Keepin' In Step

A journal of sorts documenting my various musings and opinions. Always wanted to put my thoughts down, and this is how I felt like doing it.

[sparepart11]

Ramble On

So, last year I went through a bit of a difficult time (didn’t we all) but what arose from it was one of the greatest outpourings of love an generosity I may ever get to experience.  I have great friends and they keep reminding me how very lucky I am regardless of any superficial circumstances.  One of the things given to me, alongside a day of love and support that I will always cherish, was a Playstation 4 and a joke from one that they wanted me to review all the games I got that day here.  The least I could do is fulfill that wish, whether it be a jest or not so here is the first entry in that series:

Overall, the game was very well put together.  It checks the boxes for all you would want in a gaming experience.  The combat was frenzied, if a bit simple, and the ways you could tackle the various challenges in the game were varied enough that you might even find yourself taking on tasks multiple times just to try out new things.  It is open world, and if you never wanted to get along with the game you would never really have to.  The aspect that really wins me over when it comes to this particular game is, I suppose I will call it the battlefield politics aspect, maneuvering around the different uruk lieutenants in the power structure and having fun at the multitude of ways you can cut off the head of the war machine of Mordor.  The game keeps internal statistics and does some fun things with them such as having one of the final fights be the warchief that has done you in the most throughout the game.

As for the negative, the reason the manipulation of the chieftains stands out as such a positive is that everything else feels kind of uninspired.  The combat, while fun, was pretty much straight from the Arkham games.  Combine that with the assassins creed Parkour and the Lord of the Rings wallpaper and sometimes you get the feeling that this game was assembled purely as a cash grab rather then an inspired piece of creation.  That’s not to say anything was executed particularly poorly, but it left the product feeling bloated and the open world didn’t help it gain any direction.

It would be disingenuous to say that the game was bad though, playing through it was fun and it seldom felt like a chore.  Because of the ease of the Arkham style combat system you were able to take on hordes without breaking much of a sweat, which I’m not sure such high flying heroics fit the overall gritty tone of the game itself.  I reread this post and see my thoughts are becoming disjointed as I go, which in and of itself is appropriate.  Nothing that is being added is wrong at all, but it doesn’t stop everything from being a pile of thoughts haphazardly stapled together.  As I said, it isn’t bad in any stretch of the imagination and I would be lying if I gave it any less then seven beheaded uruk... out of ten.

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Cuts Like a Knife

So among all the surprise movies I haven’t seen until recently there is one in particular that really stands out to me.  Yeah I haven’t seen the Godfather or Indiana Jones or any of the major classics until I started this blog and really got to going, but there is one film I haven’t seen until now that means a lot to me personally in that it really should get the credit for making movie studios feel safe with the modern trend of converting comic books into film:

And, well, it kind of deserves it.  The film should be praised for creating a vibrant world in which vampires walk among us and fill it with the sense of adventure that comic books bring to us.  It is a fitting ambassador for the modern comic book movie, while the movie itself is no classic there is a lot to enjoy.  The opening scene hooks you right away, the viewer is immersed in a world of vampires with politics and structure that exists and has always existed behind the scenes to society.  In enters Blade, the monster to monsters, they all know who he is and they all know to fear him, and with good reason as we are shown in his nightclub assault.  It does something amazing in this one scene that I think a lot of films, even ones I love have trouble doing.  In one scene you know what you need to know about the mood, theme and setting of the film without it having to stop and chew up minutes with dialogue.  This doesn’t let up, even when there is exposition it is always brief, only enough for the character that needs the info to get what they need and then the plot continues along.

That isn’t to say the movie is without its flaws.  The acting throughout was really stiff, even Wesley Snipes seemed a little conflicted about just how dark he wanted the character to go, taking a couple turns to the goofy.  This is perhaps understandable with how experimental the movie itself was, trying different things out to see what stuck it just never seemed to come together very well.  There is a bit of the drag after the first scene too as both sides set up the main plot, and it really stands out because as I said above the movie really does do pacing well outside of that.  Outside of that I don’t really have any major complaints, some thoughts about some tropes I wish it would have avoided, but as I feel this is the film that started the comic movie craze I really can’t fault it if it was first.  Was the CGI bad? Yeah, but again I bet the film didn’t get a lot of resources to work with both for the year it was released and the risk it represented.  Also I kind of personally enjoy how macabre the poor CGI made some scenes look, what with the tone of the movie as a whole.

A tone that is handled quite well with how little a time they had to establish it, with nothing coming before and I assume they had no idea anything would come after.  You are by the vampires that they have been around so long they have forgotten their history despite their long lives, and you are told by Blade they control half the city.  If you can quickly accept all that you can really enjoy the almost World of Darkness feel as the Masquerading Vampires run face first into the Hunter.  Blade as a character just feels cool, the creature that bumps back.  When he is fighting the underworld creatures he is pretty much unstoppable, even to the point where many opponents would rather run then engage him in combat.  I know a lot of people don’t like a character so overpowered, but I feel it works when we know his opposition is also very very powerful and he still holds his ground like he does.  The feeling is quite cathartic, especially as an immortal monster recently burnt to ash calls Blade the freak.  In the end it is the horror movie you would show to vampires to scare them to life and I love it for that.  I give Blade 8 ripped out vampire fangs.... out of 10

[sparepart11]

Time in a bottle

 I was going through my first effort of this whole blog, and actually was kind of shocked that I could glue enough thoughts together to even finish one of these things.  I did notice one thing though, outside of the one film that I knew going into was going to be bad I haven’t really disliked anything I watched.  Which actually tends to be a minor hang up of watching classics to catch up in pop culture, everything tends to hover around ‘not bad.’  This film is hardly a classic though, so let us see what happens:

A classic it isn’t, but I have to give some idea man credit for coming up with an interesting sci-fi idea and getting it green lighted.  Even though this one came out in 2011 we were already thick into the idea less age where everything was treading such proven ground that we paved and built a suburb around it.  And I hope this started as a good natured plan to present a good idea, because if it was conceived as soullessly as it turned out I have to wonder what the whole point was. 

The idea is that in a semi-distant future mankind has been able to monetize time, creating a world where the big earners are nearly immortal and the poor are literally living from paycheck to paycheck.  And there is some surface thought to how such a world would work, the rich don’t take chances because they have so much time, only physical trauma could bring about their death.  They have chauffers drive them in armored cars and have an army of guards around them at all times.  Meanwhile the poor are shown of course fearful of how much time they have left, but they live fast and party hard because they have a physical readout telling them every day is their last.  It is basically the part in Titantic where you see the ship workers dancing and having such a good time you think James Cameron just wishes he wasn’t so gatdamn rich so he truly could find out the secret to happiness.

And sadly that is about as far as they go with the idea, the rest of the film is a Bonnie and Clyde bank robbing movie, just replace the word ‘dollars’ with ‘hours’ and there you go.  There is a bunch of noise made about how redistribution of wealth would bring down the system, but you are made to seriously stretch your imagination of how that is going to happen.  That is even if you ignore the one character in the film who knows how this new finance system functions who says that everything will reset eventually.  It is easy to believe him too because everything seems so arbitrarily priced it is hard to actually figure out the value for an hour.  Which seems like a silly thing to say but I personally feel like giving away an hour of your life should be a weighty decision, but with prices hopping up and down even I as a viewer didn’t think twice about a lot of the transactions that were made.

Add to all that the fact that the banks were robbed with such ease it made me wonder how the system didn’t already flounder three times before the movie even started.  I only really felt tension once the entire film, and that was at the poker game in the first 1/3, and that is just because the dealer was moving so slowly that the main character would actually die before his win was even revealed.  Everything felt like a poorly thought through mess, like they wanted to make a generic bank robbing movie and hooked the entire time aspect onto it at the last second.   Rewriting a couple lines and getting a bit heavy handed with the class politics.

The acting itself wasn’t spectacular either.  Amanda Seyfried was fine, but that is about as far as I can go.  Cillian Murphy who I think most of my readers would agree is a fine actor grunted disinterested through most of his dialogue like he was just earning his paycheck.  I’ve actually read through some other reviews who try to tell me Timberlake was good but I’m just not buying it.  There is more to acting then just reading lines, and Timberlake seemed so determined to be ice in his veins cool that he forgot some scenes would require different emotions.

Overall I can’t really recommend this film to anyone, even someone looking for a cool sci-fi hook to explore.  All the time device in this movie provides is a time bomb that is always a few seconds from going off, and not the true world building experience a science fiction movie really needs.  I give In Time three remaining seconds... out of an original ten.

[sparepart11]

My Favorite Things

As most of you who know me already could tell the world, one of my favorite things in the universe is the short lived animated TV show Clone High.  Yes, I and many others are sad that it didn't get more of a fair shake then it did, but what it did give us is 13 pretty much perfect episodes.  That is because when you face the comedic team of Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Bill Lawrence with a challenge, even if that challenge is cancellation they will take it and use it as yet another tool in their arsenal. They have since went separate ways, Lawrence making successful hits like Scrubs while Lord and Miller give us instant classics like the Lego Movie.  On a quest to catch up on their work since the masterpiece I found I overlooked one of their films...

And those of you who know me already know how I feel about this because I can't stop recommending it to everyone I speak to.  So I guess that also means that now all you who don't know me know how I feel about it via inference.  It is pretty amazing, packed full of the fast paced comedic fun that Lord and Miller (I'm being alphabetical by the way, in case they egotistically read every meager article about them ever) have now become famous for.  I couldn't help smile from ear to ear as this take on the classic children's tale came to life.  It even accomplished out of the gate something that is very difficult for curmudgeons like myself, establish a sense of fun and wonder that is so great you accept whatever pseudoscience and silly explanation comes your way.

Which leads me to paragraph two, which is usually where I expound upon the bad of a film in the predictable compliment sandwich that my reviews have now taken the permanent shape of.  The problem is, I can't really, not anything that doesn't seem really contrived at least.  Was it the perfect film?  Well I do remember laughing harder at other comedies, I even have several that I certainly wouldn't dream of ranking under this one.  But, at that point I feel like it isn't a direct competition, I think with the world we were presented in the film it was as good as one could imagine it could get.  I tended to just be generically happy for most of the film rather then uproariously laughing.  I'd say that the film didn't have much of a goal then to simply entertain, rather then say relating a moral or expressing an idea artistically, but that would downplay the more heartwarming segments within.

Speaking of, and this goes pretty generically for all of Lord and Miller's work, they have a way of crafting a character that is truly astounding.  Lawrence has it too, which is why when they teamed up they created something magical, and it is sort of hard to describe.  They provide the audience with what at its surface seems to be a caricature, they act completely outlandishly and react to any and all situations at the far end of whatever axis they are supposedly put on.  But why then do you really care that the caricature finds his father's approval at the end? Because with just a bit of thought you realize that he or she is a lot of these cartoon characters precisely bundled up into one that spits out something truly dynamic.  I've revised that paragraph a lot tonight trying to get what I wanted to say right, but really I urge you to really think about your favorite character from the next Lord/Miller production you see, whether it be the Lego Movie again, the upcoming 22 Jump Street, or hopefully I have convinced at least one person to see this.

It comes as no surprise then that I award Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 9 really big mayors... out of 10.

[sparepart11]

The Thunder of Guns

I'm changing my habits for the better ever since I started this little experiment.  It's been a while since my last post but from the original surge came an intake of ideas both new and classical that I really didn't take the time to experience prior to this.  Reading for knowledge as well as entertainment for instance was something I left back at college.  Today's review may very well change all that:

  When I approached this book I was thinking it was something akin a Ken Burns documentary on paper.  Which, television being how it is eventually turned it into something of that sort eventually, but what struck me immediately is that this was more a textbook.  Every statement came with facts attached, charts and graphs adorned many of the pages and the ideas built upon themselves from start to finish.  Even beyond finish, as at the end of the book the author put together some postulates about nagging questions that many of his readers proposed to him after the completion of this narrative.  The author proved through this work that while human behavior is difficult to predict, if you watch society build itself brick by brick you'll have a better chance at figuring out the final structure then looking at it all from a bird's eye.  I love the structure of the narrative the author builds, to draw in readers of all types by proposing a destination that most people are interested in reaching and drawing a map for us all to get there rather then just pointing out the locale.

  I don't want to dig into too many of the conclusions the author makes during this review for a couple of reasons.  One is that at the end I'm going to recommend this book and feel you all should give it a read after I am done with this review.  It is easy to take it bite sized chunks, though I must admit it probably took me longer then most people to make it to the end.  I do think that an excellent job is done here, but sometimes he repeats his thoughts too much during the writing which causes the tone of the whole thing to start to take a classroom approach.  I did find I needed to put the book down every once and a while when my mind started to drift to chalk boards and yardsticks.  He does have his biases too, when he says he has worked with the people of New Guinea and that many of them are friends and inspirations, what he means is that New Guinea society is his favorite thing ever and if you are really interested in other parts of the world prepare for a bit of a slog every once and a while.  While it is good writing form in a professional novel to draw back to the initial question from time to time he seemed almost to retreat there when he lingered too long in discussion of other parts of the globe.

  Don't let that discourage you though fair reader, from others I have discussed this work with opinions are split about whether there is a terrible amount of validity to what I say.  Oh, and that is the other reason I didn't want to discuss this work, If you know me personally I have already discussed it with you, far too much back when I was in the midst of it.  You see, very few things in life have made me feel more intelligent then reading this book.  I nearly fantasized about meeting a bunch of intellectuals and getting a chance to discuss history like I knew what the Hell was actually going on.  It was a pretty wonderful feeling and I recommend it based on that alone.

  Overall, if you are looking for entertainment this isn't the thing for you.  But, if your goal is to broaden your horizons very few things will do that as immediately as paging thorough this tome.  I give Guns, Germs and Steel seven forgotten language groups... out of ten.

[sparepart11]

Ramble On

This will be interesting, mostly because I recently messed up the display to my laptop screen with what I think was traumatic force.  So, let us see how my already terrible grammar fares when I have trouble seeing exactly what I'm typing.  Today is a film that my friends have been demanding I see and review for a good long time now:

The claim to fame for this movie is it was the fantasy epic of George Lucas in that sweet spot period before he went crazy.  Now, depending on how you classify Star Wars you could say all he really could ever work in is fantasy, to which I would agree with you and we would continue drinking our beers.  Now, I wouldn't say this was nearly as good as the first couple Star Wars movies, but it has a lot of the charm that made them so impressive when they first came out.  Plus, you have to give the direction of Ron Howard a lot of credit for taking what I assume was a torrent of ideas and condensing them into a working plot.

The cast was fun, you can see why Val Kilmer was a thing at one point in his career and Warwick Davis proves once again that he is a great actor.  Actually with that thought outside of Warwick and a couple other of note fun is kind of the nicest thing I have to say about the acting.  I don't mean to sound too mean but, well, this is a blog for criticism and most of the actors seem to have very little emotional range in this particular one.  You could tell they were having a great time with the whole project, but it felt to me as though this was still the dark age of film where a fantasy epic was less a great career move and more just another paycheck.  The brownies were hilarious, Willow was a hero that was easy to sympathize with, and Kilmer played the rogue pretty well throughout.

However, if the actors didn't have all their heart in it the writers, director, and special effects guys did.  There was a lot done here to make the world look absolutely real and set it apart from a lot of what I think the modern view of fantasy is.  The fact that there is a modern view of fantasy to deviate from is kind of worrisome what with the whole concept of the fantasy genre being limitless, but I digress.  I loved the hairy apelike trolls, looking more like a depiction of a Germanic troll then the almost scaly beast they seem to be today in fantasy games.  While on the subject of great callbacks to classic tropes is the self fulfilling prophecy that the whole movie was based around would make the Greeks weep with whatever one weeps with when self fulfilling prophecies come about.  But ultimately the Dragon was something amazing, breaking from the normal depiction of the powerful thundering lizard that most think of a dragon.  This creation was a hydra born of mud, a beast that was horrifying to conceive of much less to try and fight.  I could go on about the establishment of high magic in a fantasy world surpassing modern works like the Harry Potter films but I feel you all have a grasp of how I feel about this particular aspect of the film.

So, just take the message at that.  The movie really is a fun experiment, but I must admit it left me without the strong feelings I would get if I really hated something or truly admired it.  I both remember it clearly and find myself in this third paragraph trying really hard to find something that jumped out at me.  If you want to see a work of Lucas prior to his end of sanity I would highly recommend this film.  If you have a group of nerdy friends like mine or are a fan of fantasy movies then this would be a good one for you as well, just to stay in the loop if nothing else.  However, for everyone else I really can't say this is one you need to run out and watch.  That may cause my friends to question my tastes, but hey can't say they have never disagreed with me in the past.

With that I see myself giving Willow only 6 failed polymorphs... out of 10

[sparepart11]

Here Comes the Boom

I got Netflix as a way to catch up on popular culture.  I fell behind over the years and realized when I was missing out on some of the classics (like the Untouchables from earlier for instance) I was well out of touch.  Every once and a while however a movie comes through the queue for whatever reason that truly surprises me, even if it didn't come as a recommendation.  This is one of those times:

There are a few things about the very premise of this film that will turn off a lot of people when they first encounter it.  First, there are people out there that don't really find Kevin James to be the best comedian.  However, I found his kind veneer and energetic delivery to be perfect for the character he was playing in the movie.  Second, it is a sports comedy movie but it isn't about a plucky group of youth hockey players coached by Emilio Estevez.  The sport in this case is Mixed Martial Arts, one that many people don't follow and some people outright can't relate to it.  However, using the MMA as a backdrop to the story was an excellent idea.  Right away you think about the premise of a school teacher fighting in the MMA as a way to raise funds for a school program and you are almost automatically in the whimsical, almost silly mindset that you need to be in to truly enjoy the film.  Plus, since a lot of viewers will find the sport very obscure, so really it is as close to a blank palette as you can get with a sports film.  Though, all you MMA fans will be pleased to know this movie showcases your sport in nothing but the best of lights.

Which brings me to what I loved most about the film, if I were to boil the plot down to a single statement to describe it to whomever asks I would go with this: Good people doing there best to help other good people.  Seriously, there isn't really a semblance of a 'bad guy' in this film (alright there was, but he was wholly unnecessary, I'll get back to that).  There was a guy who was kind of a dick, but you realize by the end of the movie that you kind of have to be if you were in his shoes.  Voss himself is kind of curmudgeonly, but I think a lot of teachers will be able to relate to his struggles, and it doesn't take him long to shake off the cobwebs.  Plus, you kind of have to have a heart of gold to get the ball rolling in the first place. 

Mix the really heartwarming characters and story and add a pinch of actually taking a sports comedy and walking down a less known trial for a bit.  There were a lot of places where the sports comedy mold was really broken.  A bit of spoilers, but my favorite was the moment where Voss' trainer makes a decision about his career that would endanger the entire mission.  In a normal sports movie you would expect this to lead to tension for the rest of the film until the wounded party gets helped out in some extraordinary way far down the road and relationships are ultimately repaired.  However what happens in this film is that the two characters, get this, talk it out like two reasonable adults and neither are worse for it.  I seriously had to pause the film for a moment, I needed to pull myself together so my head would not explode.

The only real problem I had was the kind of bad guy I mentioned earlier.  He was used as a device to bring about tension at the end of the movie, but I felt it was wholly unnecessary.  The film had been so lighthearted and the characters so likable that by the end of the story I can only imagine we were already cheering for the main character regardless of circumstances.  It isn't at all a killer criticism, but the film had done so well at knowing its genre that this particular one really stood out for me.

The critics kind of panned the film, but after reading a couple of reviews I think they went in with the wrong mindset.  A lot of them mentioned how overall the film failed to be funny, which honestly it kind of did.  But the humor isn't really there to have you rolling in the aisles, it is more there to bring a smile to your face and really have you engage with the characters on a personal level.  Go into the film with the mindset that it is going to be a feel good story, imagine how you would feel hearing about this guy on the news or reading about him in the paper.  I think then you will enjoy it as much as I did.  How much you ask?  Why I'd say 8 superman punches... out of 10.

[sparepart11]

Welcome to the Jungle, we've got fun and games!

I'm back, I've actually had this one stored up for a little while but I haven't gotten around to posting about it.  Not that there has been a fervor about my going missing but I really don't want to give up on this.  Take it lightly and miss a long stretch of time, sure.  But give up, nah, it is a good little project that keeps me up to date.  This is the second request from a good friend of mine, so here we go.

This was a landmark film for a couple reasons, the most obvious is it was Murray's first time being the lead of a movie.  The casting wasn't wasted either, his performance was unastoundingly my favorite part of the film and I have a feeling he was told to just get on set and have fun.  A lot of the scenes featuring Murray feel to me like they were just him doing what he would normally do given the situations he was put in.  A particular highlight were the morning announcements, I looked forward to them every time a day was coming to a close within the movie.  The second reason is it was the first time Bill teamed up with director Ivan Reitman, which led to a wonderful tandum that took us through the more popular Stripes and of course the timeless Ghostbusters.  I have to give the movie the due that it was the start of something beautiful.

Now for the bad, and I wouldn't call it bad I would just say that the movie had a lack of ambition.  It was very freeform and really didn't have a lot to say about anything favoring the nostalgia rush of Summer camp over thoughtful narrative.  Sure, this allowed Murray to cut loose and give us some pretty hilarious stuff, but I found that the rest of the crew just couldn't keep up.  Watching the film I got a feeling the director was very laissez faire, but he was dealt a team that really just couldn't do with that much freedom.  What you end up with is a film that obviously has a lot of heart at its core, fondly playing with the memories of childhood, but on the surface simply falls flat all over the place.  This isn't helpful in a film that while Murray technically 'stars' the weight is distributed pretty evenly across the camp staff and Rudy, who could scarcely give me a problem worth me caring how his camp experience turned out.

A big part of this is I don't know quite what audience the movie was shooting for.  The friend who recommended it to me mentioned he remembered it form his childhood, which makes sense with a lot of the humor.  The pantsing scene at the end of the basketball game for instance, though that could also be written off as the director's casual comedic style (as we would discover in his later works).  But mixed in with that was a lot, and I mean a LOT, of stuff about sex.  Which I think cuts out adults too, because the sexual stuff wasn't really humor.  In fact you could say if it isn't about anything else, that was the driving motivation for most of the characters in the movie.  So it wasn't simply a situation of 'fart jokes for kids, sex jokes for the adults'.  Which of course leaves us with teenagers, which is the most likely choice of course.  It was a coming of age story for Rudy and Tripper had to learn to grow up a little bit by the end.  Everything adds up except for the obvious play on nostalgia in the movie, but that could be forgiven due to the overall lack of focus.

In the end, part of my criticism could simply be that Summer camp really wasn't a big thing for me as a kid.  I remember going once, but I don't have many memories of it beside the lodge that we all stayed in was called the 'woodchuck'.  So perhaps the memories just didn't hit home, and perhaps that is why the jokes just didn't stick.  However, they didn't and viewing them from the viewpoint of a guy who just wanted to be entertained that really didn't do much in the film's favor.

I can't bring myself to give Meatballs any more then 6 beds on a lake... out of 10.

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Man of Constant Sorrow

So, reverse situation of the usual, I actually have quite a few things to write about (and one more I'm going to add to that tonight) and just haven't been coming in here to do it.  So sorry to those of you who have really encouraged me to keep going with this endeavor.  I can't let laziness kill this one.

When I first heard of this film it was actually from my parents who owned the soundtrack and when I asked them about it they told me that it wasn't quite my speed.  While that might have been true of me in my youth, I'm glad I have gotten past that because this was an excellent movie to add to my mental repertoire.  I'm going to be straight up honest, there isn't going to be much to complain about here even from the snooty perspective I have picked up recently.  The only disappointment I had is that I expected one thing that I probably shouldn't have and the reality didn't quite match it.

And that one thing comes in the form of the expectations I formed having heard that a lot of the story was based off the Odyssey.  There were indeed a lot of references to the Epic in question, especially in a lot of the images used.  Goodman's character was the Cyclops, Ulysses infiltrated a feast hall dressed as an old man, and of course the fact that the crew was ultimately saved by Ulysses cry to a higher power.  When I had heard that it was based on Homer's original tale I had thought that this was simply going to be a modern retelling of the story.

But every time I think about it I'm glad I am wrong, while I would appreciate such a thing eventually existing the Coen brothers composed their own epic my twisting the original into a vehicle of social satire.  As the whole story of the film can be broken down to the saying 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' using the most famous tale of a hard fought journey to get back to where you started was a great artistic flourish.  What you get is a well acted, well written, and well paced narrative of a group of people reliving an all too familiar journey to return to an all too familiar place.  I am most happy about that well paced part by the way, if you are going to write a tale about not getting anywhere you have to perform an amazing balancing act.  It was composed well enough so you remain entertained throughout, but as my friends and I learned you start to question just how long this journey has taken this group of unlikely friends as they walk their paces.

Perhaps the fact that I haven't watched something truly poor lately my reviews have seemed short and boring because of how little I have to complain about in a film.  It wasn't the funniest film ever, nor was it the most intelligent, but it combined both those elements well enough to entertain the broadest audience while simultaneously elevating the discussion.  What kinds of great things did all the innovation bring?  The radio was supposed to change how people communicated but it assisted in only solidifying the election for the incumbent candidate in the story.  What about all the time behind bars?  His wife was indeed looking for suitors but she hadn't fully moved on and the town for the most part seemed unchanged to Ulysses during his return.  It seems you can change the world around you, but you simply can't change those within it.

I give O Brother, Where Art Thou eight cows on cotton house roofs out of ten.

[sparepart11]

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

It's about time I got back on here, I knew tying myself down to a deadline for writing was a good way to burn out but that simply wasn't the problem this time.  I fell back into the bad habit of starting a bunch of things without actually finishing them, making a decent review hard to find.  So, I'm going to reach into the sack o' things I can finish in a night and see what I come up with:

And man, is this ever a hard one to actually sit down and review.  Mostly because I don't know what the movie was trying to sell me on, the system popularized by the Oakland A's in 2002 or the season that they played.  Because if it is about the season and the narrative within there really isn't much to tell.  The A's shocked everyone and that drew a lot of attention to what the team was doing down in Oakland, even a marginal baseball fan such as myself knew a bit about what was going on after all was said and done.  But there really wasn't much to it to make a movie out of, either in the form of glory or defeat.  The twenty straight wins was monumental, but it wasn't like they ended the season like that.  The A's lost game 21 and then went on to lose to the Twins in the playoffs, which didn't even work out all that well for the Twins as my friends from up North would be able to tell you. 

In fact, I would go so far as to argue that the story of the Anaheim Angels that very same year would have been a much better hook for a film.  It wasn't like they were rolling in money, with the player payroll being about half that of large market teams and they actually beat the Yankees that postseason, who represented the big-money monster that the A's were wishing to surpass in the film.  The basic problem with the movie isn't the actors, who did a very good job with their roles or even the writing which managed to pull out a couple enjoyable surprises.  Most notably I loved the fire sale at about the halfway point of the movie which forced a sort of sink-or-swim mentality to the team and really brought them together.  The problem is there was nothing actually there, the season wasn't that magical and there was nothing for the audience to really latch onto.

The real victory of the system the A's implemented was truly seen two years later in the Red Sox, who successfully combined big money spending with small market mentality.  That and we have seen a rash of small market teams suddenly succeeding since their success, which goes to show that there is something significant about what they were trying to do, even if they didn't do it so well themselves (go ahead and look up what the A's accomplished shortly after the period of time encompassed by the film).  It keeps coming back to that, after watching the film I hardly want to talk about the film, I want to talk about the sport and what this means rather then anything that actually happened in the movie itself.  This would have been much better presented as a sports documentary then a Brad Pitt feature.

That, my friends, is a real problem I feel.  That is why I can't bring myself to give Moneyball any more then six undervalued players.... out of ten.

[sparepart11]

Put it out until Judgement Day

Well, this one was a long time coming for two very separate reasons.  I've had the DVD on the top of my Netflix queue for a couple of months now and it got to the point that they sent it to me even before I sent my previous one back because I have been so patient.  Very nice, but I won't hype up what should be basic customer service.  The other is because in order to frustrate a friend of mine I refused to watch the film under any circumstances because I find such things hilarious.  But, I have finally conceded.  So here goes

First of all, I think when they got Kurt Russell to do this movie contract negotiations involved telling him that they can't really pay him much, but they do actively encourage him to show up on set drunk every day.  And I like to think Mr. Russell is laid back enough a guy that that seemed like as good a contact as any.  However they did it, they got a guy mostly known for his tough guy persona to tone it down and use those same energies to play a guy who just doesn't care about anything.  The most worried Captain Ron ever got ever got in the entire film was when he actually had to take responsibility for something, and he was able to be rough without being obnoxious, so kudos.  I enjoy that he played the interloper, but it was never really in bad spirit.  Sure he kind of started hitting on the wife of the main character, but you got the feeling that it was all in good fun and it was actually the husband you wanted to slap behind the head for being kind of a dick.

Or, that could just be because the main character was played by Martin Short, a guy who makes a career out of being a guy you want to slap behind the head for being kind of a dick.  I liked how all the members of the family were portrayed as caricatures of what would be the classic comedy movie family (well, except for the mom who I think they wanted to make super conservative at the beginning but kind of dropped it the second everyone got on the boat).  The kid wasn't just the annoying kid, he was uber annoying shout about everything get in trouble just to get in trouble kind of brat who honestly played off of Captain Ron excellently.  The teenage daughter wasn't just the usual troubled youth, but an exaggerated sex fiend who almost begged for trouble at every stop.  Something I find quite wonderful is that the experience with Captain Ron and the adventure in general didn't change the family in the usual Hollywood comedy way of everyone learns a lesson and they come out better people in the end.  While they did become a bit closer as a family you get the feeling that by the end of the film they are utterly unchanged.

Add to this the utterly ridiculous situations were quite humorous and there were a lot of just plain fun to be had.  I really appreciated a play on words about midway through the movie that led to quite an unexpected twist.  This film isn't breaking any molds, if you've seen one family vacation movie (namely National Lampoon's Vacation) you've pretty much seen this one.  But it is fun nonetheless.

I give Captain Ron seven high stakes games of Monopoly... out of ten.

[sparepart11]

The Baddest Man Alive

I'm back, it's been a while but I made it here.  The long lull was a combination of laziness and an inability for a while to get a hold of the requests I wanted to do.  What about those I could do?  Well that is of course where the laziness I already mentioned kicked in.  No excuses, but I'm happy to finally settle down and write another review.

I'm just going to say the most obvious thing and get it out of the way, the soundtrack was phenomenal.  If you are a fan of hip-hop, the way the music was woven into the scenes and the fact that the pace of the movie reflected the tempo so well at times will be reason enough to watch this film.  That is combined with the realization that a film like this was a natural next step for a man like RZA and his affiliation with the Wu-Tang Clan.  By watching this movie I know that RZA loves both the business he is in and the often cheezy Kung Fu movies that inspired this creation, because he works them both together splendidly.

After watching the movie I went to see how it was received, and the reviews often criticized it for following the Kung Fu genre almost to a fault, offering very little new.  A statement that confounds me because even as an amateur at this whole criticizing game I have to ask wasn't that the point? While watching this movie I wasn't getting the impression that RZA was trying to break the mold of the Kung Fu action movie but instead use the genre to subtly represent the music industry he is a part of.  A lot of the themes of the movie reinforce this for me, such as the fact that there are strongly knit clans and the greatest crime in the eyes of the characters at least seems to be betrayal.  The fact that every major martial artist (I used that term on purpose) has their own style or weapon and are extremely famous because of how well they wield it.  I think both those statements apply both to Kung Fu movies AND the Rap game.  If these decisions were not on purpose then the director was accidentally brilliant because I appreciated all these very blunt images actually being a subtle twist of words.  Heck, at the end of the movie one of the biggest reasons the bad guys failed was a bunch of two timin' Hos.  Literally, it was a bunch of prostitutes who double crossed them leaving most of the clan dead in their wake.  Over money.  Seriously.

Were there things I didn't like about the film?  Well yes, there were some performances that left a lot to be desired, especially the titular man with the Iron Fists himself.  However, even that was balanced out by good work by Russel Crowe, Lucy Liu, and a surprisingly good turn in by Byron Mann.  There was even a cameo appearance by none other then Pam Grier.  There were a couple scenes in the middle that drew on in the middle that really took away from the really well done appeal of this film being a concept album in movie form.  Though I was watching the extended edition so perhaps such things were my fault.  The fight choreography was done really well, especially the fight with the Gemini Killers which absolutely blew me away.  I'm gonna be honest, there was very little to dislike.

I was considering being a bit conservative with my ranking, not entirely sure it was as good as I was originally thinking.  But, I come to realize after considering it for a while that I would be pretty much lying about my personal enjoyment if I gave it any less.  I give Man with the Iron Fists 8 fantastic weapons... out of 10.

[sparepart11]

I'm back, with a vengeance.  Or just the regular kind of back, I haven't posted in a hot minute because my past couple weeks have been so loaded down with awesome I couldn't reach my computer.  Got to see an absolutely amazing performance by my favorite band in the process, seriously hope Last Summer On Earth becomes a full on yearly thing.  But you aren't here for my opinions... or are you?  Because if you are this week I will be giving you my opinions on:

It is the near future, the planet is slowly going to complete waste due to the negligence of those that have been living on it.  Power is running low, food and living space is stretched by overpopulation, and people are so jaded with hopelessness that they simply need an escape.  That escape was the Oasis, a simulated world with infinite possibilities a place a person could go and be anything they wanted as long as it wasn't themselves.  This world was created by James Halliday, an eternal loner with an obsession for the pop culture of his youth and a knack for programming and it made him rich beyond all imagination.  But, you can't take it with you and on his death bed he brought to light the greatest treasure hunt in the history of man, whoever could find Halliday's Easter Egg would be heir to the fortune.  This is the world created for the reader by Cline, and it is truly a lovely one to delve into.

I think what I enjoyed about this book most is just how much it challenges your imagination.  You are dragged from the dystopia of the real world into a world where the possibilities are endless and much of what the different planes of Oasis look and feel like are truly left up to the reader.  The only real anchors you get throughout the book are references to the culture of the 80s and 90s that are scattered throughout the book.  Other then that you are left to just imagine for yourself what it would really feel to be in your favorite movie, TV show, game, book, or what have you.  I don't know if it's true, but I feel safe guessing that you get a giddy feeling after watching a movie and wondering what it would be like to be truly immersed in that world.  To walk out of the Avengers and look to the sky, wanting to know what it is really like for people to be 'super.' Or to read Harry Potter and imagine the magic that circles just below the veil of what is real.  Cline does an excellent job of grabbing onto that feeling and feeding it to you throughout the book.

Another thing I love is the themes of the story don't really linger about the references that are continually dropped within the book.  It actually revolves about the ideas of what is real and if it is what is outside the game is that truly so important?  This is reinforced by the love story that I actually found quite touching because both the protagonist and his love interest are very likable and due to the circumstances it is very easy to get into their shoes.  The character of Aech was very refreshing too, and teaches the valuable lesson of expect nothing when it comes to a world where the possibilities are endless.  It's good that the focus of the story was well done too, because the antagonist at least in the form of Sorrento really was lackluster.  Mostly because his motivations were quite unclear as far as... anything really.  The Sixers as an implacable foe were great, and I think it would have hit harder had the army actually been made up entirely interred workers, fighting without choice for a cause they want to lose.  Using Sorrento as a face really lost it for me, I guess perhaps the author was going for the 'troll', a power saturated douche who causes problems because it gives him an e-boner.  But, I feel that just didn't fit the role of a primary foe.  He really wasn't all that threatening.

Speaking of not very threatening I really did have a problem with the pace of the story, especially at the end.  I'm going to try and avoid major spoilers, but suffice it to say that there wasn't much tension to it all.  The big fight seemed like a foregone conclusion because you didn't really have enough time to forget about the trump card the protagonist was carrying from earlier (another problem with squishing the story together, something should be said for Chekhov's Gun but you don't need to fire it the second it appears either).  Also there isn't much tension to a race when during the middle portion of it there isn't much chance for the trailing runner to catch up.  If you are confused then sorry, but like I said no major spoilers.  I even am going to refrain for mentioning what I thought the ending was going to be because I wasn't entirely wrong.  I do this because I am indeed going to recommend this book, my gripes about it are outweighed a good deal by what I truly enjoyed.

I give Ready Player One seven Easter eggs.... out of ten.

[sparepart11]

Welcome to the Jam

No long preface for this one, I just hope my review gets you all to enjoy this request as much as I did.  Yes, I am giving away how I feel about it in the first sentence.  No, I really don't care.  So, without further ado I bring you the game with the wonderfully succinct title: Tales of Game's Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa

The time: The Post-cyberpocalypse. The place: Neo New York.  Nobody really knows what constituted the cyberpocalypse but most agree it ended on one fateful day when one Charles Barkley used the ultimate Verboten move on the b-ball court: the chaos dunk.  It was a dunk of such concentrated b-ball energies that it destroyed the B-ball court and the isle of Manhatten.  Millions were slain and the response of the outraged public was an event known as the Purge, an initiative that hunted down b-ball players and those associated with the sport until the game was a shadow of its former self.  All that Barkley was left with was his shame and his only son, Hoopz.  This is their story, this is their... SaGa.

I know this is really heavy stuff, but as Barkley himself said if you can't slam with the best then jam with the rest.  What ensues are some of the most hilarious hours in video gaming history, and what else can you expect?  It is the sequel to a quickly forgotten sports game morphed into a jRPG with the most insane plot you can imagine.  Oh, and I forgot to mention, in this world the events of the film Space Jam are completely canon.  Everything is off the rails and it toys with jRPG tropes so well that you can enjoy the game whether you want to laugh with them or at them.  The writing is top notch and includes all you can expect from a poorly fan-translated import from Japan, complete with otaku-eque rants where there clearly shouldn't be any.  And the ride is perfectly timed, only about 12 hours of gameplay so by the time the joke is starting to wear off it hits the ending crescendo and reduces at least this player to a laughing fit just in time for the credits.

But of course the question is how is the game play to this entire thing? The answer I am happy to respond is pretty damn good for a game the entire premise of which is a joke.  It is turn based, but each attack is handled differently and damage and accuracy increases with proper planning and well timed button presses.  If you played one of the first two games in the Paper Mario series, imagine that but with more slams and jams.  Of which there is no shortage of, b-ball stars of all walks of the game make an appearance in some form or another.  This game is insanity done right, because each new premise builds on the other like a pyramid standing on point.  By the time you get to the highest tier you know it is going to fall and you want to ride it all the way to the bottom.

This is definitely worth your time, even with me searching every corner of the world it only took 12 hours.  I give Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden 9 ultimate b-balls... out of 10.

[sparepart11]

Too Much Time On My Hands

So, another fruitful week down, I think I'm becoming a little better at making a habit of this.  This next request was pretty strange for me, I actually had to watch the film twice and did a little research before I could fully develop an opinion on what I saw:

  This was a very ambitious idea, and right off the bat I would like to give the proper kudos for that.  Instead of the fantasy approach most movies involving time travel have (think Back to the Future or Terminator), Primer wanted to take a more scientific look at the process.  After all, Penicillin was discovered by accident, so why not time travel right?  There was also a very fresh take putting the technology into the hands of a couple of guys who could kind of reason out what it is, rather then some uber smart scientist or some kid who will selfishly use it for his own ends before learning a wholesome moral by the movies end.  The writer/director also makes a good effort to obfuscate the details so your suspension of disbelief isn't broken for the entire movie trying to reason out how what they are doing is even possible.

   However, that is as much credit as I will give the writing for the dialogue.  I am going to hope that what he was shooting for when writing the film was for the looping dialogue to symbolize the loop of time travel introduced into the movie itself.  But dude, at some point you need to watch your shoot and think to yourself 'By the Gods, this is tedious as Hell.'  You aren't Shakespere, and if I had to listen to the lead characters go through yet another batch of "I know what your are saying, but do you know?" "Yeah, I know, but do you know what this means?" I would have booked an plane ticket, went to your front door, and beaned you in the head with a physics book.

   I know, you structured the dialogue to make the events unclear so the audience had to think about it, but you were better off just making the characters shut up.  It didn't make me think, it made me believe that the modest 80 minute running time was still too long.  I did enjoy what thoughts the film did promote though.  I did like the experimental approach to time travel that was taken.  To make a loop, do a small change, observe the results, then slowly raise the stakes for the next loop.  I also liked that when realizing the potential of the machine the ultimate goal one of the characters came up with was so very petty.  It humanizes the entire effort.  It was something fresh and sometimes interesting and well done on a $7000 budget.

   If you have some time, the film is short and I recommend watching it.  But, there are a lot of better uses of ones time out there as well.  Ultimately I give Primer 6 recursive loops... out of 10.

[sparepart11]

Can't Touch This

I've been letting this sit for far too long, and really I'm not about to let another effort of mine languish.  I'm still in debt two posts after this one I realize, but there is no reason I can't catch up.  So, with renewed vigor, I bring you this weeks film: The Untouchables

After knowing this movie exists it will be hard for me to take the argument that 'there are too many characters' again for a reason a movie is bad.  There is a way to make a sizable ensemble work and this film proves it is done by cutting the introductions.  Have the characters establish themselves by the actions they take in the story you want to tell rather then stapling on lots of stories trying to tell us about the character's back story and motivations and family life and why they write all that damned dark poetry.  Each of the four leads and the antagonist all had personalities that established themselves throughout the movie and it didn't require a thirty minute diatribe of why Oscar Wallace wanted to become an accountant.  I really wish I could sit the guys working on the Justice League film down, put on this movie and tell them that this is how they should go about it.

It is helped however that each of the actors nailed their roles, and I even want to argue that the work put into the character of Malone was some of Connery's best.  But let's not discount Oscar's accountant turned cocky madman with a shotgun or the fact that through all the madness Ness still had his heart of solid gold.  It spoke something that the climactic shootout of the movie involved Ness trying to save a baby while a ton of gangsters were trying to put a bullet in his brain.  Let's not forget de Niro, who was able to establish Capone almost in his entirety during that opening scene where he was getting the shave.  With a single glance I could see the rage that was laying underneath Capone's extremely cool persona.

The music was also top notch, highlighting each scene so very well.  I was hooked from the opening to be quite honest, with the old cop serial sound with a higher tempo twist playing while the title appeared.  The scenes were paced well too, with quick cuts between scenes switching between the Untouchables and the Mob that almost gave the feeling of a sort of boxing match, or perhaps more poignantly a street brawl.  There are a few things I didn't like of course, the film was far from perfect.  Some shots seemed a bit unnecessary, such as cutting back to the mother and her child for the nteeth time.  Yes, that would have caused tension in another film but the writers or director should have known that the film was biographical and the audience should know that really Ness couldn't actually fail here.

But, any gripes are have are very minor and don't change the fact that I absolutely loved this film.  I give The Untouchables 8 bottles of Canada's finest liquor.... out of ten.

[sparepart11]

In the Meantime

The week was rolling by, and I was wholly unproductive all week because of an illness.  However, I recover and realize I have absolutely no reason to not have fulfilled a request for review.  So I got on that first thing and that is what leads to tonight's post:

This movie has a lot going for it by premise alone.  The idea is that in 1945 a group of Nazi's fled to the dark side of the moon and began building in the hopes of returning to the Earth in an invasion unlike any seen before.  The previews combined with our own thoughts about what this movie could be about paints one of the most absurd pictures imaginable.  Honestly, I think those expectations really hurt the film, the over the top absurdity that would have had me doubled over laughing if I didn't expect it seemed oddly mundane when it actually arrived.  The key to a good experience watching an absurdly bad movie is not being able to even guess what is coming next, because the vision the addled mind of whoever the director is goes so far off of sense that you really are in for an experience more then a viewing.  This movie was a bad movie full of absurdity and it felt like it was made explicitly for that purpose, that really dragged down the whole thing.

Add to that the strange moral to the mix and it honestly fell a bit flat with me.  I mean, I understand what the director was getting at making the people of Earth no easier to cheer for then the Nazis but there exists a point when your premise is so ridiculous you cross a line where credible parody is no longer possible.  I'm not saying I hated the experience, white facing the black actor, usage of Nazi propaganda to forward a political message, and Mir turning out to be a Russian attack ship all got a hearty chuckle.  Mostly because those particular jokes meandered far enough away from the source that I didn't expect it, but it wasn't enough to really have me recommend it to anyone unless this becomes some sort of cultural thing.

Which is a shame, I truly did want to like this one.  I think it comes down to the fact that I didn't experience it correctly to have a really good time.  I wish I knew less about it going in.  I really wish I could have watched it with a close group of friends, drinking a few brews and feeding off the laughter of the room.  On the other hand, if your film needs the help of the consumer's friends in order to be enjoyable it is by definition pretty bad isn't it?  Sadly not in the 'so bad it is good sense.'

Sorry Iron Sky, I can only award you Vier out of Zehn