The Lego Movie

If you are a lego fan, then everything is awesome! :D

This movie follows how one ordinary lego man becomes "the chosen one", finds love, friends, and learns more about himself and his universe. It's actually almost the same plot as any "chosen one" story but told a hyperactive, non-sensical and funny environment that is Lego, and there are some really impressive CG scenes in there. Especially animated lego water. Awesome.

The film serves as an amazing ad for Lego products too, as it showcases a lot of their range which has grown exponentially since I last played with it, that's for sure. I also quite like that they put the part numbers up on screen as well and the Act III reveal was one I really liked too.

Lego Batman is also awesome!

The problem with the movie is in it's very nature and it crosses into the too nonsensical for a non-lego person. Two of the six audience members when we watched this fell asleep. One claimed it was perhaps the worst movie she has ever seen.

To be fair she hasn't seen Halle Berry's Catwoman, Pineapple Express, or Steven Seagal's Attack Force, but still, that's a pretty strong statement to put out there and one I do take into consideration when scoring it two and a half building blocks out of five.

Personally I thought it was pretty cool, but if a movie puts audience members to sleep so early in the piece then there's definitely something wrong with it. Would I want to watch it again? Oddly - no.

Attack Force

[Post #28 of the Blaugust Challenge!]

I'm pretty sure I've spoken about this before but as I've not yet done a proper review of it, I didn't want any of you to miss my thoughts on this outstanding film. Outstandingly bad that is. The story is that a drug dealer who has their hands on addictive yet DNA altering drugs is creating murderous and crazy people for ... SCIENCE!? One test subject kills a bunch of soldiers and thus Steven Seagal gets involved to hunt them down. Just as well too because said drug dealer is about to release the DNA altering drug into the water supply! Oh noes!

I made it sound pretty decent huh? Unfortunately the extent of "DNA alteration" just relates to giving people funky eyes, and for an action film the main hero remains in a sitting position for around half the movie. Also, some of his usually soft southern drawl lines were dubbed over by someone with a grindy and angry voice who sounds nothing like Steven Seagal. This is because the original plot involved aliens but they got changed post production into druggies. Yeah, they're pretty similar... cough.

Standard procedure for all druggies I suppose.

To top it off it felt like the director used ALL the footage he had for some shots. There are just so many that would have worked better if he cut some parts out. For example, there's a section where the military guys have a convoy on the move. We see car A enter the gate from a forward shot, then we see car A going through from a rear shot. Then forward shot of car B. Rear shot of car B. Again with car C. Then a long shot of the entire convoy slowly going down a road. There's literally five minutes of watching cars move at this point, with no voice overs.

I also suspect that towards the end there, even the director lost the plot as at least one pretty major plot point was forgotten and unresolved. It also makes it funnier. :P You will enjoy this more if you treat it as a comedy, but I should warn you properly by giving this film only half a bullet out of five.

Blaugust Bonus: Going straight for another of Belghast's writing prompts today - "Has there ever been a game encounter you were afraid of? For example I am spooked of tanking Garuda hard… has there ever been a fight or encounter you dreaded?". The grim reapers (aka walkers) of Wizardry Online quickly come to mind.

You can only encounter them when you are in the spirit world and thus cannot fight them so your only hope is to either sneak past behind their backs or sprint and zig zag like mad to a priest or revival fountain, often an interesting task since they enjoy patrolling narrow corridors. While they are quite slow when unalerted, they can easily boost faster than you and each time they catch you not only do they put you back at your corpse, meaning you have to try get past them again, but they also reduce your revival rate by 10%. Ten captures in a row and your character is instantly lost to permadeath. In the later dungeons there would be groups of these wandering together. Easiest solution to avoid them? Don't die. :P