Category: Opinion

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

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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.

Super Smash Bros 64

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I may not be a hardcore fighting game fan but damn I loved me some classic Smash Bros. On Nintendo 64 I first encountered this classic which brought such iconic Nintendo characters together like Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Kirby, Yoshi, Star Fox, Samus, and Pikachu to battle each other in classic settings from there respective games. Besides fighting one another they also faced new threats like Metal-Mario, Giant Donkey Kong – which required two other fighters to help take down, as well whole teams of Yoshis,  Kirbys, and Polygons all culminating in the ultimate fight against the Master Hand. Besides your powers, you have a series of cool weapons at your disposal like Poke balls, the Star Wand, Mario’s hammer and even the Star from Mario Kart 64. Unlike most fighting games, depleting your health doesn’t kill you; the more damage you take, the easier it is to get smashed off the map which makes for some intense fights, especially between friends. Honestly Smash Bros 64 is my favorite fighting game ever ( I’m untouchable with Pikachu). The maps, the characters, the weapons, and music are ingrained in my memory long after my childhood and my N64. I seriously recommend this game, especially with a friend, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Planet of the Apes 2001

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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

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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.

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Daymare 1998 gameplay demo

This game was brought to my attention by my good friend Autobot when we watched a smaller version of this demo together. This game was announced about 3 years ago and here we have a damn good look at the gameplay. While the graphics are pretty nice, I can’t help but feel a huge inspiration pool from Resident Evil, perhaps a bit too much. Still, it looks like a alright horror game that has some tense atmosphere. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

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.

Mulan trailer

I’m going to be honest, I never watched Mulan as a kid but a vast majority of my friends have. I don’t think the trailer looks bad by any means, it’s filmed nicely and I like that it seems to have a darker tone but I’m likely not going to watch it the same as I haven’t watched the other remade live action Disney classics because I don’t see the point in them. The classics were classic for a reason after all. It still looks promising regardless, and may gaming gods bring you glory.

Anima (2019 short film)

I am going to make this pretty short and sweet. Anima is a short film that lasts about 15 minutes and I refuse to make you guys read a review that lasts longer than it would take you guys to hop on Netflix and watch it.

Anima is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and stars Thom York (Radiohead) and Dajana Rocione. The whole thing is getting amazing reviews, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing and 8/10 on IMDb.

There are 2 ways to view this. From a technical standpoint, it is amazingly done. The music is fitting, the dancing is well done and the imagery is fantastic. On the flip side, if you don’t like stuff like that, the movie is boring as hell. That is really all you have to ask yourself. If you like musicals and interpretive dance and or very artsy stuff., you will really enjoy this movie. If not, you probably won’t. That being said, it is only 15 minutes. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Knives Out trailer

I have to admit, I love that we are getting a modern who dun-nit in 2019. I’m so damn used to Chris Evans as Captain America I forget he can be pretty funny too. The cast is pretty awesome and I got a dark comedy vibe from the trailer which seem pretty cool. It seems like an interesting addition to the November movie list and may the gaming gods bring you glory.