Movie Review – Page 55 – Savior Gaming

Hot Pursuit (1987)

Hot Pursuit from 1987 is the story of Dan Bartlett (John Cusack) and his failure to catch a plane on time after he fails a chemistry test. Now he must catch a later flight to catch up with his girlfriend and her insanely rich family. Upon landing in the Caribbean he tries to catch a cab which is stolen from him, and this is where it turns into almost an old fashioned role-playing game.

Seriously, he will meet 3 friendly Rastafarians that he mistakenly thinks may be criminals because he was warned to watch out for the locals. They actually teach him to throw a machete. He will then narrowly miss meeting up with his girlfriend, he will give up hope and get drunk. He will then be basically kidnapped after he passes out and ends up with a seemingly crazed man obsessed with catching up with the boat his girlfriend is on, but he will luckily end up learning on to sail. I am telling you this because it all comes back around.

Later on, he will eventually meet up with his girlfriend, and I don’t want to spoil the ending but learning to throw a machete and sail factors into the ending. Each main person he meets teaches him a new skill to help him in his quest. This isn’t bad, it was just painfully glaring there. The movie itself has some laughs but admittedly isn’t very good and definitely is not one of John Cusack’s better movies. As a person that loves 80’s movies, this one was just not very enjoyable. I did like the ending, the journey there just didn’t worth it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Ghost Ship

ghost ship

This review goes out to my good friend Violet, who introduced me to this movie ages ago when we were kids. I’m sure there’s something poetic about time here but there is something about the importance of ducking and/ or the blessing of being short. Seriously, the opening to this movie made me pissed I’m over 6 foot tall…

Ghost Ship is about the tragic fate of the ocean liner SS Antonia Graza where everyone died and the ship was never found. Fifty years later a salvage team is presented with photos of a derelict adrift at sea. They hesitantly accept the offer, discovering the Graza. Deep inside, while scraping the ship they discover clues to what may have happened and mass amount of untraceable gold bars stowed away. With riches in there grasp, it quickly becomes clear something on the ship may not want them to leave, or let them..

The movie is simple to explain but better than I thought it’d be. I’m not a fan of most things from Dark Castle productions, the people who brought us the Puppet Master series and the god awful House of Wax (05) but there is definitely some effort here. I really like a lot of the cinematography and I do like the setting both past and present. The opening death scene is insanely awesome as well as the flashback that extends on it. The story is simple but solid and the score is meh, though the music choices make it feel dated as shit ( I was in the 6th grade when Not Falling by Mudvayne came out. Damn I’m old). The use of jump scare noises annoyed the shit out of me and I wasn’t invested in any of the characters, in fact I really wanted the bad guy dead for most of it. In the end, it’s not a bad movie. Not great but not terrible by any means and it’s not a bad time. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly evil and Vile trailer

A few months ago I was stunned a little at the The Haunting of Sharon Tate trailer and I have to say I’ve kind of stunned at this Ted Bundy movie. I don’t have a problem with Effron as the notorious killer, in fact I think he has what it takes to pull it off. What gets me is the tone of the trailer. Is it me or does the trailer kind of try to make Bundy look like a folk hero more than a serial killer? Other than that, I still think it looks interesting. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn

evil dead 2

As much as I love the original Evil Dead I admit, I never really set out to follow Ash’s further adventures. I wasn’t a fan of how the series slipped into comedy at a slope but I had a chance to sit down and judge for myself if I was being too hasty. Was I right?

We begin the story with an alternate retelling of events from the first movie: a much more rugged, manly Ash and his love Linda crash a vacant cabin one picturesque weekend only to stumble on the book of the dead and the book proceeds to take her over. Where the last film leaves over, the demons won’t let Ash leave the cabin and Linda won’t stay dead. His mind is slipping as even his own flesh turns against him, forcing him to chop his own hand off with a chainsaw. To make matters worse, the daughter of the professor who translated the book and set this all into action is going to the cabin to see what became of her parents. can Ash pull it together and live to see dawn?

While nowhere as creepy as the first movie, I do love how off the rails it goes. This movie’s greatest strength is just how creative a lot of the scenes are. My favorite maybe when Ash is trying to chase his severed hand and when he finally shoots it through the wall and he gets sprayed with what seems to be hundreds of gallons of blood, only to have time reset like it never happened. I did laugh a lot but I give the movie credit, it knows how to show some creepy shit and have it feel like slapstick comedy. Ash is a great horror icon and dare I say- groovy. I love the ending which sets up the batshit insanity that is Army of Darkness. Evil Dead 2 is a damn good horror comedy I recommend to new commers to the series and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Along Came The Devil (2018)

Along Came The Devil out in 2018 and was met with less than stellar reviews. For example, Horror Freak News gave it a 1/5 and Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 43% and even IMDb gave it a 4.1/10. The surprising thing for me here is that it scored that high.

Don’t get me wrong, the acting and effects were good. The story, however, was terrible. A girl with an abusive dad eventually moves in with her aunt while her sister goes to college and starts seeing things. Her friend gave her idiotic advice to try to contact her dead mom and they summon, a demon.

Think that isn’t cliche enough? Her mom got pregnant while possed by a demon. Yup, this is a family trait. Her aunt, of course, hid this fact and the local priest also knew. He did the failed exorcism that killed her. He will attempt to do this exorcism, and it goes basically exactly like everyone in movie history. Kid swearing while tied to a bed looking creepy and talking about dead family members and such.

The one saving grace to all this is the ending. it isn’t what I expected which was nice to see. This doesn’t make up for the fact that the rest of the movie is simply a copy and paste of every other exorcist type movie ever made, except not as good. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

John Wick 3 trailer

So we are going to see legendary badass John Wick take on the world this year. Seriously, I’m not kidding; spoiler for John Wick: Chapter 2 but at the end, pretty much the whole damn world wants his ass dead but he’s the damn “Boogeyman” and he ain’t going down without a fight as we see in the trailer. I have a lot of love and respect for this series and so far Parabellum looks like a good step in the right direction. May the gaming gods bring you glory and stop you from pissing off John Wick.

Pokemon: I Choose You (2017)

Pokemon I Choose you is a retelling and reimagining of sorts of the beginning of Ash’s journey. Brock and Misty don’t even appear in the movie, Pokemon up to Sun and Moon appear and we will see a sped up version of season one up until Ash gets his third gym badge.

Before the opening credits, we get to the point where Ash is attacked by Spearow and they see Ho-Oh. The opening song plays, we see Ash catch Caterpie then the movie starts. It won’t be long before Ash hears a rumor about a wild Entei and he runs off to catch it. After running into Verity and her Piplup they fail to catch Entei. This is around the time they scare an Onyx and retreat and eventually run into Ash’s Charmander that was abandoned by Cross and with the help of Sorrel and Lucario they save Charmander.

This is where things speed up more and we learn about Ho-Oh and some battles later Charmander evolves. In fact, by the end of the movie, it will fully evolve into Charizard to battle Cross as they attempt to meet Ho-Oh.

The movie has pretty mixed reviews from fans but critics as a whole weren’t fans. The movie was solid enough to me for what it was but honestly, I don’t understand why it needed to exist outside of simply being made to make some money. It isn’t a bad movie exactly, it just isn’t good or even necessary. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

I have to admit going into this I had odd expectations. The trailers made it look fun, I always liked Han Solo, but people give this movie so much shit I was expecting to be greatly disappointed. I didn’t get the chance to see it in theaters so when I saw it was now on Netflix, of course, I checked it out, and I am pretty glad I did.

The story is pretty straight forward. It simply tells the story of how Han escaped a life of being a sewer rat, became a smuggler and got his hand on his prized ship, the Millennium Falcon. There aren’t a lot of twist and turns or shocking developments. Han eventually meets Chewy, then catches a ride with Beckett ( Woody Harrelson) and finally Lando (Donald Glover) to finally pull the job that lets Han say he made the Kessel Run in 12 Parsecs. This has always been a hotly debated thing among Star Trek fans since a parsec is a measure of distance, not time. Many eventually began to speculate that he was referring to a shortened path he took which is now considered the common explanation, tho it is worth noting in the original movie and its script it was made clear nobody believed him because he was obviously lying and sharing false information. This movie now shows it however as a factual event and a shortened run Han made.

Another thing that many never talk about is that they kind of takes a shot at George Lucas at one point. See there is always the who shot first Han or Greedo (Han did for the record), which got worse in the rerelease when George altered the film to make it definitive that Greedo shot first. He did this because he didn’t want Han to seem like a certain kind of character. Well, there is a scene where Han is talking to someone, and he not only shoots first before the other character dies he tells Han he was smart to do that because he would have killed him. Nobody really mentions this to me when talking about the film tho.

The movie is far from perfect, but at the end of the day, it does what it sets out to do. It is entertaining, tells a good origin story and shows how and why Han ended up being who he ends up being. The hate this movie gets to me is greatly not deserved. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Spider-man: Far from Home trailer

This is a awesome time to be a Spider-man fan. Just as the hype I’ve been riding from Marvel’s Spider-man (PS4) was starting to die off, we get our first look at Far from Home, the sequel to Spider-man: Homecoming . The first question I have is whether this takes place before or after Avengers: Infinity War and the “Snap”; I personally think it’s before. Mysterio looks awesome rather surprisingly and I’m glad they seem to be sticking close to his real origin which could make for a interesting play. So far, it looks like more I loved from Homecoming and it should be a good opening to Phase 4. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Really different special editions

Being the nerd I am, I’ve watched many a different versions of a many different movies. Sometimes the changes are huge and even change the outlook of the film itself. Here are a few examples of movies I’ve seen where the special editions I’ve seen were pretty damn different, starting with something special listed above…

1. Return of the Jedi –

Most of what is altered considerably was altered in the very beginning with Jabba’s Palace and the finale and damn it hurts a damn solid movie. In the original, Jabba’s Palace is much more dark and sinister where as the special edition lingers on the scenes with a couple random musical numbers and comedic parts with CGI that sticks out like a sore thumb. The tone of the end is more somber with sad music and scenery from the prequels to connect the series. While not crippling, these changes are cringe worthy…

suicide squad 3 2. Suicide Squad –

Here we see much of what was infamously cut, much of it was for Jared Leto’s Joker. I personally found these scenes a huge improvement and added a lot of depth to his character as well as showed a better arc for Harley. Meanwhile, a lot of the team’s interactions are fun and add to the better aspects of the movie. While this version doesn’t fix all the movie’s problems, it goes together better and I say better than the theatrical.

blade runner fc 3. Blade Runner –

Here I’m afraid I can’t say much from personal experience. I’ve only watched the Final Cut, but there are famously 2 others and multiple endings. I’ve been told by many that have seen multiple versions ( while I can’t see I know anyone who has seen all of them.) that they feel pretty different.

alien 3 4. Alien 3 –

We come to the last and most extreme I’ve seen. The Assembly Cut of Alien 3 adds a lot different, including a reshot opening, a new host for the alien, a big side-plot that adds some good meat in the 2nd act, and the overly dark tone feels more evened out. This is my favorite for obvious reasons and for those who hated the theatrical, I definitely recommend this.

This is just a small list but all pretty different between versions. May the gaming gods bring you glory.