God Of War 3

Developed By: Santa Monica Studio

Playable On: Playstation 3

God of War 3 is an action/adventure platformer that is the final chapter in the story of Kratos, the God of War, who is looking to destroy Olympus and kill the all mighty Zeus.

I LOVE how “M-Rated” this game is. I think I was actually a little shocked at some of the violence and gore that can be found in GoW 3, simply because I don’t think I have ever seen violence portrayed like this in a video game. I don’t know how other players felt, but all the violence made me feel like a badass. Whether I was cutting somebody’s legs off, gouging someone’s eyes out, or ripping somebody’s head off, I was behind Kratos’ actions 100% and took pleasure in it. What made the violence even better was the gameplay that revolved around cinematic gameplay, in which you had to press a button or move a analog stick at a specific time to cause an action, like slicing open a minotaur’s belly to see all of it’s intestines spew out by rotating the left analog stick.

I never thought I would see a three way lesbian set piece in a video game, but there is one in GoW 3, and the mini sex game that ensues is mildly silly the first time played.

I really don’t think the “epicness” that is portrayed in GoW 3 can be described in words and do it justice. There are levels that are giant monsters, in GoW 3’s case, titans, that you are walking on that you have to kill (another thing that made me feel like a badass). I think it is insane that the PS3 possesses the power to create such grand stages that graphically look tremendous and the gameplay and frame rate never drops or lags. I think the game really just has to be played to truly understand the “jaw dropping” factor that GoW 3 contains.

Another faucet of excellent gameplay that can be found in GoW 3 are the puzzles that have to be solved. The puzzles were never frustrating, but they were hard enough to be gratifying after they were solved.

If I had to nit pick, there is really only one thing that I can find wrong about this game and it revolves around the Rage Meter. The Rage Meter is filled by simply killing enemies. After the meter is filled, Kratos can go into Rage mode in which he is stronger and moves faster. The reason I had a problem with it was because to go into Rage mode you have to press in both analog sticks. You move with the left analog stick and I was constantly accidently tapping the right analog stick and going into Rage mode. Rage mode can be a tide turner in a fight if you are surrounded by enemies and/or low on health, but I rarely had it because I would constantly set it off by accident when I didn’t need it.

In most games, after you kill the final boss, the game ends. But not in GoW 3, you get a little more gameplay after the final boss and GoW 3 delivers one of the best endings I have ever seen in a video game. I think GoW 3 is one of the best action/adventure platformer games I have ever played.

10 Out of 10
Trailer for God of War 3:

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Directed By: David Fincher

Starring: Daniel Craig & Rooney Mara

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tells the story of a journalist, Blomkvist, and a computer hacker, Salander, trying to solve an unsolved 40 year old murder case. They soon unravel a grander murder scheme and corruption within a single family.

Having never read the book or having seen the 2009 Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, my expectations were still high for this movie, simply because it is a David Fincher movie. And in my opinion, Fincher certainly knows how to handle a murder mystery. Fincher also helmed the phenomenal Seven and 2007’s Zodiac.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo starts off with a fantastic credit sequence, one of my favorite credit sequences of 2011. As the credits roll, it looks like a bunch of inkblot tests are fighting while a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” plays. After the core characters are introduced, I felt like the pace of the movie slows down as we see Blomkvist and Salander interview people and go over tons of photographs as they search for new evidence. But once the revelations are discovered, the film regains an even faster pace with plenty of elaborate set pieces that I thought for sure would be the climax of the film, but the film only continues with even bigger surprises. It was a lot of fun getting to know these characters and who they truly are after new light is shed on the case they are trying to solve and the philosophies some of these characters believe in.

When comparing Girl’s score with the Social Network’s score, because it was the same couple of composers, I was let down. Girl’s score is pale when compared to the Social Network’s. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross certainly deserved the Oscar they won for the Social Network’s score, but I just felt like they were unable to recreate that magic, atmosphere, and tone they set in the Social Network.

I believe Fincher was again able to create an atmosphere that is unsettling and captivating, leaving the viewer guessing until the last reel. I know I am on board with these characters and wherever their exploits take them next.

8 Out Of 10
Trailer for the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:

Hardcore

Directed By: Paul Schrader

Starring: George C. Scott & Peter Boyle

Hardcore tells the story of Jake, a conservative and Christian from Iowa. When his daughter heads to California on a church field trip and doesn’t return, Jake hires a private investigator to find her. The P.I. finds out she is doing hardcore porn films, so Jake sets out to California, with the help of a prostitute named Niki, to find his daughter.

I thought Hardcore had a tremendous premise, but ultimately it just kind of fell flat. Hardcore was not able to capture that dark, gritty, and sleazy side of the porn industry that films like 8MM and Boogie Nights were so able to wonderfully capture.

I also like the idea of a good person that is just trying to do something right, but is pushed to far to some type of extreme, like excessive violence. But we never see Jake reach that point, even though his daughter has been missing for months and he has had to see terrible things to get information about his daughter’s whereabouts.

I felt there was only two highpoints in Hardcore and one came in a scene when Jake is watching his daughter in one of the porn films she has done. I was cringing right along with Jake. The other highpoint came when Jake and Niki are talking about the value of sex. It was interesting to hear their points of view since one is a conservative and the other is a prostitute.

4 Out Of 10:
Trailer For Hardcore:

My Favorite Films of 2011

Unfortunately, I have yet see every film that came out in 2011, so this is just an alphabetical list of films that I saw and really liked that were released in 2011.

- Attack The Block
- Drive
- Fright Night
- Hobo With A Shotgun
- Paul
- Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
- Scream 4
- Super 8
- Win Win
- X-Men: First Class

Return of the Living Dead

Directed By: Dan O’Bannon

Starring: Clu Gulager & Thom Mathews

Return of the Living Dead fantastically starts off by stating that it is based on a true story. It immediately lets you in on the joke that it tells over the next hour and a half. And it makes me hope that the stupid idiots that believe the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is real have to think about that statement.

Return of the Living Dead tells the story that George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is actually real, but Romero had to change all the facts around so he wouldn’t be sued. And it just so happens that a group of zombies from that fateful night in Pennsylvania has ended up in a medical supply warehouse were three of the protagonists work. When a container that possesses one of the zombies is opened, all hell breaks loose.

The zombies in ROTLD are nothing like Romero’s zombies. They run, they can state complete sentences, and possibly the most blasphemous thing I have ever seen in a zombie movie, they don’t die whenever there brain is destroyed. Decapitate one. Nothing. Put a pick ax in the back of one of their skulls and they still keep coming!

The main characters have a ton of charisma as they spout off witty quips as they try to figure out ways to outsmart the living dead. You get Burt, the owner of the medical supply warehouse and the leader of the bunch, Ernie, the owner of the mortuary next door and a possible Nazi, Frank, who is kind of the idiot of the bunch, and Freddy, the naïve new guy. Burt is definitely my favorite character. In addition to the characters being strong, the situation they are in is so dire that I don’t think the movie would be as fun if the situation wasn’t so hopeless.

The humor is also great and intentional. Not only do the dead come back to life, but so does every other dead thing in the medical supply warehouse. And seeing two of the main characters try to beat a split dog to death is sure to cause a chuckle. Or hearing the staple ROTLD zombie “The Tarman” say “More Brains” could cause you to ROFL.

Return of the Living Dead has one of the best endings a horror movie can posses and I wish more horror films would end like that. Unfortunately every sequel in the ROTLD series is complete trash and with the exception of Shaun of the Dead, I hate comedy in zombie movies, but I am willing to say that the original ROTLD is as important in the zombie genre as Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is.

8 out of 10
Trailer for “Return of the Living Dead:”

Survival of the Dead

Directed By: George A. Romero

Starring: Alan Van Sprang & Kenneth Welsh

“Survival of the Dead” takes place just a few days after the original Night of the Living Dead, after the dead began to walk. You learn there is an island, named Plum Island, near Delaware. On Plum Island there are two families that have always ran it, the O’Flynns and the Muldoons, and they have never seen eye to eye. Now with the dead walking and trying to eat the living, they disagree with each other even more. The O’Flynns believe every zombie should be killed immediately, while the Muldoons want to “save” the zombies by locking them up and waiting for a cure to be discovered. The Muldoons also hope they can teach the zombies to eat various animals instead of the flesh of the living. Soon, a group of rogue soldiers learn about Plum Island and decide to go there. Once there, the soldiers are caught in between the war that exists between the O’Flynns, the Muldoons, and the large number of zombies that ravage Plum Island.

Romero’s attempts at humor bore me. Maybe Romero is still stoked on Shaun of the Dead, but his idea of humor is not funny to me. Romero’s “humor” primarily comes in the form of different ways to kill zombies. Such as shoving a fire extinguisher into a zombie’s mouth or shooting a zombie in the head, only for the top of his scalp to fall on what remains of the stump of his neck. What makes stuff like this not funny to me is the CGI that is used to perform the kill. The CGI just looks like crap. So instead of laughing at the idea that the zombie’s eyes just burst out of his head because it just got filled with the contents of a fire extinguisher, I’m thinking, “God that CGI looks bad.” And to make things worse, a large number of zombies that are killed are done so in a “humorous” manner. “Survival of the Dead” certainly doesn’t need any comedic relief scenes because it’s not that scary of a movie. Maybe the pie scene worked so well in the original Dawn of the Dead because it was so kookie and most importantly CGI free. I just feel like zombie movies don’t need to have any CGI in them because so many good zombie movies came out in the 70s and 80s and last time I checked, they didn’t have any CGI in them.

CGI and humor complaints aside, there is actually a lot of cool things going on in “Survival.” For example, we get to learn new rules of what can happen in a Romero zombie movie. “Survival” teaches us that if YOU bite a zombie, you will slowly turn into one. There is another cool rule that we learn, but I don’t want to give it away because it is a minor plot twist.

The cinematography is absolutely beautiful and it does a tremendous job of capturing the countryside of Plum Island. If “Survival” really was shot near Delaware, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that some parts of Delaware must be very pretty. The final still shot of “Survival,” in which we get to see what past Romero zombie films have taught us, is possibly my favorite shot in the movie.

The score is also very good as well. It does a great job of moving the action in the movie at a creepy pace. I found some of the “jump out scares” to be very effective due to the score adding something more to the scare. The gore that wasn’t done with CGI is worth mentioning. There are a couple of good body rips and a quick scalping in “Survival” that are fun.

I have read on the internet how some people believe this is Romero’s take on the abortion topic, with the O’Flynns being pro-choice and the Muldoons being pro-life. I think that is great that some people look for a deeper meaning in a Romero zombie movie. I also think it is cool if you just want to watch a zombie movie and see someone get ripped in half. Although some of Romero’s ideas are no longer fresh, as long as he keeps making movies, I will keep watching them.

6 out of 10:
Trailer for “Survival of the Dead:”

Strange Wilderness

Directed By: Fred Wolf

Starring: Steve Zahn & Allen Covert

“Strange Wilderness” tells the story of Peter Gaulke, a nature “expert” with a nature television show that airs at 3AM. Including Peter, the majority of the show’s crew are pot-heads that probably have some type of developmental disability. When Peter learns the network is going to cancel his show, he decides he is going to find Bigfoot, capture him on film, and save his show.

The humor in “Strange Wilderness” is driven by penis jokes, weed jokes, and a little shock humor. I’m sure a lot of people would find this type of humor to be “immature,” and I love a witty joke that makes you think about it before you get it as much as the next guy, but I think someone farting in a crowd of people is hysterical.

With “Strange Wilderness” being a Happy Madison production, a lot of supporting actors that you normally see in Adam Sandler movies have bigger roles in this. Justin Long and Jonah Hill also have memorable characters in this.

At only 80 minutes long, “Strange Wilderness” never has a chance to drag and the penis jokes don’t have a chance of getting old. And seeing the outcome of the crew’s meeting with Bigfoot is pretty gold.

6 Out Of 10
Trailer for “Strange Wilderness:”