NL finally updates, or the first update of 2014

Hey, I’m really sorry about the lack of updates throughout 2013. It was really a transitional year for me, and I’m not really not sure 2014 will be any better. Regardless…

I really hope you all had a great 2013. I unfortunately have to say that I’m probably not going to update my deviantART that much anymore aside from possible future journal entries. I’ve now devoted all my time to both school and work on my dream project. If you want to follow me where I regularly update, follow my Twitter in the link at the bottom of this journal.

But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least provide journals once in a while that are basically mini-Unlimited Reviews. As such, here’s the stuff I checked out the past year that I owed you guys:

Films

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
This was probably what people expect when they’ve never seen a Lord of the Rings movie but heard a lot about them. It’s unnecessarily long and has many plots/sub-plots running through it. And yet it kept my attention with its visual flair and playful nature. How much you enjoy the movie highly depends on whether you’ve read the book or how much you’re willing to let Peter Jackson get away with. I wouldn’t say the movie was well-put together, but it was very well made and sometimes you can just appreciate the scale it goes for despite featuring a lot of padding and filler. If nothing else, watch it for the Gollum scene.

Visuals/Effects: 5
Music: 4
Characters/Acting: 5
Story: 3
Presentation: 5
Personal Enjoyment: 4

Overall: 4
Recommendation: You’ll Love It or Hate It

Zero Dark Thirty
Ah, my first non-nerdy movie review. I thought it was only “okay”. It just seemed like any other movie that happened to be based on real-life events for me and didn’t really offer that much in terms of storytelling or movie making, I thought. It certainly was an interesting CIA procedural movie, I guess? For being a movie that dramatizes the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, it did its job.

Music: 3
Characters/Acting: 5
Story: 3
Presentation: 3
Personal Enjoyment: 3

Overall: 3.5
Recommendation: Artsy Fartsy!

Oz the Great and Powerful
I actually was rather looking forward to this one, but it mostly ended up just being another “okay” movie. There were many subtleties to the story, but a lot of it was downplayed and served more of an in-joke if you saw the original 1939 Wizard of Oz movie. The movie can be beautiful when it wants to, but sometimes the sets looked so obviously filmed on a sound stage that it took me out of the experience; the graveyard scene being a good example. However, the movie’s true Achilles’ heel was that the actors simply weren’t meant for their roles. I don’t know whether it was their capability or what, but I just had so much trouble believing these people are who they say they are. James Fanco simply doesn’t have enough charisma to pull off the charming conman and I could only hear Meg Griffin and JD out of Mila Kunis and Zach Braff. They tried so hard to make Kunis ugly as the Wicked Witch, but she’s just too beautiful for the role. How odd a complaint? Overall, it was just okay. The China Girl introduction scene was beautiful though.

Visuals/Effects: 4
Music: 3
Characters/Acting: 2
Story: 3
Presentation: 4
Personal Enjoyment: 3

Overall: 3
Recommendation: Skip It!

G.I. Joe: Retaliation
You were so close. SO CLOSE. But no, but this is still a terrible movie. There a lot of good moments in this, but it simply failed on a storytelling level. G.I. Joe is one of those franchises that I think can only work if you had a small cast of characters and give only focus to one of them at a time. This movie, however, tries to give everyone a subplot. Yes, there were badass action sequences. Yes, Cobra Commander looked and sounded awesome. Yes, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are probably the best things in this movie. But ultimately? It was just a dumb, dumb, dumb action movie that wouldn’t look out of place in the 80s. Which might not be so bad if you enjoy those kind of movies. However, its cast and characters are wasted and the story is beyond stupid. Check it out if you don’t mind turning off your brain for two hours.

Visuals/Effects: 4
Music: 2
Characters/Acting: 1
Story: 1
Presentation: 2
Personal Enjoyment: 3

Overall: 2
Recommendation: Skip It!

Iron Man 3
This was a glorious end of a trilogy. This is Tony Stark in his darkest hour, where he is lost and unsure of himself. And yet it manages to be utterly hilarious and probably the funniest of the three Iron Man movies. The writing for the movie is superb with great character moments interspersed with awesome action scenes and dry wit. For how little time Tony spends in the suit, it’s amazing how well the movie kept my attention and not made me think to myself, “Ugh, when is he going to put on the suit again?” If there is any problem with the movie, it would be the villain. If you’re a fan of the comic book version of the Mandarin, you’ll probably be disappointed or really angry about it. Personally, I didn’t have a problem with what they did with the Mandarin. What I had a problem with was the final RESULT of the Mandarin being lackluster and not managing to live up to allowing me to accept the changes they did with the Mandarin. That still does not take away that I consider this on par or better than the first movie.

Visuals/Effects: 4
Music: 4
Characters/Acting: 5
Story: 4
Presentation: 4
Personal Enjoyment: 5

Overall: 4.5
Recommendation: Must See!

Star Trek Into Darkness
You either love or hate this movie based solely on whether you’ve watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Considering how that movie is one of my favorite movies of all time, let’s just say that I was very disappointed. That isn’t to say the movie didn’t have a chance. It had so much potential to be good. It delved deep into Star Trek mythology and tried so hard to mean something to us. However, that wasn’t what I got. I’ll start things off saying that if you haven’t seen the aforementioned movie, you’ll probably enjoy this movie a lot. It has fun action scenes and even a good tear-jerking moment near the end. But if you HAVE seen it, then you’ll probably be able to see what the issue is: It doesn’t live up to what it is trying to do. It is trying to replicate the past in a modern way and if done so in a different manner, I could have said this movie was fantastic that not only appealed to non-fans but also Trekkies that have long since lost hope that there’d ever be a movie so great as Wrath of Khan. But it didn’t live up to it, and it chose to play the safe route of being a silly-but-fun action movie. It wasn’t bad, but it was my biggest disappointment of 2013.

Visuals/Effects: 4
Music: 4
Characters/Acting: 4
Story: 3
Presentation: 4
Personal Enjoyment: 2

Overall: 3.5
Recommendation: You’ll Love It or Hate It

Man of Steel
…*sigh*

I liked it, okay? Was it fantastic? No. Was it awful? No. Was it an insult to the Superman character? No. At least for me.

Man of Steel is a movie that dared to do something different with Superman, but the fan backlash to it was simply too much. Did it do different WELL? Not exactly. Many people say that the movie turned Superman into Batman. I don’t think that’s what they were going for. I thought the movie was trying to examine the human side of Superman. Yes, he is good. Yes, he is hope. He is the Man of Tomorrow and the hero that I respect the most. But he is still human – figuratively speaking. And that’s what makes him so aspiring to me. He isn’t just some alien sent to our planet to show us dumb humans how to be better people and be a god-like figure. He is someone that I see as one of us given the chance to do something great and show exactly how much good we can do. But that’s just the thing: Humanity is flawed. We aren’t perfect. And we make mistakes. But if we recognize these mistakes, we can become even better. That is what Superman is to me.

But was that properly shown in the movie? Yes…and no. Their intention was there, but they failed to get their point across properly if so many people thought otherwise. As such, the movie is hated by many. I suppose I respect the intentions behind the movie more than the movie itself, but it is in there. Buried deep underneath the Jesus imagery and wanton destruction. Ultimately, I can not offer any real critique. It’s ultimately how you choose to view Superman that’ll have you decide whether the movie was of your liking or not.

Though I did miss the classic John Williams theme.

Visuals/Effects: 4
Music: 4
Characters/Acting: 4
Story: 3
Presentation: 3
Personal Enjoyment: 4

Overall: 3.5
Recommendation: See For Yourself

World War Z
It’s not like the book. It’s a typical zombie apocalypse movie, but has a goofy/dumb resolution to the problem. Have fun.

Visuals/Effects: 3
Music: 2
Characters/Acting: 3
Story: 3
Presentation: 3
Personal Enjoyment: 3

Overall: 3
Recommendation: Skip It!

Pacific Rim
This movie was glorious. Many people write this movie off as a dumb-but-fun action movie. I heavily disagree. This movie was a really well made dumb-but-fun action movie. Guillermo del Toro is not some flash-in-the-pan action movie director. He is an award-winning film director that knows the subtleties behind filmmaking. He knows how to make an action scene look cool, he knows how to progress a story, and he knows how to incorporate visual storytelling without beating you over the head with it. That being said, yeah. Pacific Rim is a dumb-but-fun action movie where people piloting giant robots are fighting giant monsters. WHAT THE FUCK MORE DO YOU WANT?!

Visuals/Effects: 5
Music: 5
Characters/Acting: 4
Story: 3
Presentation: 5
Personal Enjoyment: 5

Overall: 4.5
Recommendation: Must See!

The World’s End
This movie is probably one of the best comedies of the past few years.

I didn’t like it.

Don’t get me wrong: This is a GREAT movie…with some plot holes the size of a small town. Edgar Wright is one of my favorite directors and Hot Fuzz is my favorite comedy movie. But I felt this movie either lacked the humanity of the previous Three Flavors Cornetto movies…or it had TOO MUCH humanity. Lemme explain: This movie probably features the most dislikable main character of the three movies. That isn’t a bad thing. Good comedies always feature dislikable protagonists and Simon Pegg is such a brilliant actor to pull it off without tipping over to complete intolerable territory with his character. The issue is that the movie doesn’t offer a good explanation for why the other characters are following along with him, especially after certain events causes grievous circumstances happen to them. The movie was about the midlife-crisis and coming in terms with yourself as you move on, but when it does give focus on the characters and their growth, they promptly vanish from the story and you feel like you’ve just wasted your time getting invested in these characters. It’s a funny movie, but it just isn’t as well balanced as the previous two movies. The ending also pissed me off, but has grown on me after considering some themes behind the story.

Visuals/Effects: 5
Music: 3
Characters/Acting: 5
Story: 3
Presentation: 5
Personal Enjoyment: 3

Overall: 4
Recommendation: See For Yourself

Ender’s Game
This is an emotionally draining movie. I like to compare this movie to Starship Troopers…the movie, not the book. That movie was cheesy action movie that managed to double as a pastiche and satire of war propaganda and was basically a big anti-war movie. Ender’s Game, however, is a straight “war is hell” story that examines how far exactly someone goes in order to win their side of the war. Whereas Starship Troopers is lighthearted and comedic with its message, this was harsh and unpleasant, which maybe why it hits harder and gets its point across better. Even without that, the movie is a pretty damn exciting sci-fi movie that is on the hard side of the Moh’s scale of science fiction hardness. What really stunned me was how good the child actors were in this movie. I mean…damn. I didn’t expect to see such good acting from such young people.

Visuals/Effects: 4
Music: 3
Characters/Acting: 5
Story: 5
Presentation: 4
Personal Enjoyment: 3

Overall: 4
Recommendation: See For Yourself

This is where Thor: The Dark World would go if I had seen it.

And that’s the films I saw last year! I am going to post mini-reviews of the anime I watched last year tomorrow, with games the day after, and finally ending with western series. Until then: Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, guys.

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