District 9

So Tophat recently mentioned that he tried to watch the GI Joe movie but had to stop because it sucked.  I haven’t seen the film, but I feel like this is fair.  In fact, the only person I know that actually saw the movie pretty much agreed.  His verdict was that yes the movie was bad, but also, it had distractingly terrible CGI.  This led me to remember that District 9, which came out around the same time as GI Joe, had brilliant CGI.  GI Joe had a budget of 175 million dollars.  District 9?  30 million!  First time director Neill Blomkamp takes that smaller budget and does wonders.  Aliens on Earth has been done, but never quite like this.  Peter Jackson, of Lord of the Rings directing fame,  personally picked Blomkamp to direct the Halo movie, which ended up not happening.  Jackson then told him to make any film he wanted.  Clearly, Jackson had massive confidence in Blomkamp’s skills as a filmmaker.  He was right.

Red

Sometimes a movie isn’t what you expect it to be.  I’m sure most of us have seen the trailers (or seen the movie!) for Red by now.  Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich playing retired CIA agents who become the target of assassination attempts, so they all get together to find out what’s going on and fight back.  That plot is pretty generic of course, BUT, with that cast?  I was in favor of checking it out.  It turns out that “the plot is generic” is actually a pretty generous statement.  Red’s plot really only serves to get the razor-sharp cast from one insane situation to the next.  If you can forget logic and just enjoy good actors doing awesome things, Red becomes pretty enjoyable.

XBLA 2: I’ve lost that shining feeling

Has your wallet been stolen by ninjas?  Are you not a bad enough dude to get it back?  It might be time to hit up Xbox Live for your next game.  There’s a lot of gems and a lot of junk in the Xbox Live system though, so make sure you know what you’re getting into before you start digitally buying Microsoft points.  This week we’ll touch on Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement and Sam and Max: Beyond Time and Space, since both of these games are kinda short for a full post each.  I guess this is the second installment of Xbox Live Adventures.  If you missed the first one, check it out here.

Alan Wake: Bring plenty of batteries

I need to start this review by being honest about something: I am the target audience for Alan Wake. I’ve watched the X-Files like it was my job (except those episodes with Robert Patrick, that show ended 3 seasons too late). I’ve read Stephen King, James Joyce, Bret Easton Ellis (the game draws most heavily from Lunar Park, which is a shame, because that is the bottom of the Ellis lot. Although a whole game about disenfranchised youth would be pretty boring. An American Psycho game? BRING IT ON), Edgar Allen Poe, and I’m a devoted H.P. Lovecraft follower (it even drops an August Derleth reference on you!). Alan Wake name drops and borrows elements from all of the above, pretty shamelessly in some cases. Thus, I will say, without any shame, Alan Wake is an absolutely fantastic game.

The game starts as Wake and his wife, Alice, arrive at a town in the pacific northwest called Brightwood Falls. As an absurdly famous writer (after playing the entire sci-fi/horror filled game, the most unbelievable part of the game is that Wake is recognizable to the general public…he’s a writer! Could you pick any writer other than Stephen King out of a lineup? And you only know what he looks like because they constantly cut to him during Boston Red Sox games) struggling with writers block, the hope is that a vacation to such a picturesque location will solve the problem. What happens instead is that Alice quickly goes missing and men possessed by shadows start trying to kill you.