Grumpypheasant Reviews

Danger Beneath the Sea (2001 TV Movie)

Thinly-veiled plagiarism.

[1/10 · 23 February 2012]

This is Crimson Tide. They used a clever trick to hide their misdeed: they replaced most mentions of "Russia" with "North Korea" and switched the roles between the captain and the first officer. Cunning little ones. Some scenes appear to be directly lifted from Crimson Tide and recreated shot-for-shot.

That is, the "penny dreadful" version of Crimson Tide. How did they manage to make it so much worse?

Well, the addition of a stockpile of corny dialogue helped. The characters aren't much short of just uttering "OMG, it's that deadly pass, the captain is so brave and ingenious and we nearly hit that wreck like, I could touch it, like!"

As did the pointless manicheanism. The whole point of Crimson Tide was that all aboard were taking what they thought was the right course of action and that a nuclear conflict nearly arose because the US Navi protocols were inadequate. In this movie, it's hammered home quite clearly that the first officer and his men are just your usual "baddies". Their motivations are just nefarious.

And let's not forget the pointless "action" scenes and their accompanying clichés. We're not even spared the terrible "oh! The gun fired between them! Who's dead, is it the baddie or the good guy? Lookie, it's the baddie!" scene. That was never an interesting scene, why do bad movies insist on reusing it ad nauseam?

Don't watch this, watch Crimson Tide. Partly because it's objectively better in all respects (writing, acting, directing, effects) and partly because there's no reason to endorse blatant plagiarism.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011 Video Game)

Give them eye-candy and they'll gleefully gobble anything.

[1/10 · 30 November 2011]

THIS is the much-hyped game? This is the "best of best game RPG ever made" fanboys have been lauding for the past few weeks? This isn't even an RPG. This is a 3D fighting game. But, at some point during development, they noticed it wouldn't be able compete with other fighters... so they tacked an "RPG" tag in there, an altogether too common practice lately; and the masses flocked.

There's very little to say. All characters (munchkins) can excel in everything because the modern gamer can't cope with limitations, choice or specialisation; stats are nonexistent (armors give "Defense", weapons give "Damage"... that's it); yes, this is a truly classless game.

It's sad the mainstream industry has abandoned the RPG genre, but thankfully a handful of indie developers are picking it up. Sure, their titles don't look anywhere as good as this, but at least they're fun.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Who Watches the Watchers (1989) Season 3, Episode 4

If it upsets the fundamentalists...

[10/10 · 28 August 2011]

The outrage of Christian extremists is the best testimony of this episode's necessity and of its continuing validity, 22 years after first airing.

Sadly, fundamentalists will always miss the point. Rather than realise the foolishness of resorting to extraordinary explanations when easy ones are unavailable (as the Mintakans briefly do, believing "Picard is a god" to be the only explanation to the feats they've witnessed); they'll claim outrage and talk of "offense".

"I'm offended" is the newest way dogmatic people have found to avoid thinking, and they'll ride it out for as long as we tolerate it. They'll make up oxymora like "militant atheism" to defend the dogma, because it's easier to throw nonsensical accusations than to actually start being rational about something.

Religious shows can be counted in dozens, atheist shows are pretty rare (there's Star Trek, Star Trek and, at a push, maybe Star Trek), yet that's already too much. Any view that contradicts the precious dogma is anathema, it must be purged from our screens!

Of course, they do look for opportunities to be offended, as often as possible. If atheism is so intolerable, so vile to them; there's an easy solution, one I personally adopt towards all religious shows: not watching.

Quo Vadis (1951)

Goebbels would've been proud.

[1/10 · 13 July 2011]

Quo Vadis can be summed up in one word: propaganda.

Goebbels' glee would've been unending at the success of this movie, it's a masterpiece in his most beloved occupation: twisting history to make christians look better.

If you're looking for the source of the unwarranted persecution complex of the bible-thumping hordes, this is it.

Expect to be unrelentingly force-fed fabrications utterly inaccurate about ancient Rome and its oh so evil pagans, oh so poor christians and oh so ubiquitous lions. What do you mean "there is no evidence christians were ever fed to the lions"? Quo Vadis says so, who cares for historical evidence!

Expect a sappy love story to make the propaganda more palatable. Expect top-drawer actors of the time prostituting themselves to this utter farce. Expect the worst.

Fable (2004 Video Game)

Much hype about nothing.

[1/10 · 5 July 2011]

Let's do this thoroughly, starting with technical aspects:

1. Graphics and animation. Bad, bad, bad. I can fish up an old PSX game and have better graphics. Sure, the old PSX game is pixellated and boxy, but at least characters don't have utterly strange proportions, as is the case here.

Animations fare even worse. If you want to credit it, you could say the characters run and act in more realistic way than in some contemporary games (looking at you, Neverwinter Nights 2), but that's as empty a claim as making a movie with better actors than Paris Hilton. The main character, for instance, seems to think he's a racing motorbike: he visibly leans whenever he's making a turn. Once again, we've taken 10 steps back since the PSX era, here!

2. Sound. The music is downright intrusive and annoying, but once you shut it off, the sound effects are tolerable and the voice-work actually pretty good. The game's strongest point, by far.

3. Story. Generic as it gets, with the bonus of starting in the most unengaging way possible. It all unfolds in an even more linear way than any Final Fantasy, but hopes to hide that fact behind a veneer of childish manichaneism: every action you do is either "good" or "evil" and earns you points towards those characteristics. Does a worldview get any more naïve than that?

4. Gameplay. The real meat of any game... and this is where one realises this game has been mislabelled. It's no RPG. It's a mash-up of all kinds of games: imagine the worst possible Devil May Cry clone and you've got something approaching the combat in Fable... but your imagination probably summoned up a better system than the Fable devs could achieve. Some poorly-made MGSing sequences are thrown in, there are a few customization choices to be made (of course, you want to pick "the right ones", not those you like), to try to adhere to the RPG label they've randomly applied to the resulting monstrosity, but when all is said and done, it's poor in all respects.

Frankly, it seems more attention has been payed to the emotes (ATTN 8 year olds: you can fart at people! Greatest game EVAR!) than the actual gameplay.

Just Friends (I) (2005)

Just dreadful.

[3/10 · 6 April 2011]

It's one thing for a movie to be made for teenagers, it's quite another for it to be made by them; this one feels like the latter.

Potty jokes, slapstick more potty jokes, shrieks, terrible references, some more slapstick and, to top it all off, a doubtful aesop delivered with a complete lack of subtlety.

But the worst? The hypocrisy of that aesop: so, when he comes back from LA, all artificial and shallow, she doesn't like him. Turns him down until he becomes his older self, his "true" self. But she didn't want his old self! She liked him "as a friend" back then! Oh, wait, he was fat! She wants his new look, but not his new personality, the shallow hypocrite.

But since I can be pretty shallow myself and Anna Faris provides some fanservice, I'll bump my rating to a 3.

Out of Time (I) (2003)

Doesn't work.

[3/10 · 6 April 2011]

The premise doesn't work. The head of police is embroiled in some dirty business and he has to cover his tracks but his girlfriend, who works under him, is on the very case he's involved in, so he has to stay one step of her while still giving her the change... he does so through cheap panicked tricks while delivering poor lies. She suspects nothing. That's a poor premise by any measure.

The plot doesn't work. Most of the gunshots must have hit the script, leaving it hole-filled and incapable of logical exposition. Some characters behave erratically, others are unidimensional, a few choice Deus Ex Machinae crop up and the conclusion is a mess of perfectly timed coincidences few could believe in.

The romance doesn't work. If Out of Time is to be believed, when your couple is going through a rough phase, there's a foolproof three-step plan to regain your lover's affections: first, cheat; second, get involved in a dirty affair; third, put lives at risk while selfishly trying to get yourself off the hook. When pressured, confess the whole thing to a friend but repeatedly lie to your lover about it all.

The comic relief... somewhat works. Chae's character is sometimes a cheesy cliché, sometimes a welcome relief from a tedious scene.

All in all, "Out of Time" shares the property of many below-average thrillers: bearable, but certainly not enjoyable.

The Sunchaser (1996)

The kind of horror that just can't be unseen.

[1/10 · 24 February 2011]

The plot of this movie is an abomination. An agonising creature, writhing in pain, begging even for deliverance. It's not a pretty sight.

Were they trying to document every possible movie cliché? If so, it's a commendable effort: they've not missed many. The characters act in ludicrously illogical ways, one of them is thrown in solely to awkwardly preach nonsensical views directly to the viewer... a rattlesnake even randomly shows up to serve as a plot device. As a form of entertainment, "The Sunchaser" fails on every level.

But it's worse than just a bad piece of entertainment: it's the kind that (insistantly) advocates belief in quack remedies, faith healing and various other forms of absurd mysticisms (including astrology!) and that kind of message is borderline criminal.

Watch something else. Anything else.

P.S.: Electricity does not neutralise snake venom of any kind. It can only make matters worse.

Bahamut Lagoon (1996 Video Game)

We need more of this.

[9/10 · 12 February 2011]

At the core, Bahamut Lagoon is a T-RPG: the plot kicks off with a "generic evil empire" ravaging your "idealistic little kingdom" and the gameplay wouldn't feel too foreign to a Fire Emblem aficionado; but it is such a hidden gem of the genre.

Story: As I already hinted, the main plot doesn't break new ground: you fight the big empire and its megalomaniacs, some twists happen and you find yourself embroiled in a conflict to save the world. Usual RPG plot, be it tactical or not. Yet, this rather overused plot never gets tedious, owing to the healthy dose of humour that peppers it from beginning to end.

The characters really get star treatment, and, if you so choose, in each chapter you get the opportunity to talk to secondary characters. This rarely nets an in-game reward, as would be usual practice, but it allows you to get more familiar with them, their backgrounds, their romantic interests, their personality, their feuds or doubts.

In other T-RPGs, minor characters tend to become "one of the 4 'Class' you get", whereas in BL, they're their own individual.

Another aspect is the role of sexuality. While in no way "crass", Bahamut Lagoon is definitely less innocent about the matter than your usual RPG. It's still all in the subtext, but it's there.

Gameplay: Fun, fun, fun! BL combines traditional T-RPG field battles with single-turn regular RPG encounters, to great effect.

Being a SNES game, it's of course in 2-D. But that's not a bad thing for this genre. 3-D is often misplaced in T-RPGs: either it has no impact on gameplay and just makes the field harder to see (Disgaea) or the devs try to incorporate it in gameplay and the game becomes less fun (Final Fantasy Tactics).

You get your usual types of fighters, from Heavy Armors (tanks) to Mages (nukers) and Priests (healers), without forgetting more quirky types like the Mini-Devils, whose Dances have randomly-decided effects. And then you get your dragons, which you don't directly control, but rather act on their own based on simple commands you can issue them.

You're offered the option to manipulate the environment (set fire to a forest, open a dam to drown enemies, disable enemy auto-turrets, freeze a lake to cross it,...) at many stages.

Between battles is preparation time which, on top of the usual equipment-updating involves dragon feeding. Since dragon feeding affects not only that dragon's strength but also the capabilities of the team of characters linked to it, feeding takes a center role in the game. And it's fun! Simple enough to guess the effects of some items (those dragons will eat anything, including weapons and armor), but not so simple as to be completely transparent: it's the perfect mix of intuitivity and experimentation.

Balance is also found in how many characters you're allowed to bring into battle: BL restricts your numbers enough to force choice, but not so much that you can't bring some of those units that might not be the most efficient but that you like anyway.

Gameplay isn't without flaws, though. Chief of all is the difficulty: Bahamut Lagoon is, with the exception of a couple of optional battles, too easy.

Next, comes the movement speed of units: by and large, movement speed of a team is determined by the presence or absence of a Light Armor in it and since you only get 3 Light Armors for 6 teams, the latter parts of the game tend to involve half your characters while the others hopelessly try to catch-up with the front.

Finally, there's just not enough of it! The 30-odd chapters just fly past, leaving you wanting more. The "new game+" mode isn't that interesting: you just get to really breeze through the early game and then it's just the same thing as the first time.

Overall, Bahamut Lagoon is a fun little game that really deserves a wider distribution. And, while we're at it, sequels. Longer sequels.

The Visitors (1993)

Tedious.

[1/10 · 5 February 2011]

When this was first released, I remember laughing. Then again, I was 9 or 10 at the time.

Now, I'm 27 and I understand why my child self (and, indeed, most of the other children) liked in this movie: the smörgåsbord of juvenile humour: from farts to pulling faces, random fish-out-of-water gags that long outlast their welcome (the "jour/nuit" gag, in particular, goes on for a tedious length of time), adults yelling and more farts.

The fact that the whole cast was greatly overacting would obviously have escaped me; the contrived plot contented me. But no more. They've shown it again a few days ago, and this time, I could see this movie for what it is: tripe. A mouthful proved too much, I couldn't finish it.

If you're nine, you might enjoy this. Otherwise, probably not.

Lake Placid (1999)

This movie is silly... but it knows it.

[5/10 · 5 February 2011]

Expect a weak plot. Expect the laws of physics to be maimed beyond recognition. Expect deliberate behaviour from a non-sentient creature. It should be common sense stepping into this genre of movies, really.

Don't watch this movie looking to be scared witless, that road leads only to disappointment: no scene is truly intense. The core of this movie very much lie in the relationship between Platt and Gleeson's respective characters, Betty White's short appearances and the needlessly saucy female deputy.

The rare appearances of the crocodile are relatively well-done. The beast is no masterpiece of CGI and it isn't used perfectly, but it's a far cry from the terrible cardboard shark of Jaws 4.

All in all, the mild humour, decent CGI and a cast that seems to enjoy itself all serve to make Lake Placid a palatable pop-corn flick.

Volcano (1997)

Boring.

[2/10 · 28 January 2011]

I'm a reasonable man. When the title "Volcano" shows up on my TV screen, I know the score: this is a disaster movie.

The formula dictates it contain archetypal characters, corny dialogue, a hefty dose of "Hollywood science", unbelievable behaviour, loose plots and half-arsed social commentary and if the director wasn't the kind to blindly follow formulae, he wouldn't be making a disaster movie in the first place.

So, it should come as no surprise that Volcano includes all that in copious amounts. That's not what damns the movie.

When you enter a disaster movie, you do so under the premise that all those groan-inducing ingredients will be drowned under an, if not entertaining, at least distracting buffet of jaw-dropping devastation. You willingly surrender plot, characters and realism on the altar of eye-candy; such is your tacit contract with the director.

Mick Jackson doesn't uphold his end of the bargain: at first, we're served a silly but promising premise: the lava is sentient, throwing smouldering homing boulders at people and stores it just cannot tolerate. But after a burning (sorry) humiliation suffered at the hands of the scientist (she warns others of the homing properties of the boulders), the lava just gives up, it just flows at a snail's pace through the streets of LA, half-heartedly trying to catch the heroes before being relatively easily contained.

Let this serve as a warning to anyone looking to make a volcano movie: when your lava loses the will to live, your audience loses interest.

The Kid (2000)

Pure drivel.

[1/10 · 22 January 2011]

Let's be honest: the only reason this isn't in the bottom 100 is because it's a "feel-good inoffensive family movie".

It's drivel, but inoffensive drivel, and that's why moral guardians rate it so highly.

The plot is so cheesy and so replete of holes it could be sold as Emmental, the kid character is thoroughly annoying, the message simplistic and deluded, the rare humour juvenile and the romance trite and conceited, the tone patronising.

Frankly, this is the kind of movies everyone should find offensive. This movie is a gargantuan insult to the viewer's intelligence, and that should be considered a lot more offensive than any on-screen violence or nudity.

DeepStar Six (1989)

Groan.

[1/10 · 17 January 2011]

This is first and foremost, a B movie. It's a hastily made movie trying to ride the coat-tails of Abyss' hype... and it shows.

First, the plot: basically, just an excuse to get a strange hungry creature on board an underwater facility with some terrified humans. From then on, it all unfolds as linearly as you'd expect, with force clichés thrown in; some scenes directly borrowed from other poor movies: the very last scene, for instance, mirrors exactly the groan-inducing end of Jaws 4.

To seal the deal on a terrible script, quite a few events are completely unexplained. Don't worry, you'll easily predict them, not because they logically follow (they don't), but because they're stereotypical horror movie tropes, badly executed.

Next, the creature. The real meat of this kind of movies! Expect disappointment. It looks sillier than scary, moves excruciatingly slowly (on camera; off-camera, it moves extremely fast, maybe it's just shy?) and spends more time posturing (and roaring) in front of the humans than actively attacking them. One never sees it whole, but its head and torso have more screen time than the rest of the cast combined.

Finally, the effects. Strong effects can do a whole lot to redeem an otherwise bad movie, DeepStar Six doesn't have those. DeepStar Six compensate for lack of effects with pure gore, in B-movie tradition. Gratuitous gore.

DeepStar Six isn't enjoyable. The script is just painful; the creature arbitrary and uncharismatic; the intense scenes dull and slow.

She's All That (1999)

Don't watch this.

[2/10 · 8 January 2011]

You've already seen it. Time and time again.

This is your archetypal teen movie from the first minute to the last. Complete with your usual cast of:

• The "ugly" girl (she has glasses! What a repugnant creature!) being "transformed" (the glasses are removed! It's a miracle!) into a stunningly beautiful prom queen.

• The "popular jerk who's actually pretty nice but will only learn to ignore peer pressure when seduced by the above-mentioned girl".

• The clique of real popular jerks that conceive a ploy to humiliate the "geeky" girl.

• The "helpful friends" that help the protagonists but ultimately don't matter one bit.

The stage is set, now imagine those characters interacting in the most predictable manner possible, putting a giant teen movie cliché in every scene. That's it, you've just recreated the whole movie in your head! Most teen movies at least try to put a spin on that plot or try to introduce some quirks... this one doesn't bother. They're not even trying anymore.

The Dark Knight (2008)

.Best superhero movie to date.

[9/10 · 3 January 2011]

I had high expectations for this movie, partly due to the hype and partly due to Batman Begins. Those expectations were met, The Dark Knight shines on many levels: splendid action scenes, impeccable storytelling and well-defined, well-portrayed characters embroiled in a grandiose yet credible plot.

Villains, in particular, are credible. They're not just escaped circus freaks causing grand mischief for no reason, revelling more in theatrics than villainy, as was often the case in the old Batman movies.

No, this Joker is a true psycho: he has little time for puns, he's got people to kill, a city to terrorise and lessons about the human nature to impart. He's no mere thug, but he still acts like a criminal, not like a crazed performer appearing where he's expected in a needlessly complicated scheme. Forget deadly but impractical props, he's got guns and explosives.

One can only applaud Christopher Nolan. He has one thing most of Hollywood lacks: passion. He's not just out for the money, he wants to do the material justice, and for that we should be thankful.

The actors all deliver a solid performance, particularly Heath Ledger and Michael Caine, yet one minor gripe of mine is not seeing the return of Katie Holmes. Maggie Gyllenhall is a fine actress but she just doesn't have Holmes' sheer presence, nor her heart-melting smile.

My other minor gripe is that the movie feels rushed in places. Some scenes end too abruptly, with the situation only partially resolved and Two-Face gets very little screen time; Nolan seems to have just run out of time.

10,000 BC (2008)

The epic that just wasn't.

[4/10 · 3 January 2011]

This movie tries. It tries to be epic. Sadly, only Harald Kloser's score even manages to make a credible attempt.

Anachronisms run amok (the "terror birds" - Gastornis - had been extinct for millions of years when men first appeared), so do clichés and dei ex machinae seem to have been holding a convention on the set during filming.

Yet, the movie isn't completely without interest: the CGI is very palatable and the action scenes are quite enjoyable, if too scarce and, in the french dub at least, the dialogue and narration are in fact pretty decent.

This movie tries to be "300" in an earlier setting, but falls very short of the mark.

Taxi (I) (1998)

An ersatz of an already mediocre product.

[1/10 · 3 January 2011]

This is quite simply the french version of US blockbuster car movies.

Knowing this, the average viewer expects a nonsensical, hole-filled plot and horrible dialogue; they go with the territory... but in "Taxi", stupidity goes to 11. So much so that, 20 minutes into the movie, my brain tried to strangle me.

But that's not important in such a movie. What matters are the cars, car chases, a few mooks dying and the length of Angelina Jolie's skirt. This genre is entirely aimed at a young male's middle regions, it's not to be appreciated with the brain.

Sadly, "Taxi" is lacking even in those respects: Angelina Jolie is nowhere in sight, the car chases are so impossible as to be comedic rather than jaw-dropping, and the dreamy cars replaced by... wait for it... a Peugeot. Yes, you read that right. No V8 Vantage, no XKR, no F50, no GT40, not even an Elise or 911; just a Peugeot. A Peugeot that, on the press of a button, sprouts spoilers everywhere, like the world's tackiest Transformer. I'd rather walk.

Good acting would look out of place in this movie, so let's be thankful for the main cast's sub-par performance.

Finally, the music. Well, it's all french hip-hop, which, just like the movie, is an ersatz of the American equivalent.