(FILM REVIEW) - The Irishman (Martian Scorsese)

The Irishman (Martian Scorsese)

The Irishman (Martian Scorsese)

This is a polarizing film for me. I want to really like this film, but I just didn't, for the most part. This movie is what I would call the very definition of a vanity project. A bunch of creators that are not so much "past their prime" but defiantly past the use by date for this kind of film. These are people who are making a film together. To make a film together. Not because they are the best choices for actors to make the film. 

No amount of "digital makeup" can get around the fact that they move and have the vocal inflection of old, old men. In the same way that the newish Star Wars film with Vader in it sounded "wrong" as Jones's voice was so weak, this film just lacks all the energy needed to portray these villains. The old men sequences work, and work very well. Joe Pesci particularly comes off the best, as unlike Dinero he isn't kicking people in the head when he can hardly lift his foot and balance on one leg. This really brought me out of the film and the film makers knew this. That is why the "young" Dinero still looks like he is in his late forties, to try and minimise this problem. I even read that they had a "posture coach" on this movie. They just can not fake their way around how frail Dinero and Al Pacino are and despite their vast acting talent they fail to complete the illusion the movie requires for the majority of "youth" timeline. This does mean the latter parts of the film are, imo, vastly superior as their age is not something that they are fighting, and the performances feel more natural and convincing.

In the old days, there was a covenant between audience member and film maker. The film maker only had to set up the premise of someone being old or young. The visual illusion was easily seen through but the viewer understood what was meant. In Little Big Man we are not fooled by the "Old Man Makeup" of Dustin Hoffman, but we accept it. In Batman (1998) we are not fooled by the "young Jack Nicholson" but we accept it. Films nowadays are obsessed with visual illusion over the metaphoric, and I think this is a huge loss to film making. A great example is Anthony Hopkins in Nixon and Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon. Having Hopkins in all that makeup actually puts barriers between the audience and the actor and while Langella looks nothing like Nixon the illusion is actually better as those barriers are absent and the actor's art is raw on the screen. What I am trying to say here is that this film would have been immeasurably better if they fucked off all that digital makeup and just hired some young actors to play them as kids, even if they didn't look exactly the same. For no matter how good the "visual" illusion was, the performances were just not able to be convincingly put onto the screen and in a film such as this which is so low key and so much about characters and in a film which has the acting right at the forefront, well, it just really hurt this movie.

Also this film is LONG. Like many vanity projects the editing is all over the shop. I read a metric that said only 17% of the viewers on Netflix finished the film in one session and most people took over a week to watch the film across 3 sessions. I myself watched it in two sessions over 4 days. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I actually think the long format film could be the future for streaming services. In the same way I think the short TV Episode could be the future of streaming TV, one we are glimpsing on Disney+ with The Mandelorian. What dose it matter how long a film is if you can pause it and come back the next day, or how short a tv show is if you can press "next" and watch another episode strait away? Even so, this film is undeniably self-indulgent. With film, I still think that single sessions are the way to consume them, to get lost in a story by surrounding yourself in it. Long form film work great on a second or more viewings, as you are watching to relive things, kinda like having a memory of a experience rather than actually experiencing it. I could hardly sit though the Lord of the Rings films at the cinema, but have no issues with watching the trilogy's extended editions during subsequent viewings over a few weeks at home. To that end I think that this film will gain ground on second or more viewing, as the viewer is not being asked to "live" the film, so to speak, and that means that length and more importantly the pacing is no longer as important.

The good stuff of this film is far more obvious. I mean this is a master craftsman doing his thing with some truly legendary actors behind him. Pesci stood out to me and really highlights the loss to cinema that happened when he walked away form hollywood. Even so I do not need to tell you that the main cast of Pesci, Dinero and Pacino are showcasing an actors workshop here. The cast of this movie is like a who's who. Even bit characters like Harvey Keitel shine and faces popup constantly that make you call out.. "that guy!" and no one can deny the understanding of film language which Scorsese has.

So this is a strange film for me. It is obviously something interesting and above the crowd, yet it is incredibly flawed, almost ruined in some parts and then on top of that there are these absolutely stunning actor on actor character scenes. It is such a mixed bag. One that feels undercooked somehow and it is not helped by seemingly overly lenient editing.

Verdict : Everyone should see this, but not everyone will like it, and that is ok.

(New Acquisitions) - Yokohama

Yokohama

Hisashi Hayashi made a splash a while back with Trains a kind of area control deck building game. This game is more of a classic euro style and also very well received.

At its core is a action select worker placement game. The game uses a variety of cards that contain the actions and worker slots. Unlike many worker placement games the workers actually move rather than being placed anywhere, meaning that different setups when dealing the locations can change the tactical thinking between sessions.

Like many euros it is a bit of a multiplayer solo game, there is some blocking but really it is more a kind of "race' game were you rush for points vs your opponents.

The game does look busy and kinda of crowded, particularly in at full player count. You deal less locations at lower counts so there are less slots, this is how this games gets around the worker slots issue that worker placement games have for different player counts. This allows great variance between the sessions as certain actions are missing from some games, but lacks the coherence of a properly deigned board. I am not sure anyone can seriously defend the look of it on the table, it looks a little worrying at first glace!

4 Player Game

2 Player Game

It is extremely well designed, and is not nearly as complex as it looks and is one of those games that has very interesting decisions on every turn.

The game reminds me a little of Bruxelles 1897. I know it is not actually like that game really, but even so it reminds me of it somehow. Maybe it is in how there are so many avenues to victory and you build this little player area as you go. Bruxelles 1897 btw is one of my favourite games, so reminding me of that game is a good thing.

Anyway, this is a top game. I have only bee able to play it a few times on TTS, and it has been on my wishlist for years, the subsequent pre-xmas sales and reprint seemed like a great time to pick it up.

Most photos are for the deluxe version, I just got the standard. It is basically the same but the small cardboard tokens are replaced with meeples and fancy meepels replace the cubes.

(Game Prieview) - Operencia: The Stolen Sun (Zen Studios)

 Operencia: The Stolen Sun

Zen Studios are famous for pretty much one thing... Zen Pinball... I always check up on their website when Xmas comes around to see if any cheap tables are available...and saw they have a RPG now. And not just any RPG one made is the classic dungeon crawler style of Eye of the Beholder.Might and Magic and Shadowgate... all games I loved. There was a recent series called Legend of Grimlock that I also really liked. My point is that this old school style of a grid based dungeon crawling is a style of game I really enjoy. It is also one that is criminally underdeveloped by the "retro" gaming boom that is going on at the moment. I suppose it is just the next sub-genre to get a crack after all the other retro revivals.

Anyway it is on sale at the mo on Epic so picked it up.

1st things 1st.... the game is gorgeous. The art is all awesome and colorful 3d renders, kinda like the old Myst games. The controls are classic as is the combat. This game is not doing anything new, I think they are just trying to do it well. Still the art is off the chain.

The combat is as you would expect. Some cool enemies but the imaginative stuff dose not come till you are deep in the dungeons. You fight in a 2x2 formation.. again, classic. The mechanisms of the combat is more modern though... more like a jRPG.. lots of buffs and shields and hastes and potion items and stuff. I think this is actually pretty cool and if you turn it all the way up, poses some challenge, at least in the early game. I suspect like all RPGs you end up godlike.

 True to form and a great nod to Shadowsgate and beyond, much of the game is puzzle design. Almost like Myst or a Point and Click adventure. Some of them are pretty cool, but nothing to hard. The hardest are the chest puzzles which are classic puzzle boxes and I also found one that was a legit cypher.. this puzzle woud be super hard if you did not recognise the encoding.

The voice acting is not the best, unfortunately, but all in all I am very happy with this one and enjoying it more than Legend of Grimlock 2. The start is a little wonky, but really it is just a long tutorial. So power through it, once you get past it the game begins to shine.

Verdict : Love it!

(TV Review) - The Mandalorian Season 1 : Episode 1+2 (Disney+)

The Mandalorian Season 1  : Episode 1+2

It is no secret that I am a buthurt and also a bitter old Star Wars fan. I loved Star Wars and Empires. I mean, loved. I can literally quote Empire backwards. Well. I used to be able, haven't tried for ages but I did so and won a competition at a Star Wars convention in the mid 90s once. Anyway, I liked Jedi less, but still love it for the most part. There is an age old joke about how you can tell someone's age by if they liked Jedi or not, as you were either a kid that loved talking teddy bears, or you thought it was off putting that people with sticks and stones could take out a highly advanced race of aliens. This joke is 100% true, imo, and the joke is now expanded to other generations who watched the newer films.

The prequels broke me. They were so atrociously bad that I find it almost unbelievable, and the fact they are now not the worst to be made astounds me in the most horrific way. All the kids that saw it, when they were 8 or whatever, are now in there late 20s, early 30s, the prequels came out over '99 and 2005, and they are a driving force of a revisionist movement where those films are widely thought of as unfairly judged. If you soil yourself on theForce.net, the general voice is that those films are great. It is these "new fans" that drive this change of opinion, as they are still active and engaged in the Star Wars community.

This is all about how we relate to the memories of our youth, and not about the films themselves. I think it also shows the innate childishness of the movies. It took me a long time to realise that Star Wars, all of them, are kids films, like say Goonies. The originals were just really good kids movies, so good that they appeal to all ages, but they are childish films made for children at their core. Which is why each generation hates the next set of films and the new generation loves the new ones. It is not that "kids do not know any better" it is that I am just far and away outside the target audience of the franchise, but I was the target audience when I was a kid, and of course I remember being a child and nostalgia is a thing. George Lucas understood this, and the attempting to force the newest movies into adult sensibilities is part of why they are spectacularly bad, in my eyes. He knew the key to the franchise was to make them appeal to the kids and cultivate new fans. Mark my words. The current Trilogy will be thought of as excellent by the next generation once they are old and judging the trilogy of 2038, or whenever it comes out.

The thing is I am burnt out on Star Wars. When the prequels were out I was a vocal poster about how shit they were, watched tear down vids and all that, but somewhere along the line between "Revenge of the endless lava fight of boredom" and "who gives a shit what it is called 2nd film that came out recently", that I am just spent. I care so little about it that I do not even get annoyed by it any more. All the fuel has been burnt. I do not like it, or hate it, I just don't give a shit about it. Star Wars is like Fast and the Furious to me, or maybe more like a long running soap opera like Neighbours. It is so under my radar and of such little interest to me that it barley enters my field of vision at all.

What I am trying to say here, besides trying desperately to not fall into a ten page rant about how terrible Star Wars is, I like to think I have no stake in the franchise any more, but deep down I do. The Star Wars I loved for so long is gone, erased by decades of "cannon" stories that removed all the magic and mystery of my imaginings and compressed what I thought to be a saga spanning centuries to 19 years. I can not help see Star Wars as a inferior shadow of what it was, and what it meant to my generation who spent decades without new content. Where we built our own fandom from what the shows inspired in us, not what they showed us. I am still bitter and this produces bias. I have tried three times to talk about this show but end up writing pages about my relationship to the material instead of the show itself... lol.. fuck it I'm not deleting it this time.

Anyway... lets get to it...

So, considering my relationship to most Disney properties, the mass of Disney+ TV shows that have been announced were as exciting to me as hearing that a new CIS show was coming out. Still, Disney+ is a film quality tv platform. Beyond its library of junk, it is pumping billions into original content. The Mandalorian looks fantastic, it looks better than some high budget science fiction films. They have hired top level actors, directors, writers and more, and it shows. The show from a production standpoint is just about as good as TV can get. So that is a big plus. There are few shows that have ever looked so much like a big budget film. The super rich source of design they have inherited, means even with only a few original additions, the show just looks amazing, as it is reproducing design elements that have been honed over decades. The outfits, the armour, the set aesthetics, the sheer amount of cash saved that other fantasy productions would need to spend, is then diverted into other areas and it really shows. Anyone that says this show is not one of, if not the, best production quality we have seen on TV is kidding themselves.

Beyond the production the real star of this show is David Filoni. He has a long history of making fan pleasing content and has shown he understands legacy as well as having the ability to add new content. It is well known now the terms of the Lucas deal means George retained royalty rights for merchandise for the prequels and the original series. "Let the past die" and all that shit coming down from high to wipe the old films away started to make so much sense when you consider this. Yet Filoni has somehow always managed to walk a line that brings new fans into the modern works, rather than alienate them. Do not be fooled by Jon Favreau's name. David Filoni is the guy behind this, and if they had any sense it would be him in Kennedy's chair, someone btw who is famously not involved in this show in anyway.

There is a lot of talk about how this show is like a western, but it isn't even remotely like one. It really shows how devoid of imagination much of the critical audience is. My guess is the "western" line came from Disney itself and then one critic said it and this just went on and on and on, each taking the lead from another. The show lacks all the cinematic fingerprints of the western, calling this show a western is like calling the 1st Conan film a western. Sure it is a lone man in a desert, doing fetch quests but that is about it. It will be hilarious once the latter episodes are on different planets and more characters have been introduced and stuff and this link to the "western" will be more and more absurd.

The episodes are short, and it is a mercy. It would have been so easy for them to fall into the netlfix trap of making a 20 hours film and 1/2 the audience loosing its cool mid way. The episodes are short and sweet, never staying to long and this makes you want more. I actually think the episode length is probably the smartest part of this production.

In addition there are a lot of touches that seem tailor made for old school fans to address issues that have come up over the last two decades of media. The "hero", for example, is fallible. Spending some time falling on his arse and getting nearly killed. The way the Jedi have evolved in cartoons, comics, games and films have made jedi characters into caricatures, and the simple act of the main dude not being perfect at everything instantly gives the show some credibility in my eyes. Also the "Judge Dredd" not taking his helmet off thing is really cool, and something I was sure would not happen.

I also really liked the main hook, that of the young Yoda. For those that do not know, Yoda's race and back story has never been named in any cannon media. Seeing a baby "yoda" tells fans that this show is going to seriously add to the lore of Star Wars in a major way. This is intriguing, on paper at least. All the "worshipping metal" and tribal stuff from the comics can go fuck a fruit bat, though.

I want to hate this show, but in truth there is little to fault it on. I mean I can talk about the bloodless violence or the shameless easter eggs to make fanatics wet themselves but the reality of this show is that it is well made, seems to take itself seriously, seems to have real direction and is for all appearances may be the best Star Wars live action offering since Rouge One, and that film wasn't exactly devoid of problems.

Yet, I still do not give a shit. I'm just not interested at all. Watching this show was like watching Downtown Abby with my wife. The show is good, well made even, but I just do not give a flying fuck about those stuck up English toffs or their hokey gutter snip domestics. Downtown Abby is just not for me. Magicians is just not for me. House MD is just not for me. Sopranos is just not for me. Breaking Bad is just not for me.

Star Wars is just not for me.

It was burnt out of me, all the things it was to me in my youth are gone and now it is just another random scifi, like say Killjoys and I doubt I will be bothered to summon the effort to watch the 3rd episode and beyond. It just doesn't hold my interest.

Verdict : George Lucus visited the set of Mandelorian and was latter quoted saying Dave Filoni "is like a son to me".

(Film Review) - Godzilla 35: Monarch 03 - King of the Monsters (2019)

*** SPOILERS ***

Godzilla is a strange beast in that the character is beloved, for it is a classic pop culture icon known throughout the world, as in Superman levels of penetration into the culture and yet only a tiny fraction of the people that instantly recognise the character have ever seen his films. You could ask an 80 year old granny, you could ask a 6 year old child, and you could ask them on nearly any continent on earth and they would know who Godzilla is, but have they ever seen a single film? Those that have seen the films generally considered them to be B-Movies. Even diehard fans accept the fact that the movies have always kinda sucked. That does not mean they're not films people like, even love, but I do not think that any serious filmgoers can sit there and tell me that the Godzilla films are amazing stories or incredibly well made films, beyond the original.

I have always been a huge Godzilla fan and have watched the movies a ton of times when I was small and again as an adult. It was that exposure, particularly as a child that I think is the key to my experience with this new film.

 When you are a kid you do not see the men in suits running around a glorified train set. You see Godzilla. You see a wild monster crushing cities but you also see that particular Japanese aesthetic, in their modern storytelling where mankind is completely out of control of the events around them. I kind of fatalism of endurance where the is no response to the disaster, a disaster more often than not we have caused ourselves. We are ineffectual and unimportant, the only option is to hide, to hope and to survive from a roll of a die. We are nearly superfluous, you can imagine the stories of these films carrying on without us, despite our pathetic and wretched meddling that ultimately leads to nought. It is Godzilla that saves the day, as inevitable as the dawn. But Godzilla's is selfish in a way, like us his concern is for his planet. Our planet. A beast that fights for Earth, not humanity, not for morality, not for gain and who is unable to be controlled. Yet as we live on Earth he is kinda the good guy, one we rely on as we live on Earth too. This focus moved Godzilla slowly from a hideous bad guy to what I consider as a representation of Gia itself. A force of nature, Earth personified, and who could in their right mind not want to cheer for the Earth itself.

These are powerful ideas for a kid and this film more than any before it is showing us the monsters as we imagined them. I never saw a guy in a suit with visible strings holding up 3 sock puppet heads. I saw a golden dragon. This movie shows us the monsters as they lived in our imagination, not as they lived on celluloid. This film is about how Godzilla is perceived, more than about what it actually has been.

It is also an American production and it loses some of those deep-rooted cultural concepts about our place as a human race in relation to the planet itself. In an effort to make the story more "realistic" the Gods themselves are reduced to dumb animals, easily commanded by a magic box. A switch to make them rage, a switch to make them docile, a switch to call them, to drive them away. Having humans attempt to control Godzilla and his ilk is not a bad thing in itself, in fact, it is a common theme through the series, but ultimately I feel that it should always fail utterly and be ultimately unimportant.

Godzilla for me is at its best in the way western film audiences were introduced to him in the last 2015 film by that Monsters guy. They should basically not even notice us. This is what made that scene Godzilla vs King Ghidorah in '91 so powerful for Godzilla fans, as Godzilla stood there and looked directly at the dude, feelings of acknowledgement and understanding pass through the audience at the gravity of the idea that Godzilla was noticing us at all let alone singling him out for retribution. This scene worked so well as it was so unusual. In this film, the monsters all act more like King Kong. They are letting people touch them, bending down to snort on them Jurassic Park style and chasing little girls who can somehow outrun them. For how I personally relate to Godzilla, there seems to be what I consider a definite misunderstanding of the writers and director about some pretty basic concepts of what Godzilla is all about, concepts that the 2014 film, flawed as it was, nailed.

Even so, I immensely enjoyed this film. The film looks fantastic. Some of the shots could be screen capped from the Blu-Ray, printed out and hang on my wall. I mean it is absolutely gorgeous and if you are after giant monster battles, this film has you covered. The action is fantastic. I loved it. There was a lot of chatter from the trailers about the film looking dark, but I call bullshit on that. The film is extremely easy to read, even during the ground level, humans dodging exploding cars and toppling buildings I never felt like my eye was lost on the screen or that the action was obscured from view. The film is loud though. Do not go to this film if you have a headache. It is basically 2 hours of screaming monsters.

I also liked how they delved deep into the lore of the beasts. While I am a huge advocate of not explaining shit in films, nothing sucks more than crappy pseudoscience and technobabble, which this film has a decent share of. Still, it is things like Monster Zero causing hurricanes all around him from beating his wings and his electric charge or Rodan rising from a volcano and how ancient man translated these sights and how the monsters themselves are part of human collective consciousness, filtered into our legends. I thought a lot of that was really cool. I felt this film really pushed the lore and I loved that.

That is not to say the film is not fucking dumb.

The biggest nitpick I have is that apparently water pressure is not a thing, but I can forgive a submarine form just cruising about at the bottom of the ocean or a helicopter flying in a tornado. Having hero characters conveniently picked up by some kind of transport that comes from nowhere as they need to be at the next scenes location or even the killing off of the Japanese scientist's female assistant, just to replace her with the exact same character, this time Chinese to allow the sale of the film in the Chinese market are just things that niggle me but are not deal breakers. If you make a 200million dollar film that is trying to do so much there are concessions you have to make, to make it at all.

There are also the increasingly common pacing problems that event cinema is having. With so much going on there is no time for the story to "boil". Mothra wakes up and spends all of 10 mins in the film before it cocoons itself. Rodan is born and fighting before it even takes flight form the Volcano. Everything feels rushed, we as an audience need time to see the monsters and understand what they can do. Seeing Godzilla sucker punch Rodan isn't as cool unless we have seen Rodan be a badass himself. These monsters need actual arcs. I think they could take some lessons from martial arts cinema.

This leads me to the biggest problem I have with this film. The monsters are just that. Monsters. These films over the years have produced definite and realised characters for these creatures. When you see a King Kong film, there is no doubt about his personality. You see it in his actions and expressions. The monsters in this film, despite some legit attempts, fail to have any feeling of character. We as an audience want to love these guys, to emotionally bond to them, even the bad guys but what we get are just creatures. Look at Aliens. Just tiny moments of showing intelligence and that scene with the Queen issuing direct commands and understanding Ripley's threat gave those monsters such depth and the ability for the audience to connect to them. This film needed those kinds of moments and it just doesn't have them.

Also, this films lacks the conviction to have an actual bad guy. In an age of understanding, it is no longer acceptable to just have a crazy scientist dude nearly cause Armageddon. The audience is deprived of the classic and always satisfyingly cathartic experience of the bad guy getting her comeuppance, as it is obfuscated in touchy feely bullshit. The eco terrorist and the doctor should really have been one character, and she shouldn't have a redemptive arc of any kind, imo. Why is a film asking me to identify with a woman that has literally murdered millions? Fuck that. Have her stepped on my Monster Zero or a building fall on her or something.

All in all this film is one I really enjoyed and I have already seen it twice at the cinema. Once with friends and once alone in iMax. I may even see it again as my brother wants to go see it. Even so, I am not going to sit here and tell you it is a great film. It is great because it is a Godzilla film, it isn't a great film. Even with all the monster action, the final fight is concluded in a super fast sequence that feels a little anticlimactic after such epic and awesome fighting. In Dragonball Z they don't suddenly end it once everyone is juiced up. That is when the real battle begins. This film, for all its good work, fails to tap into that mythic feeling that I so desperately wanted it to have.

And that mugffin magic briefcase thing was fucking retarded.

Verdict : All hail the rise of the King, lets hope this is one of many.

I'm back!!

G'day....

So after a long time I have decided to start posting myreviews again. I kinda stopped as I was upset with how I basically got zero feedback of any kind. I never stopped making reviews though.. I just srated posting them on variouss themed geek fourms. Like a Film Fourm or a Comic Fourm.

I actually got a lot of good responses in those threads and many people said I should restart my blog.. so here it goes!

How long will I keep it up.. I dunno. 

If anyone knows of a better platform or a way to get my blog noticed then let me know thanks!