Things You Should Check Out: Earthling Cinema!

As you guys know I like movies.  I like watching them and them dissecting them.  But sometimes I like to see other people's take on movies.  The opinions I value the most is that of an alien.  Earthling Cinema is a series of videos from the incredibly intelligent folks over at Wisecrack.  It is about an alien anthropologist who, several thousands of years into the future, tries to understand the long destroyed culture of humanity through our cinematic history.  The hilarity comes from the fact that well...he's not a particularly good anthropologist.  He is an unreliable narrator who lacks a fundamental understanding or earth, earthly animals, and humans.  He thinks that dogs are called horses, and horses are called dogs. He thinks that Mad Max's real name is Madison Maxwell. He is funny, and knows when to crack a joke to break up the seriousness of his summaries and analyses.  

However, despite his lack of understanding of animals and humans, he is quite versed in analysis and philosophy.  He compares many themes to the works of Philosophers such as Ayn Rand, Fredrick Nietzsche, the works of Diesel Punk, old pagan religions, comparisons to Hitler, and other politics.  They provide insights into these movies that would be difficult to understand unless you had a philosophy degree under you belt.  They have a several videos discussing a wide variety of movies, from pretty much all genres.  For instance, they have animated movies such as Frozen (linked below), and Akira, to sci-fi like Interstellar, to classics such as The Shawshank Redemption and A Clockwork Orange.  They've analyzed all of the Original Star Wars Trilogy, as well as my favorite movie: Inception.

If you guys like philosophical of movies and a good amount of laughs, then you should check it out!

My Favorite Movies

I figured that I made a list of my favorite video games, so that I should also make a list of my favorite movies to balance it out.  The titles of the movies provide links to their purchases!

1)  Inception

Anyone who knows me know that Inception is my favorite movie.  But you guys don't know me which is why I am telling  you.  I get that this movie is either loved or hated.  I am strictly in the camp of the former.  I loved the premise of it.  I love the exploration of dreams.  I love the parallels it draws between dreaming and film making, and even film watching.  I love that it doesn't tell you if he's dreaming or not at the end (the movie has been out since 2009, you don't deserve a spoiler warning anymore).  I loved each level of the dream sequence.  Sure there are problems with it, Leo is acting on autopilot, and that the overall plot can be a bit convoluted, but I still enjoy the film overall.  In face every time I so sick that I don't want to get out of bed, I grab my laptop and play Inception.  It' just a fantastic movie in my opinion.  

2)  50/50.

This is an absolutely amazing movie.  It tackles an incredibly difficult topic, cancer in a way that really makes you laugh.  The comedy never overshadows the drama, or vice versa. I am not a Seth Rogen fan really.  But in this role he is really really good.  He plays the best friend of the main character, and when you know that one of his friends in real life had cancer, it adds an extra layer of depth to his performance.  This movie is a feel good movie, with a happy ending.  I love it and continue to watch it once in a blue moon.

3) Drive

Drive is hands down the best directed movie I have ever seen.  You can tell the director thought about every single shot, how to set it up, what lighting to use, exactly how long the shot should last, how fast to pan the shot, how to use shadows.  Everything about the directing is amazing.  How an emotional kiss is juxtaposed to one of the most brutal killing I have ever seen on film is handled is breathtaking.  I love that the jacket is a reference to the aesop’s fable of the scorpion and the frog.  Ryan Gosling's performance is amazing.  He plays a character who is very stoic, but still looks troubled and tormented when he needs to. If you haven’t seen drive, you should.  It’s a masterpiece.  

The Witcher 3 Review: The best RPG in recent memory

The Witcher 3 is the kid in your class that is always going above and beyond and making you look bad.  They are the ones who are always raising their hands and getting the right answer, they are the one that excels at sports and the coach makes yells at you to be more like them.  The Witcher 3 is a damn near perfect game.  It is truly immersive, breathe-taking, gut wrenching, and addicting.  It is a really fantastic game.  

The game really excels at making you care about it’s characters.  You actually sort of fall in love, with Triss or Yen.  Zoltan and Dandelion feel like old friends, especially if you’ve played the other games in the series.  You really care about finding Ciri, your surrogate daughter.  The game uses these connections to draw out emotions.  You feel enraged when you see Zoltan being harassed because he is a dwarf.  You rush out to help Yen and Triss when they need help.  These emotions extend to the minor characters you run into. I remember a quest where I was just walking around and I ran into this old lady who needed help finding her favorite pan.  This sounds stupid, but I actually cared!  The lady was well voiced, and dammit, she really needed that pan!

That’s where that analogy I talked about earlier comes in.  The recent slew of RPG”s such as Skyrim or Dragon Age: Inquisition have really sub par side quests.  Skyrim ends up just making you clean up dungeons with Draugrs, Draugrs and more Draugrs. Inquisition’s side quests seem like an afterthought.  They feel like chores.  The side quests feel like they are the busy work quests in an MMO.  In summary, they are terrible.  The Witcher 3 is amazing with its sidequests.  I sometimes forgot I wasn’t playing the main campaign.  The side quests are so great, that they make the actual main quest, which is pretty good in its own right, look awful in comparison.  The Witcher 3 is an excellent game and totally worth your money.  You can easily sink over 100 hours into it, and they are going to release a new DLC in just a few months.  There’s a lot of wrong ways to spend money.  The Witcher 3 is not one of those.

The Witcher 3 can be purchased here!

My Top 3 Favorite Game Franchises

1) Mass Effect

 Mass Effect has been my favorite game since I first picked up an Xbox 360 back in 2008. I knew nothing about this game except that one of my friends absolutely hated it. He was a huge fan of another Bioware game, Knights of the Old Republic. I had always heard great things about the game, even though I never had an opportunity to play it. (Later I did, it totally holds up. Fantastic game). He wanted a Knight of the Old Republic type game but in its own universe. He bemoaned it so much that I hated the game by proxy. I don’t even know why I picked up the game. I knew nothing about what the Xbox had to offer, as I was more interested in PS3 games at the time. So I went into Gamestop blind with some store credit and no idea what to do. I picked up Forza 2 and I had just enough to buy a second game used. There I saw it. Mass Effect, in all of its glory. That’s not how I saw it at the time. I saw it as that game my friend totally hated. But for some reason I picked it up and I paid and went home. I played a couple rounds of Forza’s main solo campaign mode. After losing repeatedly and spinning off the course (I love racing games, but I am literally the worst person ever at them) I gave up. I saw Mass Effect sitting there, and I decide what the hell, might as well try it out. I put the game in, and I started playing. Initially I wasn’t blown away. The character creator really paled in comparison to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which I was playing beforehand. The game seemed rather simple in comparison. I made a decent enough looking Shepard. Eventually the game started. I was instantly blown away. I loved everything about it. I loved the music, I loved the build up to the use of the Mass Relay. I loved that the conversations between the characters felt natural. I loved that characters explained thing in a way that felt natural and not a history lesson. I loved the combat, and the leveling, and the story. I loved every twist and turn. I beat the game right after I finished school, and the first thing I did was to boot it back up and restart. I played that game like 7 times in a single summer. I loved it so much that I didn’t even realize you could skip conversations until me 4th play through. This excitement and enthrallment fed right into Mass Effect 2, and then into Mass Effect 3. The reason I am doing top 5 favorite franchises is because 3 out of my 5 favorite games are from the Mass Effect series. Sure the third game stumbles at the end, but the overall experience that is Mass Effect is amazing, and I would really recommend everyone checks it out.

 2) Assassin’s Creed

 My next favorite franchise has gotten some heat over the last couple years for becoming a bit stale, and having some of the worst DRM in the gaming world, but something about Assassin’s Creed really sticks with me. I really enjoy all the climbing. I enjoy running around these ancient time periods and getting a (warped) version of history. I love the social stealth options of hiding in crowds and stalking your targets. Sure there are flaws, and the Desmond storyline is really dumb. However, each game introduces enough new concepts to keep the games fresh…most of the time. The best in the series are Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag. The second one is an almost perfect refinement of the first game introducing much less repetition and a much more likeable character. Black Flag is the probably the greatest departure from the series’ formula by making you a pirate with the likes of Blackbeard and Charles Vane. It has one of my favorite game trailers where Blackbeard goes on to say that the main character is even more terrifying than he is, and he has never seen a man fight so viciously. It’s a perfect representation of the game. The series does stumble. I am not a fan of Brotherhood as I find Rome very boring. Revelations is my personal lowest point for the series. The main character was just about to overstay his welcome, and the tower defense game was a stupid addition. The series got better with Assassin’s Creed 3 by refreshing the fighting mechanics but the location and time period are a bit boring, which isn’t helped with a very stoic main character. However none of these game are bad, they just aren’t as good as the first two in the series. 4 Picks the torch back up and brings with it tons of fun. The series is a hitting a slump again with Unity and Syndicate but I have hopes that because Assassin’s Creed is supposedly taking a break this year, that they will bring something fresh back to the series.

 3) Ratchet and Clank

I love me some Ratchet and Clank. People always write it off as some children’s game because of the cartoon-y looks. I can sort of understand that a little bit, but I think that it is sort of judging a book by its cover. If you can get past the look of it, there is so much to love. There is an excellent sense of humor…if you’re a bit immature. The subtitles are pretty good indication of the type of humor you will get. Going Commando, Up Your Arsenal, A Crack in Time, Quest for Booty, Size matters. But more than that, the game is just fun. It’s got amazing 3-D platforming, amazing gun play, tight controls. It’s just really fun. And this isn’t nostalgia. I recently replayed the three PS2 games just recently on my Vita and I loved every second of it. It was still fun to use the gadgets to solve puzzles and to shoot evil aliens. It’s a great time all around and worth playing all of them.

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Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Disappointment

I like Batman.  He’s the cool superhero.  He’s rich and he’s got gadgets.  He’s holding his own against aliens, and cults, and clowns with guns.  He is super dark and edge.  He’s got no powers but he doesn’t let that stop him!  Everyone likes Batman.  Not everyone likes Superman.  I used to be one of those people.   People always say Superman is boring and that he’s too powerful.  But those people clearly haven’t tried to read a Superman comic.  The best Superman moments are when he gives other people hope, when he talks people out of committing suicide, or when even with all his powers, he can’t stop someone he loves from dying.  Sometimes I don’t want a superhero who is a drunk or has mental issues.  Sometimes I want a superhero who always tries to do the right thing.  Those to me are some great storylines.  When people with rigid moral codes come to a situation with no right answer. Those are the best superman (and also Captain America) storylines.  Also, stories like Red Son are great for other reasons. 

Naturally as a fan of both of these heroes, I would be excited for Dawn of Justice, right?  Well, you’re right.  I was excited.  I was super excited.  I was at like a 90% excitement level.  Until I saw that trailer.  You know what trailer I am talking about.  The one that spoils the entire movie.  That’s when my excitement waned quite a bit, down to like 40%.  However, one of my friends told me that he heard a rumor that the trailer was a sort of bait and switch.  They made it seems that it was spoiling the movie, but the structure of the movie was actually going to be different.  I bought into his words because I really wanted a good movie.  Excitement level back up to 60%.  After this, however, the reviews came in.  They all blasted the movie.  I didn’t read any of them, but a 30-ish % on Rotten Tomatoes is hard to ignore.  My excitement level dropped again to 20%.  Now mind you, I am still excited.  I still want to see Superman and Batman fight and be friends and what have you.   But it’s definitely waned.

Now let me sidetrack and say that I really loved Man of Steel.  I get it, it’s dark and too many people die….blah blah blah.  Great.  BUT SUPERMAN DOESN’T KILL PEOPLE!  Actually he has.  He’s killed Zod before, in a straight execution.  I will leave a link to a great article where it talks about all the times Batman and Superman have killed people.  So, no that argument holds no water here.  Superman will kill if he deems it necessary.  If Superman thinks you NEED to be killed, then you screwed up big time. 

http://www.newsarama.com/19848-world-s-deadliest-10-times-batman-and-superman-have-killed-their-enemies.html

Also, what the hell do you expect when an alien who has never used his powers before fights a highly militarized, highly trained individual who wants to destroy the planet.  This is Superman’s first day on the job, and he has to fight someone better than him.  His mother and father made him hide his powers so that he wouldn’t be taken away.  You’re angry people died?   Of course people died.  That’s what would happen.  It’s not a valid argument against it as a film.  

Tone is another thing that people try to leverage against MOS and DOJ,and I get it. Superman is not a dark character usually.  However, every director, author, artist, and editor bring their own spin on things.  Some play him lighter, some darker.  Snyder wanted to do darker.  I can totally get past that. And I think you should as well.

So, now that I have gotten those weaker points out of the way, let’s talk about what I liked from DOJ. Iloved Bat-Fleck.  This is the best version of Batman and Bruce Wayne we have ever gotten. Batman is intense, aggressive, and intelligent.  He’s a brawler, a playboy, a detective, and a businessman.  Affleck really pulls it off.  He looks like Batman, talks like him, and acts like him.  His parts are easily the best in the entire movie. 

Henry Cavill’s Superman is also great.  He just like the world around him is completely unsure of what his place in the world should be. He struggles because nothing he does is good enough, and it really does bug him.  After all, Clark Kent is more human than alien.  That means that he is susceptible to all of our flaws too. 

I thought the fight scenes were amazing.  They were quick without being jarring, Brutal without being over the top, and just plain fun to watch at the end of the day. 

Now for the stuff I didn’t like.  I hate you, Jesse Eisenberg.  Can you not act like a cock little bitch in all of your movies?  You are no Lex Luthor.  Please try to add some range to your performances or quit.  If a director asks you to do that quirky thing you always do, stand up to them and demand to do something different.  I am so damn tired of seeing you doing the same mannerisms and awkward craziness in all your movies (Though I am sure you’re a nice guy).   

Gal Gadot is ok as Wonder Woman.  She doesn’t really feel like Diana to me.  But maybe with her own movies she can blow me away.  Speaking of women, Amy Adams as Lois Lane is a waste of space in this movie.  She’s a fantastic actress, and Lois Lane is an amazingly strong character, can we please give her something to do in these movies besides getting in trouble so Superman can save her?

The Justice League is so poorly implemented in this movie, it’s almost laughable.  Seriously, that’s all you’re going to do.  An email?  That’s how you find out about them?  That’s really lame and lazy.  It would have been better with just background newspaper articles. It was shoe-horded in, and felt tacked on. 

Finally, the main thing that dragged DOJ down:  The editing and pacing.  There are so many problems with how this movie is put together. It feels disjointed and messy.  It’s so badly edited that there were scenes where I was confused because there was no indication that the previous scene was over.  There were no establishing shots.  It jumped from Clark to Bruce to Batman, back to Clark so quickly and with no set up that I wasn’t even sure what was happening.  There’s too many scenes that drag on to make a 2.5 hour long movie feel even longer.  There 2 too many dream sequences.  It’s just a crappy effort to condense what was obviously supposed to be a longer movie into a studio allotted run time.  

That’s where DOJ stumbles the most.  It stumbles as a film.  Even if you look past the tone, the destruction and the murder, you are left with an average movie. It can be very entertaining, just don't expect t be blown away. 

This is not the best way to set up your cinematic universe, DC.

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Deadpool: Worth The Effort of the Reboot?

Deadpool is sort of a risk for Fox.  The company released its less than stellar reboot of Fantastic Four, and it also had to make up for its missteps with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which I still claim is the worth birthday present I have ever gotten.  I thought they were insane when the cast Deadpool as Ryan Reynolds again.  He wasn’t awful in Origins, but I would have thought they would want to distance themselves from that dumpster fire.  On top of that, his performance in Green Lantern was nothing to write home about.  So does Deadpool hold up, Or does Fox screw it up again?  Surprisingly, it’s actually really enjoyable.

First things first though, this is opposite of a kids movie.  This is an anti-kids movie.  This movie is a hard R rating.  Actually I think Deadpool is the type of movie that would make a joke about the fact that I just said “hard.”  But yeah, this movie not for kids.  There are butts, and boobies, and blood, and guts, and mommy-daddy wrestling.  So yeah, go with your buddies, just not your kids.  On to the review!

Deadpool is a comic book movie about a super hero who is legitimately insane.  Not like joker murder innocent people insane, more like talk to people who aren’t there insane.  This insanity leads to some hilarious situations and set pieces.  I never laughed hysterically at Deadpool, but it is easily the funniest comic movie I have seen.  That being said, there are Deadpool jokes that fall flat on their face.  T.J. Miller’s character in particular was given some really bad lines.  One about a topographical map of Utah was especially awful.  To his credit, he says them as best as he can, but no one can polish a turd that well.  Some jokes just sound better in the writer’s room.

The special effects are spectacular.  The first scene on the bridge, and the opening credits are beautiful.  But the thing that stands out to me is Deadpool’s mask.  This is how these types of masks should be handled.  The mask’s eyes get wider and narrower expressing emotions.  Sure This isn’t the most realistic thing in the world, but It really makes if feel true to the comics.  It’s pretty neat. 

The only thing that I remember disliking about this movie is that the villain and the plot overall were a bit generic.  I really could not have cared less about this villain.  He was one of the most generic and under developed villains since Yellow-jacket from Ant-Man.  Marvel in general needs some better villains.  All the best ones belong to Fantastic 4, X-Men, and Spider-Man.  All the properties Marvel sold...yikes. 

Overall, Deadpool is a good movie.  But outside the first action scene, there’s not much to remember it by.  There are some really funny scenes.   But the lack of a story meant thatI forgot it about a day after watching it.  It’s not bad, and it’s certainly not for kids, but it does make for a great rental.  


If you guys want to buy Deadpool, it's now out on DVD/Blu-Ray! 

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Don't pay! Do it yourself!

Sometimes, it's a lot easier to go and pay someone to a job for you.  It's easy, you open your wallet pull out money or a piece of plastic, you give it to someone, they do something for you, and you sit there and watch them do their job. It's nice.  However, you do miss out on one thing. A sense of accomplishment.  When you do something yourself without paying someone else to do it for you, you get to revel in your own success.  My desk broke early last year. I thought about buying a new desk, but it would cost me 200 dollars.  Instead I went to the local hard ware store, and picked up a piece of wood, cut it down myself, and replaced the broken piece of wood myself.  Not only did I save 190 dollars, I get to look at my desk every day and see that I did something.

You might be thinking what the heck are you talking about doing stuff yourself?  This is a gaming and movie blog!  I come here for mildly entertaining blogs about movies and games.  Well, one of the problems in gaming is that games are getting bigger and bigger.  The better they look, the bigger they get.  Unfortunately, the hard drive Sony shipped with the PS4, is rather puny.  However you can replace it yourself with a small amount of effort and a little bit of time.  I wrote an entire article about it actually! It's really not that difficult.  If I can do it, you can! If you're interested here's the link.  Now go and get that sense of accomplishment!

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