Four years ago, video game maker Square created a feature film called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It was the first real attempt by anyone to create an entirely computer generated movie and make it look photo realistic. Square formed a movie studio called Square Pictures and poured in hundreds of millions of dollars to create the visual masterpiece. Unfortunately, the movie failed in theaters and the company was in danger. Many say the failure was due to a bland story line, or the departure from the fantasy setting for science fiction, or just simply not being animated enough. Square Pictures was shut down shortly after completing their work on the Animatrix short, Final Flight of the Osiris. Years later Square has recovered with successful releases and a merger with another game company Enix. Now, years after their previous blunder and with the momentum of recent success, Square Enix has released another feature film. This time directly tied to a video game, Final Fantasy VII.

One of the problems of Spirits Within was the characters were too wooden. Even though they looked ultra realistic in still shots, when they moved it was too stiff. This may not make any sense as they motion captured every character movement, but that’s just how it appeared. When creating characters with that much realism, there are certain nuances like skin and hair that don’t move realistically enough to imitate real life. For Advent Children, the style is a lot less “real”, meaning it isn’t aiming to be photo realistic, but at the same time, they are more “real” as characters. Allowing for hand animated facial expressions, they can be exaggerated just a tad from real life, and on the screen it’s more believable.

The story takes place a few years after the game leaves off. In fact, the very first scene of the movie is the very last scene of the game, with Red XIII climbing a cliffside overlooking Midgard. Without giving away too much of the plot, it’s basically a group of guys that have a direct link to Jenova trying to recover her to start some bad times, while Cloud and friends stop them. Of course, if you’ve never played the game, you have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s understandable, because that is probably how you will feel about most of the movie. The movie begins with a little summary of the plot of the game, but it really isn’t enough to understand it all. It’s enough to make sense of what the people are doing in the movie, but many questions will arise. The movie doesn’t go into detail about who most of the characters are and what they are. At one point of the movie, all the bizarre characters just show up for a battle, and most common folk will be confused. But if you’ve played the game and enjoyed it, you will enjoy the movie immensely.

For those non-Final Fantasy aficionados, I still recommend watching it because it’s really visually stunning and quite entertaining even if you don’t know who all these people are and the things they mention. The action sequences are amazing, but please realize this is based on a video game in a fantasy world. You have to suspend some logic as the characters often defy all rules of nature. If you enjoy those CG cut scenes in video games that you play through to see, then you will certainly enjoy this marvel. You can think of it as an hour and 45 minute CG cut scene. However, it’s understandable that they did not release this in theaters here, as it does not work at all as a stand alone feature. I was able to acquire the movie early through torrents and fansubs, but you can wait until November for the official US release on DVD and PSP formats if you choose to. I will be buying the DVD once it is released.

Gunslinger Girl exists in a world much like our modern day, except they have technology that can turn a little girl into a super cyborg assassin. Very young girls are “saved” from terminal illness or near fatality to be enrolled into a “institute” where they are trained to be assassins. But first they are fitted with mechanized bodies and brain conditioned to do as they are told. Their brainwashing gives them certain restraint on their decisions and also an unconditional attachment to their supervisor. Every girl has a supervisor assigned to them. Each supervisor treats their girl differently. Regardless the girls long to be with their supervisor, even if they are poorly treated, due to their conditioning.

Having first heard of this series and seeing some images, I thought it was going to be an action packed series. However, it is mostly an emotional drama. You find out about the girls’ pasts, what they have to deal with now, and how they carry on. Having watched the entire series, there doesn’t exist one episode where you don’t feel sad. That is not to say there isn’t any action, there is quite a bit.

The series is well done in style. The story works well in having you really care for the characters and not being totally unbelievable. My major gripe with the series is that it ends too quickly. The series contains 13 episodes, and I feel this is one that should have gone to 24 episodes. You would think the first 5 or 6 episodes would be enough to introduce all the characters, but even by the 9th episode you are still meeting new characters. By the time the series pulls you into this world and presents all the characters to you, it’s already over. It’s like you see the character and the problems they have, and wonder what’s going to happen to them later, and never get the answer. My feelings are just like how I felt watching the TV series ‘Firefly’. I loved that show, but as many of you know it was canceled. Watching the last episode, of course you feel unresolved. That’s how it is with Gunslinger Girl, it just felt incomplete. It lacked a bigger overall story arc and closure to some of the characters. It also had more characters than it had time to dedicate to.

If you can’t tell, I really enjoyed the series, that’s why I wanted so much more out of it. I really recommend it, just keep in mind that it ends too soon.

Buy it on DVD

I was very much looking forward to this movie. Being a big fan of Michael Mann’s work on Heat and The Insider, I knew I was in for a good time. I loved every aspect of the film. The cinematography, editing, acting, dialogue, action, music, you name it.

The look of the film is beautiful. Mann chose a grainy, brownish look to the movie, and I don’t think there’s a better choice to describe Los Angeles at night. The Los Angeles depicted here feels real. Living in LA, I know these images well, but somehow I never looked at it the same way as I did in the movie. It’s just buildings and streets, but somehow it was beautiful. Michael Mann shot entirely on location in LA, which I commend. The scummy back alleys, the run down gas station, the commercial areas, it was all real. Even three of the clubs that are in the film are real (I looked them up). And when they show the inside of the clubs, they feel like real clubs, not something overly done as in many other films. And the choices of clubs were truly a representation of the different types of people in LA. The camera work isn’t distracting when important dialogue is being presented, and the different ways the movie shows the sights of LA was nice.

Tom Cruise pulls out a nice performance being the bad guy. Jamie Foxx impresses with a good serious role. Two actors doing something out of their norm and doing it well. Like Spider-man 2, the action wasn’t the highlight of the movie, it was the characters. The characters are nicely developed through gradual, unforced dialogue. Performances are great all around.

Finally the music stood out to me as well. The music was nicely varied as well, from the Audioslave track Shadow on the Sun providing a good driving mood, to the club scene with Oakenfold, to a jazz club scene with Miles Davis playing. In filmmaking, music is a key ingredient, I just wonder if all these music choices were Michael Mann’s picks.

I highly recommend this film to everyone. You may not like it if you are brain dead and don’t care for a lot of dialogue, but maybe there’s still enough there for you.

Doom 3 is a masterpiece when it comes to graphics and presentation. But it drops the ball on the gameplay.

Well, it’s expected from iD Software. As with their Quake games they have shown how they can spend years on developing excellent game engines, but the gameplay has never been much of a factor.

Doom 3 is set on a space station on mars, where they perform all sorts of experiments and research. Then something goes terribly wrong, as it often does. People have become overtaken by some evil power. They become zombies and other foul demons appear. Thus begins the survival horror game.

The graphics are top notch. Doom 3 is all about the lighting. It creates a very eerie mood, with flickering lights, and dimly lit hallways. Using your flashlight creates a very realistic effect. The sound is also very good. In most of the first half of the game, you get chatter from other soldiers screaming in fright, which adds to the atmosphere. Some of the weapon sounds are a little light. But for the most part the sound is good.

The gameplay is where Doom 3 loses. Once you get over the surprise scare tactics they use. You are able to predict where the next monster will suddenly appear. At that point the game gets dull. The AI is almost non-existant. Standard zombies just walk straight at you slowly, while the other monsters just charge straight at you. Other than the occassional soldier that uses cover, they pretty much move in a straight line straight for you. The gameplay is a simple formula. Enter a dark room, look around until something pops out to scare you, kill it, move to the next room. When I say dark room, I really mean it. Some rooms are completely dark. Most of the time you cannot see anything without your flashlight. Which means you will have it out most of the time, and switch to a weapon when you have to shoot something. They made it so you can’t have a flashlight out and a weapon at the same time. There may be reasons for this. If you had light and gun, the game would be very easy, and very boring. But instead you ending up firing into the dark hoping you hit the enemy and switch back to the light to confirm. There isn’t really any puzzle solving. Besides your standard weapons and flashlight, you have a PDA. The PDA allows you to download information from consoles and other people’s PDA, which gives you access to some voice logs and email. Most of the plot is in the voice logs, I imagine most people don’t listen to it, in which case, most people don’t get much plot out of the game. Which I think is a good thing, some people don’t want all that stuff, and it’s an option for those that want it. When you check other people’s email you sometimes get key codes to open certain doors. Some emails link you to an internet website which you sometimes get additional codes to open more stuff. Example www.martianbuddy.com. But in general, the PDA is to download access to doors that are locked. This usually is not a difficult task since the game is pretty linear. The game gets boring after a while. I hear it picks up a bit when you finally reach that certain hellish place. I just don’t know if I can get there. It’s just too repetitive. But if you really like the creepy look and getting a scare here and there, maybe you will enjoy the whole thing.

There is a multiplayer mode, but it’s nothing special. It’s playable as a quick fun deathmatch, but there are many games that are much more superior when it comes to online play.

If Doom 3 is just a game to showcase a new engine, it makes me wonder. How many people will be sold on licensing an engine that doesn’t show any sort of intelligent AI or physics? The Medal of Honor series has used id’s Quake 3 engine for their games. Will the next versions use the Doom 3 engine? Doom 3 shows great use of darkness and lighting, but not all games are going to be like that. Maybe the engine is great, it’s just hard to tell from the game. But so far it looks like Half-Life 2′s engine is superior. It has shown it has intelligent AI, excellent physics, and what appears to be better facial animation.

Doom 3 is not a bad game. It’s worth playing just to experience it. This is a case where graphics and presentation do make the game. And I will recommend it even if the gameplay sucks.

I bought ESPN NFL 2K5. Main reason is because I had a sudden urge to play it online. Second reason, it’s only $19.99. All the other 2K5 series sports games from ESPN/Sega are going to be the same price too. I will definitely pick up NBA 2k5 when it comes out. I signed up for a free 2 month trial of Xbox Live.

It’s a great game! I’m not a hardcore football fan, I just like playing it sometimes. And the online league system got me. You can play a real 18 week season with as many as 29 other players. Other features include The Crib, where you earn points as you play the game and you have a house to go to where it shows trophies for various accomplishments and you can spend points you earn on buying furniture and stuff. Another great feature is VIP, it’s basically a user profile, but keeps track of everything you do when you play. What plays you call alot, which players you control, how you play basically. Then it saves the VIP and your friends can play the computer as your VIP. And the computer will play like you do. Graphics and sound are top notch, and the ESPN presentation makes it feel like you are watching it on TV. The half time show will show videos of the high points of the game. Last year’s version only showed stills, also the PS2 version this year will only show snapshots. This game is worth it even if it was 50 bucks. Highly recommended for casual sports fans. I always liked Sega’s football more than EA’s. Suck it Madden.

It would be biased to only review the good movies I see, so hey. In all honesty, I did not for the life of me want to see this “film”. I expected the worst in the world, but I got just really terrible.

So the first time I ever heard that they were going to make a Catwoman movie, I just said “okay”. Then I heard they casted Halle Berry, and my reactions was “interesting…”. Then first images of her costume were released and I was like “WTF?”. Then the trailer came out and I just shook my head and asked myself, “why would they go ahead with this?”.

I saw it a mile a way, this movie is a stinker. If they can’t make a movie look good in a trailer, how will they pull off the movie? So after some kicking and screaming I was dragged to the movies. I already hated the movie and was waiting for it to be over. I expected the worst. In fact, I think my low low expectations helped me deal with it.

First off, the story. Forget anything you ever knew about Catwoman, because it’s not here. It really isn’t Catwoman. It’s not Gotham City. It’s not Selena Kyle. There’s absolutely no relation to the comics. Instead we get a story about Patience something. She’s a graphic artist for a cosmetics company. She finds out about some new cream that has terrible side effects and is addictive. But they kill her. A cat brings her back to life with some unexplained power. Now she’s like half cat or something. She’ll act like a cat sometimes, she’ll act bad sometimes. It’s like she has a split personality. But apparently she has new cat powers, but she doesn’t seem surprised by it or has problems dealing with it. She just says ok and is Catwoman. The movie explains nothing. At first it seems like she has a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde thing going, but then later on it doesn’t seem so. Is she learning to control her ‘bad’ side? Is it the cat powers taking a hold of her, or her inner self? Nothing. The movie also doesn’t have a point. It may seem that her pre-cat self was a nerdy closet case, and the Catwoman makes her feel more free and herself. But is it? She gains confidence in herself, but there’s nothing to show for it in the end. And her love interest side plot was laughable. They talked, they played basketball, they have sex. Never did you see any real connection. And she never shows any real concern for anything, she doesn’t care about the bad cosmetic product that may harm every woman in the country. She only shows a brief concern about getting revenge on her “killers”, but even then you forget why she’s going around beating up people.

Ok, so the plot is bad, the action must be at least entertaining right? No not really. The fight scenes are 50% CG shots of her doing impossible cat jumps and climbs. And the CG is really bad. When she isn’t CG, it’s rapid fire editing that makes it impossible to see what’s really going on. I supposed that is always handy when your action star can’t really perform for a long shot. It’s sad that they steal fight scene ideas from Hong Kong movies, but don’t learn that they work because they take long wide shots of the fights. It’s literally, she motions kick, cut, foot hits face, cut, he falls back, cut, she lands on her feet, cut. Why bother? And there are numerous pointless shots of her climbing buildings, jumping across buildings, sliding down buildings, and walking, almost entirely done in CG, just to show that she is going from one place to another. I don’t think I ever shook my head so much in a movie.

I don’t know why they chose this french director that goes by one name, Pitof, to take on this movie. He comes from a visual effects background, and it shows. He has no sense of direction or editing. Camera shots move fast when it’s not needed, and again unnecessary rapid-fire editing is either covering up bad shots or is just bad decision making.

All the actors’ performances are nothing worth mentioning. Again, this may not be the fault of the actors but the director. And those of you wanting to see it because Halle Berry looks hot? I don’t know. The costume looks silly really, and even with all that skin showing, she doesn’t look hot. She looks better in her baggy clothes when she was nerdy and clumsy. After her transformation, she doesn’t look better. I don’t know how they managed to do that.

There is nothing worth seeing here. Avoid at all costs. However, I did find one bright side to this movie. It makes Spider-man 2 look like Citizen Kane. My appreciation for Spidey is even greater now.

Spider-man 2 was much, much better than the first one.

I was a little hyped going in to see this. Rotten Tomatoes had it rated higher than 90%. Roger Ebert said it was the greatest superhero movie ever. I was afraid I was going in with too high expectations. I wasn’t disappointed at all.

The thing with superhero movies to date were they kept focusing on making better action sequences and introducing more cool villains. The plot and characters seem to be the least important. But with Spider-man 2, it’s like the other way around. The movie oozes with story, the action sequences and special effects were pretty good, the villain was okay, but the beef of the movie revolves around the plot. You can almost say the struggle with the villain, Dr. Ocotopus, was merely a subplot to the main story. The movie deals a lot with the struggles of Peter Parker trying to maintain a job, school, and his heroic deeds as Spider-man. He suffers a lot and you feel sorry for him. He can’t be with the woman he loves, Mary-Jane. His best friend hates Spider-man for killing his father. It was a non-glamorous life for a superhero. This in turn leads to him coming to the decision that he doesn’t want to be the hero anymore, and wants a normal life for himself. Of course, that doesn’t work out either.

The “subplot” of the movie is about the apparent villain, Otto Octavious, otherwise known as Dr. Ocotpus. He wasn’t exactly a ‘cool’ villain. But I never thought he was in the cartoon either. But I liked this movie version more than the cartoon version. His 4 extra arms are a part of a science experiment gone wrong (tends to happen in comic book worlds). Obsessed with completing the experiment that failed he goes to crime to fund his project. The fights between Spider-man and Doc Ock were pretty good, fast and in your face. The CG characters didn’t distract much, CG Spidey was much improved.

I thought the opening credits for the movie was great. It showed key scenes from the first Spider-man movie drawn in comic book form. I’m rarely impressed by opening title sequences that display credits. The other one I could think of was from Hulk, where it simulated comic book frames. The movie was full of laughs on Peter Parker/Spider-man’s behalf, it was full of drama, action, romance, special effects, and plot twists. I don’t know what more you can ask from a movie. There are even some extras: usual cameo of Stan Lee in Marvel movies, a great appearance by Bruce Campbell, and an obvious foreshadowing of who Spidey will deal with in part 3. If I had to give this movie a rating, it would definately be at the positive end. I highly recommend this movie, even if you don’t like superhero types.

But it’s not just the comedy that makes Shrek great. It’s the way it taps into real life in a fairy tale setting. Often when you read a fairy tale or watch a fairy tale movie, well, you know it’s a fairy tale. Sometimes it’s hard to relate to the characters. Shrek sticks in things from real life, into an unrealistic world, and makes fun of it all. In this story Shrek and Fiona are married and they head back to the kingdom of Far Far Away to meet Fiona’s parents. The father in-law and Shrek don’t hit it off, and they each find their way to deal with the problem. I don’t want to give anything else away.

The animation had many moments as well. There were many technological achievements. Most impressive to me was how the rain affected the characters. How Donkey’s fur got wet, and how the little drops of water fell on Shrek’s face, were very impressive.

Voice acting was great all around. Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy do what they do best. New character, Puss ‘n Boots, played by Antonio Banderas fit in fine. I didn’t care for the end song they all sang. It’s a bit annoying and dated, but they recorded all this years ago before most of the animation got under way.

All in all, the movie doesn’t disappoint. It’s not as good as the first, but still good for a bunch of laughs. I think there was just some magic missing from this one that the first one had. The story didn’t flow well sometimes. Maybe too much time was spent with the king and queen, and the fairy godmother, when more should have been spent with Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona. Still, I highly recommend this one. And don’t leave right at the credits, or you’ll miss a great scene.

A masteripiece? Undoubtedly, no. But Revolutions was still entertaining and I felt it was a good end to the series.

Critics bashed it. People said it was the worst in the series. With that in mind, I went to see the film with low expectations. At the end, as the credits started, I couldn’t help but feel satisfied. I thought it was a good end to everything.

I think the reason people didn’t like it was because many questions they had weren’t given definite answers. A lot of things are left for interpretation. Many of the events in Revolutions were left unexplained: How Neo was able reach the place in between the Matrix and the machine world without being jacked in, how was Neo able to see the machines and have some form of control over them. I think it was intended to leave some sort of uncertainty, so that we would question it and come up with our own answers. Everyone knows the Matrix puts in a lot of philosophical and religious themes. The art of philosophy is questioning and developing your own answers, and I think the series wanted you to do that. Of course, many people don’t want to spend the time in deep thought about a movie that’s supposed to be action. And that could be a big part why I loved the entire Matrix series, and many others wish it had ended with the first. I have my own explanations about most aspects of the series, but I will save that for another day as it will be spoiler filled. Here is a thread with a long explanation of everything by some guy. It brings a lot of interesting theories, although I don’t agree with all of it. Reminder: spoilers.

So if you leave out all the “deep meanings” and philosophical stuff, you still get left with a decent action movie. The long winded dialogues akin to the Architect are left behind for long action filled scenes. Most of the action takes place in the real world. The main sequence would be the machine attack on the dock of Zion. The humans are armed with Mechwarrior-like armored units that gun down the sentinels left and right. The entire sequence is certainly a technical achievement. There’s also a sequence where Niobe (Jada Pinkett-Smith) navigates a ship through a narrow tunnel to get back to Zion. It was very reminiscent of the escape from Death Star II in Return of the Jedi. Within the Matrix, there was a big fight between Smith and Neo in the rain. I thought it was an excellent fight and the music with it was awesome. It was certainly a more cinematic and epic fight than the “burly brawl” with hundreds of Smiths in Reloaded. The CG was also less distracting than the one in Reloaded. A lot of people have suggested the battle was a rip off of a certain well known anime series, but I just thought of it more of an epic superhero fight.

Once again, Hugo Weaving stole the show performance wise. He’s certainly been one of my favorite villains of late. Ian Bliss who played Bane also made a great impersonation of Agent Smith.

But Revolutions is not without flaws. A certain character took way too long to say “goodbye”. I was a little disappointed that many of the characters had little part in this one. Namely, Merovingian, Persephone, and even Morpheus had very little of a role. Again, there were many questions left without concrete answers. There was a short shootout scene that felt a little uninspired. I was disappointed they had Trinity do the same kick and wall flip she did in the first film. Would’ve been nice to see some new moves.

All in all, I thought the series came to a great close. I enjoyed Reloaded for the hints and questions it presented and the theory games I had played with them. I enjoyed Revolutions for some of the answers and a resolution, and still leaving me with things I can answer myself. None of the films live up to the first one, which I thought was near perfect, but all together worked okay. Don’t let critics’ opinions turn you away from this one. What I can be sure of is that many people will argue about this one.