“Short Circuit” is a science-fiction comedy about a robot that malfunctions and gains a human-like sentience. The SAINT robots are designed to be deployed on the battlefield, driven by caterpillar tracks and with a shoulder mounted laser they are a formidable force (as we see in the opening scenes of a military demonstration). When lightning strikes one of the robots, Number 5, he manages to free himself and escape from NOVA Laboratories. Leaving his life of military service behind he embarks on a journey of discovery, reading everything he can in an insatiable desire for “input”, and finds a friend in the person of Stephanie, a young woman who agrees to allow him to stay with her. Meanwhile, the robotics engineers are doing their best to recover the expensive piece of hardware before it does serious damage in the outside world. John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, War Games) directs from the screenplay by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, who also wrote the Tremors series of films.
Chances are as a cinephile you have a feel-good movie in your collection. A film you turn to whenever you have the blues or need to soothe tattered nerves. They may be guilty pleasure films that critics weep over to this day, or they may be a film masterpiece fitting of a museum. A feel-good film knows no boundaries and never should.
Apocalypse Now is the new Spartacus. Certainly, declaring yourself to be a film in imitation of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam war classic seems very much in vogue this year.
For those who found the poster for Kong: Skull Island ‘on the nose’ just wait until you see the shot for shot likenesses to be found in War for the Planet of the Apes, the third in Matt Reeves’ Planet of the Apes reboot series. Heck, at one point – getting one up on hacks ready with the puns – the slogan: ‘Ape-ocalypse Now’ can be seen sprayed over the walls of an underground tunnel. Unlike Kong, however, Reeves’ film borrows both style and substance in his homage. War is a hugely satisfying round off to a superlative trilogy.
The Film Blog 