Category: reviews

As a Reviewer

Laura Highcove

So about a half a year ago, I sat down and tried to figure out what it was I liked about the books, TV, and movies that I loved. It was a rather eye opening experience and ever since then my method of reviewing books that I don’t like has drastically changed.

The biggest step in this process came when I started reading A Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. I had finished The Name of the Wind with an overall …meh. I was torn because by all accounts that book was an amazing, raving success that will change the face of fantasy for years to come. So why didn’t I like it?

I got about a quarter of the way into A Wise Man’s Fear and realized with startling clarity, that I didn’t care about any of the characters. The world Rothfuss created was beautiful and deep, the magic system intricate and believable, and the writing smooth and poetic. But when I realized I didn’t care what happened to Kvothe, or any of his friends/allies, I put the book down as dnf.

Now, I find I can more easily decide to mark a book dnf because if what I enjoy in a book is not there, then there’s no reason for me to finish it. At the same time, I am aware that just because that book doesn’t have what I enjoy doesn’t mean it’s a bad book and it doesn’t mean the author is a hack (In fact I think Rothfuss is awesome, and I would love to meet him some day and/or read his next series.) it just means I didn’t like the book. I just wish more people could understand this concept.

Review: Final Fantasy XV

Laura Highcove

Or as I liked to call it: Bromance: the Road Trip

Story:

The Crowned Prince Noctis heads out on a road-trip with his personal guard/best friends to meet his fiance in order to get married. His car breaks down on the way and while it’s getting fixed they find out that his father has been murdered, his city occupied/destroyed and his fiance has gone into hiding. Noctis then goes on a cross countries road trip to get all of the artifact weapons, get the blessings of the world’s gods, and find the ring that will allow him to use a magic crystal to save the world from encroaching darkness and demons.

The story was interesting but not mind-blowing. At least it was better than the storyline in FFXII, which I basically don’t remember. However, I was sufficiently invested in the characters throughout the story. I even felt regret whenever I would go back to ‘present’ time to advance the storyline, so now that I’ve beaten the game I can just hang out in the past forever.


Who needs responsibility when you’re beautiful and sleeping on a chocobo?

Characters:

I liked all of the characters. I am a sucker for bromance, so I loved the main four, and there was a colorful cast of side characters throughout the story.

Clothing put me in a weird mood. Remembering back to X-II (That’s ten-2, not 12) I feel like whenever there are outfits and girls, the variations are sexy, plentiful, and etc. When I found out there were outfits in this game I thought there would be a little more than: you start with two outfits with two variations each and the only other one you get is storyline based. Sure, I loved ‘dressing up’ the car as well, but not quite the same thing. I would’ve liked a little less cleavage on Cindy and the Dragoon or a little more shirtless action for the boys. Equal opportunity nudity please.

Gamyplay:

The combat was a little too spectacle fighter, and not enough rpg for my immediate liking. I got the hang of it over time, but I never actually liked it. I also found the ascension grid …well not exactly complicated, but annoying? I had to play for quite a while before I figured out which spheres were beneficial to my play style.

I was also pretty astonished by the number of items I needed to get through fights. I think Ignis kinda sorta turned into a healer at some point, but not really? I kept waiting to get some sort of healing spell for myself, but no, I ended up chugging potions and elixirs at an alarming pace. Now I doubt I was playing the game as intended because there was some kind of “crouch” mechanic, but most of the time when I tried to crouch during a battle I would either jump forward instead of crouching, or the monster would come over and eat my face, so I gave up on it pretty quick. I probably also should’ve used the point warping more, but it’s hard to find a point warp while avoiding the baddies and you can’t move the camera in wait mode.

But the one thing that I think caused me more annoyance than anything else were simply the load times. I mean I’m not entirely surprised because of the complexity of the world, but when driving around doing different quests, the downtime really added up.


I would go take bathroom breaks and come back and still have to wait.

Graphics:

This game is gorgeous to look at. Not just the characters and mob models, but the world itself is so seamlessly put together and…well just real-looking. I found myself in awe over and over again. Once I finally learned to put up with the camera being annoying to control (and way too close) and my disappointment over having to wait for Prompto to take pictures instead of being able to take them myself, I settled well into this world.

Overall, I enjoyed this game the most out of the Final Fantasies I’ve played, though I am really into the whole bromance thing and pretty graphics. I could take or leave the fighting system (though when I managed to get a link strike, that was rather cool) and the Ascension grid. The world was just so huge and interactive. It might even be that it feeling like it was just a step outside the real world really did a lot for it. We’ll just have to see if this is an upward tick in the Final Fantasy genre, or a dying gasp.


The graceful Prince Noctis

Review: Moana

Laura Highcove

I went to see Moana a few weeks after it came out. Disney’s been doing a good job with movies recently, but with the complete glut of movies, it’s hard to find time to get out to see them all.

Anyway, Moana is a story about a young girl who is next in line to be the chief of a tribe on a Hawaiian island. The tribe has everything they need, but Moana really want to be a sailor, only her father, the current chief, is super against it.

Moana’s grandmother encourages her by showing her that their tribe did once travel the waves, moving from island to island. Cue Moana heading out on her own to find a demi-god who needs to replace a magical stone.

Overall, a wonderful movie. I loved the whole thing (except for the crab) and the ending was spot on.

Meta talk: Hero’s Journey straight up. Also, really? Could you have been any more obvious that the pig is only there to sell stuffed animals?

Also, there is no love interest. That’s right, ladies and gentleman: this story has no love interest. Just a girl out there being awesome.

I was also pretty happy with how realistic the body types were (ignoring Maui, who is a demi-god). No unreasonably skinny waists in this movie. And yet you can’t argue that Moana isn’t attractive. I’m really hoping this trend will be continued.

Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Laura Highcove

So I went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them over my Thanksgiving break. I could only give it 2/5 stars. (Warning: Spoilers Below)

I loved the actor who played Newt, but the character himself was horribly written. The only time he really shone as a character was when he was in his briefcase taking care of his animals.

I really enjoyed Jacob. While Newt ran around for the first part of the movie with no characterization or motivation, we saw Jacob’s personality and dreams.

I also loved seeing the inside of the briefcase and all of the mythological animals that were there. It wasn’t enough to carry the movie to the end, but it was entertaining.

Most of the rest of the movie was terrible.

First off, If owls just magically give school letters to kids from muggle households, then how do any wizarding children get passed over? Even if they can’t go to school because of stupid parents, the wizarding world should know about them.

Tina is nothing but incompetent and ineffectual. Even when I thought she might matter because Credence had met her before, (ignoring how that flashback was shoehorned in) it ended up not mattering at all.

Also, let’s not pretend that people didn’t die during the climax, you know, with the buildings collapsing all over the city. Then they all got a memory-wipe, which basically means people wouldn’t even remember their loved ones existed. (Hermione did it to her parents, remember?) This movie made me suddenly realize the discrepancy between wizards and muggles and the horror comes from the fact that this is the way the wizarding world is supposed to work. Magical mishaps happen. Maybe if you want to keep magic a secret, you shouldn’t be building your Ministries of Magic in the most populated cities in the world.

Overall, pretty disappointed. It had enough charming bits of the wizarding world I love so much sprinkled throughout, but I would probably not watch it again. I’m hoping that they’ll do a better job with the second movie, but I’m not holding out hope. If you’re a hardcore Harry Potter then go see it, otherwise, please don’t use this as your introduction to the wizarding world.

Analyzing The Prince of Persia

Laura Highcove


I love a movie with a good title screen.

The Prince of Persia movie is one of the few video game movies that is considered good. It is in my own list of favorite movies, though not because it is a video game movie. This movie does a lot of things well and is overall an enjoyable experience, even if you’ve never played the game.

Here are a few of the things I think this movie does very well from a storytelling perspective:

Characterizing the three brothers


Dustan: “Garsiv, your hand is on your sword again.”
Garsiv: “Where it should be!”
Tus: “Oh, my brothers!”

From this first scene where the three of them interact while talking about whether to attack Alamut, they perfectly portray their personalities as well as their opinions of each other.

When Dustan is later framed for killing his father, the brothers act to type in that Tus is conflicted about what to do and Garsiv just wants to cut Dustan open.

It makes it all the sweeter when Dastan is able to convince both of them that he is telling the truth which leads to the feel-good moment when they come together at the end. I love that the trust between the three brothers is such an important part of the story.

Dustan and Tamina

The relationship between Dustan and Tamina is basically a perfect example of the kind of relationship development I love, down to them calling each other ‘prince’ and ‘princess’ sarcastically at first, which later turn into terms of endearment.

They have no reason to trust each other, each using the other to get what they want, but over time they begin to trust each other, and that leads to respect, and then love. It’s such a natural progression that you have no doubt that they will come to love each other again even after time is rewound.


Tamina: “Please don’t mock me, Prince.”
Dustan: “Oh, I hardly think we know each other well enough for that, Princess.
But I look forward to the day that we do.”

Parkour

The choreography for this movie is top notch and that includes all the parkour elements. Since it’s one of the selling points of the game, of course it’s important in the movie too. Unfortunately it is not easily displayed by screenshots.


I’ll just leave this here.

What I Didn’t Like

This movie is not perfect, and it has a few things in it that I don’t like, and it took a while before I stopped and looked at those pieces closely enough to determine why I don’t like them.

This scene always bothered me, because basically, the Sheikh and all his guys followed our heroes from the desert into the mountains before asking what the heck happened with the snakes the night before, and are about to leave before Tamina bribes them with gold. It’s a rather obvious example of leaving a discussion until a later scene in order to improve pacing, and it’s always bothered me since I’m not sure it would’ve been any worse for them to have that discussion when they were still in the desert.

Dustan makes a lot of leaps of logic. While this basically keeps the plot from being too slow, the boy really does piece together plot elements very accurately from very little information. He is characterized as thinking well on his feet, so maybe that’s where you’re supposed to get it from. Luckily he does draw a few of the wrong hasty conclusions as well.

The Sands of Time just …go away when Dustan and Nazam go back in time. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to assume that Tamina was just wrong about the Sands of Time wiping out the earth, or what, but it’s played up as a huge problem, and then it isn’t one.

Despite the flaws, I have watched this movie over and over again. Generally the only scene I skip is the race to the sandglass, which is pretty good for a movie I’ve seen so many times.

Analyzing Howl’s Moving Castle (And Why I Liked the Book Better than the Movie)

Laura Highcove

Next in my series of analyzing my favorite media is Howl’s Moving Castle. I saw the movie before I read the book, mostly because I watch all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films. I loved the movie and so I went out to buy the book. I also loved the book.

Over time, when I would pull the movie out to watch, I found myself instead watching a few minutes of the movie and then going and getting the book to read instead. Howl’s Moving Castle is only 329 pages, so it’s a quick read.

Reasons I Like the Book

1) Character:
I love Sophie and Howl’s relationship and how it develops so naturally between them as they snipe back and forth. Especially! the tiny bits of care Howl displays between his irresponsibility and arrogance that gradually grow more frequent. In fact, I love this so much about the book, that it’s the biggest the reason I don’t watch the movie anymore, because it is practically non-existent there.

Howl said. “I think we ought to live happily ever after,” and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more eventful than any story made it sound, though she was determined to try. “It should be hair raising,” added Howl.
“And you’ll exploit me,” Sophie said.
“And then you’ll cut up all my suits to teach me,” Howl said.

2) Voice/Plot:
Both of these have to do with the book being well written. The narrator is so delightfully playful and the dialogue is witty and appropriate.

“Go to bed, you fool,” Calcifer said sleepily. “You’re drunk.”
“Who, me?” said Howl. “I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober.” He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him. “What a lie that was.” Howl remarked as he walked into the wall. “My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.” He walked into the wall several times more, in several different places, before he discovered his bedroom door and crashed his way through it. Sophie could hear him falling about, saying his bed was dodging.

I also appreciate how well the plot is explained to Sophie in the end. Howl does a lot behind her pov and the Witch of the Waste’s plot is rather complicated, but at the same time I never remember feeling confused about what was happening and why.

Reasons I liked the Movie

1) Bishounen:
Bishounen is a Japanese word that literally means ‘pretty boy’. I grew up watching a lot of anime and this is a trope that is quite prevalent in anime. I love men who are classified as pretty over handsome. Howl is a bishounen.

2) Sense of Wonder:
Hayao Miyazaki knows how to add wonder to his movies by just showing the beauty of nature. It’s probably why I like most of his movies.

Why I Like the Book Over the Movie

1) The movie plays Howl up as noble, with his ‘saving’ Sophie from the soldiers at the beginning and his rampant disapproval of the war. This overshadows his being an irresponsible, arrogant womanizer. I can see why I liked the movie so much at first, because who doesn’t love a beautiful, noble character? Then I fell in love with the flawed Howl. I read the book to watch Howl become a better person through his interaction with Sophie.

2) Sophie does not have any magic. At least not that’s obvious. The one bit of ‘overt’ magic that she does do, in returning Howl’s heart, is in no way foreshadowed, so it’s easy to say Sophie can do it because she loves Howl. I suppose this is rather petty, but I feel like the magic was so naturally a part of who Sophie was that its absence gives her a different feel.

3) The whole war, which was there to create conflict instead of the Witch of the Waste …perhaps because her plot was too complicated? In the end the war didn’t mean anything except there were bombs dropped during the climax. (That and it reveals that Suliman was apparently covertly creepy/evil what with her mini-Howls and the implication that the war was just an excuse for her to gather and strip the powers of witches and wizards.)

4) The Witch of the Waste being horribly ineffective. She curses Sophie, admits she can’t undo the curse, can hardly walk up stairs, gets her magic taken away, and then turns into a senile invalid.

Now I’m sure a lot of parts of the movie suffered because, well, it was a movie and not a book. Books just have more time for detail and character arcs. What I can’t forgive is just how different the Howl from the book felt than the Howl from the movie. I could have been fine with the war subplot if Howl could have just been himself. But since one of the things I enjoy the most in my media are the characters and their relationships, I’ll just continue reading the book and using the movie for character designs.

Analyzing Speed Racer

Laura Highcove

So I said in a previous post that I wanted to look at my favorite media and analyze what about my favorite movies, books, TV shows, etc is so appealing to me. I decided to start off with what is arguably my favorite movie of all time: Speed Racer.

1) Stylistic Graphics

I am a huge fan of the graphics. I tend to like the aesthetic choices of the Wachowskis. Most of their movies are not great, truthfully, but their style, mixed with the feel of the anime I grew up with, made this world, and thus the movie, feel so beautiful to me. I understand this particular look is not something that a lot of people like (I think it may have been one of the reasons this movie did so horribly, but that might have also been the anime style that not many Americans appreciate), but reality that looks like a brighter, somewhat cartoonish version of reality tends to grab my attention right away. I also especially enjoyed the separation of the characters from the background, which allowed the background to move, blur, or even have different filters to change scenes or add emotion.

2) Fight Scenes

I really enjoy good fight choreography, and the races basically were fight scenes. In the Casa Cristo Speed and Racer X team up to fight off all the other cars in the dust cloud and it’s pretty amazing. Also when Speed gets Snake Oiler guy on the rail, bearing down on him with his tire. Or especially when Speed fights Jack ‘Cannonball’ Taylor and then leaves him behind.

3) Trust

I like the strong relationship between Speed and his family (which includes Trixie and Sparky). I like stories where there is a sense of trust between characters. Pops was willing to do business with Royalton if Speed wanted to, even though he knew big companies were not to be trusted. Trixie was willing to help Speed sneak away from home to go to the Casa Cristo because it was important to him. Mom kept everyone together when they tried to fall apart when they found out about Casa Cristo. And how Pops was willing to let Speed go when everything seemed to be spiraling out of control, but made sure to tell Speed how much he loves him.

4) Bromance

I like the brotherly love between Speed and Rex/Racer X. Rex means everything to Speed and Speed is likewise crushed when his big brother turns ‘dirty’. When Speed tells Racer X they made a great team while driving in the Casa Cristo and how much Racer X probably wanted to tell him the truth. Then Speed accuses Racer X of being his brother, and how disappointed he is when he’s ‘wrong’, but how Racer X encourages him like only a big brother would be able to.

There is even romance and a world that feels huge with all the details and backstory they bring up (Which I appreciate as a fantasy author). I go back to this movie again and again, and there are really no scenes that I regularly skip over. Even the scenes with the monkey (I hate monkeys) are not long or drawn out enough to be an annoyance. This movie just hits a lot of sweet spots when it comes to what I enjoy.

Warcraft Movie

Laura Highcove

So a few weeks ago I went to see the Warcraft movie. I knew it wasn’t going to be good and I knew it wasn’t going to have a happy ending (cause the whole Alliance vs Horde thing), but I was hoping that I could get some entertainment value out of it.

Now at one point I was a pretty big Warcraft lore buff, but it’s been three or four years since I played World of Warcraft, and so most of it has faded. The only name I remembered was Medivh, and that he wasn’t a good guy.

As for the movie itself. The script was pretty terrible, however the characters did a good job of showing what good friends they were with each other. I don’t know if that was the script, or just good acting, but it made the movie bearable.

The graphics were, of course, amazing. Especially the orcs and how they moved and looked. I was also pretty impressed with the magic effects. I could see people saying that the magic was a bit overblown, but after playing World of Warcraft, it’s exactly what you see swirling around a mage or a warlock when they cast.

Seeing the cities of Ironforge and especially Stormwind was just amazing. I enjoyed seeing Karazhan and Dalaran as well, though they looked a little less like their in-game counterparts. Also, kudoes to the Alliance’s armor, showing off the shiny and the bling. Not realistic in the least, but who the heck cares?

And the movie did bring up nostalgic feelings of playing World of Warcraft, which I did from 2006 through 2012 in a hardcore raiding guild. I admit, I got goosebumps at the end when the crowd was chanting “For Azeroth!” and then shifted to the one “For the Alliance.”

Overall, movie was not great. I’d probably watch it again, but I have a feeling this is one of those movies where I’ll skip a lot of it. If you loved World of Warcraft, go check it out for old times sake. If not, you won’t miss a thing.

New TV Season

Laura Highcove

So, the new season of TV has begun. Here’s a quick review of the new TV series I’m watching and what I think an episode or two in:

Shadowhunters

I liked these books by Cassandra Clare (though I liked the “Clockwork” series based in the same world better) and so I figured I would give the TV series a go.

While the differences between the TV series and the books did not bother me, (Except the fact that Brother Zackariah has his eyes and mouth sewn shut.) the acting was so poor that every time any actor opened their mouth, all I could do was cringe.

Seeing as it was the pilot, I did give it a second episode, in which the acting was thankfully better; except for Clary. She’s still pretty bad, but at least now I’m not wincing all the time. I was not expecting this to be amazingly written or acted, so now it simply falls into the “I could enjoy it.” space, which is a fine place to be.

Legends of Tomorrow

Another DC series set in the same universe as Arrow and Flash, and quite obviously as this series pulls the …well ancillary characters from those two series and gives them something to do.

It was a two part pilot in which it set up the basic premise of the show. Does it count as spoilers if it happens in the pilot? Anyway, we gather six minor heroes and two villains who are told by a rebellious Time Master (Not Time LORD mind you.) that since they don’t really effect time much on their own, he’s going to pull them out and go after this super bad dude who, in the future, takes over the world, but since he killed the Time Master’s family, we have enough bodies in the refrigerator to spur action.

The most amusing thing about this show, and the real reason we’re watching it at this point, is the amazing dialogue created by taking such a wide cast of characters and playing them against each other. It seems it will be entertaining at least, even if we have to continue to put up with the Time Master’s cheesy dialogue.

Lucifer

I had a hard time with this episode at first since I was raised Christan, there was no space in my mind for Lucifer to not be a villain. Once I was able to put years of religious conditioning to the side, I was actually impressed with this episode.
Mostly I love the actor playing Lucifer, who I followed over from Rush (which was pretty bad and canceled after one season). He has such a boyish innocence to him which somehow lends itself wonderfully to the confidant character he’s playing.

Now the main female lead spent most of the episode with her pupils absolutely tiny which just made her freaky to look at, but she doesn’t seem too bad.

Writing wasn’t amazing and my husband and I are wondering how convoluted things will have to be considering most people just blurt out important information whenever Lucifer smiles. Time will tell, but I am super excited for the second episode.

Tropes and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Laura Highcove

So all of our shows are going on their winter breaks, so my husband and I are back to some of the things we have on the back-burner, one of which is the original Man from U.N.C.L.E season 1, made in the 60s.

We both enjoyed the movie and my mother-in-law loved the show, so we figured we would give it a shot.

So for those of you who don’t know, the premise is a spy agency made up of people from all over the world who deal with things that are a threat on a global scale. Our main characters are Napoleon Solo (An American who likes his women and is suave.) and Illya Kuryakin (A Russian who has a myriad of skills).

It has been quite an interesting ride. Some of the episodes are better written than others.

Last night we watched “The Double Affair” in which the bad guys replace Solo with a double in order to get access to codes to a vault that has “something world changing” while they are being transported.

So this episode was bad for a number of reasons.

1) The opening sequence was the bad guys trying to kill Illia, since he knows Solo and would possible be able to out the fake. Illia knowing Solo did not play into the episode at all. He raises an eyebrow when Duo (what we called the fake Solo) does not mack on every woman he sees, and that’s it. If you’re going to have a Chekhov’s Gun, then fire the thing!

2) We assumed, because it was the 60s, that the ‘world changing power’ would be nuclear, it turns out instead to be, I kid you not, some sort of glowing energy (from space?) that if you look at it without protective glasses, will take over your mind and make you walk into it. This is what befalls the one poor chap who figures out that Duo got into the briefcase holding the codes. Yeah, it was basically a genre break, though TV Tropes doesn’t have a page for that one. Basically, we’re watching a spy show and then suddenly SCIENCE FICTION!

3) And, at the end of the show, the resolution is ‘hey, the real Solo didn’t get shot, everything is great because Duo couldn’t kiss well, and now the woman are happy’. Not: ‘btw, the bad guys actually did get the codes to the vault, is anyone even going to mention that we’re taking care of that?’ No? Okay…

It’s handy to be able to point out the blatantly bad writing and plot holes (along with MST3King it) because we also discuss how we would’ve written the episode. Luckily the next episode was far better, and not only because few minutes into the episode my husband said ‘Is that Leonard Nimoy?’, to which I replied in the next scene: ‘Maybe, but that is William Shatner. Man, he was hott when he was younger.’.