simon647

Watch this movie before writing it off as good or bad.

That should be rule number one for any cinema-goer. No matter how much you like this or that critic, watching a movie to create your own opinion should always take priority.

With THAT out of the way, here's what I think of Looper.

The movie starts off grim and very gritty, with presenting a cold- hearted character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. We're introduced to an interesting lifestyle of crime, sex, drugs and alcohol. Obviously, if you've seen this movie's guidelines, you'll know things eventually go belly-up for Joe, who winds up having to kill his own future self. Of course, the assassination goes awry, Old Joe beats present Joe to the ball and runs away.

The rest is a series of well filmed action sequences, flash backs, character development and theories on time travelling. In all actuality, one may claim to know what time travel is and how it works, but this is all very much speculative. If you watch Science-Fiction expecting accurate scientific statements, read a book. Looper avoids geek-talk about time travel and that sticks well to its characters. A mob boss would not sit down with one of his employees to theorize about how time travel works, nor would future Joe waste very precious time explaining, as he says, with little sticks how time travel is accomplished.

These people are on a short time line and actively hunted down for very vaguely definable crimes. I absolutely loved how the lines became blurry between present Joe and Old Joe. Adding in the mix an apocalyptic child, whose only hope to redemption is just controlling his temper, with a most interesting Emily Blunt as a "mother"... You'll be kept up until the very end.

Now, in retrospect, my one main gripe with this movie is the completely overshadowed "TKs" plot point. It's an interesting twist, but aside from marking people as targets, it doesn't seem to do anyone ANY good! You'd be hard-pressed to find evidence about how humanity just suddenly popped a telekinetic code in its DNA. So all in all, it's just one extra trigger to keep the movie going. I'm not so sure I dislike it all that much. The alternative would have been to use the tired old cliché of "Angry young kid who suffered from experiments and now wants vengeance".

Conclusion!

Loopers: Not the movie of the century, definitely original, definitely worth a watch. Don't fall in the trap of trying to figure out time travel. Modern science hasn't found a way to make it work, neither will you. Just watch the movie, escape life for an hour or two and keep quiet.

If I had to call a best FPS of all time, Call of Duty 4 would definitely be in my top whatever.

This game is relentless, it's powerful and it's pretty, plus it's DAMN fun. Remember playing as a modern-day SAS operative in Russian territory? I sure don't. Remember playing an American soldier in Iraq? Well, Battlefield 2 did things pretty close to that... But doing it with the actual USMC behind your back, giving hell to the Iraqi? I don't think so. This game shows that you can have non-stop gunplay action and still be fun, while remaining intelligent. I'm not one to praise story lines when the games rock so much, but I have to say that every single moment of tension in the game works really damn well.

So, Call of Duty 4 is "realistic" in some ways, fun, pretty and it also has great immersion. What's the catch? I don't think there's much of one, but you could get at the developers of the game for making the main protagonist as always this silent gimp guy who does everything everyone asks him to. But, the way I look at it... If Captain Price becomes the kickass SAS operative he is after having been a mute in Tchernobyl, I suppose all our -surviving- characters become as much eventually. Yes, for once in CoD4, we're reminded that human life, no matter how brave it can be, can be erased in an instant.

Only problem though is that the game homo-erotically explains that you need a Nuclear Bomb to kill off the USMC. Still, it helps to feel like you're side by side with world-wide elite counter-terrorists and military organizations alike. Wading through armies of Russian soldiers or iraqi terrorists only gets fun when they're getting obliterated by a pack of 6 or so.

The A.I. is, as it's always been in those games, kind of lacking. Sure they move and act stylized, but they still are scared of going forward without you when you reach a certain script. Like "Soap! Plant a claymore in front of the door!" or "Get on that machinegun and blast the entirety of the enemies we can't shoot from here!" It sounds good but it always seems like your partners always wait for you to do things, instead of every now and then appearing autonomous.

The enemies have that weird "twitch" that wills them to shoot you and only you once you get into the room, until one of your teammates decides to shoot them. To top that little A.I. problem, there are quick-time events in this game. Which pretty much act as random "PRESS V TO NOT DIE HERE". This usually happens only when dogs tackle you.

At any rate, this is a very good game whose bad points can easily be overlooked. Plus, the multiplayer is very effective, too.

You'll become addicted to this game for at least a few weeks.

The reason why it's horror is because it has gore. The reason why it has science-fiction is because using a black hole as dimensional travel is about as delusional as say... Catapulting yourself down the Canyon and expecting the rocks to soften as you fall on them.

Event Horizon refers to the moment where you cross a black hole's edges. Where there is no chance of return whatsoever. So this movie seems to pretend that beyond the Event Horizon, there is another dimension. This is unproven but unlikely. Fiction comes in play at this point, whereas a scientist would have been able to build a mechanism which allows a ship to travel from one point in the other. In this place, the "Event Horizon" spaceship.

The spaceship is then used for extra-system travel, where it will discover regions beyond the milky way. Bold enterprise, as the ship and its crew discover only to be found years later. The scientist is sent aboard a rescue ship, whose crew consists of growling men and wise women. Well, the choice of crew is rather justified, because they are all astronauts that were looking to enjoy their little vacation back on earth. So they don't take kindly to the good "Doctor"'s presence.

You'll imagine the Doctor's feeling rather ambitious about seeing his spaceship again. Of course, getting there, the doctor starts to get hallucinations of his dead wife, provided by the ship itself. What doesn't make much sense is that he gets these hallucinations BEFORE getting on the ship, while the other members of the crew don't get any until they arrive on-board.

Don't worry though, the movie offers a lot more plot holes like these. Does that make it a bad movie? No, the story's believable as long as you hold it to yourself to escape reality for a while. So what makes the movie not so enjoyable here? The acting. I'm not sure if all the actors forgot their faces at work, especially Mr.Fishburne, but they all seemed rather dead-eyed for the most part. Laurence Fishburne often yells without bearing any conviction to his words on his face or overall body. Same with some other characters, while a select few do show appropriate emotions. Unfortunately, we're treated to the stereo-typical black man-in-astronaut gangsta.

I mean is it really necessary for black people to always be imaged as the dumb types? Whatever, seeing as Sam Neil and Fishburne are often on-screen, you'd expect better prestations from them. None of it.

I personally disagree that this is a bad movie but it's certainly nothing to be awed at. The executions for the characters are all very poetic in a way, but they're so theatrical that it makes them less terrifying, in my opinion.

Kind of like watching a play and seeing the main protagonist be given a speech before being executed.

Do watch this movie, even for the sake of just having watched it once.

I've seen some appalling reviews in this place and I thought I should rectify the shot from some of the reviewers. What is Call of Duty aside from a WWII shooter? Well, just that. It's a world-war 2 shooter with an aspect centered a lot more on the war rather than a large-scale vendetta against Nazis. Medal Of Honor played like this chunky three-legged script-o-rama. You felt rather weak in front of soldiers that could smack you, while all you could do is stand there and shoot them. It was a great shooter, but I don't think MOH: AA ever set any kind of milestone. Nor was it an objective ever to beat MOH. Call of Duty literally SPITS on MOH:AA.

Its gameplay is better, its sound is better, its scenarisation is better, hell the NAME itself is a lot more enticing. Call of Duty will give you something MOH: AA could never have. And that's -SWEAT-. In MOH: AA , it wasn't unlikely to be seen running through enemy lines just blasting away with your thompson smg. Now? If you even pop your head out, you're almost dead: That's if you play the game on Veteran difficulty.

People saying that this game is too easy have just played it on Greenhorn (easiest difficulty). Is this an MOH: AA killer? You bet it is. Gone are the heavy and pointless infiltration scenes: There is one but I'm sure the people at 2015 just wanted to mock MOH's faults by making it extremely short a mission. See, Call of Duty doesn't mess around and try to be more than it really is. It tells you flat out: You're gonna be fighting a war here, boy. Saddle up.

And it never lets go.

It gets a four because it's stylish.

I watched this movie and I can't remember any of the characters' names. Do they have any? Is it important? They're just teenage cannon-fodder for lame plot devices.

Young American reject wants to be successful with the ladies, so he steals Dad's car to race the local Jock, who is very successful with the ladies, mostly because he's a jerk. Ladies love the bad boys. Don't you, girls? Anyways, you already know that if it has Fast and Furious in the title, it's gonna be unflattering to the female gender. So yes, girls walk around dressed sexily, men drool and leash them, great S&M fun.

American reject runs his car into some trouble during the race against the typical joke- I mean jock character and is kicked out of home (or something to that effect) by Dad. He ends up in Japan and decides he has to... Y'know, race. To uh... get money. Yeah.

I'm not sure, he just is placed in a Japanese college where an afro-American manages to speak Japanese without everyone around him glaring at him mercilessly. If you must know, the Japanese aren't very warm-hearted about occidentals speaking their language. The afro-American becomes his buddy, obviously. IT JUST SO HAPPENS that this same man owns a garage and will lend the kid a car so he can do races.

Not traditional races of course! Drift races! So obviously, the American reject kid sucks, he breaks a car and owes one to the afro, who acts somewhat cool about it.

Meanwhile, Dad does some groaning of his own.

The rest of the story revolves around getting a new car to race the big king of the Tokyo drift. If people have watched the first F & F movie, you'll recognize the dude who's at the head of it all. I don't remember his name but I went "Hey, it's him." with the least enthusiasm as possible.

Vin Diesel makes an appearance at the end as the new challenger. DRIFTING WITH A DUST CHARGER. GIVE ME A BREAK, GOD!

It's difficult to give this game a good note and it's difficult to give it a bad note.

Why? Because Starcraft is one of those games you forget, then re-discover only to forget and then find again, ceaselessly. Problem with that is that every single time, you're reminded what made you get away from it.

Whether it was its childish multiplayer community, the lack of interest put in the Single Player campaign (most people I know skipped straight to protoss or Zerg in SC) or just the fact it becomes mind-numbingly repetitive... You can never like Starcraft for too long. Unless you play it for a living, of course.

First of all: In 1997-98, the world of video games belonged to FPS like Quake 2 and Half-Life. Real-time strategy games by then up and coming Blizzard were all seen as grandiose. The initial two games having been inspired by the engine used by Dune (Warcraft 1 and 2), they were looking for something to revolutionize. So how about replacing squares with circles? It seems like a simplistic thing to do but it's the kind of revolution that got SC going. The graphics for this game were impressive for 1998. Forget about 256 colours and midi-music. How about 16-bit and industrial techno? It was visually very attractive and extremely fun and simple to play.

Once you played it for a few hours, though... The creativity began to falter. The campaign being done and forgotten, you turned to UMS(use map settings) and melee and free-for-all. Blizzard's way of saying "If you find what we gave you not enough, go ahead, make something better." This is the kind of recipee that works: Simple, addictive fun... for a while. You buy it just because it's popular, then you tell your friends to buy it because you find it kicks ass.

If you're nostalgic, play it. If you're of the next-gen generation, give this a miss. You will only be able to complain about how crappy the graphics are and how much more complex RTS games are nowadays.

Back when I was 10, I didn't care. I loved this.

Middle-aged soon-to-be wifey takes a stroll with middle-aged, soon-to-be hubby. They grab the dog and walk across New York and of course, they pick a tunnel late at night to walk through. A gang of alcoholic muggers decide to get their latest youtube video shot and they beat the living bejesus out of them.

Hubby dies, wifey goes into coma and wakes up some (long) time later. Rehab is tough and she is scared of walking outside due to the possible chance of her muggers returning to finish the job. The fact Foster is depicted as such a pathetic human being for once (you can name other movies but that's the first one in which I've seen her like this) is absolutely refreshing. To vanquish her fear, she decides to go out (once she packs the courage to do it) and buy a gun.

The gun is bought and oh the coincidence, she ends up in a shooting where the MAN is depicted as the oppressor and the woman the poor victim. Huge feminist undertone in this movie all over the place but it's alright. I think it is kinda justified here. The offender is killed by Foster and then cue typical "mystery vigilante" story, where the vigilante in question is said to be a man until *GASP* he pops a skirt and make-up.

Story is predictable and you see the end coming miles away but there's something fun about seeing Foster's terrified glance one moment be transfixed with the satisfaction of killing street scum.

Delicious.

This game is a huge fountain of adequacy. For the hype it got, I think that's not enough.

It's been a long time since we set foot into the familiar ground of the Doom series. Left off by the Final Doom expansions Plutonia and TNT: Evilution, 2004 announced the arrival of the big THREE. Doom 3 was going to be on the shelves and delivering mass pandemonium upon Earthlings.

You turn on the game and what do you get? A pretentious survival-horror with terrible mechanics and graphics that are ever only in use, you guessed it: IN THE DARKNESS.

Graphics which are very good when you cast lightning on it. Kind of makes me think of using a microscope to appreciate the detail in your local newspaper, to see the indent the printer makes on the paper. Oh yes, marvellous. However: I'M NOT HERE TO STARE AT THE F***** GAME!

Gameplay: Intact for the most part. You get guns, monsters to render to ashes and lots of darkness. Really, it's 2149 (or something) and all the marines can make up their gears with are those stupid helmets and body armour? Why not a night-vision or even better yet: Laser-sighted machineguns or flashlights strapped on the machine-gun? I'd make a mention of the System Shock-ish interface but... It's useless. No revolution there AT ALL.

Story: Are you kidding me? It's doom for god's sake. It's dumb, idiotic and makes sense only for those addicted to B-quality story lines and bad voice acting.

Sound: Flawless at best, for the environment and the monsters. Guns? Imagine having big huge guns and finding out they sound like smacking the wall with a hammer -- Softly. Worst of all, the plasmagun. You feel so very ineffective with that piece of blue sploodge... Nevermind.

Overall: Download it. Seriously, don't waste money on this nor its crappy expansion. It's more of the same Doom except darker and anorexic (in terms of space).

With that out of the way, let me tell you: I LOVE this game! I read an earlier comment about how Will Rock was better than this and that it doesn't come any close to ID Software's titles and also about graphical bugs... I don't agree with that person at all.

Although I haven't played Will Rock, I'm rather convinced it's not any better than this, judging from reviews I've read all over the internet.

If there's a game that reminds you of what "quake-like" used to mean, it definitely is Painkiller. Although I disagree it is a horror-shooter, I have to say some of its levels are well-made in the horror area. Only, there's no tension to make you feel like you could get killed on the next step you take.

To be frank, Painkiller just makes gunning things down even more enjoyable. I think it's safe to say that the makers of the game were totally uninterested in the story aspect of it. The story is crap, so what? 90% of the game revolves around shooting and blowing things up. If you find the graphics of this game are bland, you need to get a reality check. I saw that this game's gore level was judged as significantly less than Half-Life 2's by an earlier review. I snickered. To say that, one must just not have played the game.

Anyways, I based my rating upon these criterias: Graphics: The game is pretty good in architecture overall. Instead of making a uniform aspect of corridors, it actually put some make-up on the claustrophobic feel of things. I was impressed. Nothing complex but it's still pretty to look at.

Gameplay: Repetitive gunplay. MASSES to lay to waste. Guns of destruction and a rotor-blade that hacks through enemies like your lawnmower would? Hell yeah! Puzzles: Yeah, the game spawns some kind of puzzle thing about grabbing items or completing goals to get cards... I sure don't care about that.

Storyline: If this game hadn't been so entertaining, this would have probably been my biggest gripe. Once I'd watched the cutscenes for the first time, I never watched them again. The story is as important to the fun as your butt is from a nebula.

Overall: Solid game! Skip the cutscenes. Just skip them.

I've played this game for a few hours now and while I tend to give a game a chance before I blatantly rip its insides outside of itself... Flashback, for a so-called classic, brought my anger to a boiling summit that I've never felt with any other game in the past.

I based my rating on these criterias:

Graphics: The game looks good, I'm not gonna lie. It's pretty stunning for an SNES game dating back to 1992.

Gameplay: Raw. Carnage. Disgusting. I wouldn't play that game twice unless someone paid me or wanted me to get them out of a stuck situation.

Sound: The game sounds okay but a lot of the noises in the game are just reminders of how ANNOYING it can be.

Music: Err... non-existent to say the least. It plays in key situations and is nothing memorable. You'll find yourself lowering the volume more often than not.

Story: Conrad escapes from some place and has lost his memory. He must now find his memory back and people are out to kill him. That's the creative story everyone was talking about? Gee, I'm stunned. Give this game an Oscar. It would have been more fun if it had been a point 'N click adventure game, in my opinion.

Puzzles: No, just no. Mixing platform elements with puzzle elements makes the game laborious, not fun. *Conveniently placed mines and traps to make you die. *Instant-kill GREEN DEATHS right outside the screen. Remember to bring your script with you, kids. *All of these with enemies in the middle that make you fall down. *All of these PLUS timed sequences, whereas if you make the slightest mistake, YOU DIE. *PLUS Conrad's crippled, retarded agility.

I think that I've hardly seen a movie that is capable of depicting just how "man eats man" nowadays. Maybe Sweeney Todd did but it was a musical comedy and I wouldn't compare that movie to American Psycho.

Still, what was disturbing about the movie is that every now and then, I could sympathize with the main "protagonist". I saw another movie with him as the 1st role and I have to say he was poor into it. This movie however told me not to judge an actor by a single movie. Sure sometimes he looked a little robotic but that's what happens when you're DIRECTED.

This movie shows all sorts of truths about the everyday man that sometimes, I feel like anyone could be the mad killer. Anyone could suddenly walk up and shoot an old lady in the chest or start a killing spree just because they "felt like killing". We're so very weak yet we're so very strong. We're given all the tools to be judge and guilty.

I found myself looking at the protagonist as some kind of hero, up until the end of the movie, where I found it almost cruel to see that all of this had been but in his mind. The girl opening up his note book seemed indication enough that this all had been nothing but Bateman's subconscious hacking at his mind. Driving him crazy with thoughts of mutilating women and using them as his sex slaves.

Then again, this is maybe what a "hero" is. That's all a hero could be in our time where anything is brought up as a grand event. From the slightest birth to the worse death. Everything is preached, even the serial killers are preached at some point. This is why this movie is so effective: People end up wanting to see him kill people. Hell, when I heard the movie was about a guy just killing people because he felt like it, I wanted to see it.

It's such a beautiful way to end this kind of fantastical adventure by telling you: "Wouldn't you just like that? To think he's killed all these people and got away with it?" I think even though I haven't spoken of the movie much, you should see it. It's a must for anyone having personal doubts about how well our society is currently built.

I'm a Canadian and I still was able to see the references to the American dream depicted within this movie. I paid more attention to how well the whole thing rolled, up till the credits I was on the edge of my seat, always wanting to see more.

A let-down some might say? I think it was more like a slap to the face.

I am certain that purists of the genre will make references to the book itself. Quite frankly, I will assume that the movie is much better when you haven't read the book, because you don't have anything to complain about. I know what it is to flame a movie because it doesn't respect a highly acclaimed work of Litterature. And when you harass Quebec people about their pride, they flame on you quite hard, even if they'll turn back seconds later because of... Nevermind. Le Survenant struck me as a wonderful love movie. The only I've ever appreciated in my whole life. A plot well-written, music to break your heart at the right moments. A musical appearance by Sylvain Cossette and characters to get attached to. If you wanna watch this, make sure you haven't read the book first. I didn't and I loved the movie.