Virtual Adept

WANTED - Holy crap this movie was frickin’ A great. Not really super thrilled about the ending but almost everything else about this movie was great. Good to great acting, superb and completely over the top awesome special effects and stunts, a compelling plot, and hot hot Angelina Jolie. I was expecting The Dark Knight to be a shoo-in this summer for best movie of the summer, but I think it has a pretty high standard to meet after Iron Man and Wanted. Definitely see this if you like no-holds-barred action with plenty of gory violence. 9/10

RAMBO - speaking of gory violence, this is a slow starter with too much background info crap (and thankfully after watching the deleted scenes they DID edit it down some), but once the action starts, it’s completely great extremely bloody and extremely violent war action. What can I say about this that you probably couldn’t guess already? Rambo kicks some ass again. Definitely worth watching. 8/10

THE MARINE - some really cheesy acting, except for Robert Patrick (T-1000 in Terminator 2) who plays a compelling psycho bad buy. not bad as far as the action goes but why is it that every chance an action hero gets to actually get a frickin’ GUN for a weapon they instead choose to sick with their bowie knife? At least the babe is pretty hot. Worth a rent, not that great but watchable. 6.5/10

Recently I got the new 5-disc Blu-ray version of Ridley Scott’s epic cyberpunk thriller, Blade Runner. Blade Runner is my #1 movie ever. Why? Because the vision of the setting was so vivid and unique for its time. Blade Runner practically invented “cyberpunk” for a film genre. Sure, it was based on the ideas of SF writer Phillip K Dick, but there is no denying that Ridley Scott added his own vision to the project and IMHO that’s what made it special. The scenes where they are in the air cars flying over the city were just amazing. The whole concept of mankind inventing a sentient slave race, and the moral implications that entails. The blend of cultures shown in the film showing how the world really shrinks over time. The bit about how the animals are almost extinct and how people trade in “fake” animals (bio-genetically engineered). And the ending was just almost perfect (not the theatrical release version but the director’s cut version that did not throw in the “happy” Hollywood ending). Comparing the novella to the film, etc. there’s just so much to like, and it’s a movie you can pick up new things every time you see it. There’s a lot going on there and very little of it is explicitly stated. One other thing that made this movie awesome was the sound track. I don’t often buy the CD of a movie’s sound track, but the Blade Runner soundtrack is a must have. Incredible!

Been a while since I posted up some movie reviews, so here’s some from various movies and DVD’s we’ve seen lately:

Casanova - I was kind of expecting something quite different than what this actually was. For starters, it has an R rating, but where is the nudity? I mean, this is a movie about the legendary lover Casanova!! Come on, show some skin! Secondly, this is really a comedy, and not a historical piece. The history is pretty much all wrong. But as a comedy, this movie is pretty frickin’ hilarious. I laughed a lot while sitting through this. If you like romantic comedies with quite a bit of sexual innuendo (but no actual, you know, sex), and comedies about identity hijinks, you will probably like this. If you’re a big fan of Venice, you will enjoy the scenery in this movie, which was pretty beautiful. 6.5/10

National Treasure: Book of Secrets - basically, not much to say here. A typical action/adventure/mystery type thriller. if you like things like Tomb Raider, The Mummy, Indiana Jones, or especially the first National Treasure movie, you are in the target audience. It is basically eye and ear candy for 2 hours with some humor and thrills and amounts to basically nothing at the end of it. It will not change your life or make you think or give you any new enlightenment about this crazy thing called life. But it probably will entertain you, if you like that sort of thing. I liked it, and overall only 1 or 2 things bothered me, easily overlooked (that I can’t mention without spoilers). Not sure as it’s “must-see-in-the-theater” type movie, probably if you’re not sure about it save it for a rental. 7.5/10

RV - Robin Williams takes his family on a road trip in a rented RV. Hilarity ensues. Really not much to say here except I was laughing pretty much non stop for the whole movie. None of it was dirty humor or druggie humor or stupid ass humor either, just clean, rolling on the floor humor. If you liked National Lampoon’s Vacation, The Great Outdoors, and movies of that sort, you will most likely find this movie funny and charming. 8/10

Bobby Z - this movie is quite possibly one of the worst movies I’ve seen since Syriana. It’s not even a “so bad it’s good” kind of bad, it’s just, bad. The ending totally sucked. Could have been a decent story without such a cop-out ending. Fishburn writes in his role here, I was disappointed, he can act way better than this. Then they try and throw in some huggy feely shit near the end, which ruins what might have been a great little balls-out action movie if they’d have put a few more cajones into it. Blech. 5/10

Good Night and Good Luck - Great A+ level acting, I couldn’t even tell who half the actors were they were so authentic, even Clooney didn’t stand out as his typical Clooney persona. This film is 100% black & white, to get the feel of the era, which was off putting at first but eventually I got to like it that way. This is the story of how a TV news show team takes on Senator Joseph McCarthy during the infamous communist senate hearings era. If you have no idea what I’m talking about you need to read up on this era in US history, it is highly relevant today and serves as a warning as to just how perilous freedom really is, even in the so called Land of the Free. A few bits of this could have been cut out to make it shorter and more to the point. It clocks in at 93 minutes which is short by today’s standards, but I feel a movie of this nature needs to be short to keep people focused on the issue. 8.5/10

The Sopranos, Season 6 - Well, this was… an ending, I guess. I liked about half the episodes of this season, the rest just seemed like WTFiller. If you asked me what I think about Sopranos I have to say I absolutely love this show overall, but I didn’t really think that Season 6 added much to the whole thing. There are a few key moments that really had that awesome Sopranos edge to it, and those are must-see for any fans of the series. Unfortunately the whole season isn’t like that but it’s still worth a view for sure. If you’re expecting everything to get all wrapped up nice and neat with a earth shattering finale, well, don’t expect that, you’ll just be disappointed. If you have never watched Sopranos you should start with Season 1 Disc 1 because you absolutely can not start in the middle and know what the fuck is happening. This is the most realistic authentic feeling mafia show you’ll ever see in some ways, and in other ways it’s ridiculous, but it’s a wonderful ride. Overall series gets a 10/10 for me, I gotta be loyal to “the family” ;-P, but this season, especially with its “ending” gets a 8/10

Fred Claus - Vince Vaughn is Santa Claus’s older, forgotten brother and he resents St. Nick’s good nature and how his parents love little Nick more than Fred. This movie is pretty much fluff, but it’s a pretty funny popcorn movie to go see if you just want a light laugh having something to do with Christmas. There are better Christmas movies out there and there are better comedies out there. Vaughn is fairly low-key in this, not his usual over-the-top assholishness (ala The Breakup). If you hate Vince Vaughn, this movie won’t change your mind. Overall we were more or less entertained, but not wowed. 7/10

Firewall - harrison ford, predicatble plot, he did this same movie already in an airplane i think. family is taken hostage, he’s a bank security guru and has to help the thugs steal 100 million and keep his family alive. too many dull moments talking about boring computer security shit that isn’t even real computer security shit. i am glad we waited to rent this instead of going to see it at the movies like she wanted. oh well, i watched one of her movies so i get to pick next. oh and the blu-ray version of it isn’t impressive at all, looks about like a DVD. 6.5/10

The Aviator - i wasn’t really surprised at this, because i always thought he was an above average actor, but Leo DiCaprio does a smash up job as airplane/movie mogul Howard Hughes in this biographical movie. supporting acting is also top notch. This movie was long. 2 hrs 50 min. A bit too long. And they concentrated a bit too much on his mental illness (they lingered too long on those scenes is what I mean). the scenes involving airplanes and aviation were fantastic. the babes are all pretty hot also. the movie doesn’t cover his whole life, tho, and really only concentrates on a short window where he made his fortunes and ultimate decline in health. his later years after 1947 are not covered at all, and the movie doesn’t explain how he learned to fly or how he knew so much about aviation. some time spent on his formative years would have been nice, and maybe some bits on possible triggers for his mental illness which began to impact his life dramatically later in life. all in all, he was a man of strong character (or is portrayed as such in this film) in some ways, and not in others, but most of all his life was very interesting. 8.5/10

Black Hawk Down - saw the Blu-ray of this yesterday. pretty intense, lots of cool urban warfare stuff. lots and lots of killing. pretty hard to believe our military did such a clusterfuck on that thing (if the movie is a true interpretation of the events). what seemingly should have been a simple smash and grab turned into a day/night long battle. lot of testosterone and people doing stupid things in the name of honor and bravery. overall it was well worth watching again, especially since this is the first time i saw it in HD. 8.5/10

Kung-Fu Hustle - i almost turned this off after about 20 minutes of it seemingly going nowhere and just being really stupid. man am i glad i didn’t. this is one of those really slow starters but once it got going it was absolutely hilarious and the action was over the top of cool. completely unrealistic, sure, but awesome. really a neat little movie. i think the dubbing in places was pretty awful but other than that it was well worth a view. 8/10 (could have been higher if it hadn’t been such a slow starter)

3:10 to Yuma - best picture material here for sure. this is fantastic, it is definitely the best western I’ve seen this decade (not that there have been many.. any?), but it may be the best western I’ve ever seen. maybe even better than Unforgiven (1992) which is probably the reigning champ. this movie has it all, fights, gun fights, the tough frontier kid, the crazy bandit, the hard workin’ rancher who just wants to see his family through another year, the evil railroad moguls, etc. but it’s not cliche at all, it’s fairly realistic in its portrayal of nearly every character. it shows just how lawless the frontier could be (maybe a tad more lawless than it really was). and it does all this with a plot that keeps you on your seat the entire picture. plus the action is intense. just don’t miss this, you’ll be sorry you did. 9.7/10

Apocalypto - fantastic, stunning, beautiful, horrific. a visual tour de force unlike any movie ever produced. ultra-realistic sets, costumes, gore, graphic violence. astonishing brutality. this movie is very much not for the feint of heart. I do not know if this movie is realistic in its depiction of Mayan civilization, but it is amazing to watch, and it certainly felt realistic to me. i was absolutely captivated for the entire 139 minutes. the blu-ray version which is what i watched is highly detailed and looks and sounds absolutely incredible. there were a few giant coincidences in this movie that stretched believability in a few places, but it had to be that way to make a good story. all in all, one of the best movies i’ve ever seen. 9.5/10

Rocky Balboa - this was entertaining even though it’s not super-exciting and a few moments i couldn’t help but think “where is this going?”. it’s entertaining because the acting was great and it was about characters i’ve loved since i was a kid. ymmv depending on how you feel about the rocky movies. just a well done boxing movie but no real new ground covered here. 8.3/10

Well, this weekend we didn’t watch a lot of stuff, but we did watch the DVD for Underworld Evolution. This is a direct sequel to the horror/action vampire/werewolf fest Underworld. First of all, Underworld had a kind of convoluted plot, but it wasn’t that hard to figure out, and it did have a few twists to keep you guessing. Underworld had great action scenes with the “Death Dealer” vampire played by actress Kate Beckinsale, who looked sexy as hell in her skin-tight leather outfit. The NPCs in Underworld were entertaining if not entirely original. The love interest was a bit improbable, but it worked a lot better than some action movies (cough, Episode 2, cough). And the special effects were outstanding.

In Underworld Evolution, you get the same tight leather and great special effects, but with a straight as nails “OMG, I knew the entire plot from the first 2 minutes of the movie” kind of thing. I can’t see myself spending a lot of time rewatching this, it was so predictable the first time, and the only thing this movie has going for it is a lot of style, special effects, and of course, Kate Beckinsale. And more nudity this time around. But it was a worthwhile spending of 2 hours, even if not the “classic” cult horror that Underworld was. Mostly for the hotties and the cool special effects. I’ll give it a 7/10, but only because of Kate, if you took her out it’d only be a 5/10 maybe.

We also watched more of Season 2 of Smallville. Really liking that show now, I’m definitely going to snag the rest of the series on DVD. If you like comic books you would be flat out stupid not to watch this show. Get it!

Ok, we saw Ghost Rider this weekend. I liked it. Apparently Nick Cage worked out for 5 hours a day for a year to get “buff” for this even though I don’t think it was all that important to the plot. But Kim liked the scene with his shirt off, so I guess it was worth something. Eva Mendes looked fantastic, didn’t really pay too much attention to what she said for a couple of reasons. The villains were cool. Fonda made a wicked looking Mephisto. It was awesome having Sam Elliott in it. The special effects were top notch. There were a few hokey scenes but overall it was pretty entertaining if you didn’t try to take it too seriously. Worth a look even if you don’t know who Ghost Rider is, no previous knowledge is required and probably that would just tend to annoy you when they don’t go by the books. 7/10

So the latest news for Xbox 360 is that you can spend your hard earned money to download videos in standard or high definition. How much? Well, it sounds like movies will cost between 320 and 480 marketplace points, which is between $4 and $6. But most of the content that they’ve announced so far is TV show episodes, and I don’t know the pricing for that yet. I think that’s a bit crazy high. Supposedly HD movies will take up between 4 and 6 gb of your hard drive space. Considering that the 360 only allows 12gb for the user to begin with, I can see where this is going to be a very tight fit. Hopefully MS will come to their senses soon and announce a larger HDD upgrade for the 360. We need it. Bad.

Update: Sony had this to say about the new 360 video downloads (via Kotaku):

PLAYSTATION 3’s content is designed for everyone to enjoy right out of the box, no matter which configuration you purchase. We would never segregate or shut out any of our consumers from our entertainment experience because they didn’t buy the top of the line system. Both PLAYSTATION 3 versions available on November 17 include hard drives for downloading content.

That’s all well and good, Sony, but for $400 I can get HD downloadable content on my 360, either in the form of a 360 core + HD addon, or a 360 premium, and the cheapest I could do that (if I could do that) on the PS3 is $500. So solly, loo looooze!!! What idiots. No, Sony, you’re not “shutting anyone out” (/sarcasm). Assholes. As if I could even buy a PS3 before sometime next year. Sony, you need to just learn when to sit down and STFU.

A few weeks ago I signed up for a new online rental service that lets you put both games and movies in your queue for one low price. It’s called GamezNFlix.com, and for 3 at a time (anything, games or DVD’s) you pay $16.99, which is cheaper than Netflix’s 3 at a time and cheaper than GameFly’s 2 at a time plans. This all sounds really good, but there are some problems with the service.

First of all, the selection is nowhere near the level of Netflix. Expect to have to wait for a lot of movies before you get one sent. Even their game selection is poor compared to GameFly. Maybe that’s because this is a new service, so hopefully they will build up their library fast and have a better selection soon. I was able to get a few newish 360 games and a few fairly new movies so it’s not horrible, but just don’t expect it to be on the level of the reigning champs for movies or games.

Secondly the interface is really poor. The browsing seems to be completely random and useless. Movie genres are all mixed together, with anime showing up in action along with TV shows. The “coming soon” and “new releases” list old movies that happen to have a new reprint coming, even worse, it only shows you 60 titles on those lists, and so it’s only a small sampling of the new releases or coming soon titles. Most of the movies and/or games don’t have much of a description to tell you about it. Managing your queue is a pain, it’s hard to move things around in the queue compared to Netflix or GameFly. Even if you click the “move to top of queue” button I’ve found that it doesn’t always work. The queue doesn’t have a “buy it now” button for the things you have out. Heck, the queue doesn’t even tell you if the item is a game or a movie or what platform it’s on, it’s just got the title.

My recommendation at this time is that this service is just okay and not really worth the hassle just to save a few bucks. You’d be better off getting Netflix and Gamefly and paying more. If you’re on a tight budget you might give this one a look, however. If only Netflix would start renting out games, my problems would be solved.

World of Warcraft is heading to the big screen [thanks Ars Technica]. Blizzard has shown that they have a cinematic flair with all of their excellent cut-scenes in their games, so hopefully this will be a first - an actually good video game movie.

Just as long as Uwe Boll goes nowhere near it.

Ok, when they first announced the Doom movie, staring The Rock, I was pretty non plussed. I mean, we all know how great the Street Fighter movie was, or Mario Brothers. Of course, there have been some half-decent video game films. I enjoyed Resident Evil, and Mortal Kombat wasn’t completely unwatchable. But as a general rule: Video Game Movies Sucketh. However, there is a new trailer for the Doom movie at Yahoo! Movies. After watching it, I’m actually a little bit interested now from zero interest before watching it. Some things that I think made it stand out were excellent special effects, cool looking weapons, and best of all, a really cool looking first person camera mode for part of the film. The FP camera really made it feel like Doom. Hopefully in the full movie they pour on the gore, which was suspiciously absent from the trailer, but IMHO an absolute requirement for a good Doom movie.