This Nolan guy might actually be a good director. I really liked the movie, but, because the movie immediately lets you in on the conceit that dreams can exist with dreams, I was a little less invested in the goings-on because I was constantly looking for the “and this reality is also a dream” twist. Also didn’t help that I watched it on a twelve inch computer screen.
I appreciate big-budget sci-fi, but the story felt a bit too predictable and the expensive CGI setting was just kinda dull. I’d rather be watching Edge of Tomorrow than this.
Another artsy Antonioni film, this time in color! This one seems to be all about desolation in a bleak, industrialized world. Every frame is composed like a masterful painting. The characters traverse factories, docks and beat up fishing shacks without any sort of plot to keep us interested. It has its moments, but it’s a bit too hoity toity for my tastes.
As January comes to a close, I am pleased to report that most of the new character sprites are in place. The player character was by far the most challenging character to animate, and technically I am still not done. I still need animations for using the paint gun and throwing grenades (two elements from the original game that I was hesitant to bring in to the new version). I also spent a good deal of time honing the final boss and his level’s unique game-play. I have to say the final level is looking pretty good, but it’s still seems too easy for me. That may just be a result of me having had to play it hundreds of times whilst in development.
There are still many many background elements that need to be created and animated, but I’m getting close to the next phase. Here is a brief preview of where the game it at now:
I might be going a little overboard with the particle effects, but right now I think they look great.
This might be the first of these James Bond novels that actually feels like the movies. There’s a megalomaniac villain with an island lair and a penchant for revealing all his plans in long monologues. What more do you want?
Over the first few chapters I thought this was going to be great. It’s exactly like a John Waters movie, but in book form. But then the sad reality that John Waters is not a very good story teller begin to settle in. His only tricks are tasteless shock and 50s pop culture references. Sure that can be entertaining for a while, but the plot just a series of “and then this happens” with no real conflict or development.
It’s about time that I got back into this excellent series. I had forgotten how stressful these games were. There are never any good choices, and, just when you think you’ve found one, something goes wrong and messes everything up. I wasn’t too happy about the focus on the new character Javier instead of Clementine but there’s enough interaction with her (and a couple of flashbacks where you control her) to make it feel like you are still affecting her character in a meaningful way. After years of the T.V. series and all these games the stories and characters tend to fall quickly into tropes. There’s always the guy who can’t keep his cool or the group leader who seems to have brought back civilization but ends up being a wacko.
It’s been quite some time since I last dove into the Mysteries of the Unknown and this entry in the series was pleasantly skeptical of most of the proceedings. From the get go they cover the very first “table-tappers” and their admission that it all started as a practical joke. The whole idea of a séance is just goofy. You sit at a table in a pitch dark room holding hands and there are sounds and movement occurring around everyone while the medium babbles on about contacting some prince of Sumatra. Even I could perform a flawless Harry Blackstone Jr. level magic show if it was pitch dark.
A Better Tomorrow did not need a sequel and the fact that they used a “long lost twin brother” plot to get Chow Yun Fat back really sucks. That said, the last twelve minutes of this is some of the most John Woo-i-est John Woo possible. It might be my favorite of his gunfight action sequences. However, getting to that climax is a long slog through a silly, rambling plot and some laughably bad Simple Jack style acting.
This is peak John Woo action. I don’t think the narrative is as strong as The Killer or A Better Tomorrow, but the final hospital sequence (basically the last 25 minutes) is legendary gun-fu mayhem in which nobody is safe from the relentless kicks, gunfire and explosions.
