Why Did I Watch That? - The Last Survivors
I watched a bad movie today. It is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. Watching bad movies that is. I revel in the terrible plots, paper-thin characters, cheesy effects, and wooden acting. It fuels me. I love them in a way that I can’t quite describe, or feel about bad games or music. To me, bad films deserve to be recognized, talked about, and maybe occasionally ridiculed. This one is no exception.
Sometimes movies are forgettable, mediocre even, and that is one of the worst things that I can say about a movie. When it fails to excel at anything or stand out in any way. The Last Survivors is such a movie, another in a long line of post-apocalyptic “action” films that have nothing to do or say to stand out. A group of settlers is trapped in a contemporary dust bowl, trying to survive against the land grabbing rich, and the overall lack of water.
Why Did I Watch That? - Ninja Apocalypse
I watched a bad movie today. It is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. Watching bad movies that is. I revel in the terrible plots, paper-thin characters, cheesy effects, and wooden acting. It fuels me. I love them in a way that I can’t quite describe, or feel about bad games or music. To me, bad films deserve to be recognized, talked about, and maybe occasionally ridiculed. This one is no exception.
There are different kinds of bad movies. Incompetent student films, big budget pictures that miss their mark, the “purposefully” bad indie movies, or mainstay of schlock cinema: the bad action movie. Ninja Apocalypse is just the latest in a long line of ninja movies that you probably shouldn’t even consider watching. As a rule, if a movie has the word ninja in its title, it is going to be pretty bad.
Death Doesn't Matter Anymore
Movies have raised the stakes. We have started to aim bigger and bigger. No longer are our heroes in any danger, or a simple building, plane, or even airport. Now cities are cast aside as fodder as the entire world is targeted, or even more. Each blockbuster feels like it needs to one-up their predecessor. It has created an ever increasing arms race of destruction, a spiral with no end in sight, and in doing so, it has made death and disaster cease to matter. X-Men: Apocalypse, Suicide Squad, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, and so many more.
We watch as our villains wipe out entire cities with a wave of their evil hands to prove how powerful and merciless they are. When they do, we are supposed to empathize with the victims and fear for the lives of our heroes. Instead we find ourselves feeling bored and eating for the writers to brush these events under the rug by the conclusion of the film with no one, except for the big bad, any worse for wear. Except for all of the dead civilians but hey, who cares about them. Read More…
The Backlog – S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Clear Sky
I have a confession to make. Like many of you reading this, I have a list of games that I’ve been meaning play for years. I have way too many games on Steam, and a stack of cases sitting next to my TV. Close to five hundred games now. Maybe more. It makes me feel guilty. I haven’t touched 90% of them in one way or another. I need to fix that. So this week, I dug deep into my backlog and pulled out a game. I want to play all of them; I’ve just never had the chance. Now’s the time.
There always been a big deal made out of hard games. To play and beat one was to somehow prove that you are better than more “normal” players, who somehow couldn’t handle the difficulty. The oft derided “casual” gamers speak to this phenomenon. Every time that someone picks up a copy of Dark Souls, a forum user somewhere tells you to “git gud”. But often the games that we idolize for their difficulty really aren’t that hard. S.T.A.L.K.E.R is.