AtxAxLoss Review: Waking Life.

Director:
Richard Linklater
Starring:
Wiley Wiggins
Robert C. Solomon
Ethan Hawke
Julie Delpy
A bunch of really fucked up drawings
And Bill Wise as Boat Car Guy


I'd popped it in after I finished watching Fight Club for the first time in years. I was surprised to see I still loved Fight Club after all those rewatches and all that time. It seemed occasionally pretentious, but that didn't get in the way of it being a genuinely great movie. One small annoyance I perceived while watching it was that some lines, particularly the narrated ones, gave you the sense that while they were being written, the writer — in true writer fashion — thought them at least momentarily to be the most profound and original things ever uttered in the history of mankind. But being a particularly well written movie, I could overlook that. Little did I know when I threw Waking Life on, those lines would account for every character, every unprovoked speech, and every bit of dialogue in the fucking movie.


Maybe I lack the requisite Master's degree in Spare Time Pseudo-intellectual Dickery, but most of what any given character had to say was 10% idea and 90% bullshit and glitter. Even the ideas were nothing I haven't heard before. Nevertheless, everyone would passionately spout off their practiced soliloquies with the comfortably albeit misguided assurance that anyone around them gives a fuck. I'll be the first to say that there's probably some great, wonderful intended meaning in the mix of it all, but hell if the movie makes finding it even a remotely promising pursuit. By the time the fourth nutbag bleeds out every semblance of a thought he's ever had like he's got an undying desperation to make the most out of their Bachelor's in philosophy, the film is long past the point of evidencing any interest in engaging the viewer, apparently opting instead to beat the stupid out of him with its mighty pseudo-intellectual dick.


If I'd known what was ahead of me, I would've saved myself a few hours, injected some LSD, threw Richard Linklater's iPod on shuffle, smacked myself in the face with a modern art textbook, and staggered half-lucid into a Philosophy 101 class.


Two Thumbs Up

Take two.

I've decided to give this blog thing another go. I continually neglected my blogsite for ages, solely on the basis that I never felt like doing a formal review apart from that one time where I actually did. So I've decided to loosen up, and broaden my range to include video games, music, food, my day, shit in the mail. Whatever I feel like. Whatever it takes to endow the public with my charming wit and personality.

AtxAxLoss Review: Towards the end of Metal Gear Solid 1.

Is it just me, or does the gameplay of Metal Gear Solid 1 decline seriously toward the end?


Don't get me wrong. On the whole, the game was an amazing and innovative feat in both gameplay and storyline. It built the foundation for the entire series, which I happen to adore. But after replaying MGS1 for the umpteenth time, I realized I stop enjoying it right after the last Sniper Wolf fight.


I know a good deal of it has to do with the fact I'm replaying it. I fully appreciate the whole shape memory alloy thing, because the sheer annoyance of it really enhances the subsequent plot twist. God knows it needed it, because it was kind of ridiculous. Overall, I thought that segment overall was well done, but it's expectedly tedious on replays. But it's the parts afterward that really fillet my mignon.


The Metal Gear Rex battle irritates me a little. Granted, a lot of my frustration came from when I admittedly stupidly forgot that you can use the chaff grenades to disable the homing missiles in the first segment, but I thought there were some valid flaws. The fact that the whole level was a nigh incoherent blue blob didn't help any. When you ran into the higher parts of the screen and the camera pans up, it's really annoying to have to pick up on this wandering pink polygon of Snake's face to know where you are. Plus the Stinger apparently decided that locking on was for ninnies and communists, so I was shooting by approximation for most of the battle.


But I can live with that. It's a towering mass of sci-fi metallic death against a barely agile little man. It's not supposed to be easy. What really gets to me is the fist fight with Liquid on the Metal Gear.


The fact that the climax of the action is based on a somewhat weak and otherwise minor function of the game (ie. the hand-to-hand combat system) wasn't great form, and it evidences itself in the battle. There's something a little comical about watching two grown polygon men battle shirtless on the ruins of a Metal Gear skilled in the lost art of Punch-Punch-Kick kata. It takes away from the experience. And it slips into some well-worn game cliches, like Blinking Bad Guy syndrome, a staple in video game physics and evildoer anatomy and physiology. I can let it go sometimes, but part of the challenge hinges on a part where Liquid starts blinking a little earlier on in your Punch-Punch-Kick and hits you mid kick if you don't break and run off. The game changes its own made up natural laws midbattle. I thought it was a shallow move for a game that had earlier on been much more inventive and satisfying with its challenges, all the while still being difficult. Add to that the fact that Liquid has the endemic Bad Guy compulsion to interject his repetitive and nonsensical babblings into the battle ("You're out of time!" when you clearly have 1:30 left to kick his ass) and you got yourself an annoying finish to the game.


I won't even get into the driving sequence. Suffice it to say that it's really a let down to see an antagonist who lived through a helicopter crash, repeated missile shots to the face, a hundred or so foot fall, numerous machine gun wounds, and a serious car accident die from unrelated causes. And I really wonder why they stationed these supermen who can take rounds of machine gun ammo and still stand in the outskirts of fucking nowhere so they can sit and scratch their genetically modified balls.


Two Thumbs Up

Best movie ever? The answer is simple.

YOJIMBO

Director:
Akira Kurosawa
Starring:
Toshiro Mifune
Tatsuya Nakadai
Takashi Shimura


Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, the film which spawned the iconic Fistful of Dollars as well as a number of other works, contains everything a great film should have. It can be viewed and enjoyed on a completely aesthetic level, but it is at heart a true example of great filmmaking, showcasing one of the best of many collaborations of legendary talents Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune in their prime. And though its story was told and re-told across years and continents, its wit and attitude remain distinct to this day — truly a testament to the film's timeless qualities.

The film, set in 1860 after the fall of the Tokugawa dynasty, follows a nameless ronin who goes by the self-given name Sanjuro (Roughly translated as "fourty-ish.") He wanders into a gang-run town and decides to make a living by killing in a town full of people who need killing. And he is the perfect man for the job, given his extreme skills, appropriate for a story unabashedly told in terms of extreme good and extreme evil.

Mifune's Sanjuro enters the film with just as much presence as when he leaves it and never loses it for a moment, communicating the character's unusual personality even with his back turned to us. Smoothly making the transitions between laid-back disinterest and barbaric intensity, Mifune demonstrates his versatility, creating his character with minimalist chin brushes and squints to counterbalance his trademark throaty growl. It's his small quirks, his graceful gracelessness that distinguishes Sanjuro from the many action heroes of today. His charm, unlike that of so many imitators, isn't buried below the film's body count, and is instrumental in the film's tounge-in-cheek mood.

Shot by Rashomon cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, the film visually and thematically recalls the John Ford westerns which Kurosawa cites as one of his great influences as a filmmaker. The isolated feudal Japanese town plays to the established connotations of the untamed west. However, the artistry with which all the actions on screen are handled is all Kurosawa. Every frame is composed as if it were a painting, making what other directors would address as simple movements as walking down stairs or a chaotic sword fight into visual artistry.

As was what seemed to be the theme of Kurosawa's career, humanism and the power of the individual in a world of overpowering evil are central to the situation that plays out in Yojimbo. In a quote taken from the 1999 book The Films of Akira Kurosawa by Donald Richie and repeated in the booklet included in the recent Criterion re-release of the DVD, Kurosawa says "I've always wanted to somehow or other stop these senseless battles of bad against bad, but we're all more or less weak — I've never been able to. And that is why the hero of this picture is different from us. He is able to stand squarely in the middle and stop the fight. And it is — him — that I thought of first. That was the beginning of the film in my mind." What Yojimbo represents to Kurosawa is a world where conflict is erased by an idealization of a power that can make the world quiet and peaceful again, like rain to a drought. It's utter fantasy, but a fantasy in the hands of a master auteur like Akira Kurosawa is just the right material for a masterpiece.


Five Thumbs Up