Category: Movies

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Cars Can Fly In Furious 7!

fast-and-furious-7

In the opening few minutes of Furious 7 Brian O’Conner(Paul Walker)’s son throws a toy car out a minivan door and says that it flew.  O’Conner responds that cars can’t fly, but Furious 7 goes about doing its best to prove O’Conner wrong.  Much like O’Conner’s son and the toy car, Furious 7 is just a boy playing with his toys.  In this case the boy is director James Wan, but the effect is the same: cars doing impossible things in a seemingly random series of events.

I generally like to give some sort of movie plot synopsis or plot teaser, but in this case there really isn’t one.  The Furious crew does random stuff while Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) tries to kill/stop them.  Also Djimon Hounsou plays a bad guy too.  Not sure what his goal was other than to be not good.

Any time any of this movie’s actors were tasked with acting or setting up the movie’s ‘plot’ Furious 7 ground to a halt.  It was stilted and cliché.  I mean it was almost unbearable.  However, once the cars started literally flying the movie started figuratively flying.  It was so much fun to watch these characters do impossible things all with wide grins on their faces.  For Furious 8 I hope they skip the ‘talking’ scenes all together and just come up with crazy set pieces because that is what the Fast & Furious franchise is now.  Mind-bending-ly awesome car stunts.

I am not sure if Furious 7 is a good movie or not, but once the chit chat stopped I enjoyed myself quite a bit, and that has to count for something.  I don’t know what sort wild things James Wan has planned for Furious 8, but it will be hard to top what he put on screen with Furious 7.  If you want to believe that cars can fly, Furious 7 might just be what you are looking for.

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I Am The Knight! With Batman: The Telltale Series!

batman-telltale

While cinematically Batman has been having a rough time lately, in the world of video games he has been doing quite well thanks to Rocksteady Studios’ Arkham series.  It looks the Dark Knight’s excellent gaming run is going to continue with Batman: The Telltale Series.  I played the first episode and witnessed the second during the PAX West group play and it is amazing!  While the Arkham series was all about giving you the moves to feel like you were Batman doling out justice, Telltale Batman is all about getting in to the mind of Batman.  What it is like to be Bruce Wayne making hard choices.

Gameplay wise Telltale Batman doesn’t differ that much from other Telltale games.  It is still a choose your own adventure title with Quick Time Events (QTEs) for the ‘action’.  While at first it seems odd to take the action out of a Batman story, this is the first game to really get in the head of Batman and let you pick how he deals with the threats against Gotham, or even better whether Batman is Bruce Wayne’s alter ego or the other way around.  It is like the ultimate motion comic.

Stylistically Batman: The Telltale Series looks a lot like Telltale’s other comic book to game outings with a heavy cell shaded look.  Though much like The Wolf Among Us this just adds to the game’s living comic book feel.  It looks like one of Batman’s on page adventures.  Which is to say pretty great.

I guess how much you like Batman: The Telltale Series will depend on how much you like Batman.  If the Dark Knight is not your thing, playing a game where you get behind his eyes isn’t going to do much for you.  If you are like me on the other hand, and love Batman, Batman: The Telltale Series is a must play.  It is another impressive game from Telltale.  At this point after Batman and The Wolf Among Us, DC should just give Telltale license to do all their characters.

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Looks Like The Paladin Took Care Of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. For Me!

I recently watched the Man from U.N.C.L.E., and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  I was going to review it, but then I remembered that The Paladin already reviewed it a year ago.  Instead of doing all the work of writing my own review I am just going to link to his since we pretty much agree.  Plus it can’t hurt my ‘click’ rate (sadly it probably can’t help it either).

The Paladin dug The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

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What Was The Point Of Preacher’s First Season?

Preacher

I am not one for spoilers, but I have decided that I have to talk about how the first season of Preacher ended, so take this as your spoiler warning.  The show ends with a town wide explosion.  Which is similar to the comic book (in the comic it was only the church), but the comic book did it in the first two pages not after eleven hours of television.  We had no attachment for anyone in the comics yet, so the explosion just set the tone for the wild and crazy graphic adventure.  In the show we know everyone, so they just killed a bunch of people we have some sort of interest in.

What was the point of the first season then?  To show that Jesse is kind of a jerky know-it-all?  Trust me if they had followed the comic books people would have come to that realization anyway.  I don’t think Preacher needed a prequel, or this prequel at any rate.  It didn’t show us anything relevant or new about these characters.  It did show us that they are going to try and be as weird as the comic books, but just at a much slower pace.  Maybe the writers just wanted us to be asking the same question as Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy, “What is the point of it all?”.