wynni1 Reviews

Silent Hill (1999 Video Game)

Astonishing

[20 September 2005]

The only reason I finished this game the first time is that my girlfriend kept insisting that I play it to entertain her; even with company it was too freaky for me to play for more than about an hour, and alone? Don't even think about it. The creepiness factor of this game is unbelievable: the soundtrack has only moments of music; mostly it's dominated by industrial machinery or natural wind. The monsters are seriously nightmare-based, ranging from tiny knife-wielding mutant children to nurses with parasites clinging to their backs to these horrific gorilla-like things that jump and make a guttural "Unnh" sound. I mean, it's unbelievable.

There's graphic fog all over this game, but it really adds to the atmosphere, and in all fairness, for a six-year-old PSone game it has remarkable rendering and lighting effects, and some good cutscenes. Of course, the reason to play this game is the sheer psychological terror. Somewhere in Japan, somebody said, "Let's make a video game where everything might or might not be real, where the player probably doesn't have the resources to kill all of the enemies, and where the few interactions with other characters are unnerving and leave you feeling even more lonely than before." By the time you reach the "Nowhere" section at the end of the game, I swear you will be going insane.

Suffice to say that the endings are unsatisfying, but nothing could really sum up a game like this. After playing it once or twice for real, do yourself a favor and get the procedure for the "UFO Ending"; it'll help calm your nerves and keep the whole thing in perspective.

Truly a unique game.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Better and better

[16 April 2005]

contains mild spoilers...

The first time I saw this movie I was in high school, on a kick for the classics of cult cinema (Evil Dead, Dawn of the Dead, you know), and I rented it. I was amazed, and actually a little disappointed, by the lack of gore - especially in the meathook sequence - and the general somberness of the movie's tone. When I saw it again, keeping in mind that it wasn't going to be campy or cheesy, though, it really started looking different... It's been beaten to death, but there is something about the grittiness of the film and the "amateurish" cinematography that makes the movie feel almost documentary-like. There's the fact that the movie basically foregoes plot and character development (at least, not the usual hamhanded, cliché'-driven character development that usually haunts horror movies) and instead provides a simple situation: A bunch of people, Texas, summer, an old house, some cannibalistic psychos. There's a sense of the irrevocable about this movie, and while your first instinct is to give the old "Don't go in there!!!!" shout when the guy first enters the old house, the movie doesn't give you time; he trips, and in comes Leatherface with a hammer. We don't get suspense; we don't get lurking shots from Leatherface's POV with muffled breathing: He shows up, and within two seconds someone's dead. And twitching. That may be one of the closest things to a real murder in any horror movie. The dinner scene works the same way; instead of cheesy gimmicks about the family, we just get the very common sense of being uncomfortable magnified, and magnified, and magnified, until it becomes impossible to tell what's real and what's not. It's madness. This movie doesn't need great special effects: Its fatalism, its filthiness, and its cruelty are all it needs. This is a truly horrifying movie.

Thir13en Ghosts (2001)

More people....

[16 April 2005]

Honestly, more people should make movies like this. Years of penetration into the mainstream by great cult films, combined with biannual doses of M. Night Shyamalan have made everyone think that horror movies are supposed to be these leaden ballets of dread (or, equally bad, winking, awful self-parodies). Honestly. I'm glad somebody still has the sense to make a horror movie that is this silly without feeling the need to pretend their in on the joke. Who knows, maybe Thi13een Ghosts (hip spelling, eh?) was supposed to be an elaborate, deadpan satire of horror, but I doubt it. It seems more like a big, dumb, fun spectacle - the only movie I can think of that combines a man who likes a lot like David Bowie getting sliced in half, a skinny girl with slash marks on her enormous breats, Matthew Lillard literally at one point foaming at the mouth, and (Academy Award Winner) F. Murray Abraham getting ripped apart by a giant gear. Come on. The editing is ridiculous, the continuity is mediocre, the token black character is vaguely racist in her sassiness, and the movie has Tony Shalhoub AND Shannon Elizabeth. Wow. It makes it look easy - makes what look easy, you say? We live in a time when it's difficult to make a movie this ridiculous and MEAN it.

Resident Evil (2002)

What can you say?

[13 March 2005]

Fact: When I saw the first trailer for this movie I was so excited I nearly wet my pants. I remember hearing rumors about a Resident Evil movie (directed by George Romero) back in 1998, when Resident Evil 2 came out, and promptly heard nothing else (interesting aside: In that same issue of GamePro magazine they mention something about Bob Dylan's son directing a House of the Dead movie... see how these things turn out).

Anyway, I insisted on going to see it even after it got universal "meh" reviews. Well... I was disappointed. It wasn't "Bad" per se, it just wasn't good. The storyline didn't follow the video game, which I guess would have been a little redundant, given that the game played a little like a movie. It's just that the slick feel and high-tech science stuff seemed a little contrary to what I really enjoyed about the video games (tight, oddly-lit rooms, and everything being a mess). Likewise, the movie did not focus on game characters, instead it had Milla Jovovich as some woman with amnesia. Again, meh. There were relatively few zombie scenes in the movie, and the best moments of those scenes were stolen from George Romero (example: guy looks like he's going to commit suicide, then shoots a zombie instead). It was unspectacular, and the ending (which really got my hopes up for a final, super-cool battle sequence) was a serious letdown - I remember one time waiting through an entire porno movie for these two characters to get it on, and it never happened; it was about the same experience (except the porno movie didn't have a sequel where the two characters get it on incessantly, in lots of goofy positions).

So that was the first time I saw Resident Evil. After watching it again, however, with some friends who didn't play the games, and as such weren't familiar with their settings or deliberate pace, I appreciated the awesome silliness of this movie: One of my friends pointed out what a daring move it is to kill off half the cast in one scene; we noticed that the zombie dogs looked like normal dogs covered in corned beef. And the Red Queen... good lord. Maybe a computer with the voice of a little British girl saying "You're all going to die down here" could have been scary, but here it's just a precursor to the hilarious techno-camp of Resident Evil Apocalypse.

I can't really say anything bad about this movie. It disappointed me at first, yes. But hey, we've got the REmake on GameCube to make all our dreams about cinema-quality RE1 come true. If I want to see a real zombie movie, I always have out Dawn of the Dead, but now if I want to see Milla Jovovich kick a mutant dog Matrix-style, I have somewhere to go. Thank you, Paul W.S. Anderson.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

Hilarious

[9 March 2005]

Okay, let's start by saying that the movie has a great premise: Evil corporation builds its own town, accidentally turns everyone in the town into zombies, and then decides to use the accident as a free research opportunity. Let's also say that in theory black, unmarked SUV's going into pleasant suburban neighborhoods and picking up high-level employees and their families is cool/creepy, as is the idea of the city being locked-down for quarantine. All right, all the legitimately interesting points of this movie are on the table.

Now let's say that the acting is atrocious, the special effects are a cheesy, the "bad-assedness" of the slick production is over-the-top and hilarious, the editing is jarring and commercial-fast, and the movie pays tribute to its video-game roots with silly characterization, techno-infused action set pieces (which weren't part of the Resident Evil video games to begin with), and acting - at least on Sienna Guillory's part - that is taken straight from a video game character.

Watching this movie, any number of questions spring to mind, like: Why is Jill Valentine wearing stiletto heels in her first shot? If the mansion incident just took place, how was there time for her to - evidently - learn about the zombies and be disciplined for killing them? How did the movie manage to foul up the prospect of a school filled with zombie children and render them totally un-scary? Why, if they had zombie dogs, did no one spring off a wall and kick one Matrix-style? And why does anyone think it's a good idea to fight flesh-eating zombies in tight, revealing tops? For that matter, why are all of Umbrella's special-ops soldiers Russian (I realize this is taken from the video game "Resident Evil 3", but it still doesn't make sense)? Why does the movie use its sole black character, with his blinged-out handguns, for comic effect? Why didn't Paul W.S. Anderson direct this one (not because it would have had any effect on the quality, just that scripting AND directing this thing would've cemented IL' Paul's reputation as the Number One Hack of the new millennium - of course, he did make "AVP") And, for godsake, WHY DO THE CORPSES IN THE GRAVEYARD COME BACK TO LIFE (again, I realize this is taken from the video game, but someone should have exercised some common zombie sense: even if the corpses in the graveyard came back to life, they'd have a hell of a time busting out of their coffins, out of the stone vaults that enclose coffins in most cemeteries, and digging through six feet of mud - they're DEAD for godsake!)? This is definitely an entertaining movie: After the two hours was over I didn't feel cheated. It's good that someone makes movies this terrible; they're hilarious without trying. When Carlos jumps out of a helicopter on a safety harness with two uzis, it's almost as hilariously over-the-top as the sequence in which Milla Jovovich 1) drives a motorcycle through a stained-glass window 2) aims it at a monster, revs up, and jumps off 3) fires two bullets that travel in slow motion toward the motor cycle and 4) ignite the gas tank, destroying the monster and leaving Milla free to 5) squish another monster with the giant crucifix over the altar. It's indescribably funny; it's the horrific, bastard, mutant child of all the post-Matrix techno-kitsch that's dominated action movies in the last five years. The real joy of this movie is that it's the same kind of spliced-together, reanimated monster as its principle villain, the Nemesis; just as alternately lumbering and hyperactive, just as polished in its nastiness, and just as much fun to watch.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999 Video Game)

Better than expected

[9 March 2005]

I played this game back when it came out after being totally enamored by Resident Evil 2, and I remember being sorely disappointed. The difference - in terms of graphics, sound, atmosphere, and overall coolness - between RE1 and RE2 was so astonishing, that this game just seemed like one of those sell-out moves where they plaster over a good game with a new plot. I mean, the door animations are the same, the zombies look the same, the weapons are the same (though it is cool that in easy mode you get all the weapons from the start). I played it through the police station and gave up.

Then, after being totally enamored (again) by Resident Evil 4, I decided I'd pick this one up and try it again. I was pleasantly surprised. The graphics look very dated, but not too distracting. And yes, a lot of the stuff is recycled from RE2, but there are also a lot of nice changes: There are fat zombies, zombies in suits, and zombies that move reasonably fast. Also, once you get past the police station, there are some nice exteriors, walking around the abandoned city; it's nice you don't get caught up inside a single building for most of the game, like in RE1 and 2. The background are well-rendered, the characters are as one-dimensional as you'd expect from a RE game, but the voice acting is slightly above average (and I get a kick out of hearing Jean Grey's voice from the old X-Men cartoon as Jill). Stuff like the ability to dodge monsters is welcome, and the quick turn (now standard in GameCube RE games) was a nice addition.

And there's Nemesis. A cool villain, tough to beat, shows up over and over and over again, almost to the point of annoying, but not quite. He's a little like a mixture of the man in the coat and William Birkin from RE2 - tough to kill, ever-mutating, etc.

Many people discredit this game for being a worthless side-story. It does seem like a quick cash-in between the superior RE2 and Code Veronica, but it does a nice job of closing off the Raccoon City storyline (and fleshing out the Umbrella conspiracy). It also provides the plot for the movie Resident Evil Apocalypse, so if you enjoyed that movie (either as a movie or as a hilarious piece of 21st-century techno-kitsch), I'd recommend this one. Not stellar, but it's better than I expected it to be, and definitely not a "collector's-only" title.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Best zombie build-up ever

[7 March 2005]

Yes, we all know about how terrific, original, creative, funny, etc. this movie is, but there is one aspect of "Shaun of the Dead" that tends to be overlooked. One thing that - to my knowledge - no zombie movie has ever pulled off as well as Shaun, maybe because of the expectations an audience has of a zombie comedy as opposed to a flat-out zombie movie, and that is the zombie build-up. Think about it: Night of the Living Dead had a zombie show up to motivate the plot within the first five minutes; Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead both started "in medias zombie," and even if the zombies weren't actually on screen for the first fifteen or twenty minutes, they were the driving force behind the plot. I liked 28 Days Later (which was, in form and execution, a zombie movie with slightly modified monsters), but I was a little disappointed that they skipped over the 28 days of chaos after the Rage virus emerged. Let's face it, nobody deals with the day-to-day mechanics of a zombie invasion. Until now.

By using the romantic-comedy element of the movie, the filmmakers were able to move the movie from the start without using zombies; you have twenty minutes of relationship comedy with weird elements in the background, and you get to watch as the world slowly collapses into zombified chaos. Now that's brilliant. The characters aren't "zombie movie" characters, they're romantic comedy characters who suddenly have to fight the undead; again, that's brilliant. Let's face it, we don't live our lives like a zombie movie. If there are lots of police sirens going off, or people running down the street in a panic we figure there's lots of crime and people are morons. That's what makes zombie movies so effective; it's not like these are aliens conquering the earth. Zombies are just like us. "Shaun of the Dead" plays zombies for laughs, but at the end - as in any good zombie movie - whatever we're laughing at is really, truly terrifying.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

A classic

[10/10 · 1 March 2005]

What kind of classic is this movie? Well, it's a romantic comedy. That's about all there is to say: It's a post-modern romantic comedy, a romantic comedy concerned with the idea of self hood in our world, but in the end the movie is about two quirky characters looking for love.

When people say that a movie has value because it fore goes explosions and violence for... well... nothing, I think they're missing the point. You can make an intelligent, insightful movie while spraying blood at the audience, and you can make a dreadful, moronic piece of garbage without having one interesting thing happen. In the wake of the indie-film revolution, movies that follow the latter convention - yes, it's become a convention - haven't overtaken big-budget bombast per se, but they are a nice safe way for mediocre movie stars to gain indie credit.

Then there's a movie like this. All those people who consider absence of spectacular destruction requisite for a good movie are assuming the existence of movies like this. Nothing happens in "Eternal Sunshine" - think about it: The main character is asleep most of the time; all the action is memory, and a lot of it isn't even accurate memory. What emerges is - in my opinion - the most genuinely moving portrait of the human soul that's ever been committed to film. People, like Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in the movie, are naive and foolish and like to think that the best world is one in which there is no pain or grief, so when Charlie Kaufman and co. introduce the terrific sci-fi trope of a memory-erasing machine they jump at the opportunity to lose those nagging, unpleasant moments.

But you can't remove something from a person without destroying a part of who that person is, and that is exactly the course the movie tracks. The treatment destroys part of Jim Carrey's character. There's an old cliché, "If you chase out your devils, your angels will leave"; when Jim Carrey watches his fights with Kate Winslet vanish, he's chasing out the devils. But when, in the film's absolute best scene, he kneels and begs his mind to let him keep one happy memory, he's watching his angels leave.

As for the rest, the acting is wonderfully naturalistic, both by the lead and supporting characters (I hold it very much to Elijah Wood's credit that he can leave his Frodo persona in last year), the cinematography - especially in the opening scenes - is brilliant and calming, and the film's portrayals of the inside of the human mind are smart and interesting.

Yes, it is a romantic comedy, and yes, it borders territory that could be insufferably pretentious. But "Eternal Sunshine" is a movie with a real soul.

Garden State (2004)

Meh

[3/10 · 24 February 2005]

A lot of people laud movies like this one for not containing tons of explosions, meaningless sex, and kindergarten-level plotting. But let's face it; if you have trouble finding intelligent, stimulating movies you're just not looking hard enough. "Garden State" was not good enough to justify all the praise that was heaped upon it - nor was it good enough to really keep me interested.

That's not to say I thought the movie was a total bust: Some scenes were handled perfectly. Examples: Zach Braff wakes up after a night of partying to find a man in a suit of armor staring at him; that's kind of what I expect to happen when I wake up confused and exhausted after a long night. Zach Braff's oddball millionaire friend playing "Dodge the flaming arrow," or driving around his mansion in a golf cart. The focus in the beginning on the New Jersey DeNiro thing. Those were all good - very good. They just weren't in a very good movie.

A few things just worked against it: The meandering, non-pace of the movie's beginning really faltered once Natalie Portman showed up. It suddenly seemed like this oddball dramedy about a guy trying to get back in touch with a world he'd left behind was being shoehorned into a fairly run-of-the-mill "Quiet loner meets outgoing girl" love story. I really didn't feel like Zach Braff had earned the right to have his character say, "You changed my life," to Natalie Portman at the end of the film. Also, absolutely too many scenes were dominated by fast-motion camera effects and super-hip indie music.

If Zach Braff makes another movie - either a more focused love story or a less focused, existentialist-about-town story - he could hit gold. He's an assured director and a talented writer. The problem is that, contrary to popular opinion, he made this movie a little too in line with the mainstream - there's nothing revolutionary about a lukewarm relationship between two odd characters set to hip, contemporary music.

Fat Girl (2001)

Undone by ending

[17 February 2005]

I understand that a film dealing with issues of female virginity - especially when the women involved are as young as the girls in this movie - can and indeed should be more than light entertainment. That said, I did not care for this movie. It's not the subject matter or the subetext or the mode of presentation that got me; it was the cruel, moralistic, judgmental tone taken by the director. Dynamics between the characters were compellingly and interestingly explored: the sisters' antagonism, and moreso the contrast of one brilliant scene in which they convince us all that they do love each other, the older sister's interaction with her parents, which was realistically one sided and antagonistic (she is a teenager after all). Even the wrenching scenes of her "lover's" manipulation of her were well-acted and occasionally subtle. Having to listen to her being sodomized, however, was unnecessary. It was the sort of shock technique that betrays a director's contempt of her audience: We understand that his manipulation of her is evil beyond words, and we hate him enough. As the scene descends from the quiet politics of (basically) a man trying to rape an unexperienced, lovesick girl into a series of shrieks and abrupt grunts (all the while we stare into the uninterested face of the "Fat Girl" of the American title), it's not in-your-face realism, it's just bathos.

Then there's the ending. The director spends an hour creating interesting character dynamics, a tense conflict between a young girl whose desires conflict with her own best interest but is too young to understand it, her sister who is forced to grow up under the influence of this person, and her mother who is confounded by the whole affair, and then decides to end it with a murderer with a hatchet. Yes, the scene is thematically resonant: All the characters get exactly what they want. The older sister gets to die along with her mom, and the younger sister gets to lose her virginity to a man who means nothing to her. So that's what the movie is? The director saying "Be careful what you wish for"?

Obviously, a director has an obligation to follow her or his muse; but that is no reason to revert to abject cruelty, both toward characters and the audience. Again, it's condescending: We can see the moral issues at work in this situation, so why do we need a psychopath to reduce everything to an obvious moral absolute in the most unpleasant, brutal fashion possible? It's just annoying moralism on the director's part, punishing the characters for... something - while punishing the audience, apparently, for caring about the characters. And we do care about the sisters. They deserve a better movie.

Resident Evil 4 (2005 Video Game)

Series and platform best

[6 February 2005]

There's one standard that I always use to judge the quality of a game: If my girlfriend actually encourages me to play so she can watch, I know it's good. Very few games have passed this test - the original Silent Hill, Blood Omen, Resident Evil 1 and 2, and now Resident Evil 4. Not only is it totally immerse to play, but it's even fun to watch.

I'll admit that when I first played the demo (for about five minutes) I was a little nervous: The new over-the-shoulder camera setup was a little "un-Resident Evil," and the crazed hillbillies weren't comfortably familiar, like the lumbering zombies in the previous games. And some of the new moves (like diving through windows) seemed cheesy and over-the-top. However, after hearing from so many places that the game was great, and seeing so many reviews that had to rely on principle or nitpicking to find a problem with the game, I forked over fifty bucks.

And all I can say is, daaaamn. The only problem I've found with this game is that it'll make all the previous Resident Evil games suffer by comparison. This is what I really wanted - and just about got - from all of them. Who hasn't watched Dawn of the Dead and wanted to run around blasting the undead with a hunting rifle? Well, here's your chance, and you can even watch their heads explode in glorious 3-D. Ever wanted to shoot a monster in the knees, then mow it with an automatic weapon while it's down? Step right up.

Yes, lots of changes have been made to the game. Some of them seem like natural outgrowths of one another: It would be too easy to pinpoint aim and kill slow-witted, slow-moving zombies, so the enemies here are a little sharper and quicker. The camera no longer obstructs your view of a scene, which was frustrating but also a familiar hallmark of the previous games. And there are some RPG elements added that make the whole thing more "game-like," like a merchant who sells weapons and gun upgrades, and who buys treasures you find around the game. Enemies drop money, ammo, or health items when they die; the new "yellow herb" increases your maximum health. But all of these work to make the game a little more open-ended and a little more engaging (it's so much fun seeing in numbers just how powerful your magnum is). One mini-game, the shooting gallery, is unbelievably addictive, but well worth it: As a reward for completing each set of cheesy wooden targets you get money and a collection of "bottle caps" - little action figure-like models of enemies and allies from the game, who play low-fi recordings of their character sounds. It's downright hilarious.

For all its changes, though, Resident Evil 4 still FEELS like a Resident Evil game. It contains elements obviously important from the ultra-slick movie franchise - like slow-motion fight scenes and a challenging laser-dodge sequence - and other fun, over-the-top action movie tropes (pressing the action button near a second-floor window causes you to dive through the window, roll, and get to your feet), but it also contains the Resident Evil trademarks. The monsters are all weird perversions of real creatures - from humans to insects - the environments are atmospheric and creepy. the ever-more-powerful weapons are too much fun to play with, the characters interact in melodramatic shouts and cheesy one-liners, and, most importantly, you get the feeling that the enemy plans to win by sheer numbers.

It took me exactly twenty hours to beat the game: at the end my kills tallied up at just over 1,000: this game is huge. My girlfriend asked near the end of one chapter, "Is this the end?" and I said, "No, there's still another disk left." The graphics are so lush and beautiful that at least once I actually stopped between slayings to admire the backgrounds. The water effects and superb and the fire effects even better (the scene even wavers with heat); the environment is beautifully textured and some new elements - like destructible barrels and boxes and the ability to hop over obtrusive railings or fences - add an unprecedented (for a RE game) level of interactivity. When a beast dies its blood flies out in all directions; if your decapitate an enemy with your shotgun the bony stump spews blood with graphic detail.

After finishing the game you get a harder difficulty setting, and two mini-games become available: Assignment Ada, in which you play as Ada Wong through the final portion of the game, and The Mercenaries, a timed endurance round with four super-cool unlockable characters. I can't wait to play through it again.

There's also one other thing that, for me, really made the game. At one point you are in a run-down chapel inside a demonic castle, and you see an elaborate chest inside a glass case. Inside the chest is a (holy) hand grenade. I laughed out loud.

Bella Loves Jenna (2004 Video)

More creepy than sexy.

[18 January 2005]

The box on this one looked good, but the movie itself plays like a bad Nine Inch Nails video - and we all know how sexy those are.

As a narrator early on tells us, Jenna Jameson is locked up in a mental hospital for cannibalizing her parents, then sentenced to death for doing the same to some fellow patients - sound sexy yet? Jenna preps for the electric chair, gets interrogated by Nazis, and descends into some kind of underworld. Most porno movies have ridiculous plots, and it just makes them more fun; the problem is that this one is creepy instead of campy. In the titular Belladonna-Jenna scene, neither of them looks like she's having fun (mostly Jenna looks angry and Bella looks sad); they're obviously acting, but it's not hot to watch. And there's a scary old man riding a tricycle around the scene. Lots of the stuff is potentially very hot: in one scene Nurse Jenna watches a doctor and patient get it on. Unfortunately the doctor (who's face is shown just enough to make it nasty) has freakish scab makeup all over his mouth (like he has herpes), and then there's the old man on the tricycle again. Jenna and the other girl are super-hot, but the two guys (along with the use of a speculum) just kill it. Then Jenna re-animates a corpse. Nothing can redeem a porn scene where the guy has pure-white eyes and an incision in his chest.

The later scenes are better: Belladonna does some contortionist moves with a normal-looking guy, and then there's a threesome. All of the scenes have hot moments, the girls are gorgeous, and every scene has a solid money shot at the end. Unfortunately you have to get around the gore, Nazis, hideous male characters, and freaky camera effects; all in all it's just not worth it. The production values are high, but the movie is too unpleasant to deliver the goods. If you want a big-budget Jenna movie, try "Dreamquest"; it's full of goblins, but at least they're alive.