Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

As a teenager I read a fair amount of science fiction, but somehow never got around to Frank Herbert's 'Dune'.   Having now sat through this interminable adaptation (155-minutes!) of just part of the book I don't feel as though I missed much. Defenders of the film wave away complaints that it is ponderous and turgid by saying that it necessarily has to do a lot of "world-building".   To which my riposte is that the  original 'Star Wars' film manages in a mere two hours to do a hell of a lot of world-building whilst also entertaining us with exciting action sequences and creating a host of memorable and iconic characters And despite the amount of time spent in this film on world-building I still came out of it none the wiser as to what was so great about the all-important spice.    It doesn't help that this is one of those irritating films whose main purpose is to set up the sequel rather than tell a compelling standalone story.   I guess I will ge...

This nuclear thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow is certainly hard hitting. A nuke appears over the Pacific, source indeterminate, and before you can say 'Dr Strangelove' it is heading for the continental USA (gulp). Two interceptor missiles are launched, but the enormous amount of money spent on them appears to be poor value because one has a technical glitch and the other reaches its target but fails to blow up the incoming missile. Shockingly that's it as far as Chicago is concerned; the 10 million inhabitants have about 15 minutes left to live, just about enough time for the US Secretary of Defense (Jared Harris) to have a final conversation with his daughter, before committing suicide by jumping off a tall building.   I wasn't clear why more interceptor missiles aren't launched, except that we are told that the US has a limited supply so maybe they should be husbanded in case of further attacks.  But even so, surely Chicago is worth saving? Especially since th...