Hurt Locker

The so-called best picture of 2009.  But is it really?  I can say with an unequivocal, resounding... NO!

This is one of those films that boggles the mind.  Not because it has a deep story or depth of character or because it raises questions and challenges for the viewer, but simply because it won an Oscar in spite of what it really is.

The movie's as remarkably straight forward as a movie can get.  The opening sentence of the film sums up not just the main points of, but the entirety of the points of Hurt Locker: "war is a drug" - and it affects everyone differently.  While war is certainly hell, there are those who willingly and repeatedly put themselves in harms way, not (just) for the purpose of defence or patriotism or what have you, but because of the rush.

Hurt Locker is the very definition of a "PC movie".  The themes are so unbelievably tepid that no one dare criticise them for fear of drawing ire.  It's the type of war movie reviewers seem to be afraid to give a negative score to (you know the type!).  They look at the troops as people and the conflict as more than challenging and believe that is enough to win Oscars and praise (i guess they're right...).  But in doing this, story tellers fail to challenge the viewer to anything beyond the obvious.  There is nothing here beyond what you should already know and it's certainly not dressed up in anything more aesthetically pleasing than the cheap veneer of its bland cinematography.

Well, let me be the reviewer to say this movie is all kinds of boring.  The plot is non-existent, the action uninteresting, the special effects bland, the characters flat and uninteresting and the themes obvious and unnecessary.  How some people found something deep in this puddle of nothing, i'll never know.  Perhaps if you live in your own delusions and you've never thought about things before; perhaps if you're a knee-jerk reactionary who simply buys mantras and believes "Support our troops" actually means what it says; perhaps if your view of the world around is defined strictly by stereotypes and simplistic models of human beings as organic robots with a static set of wants and needs identical throughout.  Perhaps then you would find something in this movie's pseudo-depths.  But not me.

Overall this is definitely not best picture material and anyone who says otherwise is wrong - that includes every dipshit in the academy who voted for it.  I don't think Avatar deserved best picture, but i certainly can't see how this or that beat out Precious.  A good movie should a) entertain and b) challenge the viewer on some level; a decent movie should at least entertain.  Hurt Locker is an abject failure on both accounts.  No matter what anyone says, this did not, NOT deserve best picture.

Edit (April 16, 2010): When i reviewed this movie it was based on how boring i found the plot and characters to be coupled with (what i thought was) an oh-so-subtle subtext of propaganda for the US military.  I thought this was a picture made to showcase how difficult the US troops have it over in Iraq and why everyone (left and right) should just shut up and tow the line, even if they disagree with the war.  And, to a degree, i still maintain this.  I think it was intended to be a subtle propaganda pic (and it's certainly boring).

But you know what's funny?  You know who else hates this film for the same reasons i outlined above and then some?  US military men and women.  At least according to the user reviews i've seen online at places like metacritic.

Not only is The Hurt Locker boring, it's completely unrealistic - offensively so!  I could've guessed at it's unrealistic portrayal, but it's so much more gratifying to know that that's what the pros are saying, too (which is why i've included this edit update here).

It seems the only thing The Hurt Locker is capable of demonstrating is how far Hollywood has fallen and how painfully out of touch they've become with their perception of what constitutes realism and entertainment.

I also sort of realized i didn't put a "grade" on this one before.  But that's pretty easily rectified now: 0 detonated bombs out of a thousand: F minus minus.  Well, at least it's better than 88 Minutes (but not by enough).

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days

Let me start by saying that this is not a game for people who know nothing about the Kingdom Hearts franchise.  Despite its release, 358 days over 2 is a bridging game, meant to connect the events of Chain of Memories to the events of Kingdom Hearts 2.  If you've not played one of these, or worse, neither of these, you will be confused by the story.  I hadn't played Chain of Memories, but i was able to keep up to the story, thanks to having played Kingdom Hearts 2 and having watched some online cutscenes for Re: Chain of Memories to fill in the gaps.

You can really feel the love that went into the game, and not just in the homo-erotic way that made the game franchise a success among a certain breed of female fans - though there's certainly enough of that, too.

But enough mindless pre-amble.  Let's talk about the gameplay.

Gameplay and Control

Control is solid.  The touch screen is pretty much unused, but if it was used, it would only feel unnecessary.

The biggest flaw in control is the flying controls.  While B jumps, it's Y that raises you into the air with B, confusingly, lowering you.  It's really quite frustrating, especially in the heat of battle.  It would seem that such "unintuitive" logic as "jump button increases altitude always" has completely eluded the programmers of Squarenix.

The overall gameplay's largely fun, though the mission-mode system seems like a considerable restriction over the open-world exploration of the Play Station variants.  Of course, it's probably just the limitations of the system, so it's largely forgiveable.

Leveling up, abilities, etc are all handled with a "panel" system that you attach to Roxas to give him abilities.  At first i was horrified that this might be a menu-hell gimmick, but thankfully most gear of a similar nature (weapons, for instance) are all sort of shaped the same, so you don't have to waste that much time reconfiguring panels after you upgrade.  The downside is that individual magic spell casts, potions and ethers are all taken up by an entire panel, severely limiting how many you get per mission.  It ends up working detrimentally and forcing you to limit your magic to those "emergency" cases.

My biggest qualm, in general, not just in gameplay, is that killing stuff just isn't any fun.  It's more of a needless chore required to level up or gain valuable drops.  Everything has stupid amounts of health and defence, so battles boil down to taking advantage of the same attack patterns for every single enemy.  Typically it's nothing more difficult than "attack combo" followed by "avoid enemy/dodge attacks".  Repeat until enemy dies.  And you do this for every.  Single.  Fucking.  Random.  Weak-ass.  Enemy.  There's never a change!  Enemy attacks always have priority over yours, so you can't simply wail on them until they die, and many enemies are simply invulnerable to any kind of attack when they are in their "attack combo", so you just have to block or dodge or stay out of the way until they finish up and go back to harmlessly wandering around or standing still.

What's worse is it's not until considerably late into the game when you get strong enough weapons to kill even weak enemies with a single combo.  So even the weakest random foe in the level will be handled exactly the same as a boss, for the most part.  After a while, i just started to run past any enemy i wasn't required to kill simply because i couldn't be bothered.

Graphics and Music

Awesome graphics and music.  I can't complain here.  They do what they can with the system.  Squarenix has always had awesome music selection and the Kingdom Hearts series is no exception.

Others have complained that the music is just recycled from the other Kingdom Hearts games, and this is true, but it's not actually as bad as it could've been.  Ace Attorney: Investigations recycled less music, but still annoyed me with how over-used what music they did have was.  At the very least, 358 days over 2 recycled enough music that you never feel annoyed at hearing the themes.

Story

The story crawls and makes it clear it feels no degree of urgency in getting to the point.  The first half of the game's story is essentially "Roxas and Axel are friends".  Expect countless scenes of Axel and Roxas alone together sensually enjoying a popsickle of salty cream - iced cream.

Anyway, by the time the real story starts to kick in, you'll likely already have logged 10 or so hours of gameplay.

The story, as i said earlier, is definitely aiming to bridge the gap between games.  How well it bridges the games is questionable at times.  By the time i got to the end, it certainly felt like Squarenix was simply beating a path to the ending they wanted whether it was done coherently or not.  As a result there are many in-story threads that never resolve and are sort of left hanging for the "future" game of Kingdom Hearts 2.

Still, the story's definitely worth it for Kingdom Hearts fans, but expect a lot of draggy mundanities of "life in the Organization" from Roxas' perspective.

Characters

The characters are well developed.  You do get to know the Organization members better and they become more than just a bunch of named nameless enemies.  In fact, at times you almost feel like you like them.  I liked Axel's portrayal, particularly - overt homosexuality and all.  But Roxas did come off as little more than an "emo bitch".

There's also a new character that i found particularly unlikeable.  She's sort of central to the story, so i can't say much about her.  But suffice it to say, not once did i understand Roxas' deep, personal connection to her dull-as-dishwater personality.

The one problem with all the characters is that in missions where you have an ally, they are almost always in your way.  They block you from attacking, they stand in your way, they warp into your path in the middle of long distance jumps, etc.  It's really quite frustrating at times.  I'm told that you can change some setting to fix this, but i never got around to looking through the settings that much.

Final Comments

While 358 days over 2 is not an awful game, i wouldn't say it's the best of the series.  I definitely had a lot of fun with the game, but i have trouble pinning down exactly why.  I think it is because i started to appreciate the characters of the game a little more.  I used to think Axel was little more than a needy sex-starved individual with a crush on his best male friend, Roxas, but now i think he's sort of an interesting character in his own right.

It was also nice to get some background into Kingdom Hearts 2 which had previously felt like a very disconnected game to me.

All in all, if you like the series, i'd recommend this game.  You may not find it is your favourite, but it'll definitely add to the experience of the series as a whole.

Alice In Wonderland (2010)

Or as it should have been called: Alice in Wonderland 2.

Before watching this movie i was sure of two things: death and taxes.  After watching it, i am now sure of three things: death, taxes and that there never should've been a sequel to the Disney film, Alice in Wonderland.

I saw this movie in 3D, but i felt the 3d was, much like the film as a whole, an unnecessary addition.  It pops up here and there, but really isn't utilized to any meaningful degree beyond having the credits swirl out at you.  Curse you, Disney, and your new anti-piracy measure that costs $3 more, but doesn't deliver anything in terms of entertainment value!

One thing to note is that while i did find the movie to be dull and unnecesasry, it did raise a couple of questions.  Namely, why is Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter a main character?  Also, WHY IS JOHNNY DEPP'S MAD HATTER A MAIN CHARACTER!?  It's a completely unnecessary character promotion.  Worse still, he ends up overshadowing Alice (you know, the girl from the title?).  But not because of a powerful performance on Depp's part, just because the damned Mad Hatter is made far more important to the story for no obvious reason.

Of course Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is still there, she's just reduced to secondary character status.  Sure, she's in virtually every scene from start to finish, but her dialogue is largely purposeless and her actions unimportant (for the most part).  When she does speak or do anything she adds nothing to the story and it almost feels like the only reason she's there is because it is, in fact, Alice In Wonderland; though Johnny Depp In Wonderland would've been a more appropriate title.

The movie itself rehashes a lot of the original movie's scenes (but in 3d): Alice falling down the rabbit hole, Alice eating cake to grow and drinking tonic to shrink, the tea party, etc - but none of it feels like it's needed.  It's just Alice going through the actions, doing everything exactly as before.  All because, as we're told later, she thinks it's just a dream she's had many times.  In fact, the entire pre-wonderland section of the film is nothing but a not-so-thinly-veiled excuse to get Alice into that rabbit hole as quickly as possible so we can be shown these re-done scenes all in the name of, let's just say, "entertainment".

Overall, the film is just dull and unendearing with the only redeeming part being when Alice fights the Jabberwocky (don't worry, it makes just as much sense in context as out).  Of course, it's still preceeded by 1 and a half hours worth of Alice saying she's not going to do it, feverishly stupid scenes that are confusing (but not in the charming "Lewis Carroll" way) and Johnny Depp... i still don't know why he was made a main character.  Alice certainly pulls off the "in a suit of armor" look well, thanks to the feminine cut of the armor (where do they get those?).

Though i used to like Tim Burton, he's becoming something of a tired act to follow.  His movies have spectacular visuals and (more often than not) Johnny Depp, but there really isn't anything else to them anymore.  They all have a creepy nightmarish feel, but that's just not good enough to be called "art" anymore.

I'm desparately waiting for the day when 3D special effects and Johnny Depp are not enough to sell out a theatre.  Here's a sobering nightmare for your, hollywood: one day the appeal of these things is going to run out.  What's more, you'll be out of remakes and sequels and reinvisionings and everything else you've been living off of for the past decade or so.  Then what will you do?  Will you gracelessly drift into obscurity and irrelevance clinging to what power elites you still have and rely on viral marketing to save your perpetual flops?  Or will you foresee this as a coming problem and break your inbreeding cycle well ahead of time and take a chance on some new blood: fresh artists, actors, writers and directors?

I ask these questions, but they are entirely rhetorical.  We all know which path hollywood's going to stick by; it's the one that's profitable in the extremely short term.