Movie Reviews

Avengers 2 – Well, it’s pretty good. Like, 80% of the movie is pretty great. Fun fights, pretty funny, engaging, all that stuff. The amazingness of seeing comics coming to life is wearing off, which means you really gotta be good now. And jokes about Banner’s face falling into Black Widows cleavage… aren’t. There were at least a handful of really low brow stupid jokes in here. It felt very sitcomey and lame and my biggest fear for what will become of the Marvel movies. Lame jokes, flat characters, interspersed with bad ass fights. You know, Transformers. The first Avengers movie, plot wise, was boring, I don’t care about Loki or alien invasions. But it was the biggest most successful (in every way) comic book movie ever, so it got a pass. I don’t care about Ultron either, honestly I’m not that much of an avengers person at all. But since the X comics have been relegated to the fox ghetto, and those movies aren’t nearly as good, I’ll takes what I can gets. Still, don’t care about Ultron, so this is just filler to me. I really need them to make Infinity Gauntlet before all this goes to shit. And I’m sure it will, you just can’t put out as many movies as they are planning to put out and not have them go to shit, it’s some sort of fundamental law. So, please, please, get to Dr. Strange, and get to the Infinity movies. Make them amazing, and then the rest can blow, and I will feel happy.

The Imitation Game – This is quite good. This is the one about Turing cracking Enigma. I really like pretty much everyone’s performance. I don’t know how it matches to reality. I know, on a technical level, some of the things they threw out like Heil Hitler and the problem of Enigma are accurate. But historically I don’t really know. Aspergers/Autism is the new… I don’t know, thing that was popular a little bit ago. So this emphasizes that quite a bit, but I’m sure it’s accurate. The gay aspect is horrendous and I’m glad they didn’t shy away from addressing it, it’s sad and depressing and it happened and you should face it. He won’t be the last important person or genius to be destroyed by people being despicable.

Big Hero 6 – This is a lot of fun. I didn’t realize it was a super hero comic, I thought it was a robot comic. I guess it’s both, but I like both parts. It’s very funny, sweet. Not sure if I’d go read the comic, I think the movie is enough, but it’s cool.

Expendables 3 – I guess. I liked the first one, as stupid as it was. The second one was just too much, too stupid. This one they seemed to learn that they aren’t very good writers or funny or anything except explosions. But that’s good news. The fights are over the top and ridiculous, but entertaining. I like how in the end when everyone is fighting, they don’t even pretend to have the good guys start to lose each battle and then come back and win. They just beat the living shit out of everyone from beginning to end, fun stuff. They few times they try to be funny it’s horrible, but the rest of the time it’s fine.

Top Five – This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, I had a strong sandler feeling going in. It opens with Rock literally just doing stand-up, pretending it’s a conversation. That happens many times, and it’s terrible (it’s pretty bad comedy, but it’s terrible shoehorned into a movie). The plot is… meh, pretty boring, pretty standard romance underneath a layer of realty show parodying. There are some funny parts, more than I expected, but still not great.

Lucy – No. Just, no no no. For fuck’s sake no. This movie is shockingly dumb, astonishingly dumb. When will people learn. If you want to have super powers, make some bullshit up. Call it an x-gene, call it midichlorians, call it a heisenberg compensator. Do not propagate a bullshit myth about our brain capacity and act like even if it was true you could somehow see wavelengths our eye is not capable of seeing, or interact with electromagnetic waves (even “simple” ones, whatever the fuck that means), or make computers work faster just because your HANDS FLOP ON THE KEYBOARD REAL FAST. Jesus christ. Literally the worst movie I’ve seen in a very long time.

Storage 24 – Rando monster movie. People trapped in a storage facility. Crazy monster starts killing. Nothing much to say about it. Feels kind of like a TV movie, but it’s not bad, it just doesn’t have anything different.

4:44: Last Day on Earth – So, through the king of all mcguffins, the word is going to end in a few hours, due to global warming, at exactly 4:44. That’s pretty dumb, on many levels, but it’s a setup for what would people do with their last day. Turns out, not much. They do it a little, they cry, they yell at each other a lot. They don’t act very well or have very good scripts, apparently. It feels kind of like a play, very localized, meant to be a character study, except the characters are kinda obnoxious so who gives a shit.

The Book Of Life – This is an animation based on Mexican cultural stuff surrounding death. I’m not sure how much it’s based on real stuff, except that there is a day of the dead. It sounds like La Muerta is kind of real, but is more of a grim reaper. And Xibalba is a place, not so much a dude, so…. But anyway, it’s loosely based on all that. I thought it was pretty great. It has a handful of faults, chief among them the very gendered character design of the main people, both men and women. That’s frustrating. But the character design everywhere else is actually awesome. The whole look of the movie is fantastic. The story is nothing fancy, kind of standard cartoon story in mexican clothing, but still good enough. I thought it was pretty funny too. All in all, pretty good.

Dracula Untold – Meh. Not bad, I guess, but really uninteresting. I guess it’s kind of cool, the way they motivate Dracula’s origin. But that’s only kind of cool, and the rest of the movie is pretty plain. There’s some neat fighting with this dracula powers, but not too much.

John Carter – Also meh. I guess it could have been ok? There are some creative stuffs in there. I like the idea that he’s badass because of gravity or whatever, but it doesn’t hold together in any logical sense. I like the alien design and factions, but it doesn’t end up mattering a lot. In the end is a pretty average scifi action movie. If it didn’t have the notoriety of being a flop, I’d think it was just random.

Into The Woods – Not good! What the crap, why does everyone love this? There’s, like, one good song in this entire movie. Literally, when it happened I said “Hey, I actually like this song”, because it was the ONLY TIME! I like the idea behind the movie, and the structure is fine enough, though I’m not so sure about the last 30 minutes. But it’s a musical, and a musical full of songs that suck…. sucks.

Whiplash – Pretty good movie. Kind of insane, especially because I’m told it’s not so crazy off of real life. Can’t imagine people being so nuts, but I guess it happens. Besides that, it’s really well done. It’s mostly about the two guys just acting at each other the whole time, and they do a pretty good damn job. No complaints.

It’s the Earth that’s moving

So cool!

Video Game Reviews

Spore – It’s been a long time since this came out, just getting to it. I do seem to remember people saying it wasn’t very good, that it was like 5 meh games cobbled together. That’s true. It’s like a couple of boring wander-around-and-eat-things games, then a couple civ games, and a 5X game. The 5X game is the only one that is remotely interesting, but it isn’t deep enough to last. I did all the standard stuff in the space section, I did not beat the Grox, it is just too much work. And the work is monotonous. Making money is boring, diplomacy is boring, war is boring. I like the size of the galaxy, there’s just not enough to do that isn’t repetitive. Oh well.

Offspring Fling! – This is a silly little puzzle platformer. It reminds me of super meat boy. But the game mechanism is that you pick up little baby version of you and chuck them around. It’s simple, straightforward, short, cute. It’s really just a flash game, I’m sure I got it as part of a humble bundle. But it was an okay palette cleanser after Spore before playing something bigger in scope.

The Basement Collection – This is a collection of simple games developed by the same person/people who made super meat boy. It might just be a bunch of flash games packaged into a group, I’m not sure. It is kind of fun, they are all simple. Some are very confusing and I couldn’t figure out. Some I played through. Fun distraction, not much else.

Alan Wake – This game didn’t really work for me. The mechanic is theoretically cool – enemies are harmed (or made vulnerable) by light. So there’s a lot of playing with that. I don’t feel like it’s super successful in making you scared of the dark, because you are forced to spend so much time there. Instead you are just using light as bullets (in addition to actual bullets), instead of running from light to light, though that does happen too. The story is kind of boring, didn’t catch my attention, so the game felt long. The game is fairly well done, it just wasn’t great for me.

Mark Ecko’s Getting Up – Nope. Much too frustrating to try to play in 2015. In my defense, it’s not because it’s old, it’s because it’s a terrible port. I can forgive it looking kind of assey. I can forgive it for the UI interaction being slow and clunky. I can’t forgive making no effort to map the controls to mouse and keyboard. Or not letting you reassign buttons. Or even change mouse sensitivity. Or that the camera spends more time glitching on wall boundaries than being useful. I didn’t even get two hours in, I have too many games to play to waste time on this one.

Stronghold Crusader HD – Another game I couldn’t get into. I got like four missions in and gave up. I didn’t even lose the last mission, it was just such slow going I couldn’t keep going. It’s also kind of oldish, but I struggle to think I would have enjoyed it then. It’s a pretty slow-paced RTS. It takes forever to gather resources, to grow a city, to build an army. The interface is janky, the battles are super frustrating. I feel like a modern version of this might be decent, but I wouldn’t risk it unless it was super cheap (and right now it’s $50, so, no thanks).

Hacker Evolution – This is a weird little game. It’s a faux hacker game, entirely run on a command line, which is neat. The “hacking” is really just three commands – to decrypt (whatever that means), to crack a password, or to apply an exploit. The game is to figure out, from files and clues, what servers to look for and hack. It’s simple, but different. You have money to upgrade equipment and manage your “trace”, which is basically health. It’s a bit hard because there’s only a subset of paths through the game (don’t buy too much stuff, don’t hack unnecessary servers) for which you will have enough money to make it. And as far as I can tell you can’t go back a level to undo spending too much money. At the end of the game, I literally sold off all my equipment to reduce my trace enough to win (including my storage space, despite the fact that one of the conditions of winning was taking a file that resided in said storage space…). If that hadn’t worked, and my only choice was to start from the beginning, I would have found an alternative choice called uninstall.

Rochard – This is a little side scrolling platformer. You have a gravity gun from Half Life, basically. You mess with gravity, solve some puzzles, shoot some bad guys (or, preferably, obviously, throw things at them), beat the bad guy, game over. Only took a few hours to run through, nothing amazing, but a few fun mechanics, fun game.

Sol: Exodus – This game got terrible reviews. It’s an indie space shooter. I didn’t think it was that awful. It doesn’t feel that great, but it’s not awful. But then two missions in the game decided to delete my save. No messages, no crashes. I finished a mission, it went to load the next level, but instead loaded the main menu with my save deleted. Not interested enough to play through even just those 2 levels to get back to where I was. Oh well.

The Void – I don’t know, man. It’s got great user reviews, people think it’s so clever. I find it super opaque and frustrating. Not interesting enough for me to push through that and figure out the dang game. I almost uninstalled, then gave it another shot, still had no idea what was going on, so removed it. Sorry, maybe I’m just too impatient lately.

Antichamber – This is a neat little first person puzzler. The graphics are very simple, kind of line drawings. The mechanic is a gun that can pick up and put down little colored blocks. As the gun advances it gains more control (duplicating blocks, making them move around, etc). It’s pretty interesting, pretty challenging. I figured most of it out, but struggled at the end. Had to use walkthroughs to figure out a handful of the puzzles. Maybe I would have gotten them eventually, but definitely not in the time it would have taken to lose interest, so I feel like it was a good call.

The Ship – This is a multiplayer game from a few years ago. You are on a ship, you are given a target. Everyone else has a target, someone has you. You wander around trying to look innocent, tracking down your prey and killing them with a variety of weapons you find laying around the ship. But don’t let the crew or security or cameras see you. I only played once and I’m honestly not sure if I was playing against humans. It might have all been bots. I won, which makes me think it was bots. Or maybe it’s so old that only people who aren’t very good are playing. It was kind of neat, probably a good party game, I might play it once more, but that’s about it.

Movie Reviews

Boyhood – Waaaaiiiit…. people thought this was good? This was terrible. Like, objectively terrible. There are some subjective things, like maybe you like slice of life more than I do. Maybe you like just a story about a family more than I do. But there are objectively terrible things. No one wants to hear high schoolers opine about life. And sure as fuck no one wants to hear those high schoolers become college kids and start talking like philosopher potheads. Holy christ that was painful. Also, there was one scene in the middle where the kid is talking to the mom and the camera is cutting back and forth and it was literally the most stilted awkward poorly written poorly acted 15 seconds I’ve ever seen in a professional movie.

Gone Girl – Yikes, that’s a bummer. This movie is pretty distressing. No way to say why without giving it away, I guess. It’s a good story, the first half keeps you wondering, the second half is kind of bananas. Then end is just plain unsettling. It’s all a bit over the top, unrealistic. But it’s pretty good.

Birdman – Sad face, this wasn’t as great as I had hoped/heard. It was good, I guess, but not at all amazing. The faux one shot thing is very cool from a filmmaking perspective, but that only lasts about 30 minutes. I love the idea of the movie, and as far as I can tell all the pieces are good. But somehow it just didn’t hit me. It felt kind of like the Wrestler, that’s a weird comparison, but tracking a sad washed up kind of delusional dude, it seemed familiar. And I loved the Wrestler. But this was just, okay. Sad.

Godzilla – Meh. They forgot to put Godzilla in their godzilla movie. Okay, I guess he’s there a little bit. And the reversal of expectations regarding his purpose is actually cool. A number of things are decently well done. But too much of the movie is spent staring at people staring at screens that give them information about Godzilla. Not enough actual godzilla.

Art and Craft – I’m very torn on this story. It’s a documentary about a modern day art forger. He doesn’t do it for the money, he does it either out of some sort of mental handicap or out of a weird megalomania/maniacal persuasion. He gives the art away, making up some story about dead family or a church, and apparently fooled tons and tons of museums. It’s a very interesting story, how he does it, why he does it. He is contrasted with a guy with a captain ahab like drive to catch and punish the forger. Both are a bit crazy, and that’s interesting. So I’m okay with there being a movie about this guy, but then there’s an art exhibit of his forged art. I have a hard time celebrating a forger. It is interesting, but it’s also terrible. Then the movie ends on this unsettling note that he’s giving up forging for museums, and he’s going to go forge for people. Like, tell someone that he found their dead grandma’s diary? But it’s a lie? That’s even worse! I don’t like it.

Interstellar – I actually liked this a lot. I love the tone and the look of it. For the most part I really like the space exploration and the aspects of that sort of travel that they deal with. It’s largely pretty realistic. It kind of goes off the deep end eventually. Makes some shit up and contorts it around to make an interesting story. I don’t really like that part, but if I turn off my brain and try not to make it fit into reality (which much of the rest of the movie would), I’m okay with it. Pretty cool.

Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 – Meh!! The first movie was a cool idea (as similar to Battle Royale as it may have been), but was clearly leading up to the actual interesting part – the revolution. The second movie was a complete waste of time bringing nothing new to the table that the first movie didn’t already establish. Finally here we get to the revolution’s beginnings and it’s kind of… meh. Katness is completely unconvincing as a spark. Her brave and inspiring speeches fall really flat to me. I like the overall arc of the revolution and the complications that might expose (revolutionaries eventually become rulers…). But none of it really holds together for me.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – Pretty good. I remember  being shocked at how good the first one was. This one is pretty good too. I like how it fits in the history of the originals. At least, I assume it does. Maybe they’ll change something (or already have in a way that’s not obvious), a la reboot. But it seems to fit, which is cool because you have a feeling of inevitability for how things will play out. But you still get caught up in it. And it’s cool to see how things go to shit despite the best intentions of some, because some others are assholes, human and ape.

Teenaage Mutant Ninja Turtles – This isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it’d be. Not that it’s good. It’s got some pretty low brow humor. It is very michael bay in style – slow mo and explosions and such. But that stuff is cool in parts. Megan Fox isn’t as atrocious as you’d imagine. I wouldn’t say it does anything that the old movies don’t, though. It’s not less dopey, it’s not more fun. So, whatevs.

Spring Breakers – Nope. Best case scenario, the director is deluded and thinks they are making art but is actually making soft-core porn. Worst-case scenario the director is incredibly cynical and tries to layer some faux art bullshit on top of their porn movie to trick people, but knows that it’s all garbage. Either way, just go watch porn.

The Maze Runner – Y’know what, I actually kind of like this one. In many ways it’s just a teeny dystopian movie. But I like the setup, the execution is serviceable. There’s no teeny love bullshit. I like where it ends. It’s nothing amazing, but it’s a good enough world and the movie doesn’t screw it up.

John Wick – I thought this would be better. I guess it has some cool gunplay. But it’s mostly people getting their heads blown off in slick ways. That’s cool for a bit, but it’s not super memorable. And none of the melee stuff is all that great. It’s a fine revenge, don’t-piss-off-the-badass, movie, but not all that special.

Muppets Most Wanted – This was actually pretty fun. I’m not a huge muppets person, I didn’t watch it when I was young, so I don’t have the nostalgia. And when you go back, it’s fun, but just kind of dopey. Like the simpsons, you chuckle to yourself, but not too much more. Still, I chuckled a fair amount, I think more than the last one, it was fun.

Rapture Palooze – Er, I dunno. It’s a really weird comedy about the rapture and Anna Kendrick and her boyfriend try to stop the antichrist who is just kind of an a-hole. It’s weird. It’s the type of movie that could be one of those movies. But it’s just kind of average goofy, not next level goofy.

King Arthur – This is a little reimagining of the Arthur legend. Except, a lot less legendary. It reminds me of the Hercules movie, like the normal dudes behind the magical story. I like that, as I liked it with Hercules. The story isn’t particularly epic, and there’s nothing else amazing. Just average.

Redemption – Another Jason Statham. Trying too hard to be serious, forgetting that we only press play because of the kicky punchy.

My Awkward Sexual Adventure – This isn’t terrible. It’s kind of just a romantic comedy where the guy tries to get his ex girl but falls for the new girl. Except the layer on a bunch of over the top sexuality just to be crazy. It’s kind of funny in it’s goofiness. It’s not so extreme that it’s trying to be offensive. It’s just crazy enough to try to make people gasp a little. Below all that it’s pretty average, but it’s fine.

RoboCop – Meh. Doesn’t do anything better than the first one. I know the first one is kind of campy at this point, but this just replaces that with a kind of blandness; that’s not a fair trade.

Brick Mansions – I didn’t realize this was a remake when I watched it. But I’ve seen District B13, and this movie has the dude from District B13, and this is obviously just that movie. Except they replaced another bad ass ninja with Paul Walker. So… kind of a downward move. It’s in english, but it’s not like I watched the first one for the dialogue. No point in this, just watch B13.

Earth To Echo – Not a great movie, but it’s sweet. The acting is pretty bad, most of the dialogue too. But I like the little alien and the basic story, simple as it is. It’s cute.

Parallels – I actually really like this one. It is clearly a pilot for a TV show, not a movie. As such, it is woefully incomplete as a movie. The characters get very little exploration, the whole thing is rushed, it ends on a cliffhanger for pete’s sake. But given that it has a SyFy B-level vibe to it, it’s at the top of the SyFy B-level heap, I think. I like the setup, the actors all did fine for what they were given. I’d love to see a full show.

You’re Next – This is just a random slasher movie. There’s a couple purposeful twists, but not really surprising. Not like I had it figured out, just that they were not big shockers. Nothing special, nothing horrible.

Love – I didn’t really get this. It seems like my kind of movie, dude stuck in space. Then it gets all weird an I didn’t really follow. Maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention, it just seemed dopey instead of cool. Contrasted against Interstellar, when it got goofy and weird, I still like it. This one, not as much.

Atari: Game Over – Short little documentary about the infamous Atari landfill in New Mexico. It’s a decent summary of video game history and cool to find out what was actually buried in the desert.

Event Reviews

Premium Blend – 2014 edition of my favorite dance performance. Except, not this year. I feel like I’ve enjoyed each year of Premium Blend less than the one before. But every time I’ve at least had one or two dances that I really liked, and a bunch of other decent stuff, often too much ballet. This year had exactly one thing I liked, and the rest was kind of meh. The dancers were good, no one screwed up, just kind of bad or boring choreography. The first one was a modern thing with a bunch of glass objects (mostly drinking glasses, but a couple other things too) that the dancers interact with. The dancing is fine, nothing great, and the prop stuff makes me nervous. It’s like improv, I can’t enjoy it because I’m too worried that a disaster is going to happen. The next was a very short duet, it was very average. Felt like a forgettable so you think you can dance duet. Then there was a series of dances based on motion. They were really kooky, but not in a way I enjoyed a lot. Some okay ideas, I suppose, but not great (plus some annoying music). Then there was dance of all men. I really liked it in theory, but it ended up being kind of a snoozer. The best thing was the kinda creepy old lady behind me had to say was that the men were good to look at (to be fair, I’m sure the number of times a creepy old man has said that about the girls in that auditorium is probably countless). Then there was a tango series that was pretty cool. It had a bunch of different pairs doing a bunch of different tango stuff. It was brief, but very cool. Last was an excerpt from a ballet. Probably a cool thing for them to do, but it wasn’t a ballet that excited me. I’m still not 100% on board with ballet, it has to be different, not the normal stuff, that is still a bit boring to me.

The Tempest – This was done at a space at Pima. It was decent. It was limited cast, people playing more than one character, which was done pretty well. The acting was good, the sets were minimal but sufficient. It wasn’t great, it didn’t feel amazingly professional. But for what it was I thought it was decent. I’d never seen or read the Tempest, but it’s a good enough story.

Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana – This is, obviously, a flamenco show. It’s pretty standard, I think. Which isn’t to say it’s bad, it just doesn’t seem very different than other flamenco shows we’ve seen. The dancers are good, the musicians are good. Flamenco isn’t my #1 dance, it’s a ways down I suppose, but it’s cool. I don’t like the solos very much, but the group stuff and duet stuff is pretty good.

Sequence 8 – So this is a cirque du soleil kind of thing. They are french, I gather, and they are fucking ninjas. I’ve never seen a cirque show, even on video, let alone live. So I can’t really compare who is better at what, but these were pretty damn good. It is musical, which is good, some of it was as much dancing as anything. But the amazing stuff is the crazy acrobatics. There’s a trapeze dude who is pretty bad ass. A juggling dude that’s crazy. There’s a girl who can touch the ceiling bouncing on a flexible board called a russian bar. I googled it and I guess it’s common enough, but I hadn’t seen it before and it was amazing. I was pretty captivated from top to bottom, great show.

Guys & Dolls – I’ve never seen any form of this, it was pretty good. There were some real life troubles. The sign language interpreters were standing in front of us blocking 1/4 of the stage, which was frustrating (they could have moved 2 feet to the right, I think the people could still have seen them). And there was a legitimately crazy guy in the audience. Well, maybe not crazy, maybe just handicapped in some way, but rocking back and forth, making noises. There were police waiting for him at the end. Oh, also, someone had a cell phone conversation for a solid 45 seconds, no exaggeration. Yikes. But if I can somehow see past all the bullshit, the show was well done. The music is fun and the style is fun. It’s set in the 20s or so, and written in the 50s, so some of the attitudes are pretty antiquated, but it’s mostly fun. The people were pretty good singers, it was good.

Richter Uzur Duo – I’m not sure what I expected from this, but I really liked it. It’s a music professor or something from UA on guitar, kind of a classical guitar style though that might be wrong, and another dude on a cello. They play quite the variety. Some classical stuff, some covers of popular music (beatles, queen), some eastern european cultural stuff. All of it really good, really fun. Really enjoyable.

Old/New

Awesome little modern day nursery rhyme. Funny too.

Book Reviews

Fahrenheit 451 – Among the many many gaps in my classic scifi knowledge, this is pretty high. For some reason I didn’t even read it when I did 1984, A Brave New World, and We a few years ago. But it is very very much in the style of those books. It is an old time dystopian. A single man is afloat in a world that is very foreign to us and seems even foreign to him. He struggles as he comes to realize the weight of his world, and eventually flails against it. It’s very different from the modern dystopias, with the band of teenagers fighting against the system. But it’s pretty good, it’s short, and it does it’s job, and it’s good.

Three Body Problem – This is a very well regarded Chinese science fiction book. I was really excited for it. Aliens, video games, mystery, what’s not to love? But it really didn’t come together for me. Style wise, it doesn’t work. It’s either because the translation is bad, or perhaps (I suspect) this is just the style of a Chinese writer. And to American ears, it sounds awkward. The dialogue in particular is so stilted and exclamatory. I’m giving it a lot of credit by assuming it’s a cultural stylistic thing. If it was an american author, I’d say it was actively bad. Besides that, even the story doesn’t work out for me. While the mystery is developing, it’s cool. But the pay off is kind of weak. It’s not revelatory, it just kind of slowly rolls out with a resounding meh. And the attempt to ground it in some sort of physics-based reality is forced and unconvincing. Everyone seems to love this book, so it must just be me, but I actively dislike it.

Foucault’s Pendulum – I picked this up because of the Templar graphic novel I read. In the afterword, the author talked about various things he read about the templars. This is supposedly the “thinking man’s Da Vinci Code.” I, uh, disagree. This, I’m pretty sure, is the first time I’ve ever given up on a book part way through. It took 50 pages before ANYthing happened. It took another 50 before the actual plot started. For another 40, nothing happened, and I gave up. This guy uses 5 words where one would do. It’s so long and rambling and pointless. Maybe he’s a genius and it all wraps together at some point and your mind is blown. But even if that’s true, you can’t drag someone through hours of crap on the hope that the payoff is worth it. The drag at least has to be enjoyable. The book couldn’t be more opposite of 3 body problem. The language is so ornate and over the top. Just because it has big words, doesn’t make it smart. Just because he has a thesaurus and has 5 synonyms for every adjective, and uses them all in one sentence, does not make him smart. I didn’t like 3 body problem, and I did finish it. But that doesn’t make it better than this, this was just so unbearably long I knew I wouldn’t make it.

Video Game Reviews

Walking Dead Season 2 – Jeez, this game is fantastic, just like the first one. Like the first one, it has plenty of faults. It’s less and less a game. In the first one I feel like I walked around and clicked on stuff more, that was limited this time. It’s mostly conversation trees and clicking now and again to shoot something. So, maybe it’s not a game. Like the first one, there are some bullshit false choices. Making me choose among bad options when there are clear other options. Only once, this time, did I do a thing and not realize what I was doing, but it didn’t end up having any consequence. But none of that stopped it from being an amazing experience, it’s just really well written. I read the comic, I watch the show, you’d think I’d be sick of the same old stories, but not when they are so good and you are given just a tiny bit of agency in their outcome.  I experienced the game in a way I don’t usually experience fiction. I was legitimately sad at the end. When someone from the previous game shows up, I was relieved, just to see a familiar face. I forgot for a while how badly he had fucked up. And then I remembered, just as my character started to remember. And I struggled with reconciling what type of person he is, just as the character did. I was shocked when people did terrible things, and felt hopeless when it all went to shit. I just don’t feel like that in any other form of entertainment, even a really good movie, because I don’t feel like I’m part of it. Crazy good.

State of Decay – For some reason I decided to play two zombie games at once. They couldn’t be more different from each other. This is kind of an open world GTA zombie game. I actually liked it a lot, I wish it had been more fleshed out. The open world thing (well, open 2 square miles…) really works, scavenging for supplies, building a base, etc. That makes a lot of sense for a zombie game. It is unfortunately limited and in the end pretty inconsequential. I put a lot of effort into building defenses and getting supplies, and I’m not convinced it made a single spit of difference. The plot is so short to begin with, I feel like I could have blown through the story and never done anything to my base. It only lasted as long as it did because I dragged it out doing other stuff, but then the other stuff didn’t matter. The learning curve is real steep. I only discovered death was permanent when I lost my first survivor. It took me two additional survivors to learn to not put myself in bad situations. That’s all pretty cool and I like it, I just wish it had been made a little more clear. In general I feel like the instructions are lacking, and while I don’t need a tutorial in every game, if you are going to make esoteric rules and structure, you have to give me a way to figure it out, besides trial and error. Overall, I liked the game, I just wish the plot was twice as long and the open world mattered in any way. I’ll keep an eye out for the DLC going on sale, maybe it will fill in some of those gaps.

Besiege – This is an early access game on Steam. It’s pretty cheap and it sounded fun, so I picked it up. Its basically a siege weapon building game. Kind of like Kerbal (which has yet to go on sale for cheap enough for me to play), but with catapults. It’s very simple at the moment, only a handful of levels and limited building options. But even that much was pretty fun. I feel like I got my money’s worth doing as much as I have. If it (hopefully) continues to develop and add levels and features, it’ll be pretty fun.

Duke Nukem Forever – Wow. I knew it was going to be bad, I didn’t think it would be this bad. Functionally, its amazingly boring. It plays really loose, it feels like you are floating through the world. There’s no weight to the weapons or environment. It feels like a very simple FPS from 10 years ago. But the point, the character, is terrible. I don’t know if 1) I would think it was funny if I was 13 or 2) the world is just different. Peeing in a toilet, slapping a weird alien boob, saying campy one liners. Maybe that’s just not 2014. Maybe if it came out when it was started, it would have landed. But now it just seems lame. It’s not even enough of a thing to be offensive, it’s just so dumb. It’s like how you aren’t offended if a 5 year old says something sexist… because they’re five, they don’t have real opinions. There is exactly one funny part of this game, which is the loading screens. They actually say funny things, like “If you die from falling, it’s probably your fault” That’s funny. There was genuine wit, nothing deep, but funny little meta comments in there that made me laugh. The rest was terrible and I couldn’t be done with it fast enough (yes, I finished a game I hated, don’t blame me, I have a disease).

Assassin’s Creed 3 – I’m a bit behind with this series, but this was pretty fun. It’s all the same tricks, except in revolutionary America. There’s new alternative weapons, most of which I didn’t use except for guns which was kind of fun. And the long reload made it interesting. Otherwise the game is pretty much the same. I remember liking 2 better, for some reason. I was into all the art and architecture stuff. The revolutionary history was kind of neat, but didn’t strike me the same way, I’m not sure why. It also didn’t feel as big. I could be totally wrong, it’s been years, but this one didn’t feel quite as open. But it was fun and I liked it throughout. I did not like Uplay, however. Besides that it’s inconvenient. Besides that Ubisoft’s DRM policies are bullshit. When I had literally 30 minutes left to play in the game, Uplay went down and I couldn’t play. Couldn’t play the game I paid real dollars for because Ubisoft can’t be bothered to keep their servers up and they are afraid people who were never going to buy their game are going to steal their game, which they are going to do anyway. So, that’s the last Assassin’s Creed game I buy. Bye bye Ubisoft.

Deadlight – I like the idea of this game, but it doesn’t really land. It’s a very XBLA type of game - 2D sidescroller, animated backgrounds, somewhat cartoony style, cut scenes made of still images. It’s a zombie game, you are a dude looking for his family. It’s very short (3 hours), which is good because it’s not fun enough to be longer. The game play doesn’t have a lot of variety, mostly platforming. Fighting is pretty lame, which maybe they do on purpose to make you more scared? But you do have to fight on occasion, so it’s annoying. The interaction is a little clunky at times: jumping the wrong way, finicky acceptable paths, etc. Overall, it’s not a great game, but I’m sure I got it super cheap, so okay.

Angvik – Basically, imagine Rogue Legacy, with Terraria graphics, without the skills progression. You get to choose your class, which really just affects your starting equipment, but that’s pretty important. Armor is your health, and killing without weapons is rough. The controls aren’t great, after 3 hours I still find it challenging to jump on something’s head, I always am one pixel off and then I die. Everytime you beat it, the difficulty goes up, I only beat it twice before I got sick of it. I probably got it as part of a humble bundle or something, it was a decent distraction for a couple hours, nothing much else.

A.R.E.S. – Another humble bundle game (probably, I’m just trying to clean out my steam library a bit, ha). It’s just kind of a side scrolling shoot em up. It’s basically metroid, I guess, without nearly the expanse in terms of game play or levels or enemies. But it was a fine for a couple hours.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 – I honestly can’t believe this is a game. I’ve never been much of a sim person, I don’t have the patience or the skill. But yikes, all you do is drive a truck! I’m not saying it’s false advertising, I just don’t get it. I look at reviews and everyone thinks it’s great, it’s a big world (well, half a continent) and it’s so interesting to see the scenery and cities. NOPE! It is amazingly boring to drive from city to city. Have to be careful to follow all the laws and it takes for damn ever. After 3 hours I’ve only made 1/10 of the money I need to buy my own truck. It was fun for about 10 minutes figuring out how to back up a trailer using just my rear view mirrors. The other kind of hilarious part was when I fell asleep playing. 4 times. I felt like I real life trucker.

Anomaly Warzone Earth – This is another indie game, it’s kind of a reverse tower defense (you are the hoard, attacking the turrets), but with more agency. You have control over your units’ path. You can’t stop or speed up or turn around, you have to go forward and just control where you turn. The enemy has standard turrets – guns, AoE, chain lightning, etc. You have different units of your own, mostly trading off armor or attack power. You also have some super powers (healing, cover, attack). It’s pretty fun, it gets hard at the end, I only barely won. It doesn’t over stay its welcome, which is good, 14 levels in and out.

Saints Row IV – This is exactly what you’d expect, which isn’t a bad thing. The series is already GTA on goofy juice. This ups it even more, now it’s GTA in the Matrix. The guns get crazier, the powers get crazier, the vehicles get crazier. I suppose that could be boring, but it’s still pretty fun. I played for over 20 hours and managed to do all of the main content. I did not try to ace every challenge and find every collectable, but I did most of the good stuff. I was done by the end, but I enjoyed it throughout.

The Binding of Isaac – This is a weird little rogue like. It was either not fun enough or too hard for me, not sure. I didn’t get very far and didn’t try very hard to get further. It has an odd style, kind of reminds me of ren and stimpy or something. It’s not as gross, exactly, but it’s got that rough sloppy sort of look. I’m not sure why it didn’t hook me, but after an hour I gave up.

Greed Corp. – This feels like a board game, which is cool. It’s tile-based, you control units and take territory. Each tile has a height, when you mine the tile for money the height of it and all neighbors are reduced, too low and it goes away. So you are trying to control territory, build units, kill the bad guy, it’s kind of fun. There are four “factions”, but they operate exactly the same. So that’s kind of boring, after the first 6 levels with one faction, you play 6 more with three more… It would have been more fun to have some sort of progression, powers or units or something. It was really kind of boring by the end. But I pushed through just for the sake of it and it was fun enough.

Borderlands 2 – This is fun for a while, but gets old pretty quick. It’s not that it’s bad, it is exactly what it means to be. And I’m sure it’s more fun with a group. But it’s just more of the first one. There’s no real variety to the missions, go kill 10 of these, or find 5 of that. Mow down a billion bad guys and get a slightly different gun. For a while I was doing all the side quests, but I gave up by halfway through the game, I just didn’t have the interest. It’s fun and goofy and all that, I just got bored quick.

Bleed – Tiny little indie platformer. One stick to move, one stick to shoot, jump button, that’s about it. It’s very short, which is exactly what I was looking for. I suppose I could go back and do harder modes, but nah. It’s cute, it’s fun, it has a female protagonist, it doesn’t intrude on your life, good stuff.

Movie Reviews

22 Jump Street – This movie is legitimately hilarious. I remember the first one being a complete shock, in that it was funny at all. I think this one is even better. It plays a very careful but very successful game of being extremely meta, just committed enough to sell the jokes, but never taking itself too seriously. The meta stuff is over the top, constantly making comments that apply more to the movie as a sequel than their mission as a sequel, but it all works. The story is whatever and just a scaffold for the funny. The end credits is actually the best part, I was laughing almost continuously. Pretty cool.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit – This movie was much less of a lot of things than I thought. Less action than I thought. Less spy stuff than I thought. Less twists or turns than I thought. It was really pretty straightforward. Good guy. Good guy’s wife. Bad guy who is established immediately. People fight. Movie over. It wasn’t exactly bad, just 100% average.
Maleficent – I wouldn’t have believed it, but I liked this movie! It’s got its faults, quite a few, but on the whole it’s decent. The CGI isn’t great. Angelina Jolie is kinda bad too, mostly just too up her own butt about the part. The 3 fairies are terrible and should have been cut out entirely. But besides that, it’s pretty good! The tree army is just about the coolest thing this side of Middle Earth. Most of the fantasy stuff is original and realized in a creative way. The reversal of the story isn’t necessarily mind blowing, but it’s good. The role of the prince is my favorite thing in the world. Good stuff.
The Fault in Our Stars – The trouble with this movie, is it’s 50% sad and touching, and 50% inane teen romance movie. And it’s mostly sorted chronologically. The first half is pretty meh, and really standard teenie junk, kind of obnoxious really. But the second half, I mean, jeez, they are dying and it’s sad. And they do a good job with that stuff, so it’s pretty effective. Also, I really like the infinity metaphor. It’s corny, I know, but it makes sense to me, so that was good.
Hercules – Um, I don’t know, I kind of forgot about it already. I seemed to remember enjoying all the fighting. It’s a good little switcheroo part way through. I did really like how they handled the mythology aspect of everything. It was very sensible, like I could really see some less grand version of that happening. And to me anything that points out how silly mythology is, is really pointing out how silly religion is. So I enjoy that.
I, Frankenstein – This movie isn’t very good, but it’s not terrible. It feels very much like another Underworld movie. It even has the same bad guy. Instead of vampires vs. werewolves it’s gargoyles vs. demons. The demons are basically just vampires anyway. And the gargoyles are basically angels. But angels are kind of lame and gargoyles haven’t been used since the cartoon, so it’s cool. And then Frankenstein’s monster is there for some reason. The acting is pretty bad, the dialogue, especially on Frankie, is very bad. But the big fights aren’t too bad. I’m not sure that a movie like this can be more than it is, but this was a good basis. Just didn’t work out that way.
How To Train Your Dragon 2 – This movie is fun. I remember thinking the first one was fun, though not as fun as everyone else seemed to think. This one is pretty similar. It’s cute, it has some fun dragon fights, there’s some good jokes. It’s pretty likeable all around.
Step Up: All In – So, get this. There’s these dancers, right? And they are in economic trouble. Now here’s the crazy part. There’s a competition! If they win, all their dreams will come true! Also there’s bad guy dancers, a dance off in a bar, the crew breaks up 30 minutes before the finale and gets back together 5 minutes before, and two really pretty people make out for a while. Oh yeah, and there’s some pretty good dancing at the end.
Sin City 2 – I loved the first one like everyone else. This one is pretty much the same, but it feels too late. It feels like call backs to the original. But the first one was so amazing because it was original. Even with such amazing source material like the comic, there just hadn’t been a movie like this. But now there has, and this is just another one. It’s not bad exactly, it just feels like anyone could have copied the style of the first one and made this movie.
Killing Them Softly – Meh. This is a mob movie, about some fuckups and a hit man etc etc. I guess I kind of get what it’s going for, but in the end it’s kind of boring. It’s not different enough for how slow it is, so I was a bit sleepy.
Oculus – Shockingly, I liked this movie. There’s kind of an evil mirror and a girl is determined to prove it is evil, or stop its evil, or something like that. The evil mirror has evil powers, chief among which is making people think something else is happening than really is. That leads to an unreliable narrator situation, which I generally don’t like. But something about this one worked.
Knights of Badassdom – Ugh, terrible. This is just a stoner movie dressed up in LARPing outfits. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t fun, it was super dumb.
The Rocketeer – Not sure I had ever seen this one. It’s a silly, fun enough, 90s sort of family action movie. Nothing much to say, pretty likeable.
Jobs – Ppt. Pretty lame rendition of this story. I’m not sure that it accomplishes anything that the old Pirates of Silicon Valley doesn’t (and much less in the non-jobs arena). Ashton Kutcher is a terrible Jobs, he just sounds like Kelso. That dude is doomed with that personality for the rest of his life. Woz gets totally screwed over, which was covered in the tech reviews. I’m not sure that a Jobs movie is necessary, I feel like we all know the story. But if there is one, it’s not this one.
Drinking Buddies – This is a half scripted, half improv (percentages may be slightly different) about two couples and it’s kind of obvious the two couples should be swapped. So a few things happen, it’s just kind of a timely peak into their lives. It’s okay, the conversations come off pretty natural which I guess was the point. It’s not super memorable or consequential, but it was an okay way to spend some time.
Nymphomaniac Part 2 – There was no reason to watch this, the first half was awful. But I had to see how it went, it’s like stopping a movie halfway through, can’t do it, I have a disease. Anyway, this one is just as bad. Maybe worse because it’s got an equivalent number of virtues (none), but loses its shock “appeal”. Weirdly, a couple of majorish actors show up – WIllem Dafoe, Christian Slater (okay, I’m stretching the word major). I guess they think this movie supposed to be deep? That its some artsy out-there boundary pushing movie? Nope. It’s just dumb. You made a bad choice.
Tai Chi Zero – This movie is super wacky. It’s like Scott Pilgrim and a kung fu movie had a baby. It’s basically a kung fu movie, kind of a western-influence vs. eastern tradition thing. But on top of it is this 4th-wall-breaking hokeyness. The on-screen text, like a guy ritchie movie or like scott pilgrim, talks right to you. Things like (and I don’t know the chinese actors’ names) “Bob Jones, playing the hero Frank Johnson. Bob Jones is a three time world champion of tai chi!” Literally! I mean, literally without the american names. So it’s actually pretty fun, and the fighting is good and fun. Reminds me a lot of Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. The only problem with the movie is the good guys… aren’t. This village, that is supposed to be imposed upon by the imperial technologists, is full of xenophobic assholes. You treat a guy like shit for his whole life, one of your community, and you are confused when he comes back and doesn’t mind knocking your stupid house down to make a railroad? Fuck those guys, maybe you should learn not to be dicks and people will leave your shitty little village alone. Anyway, besides that, good movie.
Lovelace – This is a movie about Linda Lovelace. It’s kind of average, nothing super bad about it, nothing super amazing. Her story is, of course, sad. I didn’t know any of it, but it’s pretty bad. Not much else to say, kind of a bummer.
The History of Future Folk – Here’s another quirky movie. Very indie. It’s… an alien comes down to earth to do something bad, but then music convinces him earth is pretty cool? That doesn’t sound very good, and it’s not very good. But it’s kind of entertaining in a low budget dorky sort of way.
Jarhead 2 – This movie is very different from how I remember the first one. The first one was certainly a war movie, but it had a surreal drama to it that was really effective. This one is much more just a war movie, but it was actually pretty decent. I kind of expected a lame shooty shooty movie. It’s not incredibly deep, most of the characters are set up in their roles and they do their thing. The end kind of doesn’t make any sense – false dilemmas and forced heroics. But besides the end it’s actually good at its job.
Automata – This is scifi robot movie. It’s basically I, Robot. The robots even have rules. But I actually kind of like it. It doesn’t read any new ground, but I like the look of it, I mostly like how it plays out.
Super – Meh. This is another real life super hero movie, except just kind of sad. Sad guy with a sad life is mostly crazy and tries to do heroic things. He succeeds when he shouldn’t because it’s a movie, but even that is sad. Then there’s the thing with Ellen Page, which is more than a little creepy. It just felt like some icky wish fulfillment by the filmmakers. Maybe that’s weird to say in a movie full of wish fulfillment, but meh.
Carrie – This is the new version. I’m not sure if I ever saw the original, I definitely haven’t read the book. It’s a good story, nice and revengey. Everyone loves to see people get what they deserve. Well, maybe more than they deserve. Even though I don’t know if I saw the original, I imagine this is the exact same with cell phones. Which is fine, good enough story that it’s worth making it for a modern context. Wasn’t totally buying the carrie-rage at the end, seemed a little goofy to me.
13 Sins – This is kind of a … the best comparison is Saw. Which isn’t a favorable comparison. A guy gets a call, he can make money by doing a simple task. Then more money, with more outlandish tasks. Take it as far as you can imagine. Like all of these types of movies it’s ridiculous. Like people with so much power, and money, and control would waste their time playing bullshit games when they could just run the world. Or, assuming they already do run the world, the level of omniscience is still over the top. So the movie eventually gets too gross or too unrealistic and kind of crap. Not surprising, I guess.
Resident Evil: Retribution – Just another RE movie. They are just kind of the same thing over and over. Every movie ends with a cliffhanger, because they know they can crap out another one 2 years later and make their 10 bucks back. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just so samey. There wasn’t any particularly exciting fighting or shooting. Pretty boring.

Comic Book Reviews

So, at some point I realized I hadn’t done this for a couple years. So I just kept adding to this for a really long time, whoops.

Habibi – This is by Craig Thompson, the guy who did Blankets, which I loved. It’s a very very different story. It’s fictional, about a pair of orphaned kids in a fake islamic country. There are two parts of the book. Visually, everyone on the planet agrees it is stunning. The detail and precision and skill is astounding. The art is beautiful, but the use of patterns and writing is shocking. He’ll have an entire page that looks like an intricate rug, all drawn by hand, every pattern slightly different. He makes a very big deal of written arabic, uses it throughout and attaches a lot of meaning to the visual letters. He spends a lot of time on symbology and myth, and it’s all extraordinarily beautiful. At over 600 pages, it is an amazing work of art. The other side of the book is the story, which many people seem to have a problem with. It is nominally about these two kids, an older arab girl and a young black boy. She is sold into marriage at a single digit age, escapes, and has various abuses put upon her for the remainder of the book. He is a slave, treated poorly for no reason other than that. Many more things happen, but to say them would be to tell you the book. Point is, it does not represent islamic culture very positively. A lot of people are made very uncomfortable by that. I was not, because I don’t think he’s lying. Of course, not every islamic person is like this, so it lends itself to criticism to show nearly every islamic person in the book as pretty nasty. Nonetheless, when I read Infidel, I didn’t get upset because all the men in that book were evil. It was a true story, they were evil. This is a story about evil men. I can walk and chew gum, and just because I see a bad islamic person, doesn’t make me think they are all bad. Nonetheless, if the story was about guys that were like me, but were all evil, I’d probably not be thrilled either. Reaction appears pretty mixed, a lot of people don’t like it due to the cultural stuff, but I thought it was a pretty fantastic book in a lot of respects.

Asterios Polyp – I’ve got to get this one down now too, because it was an amazing book. It’s kind of a lame seeming story, a well to do architect has some bad times and goes on a bit of a journey. It of course has to do with love as well. The book is beautiful, there’s all manner of deeper meaning, much of which I’m sure I missed. However, the one thing I have to point out is this amazing visualization of how we look at each other. He’s talking in the book about how reality is an extension of yourself. And so our self colors the way we see everything, including each other. That’s a maybe common enough concept, but the real genius is as he’s saying this, he does a very simple thing in that he draws every character on the page in a completely different style. There’s a person made of dots, a stick figure, a japanese character shaped like a person, scribbles, a sketch, a normal picture, a wire frame, etc. He posits that maybe we get along with some people naturally (and draws them in the same style) and others not so much (and draws them very differently). Then throughout the book when Asterios is having a particularly hard time understanding someone (usually his wife), he draws them in radically different styles. It’s an amazing representation of how sometimes a person, a conversation, a situation, or the whole world seems like it’s in a different language, like it just has no sense to it. It’s really kind of awesome.

Building Stories – This one is kind of crazy. It’s a comic, kind of, but it comes in a big box. The box has 19 different …. things in it. One is a normal graphic novel, one is a kind of little comic strip from a newspaper, one is a big fold out 4 “page” cardboard thing, almost like you unfold a board game board. All are centered around this one woman who lives in a building in some city. There are stories about her past, her time in the building, her time later in life, the neighbors in the building, a bee in the building. The genius of this, besides telling a good (if extremely depressing) story, and besides playing with the format, is that you can read it in any order. There are no instructions. I happened to read the big board one first, which gave me a very brief, wordless, summary of a day in the building. Then I read a story about the woman’s past. Then I read a story about the bee that was squished by the neighbor in the big board one. Then about the lady in the future. Then about the neighbor. Maybe there’s a perfect order that would be chronological, but it super duper doesn’t matter. Instead you jump in out and out their lives at almost random times, but it all works. It’s really a pretty awesome experience.

Shooting War – This is kind of a political book. It’s about a random unknown blogger who just happens to be filming during a terrrorist attack. This gets him a lot of attention, which eventually leads to him being the blogosphere’s war correspondent. The story is okay, pretty overt, not particularly believable. The art is good, but occasionally they use photographs (or photorealistic painting, I’m not positive), which I found really distracting. It’s not cartoony normally, but it’s definitely not realistic, so to have a photograph of a exploding car thrown in wasn’t good for me. In the end I didn’t find myself liking this very much, though I’m not positive why.

Ten Grand – This book is pretty cool. On the face of it, it’s not that different – a mob enforcer, but with a heaven/hell context. But it’s pretty well done. It’s basically a noir, it has art that reminds me of 30 days of night, which really fits the story. Oh look, I just googled 30 days and it’s the same artist. Go me. Anyway, it looks great. At the end of the first issue (I’m not sure if it came out in issues), it says, hey, go to this website and listen to an audio version of this. At first I’m annoyed that it didn’t tell me that at the START of the chapter. But I listened, and it was fantastic. Really well done, and a way I’ve never ever consumed a comic book. So cool. Story ends on a to be continued, aaaaarg. I guess I’m getting the next one when it comes out.

Pride of Baghdad – This is pretty weird. It’s about 4 lions that get loose from a zoo when Baghdad is attacked in 2003 (very very loosely based on a true fact). I guess it’s supposed to be a parable. The 4 lions are meant to represent 4 attitudes regarding the war and/or occupation and/or Saddam’s reign (i’m not sure which or if it’s all 3). There’s an idealist, a pragmatist, an optimist, and an apathetic…ist. It’s a little on the nose, but it’s pretty good. It didn’t blow me away, but it’s a solid story and a very interesting way to approach the subject. Kind of an Animal Farm for the Iraq war, in comic book form.

Joe the Barbarian – This is a really interesting book. I feel like I should absolutely love it, and instead I only like it, I’m not sure why. It’s about a kid with diabetes who is having an episode. He needs to get downstairs to have a snack, and the power went out. That goal turns into an epic fantasy journey, where he has to save a land populated by his toys and pet rat from a dark force. It’s kind of a genius idea. The real life events, which presumably don’t take long, are echoed in a dramatic fashion in his fantasy, it’s really kind of cool. For some reason I don’t love it, though. I found it slightly confusing, not that I didn’t follow, just that it didn’t gel somehow.

Skullkickers – This is a series that is pretty unabashedly about cartoony violence and silliness. It’s about two guys, a tall bald guy and a short dwarf, who are mercenaries. It’s pretty silly, but it’s pretty fun. They get drawn into various schemes larger than their pay scale and shenanigans ensue. It’s got a healthy dose of nerdy D&D influence with silly +1s and “adjective noun of action” items laying about the place. It’s goofy, but it’s fun.

Tale of Sand – This is a little adventure story, it’s been a while since I read it so I’ve forgotten. It’s beautifully drawn, just gorgeous. It’s got kind of a nathan drake-ish hero running through a surreal world. I can’t remember much about the story, but I think it was pretty fun.

Templar – I quite like this one. It’s set at the time when the Templars get disbanded and many killed (I didn’t know anything about this, apparently they were the bee’s knees, then the french king decided they were big for their britches, so labeled them all evil, everyone kind of went along, eventually pressuring the pope to renounce them, no more templars). The conceit is that a couple guys get away and go on one last adventure for their order. It seems like a silly idea, but it’s pretty well done. It’s got a good mix of action and humor. It mostly plays out like you’d imagine, but it’s fun all along.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic – This one is pretty sad. It’s a biographical work of a woman who had a kind of messed up family. It’s not terrible, she wasn’t tortured, she wasn’t starving. But it’s interesting to see how small choices affected her personality (or at least she believes they did). There were some genuinely bad things about her parents, her father mostly. They didn’t necessarily directly affect her, but the whole thing is about how the whole is built of up many parts. It’s pretty good.

Parable of the Polygons

An absolutely genius “game” that tricks you into revealing how small racial biases can lead to massive societal bias.

Movie Reviews

Transformers: Yet Another one – So wait, are you telling me that 2 hours and 15 minutes into a movie called “Robot Dinosaurs!!!”, I finally see my first robot dinosaur? Maybe that’s a spoiler, but if you are worried about spoiling the plot of Transformers 4, you might need to examine your life goals. This movie is not very good. To be fair, it’s better than the last one, I think maybe better than the second one. It has a couple of good fights. It has exactly 1 moment of self-awareness when the dad makes fun of the short shorts on the daughter (the same dopey short shorts that have been in every movie on the “hot” girl). The movie is astonishingly long. 2:45, I mean, holy shit. And it’s not like they were afraid to cut it down – there is some really bad editing. Like, literally I’m driving in a field, cut, I’m driving on a free way. No transition. I’m fighting with bumblebee, them bumblebee disappears for like 20 minutes. It is comically bad. Maybe criticizing editing in a Transformers movie is like worrying about the lack of emotional depth in an EDM song. Anyway, the movie isn’t very good, but I think it might be the 2nd best transformers movie. So, that’s some weird math.

Snowpiercer – This movie is pretty cool. In a world (say that in movie announcer voice) overrun by teenybopper dystopias that are largely exchangeable, this is a very different idea. The world has gone to crap, and all of humanity, that we know about anyway, lives on a forever running train. Within that context, its a kind of normal story with the powerful and the powerless and how that goes. But the context allows for very stark transitions among the castes, which is very cool. It feels kind of video gamey, moving from level to level, but that’s also kind of cool. It’s a bit slow, maybe drags on a bit more than it has to. The stuff toward the end is pretty cool, in terms of conflict for the hero. The very very end is pretty dumb, but maybe that’s me thinking too much. Overall, pretty cool.

Authors Anonymous – This movie is kind of depressing. It’s about a group of writers and their, mostly, lack of success. I would never ever ever want anyone I loved who is creative to watch this movie, it’s so freaking sad. The people are deluded, angry, pathetic, jealous. On the one hand, I’m sure there are people out there like this. It is kind of over the top, I can’t imagine people are this bad. I wouldn’t say its all that entertaining. It’s just kind of uncomfortable to see sad people do sad things.

A Million Ways To Die in the West – Against all odds, this movie is actually pretty funny. It is very juvenile and stupid, without question, but it never pretends to be anything else. I was pretty convinced from the ads that they had used up all their funny jokes and the rest of the movie was going to be terrible. The plot you can predict from the start, but the jokes in between are actually pretty funny. It’s kind of surprising, but I laughed pretty much throughout.

Edge of Tomorrow – I really like almost everything about this movie. It’s very easily described by saying it’s {this movie} in war with aliens. But I didn’t know that going in, and it was enjoyable, so I’ll leave it out just in case. But I really like the conceit. I really like the alien design, it’s almost completely unique though it is kind of like the things in the Matrix. I really like the look of the movie, I like the arc of the main character, I like the tech. The only thing I hate is the ending. It shouldn’t have been like that, I would have been much more effective without the last 2 minutes. I wonder if the original comic had that ending or not. But man if you hit stop a little early, I really like it.

Amazing Spider-Man 2 – Kind of like the first one, not that great. Some okay fights, some okay funnies, but mostly not super interesting. People who have read the comics know the end is coming, and I really wanted that to have impact. I’m not sure why it didn’t – whether because I was kind of unsatisfied with the rest, or if they just didn’t do a great job. It is one of the most famous moments in all of comics, it’s up there with the death of superman, or jason todd. It’s one of the top 3 marvel moments of all time, maybe the top. And it didn’t feel like that, which makes it a pretty big failure.

The Town – This is pretty good. At the one hand it’s a pretty normal cops & robbers kind of story. But it was pretty well done and pretty good to watch. It looks nice and all the performances are pretty good. If you just describe it, it sounds kind of boring, but it comes off good.

We’re the Millers – This one is pretty dopey, but it’s funny. I laughed more than I expected to by quite a bit. Maybe that’s a function of low expectations, but there were some pretty good moments. It’s ultimately not super memorable, but it’s a fun time.

Dallas Buyers Club – Pretty dang good, kind of hard to argue about that. Like many of these movies based on real stories, it’s just so bananas that it’s true it’s hard not to be captivated. And of course it’s pretty dang well done. Matthew McConaughey looks so sick it’s amazing, but also he does the job acting-wise. Everyone does, really, it’s good.

Pompeii – Meh, I guess I didn’t expect much. There’s some cool enough fighting, but honestly it’s been a month and a half since I saw it and I can only remember one scene in this movie.

Veronica Mars – I really liked the show, and I know it was an early kickstarter success but…. pppt. So boring! So… teen feeling. She’s much older now, this shouldn’t feel like nancy drew, right? I kind of wonder if I would like the show if I went back and watched it, because I was really unimpressed.

The Purge – Oh for christ’s sake. I know no one thought this was good, but it was shockingly not good. It’s just so dumb. I kind theoretically get behind unnecessary violence, but it has to have some sort of style or suspense or something. This was just dumb.

Her – I like this movie, but not as much as everyone acted like. I like looks into the near future, they can be really interesting. Scifi can be really interesting examining the far future, but looking at what’s around the corner, and how it reflects on us now, can be awesome (e.g. Black Mirror). So the first half or 3/4 of this movie is kind of that and pretty good. Granted, it’s too long by half, this really could have been an hour long TV episode. And then at the end it goes off the rails and gets silly. But it still has some interesting ideas.

R.I.P.D. – Men In Black with dead people. Yep. That’s pretty much it.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – I waited too long to write about this, so I can’t remember. I think I liked it? In kind of a whimsical sweet way. It’s kind of confusing, I’m never sure what happened and what didn’t. I guess that’s the point? But I was pretty sure it was all fake. But then they act like it’s real, and that’s kind of annoying. But besides that it’s nice.

Short film: Fortress

Really really cool idea about what might happen with automated warfare.

Movie Reviews

Guardians of the Galaxy – I’m not leading the charge here, but this movie is pretty great. I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite Marvel movie besides Avengers. Mostly because it’s just fun. It doesn’t have the best action of the movies, it’s a lot of shooty shooty space planes, which you have to try harder to make awesome. The personal fighting stuff is cool, but not stand out. The fun level, though, absolutely is. I probably laughed more in this than most comedies I’ve seen lately. It hits a really great level of taking it’s own world seriously enough that you give a shit about the outcome, but with enough levity that 1) it’s fun and 2) you aren’t crushed under the weight of an ever increasing scale on the stakes. I’m glad to see Marvel has this under control, because if they are going to continue in to the off-earth side of the universe, they are going to need a sense of humor. I’ve never loved the celestial stuff, it’s too big, which in the comics tends to be a bit goofy. But I like this first foray. What else can I say, the characters are great, there’s only a couple times where the pretense falls a little flat. The soundtrack thing, as much as some are bitching about it, is really fun and smart and oddly natural. The worst part of the movie was the stinger, it was just weird and not funny and I really hope it is inconsequential, they can’t possible consider using that in the future. But anyway, great movie.

42 – This is the Jackie Robinson movie. It’s pretty good. You can’t help but feel like it oversimplifies life. I know that’s always true of a true story, but jeez. A couple of aholes, pretty quickly dealt with. I’m sure it was a lot harder and more complicated than that. You get a glimpse of what that must have been like, which is certainly something I can’t imagine. But it’s pretty well done.

Divergent – It’s fine, I guess. I’m told the movie did away with most of the teenage drama that’s in the books, and I thank it for that. The world kind of annoys me, honestly. I’m all for a dystopia, but I feel like this one is kind of dopey. The setup is just so forced, and arbitrary. It feels like too big a leap for everyone to suddenly fall into such a rigid caste system. If you can get past the setup, which I guess I couldn’t, the movie is fine. Pretty average in terms of fights and suspense and all that. No one has any powers, that’s kind of boring. When the greatest ability you have is to be both kind of smart AND like to run and punch people… kind of lame.

Captain Phillips – Can’t really argue with this movie being good. It tells what is a shockingly dramatic true (mostly) story, that almost can’t help but be good. I don’t know why they fudged what they did – mostly in turning Phillips in to more of a hero than he was. Seems unnecessary, it’s a crazy story without him being a saint, just tell it. I like the movie because it humanizes the bad guys. They could be pure evil, and there is one guy who is kind of that, but the rest are people. People who did bad things and don’t deserve to escape that fact, but people nonetheless. And if I were such a person, born in such a condition, I can’t say I wouldn’t be the same. So I like movie makers being comfortable showing that without feeling like they are excusing it. Also, Tom Hanks is mostly just a fine performance, and then in the last 5 minutes is a fantastic performance, so good on him.

The Lifeguard – Uck. I guess I can’t say why I don’t like this, because it’s not in the description so it’s a surprise? But suffice to say a normal person makes a really horrible choice (or series of choices, I guess). This isn’t an anti-hero, or a charming ruffian, or even a straight up villain protagonist. It is realish person with realish issues who makes a realish choice that is very bad. And there are no consequences, personally, professionally, in the eyes of the movie maker or (by extension) the movie watcher. I find it a bit disturbing that someone would make a movie with that story and think it’s okay. Regardless of the other qualities of the movie (which are otherwise uninteresting anyway), the ick aspect of it makes it bad.

Contracted – Bad movie. The story is some chick gets raped and gets some sort of mega disease. The rest of the movie is her just getting grosser and grosser and freaking out. She’s unlikeable, her reactions seem kind of ridiculous. The goals seems mostly to be very gross, which I guess it is, but it’s mostly just dumb with a lot of screaming.

The Raid 2 – Maaaaaan. The first movie was so good. It had a bit of boring story at the beginning at the end, but it knew what it was. It was a guy beating, stabbing, and shooting the holy shit out of an endless series of dudes until he stabs the final dude to death. And it was fantastic, choreography like I’d never seen before. This movie seems to completely forget about the first one. It is 2.5 (TWO POINT FIVE!) hours long. And fully half of it is completely useless talking. The story is both uninteresting and overly complicated. I give no shits about who betrayed whom or who doesn’t like whom. Just show me punching, christ. The action is decent, they go to some effort to offer alternative environments and constraints on the fights. Some succeed, some don’t. If it was just a solid 60 minutes of that, it still wouldn’t be the original, but it’d be good. With all the bullshit shoved in, it’s kind of bad.

Red Dawn – Meh, it’s fine. There was no real reason to remake this. I don’t think it added much of anything. The first one wasn’t very good either, but this doesn’t up the quality. The only thing I like about this movie is showing that terrorism is driven by perspective. The good guys in this movie are terrorists. But they are heroes because they are the rebels against the bad guys. Same tactics, different context –> different characterization. Granted, they make sure that these terrorists only kill bad guys. They don’t target civilians and there’s not a drop of collateral damage. Necessary if your heroes are to be heroes, I suppose. If you show realistic consequences things get less black and white. But still, I like the reminder that a freedom fighter and a terrorist aren’t so far from each other.

Monuments Men – Pretty good movie. This is the one where a bunch of dudes wade into the tail end of WW II and try to rescue art from Germans. Apparently a mostly true story, and it’s pretty cool. The idea of it just appeals so much to me that I can’t help but like it. Plus freaking George Clooney always makes such charming and funny movies. There’s little moments sprinkled throughout that make it pretty enjoyable, in addition to being interesting. Pretty good.

This is 40 – This movie is kind of crazy. It’s just a married couple, with kids and life troubles. Money and sex and parents and kids and all that. It’s pretty over the top, though. I mean, to its credit it doesn’t sugar coat anything and it feels like these arguments come out of real life. On the other hand, every single person in the room is just screaming at the top of their lungs, usually with a healthy amount of fucks thrown in. If that was real life, it’d be freaking exhausting. But it’s pretty funny, if nothing else the craziness makes me laugh.

Homefront – This movie is enjoyable in a vengeance kind of way. It’s a Jason Statham movie, so there’s a bunch of fighting. But honestly with the quality of fight choreography nowadays, Jason Statham movies are looking a bit tame. But still, this time an ex-DEA guy moves to a small town and immediately gets fucked with by a bunch of yokels. You hate the yokels, because they are drug addled assholes. And you can’t wait for him to beat the shit out of them. Then a bunch of other stuff supersedes that with people finding out who he is and coming after him and he has to go kill them instead. But still, it’s very straightforward with very bad bad guys and a good guy who can kill them. Yay.

Perfect Sense – This movie looks super dumb, but it’s actually very cool. It’s centered around a romance (the dumb part), but the context is interesting. Some disease or condition or dunno what starts spreading where people start losing their senses, as in 5 senses. It starts with smell and goes on. It’s kind of a really cool premise and mini examination of how people might cope. The main dude is a chef, so food is the focus for a while. But just the idea of what people do is actually very neat. Nothing really unexpected happens, after 30 minutes you understand what will happen for the next 60, but I still really enjoyed it.

Last Days on Mars – Ppt. I was kind of excited for a survival story of people who get stranded on Mars. Turns out to be some dumb zombie movie, it just happens to be on Mars. It’s not bad exactly, it’s not cheesy, it’s not bad acting. It’s just generic and not super interesting. Oh well.

True Legend – This is a kungfu movie, with all that entails. The story is pretty straightforward: two guys who are like brothers, one goes bad, kills the family, good guy needs revenge, etc. For no apparent reason with 20 minutes left the movie completely switches and the good guy invents drunken style fighting. Dunno why. But in any case the fighting is pretty good. It’s kind of a wire kungfu, which isn’t my preference, but the choreography is generally interesting. There’s a couple weird moments of CGI/funny editing that I also don’t understand. But overall it’s a good kungfu kinda movie.

Hick – Not sure I get the point of this movie. A teenager runs away, gets in a bunch of trouble, meets some shady people, gets away, runs away again, etc. Nothing really interesting about it. It’s not bad, exactly, the acting or writing aren’t noticeably bad. It just doesn’t seem to have much of a point to me.

John Dies at the End – There seems to be no point to this movie except to be surreal. Maybe that was cool in the book, but it seemed pretty dumb in the movie. There’s barely a thruline in this movie, it’s a bunch of weird shit happening. It’s told out of order, but that’s not why it’s confusing, it’s just trying really hard to be weird and I don’t get it. It’s not fun weird, and it’s not awesome weird, it’s just weird. I suppose it’s just not my style and if it was maybe I’d like it. But nope.

Man of Tai Chi – This movie is a decent kung fu movie. It’s a straightforward story – good guy, loses his way, goes bad, gets good again. The action is good. There’s not too much wire-fu, definitely some, but mostly in the flips off the ground and super spins and someone flying backward after a hit. Not so much the prancy floating stuff that I don’t like. The hand/foot work is good. Keanu Reaves is pretty unconvincing as a bad guy, not horrible, but not scary enough. It’s also hard to believe that he can keep up with the good guy, fists-wise. The guy from The Raid was up right before him and was completely wasted, which was really sad. The good guy is also kind of unconvincing. He’s very skilled, but he’s tiny and not very intimidating, which is kind of too bad. But it’s still good choreography and a good ninja movie.

Compliance – This movie makes me pretty angry, mostly because I can’t believe people are that evil or that dumb. It’s apparently based on a true story of some sociopath who called random retail stores and convinced people to do horrible things to other people. In this case, convincing a manager that he’s a cop, an employee is a criminal, and to do terrible terrible things to her. It’s upsetting that that man exists. It’s upsetting that a manager who is so dumb and pathetic as to let the things happen. The movie itself I guess is good? I had a feeling I couldn’t shake that the movie was just exploitive, though. They didn’t choose an ugly girl to have these horrible things done to her. They chose a hot blonde girl who was in her bra and panties for the majority of the movie. Who’s that for? Maybe I’m only upset by the story and that is transferring to the movie, but maybe the movie had shitty motives.

Starship Troopers: Invasion – This is an animated starship troopers sequel. I’m not sure where it happens in the timeline of the sequels, I haven’t seen any of them. It was pretty good, it’s nothing special, but there’s shooting and dead bugs and blood. For some reason there’s more than one animated booby. I feel like I can get a hold of pictures of boobies if I need them, animated or otherwise, I’m not sure why they are in the movie. I guess cuz there were boobies in the original? Anyway, it was fun, makes me want to go watch the original and then watch the two live action sequels.

It Felt Like Love – This one is pretty well done, but pretty sad. It’s just about a young girl, 14 or so, and how that part of life pretty much sucks. She wants to be like her friend who has boyfriends and has sex, but she has no idea. She fakes knowledge and experience to fit in. She tries to get involved with a college guy, makes some pretty bad decisions, because she’s desperate for someone to look at her that way, even though she doesn’t know what it means. It’s pretty well done. But man it does suck to be that age.

Nymphomaniac 1 – Pppppppt. How can a movie so jam packed with sex be so boring? I guess the “appeal” of the movie is that they really aren’t fucking around with the sex. That was a real blowjob. That was a real penis going in to a real vagina. Yikes. The sex is overt and constant. A lot of it is kind of disturbing, which is maybe exciting for some people, not so much for me. The rest of it is sexy, it’s basically porn half the time. But in between the sex is a completely uninteresting story about a girl who has been effed up most of her life and makes some pretty effed up decisions. But jeez it’s mostly just annoying and boring.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengence – The first of the “vengeance” trilogy. Pretty crazy. A not-so-good guy makes a dumb choice to try to help someone he loves. He then makes a very bad choice to try to make up for it. Subsequently, an otherwise-good guy makes an even worse choice (ish) in response. And first guy makes some choices in response too. No one is good, the movie on the one hand is looking at how one might react to horrible circumstances, which is interesting, but on the other hand is gratuitous and violent. It’s good, I suppose, but a bit much.

Oldboy – The second in the trilogy. This one has an american remake (prompting this watching spree). In this case a guy doesn’t absolutely nothing wrong, but gets in the way of a bad person. He is then imprisoned (by a guy, not by the government) for 15 years. When he gets out he tries to figure out why, but that’s just part of the bad guy’s plan. Bad guy imposes a truly awful revenge which, kind of, relates to what the innocent guy did to get in the way. It’s pretty terrible, and you don’t feel good at the end. But it’s a good movie.

Sympathy for Lady Vengence – Third one. Again, someone who was only kind of bad, gets turned mega bad. But the twist is she manages to recruit people in to being mega bad with her, for revenge. It’s kind of interesting, again asking what people would do at the end of grief. All three movies are good enough, though definitely trying to be gross. They are trying to be thought provoking, I guess, and only half succeeding, but that half is good. They are pretty slow paced and deliberate, but can have spurts of extreme violence. The juxtaposition is probably also part of the point. In the end, you feel pretty shitty about humanity.

Oldboy (2013) – Josh Brolin remake of the Korean movie. In the end, it brings absolutely nothing to the table except being in English. There is literally nothing about this movie that is better than the original, except that I don’t have to read the words. Where this movie is good, the original was better. And I JUST saw the original, so I’m not being hipster nostalgic here, I have no allegiance to the Korean version. This one just comes off as a copy. The one thing of significance it changes would only have been effective on someone who hadn’t seen the original, so I can’t judge that. It’s probably a worthwhile change in terms of misdirecting the audience, but I can’t say for sure. The one-take fight scene isn’t one-take here, and it’s also not as good. Josh Brolin is too much of a badass. The cool thing about the fight the first time around, besides being one take, is how clumsy it was. It was confined, and awkward, and the guy barely makes it through. That made it much cooler than brolin just being people up. If you really refuse to read subtitles, see this one over the original, but there’s no other reason.

Detention – Ugh. This movie is trying to be a new Scream, I guess. Very self-aware, trying to mock the teen/slasher genre. Apparently we are far enough from the 90s that we can be nostalgic about the 90s now. I mean, the movie doesn’t take anything seriously enough to take its nostalgia serious, but serious or not it talks a lot about the 90s. Mostly it’s just dumb, not clever, not funny, so just dumb.

Last House on the Left – I thought this was a horror movie, which is not to say that I had high hopes. Instead it’s a terrible people do terrible things to innocent people movie. The kind of movie that kind of preys on people’s fear of strangers or criminals wandering the woods waiting to kill you. The movie is pretty slimy. It spends a solid 2 minutes just staring at a (supposedly) underage girl. No pretense, no point, just the camera panning up and down her body as she puts on her clothes after a shower. Then they do horrible things that make you feel bad for watching. Then I guess you are supposed to feel happy about bad things happening to the bad people. But not really, it’s just gross.

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane – Ppt, another teen slasher. Doesn’t bring anything interesting to the table, focuses an awful lot on how hot Amber Heard is. To be fair, she is pretty hot, but I’m not sure that that justifies a 90 minute movie. The movie tries to be clever in the end, but it’s kind of  “so what” clever. Then it tries to double back on its cleverness, but at that point I super don’t care.

Escape from Planet Earth – Random netflix play, but it was actually fun. It’s just a cartoon about some aliens. It doesn’t ask much of you, and it gives enough in return. It’s cute and made me laugh (probably more than This is 40 did) and was a good way to spend an evening.

360 – This movie is mostly about a bunch of people in crappy relationships who make some crappy decisions. That’s not everyone, to be fair, there are a couple of legitimately interesting characters. Specifically the recently released convict and the older guy. The con especially, who is a sex offender and is trying to deal with the temptation of real life. That was actually interesting. But the rest of it is just boring. It tries to do the Crash thing where everyone intertwines, but it really just feels like a bunch of forced connections that don’t have any subtler meaning.

Coriolanus – This movie didn’t get a fair shake from me. It’s a modern retelling of a Shakespeare story that I’ve never known about. It is set in modern day Italy, but the language is all old timey still. I think it’s probably pretty good. I didn’t have the patience for it, I had to wiki the story to even follow it, and I insisted on playing a game while it was on. It seems to be that Ralph Fiennes was staggeringly good. Just something about a british guy doing that shakespeare stuff full force like that is hard to ignore.

District 13: Ultimatum – The first D13 was kind of a 2 hour parkour session loosely strung together with a story. This movie drops a bunch of the parkour for more fighting, which is too bad. Not that the fighting is bad, but I can see that anywhere. The parkour was why it was so cool the first time, it’s too bad there’s less of it. The story is a story, fine, it doesn’t get in the way too much. But the movie drops to a kind of average action movie.

Silent Hill: Revelation – I don’t know if I’m drunk, but I actually enjoyed this! If I am to believe the entirety of the internet, it should be deep fried crap on a stick. But I didn’t think it was bad! I mean, it’s not wonderful, but it’s one of the better horror movies I’ve seen lately. That’s not saying much, but still, I thought it told a silent hill story just fine. It’s nothing like the game still, I don’t know that a movie (where you have no control and just follow) can ever be like a game (when you have full control yet still feel helpless). But I thought it was fine.

Video Game Reviews

Bastion – I LOVE this game. I can’t believe it took me so long to play it. I’ve owned it for a couple years, I just never started it because I knew I had to listen due to the narration (I couldn’t watch TV at the same time). But wow is it good. The game is fun, it’s not overly complex, but it’s a perfect level of gameplay for enjoying the rest. And the rest is beautiful. The art is beautiful. The music is fantastic, reminds me of Firefly. The story is so cool, I love the end and the implications for new game plus. It is downright a nearly perfect game, I don’t know what I would change. I love Skyrim, but it’s a marathon, I loved it over 26 miles. I love it intellectually and in the way that you compulsively play it for hours. But I love this game in an emotional way, it was such a joy. This game is a perfect beautiful sprint; I suppose I could go play new game plus and get achievements and all that to drag it out, but it was great just like that.

The Last of Us – What is so astounding about this game is how great it is, despite being so normal. There’s nothing new here with the story. Zombie apocalypse, mcguffin potential cure, survive the zombies, survive the humans, make it through, same ole same ole. The gameplay isn’t anything to be excited about, it’s just Uncharted, except less-so because there’s no climbing stuff (not that that was that great). It’s not bad, it’s fun to play, but it’s nothing new (and aiming a gun with analog sticks is terrible). I guess the stealth is fun, and certainly preferable to trying to aim, but in the end not new. Yet, this game is amazing. It is just so freaking well done. The voice acting is better than any other game, ever. The facial animations are fantastic. Now, the words rarely match the mouths, which is really distracting and almost ruins the whole thing. But if you watch the eyes or something instead, it’s totally believable. The relationship between the two is probably the most honest I’ve seen in any video game, and in most of media. Despite being a totally normal story, I was captivated and couldn't wait to see what happened next. Pretty great.

Darksiders – I don’t know what took me so long with this game. I played an hour of it probably 2 years ago and I just never picked it up again. It’s fun, though. It’s just a god of war game, except with christian mythology instead of greek. But hey, christian mythology is actually really cool, as long as you aren’t talking to someone who thinks it actually happened. So you go around beating the shit out of various creatures, ripping their wings off (a la GoW), chopping their heads of (a la GoW), splitting them in half (I think you get it). You get a powers/weapons as you go, get to go new places (a la.. wait for it, Metroid. Ha, didn’t see that coming). Eventually you kill the bad guy. It’s all pretty fun, looks pretty good given that it’s 4 years old (on PC anyway). I’ll certainly play the sequel when it goes on sale.

Bully – I’m pretty impressed with this game, even though I didn’t have a ton of fun. It is essentially GTA in boarding school. The impressive aspect is it’s not just a skin, they did rethink aspects of the gameplay to fit the context. A lot of it is still in common, but it doesn’t just feel like GTA with kids. The class stuff is cool too. It’s an old game, so it looks pretty ass-y, but it isn’t its fault that I took so long to play it. In the end, I don’t find the game to be a lot of fun. At least half the point of GTA is mayhem, and there’s none of that in this game. You can start a fight, but it won’t really go anywhere. You can’t really fight the authorities. You can’t steal a tank and roll down the hallways. The very reasonable limitations of the game – no killing, class schedule, no fighting cops, etc – make the game restrictive and kinda sleepy. I still liked it, the story was fine I guess, I just got kind of bored pretty quick and wanted to get through it.

Movie Reviews

Great Gatsby – This movie was much better than I thought it’d be, but unfortunately it’s still not good. It had some good ingredients, but is ultimately kind of a failure. The acting is good, I’m not blown away by anyone, but it’s solid. I actually really like the mix of modern music with old timey parties. For some reason, it works pretty well. Although, it’s going to look absolutely ridiculous in about 5, maybe 10 years. Modern music with old timey parties is cool. Out of date music with old timey parties is lame. But, the movie is very hollow, led strongly by its horrible, horrendous, awful, laughable CG everything. For as much money as this movie must have cost, I have no idea why the CG is so bad. It was obvious from the trailer, it looks like a video game cut scene from 2008. The city, the car chases, the houses, the unnecessary zooms, all of it. And worst of all they occasionally try to have a human in the frame during the CG, which looks really bad. And worst of worst of all, they transition from a human in a real scene to a digital fake human-ish monstrosity in a CG scene. Maybe the movie is better than I think, but under all this bad CG, I really can’t tell. For a little while I considered that maybe the CG sheen was on purpose, to somehow represent the lavish over the top life style. But even the shitty dirt poor part of town, which is anything but lavish, looks shiny and fake.

The Numbers Station – Kind of a random action/spy movie with John Cusack defending a cryptography hut from bad guys. It’s kind of generic, not a lot to say about it, but it’s good enough for a weekend movie.

The Trip – Pretty weird movie. Nominally about two friends (ish) going on a foodie road trip for a magazine. Both are actors and kind of in competition. I think it must be largely improvised, the two guys spend a lot of time going on and on. It is at times really funny. The way they make fun of each other and the banter back and forth is good. They do a lot of impressions. Like, a lot of impressions. It’s hilarious at first. It gets old pretty quick. Although they could do Michael Caine for ever and I’d watch. But the rest of them get pretty tiresome pretty quickly. The movie in general kind of goes on and on, not sure why it had to be nearly 2 hours. But it has a pretty entertaining hour of goodness, it just needed some trimming.

The Internship – This is actually funnier than you’d expect. It’s fully 50% boring and rote. The story plays out exactly like you’d expect and none of it is particularly interesting. But half of it is actually pretty dang funny and some scenes really had me going. Given some of the crap I’ll voluntarily put on my TV, this was pretty entertaining.

Couples Retreat – So, remember the crap I just mentioned? Yeah. To be fair, I’ve watched much worse. It’s just a low quality mainstream comedy. It’s not god awful, there are some funny parts, but nothing I’d miss if I hadn’t seen it.

2 Guns -  I don’t know, I guess this movie was good enough. It has a cool set up with who is on whose side. Eventually it just becomes a bit overwrought and silly. It’s kind of like the writers heard about a mexican standoff and decided to see how many mexicans (metaphorically) they could cram in at once.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters – Meh, just like the first one. Low end YA fantasy. Nothing about it is particularly horrible, it’s not a twilight movie or anything. It’s just a random movie about teenagers with special powers saving the world, not very memorable.

American Hustle – This was okay, really. It’s a weird movie, pretty slow at times. But the actors do a good job. I can’t remember much about it, I have a generally medium-to-positive feeling about it, but I marked it as 2 stars on netflix a month ago, so maybe I didn’t like it. Oh well.

The Lego Movie – This movie is great. I never would have imagined it’d be good, but then everyone said it was, and it’s true! It’s really funny. Kind of a simpsons-like humor where you aren’t really busting out laughing, but you chuckle quitely because something was clever. More funny than the simpsons, though, and a lot of funny references. I liked it a lot, and it even ends up with a very touching ending. Good stuff.

This is Martin Bonner – This movie is reeeeeeally slow. It’s about an older guy who has had a change of life and is now working for a program that helps prisoners readjust to real life upon release and his time with one such prisoner. The two guys do a pretty good job, in a very sedated way. But it’s that kind of movie, so it’s not a criticism. It is an excellent little slice of these guys’ lives and struggles. But it is just that, a slice, so it just ends all of a sudden. No real resolution, you just see a part of their story, and you assume the story keeps going after. Kind of awkward, but obviously done on purpose, so not bad.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People – Get this, Simon Pegg plays a jackass. No no, really, he plays a total self absorbed asshole who only wants to be contrarian, drink, and get some. And then by the end of the movie, he realizes the error of his ways. Spoilers, but not really. But it’s actually a decent movie. Nothing to be exciting about, but funny at times and it runs through it’s admittedly standard story fine. I guess it’s a romantic comedy, but it’s mostly about the latter, which it only has some of. But hey, it has Kirsten Dunst, and it’s not a total disaster, I take that as a measure of success.

Video Game Reviews

Skyrim – I finally played Skyrim and it’s all it’s meant to be. I didn’t do a lot with mods, but I did install an alternative inventory management system cuz the default one sucks. And an advanced lighting one because why not. But I didn’t install anything to change the gameplay or story. The game is pretty great, pretty much exactly as I remember oblivion. I’m not sure what, if anything, is different between the two. I guess the voice thing, but I almost never used that. It is fun to blow someone off the top of a mountain, but the rest of the shouts are meh. I did eventually run out of juice, I played the damn thing for 116 hours, according to Steam. Around 100 I started pushing on the main quest because the value of becoming Thane of every town with more than 10 citizens seemed to wane. I never did the vampires, the thieves, the dark brotherhood, all the daedra, and I barely started the werewolves. It wasn’t that it wasn’t all fun, I had just played so much. It is officially my most played game on steam, beating out star trek online, which I’m shocked to discover I had over 100 hours of. So, yeah, I obviously loved it, but there’s not much I wouldn’t be bored off after triple digit hours.

Octodad – This went on sale just as I was winding up Skyrim, and it seemed like the perfect palette cleanser. It’s a goofy physics game on the vein of surgeon simulator or QWOP, but not so hard. You control an octopus who is pretending to be a man and you complete various mundane tasks. But you control your “feet” and “hands” with some goofy physics so the challenge is to do things without destroying your surroundings or prompting suspicion. It’s silly, but it’s fun. There’s a co-op mode, dunno what that’s about, each person controls an arm? The game is very short, I beat it in a couple hours. I guess I could go back and get all the secrets but that’s silly. It’s funny that I paid $5 for 2 hours here and $7.50 for 116 skyrim hours. But that’s not a reflection on this being a bad deal, skyrim was just an amazing deal.

Zeno Clash – I’m way behind on this one, but it went on sale at some point. I admire what these folks were trying to do. It’s super hard to make a first person melee game. It’s interesting, but not all that fun. The controls are mostly uncomfortable and annoying. The style of the game is certainly unique. It doesn’t really mesh with me, and I don’t know why. I feel like they deserve a lot of credit for being totally different. But mostly I was just trying to get through the game, not super enjoying it.

Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall – I quite liked the first release of SR. It had it’s limitations, for sure, and parts were a bit rocky. But I love the world too much not to love a chance to play in it. This game, technically, is basically exactly the same. Theoretically they added options and fixed stuff up, but I played basically the exact same character (mostly mage), so it seemed pretty similar. Things were a little smoother, but I didn’t really have too many problems the first time around. Most annoying thing is how crazily slow saving is, not too bad a primary complaint. People made a big deal of the story, and it is pretty good. Certainly had me hooked in more than the first game. The way it plays out is pretty good, and the admittedly binary choice at the end is a good one. The other “better” aspect is you are supposed to feel more like a shadowrunner, that didn’t really work out. Yeah, you could choose your missions a little bit, but there was a pretty short list, and you had to get through the majority of them to progress the story, so that makes it a lot less optional. It was better than the first game, but still wasn’t much different. I’m playing a community campaign now that is much more of the get a random job style. The list of jobs is pretty small, there’s just not that many types of missions you can have. But it’s fun, I’m not sure if I’ll play through its whole story before I get bored, but we’ll see. Anyway, I love shadowrun, I wish I could play it pen and paper again. This game is as close as I’ll get, so I like it.