Review: Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice

I've come to the conclusion in life that it's best to completely skip all trailers, commercials, hype ads, and other media when it comes to things I think I might enjoy.    I'm willing to watch one trailer to simply see what a movie might offer and learn that it might actually be something I want to know more about, but beyond that there's so little value to them beyond "revealing the entire plot."

However, I did say in that previous post that I would see both movies, and I've lived up to exactly half of that promise by going out and seeing the story of a guy with an armored suit battle a guy who's a walking atomic powerhouse.

So what did I think?  Well, look after the cut, and be prepared for spoilers.

Westworld

When I first heard of Westworld years ago, I thought it was an interesting gimmick.  An amusement park where the attractions flip out and attempt to murder everybody present because of the uncontrollable nature of chaos theory?  By the mid-90s, I had already seen that story done so well that it's stuck with me ever since.

Wait, that can't be right.  Anyway.

Finally, just recently, I sat down and watched Westworld.  The announcement that a television series featuring Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris piqued my interest in it again, and I figured that it was such a staple of science fiction that the fact I hadn't seen it yet was a pretty huge blemish on my "nerd cred."

I want that poster.

Chocolat

Standard preface: Dame Judy Dench can do no wrong.

Okay, let's get into it.

Chocolat is a movie starring Juliette Binoche, Judy Dench, Alfred Molina, Johnny Depp (in a surprisingly small bit role), and other actors that I'm not personally familiar with.  It involves a young woman with strong Pagan beliefs moving into a small French village with her daughter and drawing the ire of the strict, religious Comte de Reynauld and other people in the village until her exotic chocolate recipes steadily start to win people over.

It's a very good movie, though I understand there's a considerable controversy surrounding its multiple academy award nominations (other than the one for Judy Dench, naturally), but honestly, I don't care about all that.  It's a good movie with lovely set pieces, superb acting from wonderful stars, but there's something I want to focus on in this review.

Why is restraint always the villain in so many movies?

Review: The Artist

I caught this movie several weeks ago on a bus ride from Boston to Portland.  It was on a small television, and the sound and music were 3/4 of a second out of sync.  I was exhausted after a long flight, clinging to my carry-on bag despite having plenty of room around me, and pretty much ready to fall asleep, but instead I watched a silent movie that just happened to win an Academy Award.

I can see why this movie won, even with all the technical issues, it was still amazing to watch.

Review: The Martian (the movie)

Back in October I talked about a book I absolutely loved.  You might have heard of it.  They made a movie from it starring Matt Damon.

I'm here to talk about it.

...that might be the easiest introduction I ever wrote.

Review: The Shop Around The Corner

When I visited my family, we tried to find a holiday- themed movie to put on one day, and we went searching through the "free movies on demand" feature that my parents have.  There were a lot of downright terrible offerings, but we spotted one movie buried deep that I was surprised to find wasn't being listed near the top as a great holiday movie.

Maybe that's because it's only directly related to Christmas in the same sense that Die Hard is a Christmas movie in that they both "happen to happen around that time of year."

It's also a movie I'm not sure you could remake and keep exactly as it is, because if you did it now, there would probably be some concerns as to whether or not what you're doing is in good taste, but I can't for the life of me find it in myself to complain about the same issue in this film.

No, it's not Blazing Saddles.  It's The Shop Around The Corner.

Review: Ex Machina

This movie.  You guys.  This movie.

Okay, look, I love a good science fiction movie.  I think "fantastic future technology" has become more than just a regular "genre" of movie, it's become something you can tell any kind of story in.  You can tell romances (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Time Traveller's Wife, Wall-E), you can tell adventures (Star Wars, The Matrix, Terminator, Wall-E), and you can tell horror (Alien, The Thing, Predator, Wall-E).

But there are very few "science fiction" movies willing to spend more time on the "science" than they are the "fiction."  Hollywood doesn't like to tackle big new ideas that often, so while something like In Ti- ...hold on, I never reviewed In Time?  Okay, that'll be happening this week.  Anyway, while you might have something like Moon every now and again taking an idea and expanding on it until it becomes a complete story in its own right, more often than not you have something that has to abide by the rules of Hollywood storytelling.  You can't challenge the viewer too much, you need explosions to hold their interest, and special effects trump characterization.

Then something like Ex Machina quietly slips by.  You catch a glimpse of it in all the movie hype about other, bigger blockbusters that the critics inevitably pan, but it isn't until later that you start to hear the rave reviews and realize there's something out there you have to see.

So, since I had a long flight ahead of me several weeks ago, I finally downloaded it off Amazon Prime and watched it.

Holy crap, everybody.  This movie is amazing.

Review: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

I have a pretty heavy history with Star Wars.  I wasn't old enough to see the original trilogy in theaters, but I distinctively remember my family having a copy of Return of the Jedi on a VHS tape that I don't know if it was a copy of another VHS tape or what, but I remember watching that over and over again growing up.  When I finally watched the other two, I consumed them just as quickly and fell deep in love with the universe that George Lucas created.

I played the West End Games version of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game so much I had multiple sourcebooks memorized.  I have a collection of action figures never taken out of their packaging in a box somewhere.  I own the R2-D2 phone.  It sits on a shelf at my office.  Without batteries, of course, or it would be going off all the time from people just wanting to see it "one more time."

But I was one of the many burned by the prequels to the point where I didn't see Revenge of the Sith until the early 2010s.   It wasn't my Star Wars any more, it was meant for a new generation who loved it just as much as I loved the originals.  I was okay with that.  I was ready to pass on the torch and move on.

Then they announced Episode VII, and I was torn.  I was hurt before, but could the series bring me back?  Would it be like when I was young and wanted to be Luke Skywalker?

Yes, I know all the "cool" kids wanted to be Han, but I wanted to be Luke.  He got a lightsaber, you guys.  And a robot hand!  Robot hands are awesome!

Bullet Witch

I shouldn't love this game as much as I do.  The controls are twitchy and not very responsive, the story line is laughable, the voice acting is cheesy (and in some cases almost unbearable), and save for the lead character all the other people you interact with are absolute garbage, including the other good guys.

So why do I love this game so much?

I dunno, man.  I just can't explain it.

Mall of Horror

One of the very first board games I went out and bought when I decided to get serious about board games (which is, admittedly, a weird thing to get "serious" about) was a small game created by Asmodee.  It was in the clearance bin for 25% off, but I snatched it up and bought it without a second thought.

The game is a mixture of horror and strategy as you try to not only figure out your own moves, but also everybody else's moves.  Alliances can be formed and broken in minutes, and eventually you know you'll have to stab an ally in the back and sacrifice them to the zombie horde.

It's quite simply put the second most terrifying game to take place in a mall setting.

There's nothing scarier than fiscal irresponsibility.

This is Mall of Horror.

Erik's Favorite Things: The Haunting

In 1963, a movie came out that started to generate a lot of buzz as to how terrifying it was.  Movie theaters held contests to see who could get through a midnight showing of it.  Reviewers claimed that people they saw it with climbed out of their chairs in terror.  It wound up on the favorite horror movie lists of people like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and many other respected film-connected individuals.

And yet, if I tell you the title, you're going to remember a sub-par movie with Owen Wilson, Liam Neeson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, because it came out in 1999 during a flood of lackluster horror remakes and it cranked up Catherine Zeta-Jones' sex levels to 11.

But we're not going to talk about that bucket of chum so rank and stale that not even a starving shark would be drawn to it, we're going to talk about the original.  We're talking about The Haunting.

Dead At The Gates Redux: The Walking Dead: Season 2

Imagine, if you will, that you're trapped in a dungeon somewhere.  Sand covers the floor, strange liquid drips from various areas, and you're never able to get a decent night's sleep.  Every now and again a figure shows up with bread crusts for food.  He drops them on the ground and waits for you to crawl forward to cram them into your mouth, but the moment your fingers get close, he brings his boot heel down and crushes them into the sand, breaking them apart into mere dust.  And if you try to be aggressive when you grab the bread, you just wind up with broken fingers.

Then, each time, the figure kneels down and lifts your chin up.  He looks you over, observes the bloodshot eyes, the sunken cheeks, and the cracked lips you have.  He smiles kindly for a moment, and asks, "I'm sorry...have I upset you?  Here, let me go get you some bread."

The cycle continues.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the experience playing The Walking Dead: Season 2.

The only thing more emotionally draining than that experience is the fact that behind you in the cell is an open door that leads to freedom.  All you have to do is take it.  But you won't.  Because, somehow, you've convinced yourself that it's not as bleak as it appears, and that if you can just last a bit longer, that one piece of bread you get will be worth it in the end.

Hellboy

I need to be honest here.  Up until today, I've never seen the full movie Hellboy.  I've seen snippets of it here and there.  I know that it's one of the movies that really helped launch the career of Guillermo Del Toro (along with Blade II and Pan's Labyrinth).  I know it's the movie that returned Ron Perlman to his "several hours in the make-up chair" roots that stemmed from Beauty and the Beast.

But being able to genuinely discuss the plot?  ...not so much, because I had no idea what happened in it.

I know what you're saying.  "But Erik," you're exclaiming in disbelief, "didn't you say you loved Hellboy in your blog post about giant robots and giant monsters?"  Yes, I did, and I acknowledge that sentence could very well be misleading, so I'm asking for permission to take it back.  It should have been "I loved what I saw of Hellboy, and the fact that he's embraced strange stories such as that and is willing to elevate them to another entertainment medium."  That line in that blog post was an unintentional lie, and a blemish on my record.

But that's all changed.

...because I've watched it.

Okay, this intro has pretty much stalled, let's get into the movie itself.

Review: Moon

In the future, mankind has managed to shed its dependence on oil and gas.  Helium-3 harvested from the dark side of the moon supplies a majority of Earth's energy needs,  You might remember Helium-3 as being the reason astronauts landed on the moon in the movie Iron Sky, but this isn't going to get anywhere near as ridiculous.

Today, we're talking about the movie Moon, a movie I never knew existed until just recently, and one that I'm kicking myself for having never seen before.

Devil Seed

You know what would be a great title for a movie?  "The Devil Inside."  In fact, it was a horror movie back in 2012, and a pretty huge success of one, considering it cost one million dollars to make and brought in over one hundred million dollars.

I think it might have been the impromptu success of that movie that caused Devil Seed to change its title from its original name, "The Devil In Me."  This movie also came out in 2012, and unlike the former movie mentioned, this one only brought in... well, it cost... huh.  I can't find any of the information regarding this movie online.  In fact, this movie doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.

Truly we are in for a delight.

Danganronpa 2

Yesterday I discussed a video game that I think might have had one of the most profound emotional impacts on me since the time I tried to foolishly save everybody in a video game about the zombie apocalypse.  Today I discuss its sequel, which handles being a sequel better than most games I've played, and still manages to be one of the most amazing game experiences I've had in a long time.

We're talking Danganronpa 2.

Danganronpa

There have been a lot of attempts at capturing the surprise success of the series Battle Royale from Japan, a story set in a (somewhat) dystopian future where students are selected to battle each other to the death for the "entertainment" of the masses.  It's actually a cautionary tale about overpopulation, and the lengths a government might need to go to in order to keep the population from growing too quickly.

There have been a lot of similar stories that have emerged in the last few years, not the least of which is The Hunger Games.  Now, I can't say for sure whether or not the person who wrote this series ever heard of Battle Royale (and Steven King seems convinced it's actually a The Running Man knock off), but I can say that The Hunger Games has inspired his own massive flood of knock-offs and imitations.  Everything from The Maze Runner, the Divergent series, Slashers, and- wait, hold on, I think my timeline got messed up in there somehow.

But while you can shift the world setting and mix up some of the characters and genders, in the end it always feels like you have a bunch of young people being killed off for the amusement of older people, and I still maintain that The Cabin In The Woods messed around with that idea the best.

At least when it comes to movies.

Enter Dangan Ronpa (also known as Trigger Happy Havoc), a game so amazingly good that several months later I finished the sequel and I'm still thinking about the original.

Review: The Martian (The Book)

So yesterday I said, and I quote, "...I can proudly say I've never seen all of Ernest Scared Stupid."   This has absolutely no relevance to today's topic, but I just wanted to point that out again.

What I also said was that today we would "explore what I'd probably describe as my greatest fear of all."

What does that have to do with Alan Weir's magnificent book The Martian?  They both involve being alone.

Review - The Matador

So, yeah, reviewing the Street Fighter movie wore me out to the point that I really didn't have anything planned for today.

I mean, sure, I have projects I'm working on, and there's always the other Street Fighter movie, and I'm almost at my 600th post, but today...I just hit a wall.  I had nothing really jump out at me as something that would be simple and enjoyable to write about.

Then it hit me.  If I'm trying to make this easy, it means I don't want to try.  I also spotted a movie I watched not too long ago and completely forgot to review while it was still fresh in my mind.  Strangely enough, I do remember almost all of it pretty clearly, so I think I'll discuss it.

Here it is, the best movie to ever star Pierce Brosnan.

Street Fighter: The Movie - Part Two

I was not prepared for what I was getting myself into with this project.  I thought "hey, wouldn't it be fun to watch a movie that I know is big and dumb but still kind of fun?  Wouldn't it be great if I just did reviews of video game movies?"

And to think I have both the Chun-Li movie waiting in the wings for after I finish this one.

I did not really think this through.

Where did we leave off?

Oh right, the fate of the world rested in the hands of Jean-Claude Van Damme, a pop star, and Not T. Hawk.

Let's get back into it.