Category: Movie Review

Dragonball Z: Broly, the Legendary Super Saiyan

dbz broly 1

I’m spoiling this now, this is my favorite DBZ film period. No contest; no arguments. I was thrilled when Broly became canon, though I was able to see his DB: Super movie yet. But let’s take a look at this special specimen of a DBZ movie and find out why…

The South Galaxy is destroyed almost instantly to King Kai’s horror; the culprit is believed to be a Saiyan. Intrigued, Goku goes out to investigate, leaving Chi Chi enraged Goku bails out on a meeting that would have gotten Gohan into a fancy school. Meanwhile while Goku’s friends are at a picnic, a spaceship lands near them a aging, one eyed Saiyan named Paragus emerges and seeks Vegeta out, pledging with him to come lead the new Saiyan home-world. Vegeta, his ego stroked follows Paragus despite Trunks trying to talk sense to him. The world is broken and desolate with only the slaves feebly rebuilding and Paragus’s seemingly meek son Broly the only inhabitants until the gang show up. Something about Goku bothers Broly though, enrages him in fact. The next day the trap is sprung after a failed murder attempt by Broly. Paragus , once a servant of Vegeta’s father was betrayed when King Vegeta tried to murder his baby son, then him when he tried to defend the infant? Why so much fuss over a baby? Goku and Broly were born on the same day; Broly was born with a power level of 10,000 and a natural birth defect where being critically beaten doesn’t drastic increase his power but naturally skyrockets on it’s own. Broly unleashes his full might, the power of the Legendary Super Saiyan…

This the most brutal DBZ movie of the bunch. Broly is a cruel sadistic monster when Legendary is achieved and he enjoys torturing Goku, Gohan, Trunks, Vegeta and Piccolo for the sake of it and they are powerless to stop him. Seeing Vegeta shut down hit me, because the odds against Frieza, Cell, and Buu he was never frozen in fear as he was with Broly. The story is surprisingly good and the transformation into Legendary is my favorite of maybe my favorite of all DBZ. There is some good music including Pantera for the transformation which only made it more awesome. It’s a damn awesome movie that’s brutal and epic with a great villain an d definitely worth seeing. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Faintheart (2009)

Every so often I see a movie and think “This could be cool” and I am horribly wrong. This is one of those times. This isn’t even one of those I just don’t get British humor things because I do. I usually enjoy it. This is just a horrible movie. The general story is a dad that is a bit too into his battle reenactments and has a habit of being a bit late to everything. This time it happens to be the funeral of his father in law. This pisses his wife off and leaves him.

His son that he treats more like a best friend is also being bullied in school, of course. His dad is a huge nerd and he is taking his son for the ride. The worst part o the movie is how bad they make nerds look. Imagine pretty much every stereotype wrapped into one. While this normally would be no big deal, they then turn them all into massive heroes by the end. The concept is just insulting and unrealistic for a movie trying to be realistic.

The movie is also a comedy that is never all that funny, and the acting is never all that great. This most likely comes from the script being horrible honestly. This is one of those movies I just have to recommend you don’t watch. Here is the trailer tho just in case. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

re A

It’s been a while since I talked about the first Resident Evil (movie 2002) and truth be told, it’s been forever since I visited the series. Granted, I thought the first movie was pretty cool and the marketing tease for the second movie was actually pretty cool but by the time Resident Evil 6 hit consoles it seemed this movie franchise infected the games, something I had never seen to that extent before; image if the next Sonic games come out like the live action movie? So let’s see where this movie franchise began to slide…

The T-Virus has escaped the HIVE and has gone into Raccoon City. Zombies have started emerging and by night the city is filled to the brim with them. Umbrella has put the city in quarantine and dispatched there private security into the city. One of the main developers of the horrid T -Virus, Charles Ashford, is ordered to evacuate but his daughter is still in the city. Meanwhile Alice awakens different from the lab she found herself in, faster, stronger, and more agile than ever before. Along the way she meets up with a group of others including ex S.T.A.R.S member Jill Valentine and and Umbrella security Carlos Oliveira as they try to find Ashford’s daughter and escape Raccoon City while being hunted by the other experimented survivor of the last entry, Nemesis…

Ok, I’m going to say this now, if you are a fan of the games, this movie will really piss you off. Alice is basically a superhero, plan and simple. The characters aren’t bad but I have to say Mike Epps as LJ was hilarious and my favorite character in the movie. The action scenes are alright but there is no actual attempts at horror. The creepy theme from the first is gone and replaced by generic score. Nemesis is kinda cool and looks pretty legit but damn why did they put him in  a black latex gimp suit? I do like the scope of the movie and I like that Umbrella is overtly the villain here and they do a fair job at showing the depths of there corruption and power. In the end the movie is meh at best but could have been much better. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Good Luck Chuck (2007)

Imagine being a small child and being stuck playing 7 minutes in heaven. That’s the game where your friends lock you and a member of the opposite sex in a closet for 7 minutes and expect you to make out. Now imagine you have a crush on a girl at the party and she also likes you. Now you spin the bottle and you get, the scary goth chick that freaks you out. You then find out she is not only in love with you but wants to see your junk and is willing to go way further than kissing. You have never kissed a girl so you would probably freak out. That at least is what Chuck (Dane Cook) did. She also got really pissed off and put a hex on him.

Now obviously this seemed like complete crap. They were kids. Chuck never even paid attention to it. Chuck also never fell in love until he met Cam (Jessica Alba) This is when he discovered that every woman he had ever dated or slept with, married the next person they dated.

That is the story in a nutshell.  Chuck meets cam and they start dating and finding out that the hex is very real. Now he must find a way to not sleep with Cam while breaking the hex. The movie is cute and has some good laughs, but I can see why many people wouldn’t be a huge fan. In fact, it has a massive 5% on Rotten Tomatoes. I think that’s a bit unfair tho. The movie while not great wasn’t bad and even had a pretty great concept behind it. So go and check it out, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Ugly Truth (2009)

The Ugly Truth is honestly Kathrine Heigl and Gerard Butler if the odd couple were to take place at work. Ms. Heigl plays Abby, a serious kind of stuck up control freak producer. She plays the role so well, by the way, I think she might really be some sort of control freak in real life. It seemed like less a role and more of her just being herself. Mr. Butler plays Mike Chadway. He has a public access show called, The Ugly Truth where he is basically brutally honest, at least in his opinion. One night in what can only be described as a freak coincidence Abby ends up watching Mike’s show when her cat steps on the remote. After a particularly misogynistic rant from Mike, Abby calls the show to yell at him and they, of course, get into it.

After seeing this, her boss hires Mike to help save the show from ratings hell. Abby obviously isn’t so happy about this. As you can guess they end up agreeing if he can’t get the guy she likes to fall for her, he will quit his job. As you can also guess, it works. From here it is a stereotypical romantic comedy where some fun things happen, the two fall in love but won’t admit it and he quits his job. Later on, they end up together on tv, fade to black, two people on love. The real question is, was it enjoyable getting to that point? The answer honestly is yes, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Kathrine and Gerard have amazing chemistry and are great actors. This one for fans of the genre is worth watching. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Planet of the Apes 2001

apes 2001

Rise of the Planet of the Apes wasn’t the first reboot of the Planet of the Apes series. The first reboot was a remake from visionary director Tim Burton, the man who gave us Batman and Beetlejuice but also gave us oddities like Batman Returns and Mars Attacks! . So which side did the Apes remakes fall on?

Leo is a astronaut on a space station in the future. His job is to train chimps for flight missions into space. During his chimp’s test flight, a huge electrical storm closes in and Leo rushes to save his chimp. Caught in a wormhole, there ships crash on a strange world much like Earth ruled by tyrannical apes. On this planet Apes are intelligent and keep humans as pets and slaves, and Leo is cast into slavery with a group of others. With the help of Ari, a sympathetic ape daughter of a politician, they set off to recover Leo’s emergency beacon while being hunted by the the fierce Attar and the violent General Thade. Can the humans be saved from the planet of the apes?

Despite Tim Burton being one of my favorite directors and a great characters, this movie ain’t that great. While the setting is great and the ape make up is pretty fair but its still goofy to see grown ass adults acting like monkeys.  The acting is mostly bland except for a few fun over the top performances but honestly I rooted for Thade the whole time. The story is meh with a really lame couple of twists at the end and the pacing is off and with a lack of action, the movie feels longer than it is. In the end, Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake is a pretty forgettable sci-fi movie that’s OK to skip. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

dawn1

I found myself taken by storm after Rise of the Planet of the Apes and in 2014 I was eagerly awaiting the sequel. Once again, I found myself blown away by one of my all time favorite sequels…

A decade has passed since Caesar and his fellow apes fled into the woods and the mutagen that made them smart spread, decimating a huge portion of man kind. Caesar is now the lead of a village of apes, content with there peaceful life in the woods. Tensions rise when a group of surviving human is spotted by the apes trespassing into there territory. They mean to restart power from a nearby damn, but the apes don’t want them near them near. While Malcolm, head of this human group insist they mean the apes no harm, Dreyfus believes the apes caused man’s near destruction. Caesar tries to be fair with the humans but Koba, one of his best friends and former test subject, refuses to see peace and sees an end to the cruel animals who scarred him in sight. With both sides in turmoil and prejudices ablaze, can Caesar and Malcolm find peace when war is so close?

I can’t tell you what impressed me more about this movie, the depth of the story or the effort to bring the apes to life. The story brilliantly  carries over the emotional depth and characterization from the previous movie and takes off with it. Once again I found it hard to believe the apes weren’t real and the actors deserve to be commended. Serkis again is great as Caesar but I have to also give it to Toby Kebbell as Koba, who is a great, sympathetic villain. The humans are solid in there roles as well. The climax is really satisfying and pretty epic. In the end, I highly recommend Dawn as one of the best sequels I’ve seen since The Dark Knight and it’s well worth a watch. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

dawn2

 

Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse

Now I know I am supposed to love this movie and think it is one of the all-time best Spider-Man movies if not the best. The truth is while I enjoyed it, I don’t think it was one of the best at all. It was simply an average movie that spent way to much time explaining how every Spider-man (and Spider-Gwen and pig) thought they were the only one.

The story of cross dimensions due to a collider while done well has also been done pretty much to death at this point within comics and science fiction, and it wasn’t even done in some new or inventive way. Everything about this movie is as basic and cliche as it could ever be.

The saving grace in all this, however, is that the animation is without a doubt top notch, and at no point was it a chore to watch. The characters are well written and funny, and Miles Morales is a great character in his own right and I am happy to see he isn’t just an attempt at continuing Peter Parker. He has his own abilities and powers along with his own issues and faults to contend with.

The different iterations of Spider-Man from the other dimensions were also fun to see such as Spider-Man Noir being essentially a black and white comic book character that loves a Rubix cube he found and is determined to understand it despite not knowing what the colors even are. Spider-Ham is basically a Looney Tunes character in a suit which was quite hilarious and Peni Parker is a futuristic Japanese girl with a psychic connection to the spider that lives in a sort of mech suit. I feel she doesn’t get the love she deserves by the way.

The movie is good, and if you have Netflix it deserves to be experienced. It is however far from being an all-time great movie. There isn’t anything original about the story and the only thing that makes it interesting is the characters themselves, and they could have been placed in any story with the same results. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Christine

christine book

It’s been a long time since I did a dual layered book/ movie review. My earliest ones such as A Clockwork Orange , The Hellbound Heart , and Cujo were pretty popular. Since King’s adaptations are awesome once again, let’s look at a different kind of love story from the master of horror…

Arnie Cunningham is a typical nerdy teenager. He works his ass off to save money for college, is packed with extracurricular activities, and gets bossed around by his parents. His best friend Dennis is your typical good looking high school football player. One day while driving home, they stumble upon a peculiar piece of scrap- a red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury. Arnie immediately falls in love with the hunk of junk. Arnie goes out of his way to get the car from the old man who owned it and essentially he gives away most of his money for it. Dennis ,Arnie’s overbearing parents, and not even Leah, Arnie’s pretty new girlfriend seem to like his new car named Christine. Arnie puts every bit of his energy into the car, restoring her to her prime until the asshole bullies that plague him destroy Christine. Leveled, Arnie’s heart breaks because the car meant freedom, opportunity and in the weeks that lead there, Arnie grew a pair. But that was all gone, or was it? Christine rebuilds herself right before his eyes, and Christine wants to take Arnie for a bloody ride…

I love the book and the movie pretty equally but for different reasons. The book doesn’t really feel much like a horror story, more like a relate-able teen drama until the first death scene in the second act. The book goes into some way darker territory towards the end and I prefer that ending to the more “Hollywood” ending of the movie. Also the dude who sells Christine to has way more to do with the plot than the movie would have you believe as well as a pretty messed up backstory which helps Arnie feel more in danger later. The only drawback is that the book is much more of a slow burn which will turn some off but the payoff is well worth it.

The movie is one of Carpenter’s best in my opinion. Keith Gordon does an amazing job playing Arnie as a lovable but frustrated geek while the rest of the cast is solid. The effects are pretty badass, especially for the early 80’s, and Carpenter’s eerie electronic score is iconic. The scene where Christine rebuilds herself is my favorite. There are some haunting moments with the car that genuinely freaked me out and Carpenter is great at making her feel unstoppable. The only drawback I have with the movie is it feels rather short and bare bones compared to the book and I would’ve liked a grittier ending like the book had.

Regardless it’s a awesome story from book a legendary author as well as a legendary director and either way I can highly recommend it. May the gaming gods bring you glory and on Christine’s good side.

christine movie

Soul To Keep (2019)

Soul to keep is the story of a twin brother and sister that inherit a house in the woods. They invite some friends to come up and party for a bit. You know the horror movie deal, alcohol, sex, and drugs. Their grandfather that left them the house tho was a bit odd and for all their lives had a locked door that leads to the basement. Of course, it wouldn’t be all that long until they ended up down there.

In true horror movie fashion, there is a book that lets them summon a demon. Beelzebub to be specific.  They will, of course, try to do it and it won’t work. Until it does work and people start dying. Go figure right? Anyway, the movie isn’t bad up until this point, just a bit cliche. But things are usually cliche because they work. The movie is passable until you get to the final act where stuff starts happening in an  M Night style twist ending that makes no real damn sense. I won’t spoil it for you in case you decide to check it out but everything that happens is just ridiculous. Usually, with a twist ending you can go back and see the signs of these things coming and think well damn, why didn’t I notice that. That is actually the key to a good twist ending. That isn’t here tho. It just feels there for the sake of being there, and it killed what should have been a decent movie for me.

Not to be outdone, they ended it after the twist ending with another standard horror movie twist further cementing it as dead for me. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.