Month: December 2016

What I Watched November 2016

/ skoce / 1 Comment

Movies

Hacksaw Ridge – read review here. ***1/2

Dr. Strange – read review here. ****

The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 – This isn’t very good. The first Hunger Games movie was solid, exactly what it needed to be, but this adaptation of the first half of the last book is nothing. It is nearly two hours of absolutely nothing. When Harry Potter pulled this trick at least the movie was well shot. **1/2

Arrival – read review here. ****1/2

O Brother Where Art Thou? – The Coen Brothers are great, and this might be the best of their comedies. (editor’s note – It’s The Big Lebowski) All three of the protagonists are great, plenty of the side characters are a lot of fun and Man of Constant Sorrow is a delight to listen to. Just an all-around excellent film. *****

Stonehurst Asylum – An adaptation of a Poe story that I was unfamiliar with, this movie is okay. It has a lot of talented actors, with Michael Caine, Ben Kingsley, David Thewlis and Kate Beckinsale, but it is kind of muddled in the middle and not especially good. Still, there is something good in there, even if it is only intermittently visible. ***

Unforgiven – This is an amazing movie. Maybe Eastwood’s best. It is a movie about many things: guilt, fame, time. All of them are woven together perfectly for this somber look at the dying days of the old west and the toll that life can take on people. Just amazing. *****

Hero – I greatly enjoyed this. It has some beautiful shots and some wonderfully choreographed fight scenes, as well as a story that twists just enough to be interesting. It is just really well made. ****

Goon – A dim witted bouncer stumbles into a job as a hockey enforcer, even though when he starts he can barely skate. Finally having a place to belong, he grows to be an integral part of his team even though he is only there to fight. It mostly works, but isn’t anything great. ***1/2

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – read review here. ****

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – This has always been my least favorite Harry Potter story, both in book and movie form, and this viewing didn’t do anything to change my mind. Kenneth Branagh almost saves it with his perfect turn as Gilderoy Lockhart, but it loses some of the magic in trying to capture all of the book. Still, I wouldn’t call it bad, just a little too long and a little too dull. ***

ACOD – This movie has a really talented cast and a good idea, but it is a comedy that is only intermittently funny. For long stretches it isn’t funny at all. **1/2

ARQ – This is basically Edge of Tomorrow on a shoestring budget. It kind of works, though the small budget shows. Some of its concepts could use more fleshing out, but the idea of a house caught in a repeating loop with only a few of the people there aware of is at least an interesting concept. **1/2

Batman The Movie – This is a great comedy and as long as it is looked at through that lens it holds up. Batman is a silly idea, and this is that idea at its silliest. The gleeful goofiness of this movie makes it simply a delight. Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb. *****

Moana – read review here. ****

Burn After Reading – Not the best Coen Brothers movie. Stupid people do stupid things for 90 minutes. Some of them die, some get rewarded. Life has no meaning. There are some good scenes and it is pretty amusing, but it feels fatally slight. ***1/2

How to Steal a Million – Wow. Audrey Hepburn is amazing. Peter O’Toole and Eli Wallach are no slouches, but you watch this movie to watch Hepburn and it is worth it. It is a romantic comedy heist movie, and while the heist is a little undersold, the rest of it is great. ****1/2

London Has Fallen – What a miserable film. It is just ugly and bad in just about every way. There is absolutely nothing to recommend here; this is complete and utter dreck. *

TV

The Office (U.K.) – I sat down and watched this all the way through for the first time. It is still very good. You have to hand it to Ricky Gervais, David Brent is one of the most despicable characters to ever appear on TV; he is wholly unlikeable. At every opportunity he shows himself to small and petty, but he is wrapped in so much delusion that he casts himself as the wronged party. Since his constant faux pas come from ignorance, not malice it can be tempting to forgive him, but even when given the chance to be the thing he thinks he is he fails to do so. That really made the Christmas special at the end ring false; he gets something of a happy ending that he hadn’t earned. Still, it is a great show, though I would argue even more strongly now that the American version is better.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – A solid adaptation of a book I loved that can’t really bring over all of the things I loved about the book (there is no way to do footnotes on film). Still, it is a delightful look at a version of the early 19th century but with magic. It really made me want to reread the book, so I guess it was a success.

Ascension – Euggh. This starts with such a great premise, a generation ship traveling through space that has developed its own customs the longer they have been separate from Earth. It starts with a murder mystery on that ship, but every episode seems to change its mind about what kind of show it was, leading the viewer down some dull, inconsequential and poorly thought paths. This could have been something good, but instead it is nothing.

Curb your enthusiasm s3 – This show is one of those near perfect comedies, like Arrested Development. There is something perfectly relatable and detestable about the fictional Larry David. I’ve never really sat down and watched this show all the way through, but my brothers and I saw most of the 3 season one morning and every episode was hilarious.

CW Superhero Round-Up – This continues to be a strong season for Supergirl and I still like Flash more than most people. I have dropped off Arrow almost completely, though I did come back for the crossover. Legends is junk, but it is fun junk. That crossover, which was misleadingly called a 4-parter even though Supergirl’s episode only barely tied in, was impressive if not completely satisfying.

Now Playing in November 2016

/ skoce / Leave a comment

Beaten

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice – read about it here.

Wild Guns – read about it here.

Strider – I played all the way through this thinking it was Strider 2, thanks to a combination of Capcom’s stupidity and my own. The PS1 version included this with Strider 2, but labeled the CD with Strider 1 on it disc 1. I should have realized what I was playing earlier, but I didn’t. Playing it through the lens of a late 90’s action game makes this one seem primitive. There is a lot of good action here, but it seems to require a high level of play to make it seem like anything other than a somewhat stilted action game. Of course, it is a game from about a decade earlier and I’m not as familiar with the arcade games of that time. I had a decent amount of fun with it, though I can’t say I like it all that much.

Strider 2 – This was more of what I was expecting.  Not that this is necessarily a better game than the first Strider, but it definitely looks more like a PS1 game, with higher resolution sprites and 3D backgrounds.  It is still a style over substance action game that seems to be more about looking cool than providing a smooth gameplay experience.  It is a game for mastery, and that isn’t really how I play.

DoReMI Fantasy – My post about this game should be going up soon, but for now I’ll just say that this might be the best game I’ve played in my exploration of the SNES’s second tier. Right now I would call this one of my favorite 2D platformers, ever.

Ongoing

Yakuza 5 – npy5

It just kind of dawned on me that I bought this game at the end of last year and never really played it. Since I was hiding from my family during Thanksgiving, I thought I’ve fire it up. It is really, really good. This time the game lets you start as Kiryu, who everyone wants to play as anyway. It opens a full city up to him and lets the player just go free almost immediately. I ended up spending a lot of time doing Kiryu’s ridiculous taxi missions, a combination of driving challenges that force the player to follow the rules of the road, conversations where you have to entertain or inform the customers and races. Yes, somehow being a taxi driver gets Kiryu involved with a group of underground street racers that just so happens to include his coworkers at the taxi service and their tragic backstories. They are a delight, especially with the purely aesthetic modifications you can make to the taxi. That is about all I did for the day or two after Thanksgiving. I don’t think I will be so relaxed on my way through the rest of the game.

Secret of Evermore – I think this game might be better than Secret of Mana. I’m not done with it, and that might be sacrilege, but it is more compact and solid game. It lacks Secret of Mana’s highs, but also lacks the lows. At least through the first two time periods, anyway. I will hopefully have it finished up before too much longer, but I’ve been saying that for months.

Jotun –npjo

I’ve been distracted with 3DS and SNES games, but the little of this I’ve played have been a delight. It feels a little slow at times, but it looks great and the slowness seems deliberate rather than a failure somewhere. Hopefully I’ll have more to say when I get further in.

SMT IV: Apocalypse – nps4

I’m really just not in the right mood for this game right now. It is essentially more SMT IV, a game I really liked, but for some reason it just isn’t doing anything for me right now. I’ll likely give it another go once I finish with Pokémon, but I’ve learned that trying to force my way through SMT games is a recipe for having a bad time. When they are the game you are looking for they work like nothing else, but when it isn’t the right flavor there is just no breaking through the series aesthetic. Still, through the first five hours everything seems mechanically sound at the very least.

Pokémon Moon – I am nearing the end of this and it is the most fun I’ve had with a Pokémon game since White, I think. That game kept things fresh by only letting the player’s use the new Pokémon through the main game. Moon does it by changing up the rhythm of the game, eliminating formal gyms and gym leaders for a more free form set of challenges. I also like a lot of the new forms of Pokémon, which are largely interesting twists on the originals, though some are just goofy, like the super tall Eggxecutor and the Garfield-ass looking Persian. Still, electric Geodude is neat and I like the Ice Vulpix. The game also just looks really good. The graphics have never really been a big part of Pokémon’s formula, but this is a pretty good looking 3DS game. I’ll have more complete thoughts coming soon.

Upcoming

Lufia 2, Terranigma, Robotrek, Actraiser – These are the last four of my SNES games I intended to beat this year. I won’t manage to finish more than maybe two of them before the year ends, but I will do my best to get as much played as I can over these last few weeks. Hopefully I can get a least one of these posted.

Back to the Future – I played the first episode of this game a year or so back, but now I’ve downloaded all the games that I’ve bought on PSN, including the last 4 episodes of this, as well as the Telltale Monkey Island game and the third collection of Sam & Max. Come to think of it, I still need to play the second volume of Sam & Max. I’m going to have to have a Telltale marathon.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero – This should be coming out soon and I will play it immediately. The previous Shantae games have been varying degrees of excellent; I expect this one to be no different.