Zombie Column: Vancouver Edition

Last weekend, I returned to Vancouver to continue the quest Evan and I had to see every movie ever. Okay, that's a lie. I had a family vacation on Vancouver Island for a week, and when that was done, I hung around in Van City for a few days so Evan and I could catch up on the latest blockbusters we had both missed. We caught Guardians of the Galaxy on Wednesday night, then on Friday we drove to a theatre and saw The Expendables 3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hercules, and 22 Jump Street. Yes, we got back home at a quarter to one in the morning. Yes, it was worth it. Throughout my visit, we also watched Sabotage on VoD, the first half of Blitz (it was too boring to continue) then switched to watch Superhero movie. I also watched the first season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Evan worked on Thursday, and I didn't have anything else to do), and on Thursday evening, we went to an improv comedy show instead of a movie, because I've never gone to a real one before, and I can always catch up on movies with the interwebz.

Previews were actually pretty varied. We saw a few twice, but we also saw many that were way out there. The Judge, The Equalizer, Swearnet: The Movie, Dr. Cabbie, the Maze Runner, The Boxtrolls, Dracula Untold, Interstellar, The Interview, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water, Big Hero 6 (and if your wondering why these kids movies are showing up as previews for the movies we saw ... we are too).

So, here are a few paragraphs on each, hopefully with enough funny to get you to stick around. Or not, whatever. Feel free to skip to the movie you want to see me write about.

Guardians of the Galaxy

A lot of people questioned why Marvel was making Guardians of the Galaxy, considering its weird premise and limited readership. I'm not quite sure why they questioned it, though; it's Marvel. They have quality writers putting good material together, and they pick underrated directors who always do good work. All of the MCU movies have been big or massive hits.

The movie starts with Peter Quill as a young boy, who gets abducted by aliens right after his mother passes away. From there, he grows into a thief. A pretty good one, actually, who can think on his feet and get himself (and his friends) out or jams repeatedly throughout the movie. Anyway, he steals the wrong thing, which gets Gamora on his trail to steal the thing back. Also, he has a bounty on his head, for which Rocket and his partner Groot track him down. They all track him down at once, for which they are arrested and tossed in jail, where they meet Drax, and the story goes from there.

It's from Marvel, so the writing's good, and it's far funnier than I would have thought (mind you, the director is James Gunn, who did Slither, a well-regarded horror/comedy that starred Nathan Fillion, which is probably why he shows up in the credits of Guardians as "Monstrous Convict"). The action's great, and the music is ... 80's. Let's just leave it at that, and call it a theatre movie. Actually, let's call it up there with The Avengers as one of the best Marvel Movies, and one of the best movies I've seen.

The Expendables 3

Whooooooo! More old guys exploding things, punching things, shooting things, kicking things, driving things through other things, and pile-driving things. Also, for some reason, talking about things. Uh, not quite what I bargained for, but alright.

The main plot of the movie is that Barney Ross (Stallone) discovers his old partner (an original Expendable) Stonebanks (Gibson) is now an arms dealer. Barney thought he'd killed him awhile ago, but nope, he's still a live and now a rich dirtbag. The CIA hires Barney to get Stonebanks (but take him to The Hague for war crimes, so he can't just bomb Stonebanks from afar). He figures going after Stonebanks personally is a suicide mission, and doesn't want to drag the rest of his team down with him, so he fires them all and goes to his friend (Grammar) to hire a bunch of skilled but slightly suicidal new kids for the mission. Anyway, things go sideways, the old team shows up, and small country's army gets blown up at the end, because we'd all wondered if they could actually take on an army or not (yes. the answer is yes).

The worst thing about this movie is that there's not enough action, which would normally be a mortal sin in a movie like this. There's an action scene for the cold open, and an action scene after the title screen (which is unusual, since almost all movies have exposition after the title screen), and then the climax is about half an hour of really good action. But the middle of the movie is almost devoid of any action at all, which should be unforgivable. However, about halfway through, Antonio Banderas joins the team and really brings the funny. He makes up for the lack of action (Evan didn't think so), and so I'm grading this movie as a theatre movie.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the story of a brave, hard-working, ridiculously hot fluff-piece reporter who's fired for telling her producer that there are Mutant Turtles fighting crime. They're only teenagers, but they're ninjas. I'd fire her too. Okay, I wouldn't; she's Megan Fox.

This movie is often referred to as Michael Bay's TMNT, despite the fact that Jonathan Liebesman directed it. Bay only produces it. I mean, Bay also produced a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it was only known as that piece of crap that no one watched, not Michael Bay's Piece of Crap that No One Watched.

Still, this could be a Michael Bay movie. The action is pretty good, the CGI is (mostly) good, the music’s good, the humour’s there. I also liked how they mixed it up a bit from previous movies. Usually, Raphael’s all angsty, goes off by himself, and gets kidnapped (in TMNT – from 2007 – it’s his angst that leads to Leo getting kidnapped instead, but still … angst). This time, Raph’s still angsty, but it’s the other three that get captured, and he has to go rescue them. It also gives a nice reason for why Raph’s angsty.

This is during the last half of the movie, which is pretty much all action. The first half of the movie, not so much. Still, it’s not a long movie, so there’s not huge swaths of movie where no action happens (looking at you, Expendables). And then, of course, there’s the elevator scene, in which brothers act like brothers. All in all, I rank this as a theatre movie.

Hercules

Hercules is a movie in which Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays Hercules. I feel like that’s all you need to know.

Just kidding (well, not really, but I’m going to write more anyhow). The movie opens with Herc performing his labours. It cuts to a young guy (Herc’s nephew), who’s narrating the labours while telling a group of bandits not to mess with Herc, being the son of Zeus and all that. The bandits don’t listen (as bandits are wont to do. I have this same problem in video games. Do they not see the massive sword/axe/gun strapped to my back?) and so Herc and his team (hidden from view) take out the bandits. They collect their reward (turns out they’re mercenaries; nothing really supernatural going on) and take a night to revel when a princess stops by to hire them to defend her father’s land, Thrace.

The travel to Thrace and discover that there are no soldiers, because they have already been sent off to fight (and be red-shirted by) a nearby warlord. So Herc and his team train up the remaining villagers. Anyway, there are fights, and training montages, and a twist, and more fights, because this is a movie with The Rock (stupid Faster).

I was a little more into this movie because the military aspects are mirroring a book I’m reading, about a group of futuristic space marines marooned on a death planet. As their equipment fails or runs out of ammo, they have to rely on gear they can scrounge, and the associated tactics, which usually means going Roman with shields, swords, and pikes. And of course, also teaching the friendly natives these tactics. So it was interesting to see that in a movie, even if they left out important details like where their supply train was, or how the hell a giant tent showed up for them to camp in if it was only soldiers marching with only their swords and shields. Still, theatre movie, because I’m not going to rate a Hercules movie starring The Rock as any lower.

22 Jump Street

22 Jump St is almost exactly like 21 Jump Street (the previous movie, not the TV show), a fact that is lampshaded several times. Also lampshaded is the fact that sequels are only made to suck up money (both the precinct and the movie itself have much larger budgets). Still, all the self-deprecating meta-references can’t stop from making this a very funny movie.

As the previous movie hinted at, this time around, Schmidt and Jenko go to college (Whooooo! College!) to party, and to investigate a new drug that also causes death called WHYPHY, because kids these days mix up their drugs and their internet connections, or something. Also, get off my lawn!

While at college, Schmidt meets a nice girl that knows one of the victims of WHYPHY, and Jenko gets to be good friends with the quarterback, which causes friction when he wants to spend more time with the QB than with Schmidt. It’s treated like a relationship, because this is just one of the many jokes in the Jump Street arsenal.

They have many more jokes. I was chuckling through the entire movie, and laughing uproariously at times. The best parts are another drug tripping scene (these ones take place entirely within the subconscious) and an incredibly uncomfortable meal between Schmidt and Ice Cube where Ice Cube flies off the handle, which segues nicely into the next scene of Jenko finding out why it was so uncomfortable, then laughing like a maniac while running around the police station and high-fiving everyone. Channing Tatum puts so much exuberance into these performances it’s impossible not to like them.

So I’m calling it a Theatre movie. There’s not a whole lot of action, but the humour crammed into every corner makes up for it.

Sabotage

We saw sabotage on VoD. It's about a group of DEA agents led by Ahnold who plan on stealing $10 million during a drug bust on a large cartel mansion. They actually have a decent plan. The find the pallet of money (because that's how cartels get money, right?), put it in baggies and tie it to a thin rope, which they then flush down a toilet to retrieve later when they exit via the sewers. Too bad the money's not there. Someone stole it! Oh noes!

Under a black cloud of suspicion (for what? They blew up the money they didn't steal, leaving no evidence they were doing anything wrong except for being financial pyromanics. Which I guess is evidence of doing wrong), the team is investigated for 6 months, but nothing happens. They are eventually put back in the field, but before they can do any ops, someone starts picking them off one by one.

So the movie is essentially a whodunit, with a few action scenes thrown in. It's like Contraband that way. There's not a whole lot, unless your into unnecessary and brief nudity (some at the beginning, once in the middle, because apparently people that own pools do laps in the buff, as neighbours dropping by is unknown in this universe). I did like the tactics, though, because I always give bonus points for military realism. Still, nothing to elevate this film above a cheap DVD rating, and enough action and innovative camera work to keep it from dropping down.

Blitz

We watched Blitz because it had Jason Statham on the cover, playing a cowboy cop, and that's usually a great premise, but this movie is about a serial killer targeting cops in London, and there's almost no action at all, and what little of it is mainly just short burst of violence, and we got about halfway through before we turned it off and watched Superhero movie instead.

Superhero Movie

Contrary to other "Movie" movies, this is not by Seltzer and Friedberg; it's written by the other four writers of Scary Movie, who decided that the former duo shouldn't be the only ones to hock shallow parodies on an unsuspecting audience.

This movie parodies the original Sam Raimi Spider-man, right down to the opening about chasing a bus and the narration (that's only used at the beginning) about it all starting with a girl. Then we cut to our Peter Parker substitute who inexplicably has a Harry Potter haircut. There's also his black best friend, Kevin Hart, a Mary-Jane stand in (though this one is blond), and the villain, who's played by the guy that did Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmour, and will thus forever more be known as Shooter McGavin (sorry). Brent Spiner pops up as Shooter's right-hand ... scientist (I guess) and Leslie Nielson gets the coveted Uncle Ben roll (he lives in this one. Oh, spoiler alert).

Anyway, I give this movie a DVD quality rating. I mean, it's probably at the top of the DVD-rating movies, but it doesn't have enough to push it to a Blu-Ray. It's got enough humour, but the budget keeps it down (the sets look a little cheap, and the special effects are slim to none, even if they get a nice floating chair at the end). Still it's got enough laughs that you may want to check it out at some point. Just keep in mind that like all (well, most) parodies, there's going to be toilet and vulgar jokes made, although there are enough minor jokes slipped in that made me giggle.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a star vehicle for Andy Samberg. He'd left Saturday Night Live, he made some music, and a TV executive thought he'd make a great leading role for a sitcom. And then they thought of a premise, so we get a sitcom set in a precinct (quite a bit different than Castle, but what can you do?)

Samberg plays Detective Jake Peralta, a manchild who's nonetheless a great detective. His main character arc throughout the season is to grow up (a little) as well as some later-developing feelings for ...

Detective Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), a fellow detective. She's quite competitive with Jake, and ambitious to boot, which is normally a bad thing (usually plays up the stereotype of a career woman), but this time it's done quite well, because she's desperately looking for a mentor, and thinks she's found it in the form of ...

Captain Ray Holt (Andre Braugher), an older, black, gay captain who's only dream was to get his own squad. Of course, being gay and black while joining the force in the 80's made this quite difficult, but he overcame it. He also appears to have no emotions, but uses sarcasm quite effectively to cut Jake down to size when he's getting a bit too arrogant or childish. He's brought into the station as the new captain at the beginning of the first episode to replace the "anything goes" old captain who let Jake get away with way too much. Holt arc is to get Jake to gradually shape up, as well as to loosen up (slightly).

Detective Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) is Jake's best friend and occasional partner. He's competent in his own way, but earnest and usually a bit of a buffoon. Truglio plays him to perfection. His arc involves a romance to a fellow foodie, while also getting past his infatuation with ...

Detective Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), who also doesn't have any feelings. In fact, she could easily be mistaken for an attractive man with breasts. No emotions, likes actions movies and fast foods, doesn't care for romantic notions and will tell you about it. Gruff but friendly as well. Her arc is about developing some occasional feelings, and she even enjoys hanging out with Charles once he's over her.

There's also Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti), a civilian secretary and one of Jake's oldest friends. She doesn't have much of an arc (She's lazy and doesn't improve) and I didn't like her much because she's super smug and has the annoying habit of also being right. There was one episode later in the season where she and Jake go apartment hunting (he has a crippling addiction to spending money on awesome-but-unnecessary things) and she gives off awesome big-sister vibes, but then the next episode it's back to smug and right.

They're all watched over by Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) who's worked with Holt before and knows how great the Captain will be. He's essentially Terry Crews as a cop, only he's got two small daughters and a wife, and is this scared to go out into the fields for fear of what'll happen to his family if he dies. His arc is him getting over that.

There are also a couple of minor characters, but those are the main ones. The main plot for most episodes is not a crime, or catching criminals, but the interaction of the characters in the station (or away from it, for that matter). And they do that very, very well. If this were a movie, I would absolutely give it a theatre rating. So go watch it.

Improv Sports

I have never had the chance to go see live improv, except for that time I saw some high school improv teams when I was, like, 11. So I guess I have never seen professional live improv. On Thursday, Evan and I wandered down to Gainesville Island and took in an evening of improve at the Vancouver Theatre Sports League, or whatever it’s called.

There were two shows there. The early show was called Trip Improviser (and sponsored by Trip Adviser) and the action was mostly short skits with audience suggestions about where they had been. Quite funny, with a break in the middle just as things were going on a bit too long.

The second show was later and called The Ultimate Improv Championship, because things were about to go down for mixed verbal arts, or something. Two teams would each have 25 minutes to act out scenes, whether they wanted to do one or several. The first team was called “Tapped Out”, and did a variety of scenes essentially using Freeze to transition from one to another. A lot of call-backs, wildly hilarious humour, all done by three very good professionals. Great fun.

The second team was called “Dan Goes to Camp” and was a 25 minute scene about Dan going to a Magic camp (audience suggestion). It wasn’t quite as good as the first team, so Tapped Out won the night, and will presumably defend their title the following week. I’d definitely do it again. It’s not quite as funny as what you can see on TV, but those are edited down from four hours of material, and this was live. Were it a movie, it’d get a Theatre (sports) Rating from me.

All in all, a fun time was had by us. Many theatre quality movies, which was certainly a step up from last time. Maybe by the time we do it again next year, my brain will have recovered.

Zombie Column: Trans4mers

Last night, Bill, Ty, and I went to see Transformers: Age of Extinction, because we do not have enough Michael Bay in our lives. I mean, I suppose Bill and Ty may have had different reasons, but I was greatly missing the Bayhem.

Trailers for the movie were Dumb and Dumber To (no thanks), Mockingjay part 1 (featuring what I've been informed of is an evil Peeta. By the way, this is a universe in which people have names like Peeta and Katniss, instead of normal names like Cade Yaeger. Okay, bad example. Nevertheless, pass. I guess I'm just not as interested in young adults killing each other amidst love triangles as other people. I'm more interested in cars going so fast they cause explosions. Also, robot dinosaurs), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (yes. Absolutely), Guardians of the Galaxy ("Aaaaah-aah-aaaaaah-aah-aaaaahm ... hooked on this trailer." and going to see this movie) and Herculues ("I! AM! SEEING THIS!"), the latter three of which are coming out this summer, so that's all kinds of awesome.

Transformers opens up with a slightly different take on the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs - it was robots, because they're always coming here and messing up Earth, and the Autobots have to save it in the present day. That is the plot in every Transformers movie. Sometime in the past, Transformers come (100 years ago, 17000 years ago, 50 years ago), then the problems started back then suddenly emerge today. It's weird how that works out, and how none of the movies seem to be aware that robots are constantly interfering in our history except for the one instance in the movie that forms the backstory for the plot.

Anyway, we also get to introduced to Cade Yaeger (A giant robot? No), an inventor who's inventions are constantly breaking down. For my money, he's actually pretty good, managing to fit voice recognition into just about everything he does, even if they don't work as they're supposed to. He looks after (and is looked after by) his daughter Tessa, who'll be graduating from high school soon. Cade's business partner/employee is Lucas, played by T.J. Miller, whom you may recognize as a mammoth douchebag in Silicon Valley, and is one of the reasons I'm no longer watching that show (why is it people mistake awkwardness for funny? I like my funny to be funny. Also, absurd).

The main plot of the movie is that Autobots are hunted down because Chicago in the previous movie has made people wary of any alien robots, regardless of faction. Which totally reminded me of Star Wars, when everyone hates the Jedi because Sith are so evil, and bystanders tend to think everyone with a Lightsaber should just shove off. Are bystanders in conflicts so stupid they can't recognize both sides of a war? A war in which one side victorious would certainly spell their doom? Bystanders in fictional universes are idiots, I guess.

So, this movie has many explosions (which are great) and wrecks Chicago (again. What does Bay have against it? Did it dump Bay for a sexier director?) and travels to Hong Kong, where we do, in fact, get Dinobots. Robots in disguise ... as dinosarus! They'll fit right in! It also has the requisite humour, and manages to redeem Nicola Peltz after the disaster/debacle/disasticle that was The Last Airbender. Also, they brought back Steve Jablonksy to do the score, so the music is fantastic too.

All in all, it's a theatre movie. All the critics are wrong, and I am right, because this is my blog, and were you expecting anything else?

Zombie Column: Watch Dogs

Contrary to popular belief, Watch Dogs is not about canine time-telling devices. Phooey. However, it is the latest game from Ubisoft, who you probably don't know as the makers of Assassin's Creed and a particular dopey version of DRM called Uplay that they force down their PC users’ throats (Dear Ubisoft, I use Steam, which already has DRM. Well built DRM. Useful DRM, not shoehorned into games DRM. DRM that many, many people have gotten used to. Please, just let me play your games without this extra wrench in the gears, mucking things up. Thanks).

I have been told that Watch Dogs is much like Assassins Creed with hacking, or similar to Grand Theft Auto (the game, not the activity) with hacking. I wouldn't know, as I haven't tried either (the games, not the activities. Though come to think of it, I haven't tried those activities either). But the gameplay does have a lot of hacking. As well as driving, shooting, and hitting people in the noggin with a collapsible baton.

The story centers around Aiden Pearce (the character player). 11 months ago, he and his partner, Damien Brenks, were pulling a hacking job in the Merlaut Hotel. Aiden was in the hotel, hooking up to the wireless, while Damien was offsite, doing the actual hacking. After they got about $140,000, another hacker broke in. The police started to converge, and after Aiden sees a blurry image of ... something, he bails. However, the blurry image is enough to get a hit put on him that results in the death of his six year old niece. Now 11 months later, he finds the hitman who cause the car crash.

The story is kind of weird. You'd think information from the hitman would lead somewhere, but it doesn't. During the tutorial, you give the hitman (Maurice) to Jordi, a fixer you're familiar with and have paid a lot of money to. Jordi's job (besides watching your back occasionally) is to torture Maurice to give up information, but it doesn't really work. Instead, a second plot intrudes and takes up most of the game. That eventually branches off to a third plot (mostly conspiracy) that actually settles the first plot, while dealing with the last of the second plot ends the game.

Aiden himself is pretty good at hacking, but it turns out he's also good at driving, good at shooting, good at sneaking, good at everything needed to accomplish this game. And it's not just because I was in control of him (in fact, I was pretty bad at driving, until I got the hang of it. Even then, I wasn't that great). Aiden is recognized in game as good at this stuff. How did he get so good at it? Most games give an excuse as to why the player character is great at the stuff in the game. Shepard was part of N7 (Navy SEALS in space). Adam Jensen was ex-SWAT. Aiden? He's just a guy who's excellent at everything.

Gameplay mostly consists of hacking things, driving things, shooting people, and hitting people. Hacking is most common, and easy to use. Simply hold 'Q' for half a second, and you hack whatever your cursor is pointed near. Point it at someone’s phone, and you can hear their conversation, or see their text messages, or simply just a display of their bank information (which you can then steal at the nearest ATM). Hacking traffic lights causes green lights at every intersection, and everyone pulls out, causing pile-ups. Every. Single. Time. Hacking cameras allows you to look for things you wouldn't be able to see from your vantage point, even other cameras. A few missions (both main and side) require you to hack a chain of cameras. Later, you gain the ability to start and stop the trains, explode transformers or just any boxes marked 'Explode', street bumpers, road spikes, and even steam pipes under roads, causing massive explosions. It's one of the better ways of getting people off your back if their tailing your vehicle, shooting at you. And of course, one of the very fun things to do is hack the grenades in peoples' pockets. Sometimes they get it out, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get it out, just in time to fling it in the general direction of somebody else. Whoops.

Most of the game is divided up into missions, either main missions or side missions. The rest of the game is sort extraneous stuff. The side missions consist of a bit of variety. Sometimes there'll be gang hideouts, in which I have to sneak in and knock out the head of the gang (not kill him, for some reason). Some of them consist of Convoys, in which I have to knock out someone who's travelling with two other cars, and all of them are usually filled with people who are shooting at me. I didn't do any of those, because I failed about six times at the one I tried. Four times I died, and twice I accidentally killed the guy I was only supposed to knock out.

There's also Fixer Contracts, which usually involve stealing cars. Sometimes it's to provide a distractions, leading to long car chases along a fixed route. Sometimes it's just to provide a nice car to someone for free, so it involves driving carefully (i.e. slowly) so the car doesn't get too dinged.

The other thing that comes up are imminent crimes. While scanning other people (everyone's profile will pop up with a random fact about them), I'll get a notice pointing me to a location where a crime is about to take place. If I go there and look around, I'll eventually spot a potential victim or perpetrator (their faces will be in a yellow boxes. Most people are white boxes, hackable phones people will be blue, and enemies are red). If I wait out of sight, eventually the crime will start to take place. At this point, I can intervene and clobber the perp on the head, increasing my reputation. Reputation is nice, because it stops people from calling the cops when they see me. Reputation can be lowered by injuring or killing civilians, something that happened with alarming frequency whenever I was involved in a car chase, so I was always going to the crimes and intervening so I could raise my rep.

A lot of the extraneous stuff is heading to specific locations and hacking whatever's there. Mostly it's usually a CTOS box (CTOS is the system Chicago hooked everything up to so it runs right) that I hack into, but sometimes it's a door. Usually doors are locked, and I have a white line I follow around varying obstacles until I find the switch to hack. Sometimes CTOS boxes are locked like that too, so I end up wandering into the neighbor's yard to hack a switch on the back of their house, allowing me to open the garage three doors down. How does that work? Hacking cameras is very useful here, because sometimes the switch is somewhere I can't see. I might have to platform a bit to get there, as well. Once I've hacked in, occasionally I'll have to play a "Connect the signal" minigame where I rotate pieces of electronics (or code?) until it connects to where it needs to go. Anyway, if it's a box I've hacked, usually it just shows something from a camera in someone's apartment. Some of these scenes are funny. Some are perverted (nothing explicit is ever shown, just implied). Some are sad. Some are creepy. Mind you, I guess the fact I'm watching it also creepy.

The main story missions are usually made up of these types of things too. Go here, hack this. Go here, knock out this person, hack their phone. Go here, knock out this convoy. If you're good at the side missions, you'll be good at the main game. Of course, there are also some completely random extraneous stuff too. You can play poker (and cheat by hacking cameras, or analyzing biometrics), you can play chess, you can play AR games, or even drinking games. There was a drinking game as part of the main story missions, but that was the only one I did.

Most of the game is pretty good, but there are a few bad things about it. Firstly, the cops. Police are incredibly annoying and persistent. In most chases, they'll bring in cars and a helicopter. If I outrun the cars, there's still the helicopter around. If I step out of the car to hack the helicopter (because the camera won't pan up that far in a vehicle, and sometimes not on foot), disabling it for a few seconds, then the cars catch up. By the time I've outrun them, the chopper is back up and running. If I'm not in the fastest cars, the cops are just fast enough to catch up to me (but not get in front of me) and run me off the road, usually into a tree (which stops me dead, unlike lamp posts or streetlights, which simply fall over while denting my car. Too much denting and my car handles badly. Even more, and it'll give up the ghost). So escaping from the police is a rather frustrating experience, usually dependent on luck rather than skill.

Secondly, the knocking people out thing. If the target is stationary (like gang hideouts), it's possible to sneak up on them, or at least pick off enough other gang-members elsewhere that the final confrontation isn't too bad. If they're part of a convoy, though, there's eight people shooting at me while I try to run up and knock out person out.

Games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dishonored have ranged non-lethal options. DE:HR even as a tranq Rifle, for extra range. But in Watch Dogs, you need to be right up next to the person, which often means they and their cohorts are putting many bullets into you as you try to get that close (hint: Aiden does not survive many bullets).

Thirdly are the bodies. You can’t really do anything with them. Either unconscious or as corpses, bodies stay where they drop, which is annoying, because if anyone comes across them, they get freaked out. Civilians may call the police (or take pictures with their phones), but gangs will be put on alert. I hate to keep harping on what other games do better, but DE:HR let you drag bodies around to hide them in closets, and Dishonored actually had the body fall into your arms by default if you snuck up behind someone and knocked them out, letting you easily hide them in … well, more closets. In both games, guards patrol a lot, but they really should check the closets. I can imagine a tidal wave of bodies falling out on top of the poor sap who opened the door. Creating another body, I supposed.

Lastly are the save points. This game goes by checkpoints with no saving. A lot of other games do that too, but it can get annoying if I’ve perfectly cleared out a level of a parking garage, alerting no one. It’d be a great time to save, lest I set of the alarm one floor up and wind up in another shootout. Unlike Jesus, I can’t save, so if the shootout goes sideways, I’ll have to restart the whole parking garage again. And yes, this totally happened, and nearly put me off gang hideouts for the rest of the game.

Other than that, the only other annoyance I found was story related. Near the end of the game, one of the main characters dies for what the writers thought was a good reason, and for what I thought was a pretty stupid one. I guess the writers thought that someone should die for the emotional gutpunch, but I just though “there was figuratively no reason for that to happen.”

I should make specific mention of the soundtrack to the game. Occasionally, you can hack peoples’ phones and snag a song off of them, which can then be selected when you’re driving. There’s an achievement for getting 23, but there are actually a lot more songs than that. Not all of them were to my taste, but the breadth of selection means there’s something for everyone. I hadn’t heard “Invisible Man” by anyone but Ghoti Hook, so it was cool to see the original done by The Vindictives.

So, I was all prepared to give this game an 8 on 10, because of the annoyances. But then I played the last two missions, which were chock full of police, and so frustrating I had to knock it down to a 7. There’s a difference between challenging (like a good math problem) and a just plain difficult (like a terrible math problem that you don’t understand, because the teacher didn’t explain the concepts to you, and you’re actually a sociology major, and are in the wrong class. Whoops). It’s not a bad thing to put frustrating things in your game (well, okay, it is), provided they are optional. They should not be jam-packed into the climax of the game.

So, 7 out of 10. Pretty good game, full of things to do, but be prepared for some frustrating experiences, with excellent music to soothe you through the hard times.

Zombie Column: Superb Sequels – A Doubleheader

This week, I took in two movies in a doubleheader. And it’s fitting I went to two, because both are sequels (if you hadn’t guessed from the title or anything). I went downtown, because that was convenient for seeing it after work, and not many theatres were playing the second movie I went to. In order, they were Captain America:The Winter Soldier, and The Raid II.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

This is the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger. Apparently it’s impossible to name these things without a colon somewhere in there. Iron Man got off lucky with numbered sequels and Thor at least managed one before he had subtitles amended to his movies, but the Captain gets colons wherever he goes.

Anyway, the movie starts with the Captain storming a SHIELD freighter that’s been taken over by pirates. These are not Captain Phillips pirates, these are Marvel pirates, so they’re all white (no racial implications for you) and led by a guy played by George St Pierre (the MMA fighter). He and Cap throw down and Cap wins, because St Pierre is not playing a super soldier. After rescuing the hostages, Cap finds Natasha Romanov downloading files from the freighter computer on Nick Fury’s orders, and he’s a little pissed about that, since the mission was supposed to be about saving people, not information.

Back at the base, he and Fury get into it about trust and compartmentalization and all that, and there’s a lot of talking for an action movie. However, it does raise one of the central plots of the movie, which is the balance between freedom and security, in which freedom is always portrayed as right, because this is America, and it’s not like we have metal detectors at the airports or speed limits on roads. Oh wait, we totally do. Still, debate! Depth! Discussion!

We also get The Winter Soldier. Who is he? What is he? Sadly, I had this spoiled by the IMDB page, and also the Cineplex magazine in the theatre, which actually says who he is. Dude, spoilers. Also in the spoiler vein, we get a new technology that neatly steals the plot of Transcendence and packs it into about 10 minutes. I think most people would just accept this new technology and move on, but I’m not sure how many people really understood the mindblowing implications of it. Also, I’m not sure if the film makers understood how limited 70’s era storage technology was. Still, those 10 minutes explain who the bad guys were (these guys again?) and how they came to be.

The Raid II

In case you didn’t know, The Raid was an Indonesian film about a team of police invading a 15-floor apartment building in the slums of Jakarta to take down the mobster that owned the place. So, cops versus criminals in a building. Cool? Cool.

The Raid II takes place afterwards, and has a lot of time skipping back and forth at the beginning. Sorting it all out: right after the first film, Rama (the hero of the first film) meets with an Internal Affairs agent who wants him to go undercover. The first film villain was only a small fish, but the big fish are paying off cops, and the IA officer wants proof. Rama declines, because he has a pregnant wife. However, a few months later his brother is killed by one of the gangs (mobsters, really), so he goes to the IA officer and accepts. He gets himself arrested because the son of one of the mobsters is in jail. They become friends, and two years later (once Rama is released), he goes to work for them as the son’s shadow.

However, there is a new guy in town who wants a piece of the pie. Previously, the pie had only had two pieces – one for a local gang (the one Rama now works for), and one for a Japanese one. The new guy wants to induce a war between the two, edge out the Japanese, and split his remains with the local gang. All of this takes a lot of talking, which is why The Raid II is 2.5 hours long.

Also, it’s long because the director (Gareth Evans) really likes to linger on shots he finds cool. He could’ve cut about 15 minutes if he’d hired a ruthless editor, but no, we get to cut back and forth for a minute between a fair that doesn’t have anything to do with anything, and a field of very tall grass, which is eventually sprayed with blood before we pan over to which body previously held said blood. We get that you like that shot, but maybe you shouldn’t use it in an action movie, Mr. Evans.

All told, both movies are theatre movies. Both movies have car chases that aren’t spectacular, but we aren’t going to these movies for the car chases. We’re going for the fighting. Cap is surprisingly good at hand-to-hand, and The Raid II had martial arts in its car chases, because with a whole city as its set, why not find some inventive places to fight? Neither may live up to the incredible expectations placed on them (The Avengers is still my favourite Marvel Movie, and the Raid had a higher density of fighting, if not total amount). Still, both great movies if you want to see action.

Zombie Column: The Lego Movie

This week, a few friends and I went to see The Lego Movie. I’m trying to find words to describe it that don’t include Awesome, because of the theme. It’s uncannily ear-wormy. I mean, I have some songs I’m using to fend it off, but if it woke me up in the morning, I’d be hearing it all day. The movie makers used it fairly well, though. It’s the normal bubblegum pop for the opening bit. But then the movie eventually goes to an old west Lego Land, and there’s a honky tonk version being played on the piano. Then at the end of the movie, there’s an acoustic version (reminding me of Ted on Cougar Town), before it swings into a power ballad, like all the metal bands did in the 80’s to get on the radio. Oh wow, I got off track.

Anyway, I was excited to see the previews until I remembered (right before walking into the theatre) that this movie was rated G, and there would be no previews I recognized. There was an animated one for a dog that invents a time travel device, one for Rio 2, and one for possibly a documentary on the Lemurs in Madagascar. The kids in the theatre were delighted at their antics, so I’m sure they’ll drag their parents to see it if they can remember it after 5 minutes.

So, the movie opens with Emmet waking up. Emmet is a perfectly normal Lego guy who follows the instructions so perfectly that nobody really remembers him. He has no distinguishing features, unlike the guy who loves sausages, the guy who has bananas, the guy who laughs when you say his name, and the girl who’s perky. They all live in a large Lego city where everyone is supposed to follow the instructions. This is actually pretty brilliant, because when I get new Lego (and yes, I totally love getting new Lego. So what? I’m an adult, and I can spend money on what I feel like), I always follow the instructions too.

Emmet stumbles upon the mysterious Piece of Resistance, about which a prophecy is foretold that includes messianic figures and whatnot. Because of this piece, Emmet is soon engulfed in a conspiracy of Master Builders (people who can build without using instructions) who want to take down the evil President Business before he can end the world using his secret super weapon. The plot goes from there.

First of all, this movie is funny. Lots of gags, including in the casting. Cobie Smulders, (not-so) fresh of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, gets in to the DC Legotastic universe by voicing Wonder Woman (Paula Patton is in talks to play her should she get an actual movie). Billy Dee Williams plays Lego Lando Calrissian (so awesome!) and Anthony Daniels is C-3P0. Shaq plays Lego Shaq, because why not. And while not a stunt, Charlie Day plays a 1987 Space Man with a cracked helmet that looks suspiciously similar to how may cracked helmets I put on my old Lego Spacemen. He gets so excited about getting to build a spaceship that it could be a shoutout to Portal 2.

Secondly, the action is really good. It can get a little frenetic when guns are shooting, but the chase scenes are fantastic. Also, the way that Lego pieces get used as debris is excellent. Whenever something goes crashing into something else, bits of Lego go flying out. And they use a lot of the fire pieces that used to come out of the back of the engines of my spaceships (‘cause I get excited about spaceships too).

The CGI is incredible. This is a master class on how to use computers (and the occasional stop motion capture) to make a movie. And the sheer imagination of the way they used Lego is ridiculously impressive. I cannot say enough about that.

So, all in all, a theatre movie. Or, as other critics might say, Two plastic claw-handed thumbs up. In fact, everything was awesome (damn!)

Zombie Column: 47 Ronin

So, Evan was in town for the holidays, which meant we saw a movie, because that’s what we do. Also, it was unilaterally decided that I would be going to visit them soon for another weekend of movies. I had no say in this. On the plus side, they have Netflix, so if I get sick again (it happened last time), we can at least pack in several movies at their home.

There were three options of movies for us. First was the new Hobbit movie, but it seemed more like a family movie, in that Evan promised to take his wife, and I should probably take my nephew. Secondly was Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which seemed like a ripe case for Hangover 2 syndrome (a sequel to a massively successful comedy that rehashes the same jokes with little humour). Third was 47 Ronin which had the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the three, so we went to that.

Trailers this time included I, Frankenstein (Evan pointed out the irony of titling it that. I guess I, Adam would have been lost on everyone. Although I, Daemon would have been pretty cool), Endless Love (about a shady guy who turned his life around, then fell in love with a good girl, whose dad looks into the guy's shady past. What the hell’s a love movie trailer doing in front of this movie?), Non-stop (Liam Neeson Neesoning his way through a plane mid-flight), and X-Men: Days of Future Past (in which Wolverine is sent back into the past to stop a war on mutants, because time travel has always worked out so well. Alright trailer with terrific music).

47 Ronin stars Keanu Reeves as Kai, a white guy in Ancient Japan (he’s actually the son of a British sailor and a Japanese woman, putting the time of the movie somewhere after the British had arrived, but before mythical creatures had died out). He hangs around the province of Arco, and is in love with Arco’s lord’s daughter, although he knows that her place is far above his in society. Arco hosts a tournament that the Emperor and the lord’s rival attend. Under the influence of witchcraft, the lord harms his rival. He’s permitted by the Emperor to commit Sepuku. The rival will take over the land by marrying the lord’s daughter. The lord’s samurai are forbidden to take revenge and cast out as Ronin. After one year of mourning, they team up with Kai and take revenge. Revenge with a side of honour, making it more Justice than Revenge.

The beginning of the movie states that those who understand the 47 Ronin understand Japan, but that’s not really true. Samurai are viewed a lot like knights. Back then, they were normal people who acted like normal people, with all their good qualities and bad. Much, much later, we look back at them with idealism as paragons of Honour, but they were not. Knights were kind of into the pillage/rape/murder thing, and I would wager small amounts of money that one of the reasons for the Crusades was so that the pillage/rape/murder could happen on foreign soil to the people of a religion Europe didn’t really care about.

Samurai were the same way. Some time later, important Japanese people got together and said “This is how Samurai acted, and so should you” regardless of whether or not Samurai actually acted that way. I’m sure some did, just as I’m sure some knights actually were knights in shining armour. But to say to understand the 47 Ronin is to undertand Japan is wrong. It’s actually understanding what Japan wishes it was. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We all idealise the past. All the founding fathers had foibles – they were people, after all. Nobody’s perfect. Anyway, I just wanted to state that.

So, the movie itself? Well, it looked great. They had $175 million for a budget, and they spent a lot of it on effects, and the rest on costumes so elaborate, they were ridiculously over the top. There wasn’t a lot of humour, but that’s okay in a serious movie like this, trying to get the point across that honour is worth dying for. The music is perfectly adequate.

The only real letdown, actually, is the action, which is kind of a big deal for me. There were only a couple of extended set pieces in the movie (there were some other very short ones). The first was good, the second was a battle in a flaming village that was a huge letdown because they went with the shaky-cam, short-cuts method instead of having awesome flaming fights, and the last was actually pretty good, and featured one of the better human vs dragon battles I’ve seen. In fact, I don’t really remember seeing anyone battle an Eastern-style dragon before. Still, the potential was there for so much more awesome, and they dropped the ball.

In conclusion, I’m going to have to give this a DVD rating. On the ride home, we compared it to Battleship, but upon further review, I think the scenery bumps it up a little. Not much.

On a final note, there’s a really nifty scene where (before the final battle) the remaining Ronin all sign their names on a piece of paper detailing their goal. Each signs their name, then draws their katana a few inches, presses their thumb against the blade, and leave a bloody thumbprint next to their name. I just thought that was pretty cool.

Zombie Column: Riddick

There are many, many people who are probably making the Riddick-ulous pun right now, so I won't be joining them (just standing beside them and pointing it out a lot). Unless, of course, I wasn't referring to the adjective, but instead the spell from Harry Potter, able to turn a bad movie into a good one. Sadly, my magic is just not that strong, and Riddick remained as it was.

We saw the movie up at CrossIron, although not in the fancy 3D UltraAVX theatre. Riddick wasn't in 3D, so I guess they didn't want to waste the extra money they could charge on it, or something. Still, good theatre. Previews for the week were Oldboy, Runner Runner, and 47 Ronin (which had a surprisingly long trailer). I could go for Oldboy (even though I know all the spoilers for the movie it remade) and 47 Ronin, because who doesn't like Keanu Reeves or Japanese martial arts movies with supernatural actions scenes?

Riddick opens with the titular character abandoned on some desert world (a little more varied than Tatooine, but not much. More like Geonosis, actually). There, he battles the elements and the predatory native creatures, all of whom seem to want to kill him. And that's all he does for about the first third of the movie. It's boring. Wow, is it ever boring. There's a brief flashback to the Necromongers, and then it's back to camping on death world. Whoo.

After that, he goes exploring onto the slightly nicer part of the world. It's more of a tundra than a desert. He comes across a Merc station (put there by who knows to house and re-supply any mercenaries that need it). Then he sees a rainstorm and decides that enough's enough, time to get off this rock. The only problem is that the only way off involves being captured by bounty hunters, so Riddick calls them over from whatever planet they were on.

Two bounty hunter crews arrive, and there's a lot of setting up, and patrolling, and Riddick gaining intelligence by staying far away and staring at them. Then there's some offscreen killing, and some really lame action and then the movie ends.

So, this movie is terrible. The first part is slow, and the second part is slow, and the third part is slow and lame. I can understand now why it took so much trouble to produce (Evan was telling me Vin Diesel had to mortgage his house to get the necessary funds). I mean, who would have looked at this script and said "Yeah, I want to make this. It stars an action hero with cool powers in an action hero franchise, only this time, he doesn’t do any action!"?

Is there anything redeeming about this movie? Well, after this, they won't be able to make any more. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, since I liked Chronicles of Riddick (I'm the only one). So the chance for another one of those is gone. But if they wanted to make more movies like this one, then it's a good thing they won't be able to.

Other than that, there are one or two chuckles to be had. Also, for fans of Battlestar Galactica, Katee Sackhoff is in it, and it's always nice when TV actors get roles in movies. I mean, she's in a completely unnecessary topless scene, so maybe it's not so good either. The movie had already earned it's R-rating with topless scenes in the flashbacks, we don't need famous actors doing them just for funsies.

All in all, I'm ranking this as a Free on TV movie. Not the absolute worst we've seen (Hi, Last Airbender), but probably ranking somewhere between Wrath of the Titans and Faster.