I saw it at the cinema and I believe I said at the time exactly what you just said above. (8+)

Mark

Get out of my head!

No. I like it in here. (8+)

Mark

Had to stop watching Gravity, tedious.

Right, so a quick more indepth review as my next patient hasn't turned up. It does contain spoilers.

The premise of the original Robocop (IIRC - it's been a while since I last watched it) was that it was almost tongue-in-cheek style of hyperviolence, corruption and capitalism. OCP want to take over a town and run it as a private enterprise, and in doing so wants to run the police force. It creates a cyborg that requires a human brain. Murphy gets slaughtered, is pronounced dead and gets put into the program. Over the course of the film, we find that Murphy still exists somewhere beneath the machine.

Robocop 2014 has a different premise, which you will have no doubt gathered from the trailers. There are ED-209 machines which police parts of the middle east. The idea is that human lives are not placed at stake. There's a push for such machines to police America. The resistance from the public is down to the lack of a "human factor". Murphy has an accident and is put into the Robocop program. He still has an intact brain and memories, so is very much a human in a machine body. There's a cool bit where we see what remains of Murphy. It skirts around the issue of what it means to be human but disappointingly never looks at things more deeply. Murphy tries to adjust to life as a man in a machine suit, but it appears to interfere with his ability to make decisions. Another interesting point about morality/free will. He is medically treated and basically becomes a machine with a human brain. Towards the end, he starts to regain his humanity.

There are some cool bits, there are some questionable bits, there are some scientifically questionable bits (what kind of person has a heart rate of 30 bpm and is still conscious!?!?!?). It skirts around the idea of free will and what it means to be human, but never explores it fully. I think if they had done this, it would have made for a better film. They also seem to lose the idea behind the original film which took a look at some of the bigger issues like corruption and capitalism and it's like the film makers didn't know this or chose to ignore it.

12A rating - honestly, in some ways I missed the impact of the hyperviolence but since they seemed to have ignored the stuff from the original film, it wouldn't have fit in as well. Hence I didn't miss it as much.

In short, I liked it more than Man of Steel, but didn't like it as much as the original. 3/5 current rating. Wouldn't deliberately go out of my way to watch it again but wouldn't mind if I had to. Unlike MoS which I would just walk out or leave the room.

American Hustle - 3/10

2 Hours 20 Minutes of my life I'm never getting back! It was so slow-paced, there were a lot of long, significant looks trying to convey meaning, but the whole thing was so stilted and tedious that by the time we got to the end 'event' I didn't give a toss about what happened to any of the characters and was just glad it was nearly over. If they'd cut it down to an hour and a half and brought things to a head more directly without all the pointless ego-massaging I would probably have enjoyed it more.

Cross country skiiiers and other hyper-athletes like staged-tour cyclits I believe.

Stolen.
Nick Cage (I realise I just lost a lot of people right there) gets to play at being Liam Neeson in a sub-par - but not without it's moments - rip-off of Taken.

Mark

Generally speaking, they are isolated incidences. I would have accepted a bradycardia of 40-60 but at 30, you need a temporary pacing wire at the very least, which the character didn't.

Let's hope they do it justice. Thanks for the heads up Mr W.

Whoops. Too used to incidence, prevalence etc.

No I let you off to be honest because you are talking about incidences of certain heart rates, I think it was acceptable. ninja editing is getting slow these days.

But you are correct that it should have been incidents. The incidence of bradycardia like that is very low, but not isolated!

So it stole a few hours of your life?

At last they have made a highly original and interesting book into a film

Under The Skin

If it's anything like the book it will be great.