Movie Review #8 Haywire (2011)

- Girl power, and by that I mean a woman who could kill you before you knew she was attacking.

Another action movie, but I promise I'm going to lay off them for awhile in May. When I was told that there was going to be an action movie with one of my sweethearts from American Gladiators (2008) and Mixed Martial Arts fighter, Gina Carano, I was already sold on going to the movie. Shortly after I found out that Steven Soderbergh was directing, I knew this was something I just had to see for myself as he isn't known for action movies. I wanted to see what he'd pull in a movie that seemed like a run of the mill “run till your heart stops” action movie.

I really wanted to like this movie, I was stoked as much as I was for The Expendables (prior to seeing it, as the hype was better than the movie) but it falls on its face more often than not and it's not even the fault of the fighter turn actor, not intentionally anyway. I'd like to give Gina Carano quite a bit of credit, for the most part she did her scenes as to be expected from a real fighter turn actor in a dumb action movie.

Movie Review #7 The Raid: Redemption (2011)

- Police brutality at its best.

This isn't a standard action movie, after seeing the movie I decided that The Raid: Redemption shouldn't be called an action genre movie because it transcends the action genre. Ultra-violence or artistic brutality are certainly better phrases to describe what I saw.

The movie is a macho descent into gratuitous muay thai for just about 90% of the movie. There is a story but it's almost as if they worked on the story for five minutes, called it a day and went to work on the action. It's men showing off what the human body can do or at least what the body can do in a fictional world, as very little wire work was done – if any. This is noteworthy as the trailer for the movie boasts "from the company that brought you Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and I can't believe you'd try to make that connection. That is an artistic action movie where the action is fluid, and flows in almost a gentle beautiful fashion. The Raid: Redemption is fluid, but it's blood that is flowing and it's fast paced and harsh. Broken backs, stab wounds just about anywhere you can think, bullets flying and abstract weapons used in the most unsavoury ways.

Movie Review #6 The Hunger Games (2012)

-Another book series brought to life by talkies.

I'll start off with the fact that I have not read any of the books in this series. I know the title, and I have the feeling that people are latching onto the book series to a fashion not unlike Harry Potter or the Twilight series (the only thing the three series have in common is that they could be broadly categorized as fantasy) and that was what I had going into the movie.

Pretty quickly I found out it had similar aspects to movies that I enjoyed like Battle Royale and The Running Man. This is not so much a good or bad thing, just an observation, not every single movie needs to have an earth-shattering never seen before story that blows you away. The three movies mentioned prior all have different reasons for being completely different characters within the similar premises and budgets that are almost not comparable. The Hunger Games contains a lot of flash and bang for its buck. There are quite a few instances of CGI in a movie that I thought (due to not reading the books) was going to be a little more grounded.

Game Review #1 Bastion (2011)

- Play-by-play video game playing.

I wanted to start the video game reviews on my blog with a game that was on the three big consoles, but the only worthy ones were MegaMan 9 and 10 and honestly nobody needs to hear me talk about those anymore. So I picked a game that isn't on all consoles but I have played most recently. I've known about Bastion since its release July 20^th, 2011 on the Xbox 360 by SuperGiant Games but I only got around to playing through the game in its entirety last month. Bastion is an isometric action-rpg with lush beautiful colours, decent controls and a good mood-setting soundtrack. It takes between 7 to 15 hours of game play, depending on the difficulty chosen and if you want to see both endings.

If your interest has been piqued then hopefully you have a Windows PC, Xbox 360 with online capabilities or you use Google Chrome. I've only played the MS 360 version so problems, glitches and other assorted things can only be connected to that version within this review.