All the King's Men (2006)

 I have recently begun appreciating the extended works of one Sean Penn, despite only rarely seeing movies with him in them for whatever reason (coincidence). So I’ve seen Mystic River, Carlito’s Way, and now this odd film. All the King’s Men is a novel based on the life of Huey Long, a pseudo-socialist dictatorial Governor of Louisiana (oh yes, there will be terrible southern accents) who was assassinated prior to challenging for the presidency. Short of FDR one of the most interesting American political leaders of the past century. The dude who shot him was immediately annihilated by Long’s “gunmen” Gestapo police force. Per the trustworthy Wikipedia: “Long's bodyguards returned fire, hitting Weiss 62 times and killing him instantly.”

I’ve always been a fan of silly stories like that, hence my fascination with Rasputin and his inability to die. Anywho, this film stars Sean Penn, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Ruffalo, James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, and Jackie Earle Haley; but despite the incredible cast was critically panned and poorly received. This film is actually a remake of 1949’s best picture of the same name so evidently was placed under a microscope.

That said it is a bit hard to defend the film, most of the performances are over the top, Jude Law’s character is basically a means to move the plot forward, and Sean Penn turns into a power hungry “corrupt” government figure in about 5 minutes. Still I don’t think it is entirely without merit, the cinematography is outstanding, the score is fantastic, and the acting while over the top is still entertaining.

Every 20 or so minutes there’s an interlude where Sean Penn stands on a soapbox and yells to an audience, “every man a king” speeches and lambasting all of his opposition. He has a pretty amusing sounding southern drawl which I honestly have no idea as to the accuracy of. Jude Law is the center of the plot otherwise, various blabbing about his irrelevant past and how he must serve Huey Long’s magnificent corruption for no apparent reason. But then the weakest part of the film surfaces.

Jude Law has several overly emotional scenes that are really laughably bad; I don’t really care about the character since the film gives you no reason to. Evidently every tragic moment in his past must be emphasized heavily so he can finally decide to not help out Huey’s reign of terror; unfortunately this goes for naught and impeachment fails. Conveniently he’s then assassinated 5 seconds later and the single bodyguard (Jackie Earle Haley) in this case kills the assassin. Jackie’s character is awesome throughout as the only word he ever says is “bastard” while shooting or driving (Suga boy is his name), but unfortunately he fails to redeem the film by hilariously saying this in the end sequence and suddenly goes mute. Bastard is my favorite word and its omission is absolutely grievous and uncalled for, what a disaster.

The Amazing Spiderman

Ah the glorious movie industry and their weirdass release dates. July 4^th is tomorrow (or today I suppose), thus our movie must premier on July 3^rd! Tuesday!? Who cares, people go to see movies on July 4^th weekend err… I mean week. All week long in fact! It’s a weekend week if I ever saw one. The 75% full theater testifies to the intense popularity of Tuesday releases and future Monday releases that will inevitably follow. Glorious!

Strange release date aside I thought this was a decent enough film as absurdly fast reboots go. The cast is much improved over the previous Spiderman trilogy, though oddly that doesn’t make as much of an impact as you’d think. The strongest part of the first Spiderman was Daniel Defoe as the Green Goblin, and his story arc is much more compelling than the Lizard’s is in this film (or in general). Additionally Sam Reimi did a much better job of directing and constructing a film, even with much weaker actors.

That said the first half of this movie is great and far exceeds the precedent; unfortunately the movie starts to take itself too seriously at roughly the halfway point. If the original Spiderman pandered to post 9/11 audiences with New York joy, this film is outright insane. There is, no joke, a 5 minute sequence of nothing but that sort of pandering with a ridiculously overdone “epic” soundtrack (James Horner: Titanic, Braveheart, Avatar, Troy… and Spiderman). That alone knocked at least a half star off the score of this film.

There is one strange part about the early part of the film, literally every primary “high school” actor looks and acts like they’re 10 years older than they are. The school they’re in has collegiate style classrooms, the love interest (Emma Stone, who’s only 22) looks like she’s 25 and acts like she’s at least 30 and has the job credentials to match evidently. Andrew Garfield doesn’t look quite that old but he’s competing with a 5 foot tall guy who sounds like he’s 5 and looks like he’s 12; he may as well be as old as Martin Sheen.

Speaking of which, Martin Sheen dies in the good half of the movie and its not too overdone, I guess you could say it’s a necessity for Uncle Ben to die and as long as its over quickly that’s fine. But, then the second best actor in the movie dies and there’s a 10-15 minute sequence blabbing about him and things related to him. All of the over-dramatization sort of kills any chance this movie had of surpassing the original Spiderman (doesn’t even come close to Spiderman 2 regardless). That said I still think it is worth a look since there’s not much else coming out until Batman.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena

Pros:
++ Satisfying mixture of melee and ranged combat
++ Moderately difficult
+ Decent boss fights
+ Fantastic sparse dialogue
+ Some interesting first person puzzles
Cons:
-- Too much shooting
- Melee is a bit too twitchy against the only two difficult opponents
- First half of the game looks like Doom 3

Ah here we are, only several months late. Vin did okay in my absence, however, have no fear. The original Escape from Butcher Bay (included and remastered on the disc) is regarded as a sort of classic for the X Box. If you recall that system had only a handful of competent games so being a classic isn’t much of a challenge. When your competition is a couple of alien shooters and Morrowind you too will be escalated into the pantheon of legends.

So, how does this game stack up to Butcher Bay? Eh, it’s not horrible by comparison. Dark Athena is sort of a mix of a modern shooter and Butcher Bay’s melee/ranged mix. You don’t have a ton of regenerating health so there’s a greater tendency to think about situations. Unfortunately only a few encounters in the game can be solved by multiple methods, for the most part you’ll just be shooting or punching your way to victory. While the few situations that can be solved creatively are quite satisfying I only wish there were a lot more good moments like that.

Without wishing to be too spoiler tastic I’ll say you fight an enemy about halfway through the game who has a long death scene immediately thereafter. Then, without any justification that same enemy returns to life magically. It sort of feels like they had two boss fights and didn’t know what order to put them in and thus randomly stuck one before the other (both having long death scenes, the latter being far more escapable than the aforementioned one). It’s just bizarre and very strange especially in retrospect.

The massive genre of first person melee/ranged hybrid adds another to its list, and so I’ll try to compare it to the closest game I can think of: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Yes, Skyrim sort of has the same vibe but it is extremely non-linear and the action is still the most wanting part of that game; both Dark Messiah and Dark Athena outdo it for simple combat. In Dark Messiah almost every situation can be solved dozens of different ways. Kick an enemy into spikes, collapse a wall on top of him, stealth kill him with a knife, stealth kill him with a bow, charm one enemy and make them fight each other, let your flimsy companion take care of it, there’s just a ton of ways to kill stuff and almost all of them are satisfying. Dark Athena needs this if its going to challenge that throne.

As it is Riddick’s (likely) last installment isn’t quite as good as the first but is still reasonably unique in the modern military shooter era. I wish the color palette wasn’t so grey/brown, but at least there’s some incentive for playing well in having non full regenerating health. For how cheap it is I think it’s worth the purchase on X Box or PS3, though I’m told the PC version has some more troublesome issues.

Final Score: 8/10

Prometheus (Spoilers)

I wrote this email a week or so ago, a bit more detailed discussion of my fairly vague Prometheus review inside:

Hello sir,
You talked about how the idea of meeting one's creator is the main interesting idea in this movie that isn't really expanded upon, however I don't really think it is told in such a way that it's "debating" the point of creation by a God or gods as much as its pigeon holing Ridley Scott's belief system into it. Now I don't really have any large amount of disrespect for Ridley Scott but he has pretty much made every one of his movies bash you over the head with some philosophical point or other for 10 or more years, the initial Alien not really having that issue became an excellent picture. This movie if you look at it as just an Alien clone doesn't really hold up as there's so many somewhat random weird things going on alongside the most sympathetic character being an Android. But the movie isn't about that, it's about this absurdly elaborate construction of the Ontological argument for the existence of God.

Someone asks a question "What created God?" and you wind up with this infinite loop of creation, the ontological argument simply posits that there had to be an initial force at some point in the creation loop; everything we know and understand is finite therefore the universe must be finite in some respects save this force oft identified as God. Michael Fassbender's character is essentially the central portion of this and he introduces the other primary plot point by saying "Doesn't everyone want to kill their parents?" On its surface this a throw away line, one level deeper and it reflects his motivations, but looking at the movie as a whole under this guise is really where you start to pick up on it. Androids are created by humans and want to destroy them, humans are created by titans lets call them, but humans are completely retarded in this movie so instead of wanting to kill everyone but themselves they just want to have peace and happiness, doesn't that work out great? Titans create humans because the dude on the waterfall (theorized to be a rogue) turns himself into primordial soup on the isle of skye.

Rest of the titans don't like this so they create Pandora's Box, the mother of all pathogens. Black goo. What the hell does black goo do? Well its hard to say, I don't think it genetically traces directly to Xenomorphs. If ingested black goo deconstructs and reconstructs your DNA and you turn into a zombie (weird Irish geologist guy who's the most prolific murderer in the movie, 4-5 kills in like 30 seconds), if the black goo soupifies on its own it becomes the penis monster. If you are fucked by a zombie as a human THEN your baby turns into a hydra octopus giant face hugger thing which if it then impregnates the only Titan around becomes a (very small somehow) Alien, and maybe aliens propagate themselves after that asexually, who the fuck knows. Everyone wants to kill every other race except retarded humans.

Okay what I just explained sounds really fucking stupid as a plot for a movie, however I would have to guess this is how Ridley Scott views the eternal cycle atheism that he embraces. Something created us then got destroyed by us or vice versa and this led to creating other shit because people were idiots and wanted more biological weapons, and this goes on continually until the end of time. It's fairly interesting philosophically. Of course the movie doesn't make the point very well, if I were an undecided person and had weak faiths I don't think Prometheus would inspire me to doubt the existence of God, even looking at it through this lens. No I think I'd just realize how weird and bizarre Ridley Scott's argument becomes if it is drawn to its logical conclusions, which kinda sorta happens in the movie.

I wrote a spoiler free rendition of this on my blog here: fcdisbad.blogspot.com But it's nice to articulate it to someone who has actually seen the movie. I'm probably going to write 31 movie reviews in July out of boredom and having shitloads of DvDs, but I tend to write brief reviews, 4-5 paragraphs so they don't become too much of a wall of text; though it depends on the movie and what I have to say about it.

Prometheus/Ridley Scott

Prometheus is a mildly amusing addition to the Science Fiction genre. At its core there is the potential for an exceptional, excellent movie but it kind of falls short. Now the primary reason for this is because of our kindly neighborhood director Ridley Scott. At some point, ten, fifteen years ago Mr. Scott decided to stop making movies for the sake of making movies and instead embeds severe some might say ham-fisted philosophical points into his films. The major point in this film is essentially the Ontological argument for the existence of God, or some derivation of it.

Ridley Scott is a renowned atheist, but he isn’t the dickish/retarded sort that just says herf derf there is no God. Clearly this man has put in the effort and thinks about it daily as it is lambasted in Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, and now Prometheus. This may seem bizarre for a Science Fiction movie to revolve around God but, that’s precisely what happens here. Man discovers a potential creative being in hieroglyphs and somehow finds the constellation that all the various histories have in common. They send a ship there for at best nebulous reasons and so advances the plot.

But at some point the plot pretty much solely becomes about the question “What created God?” and the Ontological argument basically counters this by saying that there had to be some initial force and that particular force is identified as God. It’s not as philosophically invincible as say, Determinism, but it’s not the worst argument out there. Michael Fassbender plays an Android in this film akin to Alien and is absolutely fantastic. Most of what he says is hugely symbolic but pretty much everything he says is well written; the same can not be said for the rest of the cast.

Anywho there’s one line in particular, “Doesn’t everyone want to kill their parents?” Seems sort of like a throwaway but I picked up on it instantly, as every created being wants to destroy their creator in some bizarre infinite loop of creation and destruction, perhaps Mr. Scott’s outview on how civilization begins and ends. An interesting method he could have used to purvey this argument better was to make the Greek and Roman symbolism much heavier as their myths fit in much better with the weirdness of the plot; but really all you get on that front is the title of the ship and the film. Of course maybe a better title would be “Aliens of various species.” Somehow this movie does look to be doing fairly well at the box office, but if it was advertised as directly linking to Alien instead of being like Alien could it have sold better? One wonders.

I realize this isn’t much on the review front, but people have approached their reviews in the wrong sort of way. If you look at Prometheus as a single cohesive plot it doesn’t really hold up all that well and becomes a mediocre movie, but if you look at the obvious philosophical argument that is being utilized it becomes much more interesting. Plot aside the film has a fantastic cast and solid acting performances throughout to go alongside excellent CG and practical effects. Fassbender is the biggest strength the movie has and I guess I’d say the meaninglessness of Charlize Theron’s character is the biggest weakness.

Avengers

Alright well I might as well just put this out there to start: Avengers is the best heavy CG action movie ever made. There is a 45 second single cut which blows absolutely every other scene out of the water and will probably continue to be the best CG action sequence for at least 5 years. However it is at its core still just an action movie; I won’t say it is a “dumb” action movie as it is at least smart enough to be genuinely humorous throughout in an unironic fashion.

However, when I say Terminator 2 is the best action movie of all time, it still completely destroys this movie (you see that helicopter flying under a bridge over a freeway, that is a helicopter flying under a bridge over a freeway) and on top of that has some pretty hefty philosophical issues inside of it. When I say The Dark Knight is the best superhero movie of all time, it has a genuinely terrifying villain, the vast majority of the action sequences are practical effects, and you don’t know for sure what’s going to happen in the end (unlike absolutely every other superhero movie to date).

And so we move on, I suppose an overview of the cast is probably the best way to approach an ensemble review like this. Loki is the villain here, returning from Thor, and generally competent. There was only one way to do Loki excellent and that was to make him continuously smug and mischievous as he is after all the god of Mischief. However he starts out pretty weak and they bring up those oh so terrible daddy issues from Thor briefly before he finally starts to gain some traction in the central sequence of the film. Loki should be fucking with people nonstop, he shouldn’t have a massive inferiority complex. The actor (Tom Hiddleston) is still extremely solid, it’s simply the plot that’s constructed around him that makes him less effective than any great cinematic villain. That said he’s still pretty good for a superhero movie.

Jeremy Renner shows up as Hawkeye and is magnificent, because Jeremy Renner is fucking awesome. Sam Jackson is extremely stoic and delivers a Star Wars prequel level performance, I’m sure if this movie was rated R he would have been amazing, but he’s kind of just there spouting exposition in this case. Mark Ruffalo is fantastic as Bruce Banner, though he doesn’t say much if he’s in CG form, he even lifts the level of weaker performers in his one on one scenes. That one dude from Shield is much better developed than he was before. The Patriots from Metal Gear Solid show up, don’t know why.

Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans, Thor and Captain America respectively, deserve special mention here. Both of these guys are fairly new actors opposing a fantastic cast and both perform superbly well. In addition they both do most of their own stunts so while an action scene with Scarlett Johansson has 5 cuts in the middle of it, one with Thor or Captain America has 1-2. This isn’t really something you notice as a novice movie goer but I have picked up on it more over time and can appreciate when an action sequence only has stuntmen when absolutely necessary.

Speaking of Scarlett, surprise she’s the worst character in the movie and could easily be labeled as fanservice (though it’s not as bad as Gwyneth Paltrow’s brief appearance). However I don’t think she is objectively terrible, she’s just mediocre in a movie with 6 or 7 superior actors. Now you might say “But she was good in Lost in Translation!” Right. Well that was almost 10 years ago, what has she done since except become a sexual object? She was in The Prestige, easily the worst part of that otherwise exceptional movie. Maybe Michael Bay turned her retarded somehow, stupidity is contagious.

And we’re left with our leading man Mr. Robert Downey Jr. He is of course fantastic and pretty much plays the exact role that he played in Iron Man (every other character is different from their previous appearance, some more than others), which is what everyone wanted. I don’t think there was any doubt about this though as even if the rest of the movie sucked Robert Downey Jr. would have made it somewhat watchable.

Well, I don’t really have to say this but you should definitely watch this movie if you have a pulse. It is one of the best popcorn movies in the past decade, and while you won’t have an epiphany or philosophical catharsis you will most certainly be entertained. There is a ton of humor, every character has at least some development, and of course the excellent action scenes.

The summer of cities being destroyed begins! I suppose Independence Day started this trend but lately it seems almost every movie has either a gigantic obsession with the US military or the need to destroy New York City or pseudo NYC. Battleship? Check. GI Joe? Check. Batman? Check. Can't we all just get along?

Killzone 2

Pros:
+++ Exceptional enemy AI
+++ Fight with Radec is perhaps the best in any first person shooter
++ Solid atmosphere
++ Other bosses are also well designed
+ About half the arsenal is extremely satisfying
+ Excellent graphics
+ Length feels just right
+ Extremely difficult
Cons:
--- Rico is a terrible character
-- Weapons don’t have secondary functions like they did in Killzone 2
- Storyline is pretty mediocre

Ah the Halo Killer at long last… okay maybe that turned out to be Call of Duty, but this was still an excellent shot at the FPS crown which has continued to be reasonably successful in its third (by all accounts worse) rendition. The first thing that might strike you about this game is how they swear so damn much, every other word being “fuck” or “shit” helps to add to the gritty World War 2 atmosphere… scratch that this isn’t WW2 and swearing only makes the game sound bizarre as they shove the plot down your throats.

Well, how many FPS’s have good storylines anyway? Surely there’s some redeeming factor here! It must be the weapon design, there’s about 10 weapons in the game and they’re not all virtually and functionally identical like CoD! Unfortunately the first game also had about 10 weapons but every one had an interesting secondary fire, why they removed that glorious function from the game is beyond me. If not for the last part of the game’s reserve of good qualities it would be rather tedious going through the game a 3rd or 4th time.

So, we’re left with the extraordinary difficulty of this game to keep us persevering. Naturally I’m referring to the “Elite” mode which is basically “Legendary” from Halo on steroids with almost every enemy in the game being both able to kill you in seconds and able to move in a surprisingly effective manner to get to you. Yes this may be the one modern FPS that actually has functionally good AI, some enemies simply move about intelligently cover to cover, others bumrush you ignoring cover entirely, and a few scarce others tend to camp at specific spots like this was a much worse game; but it’s the combination of all 3 that leads to a very hectic and difficult experience.

You’ll ask yourself “how many guys are left, who’s coming up these stairs next, gotta get the last guy gotta get the last guy gotta get the last guy!” Literally the entire game is tense on the hardest difficulty as it really isn’t predictable how the enemies approach you the next time you restart that checkpoint. KZ2 has a brutal way of keeping statistics, the only way you get kills is if you advance to the next checkpoint, so I have a staggering 1200 or so kills to 550 deaths in my 2 playthroughs of the game, roughly 450 of those coming on Elite. Now that is by far the most deaths I’ve ever had in any game playing through hard, and does gives KZ2 something of an argument for the hardest game of all time, but I tend to think its too fast paced for that award.

The last boss is the hardest section of the game and even FPS masters tend to admit that they had quite a lot of trouble with it. Surprisingly I only took about 2 hours on those 3-4 checkpoints, some take days. You have to fight about 30 guys in rapid succession with very little cover coming from all directions in what is effectively a shooting gallery for them (depressed section of a room with elevated balconies all around). Eventually you get to the second floor and don’t have to play as aggressively to succeed. Finally you fight the last boss, who is just absolutely amazing as he switches between knifing, teleporting, and shooting you over and over; the best way to damage him is to knife at the air in the hopes that you catch his invisible ninja form a few times. I’m not particularly great at the fight but it is still exceptionally entertaining.

Final Score: 9/10