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 Destiny Game Review

4/23/2015

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If you're looking for the "Too Long: Didn't Read" prognosis, "The Last Word" if you will, Destiny is fun. The game mostly involves your character running around shooting aliens in the face. Good times. Go buy it.

If you're looking for deeper analysis of the game and other online reviews lack sufficient examination, then read on.

Destiny is a big game that feels small. After a heart-pumping intro mission that features environmental manipulation--like grates falling from ceilings, pop up enemies, sound in the walls and trip mines--the game sends you to the Tower, your headquarters for the remainder of the game. It overlooks a glittering cityscape overshadowed by an immense alien sphere called the Traveler. The Tower is encircled by snow-capped mountains and flying craft that scurry  near and far on unknown business.

At first glance, the Tower feels as if endless activities and quests are ready to be triumphed. It soon becomes apparent that the player is confined to a few thousand square feet of explorable real estate and quests typically come from one source at a time.

This was the first major disappointment.The quest system doesn't measure up to previous generation benchmarks like those in the Elder Scrolls or Fallout franchises. In them, the player only needed to walk around cities or villages and talk to almost any NPC to could gather information about the area, other characters, or start quests. Compare the lifeless Tower to the lively Citadel in Mass Effect, with its fully realized characters, multiple explorable floors and varied missions with multiple outcomes.

In Destiny, you typically get missions from one of four people in the tower and barely exchange dialogue. One cut scene with a character called the Speaker explains nothing and sends you on a mission. Looking back after playing the rest of the game, you were lucky to get that much. There are no dialogue exchanges or cutscenes with the NPCs voiced by Nathan FIllion, Peter Storemare, Claudia Black, Gina Torres and other excellent voice actors. Sometimes they say things to no one in particular, or maybe you buy something from them, but you don't really interact with them.

You must rely on a little hovering companion called a "ghost," voiced by Peter Dinklage, to interpret what just happened. He briefs you on missions while you descend on exotic alien locales to extinguish all life you encounter. Unfortunately, most of the time he seems just as ignorant as you. Before you know it, you've completed 20-30 of these missions with vague introductions, sparse cut scenes, half-assed explanations and the game ends. You beat it and probably have no idea what  just happened.

The entirety of the main story plays like the introduction mission to a bigger game. This may have been the intent, because Destiny is an Mega Multiplayer online game and additional content is how those games stay alive. Howvever not much extra content is available. If anything, the extra content is even more vague than the main story.

The game succeeds at one thing: making you feel like a real soldier. You are sent into one dangerous situation after another without a proper briefing or planning, told to complete an objective without context, and told to rely on the judgment of your superiors.

The story is supplemented by an intel catalogue called "Grimoire." It is similar to the Codex in Mass Effect Games. The biggest difference, of course, is that it's not in the game. It's only accessible online at bungie.net or official application. It's also not voiced. It doesn't contain any video. The lore contained in the grimoire is on the back of animated flip cards.

The grimoire is one of my favorite parts of the game, although some would argue that it isn't really part of the game at all. It finally gives background on enemies that you've already slaughtered by the thousands. It fills out the world you've inhabited but didn't know anything about. Some of the grimoire cards even have unreliable narrators, which is a fun addition to the lore. Still, it once again fails to achieve the success of previous generation efforts like a similar Bungie supplemental app, Halo Waypoint.

Waypoint featured videos, an anime series and an online live-action series called Forward Unto Dawn. Halo had a story all its own and used Waypoint as a way to flesh out other parts of the world. The Grimoire is the primary source of Destiny's story. It requires the player to stop playing, sit at a computer and read story fragments to figure out what is going on. It will put off virtually all casual gamers.

What little story is present takes place on the Earth, the Moon, Venus and Mars. Mercury and the Asteroid Belt show up in limited roles but don't yet offer any playable story. The playable areas are enormous, though most players don't realize it immediately. The environments are partitioned, isolating the player from vast landscapes by injecting narrow tunnels and paths. It unfortunately diminishes the sense of grandeur. However, if players do a circuit of the playable area on any planet, they would discover miles of terrain.

These "open-world" environments were expertly designed with mission gameplay in mind, but completely suck to explore. Remember all the amazing nooks, crannies, landmarks, Easter eggs, dungeons, huts, villages and caves you found while wandering around Skyrim? You'll find none of that in Destiny. Destiny's landscapes are designed to squeeze you from point A to point B to finish an objective with no fuss and limited distraction. Even though players can go where they want, I'd balk at calling this an "open-world" game.

The additional content outside the main story is where Destiny gets fun. It's a good thing too, because the main story has only about six-to-eight hours of repetitive gameplay. Players can opt to go on missions called Strikes and Raids. They are mostly
new areas designed to be more difficult and are geared toward cooperative multiplayer. This is the heart of the game. This is an MMO and only on these missions is that intention conveyed. Between the 6-to-8 strikes (depending on platform) and two additional raids, Bungie has added hours of unique gameplay.

Even though Destiny botched the broad strokes, it got many of the little details right. After playing through five or six Halo campaigns, the game mechanics feel like coming home. Every movement is graceful and balanced to work with a shooter. Perks on your character slightly alter the game's feel and make a big difference in multiplayer.

Destiny's multiplayer (called the Crucible) is designed to work in tandem with the "story." Weapons and upgrades cross over between thew two. Players are not locked into using specific weapons or classes for anything, Crucible or story. If you earn a gun you like, you can use it in any part of the game. Unfortunately, Crucible matches are plagued by lag, just like old Halo 2 matches. A clean connection in a Crucible match is extremely fun (if you like PVP). Other times... this happens:

Many have described this game as gorgeous. While it does, indeed, look nice, it looks like a highly polished mod of a previous generation console game, because it is. The game was designed with the graphics limitations of the XBox360 and Playstation 3 in mind. Large land objects block the player from seeing too many things at once, so we won't suffer a drop in frame rate. It lacks the overwhelming sense of realism found in current generation games like Dying Light and the Silent Hill demo. Faces aren't as expressive as in Infamous Second Son, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare or, for that matter, Halo 4.

It's a good game. It ties together genres that usually don't overlap in MMOs. It's biggest detraction is that that's all it is. A good game that mixes together game types. It isn't at the forefront of graphics, storytelling or game mechanics. It was created by a studio that mastered first-person shooting long ago, so that is top notch, but everything else is just...decent. It is mindless fun, but little else.

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American Sniper

1/20/2015

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In case you enter the theater with a lack of knowledge about the film's content, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (played pitch-perfect by Bradley Cooper) has more confirmed kills than any sniper in American History. He fought four tours in Iraq before coming home to help veterans adjust to civilian life. He was shot and killed while trying to help a fellow veteran in 2013. These are all things the film expects you to know.

I don't think I can get far into this review without addressing comments made about Eastwood, Kyle, and the film. There seems to be an infectious misunderstanding about this film that has bred unjustified controversy. It has been accused of being a propaganda piece of a right-wing conspiracy that glosses over the horrors of war in favor of gung-ho pro-American simplification.  If people making these claims had ever seen Letters from Iwo Jima, directed by Eastwood, they'd know their accusations against him are misplaced. If people making these claims had ever talked to a special forces soldier, they'd know that their accusations against Kyle are equally baseless. The film is told mostly from the perspective of Chris Kyle, whose world outlook is stone simple. There are bad guys and it's the job of the good guys to stop the bad guys. He didn't see anything during his tours that changed his mind about his enemy.

More often than not, when you ask a veteran why they shot a person, they answer, "they were shooting at me." People who have never been in a battle, gone to war, or had a gun pointed at them, too often demand that every story show the moral complexity and emotional weight of shooting someone. This movie clearly shows that there is no room for that type of soul searching in a firefight. From the point of view of a soldier, it's kill or be killed. Kill the evil bastards who are shooting at them. Simple.

This does create a narrative problem for the film because we are following around a guy who is definitely simple. I don't mean that he's stupid. In his book, he described himself as black and white and that is apropos. The first twenty-five minutes of the film are mind-numbing as it shows his journey to becoming a soldier. The film hints that his father whipped machismo and his sense of justice into his sons that stuck with them for the rest of their lives. Of course Chris Kyle doesn't have the same version of right and wrong that others may have. For instance, like some other soldiers I've met, he has the irresistible urge to spin the occasional tall tale. That has ruffled some audience feathers, but this is a movie about him and his moral compass, not ours.
Eastwood tried to faithfully capture the simple attitude and confidence of a Navy sniper. Kyle is shown disobeying orders on two occasions because he felt like he wasn't doing the right thing.

Once the realization has taken hold that the film has no interest in exploring the outside world's opinion of right and wrong, the audience
can enjoy the straightforward heroics of the film's gunslinger.
In no uncertain terms, he's shown battling evil with a rifle. A character in the film referred to only as "The Butcher" was based on a real executioner named Abu Deraa who used a power drill to torture his victims. Kyle and his SEAL team is tasked with eliminating him. It's difficult to conjure a moral objection to assassinating the Butcher. Most of the combat scenes follow a similar trajectory.

Scenes on the homefront are a different story. Kyle remains stiffly black-and-white while his immediate family suffers in the gray area between. Kyle's wife, Taya (Sienna Miller), begs and pleads for him to rejoin his family in America. Kyle wrestles with doing the right thing when two "right things" are in direct conflict. It's his duty as a macho guy to take care of his family. It's also his duty as an accomplished soldier to protect his brothers in arms. The conflict brings out the best in the performances of Miller and Bradley Cooper, who seem to have an understanding of Kyle's stubbornness. When everything is going right in their marriage, they are a seriously boring couple (probably like most couples) and the movie drags.

The movie is well-made and takes on the most common problems faced by soldiers, ignoring ones that movie critics might find more compelling. It does not try to shoehorn moral judgements into the film. Most soldiers are comforted by a sense of duty and without it can feel lost. Their sense of righteousness and justice often interferes with personal relationships. That's what this film is about. If you want an exploration of the moral ambiguity of war, look elsewhere. This film is a black and white tale told from the perspective of a guy who knows how to spin a good yarn. In the end, it's a solid war movie that bucks recent trends and appeals more to veterans than sensitive anti-war audiences.

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Snowpiercer

1/9/2015

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Rumors ran rampant with this film before it ever hit theaters. Some were annoyed with its online marketing strategy. Some people who saw an advanced screening said it was terrible. An argument sprung up in a few forums over whether it was Marxist or not. I heard that the studio started stepping on the Director's toes. Then it wasn't going to be released, then it was going to be cut 20 minutes, then it was released only in art house theaters.

People had strong opinions about the film, all the way from the lowliest movie watcher to the highest big wig at Moho Studios.

The plot is simple but the spare storytelling energy is used to fearlessly delve into inhuman moral choices. The film takes place on an advanced, self-sustaining bullet train that holds the entire human population. Its perpetual motion engine is all that keeps them alive and warm. At the head of the train are the oppressors. At the heel of the train are the oppressed. The oppressed folk rebel against the brutal upper class (
And they are brutal) in an attempt to gain control of the train.

Curtis (Chris Evans) is selected to be the reluctant leader of the rebellion and definitely appears to be the right man for the job. He makes carefully considered decisions as well as split-second ones that give the rebellion the best chance for success. Some of those decisions come at high prices and the weight of each is ever evident on Evans' face.

The rebels move from car to car, inching toward the engine, in one impressive piece of set design after another. Even if a car is only shown for a few seconds, it tells a full story without the need for dialogue or additional information. Director Bong Joon-Ho knows precisely what to show and what to leave out. The characters are shown progressing through their individual stories in each car. They're not all given equal screen time, but Joon-Ho never leaves us confused about anyone's motives or priorities.

The action scenes are utilized to stress the audience with worry as the brutal events unfold. The carnage is not fun. There isn't much reason to cheer after rebel victories because their numbers continue to dwindle with each engagement against a never-ending security force.

The movie has a few enthralling moments that show the refined brainwashing of the front passengers. After a particularly bloody battle as dozens of security officers lay dead and dying, the PA system announces that it is nearly the new year. Everyone stops fighting and starts counting down from ten. As the timer reaches zero the security officers shout "happy new year!" even those who lay bleeding to death with their guts spilled on the floor.

I didn't know it until the movie ended, but Tilda Swinton was in it. She gave one of the best and most unrecognizable performances of her career as a torturous mouthpiece for the elite class. I thought I recognized her voice, but I wasn't sure until I looked it up. She chews up every scene she's in, even overshadowing strong lead performances by Chris Evans and Song Kang Ho. In a way, she has taken the place of actors like Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce as A-list chameleon character actors.

The film is a philosophical feast. Even with a narrow plot that fits perfectly with the style of movie, it makes the audience ask a lot of questions about morality, responsibility, monstrosity and necessity. Every character blurs the lines between good and evil and somehow leaves you with simultaneous feelings of dread and hope. It's not only a must see for sci-fi fans, this movie has enough content to keep all audiences interested.

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Amazing Spider-Man 2

9/26/2014

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The first Amazing-Spider-Man film had some charming aspects marred by silly plot developments that resulted in events that should not have happened. It was clear that certain things were pre-ordained, regardless of whether they made sense in the world the film creates. If characters in the film weren’t forced to trudge toward their next plot point, they could have figured ways around nearly every threat.

Amazing Spider-Man 2 has the same problems, but worse. It also has the same charisma, but better.

For the first time in any Spider-Man movie, Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is genuine and likeable while in the suit, Even when Tobey Maguire played him, one of the more easily likeable people in film, his one-liners fell a bit flat when the mask went on. This Amazing Spider-Man takes after the rapid-fire quipster from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics. He is caring. He likes people. He has some of that unmistakable New York swagger. He’s appropriately guilt-ridden. And most importantly, he’s hilarious. I especially loved the moment when Spidey sports a fireman’s hat as he uses a fire hose to vanquish a threat. Andrew Garfield is everything comic book fans deserve. He balances Spider-Man’s half-overt and half-accidental comedic timing. He even gives Spider-Man a Queens accent.

The first act of the film is touching. (Small spoiler for the first Amazing Spider-Man film here) Peter’s guilt over the death of Captain Stacey (Denis Leary) in the first film makes him question every action. Some things he should; some things he shouldn’t. He can’t tell the difference. Director Mark Webb demonstrates a deft cinematic hand by showing us why characters act irrationally. Sure, those moments are written into the plot, but they makes sense...usually.

The film is at its best when focusing on the relationship between Peter and Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone). In the best non-verbal cameo I can remember, Captain Stacey’s memory haunts Peter on the edges of his vision. Leary has one of those faces. His eyes look like they can pierce your thoughts and read your mind. His face may be placid, but somewhere in his expression, you can read disapproval. Or is it anger? Is it concern? His last words were for Spider-Man to stay away from Gwen. Peter promised him, but is too head-over-heals to abide.

This complicated melodramatic relationship is the heart of the film and, honestly, the action sometimes just got in the way.

The wheels come off when Electro (Jamie Foxx) shows up. The film’s problems are not Electro’s fault. That’s just when the threads come undone. The film tries to follow Peter and Gwen’s relationship, Max Dillon before he becomes Electro, and Peter's childhood friend Harry Osborne (Dane DeHaan), whose father has something to do with Peter’s father, who may or may not have died a traitor while bioengineering a cure for all man’s ills, but, of course, it would be used as a weapon. There’s a subplot about industrial politics, oneupsmanship and backstabbing within Harry’s company, which somehow causes the final showdown with the Green Goblin. Just in case you don't have enough villains, Paul Giamatti plays an unintelligible mechanical Rhino in the film's worst performance. Oh, and Gwen is trying to get into college in England. The movie makes sure to cover every conceivable plot point from every genre in its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time. It's too much.

It’s not that the plot threads are hard to follow, because they’re childishly simple, it’s just that there are too many. Sometimes we have to suffer through multiple expositions before getting back to something interesting. Sometimes, just to remind us that other stuff is going on, the film cross-cuts to other storylines for a few seconds, only to annoy the audience that more wasn’t shown.

Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield’s charisma carried me through the frequent flaws and while I couldn’t ignore them as they were happening, I was rewarded with solid action scenes and effective melodrama.

There is a A LOT of stuff to chew on in this movie and when it gets things right, the movie cruises. It has some of the best dramatic moments in any superhero film to date. When it tries to cram too many developments into tight editing, it has the opposite of the intended effect. It lags.

If you like action, you'll see plenty. If you like romance, it has that too. It has everything that sometimes works to cross purposes, but it's easily forgiven in a summer blockbuster
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Space Pirate Captain Harlock

8/26/2014

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Style over substance.

It's common enough in any Japanese anime adventure and director Shinji Aramaki delivers the stylistic goods with space ships that circle each other, defying the laws of physics, firing broadside salvos into each other. I liked the first time that Captain Harlock's ship, the Arcadia, emerged from an endless black smoke that creepily slides off its skull and bones figurehead. All the computer-generated sets were created with painstaking care and attention to detail.

There is a capital city, where the oppressive governing council reigns, that has every bit the white marbled beauty of
Minas Tirith. Although the Arcadia's engine room was only briefly shown, it is a magnificent futuristic coal chamber running on dark matter, dimly lighting a room whose every surface is silted with tarnished blackness after long empty years.

Toei Animation's computer graphics are unrivaled in any animated action film to date.
From time to time, especially in close ups, it's difficult to tell the difference between a real life person and the rendered characters. It's beautiful.

Unfortunately, all that technical brilliance goes to waste on movie that is unforgivably stupid. The characters all come in varying shades of idiocy or they were so uninteresting that I forgot who they were.

The main character switches loyalty depending on who he' talking to. He has an idiotic backstory where he was a slightly younger idiot who paralyzed his idiot brother and now has to make amends by acting in his brother's place as a field operative who answers to an evil council of space idiots.

This council is clearly willing to sacrifice entire planets for the sake of...actually it makes no sense so I won't bother. It's easier to admit that the writers wanted to make them "bad guys" so they were. No one sufficiently explains anyone's motives because motives only exist for the sake of creating annoying artificial conflict.

Sure, all the characters had some backstory, in which they did something inexplicably stupid and now they have to atone, so I guess they had "motives," but it was only to correct completely contrived and nonsensical choices in their pasts that would never have crossed the mind of anyone in control of half their mental faculties. The movie seemed perfectly content following around lobotomized douchbags.

For most of the movie I was rooting for the evil empire because it would have been a valuable public service to euthanize the pirates and remove their mental deficiencies from the gene pool.

There are too many horrible things to point out about this movie. I would like to catalogue all the violations of the laws of physics that no one took the least effort to limit (This was egregious. The dark matter Macguffin alone was unforgivable). I could also rant a while about the pirate crew's determination to use medieval weaponry in space. I want to complain about all the scenes in which everyone is a bad shot. However, those were all sacrifices that the filmmakers made on the alter to style. I point them out because I could only handle so much dumb moronic idiocy in one stupidly stupid movie.

Sure is pretty though.

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Guardians of the Galaxy

8/4/2014

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I tend to nitpick movies. Even movies I like. I notice things in the sound editing that could have been tuned better or pacing that could have been smoother or performances that could have been more intense. With this movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, nitpicking has never seemed so wrong.

I'm tempted to call the movie perfect even though it isn't exactly perfect. I could say that people unfamiliar with the Marvel Universe might be miffed by knowing there is another bad guy behind the main bad guy. Maybe there was a subplot too many. Maybe.

Critiquing the movie based on such things seems petty. It gives us all the entertainment we can handle and more and then keeps piling on. I haven't seen a movie so successfully built around pure entertainment since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Where some critics might take offense at the simplistic explanation of a planet dooming device, I found the sequence fresh and wondrous and funny. Our heroes stood in a miraculous museum of fascinating characters and devices while the eccentric Collector (Benicio Del Toro) explained the origin of the universe to people who didn't really care.

Every scene gave us a collection of interesting characters, whether they be murderous brutes in a prison or a ship full of scrappy scavengers with arrows commanded by whistling. I haven't seen this level of creative character invention since the original Star Wars

Our story follows a motley collection of criminals with varying levels of recklessness. Starlord (Chris Pratt) becomes their leader in a way that makes sense. Rarely do I see movies that show why each character would follow someone for legitimate reasons that relate to their individual lives. Never once did it crossed my mind that a crew of aliens would follow the human because that's what the audience wants. It evolved naturally. Seamlessly.

Starlord leads four truly extraordinary companions on a mission to stop a zealot alien separatist named Ronan from destroying the galaxy. To stop him, Starlord has banded together a lexicon-challenged tree named Groot (Vin Diesel), a war criminal who has a change of heart named Gamora (Zoe Saldana), a wisecracking, streetwise, genetically-modified racoon named Rocket (Bradley Cooper), and what can only be described as a full-time badass named Drax (Dave Bautista).

First and foremost, against all odds, a talking raccoon who rides a rampaging tree works very well onscreen. Rocket and Groot provide many of the film's best moments. Chris Pratt is not outshined, however. Somehow, in the midst of raccoons firing machine guns, weapons that destroy planets,  space battles, catfights and a whole lot more, Starlord remains grounded front and center. Pratt has the presence of a young Bruce Campbell, who carried Army of Darkness with the same unlikely balance of bravery and cowardice, ineptitude and cunning, charm and despicability. Even though Pratt's performance exists mostly in the midst of choreographed special effects it is hard to imagine a more difficult role to pull off.

So yeah, it's perfect even though it isn't. If you go into this movie listening to people who say it lags, or that there's too much going on, you might end up agreeing with them. You can nitpick and spend time analyzing the film's shameless excesses, or you can actually just enjoy what happens. I was never once confused by the plot, by character introductions, by motivations or editing. I loved every minute of the movie.

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The World's End

8/26/2013

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The World's End, if you haven't heard, is about the robot apocalypse....but they're not robots. The robots constantly remind the characters that they're not robots. "Robot means slave," they say, but for all intents and purposes, they're robots.

In a Monty Python-esque comedic sequence, the drunken main characters try to respect their would-be conquerors' sensitivities by making up a more accurate name than "robot." They eventually settle on "blanks" because they're too plastered to dedicate much thought to the task.

While the "blanks" provide some good sci-fi-spoof entertainment, and even some philosophical cud, the first half of the movie, before anything supernatural occurs, is so smart and well-crafted that it makes one wonder where the script could have gone had there been no "blanks." The dynamic between Gary (Simon Pegg) and his friends is rich with the realistic history of high school buds who have lost touch while following different paths.

Former high school badass/wayward adult Gary King is on a mission to relive the most glorious night of his life. During the peak of his high school days, Gary dragged his friends on a mission to drink twelve pints of ale at twelve pubs scattered throughout their hometown. He calls it the "Golden Mile" with a tone of reverence usually reserved for the unattainable lost cities of El Dorado and Hamunaptra.

As young, reckless men, the quintet drank, fought and toked their way through only nine of the twelve pubs, leaving unfinished business for the rest of Gary's largely wasted life. Twenty years later, he manipulates his friends into giving the Golden Mile another go. Hijinks and clever comedy ensue as Gary drags his friends on a drunken Odyssey. Then come the robot alien replicants...or whatever. "Blanks." The interactions between these five guys while they drink themselves into oblivion would have provided more than enough material for a memorable comedy. Alas, that was not the film Pegg and Edgar Wright chose to make.

I suppose The World's End delivered everything I expected. It had intense and funny moments that simultaneously touched emotional chords, just as this same creative team mastered with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. It also had the same rapid-fire banter between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. However, I was not expecting it to offer such impressive emotional gravity and complex history only to let all that succulent fruit shrivel on the vine. Nonetheless, this movie is about a robot (kind of) apocalypse (kind of), and that's how it should be viewed.

The internal logic of the plot fails at every turn. The blanks can remember everything from the life of the person they copy, but fail to recognize anyone from their past. The blanks are as soft and fragile as the vampires in From Dusk Till Dawn, and then suddenly durable for no reason. It's probably silly to complain about such things in a movie about alien robots.

When I walk into a movie about alien robots, I just want to be entertained, and in the end, I was. The World's End is fun-fare. It's to giggle at and enjoy as it makes fun of itself. It did its job, but for the second half, I couldn't help but feel that I got the rug pulled out from underneath me. Then again, if it did a poor job of defining the characters to begin with, I may not feel let-down by a breezy and silly second half, but I wouldn't have cared what happens to these guys. That surely would have made for a worse movie experience.

What we get in the end is a funny and touching movie about friends and memories and growing pains and squandered potential and, of course, alien robots. Works for me.

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Fire With Fire

7/6/2013

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This movie doesn't have much of a story. It's more like a cobbled together collection of scenes invented by a college film major that he then forced into a single script. There's a plot, but it is nonsensical. An organized crime head honcho murders a black convenience store owner (and he murders the owner's son, for no other reason than to make sure we know the crime boss is really bad) for the "location" of the convenience store (it was near highways).

Seriously, for a convenience store "near highways." Perhaps someone up the production chain-of-command for this movie realized how stupid this was and put swastikas all over the bad guy in the hopes that this would provide added incentive to murder. It didn't help. Still stupid.

The head honcho is played by Vincent D'Onofrio (The Cell, Full Metal Jacket), in what is certainly one of his worst performances. He has a pseudo-southern accent that slips back and forth between the hard and soft pronunciation of r's. He hangs out with British tough buys like Vinnie Jones and...well, that's really about it.

A firefighter (Josh Duhamel) sees the murder and manages to escape the gunmen, enters witness protection, where he is quickly exposed and Big Boss Nazi D'Onofrio makes an attempt on his life by hiring a two-man hit team played by Julian McMahon and... some other guy who has thirty seconds of screen time. This raises several questions. Why would someone who clearly murders people in the middle of stores hire a professional hitman? How does a two-time criminal who feels compelled to murder a convenience store owner for the "location," even afford a professional hitman? For that matter, how does D'Onofrio's character have an "army" surrounding him at all times (the script says it's an army, but it usually consists of two or three stuntmen at a time)? The answer, of course, is because the script says so.

Plot lines are ignored and fall by the wayside. Characters are added and then discarded. There appears to be no real reason for Bruce Willis's character, although he provides some needed stabilization for an uneven script. Its clear that they added a scene here or there to give him more screen time. There are a few scenes that make it clear why Julian McMahon, Richard Schiff and Quentin "Rampage" Jackson, joined the cast. In one or two scenes each, they munch away at the scenery.

If you're bedridden and have exhausted your Netflix action options, well, you could do worse than watch Fire with Fire. Other than that, it might serve as passable ambiance while you and your friends talk over it. Just look up when something cool happens.

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Sync

5/6/2013

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Corridor Digital, a "Youtube Sensation," as they refer to themselves (and if everyone else were honest about it, they'd call them that too), created a full web series that is also easily categorized as a feature-length film called Sync.

What I like most about Corridor Digital is that they manage their goals wisely. They know how to get the most out of a shot. When working within the confines of ten minute videos for the past several years, they've developed an impressive knack for shot-efficiency and editing that should be envied by every single studio in Hollywood. So when they set a goal to make a "cool sci-fi show," I had no doubt that's what I'd get.

I was immediately enraptured by a sense of nostalgia as it took me back to my days of staying up past my bedtime to watch Olivier Gruner and Rutger Hauer sci-fi B-movies on Showtime. The film meets the requirements of any self-respecting low-budget sci-fi action extravaganza by having a neat premise, a charming wise-cracking protagonist, a love-interest who may or may not need to be in the movie, a hardassed by-the-book boss who will stick his neck out for his best agent/cop/employee/pet, and a mixture of advanced futuristic technology and low-tech gadgets that will probably be outdated by the time this review posts, and a series of events that could be mistaken for a plot.

The film follows Charlie (Tanner Thomason), a special agent in some government black ops division that suffers a security breach and is about to be shut down. The sci-fi flip is that Charlie is a clone...kind of. He can download his thoughts and memories into an infinite number of new "shell" bodies and continue kicking ass just as before. It allows him to travel to different continents in the blink of an eye and survive horrific beheadings. He has to stop a virus that became sentient and took over an ultra-secure network due to a rather clever collection of mishaps.

The concept of memory transfer has been around for decades, but after Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, The Matrix and The 6th Day within the last dozen or so years, it's hard not to notice the modern popularity. Sync has unique moments, but it doesn't have the mind-blowing originality of Brazil or Being John Malkovich.

The movie is opposite of pretty much every mainstream movie in that it takes the time to focus on small things that Hollywood movies often neglect. As opposed to feeling tacked on, Charlie's love interest has a direct influence on his motivation. It even informs the outcome of the film. Action movies like this don't really need a love story, but if they're going to have them, they should feel important. I particularly liked the relationship between Charlie's boss, Griggs, and Grigg's ex-partner, a surprisingly reasonable mad scientist Dr. John Wyatt (Jai Koutrae). Despite turning into enemies, they have a shared fondness for one another. One could certainly argue that the story is all over the place, unfocused, disjointed, which is probably a side-effect of publishing the film in ten-minute sequences, but those little detours from the main story tend to help fill in science-fiction worlds, giving the viewer a sense of stability in the fictional landscape.

The action scenes are all well-choreographed and beautifully filmed and, more importantly, limited. This isn't a non-stop action extravaganza that wears on our senses. The action scenes allow the characters to reach important destinations and retrieve vital information, a lot like video games. The action isn't there for action's sake. Action is correctly treated as an obstacle to a goal. The most important scenes in the film revolve around conversations and emotions instead of martial arts and gunfire, much like the climax of the Matrix Reloaded.

When cruising Youtube, we used to just want for a few fleeting seconds of entertainment before moving onto something more substantial. Things are different now. With ambitious projects like Kate Madison's Born of Hope, FreddieW's Video Game High School and Corridor Digital's Sync, Youtube has matured. Check out the full film below. Bottom line, it's good.

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Spider-Man Cartoons

2/25/2013

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Spider-Man (1994) -

For the time, the animation was top of the line. It was among the first cartoons to combine CG animation with traditional. Looking back, it's somewhat distracting, but it looked amazing when I was young. Everything about the show screams early-90s, with visual influence spilling over from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and GI Joe, which gave Peter Parker the look of a thirty year old jock, with that Jim Lee haircut, rather than a wiry recent high school grad. It also can't bring itself to let go of the melodramatic comic book coattails of the 1980s, immortalized by Marvel Editor & Chief Jim Shooter.

It benefited from splash popularity from Batman: The Animated Series that boosted viewership of all other Super-Hero shows. Batman took great care to be respectful of its lore, while updating and changing it for the sake of continuity. The X-Men cartoon met success with the same formula, so they applied it to Spider-Man. This version of Spider-Man dedicates the appropriate amount of time to Peter Parker's personal life. He has all the money problems from the comic. J. Jonah Jameson is always on his case. He attends the fictional Empire State University, where he is also the lab assistant to Doctor Curt Conners (The Lizard).

Gwen Stacy is nowhere to be found, but Spider-Man's romantic entanglements with Felicia Hardy and Mary Jane Watson are front and center. The show is unafraid to mix a pinch of romance into an action cartoon, which is a refreshing change of pace when compared to modern cartoons constructed by focus groups and excel finance sheets.

Like the comic, the cartoon has its highs and lows in quality, mostly related to writing. The first season focused on introducing as many villains and stories as it could squeeze into a year, but it later found a nice groove from season long story-arcs interrupted by side-stories, much more like modern television (The studio strongly objected to this plan, of course).

This Spider-Man is the most revered of his cartoons. It wasn't canceled after one or two seasons, which allowed it to dig deep for underused, and excellent, Spider-Man villains. Spider-Man and Peter Parker had time to develop relationships with other characters. Histories formed. Past events dictated behavior and interactions. Compare that to modern cartoons and you'll realize how rare that is.

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Spider-Man Unlimited (1999) -

Back when Marvel cared about continuity, it created a new series that followed the story of the 1994 cartoon. It's more like a miniseries, or a Doctor Who special, than it's own series. It mimicked the season-long story arc strategy of its predecessor. Spider-Man is blamed for attacking a space shuttle and in order to clear his name, he travels to the destination of the shuttle to rescue its pilot.

For this series, Spidey gets spiffy new nanotech threads and finds himself on a planet that is a mixture of the Island of Dr. Moreau and the world of Judge Dredd called counter-Earth, where animal-people rule the world and humans exist beneath smoggy city pollution.

Spider-Man fights Venom and Carnage and counter-Earth versions of other villains, but the main baddie is a telekinetic dictator called High Evolutionary. Some might remember him as the red mechanical looking villain from the comics, but this guy is kind of goofy looking, with a Santa Clause beard and weird bone attire.

The art was primitive and advanced at the same time. All of Spider-Man's web effects are detailed and clever, but sometimes Spider-Man will crawl on a multi-surface walls with pipes and indentations like it's smooth and flat.

Other-world politics played a part in the action as Spider-Man teamed up with a motley crew of rebels to free humans from oppression. A subtle fabric of social intricacies surfaces when we see human sympathizers, rioters, racists on both sides, and "heroes" clash. Odd horror elements come into play every once in a while. An alien race called the Synaptic take over humans and turn people into bio-controlled zombies. It seems like Bungie lifted the idea for the Flood in Halo directly from Spider-Man Unlimited.

It's a hodgepodge of various genre elements that mostly work, but was shot down after one season due to flagging ratings. I like shows that try something new with tried and true characters, and taking Spidey, putting him in nanotech duds, throwing him off Earth and onto a planet populated by animal-people was certainly new. It doesn't always work, but it stays interesting.
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Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (2003) -

The edgy, computer-animated, adult Spider-Man on MTV with the voice talents of Neil Patrick Harris and Lisa Loeb suuuuuuucked. The writing is not respectful to the characters. It portrays Kingpin as a cackling, personally-involved petty thief who fights with the FBI and flies helicopters (REALLY!?). Mary Jane defends the life-endangering thievery of a narcissistic, high tech Robin Hood character. Come on.

The writers can't seem to make up their minds about how stupid they want their characters. Every once in a while, the characters will swear just to remind the audience that they're watching MTV, which is EDGY. Every time it happened, I was annoyed. I don't have any fucking problem with cussing, but when you read it in the middle of a Spider-Man cartoon review, it seems out of place, no?

Some people considered the visuals state-of-the-art, but I don't know why. Many other CG cartoons had already surpassed the quality of this cartoon. I'm not even talking about the top-notch level produced in Toy Story or Ice Age, but this show barely looks better than 1994's ReBoot. All the characters run like sloths, which is painful to watch in a show dedicated to supernaturally-gifted athletes. Some of the more complex facial expressions are impressive for a 2003 cartoon and some of the night scenes are kind of cool in a retro Tron way, I guess, but other than that, the art sucks.

Its sole redeeming attribute comes from solid voice acting. Michael Clark Duncan, Clancy Brown and a slew of supporting guest stars performed their duties admirably. This show was mercifully put of its misery after only one season.
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Spectacular Spider-Man (2008) -

I kept reading all over the internet that this was the best Spider-Man cartoon ever made. Internet knows best. It is.

In this version, Peter Parker is a straight-A high school student with friends Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborne. It's great that Gwen Stacy, the most important romantic partner Peter has ever had, is finally in one of the cartoons. Surprisingly, the show confronts Harry's drug problem, which is brave. It also plays with the viewer's knowledge of the comic books to keep things fresh.

It does the basics very well. An essential part of a super-hero cartoon is creativity during fight scenes. The combatants should make unexpected moves that excite the viewer (remember the first time you watched Neo extend his fingers to choke Agent Smith in The Matrix?). This cartoon has the most unexpected fight moments in any cartoon since Avatar: The Last Airbender. I especially liked the episode in which Venom is trying to peel off Spider-Man's mask and expose his identity during a fight. The back and forth is nothing short of genius. Some people are put off by the extremely stylized art, but unlike most other cartoons, the quality of art, proportions and perspective stay perfect even in the most frenzied action sequences.

The show doesn't skimp on Spider-Man's romantic life, either. Actually, it may go overboard, as Peter is pursued by Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson and Liz Allen (all from the comics). This may be the result of changing perspectives among youth that no longer see "smart" kids as "dorks." Peter still has to deal with bullies, but it's apparent that bullying is generally looked down upon by students, a huge leap forward from the 1960s comics. Most of Peter's problems come from his double life as a Daily Bugle photographer. He disappears from important moments in his friends' lives and they later find that he was "off taking pictures." This leads to a falling out with Eddie Brock, which has dire consequences. This Eddie Brock isn't just relentless, he's observant, clever and resourceful. There are a few moments when Brock is truly chilling.

The show gives us a solid reason (excuse?) for the sudden uprising of super-villains, who are all great and some are even pretty likeable. The history of Rhino, Sandman and Spider-Man is pure gold. Dock Ock has his moments, as does a dixie-fried mercenary Shocker.

As fun as season one is, I was not prepared for the mature steps it took for season two, in which it explores the loyalty of friendship and the detriment caused by betrayal, how it can generate resentment and even seething hatred. The social mechanics of modern day high school are explored in depth with sentimental care. Season two has an intertextual relationship with Shakespeare that will be lost on anyone under the age of 18, and probably many older viewers. It's an impressive and thoughtful action cartoon. It's more than we are likely to see again and it was shamefully cancelled after two seasons.

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Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) -

Spider-Man fans hate this show.

Spider-Man breaks the fourth wall, telling jokes directly to the viewer...lame jokes. His love life is completely absent. There isn't even a whiff of romantic tension or a kiss or an almost kiss anywhere in the show. Peter Parker's financial woes are ignored (or don't exist. In this version, Aunt May seems very well-off).

The stable of regular characters is comprised of, for some reason, Nick Fury, Iron Fist, Power-Man and White Tiger. A petition surfaced on change.org after the eighth episode, begging for the show's cancellation. Disney renewed the show for a second season after episode nine. Ultimate Spider-Man doubled Disney's audience of young boys, so it's here to stay.
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This is clearly not the Spider-Man we know. It's part of him, sure, but key components are missing. It's kind of like a statue of Optimus Prime. It looks like him, but if he doesn't transform, he's not a Transformer.

The show may not be very good, but oddly, it's almost great. Just beneath the surface of incessant rapid-fire quips, cupie anime interludes and banal character development, you'll see glimmers of brilliance in almost every scene, even the bad ones. Rampant creativity bursts at the seams but is stifled by Disney/Marvel's decision to target the key demographic of two-to-eleven year old boys (that's right, two year olds). The creative team shines when they don't have to focus on the core characters, whose attitudes and actions are vigilantly constrained by studio executives. The villains, on the other hand, are all awesome.

This cartoon brings something new, interesting and somewhat disturbing to villains like Sandman, who has gone insane from isolation on a deserted island, Venom, who bounces from host to host with unrestrained bloodlust, Green Goblin who ruminates on his condition like a Victorian-era monster, and Dock Ock, with his subtle transformation from a creepy voyeuristic coward to a relentless and formidable enemy. They also hilariously revisioned Baltroc the Leapster.

People may claim that Disney could please both older and younger audiences with a slight compromise. While somewhat true, there is a give and take when compromising. They may gain some 13-16 years olds, while respecting us older fans, but they believe they'd lose far more young viewers. Disney has bet all-in on little kids. It's a business decision that sucks for us.

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The current incarnation of the New York that Peter Parker protects is an amalgam of the movies, traditional Marvel universe, the Ultimate universe, and new ideas. It's kind of a mess.

The Peter Parker we all know and love has anger issues in the comics and other cartoons and an unhealthy obsession with justice after the death of his uncle (how else could you get a fifteen year old to give up his social life, love life, and community respect just so he can get broken bones, bruises and sleep deprivation while he risks his life every night?). This show barely acknowledges the existence of anger or fear. Peter never loses control or breaks down. He certainly never suffers from self-doubt. He's absurdly cocky and irresponsible for someone who has the line "with great power comes great responsibility" playing on loop in his head.

The humor consists of a constant barrage of puns and sight gags--all immature. There is no depth to any of the jokes and the vast majority fall flat. That being said, this is the only Spider-Man show to make me laugh out loud, long and hard. Still, laughs don't happen often. It reminds of Austin Powers 3. Sure, I laughed. If someone throws enough jokes at me, a couple have to hit the funny bone. Was it worth sitting through all the ones that didn't?

Also, why in the hell are Power Man and Iron Fist in this show? Not only that, why are they painfully lame? Power Man (Luke Cage) has no edge for a guy who is supposed to be a streetwise scrapper. Iron Fist (Danny Rand), is insufferably bland. He's supposedly reached one of the higher planes of enlightenment. However, he seems only capable of sharing his wisdom in broken fortune-cookie new-age surfer talk. He sucks so much. White Tiger is a surprisingly amiable, if limited, character. She has past ties to Kraven the Hunter, making her fit a little more easily into the Spider-Man world.

The best addition is Agent Coulson from the Marvel movies. He is Spider-Man's S.H.I.E.L.D. handler, posing as principal of his school. Clark Gregg, who portrayed Coulson in the films, supplies the voice. He gives the show a sane break from Spider-Man's motormouth antics.

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I've read critics who said that season one animation is subpar. Those people are insane. The first season animation team created a technologically magnificent cartoon. The artwork is simplified for season two. A subtle change, but probably easier to stay on model (i.e. replicate the prescripted appearance of characters). Usually, that will translate into better, more fluid action scenes. It didn't. I notice more animation flaws, not less.

The threads of creativity woven into the fabric of the Ultimate Spider-Man makes the show all the more frustrating. It could be great, and on occasion strikes the right balance between funny and exciting, but in the end, Spider-Man deserves more.

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    I work in Kansas City.  I like writing and illustrating things that either make people think or laugh.  If I can make people do both at the same time, I've achieved a continuing lifelong goal.

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