Silent Hill: Revelation 3D

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Okay, look. Yes, the next movie I saw was also a horror movie based on a video game franchise, and yes the previous entry in that series was objectively worse than any of the Resident Evil movies. That is no excuse to just skip to the next review. Thbbt, I say.

I actually do have at least a handful of things to say about Silent Hill: Revelation. The first is that it was shockingly coherent, with plot turns that could be predicted, characters that (mostly, at least[1]) had explicable motivations, and a by-the-book cultist storyline that was definitely a viable sequel to the earlier work. The second is that it used up a lot of that goodwill by giving none of its non-cultist characters agency after the first third of the film. The third and most mysterious is that the girl you undoubtedly saw walking around in a red Marty McFly vest in the previews is actually not Michelle Williams, a possibility that never entered my mind until her name wasn’t in the closing credits. (Sean Bean is still her father, though.)

The last thing is that the various nods to videogame iconography thrown around have made me itchier than ever to play Silent Hill 3, which it turns out is directly what this movie was based upon. Who knew? I thought all of those games were standalone, but I guess not.

[1] I mean, I guess you accept that cults want to raise some god or demon, or bind one, because some awesome thing will happen if they do, but as the awesome thing is never quite explained in such a way as to illuminate the uninitiated and never particularly comes to pass either, one must settle for accepting (or not).

Resident Evil: Retribution

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I haven’t reviewed anything in like a month, which would be embarrassing enough in any event, but is possibly more embarrassing because of all the movies I’ve seen over that period. So, I guess it’s time to catch up?

The first thing I saw was in the dollar theater, since (for some inexplicable reason) the fifth Resident Evil movie did not stay in theaters for even a month. It’s almost like people think that series is trashy and has no staying power? I don’t buy that for a second, of course. Any movie that takes zombie ass-kicker Milla Jovovich and puts her in a clone-filled series of cityscapes in a secret base under the Arctic ice shelf[1] and makes her fight her way through zombies from half a dozen ethnicities, not to mention a skinless, brain-exposed[2] saber-toothed cat-looking thing and Michelle Rodriguez, can be described as a lot of things, none of them trashy nor lacking in rewatchability.

And now that all of you are (incorrectly!) backing away from your screens, shaking your heads in mute disbelief, I’ll go ahead and cut short the review, since it’s not like I’ll be able to add anything else convincing. But I should mention there are strong hints that the next sequel will also be the last[3]. I should also mention, in fairness to equal time, that the series has a hard time deciding how doomed humanity is at any given moment in the sequence of events. I mention this latter because it’s really the only major plot hole in an otherwise tightly plotted- …oh come on! Fine, I’m done.

Sheesh.

[1] I mean, maybe it was the Antarctic? But as I saw no giant flying zombie penguins… no, wait, those are in the Arctic circle, aren’t they? I’m so confused.
[2] Or maybe those are radar pods?
[3] To be fair, the film was in the can long before Star wars Episode VII was announced, so they may change their minds.

Paranormal Activity 4

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So, hey, I finally saw a movie! I still have at least three more I need to see, but just breaking the dry spell is a plus. You may recall there were two previous movies in this series as well as a prequel? Well, Paranormal Activity 4 is a sequel again, and… well, there are two ways to watch it. If you like cameras filming all the things and people refusing to take seriously what they are seeing and eventually scary jumpy things happen[1] and then suddenly everyone starts to die, and especially if you like seeing just how creepy Katie Featherston can be? (Answer, as you know if you’ve seen any of these: seriously damn creepy.) If that is what you are watching for, you will like it just dandy, and are welcome to have all kinds of fun.

If, on the other hand, you are watching it because of the compelling story that has played out across the three previous movies, you will be very sad. Yes, there is creepy Aunt Katie. Yes, this is still about demonic possession as it relates to Katie’s doomed and/or creepy extended family. But really it’s about what happens to a group of innocent bystanders, with only the barest of incremental additions to the overall mythology. Maybe there will be a fifth entry to the series? But, much like the end of the second movie, I still don’t see what would be gained by making a new sequel. Demon wants baby, demon got baby. What else really is there to say?

Well, one thing. The infinite number of infrared dots that a Kinect fills a dark room with? Perfect backdrop for, er, paranormal activity.

[1] Also, there was a basically great reference to The Shining. Not enough reason to watch the movie, but entirely giggle-worthy if you do so.

The Fires of Heaven

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Yes, it really did take me this long to read The Fires of Heaven. (Yes, I really haven’t watched a movie in this long either.) No, it’s not because I suddenly liked the book a lot less than I have liked the previous ones during this re-read. Yes, it spells all-but-certain doom for my hopes of being caught up with the series by the time the last one comes out in three-ish months. Yes, that makes me pretty sad.

But damn, it doesn’t make me as sad as watching Moiraine’s noble-tragic march through the book, every bit as cognizant of the outcome as I am.[1]  It doesn’t make me as melancholy as the loss (in one way or another that is probably not as lossy as you might expect) of three characters I would like to have watched for longer than I got to.

The metaphor breaks here, because most of the rest of what I have to say is good. So much of what isn’t melancholy trending toward tragic is ridiculously awesome (Mat finding his place in the world, finally) or downright hilarious (any given scene from Nynaeve’s point of view, and I feel bad relegating her to the hilarious when there is so much awesomeness to be had by her along the way). Plus, this is the first book where we see into the minds of the bad guys in a sincere and meaningful way. Those sections have always been my favorites, I think, once they were not solely the province of Ishamael, the 4,000 year old lunatic.

If I have to pick a character to dislike (and save for Elaida, this is probably my first time in the read), it’s Egwene. Her rise to power is cool in its way, I like how much she is learning and how much she wants to learn, but the way she turned the balance of power on her friends solely to keep them from ratting her out for doing something she had sworn she would not do, and especially for her feeling so gleeful about being able to upset that balance of power for such an ignoble end? Pretty icky, Egwene. Just saying.

[1]I have read this book at least four times, and every one of them (well, okay, not the first one in 1994[2]) I have felt increasingly more sad over the course of her scenes and inevitably become teary by the time Rand is reading her letter.
[2] This was the first book in the series I had to wait to read. I did not have to wait long at all, maybe only a month or so? But I did have to wait.

Dead Space

71OSRxkysVL._SL1199_So, Dead Space. This is a game I should have completed and reviewed years ago. I mean, literally. Years. I started playing it in 2009, splitting time with my friend Billy. And after a couple-few weekends, we ran out of time and stopped, and I kept not playing it, thinking we’d pick it back up. But that never happened and I suppose never will, now.

I started over, anyway, and had a pretty good time at it. See, you’re this guy who is part of a team landing on a mining ship that sent a distress call and then went dark. It turns out that they had a really good reason in the forms of a weird alien artifact, a recent religion, and a bunch of undead things combined into the twilight of humanity. Unless, of course, you the player can find a way to survive the ship, prevent the coming apocalypse, and save your girlfriend.

At a high level, this game reminded me a lot of Ridley Scott’s Aliens. Too much religion, too much focus on dismemberment as the best way to kill things instead of just shooting them a lot. But the aloneness, the helplessness in the face of superior forces with no good way to leave except by killing everything in your path, and the essential alienness of the foe? It is a good recipe, and probably made the game better than it deserved to be by proxy. But hey, as long as I have fun, whatever works is cool by me.

The Shadow Rising

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I think that I was a little hard on The Shadow Rising in my mind, when I claimed that The Dragon Reborn was the last book in the series that had a solid structure to bring everyone into the same storyline. I mean, yes, some of the characters have fully divergent stories for the first time, and they will remain diverged until the end of the series from here on out. I mean, some people reconverge at certain times, but never everyone all together. (P.S. Still spoilers, for now. Probably not much longer, I’ll be more careful, but they still exist for now.)

But the plotlines in this book constantly mirrored each other thematically in ways that I would be able to describe rather than assert if I had not waited so very long after the book for the review. (This is a real problem that I will try to avoid in the future. Because, pretty embarrassing, right? I mean, even one “for instance” and I’d be satisfied. But my brain is a blank slate on the point, other than having been impressed by it as I was reading. This is one of the upsides of re-reading a book when you know all the things that are going to happen in it. You can get a lot more deeply into the structure of the thing, the themes, the foreshadowing, develop a real appreciation for the craft of writing. When craft exists, at least, which it did here, despite my lack of proof.)

Plus also, some of the coolest scenes in the series, right? Well, at least, the highest concentration of them. Redstone doorframes? Rhuidean? I’m just saying, cool shit went down. Plus… so, this was the first of these books that I read any of. I was at UT for a weekend “come be at our school” trip, in the summer of 1992, and my occasional girlfriend was reading it, and I glanced at what she was reading, a scene where Mat was trying to convince Perrin that they should both ditch Rand, because, crazy channeler guy even if he is the Dragon, right? She explained to me that Mat was less of a dick than he sounded in that scene, and I eventually picked them up based on the recommendation. (Later, I realized that when she sent me through a three-ringed art installment on the UNT campus  hoping I’d have some kind of vision, that was a reference too.) My point is, it will always be special to me not just because I haven’t entirely gotten over the collapse of the Age of Legends and the Da’shain Aiel, but also because it marks the first words I read in the Wheel of Time.

Anyway, good book. But then, haven’t they all been, so far?

The Bourne Legacy

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The number of weeks that have passed since I actually watched The Bourne Legacy should not, per se, be taken as an indication of how well I liked the movie. For one thing, my reviewingness has been spotty at best since I took the job where I make other people make the internet go for stock traders. No, when I think about it further, that’s not just one thing, it’s the primary thing. But okay, I still do stuff now and again, enough things that not only did I watch the third Bourne sequel, but it’s actually the first of three things I am behind upon, so let’s fix that, shall we?

So, movie.  It’s like, on the one hand, I remember Bourne flicks being pretty good. Lots of actions and explosions and I cared what happened to Matt Damon. But then they ditched him (or he ditched them?) in favor of a bunch of alternate super-spies who have been similarly modified, and this is the story of another such individual and his romantic entanglement, because action movies need love interests apparently. OR, you can watch the movie like I did, which turned out pretty okay.

Remember Thor and The Avengers? Take this as an origin story for Hawkeye. Then, try to tell me a) that it doesn’t work and b) that it isn’t better than the plot that was presented. No, seriously, do that. I want to be challenged. But I’m pretty sure I’ve nailed it here.

The Dragon Reborn

It occurs to me that every review after this one will be much harder. Because, see, The Dragon Reborn has a cohesive storyline that weaves its way apart and back together again, although arguably Perrin is barely involved in the climactic action, or for that matter any of the rest of the events, which mostly bring everyone together via traps and/or the whims of fate, and meanwhile Perrin is only being dragged along by Moiraine while causing ripples that will have future rather than current consequences. So I suppose I’ve just made a liar of myself, and the truth is that Jordan was already starting to drift away from everyone being a part of the same grand plan for a book’s arc.

But all the same, this is the last time that was even mostly true, and so it’s still noteworthy. Because Rand is… so, here’s a thing people talk about, why he seems so much crazier in this book as though the taint of saidin was ravaging him, then Jordan took stock and realized how much time was left and kind of backed off that plan for a while. Also, this may be a good time to mention that I’m still not caring about spoilers yet. Good? Good. So anyway, that’s a valid stance to take, authorial error. Whether it is such and I’m being apologist or not, I still think the text, especially the preceding events in the overall story, support another explanation. Which is, Rand is experiencing actual regular psychological trauma based on having just had a prophetic fight in the skies above Falme, taking a magical unhealable wound during said fight, being praised by everyone around him as the savior / destroyer of the world, and still not even being able to control the power he’s supposed to use to do whichever of those things turns out to be accurate. My point being, you don’t need magic evil to explain why he might have experienced a temporary break with reality that reset itself once all his doubts had been erased. Sure, he ended up with the crappy end of the bargain, but at least it was no longer just sitting there, unknown and unknowable. “Am I really really the Dragon? Fine, let’s get to work, then.”

I, uh, may have gotten ahead of myself there. So, anyway, you have Rand running off to fulfill the one part of the Prophecies of the Dragon he knows about, just so he can be once and for all sure instead of awaiting Moiraine’s pleasure. And you have Moiraine vexedly following, never so angry before or since at her own inability to to make it happen the way she wants to, and you have our three Aes Sedai in training headed off to spring a trap so it won’t get Rand instead, even though they know that’s probably why they know about it in the first place, and most of all you have Mat finally getting to be Mat, which is nice because I will like him for the whole rest of the series, except for the book he’s not in and the book where his voice is wrong, but it’s better than disliking him, which I have had to do now and again.

And this is me considering the reviews still pretty easy. Oy. The one bright side of reviewing books I’ve read lots of times and that furthermore almost everyone reading the review has read lots of times as well is that nobody has much in the way of expectations. Oh, also, Egwene? Totally binty. I wonder if this is objectively true or more a function of me liking Nynaeve so much better in my old age. I think it’s an objective truth that is undercut by her eventually growing into what she wrongly thought she already deserved in this book. Alright, I’m done. The next one may be a while in coming.

Mass Effect 2

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Remember when Shepard, um… yeah, okay, neither do I. I know she did something to learn about the history of the Protheans and the present of the Reapers, and repelled an initial foray into “the destruction of life as we know it”, but that’s about all I remember. Because I played Mass Effect way too long ago. To give you an idea of how long ago, I didn’t finish playing Mass Effect 2[1] until after the majority of people I know who like video games had finished Mass Effect 3.

But I did. And it turns out that knowing why the Citadel was attacked and what that means to the next few years of “life as we know it” isn’t so relevant when compared to politics, especially if new players in the galaxy (called by people who are watching history The Collectors because of their habit of gathering up entire populations and leaving through a mass effect relay nobody else has ever returned from in recorded history) kill you before people get a chance to decide if they consider you a hero for sure or not. Although martyrdom is nice for the hero image, don’t get me wrong.

But it’s cool, because Shepard is back a couple of years later (you can’t keep a good hero down apparently, especially when she has the financial backing of her biggest political enemy behind her) to figure out what happened to her and what is about to happen to everyone else, with new allies at her side (and a selection of the best old allies, including Tali, without whom the galaxy basically seems not worth inhabiting). If you liked the first game, you’ll like this one. If you didn’t like the first game, it is either a) because you are a bad person or b) because you hated the inventory system. That has been fixed, and all that is left to worry about is the exploration of uninhabited planets, which is not bad per se as long as you don’t give yourself the mistaken impression that you should ever explore them in advance beyond your needs. Because there are way more planets rich in resources than you will ever need to probe.

And if there are unexplored planets that have plot relevance but are not announced except by looking for them? That is a fault of the designer, not the reviewer.

[1] Technically, I still haven’t finished, as there are monetary DLC that seem worthwhile. But it feels close enough for review work.

The Dark Knight Rises

I hate it when I have to review something that I want to reveal basically nothing about. Okay, let’s start with premise, that’s always safe ground. The Dark Knight Rises is set some eight or ten years after the events of The Dark Knight. Batman has not been seen in all this time, after having been branded a public enemy for his alleged murder of district attorney Harvey Dent. On top of that, Bruce Wayne hasn’t been seen much more often, which hasn’t exactly spelt sunshine and puppies for his various financial holdings and charities. And then, of course, something intriguing happens and something terrible happens, and our various characters are suddenly knocked out of their stasis.

Okay, and that’s enough. As with my previous review, there’s nothing in there that doesn’t happen in the first fifteen minutes or so. I will say only a couple of more words before I send you on your way to the theater, unless you are wiser and more appropriately unbusy than I. Although the first one is a little bit of a story: someday, I may choose to re-read a series I first caught as a young teen, Stephen Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. People have left me with the impression that I may fail catastrophically, but I’m interested to see how it goes, so I may. Anyway, the point is that as the second trilogy opens, Thomas Covenant, storied “hero” of a faraway, possibly hallucinatory land, has a terrible life. Sure, he may have defeated some dark lord or other, but back on earth he’s still a miserable leper. And one of his foes has an opinion on how to strike out at him that has always stuck with me. “What do you do to hurt the man who has lost everything? Give him something back, broken.”

It seems to me that Christopher Nolan has taken that advice to heart here. He doesn’t give Bruce Wayne something back broken so much as he gives him everything back broken, starting with his body, continuing right through his city, and stopping…. well, in theory, nowhere. You’ll have to see for yourself, of course. While this singular focus leaves me with an impression that some pieces of the plot are contrived, none were so glaringly contrived as to detract from my overall enjoyment. Plus, he made that bleakness up to the audience by also giving us the second thing I had wanted to mention, Anne Hathaway in a leather catsuit.