Mini-Reviews #7: The Almost Video Series

So I very nearly made this into a video review series for my new YouTube channel - heck, maybe I still will; I got as far as recording and editing some voice-over. But I guess I realised making these into videos would take more time than it'd be worth given my currently non-existent online following. Damn, that's a bit of a defeatist attitude isn't it? Well, never mind. Better crack on, it's been a year since I did the last batch...

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Nazis! Nazis in the 1960s! Nazis ruling 'Murica! Nazi robots firing laser beams that go BWAAAH! It's a Wolfenstein game all right and it's pretty darn all right. The new series continues to impress with memorable characters, Mick Gordon soundtrack awesomeness and did I mention Nazi robots firing laser beams that go BWAAAH? Wolf II leaps from Schindler's List to Inglourious Basterds to Iron Sky so fast it's hard to keep up. It has the most ridiculously over the top story beats in any big budget game and I kind of love it for that reason. Gushing too much? Well, the balance seems a bit off. It's a chaotic action game where a single enemy can down you in half a second. Normal mode's about as unforgiving as Doom 2016 on Nightmare. Fortunately I kind of like Doom 2016 on Nightmare, but I wouldn't dare crank it up any harder, bloody hell... BWAAAH!

Cuphead

"Well, Cuphead and his friend Mugman, they like to roll over and die." Something like that. It's no secret that Cuphead looks pretty special. The 1930s Disney / Fleischer aesthetic looks incredible. All the characters look great in motion and the game really really wants you to notice because - oh look, I took my eyes off the screen for a split second and now I've gotta try again. But, hey - old school difficulty is cool if you're into... pattern recognition and absolutely no room for error... yay? 2 player mode is a bit confusing and the game seems weirdly broken for something so mechanically straightforward. But, if allowances can be made for style trumping everything else - Cuphead, I guess, gets away with it. Pro-tip: Try duct-taping the fire button down so that you don't get hand cramps.

The Disaster Artist

Oh hai internet I didn't know it was you. James Franco plays the mighty Tommy Wiseau, a messenger from another planet who loves all things Shakespeare, Hitchcock and spoons. A fitting choice of actor, considering that once Tommy played James Franco in a movie called 127 Hou- oh wait, no, that was a cartoon I made. This, of course, is a movie based on the book based on the making of The Room, the ultimate lightning in a bottle moment for 'so bad they're good' movies. Franco does an amazingly nuanced, precise impression of Tommy. His admiration and morbid curiosity of the source material shines through and pays off in unexpectedly great ways. I should know, I'm pretty obsessed with it too. Overall, I consider it the funniest movie of the year and I'd recommend it whether you're familiar with The Room or not. Thanks a lot, bye.

The Walking Dead: Season 8 (Part 1)

Oh dear. I'm just going to ramble through this one because I don't think it deserves a coherent analysis at this point. The Walking Dead has completed it's deterioration into a bloated mess of a show. A show structured around geographically confusing firefights that are supposedly following Rick and his fellow survivors' 'plan' to depose Negan. I say supposedly... 8 episodes in we still don't know anything about the plan. Or how the Saviours' supplies and general state of health seem to randomly fluctuate up and down with each passing ad break. Speaking of ad breaks, the show keeps doing this thing where it pretends to do pretentious artsy non-linear editing. But it's not artsy - quite the opposite; it's letting the ad breaks dictate the edit. There's no rhyme or reason to the scene ordering. Just a cold, hard, flow of cash that they forgot to give to the lighting crew in night-time scenes. So dark, you can't even see what's going on. I could continue, but you're better off reading these hilariously cutting Forbes articles.

Twin Peaks: The Return

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Do I really have to review this now? I don't think I'll bother. I just wanted to put sunglasses on a Porg.

Well, it's basically the end of the year, here's a list of list the things I enjoyed most from 2017, including stuff I didn't bother to review:
Games: Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Wolfenstein II, Resident Evil 7, Sonic Mania
Movies: The Disaster Artist, Blade Runner 2049, Logan, Baby Driver, War of the Planet of the Apes, Get Out, Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Shows: Twin Peaks, Better Call Saul, Fargo, Game of Thrones, Mr. Robot
Best Overall Thing: Nintendo Switch, obviously!
Honourable Mention: PlayStation VR. Yeah, picked up one of these in a Black Friday sale, as you do. My overall opinions are more or less the same as they were when I wrote this VR opinion piece last year.

Mini-Reviews #5 - Micro Review Bonus Round!

A'ight, I've got a lot to go through now. Let's see how many things I can review in one sentence or less...

DOOM (2016)

Meaty reinvention of the first person shooter with very welcome exploration, clever gameplay loops and a frenetic style that scoffs at its contemporaries gimmicky attempts at being 'fast paced shooters' - bonus points for a fun editor with full console support (here's one I made earlier)...

Captain Toad: Civil War

Wii U may be on life support but I still have some catching up to do - like this lovely little puzzle / platformer / diorama / thingumajig that sees fellow superheroes locked in an epic battle of morality versus, oh wait hang on... 

Captain America: Treasure Tracker

In its second-act ensemble set piece it may well be the most entertaining Marvel film ever made, but getting there does mean sitting through an arduous amount of 'superhero politics' while Cap attempts to save Toadette from the clutches of an evil bird... okay I need to stop now.

Time v Money: Yawn of Justice

Yeah, if you're a sucker like me you watched this in both theatrical and ultimate cuts - I dunno, for five and a half hours you could probably do better things with your life, like copying and pasting images of sunglasses onto pictures of actors.

Suicide Squad

Oh I'm not done wasting short reviews on this summer's superhero flicks, like this one ostensibly about an actor who thought he was doing something dark and edgy and got screwed over by the studio... well, that's a more interesting story than what we actually got with this mess...

X-Men: The Not-Deadpool One

Okay enough of the superhero stuff, I don't even know what to put with this one... erm... I mean it's alright, it has Oscar Isaac playing an evil smurf and about four other characters also playing smurfs engaging in a giant cosplay battle in an apocalyptic city... uh, spoiler alert?

The Jungle Book

As we finally move away from superhero films, here is a film about a kid who's super power is 'acting against a green screen' - It's brilliant but I don't have much to say about this, I just really wanted to put sunglasses on a bear.

Stranger Things: Season 1

Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-Dyooowwww-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.... (It's a good show.)

Mr. Robot: Season 1 & 2

Wow, okay, so, who'd have thought that a show with such a persistent motivation to troll its own audience, a show that consistently gives its main character no concept of what he's doing or who he's with, a show with so many damn Fight Club rip-offs... would be so damn addictive?

Second Sight

Now here's a game nobody talks about anymore - a third person Metal Gear crossed with TimeSplitters? Well, it's not exactly aged well, but I had some fun playing this for the first time recently, even if it was just to listen to all the cringe-worthy dialogue. God I miss Free Radical.

Vampire's Kiss

Finally, let me draw your attention to the greatest Nicholas Cage film ever made - I just... please watch it, you won't regret it.

Mini-Reviews #4 - Winter Happened

Did ya think I was done? I've got another load of quick-fire reviews to get through...

Life is Strange

I wasn't initially bothered about this, on the presumption that it was a game about teenage girls and angsty social interactions. Not the sort of thing that I'd want to be seen playing, if that makes any sense. Still, I started hearing more and more buzz about the game and its time travel hook so I tried it out...

First impressions... bloody hell teenage girls are annoying, oh my god the lip syncing is so off it's painful, what tone does it want to have? All those concerns were still valid hours later, but I have to say, the game did win me over. I still don't really get the logistics of Max's power (what, she can reverse time without moving, so she's effectively teleporting? Without people noticing?) but the story does get more compelling, the drama does become engaging (I'll admit some of the moving moments were executed well, despite being somewhat hammy) and ultimately, it's a more complete, polished story about cause and effect than anything Telltale's done recently. Speaking of which...

Telltale's Game of Thrones & Tales From the Borderlands

Telltale's been kind of going through the motions recently, I feel. I've played through all of their Game of Thrones and Borderlands episodes and that's the conclusion I've come to. Game of Thrones had its moments and really felt authentic, but came with a somewhat fitting flaw - the high death count really made the whole thing feel depressing and hopeless.  Which is great on the TV show but when you're the one driving these characters to their fates? Ew...

A lot of people love Tales from the Borderlands, and that's fine, if the sense of humour is your thing. To me it came off a bit smug and show-offy, I would've preferred a subtler approach. It's still nice to have a lighter game from Telltale though, and it does feature possibly my favourite scene from any of their games.

But yeah, they're still going through the motions. The Michonne mini-series doesn't look too promising...

Until Dawn

Well, I've been harping on about story based games so far so I might as well talk about Until Dawn, a horror game starring such desperate D list actors as the cheerleader off Heroes and Mr. Robot (I haven't seen that show, maybe I should give it a chance). Until Dawn takes a clichéd premise and proceeds to have a lot of fun... not subverting any expectations. In fact, all I can really say is that the tension of not knowing whether I'm one quick-time event away from a permanent character death is what made Until Dawn interesting. Other than that, it's a very pedestrian walk down generic horror lane, with virtually every trope imaginable and at least twenty jump scares too many. It does have some ridiculously detailed, uncanny-valley pushing facial animation however. I might be a bit more invested if I wasn't half expecting Hayden Panettiere's character to regenerate like she always did on Heroes. Speaking of which...

Heroes Reborn

Oh god!!!

What the hell happened to Heroes? When it originally got cancelled, everyone was pretty sick of it as far as I recall, but it never sunk this low, I swear. It's not just the recent stream of high quality TV competition that worked against this - in almost every single facet, this is the worst show I've seen in years. Awful writing, awful characters, embarrassing effects. I could go on but I can't, I just... can't bring myself to write any more about this stupid... just look at it! Get it out of my face, I need to get back to something good...

The Martian (film & book)

Yay! First of all, I love that someone’s finally managed to make a survival story that works without any shoehorned emotional baggage. The Martian hasn’t got any time for that crap. It’s all about solving problems, not crying about them.

I saw the film first, and wasn’t expecting the it to work in such an engaging, uplifting way. I look back now at the likes of Gravity and Interstellar, both films I liked, thinking why couldn’t they have had a bit more fun too? Great cast, great direction, great visuals and a great sense of humour… you get the idea.

Reading Andy Weir’s novel was interesting because it made me realise how largely faithful the film was, and also the way it was written almost as a technical how-to guide for surviving on a deserted planet. I’m exaggerating slightly, but the scientific approach that was already prevalent in the film is significantly expanded in Weir’s prose. It manages to retain a solid sense of humour and excitement throughout, so… if you asked me which version of the Martian to go with? Both!

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds

I went to see this recently. It's alright. Here's the thing - you've got to really be a fan of the album before you go to see this. It's literally a visualisation of the music rather than a play that makes use of the music.

You'll probably get a kick out of it if you're familiar with folks like David Essex and Jeff Wayne himself (who was indeed on stage and conducting), but, you know, I was born in the 90s...

It felt like a bunch of sci-fi fanatics dancing around with ridiculous props, pyrotechnics and a general chaotic atmosphere, like it was all about to fall apart at any moment: Kids not singing in time with each other, a "hologram" of Liam Neeson appearing every five seconds for awkward narration, dodgy background CGI... The music is all good, in a surreal 70s way at least, but, you know, just make sure you're a fan of it before you check it out.

Other Things...

Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Great! Can I really think of something original to say about it? Probably not.

Undertale - I could write for ages about why this is probably my favourite game of 2015 but that would make me an 'Undertale preacher,' and those people scare me.

The Hateful Eight 70mm Roadshow - Great Tarantino film made that bit more special by the presentation. The roadshow's over now so no point recommending it!

Spectre - Fun but flawed Bond film. Liked it at the time, thought about it, realised how lazy some of the writing is, watched it a second time, liked it a bit. The opening is good.

Super Mario Maker - This isn't a review, this is a plug. I made some levels, go check 'em out.

Halo 5: Guardians - LOL REQ POINTS GET IT? REKT! Great Arena multiplayer, dodgy everything else. Agent Locke is boring. Why am I writing this?

That's all for now, see you again whenever I decide to accelerate my plans to release something meaningful. Adios!

Mini-Reviews #3 - Summer Happened

Right, summer is almost over, and it feels like it’s about time I bashed out some new unfettered opinions on stuff. Perhaps it will even help pass the time before Metal Gear Solid 5 comes out. One can only hope…

Terminator Genisys

Crikey, where do I even start with this one? It’s no secret that this latest attempt to resuscitate an iconic franchise didn’t exactly turn out that great, so the question remains, is it still worth watching? Well, yes, kind of, but please deposit your brain by the door. This, after all, is a film that insists, without question, that the only way to stop a nuclear apocalypse is to time-travel to merely hours before it’s due to happen, despite the fact that you could theoretically stop it years in advance. This is a film that thinks that the Terminator attempting to smile - a scene from Terminator 2 that was deleted to make room for better scenes, deserves screen-time as running gag. This is a film that spoilt its only legitimate twist in its own bloody trailers - and - if you successfully managed to avoid those - the posters too.

It can be fun though, a lot more fun than the tiring ad-nauseam of Terminator 3 and the bleak, bland, boringness of Salvation. Watching an old Arnold fight his younger-self, realised in impressive CG, it hit me, this is nothing but a big-budget fan-film, and shouldn’t be held in any higher regard. In that respect, it has its moments. But as an intelligent sci-fi flick to rival the original films? Don’t even go there. 

Bonus thought:  Paps! I had no idea Emilia Clarke could be so annoying.

Ant-Man

No, I’m not just reviewing this to help justify the ‘mini’ in this blog title.

Okay, so I’m going through a bit of a superhero fatigue phase at the moment. I haven’t even watched Age of Ultron yet, so it will probably strike you as odd that I went to see Ant-Man this summer. Well, put this one down to morbid curiosity I guess. I’m a giant Edgar Wright fan, so the fact that he had such a heavy involvement in the early days of this counts as a definite plus for me. Of course I’m disappointed that he didn’t direct it, but I’m sure he had his reasons. Having seen the finished film, I can think of plenty.

Ant-Man’s not bad - it is what it is. I appreciate the simplistic approach and the fact that it accepts the ridiculousness of its source material so unabashedly… After all, Ant-Man is about a man who shrinks in size and controls ants using mind-powers. It’s just… despite everything, I found the film very forgettable. It’s quite hard to put a finger on what went wrong - it’s like the whole film has been muted with a layer of mediocrity. A couple of ‘tip’ sequences in which director Peyton Reed mimics the style of Wright just feel off because they lack the kineticism we’re used to seeing in the likes of Shaun of the Dead. The effects look good, but there’s never enough weight to the action, leaving the audience is in a state of permanent detachment. Still, the final fight is quite something, hinting at the ludicrous potential that could have been unlocked since it establishes that literally anything can be shrinked or grown at ease. Perhaps it’s good that they didn’t go crazier, but a little more insanity might have made the film stand out a bit more. As it stands, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the film - if you’re not suffering from superhero fatigue you’ll probably enjoy it quite a bit. 

Bonus thought:  A cameo from Marvel’s ‘bottom of the barrel’ Avenger feels like the most shoehorned-in bit of ‘universe building’ nonsense that’s ever come out of one of these films.

True Detective Season 2

The biggest problem with True Detective Season 2 is the fact that it’s called True Detective. The first question anyone asks will inevitably be, ‘is it as good as the first season?’ which is an unfair comparison for so many reasons. It’s an entirely different story, different cast, different location, and the circumstances surrounding its release are totally different. Season 1 came out with virtually no fanfare, and became a big hit. For Season 2 we’re all expecting something great from the get-go. I guess it makes sense to make it a ’sequel’ for marketing purposes, but the point I’m getting at here is that for all intents and purposes, they shot themselves in the foot with this one, and this should be treated as a separate show.

Christ, that was rambling. Maybe I should talk about whether it was as good as the first season…

Well, it’s certainly a more laborious watch, if that makes any sense at all. The meandering plot is dark, grisly, and kinda all-over-the-place. Ask me to describe it, I’m tempted to just shrug and blow bubbles, such is the convolution here. Watch it for the characters, I’d say, and the general atmosphere. It gets under your skin in a mildly hypnotic way, even if long stretches of episodes are padded out with meaningless pretentious dialogue. Performances are good for the most part, especially Colin Farrell, who I don’t think has ever been on such fine form. There are some great action and set-pieces sequences peppered throughout, especially towards the end, though there’s nothing as insanely well crafted as McConaughey’s one-shot drug-fuelled gang infiltration from the first season. 

Bonus thought: Not sure Vince Vaughn convinces as a honcho tough-guy gangster type. Oh, maybe that was the point.

Fear the Walking Dead: Pilot Episode

As if superhero fatigue wasn’t enough, I’m gonna go ahead and add zombie fatigue to my list of impairments. Specifically Walking Dead fatigue. Because my god, is there a lot of The Walking Dead around at the moment. I could ramble for ages about some of my problems with the main show, but let’s not do this now. Let’s talk a bit about the new spin-off prequel that debuted last week.

I was cautiously optimistic about Fear the Walking Dead, as I figured it would be a fresh new perspective for the franchise. Away from the repetitive trudging through forests, sitting contemplatively, more trudging, more sitting contemplating… the crickets, oh god the crickets never stop!! But I digress. Fear the Walking Dead’s setting is boring. The pre-apocalypse world is boring. The action is boring. Sorry if this sounds pre-emptive and immature, but it’s simply my knee-jerk reaction to many of the generic decisions that were taken with this pilot episode.

They’re generic because this story has been done to (pardon the pun) death. Of course there’s the drugged up protagonist who makes first contact with the undead and doesn’t know if what he’s seen was real. Of course there’s a character who’s been reading up about mysterious outbreaks and is met with skepticism by others. Of course there’s the viral video of the one zombie being gunned down by police, long before anyone suspects something is up. Maybe I’m expecting too much, but I’d like to be surprised once in a while, guys. In spite of these things, and the mostly sub-par acting, I started to warm to the show towards the end. I found Frank Dillane’s Nick character to at least be engaging, as he wanders about in a state of deluded panic, seemingly channeling a young Johnny Depp. Maybe it’s his face. Anyone want to reboot Edward Scissorhands? I lost track again. Where was I? Oh yeah, talking about a show I don’t care about. Well, whatever. I’ll see how this pans out over the next few weeks. 

Bonus thought: Opening with a guy stumbling around would be nice zombie foreshadowing, but Shaun of the Dead did it already. Yes, I’m namedropping that again.

Rare Replay

Now to balance out the negativity from above with some good old-fashioned gushing. Yes, I've talked about Rare Replay already, but now that I’ve been sitting with a controller glued to my hands for the past month, I can confirm that everything went well with this one. Great value, great presentation and a great set of games to boot. Let’s dig deeper…

Quick reality check. The games are dated, inevitably, and there’s nothing we can do about that. The ZX Spectrum games are ancient and cryptic to the point of incomprehension. The Snapshots feature is alright, but pales in accessibility to NES Remix. Jet Force Gemini’s controls are weird - I personally have no problem with that, but I can see why people can’t get past it. And yes, Conker’s Bad Fur Day doesn’t hold up well against the more recent Xbox version, which unfortunately wasn’t included here. Neither is GoldenEye, of course, but we can’t help that. I definitely suggest digging out your old N64’s for it though - split-screen multiplayer is still a blast.

I like to think of Rare as being the Aardman equivalent in the gaming world. I grew up with their games, I follow what all their devs and ex-devs are up to on Twitter, and I know far too many facts about the history of the company. So the Rare Revealed video segments are great extra material for me - interesting too, talking candidly about Nintendo on a first-party Xbox product (despite the whitewashing of all Nintendo logos and more in the games themselves). These behind the scenes videos did leave me wanting more though - thankfully they’re planning to continue the series on YouTube.

What’s important to me is that this marks the resurgence of Rare in the gaming industry as a force to be reckoned with. I don’t normally care about charts and stuff, but there’s something satisfying about the fact that Rare Replay is the company’s first game to hit number 1 since the Banjo days. I hope it encourages Microsoft to give Rare a more hands-off approach, to nurture its IPs better (as they’ve already started doing with the likes of Killer Instinct and Battletoads) and to let them to preserve their iconic British charm - its quite telling that there’s no mention of Kinect Sports in this whole collection. 

The Banjo games are brilliant. Perfect Dark is one of my favourites of all time. If you want to start somewhere, I actually recommend the obscure haunted house brawler, Grabbed by the Ghoulies. It was unfairly treated at the time, and it’s brilliant, easy to play but with a lot of challenge to boot - it’s a cacophony of silly noises and hilarious designs and stands as a brilliant summation of the company’s humour and visual appeal overall. Diddly-doo!

Bonus thought: I’d never played Viva Piñata before but I’m thoroughly hooked now. Though I wish the Rare revealed video explained who the hell thought using Comic Sans as a font would be a good idea.

Well, that was quite a bumper set of reviews. Though I’m looking at the clock, and Metal Gear Solid 5 still isn’t out yet. Bugger. 

Mini-Reviews #2 - Sci-fi Roundup - Apes, Space Raccoons, Bald Men & Betas!

Oh, wow. I've somehow broken the 'one blog per month' curse to do another selection of half-arsed reviews. This time they're all sci-fi themed. Yep, time to embrace my inner nerd...

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The confusingly titled sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes (how can the dawn come after the rise?) is a brilliantly made blockbuster. Even if you disliked the previous film, it's worth giving this one a shot as it has a significantly different tone. The film does a good job of keeping you invested and rooting for both sides, though the CGI chimps undeniably steal the show. Koba in particular gets some very scene-stealing moments. The characterisations and mo-capped performances are complex and nuanced even when the film dares to devote entire scenes to subtitled sign-language and simple primal growls. Despite devolving into silly, schlocky action full of apes-riding-horses-with-machine-guns, exploding skyscrapers and overly convenient plot contrivances, it does so in such a way that the film loses none of its credibility while more than fulfilling the Summer blockbuster action itch.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Has Star Wars come early? Er... if Han Solo were a space raccoon and Chewbacca were a talking tree... maybe... Actually, Chris Pratt's Starlord is even more the Han Solo type, making for a likeable protagonist, rolling around with his inexplicably-still-working Sony Walkman. Some good song choices in this movie. It's fun seeing a goofy ensemble sci-fi that doesn't take itself too seriously, but does enough to make us care about what is happening. I'm looking at you, Star Trek Into Darkness. Effects can be a little over-flashy and some scenes are derivative of other Marvel films (good or bad depending on how much you're into them, personally I'm a little burned out), yet the film has a lot of director James Gunn's wacky indie charm, a massive likeable cast and does a great job setting up an expansive and completely bonkers world. I just wish Peter Serafinowicz had more to do.

The Zero Theorem

Moving away from blockbusters, here's something that's had virtually no marketing of any kind. A dystopian film from Terry Gilliam, very much in the vein of his classic Brazil (which is one of my favourite films), though this is way more abstract and less accessible. Django Unchained's Christoph Waltz plays Qohen, a bald, deluded programmer tasked with mathematically proving that life has no meaning, or something. It's all very surreal and visually interesting, as one would expect from a Gilliam sci-fi. There are plenty of quirky elements, like the AI therapist who at one point breaks out into rap for no reason whatsoever. The film is only sporadically thought-provoking though, it's mostly just headache-inducing Gilliam nonsense. At one point a character asks, "Do you have any idea what the zero theorem is all about?" which is a very apt comment.

Destiny (Beta)

Alright, now let's talk games. As anyone who's been following Destiny's development probably knows, Bungie ran a beta of their Borderlands-esque Halo-but-not-Halo shooter for the public a few weeks back. I had a decent amount of time with it, but I came away somewhat disappointed. Production values - awkward Peter Dinklage dialogue aside - are incredibly strong, particularly soundtrack-wise, while the controls are as smooth as you'd expect given the company's heritage. It's just that the focus is so much on grindy, MMO-style repetition... I spent nearly two hours trying to grind out a tank boss with a couple of other cohorts and wandered what I was doing with my life. There's just so much repetition in the design that everything rubs off as generic and pointless, in spite of how good it looks. Guardians? Darkness? Fallen? Blah. Thanks Bungie, I'll pass. I think I'm getting a bit sick of sci-fi now.

Mini-Reviews #1 - Godzilla! Fargo! Mario Kart 8! E3!

Let’s try something new then, seeing as these blogs aren’t going to write themselves. Mini-reviews! Boom!

Godzilla (2014)
At last someone in the West figured out how to make an actual Godzilla movie unlike 1998’s pseudo-Jurassic Park nonsense. Godzilla himself has an impressive sense of scale and looks very good for once, but he sure likes to make us wait, almost like he’s doing a two hour long striptease. It means that we get just the right amount of Godzilla to have an impact, but we’re left with a mediocre human story to carry things, which only gets more generic and tedious as the movie progresses. It's generally all very well directed and acted; the other monsters have some decent moments, though I would have personally preferred it if ole Godzy was fighting something that didn’t look like an amalgamation of literally every single recent movie monster from Cloverfield to Super 8. Let’s get some of those bonkers Japanese monsters back. Well, maybe not all of them…

Fargo (Series)

Made oddly more compelling by the fact that virtually nobody I know was watching it, this series captures the tone of the Coen brothers film perfectly with some great visuals and a terrifically deranged Billy Bob Baddie. Between some over-the-top anti-heroes and ann amusing supporting cast (hi Saul!) there’s a strong, believable female protagonist much like the film to keep things grounded. Speaking of which, I worried at first that the characters and scenarios would be too archetypically similar to the film (to which the story is only loosely connected) but that fear subsided before the end of the first episode. Overall thoughts now that it’s over? Well, it was occasionally a little slow-moving, probably didn’t need 10 episodes, but there’s an engaging undercurrent of tension throughout. Now if only I could get over Martin Freeman’s accent.

Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
Mario Kart 8 is like meeting up with an old friend you've kept bumping in to since 1996 and discovering that they are still exactly the same as they’ve always been, except they’ve suddenly struck gold in the looks department. Which is to say that the graphics are the main new selling point in Mario Kart 8, unless you count the anti-gravity stuff… but that would be doing a major disservice to the best racing game of all time. The replays are cool - scrubbing through them is a lot of fun; having no control over the camera isn’t. The racing is solid but the lack of item stocking is odd if you’ve been playing the series for years. The balancing is fairer than it has been previously (shudder) but still regularly aggravates. The battle mode is lazy. The extras are non-existant. Oh, stop whining! It’s Mario Kart.

E3 2014
E3 was a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t said anything about it which is weird because I’ve usually made a stupid parody video by now. Maybe E3 just wasn’t very exciting this year? Actually, that’s not true, the main reason is probably because there weren’t really any silly conference goofs to laugh at this year, so all we're left with is a load of marketing jargon and fake gameplay trailers for expensive shooter sequels. Microsoft did a good job of turning around the Xbox One’s terrible reputation. All it took was a fan-spanking Halo collection and the promise of 4000 gamer points, apparently. Sunset Overdrive looks passably entertaining and I’m hyped about the Platinum Games thing because Platinum Games. Sony went through the motions and kind of ran out of steam somewhere around their hundredth indie showcase, though I’m looking forward to the likes of No Man’s Sky. Nintendo meanwhile are now so stuck up in their own little world that literally anything goes, it seems, and it was refreshing to see things like Splatoon and the wacky new look for Zelda. Amiibo though - those Skylanders style toys for Wii U? I’m not convinced, but if anything’s gonna save them at this point, resorting to the old ‘gotta catch-em all’ tactics probably isn’t a bad idea. So there was some decent stuff at E3, but was there enough to justify buying a new console yet? Ask me again when Metal Gear Solid 5 comes out.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Review

Minor spoilers ahoy

The Amazing Spider-Man 2, not to be confused with the Spider-Man 2 that only came out 10 years ago, is the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man, the reboot of the movie version of the origin story of The Amazing Spider-Man comics, previously adapted in the 2002 movie Spider-Man. Still with me? This time around Spider-Man must face ‘Django 2: Electric Boogaloo,’ along with his nemesis the Green Goblin, Harry Osborn, who previously appeared in the movie Spider-Man 3 as the New Goblin, the son of the Green Goblin, Normal Osborn from the movie Spider-Man. Because comic book movies.

Andrew Garfield doesn’t have Tobey Maguire’s gift of unflattering facial expressions but admittedly comes off better as a more conflicted, nuanced version of Peter Parker. Which is funny when your superhero film also features a flying neon-blue Jamie Foxx playing what essentially amounts to a Dubstep version of Mr. Freeze. This film goes all over the place - it’s over the top and conventional at the same time, with an emphasis on setting up all the million billion sequels and spin-offs; that’s the Avengers law I suppose, stating that a superhero film series can no longer exist unless it plans to last several decades and contain at least twenty interlocked AAA blockbusters. All this obvious web-spinning (if y’all pun the pardon) would have got on my nerves except for the fact that it was all quite entertaining.

I’m glad that this sequel had the courage to follow through on a couple of lingering threads from the first film, but to be honest I could have done without the whole conspiracy subplot with Peter’s parents in the first place. The opening of this film is hilarious. It’s like the writers watched The Dark Knight Rises and soiled themselves, so felt they had to go with a plane crashing sequence too, one that feels out of place and serves virtually no purpose. Oh, I guess it did have a purpose - product placement for a certain Sony laptop. If we are to believe this film, these laptops are apparently able to stay connected to a server and upload a file in an exploding depressurised plane travelling at hundreds of miles an hour. The payoff to the conspiracy subplot is… basically just a confirmation of things that we, the viewers, suspect or already know by this point, and it’s pretty underwhelming at best. Plus the whole setup undermines the ‘Peter Parker is an everyman’ idea by making Oscorp far more integral in every area of his life. Speaking of which, I’d just like to write a quick letter to Spider-Man…

"YO SPARKLEZ"

Hey genius, you know the Oscorp company, the one with all these shady ties to genetic enhancements that was already responsible for your spider powers in the first place, oh, and that whole Lizard fiasco in the first movie? The one where your girlfriend works and for-some-reason-you-seem-totally-fine-with-her-working-there-despite-worrying-about-her-safety-because-you-are-also-spiderman-angsty-angst? You don’t suppose that the company shouldn’t already have been shut down because the whole of New York got wind about the Lizard thing and probably doesn’t feel safe with this massive shady corporation trying to control the future of science? You don’t suppose that they could be responsible for the creation of more super powered monstrosities in the future, do you? The kind that might, I dunno, put your girlfriend in danger, perhaps? You don’t suppose that your creepy childhood friend with serious emotional issues who’s just become the head of said company would ever have anything to do with that? You don’t suppose you should just openly tell him your girlfriend’s name and where she works so that you can maximise your chances of endangering her and exposing your secret double life do y… oh wait, you just did that, didn’t you. Well, never mind. The Marvel police are coming over here telling me not to worry because it’s just a comic book movie and stuff has to happen “because sequels.”

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a big, noisy, bloated, silly, well-acted, over-acted, under-acted, predictable, shocking, stupid, entertaining ride. The romance scenes work better than those in the Sam Raimi trilogy because Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone actually have believable chemistry, which I know everyone has pointed out a thousand times by now. Despite this, these scenes often overstay their welcome and revolve around really dumb story clichés, but there’s plenty of stuff going on elsewhere in case you lose interest. As others have also pointed out, it's nice to see a modern superhero movie that goes out of its way to show the hero saving civilians. I'm looking at you, Man of Steel. Unfortunately, the action scenes here are ridiculously CGI heavy to the point where they are quite literally just video game cutscenes. I half expected a QTE button prompt to pop up in one obligatory slow-motion sequence. There’s almost no tension in these fights, except for a brief sequence that I won’t spoil because it’s basically the most important plot point of the movie. I don’t know… on the one hand, I feel like this is what comic book movies should be like, with the overdone digital effects, rather than trying to do stuff practically, but on the other hand, I don’t go to the cinema to be reminded that I could be playing Metal Gear Rising. Speaking of which, go play Metal Gear Rising. It’s way more fun than this.

But the film was still pretty good. I give it three and a half Tobey faces out of five.

The Return of The Beards: My thoughts on The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The Hobbit: The Definition of Smug, sorry, The Desolation of Smaug (turns out I’m not the first one to make that joke) is the latest self-indulgent drawn out visually exhausting trek across fiction’s most beloved fantasy world viewed through the eyes of New Zealand’s most over-affluent fanboy-turned-director Peter Jackson. If that sentence seemed rather lengthy then you’ll probably get where I’m going with this.

Okay, everyone knows these movies are long. Everyone knows Jackson is obsessed with squeezing as much detail as possible out of background details and functionally irrelevant plot points. Fine. It’s just that for the first time in the saga, I didn’t feel any satisfaction once the credits rolled. It’s probably not much of a spoiler to say that The Desolation of Smaug ends on an abrupt note, but it’s almost as if we’re getting half a movie here, arbitrarily cut in half before anything of real relevance happens - a by-product of the original two planned Hobbit movies being cut into three?

Wait a minute! Surely this was better than the first film? The one where, you know, we had to suffer through Bilbo walking around his house for 45 minutes? Actually, I have to disagree. I thought An Unexpected Journey kept things flowing with a greater level of humour and charm, with the Gollum riddles section standing out as a highlight of the entire franchise for me. It was flawed, sure, with pointless extra scenes giving screen-time to some old faces (literally) and the aforementioned slow start. Maybe it was the nine year wait we’d had since Return of the King, but I didn’t feel short-changed by the first Hobbit. I’ll stop short of calling it a good movie because I’m worried if I watched it again now I’d be less kind.

I think the main problem is that while it was entertaining, the foundations laid by the first film weren’t particularly strong. The only way a trilogy that tells a single, focused story can work is if the first part does enough to make you care about the characters and their plight. Martin Freeman is an excellent Bilbo but he has to share screen time with a cast of 13 incredibly dull dwarves that I didn’t care about in the first film and certainly couldn’t care less about now. In trying to embellish as much of the story as possible, Jackson frequently shoves Bilbo in the background and gives Thorin "Boring" Oakenshield the lead role.

For a story called ‘The Hobbit,’ it might as well be re-named ‘The Beards,’ since it seems like Jackson would rather devote screen time to the unconvincing facial hair worn by 95% of the male cast. (Incidentally if you thought the facial hair looked bad in the first film just wait until Stephen Fry shows up.) Apparently beards are so important in these movies they even got WETA to animate them digitally for some scenes. I’m not making this up. They paid people to animate beards. Groundbreaking visual effects these are not. I feel like I’m getting a bit off track.

My point is this ‘middle of the trilogy’ film doesn’t even try to do anything interesting with any of the characters and because of the first film’s failure to establish reasons to care my interest was lost very early on. There’s a handful of promising scenes such as Bilbo’s dark turn in the forest; but it’s such a small part of the overall movie that it gets quickly forgotten amongst an endless cycle of dull action and padding. The whole movie builds up to Smaug’s appearance, which starts off well but devolves into a horribly boring action sequence that’s almost incomprehensible. I have no idea what was supposed to be happening during the last 20 minutes. There was a lot of fire and dwarves and beards flying around and I’m pretty sure the droid factory from Attack of the Clones showed up at one point.

Don’t get me started on Legolas’ pointless appearance, or the cringe-inducing ‘there could be anything down my trousers’ love triangle, or the fact that Gandalf’s sub-plot doesn’t go anywhere, or the CGI bee that lands on Bilbo’s nose and looks like the worst visual effect ever conceived this side of the Amazing Bulk…

There’s an argument that The Hobbit book was written as if Bilbo was reciting it from memory - anything that didn’t matter to him was left out (to be later filled out through Tolkien’s obsession with appendices and whatnot). Jackson’s vision of The Hobbit is to give us the ‘complete’ version of the story all cobbled together while showcasing his production company’s outstanding ability to render more and more beards. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that - for the most part the film still holds up as a piece of fantasy entertainment. The problem is, in my opinion, the excessive approach just isn’t worth it - the story is no longer about Bilbo, it’s about beards talking to more beards, with extra beards thrown in for good measure. The Hobbit stood the test of time because it was a concise, engaging, simple little novel aimed at a younger generation. Sometimes we don’t need embellishment. Or CGI beards.