Author Archives: lovepirate77

Review: Tomb Raider (2013 Video Game)

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(Disclaimer: I have never reviewed a video game before despite being a lifelong gamer, and I’m going to approach this more as I would a film, as a means for telling a story.  For reference, I played the Xbox 360 version of the game.)

Lara Croft, wealthy young archeologist, is off on her first expedition, to find the lost Japanese kingdom of Yamatai, along with a shipful of assorted characters.  They’re heading into the Dragon’s Triangle, a dangerous area of the ocean that’s the source of many strange rumors, when a violent storm appears and causes their ship to sink.  Lara plunges into the sea, scrambling to shore, pulling herself up on the sand.  She spots the other survivors further down the beach, but as she calls for them an unseen attacker strikes her head, knocking her out.  She awakes hanging in a cave by her ankles, bound and unable to move.  She swings herself back and forth, knocking things over and causing a fire.  As she prepares to set her bindings aflame in order to free herself she mutters, “This is going to hurt,” and as the fire cuts through her ropes she plunges into a pit, where she is impaled through the side by a piece of rebar.  She pulls it from her, and she staggers deeper into the cave, trying to find a way out.  She eventually does, but not before struggling with her attacker, creating an explosion that causes the cave to collapse, and crawling on her hands and knees up through the falling rocks towards a point of light that means escape. Continue reading →

Review/Analysis: Oz the Great and Powerful

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Oz the Great and Powerful is a good film but not a great one, and is in fact fairly interesting, though not perhaps for the intended reasons.  It’s an unfortunate fact that any Wizard of Oz related story, particularly a prequel, is going to be compared to the musical, Wicked, and will most likely suffer from that comparison.  I went into Oz with an open mind, even if I had low expectations, and I came away having generally enjoyed it.  It’s neither as deep nor emotional as Wicked, but you shouldn’t expect it to be.  It’s fun and funny, and while it has its faults, I’d still recommend it, especially considering my larger impressions that I’ll get to in the analysis section after the review. Continue reading →

Star Wars Prequels: A Good Foundation for the New Trilogy

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I’ve never had a spot on the anti-Star Wars prequels bandwagon.  When The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, I was 14 and a huge Star Wars fan.  I was too young at the time to go to a midnight showing, so I had to wait all day to see the film that evening, and I could not sit still.  By the time the 20th Century Fox fanfare started playing, I was in tears, and stayed that way through most of the film.  I remember everyone in the theater enjoying it immensely, laughing and cheering throughout, and I saw it again two days later.  Needless to say, I’m a Star Wars fanboy, and while my 28 viewings of the Star Wars saga films in the theater are not anything close to a record, it’s safe to say that I was in no way disappointed by the prequels.

With the announcement that Disney and Lucasfilm will be making (at minimum) Episodes VII-IX, many people have found themselves revisiting that last Star Wars films that were released, giving the internet new justification for one of its favorite pastimes: prequel bashing.  Many of these have been presented as “Lessons J.J. Abrams Can Learn from the Prequels” containing a list of grievances against the film.  IGN recently featured an article of this type, and I want to address some of its complaints.  I’m going to do my best to set aside my fanboyism because I truly feel that Episodes I-III are great films, and have been unfairly maligned in the last 14 years.
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Review: Quartet

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2012 was a busy year for Maggie Smith.  In addition to her role in season 3 of “Downton Abbey,” she was featured in two, very similar films: Quartet and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  The two movies are so similar that it’s almost impossible to review one without comparing it to the other.  Both films feature aging retirees, adjusting to both a new phase in their lives and to new environments.  However, while The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was energetic, and uplifting, Quartet is more subtle, quiet and slightly more serious.
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Review: A Good Day to Die Hard

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25 years after his first adventure, NYPD Detective John McClane is back, in his fifth film, A Good Day to Die Hard.  McClane’s last outing, in 2007, we were given man left behind by the modern world and confronted with a threat he couldn’t fully comprehend.  He was partnered with a geeky companion, and the juxtaposition was the perfect way to reintroduce Die Hard for the modern era.  This time out, McClane travels to Russia in an attempt to help his son, who has been arrested for an assassination.  I can see how this seemed like the perfect setup, offering plenty of opportunity for McClane to be a fish-out-of-water in a similar way to the very first film.  The only problem is that I think the filmmakers have never seen a Die Hard movie before.
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Analysis: Argo and Filmmakers’ Responsibility

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Even before Argo won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Hollywood’s top honor, it was already being plagued by controversy.  (Nevermind the fact that every other nominee was controversial in some way: Lincoln got easy facts wrong, Silver Linings Playbook mishandled mental illness, Beasts of the Southern Wild romanticized poverty, Zero Dark Thirty lied about torture’s effectiveness, Django Unchained was racist and used the n-word too much, Russell Crowe’s singing was horrible in Les Miserables, Life of Pi misrepresented Indians and religion, and Amour advocates assisted suicide and wasn’t even in English!)  It’s nothing unusual for films to encounter controversy, or even to court it, but the debates this year about facts and politics in film have raised questions (none of them new) about the responsibility of filmmakers to the audience.
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2013 Oscars Recap

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Another Academy Awards ceremony has come and gone, and overall it was an enjoyable evening.  There were few surprises among the award winners, though I only correctly predicted 16/24 winners correctly (equaling my score from last year, at least I’m consistent).  In addition to there being no real surprises there are also no winners that I feel were not deserving to win; even if I disagree with the outcomes, the awards went to quality films/performances which makes it hard to complain too loudly.  The show itself was enjoyable, if not spectacular, with some wonderful moments and some bits that fell flat, and I was surprised with how much I enjoyed Seth MacFarlane.  Read on to see my thoughts in a bit more detail.
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Review: Life of Pi

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“He said you had a story that would make me believe in God.”  This is both the essence and the greatest fault of Life of Pi.  It tells the beautiful and exciting story of the young Indian man, Pi, and his adventure adrift on a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.  It’s a gorgeous film, with amazing effects, and based on a book that most people thought to be unfilmable.  It has some impressive acting, is filled with many interesting and stimulating ideas and is in many ways a remarkable achievement, but throughout the movie that quote kept ringing through my head.
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Review: Silver Linings Playbook

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Pat (Bradley Cooper), a high school teacher in Philadelphia, is finally being released from a mental hospital after eight months.  He was sent there as part of a plea bargain after he discovered his wife with another man and almost beat him to death, a product of the bipolar disorder he was diagnosed with at the hospital.  He’s spent these last eight months working hard to improve himself, losing weight and dealing with his condition, in order to impress and reconnect with his wife, Nikki, if only he could get her to drop the restraining order.
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Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild

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Beasts of the Southern Wild is the sort of film that defies classification or description, by nature of its inherent simplicity and the complexity of interpretation.  It’s nominally the story of a girl whose community is devastated by a hurricane, but that’s merely the surface.  Beasts of the Southern Wild is one part environmental fable, one part coming of age story (maybe), one part morality tale about the links of the universe, and possibly many more things, all wrapped around one truly remarkable and unique performance.

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