Review: 21

21 opened number one at the box-office this weekend, so several people probably saw it. I was one of those people. Bottom line is the movie is a predictable fair, but worth your time.

The story is based on the MIT blackjack team chronicled in Bringing Down the House (the book not the white-people-and-black-people-are-comically-different Steve Martin/Queen Latifa[h?] movie). The story starts out with some kid (I forget his name) who is a nerd with nerdier friends. He is portrayed as the smartest in every class, is working on building robots, and appears to have never talked to a girl save his mom. Well, he's been accepted into Harvard Medical school, but needs the lots of money they charge. Enter his proffesor Kevin Spacey who invites him to join the blackjack team, which happens to have the girl of his dreams on it. After some apprehension he joins in order to gain the $300,000 he needs for school. He is then having the time of his life in Vegas, making money and getting close to his dream girl. In typical fare this leads to him ignoring his nerdier friends and then leads him to change and become cocky. Well his house of cards soon comes tumbling down, but he comes out in the end. Yadda yadda yadda.



While still being formulaic guy is loser becomes accepted rises gets the girl ignores friends changes crashes down learns lesson and then fixes everything coming out on top, it is not as painful as most. The break up with his nerd friends, his change in attitude, and his humility in apologizing later are handled better and more realistically compared to past scenes in similarlly structured films. Though that being said two decisions by characters practicully scream "PLOT DEVICE!" at the audience, but both are necessary for the film to work and are just the result of lazy writing. Kevin Spacey is his typical greastest-actor-alive self. Of course it's not like this role really challenges him and even when he turns evil (he's Kevin Spacey he has to change after there is twenty minutes left in the film; he either turns evil or grows a spine or turns out not to be an alien or something) there isn't much material for him to shine, but still he's good. In fact every actor turns a good fair from the main to the supporting (even the nerdier friends barely go over the top in their nerdom performances). The only when who didn't shine was Lawrence Fishburne. Not to say he was bad, but he didn't stand out. You could pretty much forget he was in the movie at all despite being the main antagonist for most of it.

Now I hadn't read the book, but I saw a history channel program detailing the events. While keeping the same premise it takes out the more realistic ideas of the team eventually failing, ruining the member's lives, and forcing the professor in charge going to Europe to countcards after being black barred from all American gambling establishments. Naturally the movie adds more of a plot and ends it on a brighter note. So it's a good popcorn flick. Again you could guess what's going to happen at every turn, but it's done well and I'd recommend it if you got nothing better to see.

Rating: 6/10

Review: Be Kind Rewind

Wow. Rarely does my movie meter fail me on what I believe will be quality films. I mean I listed this as one of my most anticipated films to come out this year. But I was way off. This movie was horrible. A terrible, terrible movie with almost no redeeming values.

Ok, so the premise is Jack Black gets magnetized and erases all the VHS tapes at his friend Mos Def's local rental store. So they decide to remake the films their customers want to see, leading to a boon in business and them becoming local celebrities. First of all the whole concept of Jack Black getting magentized by getting electricuted when he tries to shut down the local power plant becaue apparently it's sending microwaves into our brains making us do stuff (I realize this conspiracy theory sounds like I'm leaving something out, but that is almost verbatim as he describes) is a tad contrived (not to mention illogical), but I was willing to overlook that if the film was up to snuff. Again, it's not. The flick doddles on leaving you very uninterested for the first twenty minutes giving you time to question whether or not Mos Def and Jack Black are supposed to be portraying mentally challenged characters or not (or if they aren't supposed to be, but just come off like it that's what I came up with). But I endured hoping that when we actually started "sweding" movies (term created by the characters for what they are doing) the film would actually pick up. Indeed my assumptions were correct. Their remake of Ghostbusters was by far the funniest thing in the movie from what they get totally wrong to how they try and recreate it with no money and two people. Some of the other flicks rehashed also bring a chuckle from Rush Hour 2 to 2001: A Space Odyssey. But the other ten films shown being "sweded" only average seven seconds of film time and thus we can't truly enjoy them save a single shot references. And this only truly funny thing or premise in the movie starts thirty minutes in and stops less than twenty or so after that. The rest is filled with unexpanded love interests, and the need to modernize the store, and injuctions from the copyright people or whatever. But the mahority is taken up by the history of Fats, a jazz musician who was born in the video store, but not really because that's a lie told to Mos Def, but that's ok becuase the whole town decides to accept the lie when they make a documentary about him.

I'm not exactly sure what message Michel Gondrey was trying to present to us, but it seems like we were supposed to walk away with something, possibly that the streamlined is not the best and we should regress to simpler times, or that deluding ourselves with a lie is the best solution, or that two retards trying to make movies is somewhat funny. Whatever it is the flick is not worth your time and money. Even when it comes out on DVD and a friend of yours buys it and wants to watch it with you, don't do it. It's a trap. Leave quickly before they attempt another attack on your life.

Rating: 2/10

Lost Odyssey Review

When I was your age we used to walk for two and  half miles through the snow to buy our video games...

 That about sums up Lost Odyssey, a dying genre from a dying age. I guess what they are calling this type now is  Japanese Role Playing Game, or JRPG for all you acronym lovers out there. We needed a way to differentiate between this type of RPG and the Mass Effect kind of beautifully done RPG with much more interaction. I purchased this game longingly remembering the "good ol' days" of power-houses like Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger. It had been so long since a good 'JRPG' on a console that I owned I thought this is what I really craved to play.  I thought I wanted a rich really long story. I thought that a four disc game would be amazing. I also once thought that eating play-doh would be enjoyable.  The simple truth being, sometimes we don't know what we really want. 

The game follows the character Kaim Argonar who is mysteriously the only person left alive after a massive meteor crashes in the middle of a battle between two countries, killing thousands of soldiers, who I feel I must add, wear the craziest looking helmets I have ever seen. Seriously, I understand that need to create a fantasy appeal, but those guys just look ridiculous. Early on in the game you discover that you are an immortal being who has lost all of his memories, and you spend the first disc trying to get them back. The first disc is about ten hours long and it's safe to say that you spend at least 7 hours of that in cut-scenes.

Lost Odyssey to me can be summed into one simple word "mediocrity".  No aspect of the game is terrible, but no aspect of the game really excels. The game play is average, the storyline is average, the graphics are average, the score....you get the point. To spice up that battle sequence a little bit more, the game adds these rings that you have to line up while fighting something. It really doesn't do much. Nothing in this game really excels to make it anything more than slightly noticeable.

I do have a slight confession to make. I did not actually finish the game. I am hung up on a certain section of the game about 27 hours into it, when all of your party splits up and you are forced to play with nothing but mages and people who I haven't had in my party since the very beginning of the story and thus are worthless. Now I continued to play even after the "plot breakthrough" failed to impress me at the end of the first disc(10 hours in) just because I felt there must be something more to this game. I was wrong, terribly wrong. It took me another 17 hours to realize the game wasn't really getting anymore enjoyable. There wasn't going to be some magic moment where that game says "surprise, we've been showing you this halfway good game just to hide this actual amazing game that begins now!" Perhaps my Final Fantasy VII expectations were just too high? This is a definite possibility.

  When it comes to video games, you will usually find me repeating the age old phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" again and again, but this time, they have gone too far. I'm sorry, but the video game world has just advanced to far for me to still be forced to put up with the same random battle sequence every two seconds when I'm walking around the over-world map. What made those age old 'JRPG' classics work? The first important element was that we didn't expect super fast loading times, so we accepted the new screen for battles. Gaming back then wasn't about the pace, it was about the story. Well that is no longer the case, it has to be a combination of the two. Game like Mass Effect have now adapted with adding great story lines as well as more interactive battle sequences. I know that not every game can achieve the sort of interactive cut scenes that Mass Effect had, but when Lost Odyessey tries to fake interactivity by having you move three feet only to be launched into another cut-scene.  That just doesn't fool me. 

Bottom line, this is not a terrible game. The story line is interesting, but can be at times hard to relate to, and to me it's all in how connected you feel with the characters. Even once Kaim opens up, you really aren't sure who he is. The most captivating moments are when you are forced to read through a story instead of watching anything take place. The sad truth is that JRPGs are dying out, and they were hard to come by on the 360 to begin with, so if you want to pick this title up to remember better times, I really can't blame you. I really would warn anyone against spending a full $60 on this though, there are just better games out there. Save your money and wait for the new Ninja Gaiden, that's my advice. 

Rating: 6/10

Review: In Bruges

So last night I was invited to see In Bruges, starring Bulls-Eye himself Collin Farrell as a sorrow hit man who has to hide out in Bruges, Belgium which he finds boring and feels the need to tell us every few minutes about how much it sucks. Now when the invite was first extended and I recalled what the film was based on a trailer I saw way back when I declined. The flick seemed that it would be pretty bad. Firstly it seemed like all that was going to happen was that Farrell would complain about Bruges to his killer buddy and pick on Americans. Secondly none of these two things were portrayed as funny in the trailer. Thirdly this was the second Farrell as a repenting hit man that was coming out (the other one being Cassandra's Dream with Ewan McGregor, directed by Woody Allen) so I kind of zoned out on the whole premise.

However, realizing I had nothing going on that night I decided to at least check it out, because I do like movies in the general sense. I really enjoyed it. It was so damn funny. The trailer I saw did not do it justice. In Bruges follows the anarchic humor and darkness that has followed other hit man movies recently (namely The Matador [ok] and You Kill Me [great]). The anarchic humor mostly stems from random bouts of political incorrectness (whether it be about the disproportionate suicides of midgets, getting a "gay" drink for your friend, because he's gay and a "normal" drink for you because you're normal, or beating up Canadians as repercussion for John Lennon), but if you can laugh at that sort of thing you will and lots. The darkness comes from the fact that Farrell accidently killed a six-year old boy on the last hit and is deeply suicidal over it. Both the humor and the depression don't counteract each other and are both well done, and it didn't seem like two different movies either. I actually believed Farrell’s actions were those of a man who had just committed an atrocity and didn't know how to repent. The whole affair was handled very well.

That being said this movie is hardly a masterpiece or revolutionary. But it is so damn funny, a lot of that having to do with Farrell’s delivery which really brings out the humor and innocence in these somewhat offensive lines. The ending is a bit rough and a tad forced by plot, but Farrell’s voice over saves the last few minutes. Great laughs and a great time at the movies.

Rating: 8/10