To Squee Or Not To Squee: Oblivion

I’m on a Cautious Enthusiasm roll!

It’s the dawn of the summer blockbuster season and I just watched Oblivion, which is probably out now because it’s not quite dumb enough to compete with whichever giant robots or superhero bros are vying for our ticket money this year. Oblivion turned out to be way better than I figured it’d be, while not quite reaching that golden plateau of brilliance attained by, say, Blade Runner or Minority Report. The trailer for Oblivion really piqued my interest, but it also seemed to give away most of the plot. I’m very happy to say that the actual film is, if not terribly original, a lot more complex and head-fucky than I expected. So kudos!

I’ll spoil as little as I can. Tom Cruise narrates endlessly at the start of Oblivion, and there’s a lot to ingest. Sixty years ago (in the movie’s timeline), hostile aliens arrived on Earth. Their plan was ingeniously nasty: they blew up the moon, turned the planet into a Roland Emmerich movie, then moved in after our shit had been ruined. We won the war in the end, but Earth was left a largely irradiated wasteland. Now the remnants of humanity live in a floating space station, and are in the process of moving to Saturn’s moon, Titan. We’ve built massive power-plant doohickeys to suck the last resources from the oceans, but they’re in danger from the few aliens still skulking about. The doohickeys are defended by trigger-happy robotic drones, which are in turn cared for by Jack Harper (Cruise), a handyman who commutes to the planet’s surface every day from his sleek, photogenic sky-penthouse, where he enjoys sleek, photogenic sex with his mission partner, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough). They’re pretty much the last people on Earth, and soon they will leave as well. That’s the premise -- or, at least, the supposed premise.

It’s hardly surprising to learn that Jack and Victoria had memory wipes prior to their mission.  There has not been a single movie in this genre where the initial premise is the absolute truth, nor a single male protagonist who starts out the movie schtupping the woman he’s truly meant to be with. Sure enough, Jack dreams about another woman (Olga Kurylenko) whom he remembers but can’t put a name to. When he meets his mystery lady face to face, it’s under surprising circumstances: she’s in a cryo-pod, which is in a pre-war ship that crashes on Earth, and Jack has to save her from being charbroiled by the very robots he takes care of. Now isn’t that strange. The trailers give away some of what happens next, including that there are still humans living on Earth (hey, you get Morgan Freeman for a movie, you damn well let people know) and that Jack and Victoria’s largely unseen superiors may have a sinister agenda. But I’m leaving out four or five twists that are quite effective, if derivative. The movie is strongest when it’s exploring the mysteries of its plot, gradually unpacking one truth after another. As we expect, Jack is soon at odds with Victoria and must Question All He Ever Knew and blah blah blah. But it’s harder than you might think to guess the next direction the plot will take. I like it! It’s cobbled together from other sci-fi films, but at least it doesn’t insult the intelligence.

I can forgive a lot if a movie looks good, and Oblivion looks fantastic; I adored its depiction of an utterly ruined Earth, in part because it dared to make the devastation beautiful. This future world is composed of vast peaks and bleak, endless barrens, and the remains of buildings and towers and ships look like some kind of dreamlike abstract sculpture (I do have to laugh, however, at the sheer durability of famous national landmarks; way too many of the landscape shots have some iconic building or monument to ID.) By contrast, Cruise and Riseborough get to lounge around in their swank glass eyrie (probably designed by Apple) and Cruise pilots a nifty gyroscopic aircraft that totally looks like a cock and balls, but what can ya do? The musical score is also fantastic, if a bit relentless at times. I’d love the film way more if it were just the surreal special effects and the cryptic plot, but there are also token action scenes, and like I feared, they’re annoying. Oh, they’re done very well, but they make a jarring contrast to the rest of the film. There’s one foe that Cruise has to battle repeatedly (to describe it would be a spoiler), and his smackdowns with said foe get predictable, especially since it has the type of big glowing weak spot you see in video games.

Also, stronger characters would’ve been nice. Cruise is as watchable as ever (Jesus, he’s really fifty?), but he’s playing the role he’s most comfortable with: an action everyman who can be our blank slate. Morgan Freeman, likewise, plays the same damn part he always plays. Olga Kurylenko’s character is a weak link; although she has one effective scene of powerful emotional revelation, she’s just The Woman, and the job of The Woman is to look lovely and concerned while standing slightly behind and to the right of The Hero. Her mystery lady disappears behind the mystery. I was way more invested in Andrea Riseborough’s Victoria, who, in terms of her motives and character arc (again, no spoilers) is a tragic figure indeed. Finally, Melissa Leo does good work as the slightly-too-upbeat talking head from Mission Control who appears on Victoria’s monitor, but since we just know she’s gonna be an antagonist, we can’t feel much for her. There are, shall we say, potential reasons for some of the characters to be thinly defined; for once, it may actually be appropriate for the plot to dominate the cast. But our emotions are kept at bay, and the ending is a rather annoying cop-out. Yay, says the studio, we managed to wrangle a happy ending from all this! Yeah, but happy on a very false note.

I do recommend Oblivion. Fans of sci-fi will not be disappointed, though they may be checking off all the other films that this one borrows stuff from. I enjoyed it enough to want to see it again, maybe even own it. And I’d be happy if they made a sequel, possibly dealing with certain of the characters struggling to find their place in the current world (yet again, no spoilers, but Victoria really ought to be the main protagonist of the follow-up). It was a good film to see on an otherwise quiet Sunday, and a good take on the postapocalypse. There’s even a dog! Because we all know dogs in movies can survive the end of the world. Guys, if aliens invade and blow up the moon and all, find a cute dog and fucking STICK with it.

VERDICT: Sure, I’ll give it a squee. A squee for effort.

To Squee Or Not to Squee: A Song of Ice and Fire

Checking another one off the Cautious Enthusiasm list! Well, in part. You’ll see.

I think I underestimated my own ridiculous tendency to devour literature with the enthusiasm of Pac-Man on meth. For the past month, I’ve been pretty much reading nothing but the first three volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin’s celebrated fantasy series, which is currently enjoying a second incarnation as the HBO series Game of Thrones. If anyone’s amazed I got through over 3,000 pages in a month, well, it’s not just my mad skills, it’s also that these novels grab you and DO NOT LET GO. Just a few chapters into the first one, I was like, yeah, I’m lost. And when I finished it, any plans of taking a break before diving into the second volume? Gone out the window. As with Lord of the Rings, it’s all one big story that doesn’t pause for breath between each volume. But LotR never had this much gruesome gore, sexual hijinks, soul-destroying plot twists, dwarf jokes, main character fatalities, epic fuck-you moments, and incest babies. There’s only one character in the series (Sansa Stark) who thinks she’s in a romantic, highfalutin Tolkien story, and the response of the author is to grind poor Sansa into a whimpering pulp over and over and over. It’s...kind of amusing. Sorry.

The first three volumes -- A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords -- work pretty well as a trilogy, though you can bet your ass that the ending of A Storm of Swords, which I just reached today, contains enough HOLY SHIT moments to make me want to snap up the next book right away. I’m forcing myself to take a break. There’s just so much to digest. To sum it all up VERY briefly (and without spoiling anything major), the series takes place mostly in Westeros, a fictional medieval world based heavily on European history and mythology. We jump right into the middle of things; the current king hasn’t held the throne all that long, after either usurping it from the noble Targaryen family or rightfully rescuing it from the fucknutters Targaryen family, depending on who you ask. When (minor spoiler alert, though it’s pretty predictable) the king dies, the resulting power vacuum turns Westeros into a deranged chessboard with five or six different factions grasping at the throne. (Are you Team Robb? Team Stannis? What...you’re Team Greyjoy? GET THE FUCK OUT.) Much of the narrative revolves around the Stark family (two parents, five kids, one bastard son, and some direwolves), who start out ruling the northern fortress of Winterfell and end up scattered to the winds. Toss in a creepy undead horde lurking behind the giant ice wall at the northern border of Westeros, and an exiled Targaryen princess and her three baby dragons planning revolution from across the sea, and you have a story that makes us damn glad wikis exist.

What makes these books so good, when so many high fantasy novels are...well...utter shit? Well, in part it’s because Martin is a solid writer who has little interest in copying the aesthetic of Tolkien. His prose is lean and gripping, even when he’s rattling off endless lineages. His world feels so real; you can tell how much time he’s spent building the history, the geography, the backstory of each major family. Magic and the supernatural exist in Westeros, but they’re just the tasty frosting on the cake; mostly it’s about the characters, their relationships, and how they move through the plot. Absolutely nobody is perfect; there are clear heroes and villains, but the heroes make mistakes and do cold-as-fuck things, and the villains are often not without sympathy. There’s no “Dark Lord” that everyone can hate, nor is there an Aragorn who never strays from the path of light. It’s a harsh place where no one is spared misery and tribulation, and it feels all the more real for that -- even if it’s painful to read. Death is never far. At this point, it’s hardly a spoiler to mention that one of the main characters in the first book is killed before the end. It doesn’t end there; A Storm of Swords in particular has a couple scenes of such sudden, shocking, brutal tragedy that it’s hard to keep turning the pages. But the worse it gets for the good guys, the more we want them to fight, to overcome. And they do, sometimes in ways we’d never expect.

It’s been awhile since I was this invested in a fictional world. It’s hard to keep track of everyone and everything, but it pays off. And, y’know, you don’t need to remember every detail. If someone mentions that Ser Snofftoast Bubbletripe was just defeated at Tonsil Keep, and I have no recollection of who this dude is or why I should care, well, it’s okay. It’s a whole world. Worlds keep on turning no matter what, and any given person can only perceive a tiny sliver. I love how characters and events fade in and out of relevance in Martin’s narrative. A major subplot (who tried to kill Bran Stark?) may be shelved for awhile, then dusted off when new information comes to light. A character (Theon Greyjoy) may have a minor supporting role in the first book, become a main antagonist in the second, and then not appear at all in the third, with only occasional hints as to what’s happening to him. And all the characters are also striving for information, so they constantly get to update each other (and us) about what all is going on. Yay for messenger birds! Seriously, though, it’s an utter pleasure to get lost in the series and wonder what in God’s name is gonna happen next, because there is often no way to tell.

So far, so awesome. I will continue to read the series, after which I will do what all the other fans do and sit around impatiently hoping that Martin will finish off the series before he dies of natural causes. I’ll also get to the TV show in time. Now that I’ve read the books, I can watch with amusement as non-book-readers react to what happens on the screen. (Four episodes till the Red Wedding....) Bottom line, I can proclaim myself a devoted fan of A Song of Ice and Fire. And it only took a month! Here’s to however many more months and years it takes to wrap the whole crazy mess up. More blog posts on this subject will happen. It is known.

VERDICT: Epic squee!

UPDATE: More ruminations on this series can be found right here.

Top 10 Scariest Video Game Moments

WARNING: VIDEO GAME SPOILERS AHEAD!

It ain’t the Halloween season, but hell, I never pass up a chance to discuss the horror genre. So, I love horror video games, but they’ve never frightened me in the same way some movies or written stories do. I think it’s because I’m in control; I’m choosing the trajectory of my story within the game, so I can run or fight in order to avoid the horror. (This may be why I skip games like Amnesia; I’m not interested in a game that requires the player to be hopeless and panicked all the fucking time.) However, there are still games that scare me, either with shocking BOO! moments or a delicious feeling of dread.

The problem in writing this particular list is that Silent Hill 2, a game with which I would have sex if I could, would naturally dominate. I mean, Jesus...the corpse in the TV room, and the hanging bodybags in the hospital, and pretty much every single Pyramid Head encounter, and the showdown with Eddie, and the invisible monster in that one prison cell, and...so forth. So I have to leave Silent Hill 2 off the list. Maybe one day I’ll up and write a list of my scariest Silent Hill 2 moments. But plenty of other games have prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. In the name of fairness, here are...

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN SCARIEST VIDEO GAME MOMENTS
(NOT COUNTING SILENT HILL 2)

Banjo-Kazooie: Meeting Clanker
Let’s begin our skin-crawling foray into the depraved depths of video game horror with a cute, innocent, cartoony game for kids. Yeah, okay, but take a look at the above image and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The “Clanker’s Cavern” level begins as a rather boring sewer-themed environment, right up until you swim down a passageway and come face to maw with something that looks like its favorite prey is the kind that screams and bleeds. And then its sawtoothed grin opens WIDE, as do the sphincter muscles of your average unsuspecting kid playing the game for the first time. FUCK YOU, RARE. Luckily, you quickly find out that Clanker the robo-shark is a gentle soul who needs your help. You even get to enter his body and explore his innards without being digested or anything. But for a few heart-stopping seconds, Banjo-Kazooie is the most terrifying game a child can experience. Jaws ain’t got nothing.

Daymare Town: The Librarian Lurks
Gamemaker Mateusz Skutnik specializes in small flash games with a wonderfully bizarre vibe, and his Daymare Town series is a monochrome exercise in unsettling bleakness. There’s plenty of creepy images in the first entry, and one moment that makes you jump out of your skin. In a far corner of a decrepit building, you find an alcove with a rusty sink. So far, so good. But later, when you return to that space, someone is waiting for you. This entity, known only as the Librarian, huddles in the corner, glaring at you like you’re the cause of all his miseries. His totally unexpected appearance, coupled with a horror-movie jolt chord on the soundtrack, gets me every time I play the game. It’s a cheap scare, but damn if it doesn’t work well in a game that already has you on edge. And if you try to interact with the Librarian (unless you have the right item), he fucking snarls at you like a rabid polecat. Just back away...he’s not gonna stab you in the throat...just keep telling yourself that...

Fatal Frame: The Long-Armed Man
The Fatal Frame games are sublimely frightening, as you explore endless, rotting chambers and fend off the angry dead with a magic camera. (Don’t laugh; it’s a great mechanic.) The ghosts are all scary, and waiting for them to appear is even scarier. The moment that haunts me most comes fairly early in the first game, when the heroine hears a sound, freezes, and watches as this utterly awful face slides into view around a corner. The owner of the face is a leering, lank-haired male ghost with impossibly long, thin arms that jut out like the graspers of a praying mantis. Somehow, this inhuman detail ratchets up the scariness factor of this particular ghost (most of the others just look like pissed-off dead people), and his long reach makes it harder than usual to combat him without being seized and strangled. The game is telling you to expect anything, and the worst part is, you just know you’re gonna encounter the Long-Armed Man more than once. But when? But.........when?

Limbo/The Unfinished Swan: Along Came a Spider
I believe that everybody is at least a little bit scared of spiders, even if (like me) you think they’re cool. Interesting, that two recent games (which, as I’ve pointed out, are spiritual cousins) both included a tribute to our eight-legged buddies. The plus-size arachnid in Limbo is famous, as it leisurely stalks you through the forest, at one point wrapping you up like a bug and giggling to itself as you attempt to escape in pitiful little hops. But at least you get to kill the thing in the end. On the other hand, The Unfinished Swan is generally not a scary game, so it’s extra-sucky to find yourself lost in a dark forest -- especially when you turn around and see clusters of red, glowing eyes regarding you from the shadows. Following you. Patiently. You never get a good look at these spiders, which is scary, and they (unlike everything else in the game) can hurt you, which is scarier. Both games reduce you to quivering prey, and it’s awesome.

Resident Evil 4: Village Siege
I think everyone knows that of which I speak. This was the sequence that caused series newbies to weep and longtime Resident Evil fans to renew their vows. There’s just so little warning! You stroll through the woods, you kill a couple angry Spanish dudes, whatevs. Then you see the whole village turned out to burn some poor schmuck at the stake...and they see you...and you have about three seconds for it to sink in: they are coming for you. All of them. RUN. What do you do next, Mr. Big Shot? Take to the rooftops? Find somewhere to make a desperate stand? You can’t hide. Pray you find the shotgun before it’s too late. Pray. Because that distant revving sound you hear is a fucking chainsaw, and its owner will kill you in a heartbeat and can eat about fifty handgun bullets before dying. Resident Evil 4 is one of the best and scariest games of its generation, in part because it tosses the player into the frantic, thrilling, unforgiving blender of survival horror right from the get-go. It’s unforgettable and I don’t dare forget to include it.

Resident Evil 4: Introducing the Regenerators
Oh, we’re not done with RE4 yet, my dears. I could include other sequences, like being stalked by the ghastly Verdugo or encountering invisible face-melting bugs, but they pale in comparison to the Regenerators. Deep in the game, after you think you’ve seen the worst, you encounter a creature tailor-made to cause bowel evacuations. You think it’s dead at first, but then the naked, gangly, burnt-looking corpse lurches to life, emitting a demented rasp as it advances on you. And it doesn’t die. Its necrotic flesh grows back before your eyes, and you’re reduced to wasting bullets in a panic. Maybe you figure out that you can use your new thermal scope to find its weak points, but just try to stay calm and target them while it’s getting closer and closer -- or chewing on your flesh with its beartrap mouth. You finally kill it, you get the hell out, and then...you hear more of them nearby. God, that raspy breathing -- I think that’s the worst. Ignoring Silent Hill 2, I seriously have never met a video game monster as scary as the Regenerators, and I FUCKING HATE that part of the game SO MUCH. But that just shows it’s working.

Scarab of Ra: What’s Around the Corner?
Waaaaaaaayyyy back in the days of yore, there was this Mac shareware game called Scarab of Ra, in which you wandered around a labyrinthine pyramid, hunting for rare treasures. Despite its Etch-a-Sketch graphics, it was complex and fun to play. Also, scary as shit. Why? Because you could only see in front of you, and you were sharing the randomly generated levels with cobras, lions, monkeys, and mummies, and they wanted your ass in a sandwich. All of these foes would kill you except for the monkey, who’d just steal your most necessary items and then vanish. You often wouldn’t see them coming, and if you hadn’t found the right item to defeat them, you were pretty much fucked. And when you found the titular Scarab, it was no cause for celebration, because you knew you’d just woken the mummy, and it could be anywhere, and if you were too slow or just unlucky, you’d be swiftly and mercilessly dispatched. Playing this game was a white-knuckle experience. God, I miss it.

Slender: The Whole Fucking Game
I haven’t actually played Slender. I don’t have the balls to play Slender. Watching poor, whimpering fools try to play it on YouTube is bad enough. It’s truly amazing how Slender Man, the faceless, dapper-suited, spaghetti-armed ghoul birthed on a Something Awful forum, has become such an icon of internet culture, and this little indie game perfectly captures everything freaky about him (it?). Venturing through a spooky forest, trying to track down all the cryptic notes, and the whole time, you know: Slender Man is nearby, and he’ll soon be even nearer. The first time you look back and glimpse him through the trees...nightmare fuel, I tell ya. In a brilliant use of horror logic, Slender Man gets closer, faster, and more aggressive the longer you play the game, and the last bit (assuming you make it that far) is a panicked sprint because he is RIGHT THE FUCK BEHIND YOU. Knowing what’s coming, knowing what will happen, is sometimes a thousand times scarier than being surprised. If I were dumb enough to play this, I’d probably be found looking like Amber Tamblyn in The Ring.

 Silent Hill 3: A Mirror and a Bathtub
What? I only said I’d leave Silent Hill 2 off the list. There’s plenty of fear to be had in the rest of the series! Silent Hill 3, with its spunky protagonist slicing and dicing goofy-looking beasties, kind of flops in the fear department, but there is one brief sequence that gets under my skin. While exploring the hospital, heroine Heather finds a room with a bathtub and a wall-sized mirror. Mirrors: never good news in horror stories. Sure enough, the bathtub starts to ooze blood and muck, which spreads like unholy fungus across the floor and walls. Still not really bad...until you notice that Heather’s reflection is now soaked in blood, while she remains clean. Then (this was what made me jump and whimper during my first playthrough) her reflection...stops...moving. I hear you die if you stay in the room too long, but I’ve never found out because I always fucking book it at that point. So why do I enter the room in the first place, knowing I’ll be creeped out? Come on, haven’t you been paying attention?

Silent Hill 4: The Haunting of Room 302
I fear Silent Hill 4: The Room was the last hurrah of the series being truly under-your-skin frightening. The game has its flaws, but it also has a ton of effective scares. The thing is, no matter how bad shit gets, you can always return to your cozy apartment to save your game and bask in an utterly normal, boring, non-horrific environment. And then the game laughs at your hubris and punches you right in the fear muscle, because after the halfway point, Room 302 becomes haunted. Imagine waking in your bed to discover that something’s in the room with you, a snarling, invisible thing that turns your vision red and drains your health. And that’s just one example; you have to deal with a whole selection of distinct haunts. You never know what’ll appear next, and returning to the apartment, once a comforting thing, becomes a dreadful step into the unknown. That’s what the best horror does: it takes the safe and familiar and twists it into something alien, something you can’t understand. I do relish what the gaming medium brings to the horror genre...when it gets it right.

Roger Ebert 1942-2013

Today is a sad day. I'm going to miss you, Mr. Ebert.

You were honestly one of my biggest influences, both as a writer and an amateur critic. I owe a lot of my style to you. You taught me how to look at each film with an open mind, how to treasure the "lowbrow" movies for bringing us delight, and how to be snarky without coming off as cruel (unless, of course, the movie really, really deserves ridicule). I quote you, I emulate you, I look up to you. I always will.

Thank you so much. Rest in peace.

April Fools Post

It's April Fool's Day. If I were up to it, I'd write up some blistering fake post about how, I dunno, Netflix is bringing back Firefly or something. But I don't feel like concocting an elaborate hoax. So I'm just going to bring you the gift of laughter. Specifically, my own laughter. The following are a bunch of goofy online images that I personally find really funny. Can't say why, except that some of the best humor involves surprise. Being hit with a gag you didn't expect.

Hope you giggle!

Silent Hill Series, pt. 10

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D -- No Time To Explain! Get In the Vest!

One of the first things you see in Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is Pyramid Head operating a merry-go-round. Other sights include a ghoulish nurse getting tasered in the cleavage, Malcolm McDowell transforming into a Silly Putty monster, and kids in Ranger Rick makeup eating decayed flesh birthday cake. This is the point where a typical Silent Hill fan would put a bazooka to their head and pull the trigger (bazookas have triggers, right?), but let’s keep going for the sake of professionalism. And giggles.

I’m quite happy to be revisiting my Silent Hill review series, if only to explain, with relish, how terrible and retarded this movie is. It’s a direct sequel to the first Silent Hill film adaptation, which, if you recall, I thought was fairly acceptable. Nothing much is acceptable about Revelation, but somehow, I am inclined to be kind to it as long as I can also tear it a new asshole. Maybe it’s because I watched this one with my best friend and was mildly baked. There’s “hate-watching” and then there’s “baked-watching.” So I’d put Revelation on the revered list of shitty films that you can’t help but enjoy on some delinquent level. It was clearly made by fanboys -- the type of fanboys who sit around talking about how much COOLER something could be if it only had THIS and THIS and AWESOME BADASS WOOOOOO! Oh, do they work hard to please us.

Now I’m going to do what the movie does in buckets, and explain stuff. Revelation is based on Silent Hill 3 and is actually a close adaptation of the game, apart from certain not-very-minor character changes. Spoiler alert: the first film ended with heroine Rose DaSilva (Radha Mitchell) dying or something, leaving behind her husband Chris (Sean Bean) and possibly supernatural daughter, Sharon. Some years have passed, Chris is now calling himself Harry Mason (OMG, LIKE IN THE GAME!!!) and Sharon goes by the name of Heather (Adelaide Clemens). They move a lot and change their names because...well, Heather just sort of accepts her dad’s non-explanation, but the real reason is that the Order of Silent Hill wants to drag Heather back to their shitty town so she can become a vessel for their god. Story of all our lives, right? Heather begins to have awful maybe-nightmares, Chris/Harry gets abducted, and it’s up to Heather to seek out answers and get explained at. A lot. A whole goddamn lot. Yeah, I’d say the worst thing about Revelation is its script. There is soooooo much ham-handed explanation. Reminding us what happened in the first movie. Outlining the convoluted story behind Heather and Alessa Gillespie. Reiterating the stakes. Even trying to explain Pyramid Head, as if he needs it. Occasionally, the movie takes a break from endless exposition to have Heather run around and react to things.

It’s a good-looking movie, I’ll give it that. Heather galumphs through a string of diseased environments (OMG, LIKE IN THE GAME!!!) and you can almost smell the filth and communicable diseases. Even the real world looks grotty. The monsters are pretty cool too, a mix of the usual suspects and brand-new creations. Sadly, it seems as if we still can’t forget about fucking Silent Hill: Homecoming, which was a big aesthetic influence here. No subtlety, no understatement, no quiet moments. Revelation refuses to pause for breath, which makes it an inferior sequel indeed. And, inevitably, blood and digits and pointy objects are always being shoved up the cameraman’s nostrils, because THREE DEEEEEEEEE! Ah, well, the film’s more than satisfying in the fucked-up, Jacob’s Ladder-style imagery department, though it’s never all that scary. I’d say the niftiest sequence takes place in a mannequin storage facility (OMG, LIKEINTHEGAME!!!) occupied by a nicely unsettling boss...uh, I mean, boss. I mean monster.

All of this nonsense would be a lot harder to digest if not for Adelaide Clemens as Heather. I have no idea who she is, but they nailed the casting. Like her onscreen mom, Radha Mitchell, Clemens mainly has to act terrified yet determined, and run around unsanitary hallways while demanding answers, dammit! But Clemens takes the easy role and ridiculous dialogue and makes it quasi-believable; she’s vulnerable, she’s badass, and I even bought that she was a teenage girl. Thank God for her, because the film’s a one-woman show; apart from Heather, none of the characters have much screen time. This cameo club includes not only Bean and Mitchell, but also Martin Donovan as private detective Douglas, Deborah Kara Unger returning (very briefly) as Dahlia Gillespie, Malcolm McDowell as whoever the hell he is, and poor, poor Carrie-Anne Moss as the evil and eyebrowless zealot, Claudia Wolf. And, of course, the Vest. Adelaide Clemens totally rocks Heather’s signature poofy white vest, and the filmmakers treat said article of clothing with nerdy reverence. Chris/Harry gives her the Vest for her birthday, and later she rips off her coat to expose the Vest, and the Vest stops giant monster knives and is probably made of angel hide, who knows. The Vest is way more compelling a character than Vincent (Kit Harington, who, by appearing alongside Sean Bean, is probably making Game of Thrones fans very confused). In the game, Vincent is a sleazy, villainous, embezzling member of the Order who gleefully fucks with Heather’s emotions and is old enough to be her uncle. In this movie, Vincent is a dreamy teenage love interest with pouty lips and a very poorly-telegraphed “secret.” Ugh. Thanks to this switcheroo, Detective Douglas -- a dependable sidekick throughout Silent Hill 3 -- gets about two freaking minutes of screen time here. Again, ugh.

I just can’t loathe this movie, despite how badly it rapes the source material. The makers of the first film seem to have gotten what makes the original three or four games so effective. The makers of Revelation don’t get it at all, but they so desperately want to look cool. They’re like eleven-year-old boys playing with action figures. There’s so many “OMGLIKEINTHEGAME” moments, from Heather’s vest (which probably had its own trailer) to the frequent appearance of  Robbie the Rabbit, and beyond. All of these shout-outs unroll before our eyes on a silver platter, begging to be approved of. Most of the major iconic sequences from Silent Hill 3 are recreated with care, and then at the climax, they declare “Screw it!” and give us something that I will only identify as a “Monster-Off.” It is either the worst and most offensive crime to be inflicted upon the esteemed Silent Hill brand, or shamefully brilliant. It’s followed by an ending that not only sets up a threequel, but very blatantly invokes two -- TWO -- other games in the series. Jesus, this movie is a retarded puppy. You threw the ball and the puppy waddled after it, rolled in rotten meat-lover’s pizza, took a shortcut through the sticky dildo factory, and ultimately brought you an aborted walrus fetus instead of the ball -- but when that retarded puppy looks up at you with its wet, clueless, hopeful eyes, you just have to give it a pat on the head.

But you never throw the ball for it again, because you’re not fucking retarded yourself. Let’s get someone classier on the next film, hmmm? But Adelaide Clemens and Sean Bean can come back; they’s cool. Kit Harington should stick to M-rated epic fantasy television. Carrie-Anne Moss needs to locate her long-lost film career. I’ll play Henry from Silent Hill 4; check out my stoner gaze! Anyway, farewell until the next time they drop some new disrespectful Silent Hill product into our laps. Or until they remember why it was originally so amazing. If.

SILENT HILL REVIEW SERIES

Silent Hill • Silent Hill 2 • Silent Hill 3 • Silent Hill 4: The Room • Silent Hill: Origins • Silent Hill: Homecoming • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories • Silent Hill: Downpour • Playable Teaser • Silent Hills • Silent Hill: The Movie • Silent Hill: Revelation 3D

Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time

Checking another one off the Cautious Enthusiasm list!

I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for a new Sly Cooper game. To give some historical perspective, this series blew me across the room once. I’d played the demo for Sly 2 and said “meh,” because the demo was put together by retards who hand-picked the least interesting parts of the game to showcase. When I finally tried out the full version, there was sunlight and roses and little angels with trumpets because it was AMAZING. And that was that. But there were only three games! The first, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, is fun but very short and a bit forgettable. It functions as a beta for Sly 2: Band of Thieves, which took the concept and blew it up into a delightful mishmash of stealth mechanics, sandbox environments, and awesomeness. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves followed along dutifully and was solid but overstuffed, with too many playable characters and vehicles jostling for attention. After that, the developer, Sucker Punch, closed the curtain for the time being. Sucker Punch has yet to make a bad game; even their debut, an obscure N64 platformer called Rocket: Robot On Wheels, is put together well, and they’re now known for another great franchise, InFamous. But what of Sly?

Thieves In Time, the fourth entry in the series, was made by Sanzaru Games, who don’t have much under their belt but did port the original Sly trilogy for the PS3. I was really nervous about this, but it turns out to have been an advantage: they’re well acquainted with the mechanics but are humble enough to not fuck with the formula. This is astounding: apparently Sanzaru began developing Sly 4 WITHOUT PERMISSION, and when they showed off their work, Sony was sufficiently impressed by the quality (or the massive balls on display) to give the green light. Imagine if that story had had an unhappy ending. We wouldn’t be gifted with Thieves In Time, an extremely enjoyable and faithful-to-a-fault fourquel. Apart from a luscious graphical facelift, nothing much has changed. Playing through the game, I realize that I didn’t really need anything to change.

The Sly games take place in a cell-shaded world of talking animals that dances somewhere between high-tech present-day and Noir. Sly Cooper is a suave raccoon who’s also descended from a long line of infamous thieves. Fortunately for the hapless victims of the world, the Cooper family upholds a strict code of honor and only steals from total bastards. The plot of Sly 4 picks up where the last game left off: Sly’s been semi-retired for awhile, faking amnesia in order to be with his sexy girlfrenemy, Inspector Carmelita Fox. Then he discovers that someone appears to be altering history -- Cooper history in particular. So Sly leaps back into action along with his two ever-faithful sidekicks, Bentley the nerdy, wheelchair-bound turtle (who wants to find his missing girlfriend, Penelope), and Murray the musclebound hippo (who wants to punch everything in the world). They travel back in time (Carmelita gets yanked along, of course), and uncover a sinister plot spearheaded by a shady individual called Le Paradox and several other time-displaced evildoers. Along the way, Sly’s ancestors are dragged into the mix as well. Because that wouldn’t mess up history, oh no!

Controlling Sly revolves around stealth sneaking and context-sensitive acrobatics, with the circle button doing most of the work for you. You bound across rooftops, walk on wires, balance on the pointy tips of things, and pick the pockets of derpy guards. Each character plays differently, some better than others (I’ve never found Murray’s beat-em-ups very interesting). You get a chance to play as all the historical Coopers, each with their own skills, and Sly also picks up special costumes that allow him access to hidden areas and (for the first time in the series) provide a reason to revisit levels. The story missions are a nice selection of challenges and minigames. Action platforming, button-matching, arcade-style shooting, timed sprints, vehicle courses, boss battles, FPS shenanigans -- everything gets its moment. Or you can ignore the story and just explore the sprawling open levels. Collect all the clue bottles to recover an extra-special treat, or seek out treasures that you must spirit back to the hideout before the clock runs down. These sidequests (criminally absent from Sly 3) add tons to the playability.

So I obviously like Thieves In Time. Does it redefine the series? Not at all, for better and for worse. Like I said, I didn’t need it to be different, but I also kinda felt like Sanzaru was carefully following a checklist. One thing I noticed was that the game is never very difficult, whereas the original trilogy could ramp up the challenge quite a bit at times. There was also less variety in the missions: I got sick of having to tail the baddie-of-the-moment while they conveniently outlined the details of their evil plan out loud to themselves. Fortunately, most of the villains are funny and interesting. Most but not all. Main antagonist Le Paradox is barely present (the earlier entries had this problem too) and his eventual appearance, as well as the not-really-a-final-boss-fight, are anticlimactic. The levels are fantastic, each one a visually-striking playground of high vantage points, disorienting pathways, and hidden crannies. (The only level that flops is the Ice Age; it seemed like the developers got really excited about the concept and then, too late, realized they had no good material to fill it. Also, the Ice Age villain, a jive-talking bear in a pimp suit, should be stoned to death for racism.) It’s understood that the Sly franchise depends upon a certain formula. Better to recreate the best aspects and be satisfied, though I still feel they could’ve taken things a little farther.

There is one thing they took farther, for which I am incredibly grateful, and that’s the character of Carmelita Fox. Up until now, she was a ball and chain that dragged the series down. See, Carmelita is basically Javert from Les Misérables with furry boobs and a taser gun; she hates all lawbreakers and believes in an entirely black-and-white world. Every scene where she totters impotently after Sly while yelling, “I’m gonna GET you!” is a scene that lessens the game. Ironically, she was worst in the best entry, Sly 2, which presented Carmelita as a shrill, clueless fuckup who, at one point, failed to realize she was dancing with her arch-nemesis, even though his brilliant disguise strategy was to wear a tuxedo and NOT TAKE OFF HIS THIEF MASK. Anyway, yeah, I have issues with Carmelita. To my happy surprise, Thieves In Time makes her into...a person! Holy shit! She’s forced to rethink her own philosophy; after all, she’s been cozy and romantic with Sly for awhile. She knows him now (also in the biblical sense, bow chicka bow wow). And she finally takes the time to see that his criminal acts serve a larger good. So she’s conflicted. She doesn’t know where she’s gonna stand once everything is over. I found myself warming to Carmelita in a way I never had before, so kudos!

On the flip side of character development, I do have a huge, angry nitpick. Without spoiling too much...at one point in the game, a character who we thought was good turns out to be evil. Shocking twist! Yeah, but shocking in a shitty way. I kept waiting for the character in question to turn out to have been brainwashed or something. Nope -- they’ve been secretly evil all along. Not only does this reveal come out of nowhere, it is completely untrue to the character in question. Up until this point, NOTHING about them has implied that they A) are a power-hungry megalomaniac, and B) have been planning to backstab Sly and co. from the get-go. It is a cheap, false twist. And it’s not properly resolved, either: there’s a rushed, obligatory emotional crisis; the revealed villain is beaten to a pulp; and our heroes stroll away, dusting off their palms. “Yeah, good thing we deal with painful betrayals of friendship on a daily basis!” The whole sequence made me facepalm. Maybe the next game will take the hint and repair that whole misguided subplot before it’s too late.

I said “the next game” even though I’m not sure there will be one, because I insist on optimism. Despite erring a little too much on the side of caution, despite befouling one good character, the folks at Sanzaru did such a bang-up job with Sly’s world that I can’t imagine them not being invited to continue. Of course, it depends on the success of Thieves In Time. Will it introduce new players to the franchise? Will it be dismissed as obsolete? Or will they be able to follow the example of Halo and bless the world with an entire second trilogy? Fingers crossed, because Sly Cooper presides over a way cooler, more engaging gameworld than fucking Master Chief. In my teeny little opinion, anyway.

VERDICT: A big raccoon squee! Wait, do raccoons squee?