Monthly Archives: December 2012

Totally Recalling the neighborhood Watch for Resident Evil

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The Watch:

I went into this expecting a pretty terrible movie. I wasn’t sure how (based on the previews) Ben Stiller and his backup cast of rude comedians were going to last for an hour and a half walking around the neighborhood being clumsy and stupid. But the movie took a turn for the better relatively quickly. It’s not what you thought it was about, trust me. I will keep it a secret even throughout this review and only say that I was pleasantly surprised with the plot. It’s a much more entertaining experience if you don’t look up what the movie is actually about.

Yes, it was still stupid, riddled with Vince Vaughn’s usual machine gun wit and Jonah Hill’s rude and lewd shtick. Richard Ayoade was a pleasant counterbalance with his British accent and uberpolite delivery of vulgar lines. I am looking forward to seeing the next movie he does; he was quite enjoyable.

I think the main complaint I have is the attempt to lace the movie with a serious subplot about Ben Stiller’s character being sterile. It’s just..strange and seems not to fit. They’re spending a lot of time talking about dicks and balls, as expected, and the serious edge was odd to me.

Overall, at least worth renting for kicks.

Resident Evil: Retribution:

This is on about the same level as the other Resident Evil movies. Silly one-liners, lots of zombies and assorted mutations, and evil corporation blablabla. If you were entertained by the others, you’ll like this one fine. I enjoyed the addition of Leon, the main character in the video game franchise, and Ada Wong. The costumes were awesome and the large zombie creature they used was well-animated and pretty freakish. I also loved the SOUNDS they used for the guns – I’m not sure what they did, but it felt so satisfying whenever she shot a zombie. I think they used a more video game-type effect for these and I think that was an excellent move. Unrealistic, maybe..but better. Why resort to realism when people are flying around the air like Olympic gymnasts killing the crap out of some zombies? Exactly.

Overall…the usual.

Total Recall:

This COULD have been an amazing remake. Could have, but didn’t quite stand up.

The action scenes were great. The combat between Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel was fabulous and sexy, and Kate Beckinsale does a fantastic job as a villain. I loved the effects and how things were visually. There were some gravity reversal combat scenes that absolutely destroyed. So far so good.

But WHY did they make so many changes to the plot? Okay, it takes place on Earth instead of Mars. I can wrap my head around that. Fine. But I don’t think they THOUGHT about it other than making a cool tunnel allowing people to travel through the core of the Earth to the other side. Very cool. Further than that? Brian Cranston is always great but his character has flimsy motives. For some reason, he wants to kill all of the citizens in the ghettos of the city and replace them with robots….making sense yet? It never does. He also seems to show up everywhere instead of sending cronies. This guy is the freaking big bad guy in charge..and he shows up for invasions with his robots!

Also disappointing was the transformation of the movie from science fiction to post apocalyptic, sort-of not-really science fiction. They completely removed mutants and the concept thereof, which kills of a large part of the plot, including the removal of Matthias himself housing a little alien being on his chest. No more aliens, no more mutants. Matthias is on screen for what may be a total of 3 minutes and then dies. Did I care when he did? No…his death brought zero consequence to the movie’s plot, unlike in the first Total Recall. He died and I forgot he died 5 minutes later as I watched the main characters jump around on weird 3D elevators. Cool, but the plot keeps falling into these weird holes that wouldn’t have been there if they hadn’t tried to so drastically change it from the first movie. Oh, and they left the three-breasted woman as a type of homage. BUT THE HOMAGE MAKES NO SENSE BECAUSE THERE ARE NO MUTANTS IN THIS VERSION. So how does she have three breasts? Did she just get a third one put there? What the hell.

Colin Farrell does an alright job. It’s not quite as fantastic as when you see Arnold running around like a bull in a china shop killing people and freaking out, though. I don’t know that anyone could match that.

Overall, as a standalone movie, passable. As a remake, meh. I wasn’t as impressed as I should have been. Disappointed.

Guns – Misinformation – Fuck Bob Costas

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Our lawmakers are failing us. Our country’s media has failed us. The knee-jerk reaction to the shooting in Sandy Hook is once again threatening to strip rights from law abiding citizens. I’m not going to talk about that, though. I’m not going to belittle their tragedy by putting myself on a soapbox for my own, personal agenda. What I will talk about is the media, firearms, and a general lack of understanding people like Bob Costas seem to have when it comes to the topic.

I’d like everyone to take a step back from mourning, pretending to care, from overreacting, and from spouting bullshit. If you can’t do that, stop reading right now. For the rest of you armed with common sense, we’re going to have a discussion and hopefully shed some light on some of the crap coming out of our media.

First, we need to stop demonizing firearms. They’re an inanimate object. The evil is found within the hearts of those who take the lives of innocents. They do it with guns in America, knives in China, homemade bombs in Ireland, etc, etc. The methods differ but the root of the problem remains the same: people. That is indisputable. If you feel like arguing that point just remember the part where you agreed to remove yourself from the personal and look at things objectively for once in your life.

Along with demonizing comes editorials about how automatic firearms should be illegal–they already are, and the people who can own them are not the problems. They’ll talk about how assault rifles are powerful killing machines. They’ll go so far as to quote the FPS at which a bullet is fired out of them as a testament to how dangerous the guns are …but hunting rifles are okay. Well, here’s some news: most hunting rifles are considerably more powerful than an assault rifle. They fire a much larger bullet. The amount of energy they create is easily double that of an assault rifle. They are designed to kill things much, much larger than a human being. The only difference here is they don’t come with a black stock and a pistol grip.

And that really is the problem. People see the matte black finish and they lose their mind. They freak out. IT’S GOING TO KILL US ALL, IT’S BLACK! If we were talking about people here we’d be racist. Here’s an example:

http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14RanchRifle/models.html

This is a Ruger mini-14. It’s a semiautomatic rifle. It comes in a variety of colors. Can you hunt with it? Sure! I know people who have used a mini-14 to hunt. Let’s take a look at another rifle.

http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14TacticalRifle/models.html

What’s that? If you said “assault rifle” here comes the mind fuck–THEY ARE THE SAME RIFLE. The only difference here is one comes with a black plastic stock that features a pistol grip. They fire the same cartridge at the same speed and can hold the same size magazine–again, THEY ARE THE SAME RIFLE.

The assault rifle you are so afraid of is not an assault rifle at all. It is not any more dangerous than a hunting rifle, or a handgun, or a shotgun–all of which are equally deadly in the hands of a lunatic. The news media are BRAINWASHING you to further their own political agenda. They want you to be afraid of the black plastic, because it somehow turns the firearm into a “killing machine”. Let’s quote a little from the good old Washington Post, shall we?

“THE BUSHMASTER .223-caliber semiautomatic rifle that Adam Lanza carried into Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday is a frightful killing machine.”

Right off the bat you hate the rifle because it’s a “killing machine”. It’s now associated with a horrible massacre of school children (again, we’re taking a step back here, don’t get emotional on me now).

“A coroner said most of the victims were hit with at least three bullets — and some with up to 11 — that exploded with devastating lethality, tearing them apart from inside. The Bushmaster was a juggernaut of death.”

This is my favorite part. It’s like they hired Stephen King to write the editorial. It was a juggernaut of death–that’s gold. And people still don’t think the media have their own agenda? They’re using these tragedies to make you hate. They’re trying to fuel knee-jerk politics with these colorful, misleading anecdotes. I read another article the other day where they talked about how the “Bushmaster” rifle that was used could fire six shots a second. That’s more bullshit trying to sway your emotions. It’s a semiautomatic rifle. Let’s break it down:

The “automatic” from the phrase is referring to the gun’s action (the part that houses the firing mechanism, ejector, etc). Prior to machine guns, as they were originally called, we had manual action firearms. Once fired you had to manually eject the cartridge in order to load another into the firing chamber. Machine guns removed the manual part of the equation. When fired, it used some of the energy created by the explosion to automatically eject the empty and load a new round into the firing position so you didn’t have to.

Semiautomatic weapons stop there. One pull of the trigger fires one bullet, and the automatic action removes the empty and loads another cartridge. That’s it. If you want to shoot again you have to pull the trigger a second time. Fully automatic weapons will continue to fire as long as the trigger is held down. The rifle used in the Sandy Hook shooting was a semiautomatic. That hasn’t stopped the news media from telling you it’s a military rifle, an automatic rifle, can shoot X bullets per second, etc. All of these statements are false and are used to force you into an emotional response–to demonize the firearm.

I don’t care if you hate guns, the gun community, or even me. I really couldn’t give a shit. But at the very least you should know what you’re hating and why you’re hating it, and aren’t just repeating what the talking heads want you to think. Unfortunately, our representatives are spewing bullshit at the federal level. They want to ban things and they don’t even understand what they’re banning. Can we have a fucking intelligent discussion with our policy makers? I doubt it. How some of these people end up elected is beyond me.

The Dark Knight Rises & Falls On Its Ass

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The trilogy has ended. Batman has been immortalized in bronze at city hall while Bruce Wayne anonymously lives out the remainder of his years with Selina Kyle. Happy Ending?

Not quite. In all honesty, the film was pretty boring. Let’s ignore for a minute that Chris Nolan did to BATMAN what M. Night Shamalamadingdong did to THE LAST AIRBENDER–that would be to abandon established lore in favor of writing your own stripped down, anorexic bullshit–the only major difference being that Chris Nolan can actually direct actors. That has never been my problem with the new Batman; the actors generally deliver decent to good performances, my problem is that I just don’t care about them.

Mr. Nolan did his best to reboot the series into a dark, gritty world more akin to our own reality than it is to the comic books. The problem he forgot to address is that in reality life is fleeting and people die. In THE DARK KNIGHT RISES nobody of concern ends up getting killed. You never feel afraid for any of the primary characters. Again, that is not necessarily a problem with movies in general, but it is a problem in this film because of how they have tried to depict the world of Batman. Strip away the violent, dirty exoskeleton of Gotham and you’re left with a run of the mill super hero movie.

The movie, at first, appears to suffer from the trying to do too much in too little a time frame dilemma that many modern movies subscribe to. After closer examination you find that the movie does the opposite–it attempts to stretch the little it has too far and too thin. Here’s a quick timeline: Batman returns to the scene after eight years of absence, Batman has his ass handed to him by Bane, Bane threatens to blow up Gotham with a nuclear weapon, Batman returns (again) and this time manages to win with the help of Catwoman. You need three hours to tell that story? I suppose you should tack on an extra hour for all the whining Alfred ends up doing.

Speaking of Catwoman. I absolutely love (read: loathe) how Bruce Wayne keeps giving her the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact she’s burned him several times throughout the movie. She’s given him no reason to trust her, or even like her, but he still follows her around with puppy-dog eyes. In the comic Catwoman fights an internal conflict over her life as a cat burglar and helping people. She’s not inherently evil in the comic, she’s more indifferent than anything, but she does give Batman reasons to trust her from time to time other than flashing her finely manicured backyard so he begins following the Bat-cock instead of actually thinking.

There was also zero chemistry between the two actors. None. Maybe they just grazed over those scenes and did them in one take. Who knows? I don’t. We’re also constantly reminded throughout the film that Bruce Wayne could have gone anywhere, done anything, but instead he decided to put the cape back on and save the people. As if we needed the movie itself to tell us that we’re watching Batman, what the fuck else is he going to do if not save Gotham for the nth-hundredth time? In the end these scenes serve only one purpose: TO SHAVE PRECIOUS SECONDS OFF OF MY LIFE. Filler dialogue does not make for a good movie going experience.

The usual suspects continue to plague this movie: the “bat voice”, for one. Even when he’s in a scene involving characters who already know that he’s Bruce Wayne he feels it necessary to keep laryngitis bat going. Not to be outdone, the boys in post added so much shitty processing to Bane’s voice that it makes it difficult to not press STOP and EJECT on the DVD. Was there no one around when they were dicking with this shit? No one to say “Hey guys, his voice is coming in WAY louder than everyone else in the scene, and it’s in full stereo. Why don’t we pull our heads out of our asses?”

What do I mean by full stereo? When you watch the movie you’ll notice in scenes where Bane does any amount of talking that his voice seems to fill the entire room. The other actors in the scene have their voices mixed directional, so that if someone is on the left side of the screen their voice is coming out slightly more on the left speaker than on the right, but Bane’s voice fills the entire aural spectrum. It instantly ruins any amount of immersion you may have had in the movie up until that point.

All in all the movie floats somewhere between bad and average. I don’t understand the hype. I would only recommend it to fans of super hero movies. Everyone else should stay clear.