Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and our contemporary fears
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a dinosaur adventure that spends a surprising amount of its running time on things that worry people in reality: genetic engineering, climate breakdown, and who is responsible when science is put to work by someone else’s balance sheet. The franchise has always been about this. Michael Crichton’s original novel was […]
Bad Boys for Life: when action heroes are allowed to feel
Bad Boys for Life, the third entry in the franchise, does something the first two did not: it lets its heroes change. Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett still drive through explosions, but the film gives them internal problems that the action cannot solve, and that shift is what makes it worth writing about. Seventeen years […]
Adaptability and resilience at work: lessons from The Hustle
The Hustle is a comedy about two con artists, Penny and Josephine, who need creativity and flexibility to make anything work. Underneath the jokes it is a decent illustration of adaptability and resilience — two capabilities that decide who lasts in a competitive environment. The film is a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with the […]
Data security strategies inspired by the Men in Black
The Men in Black are, above everything else, specialists in protecting sensitive information. Their methods are fictional, but the organisational logic behind them maps unusually well onto what a modern company actually has to do about confidentiality. Here are four practices worth borrowing. The premise is a useful frame for a serious problem. The MIB […]
Hiccup’s transformation: lessons in evolving leadership
How to Train Your Dragon is an animated film about a young Viking, Hiccup, who becomes a leader for his people. Through mistakes, challenges and eventual success, he demonstrates what leadership looks like when it is built on empathy and resilience rather than authority — and the lessons transfer straightforwardly to professional life. The situation […]
Leaving your comfort zone: lessons from Dr Dolittle
Dolittle sends its famous veterinarian out of the safety of his manor and into a genuinely risky voyage. The journey is full of obstacles that push him past his own limits, and the film is a straightforward illustration of what leaving a comfort zone actually produces. It is worth being clear about the starting position. […]
The Invisible Man: from victim to hero
The Invisible Man, directed by Leigh Whannell, follows Cecilia Kass, who escapes an abusive relationship only to find herself hunted by an attacker nobody else can see. The film is built around her transformation from victim to protagonist, and it is unusually precise about what that transformation costs. The 2020 version made one decision that […]
Queen & Slim: the power of visual storytelling
Queen & Slim, directed by Melina Matsoukas, is a film in which almost every image is doing narrative work. The story of a couple on the run after a traffic stop goes wrong is carried by its dialogue, but at least as much by what the camera chooses to show. Here is how the visual […]
Family relationships under pressure in The Purge
The Purge takes place in a dystopia where, once a year, all crime — murder included — is legal for twelve hours. The premise is designed to provoke, and what it actually examines is closer to home: what happens to a family when survival is the only thing on the table. The detail that makes […]
Persuasion tactics in Catch Me If You Can
Catch Me If You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the life of Frank Abagnale Jr., is a film about persuasion pushed past its ethical limit. A young man fools institutions and lives extravagantly under a series of borrowed identities. Underneath the entertainment, it is an unusually clear demonstration of techniques most people […]