Domain Change Announcement and other general info

So, sorry for being so much under the radar lately. I have been busy with keeping up with updates on Ankford Plays as you very well may be aware I update the channel daily and that has not left a lot of time for updates on any of my other stuff, particularly here. That also means that I just simply cannot justify keeping the http://kaisercritics.com domain alive for the asking price and that means by the 27th of September we will be reverting back to the original http://kaisercritics.blogspot.com domain. All in all, I just have not had the opportunity nor the motivation to work on this blog at all - I'm very sorry but it's just me here now, Mike having left the project way back in April of last year. If you guys are at all curious about what's going with me you can subscribe to the previously mentioned Youtube channel or follow my Tumblr. Hopefully I'll go back to having time to update this page sooner rather than later though and I'll be sure to notify you guys there once I do.

- Hans

Godzilla (2014)

Film: Godzilla
Release: 2014, Theatrical
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: 15 years after a nuclear meltdown that tore his family apart, a homebound soldier is forced to go pay bail for his seemingly superstitious father. However when the fathers theories prove to be true, humanity is faced with a problem that has been resting beneath the earth for millenia.

Hans' thoughts:

In 1954, a Japanese film studio called Toho aped the success of the giant monster genre with their own take: Gojira! (or as it's known in the west, Godzilla! King of the Monsters!) The movie was a tremendous success and ushered in the kaiju genre as well as a long spanning movie series, a reboot in the 80's, and an American remake in 1998. The American remake starring Matthew Broderick and directed by disaster-movie master Roland Emmerich is widely regarded as one of the worst movies not only of the genre, but of that decade. When Hollywood announced they were coming out with a new take on the Godzilla characters, fans were (perhaps understandably) wary of what the west would make of their favorite big screen monster this time. 

Did I tune into a Simpsons live-action movie by accident?

So let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first, one of the biggest problems with most disaster movies is that the human parts are absolutely boring, not just by comparison with what is going on in the rest of the movie but by drama standards as well. The human actors who do the best job are Bryan Cranston as the Captain Ahab like Dr. Brody and whoever played that pleading guy trapped in a crane being dragged into the abyss. I'm sorry, I really am, but I felt little to no chemistry between any of the human characters - including up and comer superstar Aaron-Taylor Johnson whom I've previously enjoyed in his role as Kick-Ass. Most of the characters who spoke in the movie had little to nothing to say besides explaining to the audience what is going on on the screen when they weren't mugging at the camera to try and make us believe that what they were looking at was very tragic and very real. I did not believe the love between the main character and his wife, played by Elizabeth Olsen. As many flaws as the '98 Godzilla movie had, at least I cared a little more about the characters on screen - even if that care was whether they were stepped on or eaten. Frequently the movie would give us a two second shot of the action going on and then immediately cut back to a full scene with nothing but human characters - even long after the focus should've cut completely to just the rampage and the reactions by the human onlookers. A fun addition to the human roster however was Ken Watanabe as this movies version of Dr. Serizawa. However Watanabe got little to nothing to do in the entirety of the film and in the first 25 minutes I was honestly wondering whether his character was supposed to be mute.

All this is really a damn shame because once the movie actually kicks into gear there is a lot of good stuff there. The special effects are really cool, the spectacle-o-meter is going into the red with all the stuff happening - you get what you came for. Senseless meaningless and all encompassing destruction. Once all the key players of the movie are on set (and let's be honest nothing in that sentence includes something human) the destruction is great. A lot of critics has treated the fact that there's more than one monster in this movie as a spoiler, however there being a second monster in the film is clearly shown in the officially released trailer. The interaction between monsters and the animation of the monsters felt more real, than the actual human characters running around trying to survive the disaster. I got more attached to evil monsters in this film than I should've and that's for shame. Godzilla is also fortunately in this movie, as opposed to the '98 disaster that simply but a computer generated T-Rex on screen. He looks like his Japanese counter part, he has the power set of his Japanese counterpart and he actually acted like Godzilla would. It was awesome to see him and his enemies smash themselves through the screen time they got - even if the designs of the new monsters were kinda cliché. The human parts may not be all that good but the people tied to the creative process obviously treated this as a petproject that they really wanted to see succeed. They get what the genre is all about, they get why Godzilla is so awesome, all they really need to do for their next outing is work on their drama skills - or maybe motivate their actors a little better. 

After the success of Del Toro's 2013 kaiju love-letter Pacific Rim we may see more and more American kaiju attempts like this one. I'll be happy if the rest of them will at least hit this level of quality and dedication when it comes to the spectacle and special effects. If the sequel to this movie simply ups its game when it comes to the human parts, we may actually get the great western action blast that the king of monsters truly deserves. 

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Film: X-Men: Days of Future Past
Release: 2014, Theatrical
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Peter Dinkleage, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Previous in the series: The Wolverine
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: Years into the future, a race-based war between humans and mutants has thrown the would into chaos and the mutants on the border of extinction. As a last desperate measure, Wolverine is thrown into the mind of himself from 1973, to bring together the corner stones of the mutant civil war: Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier.

Hans' thoughts: 

After bringing the series back from the brink of extinction with X-Men: First Class and The Wolverine, Bryan Singer is bringing us the brink of mutant extinction on the silver screen. With imagery mimicking the footage of the second world war, Singer shows us a dark and twisted future where apparently not only did most of the major cities get nearly destroyed - The sun decided to tone down its shining and draw all the color from the world till everything was a mix of black, grey and blue. Kidding aside, the movie does have a bit of a problem during the first 10 minutes of the movie. No re-introductions are served to an audience that's not seen most of these characters since X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006 and that gives us little time to get comfortable before a heavy amount of science fiction talk is thrown in our faces. This movie is mostly for those who has been along for the entire ride. Indeed, the only movie you don't expressively need to have seen before viewing is The Wolverine from last year.

 To audiences who remembers that far back, there's a nice reunion with Storm (Halle Berry), Shadowcat (Ellen Page), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and of course Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Unfortunately, while it's nice to see them all together again, they don't get to do much in the movie at all aside from a quick line of dialogue here and there and we just barely see them in action at all. Focus is instead on the younger versions of Professor X and Magneto - namely Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender). Thankfully, while the dark and grim future of the old actors doesn't have much going on - the movie picks up greatly once we actually have Wolverine in the 70's meeting the younger versions of both the aforementioned two gentlemen and also a certain supporting castmember we've not heard from since X-Men 2. Staying around from First Class we also have Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and as the big turning point of the movie we have the return of Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique. 

In the past era which spins most of the movie, the pace is quickly picked up. References to the major lore of the X-Men franchise is thrown at the audience and Peter Dinkleage does a great job as the scientist Dr. Trask. Indeed the very color defined imagery of the future stands as a direct opposite to very alive world of the past. One of the things that's been discussed a lot about the movie is the inclusion of Quicksilver, here played by Evan Peters. The movie seems to have a lot of fun with the concept of an incredibly speedy character and at least one moment had most of the theater bursting with laughter - The ball is in your court Marvel Studios. However like most of the X-Men movies before, this movie doesn't do team focus very well and the main part of the movie is therefore bounced between McAvoy's Xavier and Lawrence's Mystique, with Jackmans' Wolverine serving as the audience point of view. 

On the other hand, something the X-Men movies have always done very well is special effects and once again the effects are in tip top shape to show us the spectacle of just what these characters are capable of. A character I've sadly been missing from the other movies has been Beast and Hoult gets to completely beast out in this movie and actually do some action scenes of his own. X-Men: Days of Future Past is not the greatest of the bunch by any means. Lawrence does not feel like she's particularly interested to be in the movie with most of the returning cast members from the original trilogy. Dinklage's Trask rarely speaks at all which is a major problem considering his status in the film. McAvoy and Fassbender and Hoult all do perfectly great in the movie with Fassbender once again bringing in the bacon with his menacing Magneto. McKellen and Stewart are criminally underused, with McKellen only uttering one or two lines in the entire film. Why they were brought in at all is a mystery. Jackman does as good as always with his portrayal of Wolverine; it's strange they decided to once again throw main focus on him because in the original comic Shadowcat was the one to go back in time. The one piece of expository dialogue we never got was how the time travel stuff actually came into the posession of our heroes but that's just kinda thrown to the wind. There's also focus on a cameo character who nobody who hasn't read the comics or watched X2 lately will actually recognizw due to him only being recognizable by his last name. However it does what it came to do - give us the big rewind so we're ready for the next full-cast action blast. As an action movie it has some spectacular effects to latch onto. It makes for some great entertainment value as well, as a reunion movie however it kinda fails in not letting the old folks have that much to say or do. Whether this was due to budgetary restraints is anyone's guess but it's still a shame.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Film: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Release: 2014, theatrical
Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Redford, Scarlett Johansson
Directed by: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: After a black-ops operation on a hijacked U.S. ship, Captain America starts having doubts about the integrity of S.H.I.E.L.D. as an organization and he soon discovers that maybe modern day America isn't as black and white as the world he came from.

Hans' thoughts:

When you summarize the names of superheroes that will do well internationally in your head "Captain America" is scarcely the first one that comes to mind. Grounded deeply in the American reaction to the Second World War, the character was created basically as a propaganda piece to sell warbonds. One of the most well-known images of the character is simply him giving Adolf Hitler a punch to the jaw. However Captain America: The First Avenger actually turned out to be one of the more well received entries in what is now named "Phase one" of the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), consisting of (in order of continuity): Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and ending with The Avengers in 2012. So far "Phase two" of the MCU is also looking decent enough, while Iron Man 3 received some critical panning and the tie-in TV-show "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." has been deemed a failure by many fans Thor: The Dark World was considered one of the best entries to date. So how does The Winter Soldier hold up? Surprisingly well actually. 

Unlike Iron Man 3, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is very scarce in referencing the events of The Avengers, instead The Winter Soldier gives us a more in-depth look at the intelligence bureau known as S.H.I.E.L.D. Where our titular hero portrayed by Chris Evans, a man of simple values and straightforward methods, is having trouble fitting in with the methods of his secretive boss Nick Fury, portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson. Evans portrayal of Cap is as good as ever, his arc in this movie is very much about having old world viewpoints in a new world and while the actor himself turns in a good performance, and the writing is actually really good. I can't let the fact go however, that his costume has never really been all that good in any of the movies thus far and unfortunately it's the same case this time around. Costume designers seem to just be unable to get it to look good, and that makes total sense since the original Captain America suit was designed in the 1940's and has seen little to no updates in the years since then. This time they decided to make his ears be free from the hood part of the suit and unfortunately that makes them seem huge. I quickly got used to it, but in the first few moments of the movie I had to remind myself that this was not a comedy. The movie has a lot of returning actors and it works to the advantage of the piece, as instead of throwing a lot of new things at us we have the growth of already established characters with the exception of newcomer Sam Wilson, portrayed by Anthony Mackie. Mackie fits right in with the old cast however, and quickly sets up himself as another well-known Marvel character. His special effects are actually done really well and though his action scenes in full get-up are few they are very enjoyable and doesn't take away focus from the main cast - though unfortunately his costume design for this movie follows the Hollywood trend of removing as many colors as possible from superhero get-ups as was the case for the MCU's version of Hawkeye. The other newcomer is seasoned veteran Robert Redford as the chairman of S.H.I.E.L.D. and he has a lot of great moments in the movie. His portrayal made one of the twists of the movie all the more surprising. Scarlett Johanson returns as Black Widow, once again showing new sides of the character and seems to just have a lot of fun portraying the character. Nevermind the fact that she's not held back by a tacked on romantic sub-plot that probably would've been present in a lesser movie. Black Widow is thus far the only female superhero set up in the MCU, but she can definitely stand toe to toe with the likes of both much more seasoned actors Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Redford. 

The elephant in the room in this review thus far is of course The Winter Soldier himself, this is not because of his portrayal (the character is actually done a lot of justice and I enjoyed every single scene he was in) but because his identity is supposed to be a complete secret. Rest assured Marvel fans, there's no big fake out moments here as was the case with The Mandarin in Iron Man 3. More than that I'm not really willing to say, even though promotional material for the movie has not been all that secretive I feel that non-comic book nerds should discover this awesome plot twist for themselves. So there's that. Moving on to the action of the movie, it has a fair amount of "shaky cam". Meaning of course that the camera is moved frequently in the film to up the intensity of some of the scenes. Unfortunately it makes some scenes fairly hard to follow and I heard complaints from one of my companions that he could barely see what was going on in some of the bigger action scenes at all. It's a big shame because on the other hand the hand-to-hand combat scenes are really good and the choreography makes the action in these scenes seem very intense without needing the added effects of shaking the camera. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a much more eventful movie than its already strong predecessor and stands as a testament to the really great thing Marvel Studios has going at the moment proving that the high quality of "phase one" wasn't a complete freak of nature. The special effects of the movie are great, even if we're not able to see as many of them as we would like due to the rapid camera movement and the writing of the story is spot on - taking one of the major plotlines of Captain America's comic line and updating it for modern movie going audiences and the setting of the MCU.

News: Something different!

So normally our approach to video games have been a review of the story lines and not much else, that's a bit of an incomplete experience when you consider the medium which is why I've started a Let's Play channel! Come see and judge for yourself this time around. Our first subject? Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock, however the next game is already planned and on its way! Two episodes are posted daily at around 7 and 8 PM (GMT+1) and I hope you'll take a look!

Go to this link to visit and subscribe to my channel

or just start the playlist of the first series right here (currently at episode 8)

Justice League: War (2014)

Film: Justice League: War
Release: 2014, Video
Starring: Sean Astin, Christopher Gorham, Jason O'Mara
Directed by: Jay Oliva
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: All over the world, strange kidnappings by monstrous beings are taking place. During an investigating into the matter in Gotham City, Hal Jordan the Green Lantern of Earth meets the rumored "Bat Man".

Hans' thoughts:

Kickstarting a new DC animated universe, Justice League: War is an adaptation of the first story arc of the rebooted Justice League comic books from 2011. On planet Earth, superheroes are appearing for the very first time and brought together to fight a full scale invasion from the death lord of planet Apokolips, Darkseid. A few changes has been made to the original story for the sake of adaptation, the most notable being that Aquaman is switched out with Shazam (Captain Marvel) in the roster of the team. Why they decided to do so is anyone's guess, but it might be because Shazams origin story was retold as a subplot in the original format independent of the main story-line. 

Acting wise I have to admit I felt it in places was a bit weak. Especially the actress playing Wonder Woman had a few lines that felt way too read from the script, probably rehearsed well enough, but it's like she didn't make the dialogue her own. It's the same case in varying degrees with the other actors, however for whatever reason she was the one that stood out the most to me. Steve Blum, who's an industry veteran by this point did a good job as Darkseid however the voice-filtering on him sometimes made him nearly incomprehensible. Despite this, dialogue is actually very much on point and works well with the very uncomplicated plot - exposition is handed out quickly, "this is what's going on and why - now watch Superman punch this alien". This paves the way instead for more silly remarks and reactions between the individual heroes to the strangeness that surrounds them.

I was actually pretty thrilled by the action scenes in this, the movie does not serve as an origin story for the individual heroes (with the exception of Cyborg) so it's taken more of a "less talkie, more punchy" kind of nature. The action scenes are well edited and animated, with sound effects that really underscores the effects of the punches. The artstyle of the movie is similar to that of Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox from last year, and serves as a decent adaptation of the new costumes designed by artist Jim Lee.  Both Flashpoint and this story was written by Geoff Johns, and you can recognize his background as a writer for The Flash and Green Lantern as they've both been given extra attention. Flash was the main character in Flashpoint, and Green Lantern is the main character in this piece. Green Lantern especially ends up being a character with humorous moments and exchanges right from the get-go.

Justice League: War is by no stretch a great animated movie and it pales in comparison to some of the other DC direct-to-video releases. Despite the creators intention of making it a jumping on point for newcomers, It unfortunately also withholds one of the problems of the animated films by just leaving way too much up to the viewer. Hopefully some of the more unknown characters like Shazam will come into their own with a movie detailing their origin. That being said, for anyone who loves well-animated action scenes and the Justice League this is an entertaining piece through and through. It keeps a fast-pace, has some funny lines and a great retelling of both the origin story of Cyborg and the coming together of The World's Finest, setting up what will hopefully be a great series of movies.