Primitive War review – it’s Green Berets vs dinosaurs in cheerfully cheesy Vietnam war gorefest

Set to an on-the-nose soundtrack of Creedence Clearwater, an elite squad of soldiers are suitably unprepared for their large-toothed assailants in this jungle thriller Aimed squarely and unabashedly at viewers who love soldiers, gore and dinosaurs – as well as dinosaurs goring soldiers – this adaptation of Ethan Pettus’s 2017 novel is deeply repetitive but weirdly watchable. Although shot in Australia with a mostly Australian cast sprinkled with a few American actors, it’s supposed to be set in Vietnam in the late 1960s as the US armed forces take on the Viet Cong. But there are other forces to contend with, and we don’t just mean covert Chinese or Soviet operatives, although the latter do feature significantly here. It turns out a nefarious scientific experiment by one of the aforementioned factions has accidentally ushered a whole army of dinosaurs into the jungle and they’ve begun gaily munching their way through anyone who gets in their way. When one squad of Green Berets go miss...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at 20: a love story that’s impossible to forget

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet forget they used to be in love in a wonderfully inventive and moving reminder of why romantic pain is an important thing to remember

The greatest screen romances are usually about failure, not happily ever afters. Love sacrificed. Love unrequited. Love forbidden by social mores or bad timing or the tectonic forces of history. Think Casablanca. Brief Encounter. In the Mood for Love. The Age of Innocence. Moonlight. Considered another way, though, they’re powerful because they end so pristinely, before the banal hassles and petty fissures of everyday life make a mess of things. Give a relationship enough time and Before Sunrise turns into Before Midnight.

One of the reasons why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the 21st century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience. It’s only human to want that pain to go away, but the film suggests that literally making it so would be a wish on a monkey’s paw, offering some short-term relief, perhaps, but with unanticipated long-term consequences. People usually have many more failed relationships before one that succeeds, after all, and the accumulation of experience and memory not only means something, but that meaning isn’t static. Bitter moments can turn bittersweet.

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