Prey train

Prey, Dan Trachtenberg 2022

Prey is a new prequel to the Predator franchise, set in 1719. In a North America still largely native, we find Naru (Amber Midthunder). She’s a young female Comanche who doesn’t like the way she’s treated by the men of the tribe as “just a woman”. She wants to be part of the hunt and her ideas, rejected by her male peers, are effective. Her brother, Taabe (Dakota Beavers), is more supportive of her tomboyish desires, but even he thinks she’ll not be strong enough. When she says she wants to lead her first hunt, Taabe tells her that when she meets her victim, she should say “This is as far as you go. No more. This is it. “, which you know will get used in the final showdown. There are a lot of bits like that in this film, with stuff like the axe-tether or the discovery that a petal renders you invisible(?!) so this is not a challenging film. It is, however, beautifully shot; nicely paced and well-acted. It doesn’t break the mould of a Predator movie, but it passes the time well. I would like to have seen it on a big screen, with crashing sound. 4/5

Bullet Train, David Leitch 2022

So, Deadpool 2 was great; the trailer for Bullet Train was great, the film is less so. It sets off like a version of Snatch directed with even more editing gimmicks than Edgar Wright and feels like an American remake of Beasts that Cling to the Straw/Lucky Strike. It’s bigger, louder brash and dumb and it can be lots of fun if you turn off your brain entirely and just rely on your limbic and autonomic systems for enjoyment. We did laugh on several occasions when we saw it en famille, but I’m not sure it will bear many rewatches. I doubt it’s on the Japanese government’s radar, but they should be offended that it ends the way it does, given that no-one has ever been killed because of the shinkansen. There was an accident in the 50s that they studied and made sure could never happen again… Very silly 3/5