Because Everybody Else Has One

Just a quick one, this time. OK, maybe not... I had the pleasure to see Ready Player One again with visiting friends from Cape Town in IMAX 3D this past weekend and the difference between my first and second reactions to the film is really quite profound. Certainly profound enough that this may just be the first re-review in all my years doing this blog. A few of my issues do remain with the film but it's a much better and much more enjoyable experience than I first gave it credit for. It's true, for example, that the (admittedly super impressive) video-game-inspired CGI is something of an alienating factor and it does at time feel like watching someone else play a video game but I do think that Spielberg actually does give even these sequences some weight by having them transposed against the dangers of what's going on in the real world of the film. This is especially well done later on in the film but it's true in all but the introductory sequences - which ar...

Just a slight disclaimer. I'm very tough on the 3D of this film but a fellow film reviewer pointed out that the 3D was out of focus. I didn't notice because I normally find 3D films pretty unbearable but it's entirely possible that the film's 3D prints, in general, aren't quite as bad as I originally thought they were. I still think 2D would be the way to go, preferably IMAX 2D, but -  Nah, forget it. Just see it in 2D. This whole 3D thing has more than worn out its welcome. This review is also up now on Channel 24   What it's about The year is 2045 and as the real world gets progressively worse, most of the world's population spends time in a vast virtual world known as the Oasis. With the death of the Oasis' creator, James Halliday, however, his virtual world becomes more than just a means of escape as he leaves control of the Oasis, along with his personal half-a-trillion dollar fortune, to the first person to solve a series of challenges...

Almost forgot to post this. Which is kind of fitting if you think about it... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A convict with ten months left on his sentence makes a deal with the devil to get out of prison early to spend with his terminally ill son. The cost: making use of his brilliant forgery skills to create a fake copy of a Monet with which his former boss can replace the real one he intends to steal. What we thought Aside for doing weird, weird things on stage at a couple of awards shows and being the subject of not a small amount of controversy, we haven't seen much of John Travolta these past few years. Frankly though, even if The Forger is nowhere near as bad as most critics suggest, I can't really say that it was a particular pleasure seeing Travolta again. It's a pity, he was rather good for a little while there, back before he torched his own career with the whole Battlefield Earth debacle, but he has since become a ...