Author: Verse

3:10 to Yuma (2007) 3.5/5

Categories 3.5/5, Action, Crime, Drama, Movie and Series Reviews, Western

A good movie but a little too cleanly puzzled together. The scripts cleanliness takes front stage to character motivations. This makes for some admittedly fun one liners and impressive scenes, but it feels very Hollywood by the end. Even the wrapping up feels like everyone says the right thing in unnatural ways to get it to the overall cool idea. This leaves Dallas Roberts, as the money man, to just be super agreeable at every step.

This also may be the cleanest R rated film. I am not advocating for going Bone Tomahawk, but it detracts how every death is so visually polite. Especially when quite a lot of characters are motivated by dealing and avoiding death out.

If that seems tough on the film, it is only because I really like certain parts. Ben Foster is fantastic and chews what he can with his dialogue. Peter Fonda really nailed his holyer-than-thou role. Bale is awesome and lets scenes breath around him. It is always fun to see Alan Tudyk, even if his character felt very cut down in editing here or in need of some actual doctoring scenes along the journey.

Appaloosa (2008) 4.5/5

Categories 4.5/5, Crime, Drama, Movie and Series Reviews, Romance, Western

I saw Appaloosa years ago, and now again, and I still enjoyed it a lot. It is a very slow film with a lot of character, dialogue, and patience. Life slowly rolls by and even the action has a patient, audience-aware, build up. I admire its ability to eschew being over dramatized and keep interest.

End of Watch (2012) 3.5/5

Categories 3.5/5, Action, Crime, Drama, Movie and Series Reviews, Thriller

End of Watch dances all over the line of over-the-top and plausible reality. Its characters are immensely watchable, even down to the supporting cast like Frank Grillo and David Harbour.

The character-perspective camera work captures the chaos in a unique way and furthers character development. However, it is also a distraction as the film explains in unbelievable ways why various characters are recording things. Ultimately though it feels unnecessary as the film mixes this documentary style with regular camera work.

Some of the script is really good, genuinely eliciting laughs, and some feels written with a hammer. The hammer can be said for a lot of things though, even outside of dialogue, with a movie that starts off with its lead cops immediately breaking their cover to walk up in a shoot out for the cool guys factor.

A really rough spot is the curbside gangsters, a constant villainous element throughout. These characters were comically mustache twirly. That could have worked fine, but they got too much screen time and it only greatly detracted.

It would be hard to have a bad time with End of Watch, just be ready to suspend some disbelief.

Realized Thoughts on Falling Out of Love with Blizzard

Categories Video Games

I spent countless hours playing Diablo 2 and its expansion, and it probably only barely edges out Starcraft for hours played. My introduction to role playing games was the first Diablo (On the Playstation!) and NoX (a Westwood game) and Diablo 2 thereafter. Both gave me a lot of good memories, but Westwood died after NoX and Blizzard also had Starcraft. I was passionate about Blizzard from this point. When World of Warcraft came out, I jumped from Star Wars Galaxies to WoW and never looked back. I was smitten once again. WoW felt like it took the ideas of what I wanted from role playing games and made everything bigger and more realized.

NoX
NoX by Westwood. “My introduction to role playing games was the first Diablo (On the Playstation!) and NoX (a Westwood game) and Diablo 2 thereafter.”

However, on reflection and while listening to Kyle Bosman and Jason Schreier talk about Blizzard and WoW, I realize the world of Azeroth was probably what ruined them for me. Despite years of love, and subsequent love-hate, I think the path Blizzard walked for World of Warcraft changed the company from one that made games regularly to one that only focuses on, and before the phrase really existed, live service games. I remember when Starcraft Ghost was canceled and then I just stopped hearing about Blizzard working on new games. I did jump into and play Overwatch thoroughly but even that eventually had its doors closed and got replaced with Overwatch 2, with extra emphasis on forever-money.

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