The A-Team

Hollywood does love its remakes, doesn't it? Old movies, new movies, books, and TV shows are all fodder. And remakes often suck. BUT NOT THIS ONE! Heck yeah! This was a completely awesome movie. If you haven't seen it, go. Grab a bunch of friends and have a great time.

Oh fine, if you want to know why it's so awesome, read on.

Zombieland

I wanted to like this movie. I really did. I loved Shaun of the Dead. I figured that "zombie" + "comedy" was a formula that really couldn't be screwed up. Well, I was right. Just turns out they forgot the comedy. Okay, to be fair, there is comedy here, it's just not my kind of comedy, apparently. Nearly every single time I chuckled during this movie was at the stupidity. I even watched this a second time. My initial reaction was that this was the worst movie I'd seen in ages. I've backed off from that, but I think it's still pretty bad.

Bloodsport

I love the bargains section of DVD stores. I managed to pick up Bloodsport for $6. This isn't the first Jean Claude Van Damme movie I've talked about (Universal Soldier and Street Fighter being the others), but this is the best. Even the first few minutes are just guys being awesome at martial arts and fighting. One guy breaks ice blocks, another guy jumps up a tree and breaks coconuts with a karate chop. The basic set up of the plot is JCVD is Frank Dux (pronounced Dukes, not Ducks. I'm not sure why it's pronounced that way, nor why they went with that spelling. I guess it's JCVD's thing.), an American soldier who goes on leave to participate in the Kumite for the honour of Tanaka, the guy who taught him martial arts, since Tanaka's son died. That's told in about the first 10 minutes of the film, followed by a  training montage.

Now, here's the catch for the rest of this review: I'm going to be watching it as I'm typing this up. I'm going to stay away from intentional plot spoilers, and just record my impressions with time codes. I haven't seen this movie since about 1990, so this should be interesting...

Alpha Protocol or: How to Abuse Stealth Mechanics

Alpha Protocol (An Espionage RPG) is a new game by Oblivion. Oblivion carries a lot of baggage with them. They're notorious for making buggy sequels to excellent games. Alpha Protocol, however, is new ground. How do they do when they're not working with something someone else created? Well, pretty good, actually. It's far from perfect, but it's a solid game. I'll discuss it in more detail mechanics-wise, but I'm not going to give any plot spoilers.