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Time to Wrap up Winter

I don't know about you, but I am ready to wrap up winter, just like these ponies.

The Fighter (2010) Review

(The real fight is for the oscars)

So many boxing movies. Yet so many of them are actually good movies. The two most common examples of boxing movies are Raging Bull and Rocky. What happens when you take ideas from both movies, and put them together? You get David O. Russell's The Fighter. A movie that has its heart in the right place, but lacks the emotional punch of most boxing movies.

The Fighter follows "Irish" Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his fight to the welterweight title. It's also about his older brother Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale) fighting his crack addiction. So really, the title can go two ways since it's about two different fights. The story is told with a fantastic script, but as stated earlier it lacks the emotional punch of a good chunk of boxing movies simply because you can already tell what's going to happen. To its credit though, the rest of the script is fantastic.

Where this movie shines though, are the performances. For the longest time, I've felt Mark Wahlberg hasn't had a good role since Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights, which I feel he should have won an oscar for. After starring in such wonderful hits like Max Payne, Mark Wahlberg proves he is indeed worthy of an oscar by delivering a top notch performance as Mickey Ward. Christian Bale himself does a great job, and I had a hard time recognizing him as Christian Bale. He really did slim down to play the crack addict role so perfectly. Definite oscar nomination for Bale as a supporting actor.

Funny enough, there isn't that much in the way of boxing in this movie. Sure, it shows a couple of fights, and has a few short Rocky style montages, but this movie is about its fighters. When it came to the fights though, they stick a video filter over them to create this idea that they were the HBO broadcasted fights. While it's a great effect, it's lost when they use the same filter to show the more cinematic angles. This is only a minor issue though, as the fights themselves are, like Raging Bull's, the last few moments of the fight. It works, yet at the same time, it doesn't.

The Fighter is Mark Wahlberg's best movie in a damn long while. It's also another great addition into the sports movie genre. While we have to put up with a rather predictable ending, the script, Wahlberg and Bale's performances really make up for it. There's a lot of heart in this movie that it deserves its oscar nominations. I can only hope Wahlberg will have a streak, because this movie has given him a bright future.

The King's Speech (2010) Review

(We need more movies like this.)

So I'm entering 2011 with a movie from 2010, simply because I had been meaning to see The King's Speech for a long time. After sitting through so many poor quality movies last year, it's a miracle movies like The King's Speech still exist. This is a movie that gives 3D and visual effects the finger, and tells a story about hope in dire times.

The King's Speech is both a literal and metaphorical title in the sense. The Duke of York, better known in this movie as Bertie (Colin Firth), has been given the honor of being crowned King George VI. Trouble is, Bertie is not so good at delivering speeches thanks to a speech impediment he's had since he was five years old. His wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) recommends him to Lionel Logue (Geoffery Rush), who will help him overcome his stammering to deliver a speech during the dark times of Hitler and Nazism to give London the hope it needs. Yes, it's pretty much inspirational oscar bait, but I can't fault them for that. I was desperate for a movie with such beautiful storytelling, and I finally got one after waiting for so damn long.

Both Colin Firth and Geoffery Rush play off each other so well. At times I forgot I was watching a movie and thought I was in the same room with these two. Lionel's unorthodox therapy methods are some of the funniest things I've seen in a while. There's just something about a speech therapist who finds dropping F-bombs theraputic quite hilarious. From what we see of Helena Bonham Carter's performance, I am very impressed with her screen presence in this movie. Another minor performance I was impressed with was Timothy Spall's performance as Winston Churchill. I want to see him get nominated for best supporting actor for this movie, simply because he nails his character so well.

I can safely say that there are two departments this movie will win an oscar in is its costume and set design. 1930's London is recreated beautifully in this movie, with plenty of colorful, fancy decor all over the place. Lionel's office, on the other hand, is very cozy, house warming, and welcoming with an elevator that barely fits two people. Helena Bonham Carter wears the most beautiful, elegantly designed outfits along with pearls, which seemed to be typical of English royalty. I'm going to get a lot of heat for that, so I apologize if I insulted anyone reading this that's British. When Bertie is crowned King George VI he wears a fine suit full of medals and awards, fit for royalty. I really hope it wins oscars for these two areas.

The King's Speech is a refreshing movie in this day and age. We've had to put up with the 3D gimmick being shoved down our throats, movies that use dazzling visual effects, and explosions everywhere to mask poor movie making and storytelling. The King's Speech is one of those movies that entertains you with a wonderful oscar-bait story that is very powerful and inspiring, and dazzles you with pretty set design and costumes.

Tron Legacy (2010) Review

(It truly is a bad movie...)

The original Tron has quite a huge following. Imagine if computers were a living, breathing world. It was an imaginative experience. So after sitting in my seat with disorienting 3D glasses, after a whole two hours of movie, I ended up feeling let down after seeing this movie.

Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappears one day, and we see a grown up Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) goofing around by taking Encom's latest operating system and putting it on the internet for free, because he's a rebel and the chairman at Encom is supposed to be EVIL! What this has to do with the movie, is beyond me because this whole scene adds absolutely nothing to the movie except to pad out its two hour length. You could not imagine my reaction through this whole opening act, because of how dumb it is. We then find out that Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) received a page from Kevin Flynn and rather than check it out himself, Alan insists Sam go check it out. Why does he insist upon this?

Let this whole opening act set the tone for the whole movie, because it is littered with insipid plot holes throughout the whole movie. Sam arrives into the grid, and is immediately given his purpose, which is to compete in the games. He immediately picks up on what's going on and how to play, and it's revealed that he's a user. It's here we meet the movie's villain Clu (Jeff Bridges' face on somebody else's body), and he needs Sam to find Kevin's identity disc so he can open the portal to get out of the grid and take over by erasing all imperfections. Clu, for some odd reason, wants to kill Sam by putting him through the light cycle game. This makes absolutely no sense, because if you need to use Sam to locate Jeff Bridges, why is the plot demanding that Not Jeff Bridges kill him? This makes absolutely no sense in any way. After a mess of a failure in trying to kill him, we're introduced to Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who is a special type of being called an ISO.

What is an ISO? It's a special type of sentient being that is able to roam freely. Clu finds this unacceptable so in a flashback, it's revealed he basically performed an ethnic cleansing by attempting to kill all of them. Quorra is the only survivor, of course, but while you might think it's suspensful that it's not revealed until much later, there is no suspense because this flashback gives it all away. This movie just keeps adding a plot hole every step it takes. I was getting annoyed every time a plot hole was added, that if I were to compare this to a piece of cheese, this movie is swiss cheese. However, if you count all the plot holes you would assume it was shredded swiss cheese. The basic movie's plot is Sam is trying to get back home after getting lost in the grid.

This movie trades in all its substance for style, but even the look of this movie can't be saved. The whole world itself is drenched in black, white, and greenish-blues. It's easy to tell who's good and who's bad because it's another case of red vs. blue, something we totally haven't seen enough of. The upside to the look is it doesn't end up looking as silly as the original, but given today's standards, everything needs to be overly complex that this movie looks like Need for Speed Carbon where the neon is all over the place. For me, the best thing about this movie is the soundtrack, but that alone cannot save this trainwreck of a movie.

This movie's script feels like an insipidly rough first draft. There should have been rewrites everywhere to seal the plot holes, because it would have made a better movie. This is a movie that reminds me a bit of Avatar in some ways. You wanted to see it and you loved it because you loved how it looked, and didn't care for its plot. The only difference is Avatar wasn't anywhere as bad as this movie was. I'm disappointed in Disney for taking so long to put out a sequel and tarnish the series' reputation.

Need for Speed Undercover (PC) Review

(2008 was not a good year for Need for Speed... it gave us this abomination.)

I've given Need for Speed Pro Street a lot of crap since I first played it. Most fans of the series have gone so far to declare it the worst in the series. Pro Street's issues stem from the fact that EA wanted to try and cash in on the racing simulation craze of Gran Turismo and Forza, while at the same time trying to go back to what Need for Speed was in the first place. Despite Pro Street failing in a ton of aspects from its selection of cars, to a horrendously unrealistic simulation model, I will give EA credit for trying. However, I recently unearthed a Need for Speed game that almost nobody wants to remember. Is it possible that Need for Speed Undercover is actually worse than Pro Street?

Here's a question for you, how many racing games have you played that had some kind of a story? Need for Speed had been doing this sort of thing since the days of Underground, and it's here that it becomes painfully obvious this is the most pretentious of the collection. You play as an agent who goes undercover in an attempt to bust a group of international car thieves. I'm not making this up, you play a racing game where the story involves you busting smugglers. How does one tell a story like this in a racing game? Through a bunch of poorly acted cutscenes that felt like rejects from the era of Sega-CD FMV games. They really don't add much to the progression of the story though, because one scene will tell you to close in on a guy so you can get information, and after that race, a scene will say they have the info they need. So as you can plainly see, there is no real progression of the storyline, but at the same time, there is no real story in the game.

So, given the storyline, how does this particular Need for Speed game play? Well, it takes its cues from previous Need for Speed games that felt racing in a sandbox was a great idea. Unfortunately, you will find that the whole open world aspect of this game only takes effect when you're trying to outrun cops, because you can't start events from the open world unless the game gives you a prompt for a certain event. Story related events only pop up from time to time, which basically forces you to grind races to not only make money for better cars and upgrades, but to progress the storyline. It's like I'm playing Spectral Force 3, but as a racing game. The car selection is certainly better than Pro Street, but my question is where are all the fancy exotics that made Need for Speed what it was? This selection is okay if you are like Pro Street and taking a simulation route, but this is an action racing game, so I demand exotics.

The driving model isn't any great either, sporting some very glitchy physics that might cause other players to do crazy things like shoot fifty feet into the air after crashing into a wall. The other issue I have in race is because you're in an open world racing game, you'd naturally assume there was a lot of traffic, but no, there's hardly any traffic unless you're doing highway battles. As for the AI itself, it's a total joke because it has a habit of turning into walls for absolutely no reason. You'll be driving along the route in a race, and an AI driver will be ahead of you only for him to just turn right and hit a wall. One would assume this game would be somewhat challenging, but it has no challenge at all. This is such an easy game you'll have no problems breezing through it.

The racing modes are pretty typical with point-to-point sprints, circuit races, and checkpoint racing, but its unique outrun and highway battle modes are broken in so many ways. In outrun, the idea is to get ahead of the AI and stay ahead for 90 seconds. The problem this game mode has is how stupidly easy it is. All you have to do is pass the AI, and perform a 180, and you'll still be ahead, even if he passes you. Highway battles are simply annoying because of the random traffic. It's nice to see a lot of traffic in an open world, but it feels like the game will just randomly throw a bus in front of you when it feels like it. When you're being chased by cops, you cannot restart the event, you must see it through until you escape the cops. The police model is lifted from Most Wanted, but these cops are a bit more easy going, and it's more than likely you will never get busted. Chances are, even if you're going 200 mph, they will be going 200 mph in Jeeps. The only way to stop them is with pursuit breakers, but they're so hard to come by that it may take you upwards of two minutes of trying to evade cops just to find them. Despite that, this is one of the easiest Need for Speed games I've ever played.

Even if Pro Street didn't look all that great, Undercover somehow manages to look worse than Pro Street. Sure, the in-game cars look beautiful, but traffic is rendered with such lack of detail and simplicity, it's like I've gone back to Underground. Undercover is the only Need for Speed game to actually look like it fits in with today's games because it abuses the whole "Brown and bloom" visual motif seen in a lot of action games. Because when I think of Need for Speed, I think of Gears of War. Undercover's soundtrack is relatively weak, not because it uses music that isn't popular, but it's just bland and doesn't get you in the mood to race. The one thing I noticed is that certain songs tend to get played more than others, meaning that if you find a song you like, it may not get played for a while and you'll have to listen to the bad music often.

As much crap as I gave Pro Street, I respect EA for trying to do what they did, simply because they had their hearts set in the right place with it. This game feels so heartless, I have to wonder who thought this is what Need for Speed fans wanted. Its selection of exotics is boring, it just isn't as much fun as other entries, and more importantly, IT'S TOO DAMN EASY.

Faster (2010) Review

(Generic action movie is generic)

Ever since Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson quit WWE, he's had quite a film career. From his early action roles, to his more family friendly roles, he's been through a lot. Faster is an attempt to get The Rock back into the action movie role. Although he shows that he still has the edge of an action star, Faster's problems become apparent when you realize just how empty this movie is.

After spending 10 years in prison, a man we only know as "driver" (Dwayne Johnson) is finally allowed his freedom and heads off to do the one thing he's always wanted to do. Seek vengeance on those that killed his brother. He's not wasting any time as the first few minutes have driver kill an office worker in plain sight. Do not let this be an indication of how fast this movie is going to go. Driver is also dealing with a drug addicted cop with family issues we know as Cop. (Billy Bob Thorton) The other character is a wealthy man who has an obsession with one dollar bills, known only to us as Killer. (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) Where's Stalker, Writer and Scientist in this movie? Even if their names are revealed to us, it's briefly and something you need to look for in the background, so good luck with that.

As you can imagine, there's nothing too exciting about these characters. They're one dimensional, soul-less, empty, and lacking in a lot of personality, but Killer leaves a lot of open questions that aren't answered. Why does he have an obsession with one dollar bills, how is he getting all those weapons, and how does one actually beat yoga? Driver's backstory isn't interesting in the least, but it's certainly better than Cop's family issues that get resolved, but everything he does literally amounts to nothing to move the story further along. What a waste of script movie.

The only thing that saves this movie is a twist I didn't quite expect. Faster is basically what I expected, a straight-up action movie, but would it have killed the people behind this movie to try and make it a little more interesting? I'm not saying I hated it entirely, I just wanted more out of it. 

The Warrior's Way (2010) Review

(Assassin.Hero.Legend.Disgrace)

I've seen quite a few flops of movies, but The Warrior's Way is an unusual case of a flop. While it doesn't reach Last Airbender levels of bad, it does come close on occasion. It's a fine example of trying to mix Spaghetti Westerns with Asian Cinema and failing miserably.

Yang (Dong-gun Jang) is a man who is seeking to be the greatest warrior in the world. Unfortunately this means he must kill everybody in the opposing clan, which is made impossible since the last surviving member of the clan happens to be a baby girl. This means he has to run away, but he takes the baby and runs away to the old west. Yes, we go from a blue toned Samurai flick to a more earth toned Spaghetti Western.

The movie's biggest problems stand out as soon as Yang reaches the old west. He meets up with a forced cast of characters that aren't interesting in the least. Lynne (Kate Bosworth) is a girl with a scarred past who is out for revenge after her whole family was killed right in front of her. Obviously she and Yang are the couple that are being pushed in this movie, but that doesn't mean Kate and Dong-Gun have the chemistry for it. In fact, the relationship feels so forced, it felt like a last minute addition to try and give Yang some kind of character, despite the fact that we witness him go from a cold-hearted warrior to a man with a heart, all because of somebody's baby. The other supporting character is Ron (Geoffery Rush), who is basically a drunk trying to get away from his past. Gee, this guy isn't anything like Yang. The villains are a man simply named Colonel (Danny Huston) and The Saddeset Flute (Lung Ti) and it's obvious what their motivations are.

The entire movie is basically filmed in front of a green screen, so nothing really feels to natural. To make things worse, the CG was really bad, and I mean really really bad. Once The Saddest Flute makes his debut, you begin to realize that he really only has one ninja with him, and they just duplicated him through computers. The real kicker was one scene, you can see the ninjas running on roof tops, and as they're running, you notice that they have the same animation when the ninjas are tripping on the same roof, in the same spot, and the animation is exactly the same. This makes it feel even cheaper than it is.

The worst part about this movie is it can't even offer us a satisfying conclusion. All the climactic final battles somehow end up being anti-climactic and left an empty feeling. Oddly enough, Yang at the beginning of the movie, feels empty, but by end is supposed to have grown a heart. For us, the complete opposite happens, we go into this movie thinking it's going to be great, but it ends up falling on its face. The Warrior's Way is a movie that's trying to mask itself with some stylish visuals in the hopes you won't notice how bad this movie can be.

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (PC) review

(This game is guilty of being too much fun)

I'm a huge fan of the Need for Speed series, but even I knew when it was starting to go bad. After Porsche Unleashed, it seems the series had nowhere else to go but down. While NFS Underground wasn't horrible, it was nothing more than a push for the latest in reflective surfaces. The series made its comeback with the popular Need for Speed Shift, a simulation that still has the best in-car view to date. Although Shift was a great simulation, people wanted a Need for Speed with a classic arcade-style feel. Criterion Games, makers of Burnout Paradise, developed Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, a game that is more fun than it should be.

One of the biggest problems that a lot of recent Need for Speed games had was they tried to implement a storyline into it. A storyline in a racing game is generally not a good idea, because it comes off as being pretentious, and the equivalent of Redline the official video game of the movie. Hot Pursuit does not contain a story, but structures its career mode in a standard racing game flair.

Hot Pursuit will not force you to play only one side, or force you to play one side through the course of your career. You're free to play both racer and cop events to your heart's content. As you progress further into the game, you unlock cars, more events and level up. It's pretty basic, but it feels better than going through a silly storyline, or a sandbox style game that can often break the flow of gameplay. Events are instead selected on a map screen, and give you plenty of detail about the events themselves.

The interface may be easy to navigate, but is the game any fun? It's so much fun, I would actually call it racing game of the year. As a racer you will either compete with one person in a manufacturer duel, have a standard race, a time trial, or a pursuit. The fun of this game is the pursuit races where you're trying to outrun cops. As you're racing you will notice a ton of side roads, and while some of them are marked on your mini map as shortcuts, there are a ton of unmarked side roads that will actually take the race take longer and keep you from getting first place. At first the AI is a total pushover and won't take shortcuts, but as you get further into it, the AI starts to show its true colors and take shortcuts and use nitrous at the right times so you don't get to first place. Although you need gold medals to unlock more events, progress on increasing your levels and unlocking cars is done by earning bounty. This actually discourages restarting races every time you screw up, because you can always return to events. All your unlocks will carry over to multiplayer, so you won't feel dumb playing singleplayer for nothing.

Hot Pursuit's unique feature is autolog. What is this autolog I speak of? It is one of the best ways of dealing with leaderboards. Usually with leaderboards, you'd find yourself on rock bottom, and have trouble finding your friends. With autolog, it keeps track of what your friendslist is doing so you can find out how you compare with them. It's a great option, but wasn't necessary, because they had me at the gameplay.

Hot Pursuit, when you get it to run in high resolution, is glorious. Seriously, the crashes are beautiful, the cars are nicely rendered, but it's the tracks that are stealing the show in this game. They're full of life, make the experience exciting, but also distract you from the race because of their beauty. It's funny how most games with traffic do not render the traffic well, but this game renders traffic with as much attention to detail as anything in the background. EA's music selection for this game is one of their better selections of music. There wasn't a single track I heard that I ended up disliking to the point of turning the music off completely. It does feel a bit silly when the cops are chasing you and you get this overly dramatic music though. Seriously, it's like being chased by cops is a life or death situation.

Hot Pursuit is a fine example of taking Need for Speed in the right direction. Ever since that fancy logo that makes no sense to me, these games have just been getting better and better. I hope this trend continues.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 review

(One way, one fate, one hero, two movies)

The Harry Potter movies are an interesting anthology. They've been consistently good, always improving in every way possible. However, in every anthology, there's always that black sheep you wish you could forget about. For Star Trek, it was The Final Frontier, and for Star Wars, it's that entire prequel trilogy. I would consider part 1 of the Deathly Hallows to be the black sheep of the Harry Potter movies. It's slow, treads on boring at times, yet at the same time, manages to somehow be a decent movie.

This movie picks up where the last one leaves off. Basically, Harry Potter has to destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes, but he really doesn't know how to do this. He's never really given any insight as to where these things are, or more importantly, how to destroy them. It's a bit of a guessing game for him. However, Harry's pretty much been marked for death, and the movie mostly consists of him, Ron, and Hermione trying to keep out of sight from the movie's cast of villains while destroying Horcruxes.

The rather unfortunate thing is this movie is very inconsistent with its unusual pacing. The first act takes place inside a bustling city, including a beautifully rendered flying chase sequence, and the colorful cast of characters we've come to expect. It's great thrills for the kids, but after escaping from the Ministry of Magic, we get to a second act that almost feels like Harry Potter and the Art House Film. The music is suddenly muted, there isn't a whole lot of dialogue and every scene is either in a tent from Hermione's bag of infinite space, or them not saying a thing at all. I normally don't have problems when movies try to do this, but when you consider Harry Potter is something for kids to young adults, this isn't necessarily a good idea. Although I will give this cast a lot of credit, because their acting does create a sense of real human drama, but for a third of the movie, a good chunk of these scenes offer nothing.

By the time it reaches the third act, it decides to ditch the whole art house thing and go back to being a standard Harry Potter movie. It's here we see more of our villainous characters, but you almost forget about a few characters here. Snape is in the movie for maybe a whole two minutes, with maybe one or two lines of dialogue. Draco on the other hand, has two minutes of screen time, but absolutely no dialogue. These are important characters, and I assume we will learn what their roles are in part 2, but they almost feel like they're just there to say they exist.

It's interesting how the Harry Potter series went from colorful fantasy to a grim dark fantasy, but this is all part of growing up. While this movie does offer the grim dark fantasy quite well, it seems like it's maybe pushing it a little too far. Especially with how the movie ends, I don't know how to feel about it. I didn't expect it to end on a high note, but to end like that? Oh well, this movie's great for people who want to keep up with Harry Potter, but anybody new to the series will feel completely lost.

Unstoppable (2010) Review

(At least 1,000,000,000,000 cliches for good measure)

What do the movies Unstoppable and The Taking of Pelham 123 have in common? Both movies involve trains, both star Denzel Washington, and both movies are directed by Tony Scott. The difference is that when the train in Pelham 123 stopped, the movie stopped. In Unstoppable, the train doesn't stop, and this movie doesn't stop either. It doesn't mean it's spectacular, but it's not a bad movie either.

Frank (Denzel Washington), an experienced man with two daughters, works with Will (Chris Pine), a yellow-vested rookie with a few complications in his life. So basically, already I find nothing to attach myself to with these characters as they feel cliched for this kind of movie. The usual old guy vs. new guy mentality only works for so long. The other issue is the conflict between a train operator and the head of the corporation responsible for the train and its cargo. Seriously, I feel like I'm watching a movie I've already seen before. The real interesting character of this movie is the unstoppable train. It's carrying enough toxic chemicals to wipe out entire cities.

So while the acting isn't anything special, what really works for this movie are the action sequences. There were so many moments where I was on the edge of my seat, it's rare an action movie can do this. It might have something to do with the fact that there wasn't any noticeable CG, and everything was practical. It created a sense that there was a ton of real danger in this movie. Unfortunately, this is mostly ruined by the fact that the cinematographer insists on shaking the camera around like a mad man. There's this invention called a tripod, use it. This doesn't make the movie more intense, this makes it difficult to follow, and can make the viewer puke. For me, it's an absolute annoyance. Oh hey, there's some action going on here, but I'm going to shake the camera so you can't see it, just pretend something crazy is happening.

Despite all these problems I have, for some reason, I actually ended up liking this movie. It may have been the intensity created in the action sequences when I could see what was going on, but what would have really worked well for this movie would have been no soundtrack at all. Just let the sound of the trains be the background music. It needed some work, especially with the cliched end credits where they explain what happened to everybody after they stopped the train. It's better than Pelham 123, and it's Tony Scott's best in a long while. He just needs to stop making use of every cliche in the book, or he'll have his own "Jerry Bruckheimer formula."