Film Review #36: The Final Cut (DM Show) Preview

     It's the end of the year, and what better way to wrap it up by reviewing the preview of our upcoming show? And what incredible stuff there was. From the awesome visual effect heavy bumpers, to Ingemar's absolutely AWESOME animation, to funny videos like James' Invadepurrs, and Schorl's tense Hooked. It's really great to see all these things wrapped up and completed, but also a bit weird. It's over. This is kind of an unusual review, blame the fact that I was editing three different videos for the Earth Science final. I'm really excited to see all of our awesome films on the big screen in full HD. It's been a great (half) year for me at Digital Media.

Film Review #35 - Telltale's The Wolf Among Us (Episodes 1-3)

     Oh boy, Telltale just loves to show off how good they are at making gripping story focused video games. The Wolf Among Us is based of the comic series Fables, in which fairy tale and folklore characters, who refer to themselves as Fables, have fled the Homelands and formed a clandestine community in our world, in New York City. The game takes place before the events in the comics, where we play as Bigby Wolf, the Big Bad Wolf himself, as he tries to solve an unfathomable crime: the murder of a Fable. The story so far has been an incredible ride, with twists and turns and tense moments. It's similar to Telltale's The Walking Dead in the sense that you select what the character will say and you get to make choices, but it feels different. Maybe it's the atmosphere, an incredible atmosphere by the way. The art style is the same, but their use of shadows and colors remind me of a noir film. The soundtrack also heavily reinforces that feeling. A welcome improvement to the formula is the combat. In The Wolf Among Us, combat scenarios feel a lot more engaging and offer you more control over what happens. You click a directional key when prompted to avoid an attack for example, and in general everything is more fast paced and feels more fluid. It's definitely very satisfying. Now I can't say what's going to happen in "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" and in "Cry Wolf", the two remaining episodes, but what they've set up in Episode 3 "A Crooked Mile" and how they ended it makes me very excited to see the conclusion.

Film Review #34 - Telltale's The Walking Dead Game: Season 1

     Telltale's The Walking Dead Game Season 1 is definitely one of the best examples of how games and interactive media can benefit storytelling. Based off Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comics, the game stars Lee Everett, a man on the way to prison for murder. When the zombie apocalypse hits he meets Clementine, a young girl who comes along with him as they try to survive in this awful new world. The game is divided in 5 episodes, with one downloadable bonus episode (but doesn't have the same characters as the main story), and is one hell of an emotional roller coaster. A big part of that is achieved through the interactivity that you get with a video game. You're actually selecting what you want to say to people. You're fighting through the "walkers" (aka Zombies) and you're literally making your character run to help a person in danger. It makes the connection to the story and the characters even more effective. This being a point-and-click adventure game means that it doesn't have to focus on gameplay that much and more on the writing, which is good but can get a bit boring to play at times. For 25 dollars the game is a steal though, it'll make you laugh, cry, and horrify you, but the experience will be memorable. It's so good that they managed to get deals to make a Game of Thrones game, a Borderlands game, and are currently doing The Wolf Among Us (based on the Fables comics) and The Walking Dead Game Season 2. I'm looking forward to playing all of these.

Film Review #33 - The Amazing Spider-Man 2

     Spider-Man, Spider-Man, radioactive Spider-Man... The Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes two years after a reboot that received mixed reception. The sequel goes for a bigger and better approach, and mostly succeeds at it: Andrew Garfield's performance as Peter Parker/Spider-Man is great and closely resembles the web crawler from the comics, and his chemistry with Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy are the highlights of the film. I thought they managed the time distribution for the three villains fairly well, though I felt that the Green Goblin was shoehorned in for the climax of the film (an incredible, and emotional climax that was probably one of the best scenes in the film franchise so far). The movie was obviously trying to cram in a lot of different plot lines to set up future movies, especially  the Sinister Six movie coming up soon, but overall it made good use of it's near 3 hour runtime. I'm really excited to see what Sony has next for the future of this franchise.

Final Film Idea

I'm thinking about a short film about what it means to be human, or inspiration. Narrated over shots of main character doing things that relate to the narration. Opening shot would be a close up of an apple being thrown into the air and fall back into the MC's hand as the title of the movie fades in. I want night time balcony shots with city lights, shots of MC doing stuff in town, walking in the forest, playing video games, etc... Shot with heart shaped paper that's been torn and crumpled in focus, with MC walking away in the background, unfocused (narration about moving on and using those experiences as lessons).

Film Review #32 - The Wolf of Wall Street

     The Wolf of Wall Street. I don't know what I was expecting going in. Crazy stuff sure, but to this extent? Hell no. And I LOVED it. Leonardo DiCaprio kills it as Jordan Belfort, and his journey from struggling middle-class worker to "The Wolf of Wall Street" is engaging, laugh out loud funny at times, but also oftentimes dramatic. An interesting technique used in the film is when Jordan talks directly to the camera, explaining to us what's going to happen next (before cutting himself short, saying 'but no one gives a shit about that, the point is...'). Breaking the fourth wall is a bold move, but it works great in this movie. The shots are beautiful, the editing is great, the performances from the multiple different actors are amazing... There's just a lot to say about Martin Scorsese's talents as a director. I wasn't bored for one minute during the 3 hours (!) run time. I highly recommend the movie.

Film Review #31 - Captain America: The Winter Soldier

     After a bit disappointing Thor sequel, Captain America makes his return on the big screen in the post Avengers era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in The Winter Soldier, which is one of Marvel's best films to date. Now I haven't seen The First Avenger, but The Winter Solider is more of a standalone film, with the references being explained through flashbacks. The story itself is insane, and in a good way. The risks it takes with the MCU is surprising, and the events will surely have dramatic consequences on the future Marvel movies (in fact it's already affected ABC's Agents of SHIELD, a TV show based in the same universe). It's gripping, exciting, and well written, and allows for some fantastic set pieces visually impressive moments. A minor gripe I have is that the actual "Winter Solider" isn't really present in the movie that much. He shows up, causes trouble, and leaves. Rinse and repeat. It's only after his identity is revealed that he appears more often, but he's still not involved enough in the plot for the movie to be subtitled after him.
     I don't know how Marvel's going to top this one off. They've got plenty in store - plans for movies up to 2020 if I remember correctly - but I hope it's as good or better than this. I'm definitely excited for the future of these movies.