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mossfoot
Reviews
The Pentaverate (2022)
Delightfully weird
Weird and wacky. It's inventive and creative, Takes chances. Gotta respect that. Funny and irreverent, what more do you need? Slow at times, but worth sticking with it.
The Dwarvenaut (2016)
A fine look at art and the love of roleplaying
I've been a roleplayer most my life and watching this reminded me why I got into it in the first place. It was a humble and emotional look at how the creator of Dwarven Forge came to his recent Kickstarter successes, portraying a man full of creativity and optimism and a love of story as well as art. Well worth the watch.
Even if you've never played D&D in your life it's worth watching because of the journey that is taken, from a trouble childhood to adulthood, from GaryCon to GenCon. It also pulls no punches, showing the troubles faced as well as the triumphs. But ultimately it is about a simple thing: living your dream.
Pacific Rim (2013)
Giant robots, done right. Was that so hard?
Granted I went into Pacific Rim hoping to enjoy it, but keep in mind that with me that actually means a greater chance of disappointment.
Which I was not.
Does the world in which Jagers exist make a lick of sense? No. How on earth does punching Kaiju with giant metal fists make more sense than launching Tomahawk missiles at them (my nerdling explanation here is that the radioactive nature of the creatures prevent long range weapons from working properly, but still
) Fact is, if that is the kind of detail that is a deal breaker for you, then you are way too nitpicky and will not enjoy this movie.
But. If you are the kind of person who grew up a fan of Godzilla movies, or Japanese Giant Robot cartoons (not Robotech but the Grandzier variety) or hell, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, I can't see how you won't love this movie.
Personally I fall in the middle category. Was never big into Godzilla and was a bit too old for Power Rangers when it first came out, but those Giant Robot cartoons with the superhero like super science? I dug it. Granted when Robotech came along I vastly preferred the slightly more realistic/militaristic approach, and if anything that is the middle ground Pacific Rim falls into.
Plot wise we're talking a straight forward story. You have the invasion scenario, you have the military response, you have teams of pilots. Characterization is done fine, but a problem I think some people have is that they're expecting TOO much from Del Toro, as if he's not just suppose to do better than Transformers but give us a deep window to the human condition
with giant robots punching monsters as window dressing.
Let's put this movie in it's proper place. It's Top Gun. It's Star Wars. It's The Matrix without the psudo-philosophy and impossible human battery science in favour of impossible giant robot science. That's the kind of movie you're going to watch. To quote an oft-used internet meme: it ain't Citizen Kane. Nor is it supposed to be.
Only one character I actively thought was full on super-cliché and that was the Iceman clone (though what happens at the end with him is better). Ron Pearlman is perhaps underused, but it's always great to see him show up.
I was also surprised how I didn't mind the 3D effects. I'm not a fan of 3D (didn't have a choice in the matter), but this worked fine in that medium. It was obvious when it needed to be and wasn't when it didn't. Still not worth paying extra for, but usually there are moments where the 3D bugs me and this didn't have any of them.
If I were to go into geek mode I could nitpick the hell out of it, as I alluded to before. But where Del Toro succeeds is that I didn't want to. I was too busy enjoying myself, and wishing I could see more of this world. My major complaint is that it was too short – by about ten hours.
What I mean is this would have been great as a series rather than a movie, to flesh out more of the characters and give the consequences more weight. Heck, so much backstory is just hinted at in the first half hour, showing the early years of the Kaiju war, I would have loved to have seen more of that as well. Or watching them effectively become independent contractors when they lose their funding. And more time to get to know the pilot teams. Because even action movies can have characters that are developed enough for you to care about what happens to them, and I don't think this movie had enough time to do that for some of them.
Taken for what this is, this succeeded where Hollywood almost always fails.
Giant robots, done right. Was that so hard?
The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
An Underrated Classic
I just saw this movie again, and stand by my original assessment of it. It's an underrated classic, with far more depth than most family movies. On the one hand it's more simplistic than, say, a Pixar film. It's more of a fairy tale like The Little Prince. And while I don't care for the character designs too much (though they do have an artistic charm to them), from a writing standpoint I would put Despereaux on par with the best Pixar films, maybe more so.
Most of the main characters are seriously damaged, yet believably human (even the rodents). The way some characters fall from grace is more believable than anything Lucas came up with in Star Wars III.
If it has a failing it's with some of the secondary characters, such as the Soup Maker's assistant (made up of vegetables) which just didn't really seem necessary.
But the themes of anger, regret, sadness, depression, and the power of forgiveness makes this a movie I feel more children should be exposed to. It's a very much a children's movie, but deals very much with adult themes.
Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (2007)
It's just right for what it is
The Lost Tales series (and I do hope there are more) are meant to be a series of short stories compiled together at roughly the same point in time. In a way this reminds me of a compellation by Ray Bradbury. It is not epic, it is not action packed, and it is not meant to be. It's about the characters and to approach the universe in a different way from the regular series or movies. I gave this 10 out of 10 for this reason, but also in anticipation that the rest of the short stories are done on par with it in theme, feeling and writing.
If B5 is the TV equivalent of Lord of the Rings in terms of an epic SF series, then Lost Tales will be the equivalent of Martian Chronicles.
For what it is, I loved it.
Melanie Darrow (1997)
Hilarious!
This has got to be the most insulting to your intelligence show ever!
Okay, this is definitely an 80s/90s TV movie, like the newer episodes of Matlock or Parry Mason, just so you have a sense of the look of it.
In it, Delta Burke plays Melanie Darrow, a hotshot lawyer (are there any other kind) who is hounded by the media, constantly waving them off saying "Not now, boys" like some belle suthern girl, until she needs them, in which they wordlessly follow her like obedient puppies. Yeah, the media do that. Really.
This movie is just playing in the background while I work and seemed pretty average/normal/mediocre until about half way through. When the following sequence happens:
Melanie's P.I. buddy is staked out outside a jewelery store, waiting for someone to pick up some hot merchandise. The woman picks it up, and he takes pictures of her from ten feet away with a giant camera, leaning out the window to do so... and the woman doesn't see him! She almost looks right at him and doesn't see him, leaning out the window with
Okay, maybe she's just a really dumb girl, but the P.I. is just plain stupid. She hands the jewelry to her boyfriend who drives off, while Stupid P.I. drives off after him. He tails the man too closely (and Melanie is apparently telepathic, because she tells him this over the phone), and he stops in a warehouse. Melanie tells the P.I. to wait there for her, she's coming in. Forget the police, let the lawyer make the bust.
Stupid P.I. goes in anyway.
Melanie arrives on the scene. Stupid P.I. isn't there. She pulls out a pistol from her handbag and investigates the warehouse. This is funny enough. Up to this point it seems the Melanie Darrow can do anything. Before this she talked a jumper off a ledge, used the media to scare the jewelry store owner to get rid of his hot goods, everyone knows her, and she just glides along like some superheroine who merely tolerates us mere mortals. Oh, and in case you're wondering why she has a gun, don't worry, they have a logical explanation for that. Apparently she romanced a judge to get a license to carry. Because nobody can resist the seductive charms of Delta "Airlines" Burke.
So now she finds Stupid P.I. tied up to a support beam with a bomb strapped to him.
What the hell? A bomb?
So then she... no wait, It has to be said again...
What the hell? A bomb? Seriously, what is up with that? The P.I. apparently got bushwhacked by the guy he was tailing... a guy who conveniently carries a bomb in his trunk for just such an emergency. It's a big one, too. Bout the size of your standard computer tower, sitting on his lap.
Stupid P.I. says it's standard Navy Seal issue (okay I'm just snorting coffee out my nose right now), and he tells her how to deactivate it. No, he's not an ex-Navy Seal... he has a friend who is... and who apparently likes to give detailed operational instructions on bomb disposal.
Well unfortunately, Melanie is in fact human after all and screws up. The countdown activates! Only 30 seconds before it blows! She tries to free him for ten seconds, and Stupid P.I. pleads for her to leave without him, it's too late for him and she'd be doing the world's gene pool a favor, anyway.
With 20 seconds left on the clock, Melanie does this... I kid you not:
-Runs out of the warehouse -Starts up her car -rams through the warehouse loading door -Stops in front of Stupid P.I. -Frees Stupid P.I. -The two of them drive out of the warehouse as it explodes.
Looks like her superhero powers are back in full form. Of course, if she couldn't free him before, how could she now?
Oh, but it doesn't stop there. Melanie's brother is a cop, who ends up tracking down the guy who almost blew up Stupid P.I.
And HE gets caught and then handcuffed to a light wood chair. The villain then puts the hot jewelry in his pocket and says "since I'll never be able to sell it, you can take it to hell with you." To which Slightly-Less-Stupid Cop retorts by reading him his Miranda rights. The villain leaves, and then sets the house on fire! Because, you know, a gun with a silencer would be too easy. This guy has flare!
Now, he isn't shown dousing the house with gas, but he must have, because the flames just roll across the floor like the bathtub had overflowed with lighter fluid. Slightly-Less-Stupid Cop struggles with the handcuffs on the chair, then realizes... hey, wait! The chair is made of light wood and weighs maybe three pounds. He finally figures out standing up might work and jumps out the window!
AND she's still got plenty of time to save a depressed teenager from jumping off a roof by getting in a helicopter and rescuing him, help a friend through rehab and withdrawal, find the badguys, knee a henchmen in the balls, and free an innocent man from prison.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Dead Man's Chest... What's Right and What's Wrong
You know, while this applies to Pirates of the Caribbean, I have a list of beefs against sequels in general
Flaw 1) "Hey we did that last movie, wouldn't it be cute if we did it again?" When it's done right, you get Indiana Jones reaching for his gun to shoot the two swordsmen (like he did against the 1 in the previous movie) only to find out it's not there.
When it's done badly, you get "cute" repeats of lines you enjoyed the first time so forced that you can't help but feel hammer used to slam it into the script. The "Dog with the keys" bit was used not once, but THREE different ways.
Flaw 2) More-itis More-itis is when creators believe that they need essentially the same story, but all the "cool" points need to be enhanced to the power of two. This isn't addition or multiplication we're talking about, but exponential.
Might I lay the most brain-hurting example in recent memory: The Mummy and The Mummy Returns: Hey, you had one undead villain before, NOW WE HAVE TWO! Before he was a face of sand, NOW HE'S MADE OF WATER! They flew in a biplane before, NOW IT'S A ROCKET POWERED BALLOON! They fought a bunch of mummies before, NOW IT'S A WAR ON AN EPIC SCALE! It gets old quick.
You imagine people around a table saying "You know, those undead skeletons in the first movie was cool, how can we top it? Let's have them all sea creature mutants! Each one more weird and deformed than the last!" Sensory Overload is an increasing problem in Special Effect movies. In this movie, there was so much slimy sea-human body parts flying around you don't know what's attached to what.
An even worse offender is Captain Jack's Great Escape. We all loved Captain Jack's miraculous escape from Norrington's guards at the beginning of the first movie. You know what made it work? NO CGI! It was all traditional stunt work done in prime fashion. Not so here... So many parts of the Great Escape are clearly CGI that you can no longer buy the idea it's actually happening.
Flaw 3) Good Guys Don't Kill Good Guys At one point in the movie you have Captain Jack, Norrington, and Will Turner fighting one another for the key to Davy Jones' locker. It is, in fact, the big climatic sword battle of the movie.
Only it doesn't quite work for me, because you KNOW nobody is going to get hurt. You know Captain Jack and Will Turner are good guys (well, more or less) and as a result will NOT kill another good guy. Norrington is the only "maybe he'd go bad" character, but since his opponents are Jack and Will, again there no real danger.
Jack and Will's first duel in the first movie was exciting. In part because you didn't know these characters or where this might be going. Maybe one of them really would get hurt? Not likely but you didn't KNOW one way or the other. Also, you're willing to go along with that if it's a non-climax battle. But this happening at the climax you're thinking "What's the point? Nobody is going to DIE in this battle!" I couldn't help but be aware of this throughout the battle, and it makes it drag.
Flaw 4) TO BE CONTINUED You know, this is pretty standard. Empire Strikes Back did it, Lord of the Rings did it (well, you couldn't avoid that, really), The Matrix did it. You make #2 in such a way that you absolutely MUST have #3. There's only one problem here. This was the WRONG movie to use this technique on! All those other movies have some kind of grand story arc involved that intends to climax with the downfall of the Evil (whatever) and good to triumph.
How the hell does that apply here? Captain Jack is going to destroy the East India Trading Company? Yeah, Davy Jones is going to croak, but so what? It's the wrong technique for the wrong storyline. Is Davy Jones going to destroy the world? If so it's news to me! Had I had a bit of warning maybe it wouldn't have bugged me as much, but as we got on the 2 hour mark I was wondering where climactic battle with Davy Jones would be, only it didn't happen! It wasn't till it was clear the Black Pearl was going to sink that I felt the beginnings of To Be Continued creeping up.
Flaw 5) Obey Your Own Goddamn Rules!!! Okay, look, it's not that hard to follow. The cursed Aztec gold made everyone who took it into cursed undead, right? The only way to undo the curse for everyone is for everyone to put the gold back. EVERYONE. Otherwise it doesn't work, right? So why is the monkey still undead? If he's undead, why are the Bumbling Pirate Duo alive? Did the monkey swim to the island and take a fresh coin after the curse was broken? And of course it doesn't even begin to explain why Captain Barrbosa is still alive? He died. We saw him die.
Oh wait, I know! The curse is broken
the monkey swims to the island and takes a coin, thus restarting a fresh curse. Then he goes over and puts a fresh coin in Barbosa's dead hand (sure, it'll work with dead people, why not?) thus making him undead and healing his wounds. So Barrbosa is also undead, too, because if the monkey is undead the new curse can't be broken (unless they both put the coins away, breaking the curse and then the monkey took a coin AGAIN to restart a third curse just for himself! Stupid damn monkey) By the way if I'm right I'm going to beat myself over the head with a shovel, because it's weak.