Nightfire on XBox

With the impending Skyfall only mere days away from blowing gloriously across the screen of my local theater, I've been jonesing for a bit of Bond.  Looking around Half Priced Books yesterday after work, I ran across the old XBox James Bond game, Nightfire; which they might as well have been giving away for three bucks.  Of course I pounced on it, having come across an old XBox a couple of months ago on the cheap.

The obvious question one always asks himself when grabbing a Bond game they've never played before is "Is it as good as GoldenEye."

The answer is no.  In fact, the answer is always going to be no.  GoldenEye came out during a special time in all of our lives, that special time being that GoldenEye came out.  I remember looking forward to that game not because of the buzz surrounding it (I was pretty immune to video game buzz in those pre-internet days), but because it was a game based on that most awesome of Bond movies, GoldenEye.  That movie was my gateway Bond movie.  The first one I saw that led to vigorous viewings of all the others.  Pierce Brosnan is my Sean Connery if that makes any sense.

The fact that the game turned out to be one of the most historical console games in history is just icing.  I had no concept of First Person Shooters.  I just know that I felt like Bond ripping through my favorite Bond movie shooting Russian bad guys in bathroom stalls.  My life was complete.  And that's not to mention multiplayer.  I wasn't exactly what you would call "Awesome" or even "Somewhat Decently Good For A Three Year Old Type of Way".  I still had fun, even though we knew this guy Donald who would always kill us within .5 seconds flat of starting.  That was a bit annoying.

But Nightfire is the game I'm playing now, not GoldenEye.  And while it will never be what that game was to me at that time in my life, I must admit to only playing one level so far; so things can change.  The one level was fun, I will give it that.

The thing that throws me off is that Bond in this game was so computer generatingly crafted to look exactly like Pierce Brosnan, they must have used all the money on the technology to Pierce Brosnan-ize Bond's look that they couldn't Pierce Brosnan-ize his voice.  Not even close.  I would venture to say he almost doesn't sound British (Not that Brosnan is technically from England, but you know).  It almost wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't already have Everything or Nothing for my Gamecube in which Bond is so Pierce Brosnan'd into the game, he actually shares the actor's voice.  As a result, that game feels like the extra Brosnan Bond we never got to have. (sigh)

Insidious!

 If you're looking for a movie that'll send its share of shivers down your spine, then you could do a lot worse than Insidious. A Haunted House movie that delivers what you expect yet still does its durndest to avoid cliches sounds like more than one could dare to hope for. And Insidious comes very very close to being that good.

The cast is very believable in their roles. The chemistry between Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne is there. These feel like a well adjusted couple with a handful of kids. You could see this group walking through the neighborhood grocery store and buy that they are a family. The two ghostbuster characters bring in a bit of needed comic relief, but not so much as to derail the tone of the flick. The character of Elise does a fine job of enhancing the spooky factor. Not because she's a creepy person, simply because the information she brings to the table raise the stakes dramatically and the actress does a fine job in not going over the top in what most movies probably would have made a showier role.

 The movie is there to frighten you and it does a very good job with the creep out parts. The director knows how to play an audience and he has a lot of fun trying to get you to pull that pillow you're gripping in even tighter. I particularly enjoyed the fact that daytime was not treated like a safe haven. The different ghosts and spirits were diverse and did well in playing with several different fears.

The first hour of this movie was building up to make me believe I was dealing with a modern classic in the horror genre. Then the third act happened. The thing is, that last half hour isn't necessarily bad. In fact I appreciated its attempt to go in a bit of a different direction than a normal haunted house movie. I simply felt that the execution didn't live up to its ambition.

For a fan of movies full of fright, I have no hesitation in saying it is a movie worthy of your time. I just wished that the brilliance of the first hour was followed through with a more satisfying conclusion.

Skyfall Teaser Poster

I'm a big Bond nut.  I love the movies, even the bad ones.  Yes, I can watch A View to a Killor The Man with the Golden Gunand be a happy camper.  That's just how I roll.  I loved Casino Royale and thought Quantum of Solacewasn't as good, but still very watchable.

I have to admit that even now, it takes a bit getting used to when I see Daniel Craig grunting his way through a brawl, but I still think he's a pretty good Bond, even if he doesn't look the part I'm used to seeing.  Still, great movies and fun times.

Craig's next Bond flick, Skyfall, hits theaters this November and I think the teaser poster they just released is probably one of my favorite Bond posters now.  Something about it just screams old school Bond and I love it.  I'm sure I'll enjoy the movie but the jury's obviously out on how it'll rank against the rest of the series.  I'm getting more jazzed for it by the day now.

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings on the Wii

Indiana Jones swings onto the Wii with his trusty whip and a bunch of motion controls. The latest adventure of everyone's favorite fedora sporting archeologist takes him on a quest for the Staff of Moses as he races against his rival Magnus Voller and the band of Nazis intent on getting the artifact for their own vile superior race driven agenda. Just right off the bat I have to say that I think the game is fun. Does it have problems? Yes, it kind of does. Some of the things people don't like about the game really don't bother me, but I do think there is good and bad to it.

Let's look at what most everyone considers bad first off. The motion controls. This game relies HEAVILY on motion controls. Whether you're slinging Indy's iconic whip or using his fist to knock the teeth out of a Nazi, you'll be putting your body into it. This aspect, I really didn't have a problem with. I like the feel of wielding the whip. Of feeling like I'm in a fist fight pummeling a Nazi within an inch of his life. If you don't mind that kind of thing, the game probably won't bother you as much as it does some people. However, the sensitivity of the motion can sometimes be a problem. Especially in the fist fights. You swing the Wii remote, Indy doesn't swing. BAM, a cheap shot to the face by a lucky Nazi. That gets annoying. Especially when you have a room full of brawlers coming at you. The cool thing is, you can use your whip to pull these guys to you and head butt them into submission and it feels great. The bad news is, sometimes you pick up a shovel, take a swing and the game doesn't read your motion and suddenly you have a bunch of dudes the size of the Airplane Bruiser from Raiders of the Lost Ark dogpiling you out of commission. All in all, though, I can forgive the game for that, because when it does work, it does feel rather satisfying.

The negative thing that drives me the most crazy is unskippable tutorials. Yes, these things will make you want to brain yourself with the nearest convenient concrete block. Say Indy gives you a run down on how to use your gun to take out bad guys who are hiding in a balcony. You take them out, walk off and a Cheap Death awaits with a bad step off a ledge or something of the sort. That's right, Indy gets to take another five or so minutes to show you how to take out balcony hiding bad guys with your sidearm once again with no way to skip through it. Uggh.

One other thing that might rankle is the running length of the game. It's pretty short. Less than ten hours, probably take you about 6 or so if you're not trying to get everything. This is okay with me as I only get to do my gaming in 20 minute spurts most of the time and with a good amount of checkpoints to save your progress, it can stretch the game out over a good couple of weeks or more for me. Then again, those who have hours to spare at a time will zoom right through this without breaking too much of a sweat.

That aside, I do think the game is fun. It feels like you're controlling Indy through a decent Indiana Jones movie. The locations feel like something you'd find in the movies and there's a decent variety to them. You start off in the Sudan and find yourself going through places like ruins in the jungle, the streets of San Francisco, a wrecked ship found underground, and the icy tundra of Nepal. You'll find a lot of brawling and a bit of puzzle solving along the way. Nothing that'll make your brain explode, but still fun to figure out and satisfying when you see the results. Once again, it's a decent job of making you feel like a participant in a Jones flick.

You can find a lot of "artifacts" hidden along the way and get enough of them, you can unlock movie trailers for the Indy series or new skins for the character to wear. There are a few cool moves you can do (such as killing a certain amount of bad guys by knocking a shelf on them) and unlock Glory Moves, which unlock other things. Most noticeably, the classic Point and Click adventure The Fate of Atlantis. In a way, you're getting two games for one in that regard.

Another thing about the game I found enjoyable is that amongst a lot of the levels, we find some arcade type action. A lot of time, you'll have the gun and you'll be a part of an on-rails shooter where you have to figure out the best way to dispatch bad guys. You'll find yourself on a runaway trolley shooting at car after car trying to gun you down. There's a pretty cool plane sequence where you have to navigate your way through a canyon-like area and take out enemy planes as you do it while holding the Wiimote like a joystick. This was frustrating to me at first, but once I got the hang of it, I found it quite fun. Also some water rafting and things of that nature. I found it a nice little way to break up the traditional bad guy fighting, puzzle solving play of the rest of the game.

For those who love them some Indiana Jones (what sane person doesn't), I think you can find this game cheap enough nowadays to warrant a buy. I don't feel it's good enough to justify paying the full price when it came out, but after the price drop; sure. If not a fan of the whip master, a rent would suffice. You just have to know going in how much you can tolerate the heavy use of motion controls and if that's worth trudging through. For me, it was. But, as they say, your mileage may vary.

Stargate Extended Edition Blu-Ray

I haven't seen this movie in a long time.  It's hard to believe it's coming up on being 20 years old, but when I think about it, the last time I saw it, it was during a weekend where we had free HBO or Showtime or something for the week and it was one of the newer movies being featured.  So  yeah, been a while.  However, I do like Sci-Fi and I found the Extended Cut Blu Ray for a whopping five bucks at Target and couldn't resist.

Being so long, I didn't remember the particulars of the movie very well, so it was almost like seeing it for the first time.  It's a movie that takes the idea that the Egyptians weren't worshipping gods after all, but a race of space aliens that were using them as slave labor.  Eventually, the humans became too strong and the aliens, led by Ra, took off; but not before leaving an artifact to be found thousands of years later.  That would be the Stargate, of course.  Which opens a portal through space to distant galaxies.  After recruiting a young floppy haired James Spader to help them unravel the mystery of the Stargate, a team is led by Kurt Russell (at his square jawed, high and tight haircut early 90s toughest) through the Gate to find out what's on the other side.  What they find is a race not unlike the early Egyptians, being used by Ra and his forces as slave labor once again.
 

I love the idea behind this movie.  The execution of that idea is good, but I think could have been a lot better.  As it is, it's an entertaining piece of sci-fi with a decent archeological mystery and action that moves along nicely and hits all the notes it's required to.  It just seems as though they didn't reach the potential that the set-up of the movie promised.  The story is of the classic mold of a group of soldiers teaming up with a primitive race to fend off their technologically superior evil overlords set in a sci-fi mold.  For the time period, the special effects are very good and I actually think they hold up pretty well.  I actually didn't think there was as much FX as you would expect in a movie like this, which isn't really a bad thing. 

In a movie like this, there are leaps of logic that must be made to make the story work and it's a credit to the movie that I took those leaps without much grumbling.  The one thing the movie asked me to do, though, that I simply could not was to take French Stewart seriously as a hard nosed soldier.  Couldn't do it.  Sorry.  Hearing tough guy snarky dialog coming from the Squinty Eyed One was just one leap too many.  Also, Hollywood once again doesn't disappoint with it's obvious love affair with the name Jack.  In this movie, we have Russell's character named Jack and Spader's last name Jackson.  Subtle, Hollywood, subtle.

Tough Military Guy Who Takes Crap From Nobody

Those quibbles aside, it really is an entertaining movie with Spader doing good with the role type that would be taken over by Jeff Goldblum in Emmerich/Devlin's "Independence Day", and I really liked Kurt Russell as Jack O'Neil.  You wanted to like him, because Kurt Russell is just so darn awesome, but he was a character with flaws and layers and maybe he didn't have the best of intentions, but Kurt was good at giving you windows of the sympathetic side of O'Neil.  As with others, I can't speak highly enough of David Arnold's score.  I miss big scores in movies with recognizable themes.  This might be one of the best movie scores ever, if only for the main theme.  I loved it.  Basically, what we're dealing with here is just a fun action/sci-fi flick that asks you to go along for the ride and have a good time with it, and I enjoyed it for that.  It's just a shame that I felt it could have been so much more. 

The blu-ray side of things, though... that's another story.  I got it cheap, so I can't complain too much.  The movie just doesn't pop like other blu-ray releases do.  I can't compare it to the DVD release, as I never saw it, so I don't know how much of an upgrade it is, but the picture just doesn't blow me away.  The menu is kind of awkward.  When I go to, say, scene select, the disc does this weird pause thing that briefly takes you back to the main menu screen as it resets the background music before sending you back to the screen select menu.  Weird.  Also, I didn't realize until after I was done that you had to have subtitles on to see the subtitles when the aliens were talking.  I went through the movie thinking that was maybe just a stylistic choice by the filmmakers, yet still felt like I was missing some plot.  Now I know why.

Still, for the price I paid for it, I don't regret the purchase.  It's a bit of a questionable blu-ray, but it's a fun enough movie that its worth owning.  I say 3 stars with the shoddy blu-ray issues, 3.5 stars for the flick.   

Five Reasons RoboCop 3 Will Blow Your Mind

I've been watching the first couple of RoboCop movies since before I was probably old enough to be able to.  The first one to this day stands as a classic in it's genre and is still extremely entertaining to watch.  The second one fails to rise up to the standards of the original, but is still wacky and crazy enough to entertain if you are able to separate it from it's predecessor's greatness.

Which brings me to RoboCop 3.  I've never seen it.  Someone like me, who lived and breathed the Half-Man, Half-Machine while I was growing up to have not seen the third one might seem a little out of character.  It's one of those movies you hear bad things about and attempt to avoid so as to hold the image you have of the character in an untarnished light.  Admittedly, I've never been one to let popular opinion keep me from watching something that might even come close to entertaining me, but I still never gave this one a shot.  I've seen bad sequels to movies I hold much higher in estimation than RoboCop before.  Take Jaws: The Revenge for example.   Of course, to be fair, I saw Jaws: The Revenge at an age that if you were to throw a goldfish into a home video and called him Jaws, I would of thought it brilliant.  I think I was beyond that age when Robo rolled around.

And then lo, from on high, came Netflix Streaming.  And then came RoboCop 3.  And I simply can't believe how this movie blew my mind.  Here are a couple of reasons why, if you don't believe me.  And if you care, spoilers ahoy.

This is the movie that....

MADE NINJA ASSASSIN ROBOTS BORING

Seriously, this movie has the most superfluous use of Ninja Assassins I believe you will ever see committed to film.  If you take the evil Ninja Robots out of the movie, it would make absolutely no difference.  That's how much they matter to the plot.  Never mind how we are dealing with a world in which RoboCop is one of the most advanced pieces of technology out there, now there are suddenly Ninja Assassin Robots that look exactly like humans that make him seem almost obsolete. I might overlook that glaring plot contrivance if they were actually cool.  Or, you know, threatening.  All they do is to serve to trip RoboCop up a time or two in two scenes at most before he blasts them into oblivion.  At least in RoboCop 1 and 2, Ed209, Clarence Boddicker and Cain really screwed RoboCop up pretty royally.  This guy chops RoboCop's hand off, Robo just replaces it with a machine gun attachment and blows the guys head off.  End of fight.  What a lame Terminator knock-off that guy (and his look-a-likes) turned out to be.

MADE LEWIS GO OUT LIKE A PUNK

Officer Anne Lewis became Murphy's partner right before he got blown away and became RoboCop.  She was also the first to realize just who this walking tin can really was.  She was there by his side every time he went against orders or into situations where they were likely not to get out alive.  Now I understand the actress asked to be killed off.  And there's nothing wrong with killing off a strong supporting character when it means something.  In this movie, it was meant to pit RoboCop against the evil OCP home eviction crew.  Who he was going to be against anyway.  They play up her death as a reason that he turns his back on the law and supports the rebels, but the story was heading in that direction anyways.  That was why he and Lewis were in the fire fight that got her killed to begin with. Sam Jackson famously asked George Lucas to not let him die like a punk in the Star Wars Prequels.  If he was gonna go, he wanted to go out in style, not like some meaningless piece of collateral damage.  Lewis died like a punk. If you're gonna kill off a character like that, let's not do it during an impersonal fire fight, give her a good death.  And not some cheesy dying line about making the bad guys pay.  We'll miss you Officer Lewis, but your death was lame and lacking in any emotion.

THAT TOOK AWAY PETER WELLER

I can't blame the guy playing RoboCop for being "Not" Peter Weller, it's obviously not his fault.  However, the lack of Peter Weller is a bit jarring, especially at first.  The voice and movements seem a bit off, but that's just the least of it. When you kill his partner, who we associate with Weller's partner, and expect his reaction to hold the same emotion Weller would bring is kinda stupid.  Look, I get that he did not want to come back and that we should see RoboCop - not Peter Weller - but it's like when George Lazenby took over James Bond from Sean Connery and they married him off and made a widow of him within like five minutes, it just didn't ring as emotionally true as if it were the actor we are used to going through the trauma.  RoboCop, in the last couple of movies, has been slowly gaining his humanity back. The Murphy-ness of his true self.  Suddenly, here we have some other square jaw in the suit playing him robotic again.  His expression never changes when helmet is off.  He tosses off Schwarzenegger-esque one liners (that I admittedly got a giggle out of), but the Murphy we know seemed to regress a bit.  Again, I can't fault the guy for his lack of being Peter Weller, but perhaps a stronger script that would have played to his strengths would have been called for.  Or how aboutjust a stronger script, period.  That would have been nice.

INTRODUCED A CUTE LITTLE KID

And what's more, she's a hacker!  That's right, this cute little curly haired girl, separated from her parents during OCP's eviction of her neighborhood, can hack into one of the most violently fearsome robots of previous movies, ED209, and turn him into a guard puppy dog in about 2 minutes flat.  I am of the personal opinion that the insertion of  Cute Little Kids (tm) can turn PG sequels into something less than they should be.  Did we really need to see Zorro's precocious little spawn taking up so much screen time in "Legend of Zorro"?  Imagine what it does to a RoboCop movie.  A franchise where the last 9 year old kid was a foul mouthed drug dealer.  Serving as RoboCop's attachment to humanity in this installment, this little moppet scurries throughout the movie endearing herself to rebels, former OCP technicians and cyborgs alike and putting the smear of Cute all over a movie that could use all the cynical grittiness it can get. 

TOOK THE STING OUT OF THE COP

I remember when I was little, watching RoboCop shocked me with it's ultra violence.  Murphy's death.  ED209s murderous malfunction in the conference room.  Emil's toxic car wash.  Probably not things I should have been watching at that age, but just because I shouldn't be watching it doesn't mean they should aim a movie in the franchise at people that age.  RoboCop was never a Superman-esque hero.  He was a jab at the future of commercialism and corporate power that the filmmaker's saw on the horizon.  He just happened to be an awesome character who appealed to teenaged boys, even if the movie wasn't aimed for that age.  The studios saw this, of course, and decided to give them a movie and in doing so, they de-fanged RoboCop.  It's obvious throughout the entire movie, but especially at the end, when the cops team with the rebels against OCP and a big fire fight breaks out and goes on forever without anyone seemingly even getting hurt.  RoboCop flies by with his RoboJetPack (I'm not even going to go into this atrocity), blows up the tank with a missile attachment, then flies on to OCP headquarters to save the Cute Kid and that's about that as far as the big standoff.  I'm not usually one saying movies need to be super violent to be entertaining, but I think when you take that away from RoboCop, you're messing with the DNA.


All that said, I can't help but not hate the movie too much.  Taken as a B-Movie that happens to star a character I really enjoy, RoboCop, I can get some entertainment out of it.  I've certainly been entertained by worse movies.  As a true sequel to the world, tone and character as devised by Paul Verhoeven and the writers of the original, this falls so short, they might as well not even have tried.

Once More Into the Fray with The Grey

Right off the bat I will say that the marketing for this flick will convince you that you are seeing another movie. A movie in which the Liam Neeson from Takenspends a couple of hours giving a bunch of wolves broken bottle enhanced knuckle sandwiches. The previews lie.

Instead what you'll get is a chilling fight for survival by a struggling group of plane crash survivors in the freezing Alaska wilderness. What this movie does is put a handful of hard edged characters in an impossible situation and asks them how hard are they willing to fight to live.

The group of characters don't always come across as likable, but they mostly come off as real. You are given enough to know about the characters to make you care about their fate. As you would expect, Liam Neeson does a fantastic job as the leader of the group, Ottway.

The movie does a great job at doing what these kinds of movies should do, putting you in that situation and having you wonder how you would react. We are dealing with a group of people who slowly come to realize that they are probably about to die and as the audience we can't help but think if we were in such extreme conditions, would we be willing to try to fight through it?

Director Joe Carnahan uses the wolves and the elements fantastically, giving us a really good idea of what these people are going through. You can almost feel the chill of the blizzard through the movie screen. What he's also adept at is ratcheting up the suspense. One of the most suspenseful sequences I think I'll see in any movie this year deals with a treacherous climb via rope over a deep ravine. Carnaharn let's you off easy for the first couple of trips for the characters over. He waits until its the turn of the guy most nervous about that trip, then he once again takes us hand over hand over that ravine and its truly effective terrifying stuff.

The best thing I can really say about the movie is that after giving you enough chills and thrills to keep your heart rate up for the running time is that the images and the questions it asks linger with you days after the credits start rolling.