Brainsmasher: A Love Story review

I was at a local pound shop the other day and, out of sheer morbid curiosity, I stopped to check out the crappy DVDs these kinds of places stock. So yeah, the title was so silly that I was actually intrigued enough to read the back: "Sam Crain, a professional model, is asked by her sister to smuggle a package from Europe to Portland, Oregon where she discovers that her sister is battling Chinese Shaolin Monks.". Um, what? I was almost surprised when the back was even sillier than the front, so I decided to give it a go.

After watching it, I can conclusively and without any doubt say that it's a movie. I don't really have much else to say really. It's neither good nor particularly bad; at least it's not worse than I expected or better than I had hoped considering it's clearly a made-for-TV or perhaps direct-to-DVD flick. It was mildly entertaining at points, and never particularly annoying.

That last part is kind of a big thing actually. These days I get annoyed with movies and TV shows very quickly; I've grown very impatient, and I actually find it very hard to sit and watch things sometimes. Well, a lot of the time in fact; when I tried watching season 2 of the Walking Dead, for example, I turned it off less than ten minutes in because that's how long it took to start feeling stupid and contrived.

But Brain Smasher didn't annoy me. Much. Perhaps it's because it didn't take itself seriously, or perhaps it's because it never had enough ambition to make me care enough to get annoyed when it acted stupid, I don't really know.

On the positive side, the monks were fun, and the main characters were more likeable and in fact more capable than I expected. On the negative side, the movie was somewhat uneventful, there's a surprising lack of romance or chemistry for a movie with "a love story" in the title, and you will get sick of hearing the phrase "ten thousand dollar watch" long, long before they stop saying it. Seriously, the damn thing practically has a speaking role.


So what's the final score? Well, I guess it has to be a 5/10 seeing as it's a completely average movie. You probably won't regret watching it on TV or when you're really bored. Probably.

The worst thing that can happen to a comic book character is to star in their own comic

"What the hell does that mean?" you say. "How the hell does that make any sense?"
To which I reply: "Stop swearing and let me explain. Potty mouth."

Lets start by talking about team books, like say the X-Men. Now I picked the X-Men over some other groups because, in both the comics and the movies, they were a team first then individual characters went solo later, which is the kind of situation that I'm referring to in the title. Many characters start this way; either in a "team book" or as a supporting cast member in another character's comic. Of course in the world of comics it's not always so clear-cut; Wolverine, for example, generally has his own series as well as being in at least one X-Men title at any given time - after the Civil War he was a main cast member of Secret Avengers as well.

But let's get back to the X-Men. Now, in a team dynamic, most of the character development, story and drama (at least of the sort that doesn't involve alien invasions) comes from the interaction between the different characters. Personality clashes, alpha-male struggles, relationship issues, etc.

Now put a character in his own comic. Yes, there's other people around, but they're just supporting cast, they don't really matter - at least they're often portrayed that way. At the very least they are generally viewed in terms of their relationships with the main character, the focus ultimately isn't on them.

So where does the emotional content and personal drama come from now? Well, from what I've seen, what generally happens is that it now comes from the titular character's inner conflict. Their doubts and fears, their struggles with ever-increasing burdens they must bear.

In other words, when a character gets their own comic they are all too often transformed from a strong and entertaining superhero into a whiny and annoying emo loser.

Sorry! That was probably very offensive. I don't wish to say that having personal problems means you deserve scorn, far from it, I have more than enough bad days myself, days when I cannot think of a single thing that feels worth getting out bed for, days when I just want the world to go away and leave me alone.

But the thing is I don't want to read comics about that. Or at least, I don't want to read any more comics about that. Or at least, I don't want to read any more fantasy comics about people who wear skin-tight clown suits and can juggle SUVs while cooking eggs with their minds whine about hard everything is, while their whole world entirely revolves around ruining their lives. I want to see them fight evil and do super stuff.

And another thing: it seems that while most team comics seem to heavily feature the team responding to external problems, like bank robberies and demonic invasions, in solo books the threats are all too often from super-villains targeting the main character, from problems that come to their doorstep and punch them in the face, forcing them to deal with them, rather than independent crisis that they chose to try to solve. Overall they stop making the world a better place and end up just putting out fires that were fallout from people trying to hurt them specifically, meaning their existence is a net negative for the rest of the world.

I'm not saying it's wrong to portray these characters as human, or to try to make them more relate-able or sympathetic, or to admit that when the whole world really is resting on your shoulders it can be a little difficult sometimes. I'm just saying that not every character has to be like that. In every comic they every star in. For all eternity. I mean, change the tune a little, you know? It's just not fun. Any why shouldn't comics be fun? I mean, if I'm reading a comic about the adventures of a guy who travels through space saving entire planets of strange aliens from bizarre cosmic forces, I'm probably not reading it because I want to hear the guy harping on and on about how much he regrets not being a good husband.

OK, X-Men probably isn't the best example since they've always been kinda whiny emos (sorry!). When I used to read the x-men twenty years ago every single issue talked about how the world hated and feared them. OK, it was in the introduction blurb, but it was still kind of a running theme. Now, on the rare occasion when I see an issue in the news agent and pick it up to take a quick a look, the first thing that I always see is the same old whining about how everybody hates them. I haven't been able to read X-Men in years because DAMMIT STOP WHINING ALREADY!

Ah-hem. Back to the point. Um, well, I guess what I'm saying is, what I enjoy is seeing the good guys grit their teeth with determination, not bow their heads with self-pity. Shallow? Probably. Immature? I don't know. But I do know when a comic book character gets their own series, they're probably going to go from being a strong and willful hero, to a weak and whiny mess who's more victim than saviour.

Pandorum review

Some of the movies that I remember most fondly are ones that I hadn't even heard of before seeing them, films that I went in to "blind". Pandorum is one such film.

Which is one reason why I don't like to actually tell anyone very much about the movie other than saying it's good. The other reason is that I think the mystery is a big part of what makes the movie work; we are in the dark just as the characters are, and we discover things as the characters do.

To be honest I can't think of all that much else that I'm willing to say outside the spoilers section, other than the fact that the movie just works. The plot, acting, environments, effects, and so on are all very good and seamlessly integrated parts of the whole.


Overall I'm going to give it a 9/10; it's a good movie, if perhaps not for everyone. But if you're reading this blog then there's a decent chance you're the sort of person who will enjoy it.

#####SPOILER WARNING#####

I absolutely love the end. It's partly the various revelations and twists that build up towards the finale, and partly the intensity; in an already dark and claustrophobic movie, the final scene with two people crammed into the tiny pod, in the dark, as it fills with water raises the fear and claustrophobia to a new level before they finally emerge into sunlight - not only is it the first natural light in the whole film, it's practically the first scene that isn't in a dark cramped monochromatic environment. And it felt glorious; it felt to me like a metaphor for the physical act of birth, and that the human race itself had been reborn. It was a surprisingly positive and hopeful ending to a very dark and oppressive film, and I really think that's a huge part of why the whole thing works, or at least why it worked for me.

Army Of Two: The Devil's Cartel review

The original Army of Two was one of the first games I bought for my X-Box 360, because I wanted a good split-screen multiplayer game and it was one of the only ones I knew of that made team-work a priority. While the cover-based shooting in the later stages grew very annoying, overall I really enjoyed the game. I actually liked the story (you're equal-opportunity murderers; Arabs, Americans, Chinese, you don't care) and the teamwork mechanics were pretty good, with a combination of organic gameplay elements and more structured game sections. I would have liked to see even more coordination opportunities or demands during normal gameplay (perhaps more teamwork moves like the shield, or using the step-jump organically to find secret areas or paths), but I thought it was a good start. I expected sequels to take that teamwork-centric gameplay and improve and expand upon it, but somehow it doesn't quite seem to have worked out that way.

The Devil's Cartel is the third game in the series. I'm afraid I missed the second, but I found this one slightly disappointing. The elements that I liked from the original - the emphasis on teamwork and the slightly less racist story - have been scaled back in favour of more generic third person gameplay about killing people who aren't American. That's probably a consequence of the game being developed by a different studio; there's no reason to try to include every feature of a game some other guys made if you don't feel the need for them in your game, it just feels like some of what made the original different has been lost.

I should mention that I played most of Devil's Cartel on my own (this is what happens when your friends get married), so naturally I didn't get the same multiplayer experience that I did from the first. However there are definitely changes to the teamwork elements, and I'll try to be objective when comparing the two.

The back-to-back segments (which I actually really liked) are gone. The parachute/sniper sections are gone - OK, those were a bit weird, but they were interesting. The vehicle sections, where one player drives and the other shoots, are gone. Aggro is still present but less prominent (it's barely even touched upon in the training and the "aggro-meter" is gone) making less likely that you will coordinate it with your partner. Tandem sniping is gone (no great loss to be honest). You can't swap weapons with your partner any more. As far as I can tell you can no longer drag your partner to safety when he's wounded, you just wait for him to crawl there on his own. You can't feign death any more either.

Shields show up later in the game but don't really seem to have much impact as most of the levels featuring shields are small and have lots of cover, and as you can now shoot your pistol while holding a shield you can happily take advantage of it on your own while before there was no point of using one without your partner's help - plus half the time when I picked up a shield I would immediately go through a brief story section and lose it without ever having used it. It's a small thing, but you used to have more manual control over the step-jump, which made it a bit more like an actual gameplay element and a bit less of a fancy transition animation - for example, you could grab a ledge and take a peek over it to see if there were any enemies before pulling yourself all the way up, while now it's a single un-interruptible animation.

There are however some additions to the multiplayer formula. You get point bonuses for coordinating your fire against enemies - bonuses for flanking and double-teaming opponents and aiding him during melee - which helps if you care about that sort of thing. At the very least it's a way to make the game more interesting as you try to combo effects for maximum points rather than just shoot the enemies and move on. There's some sequences where one of you will cover the other from a vantage point with a sniper rifle or some form of heavy weapon while they advance, which I thought worked quite well but could have been better if there was a more compelling reason to need to do it.

In a lot of levels you have one or more additional AI partners, although personally I felt that it took away from the teamwork dynamic rather than adding to it, as you now had other characters you couldn't really control getting in the way. In truth I'm generally not a fan of AI team-mates in games, although there are exceptions that include the original Army of Two. I just felt I had more control over my partner when I played that game in single player than I did in this one; there were more specific commands available, for example.


While the original's story had you battling a variety (thematically at least, if not in gameplay terms) of opponents in a variety of environments across the globe, in this game you kill Mexicans. In rather same-y looking environments in Mexico. The scale seemed smaller, the stakes lower. Some of the characters and relationships had the potential to be more interesting, but the game just didn't seem to be able to take that extra step to make them work.

Also I didn't like the "reboot" of Salem and Rios - at least I assume that's what it was, I couldn't believe those were supposed to be the same characters I played as before. I suppose it ties the game thematically with the previous two iterations, but I would have preferred either a completely fresh start or a more familiar take on the two characters. And what was with that talk of Alice, did something happen to her? Did I miss something?


OK, now I've spent a lot of time complaining about the differences between this game and the original, so you might be thinking that it's a bad game or that I didn't like it. Well, that's not actually the case. It's a solid third person shooter which controls better than  the original; in fact it controls better than many of the big name third person shooters I've played. They've fixed a strange problem that I remember the original having; there was a small lag between pulling the trigger and firing that was noticeable with some weapons, which made shotguns for example tricky to use effectively. I'm not personally fond of the cover system, which lets you just look at a distant piece of cover and press a single button to run up and duck behind it, but I think it did make some transitions easier than they would have been with the old manual system. Cover is also destructible, which actually helped mitigate some of the worst issues of cover based shooters - no longer will you statically hide behind the same piece of cover for ten minutes while trying to kill enemies that you can't see or hit behind their own little chest-high wall.

The aim assist could be a little overly-aggressive at times, but I didn't mind, and it made sniper rifles a lot of fun to use even at somewhat close ranges. The grenade indicator was really obvious and eye-catching, thank God. I really like the weapon swap system; pressing a button switches between your two main weapons and double clicking the same button quickly draws your pistol; it's fast and easy to use, although I found it took practice to get used to drawing the pistol when stressed. I did have a strange problem when playing single player; for some reason overkill would trigger sometimes when I pressed L3, which is the sprint button, and not when I pressed L2. It seemed to sprint normally when I was pushing up on the analogue stick when I clicked it, I think it only happened when I pressed L3 while the stick was centred. There was nothing I could do to fix it though as you have almost not options to modify the controls, which I personally consider to be unforgivable (yes, I know there's a chance players will pick a "bad" control scheme and not enjoy the game, but I reject that assumption of player stupidity in favour of allowing players to play the game the way that works best for them).

The character customisation can be a lot of fun. Some of the masks are pretty cool, and being able to design your own is a nice touch. Customising weapons is a lot of fun, and being able to try before you buy is a nice feature. Having said that there's a few strange omissions; you can upgrade a weapon's magazine size, but it doesn't actually tell you how many rounds it will have, and even if you use the "test" mode the HUD is missing so you still can't tell. The effect of some weapon attachments such as the blind-fire camera is not explained, and as you can't move or duck behind cover in the test mode it's not always possible to figure it out there either. I still don't know if my ballistic shield actually did anything or if it was purely cosmetic.



Unfortunately there is one big problem with the game that I have to mark it down for. Invisible walls. Often in the game I would try to walk through an open doorway or passage only to be stopped by an invisible wall and a glowing blue icon. Sometimes I was supposed to wait for my partner to catch up or for something else to happen, but sometimes it was something else, like a path I had just come from and apparently wasn't supposed to go back down.

You still sometimes get invisible walls in large open-world games, driving games and the like, but as they tend to be only around the very edge of the map you rarely run into them, and ultimately they are understandable as it's not always possible to make a natural-looking world that is completely enclosed without it looking more out-of-place than the invisible wall would be. But to have invisible walls in a big-name linear shooter in this day and age is very hard to forgive. It shouldn't really be a big issue, it doesn't really ruin the gameplay or anything, but it's just very hard to accept such an outdated hangover of older game's limitations, and I actually found it to be quite obtrusive. Maybe I'm just spoilt.


I enjoyed the game enough to give it a 7/10, it's definitely worth playing if you like to be in the same room as other people, but I can't help feeling it should have been better than it is.

#####SPOILER WARNING#####

I was looking forwards to the confrontation between Salem and Rios, but when it happened it felt rushed; Salem threw a few vague accusations about being left behind, Rios didn't really say anything back (I was kind of expecting him to respond with something like, oh, I don't know, "You drove off and left US behind, and I STILL lost a leg trying to pull you from the fire, you backstabbing traitor!", or just anything really), then bullets started flying and that was it. By the way, what were those tiny scenes with Salem in jail during the credits? I guess that means he's going to escape?

They didn't seem to know what they wanted to do with Fiona. She doesn't say a single word at first, then five years later she suddenly shows up and she's a completely different person, and one minute she's fighting alongside you then she's kidnapped and needs to be rescued then she rescues herself only it's a trap then her story arc is done then she dies. Kudos for having the guts to kill her I guess, but I just felt they didn't know how to handle the character or what they wanted for her; she had an interesting backstory but they never took advantage of that, I never really felt as if she had a connection with the other characters despite them saving her years ago, and then you never really even avenge her death.

Check behind doors Goddamnit! Aren't you guys supposed to have, like, training or something? How come you keep letting people ambush you in really obvious ways? And when there's three of you facing one guy with a gun to someone's head, how do you keep letting him kill two people then escape without being shot? There's three of you, surely you can surround him and get an easy shot, or at least cut off his escape route and force him to negotiate? How is it that the moment Salem pulled the trigger on Fiona he wasn't instantly filled with so much lead that there would be no organic material left, just a man-shaped outline made of gently cooling bullets? Ditto for Bautista and Chuy. Neither of those two identical scenes made much sense to me.

Soooo many dead Mexicans...

Despicable Me 2 review

The first movie was a bit of a surprise hit for me. It was funnier than I expected, and I enjoyed the story. As a result my expectations for the sequel were naturally higher than they were for the original, but in my experience animated movie sequels are sometimes better than the originals (Toy Story 2 and Madagascar 2 come to mind), so I allowed myself to be hopeful.

And you know what? I really enjoyed this one; probably a lot more than I did the original in fact. I found it much funnier, and some of the new characters are a lot of fun. I also think that in the original it took me some time to really warm to the characters - not surprising given the nature of the film - while their familiarity in this one meant I had more fun watching their antics right from the start.

The animation, acting, and music were all great. The whole "pointing out of the screen to remind you it's in 3D" gimmick was severely over-used - I lost count of the number of times they did it - but the short minion animation that accompanied the credits was actually some of the best use of 3D I've ever seen in a movie. It was like a bunch of animators said to themselves "Let's see what we can really do with this whole 3D malarkey when we're not too busy worrying about the rest of the film", and then went out and did just that.

I do have a little bit of criticism. The story just wasn't as strong this time around; more time and attention is spent on Gru's relationship with Lucy, pushing the whole "saving the world" plot into the backgound, but that relationship isn't as compelling as his relationship with the girls in the first film. I just feel that the romance angle in this one is more generic and less touching than his connection with the girls. Speaking of which, it seemed a little strange that the movie paid far more attention to Margo than her sisters; Edith especially was almost completely ignored, which I thought was, well, kind of unfair. Gru also had much more character growth and change in the first one.


Overall I'm going to give it a 9/10. It might be a little shallow compared to it's predecessor, but it is just a whole lot of fun.

The Croods review

I'm not sure why, but the trailers for this movie did not make it look particularly appealing to me. Perhaps it was just the strange-looking characters? Perhaps the story just came across as silly? I wasn't sure, so I decided to give it a go anyway.

Turns out it's a good movie. It's funny, exciting, visually impressive, with a pretty good story and likeable characters. I'm not usually impressed with Nicolas Cage's acting, but I thought he did a great job as Grug. It almost goes without saying these days, but the rest of the voice acting was spot-on.

I did have a bit of a problem with the film's "message". Mild spoiler warning I guess, skip this paragraph if you must. Anyway, the father's story arc involves learning to "never be afraid". Now that might be good advice to upper-middle class families in first world countries, but I don't think it works in the context of the movie. Their entire world, the animals, the birds, the plants, and even the planet itself, spend the entire movie trying to kill the Croods. Practically very hour of every day in their lives is a struggle for survival; under those circumstances fear is not only a valid response, it's the correct one. Not being afraid will very quickly get you killed. But I suppose it's more important for children to learn to be brave and enjoy life, so I probably shouldn't complain.


I'm giving it an 8/10; it's a nice fun movie.

Jack Reacher review

Tom Cruise has been on a roll lately. I think this is his fifth movie in a row that I've really enjoyed.

Being as it's a movie about a single character and starring Tom Cruise, I think I can be forgiven for assuming it was intended to be a mind-blowing summer special-effects action extravaganza. It isn't. It's a thriller. Having said that, I enjoyed the action more than do in many action movies.

In fact, I enjoyed just about everything about this movie; I just found it all to be very well executed. There was a balanced amount of action, and it was all fast, brutal, and convincing. The story was interesting enough and flowed well, it wasn't terribly unpredictable (what is these days?) but it wasn't blindingly obvious either, and the obligatory twists were handled well enough. Basically, watching Jack Reacher work was just fun.


A do have a few criticisms. The film has an anime-like obsession with making the central character look cool and mysterious, which might feel silly to some people but didn't bother me personally (actually, it felt a bit like a guilty pleasure; to enjoy watching a guy who isn't all human and vulnerable but rather just outright cool and awesome). The main villain, while quite characterful, isn't particularly menacing and probably could have benefited from a bit more screen time. Likewise some of the supporting cast could have had a bit more depth or backstory.

The thing that bothered me most, however, was that I felt the film has something of an anti-gun theme. It opens with a very powerful (and disturbing) scene of a sniper gunning down helpless civilians that's interspersed with shots of ammunition being carefully hand-loaded; while in theory this is just about establishing the character of the sniper, I can't help but get a "crazy gun people who are so obsessed that they load their own ammunition are really scary" vibe from it. Even the nice gun range owner who shows up later doesn't seem to have any objection to his patrons being universally referred to as being crazy.

I don't really think that's fair myself; anyone who's much good at anything spends a lot of time and effort on it, and that includes paying attention to the small details, whether it's shooting, driving, cycling, programming, writing, or cooking. In fact, tinkering and experimenting with every element is often part of the fun of many hobbies.

Of course Jack Reacher saves the day in the end using guns, so either I'm reading too much into it or the movie is somewhat hypocritical. I only mention it because this is kind of a big issue right now that Hollywood actors have decided to get involved in, which could end up affecting movies since guns on screen are part of the debate.


I'm giving it 8/10; a solid and engaging movie.