Comedy, 117 Minutes, 2011
You know if you’ll like this before you see it. Nothing I can say can ever change that. Lord help us all.
Like any of the recent rash of Rom-Coms there are few giggles here and, yes, there are some gratuitous (thanks!) scenes of Brooklyn Decker and Jennifer Aniston in bikinis – but damn, there’s not much else. I guess Bailee Madison was cute enough – given a decent script she might actually be more than yet another “kid that talks like a grown up for our amusement”.
“This Film is Not Yet Rated” on IMDB
Documentary, 97 Minutes, 2006
This was a good, but unfortunately flawed, look into a topic that simply should get more attention. An NC-17 rating is essentially a death-sentence for a film in the United States. Most theaters won’t present it, most video stores won’t stock it. Walmart and Target, accounting for a huge percentage of video sales, won’t carry it.
Sci-Fi/Thriller, 112 Minutes, 2009
Cargo is a rich, stylish sci-fi thriller in the vein of “Sunshine”, “Moon” or “Solaris”. The first half of the movie is as good as the genre gets. All the elements are there: a close-knit crew dealing with strangers, a huge ship with a mysterious secret and a dangerous, unexpected development.
“Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom” at Amazon.com
Rated Teen; Reviewed on PS3
This was a truly enjoyable game. A simple, engaging story; likable characters and interesting gameplay. In most of the particulars it’s a fairly standard third-person adventure; but a very well done one that oozes charm.
Some might say the length is “too short” but at about 15 hours I felt it actually could have been a bit shorter. I deeply appreciate a game that takes as much time as it needs to tell its story and ends. “Majin” does fall, partway at least, into some of the traps. There’s some backtracking that feels a little too much like work (especially when trying to collect all of the “Memory Shards” which only appear at night) and some of the later levels approach a “been there, done that” vibe.
Adventure, 114 Minutes, 2011
This is exactly the kind of movie I love, so it’s hard to be completely objective about it. It’s got fighting and swords and honor and mud and fighting and horses and friendship and more fighting. If you like those things, you’ll like this. There’s not much more to say.
Sci-Fi/Thriller, 112 Minutes, 2011
If you were thinking from the promos that this was going to “Goonies: the Next Generation” well, you’re partly right. The group of kids is appropriately precocious and charming but the film has a deep undercurrent of darkness that tempers the enjoyment just a bit. There are complex issues at play in these lives and, unfortunately, the film does little to truly explore them beyond a token resolution.
Action, 114 Minutes, 2011
I deeply, truly enjoyed this. Basically it seems that every few years Simon Pegg and Nick Frost give us a classic comedy. Of course “Sean of the Dead” is still (and will probably always remain) the pinnacle of their work, but “Paul” definitely shoves “Hot Fuzz” to the bottom of the heap.
Rated Teen; Reviewed on PS3
Sucker Punch Studios “Sly Cooper” along with with Naughty Dog’s “Jak and Daxter” and Insomniac’s “Ratchet and Clank” made the PS2 the undisputed home of platform adventure gaming. With the power of the PS3 those companies have all moved on to more realistic adventures. Naughty Dog with “Uncharted”, Insomniac with “Resistance” and Sucker Punch with “Infamous”.
“Infamous” was an experiment for Suck Punch. A team that lived and breathed platformers rife with mini-games took on an enormous open-world game with coherent super-powers and a storyline based on the player’s moral choices. They mostly succeeded.
Rated Mature; Reviewed on PS3
Splatterhouse is a remake/homage of the Namco classic arcade game (I originally played the superb TurboGraphix 16 port).
The story remains the same: you’re Rick Taylor who, with the help of an ancient, sentient mask is fighting through hordes of demonic creatures to save your girlfriend Jennifer. This iteration leans very heavily on Lovecraftian sources and imagery which is starting to approach trite, but since it’s rarely done well it can be forgiven.
You interact with two primary characters, Rick (who spends most of the game dazed and confused) and the mask itself (which adds a raunchy voice-over to the proceedings). The villain of the story, Dr. West, is about as cardboard as they come and Jennifer (stolen by West because she looks like his dead wife) is, for all intents, a prop.
Action, 114 Minutes, 2011
I’m surprised at the vitriol that reviewers seem to have for this film. Could the entire industry just have been having a bad day? Because the movie, while far from the best thing ever, is also very far from the worst. One of the criticisms that I continually hear is that it’s too “formula” or “clichéd”. Of course it is: DC Comics invented the formula! The Green Lantern was created over 60 years ago – doing the source material any justice at all means painting-by-the-numbers to at least some extent.
