Frozen (Film) - Review

I was taken by surprise at the decent acclaim that Tangled garnered, and so too was I taken aback by the response to Frozen. The trailers make Frozen out to be nothing too special, but that isn't the case. This is a special movie that will almost certainly go down in history as another Disney classic. With Frozen, Disney has crafted a self-aware, forward-thinking, and also very enjoyable film.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Video Game) - Review

When The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds was first announced, many reactions were quite skeptical, including mine. A handheld, button-controlled, top-down Zelda instantly sounded like a good idea to me, but I was unsure about its decision to harken back to A Link to the Past as strongly as it seemed to be. As more information about the game creeped out, I continued to fear that the game would be overly dependent on the past. The game is out, and sure, I wish it didn't borrow as much from A Link to the Past as it does, but that doesn't come close to stopping it from being the absolutely fantastic and innovative game in the series that it is. 

Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai (3DS) - Review

2010's Jett Rocket went under the radar when it released on the WiiWare service from Shin'en, but it did receive positive reviews. It was a 3D platformer that sparked comparisons to Super Mario Galaxy, despite it not including any gravity-based gimmickry.  I never got to play this game even though it always interested me, so when I saw its sequel, dawning the quirky subtitle The Wrath of Taikai, while randomly deciding to browsing the 3DS's eShop, I decided to give the 3D trailer a watch. The trailer very much impressed me, so I went ahead and bought the game that day and was overall pleased with what I played. Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai is a good little game.

"Ramona" - Fiction

I'm in Creative Writing this year, in high school. Like the last time I was in the class, two years ago, the first grading period has you writing a multiple-assignment story about one character. Five assignments: one character biography and four stories. Think of each assignment as a chapter. 

That's all done now. I threw together my assignments and edited them some. I think this is pretty alright. Please enjoy.

Rayman Legends (Video Game) - Review

2D platforming is such a simple genre and one so full of games, that I sometimes worry we'll eventually reach a time when the genre as a whole grows stale. After each time I play one, I get more and more concerned that developers will just run out of ideas. Rayman Legends is the kind of game that restores my faith, but with some strings attached. Rayman Legends is a great game rife  with clever design and superb aesthetics, even though it left me without a proper sense of satisfaction after the credits rolled.

Rayman Legends is a joy to play. The controls and physics are very solid, meaning that the inputs are merely an expression of your skill. There are some hairs to split, like wall-running getting a bit disorienting in terms of which direction to move the stick/d-pad, but overall, again, very solid overall. The level design is truly remarkable. Most levels are designed to be ran through quickly in a sort of rhythm. This makes things exciting and fast-paced, even though technically only some levels actually force you to maneuver quickly. Throughout the duration of the game's main five worlds, original concepts are sprinkled into the bowl. The best example is the stealth portion that is mixed with swimming, which offers a pretty unique experience. It's also the little things that really stick out, like the cleverly-placed hidden collectibles. 

Rayman Origins got the attention it did thanks in large part to its gorgeous visuals, and the ante has only been upped in Legends. This game is beautiful, with intricate and fun animation and bucket loads of color. The music is also quite good here, offering enjoyable tunes that both enhance the feeling of playing and are good in their own right. The aesthetics are remarkable.

Each world ends with a boss and then a music level as a bit of a reward, essentially. The bosses are polygon-based 3D, which is a cool way to contrast them off of the rest of the graphics. Taking down the bosses is good, patterned-based fun, even though none of them are particularly anything to write home about. The music levels are definitely cool, offering a really entertaining mixture of level design and music to enjoy, but they are somewhat lazily put-together. Gameplay footage makes it seem like these are interactive-rhythm segments, but they're actually a fake version of that, as your interaction doesn't create the music, it just goes along with static music in the background. A string of lums (coins) is set to a series of guitar strings, for example, but if you don't collect the lums, the guitar strums still happen. I did enjoy these, even though they don't involve the player in a way that makes game like the Bit.Trip series so neat.

The big disappointment here, though, is just that the main game ends abruptly, leaving me still wanting. The story is a load of nonsense, which means that there is no added sense of satisfaction at the conclusion because there's basically nothing here. Narratives in games like this don't need to be anything more complex than a hero saving a princess from a monster, but something should be here to give a sense of purpose and conclusiveness to the adventure. It would probably seem silly if that was the thrust of my explanation of my biggest problem with the game, but that is just secondary. The short feeling of the main game adds much more to this abruptness. These five standard-length worlds don't feel like enough. I wanted more.

That's not to say that there isn't a lot of content here, because there is. Legends does a brilliant job of constantly holding a carrot in front of your face, giving you new challenges like short time trials (as well as daily ones that are ranked online!), and new rewards like character skins. It's quite addictive! There's nearly an equal amount of remade Origins levels here, which are still incredibly fun despite feeling jarring and useless, considering this game is lacking on new levels and since Origins was so recent. 

I get the sense that Rayman Legends could have so easily been an incredible or even masterful game, when it's really just a great one. So you could fairly say that I'm disappointed. But really, I love this game. It is an absolute blast and very smartly designed. Its aesthetics are wonderful. It's great.

***

~  Reviewed on Playstation 3, single-player ~

Louie: Season 3 (TV) - Review

It's not controversial to say that Louis CK is the most successful contemporary comedian; it's also not controversial to say he may be the best. I love his standup, but he also has a television show which I somehow appreciate even more. When I first got into Louie, I did pretty much nothing else with my free time other than watch the show, as I was so engrossed. I remember thinking that the first season was absolutely incredible, although I thought, as a whole, the second was just okay. But even during the large rough bits of the second season, it was easy to watch because Louie is truly unique. I recently watched the third season; there are some issues, but overall it is very funny, very moving, and very great. 

Typically, on the surface, the stories told in episodes of Louie are seemingly mundane. Louie follows Louie CK, a fictional character based heavily on the real-life dude who plays him. He is a fat, middle-aged, divorced comedian with two kids and an awkward demeanor. We watch him be a father, date women, and work. Louis CK writes and directs the show, on top of playing the lead role. Popular comedians like Chris Rock and Sarah Silverman also have [great] cameos in the series, showing just how tapped into show business CK is.  

Louie is both a drama and a comedy, and it balances the two remarkably well in the third season. One of the best episodes is the third, in which our protagonist finds himself in Miami for work and befriends a hunky, friendly lifeguard. Against what Louie has always considered his sexual orientation, he gets some tension around the lifeguard, which makes for smart, awkward humor but also captivating storytelling. Another highlight of the season is a two-episode story arc in which Louie dates an eccentric woman with a depressing past - something that really shows. She acts wacky which garners laughs, but her phenomenal acting means that we can see the tortured part of her soul just by watching her facial expression. And then also Louie's reaction to her through his facial expression. This season of Louie can have me cracking up one moment and then tearing up a few minutes later. What I find most remarkable about Louie in general is its intimate grip on realism, and its control of such which allows it to create something that is truly compelling to watch. Much of the humor and drama rests on displaying the realistic in a way that affects.

This is why my biggest complaint with this season is the unrealistic curveballs that get thrown into the mix every now and then for shock laughs. These moments are downright cartoonish: For example, in one episode, a naughty kid whom Louie is babysitting shoves a baby carriage into oncoming traffic, creating a dangerous, toxic gas leak, and Louie's response is to head home and let someone else deal with it. Moments like this contradict and cheapen the actual, realistic characterization of Louie as well as the realistic set up of the show's world. My other complaint, which is lesser but still notable, is that it's not just consistency in tone that isn't properly respected, but also consistency in story continuity. Louie occasionally (and effectively) pulls from past episodes' plots, but sometimes it intentionally goes against past plots just for the heck of it. Continuity flubs can be forgiven when the changes make sense, but these changes seem pointless. Either respect continuity or make each episode its own thing; you can't have both. 

The curveballs really don't happen too often - think once every other episode, more or less, but some episodes are affected more than others. One otherwise excellent episode's climax is one of these moments, making it one of the weaker episodes. The continuity changes are annoying in their pointlessness, but being pointless does mean that things aren't changed in a way that really alters the story. These two things are problems, but not deal-breakers. At the show's best, witty comedy mashes with captivating drama to form a tour de force of exemplary, truly special television; it's just a shame that tonal and continuity inconsistencies bring it down sometimes. 

Anchorman (Film) - Review

Anchorman should be so much better than it actually is. It casts Will Ferrell alongside the likes of Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, to parody 70s-style misogyny in news broadcasting.  It's produced by Judd Apatow. Maybe by the standards of 2004 this was better, but today, at least, this is bad. What could have been a hilarious ride of mocking sexism is a joyless mess of a film that is only occasionally funny.

Ferrell's character Ron Burgundy is the beloved lead anchorman for a San Diego news station, along with other respected anchors for sports and weather and such. I can't tell you their names, because they're too boring for me to remember. One's gimmick, the one played by Carell, is that he is mentally retarded with an "IQ of 45," but the only real difference between him and just about every other character is that his mental problem has been diagnosed.

They're on top, so when a woman is hired on the station and garners some success, they become enraged, because she's a woman! This premise lends itself to an ongoing joke in the film; the anchors are sexist! They treat women like means for sex, and this is acted out in a very juvenile fashion. Prejudice is funny when it's made to look ridiculously bad, but here, it feels like just another joke. Initially the film-makers try to make the woman, played by Christina Applegate, a straight-man to their idiocy, which was functional until they gave up on that idea. Eventually her character becomes a whole lot less strong, and she falls for sexist dope Burgundy because that's what the dumb script calls for. I cringed and literally face-palmed throughout the film.

The core issue here is that the movie really doesn't know what it wants to do. Is it really trying to smartly satire old-school misogyny? If so, why is the woman turned into a submissive (and even damselized, at the end) joke? Is it about Burgundy's station beating out its competitors, like a very involved fight scene towards the middle, and an important exchange of dialogue at the climax, both seem to allude to? If so, why is it so underdeveloped? There's a colorful bit of animation abstractly visualizing sex, is it really just supposed to be a senseless, ludicrous collection of comedy?  If so, why ground the movie in troubling, serious subject matter?

The movie also has a habit of pretending its actors are much more talented than they actually are. And that isn't a slight at the talent here, because it really does bring together impressive performers. It's just that most of the jokes are one-man shows. We're usually watching an actor act towards the camera. To sustain a movie, it would make more sense to have the cast working off of each other more.

I can be a bit positive about the movie. It's not actually offensive, it just doesn't work. And it is occasionally funny. The attempts at satire don't really work, but when it's just trying to be humorously stupid, it tends to work a good bit. That animation I mentioned earlier is quite funny, and there's some good laughs when things get very ridiculous towards the end.

But the high points really aren't enough. I was surprised how much of a mess this movie is. Anchorman sports an all-star cast alongside its fantastically talented leading man. It's a shame that it's so awful.