Monthly Archives: January 2019

The Breakfast Club Review

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This review is based on the TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative.

It’s time to look at an old classic. Just about everyone has heard of The Breakfast Club as it was a big deal back in the day. I have to say that my impression of it was a lot different from what we actually got. I thought its tone would be something similar to the teenage beach films I saw recently. A pretty light hearted comedy with dramatic characters and such as the characters eventually all became friends. Instead this story actually takes itself seriously. So much so that it ends up imploding although had I known the film’s rating I probably could have predicted that.

The film starts with a group of teenagers heading to detention. In this school that means you have to go there on a Saturday and stay all day from 7 to 3. Each of the kids presumably did something wrong to be there and the parents aren’t happy. Vernon is heading this detention session and he runs a tough ship. He tells the kids that they can’t talk to each other and have to write a 1000 word paper talking about who they are. He heads off and one of the kids (John) starts to cause a lot of trouble. The other kids are annoyed, but after a while they begin to jump in. With all of these bad seeds hanging around each other, will they find out that there is more to each of them than meets the eye?

Naturally with a plot like this you’re expecting every character to have some issues and that’s exactly what happens here. All of the characters have done something wrong or at least have negative traits and the film makes sure that none of them are even remotely likable by the end. I can’t say that I was a fan of the writing as the dialogue is pretty bad. A lot of language is constantly thrown around but the channel did a good job adding air bubbles and some dialogue inserted over the scenes. Still, that’s not a credit I can give to the writer. None of the characters are remotely likable as I mentioned earlier as well so that’s a problem. As Claire even points out they tend to have the same discussion multiple times and they sure pick on her quite a bit. None of the students are all that tough either and start to break down in tears upon reliving their history. By the end of the film they’ve all spilled their secrets and Monday is going to be very awkward.

As this is an 80’s film we do get some songs, but not as much as you might expect. The final song is certainly iconic and I suppose the others are reasonable at best, but they won’t leave much of an impression. The 80’s song used in Infinity War has more heart than the rest of these songs put together and that movie didn’t even come out in this era. All right, lets talk about the characters as there is a lot to unpack here. We’ll start with the pesky grownups.

Vernon is the teacher in charge and he doesn’t like the teenagers. In his defense they all appear to be jerks, but he doesn’t do anything to help that. He slowly starts to crack by the end to the point where he threatens and blackmails one of the kids. Then he starts looking through private files where he is caught by the custodian and blackmailed further. He’s definitely the main antagonist. Carl is a little more nuanced and at least he’s a fun character to have around. I was glad that he got the $50 from the teacher and also made him give up the lunch. It’s always good to have a character like that here to spice things up.

John is the biggest delinquent of the bunch. Unlike the others he is a repeat offender and has been to detention many times. He has a very rough home situation which has been a bad influence on him. John pays the experience forward and tends to act like a jerk to get attention. Of course his origin is pretty sad, but he’s still a terrible character in the modern scenes and goes too far with the jokes. He’s just too far gone. Then we have Claire who has some ego problems and doesn’t like being associated with the others. Her romance plot is handled terribly and unfortunately you can see it from a mile away. She is considerably better than John, but still not a good character.

Then we have Andrew who starts out pretty reasonably. He tells John to stop bullying Claire and when the guy doesn’t Andrew puts him into the ground. He starts to falter from there as we learn why he is in detention and it’s definitely a pretty bad reason. Then he succumbs to the drugs like the rest of the students and by that point he was doomed. Drugs ruined all of the characters, but even without that scene most of them would have been doomed. Brian is the smart member of the group, but as he is seen as a bit of a nerd he isn’t usually in the same social circles at the others. Everyone tends to blow up at him at some point or another even though he doesn’t typically notice it. Still, he has his own character traits that are pretty iffy like being a little too desperate to appear cool to the others. He loses his wallet pretty easily and has some dodgy stuff in there.

Finally we have Allison who loves to lie. She constantly does so and acts rather off throughout the film. She just doesn’t seem to know how to interact with the others and so she does a lot of weird stuff to stand out. Throughout the film she seems to avoid the spotlight, but does weird things to place herself in it. As one character points out, she just wants attention. Unfortunately, most of her scenes are pretty bad and her weirdness goes too far. Her romance plot is also pretty rushed.

The film gets a lot more wrong than it does right. The premise of the film is pretty interesting, but it has to be handled with care. There are so many good ways to handle it. Just have the characters not be as exaggeratedly bad and the movie would already be a lot better. I don’t think it needed to be quite as dark and dramatic as it was. Tone the film down to a PG and you’d probably be able to naturally get rid of most of its negatives.

Overall, The Breakfast Club is definitely not what I was expecting and unfortunately this is in a negative way. The film is fairly short, but it still manages to drag on at times. You just can’t go far with a bad cast and poor writing. Even if the core concept is good, that simply isn’t enough. If you want a better story about school situations then Saved By The Bell is something you’d want to check it out. As it stands, I definitely fall into the camp of those who think that this film has not aged well. You’ll want to avoid it at all costs.

Overall 2/10

The Indestructible Man Review

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It’s time to look at an old school monster type film. I’m not talking creatures here, but a human monster. It plays out pretty much like you would expect and is essentially like the Electric Monster film. My biggest complaint is really just the fact that they waste Lon Chaney here since you can barely even tell that it’s him with all the makeup effects. They may as well have gotten just about anybody. Chaney is at his best when he’s talking so why give him a role where he can’t speak?

The film starts off with Chasen narrating about how tough things were about to be. He’s a detective and as such he does a lot of monologue scenes. But lets not get ahead of ourselves. A criminal known as the Butcher has been caught at last and is about to die. Before he passes, one of his fellow crooks named Paul tries to get him to spill the beans about where the stolen money is. Butcher doesn’t reveal this, but he does say that he’ll come back from the dead to destroy Paul. Paul doesn’t believe the threats, but Butcher ends up coming back to life thanks to some electricity experiments from a pair of scientists. Now Butcher intends to murder Paul and two other crooks so that he can reclaim the money and his friend Eva. Well, he doesn’t know that they’re “just friends” Eva hasn’t told him that part yet. Chasen is put on the case to stop this guy, but what can he do against a bulletproof monster?

If you’ve seen enough creature features you can probably call this one beat for beat. It doesn’t try to do anything outside the box or anything like that. It just gives you exactly what you’re expecting. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but there’s not much to make this a memorable experience either. You could substitute the Butcher for Frankenstein and it wouldn’t make a difference. Still, Butcher’s a reasonably fun villain. I just wish he could talk since he made for a much more interesting villain before he died. If anything he ends up getting out shined by Paul in the present. Paul’s a quick thinker and has some good plans. For example, punching one of the police officers was smart since they had to arrest him for that. Honestly I wouldn’t trust them to keep me safe from the Butcher, but it beats wandering the streets right?

Thing is, Butcher isn’t particularly fast so whenever he catches someone it is only because that person tripped or boxed themselves in. He racks up an impressive body count so people tended to underestimate him. Even several cops were taken down which was a little surprising since usually the villain is taken down a little sooner than that. Trust me, you’ll be surprised at how many guys get bumped off by this character. I guess he earned the name.

As for our lead Chasen, he’s not terrible but he could be better. He’s very overconfident and while he is a good detective, his confidence isn’t always warranted. He takes forever to solve cases and only manages to clear this one because Butcher isn’t exactly subtle. He’s also very presumptuous as he gets Eva fired from her job before even telling her about this. He just assumes that she would want to marry him over keeping her job so naturally that would mean that he made the right call right? It’s the kind of scene that certainly wouldn’t happen nowadays, but in retro films like this one the romance was always super direct like this. They met and the next day it was time to be married. Naturally you can tell that this is not a romance plot I could get behind.

As for Eva, she didn’t seem like a great character. Everyone pushes her around and she may have been rather misleading with the Butcher. She actually left her envelope filled with possible riches in front of a super shady guy while she went off to do her performance. Keep in mind that the door is open so anyone could wander into her room at any time. As a result she doesn’t notice when the guy swiped her treasure map. She’s just not the smartest cookie around.

Meanwhile the police chief was pretty fun. Naturally he is a little out of his depth, but the guy does have good plans and is pretty reasonable. Most chiefs would have just told Chasen no dice as soon as he started talking, but this guy did hear him out which is a considerable improvement. In general the writing was pretty solid here. I’d give the pacing a thumbs up as well. The movie may not have particularly excelled in any areas, but it didn’t really make any mistakes either. The film is consistent and that is always a good skill to have.

Overall, The Indestructible Man is a solid film. It’s a classic monster story even if it never does try to be anything more than that. My main negative would still be the fact that Butcher just doesn’t look enough like Chaney. Imagine how much more humorous the film could be if you had Chaney chasing everyone with his classic monotone voice. It would have likely elevated this film quite a bit. If you haven’t seen the movie yet then I’d recommend changing that. If you’ve already seen a bunch of other films in this genre then there isn’t much of a rush though. It’s not as if this is a film that anyone will ever bring up in day to day life so you likely won’t get exposed for missing it.

Overall 7/10

Itachi’s Story: Daylight/Midnight Review

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It’s time to look art the two part Itachi adventure spread across these two novels. At this point you are likely familiar with Itachi’s story as it was explained around 10 times in the anime and is constantly brought up. These novels add more details to the period before Itachi actually ended up murdering his clan. This way you can better understand his rationale and what caused him to tip over the edge. How much you enjoy the novels will likely depend on if you can buy into any kind of justification for murdering a whole clan and as there is none it can get tricky. Prequels like this tend to suffer from one tricky element that is hard to get around. The ending is written in stone and can’t be changed so no matter how heroic the character tries to be, it is ultimately futile. I remember another prequel being like this, but I can’t recall which one.

Well, the novel starts with Itachi growing up. At first he is a kid who is forced to learn about the outside world and the brutal realities of the Ninja War. Eventually he grows to accept it, but decides that when he is strong he will be able to change the world. He’ll become Hokage and end all of this. In the mean time he has to be careful because the Uchiha clan want him to be a spy on the Hidden Leaf Village while the Anbu want him to spy on the Uchiha. He obtains a high ranking position among both groups. Both groups intend on murdering the other so Itachi is unsure what he can do. No matter what he will end up betraying somebody.

I’m quickly going to jump into the ending here because it’s really the main problem with this duology. Throughout both books Itachi is painted as being a very nice guy. He’s apparently quite the pacifist who even acts timid for quite a while. The only scenes where he becomes a lot harder and more out of control are the ones from the manga which have to be re-adapted. As such, the ending really comes out of nowhere. It never feels like the narrative was building up to Itachi murdering everyone until it happens. The justification for it is still as weak as it ever was. Danzo and his group are effectively blackmailing Itachi at the end, but why should he obey them?

Danzo ordered the execution of Itachi’s best friend and has been doing everything he can to ensure that the Uchiha clan would be destroyed. He eliminated the only option for peace by getting rid of Shinsui. Itachi even half heartedly tried to avenge his friend. Why go from there to suddenly agreeing with Danzo and murdering his family? The only reason for this is that it had to be that way. That’s how the story is supposed to end. It’s still the biggest problem with prequels like this. The story tries to have him save face by placing his friend in a genjutsu as he destroys her so she doesn’t feel like it, but that’s not even a silver lining. To ease his own conscience Itachi lets Madara destroy the women and children, but that is still as guilty as doing it yourself.

The ultimate rationale for this is that if Itachi didn’t wipe out the Uchiha then both sides would have had many casualties. While that seemed very likely if not inevitable, it’s still not a choice that he should have made. I also wouldn’t trust Sasuke’s safety with the village after this. Sure, he had their word, but what’s to stop Danzo from setting up another “accident?” Itachi could try to out him with his info, but that wouldn’t do much at that point. Clearly the best thing to do would have been to just make the situation known to everyone. A civil war would likely occur but at least some people would live rather than none. Of course the other villages may attack as well, but with this many ifs it isn’t as if there is an option that is risk free.

So the second volume definitely finishes the series off on a low note, but overall the duology is fairly well written. Itachi’s story makes for a pretty good parallel to Kakashi’s. Both of them are prodigies who quickly joined the Anbu and started to turn the tides of the war. The leaf village was really lucky to get so many highly skilled ninja at their disposal. I think the series is at its best when Itachi is on missions with the Anbu. I think focusing on that part is certainly best, but as I mentioned the rest of it is very interesting too. Just cut out the ending and then this story would be complete.

Danzo and his group are just very annoying. They get away with everything including literal murder. The Hokage is heavily implied to know what is going on, but simply doesn’t care enough to help. That’s why I never liked the Third Hokage and I was rooting for Sasuke to take down the village. The place is just so corrupt and everyone always seems to get away scott free. Even not arresting Orochimaru in the Boruto series is highly suspect at best. The guy is responsible for countless crimes, why are they being swept under the rug? These novels show just how shady the village is and why it’s hard to like any of those guys.

Naruto gets a cameo which was cool. Apparently Itachi was also able to be nice to him back in the day. Before he ended up snapping Itachi is shown to be one of the nicest guys around. He’s a genius while staying humble. If you don’t like it when a character gets too much hype then this could annoy you, but I’m fine with it. Some characters just are that perfect, it’s fine. It also does make for a very intimidating villain since it’s not as if Itachi lost those skills when he turned over to the other side. Given how Itachi’s mission was to look out for the Leaf though, I do think that hanging out with the Akatsuki was super risky at times though. It’s good to be close to the villains of course, but I feel like after a while Itachi’s goal shifted from protecting Sasuke and the village to purely be focused on Sasuke. Not a bad thing of course and the village doesn’t deserve his protection anyway, but time probably clouded his thinking.

Overall, The Itachi novels definitely add a lot of details to his sob story. Even though we’ve been through this many times in the show already, it definitely does add some insight that you couldn’t already know. How much that matters will depend on the person. I have to shave some points off for the terrible ending, but beyond that the books are solid and I’d recommend checking them out. Itachi may be gone in the present day stories, but his sacrifice did ultimately help Sasuke become one of the greatest Ninja out there. The village also seems to be in a better spot than it used to be so at least things won’t always be corrupt there. Naruto needs to keep everyone on a short leash and he has the power to do so. We better not get another Danzo type situation. With this one done I’ll start on the Sasuke novel soon. I expect that one will triumph. After all, Sasuke’s the main character!

Overall 5/10

Need For Speed Underground 2 Stats and Records

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Stats time!

Game Complete 70%
Bank 221,031
Race record 155-3
Circuit Wins 35
Sprint Wins 28
Drift Wins 25
Drag Wins 17
Street X Wins 26
URL Wins 24
Magazines Won 6/20
DVD Covers Won 10/10
Hidden Shops Found 18/18
Parts Unlocked 100%
Stage 1 Reputation 1,600
Stage 2 Reputation 5,100
Stage 3 Reputation 7,700
Stage 4 Reputation 12,500
Stage 5 Reputation 13,900

Need For Speed Underground 2 Review

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It’s time to look at a Need For Speed game that I’ve been working on buying for many years. I beat the first Underground a while back, but I just hadn’t gotten around to buying this one. Well, recently I bought around 6-7 games in the series so now I can go on a little roll. This game was incredibly long so clearing the story was a daunting task, but one that I was prepared for. It’s definitely a great racing game with content that will last you a long time.

The story starts out with a bang as your character is ambushed by someone and your car as well as all of your money is stolen. People don’t remember you without the car so now you’ll have to start from scratch. Fortunately, a rich lady appears and agrees to help you out in exchange for conquering the Underground circuit. You decide to do so with one motive at hand, you want to crush Caleb, the guy who stole your stuff. Can you make it to the top or will he sabotage you before then?

I do like how the game continues from the first with this intro. It’s even a good in universe reason to explain why you’re back at the bottom even if people forgetting your name is a bit of a stretch. Still, the actual premise beats the execution. There aren’t a whole lot of cutscenes in this game and it’s not like the main character ever even appears. The cutscenes are done in comic book format and use moving stills rather than animation. So, the games have some room for improvement in the story, but at least this one did have a real story. I’ll give the title some credit there.

The gameplay is certainly on point. It brings you back to the simpler days of racing as you just drive to the goal using your skills. Eventually you are given the option to add a booster, but that’s as far out as it’ll go. As I’ve mentioned in the past, having a booster isn’t bad. It’s still pure racing and there’s a reason why Need for Speed is so well known. The franchise is just really good at doing what it does best, getting you into the zone. You’ll be dominating the rest of the cars by the end of the game as you master the controls and keep on improving your car.

You better make sure your car is on point because there are over 200 races in the game and if you have to replay all of them a few times to win…then you’re going to be here for a long while. You can clear the game after around 150 races at least, but that’s still a lot. The game is around 20 hours long and 100% completing it will take significantly longer than that. To help ease the repetition you can also go to shops and spruce up your ride a bit. Switching up how it looks should help quite a bit in the long run since it’ll feel like you’re racing an entirely different vehicle.

One thing to watch out for is the game’s visual reputation gimmick. There are 5 stages in the game and to get to the next one you always have to increase your car’s star value. The max is 10 and you typically need to increase it by 2 for every stage. So if you have run out of levels on a stage that is probably why you haven’t been able to go forward yet. Speaking of which, there are several kinds of races. First are the standard Circuit ones. Just drive to the goal to win. Then you have the best ones which are Drift. Just keep on turning to wrack up points and you’ll usually win the races by a rather huge margin to be honest. Street X races are sort of like mini races. You have to out drive the other cars on a very narrow track. Drag races are the toughest ones as you have to manually switch gears at the perfect time to win. The best thing to do is leave these til the end where you can cheese them with your booster.

The races that advance the plot are the URL ones which are typically a series of 2-3 races. Once you beat them then you move on. I do think it’s a little annoying how the game makes the races so long by the end though. Some races can go on for 6-10 minutes straight so when you lose them you’ve just lost a lot of time. I think a good race should always be 3-4 minutes tops. If you get beyond that then the race is too long. It’s almost a case of having too much content, but it’s under the same logic of how save points should be frequent and easy to access.

The graphics definitely look very solid here. It was definitely an interesting move to have the whole game take place at night. Honestly by the end I was hoping for some daylight levels, but the screens still look good. The cars are quite sharp and I always like the boost effect. It’s safe to say that these areas hold up. Unfortunately the soundtrack does not. I ended up having to turn off most of the music themes in the game and the ones that I left on aren’t exactly great. It’s a very weak soundtrack which isn’t all that surprising as EA in general tends to overdo it with their selection. Still, you don’t hear the tunes quite as much when you’re playing Madden and in general I think that series was better at it.

Overall, Need For Speed Underground 2 is a great racing game. You really can’t ask for much more out of the genre. It’s got a story and over 200 races. There is also a multiplayer mode to have fun with. I see this as being the definitive Need For Speed title, but we’ll see if it can hold on to that. Next up is Most Wanted which seems to have a better story and it finally brings in the pursuit mechanics, but it may come at the expense of a multiplayer mode. Either way I’ll start on that one soon, but with Kingdom Hearts III coming out it may take a little longer to complete than I would have expected otherwise. If you haven’t played this game yet then you should change that. It’s definitely a title that you will want up your sleeve.

Overall 8/10

Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty’s Revenge Review

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I’m not too familiar with Banjo-Kazooie despite hearing the name a whole lot. The problem is that most of the games never came out for a console that I’ve owned. This is the first installment that I get to play. The lead duo seem fun enough and I’m always up for more platformers. I may have joined this franchise late, but better late than never right? It’s a fun title and one that you won’t want to miss on for the GBA. You don’t have to worry about playing previous games to understand what is going on here.

The plot starts with Gruntilda escaping her rocky grave to enact her revenge on Banjo and Kazooie. She succeeds in kidnapping Kazooie so now Banjo must do whatever he can to get his pal back. Fortunately his friends are around to give him useful tips and transformation techniques so he can succeed at this goal. Once the duo is together again, they vow to put an end to Gruntilda’s plans once and for all. Let the villains try to stop them, nobody can mess with their teamwork!!

The plot is fairly direct as you’d expect. There are 6 worlds and each one has a certain amount of objects to obtain. Grab enough and you can head to the next world. You’ll need 50/60 of them in order to fight the final boss so you can effectively skip a world if you collected them all. I don’t think it is possible to skip the entire world since some orbs can’t be obtained until after you get some other power ups but you can skip a reasonable chunk of them. Each world is connected through a door so by the end of the game the hub world is quite huge. You’ll probably get lost a few times, but eventually you’ll get the hang of it and then it’ll all be cake for you.

The levels use an overhead camera and you move as you would expect. You start the game only being able to jump and roll but by the end you can glide, use super jumps, and have an array of other abilities at your disposal. You better make sure your L and R buttons work well because if they’re damaged like mine then the latter levels could be a little tougher than you might expect. Always keep your guard up. None of the levels feel cheesy and there aren’t any bugs that I came across so the game is designed well.

Graphically the game has aged quite well. The character models are on point and the level layouts are nice. There isn’t much to say about the soundtrack, but the themes aren’t bad. On a technical level the game succeeds. I also naturally have to mention that the sound effects used for whenever a character would talk are naturally a blast as well. It reminds me of Yooka Laylee which is likely a homage to this title. Everyone sounds like they’re gargling under water and over the top effects like that are always fun. The only area where the game does get a bit iffy with the replay value though. You’ll be able to easily 100% the game in under 10 hours. At that point there won’t be anything more to do. Still, it’s a fun play through and if anyone ever asks you what a platformer is you can redirect them to this game. It contains everything you would expect to be in a title of this genre. It’s a solid all around title.

I also appreciate how Banjo and Kazzoie both have unique personalities. It feels like some platforming protagonists don’t have a whole lot to say or express during the game. These guys are not like that. Kazooie is the kind of guy who is constantly throwing insults around and he keeps everyone on edge. While getting kidnapped may prevent you from taking his tough talk seriously, it’s always good to have a character like that. Without him the villains would probably walk all over Banjo. In comparison, Banjo’s a very nice guy who is always doing his best. He stays polite through it all and I suppose that this is admirable although he isn’t nearly as much fun as Kazooie.

Aside from the main platforming levels you also have a few minigames which are always fun. One of them is a fishing game where you have to reel in some fish. The timing of it can definitely get tricky and you’ll need to grab a lot of them but it’s a satisfying side mission to grab your attention. Then you also have the slides, there seems to be 1 per world. These are easy but also a nice detour as you try to grab a lot of energy pieces. I’d be game for more little side events like that.

As for the villains, we have two of them in this title. The main villain is Gruntilda who is a witch with a lot of hype. She seems reasonably tough and I do like her confidence. She is a lot better than her sidekick who is a very smart King K Rool type foe, but one who doesn’t command her level of respect. I can see them returning for most if not all of the games in the series.

Overall, Banjo-Kazooie is a fun game. I can see why the series was well liked in the past. The levels are well designed and the gameplay is pretty smooth. It has some unique gimmicks to complement the adventure and you’ll get to use all of your skills as the game goes on. It’s a little on the short side, but I imagine that the main games would have had a lot more content to wrap things up. If you get this game for a good price then it’s certainly worth it. I don’t think this series will be ready for the big hitters quite yet, but I look forward to a modern remake some day.

Overall 7/10

Number One Review

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It’s time to look at a film with an unlikable lead. It’s a shame that the film is inclined to spend more time on the drama than the actual Football plot. Had it been the other way around then I think this title could have had some real promise. After all, who doesn’t want to enjoy seeing the Saints win a Super Bowl? There aren’t exactly a whole lot of football films after all so this is just wasting a slot. Unfortunately there isn’t much to like in this film.

The main character is a guy named Cat. He’s a washed up old quarterback who used to be good, but isn’t anymore. He doesn’t have the healthy diet that Brady possesses, nor does he have the integrity to try and improve his game. As a result, instead of heading to yet another Super Bowl he can’t seem to beat anyone. Cat decides to take his frustrations out on the backup quarterback and also starts cheating on his wife. Cat is determined to see how far he can push everyone until they push back. Well…he may just get his wish when the Cowboys roll into town. Jerry Jones and his team aren’t about to allow any of this foolishness so Cat needs to get his head in the game or it could be curtains for him.

From the start you get the feeling that this film isn’t going to be particularly good since Cat is just never on the up and up. The party scene where he gets tempted to cheat is very early on. Unlike some protagonists who will at least pretend to restrain themselves Cat is the one flirting from the start. He’s just a distasteful character who wrecks everyone’s lives. Even the person he went on the rebound with is quickly ditched as Cat won’t stay with anyone for long. He also tries to mess things up at his wife’s job since he begins to become jealous of her success as well.

The guy is very stubborn and the problem is that he doesn’t want to work on improving his skills either. This leads to a dilemma as you can’t get better without practice and Cat refuses to put in the work. There’s no way that I can be sympathetic to a character like that. It’s simply not happening. The worst scene in the film is certainly when Cat breaks all of his wife’s projects and gets away with a whole lot. The wife probably should have just left by that point. He’s clearly insane.

What is just as bad as this lead is the fact that everyone just puts up with it. The coach tells Cat that he believes in him, but there’s no reason that he should. He should simply bench him and have the backup play. Why let this Quarterback undermine you at every turn and continue to play? It just doesn’t make any kind of sense to me. The coach tries to justify this by saying that the backup isn’t ready but it should beat the alternative. It also shouldn’t have come to this.

During the film we get a lot of flashbacks about how good Cat was when he first started. That’s fine and all, but in literally the first play of his career as a starter he ignores the coach and changes up the play so he can do whatever he wants. He even insults his fellow players and threatens them. Why would the coach allow that at the start? There’s no reason to allow for that to a rookie. The whole film just never feels realistic and without anyone to root for the whole movie suffers.

Naturally most of his teammates fled the league to get high paying jobs which is a good move. At least they weren’t going to just stand around and get insulted the whole time. Of course one of them ends up being pretty iffy and hosts dodgy parties as this kind of film can’t resist scenes like that. In case you couldn’t guess the romance here is also pretty terrible as well. With sub-par writing at work this was basically unavoidable though. The film isn’t too long so at least it doesn’t drag as much as it could have, but that’s barely even a silver lining at this point.

It’s also hard to know where to start when talking about how to fix the film. You’d pretty much have to redo it from the ground up and by that point I always wonder whether that even counts as fixing it. It’s just a totally different experience in a case like this. Still, the first thing you’d have to do is bring in a completely different main character. That could help I suppose and then give the actual football games more screen time. Follow those two key elements and you can probably salvage this film, but it’ll be tough.

Overall, Number One is a film that I highly recommend avoiding. It’s a terrible football movie and the main reason for that is due to the sport not playing a big focus at all. It’s all just about how bad Cat has become over the years and even the plot is ruined when we find out via flashbacks that he’s always been a nasty character. The film can’t even keep its own plot straight. Naturally you’ll be rooting for the Cowboys to win the final game. America’s Team can’t lose and at least they brought the film to a quick end.

Overall 2/10

Christopher Robin Review

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It’s time to look at this recent Winnie The Pooh spinoff that came out in theaters. It’s the kind of film where the trailer doesn’t really speak to you as it’s more of a subdued experience. Still, films like this can be fairly emotional if handled right and that’s certainly what you expect to see. This ends up being a good film. Christopher is definitely really annoying though, but the rest of the cast are able to hold their own as they remind him what it means to be a quality character.

The film starts off with a bit of a montage showing Christopher growing up. He used to hang out at 100 Acres with the rest of the animals, but as he grew up he started to forget the place. By the time he was a grown up he convinced himself that they weren’t real and he had simply been imagining them. (That must have taken a lot of self-brain washing tbh) He is now working at a classic 9-5 job where the company is going under. His boss instructs him to fire a lot of his colleagues in order to keep the company afloat. The problem is that this will require him to work the weekend when he had planned to spend it with his family. He also isn’t thrilled about firing everybody, but is ready to make the hard calls if necessary. Will he ultimately choose the job over his family?

It appears so. Fortunately, Pooh is coming home to get Christopher. See, at 100 Acres all of his friends have vanished. He needs Christopher to find them, but the journey will be tougher than he thought possible since Chris has renounced his ties to his friends. Gone is the nice kid who would help out all the time. All that remains is a shell of his former self, a man who is stuck being the Yes Man at his company. Pooh’s going to have to try and teach him what it means to be a good friend.

Well, you can tell that I didn’t like Chris. He’s just really mean to everyone the whole film. The worst part is that he plays the victim card the whole time. He acts like he’s doing this for everyone else when that isn’t the case. One example of this is how he wants to send Madeline to boarding school despite his wife Evelyn pointing out that this will not be for the best. Chris likes the idea since he was sent to boarding school, but look at how he turned out from there? Then he doesn’t stand up to his boss at all and doesn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the shed. Christopher’s character arc is pretty obvious from the start. You know that he will ultimately see the light so the thing to look for in this kind of arc is how bad the character gets before he starts to turn things around.

Some characters manage to not fall too far down the rabbit hole in the mean time while others really go over the bend. Unfortunately, Christopher is the latter case. It’s impossible to sympathize with the guy since all of his troubles are of his own making. Lets take the weekend trip. Sure, this is important so maybe Christopher should be at the meeting. Well, he still could have gone to the summer house for the first day since the meeting wasn’t til the next day. He could play with Madeline and Evelyn at that point and then work through the night before driving back. Sure, he’ll be sleep deprived, but that’s the kind of sacrifice he should be able/willing to make in order to please his family. What’s a few sleepless nights if it’ll calm down the household?

Throughout the film Christopher acts like he has no choice when there are so many easy ones. Closing the door when the others are trying to dance was also pretty rude. He puts his job ahead of his family with the justification that it’ll make things better once they’re old, but that’s no good. You gotta live life to the fullest now and don’t worry about the future like that. Once you’re old you won’t be able to enjoy things quite as much as you could back in the day anyway so the logic is just backwards. As long as your situation is livable then you’re fine.

Meanwhile, Evelyn and Madeline were all right. They were fairly reasonable characters and were at least here to help guilt trip Chris through his character arc. Without them around his arc wouldn’t really have much of a purpose so they’re definitely necessary. I’m glad they did get to see some action towards the climax of the film at least. If we ever get a sequel where the characters have to fight monsters in 100 Acres I definitely expect them to participate.

As for Pooh and his friends, they were pretty solid as well. Pooh may not be the smartest bear in the bunch, but the guy has heart. Plus, technically none of the animals are all that smart so it’s not like Pooh gets out shined by the others there. None of them are able to come to terms with the fact that they are not supposed to know how to talk in the human world. He does what he can to help instill life lessons in his friends. The voice is also iconic. Then we’ve got his friends who are all nice enough. The best one is the donkey-like creature who is always being a downer. His lines are all pretty genuine and you can’t help but feel bad for the guy. Aside from Pooh I think it’s safe to say that he got the biggest role from all of the stuffed animal creatures.

I’d say that this film shines in its ability to avoid the negatives. There isn’t really much wrong with the film. The pacing is pretty good and the plot’s interesting. Those are the two fundamentals you need for a good film so I could definitely recommend this one. Pretty much anyone could watch this film and have a good time of it. Once in a while you may get a scene that’s a little too silly to take seriously like Christopher fighting off invisible opponents, but for the most part the movie takes itself seriously. You will feel bad for Christopher’s house by the time Pooh is done with it though.

Overall, Christopher Robin was a fun film. The lead did his best to drag it down, but the other characters remained. I do have to say that I was surprised we didn’t really get closure with the neighbor who wanted to play cards. Admittedly that guy did seem a bit iffy, but if Chris had expressed interest in playing in the first place then he was leading the guy on. He should have given a firm “No” and that would have been the end of that. Maybe in a sequel the guy would appear and now they would get along better since Chris is a changed man. If you haven’t seen this film yet and are looking for an emotional experience then I’d recommend checking this one out. You won’t look at Pooh the same way again.

Overall 6/10

Batman Ninja Review

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Time to look at one of the strangest Batman films to date. This one goes for a very different look and even takes place in a different era than where Batman usually is. It’s a fun enough film, I think parts of it end up feeling more experimental than fixed, but it has potential. Either way it’s a fun way to spend 90 minutes and I’d be game for a sequel.

The film starts with Batman trying to stop Gorilla Grodd’s latest invention. It’s a time machine that he is planning to use to rule the Earth across all of its different eras. Batman blows it up, but this has the unintended effect of bringing him and everyone who was in range of the device into Feudal Japan. He is now in the Sengoku period and each of Batman’s enemies have commanded one of the territories. Joker naturally owns the biggest one. Batman will have to quickly get used to this period and make arrangements with local armies to fight back. He may even have to team up with Grodd, but can the ape be trusted?

After that beginning the film does play out a little differently than I thought it would. I got the feeling that Batman was going to have to unite Japan and take out all of the villains. Of course, maybe it’s for the best that it didn’t go that way since each fight would have been really rushed. I’m ultimately pretty glad that Batman just ignored everyone else and ran to where Joker was. His Batmobile looks better than usual here as it has multiple vehicles built inside. It was too bad when they were ultimately broken.

In general Batman looks pretty good here. I’m still not crazy about his design, but personality wise he basically made all of the right choices. Even if if the hostage was almost definitely fake and just Harley in disguise, that’s not a risk that Batman can simply make. In hand to hand he was doing quite good as well and his plans were on point. Even his quick period of self doubt was shorter than most as he quickly got back on the saddle. That’s definitely what I like to see from our lead.

His array of Robins also show up and were fairly helpful I suppose. As always, Red Hood was definitely the most violent and intense of the bunch though. He was really willing to take Joker and Harley down for the count. Batman’s not up for murder like that so I feel like if that happened in the present he would have probably tried to arrest Jason. This just wasn’t a good time to do so. Catwoman looks all right as well. As always she basically plays the field until one side has the edge and then she makes her move. Things worked out pretty well for her so the plan was definitely her best option.

There’s not much to talk about for the soundtrack but how about the animation? Well, for the most part it looks good. The character models are very detailed and there’s a high tech feel to the whole thing. While the fights can be a little blocky at times it doesn’t take away from the nice choreography. On the other hand, we do get one stretch of time for the farmer scenes where the budget completely dies out. I didn’t mind the video game type cutscenes when Batman says that he’ll have to do things like Feudal Japan civilians would as it’s a bit of a throwback. This artistic fadeaway style is something else though. The scenes just don’t look good and you start to feel like the budget is drying up real quick. Fortunately these are quick scenes though.

There’s a lot of action to be found here. As soon as one fight scene ends you can bet that a new one is about to start up. There is rarely a few scenes in a row where nothing much is happening. With the short length this is basically a must so I’m glad that the film handled this well. You can feel a good amount of power behind each of Batman’s blows which is always important. He strikes with minimal movement as each blow is very precise. The film does a good job of getting that across.

As for the villains, Joker is certainly the main one here. His voice will take some getting used to, but the character definitely gets a lot of respect here. He actually has Batman on the defensive a few times which is more than most villains can say. He actually looks really good during combat which is always nice to see. Grodd also looks pretty solid here even if he isn’t quite as impressive. He’s also a strategic mastermind in his own right so he shouldn’t be underestimated.

The other villains don’t get a huge role though. It’s pretty much unavoidable, but that’s why this concept could have really worked for a full TV season or something like that. Having Batman tackle all of the districts would be pretty cool. Aw well, either way we did get a bunch of giant robots for some fights so that was pretty neat. Then the quick Bane vs Batman scuffle was also pretty intense. It’s always nice to see Batman bringing out a whole lot of tech like this. He’s a genius and with prep time you’d expect him to have a lot of tools at his disposal.

We have to quickly talk about the ending though. It’s basically there for cool points, but makes no sense otherwise. So Batman…the guy who is always trying to hide his secret identity has decided that he’s had enough of that. He gets into a horse driven carriage that has Bat emblems all over it. Why would he draw attention to himself like that? It’s a moment that just feels really forced and I had to bring that up. Not a bad ending I guess, but in universe it just makes no sense.

Overall, Batman Ninja is definitely a fun film. It brings that proper blend of being a super hero film along with some anime inspirations. The fights are good and there’s not much bad to say about the film. The animation could certainly be more refined and the character designs need some work, but as long as you remember this is an AU then that doesn’t even matter quite as much. If you haven’t checked this film out yet then I would recommend changing that. It certainly has a good amount of enjoyment to offer you.

Overall 7/10