__Hello, and welcome to the last month of 2022.🙂 Whether or not you're looking forward to Christmas, I hope you enjoy yourself. In the meantime, this will be my last regular compilation of "first impressions" reviews this year. If this is your first time reading my blog, this is something I do on the first Saturday of every month, where I copy and paste the short reviews I've put up on Twitter, because I've now seen so many movies that I no longer have the mental energy to write full reviews for each one.
__I'm not sure what's going to happen with these going forward. As I said, these mini reviews come from my Twitter page, but now that Twitter's management has become a complete debacle, I'm starting to doubt I'll remain active on it for much longer, even if it doesn't completely collapse. I've heard of some alternative social media platforms, like Mastodon or Hive, so I might join one of them instead.
__But that's a concern for another day.🙂 For now, let's start with my thoughts on the three movies I've seen in the cinema since my last post four weeks ago.
My favourite character from the first movie takes centre stage, and her mental state leads to some fascinating developments. It feels like they’re trying to make Namor a sympathetic villain, but don’t fully commit to it.
My rating: 65%.
A delectable dark comedy. Not only does the tension steadily increase as events escalate, but it's also a biting satire of elitism and criticism in general; many of the characters' comments on food are just as applicable to any form of art.
My rating: 75%.
The subterranean world is bursting with imagination; the creatures' creative designs take on a whole new meaning when the world's secret is revealed. Sadly, the characters are nothing special, therefore the narrative is also underwhelming.
__Now for some other movies I watched at home. Most of them are titles from this year, but before them comes Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, the first film in the DC Animated Movie Universe. It was the only film in that series that I hadn't seen yet because I didn't know it was part of said series until much later. And, since it was the one that kick-started it, I figured I wouldn't need to refresh my memory of the others, as I often do with sequels.
Once you get past the opening's distractingly cheap animation, it's a compelling alternate timeline story. Barry's aided in his efforts to restore history by a very different Batman with an arguably darker past.
My rating: 75%.
The story is decent, but has very little characterisation. John's inexperience had potential, but nothing is fleshed out. Like a few other DC animated movies, it has some pacing issues, with awkward pauses between lines.
My rating: 55%.
It builds tension well as the characters' paranoia rises to a boiling point, but I didn't care much for the characters themselves. For a supposed horror comedy, it's not overtly funny. If it's satirising something, I don't get it.
My rating: 65%.
Most of the time, the CGI looks great, and it's impressive how many scenes play out in one continuous shot. But the family drama is generic, and the characters make several blatantly stupid decisions, so ultimately it's a disposable creature flick.
My rating: 55%.
The animation looks like a cartoon-style video game, but the characters' personalities keep the story lively. It's a buddy comedy of sorts starring the nascent Jonathan Kent and the cynical Damian Wayne.
My rating: 75%.
It has all the ingredients for a supremely suspenseful thriller – two characters trapped in a tight, dangerous situation with little hope of escape – but the film never surpasses the gripping tension of Becky facing her fears in the initial climb.
My rating: 65%.
__Before we move on, I have an additional comment for Green Lantern: Beware My Power. The movie doesn't make a very good case for heroes not killing their enemies being their strength, because John's refusal to take a life constantly makes things worse.
__The next section is the games I own, which this time consists purely of the end of the Hitman franchise, the three games known as the World of Assassination trilogy.
__Since the first one is just called Hitman and the sequels are simply numbered two and three, you'd be forgiven for assuming it's a reboot; I certainly did. But no, apparently it's just a continuation of the same series. That's an increasing trend I've noticed in sequel titles, and I'm really starting to hate it!
__If you don't know, this is part of a marathon I've been having for the last couple of years: running through all my games that I haven't rated yet. I usually start playing them and get stuck early on, and since I have neither the time nor the patience to figure out how to progress, I then watch a longplay to see the rest. But for Hitman 3, I had to skip straight to the longplay because I'd bought it for the PS5 and didn't have the console itself yet. Thankfully, I do now.😀
__Anyway…
It reverts to the less compelling pre-Absolution format of several seemingly random missions revealed to be connected at the end. Each job is distinct; where else can you go from impersonating a model on the runway to infiltrating a laboratory?
My rating: 70%.
It's more successful at having each level advance the story, but it's a story that utterly failed to grab me. The graphics somehow look inferior to Absolution (a last-gen game), and why are the cutscenes between missions just static images?
My rating: 60%.
A decent ending to the World of Assassination trilogy. One highlight is impersonating a detective to reach the target. I still question disguising yourself as someone other NPCs know; how come they never notice the face and voice are different?
My rating: 70%.
__And the final section is some other games I watched as longplays to see if they're worth getting. This month, that group is mostly the Ratchet & Clank Future series, all four of which I've decided are worth downloading on the PS3, but not just yet.
__If you live in the US, you might notice that the word "future" is missing from the first three titles, and Into the Nexus is just called Nexus. That's because, as I live in the British Isles, I know them by their local titles. Yeah, pretty much all the Ratchet & Clank games after the first one had alternate titles between regions, be it a drastic change or just removing the word "future".
It retells Episodes I to VI entirely wordlessly, which on one hand makes it more bearable than the prequel trilogy, but stripping down the drama and focusing on the action beats ultimately makes for a hollow experience.
My rating: 55%.
The first of the Future series involves a Cragmite emperor with a grudge against Ratchet's species, providing intrigue that there may be more Lombaxes. One highlight for me is the Gyro-cycle – such a cool vehicle.🙂
My rating: 65%.
A short pirate-themed adventure that picks up where Tools of Destruction left off. It's merely the first step in saving Clank: locating him. Highlights include the ending and the three puzzles protecting Darkwater Cove.
My rating: 65%.
The plot involves both Ratchet and Clank learning the truth about their past. The "time pads" are an awesome new feature, as is Ratchet's ability to explore and land his ship on small moons to complete optional challenges.
My rating: 70%.
Another fairly short outing, in which a dangerous prisoner threatens to merge two dimensions. There's a recurring theme of defying gravity, be it the spectacular opening sequence, the Grav Streams or Clank's Netherverse sections.
My rating: 65%.
__That's it for now. I'll obviously be watching and playing more movies and games over the coming month (including Avatar: The Way of Water), so I might do one last "first impressions" post before the end of the year – perhaps on Wednesday the 28th, the middle of the final week. I'm a real stickler for routine (an affectation of my autism, I think), so I'd usually insist that Saturday be "first impressions" day, but the last Saturday in December just happens to be the 31st, which is the day I traditionally post my "top ten movies of the year" list. It might be worth putting my mini reviews of the year's few remaining movies on my blog before then.
__In the meantime, whether or not you celebrate Christmas, enjoy the holiday season.🙂 Take care.
No comments:
Post a Comment