Quick Movie Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Personally, I found the plot of Iron Man 2 to be more believable than the one presented in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The dialogue in particular is very forced and reeks of adults trying to sound like teenagers. Still, the movie is entertaining enough and it does have enough high points where I would consider it worth watching.

Quick Movie Review: Oz the Great and Powerful

Oz the Great and Powerful is a prequel to the classic Wizard of Oz and tells the story of how said wizard came to arrive and ultimately rule in the magical land of Oz.

There are many things that I enjoyed about this movie. The beginning section, similar to the original Oz, is in black and white and 4:3 aspect ratio. It tells the back story of man named Oz (played by James Franco), a traveling carnival magician who is struggling to become what he considers to be a “great man”. Fast forwarding a bit, the soon-to-be wizard arrives in Oz and the movie changes to full color and wide screen aspect ratio. Similar to the original Oz movie, this change serves to really highlight the contrast between the real world and the fantastical world of Oz. However, I feel that this is where the movie starts to drift away from the greatness of it’s predecessor.

First and foremost, this movie is extremely CGI heavy. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, I felt that all the CGI detracted from the movie experience somehow considering the original’s legacy. To be fair the CGI was well done, especially the beautiful landscapes when Franco first arrives in Oz.

As far as the plot, I can only describe it as sort of “hum-drum”. I believe that this movie suffers from what I refer to as the “prequel syndrome”, in that as viewers we pretty much know how the story is going to end due to our knowledge of the original. Because of the so-called “prequel syndrone”, the prequel movie can’t really deviate from what we already know about the story which culminates in an ultimately anti-climactic ending (i.e., the Star Wars prequels). This, combined with a plot that is overly dialogue-heavy, filled with extraneous characters and runs for over two hours do not a memorable movie make. I feel that this movie could be highly improved simply by better pacing. As I have said, many of the characters in the movie are irrelevant. Rachel Weisz’s character in particular serves no purpose other than to take up unnecessary screen time.

After viewing Oz the Great and Powerful it took me a while to simply decide whether I liked it or not. I would not call this a bad movie, but merely one that suffers from a weak plot and poor pacing.

Platinum Report: DmC: Devil May Cry

I got the platinum for DmC: Devil May Cry. I had been looking forward to playing this game for a long time and let me tell you I was not disappointed! Here are some of my thoughts on the game.

First of all, let me address the issue of the reboot/Dante redesign. Like many hardcore Devil May Cry fans I was skeptical about Capcom’s decision to redesign the DmC characters and reboot the series, but I figured as long as the combat and gameplay were top notch I would enjoy the game just fine.

Once I had the game in hand and started playing, I actually started to appreciate the reboot. The newly redesigned DmC world is a world parallel to our own, but the twist is that demons are controlling the populace with subliminal messages and media propaganda. So you spend the game fighting demons and eventually face Mundus, whose appearance and role in the series has been completely revamped. Plot-wise the game draws elements from Devil May Cry 1 and 3 and I think it really sets the foundation for future successful DmC sequels.

In terms of the combat, this game offers the same addictive gameplay that is expected of a Devil May Cry game. Most of Dante’s signature moves and weapons are back, which makes the combat instantly recognizable. The problem for me and most fans of the series is that the difficulty this time around has been severely reduced. I think that maybe the developers were trying to keep this game from being overly difficult so as not to scare away new players to the series. To give you an idea of the difficulty reduction (and this is entirely my opinion), I would say that playing DmC on ‘Dante Must Die’ mode is easier than playing Devil May Cry 4 on ‘Son of Sparda’ mode. While the game is easier this time around there is still challenge to be had on the upper difficulties should you wish to attempt them. DmC isn’t as brutal as past Devil May Cry games, which may be a plus or negative for you depending how much of a gamer you are.

Surprisingly, the shining star in this game is the level design. The game offers some of the most creative levels and backdrops I’ve seen in a while, there are even some fun platforming sections that do a good job of breaking up the combat. DmC also has great bosses, some of which I found genuinely disturbing my first time through the game.

All in all, I liked this game a lot. Sure there are things that I would like to see changed for DmC2, but I am just happy that Devil May Cry is back and getting the attention it deserves. To me, this game will always be the king of the hack ‘n slash genre.

Quick Movie Review: Date Night

Boring, mediocre, bland. Not much else to say about it. I feel like this movie had potential to be really funny if the plot weren’t so bad.

Quick Movie Review: Swimming with Sharks

This movie was pretty good and is easily relatable if you work in a corporate/office environment. Kevin Spacey is awesome in this as an abusive movie executive with many memorable scenes and quotable lines. I would’ve given this movie 4 stars but I felt like some of the scenes were very cheesy and I found the plot to be less than credible. You will enjoy this if you enjoy black comedy with an emphasis on character development and relationships between characters.

Quick Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Let me start out by saying that I saw this movie without having read the book, so I will not be able to compare the two. I will be reviewing this as a movie alone. I found this movie to be very entertaining and engrossing. I mean, this movie is 2 hours and 53 minutes long(!) and I was into it the whole time. There are not many 3 hour movies that can hold my attention (or even need to be that long for that matter) but this movie is an exception.

The most interesting part of the movie is the main character, Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace); a very strong, independent woman with a unique look. She is a employed as a professional computer hacker for a private security company, and for some reason (that is not explained in the movie) she has what is called a ‘guardian’. Apparently, in Sweden there is a system in place where people have these ‘guardians’ which seem similar to parole officers, and this person has the ability to control Lisbeth’s monetary assets and basically control her. Now, I’m not familiar with this foreign system and like I said the reason behind why she has this guardian is not well explained in the movie. I may have missed it somehow but I can only assume she committed some kind of crime. Anyway, despite the confusion these scenes with the guardian are quite compelling and are some of the most memorable in the entire movie. She hates his guts and it will not be long before you do too.

The plot of the movie revolves around a man name Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nyqvist). He is a investigative journalist who has been convicted of libel and is sentenced to 3 months in prison. For some reason, he has 6 months to wait and walk around freely before serving his sentence. Again, this is not well explained and I can only chalk it up to laws being different in Sweden. He eventually meets up with Lisbeth through a series of events and together they have a nice little murder mystery/missing persons case to solve. This aspect of the plot is very well written and interesting, made all the more so by the fact that the movie has spent quite a bit of time developing the main characters by this point; you feel empathy of the characters, especially Lisbeth. The mystery plot sort of reminded me of The DaVinci Code or National Treasure, only darker.

I really liked this movie, but watching it I couldn’t help but feel that it just wasn’t made for me. I feel like the movie was meant to be watched under the assumption that you had read the book, which I haven’t. There were things that were sort of glossed over or unexplained that I have to think must be clearer in the book, especially the ending. On it’s own, however, it’s a solid movie that is made all the better by the deep characters and I am very much looking forward to learning more about Lisbeth Salander in the sequels.