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Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011)
Doesn't quite measure up to the original material, but not bad.
DXHR suffers from two problems that plague bad RPGs:
1) Arbitrary Boss Fights
2) An ending that makes no realistic sense.
As for the first . . . You know what? I'm sure you've heard that complaint from every angle, and I have a 1000 word limit, so I won't go into it. Moving on!
Come the end of the game, the situation in the world is as follows. TYM is buying up every other augmentation company in order to control the release of augmentation products. The current diversity of companies means that the Illuminati can't exert control over those who choose to be augmented - they're essentially super-powered humans who can use their powers in whatever way they see fit. This makes them a threat to the established order.
At the end of the game, TYM and the Illuminati still exist. One of their agents, Bill Taggart is trapped with you.
Likewise, the heads of the companies bought out by TYM still exist, though Sarif is trapped with you.
Eliza is 'trapped' as well, unable to escape through the comm connection while it's in use - but as an AI, her 'main' self is still on the Picus mainframe.
And last but certainly not least, Hugh Darrow is trapped with you, after setting the communications array to transmit a signal causing hallucinations in any augmented person equipped with one of the TYM biochips, effectively making them become homicidal maniacs.
There are four possible endings. The first three sort of make sense:
You can broadcast Darrow's warning - but seriously, screw that guy.
You can have Eliza alter the broadcast to make up a story to support the Illuminati's point of view. But since they were acting like I should be shot, screw them, too.
Alternatively, you can have Darrow's broadcast altered to suit Sarif, which is by far the most rewarding of these three, personally.
But that's not the point. The point - and the reason I felt the need to explain the state of affairs by the end - is this. The fourth ending is that you destroy the structure you're in, killing everyone and (as the dialog tells you multiple times) leaves no one alive to 'spin' the story.
However, there's a flaw that anyone with a working brain should see with this ending. It actually leaves pretty much EVERYONE alive to do exactly that. The bulk of the Illuminati, TYM, other augmentation companies and their former idealistic owners, Lazarus the ranting radio retard, and Eliza herself are all going to survive while in point of fact, all you do is prevent any version of the truth from getting out. You leave nothing but a huge disaster for the most powerful parties to 'spin' exactly how they like with no informed opposition.
I know this. You probably realized this. There is literally no reason that Adam shouldn't realize this, but instead, when he's informed of this option, he blindly goes along with the idea that this option will 'allow people to make up their own minds'. The stupidest possible conclusion to events is foisted off on the audience as though it's actually a good idea in any way whatsoever. No wonder they called this game Deus Ex - through the dumbest possible solution, one that would never work at all in reality, Eliza assures us that this'll solve everything, and Adam buys it.
*sigh*
Alright, that aside, iron sights that toggle, instead of a simple 'right-click and hold' is a bit of a pain, but you have to use it because there is no targeting reticle. Some sort of 'statistics' screen would be good, too. Especially for those playing multiple saves. And though it's not something that was incorporated into the first Deus Ex game, there's no good reason not to add a New Game + to increase re playability in the game. Solid Snake has been getting bandannas for infinite ammo for 10 years now, there's no excuse not to.
Those minor complaints aside, though (and the two major ones above) there's not too terribly much to find fault with, here. The graphics are adequate, the levels are well- balanced and offer a variety of ways to get through. The AI is clever, which is a startling change of pace from many other games. They don't confirm sighting you too easily, but nor do they ignore the possibility that you're there. Pitting myself against it was one of the most interesting parts of the game.
In the end, I give it a 7 out of 10. Worth a play, and even a couple of replays, but after about a month you'll forget about it. Barring DLC of significantly higher quality.
Hard Candy (2005)
There is literally nothing worthwhile about this movie.
The plot doesn't make sense, the characters don't make sense, the action is contrived. It's clear the writer took an ending he'd like and then extrapolated backwards in order to lead up to it. The acting is good, but there's no other reason to watch unless the fantasies of the mentally ill are your thing. There are thousands of things you could be doing to enjoy your time that would be more rewarding than watching this pathetic excuse for a thriller. In the end the question is this: if the antagonist was suitably morally bankrupt, could you suspend disbelief in order to imagine that Snuggles, the Fabric Softener Bear could immobilize and terrorize a grown man? If so, then you might actually like this. If not, then probably not so much.
The Mummy Returns (2001)
Horrible.
There is no excuse for this. This was, literally, the worst big-budget movie in 2001.
I won't disagree with the 'cartoony' feel of the thing. If that's the way you want to go with it - you want to take a classic horror movie and turn it into something horrific because it'll get the little kids to drag mommy and daddy in, then that's fine. You bought the rights, have at it. And it's even possible to enjoy someone raping cinema history as Sommers did here, I'm sure, if it's done well.
This wasn't.
I'll just give you two examples. Please bear in mind that these are merely examples, they are by no means 'the only two problems with the movie' but they are two of the biggest.
First of all Alex is left in Lock-Nah's care. Here is a gentleman who has survived in some of the harshest environments in the world, and in this movie we're to believe that he'll just grudgingly do whatever Alex tells him because he can't murder the kid. You have taken suspension of disbelief too far. As an audience member I wanted to pin his hand to a table with a knife and tell him that if he needed a drink to pee his pants and suck the moisture out of the fabric, because he's not going anywhere. But we're to believe that a man who lives in areas where people would sooner kill you just for thinking you're a thief than bother to call the authorities would just groan and do as he's told by this brat. No dice, Sommers, you moron.
Secondly (and this is just an even worse version of something that happened in the first one, actually) at the end, when verses need to be spoken to perform 'magic', huge conversations are carried on in the midst of it. "Magic magic magic . . . hey, how do I say this? Yeah, this right here! Are you sure? Oh, yeah, that's it! Alright, thanks! Hey, how're things going? Doing well? Awesome, awesome. Well, I'd better get on with saving the world from hordes of the undead! Yeah, I know, every summer, right?! Ha! Anyway . . . magic magic magic." By Sommers' logic, we should all be casting magic spells every day, because at some point, you're going to have uttered all the syllables in the right order. Just more poorly-thought-out crap that anyone with an IQ over 80 could spot the hole in with about 2 1/2 seconds of thought, but Sommers has so little respect for his audience that he just tosses it in there so that he can build tension.
In other words: Sommers wanted a visual spectacle to be delivered, and he did so. He wanted mummies in there, and there were. He wanted Brendan Frasier, and there is. He wanted Egyptian women trained in and fighting with Asian weapons (in ancient Egypt) and for some reason, there are. He wanted a "precocious" child (read: freaking insufferable little turd begging to be thrown from a plane, sans parachute) and he got one. What Sommers did not give a crap about was a coherent setting that's consistent with itself, much less the real world. Because Sommers clearly has the intelligence of a dung beetle, and expects you to as well.
BloodRayne (2005)
This is, I kid you not, one of the worst movies ever made.
If it were possible to give less than one star, this movie would've achieved it. Listen, I'm not going to go into the details - the acting (merely bad), the scripting (idiotic), the sets (styrofoam dungeons!), the fight choreography (epilleptic!) or any of those things. No doubt they've all been harped on enough, and there's no point going on here.
I rented this movie thinking roughly the following, "I've never seen one of Uwe Boll's films, but you know, they can't be THAT bad. I mean, they keep letting him make movies, so there must be something good about them, huh?" I was seriously mistaken. Just look at the average ratings here, and you'll notice a serious trend. It's not (as a Uwe Boll defender put it) some sort of 'Hate Club'. His movies are God-awful and it honestly made me want to start drinking heavily just to wash away the memory of having ever watched it. It physically hurts to remember it. I'd rather attempt with a rusty bread knife (starting from the groin) to cut myself in half than to even THINK HARD about watching this movie again.
Look, I know that 90% of the 'user comments' here for this movie are something like overkill, so let me just close with this tiny observation (spoiler follows) and be done with it. At the end of the movie, Rayne sits down on a throne or some such and the camera zooms in on her face slowly - and then we're treated to a replay of EVERY scene in the movie that featured blood. That's a lot of flashback, so it's ridiculously long and boring. But during it, they flash back to one scene that I was certain I must've mis-remembered . . . but I didn't. There was a dismembered torso lying on the ground. Then you see a sword thunk down into the hay scattered all over the place beside the torso. "Well, perhaps the torso wasn't quite dead enough - perhaps that fellow was a little overexcited and missed," you might think. But then, a moment later (perhaps another few swords thunked into the ground at this point, I can't quite recall) blood SPRAYS out of every orifice on the torso, as though it'd been dismembered between heartbeats. And then, "thunk", another sword hits the ground, and another . . . the camera pans up, away from the torso, and to the crowd of men who, in the midst of what we're led to believe is a raucous battle, have nothing better to do than hack at the ground around (I say again) a torso. As it pans all the way up, you see them . . . crazed with blood-lust, are they? So caught up in battle that their berserker rage causes them to attempt to hack the enemy (literally) to bits? No. No, quite the contrary. In a moment that's indicative of just about every horrible moment of this horrible movie, you see it's just a bunch of bored-looking extras, the thought playing through the forefront of their minds, "I'm getting scale for this, but god, I wish I had a line or something." I would say that Uwe Boll should be fitted with a collar that will detonate and decapitate him instantly if he's within 15 feet of a camera, but sadly (dupe that I am) I'm intrigued by the preview for "Postal". Suicide, I believe, may be my only hope at this point.
Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995)
Decent film, but with a few obvious flaws.
While the movie itself is well-constructed, the characters universally aptly portrayed, and the atmosphere quite spectacular, there are a few things that I always warn friends about when approaching this movie.
First of all, the characters ARE caricatures. In more than one case, a character is barely more than a sketch, without so much as a name. The writer clearly had ideas for how he wanted to personify these concepts, and the actors did fantastic work with them, but all you need to do is go to the 'cast and crew' page and look at the NAMES of the characters to understand more than one role that's played in the movie itself.
Secondly, and far more annoying, is the attempt to create an atmosphere of authenticity by making up something that's supposed to be 'prison slang'. It happens more than once - some phrase that you've never heard before is used, the old man narrating the story pauses, we're brought crashing back to the wraparound story as the old man telling this to the kids explains the obscure meaning of this phrase or that name, or some other thing. "See, kids, they'd say 'dingleberries' when things were going wrong, because when you're being raped in prison, the last thing you want are some dingleberries back there . . ."
And I forgot what the third thing was. But I will say that this movie singlehandedly changed my opinion of Christopher Lloyd (for the better). It's worth at least one viewing, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it. If you're like me though, you'll think about a few bits of it after it's over and shake your head at the silliness of them. "'Boat drinks'? What the HELL?!"
Zoolander (2001)
The most idiotic premise ever.
While it is, of course, the job of an actor to act, there are certain things that just can't be done. Without straining the ability to suspend disbelief, for example, you could not have Oprah Winfrey play the biological mother of Haley Joel Osment. Having Bernie Mac play JFK would be another stretch that's pretty much unimaginable. And the idea of having Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson play male models is on the same level.
Some people might say that that's the point - it's inherently funny to have a man who resembles a chimpanzee and a man with half a nose playing models. That might be true, were it not for the fact that Ben Stiller, Jerry Stiller and Owen Wilson have, between them all, the comedic talents of a stale animal cracker. The only plus to this movie was Will Ferrell - that's it.
I have no idea what a person might find funny about Zoolander - clearly some people find it endlessly amusing, even some of my friends - but I can't, in good conscience, recommend it to anyone that I don't want to see commit suicide. If you really want to experience something that nearly emulates the amount of pain this movie will inflict without having to spend over an hour watching it, may I advise the following?
Go duck hunting with Dick Cheney. Have an intimate encounter with a food processor. Dip your most sensitive bits in gravy and tease a rabid wolverine. Hug a wrecking ball (in use). Apply for a job brushing the teeth of great white sharks.
Any of these will allow you to experience the sheer mental torture that "Zoolander" will inflict on you without actually having to invest the time in watching Ben Stiller 'act'.
Family Guy (1999)
High Quality Television! (Soon to be banned in a country near you!)
I give it a 9 because a 10 is perfect, and only Allah is perfect. But that aside, Family Guy is one of the boldest, most audacious shows on television. I could go on and on about the attractions that it has, but that would get monotonous. Let me instead provide something useful to the 4 people who haven't seen this show and tell you what you might NOT like.
First of all, the show consists of about 10% random 'flashback' style jokes that are tangential to the plot. Personally, I love this, because while it comprises a 'formula' of it's own, at least it prevents the show into sliding into other, more familiarly formulaic patterns.
Secondly, Seth McFarlane has a plebeian touch that would make Caligula proud. While he's hilarious, extremely talented, and I'm certain he's a wonderful gent all around, nevertheless his ability to relate to the lower classes in any way other than stunned disbelief or open mockery is nonexistent. This shortcoming, however, is rarely an issue as there are other people writing for the show.
Mike Henry's voice as Cleveland is an acquired taste, but the 90 other characters that he voices that all sound exactly alike are a taste that's never been acquired by anyone who doesn't work on the show. So if you haven't seen "Family Guy" before, and you hear someone slowly drawling and sounding slightly effeminate - just bear with the interruption, and hilarity will resume as soon as the character currently speaking leaves the screen.
And finally, you will more than likely be offended. Season after season, this is a show that pushes boundaries - not only in what's possible, but also the boundaries of its audience. "Family Guy" will find something you hold sacred and mock it, then DARE you not to laugh. So if you haven't run for the hills already, then have a seat, tune in, watch, laugh and enjoy - and if you find yourself getting offended, then just repeat after the character watching the Christmas Pageant in "A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas" and say, "I guess I'll just have to develop a sense of humor."
Fonzie be praised!