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Review : Arq

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​First, the not spoiler review. 

Netflix original movie, Arq is a fast paced action adventure. I went in knowing nothing about the movie other than it was a Netflix original and sci-fi. When things started going I ended up glued to my seat trying to figure out what was going to happen next. I loved this movie! I hope it gets a sequel because I would love to see more of the world.

The entire movie takes place inside one house. You do get a feel for the world outside the house, but they manage to do a beautiful job of telling a story with this limited set, and only six characters. 

I honestly think I got more enjoyment of the story because I did not know what to expect. I came in blind and was able to take in the pieces as they were given to me, and got more interested the farther down the rabbit hole we went.

Now, for the spoilers: 

Arq isn’t a new idea. Time looping and sci-fi have gone hand in hand for as long as most of us can remember. I can think of several Star Trek episodes, plus movies like Primer, Looper, and Groundhog Day. All of which deal with people repeating a day, or week, or moment over and over again.

Arq is, however, creative in the way they do it. One person remembers. As they loop more people start to remember, and each new person who remembers causes new complications along the way. The fact that all of this is happening during a home invasion just makes it even better. 

The interaction between the two main characters is fantastic! And the fact that it keeps changing as they keep learning new things about each other through the loops is great. 

The ending was a bit of a OMG moment. I thought “fantastic, let’s go to the next episode, this is great.” That’s when I realized it was a movie, not a series. This would make such an interesting series!

Hoping they make a sequel to this. It really deserves one.

Review: Jason Bourne

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imagesDon’t you love how they did away with everything except his name? Jason Bourne, because we all know his name and his story. It’s become a part of our culture, and our references. There are so many memes about Bourne that he needs nothing except the name and the face.

But I find the Bourne series interesting in other ways too.

Last week I did a review on Stranger Things. Set in the 80’s, it had a lot of references to things I knew back then. That included one moment in the show when the father tells his wife “Don’t worry, their the government, we can trust them.” (Or something like that.)

On the other hand there is Bourne, and other movies like it, that emphasize that we can’t trust our government. When I was growing up we had The Great American Hero and 007 who fought for the government to stop the bad guys. Now both of them are working against the government, taking a stand against what they think is wrong.

We don’t trust our government like we use to. We don’t expect them to be working for the “greater good”, whatever that is. We do expect many people in government to act in their own self interest. The sad part is, nothing has changed. The same people in government are doing the same things they’ve always done. We just took the blinders off. Things like Snowden and the NSA have made it harder to stick our heads in the sand. Not that we can do anything about it.

So we go to the movies and we watch shows like Jason Bourne or Jack Reacher where a lone man fights against the odds to bring corrupt people in the government to justice. Why? Because we survive off hope. Just like many turned to comics and stories back during WWII for a little hope that the war would someday end.

I will say, Bourne was a great movie. Lots of action, lots of conspiracy and twists and turns trying to figure out who was really at fault. And in the end Jason Bourne only has some of the answers, leaving room for yet another installment. But not enough to feel like it wasn’t a complete movie. It’s some of my favorite kind of escapism.

Review: Stranger Things

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stranger-thingsThis has to be my favorite TV series this year. And it’s on Netflix.

Last year my two favorites were Dare Devil and Jessica Jones, both on Netflix. Okay, Game of Thrones is probably also. So yes, top three. Netflix is doing an amazing job of producing some fantastic shows.

If you haven’t watched Stranger Things yet…GO DO IT! Seriously, it’s a slow burning thriller set in the 80’s, and so good.

I have to admit that some of it is nostalgia that makes me love it. The sets are done with old wall paper, and wood paneling just like my grandmothers house use to be done up. There are Ferrah Fawcett hairdo’s (though not many) and lots of 80’s music.

But the story is what compels you to keep coming back. There is so much mystery around the young girl, and the underside. And while the whole series has a satisfying ending with all of the ends tied up they leave two new mysteries that leave a HUGE opening for a second season. I’m really looking forward to that second season.

The acting in this series is fantastic. I forgot what a great actress Winona Ryder is. She plays a desperate mother trying to save her son even when all the evidence points to him being dead. She seems to go a little crazy, which is exactly perfect for that character.

But it isn’t just her. The four kids that play the main characters are fantastic, each in their own way. Millie Bobby Brown who plays Eleven does a wonderful job of playing a semi mute child, and yet providing a lot of the emotion of every scene she is in. David Harbour and Charlie Heaton also stand out, trying to help those they care about while they are struggling with their own demons of their past.

If you love mystery, and thrilling story telling without being too scary, Stranger Things is a wonderful show.

Suicide Squad: Review (no spoilers)

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I know, the critics hated it. Suicide Squad got trashed by critics while the fans seemed to really enjoy it. Odd how that works.

I will admit, I’ve been a big Batman fan from a very young age, and I absolutely, unequivocally, LOVE Harley Quinn. I always have, I always will, I own the comics series she’s that awesome. Just a little crazy, completely without fear, and always trying to find some bit of normalcy even when everything’s not quite going right.

I think the Joker was actually the weakest part of this movie. Set aside the actors performance, the writing for the Joker just wasn’t as deep and thoughtful as the other characters.

I was actually very pleasantly surprised how they managed to put in origin stories for almost all of the Suicide Squad members, and how they were caught to begin with. Then they went a little deeper, showing what made some of them tick. That brought the characters alive, giving them more dimension. The villain (who I won’t be naming) added to that depth, showing what the characters actually wanted in life. Their deepest desires.

I watched a review before going (spoiler free, thankfully) that said the movie had a over arching theme of love. I think the movie’s theme was actually love verses hate. The main villain and the woman who put the Suicide Squad together are both operating out of hatred for something. They want to destroy (or be able to destroy) the things that make them afraid. The Suicide Squad, oddly enough, is representing the choice of love in their various incarnations. In Quinn’s case it isn’t the sanest of loves, but it still is love.

This isn’t a dark brooding story like The Dark Knight, and it isn’t a non stop action movie like some of the Avenger movies. This is an action movie that has a lot of character development. It shows the men and women of the Suicide Squad coming to grips with their place in life, and becoming a team.

Also, I have to admit the main actors, Will Smith and Margot Robbie really do fantastic jobs. Viola Davis does a great job of making me really hate her character, Amanda Waller, too.

Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

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imagesWe went out to watch the new Star Trek movie tonight, and I have to say I rather enjoyed it.

Now, I admit I’ve been a die hard Star Trek fan from a young age. I grew up watching re-runs of the original show, and started in earnest with The Next Generation. I loved how they mixed a message in with all the action and drama. There were bad episodes, but even the bad episodes were entertaining.

When they did the Star Trek reboot I was a little apprehensive. Reboots aren’t always good, as the new Total Recall and Robocop can attest (though I kind of liked the new Judge Dredd.) Sometimes they fail because they stray too far from the original source, in which case the die hard fans are left forgotten, wondering why they even bothered to stick with the original franchise instead of making something new…or they take the original source material and just grind it up and spit it out in a “modern” movie that is very forgettable.

This Star Trek reboot had some things I liked, and some things I didn’t. In many ways it did make sense to start off by completely rewriting history, and starting from scratch. I was also pleased that in the second movie they had Khan. He was an important character in the first series, and there was a lot of character development in that movie. A lot of things between the three main characters (Kirk, Spock, and McCoy) were established in that episode that needed to happen to further the new series, and Khan was a great backdrop for that all to happen.

I was slightly disappointed that the new series became much more about the action movie style then the character development and subtle commentary on the world around us. While some of the original movies were blatant about it (save the whales?) others were far more appealing. Learning to trust your friends, standing with your crew, putting differences aside in search of peace… All of them very well told, and many you didn’t catch unless you thought about it.

I was happy to see that this latest movie had a moral. It wasn’t in your face about it, and it required some thinking, but it had several morals laced in with the high action plot. I think there are a few subtle morals to the story, the biggest one being to stick with your crew when the going gets tough, and that unity in the face of adversity will see you through. And I saw a one much larger one that I can’t tell you because it would spoil the whole movie.

The other fantastic thing about this particular movie is the character development. Kirk, Spock, and Bones, are all learning to trust one another, and finding a true friendship together. The chemistry between the three main actors really felt like it was coming together, and I loved to see that. The actors are getting to know one another, and seem more natural up on the screen. They are coming into their own, which makes the movies that much better.

Overall, I’m looking forward to the next Star Trek movie. I think they are doing justice to the source material while still making a brand new universe. I hope they continue to weave those subtle morals into the story, to make the story worth telling and sharing, and making it last. Because, lets face it, action movies come and go. We have some that we really love, but there are very few that stick with us for generations. Star Trek has become such an icon of the future because it shows us a future that we want to have. It teaches lessons, and inspires science. It expands the mind instead of just entertaining it for a couple hours. And that’s what keeps us coming back for more.

But I will also admit…I was on the edge of my seat for some of those scenes! The action is top notch.

Whatever reason you go see it, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Ghostbuster Reboot?

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ghost_10I’ve watched the Ghostbuster reboot trailer a couple of times now and I have a very…meh…response to it.

First of all, I absolutely LOVED the original movie. The second Ghostbusters was okay, but the original one is a movie I have watched dozens upon dozens of times because I loved it.

The reboot seems to start in the same library as the original, but with four women instead of men. I’d just like to say now that the gender swap aspect doesn’t bother me. I hate that I have to point this out, but the gender of an actor doesn’t matter as much to me as their skill in their performance. But the thing that sets a performance off the most is the writing of the script, the directors direction in performance, and the editing. You can have a marvelous performance by an actor/actress, but if the edit cuts it together wrong that performance will still suck. You can have a brilliant script, but if the director has the actors/actresses stand in weird spots, or he camera crew capture it from weird angles, it’s not going to look good in post. All of the elements have to work together to produce a good movie.

Now, from what I’ve seen of the trailer: The CGI was interesting. I loved the ghost on stilts, and the librarian ghost looked awesome. Some of the set pieces, like the new ghost trap, were kind of a cool take on the original movie. And they had Slimer.

What I did not like: The stereotypical loud, sassy, black chick. Really? Aren’t we past that yet? Sure, it can be funny sometimes, but the original Winston was not a stereotype, he was an everyday man just looking for a job. That was the beauty of his character, and they turned him into… that. Ug.

The rest of the plot-line that they showed seemed to revolve around one liners and cheap rips, or “girl power-esk” BS. They were suppose to be three scientists and they made them look stupid! How is that empowering for women?

And it bothers me slightly that they made this a reboot instead of a sequel. Why? Why would they do that? Not only are they rebooting it, but they are completely redoing it, and, if the trailer is to be believed, making it more campy then the original one was. And I want to point out that I would feel the exact same way if it was men playing the parts instead of women.

They could have done this well, and made tons of money to boot, if they had just made it a sequel. A passing of the torch to the next generation, and treated it with the same quirky but smart humor that the original had. Instead we get campy, stupid humor on par with an Adam Sandler movie. If you can’t tell I really don’t like most Adam Sandler movies.

It’s kind of sad too. I would have liked a new Ghostbusters movie to share with my kids. At this point I’m just going to have to wait to see reviews, and probably catch it on Netflix when it finally makes its way out of the movie theater.

Review: Jessica Jones

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Jessica JonesI finished watching Jessica Jones just last month and I have to say that it is one of my favorite shows to come out last year.

They did a great job of setting the series up. Here we have a bad ass woman who doesn’t take crap from anyone, and has the strength of a hundred men. Then someone mentions Killgrave and she’s visibly terrified. This bad ass chick that just lifted a car, jumped to the second story of a building without a problem, and gives no fucks about anyone or anything, is terrified of this guy. This guy must be really dangerous if she’s scared of him, right?

Then we start finding out what kind of a completely messed up guy this really is, and what he does to his victims. Mind control with absolutely no conscious, no empathy. It’s horrifying. He thinks nothing of telling people to kill themselves, or others, or having children sit in a closet and die of starvation, unable to move or call for help just because he told them not to. It’s one of the most sadistic villains I’ve ever seen in a super hero movie or TV series.

Jessica Jones at first decides to run. She wants to get as far away from Killgrave as possible, but even in running we see that she has altruism at heart. She isn’t running because she’s afraid of what he’ll do to her, he’s already raped and tortured her, and while that’s terrible it isn’t the worst he can do. She’s terrified of what he will make her do to other people.

This is the crux of the entire season of Jessica Jones. She isn’t fighting for herself, I sometimes wondered if she could fight for herself. She’s motivated by helping others, and trying to stop Killgrave from harming anyone else.

The creators of Jessica Jones really did their homework on the psychology of abuse victims. While not everyone reacts the same to abuse there are some similarities that they portrayed throughout the season. There are a group of Killgrave’s victims that come together and discuss what happened to them, and try to overcome their problems together. Then there is Jessica Jones who shuns such help, and would rather drink away her memories. The sharp contrast serves to set her apart from everyone. She doesn’t want their help, even if she sometimes needs it.

Krysten Ritter does a phenomenal job of portraying Jessica Jones, a smart, sassy woman who’s tough as nails and broken at the same time. Her opposite, Killgrave, played by David Tenant, does a fantastic job of bringing a horrible villain to life with all his quirks and idiosyncrasy. Together they make a nail biting series that I just could not stop watching.

They even play homage to the origin of the characters. Killgrave, once The Purple Man, is seen wearing purple suits in a couple of episodes. Jessica Jones’ sister brings out a costume for her to wear, a copy of the Jewel costume that she wore in the comics.

Like Dare Devil before this, Jessica Jones is one of my favorite super hero shows. I think Marvel did the right thing in giving Netflix the go ahead to make these series. With more planned I feel that my subscription to Netflix is the best value in TV I can get.

My impressions of “Mad Max: Fury Road”

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MM-Main-PosterJust got home from watching Mad Max Fury Road. I only remember fleeting parts of the original Mad Max. I do remember watching “Thunder Dome” as a teenager. Tina Turner was amazing in that. What I remember of both movies was fantastic, dark, gritty, and filled with action.

The new Mad Max carries a lot of those same qualities. Dark and gritty, filled with action. And it was amazing. A true action movie filled with all sorts of explosions, phenomenal chase sequence, and moments where you are just trying to figure out who is a good guy.

The story was more then just action though. There was a lot of great characterization (though little of it had to do with Max, himself.) But to talk about that, which I have to because I’m also a story teller, I’ll take you behind a cut since there are going to be spoilers.

(Click ‘read more’ to risk spoilers.)

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Maleficent and Disney’s new direction

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If you haven’t seen Maleficent yet, then you should. It’s a beautiful movie with gorgeous imagery, and strong characters. The plot is a nice twist on a fairy tale we all grew up with. And the ending has an epic battle worthy of the name.

They did a beautiful job of adding just enough prosthetic to Angelina Jolie’s already very expressive face. It gave her higher cheek bones, and made her seem leaner, almost gaunt, with wide mouth rimmed in red. In some scenes, especially those containing maniacal laughter, it was pretty amazing to watch. She embodied the evil Maleficent I watched when I was just a little girl. The scary dark fairy bent on destroying the life of the beautiful Aurora. She really made the movie what it was.

Now, beautiful scenery, characters that pop, and a plot that twists old stories and makes you wonder what is up and what is down… Lets just get into what I really love about this movie. I’m going to put it behind a break. DON’T READ IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS! (just a few of them.)

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A Challenge and a Review

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millwords

A Challenge

A group of my fellow authors started a little challenge for the new year. The challenge is to be the first to write a million words for the year. Not just on books we might be writing, but also including things like blog posts, notes for world building, articles, or anything else we “write”, because ultimately writing is all about putting words on a page.

I am skeptical that I can do this. Sort of.

I write a lot each day. I write a bit on some stories. I do blog posts. I answer emails, and talk in forums about odd things I find on Reddit. But I can’t bring myself to “count” those words.

I suppose, if I wanted to, I could cut and past all those little snippits of words from conversations about the political climate in Washington, and weather or not the cute little otter running back and forth across the fence is really THAT cute, and shove them into a file marked “BLAH” and count them. But that feels like cheating to me.

And it isn’t that I’d be cheating the challenge, because the challenge specifically says “ANYTHING” I write counts. It’s that I feel I would be cheating myself.

Last year I wrote about a quarter of a million words, only including actually work on books and short stories, or blog posts. That also included a few ideas for future stories, but it didn’t count all the blog posts I started and never finished, or those I eventually threw out as a bad idea. It didn’t count several thousand words I threw away as something that would never come to fruitfulness. Maybe those things would be interesting to see.

I wanted to work myself up to 1000 words of story a day anyway, and that would get me close to 400k all alone, so perhaps with all this other writing added in I will get closer to a million. But I refuse to count posts on Reddit, Twitter, Goodreads, and other social media. THAT is where I draw the line.

A Review

FO-smSimon Canton was nice enough to do a review over on his blog for “Forgotten Ones”. It was a fair review, and…

Well, I don’t generally make it a point to answer reviews, or comment on them for various reasons, but I will say that I do have two more books planned for the “Eternal Tapestry” story-line. One will be a revisit of the “Necropolis” short story, and go back to the first time Jadina meets Maylin. The other is a story that comes after “Forgotten Ones”, dealing with another goddess that managed to survive the modern age. Because I agree with Simon that it would be much better as a full novel. So,… I’m working on that.

I find it incredibly interesting that so many people read my stories and their first comment is “I wish this was longer, I wanted to read more.” Which just leads me to think that I really, REALLY need to put out some novels so I can give people what they are asking for.

I’m working on it!

Some Updates

“Mermaids Curse”, my NaNoWriMo project, is now at 48k. It’s about half finished, maybe a little more. It also has a LOT more action then most of my books, and maybe a couple sex scenes just because they seemed to fit at the time. (That is, if I can write them. I’m still not that confident in writing a full fledged sex scene.)

That is my big project at the moment, but in between filling out those chapters I will continue writing short stories simply because I love finishing stories, and I love publishing things so people can read them. Since it takes me such a long time to finish a novel it just makes sense that I’d do a couple short stories a month too.

“Footprints” is finished, but I won’t be putting that out for a little while. Garrett Robinson is working on an anthology, and “Footprints” will, hopefully, be part of that. I am not sure if I want to put it up as a single before or after the anthology is released.

“Zombie Swarm” is the current short story I am working on. It is my first (and probably only) zombie story, and looks like it will be 5-8,000 words. It is a rather unique view of zombies, and I really can’t say anything other then that till it is released. Which, I hope, will be by the end of this month.