Movie Review: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Edge of Tomorrow, based off Hiroshi Sakurazaka's 2004 novel All You Need is Kill (available now on Kindle for only $6.99!), is a sci-fi military time loop adventure that succeeds because of its internal consistency, terrific graphics and soundtrack, and the charisma of its two leads. It also combines moments of levity with a grim look at what repeatedly reliving war does to someone.

Plot: Five years into an invasion by silicon-based aliens called Mimics, smarmy US officer Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) is sent to the front lines wearing the latest technology credited with allowing soldiers with minimal training to defeat the enemy. The poster child for the suits--called "Jackets" in the novel--is Rita Vratasky (Emily Blunt), a veteran called "The Angel of Verdun," aka The Full Metal Bitch. Cage manages to kill one of the enemy during the fighting, and dies in the process. Then he wakes up yesterday, before his deployment, and has to relive that day and the battle over and over again. Eventually, he learns that Rita knows what happened to him, and she wants his help in ending the alien threat.

The strong writing propels the story along at a brisk pace. And someone with Cruise's charisma needed to be cast in this role, because Cage starts out as an unlikeable coward. He becomes less comically incompetent as he relives each day, and with Rita's training he becomes a better soldier and even a better human. Tropes abound, of course--the hardass Master Sergeant, the squad of misfits--but they're kept to a minimum, since the movie is laser-focused on Cage. Alas, this also means that it fails the Bechdel test.

Although the entire premise of the film requires all disbelief to be placed in a bottle and checked at the door, the decisions made by the lead character are believable and fuel his growth. There's one particular turning point that really demonstrated how much he's learned: when he realizes that he needs to go it alone to get the job done. And then...dun dun DUNNN...TWIST! ...Not to be revealed in this post.

TL;DR: Highly recommended, watch it in 3D if you prefer.

This post brought to you by pastillas.

San Francisco!

View from rooftop of a startup--see the Golden Gate Bridge?

Fragrant Husband and I went to awesome San Francisco last week to take a little time off from Massholes and psychotic spring weather. We went there for the express purpose of celebrating a dear friend's 30th birthday ("I'm turning into an adult!" she declared. Millenials can be so cute.).

Despite having only one thing on the agenda, our days and nights quickly filled up, mostly because we have friends who are wise and live there. Here are some fun, non-touristy things to do in the City of Fog and Weed, or whatever San Francisco calls itself:

1. Go to a drag show

Specifically, go to AsiaSF, where the drag queens are my people (Pinays) and are built like Greek goddesses, the bastards. You get a delicious three-course meal and several ladies lip-syncing and dancing on the bar in between your appetizer, entree, and dessert. The emcee encouraged everyone to drink up: "Remember, the drunker you are, the prettier we'll look!" ...But seriously, one of them (Amber, I think) was legit gorgeous. They call themselves "the miracles of science" and are damn entertaining. For those who've read Si Amapola sa 65 na Kabanata, this is what Pol does for a living.

2. Walk through the Tenderloin

This is especially recommended when you are towing a waddling woman wearing bling and freely swinging her little purse while chattering nonstop at you. For the uninitiated, the Tenderloin is the city's highest-crime area. We saw drug deals taking place in the open, we were followed for a block, and some chick wandered off from her druggy boyfriend before turning tail and running right back to him when an even shadier dude started catcalling her from the corner. So exciting!

3. Go Shopping

Shoes are always a great investment, since you should be energetically walking around and getting a contact high just from breathing the outside air. Alas, I did not get to buy a fanny pack at the Tibetan gift shop in the Haight-Ashbury area, but the waiting shall make my eventual ownership that much sweeter.

4. Put Food in Your Face

For a hearty breakfast, look no further than Dottie's, which had a line at 8 in the morning on a weekday, it's that good. I polished off an entire omelette (the daily special, with blue cheese and bacon) and a half order of French toast. Thus did I finally earn my husband's awe.

For lunch, Dojima Ann is full of Japanese customers so you know it's solid fare. Good donburi! Also, I ordered in Japanese and our very cheerful waitress complimented my fluency ("Jozu desu ne! Sara sara sara sara..." and I was all, "Fu fu fu fu, iie, iie."). Thus did Dojima Ann win my heart.

5. Use the Bart and MUNI

Small as it is, San Francisco is still bigger than Boston, and walking from Union Square to Sunset will wear a hole in your shoe. Why are you only wearing one shoe?

6. Do Something Fancy

For us, this meant graciously accepting an invitation to the Wingtip Club, which is like the Harvard Club but with competent management, great facilities, and cool furniture. Bonus: their wine pours are ridiculously generous. I ended up donating half of mine to Fragrant Husband, who heroically put it away despite all the other alcohol in his system. Hey, our friends were footing the bill, live it up! We'll pay it forward the next time they come over.

7. Party Like a Rockstar Cat Lady

Like I said, we flew across the country for a birthday celebration. The theme was "Crazy Cat Lady" and everyone showed up prepared. Fragrant Husband wore a dark kitty hat in memory of Sheba and I was his owner. We all got stickers with "Hello My Name is _____" and he called himself Chairman Meow. I was "Cat-atonic Cat-aracts" but in hindsight I should have been "Cat-herine the Great" or something cheesy like that, darnit. 

The party committee went all the way. There was an art contest (color the kitties!--my husband won!), a costume walk-off, games like Truth or Dare Cat Jenga and Pin the Tail on the Cat, a kitty litter cake (not actual kitty litter), kitten videos, and pictures of cats everywhere. 

It was such a gathering of oddballs and I loved every dorky moment of it. 

***

And then it was time to go. But before I finish this post, may I recommend one tourist-y activity: ride the Big Bus Tour, or whichever one offers you a discount. Get up top and just sit there for the whole trip. Then you'll get to see and hear the highlights of this great city!

***

In conclusion, here is a little table with pros and cons of living in San Francisco:

Pros	Cons
Great food Great sights Historical Good economy Diverse population	Earthquakes Smells like weed and pee Hella expensive

This post brought to you by Seafood City Supermarket, where standing in line will make you feel tall. 

Game Review: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PS3)

Renaissance Assassin Ezio Auditore picks up right where he left off from Assassin's Creed II: older, wiser, deadlier, and with the mysterious Apple of Eden in his possession. Alas, all good things must end. A new villain soon appears to get the plot moving, and players are plunged into a world of assassinations and near-death experiences via newfangled inventions such as cannons, wall guns (muskets), and whatever Leonardo da Vinci has been cooking up.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is aptly titled because the group that helped Ezio in his previous outing is now more organized and crucial to the story. Granted, the story is basically an extended find-and-retrieve mission, which is probably why developers piled on a metric ton of extras. Foremost among these is the ability to recruit and train ordinary citizens and send them on missions to raise them to the level of Assassin. This fulfills two functions: it earns Ezio money, and lets you kill guards without getting your hands dirty--either by calling your flunkies to swoop in and go stabby-stabby, which you can do three times in succession, or you can use up all three slots in one go with an "arrow storm," which kills every enemy within sight. So that's the other reason the game title makes sense.

Other, familiar sidequests show up to distract players from the thin plot: thief challenges (usually in the form of rooftop races or killing members of a rival thief gang), courtesan challenges (replacing the "beat up my worthless, cheating husband" missions, only this time you beat the targets with sharp objects), and assassinations. As with other Assassin's Creed games, treasures abound, marked on the map if you spy them with your Eagle Vision or if you buy a map of the area. There are feathers to collect, too, but not as many as in the last game. Collect 'em all and win the Auditore Cape!

The game takes place mainly in Rome, which is enormous and has lots of structures in disrepair--just waiting for some savvy entrepreneur to buy and renovate for profit! Its aqueducts need to be fixed, too, if only for the knowledge of your noble contribution to history. Just kidding. I think it's mostly for raising water levels in certain areas of the city so Ezio can access hidden treasures.

There are new additions, too: the Borgia banners (the Borgia family is Ezio's sworn enemy)--collect the full set of 100+ to get the Borgia Cape (meh). There are tightly guarded areas to penetrate so Ezio can burn Borgia Towers, which diminishes their influence in Roma and allows Ezio to renovate city essentials like blacksmiths, stables, doctors, painters, tailors, and banks. Midway through the game, old pal Leonardo shows up and begs Ezio to destroy his new war machines, which takes players outside Rome to test out a working prototype hang glider, tank, and speedboat cannon (?). Pretty cool. Finally, having lost the Armor of Altaïr early in the game, Ezio has the option of going into Lairs of Romulus to gather the keys leading to the Romulus Armor.

I was impressed with how the developers took everything fun about AC II and served them up almost immediately. Crucially, players can start earning money early on by reopening banks and going on sidequests, and you can get the crossbow within a couple of hours. The crossbow is the weapon of choice for the hardworking Assassin, because those guards on the roofs aren't going to fall to their deaths on their own, you know.

I was gleefully tearing through the game when the plot harshed my buzz with its full lameness. Having taken a break from obsessively completing sidequests, I inadvertently retrieved the Apple of Eden--and had to actually use the bloody thing exclusively, which defeated the purpose of the entire Assassin thing. Worse, some glitch kicked in where the enemies I turned into cowering wrecks via Apple were ignored by my Assassin posse, and I couldn't kill them myself because all I could do was hold the Apple aloft and let its work its annoying magic. I had to wait for arrow storm! #firstworldproblems

Helpless, I could only watch (and play) as the action shifted back to the present, to Ezio's descendant Desmond and his team of two nerds plus one trained Assassin who want to find the Apple of Eden, to save the world, obviously. From the sun, I believe it was. Anyway, conveniently, the advanced race that created the Apple and left clues behind were really into acrobatics, so Desmond, having absorbed all of Ezio's monkey- and goat-like leaping/climbing abilities, is perfectly suited to reaching the inedible, glowing golden ball that will lead to yet another fucked-up ending, pardon my French.

So there you have it: the middle game in the trilogy has a weak plot, fun sidequests, and an ending calculated to make players purchase the next game immediately if not sooner. Well played, Ubisoft, well played. I shall take up Ezio's ridiculously distinctive uniform one last time.

This post brought to you by VACATION TIME WOOOHOOOOO!!!

Movie Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

Wow. I am speechless by the enormity of Bryan Singer's accomplishment. He crafted a tightly-plotted, well-paced, well-written, well-acted time travel film, and [SPOILER ALERT!] erased the poorly-executed X-Men: The Last Stand from movie canon. All the yays!

In brief: fifty years in the future, the war against mutants is taking its final toll. A robot army called the Sentinels, designed to adapt to mutant powers, have decimated mutants, and their human allies are also punished. The X-Men are rapidly running out of time and places to hide. Together with their former nemesis Magneto, they send one of their own back into the past to undo the events of that led to the creation of the Sentinels.

There's a lot to recommend about this film, and here are my top five:

1) The fights are spectacular -- Mutants versus sentinels, mutants versus mutants, one mutant versus multiple armed humans... it's all choreographed well, with the special effects blending seamlessly. The only exception is Beast, whose wirework is pretty obvious. Oh well. Fortunately, Quicksilver more than makes up for it. His CMOA (crowning moment of awesome) scene was the most enjoyable in terms of action.

2) Cinematography -- Each timeline gets its own distinctive palette: the dark, grim future; the groovy, brightly-hued seventies; and the (eventual) softly lit, shiny new present. In between, there's no shortage of intense close-ups, epic panning views of grandiose mutant gestures, and sparing but effective use of slow motion.

3) Dialogue -- Lots of wry lines from protagonists got chuckles from the audience. The seventies jokes are pretty priceless, but never distracting.

4) Character development -- These people are heroes, and that's why we love them. A younger Charles grapples with his sense of abandonment, Wolverine acknowledges his limits, Mystique decides her path, and Magneto does what he thinks will secure his people's future. All these protagonists make hard decisions and they do it quickly, which helps tremendously with pacing.

5) Michael Fassbender -- There is one scene where he out-acts ever single person in this film, including Sir Patrick Stewart, who continues to be the best Professor Xavier there could ever possibly be. Fassbender is Magneto. (Sorry, Sir Ian! You will always be Gandalf.)

Speaking of Magneto, may I just say that I admire his ruthless, logical maneuvering in his pursuit of mutant freedom/hegemony. The man is a Magnificent Bastard Problem Solver. Trademark!

As always, X-Men poses philosophical questions. It begins with a voiceover: "Is the future truly set?" Throughout the events of the film, more questions emerge: what is the true cost of sacrificing one life to save others? How can pain and fear help the lost find the path again? What will it truly take to unite humanity?

I highly, highly recommend X-Men: Days of Future Past. It has something for comic book nerds and casual moviegoers alike, because it tells a good story using a familiar and talented cast.

Attention nerds: The easter egg at the end of the credits reveals the next villain. Can't wait for X-Men: Apocalypse. En Sabah Nuuuuuuurrrrr!!!

This post brought to you by Memorial Day weekend!

Movie Review: Godzilla (2014)

Director Gareth Edwards' sophomore feature-length debut is a reverent rumination of nature's unstoppable power. That central theme necessarily puts puny humans on the sidelines, from high-ranking military officials seeking to contain monsters to ordinary folks just trying to survive the onslaught. At its heart, Godzilla is about forces beyond our control, so slap on those 3D glasses and prepare to cheer for the baddest alpha predator to ever curb-stomp radioactive menaces.

The film opens with ominous music and footage: black-and-white clips of submaries, nuclear tests, and words being crossed out -- censored -- until only the cast names appear. Cut to a chopper in a gloriously beautiful location -- the Philippines, naturally -- and out comes Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his colleague Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins), both employees of a company called Monarch. An accident has revealed an ancient cavern, with two enormous cocoon-like structures: one intact, the other...not.

In Japan, engineering supercouple Joe and Sandra Brody (Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche) try to find the source of the tremors rocking their nuclear power plant. Bad things happen.

Fifteen years laters, Brody's son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) must travel to Japan because reasons. Once Ford and Joe are arrested by Monarch's security teams, the movie kicks into high gear and the rest of the time flies by. I shan't spoil it further.

I will say that this is a very welcome movie after the awful Roland Emmerich interpretation back in 1998. That one is so bad that even IMDB's auto-complete search bar refuses to display it -- you have to click on "more results" to get to it. Edwards' Godzilla, while a little lacking on basic explanations about the titular character, gets it right: when faced with creatures that can level entire cities just by walking around, the best-laid plans of mice and men mean zilch. When this event happens -- and believe me, Godzilla rising out of the depths is an event -- you just GTFO. While a few human actions do turn out to be effective, most of the time it's best to leave it to the spiky bug guy. He is awesome.

This movie's cinematography and soundtrack are amazing. Nothing underscores technology's impotence in the face of nature quite like fighter jets plummeting helplessly from the sky. And the use of György Ligeti's "Requiem For Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs And Orchestra" during one sequence is particularly arresting.

Bottom line: Of course go watch it. It's Godzilla.

This post brought to you by Oscar the cat, whose rendition of "O Sole Mio" at 6:30 am is...moving.

Movie Review: Elysium (2013)

Since our shiny new TV has 3D capability (ooooo), Fragrant Husband and I decided on a recent action movie to test it. With a running time of 109 minutes, last year's Elysium was a clear winner. On came the glasses, and we were off on a sci-fi adventure...

...that was scattered and unsatisfying.

Alas, Elysium could have benefited from tighter writing. The movie, written and directed by Neill Blomkamp of District 9 fame, is about Max (Matt Damon), a former car thief trying to make a decent living in dirty, dystopian future L.A. (looks an awful lot like current developing nations). Max dreams of buying a ticket to Elysium, a "habitat" floating in orbit that boasts vastly superior technology, including med-bays that can heal pretty much anything. Defense Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) protects Elysium from poor people trying to breach this ultimate gated community in their desperate attempts to get near-miraculous medical treatment.

Max gets involved because of a catastrophic accident at work, and coincidentally he used to work for the guy who runs unsanctioned shuttles to Elysium, and wouldn't you know it, his beloved childhood friend who he promised to take up to Elysium one day has a little girl with leukemia. Imagine that. Anyway, as demanded by the gods of formula, he makes it up there and must defeat Kruger (Sharlto Copley), the real Big Bad. Et cetera.

The entire movie was so focused on hammering home its message (THE RICH ARE BAD THEY ARE OPPRESSING THE POORS) and so skimpy on the details that Fragrant Husband didn't mind my constant questions throughout the movie, because he himself was going, "Huh?" at various points. For example:

• What is the basis for citizenship on Elysium? Do you buy a ticket? Sell a kidney?
• What is the process for electing Elysium leaders? Sharpest suit? Most uptight hairstyle?
• Were all the droids on break when Max was shooting up the government building? 
• Et cetera.

ERGH.

Also, Kruger is gross.

Pro: At least the violence and gore are unflinching! Yay!

For a longer and angrier takedown of this movie, click here.

Bottom line: Skip it. Skip it hard. I actually like Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters better, and that movie featured a wooden turntable and a Gatling gun in an early 19th century setting.

This post brought to you by Robot Chicken.

Eddie Izzard: Force Majeure (live, 2014)

Eddie Izzard has reached his next stage of evolution: Action Transvestite. The previously Executive Transvestite is back on stage and sharing his bizarre thoughts with appreciative audiences. Topics range from human sacrifice, the Magna Carta, learning other languages, and a documentary called The Clash of the Titans.

Themes from previous acts persist: he riffs on Hitler, talks about his desire to join the military as a lad, mocks Caesar's legacy (this time as a salad--last time it was a brand of dog food), and does the God voice. As always, his physical comedy skills are beyond reproach: he mimes, makes sound effects, and runs back and forth across the stage pretending to be two people having a strange conversation.

Izzard's overtly anti-right wing stance is new and a bit surprising, but maybe he was just playing to his audience of liberal Bostonians? Anyway, he did an encore about the Lord of the Rings where he attempted to do mathematics, and it's as hilariously weird as it sounds.

Here are his US tour dates. Catch him if you can!