Shift 2: Unleased

In a word: disappointed. I loved the first Shift tremendously; it's style of racing fit my preference perfectly and it's still a game I can put in the drive and continue playing. Racing games have always been a part of my life, and with Gran Turismo I was at a crossroads. In those games, you are encouraged to tune, simulate, advance through your "career" and earn money, all for what? You would spend quite a bit of time outside the track, and would find yourself grinding more than anything else. I remember playing the same race over and over just to get some money to buy a new car in order to have a slight chance of competing. After a few hours I would become discouraged and give up. And then Project Gotham Racing came about, and my interest in racing games was renewed. The physics and handling were more arcade-style, yet you were racing real vehicles and awarded for doing neat things on the track. You didn't have to technically master anything, and the result - for me - was a ton of fun. So you could imagine my sadness when the series ended, but then Shift came out and I was overwhelmed with joy.

Shift 2 was released recently, and the fact that I actually pre-ordered the title should indicate how excited I was for it. I picked it up, put it in and started playing. And for a time, it was good. Like, really good. The graphics are amazing; the cars are incredible. The sound is loud and immersive. The new helmet cam is innovative but not up my alley; the game's default view is from within the rider's helmet and I found myself switching out to the classic chase cam. I've tried that helmet cam since and it's weird. The drive looks into turns as you approach them and you get a real sense that the car is a separate entity than the driver. You can look around in the cockpit and truly appreciate the developer's love for cars: the detail is amazing.

So what happened? The difficulty has been spiked, is what, and it's been spiked in terms of driver AI and technical racing. In the first Shift was a bit of a postive/negative karma system, in that you could get points for clean overtake (in which you do not touch your opponent as you pass him) or a dirty overtake (in which you do make contact in order to pass). Dirty overtakes were common and fun: you could run someone off the road and keep on going; in Shift 2 if you dare touch another car you are spinning wildly out of control and your race is over. Indeed, the pack is so hard to catch up to that if you fail and run off the course at any moment it's time to restart the race. The driver AI has been ramped up and they are more aggressive; this is advertised as a feature of the game but I don't like it. I need to be battling morons. If I wanted harder opponents I would take it online. The AI will drive out of its way to block you, and in most cases making contact, which as mentioned will quickly take you off the track.

So you've got to be a better racer, but perhaps I don't want to. If I did, I would go play Forza or Gran Turismo. I like the arcade elements in these games; there is a best driving line you can follow to help you master corners but not following it shouldn't mean you lose the race. Perhaps I am incredibly picky: I require that perfect balance between sim and arcade racing. I believe Shift had that, and now Shift 2 is veering ever so softly into an uncomfortable simulation area. Or perhaps I just suck, and need to practice more. I want to race, I want to win (not all the time of course) and continue through the game. Give me credit for finishing third, fine, but make it close and let me advance. I'm at a point in life though where I don't want to grind away at the same track just to win by fractions of a second. I simply do not have the time or patience; there are many other games out there that can grab my attention and entertain me.

Project Cafe aka Wii2

It's been an incredibly long time since a new home console has been released; I guess the last one was the PS3. Microsoft really took the bull by the horns and got everyone into a frenzy with their viral marketing, making the term a household name and setting the precedent for the game industry (see Portal 2, just last week). I remember being very excited for the 360, even though I had no idea what it was or what to expect entirely, but that's part of the fun right there. When the Wii was coming out, I only felt that tingle of joy slightly, as the uncertainty of motion controls had already set in. But I still saw the potential, and innovation. As it turns out the Wii was pretty disappointing, although it has some pretty killer games. So now we're in a situation where rumours for the next Nintendo console has absolutely broken through the brick wall, just like the Kool-Aid man, absolutely devastating the the rumour mill. And I am completely into it.

I'll tell you why: high definition graphics. This has to be a major detractor from the current Wii. Nintendo has foresight, yes, but they didn't have the foresight to see that HD televisions would be so widespread in a relatively short period of time. But perhaps my view is myopic; the target consumer for the Wii is arguably not me, but the more casual gamer who don't have big screen TVs, let alone a television that isn't a tube. The Wii is a massive success, but a bit of a failure for the intermediate to hardcore gamer. So this next Nintendo system will have high definition graphics; of course it's all completely rumour and nothing is fact, but it seems impossible at this point to not include HD. So there's that.

And what else could be lined up for the system? Touchscreens in all the controllers. Nintendo has always shown great innovation in controllers, and by extension, they have guided the gaming industry. All the current gen systems have a form of motion control now. After the N64, everyone put analog sticks in their system. The list goes on, but it's important to note Nintendo would not be the first to put a screen in a controller - see the Dreamcast - but they could be the first to do it successfully. Nintendo has been a pioneer in the touch screen business with their DS, and the train keeps on rolling.

I also think it's important to return to the foresight here, and use Apple as an example. I read an article a while back that described how the iPad was the product of years of live research: the screen being pioneered in the Macbooks until perfected, and the touch screen introduced in the iPhone and iPod devices. Culminating together, you have the iPad, the device they really wanted to release but needed to perfect first. I can believe Nintendo doing the same thing: you have the combination of motion controls and touch screens to bring out the "perfect" controller. Well, I'm not entirely sold on it, but there are possibilities; Nintendo first experimented  with multiple screen gaming with the Game Boy consoles, of course, but later on with Four Sword Adventures. Each player having their GBA connected to the Gamecube; each with their own screen, and each sharing the big screen up front.

There are many more possibilities out there, and they are all rumour right now. I can only hope we'll see an official announcement at E3 this year.

Update: I know, it's weird, I'm updating this before it's even been published, but so is the way of my blog (I typically write things up weeks before they are scheduled for posting). Nintendo has officially announced that it will be revealing their next system at E3, and that it will be released next year. So, I don't have to remain in a state of heightened anticipatory excitement for long, as we'll be getting all the details soon. But it makes you think about all these rumours in the past week eh?

Dog Soldiers

It's about time I saw this movie! And I'm convinced that if it wasn't for Netflix that I would still be missing out on this little gem. This is a film that come out in 2002 and has been sitting on rental store shelves, box seen but film unseen, for so long. There was a time when I would frequent Blockbuster and this movie would stand prominently, begging for attention every time, but every time, I would turn my back and walk away from it, treating it like an abandoned pup in the forest. But this is no pup, this is a werewolf, and I'm surprised I wasn't disemboweled as I walked through the metal detectors of those now-obsolete rental stores.

Somebody once told me that werewolf movies were my thing and I took that to fact because I can't stop pimping An American Werewolf in London. Aside from that I'm not entirely sure I've seen too many other 'wolf films, aside from Wolf and the disappointing The Wolfman (2010). The fact is though I like the idea of being a werewolf movie guy, and now feel an urge to live up to the title and get into them more. It's certainly better and more attractive than being a "vampire guy" and trying to justify the bile coming out of Hollywood at the moment in that genre. What better way to get into the werewolf craze than a nine year old movie about a British military squad stumbling onto a group werewolves in the Scottish Highlands?

And that's basically the plot: a small British military squad led by none other than Kevin McKidd - Lucius Vorenus himself - are in the middle of a training exercise when things start going awry. They stumble upon another military bunch (who of course are doing secret things) and things take a turn for the worse. They are hunted by these werewolves, and eventually take refuge in an old home, thanks to a zoologist they find randomly about. What we have here is a Zulu situation, except instead of thousands of Zulu warriors we have a handful of werewolves, who have simpler desires: to devour and satisfy their hunger for human flesh. 

The action is great: you feel like they could be making progress shooting at their enemy, but you can't be certain as the point of view is always from the squad members inside the house. Shoot at a werewolf poking his head into a boarded up window, and he disappears howling into the darkness. Is he dead? Just getting rejuvenated? Perhaps these monsters don't need silver to be killed. We get little tidbits here and there on how these monsters are different and similar to how they've been portrayed before in story and films. The soldiers only care about one thing though, survival, and any myths aside, they know they have to outrun their foe or wait until daylight, as that's one mythos that can never be broken. The full moon grants them their power, and it's disappearance means the same for these damned souls.

Dog Soldiers does not mess around that much: it gets off to a shaky start as it travels back in time a few hours for absolutely no good reason. The opening scene is of course a cliche young couple get ready for action, then promptly attacked. The film takes us back a few hours to set up some characters, then just as quickly, four weeks later. But after this bit of odd pacing is taken care of, it's a smooth ride all the way out. We get to see some good werewolves: there is not a single shot of blatant CGI here. We get werewolf special effects that make me happy, because they are unique to the film. They seem "realistic" if I can even use that word here. We don't see transformations, but you can see the human behind their grotesque form. The camera cuts to them and back again quickly mimicking, I'm sure, the frantic nature you would find yourself drowning in should you come face to face with one. There's the requisite and sufficient amount of gore and horrible things present. It's a good ride, and one that I feel bad for not taking much earlier.

Experiment in PC Gaming

The entire reason I got into computers can be attributed to games. It wasn't easy getting them (or anything on the PC, for that matter) to work, or even work well. You had to educate yourself; familiarize yourself with the various kinds of memory, startup files and disk space usage. Or perhaps you're too young to remember when drives were forty megabytes and you had to compress the space just to install a game - but if you compressed it, you were increasing the volatility of the entire computer, not to mention some things don't work on compressed volumes. I became very aware of disk space when my dad brought home a computer with 200MB, and we compressed the hell out of it. It allowed me to install Mechwarrior 2 instead of running off the CD-ROM, and a few other games. Quickly drive space wasn't a problem yet more came up: video and audio cards. Specifically, video cards that enabled true 3D graphics (polygons and the such) were entering the market, and if you were familiar with the industry at the time, you knew how wild it was.

There were many manufacturers of cards, and the game you were playing had to be built to take advantage of it. I'm happy the industry sorted itself out and we have two main providers now and follow standards. There's a level of comfort that we didn't have before when buying games now, but I'm still irked. This is because the tech advances so quickly, and there's a huge range of cards available with various specs. The latest games are demanding, and the ability to play them can be costly. Some say the PC gaming industry is dying out; I would tend to agree and cite costly upgrades as a major reason for it. I can buy an XBox and be guaranteed that any game released for it will indeed work - no upgrades necessary. Then the 360 and PS3 come out and it's blowing away anything on the PC anyway; my interest in PC gaming died six years ago. I think the last one I installed was SimCity 4 (which I don't believe was very demanding anyway).

In the past year or so I've noticed some more standards being introduced in the PC gaming scene, addressing installation and platforms. As I said before, installing a game could be tough, but it's not just because of the hardware or memory. Getting a game installed and configured to work on your system was a chore, and sometimes you end up reinstalling numerous times. Software standards like DirectX have been around and continue to evolve, but I really took notice of are platforms like Steam and Games for Windows. I can't speak for Steam - as I've never purchased a game through it - but I love the idea; digital distribution can be a wonderful thing, although I prefer collecting physical media. Some of their deals are incredible too, and you can get some great titles very easily and very cheaply. Games for Windows seems similar, but again, I'm not buying; instead, today I downloaded a trial of Resident Evil 5. As well, it's important that these are playable on the big screen and are playable with a wireless controller. Enter the 360 wireless controller adapter for the PC, and you're in business.

I keep seeing things about physics cards adding to games; I saw comparison videos on YouTube about Batman: Arkham Asylum, and for the first time in ages I feel like I'm missing out on experience-adding content. The core game remains the same, but it's the details that get enhanced; we're not just talking improved graphics, we're talking environmental effects, movement and other wonderful things. Plus, I was really curious to see if my PC setup could run a modern game. So RE5 installed, and I ran it. Now, this was misleading as this is a "benchmark" demo: not playable. It's like the game is on autopilot and the frames per second are in bold on the screen for you to see performance. Using mid-quality settings I was getting an average of 32FPS, which seems decent, but I'm not sure I can be the judge of that. I'll be researching: how many FPS does the 360 pull off? These "mid-quality" graphics looked as impressive as the 360, and I was excited knowing the possibility they get even better. And that game is a couple of years old.

But then I step back and think: what is the cost of upgrading to something that can push RE5 and all these other games at the highest quality? And 1080p? I refuse to look as I'll get the itch to tinker, but I imagine we're talking hundreds of dollars, perhaps $300? That seams reasonable to me, but then again, that's the cost of an entire console. And was this experiment in modern PC gaming a success? I'm not going to give up the 360, but I will check out some more demos. I have little interest in investing more money in my computer, but who knows; being into tech it's fun to tinker with one's own computer; it's just a matter of time before the bug takes hold. As they increase integration into the Live service (XBox Live) and grant achievements that are viewable on the XBox, the intrigue will be there.

Punisher: War Zone

Sometimes it's easier to write about things you hate, than those you love. This is a movie that I wanted to love - well, perhaps love is to strong a word. I have yet to see The Punisher from the '80s, but will soon enough I'm sure, and I was disappointed by The Punisher from earlier this decade (starring Thomas Jane). He's an interesting character to bring to the screen: by all accounts he's a ruthless killer, but they just fail to properly adapt him to the big screen. Perhaps there is a problem with the comics: I've never really read them before, and I really have to question how he fits into a world dominated by the Comics Code Authority. So maybe that's why these adaptations fail: they just have poor source material.

This can't be an excuse for what I witnessed recently though. You've got a host of bad acting, and suprisingly comical gore scenes. It's like the previous wasn't violent enough that they had to step it up, but just ended up making it silly. I don't have much of a problem with Ray Stevenson, but something horribly awry happened with Dominic West's Jigsaw character. This guy was great in The Wire but fails here; perhaps he just had no direction. At one point in the film he's walking down the street waving his arms wildly, just as I would do when I was in grade four and trying to embarrass my sister. To quote my friend: it was "zany." The scenes, and how they come together are questionable: we have a shootout in a house that ends awkwardly, incredibly odd characters that don't seem to fit, and very questionable motivations. The Punisher himself is clear cut: he's out for revenge and is actually nearly done, but he doesn't express any kind of satisfaction; this guy is severely disgruntled and I'm removed from the immersion of the film as I wonder how he passes slow days by himself in his Ninja Turtles-style lair.

I guess, to some degree this movie was becoming so terrible it was funny. When The Punisher punches a thug in the face, he not only knocks him out, he caves in his entire skull. Come on. I laughed a bit when that happened, but I think half the laugh was devoted to sadness. And I really question Julie Benz: you grew to hate her in Dexter (perhaps annoyed is the better term), and this film didn't help her case. Let's not get started on Martin Soap! Was this guy in the comics? Was he so terribly goofy? It is time to stop bringing The Punisher to the big screen.

Killarney 2009

A handful of images from our camping trip to Killarney a few years back. My personal favourite is on top!

Hanna

For years I was the master of trailers; indeed, I downloaded them every day and stored them for future use. My mouth watered with anticipation on the thick, raw blockbuster previews, many of which would prove disappointing. In the past few months I've slowed down to a standstill, and haven't downloaded a trailer in ages. I've left it up to other means, mainly the previews before a movie in the cinema, and the odd internet trailer. So now sometimes a film comes out and I'm caught completely off guard; for whatever reason I'm not in tune with the marketing machine and I miss it. And then I see these movies, and am pleasantly surprised. I can't help but feel that this has helped many films, but it's bigger than that: it's brought the joy of going to the movies back. Sometimes you see, without really knowing it, 10 minutes of a film - spread over three or four trailers - and lots of plot; indeed, most are spoiled.

Hanna is such a film that I had no idea was coming until twenty four hours before release (April 8). Oddly enough I heard about it on the radio more often than anywhere else; I saw a headline or two in my RSS feeds that described it as a Bourne-style film about an assassin travelling through Europe, but this time, Bourne is a woman. Then I come to understand Eric Bana is in it, and I'm further intrigued. To call his movie "Bourne-style" would be an insult. We get some great performances from everyone involved, including the young Saoirse Ronan, starring as the title character. Basically, to sum up the plot, you have Hanna being raised near the arctic circle in complete isolation, by her father. She's being trained, and educated, to be an efficient killing machine. There comes a time when Hanna decides for herself to leave the nest, so to speak, and begin her mission. What we get is Hanna being on the run, piecing together bits of her life (how she came to growing up in the woods) and interacting with others.

In her journey, she befriends another young girl and her family, learning how things work in ways that an encyclopedia can't teach you. Take for instance, this very subtle, underlying sexuality occurring between Hanna and her new friend. Hanna is young and the film tries hard to push it in your face and make you question it at the same time. Extreme closeups reveal so much character in her eyes, and allowing you time to analyze every detail in her face. Brutal fight scenes punch you in the chest and make you do a double take: how is someone so young, so small and unassuming, doing these amazing things? I don't question the realistic nature of it: a lifetime of training in anything can make you an expert. She's unassuming, fast and well trained; it's a work of art watching her move.

So, this is a great film that pleasantly surprised me. It's not a knock-off, and it's not your typical action film. It has a steady pace and is a great "coming of age story" (I ripped that from somewhere). And, to top it all off, the film was scored by The Chemical Brothers!

Sucker Punch

You can't help but get incredibly excited when you first see the trailer for this movie, and why shouldn't you? What you basically have, at first glance, is 300 but with all the nearly-nude me replaced with beautiful women, how can you go wrong? So there's a team of female ass-kickers, put into various situations: fighting fifteen foot tall gatling gun wielding samurai, crazy fire breathing dragons and steam powered Nazi robots. This movie has it all! So what happens? Baby Doll is traumatized and unfairly institutionalized by her deranged step-father, where the only way she can deal with the horrible situation is to fantasize.

She hatches a plan where she must collect a variety of objects that will help her and some of her friends escape. The layering is kind of odd: she enters the hospital (reality) then immediately switches into the fantasy version. In the fantasy version she goes deeper, until the end where we are pulled out and have to wonder how much of the fantasy world(s) spilled into reality, and vice versa.

We get lots of Snyder's trademark slow motion insanity, and some absolutely stunning camera work and effects. It's a great thrill ride, and makes me appreciate the medium. But I walked away from it feeling a bit mixed. Did I just watch a special effects roll? Was there any real substance there? Does there have to be? So many questions and no energy to really look into them.

This is where I shelve my discussion on the movie for a week and question whether to even publish this thing. I have nothing very insightful to say about it, and I wonder if that's a testament to this movie being so surface driven you can't derive anything but the most basic premise from it: escapism and I guess, injustice. Perhaps I'm not keen enough to derive much more from it than that. I also feel like this movie will grow on me and that I got exactly what I expected out of it: a highly stylized, exciting popcorn flick. I ate my popcorn and enjoyed my root beer throughout the film, and I must say it all meshed perfectly. Oh, and do yourself a favour and click on the poster above for the full resolution version!

Arrowhead Photos

Just a few nature photos from a trip to Arrowhead back in 2009.

Click on the slideshow above to be taken to the full gallery (seven photos).

Smoking in Films

Listening to the CBC around lunch hour is always nice: they typically have an interesting subject and have callers with a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints. The topic the other day was smoking in films, and in particular, Rango. Not seeing the movie I can't comment on the content; they mentioned that there were numerous scenes of various characters smoking. In most cases, they were the "bad guys" but I wouldn't be surprised to see Depp's chameleon lighting up at one point too.

The big talking point is this: should (animated) characters in kids movies be smoking? 

Well I'm going to have to go ahead and say no, they shouldn't. But there are some interesting viewpoints. The parents should take responsibility. This is a good one, and should be ever present anyway, right? You're not going to let social media raise your children for you...completely. It happens: the television has become a babysitter, and there is just no way you can protect your child from seeing everything naughty. They will witness violence, sexuality and drugs (i.e. smoking) on screen. They will process it, and I think there is a great degree of how they've been raised, that will determine the outcome. My niece hears cartoon characters in The Flintstones using the word stupid and she now reacts with a bit of an open mouth and saying "he's using a bad word!" like it's the end of the world. I can only suspect that is a good sign of things to come for her moral compass (although she can be quite devilish at times, but alas, thats kids for you).

I would be surprised to see a lot of smoking in an animated feature. I would be surprised to see it in just about any movie at this point, honestly. Hollywood is obsessed with making movies so universally accessible everything is and has been cut to the bone; case in point is the latest Die Hard film. So of course smoking is something that is easily removed from these films, and there's another viewpoint: simply remove smoking from any media. In Canada this has been happening for quite some time: you cannot advertise cigarettes (you only see them in American magazines here) and the actual product is hidden the counter. It wasn't enough that they were simply out of reach, they are now inside unmarked cabinets, although those cabinets can be plastered in ads for other non-tobacco products, such as soft drinks or chips. They threw some stats around saying this has all helped, so removing smoking from movies should contribute to success, success being a reduction in (youth) smoking.

Ghostbusters smoke. This is not something that I noticed as a child but as I rewatch those classics, I'm surprised to see how much of it was going on, and how it just wasn't a big deal. Perhaps that's the way it is: if you see it a lot in real life, and in movies, you think nothing of it. You're given more opportunity to decide for yourself, as opposed to hardcore pro-smoking (which I guess would be the glamourization of it, say for instance the hero of a film lighting up after conquering some bad guys...I'm looking at you Hellboy). Or hardcore anti-smoking, which I guess would be conveying the bad guys as addicts. Perhaps that's not the greatest view, but one of the listeners made a great point: if the bad guy is smoking all the time, as they do in Rango, kids will associate smoking with bad. But when they get a bit older and enter that wonderful teenage rebellion, they may be more inclined to take up behaviour that they've previously associated with being "bad" and in this case, that would be smoking.

An interesting situation; good luck to all you parents out there! 

The Troll Hunter

Every so often a movie comes around that picks you up out of your seat and firmly plants you in its own universe, this universe being Norway, in particular. And Norway is infested with trolls. I knew I loved this movie in one very particular scene: the camera crew have followed the hunter and lost tack of him in the woods. We see a series of flashes in the distance, then the scampering of somebody running towards the camera; the hunter enters the frame, only slightly out of breath, quickly looks at the student filmmakers and yells: "TROLL", with a strong focus on the "oh." From there the scene gets a little nutty and you know what you're in for. This movie features trolls in all their glory, and couldn't have done it any better.

The movie opens with some text on the screen that - properly translated - indicate that what you are about to see is found footage. Cloverfield? I must say this is my only gripe on the film; it could have just as easily picked up on the first scene, set itself up and told a proper story. The thing with Cloverfield is that you can believe it was one "tape" and the events were recorded over the course of an hour and a half. This movie takes place over a few weeks: basically you are looking at footage that was "found" then edited over a month or so to feature a proper, gripping story of a group of students learning that not only do trolls exist, they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. It's a small gripe but it's there; the movie finishes in a cheap manner but it's easy to get over.

This is an independent (presumably) film that features really fantastic special effects, but also some great characters. Otto is the perfect hunter; sufficiently confident, disgruntled and humbling. He's fascinating to watch whenever he's on screen, whether it's fighting a big troll, or eating breakfast filling out paperwork. The students do a good job too, with Glenn being on-screen more often than the others and conveying exactly how we feel: frightened, excited, intrigued; you name it. And the country itself is another character: in what feels like color-enriched mountainsides and lakes, there are many shots where the characters are talking with nature in the background. Now that you know what to look for, you scan the mountains and rocks, looking for signs of troll activity. You want to be there, dangers included.

So what happens next is the American adaptation, or remake. Supposedly it's been optioned by somebody, and in the works already. Perhaps we'll have a Dragon Tattoo situation, wherein the original foreign version is released Stateside, practically used as marketing tool for the soon-to-be remake. We'll hopefully get a proper BluRay release in the meantime too. I highly recommend the film: very original, with the perfect amount of humour, action and fantasy.

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

The title is a bit lengthy, but so is Godzilla's illustrious movie career. And there is no way I've seen every Godzilla movie out there; it may in fact be a misconception that I love his movies and have seen a ton of them; I've certainly seen my fair share, but when I look at the pool, I can't help but think I've only swam in the shallow end. This is further verified by watching All-Out Attack: the movie looks and feels old, it has terrible acting and cheesy scenes. It has crazy action and awesome monster battles, and a little bit of a unique take on Godzilla himself, but most of the movie feels like it was from the sixties or seventies. It was hard to identify the age of the film, then you look it up: 2001.

Where are the modern special effects? Where is the modern storytelling? Why has this movie not been touched by today's movie-making style? Because Godzilla doesn't bow to that nonsense. It's never been about the special effects, or in some cases, the story. Godzilla is, and will always be, a guy in a suit fighting other guys in other monster suits. If you've ever been involved in one of our conversations about CGI, you know how it is: CGI doesn't look quite right, and "classic" effects will always stand tall, because they are tangible. They are caught on film, not added later and because of this, they are timeless. Anyway, as the film progresses the traditional effects start looking better and you can see a bit of modern influence in here, but it never detracts from the epic battles you are watching.

What's really great about this film is how it feels like a direct sequel to the 1954 original, where Godzilla is just evil. In that original, Godzilla just comes out of nowhere, wreaks havoc and moves on; a product and warning of the nuclear age, Godzilla was an uncontrollable, unstoppable beast that couldn't be reasoned with. Indeed, this film's events take place fifty years after Godzilla's initial attack on Japan. Over the years, Godzilla becomes a saviour, warding off other monsters and protecting the people of Japan. Perhaps his motives were questionable at times, but when aliens visit Earth and plop down some terrible creations, it's Godzilla who comes to the rescue. In this film, he's just plain evil. Rising from the waters, hunting down Japan's protectors, and with absolute fury, kills them all. And just in case you don't want to accept this version of Godzilla, you are forced to as your look into his soulless, inky black eyes.

Mothra and Ghidorah make an appearance too; in the past movies I've seen Mothra was fighting off an evil (although not this evil) Godzilla, and if I'm not mistaken, they become best pals and team up a few times. I'm not sure I've seen Ghidorah in a film before, but since I have him sitting on top of my speaker I felt it was high time to see him in action. IMDB trivia tells me this is a smaller Ghidorah than typical, and to further alter him, he's a good monster; in the past he's been quite evil. There's another beast in there too, but the little thing looks so sad and useless that I think the only reason he was in there was to show how cruel this Godzilla was. The four legged dog-like creature had puppy-dog eyes and a knack for burrowing underground, but was clearly outmatched to Godzilla. Once the three ancient guardian monsters are taken care of, it's up to the humans to step up their game and put an end to this malevolent threat.

Knowing that they are still churning out great Godzilla flicks, it's time to swim into the deep end.

Movie Update - March 2011

Not in any particular order, here are the movies I saw in March! Not a bad run if I must say so. I'm curious though, if I didn't put 60 hours into Fallout 3 over the past four weeks if there would have been even more movies taken in.

• Barbarella
• Reign Over Me
• The Fighter
• Battle: Los Angeles
• The Ghost and the Darkness
• Sucker Punch
• Troll Hunter
• Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
• Iron Man 2

Battle: Los Angeles

No, this is not Skyline 2; I had to get that out of the way. It's easy to draw the comparison, I'll grant you that. An unknown alien threat descends on the west coast (and the rest of the world) and starts messing us up immediately. In Skyline, they abuct people and steal their brains, while in Battle, they just rips us apart with projectiles and explosives. Independence Day is also a film that is quickly drawn into the mix of comparisons, and when you throw that one into the mix, you realize how the alien invasion pic has evolved and changed over the years. You could go back even further to something like The Day the Earth Stood Still and become incredibly scared: the brainy sci-fi invasion movie has turned into an action-driven vehicle of brainless special effects and action (yes, so much so it had to be said twice).

I really felt like I was watching a video game here. It doesn't help that games have come such a way graphically now, that their aliens are complex and full of character, just as much so as the movies'. You could create a Battle game with the exact same story and scenes, and get a decent little eight hour shooter out of it. The movie starts off wit the aliens coming down, and we are cheaply introduced to a variety of characters that will become the team of Marines we follow throughout the rest. I say cheaply because it's formula and annoying: stereotypes are introduced, a very brief backstory is provided for each person, and then we never see the relevancy later on. One guy is currently out of combat due to some stress and anxiety from a previous combat situation. He's full on in combat later on though, and this anxiety is never touched upon again. It just further constitutes the fact that you are here to watch these guys kick all kinds of ass, and nothing more.

To the point of intriguing action, this movie excels and is fantastic to watch. It focuses on this small team as they try to rescue and escort civilians back to the safe zone. It's fight after fight, understandably, and a climax of pure action that does not disappoint. I swear at times I was manipulating the controller in my hands at time. It was also kind of interesting as American streets are turned into war zones and points of skirmish. There was an abundance of broken up concrete and burning cars to make me believe I was watching Black Hawk Down for a while, and the heavy layering of pro-Marines was enough to make me wince once in a while. Perhaps, being Canadian I'm skewed a bit and have distanced myself from the ooo-rahs and retreat: HELLs that it practically became funny every time it came up. That being said, I have a great deal of respect for anybody who is putting themselves in harm way, and you can see the teamwork at play here and, unlike Skyline's group of sad sacks, believe in some degree of success for these Marines and the human race. Not Independence Day-like success, granted, but something.

I have to make one more gripe: the intro. Both Battle and Skyline started "in the action" so to speak, then reversed the clock by twenty four hours. There is no point to this than to aggravate me: they don't reverse and spend significant time developing characters or setting plot that we don't already know. It's a waste of screen time. Now that being said, those periods are short and we get right into the action, and that's what this movie is all about. It's a popcorn flick with awesome action and fantastic special effects.