Movie Review - Nightcrawler (2014)

  
    While I wish I was reviewing a movie about the X-Men character of the same name, 2014's Nightcrawler is in fact a much more disturbing tale than that of my favorite teleporting blue mutant. Nightcrawler has us following Louis Bloom, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, as he navigates and rises through the ranks of news journalism. Specifically, Bloom wants to take on the task of a "Nightcrawler", someone who rolls around town late at night with a video camera, waiting for some sort of event to come through on the police scanner to video tape it, and then sells it to a news station for use in their broadcast. This can include car accidents, fires, murder and various other crimes.

Describing the tone of this movie is hard to exactly nail. I catch myself calling it something like charmingly disturbing. Nightcrawler is an excellent foray into the genre of thrillers, something writer/director Dan Gilroy is pretty well-versed in, having helped make two of my favorite recent thrillers, as his brother writer/director Tony Gilroy made Michael Clayton and Duplicity, and wrote the Bourne series. This family knows the thriller genre, and it shows. What we get here in Nightcrawler is an excellent turn from Jake Gyllenhaal as this...oddly likable sociopath who's goal is to start at the bottom rung and efficiently work his way to the top.

This movie lives and dies on Gyllenhaal's performance. He is in every scene of this movie, and he makes this character come alive. Someone less skillful would have teetered the movie to either too dramatic or too funny, but Gyllenhaal does an amazing job making Bloom a character who's not only amiable, but also downright terrifying. I keep stating that Bloom is charming and that he could be played too funny, and the truth is that Bloom as a character is absolutely terrifying, he's a sociopathic monster who we watch slide into increasingly dark pathways throughout the run time of this movie.

However, Bloom as a character is written in this odd, stilted way. He's this guy who presents himself as a super personable dude to the outside world, someone who is non-stop goal oriented and who endears himself to "business-like" codes of conduct in everything he says and believes. It's humorous to watch the way he talks. It comes across as incredibly uncomfortable and awkward, but the performance is so earnest, you have a hard time not believing that he believes what he says to be true. And that I think is the key to Gyllenhaal's performance. He plays Bloom so earnestly that you have a hard time not liking him on some level for being so dead-on goal oriented. Knowing exactly what he wants and figuring out exactly how to get it.

As uncomfortable and horrifying it is to see Bloom do these increasingly worse things in order to be the best Nightcrawler in town, it's also on some level hard not to respect that each calculated move he makes indeed rises him up the ladder of success to exactly where he wants to be. It seems that he learns something in every scene, and he's applying it to the next scene. It's utterly fascinating to watch. I absolutely love this movie. It's excellently shot and composed, the entire cast does a great job and the story is entirely watchable. Much like any good thriller, it's a slow burn, but at no point in time did I ever feel like turning it off, it had me hooked from the beginning with it's interesting subject matter, and watching our main character delve deeper into that world was enough to keep me on the line for the just under two hour run time.

If you like thrillers or movies that get under your skin, check out Nightcrawler.

A New Section - Welcome Our New Contributor!

Hey everyone!

Big things are happening here at Critical Nerd Levels, we have a new contributor! That's right, we have my friend Grant joining the blog for a feature he calls Backlog Burnout, An in-depth look through his video game collection, old and new. I asked Grant to introduce himself, and this is what he had to say,

"Hello my name is Grant Nielsen. I’m currently studying psychology at Washington State University. While I truly love what I study, one of my biggest passions lies elsewhere. Namely, in the realm of video games. I have been captivated by the medium since a very young age. The ability that video games have to tell an interactive story and create memorable experiences and joy is unmatched in other forms of media. Childhood days spending hours playing slappers only Goldeneye in friends’ basements or adventuring with Cloud and Tifa are some of my favorite memories. From these experiences a lifelong love with video games was born and I became a collector.

Recently, I realized that the difference between the amount of games that I have and the amount of games I have completed has been growing at a dramatic rate. I decided to rectify this situation with a little project I have named Backlog Burnout. I’ve begun attempting to play through all of the many hundreds of games I just never got around to or couldn’t find the time to work on. Whenever I finish a game I’m going to share my feelings and experiences about it with you! While some of these games will be well known titles, many of them you may never have heard of, and a few of them may even be terrible. My only goal is to give objective, modern day reviews from a gamer's perspective, and hopefully spark some interest in products that may have flown completely under your radar or are out of your normal realm of experience.

My favorite genres are RPGs and horror, so many of the games will be from these categories or variations thereof. However, my collection is vast and I am sure there will be something to interest everyone in there somewhere. Anyways, I look forward to sharing my experiences with you and hope to provide information you find enjoyable and valuable. "

As someone who loves games but never actually plays any, I welcome Grant aboard to educate and entertain. Look for his first review up soon!

Music Review - Mystery Skulls - Forever

I've been keenly aware of up-and-coming Electro-R&B/Pop artist Mystery Skulls for several months now, having been exposed to a promo single off his debut album Forever called Number 1, which was notable for featuring both famous disco guitarist and friend to all electronic bands Nile Rodgers and R&B singer Brandy. It was a catchy, if not generic sounding upbeat R&B song with some flair. However, last week I was made aware of the rest of Mystery Skulls' album, and the fantastic animated video for the single Ghost, and now I'm convinced this album is a force to be reckoned with and needed to show it off to all of you.

Like I mentioned, Forever is the first album from Mystery Skulls, though it's brainchild Luis Dubuc has been around for awhile with different projects since the early 00's. Forever is an ambitious album and is exactly the kind of thing I really dig; slices of R&B, Pop, Disco and Soul with a predominant Electronic base and history rather than Hip-Hop oriented. While I don't think there is anything wrong with R&B traditionally being Hip-Hop or even Funk or Blues based, I was a kid raised in the electronic scenes of the late 90's and early 00's and when those influences cross-over to other genres of modern music like Electro has for the last decade or so I get more excited about the new combos more than I do the originators.

Daft Punk can easily be identified as one of Mystery Skulls biggest electronic inspirations, with some of the harder Electro and Disco based beats. One of my personal favorites on the album, Paralyzed, has a main synth riff that sounds like a combination of the secondary, end riff in Da Funk and Derezzed. One song, When I'm With You, I swear took a little synth rhythm from Eiffel 65 and if that is where he got the inspiration I would be so incredibly pleased. Dubuc has a very blue-eyed soul sound to his voice similar to the take the Black Keys take on their newest album, Turn Blue, and a cadence that places him definitely in this era and no sooner. The majority of Forever combines this voice with a particularly fun turn of phrase, some hard synth lines, crunchy basses and strong kick drums. On some songs however, Dubuc switches flavors up and tries to go more R&B or Disco-y, and strings and guitars are much more prevalent than kick drums or synths.


That flavor turn is most evident in Magic and Number 1, the two songs that prominently feature both Nile Rodgers on guitar and Brandy on vocals. Both songs, while enjoyable, I find lacking compared to the Electro-oriented Pop of the rest of the album. Rodgers has a very distinct playing style that, while very pleasing to hear, can sound very same-y, song to song, and it becomes more about what you put around that guitar that makes it different. Brandy does a great job and adds a level of credibility to the songs with her vocals, but unfortunately the lyrics on these two songs happen to be the most repetitive and least substantive. On their own, very good, comfortable songs for the genre, but on an album that has so many other high points there has to be a low point and for me these two are it.

The real star of the album is the track Ghost, which combines a really infectious Electro-beat, House-y Synths and super catchy vocals. This song is the defining track of the album. If you hear this song and like it, you'll love the album. It really embodies the main influences and directions that Dubuc is trying to accomplish with this album, and it's a sound I really, really enjoy. It doesn't hurt that a super groovy animated music video for it is currently taking the internet by storm.

I think the only other real criticism I have of the album is a nitpick, and it's the amount of swearing on this 41 minute, 11 track album. I know it sounds weird, but the amount of times Dubuc says fuck and shit in the album was a little bit of a detractor for me. While it does make him sound more of this era in his songwriting process, it to me sometimes just felt a little lazy, like he could've found something better to fill that word space in than fuck, but it really is a nitpick. I know I actually enjoy it in the song Paralyzed when Dubuc brings the song down to silence, says "fuck it" and the song breaks out into an instrumental interlude.

Overall, this is a stellar debut from Mystery Skulls and I can't wait for the vinyl release of Forever and whatever he has planned next. Oh, and stay tuned to the blog for some exciting news (hint, we have a new contributor!)






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Movie Review - John Wick

Between personal reasons and being a little burned out I took a break from the blog for awhile, but now I'm back to rave about a little film I saw called John Wick, and why you should see it.

John Wick on paper looks questionable. The plot? A retired hitman comes back for one more job after some dumb criminals kill his dog and steal his car. The writer? A guy who's written two mediocre-to-bad films that were released in 2012. The directors? Two veteran stunt coordinators with no previous directing credits. This movie on paper looks like something Nicolas Cage would be in to earn a couple hundred bucks and would go straight to DVD. In actuality though, this film works as an excellent B movie that is surely going to help revitalize the career of Keanu Reeves, and maybe make him the action hero he always wanted to be.

As far as the plot is concerned, I've already given out the majority of information you need to know about John Wick. Wick is a retired Hitman, who left the life for a woman. In those years, she falls ill to some kind of sickness and dies. After she dies, Wick gets one last gift from her, a puppy delivered to his doorstep to encourage him to keep on living. However, some criminals break into his house, steal his classic car and kill the puppy. When Wick comes to, he vows to track down and kill everyone responsible for these heinous deeds, and he will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger. The rest of the film follows Wick as he stalks and kills the bad guys and how he traverses the criminal underworld.

The movie is shot wonderfully, has a great soundtrack and delightful stunts. The gun play and stunts are exactly something I would expect of two directors who have worked on some of the biggest action films of the last couple decades. The writing isn't spectacular, but it never needed to be. This film is a classic B-movie shoot ém up, in the vein of Taken, Hard Boiled, Die Hard, Dredd, and of course the film Shoot Ém Up. The movie is less about the story than it is about cool ways Keanu Reeves can kill people, but it's solid and plenty for what it needs. John Wick looks excellent and has a playfulness about it in the way it was shot, they went into this knowing exactly the film they were making. They even have a little flair to the Russian subtitles the film uses. The score was well done for the movie, though I admit a lot of it sounded similar to each other, it worked to set a general tone for the film.

While the story isn't amazing, the world-building involved in creating the criminal underworld is fantastic and fascinating, getting an appearance from The Wire's Lance Reddick as the front desk attendant of a criminal hotel and Ian Mcshane as some sort of big shot in the Hotel. I could watch a whole movie just about the goings-on with this hotel and the people within, it's totally engrossing and fun to watch. The acting throughout this movie is sold as well, with solid turns from Adrianne Palicki, Lance Reddick, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, even Willem Dafoe and Dean Winters doing good work here. The star of the show however really is Keanu Reeves, and the acclaim is deserved. In the past he's gotten a lot of flack for his acting, being called wooden or cold, but where elsewhere that would be a detractor, having Reeves be a detached, calm and collected killer in this film plays right to his strengths and he excels in it. He delivers just the right amount of emotion to make the character believable, and plays it with enough cheese to let you know he knows what film they're making. The creators of this film weren't looking to make an Oscar-winning piece of cinematic gold, they were looking to make a kick-ass movie about a guy killing people in different brutal and visually pleasing ways while getting to crack a joke or two along the way.

Without giving too much more away, I gotta say right now as a fan of this genre of film that John Wick is an instant classic and I can't wait to make it a part of my collection. Go see it now and enjoy the ride that is John Wick.

TV Review - Bojack Horseman - Season One

After being prompted by a friend and hearing mixed feelings about the show, I decided I should check out Bojack Horseman, one of Netflix's new original series, an animated show about a washed up 80's actor and his life post-stardom, starring an anthropomorphic horse and a whole star-studded cast of comedy cold.

In the weird world of Bojack Horseman, we follow our title character (voiced by Will Arnett), a delusional ass-hat who starred in a late 80's, early 90's sitcom like a Full House or Step by Step situation, but has been pretty much out of work since, due to his attitude and behavior. We follow Bojack and his friend/unofficial roommate Todd (Aaron Paul) as Bojack puts off writing a book he has promised Penguin Books until they convince him to get a Ghostwriter (voiced by Alison Brie.) From there, the show is watching Ghostwriter Diane try to capture Bojack's life while she befriends him and he continues to be a mess.

Between this we also meet Princess Carolyn, a cat voiced by Amy Sedaris that is both Bojack's agent and his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Pinky Penguin, voiced by Patton Oswalt as his book publishing agent who is in dire need to have Bojack finish his book, and Mr. Peanutbutter, voiced by Paul F. Tompkins, an anthropomorphic dog who starred in a show just like Bojack's that is also dating Diane. The cast is wonderful, the world is weird and it's hard to describe why exactly I liked it.

Thematically, the closest I think you get to a show like Bojack Horseman is like Archer or Bob's Burgers, but it's definitely not the same. While all three shows trade insults and jokes at lightning speed, Bojack is a lot darker than either of those too and takes a different approach to storytelling. Bojack Horseman follows a serialized pattern, meaning after the first couple episodes, they all fall into place with one another to tell one story, and each episode is a continuation of the last. That's one way the show is different from most animated adult shows of it's type, it's trying to tell one singular set of stories episode to episode, instead of each episode being self-contained. Another thing is that it's way more of a drama than a comedy towards the back half of the season, but still contains funny moments.

I think Bojack fits in with the other good matieral Netflix has decided to support, as it's just as hard to classify as one of those things. Take a look at Orange is the New Black, you can't call that show just a Drama, certainly not a Comedy, but it has a mixture of both that probably fits that moniker "Dramedy" as well as switching narratives and episode formats a lot. While Bojack focuses primarily on this one set of characters, it does expand out to tell the stories of other characters as well as telling a serious story with jokes instead of a funny story with some serious moments.

Bojack Horseman is actually fairly bleak. I've head a lot of people have problems getting past the first episode, some people don't get into it until episode 4-5, and that's when the narrative really picks up speed and the show switches up style. While the first four episodes further the overall narrative, they work as standalone episodes of the show that try and contain their whole story arc in 25 minutes. From episode 5-12 however each episode follows the other and ties into this overarching story and I think this is when people get hooked. Starting with episode five we find Bojack falling in love with his ghostwriter Diane, who is dating his longtime rival and Bojack finds out his old best friend is dying of cancer. Two very serious subplots with very serious repercussions.

I'm not going to spoil the show because it's still pretty new and a lot of people haven't seen it yet, but I think what gets people hooked with these subplots is how human they really are. Bojack reacts in an exaggerated yet truthful way to finding out the girl he is in love with is going to get married to a guy he resents and the situation with his old friend dying of cancer is a very believable and true-feeling one.

I think the conceit of Bojack Horseman is that it's telling a very human story through the guise of this cartoon anthropomorphic world so people take it less seriously, but it's darker than most animated shows I have seen, and that is part of what I think makes it so great. There are also great light-hearted moments, like director Cameron Crowe being realized as a Raven that people mistake for a Crow because of his name, or Neal McBeal the Navy Seal (voiced by Patton Oswalt) who called dibs on a box of muffins, which Bojack ignores and it spirals out of control into this idea that Bojack hates the troops because he didn't respect the guy's dibs. I like the animation style, the voice work by Arnett, Paul, Oswalt, Brie and the rest of the crew is exactly what the show needed, and the into song (written by half of The Black Keys) and the outro song are tonally great and fun.

Overall, I really enjoyed Bojack Horseman, and I recommend people who either haven't started it or haven't gone past the first few episodes to make it to episode 5-6 and see if they still don't like it. It seems to be polarizing overall, and I know at least one person who never ended up liking it despite watching all the way through. All I can say is to give it a chance and you might find it as rewarding as I did.

Music Review - Kimbra - The Golden Echo

Kimbra made big impressions in the last few years, with her first album Vows originally coming out in 2011, being spotted on Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know in 2012, and then having a re-working of Vows come out in 2012, it seemed like she could do anything, so..she did a little of everything on her follow-up The Golden Echo.

The album is a mixture of genres that are unified by a few key ideas, the main one being that Kimbra can pretty much do anything she puts her mind to. While comfortably sitting in a modern Soul/R&B positon, Kimbra also takes on some more Rock-Pop numbers and even the weird genre-bending pop hit 90's Music, a song that's as much of a homage in it's lyrics as it is in style. Kimbra's musical style jumps all over the place, and it's a good thing. You can never peg her down as being just one kind of style, even when she excels at it. The Golden Echo is a collage of styles that do nothing but good things for the young, but very talented Kimbra.

Songs like 90's Music and Miracle sound poised to take the pop charts, while others like As You Are and Love In High Places are like the modern comeback of Soul, like Amy Winehouse or even Adele. While still others like Teen Heat and Madhouse sound like the Funk-induced R&B of the likes of Prince. It's a kaleidoscope of genres flavors that all combine to give you an authentic sense of what Kimbra is capable of, and that you at the same time don't know where she'll go next, whether it's the low-key trap-based Goldmine or the Soul of Waltz Me To The Grave. There are no sour notes on The Golden Echo, there are just different flavors rotating through.

The instrumentation is absolutely delightful. Besides Kimbra's magnificent voice that can hit the lows as well as the highs, you have multiple appearances from accomplished bassist Thundercat, Michael Jackson's drummer John Robinson, and Morris Hayes, a keyboardist for the NPG-era Prince. On 90's Music, Muse's Matt Bellamy plays guitar, Mark Foster from Foster the people makes an appearance, John Legend is on a track, the album really is just a collage of all the things Kimbra likes and wants to incorporate into her work, and it shows. Though instead of being a Hodge-podge mess of styles, The Golden Echo holds together as it's own standalone piece of work, a reflection of who Kimbra is and what she wants to bring to music, and I'm on-board for wherever she wants to take me. 

I will mention that while the vinyl lacks all the bonus songs of the deluxe version, it not only sounds fantastic, but the digital download they include also has the bonus tracks.

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Movie Review - Chef

So I finally got a chance to watch Chef last week, and I absolutely loved it. While not a perfect movie, it's a passionate movie about somebody's passion for the things in his life, and it was an incredibly enjoyable experience.

The basic story is that actor/director/writer Jon Favreau stars as our main character, Carl Casper, a well respected Chef working in an upscale restaurant. While Carl is shown to be passionate about the food he makes and wanting to take things in new directions, the owner of the restaurant is constantly stifling him. This all comes to a head when a famous food critic is going to come into the restaurant and the owner forces Carl to stick to old standards instead of doing anything new, which leads to a disparaging review from the food critic. After an altercation at the restaurant because of this, Carl decides to leave, and the rest of the movie is about him re-discovering what he wants in life. I'm trying not to give much away because even though it's a predictable movie, I still liked not knowing every detail before I went it to the film.

What I found surprising about the movie was that despite it's name, the movie isn't really about food, or being a chef. Instead, the movie is about a man's journey to find himself after spending years doing things just for other people. It's about his relationship with his estranged wife and especially his son, who he is always blowing off for work. Surprisingly, it's also just as much about social media and the power it has in this day and age. It just so happens that the medium for this story is about a chef and his number one passion is food, but otherwise this film could have been told with any artistic  profession.

One of the reasons people are really positive about this movie is that it mirrors, most would say intentionally, the professional life of Jon Favreau. He started off as a very well recieved indie director who kept getting bigger and bigger. Then he was picked up by Marvel, and as stories over the last couple years have shown, Marvel was the one calling the shots ultimately on those movies, as evidenced by Iron Man 2, a movie that got a lot of flack for how messy it was. Then he got Cowboys Vs. Aliens, a superstar sci-fi spectacular that just bombed. After that, Favreau disappeared from the spotlight. He directed a couple episodes of TV and had producer credits on some things, but then came back with Chef, a movie he wrote, directed and starred in about a man quitting a high-profile restaurant where he had no control to re-discover his roots and what was important to him. It's a film that is beautifully shot, well acted and what I will assume is a small budget. It's Jon Favreau going back to what he became famous for, well shot and written character pieces.

Like I said, the film isn't perfect. The movie's last 15 minutes kind of feel rushed and aren't as fleshed out as the rest of the film, but it's the kind of movie where you don't need like every single detail as to how something happens, the joy is in the journey, and once our charcters learn their lesson the movie goes out on a high note. Ultimately it's a feel good comedy that will make you hungry, especially for some Cuban sandwiches.

Music Review - Judas Priest - Redeemer of Souls

It's been awhile since I made a post. Partly it's because I moved to my first apartment, but that was a month ago. I've been tempted to write several times and come up with no motivation, but after listening to the new Judas Priest album I figured I could finally figure out something to say. I was originally going to review Mastodon's new album Once More Round The Sun, and I still will, but I'm thinking of doing a whole career review, album by album, so that's been put on hold until my copies of the other albums show up. Well, without further review, here is Redeemer of Souls.

Judas Priest exists in this odd Classic Rock time vortex that a lot of older rock bands from the 70's and 80's have been thrown into, where the band is at once celebrated for the majority of their back catalog, yet ignored when they release anything current. Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, hell even Whitesnake and Deep Purple have this problem. The bands don't retire, but they can't seem to catch anyone's attention with the new releases. Part of the problem I think has to do with subject matter. When you've been around as long as Sabbath, Priest, Maiden, you've pretty much written everything you wanted to write. What do you do after that? Well you create something new, and it seems that new effort is often lackluster.

Iron Maiden's latest The Final Frontier was ultimately a disappointment for me because it's one long epic song after another, until it all blends into same-y territory. As much as I enjoyed the return of Ozzy fronted Sabbath, this was my biggest problem with 13 too. The shortest songs on Sabbath's 13 are 4 1/2 minutes long, and that's you know, decent, but roughly half the songs on the album are 7-9 minutes long, and most of these songs were slow, trudging pieces. Though they're enjoyable, when you're hit with 7 minute song after 7 minute song in the same tempo it gets exhausting.

So when I put on Redeemer of Souls I was immediately delighted to see the longest track is Halls of Valhalla at just over 6 minutes, and the rest of the album ranges in length and tempo. While the album still feels a little large overall, it's really enjoyable, and doesn't feel like a slog through familiar territory.

Redeemer of Souls is largely treading familiar waters, but it doesn't feel old. It in fact feels like a throwback to their 70's offerings like Stained Class with a hint of my favorite album, Painkiller. Songs about fighting, swords, fire, steel most certainly, war, battle, it's cheesy in just the right ways. If anyone were to make the overbearing machismo on this album tolerable, it's Halford and company. The lyrics are nothing revolutionary, but they're the kind of campy fun you come to expect from a legacy band like Priest. Things like Metalizer's "His immortal soul at stake, hear the storm clouds break." It's exactly what you expect at this point in their career. Halford's taken the pitch down in his songs a bit and sings in a lower register, but that's what you expect for a singer in their 60's. He proves throughout the album he can still hit the high notes, just not as high, and not as often, but he hits them all the same.

This is the first album without founding guitarist KK Downing, who has been replaced by Richie Faulkner, and it doesn't sound that different. If anything, much like Brad Wilk's drumming on Sabbath's 13, Faulkner sounds like he is doing his best to channel what the band sounded like in their prime, and it works. Tipton and Faulkner sound great in tandem, and bring life to the riffs that sounded overblown and tired on 2008's Nostradamus.

This album marks 40 years since Rocka Rolla, Judas Priest's first EP, and while they don't sound as young and energetic as they did then, they still are able to deliver a fun, hour-long romp into campy, machismo-filled Metal territory. I can't even find a song I dislike on the album, it's a solid 13 tracks. Though I would have preferred a few more quick-burning numbers over the long headbang-chanters like Secrets of the Dead, it's a pretty good mix between the styles. My favorite album is and will always be Painkiller because Priest experimented with the sub-genre Speed Metal, and even if half the songs are cheesier than well, a block of cheese, it was loud, fast and aggressive. A side of Priest that had been missing in the late 80's. It was a direction they never quite attempted again, the closest being 2005's Angel of Retribution, an album I love dearly. However, you can hear bits and pieces of the style still in Redeemer of Souls, with songs like the opener Dragonaut and Battle Cry.

If you like Priest, I think you'll like this album. If you're not really a Priest fan or haven't gotten into the back catalog, check out albums like Stained Class, British Steel and Painkiller first, then check this one out. It's a fun, solid album from a band who are proving that they're not too old to rock, but it's not as good as the albums of old.

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The X-Men Movie Franchise - X-Men Days of Future Past (Part 4)

As I said last post, I saw both Days of Future Past and The Wolverine, so now it's time to talk about Days of Future Past.

Going into the film, I was pretty excited. The trailers I had seen hyped me up for the film, and between First Class, the returning cast and appreciation I gained for The Wolverine, I was totally excited for this new installment. I also remember the X-Men 90's cartoon I loved dearly taking on the Days of Future Past storyline as well, so I was hoping that at the very least this movie could hold up as well to me as that cartoon did.

First things first, this movie is the most comic book movie I have ever seen, aside from The Avengers. As much as I love and enjoy a multitude of other comic book movies, a lot of them try really hard to take everything seriously and ground them in reality. While the X-Men franchise has always tried to tell stories as allegories for racial discrimination and the gay rights movement, they still try to have fun with it. This film heartily embraces the nature of comic books and sacrifices a lot of deeper meaning for a story that attempts to cover a lot of ground and embraces new concepts. So the story isn't trying to cover as many deep topics as say X-2, but it trades it in for a story that can go further and do more in it's run time than a lot of the other films in the franchise.

The basic plot of the movie is fairly simple. In the present X-Men universe, from The Last Stand and The Wolverine, these robots named Sentinels have taken over policing Mutants, and the world has become a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with them having murdered tons of Mutants as well as any humans sympathetic to the Mutant cause. They have a skin that looks like Mystique's and can adapt to anything being thrown at them to fight back. We find Kitty Pryde, Bobby and some new faces to the film franchise (hello Blink and Bishop) hiding out in some weird mountain bunker when Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine and Rogue find them and engage in the plan of the film.

Kitty Pryde can essentially put someone to sleep and send their consciousness to the past. She uses this when they get caught by sentinels to send Bishop's consciousness back to his body a couple days to a week before, so he knows what to do so they never actually get found. Kitty sends their thoughts back in time and when the person wakes up, the new future takes hold. The sentinels are made by Trask industries, the founder (played by Peter Dinklage) was shopping around initial designs in 1973, but no one would fund the sentinel program. However, Mystique murders him, and she gets taken hostage and experimented on. It's through this process that they decide to not only fund the sentinel program, but they give the robots her adaptive DNA, which makes them so deadly. So Professor X wants Kitty to send his conciousness back in time, so his current mind in his 1973 body can stop Mystique from murdering Trask and therefore the Mystique DNA'd sentinels will never exist. Kitty however insists that she only sends people back up to a week to a month and couldn't possibly do 50 years without destroying the person's brain. So Wolverine steps up as the one man whose healing abilities would not only allow him to travel back that far, but also look exactly the same age. And that's the beginning of our film. Logan is transported back to 1973, and it's roughly a decade since the events of First Class. He has to convince Professor X and Magneto to join up with him to stop Mystique from murdering Trask, among other things.

Post apocalptic world, time travel, stopping assassination plots and giant robots? It's a comic book movie alright. In what other medium would such a harebrained collection of ideas gel together so nicely. I had an absolute blast with this film. Even though it's not the deepest story out there, it's one of the very few comic book based movies that actually feels like the material it came from. The music and cinematography is great, the acting is great from all of the main cast and it's a lot of fun. What the story does right in my opinion is that even though it's focusing on this grand plot that encompasses all of the world, it still only focuses on a handful of characters to tell that story. Unlike The Last Stand, where they tried to do a story that impacted the entire world and tried to focus on every major character they had introduced thus far, Days of Future Past lets us spend a lot of time with our handful of characters without trying to develop a million characters. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the film is our time with Quicksilver. The advertising with him before the movie was absolutely terrible, but his use in the film is fun, filled with laughs and just big enough that he feels like a nice addition to the universe without having to devote time out of the movie to develop him and his story, that can come later.

I'm trying to not give much away here, so I'm just going to say that I did not expect how the end played out, for better or worse and it threw me for a loop. Overall, I had a great time with this movie and it's a great entry into the X-Men franchise. Jennifer Lawrence puts in a great performance as Mystique, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender do great as young Professor X and Magneto, especially when the legends themselves Patrick Steward and Ian McKellen are also in the film. Hugh Jackman of course is Wolverine, and he knows exactly how he wants to play that character after 14 years and it works great. So check this movie out, have fun and hopefully Guardians of the Galaxy will fulfill my hope of being another comic book-like movie this summer.


                                                                   Spoilers

One thing I wanted to talk about was the impact that the end of the film has on the franchise itself and the reveal at the end. It's confusing, and very comic book-y, but it puts into question everything we know about the franchise, which potentially adds more questions than it does answers.

At the end, the characters save the day and Wolverine gets sunk into the water. He wakes up, it's 50 years later, back in the X Mansion. Storm, Beast, Bobby, Rogue, Scott Summers, Professor X and Jean Grey are all alive and well and Logan is (fittingly) a history teacher at the school. The idea is that the effects of the events in 1973 had a ripple effect, and anyone who died because of the sentinels is alive, but also, because of Wolverine's intervening, 1973 Professor X also knows about Dark Phoenix inside of Jean Grey and can teach her to control her powers instead of trying to suppress it, meaning she never goes evil and doesn't kill Scott  or Professor X and doesn't die.

So at this point, they've retconned the second worst movie in the franchise, The Last Stand, and everyone including Fox was already pretending that Wolverine Origins doesn't exist anyway. So that's great. However, this chain of events puts into question the whole original trilogy, as well as The Wolverine. The only movie that still without a stands true as having happened is First Class. While the events in X-Men and X-2 could still have happened in one form or another, they don't happen the way they do as they exist now. Since 1973 Logan knows Professor X, there is no reason why he couldn't start teaching at the school anytime afterwards, meaning there is no reason for him to be out in Canada bar fighting, in which he meets Rogue, saves her from Magneto's people and both of them get taken to the X Mansion. And yet, there Rogue is in the end cameo sequence, so somehow she still makes it to the Mansion. Magneto is now known to the world to be a bad guy in 1973, so his motivations and actions are possibly very different from what he did in the original films as well. It's possible he still does everything he does, but like I said, it has to happen a somewhat different way than what we saw. We see at the end that Mystique has taken to impersonating Stryker and she takes Wolverine...but unless she's planning to free him once they're alone, it doesn't make sense. The climax of the film comes down to her deciding that there has to be more than one way to change the course of history without killing those people, and that is ultimately what changes the future. So why is she taking Wolverine? If she's going to let him go, then likely the Wolverine of the now current timeline will never have an adamantium skeleton or claws. It makes no sense for him to choose to put the metal into his body himself, and if Mystique does keep him as Stryker and experiment on him or whatever...that completely devalues her story-arc of the film. It's a situation I'll be interested to see how they get out of.

The one thing I think that ultimately disappoints me about this ending is writer Simon Kinberg's disregard for The Wolverine. He wrote the credits stinger from The Wolverine that undercut everything that movie was leading up to, and now with this film the events of The Wolverine never happened. Similar to the original trilogy the events could still happen, but a different way. He saved Yashida in 1945 so that still happened  and Yashida is still in a world where he's dying and wants Logan's healing factor. However, he wouldn't be a hermit in the Canadian wilderness for Yukio to find, with Jean Grey around he has no reason to fall for Mariko, and with him teaching at the school there is no reason he'd get on a plane with Yukio and have adventures. Between the mid-credits scene disreguarding the ending of The Wolverine and the end of this film changing history, The Wolverine just gets thrown out. It had an interesting enough premise and lent itself to sequels, but now they will likely never return to Logan, Yukio, Mariko and that private jet they had. In a universe that is trying so hard to tie everything together after the abomination that was Wolverine Origins, it saddened me to see that they're just throwing previous good storylines out of canon so they can fix bad ones. Next we'll get X-Men: Apocalypse, with everyone in the 80's. I assume this will catch us up on what the hell happened with Mystique and Logan, as well as giving more screen time to characters who should be able to start existing now, like Gambit and hopefully more Quicksilver. Then after that film, 3 years from now, we'll get another Wolverine film, and likely Hugh Jackman's last time playing the character. There is only so long you can stay looking the same for a character that isn't supposed to age, and they've already cheated and used special lighting techniques in The Wolverine and Days of Future Past to lessen the wrinkles off of Jackman. At that point, he will have played the character for 8 movies over 17 years. Nearly 20 years as a character who isn't supposed to age. Hopefully they give him a good send-off, but who knows in what direction they'll take his story next. Guess we just have to wait two years and find out.

Movie Review - Godzilla (2014)

Yesterday was my birthday. It was also the day that the new Godzilla came out. As a big fan of the big G, it was a no-brainer that I'd celebrate my birthday with the reintroduction of Godzilla to America, and what better way to see him than in IMAX 3D. I was not disappointed in the slightest.

I absolutely loved the new Godzilla, and I'm speaking as a real, true fan. I was indoctrinated into love for the big G from a young age. When I was in elementary and middle school I was all about Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. My favorite character? Tommy, aka The Green Ranger, and his Mech unit, the Dragonzord. In adolescence, I had a tv with satellite cable in my room and I'd stay up late watching the old Toho films on obscure cable channels. I watched a good amount of the Godzilla films themselves, as well as the Rodan and King Ghidorah films. My favorite monster of course came to be MechaGodzilla, especially once I realized the Dragonzord was a play on him. While not all Godzilla movies from Toho are created the same, they were a joy to watch. Besides my love of just watching big creatures beat each other up, I was also enthralled with how real they tried to make them, despite it being actors in suits stomping on model towns.

Yesterday morning I re-watched the original Gojira in preparing myself for the new film, as that is the movie it is trying to be like the most. While in some places it's heavy handed in it's acting and the message of the film is just shoved down your throat, it exceeds in capturing the mystery, wonder and devastation that comes from having a giant monster attack your town. Long shots of the city on fire and decimated fill the third act, and it's horrifying. More than anything however, Gojira (and I imagine Godzilla: King of the Monsters but I haven't seen that version) enforces the notion that Godzilla is a force of nature. In Gojira, Godzilla is an ancient creature from dinosaur times that was just hanging out at the bottom of the ocean when nuclear radiation affected him and made him into the force of destruction we see in the film. His creation as a monster is the fault of man, and when Dr. Serizawa uses his device to kill both him and Godzilla, it is not seen as a victory for mankind, but rather as the payment Japan had to pay for having used nuclear weapons.

In the new Godzilla, Bryan Cranston plays a supervisor of a nuclear plant who is seeing readings of activity that could endanger their plant, but no one will believe him. Eventually the plant explodes and is quarantined. We skip to 15 years later and Cranston is convinced whatever created the last explosion is back, he goes to explore and comes across the "villian" of the movie, the MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) has a cocoon harvesting radiation from the plant, and when it hatches, it unleashes the monster on the world, hungry for radiation. Without spoiling the rest of the film, I'll just say that Godzilla is out there in the world, and he notices what the MUTO is doing and starts hunting him. The rest of the movie is Godzilla hunting the MUTO while the MUTO swims through the ocean going from one radiation source to another, while the government does their best to find their own solution to two giant monsters destroying the world.

I think saying anything more about the plot would take some of the fun out of it, but I really liked how they did the origins of the creatures. It fits in themeatically with Gojira while still being different in it's own right. The re-awakening of the creatures are still the fault of man. Our desire for ultimate power brought forth a being that could cause ultimate destruction, and whats more, feeds on our most devastating weapon, nuclear energy.

I really, really enjoyed this film as it wanted itself to play out, as a slow burn. Director Gareth Edwards took cues from Jaws in how he introduced and showed the monsters. It's at least over an hour before we actually see more than just a fin from Godzilla, and it's terrifying. For the majority of the film, we follow Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a Navy Lieutenant and his exploits trying to get back from Japan to San Francisco where his wife and child are amidst the monster attacks. This I think is the essential part of the movie that captures the true horrific atmosphere of the film. In the Toho franchise, while we see human stories intersecting with the monsters, it's often thrown aside to show large aerial shots of the fights between creatures. What this new Godzilla does best however is showing these monster fights from the human point of view. In the Toho films, often the buildings and landscape are just obstacles for the monsters to fall into or be thrown onto. In this film that is still very, very true, but from the monsters perspective. From the human perspective, every skyscraper destroyed is hundreds of lives lost. A foot crushing through a skytrain rail is hundreds of innocent people suddenly thrown to their doom. Godzilla merely moving through the water around ships means the possible destruction of whole naval ships or bridges because of his size.Their destruction has weight, and the destruction is absolutely horrific.

While I think the human plot and dialogue to be equally predictable, that didn't make it bad. What is being said and what is being done are not revolutionary things or ideas, but they are executed well and fit right at home in this kind of film. The score by Alexandre Desplat was absolutely gorgeous in how well it conveyed not only the feeling of terror, but also anxiousness and intensity. The recreation of the Godzilla roar and his sounds are both iconic and sound real. IMAX opened the film by playing the new Godzilla roar and it was both terrifying and exhilarating, my theater yelled and cheered. The cinematography was also delightful, and the fights are a joy to watch.

Overall, this film succeeded for me mostly because of what it decided to show me, when it decided it wanted to show that to me, and knowing what would and wouldn't make the film better. One of the "problems" with the Toho films is that the longer Godzilla and the monsters are on screen, the more you notice about how fake it is, how the men in the suits move, the suits being suits, the environment being scale models. I said "problems" because to me that is part of the charm of those films, but Gareth Edwards was not going for that, he was going for the most realistic take on the creature since Gojira, and the less of Godzilla you see, the more you can believe he's a real, breathing entity. For me, Godzilla felt totally real in this film, and part of that is because I didn't have ages to notice how fake it actually all is. Between the motion capture of Godzilla, his design, and how he was shown, I could believe for those two hours that Godzilla was real, and it was everything I ever wanted since seeing The Dragonzord rise from the sea to take down the baddies in Power Rangers.

If you're interested in seeing the new Godzilla film at all, by god go see it in theater, IMAX 3D if you can. I have full confidence that the home release will still be a wonderful film, but the feeling of seeing the big G on a 40 ft. tall screen was everything I had ever wanted for him.

Music Review - The Black Keys - Turn Blue

I've been a fan of The Black Keys since 2003's Thickfreakness, and it's been fun watching them grow and evolve. While they've gotten further away from that Blues-influenced Garage Rock sound they started with, they've continually found ways to incorporate new and interesting elements into that style and make a fun experience out of it.

With Turn Blue, The Black Keys do just that. Teaming up with Danger Mouse again, (He produced Attack & Release and co-produced Brothers and El Camino) The Black Keys put out an album that, while steeped in a Bluesy, Garage Rock tinged atmosphere, explores the Psychedelic range for the majority of the album, and it's a welcome turn. If Brothers and El Camino are two sides of the same coin, Turn Blue is a slightly misshapen but similar coin. Okay, I'm bad at making analogies, let's just accept that right now.

I listened to the album twice through the free iTunes radio stream and immediately dug it. Today, on the day it came out, I went out and bought the vinyl and it sounds absolutely delightful, with wonderful packaging to fit the mood and theme of this album. From what the band has said, this album is less about radio singles and more about being a "headphone record" meaning it has been mixed specifically to have a unique experience in headphones over a stereo system, but I have yet to try it out. I bet it makes the experience even that more personal.

While Brothers and El Camino felt like a collection of tightly constructed numbers, Turn Blue feels looser, more air-y. Songs like title track Turn Blue have breathing room. They float along, letting the melody just wash over you. It's not always a slow pace however, as the lead single Fever is a floor-stomping disco-y number, with one of the best basslines and most memorable synth lines on the whole album. It's infectious, which is probably no coincidence due to the nature of the song lyrics. The lyrics throughout most of the album are about love and loss, which was to be expected as the divorce singer Dan Auerbach was going through happened during these sessions. It's often forlorn and depressing, but sometimes the lyrics pull up into this wistful-hopefulness and it's just the little glimmers of hope the album needed to keep from being a complete downer.

The biggest things you'll notice about the album is that it has a lot of soul to it, vocals and guitars. It really grooves along too, with some heavy basslines and real fuzzy guitars. Between the amount of reverb used on the lead vocals at times (like Bullet in the Brain) and the female vocal harmonies hanging around in the back (like on Year in Review) the album has this hazy, dream-like quality to it, but it never stays that way for long. It's just there long enough to give you an idea of what that could be like, but they never let it go too long without punctuating the song with a wonderfully catchy bass riff or reverb-upped guitar.

Turn Blue feels like a floating journey through the mind of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, with hints from Danger Mouse floating in and out. After having produced the last 3 albums and taking co-writing credits on El Camino, Danger Mouse's influence is undeniable at this point. He's a producer who loves to let the music breath, and that I think is the best asset here on Turn Blue. It never feels like the music is being forced, it just feels like this is how these songs were supposed to sound, even when we've never heard The Black Keys quite like this.

I cannot recommend Turn Blue enough. I understand that some old fans like myself who might not like the more poppy sound The Black Keys have been turning to, but if you understand all that made them what they were is still there in some way or another I think you can appreciate this album. While it's a long ways away from the raw, pure energy of Thickfreakness and Rubber Factory, this is just an outreach into a different sub-set of influences that makes for just as enjoyable album in it's own right.

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Movie Review - The Amazing Spider-Man 2

    A handful of days ago I saw The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in IMAX 3D and I wanted to take a few days to think about the film critically before I put out a review. The film is getting such a bad rap (55% on Rotten Tomatoes) I wanted to think about what I said and if I could address the problems brought up in those reviews before I wrote my own. So here we go.

   I really, really enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I thought it was not only a superior superhero movie, but also the best representation of Spider-Man we have gotten on film so far. That is not something I say lightly. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man was my introduction to superhero movies and it's sequel Spider-Man 2 is at the top of my list for favorite superhero movies of all time. The third film I enjoy on a base level but I acknowledge and readily see that it is not a good film. While Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films had their problems throughout, you could tell the guy loved the characters, and that love was something I could latch onto as a kid. When I saw The Amazing Spider-Man two years ago on it's midnight premiere, I liked it, but I could see a million things wrong with it and those things really bugged me. I loved 500 Days of Summer, but didn't know if that director could go from personal indie Rom-Com to big budget Superhero franchise. Sure enough, when the movie hit I could tell Marc Webb had directed the movie. The dialogue sequences anyway. Any time two characters were by themselves interacting it was shot beautifully and the chemistry was great, especially between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, but the action sequences were competent at best. The first Amazing Spider-Man feels like the hands of Sony executives are all over it, trying to do their best to distance themselves from the last franchise while still trying to cash in on the burgeoning popularity of superheros.

   The first Amazing Spider-Man has clunky dialogue, plot lines that go nowhere or feel forced and competent but lacking action sequences. The dialogue sequences between characters however was spectacular and was what made me enjoy the movie despite it's obvious flaws.

   So here we are at the sequel, which was preceded by the news that there are already 2 more direct sequels planned, with Marc Webb attached for the first one but not the second, as well as plans for a spin-off movie with Venom and Carnage. Amazing Spider-Man 2 therefore had a lot to live up to. Before it even opened it had to guarantee it would be good enough to warrant a whole franchise around it, which is saying something considering the first film was only rated as decent and not good or great.

   I think that for the most part, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 succeeds. It is by and large better than the first film by miles. It is certainly not without fault, but it is on a wholly other level of film than the first Amazing Spider-Man is. The action is better, the dialogue (while still at times ham-fisted) is better, the characters are more fleshed out, the score is amazing and the plot, while a bit messy, is more solid than the first.

   The main story of the film is a combination of exploring Gwen and Peter's relationship past highschool and into the future and Peter dealing with the return of an old friend who suddenly is the most powerful man arguably in the world and dealing with Electro, a villain whose powers challenge Peter's ability to take him down.

   I'll start with what I like most, and it should come as no surprise as to what it is; the relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. After seeing and falling in love with Marc Webb's 500 Days of Summer, I had full confidence he could make me believe in the love story between Peter and Gwen, and he fully succeeds. It's also helped along by the fact that in real life Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone fell in love during the filming of the previous movie and have been dating ever since. Their relationship is the best part of that first film, and it certainly is exceptional here. Their real life chemistry gives the characters the necessary believability we need for these characters, especially when trying to separate themselves from the previous trilogy. As much as I like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, Peter and Maryjane in those films don't really have that much chemistry. Maryjane seems Peter as nothing more than a friend until she finds out he's been going out of his way to save both her and New York, and until he pulls off these feats of bravery he can't talk to her. She is put on this pedestal of being the perfect girl for him when she's not really that spectacular. Maryjane is Peter's dream girl who he only gets into a relationship with once he becomes more than what he normally was.

   On the other hand, in The Amazing Spider-Man, Gwen is naturally drawn to Peter before she knows his secret. In that first film, my friends and I noticed that she's putting it out there that she wants Peter real bad before she knows of his dual life. While Peter is still shown as shy and isn't great at talking to her at first, she knows and is interested in him and his interests and they have conversations as equals and not as someone who is afraid of talking to the girl he worships like in the Raimi films. Besides this change in their interpersonal relationship, Gwen is also seen as someone of similar or superior intellect to Peter. She is just as smart and able as he is, which allows her to while still being in danger, have an effect on the plot line of the film instead of just being a damsel in distress. In The Amazing Spider-Man it is Gwen who saves New York. It was Spider-Man who saved the town from The Lizard, but it's Gwen who retrieves the antidote for the gas The Lizard released that will turn the people of New York into lizard people. That is one thing I really like and respect about this series, Gwen Stacy is integral to Spider-Man saving the day, in both the first film and this one.

   I thought the action sequences of the film were waaaaay better than the first one. Spider-Man flows naturally, and what's more, has spider-like movements and actions. In the Raimi films he primarily uses his powers to shoot web, crawl up walls and jump really far, but in the last film and especially this one, they make it a point to show that the spider-bite affected his mind. When he fights, he fights with every limb being another tool, in the opening sequence he has to catch a bunch of little bottles of plutonium and does so using both his arms and his feet, and then uses his web in various ways to store them. They've made it a point in both films too that since being bitten he likes hanging out either upside down or from various heights or angles that a regular person could not do. All of this was taken into consideration when doing his action and stunt choreography, it not only feels like the same person in and out of suit, but it also feels like this is someone who has traits of a spider inside of him.

   The cinematography and score were absolutely fantastic. The first film had no real memorable score or theme and real questionable song placement choices. While we still have one incredibly odd song placement choice, the original score done by Hans Zimmer and the Magnificent Six (which include Pharrell Williams and The Smith's Johnny Marr) is superb. Each of the main characters has a definable theme and the music has the necessary weight to it to make scenes have the most impact.

   If you made it this far into my review, I want you to know I really enjoyed this film and think it deserves your attention if you like Spider-Man as a character. Even if you didn't really like the 2012 film, check this one out. Below I will talk about what I didn't like about the film, but since I can't do that without spoiling the film, you've been warned. If you haven't seen the film read no further and go see it before reading the rest. As a Spider-Man fan for the majority of my life, I heavily enjoyed it and think it's worth seeing.

Spoilers Below

   Okay, so for what I didn't like about the film. The storyline with Peter's parents feels haphazard and messy at best, and a time waster at worst. In the first film we got over half of this storyline about Peter's parents and what they were working on, which was in fact essentially, Spider-Man. However, about halfway through the film that storyline just disappears and is forgotten about. Cut to this film and it's not only what we open the movie with, but the whole storyline is told over again and then elaborated on. When Aunt May talks about how government officials said Peter's parents had betrayed the government and Peter just believes her and thinks his parents were traitors is my low point for the story-arc. We spent a portion of the last movie learning not only that Richard Parker was working on some secret, revolutionary work from someone who worked with him, but we also learn that Oscorp is up to some crazy things. In this film before this sequence, we are both shown and told that Oscorp is running a cover-up on Max Dillon. So why does Peter automatically believe his parents were government traitors and bad people? The hidden train station lab Roosevelt is really cool and I like the scene and what it reveals about the Spider deny. Not only is the Spider DNA that Richard Parker was working on include his own DNA so only someone with his blood could enjoy it's effects, explaining why Peter got his powers, but it also answers Peter's question of whether or not he could give his blood to Harry Osborn and have it work. However, it felt like a ten minutes too long in an already long movie segment that didn't need all that build up to get to.

   I also did not fully enjoy Harry Osborn's character arc. It's a story of extremes. Harry comes in hating his dad, finding out he has a genetic disease that will kill him and hating everything Oscorp stood for. He meets up with Peter and their friendship is nice and covers a lot of ground in a short amount of time and feels like a real friendship between two estranged people who used to be close. Once Harry finds out however that the Spider DNA has everything he thinks he needs to be cured, he has a one track mind that drops all character sense out of the way for plot progression. You know Harry is desperate for a cure, but we hadn't seen him as a killer. When Spider-Man denies him his blood, it made more sense to me that the next step would be for Harry to set up a trap for Spidey and then forcibly take his blood. Harry shows no ill-will towards Spidey earlier, mostly just curiosity and bewilderment. Instead, when Spidey says "No you can't have my blood." Harry automatically switches to "Well, guess we have to kill Spider-Man now since he wouldn't help me." That doesn't make sense. That's a matter of plot fast-forwarding Harry's desperation to find a cure so that he would inject the spider venom himself and turn crazy, inspiring our third act results of both the death of Gwen Stacy and the incarceration of Harry into Ravencroft so he can be approached by Gustav Fiers and start assembling the Sinister Six for the next movie.

   Harry's character arc was sacrificed for the necessity of the franchise. Harry needed to be sent to Ravencroft so he could encounter Fiers, and set in place the Sinister Six for the next set of films. He needed to be desperate enough to inject the spider venom himself instead of Peter's blood. When Norman is dying he is seen to be at least in his 50's, and Harry is 20. It is assumed that that will be what becomes of Harry if he doesn't find a cure for the disease, but Norman's parting gift to Harry is all of his research and intelligence of what lies within Oscorp so that he can find the cure for himself. As Norman is seen doing pretty well in archival footage with Richard Parker, you can assume Harry would have at least 20 years before his conditions from the disease got really bad. Norman's message is to use everything he had done in his lifetime to find himself a cure. Harry starts with this option, then very quickly goes from "Well, Spider-Man has everything I need, guess I need his blood" to "Kill Spider-Man, I'll steal the pure spider venom instead." It's a rushed arc in order to get Harry to do things for the plot to set up the rest of the franchise.

   All this being said, the film still works for me, but I can also recognize where the film falls short and what it could have done better.

Music Review - The Faint - Doom Abuse

If any of you have known me for long enough, you'll known I love The Faint's 2008 album Fasciination. I loved it so much I pushed it during my high school news broadcast's music segment. Well, it's been 6 years and The Faint are back with Doom Abuse, an album I am loving.

While I don't totally love The Faint's back catalog, Fasciination was a perfect album for me, a combination of electro-style synths and basslines with a rock band behind them and an eccentric vocalist behind it all, giving me catchy yet out there lyrics in what would come to define my idea of Dance Rock/Dance Pop music for a very long time. With Doom Abuse The Faint drop a large portion of the bouncy Electro synths for noisey ones and a harder rock edge, but it's still the same band and still giving me exactly what I never knew I wanted.

Doom Abuse is a short blast of danceable, weird pop rock. They come in at 12 songs in just over 39 minutes. The songs are catchy and convey just as much as they need to before jumping to the next one. Allmusic review James Christopher Monger called this iteration of The Faint "Equal parts whimsical and despondent, it's Disintegration-era Cure, wearing an Imagine Dragons hoodie trying to have an LCD Soundsystem "All My Friends" moment." While that is a lot to swallow, I think it's pretty apt. The lyrics are often on the downward slope, about the decline of one's mental health, the degradation of society and a cynical view of how the world is changing, but told through upbeat, rocking numbers you can't help but move along with. Two of the biggest examples of this are the back-to-back combo of Mental Radio and Evil Voices, pairing lyrics like "Evil voices lie when they say you're alone" with arguably the catchiest songs on the album. On tracks like Salt My Doom they go for a noiser edge, tapping into their punk influences for a short, shouty number. Help In The Head is the opening track and pretty much a combination of both previous styles, being catchy and flippant, but also dark and with a noisey overtone. While not the best song on the album, it gives you a damn good idea of what the rest of the music is going to sound like, more or less. If you like Help In the Head, you'll like the rest of the album. The track Animal Needs might be the most The Faint song out of all of them, with a strong synth riff and a pounding drum beat play while the lyrics talk about what they do and don't need, which comes down to pretty much, we don't need anything from structured society, but they have the same needs as an animal." An anthemic track you can dance along too with a message about society.

Doom Abuse is the kind of album that makes me fall in love with a band. Their Dark Wave/Dance Punk outlook has enough twists and turns in between songs while still keeping to a very similar and established sound throughout the piece. The only time it really lets off is the final track, a beautiful but slower piece named Damage Control. While not a revolutionary album in itself, it's a totally different experience from most popular music going on today, with just as many catchy riffs, hooks and choruses. At under 40 minutes, it's really just a fun experience to put on and let it play all the way through, and when it's done I'm ready to start at the beginning all over again.




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Movie Review - Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier was awesome, and you should totally go see it.

The Winter Soldier is the second Captain America film, and the last of the main Avengers to get a solo movie before the next Avengers film. The basic plot is that Steve Rogers is adjusting to living life in the modern age and dealing with S.H.I.E.L.D., when he eventually gets tangled up in a terrorist plot to kill millions of people all over the world and it's up to him to stop it.

I really enjoyed The Winter Soldier. Like, really enjoyed it. The opening fight sequence alone got me hooked. As much as I enjoyed the first Captain America film, it was easily the most boring of all the first wave movies. My biggest problem with the first one was one I understood was not exactly the writer's fault, but they had to tell Cap's origin story. The problem with Cap's origin story is that he did some cool stuff in World War II and then gets frozen until he's thawed out in the present day. While it's important to set-up Captain's past history and his involvement in the war and why he was so revered, it takes all the tension out of all the action scenes because you know that at the end Captain America has to be frozen in ice, then thawed out in present day and be fine. In the first film, you know nothing can happen to him while he's in the 40's because you know he has to end up perfectly intact in present day. I suspect that's a big reason they added a troop of guys for him to fight with in the first movie, because you could care about them living and dying, in a way you couldn't care about Captain.

One of the things I liked most about The Winter Soldier is that instead of trying to create tension with the possible safety of Captain America, they took a different approach and really hit home how much worse it's been on Steve Rogers emotionally to be alive. If he had died after the events of The First Avenger then he would have been the hero everyone wanted and would have gone out a hero. But in The Winter Soldier they emphasize how hard it is to deal with the fact that not only shouldn't Steve be alive, but that everything he knows from the life he knew is over and he has to start all over. They play several of these sequences for laughs, but there is still an underlying tragedy and darkness to it all. In the opening sequence we have Black Widow ask Captain America what he does in his free time and he quips that all the guys in his barbershop quarter are dead so he's got nothing to do.  While a humorous statement, it shows you something some people might forget about good ol' Cap, everyone he knew in his original life are dead or dying. The woman he had feelings for in The First Avengers is in a hospital as an old woman and has some form of Alzheimer's. Steve Rogers is all alone in this new modern world and has no one.

Things I really liked about this movie: The action, the relationship between Black Widow and Captain America and the humor. The action and stunt choreographer's deserve awards for what they accomplished in The Winter Soldier. All the action set pieces look and feel real. Also, the decision by The Russo's and company to go with as many practical effects as they could also made it all feel that more real, which is something you want from a Captain America movie I think. Iron Man has the movies with crazy technology, Thor has the movies with fantastical worlds, Captain America should have movies that ground themselves in as much reality as they can because in The Avengers, he's our everyman. Steve Rogers was just a normal guy who happened to be injected with a crazy serum that made him a perfect specimen of man. Sure, he was always brave and heroic, but the serum is what made him stand-out. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner are genius scientists/engineers, Thor is a god-like being, Black Widow and Hawkeye are extremely dangerous and expertly trained assassins. Steve is essentially a regular guy on super juice.

The relationship between Black Widow and Captain America was also a lot of fun. Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans have really good chemistry together and after seeing that they're good friends in real life and have worked on a bunch of movies together it totally makes sense. Apparently they also made up a bunch of their own dialogue for their scenes together which if true is great because it feels so natural. They get to bounce a lot of jokes off of each other and at once they both humanize Black Widow who up to this point has just been this crazy assassin woman with a fun personality and give Captain America someone to relate to, something that he is shown over and over that he is having a hard time doing in the present day.

Finally, the humor in this movie was really a delight. The Russo's come from a comedy background, including directing a ton of NBC's Community and as such it came as no surprise that they added a bunch of humor in what would otherwise be a pretty serious political thriller. One of the biggest letdowns of the first Captain America movie for me was how serious it was. There was humor, but for the majority of it the movie is played straight and that takes away from it I think. These Marvel movies work best when they have humor injected into a serious story. Thor was another good example. When Thor is on earth there's a lot of good humor about how much he stands out, but when he's in Asgard it's all totally serious. In the Thor: The Dark World there's humor in every sector of the movie and it plays a lot better. Not just because of the humor, but at least in part. The third Iron Man works way better for me than the first two (especially the second) because it's basically a buddy-cop movie re-skinned as an action/sci-fi film.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed The Winter Soldier. The story was good, the cinematography and sound design were good, the action and stunt choreography was brilliant and the acting was good all around. I was totally happy with how the film played out and I'm excited to see where Guardians of the Galaxy and Age of Ultron take us in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I figured I'd talk very briefly about the things I didn't like about the film, which will include spoilers for the movie, don't read past this point if you haven't seen the film.

Spoilers
I thought it was a nice touch that they referenced Tony Stark a bunch in the film, and even Bruce Banner for their creations, but it was a little irritating at the end to see that they never mention Hawkeye and never call up Tony Stark. However, there are things I don't think we know, like the timeline of these films. In the first wave of films, they don't happen in chronological order and/or take place at roughly the same time. Thanks to Shane Black's love of using Christmas as a back drop for his movies, we know Iron Man 3 takes place around Christmas time, but I'm unclear of when the other movies of this wave take place. While I understand that these solo movies are supposed to be that, solo, it feels funny that after The Avengers if something big is happening like say, S.H.I.E.L.D. is secretly half Hydra and is trying to kill millions of people around the world that you reach out to Tony Stark and ask for help. The biggest problem for me in this regards was the lack of Hawkeye. We're shown in the first Thor and in The Avengers that he does a lot of big S.H.I.E.L.D. and as such he may have been off on assignment somewhere (possibly being saved for a Black Widow spinoff movie that is supposedly in production) but he's never mentioned by name in the film. The fact that Hawkeye isn't even mentioned seemed like just a waste, as we've established he is a main Avenger that is directly working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and in this movie S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised and destroyed. I would have understood if there were filming complications due to Jeremy Renner being in other movies or not writing him into a plot corner if he's supposed to be tied into this supposed Black Widow movie, but even then they should have at least mentioned him the way they name drop Tony Stark for a bunch of his technology.

The other thing that bothered me was the possible romantic subplot between Black Widow and Captain America. If the intention was just for Captain to make a friend then to me it seemed that Scarlett and Chris' chemistry worked too well for them because throughout this movie it feels like they're making a romantic bond. One of the recurring gags of the movie is Black Widow asking Captain if he's thought about asking any girls from work out on a date, and he has a reason for each one for why they wouldn't be compatible, and by the end of this movie it feels like a woman who could easily understand and relate to Steve would be her. There is very clearly romantic tension between the two in the film, especially when they kiss, and the resulting conversation after that. To me, it felt like the writer and directors didn't want to commit to anything because Black Widow has an off-again-on-again relationship with Hawkeye in the comics, and with a Black Widow movie possibly getting off the ground they didn't want to jeopardize anything for that movie. I thought it was a nice touch that at one point we see Black Widow wearing a little arrow necklace, if they want to setup that she's romantically involved with Hawkeye. But then that goes back to my other problem, if she really cares about him, why does no one mention Hawkeye once in this film.


In reality, these are just nitpicks in what I find to be a superb movie and a fine entry into the Marvel cinematic universe. I guess my problems with the film are really just tied into the movie not wanting to interfere with any possible plot or storylines from the movies they have planned. We might find a reason for why Hawkeye or Iron Man weren't called in for this story in Age of Ultron, or why there wasn't a romantic sub-plot between Captain and Black Widow in Age of Ultron or her spin-off movie. Not everything has to be a definite and known thing in film, but both these things just felt like windows of opportunity or even logic that were sacrificed for the ability to keep everyone's options open for future movies.

TV Review - True Detective

I haven't posted anything in a little while because most of what I've been doing is catching up on series that I've been following for a long time and I didn't want to post a review of just like, Justified Season 4 when I didn't review 1-3 or How I Met Your Mother Season 9 when I hadn't done the others. For HIMYM I'm thinking of doing a show retrospective once the last episode airs next week. What I did just finished however and would love to talk about right now is True Detective.

True Detective is the new show from HBO, written and created by Nic Pizzolatto. The show was pitched as an Anthology format, like how American Horror Story is, meaning each season will be it's own self-contained thing, with it's own characters and story. This first season starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as two State Police detectives in Louisiana, solving a crime and exploring their lives in a 17 year period. I think it's hard to talk about the show without spoiling it at the same time, so I'm going to talk in broad strokes about the season and my general impressions and then later in the post mark a spoiler section and talk about my complete thoughts.

This first season was fantastic. In the 00's we had just...an overload of crime shows, and although they kind of died off, we're starting to see a resurgence of crime shows in the last few years that all have a specific twist. In NBC's Hannibal, we have a character who has complete empathy with the killers, in BBC's Sherlock we have Sherlock Holmes and his brilliant observation skills. In this first season of True Detective, we have Rust, McConaughey's jack of all trades detective who sees connections others do not, and often speaks in philosophical riddles about what it means to be alive. What makes this show really work for me is that it's not about the actual crime they are trying to solve so much as the conversations that Rust and Marty (Harrelson) have around the situation. While Marty is our stereotypical alcoholic, cheating on his spouse, good ol' boy detective, Rust is our nihilistic, philosophy spouting outsider, who pretty much everyone hates, but he's damn good at his job. What makes their partnership work I think is that Marty does not like Rust. He pretty much hates him, but he knows the guy knows what the hell he's talking about when it comes to solving crimes. As they make it a point to show in the show, Marty is the only reason Rust has the job he does, as he sticks up for Rust and tells the state police to keep him on the force.

The set-up to the show is interesting, and shows some creative storytelling. We open the show with older, more downtrodden versions of Rust and Marty in 2012, being interviewed separately about a case they worked in 1995. We spend a large amount of the show in 1995, with much younger, more energetic and youthful versions of Rust and Marty solving their crime. We also get a middle period where they look slightly older and some interesting things happen, and we get a bunch of time with both of them in 2012. It's a show that literally takes place over nearly 20 years, and it's executed near perfectly. The characters look respectively older and younger, depending on the time period they are supposed to be in.

The show itself is a play on the Detective genre, particularly the pulp detective stories from the 20's-40's. The crimes are often gruesome, the sexuality is rampant, and the detectives are just the unlikely pair that are able to solve the case. However, the show does a great amount to subvert the genre tropes and make something interesting. When Marty goes on about how much he loves his wife and then is actively cheating on her, we are shown that it's wrong, and that it's actively destroying his life. While we see Rust be the detective who digs into old records and old cases looking for a new lead, which is normally lauded in standard crime shows, pretty much everyone tells him to stop and that he's wasting time and money doing so. They aren't praised for their genre-normative actions.

I'd almost go and say that this season of True Detective is Film Noir style. Colors are bleak, most characters don't get a happy ending, the philosophical questions that are brought up, and the narration of most of the season. Since I absolutely love the Film Noir genre, this is easily a new favorite show of mine. Another thing I liked was that the season is 8 episodes. They're tight, concise. It's exactly as much time as the show wanted to spend with those characters and nothing more. Before I found out the show was going to be an Anthology series I would have been all for more adventures with Rust and Marty, but the way it is now is exactly what you want from a show. You have enough of these characters to get a good idea of who they are and how they interact with the world and they get a story that spans 20 years. However, we want more of them, but we aren't getting any more, which might dilute their characters down and make us think less of them. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, in TV especially. The season felt like just enough story without running into filler, which can even happen in a show with just 12 episodes, like say, True Blood. Though that isn't strictly a good comparison, as True Blood is a show that is ostensibly about the town the show is set in and all the goings-on in it, while this season of True Detective was purely the story of Rust and Marty, everyone else was pretty much just there to serve the story.

So in my spoiler-free conclusion, this first season of True Detective was awesome. The acting is pretty much outstanding across the board, especially from McConaughey, whom it seems can do no wrong right now. The narrative and framing of the season keeps it engaging all the way through, and the writing is impeccable. I can't wait to see how they follow up this season, and how much will stay the same and how much will change. If you get a chance, check it out.

SPOILERS BELOW

One thing I wanted to address right off the bat the accusations that the show is heavily misogynistic and treats women poorly. To that, I'll say, not really. Aside from Rust using the term pussy, he treats women perfectly alright. The one time he does something poor to one is Maggie, Marty's wife, and that's because she intiates sex with him and then reveals that she specifically did it to get back at Marty. While he is responsible for having sex with a married woman, he always treats Maggie up to that point with respect, certainly more than Marty does. The character that treats women poorly is Marty, and it's not glorified. It's put right out there that he's wrong, and everyone but him thinks it's wrong to do. Against the criticism that the women characters all are just flat pieces of writing that aren't full characters...sure. But no one else is either, apart from Rust and Marty. The show is about them, and their perspectives in solving a case. Apart from them, we don't get full characters of anyone else, aside from our Yellow King, and even then he's still mostly left in mystery.

I know a lot of people also had problems with how the season ended, particularly the mystery around the Yellow King. A lot of people felt like it was anti-climatic, and I see their point. We start in the first episode with all these symbols and crazy stick built-things and crazy phrases like "The Yellow King" being thrown about, only to have it be some mentally-deranged hillbilly on a farm in the middle of nowhere. I agree that it was a little disappointing to me that we didn't get to see more of the connections there in how things went down. We just see that he's crazy, but we don't get to see him spout all the crazy stuff that led everyone to that point. Other than that though, I don't know what else I could have asked for. Our characters did all the difficult legwork to track down the bad guy, they put all the pieces together, ended up with a realistic confrontation scene and a very realistic take on what would happen afterwards to these two men. I was incredibly happy with how the season ended, otherwise. It answered all the answerable questions it asked, and it made me think about the point of life and existence and what it means to be alive and doing what you consider good.