Tom Holland

Chaos Walking

  • Title: Chaos Walking
  • IMDb: link

Chaos Walking

Adapted from the first book of a sci-fi trilogy, Chaos Walking offers a dystopian future on an alien world where human settlers deal with an oddity of the planet as men’s thoughts are broadcast allowing others to hear, and even at time see, them. Our two main characters are the local screw-up Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland) and newly-arrived colonist from space Viola (Daisy Ridley) who is notably taken aback by the unexpected phenomena and whose appearance throws the town into chaos and forces hidden truths about both the town and world Todd has grown up on to be explored.

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The Lost City of Z

  • Title: The Lost City of Z
  • IMDb: link

The Lost City of Z

2016’s The Lost City of Z is a stylish period drama set in the early 20th Century centered around the life and explorations of surveyor Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) who grew obsessed with discovering the ruins of an advanced civilization hidden deep with the Amazon jungle. The film does capture the drive behind exploration. Despite the personal cost to his family life, and the dangerous conditions of each expedition, the film sells us on Fawcett’s obsession and eagerness to return to the Amazon to prove his theories which were initially dismissed by other explorers of the time.

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Uncharted

  • Title: Uncharted
  • IMDb: link

Despite its title, Uncharted takes us on a journey of well-trod treasure hunting involving Nate Drake (Tom Holland) being pulled into a search for the legendary lost treasure of Magellan which he and his brother once fantasized about finding as kids. Teamed up with various untrustworthy and unscrupulous hunters, each after the treasure for their own reasons, Uncharted follows the basic path of the genre with various clues needing to be solved to move the characters to the next step on their journey to the treasure.

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Spider-Man: No Way Home

  • Title: Spider-Man: No Way Home
  • IMDb: link

Because there’s so little plot in Spider-Man: No Way Home it’s hard to discuss the film without revealing its many secrets. What writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers tee-up for fans is a loose structure that allows for the film to throw everything but the kitchen sink, with an almost overwhelming amount fan service (admittedly pretty good fan service), into a single film. While it doesn’t measure up to the film that obviously inspired it, Spider-Man: No Way Home turns out to be a pretty fun ride. 

Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is fucked, and his friends (Zendaya and Jacob Batalon) are paying for his mistakes. In classic Spider-Man fashion, Peter’s attempts to rectify that situation caused by Mysterio revealing his identity to the world only make it worse. After finding a wizard and loophole to set things right, Peter’s interruption of  Doctor Strange‘s (Benedict Cumberbatch) spell to prevent anyone in the world from remembering he is Spider-Man backfires opening up cracks to the Multiverse allowing anyone who knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man from any other reality to bleed through. Let the chaos begin.

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Onward, But Not Necessarily Upward

  • Title: Onward
  • IMDb: link

Onward movie reviewWritten and directed by Dan Scanlon (Monsters University), the latest entry to the Pixar universe is one of the weakest in the company’s catalog. Set around broader and more generic characters than we’ve come to expect from Pixar, Onward is a story-driven tale that doesn’t hit the emotional beats nearly as well as many of the studio’s previous films. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a passable animated feature, it’s just not… magical.

Onward has the ingredients which should hit home for me personally, yet it does not. It focuses on an introverted character finding his path and involves Dungeons & Dragons role playing adventure. Maybe such themes have just been mined too long by film and TV in recent years to leave much new ground to cover.

The wacky road trip movie stars Tom Holland and Chris Pratt as a pair of brothers living in a fantasy world that has lost most of its magic. Given the opportunity to spend one day with the father they lost as children, the pair race to complete a spell that has only resurrected the lower-half of their dad.

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