OMG, GS:DD is an RPG on the DS! It's also the most recent installment for the Golden Sun series. As a fan of the series, I picked up Dark Dawn hoping to revisit the world of alchemy and psynergy I enjoyed in the preceding games: Golden Sun and GS: The Lost Age (both for the GBA). While it does improve on the series in a number of ways, there are times I feel it didn't improve ENOUGH on the previous games.
Breaking it down:
Gameplay and Control:
Control can be done handled both with the stylus and with the d-pad and abxy buttons. The game definitely wants you to use the stylus, though. There's even a couple quick access spots for heavily used psynergy (either by using L or R or clicking on the picture in the top left of right with the stylus).
Overall, the control is fluid and natural. There's a few issues when it comes to trying to point at specific items on the screen, but it's largely due to the use of 3D graphics making it sometimes difficult to pinpoint where you're supposed to actually click.
As for gameplay - it's an RPG with a lot of standard RPG elements (customizable character classes, leveling up, etc). Very much like the Final Fantasy series, it also has random battles, turn based attacks, magic (which they call psynergy), summoning and the like. But this is no different than the previous games.
In relation to the previous games, there's a lot of interesting new psynergy and Djinn's (small equipable monsters that are the source of the magic and can change your character class), as well as some old favourites to go along with the new set of characters who are confusingly all direct descendants from the first game's characters (more on this later).
There's even a few new weapons and weapon classes (the bow and arrow) - but this is marred by the way too many old weapons returning. There's something distinctly distasteful about finishing a game that's supposed to be a sequel and having a large assortment of your weapons being the exact same weapons you had in the previous game.
A few other sore points for gameplay are the unupdated battle system, which still requires you to "click" or otherwise "tap" past every single iteration of battle text, and the myriad of forced tutorials that clutter the first parts of gameplay. Game makers would do well to remember they should always, ALWAYS allow for people to skip tutorials - especially when the game is a sequel to an existing series, or if you want people to reply the game ever.
I'd also like to make special note of the weapon forging, since the weapons you get are determined by chance, resulting either in a lot of save-scumming (returning to previous save points), or the acceptance of lower tier or undesired weapons. As a result, forging is nothing but a painful chore... just like it was in the last game.
The most frustrating part of gameplay is probably the "lag" that occurs when casting psynergy; this if of particular issue when it comes to psynergy cast on moving targets, like using mind read (or as this game calls "spirit sense") on an NPC (non-player character). The issue is that the lag only affects YOU. The NPC can, and often does, move out of the way in their random walk-around-in-a-single-spot motions. The only way around it is to either get lucky or force the NPC into a corner so they can't escape their inevitable mind-reading.
The lag isn't as much of an issue when it comes to stationary targets, but it still makes me wonder why Nintendo couldn't just make the entire world stop moving when you're casting psynergy.
Graphics and Musics:
Full use of 3D graphics and very good music selection. Some people say that the graphics of Squarenix' remakes are better, but Squarenix didn't have a fully 3D world: just 3D characters in a 2D backdrop world, so the discrepancy in graphics is not just forgivable, but understandable. No complaints here.
The music selection is good and a lot of the songs are even entertaining to listen to for many minutes on end. None of it "overstays its welcome" as the saying goes.
Story:
The story is you're trying to get a Roc's feather so you can fix the device your idiot companion broke in the intro. That's it. Everything else is just the trials and tribulations that go along with getting a Roc's feather, apparently, that ends up thrusting you into the responsibility of saving the world.
My biggest qualm with this is for the most part you never really know where you're going next. For most of the game you don't have an overarching goal - just a series of small goals that eventually lead you to the ending of the game: fix this device, meet this person, learn that psynergy... they all end up being useful in the end, but almost out of a sort of "coincidence" from the characters' perspective.
This wouldn't be such an issue except there are a number of "points of no return" that can really sneak up as a result. I, being a "100% completionist", ended up restarting the game after 20 hours in because I stupidly didn't keep a backup save file and walked right into a point of no return.
There's a lot of interesting set up for the problems that have arisen in the world since the events of the previous games, but nothing's really done with it except for the ending's sequel-hook. That felt like a bit of a cheat.
Characters:
I'm not going to go into each and every player character and villain - there are some good ones and some less good ones. Sadly, Nintendo seems fond of the "rescue this guy and he joins your team" plot device. So much so that when you're not rescuing someone to make them join your team, they're just joining your team for no reason at all.
As I said earlier, there are so many PC's (player characters) that some get no development at all. There's also the incredibly confusing issue of every character being related to characters from the first game - even to the point that it makes no sense. The first character you get, Mathew, the main character and party leader, is the son of Isaac, hero of Golden Sun. The next character you get it Karis, daughter of Ivan, wind adept of the first game. Then there's Tyrel, Garret's son. And Rief, Mia's son.
But there's no reason for these characters to be related the way they are - it's just like Nintendo was trying to force the connection to invoke some kind of nostalgia from the last game. I don't mind that the characters are "the next generation", as it were, but by the time I got to Mia's son, it just felt so forced!
On the plus side, the many characters allow you to mix and match your party to have characters you prefer over those you do not.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, I thought the game was fun - just not as fun as a sequel to Golden Sun should have been. There's a lot of improvements, but a lot of things stayed the same as well. The characters are either unexplored or uninteresting in their own right and the story is oddly, little more than a protracted fetch quest.
However, I still enjoyed the game for what it was. All the RPG elements are there; there's a good deal of customization in character classes that I, oddly, never bother with (but I'm sure others do), impressive magic and summons, and a quest to save the world that can last hours. The "points of no return" were an unwelcomed addition but I guess there's nothing wrong with them in the general sense.
Overall, I'd say this game is a B. It's fun while you're playing it and you'll want to see how things turn out, but leans a little too heavily on the previous games for nostalgia than trying to define itself as something new.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The Final
Bullying is an epidemic problem in schools. It's encouraged by peers, ignored by teachers and generally stupidly handled by society as a whole ("Why doesn't 5'2", 85lbs Donny throw a punch back at 6'3" 230lb Billy? That'll teach him to pick on him!"). Anyone who's been through high school knows this shit. But what happens when the bullied get pushed too far?
Dane (Marc Donato) and his friends ("the five"), after having been tortured and bullied for years by their peers, decide they've had enough and to pay back the worst of the worst with one final night of horror and prolonged torture at their hands. They invite their bullies to a fake party, drug them, tie them up and prepare for the night of violence.
The movie is billed as some kind of revenge flick, but the stilted line delivery, forgettable acting and needlessly protracted torture scenes make it feel like the true target of director Joey Stewart's revenge is the unwitting audience. What did we ever do to deserve this movie, Joey?
While i'm certainly not a fan of horror movies depicting graphic violence for the sake of graphic violence, i'm also not one to hate one simply for this reason, either. What really confuses me about this movie is how ridiculously tame the torture scenes come off as. Even after being shanked with a knife to the spine, Justin Arnold's Bradley character does little more than make a funny face. There's no blood and he doesn't even scream!
What the fuck kind of revenge flick is this? I don't even think i recall a harsh word being thrown.
Even when Dane and his friends tie up their tormentors, they do it in the too-dumb-to-live "hands tied in front with the loosest of chains, ropes and over-sized handcuffs" all too commonly used by fictional evil doers on damsels in distress these days. You know, the kind of restraints a determined quadriplegic could escape from?
It's really weird because there's use of a ball gag in the movie, but the actress who wears it seems to only be doing so out of grudging obligation. So, realistic restraints are considered too much, but torture, cold blooded murder and skimpy outfits = a-ok? Remember, this movie's rated R, as in, "ARRR! You 17+ years old?".
The worst thing about this whole movie (besides everything else already mentioned) is how poorly put together it is. Every plot element seems like it's only there as a transparent framing device to show case the torture of the bullies. But since the bullies aren't really tortured in any kind of gory or gruesome way, the build up feels painfully look and the payoff non-existent. As a result, the movie itself feels painfully long with absolutely no payoff. You don't care about the forgettable characters and you probably won't remember them scene to scene.
There's also this kind of weird set up the movie has that seems to suggest the writer thought it was poignant or something, what with the bullies being made ugly on the outside, too. But since you don't really care about the characters (any of them) the point is lost almost entirely. Let me be blunt: i don't care if bully number 6 learns a lesson in what it means to cause pain, because i don't care about bully number 6.
Bottom line is, if you're going to make a revenge flick, make it gory and over the top. If you're not, then get better fucking actors, writers and direction. I'm sure even a B-movie can afford a few dozen litres of fake blood to dump all over the scene. Or better yet, just shoot real bullies of the world (i kid, i kid!) But whatever you do, do not do this.
Dane (Marc Donato) and his friends ("the five"), after having been tortured and bullied for years by their peers, decide they've had enough and to pay back the worst of the worst with one final night of horror and prolonged torture at their hands. They invite their bullies to a fake party, drug them, tie them up and prepare for the night of violence.
The movie is billed as some kind of revenge flick, but the stilted line delivery, forgettable acting and needlessly protracted torture scenes make it feel like the true target of director Joey Stewart's revenge is the unwitting audience. What did we ever do to deserve this movie, Joey?
While i'm certainly not a fan of horror movies depicting graphic violence for the sake of graphic violence, i'm also not one to hate one simply for this reason, either. What really confuses me about this movie is how ridiculously tame the torture scenes come off as. Even after being shanked with a knife to the spine, Justin Arnold's Bradley character does little more than make a funny face. There's no blood and he doesn't even scream!
What the fuck kind of revenge flick is this? I don't even think i recall a harsh word being thrown.
Even when Dane and his friends tie up their tormentors, they do it in the too-dumb-to-live "hands tied in front with the loosest of chains, ropes and over-sized handcuffs" all too commonly used by fictional evil doers on damsels in distress these days. You know, the kind of restraints a determined quadriplegic could escape from?
It's really weird because there's use of a ball gag in the movie, but the actress who wears it seems to only be doing so out of grudging obligation. So, realistic restraints are considered too much, but torture, cold blooded murder and skimpy outfits = a-ok? Remember, this movie's rated R, as in, "ARRR! You 17+ years old?".
The worst thing about this whole movie (besides everything else already mentioned) is how poorly put together it is. Every plot element seems like it's only there as a transparent framing device to show case the torture of the bullies. But since the bullies aren't really tortured in any kind of gory or gruesome way, the build up feels painfully look and the payoff non-existent. As a result, the movie itself feels painfully long with absolutely no payoff. You don't care about the forgettable characters and you probably won't remember them scene to scene.
There's also this kind of weird set up the movie has that seems to suggest the writer thought it was poignant or something, what with the bullies being made ugly on the outside, too. But since you don't really care about the characters (any of them) the point is lost almost entirely. Let me be blunt: i don't care if bully number 6 learns a lesson in what it means to cause pain, because i don't care about bully number 6.
Bottom line is, if you're going to make a revenge flick, make it gory and over the top. If you're not, then get better fucking actors, writers and direction. I'm sure even a B-movie can afford a few dozen litres of fake blood to dump all over the scene. Or better yet, just shoot real bullies of the world (i kid, i kid!) But whatever you do, do not do this.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Happening
Oct 6, 2010 Edit: For some reason my entire review didn't post, leaving out important paragraphs, etc. Fixed now.
Oh my god, what an awful, awful movie!
The Happening, which was written, co-produced and directed by M Night Shyamalan (explains a lot, doesn't it?), is billed as a "thriller", though to call it this seems a fair bit of a stretch. There's nothing really thrilling about it. Of course, i don't think this is the kind of movie that lends itself well to categories. It's not suspenseful, it's not comedic, it's not dramatic - it's pretty much devoid of any kind of entertainment value one could derive from seeing a movie.
I guess if it has to be classified as anything, one could classify it as horror, since i'm literally horrified to know that a movie like this could make $163M!
What, not scary enough? Well, let me remind you: so long as movies like The Happening continue to be financially successful, Hollywood will keep on making them.
The general plot of The Happening is that some mysterious neurotoxin is being released all across the eastern United States. The slightest exposure to this neurotoxin causes the victims to engage in deliberate acts of self-harm, like jumping off buildings, cutting their wrists or watching M Night Shaymalan movies, leaving the survivors as soulless automatons, devoid of personality or charisma.
Ok, so the latter isn't really a symptom of the neurotoxin, but it is the unfortunate (and perpetual) condition of our protagonist, high school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg). The closest thing poor Elliot Moore ever comes to having an emotion is when he snaps at a bunch of extras for not giving him a moment to think.
You know, i'm starting to see a bit of a pattern with Shyamalan's movies - and i don't mean the whole "twist ending" bit. This one is much more prevalent and far more insidious. Remember how Mel Gibson's family acted in Signs?
"Creepy vacant stares and slow paced monotone conversations are the norm..."
Yeah, well... The Happening is exactly the same. The closest anyone comes to showing emotion is when they go into a zombie-like trance and kill themselves.
The female protagonist (Zooey Deschanel) is even stated to be someone who "doesn't show her emotions", which is pretty convenient for a character in an M Night Shyamalan movie. Of course, i'm going to give Zooey Deschanel the benefit of the doubt and assume she knows how to emote, but that it's just simply not part of her job description.
(I picture Shyamalan on a directors chair shouting at his actors, "Less emotion! Less! What are you trying to do? Bring me to tears?")
Of course if you can somehow look past the incredibly lifeless acting, what you'll get is some of the most impressively bad writing imaginable. Awe inspiringly bad writing. I'm talking Hackers bad.
For example, at one point in the movie, Elliot Moore is trying to figure out the cause of the neurotoxin. In order to do this he starts spouting off lines like "isolate the variables" and "design an experiment" to himself in a hushed whisper (because he's a science teacher, remember?).
Um... why? Who does that? Who stands around vocalizing pointless phrases related to their profession in order to help them come to conclusions? Nobody! And that's really the worst part about it, isn't it. The dialogue isn't there to explain what Wahlberg's character is thinking. It's just there to let the audience know that Wahlberg's character is thinking (an alien concept to most, i know).
The worst part is, that's not even the worst part of the movie. There are so many other bad scenes i could waste an entire post just outlining them. But i won't, because that would require me writing out the entire movie scene for scene, followed by a paragraph or two about how stupid it is. Don't get me wrong, i'm sure it would be an improvement on the script. But it still wouldn't be anything anyone would want to read.
Anyways i really don't have anything else i want to say about this movie. Every word i type here is only giving too much credit to a film that should never have been made. But i do want to mention one last thing:
I watched The Happening only recently, but it was originally released in 2008 - Friday the 13th of June, 2008. I'm sure Shyamalan thought this a bit of poignant cleverness on his part, but for the original viewers of the film it'll only serve as a reminder that bad things really can happen on Friday the 13th.
Oh my god, what an awful, awful movie!
The Happening, which was written, co-produced and directed by M Night Shyamalan (explains a lot, doesn't it?), is billed as a "thriller", though to call it this seems a fair bit of a stretch. There's nothing really thrilling about it. Of course, i don't think this is the kind of movie that lends itself well to categories. It's not suspenseful, it's not comedic, it's not dramatic - it's pretty much devoid of any kind of entertainment value one could derive from seeing a movie.
I guess if it has to be classified as anything, one could classify it as horror, since i'm literally horrified to know that a movie like this could make $163M!
What, not scary enough? Well, let me remind you: so long as movies like The Happening continue to be financially successful, Hollywood will keep on making them.
The general plot of The Happening is that some mysterious neurotoxin is being released all across the eastern United States. The slightest exposure to this neurotoxin causes the victims to engage in deliberate acts of self-harm, like jumping off buildings, cutting their wrists or watching M Night Shaymalan movies, leaving the survivors as soulless automatons, devoid of personality or charisma.
Ok, so the latter isn't really a symptom of the neurotoxin, but it is the unfortunate (and perpetual) condition of our protagonist, high school science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg). The closest thing poor Elliot Moore ever comes to having an emotion is when he snaps at a bunch of extras for not giving him a moment to think.
You know, i'm starting to see a bit of a pattern with Shyamalan's movies - and i don't mean the whole "twist ending" bit. This one is much more prevalent and far more insidious. Remember how Mel Gibson's family acted in Signs?
"Creepy vacant stares and slow paced monotone conversations are the norm..."
Yeah, well... The Happening is exactly the same. The closest anyone comes to showing emotion is when they go into a zombie-like trance and kill themselves.
The female protagonist (Zooey Deschanel) is even stated to be someone who "doesn't show her emotions", which is pretty convenient for a character in an M Night Shyamalan movie. Of course, i'm going to give Zooey Deschanel the benefit of the doubt and assume she knows how to emote, but that it's just simply not part of her job description.
(I picture Shyamalan on a directors chair shouting at his actors, "Less emotion! Less! What are you trying to do? Bring me to tears?")
Of course if you can somehow look past the incredibly lifeless acting, what you'll get is some of the most impressively bad writing imaginable. Awe inspiringly bad writing. I'm talking Hackers bad.
For example, at one point in the movie, Elliot Moore is trying to figure out the cause of the neurotoxin. In order to do this he starts spouting off lines like "isolate the variables" and "design an experiment" to himself in a hushed whisper (because he's a science teacher, remember?).
Um... why? Who does that? Who stands around vocalizing pointless phrases related to their profession in order to help them come to conclusions? Nobody! And that's really the worst part about it, isn't it. The dialogue isn't there to explain what Wahlberg's character is thinking. It's just there to let the audience know that Wahlberg's character is thinking (an alien concept to most, i know).
The worst part is, that's not even the worst part of the movie. There are so many other bad scenes i could waste an entire post just outlining them. But i won't, because that would require me writing out the entire movie scene for scene, followed by a paragraph or two about how stupid it is. Don't get me wrong, i'm sure it would be an improvement on the script. But it still wouldn't be anything anyone would want to read.
Anyways i really don't have anything else i want to say about this movie. Every word i type here is only giving too much credit to a film that should never have been made. But i do want to mention one last thing:
I watched The Happening only recently, but it was originally released in 2008 - Friday the 13th of June, 2008. I'm sure Shyamalan thought this a bit of poignant cleverness on his part, but for the original viewers of the film it'll only serve as a reminder that bad things really can happen on Friday the 13th.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Easy A
So i finally went and saw a new movie in theatres and, whaddaya know, it was a movie called Easy A. When i first heard the title, i assumed it was dramady about academic life in university and the pressures of making the grade. I also assumed it would have some tacked on life-lesson about plagiarism or intellectual dishonesty and that that "Easy A" isn't as easy as it may seem. You know, standard dramady fare.
While being the only 28 year old male in the predominantly teenaged girl (and occasional teenaged boy) audience should've clued me into what was going on, it actually wasn't until the movie started that i sensed something was amiss. By the time main character Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) started talking about her "below average breast size" i knew i had (let's say "accidentally") walked into a romantic comedy aimed at teenaged girls.
Now, there are exactly two things i know about women: they are all emotionally insecure (yes, all of them) and they all think i'm a jerk (and if they didn't before, they certainly do now). How did i come to these two conclusions? Partially real life experience, but partially from how they're portrayed in romantic comedies (or so i heard). So i thought i knew what i was in store for with Easy A.
But it turns out, i was only half prepared. Easy A is not exactly a typical romantic comedy aimed at teenaged girls (or so i heard).
Staring 21-year-old Emma Stone as "so plain she's average" high-schooler Olive Penderghast (yeah i know, just suspend your disbelief), Easy A is about Olive's attempts to become popular by playing the role of the town bicycle; not actually being the town bicycle, just saying she is. How pretending to be easy when not actually putting out makes a girl popularin high school on any planet, i won't know, but that's the plot. Deal with it.
Of course, Olive never actually planned to play this role, it just sort of happens after a lie she tells gets spread around the whole school. The entire school, which is populated entirely by gullible morons (as most high schools are), of course believe the lie in its entirety simply because if they didn't there really wouldn't be much of a movie.
Of course, this isn't so much a bad thing for Olive as she turns her new-found, er... "fame", into a business and starts to sell off tales of steamy sexual encounters to an assortment of male classmates hoping to buy their way out of the shitty lot in life that is going to high school with a bunch of gullible morons. For the most part, it works. That is, it works until it doesn't and Olive finds herself struggling to cope with all the problems she's created for herself.
At this point, you may be thinking, "what the hell, Tipz!? You're supposed to rip into movies and call them all kinds of bad names, safe in your knowledge that no one's reading this!"
So, why have i, to this point, failed to bring and really harsh criticisms? It's not that Easy A is a good movie, it's just not that bad a movie, either. It is The Dark Knight of romantic comedies for teenaged-girls (that's right: come get me, Dark Knight fans!).
Sure, it's not all that funny and the story's a little cliche, but it's good at what it's trying to be. That is, it's good at being not all that funny and a little cliche (at least, not all that funny to embittered movie reviewers).
But, seeing as i am an overly embittered movie reviewer, i suppose i owe it to you to spell out why this movie is less on the side of good than the side of bad.
So let's talk characters:
Olive herself is supposed to come off as charmingly witty, but she's really something more of a wannabe snarker. The best insult she can dish out is "twat" which isn't even racy enough to net this movie anything more than a 14A rating, let alone rile anything more than confusion in the victim. She really only comes off as snarky to her insanely religious enemies who are just as likely to be offended at being mistaken for a Lutheran or Roman Catholic or some other denomination of christianity that they are not.
Olive's overly wacky parents are certainly trying to be funny (oh god are they trying!), but it all just seems a little forced. Not just in movie forced (which it seems is supposed to be the case), but real-life forced. Nothing they say is funny because they're trying too hard to be funny. The comedy of their routine is very much in line with the kind of comedic situations you might describe to a friend only to end your anecdote with some paraphrase of, "i guess you had to be there". For a movie, that's really a sad statement.
Then of course there's Todd (Penn Badgley), Olive's shallow love interest. You can tell he's Olive's shallow love interest because a) you never learn anything about him (incidentally, neither does Olive... not that that's a stumbling block for romantic comedy relationships), b) whenever he is on screen he's either topless or saying nice things to the Olive (you know, setting himself up as the only reasonable character Olive could possibly get with in the end). It's odd they'd even bother hiring an actual actor for this role. Any of the extras would've done just as well.
There's also a whole slew of background characters who play roles that never stretch beyond the importance of a single plot element.
The Christian Club of the high school are supposedly the main antagonists, but nothing really happens to them to make you feel like justice is done. Their leader spends the whole movie being a bitch to Olive (with the sole exception of one fickle day). But the last you ever see of her (or any of her goon squad) is them scowling at Olive during the climax of the movie. That's it. No comeuppance, no cosmic karma, no verbal dressdown, no mudbased catfights. What the hell kind of movie ends like that?
I'll tell you what kind of movie ends like that: a depressing one. That, or a movie clearly not aimed at embittered male movie reviewers. You be the judge.
Anyway, that's Easy A. The writer brags to have written the script in 5 days (presumably after which he said "easy, eh?") and i can believe him. There really isn't much substance in it beyond a slightly different take on the same old cliched story. I wasn't all that enthralled, but it's certainly not all that bad, especially when compared to other romantic comedies aimed at teenage girls (or so i heard).
This movie gets an easyA C.
While being the only 28 year old male in the predominantly teenaged girl (and occasional teenaged boy) audience should've clued me into what was going on, it actually wasn't until the movie started that i sensed something was amiss. By the time main character Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) started talking about her "below average breast size" i knew i had (let's say "accidentally") walked into a romantic comedy aimed at teenaged girls.
Now, there are exactly two things i know about women: they are all emotionally insecure (yes, all of them) and they all think i'm a jerk (and if they didn't before, they certainly do now). How did i come to these two conclusions? Partially real life experience, but partially from how they're portrayed in romantic comedies (or so i heard). So i thought i knew what i was in store for with Easy A.
But it turns out, i was only half prepared. Easy A is not exactly a typical romantic comedy aimed at teenaged girls (or so i heard).
Staring 21-year-old Emma Stone as "so plain she's average" high-schooler Olive Penderghast (yeah i know, just suspend your disbelief), Easy A is about Olive's attempts to become popular by playing the role of the town bicycle; not actually being the town bicycle, just saying she is. How pretending to be easy when not actually putting out makes a girl popular
Of course, Olive never actually planned to play this role, it just sort of happens after a lie she tells gets spread around the whole school. The entire school, which is populated entirely by gullible morons (as most high schools are), of course believe the lie in its entirety simply because if they didn't there really wouldn't be much of a movie.
Of course, this isn't so much a bad thing for Olive as she turns her new-found, er... "fame", into a business and starts to sell off tales of steamy sexual encounters to an assortment of male classmates hoping to buy their way out of the shitty lot in life that is going to high school with a bunch of gullible morons. For the most part, it works. That is, it works until it doesn't and Olive finds herself struggling to cope with all the problems she's created for herself.
At this point, you may be thinking, "what the hell, Tipz!? You're supposed to rip into movies and call them all kinds of bad names, safe in your knowledge that no one's reading this!"
So, why have i, to this point, failed to bring and really harsh criticisms? It's not that Easy A is a good movie, it's just not that bad a movie, either. It is The Dark Knight of romantic comedies for teenaged-girls (that's right: come get me, Dark Knight fans!).
Sure, it's not all that funny and the story's a little cliche, but it's good at what it's trying to be. That is, it's good at being not all that funny and a little cliche (at least, not all that funny to embittered movie reviewers).
But, seeing as i am an overly embittered movie reviewer, i suppose i owe it to you to spell out why this movie is less on the side of good than the side of bad.
So let's talk characters:
Olive herself is supposed to come off as charmingly witty, but she's really something more of a wannabe snarker. The best insult she can dish out is "twat" which isn't even racy enough to net this movie anything more than a 14A rating, let alone rile anything more than confusion in the victim. She really only comes off as snarky to her insanely religious enemies who are just as likely to be offended at being mistaken for a Lutheran or Roman Catholic or some other denomination of christianity that they are not.
Olive's overly wacky parents are certainly trying to be funny (oh god are they trying!), but it all just seems a little forced. Not just in movie forced (which it seems is supposed to be the case), but real-life forced. Nothing they say is funny because they're trying too hard to be funny. The comedy of their routine is very much in line with the kind of comedic situations you might describe to a friend only to end your anecdote with some paraphrase of, "i guess you had to be there". For a movie, that's really a sad statement.
Then of course there's Todd (Penn Badgley), Olive's shallow love interest. You can tell he's Olive's shallow love interest because a) you never learn anything about him (incidentally, neither does Olive... not that that's a stumbling block for romantic comedy relationships), b) whenever he is on screen he's either topless or saying nice things to the Olive (you know, setting himself up as the only reasonable character Olive could possibly get with in the end). It's odd they'd even bother hiring an actual actor for this role. Any of the extras would've done just as well.
There's also a whole slew of background characters who play roles that never stretch beyond the importance of a single plot element.
The Christian Club of the high school are supposedly the main antagonists, but nothing really happens to them to make you feel like justice is done. Their leader spends the whole movie being a bitch to Olive (with the sole exception of one fickle day). But the last you ever see of her (or any of her goon squad) is them scowling at Olive during the climax of the movie. That's it. No comeuppance, no cosmic karma, no verbal dressdown, no mudbased catfights. What the hell kind of movie ends like that?
I'll tell you what kind of movie ends like that: a depressing one. That, or a movie clearly not aimed at embittered male movie reviewers. You be the judge.
Anyway, that's Easy A. The writer brags to have written the script in 5 days (presumably after which he said "easy, eh?") and i can believe him. There really isn't much substance in it beyond a slightly different take on the same old cliched story. I wasn't all that enthralled, but it's certainly not all that bad, especially when compared to other romantic comedies aimed at teenage girls (or so i heard).
This movie gets an easy
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The Expendables
People tell me an action movie is supposed to be stupid. If so, then The Expendables is everything it's supposed to be.
The most amazing thing about The Expendables is that it manages to bring in the audiences, despite it having no story and starring the nearly incoherent Sylvester Stallone. Why do people line up to see him? At his most coherent he sounds like a boxer who's taken one too many blows to the head (which, incidentally, is why Rocky was such a good movie).
The movie is nothing short of one dry, uninteresting action movie cliche after another. It's really hard to imagine a movie with so many explosions and fight scenes being so boring, but there it is. At no time in this painfully long movie did i feel entertained by the overly stereotypical displays of pumping testosterone. And i really can't imagine anyone with any set of objective standards feeling any differently.
The Expendables follows the story of a group of mercenaries with absolutely no endearing personality quirks as they accept a dangerous mission to off a dictatorial general in a fictional island nation. Apparently that's all the plot that seems to be required in order to make a movie like this, because that's all the plot we ever get. It's so shallow, that even the characters who set up the story are only there for cameos.
Of course, i'm told the appeal of this movie is not the story (ya think?), but the, *ahem* "all star" cast of action heroes: Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren... You know, all the washed up action stars from the 80's and 90's? Who wouldn't pay to see that?
The worst thing about this movie is it's not even interesting to make fun of. It knows it's bad - and somehow it's ok with that. It's just this shitty little movie that's supposed to be fun for all the teeny-boppers of the 90's who never quite grew up enough to accept more complex stories or characters. It makes no attempts and tries nothing new. It revels in what it is and what it is is awful.
When i see movies of the calibre of The Expendables, it really reminds me of how low we as a society have sunk in terms of what we accept as entertainment. It's no surprise that Hollywood is out of ideas (and thanks to nepotism, refuses to let in new ones), but when you have to turn to people like Sylvestor Stallone for movie scripts? This should be a sign that you're industry's in trouble.
It's remarkable in and of itself that a movie like this could ever get made. But you want to know the really amazing part? Stallone's already planning a sequel!. How the fuck do you make a sequel of a movie that has no god damned plot, entertainment value or lasting appeal; a movie whose only real selling point is it's B-List cast? Maybe by stacking it with even more washed up talent? Who knows; maybe they'll even get Vanilla Ice to do the sound track. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
The most amazing thing about The Expendables is that it manages to bring in the audiences, despite it having no story and starring the nearly incoherent Sylvester Stallone. Why do people line up to see him? At his most coherent he sounds like a boxer who's taken one too many blows to the head (which, incidentally, is why Rocky was such a good movie).
The movie is nothing short of one dry, uninteresting action movie cliche after another. It's really hard to imagine a movie with so many explosions and fight scenes being so boring, but there it is. At no time in this painfully long movie did i feel entertained by the overly stereotypical displays of pumping testosterone. And i really can't imagine anyone with any set of objective standards feeling any differently.
The Expendables follows the story of a group of mercenaries with absolutely no endearing personality quirks as they accept a dangerous mission to off a dictatorial general in a fictional island nation. Apparently that's all the plot that seems to be required in order to make a movie like this, because that's all the plot we ever get. It's so shallow, that even the characters who set up the story are only there for cameos.
Of course, i'm told the appeal of this movie is not the story (ya think?), but the, *ahem* "all star" cast of action heroes: Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren... You know, all the washed up action stars from the 80's and 90's? Who wouldn't pay to see that?
The worst thing about this movie is it's not even interesting to make fun of. It knows it's bad - and somehow it's ok with that. It's just this shitty little movie that's supposed to be fun for all the teeny-boppers of the 90's who never quite grew up enough to accept more complex stories or characters. It makes no attempts and tries nothing new. It revels in what it is and what it is is awful.
When i see movies of the calibre of The Expendables, it really reminds me of how low we as a society have sunk in terms of what we accept as entertainment. It's no surprise that Hollywood is out of ideas (and thanks to nepotism, refuses to let in new ones), but when you have to turn to people like Sylvestor Stallone for movie scripts? This should be a sign that you're industry's in trouble.
It's remarkable in and of itself that a movie like this could ever get made. But you want to know the really amazing part? Stallone's already planning a sequel!. How the fuck do you make a sequel of a movie that has no god damned plot, entertainment value or lasting appeal; a movie whose only real selling point is it's B-List cast? Maybe by stacking it with even more washed up talent? Who knows; maybe they'll even get Vanilla Ice to do the sound track. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Thursday, August 5, 2010
The Great Global Warming Swindle
I walked into this movie knowing i probably wasn't going to like it. Mostly because i've heard a lot of the climate denial points of interest before and i've heard them soundly being refuted. But since i like to think of myself as an open minded type wanting to hear both sides of the issues, i put aside all my skepticism and decided to give Martin Durkin a chance to make the case for the other side. Hey, it's the least he'd do for climatologists, right? Right?
Alas, far from being an honest and frank portrayal of the climate denial ('scuse me, climate SKEPTIC) side of the debate, The Great Global Warming Swindle starts off with an ironically alarmist message warning about the dangers of (you guessed it) alarmist messages.
But ok, so it's a little alarmist in its message. I'm sure Al Gore's movie, which i haven't seen (and have no interest in seeing) isn't any different. And it's not like Durkin did the whole "compare my opponents to dangerous ideologues" dealy.
Oh wait - that's exactly what they did!
According to The Great Global Warming Swindle the environmental movement is little more than a plot by neo-marxists, who trace their roots right to the USSR, to subvert capitalism and promote communism through the UN.
That's right, the same UN that seems utterly impotent when it comes to to stopping things like: the Iraq War, the Rwandan genocide, the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, conflicts in the middle east and countless other wars and territory squabbles is behind the single greatest attempt at total world domination in the history of the world! Even the mighty US, that gladly shrugged off UN resolutions to go into Iraq, is powerless to stop the IPCC and the Climatolomarxistnazis!
Only in Climate Denier land.
The thing with this movie is that while it spends a good deal of time deriding the "evil IPCC" for being biased and full of greedy, money-hungry communists (don't ask), it willingly embraces its own biases, flatly declaring uncontested, unsupported lies as if they were reality.
One of the most glaring examples is their statement that volcanoes produce more CO2 than all the factories, cars, planes, etc put together. This is, of course, just demonstrably wrong. And i don't even mean like "kinda wrong" - it's wrong on orders of magnitude, as volcanoes only emit 1/150th of the CO2 as all human sources.
To put this into perspective, that's wrongness on the scale of claiming the US is roughly 30km across from east coast to west (an actual distance of more than 4500km). In other words, really, really wrong.
But, how does one make such a gross miscalculation and then include it into a documentary (that's aimed at criticizing scientists for inaccuracies, remember)? Obviously, they just didn't care.
I should note that Climate Deniers like to think of themselves as skeptics. But i'm sorry: if you fail to fact-check dubious claims simply because the opinion it supports agrees with your political view, you are not a skeptic.
Now, some climate deniers might point out that this is an unfair criticism, as this point was corrected in the theatrical release provided later. But that's completely missing the point! The very fact that this misinformation was ever in your documentary demonstrates how little skepticism you show opinions that already align with your particularly slanted view of the world.
Mind, this isn't even the only piece of bad science in the movie. Oh, there's much more where that came from! But i don't want to bore you with the science... and evidently neither does Martin Durkin; he's much more adept at boring you with lies and spin.
Now, going against the vast amounts of scientific consensus and mountains of scientific journals is a tough job. An honest documentary has to sort out the most important arguments from both sides and weigh the facts and evidence supporting each claim and then demonstrate how the ideas you front are the better options. The Great Global Warming Swindle, however, resorts to your typical strawman fallacy.
"All [climate change] models assume that man made CO2 is the main cause, rather than the sun or the clouds."
All? Really? Every single one?
I'm no climatologist; in fact, i have limited understanding of the field (though evidently, considerably more than the intended audience of this movie), but that's just simply not true. In fact, no climate model claims CO2 is the main influence on climate.
According to The Great Global Warming Swindle, climatologists willfully ignore the influence of the sun on climate. Further, they claim that the sun can account for all the warming we've been noticing. They even give a little graph to show how global temperatures compare to solar activity (sorry for the lousy quality - i just screen capped it).
Well that proves it, doesn't it? The lines match almost perfectly! Case closed! Climate change is a fraud!
But wait. Notice how the orange line stops and the blue line continues on for a bit? Seems like an odd omission. I mean, our record keeping in the past 20 years has gotten better, so it's unlikely our data for average temperature outstrip our data on solar activity by 20+ years.
I wanted to know what the rest of this chart looks like, but since it was painfully clear the climate "skeptics" do not, i would have to do the research on my own. That lead me here. (Note: this guy's actually done quite a few videos explaining the science behind climate change, including at least one video on this very film!)
watch the video, here's the graph we're concerned about (with the more complete data record).
Why, it almost seems like Durkin was deliberately leaving that info out. There's no way he didn't have the corresponding solar activity data for the same 20 year time frame as temperature data. But, if he did have it, why wouldn't he include it?
Isn't it obvious? The neomarxists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had artificially cooled the sun and... no, wait! They used tree rings to... no! The science isn't decided, yet! Except that it's decided that the sun causes global warming.
Well, whatever it is, i'm damn sure Durkin is the guy telling the truth on this one. I mean, who do you trust? A guy just makin' a documentary or the group of commi-scientists at the IPCC? I know where my money is!
Anyway, by this point in the film, i had completely given up any hope for an honest presentation of the material.
But with Durkin's strawmen utterly humiliated and the accusations of bias in the IPCC cast, it was finally time for him to tackle all those unfair "myths" levied at the climate denier side. You know, myths like Climate Deniers getting money from private financers with an agenda. It's absurd.... claims Durkin.
Huh...
That's odd. He can't be serious, right? I'm sure Durkin's heard of groups like: The Cato Institute,The Committe for a Constructive Tomorrow, The Science and Environmental Policy Project and The Heartland Institute. In fact, i know Durkin's heard of these organizations, because half of the damn people in his documentary are involved with them in one way or another.
Each of these organizations are all opposed to the idea of Anthropogenic Climate Change and all of them receive much of their funding from private donors, including those from the energy and car manufacturing sectors. Many also receive money from the tobacco industry and, surprise surprise, they're opposed to the scientific consensus that secondhand smoke is harmful. But that's just a coincidence, right?
But is it any wonder that these scientists who are associated with organizations that receive tons of money from companies like Exxon-Mobil have anti-climate change opinions? Or that Durkin would deliberately hide the fact that these organizations exist and are associated with his selection of climate denying scientists?
Now, Durkin might like to say that the source of the money shouldn't matter (and in fact, he does at one point), but he obviously doesn't really believe that. After all, he went out of his way to try and "dispel the myth" of private financing. Not to mention all the effort he puts into making the vast scientific community who hold the consensus views look like they're only in it for the money.
Durkin knows money speaks and he knows the source of the money determines the outcome of the result. He just didn't want you to know it.
Anyway, that's The Great Global Warming Swindle. It's an insultingly anti-intellectual display of lies, half-truths and propaganda designed to make the watcher question the science. I'll stop short of saying it's fronting an agenda, because for all i do know, maybe Durkin really is this ignorant and simply doesn't understand the facts himself. I mean, i doubt that's the case, but it's possible. Even most climate deniers themselves aren't evil, just misinformed... and it's banal shit like The Great Global Warming Swindle that makes sure they stay that way.
Now, it's not to say the movie is complete trash; it's just mostly trash. It does make some good points, particularly for the alarmist media presentation of Climate Change, which is more often wrongheaded, if not explicitly wrong. But what little it gets right is done no service by the lies and blatant propaganda that makes up the remainder of the movie. It's deliberately manipulative, slanderous and full of lies.
But if you don't believe me, just read what Carl Wunsch, a professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT (who was featured in the film) had to say about it.
"Grossly distorted"? "... as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two"?
Well, that seems a little harsh! But, what do you expect; he's just a money-hungry, neo-marxist-commie!
But wait, if this is like WWII propaganda and the climatologists are the commies, i wonder who the climate deniers are?
Don't see this movie. It's not even a good representation of themore intelligent less stupid climate denial criticisms.
Alas, far from being an honest and frank portrayal of the climate denial ('scuse me, climate SKEPTIC) side of the debate, The Great Global Warming Swindle starts off with an ironically alarmist message warning about the dangers of (you guessed it) alarmist messages.
But ok, so it's a little alarmist in its message. I'm sure Al Gore's movie, which i haven't seen (and have no interest in seeing) isn't any different. And it's not like Durkin did the whole "compare my opponents to dangerous ideologues" dealy.
Oh wait - that's exactly what they did!
According to The Great Global Warming Swindle the environmental movement is little more than a plot by neo-marxists, who trace their roots right to the USSR, to subvert capitalism and promote communism through the UN.
That's right, the same UN that seems utterly impotent when it comes to to stopping things like: the Iraq War, the Rwandan genocide, the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, conflicts in the middle east and countless other wars and territory squabbles is behind the single greatest attempt at total world domination in the history of the world! Even the mighty US, that gladly shrugged off UN resolutions to go into Iraq, is powerless to stop the IPCC and the Climatolomarxistnazis!
Only in Climate Denier land.
The thing with this movie is that while it spends a good deal of time deriding the "evil IPCC" for being biased and full of greedy, money-hungry communists (don't ask), it willingly embraces its own biases, flatly declaring uncontested, unsupported lies as if they were reality.
One of the most glaring examples is their statement that volcanoes produce more CO2 than all the factories, cars, planes, etc put together. This is, of course, just demonstrably wrong. And i don't even mean like "kinda wrong" - it's wrong on orders of magnitude, as volcanoes only emit 1/150th of the CO2 as all human sources.
To put this into perspective, that's wrongness on the scale of claiming the US is roughly 30km across from east coast to west (an actual distance of more than 4500km). In other words, really, really wrong.
But, how does one make such a gross miscalculation and then include it into a documentary (that's aimed at criticizing scientists for inaccuracies, remember)? Obviously, they just didn't care.
I should note that Climate Deniers like to think of themselves as skeptics. But i'm sorry: if you fail to fact-check dubious claims simply because the opinion it supports agrees with your political view, you are not a skeptic.
Now, some climate deniers might point out that this is an unfair criticism, as this point was corrected in the theatrical release provided later. But that's completely missing the point! The very fact that this misinformation was ever in your documentary demonstrates how little skepticism you show opinions that already align with your particularly slanted view of the world.
Mind, this isn't even the only piece of bad science in the movie. Oh, there's much more where that came from! But i don't want to bore you with the science... and evidently neither does Martin Durkin; he's much more adept at boring you with lies and spin.
Now, going against the vast amounts of scientific consensus and mountains of scientific journals is a tough job. An honest documentary has to sort out the most important arguments from both sides and weigh the facts and evidence supporting each claim and then demonstrate how the ideas you front are the better options. The Great Global Warming Swindle, however, resorts to your typical strawman fallacy.
"All [climate change] models assume that man made CO2 is the main cause, rather than the sun or the clouds."
All? Really? Every single one?
I'm no climatologist; in fact, i have limited understanding of the field (though evidently, considerably more than the intended audience of this movie), but that's just simply not true. In fact, no climate model claims CO2 is the main influence on climate.
According to The Great Global Warming Swindle, climatologists willfully ignore the influence of the sun on climate. Further, they claim that the sun can account for all the warming we've been noticing. They even give a little graph to show how global temperatures compare to solar activity (sorry for the lousy quality - i just screen capped it).
 |
| See? That orange line is solar activity (right side axis), that blue one is average temperatures (left axis not visible) and x-axis is time in years (not visible). |
Well that proves it, doesn't it? The lines match almost perfectly! Case closed! Climate change is a fraud!
But wait. Notice how the orange line stops and the blue line continues on for a bit? Seems like an odd omission. I mean, our record keeping in the past 20 years has gotten better, so it's unlikely our data for average temperature outstrip our data on solar activity by 20+ years.
I wanted to know what the rest of this chart looks like, but since it was painfully clear the climate "skeptics" do not, i would have to do the research on my own. That lead me here. (Note: this guy's actually done quite a few videos explaining the science behind climate change, including at least one video on this very film!)
watch the video, here's the graph we're concerned about (with the more complete data record).
 |
| Blue line is average temperature, orange line is |
Why, it almost seems like Durkin was deliberately leaving that info out. There's no way he didn't have the corresponding solar activity data for the same 20 year time frame as temperature data. But, if he did have it, why wouldn't he include it?
Isn't it obvious? The neomarxists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had artificially cooled the sun and... no, wait! They used tree rings to... no! The science isn't decided, yet! Except that it's decided that the sun causes global warming.
Well, whatever it is, i'm damn sure Durkin is the guy telling the truth on this one. I mean, who do you trust? A guy just makin' a documentary or the group of commi-scientists at the IPCC? I know where my money is!
Anyway, by this point in the film, i had completely given up any hope for an honest presentation of the material.
But with Durkin's strawmen utterly humiliated and the accusations of bias in the IPCC cast, it was finally time for him to tackle all those unfair "myths" levied at the climate denier side. You know, myths like Climate Deniers getting money from private financers with an agenda. It's absurd.... claims Durkin.
Huh...
That's odd. He can't be serious, right? I'm sure Durkin's heard of groups like: The Cato Institute,The Committe for a Constructive Tomorrow, The Science and Environmental Policy Project and The Heartland Institute. In fact, i know Durkin's heard of these organizations, because half of the damn people in his documentary are involved with them in one way or another.
Each of these organizations are all opposed to the idea of Anthropogenic Climate Change and all of them receive much of their funding from private donors, including those from the energy and car manufacturing sectors. Many also receive money from the tobacco industry and, surprise surprise, they're opposed to the scientific consensus that secondhand smoke is harmful. But that's just a coincidence, right?
But is it any wonder that these scientists who are associated with organizations that receive tons of money from companies like Exxon-Mobil have anti-climate change opinions? Or that Durkin would deliberately hide the fact that these organizations exist and are associated with his selection of climate denying scientists?
Now, Durkin might like to say that the source of the money shouldn't matter (and in fact, he does at one point), but he obviously doesn't really believe that. After all, he went out of his way to try and "dispel the myth" of private financing. Not to mention all the effort he puts into making the vast scientific community who hold the consensus views look like they're only in it for the money.
Durkin knows money speaks and he knows the source of the money determines the outcome of the result. He just didn't want you to know it.
Anyway, that's The Great Global Warming Swindle. It's an insultingly anti-intellectual display of lies, half-truths and propaganda designed to make the watcher question the science. I'll stop short of saying it's fronting an agenda, because for all i do know, maybe Durkin really is this ignorant and simply doesn't understand the facts himself. I mean, i doubt that's the case, but it's possible. Even most climate deniers themselves aren't evil, just misinformed... and it's banal shit like The Great Global Warming Swindle that makes sure they stay that way.
Now, it's not to say the movie is complete trash; it's just mostly trash. It does make some good points, particularly for the alarmist media presentation of Climate Change, which is more often wrongheaded, if not explicitly wrong. But what little it gets right is done no service by the lies and blatant propaganda that makes up the remainder of the movie. It's deliberately manipulative, slanderous and full of lies.
But if you don't believe me, just read what Carl Wunsch, a professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT (who was featured in the film) had to say about it.
"Grossly distorted"? "... as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two"?
Well, that seems a little harsh! But, what do you expect; he's just a money-hungry, neo-marxist-commie!
But wait, if this is like WWII propaganda and the climatologists are the commies, i wonder who the climate deniers are?
Don't see this movie. It's not even a good representation of the
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Inception
Before i get into the review of this film, i must remind you that i'm exceptionally difficult to please - i'm not taken in by gimmicky flash-in-the-pan movies the way others so often are. I look at the lasting ability of a movie's story. The level of quality a movie must attain in order for me to regard it as "good" is so high, even movies like The Dark Knight fail to live up to my standards. And yes, i stand by my review of "ok, not good" for The Dark Knight, so merely the fact that Christopher Nolan also directed Inception doesn't mean anything. You disagree, you are wrong.
So, with all that in mind, what did i think of Inception?
...
Yeah, i liked it.
Go see it, you'll be glad you did. But as always, disregard the imbecilic praise of the fanboys first and just let yourself enjoy the movie for what it is.
So, with all that in mind, what did i think of Inception?
...
Yeah, i liked it.
Go see it, you'll be glad you did. But as always, disregard the imbecilic praise of the fanboys first and just let yourself enjoy the movie for what it is.
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