Plus One (+1) Film Review

 

Ugh. A mildly sci-fi flavoured chiller flick that bores instead of thrills, squandering its intriguing premise.

At a massive house party, things begin to get strange after a tiny meteorite strikes a power pole. The party begins to experience brief power outages, which spawn copies of everybody at the party. The copies, however, are from several minutes in the past, oblivious to the situation, performing the same actions and having the same conversations as the originals had only minutes earlier. Each time the power goes out, the time gap closes a little and the copies get closer in time to the originals. But what happens when they finally catch up?

Well you’ve got ninety minutes to find out. This movie moves slow. The first half hour comprises of poor character interplay at a pathetically try-hard house party (when booze, strippers, naked sushi and rave lights aren’t enough, there’s always indoor flaming ball tennis – complete with shoddy CGI). Once the copies turn up, things actually slow down even more, as the film spends a lot of time contriving excuses for the originals and copies to not notice each other for most of the movie. Only a handful of characters are aware of the situation (as always with this sort of film) as everybody else at this house party (with at least fifty people attending) are oblivious to the situation. And the characters that do know do very little about it, with some even choosing to just ignore the problem altogether (particularly the dickhead main character).

The main character, David, is one of those unlikeable protagonists these sorts of pseudo indie flicks are rife with. His girlfriend dumps him at the beginning of the film after catching him making out with another girl (a situation that just happens for no discernible reason other than ‘main character is an ass’). He still pines for her, and wants to use the party as an attempt to win her back (through giving a passionate speech, as TV has taught us). When the doppelganger situation arises, he uses it as an opportunity to convince her to get back together with him. But which one is he interested in catching? The original or the copy? Fuck it, he’s selfish enough not to care. Despite being the main character, he mostly just fills out the relationship side-plot, not concerning himself with the main conflict.

It all leads up to a weak, unsatisfying ending that attempts to provide an element of freaky ambiguity, but instead just feels like a bit of a lazy cop-out. The movie has nothing other than its premise, an interesting one it never really capitalises on. It spends too much time setting the scene than exploring its ideas, providing a weak sort of resolution to cap off a disappointing viewing experience.

For a horror movie (or at least thriller) it lacks in every department. There are no thrills or chills, there’s little blood and no gore, there’s a lack of atmosphere, personality, character – this is just sad. There’s some nudity and sex, and a brief bit of violence towards the end. Otherwise this is like the plot of a rejected Twilight Zone episode that got stretched out to fill a film. 

The creepy time my local video store was full of cartoon porn

(This blog has a lot of nostalgic rambling, but I eventually get to the point)

Well it finally happened. After several years of slow decay, one of the last video stores in my area finally, inevitably, shut down. Video Ezy shut its doors after a slow march into obsolescence. To be honest I rarely went there. The prices were steep and the selection was mostly just alright (though they had a decent 'foreign film' section). My biggest issue was with the staff; they were often uninformed teens who knew nothing about DVDs and constantly made mistakes. By mistakes I mean giving you the wrong film (like a sequel instead of the original). They were also often quite rude, and rarely knew anything about movies.

In the last days they had a clearing out of all DVDs, Blu Rays and Games, so I swooped in and took a fair few titles I'd been interested in. It's the most bittersweet part of a video store shutting down. You're essentially a vulture scavenging from a corpse, hoping to take whatever you can before other vultures swoop down too.

The sale actually made me feel nostalgic for those brief times when video stores would get rid of their out-dated stock. It happened in a major way when VHS switched to DVD. It often happened with video games; when a console was replaced by another one and games stopped being released, video stores would sell all the used games at ridiculously low prices to get rid of them. That's where I got most of my Sega Megadrive/N64 games, from video store sales.

~

With the slow march of time, There were five video stores in my area, and now there is only one.

One of the first was a video store connected to a general store. The VHS tapes were amongst bags of chips, car tools and the freezer full of meat and beer. This one was a special one because it had all sorts of weird, rare horror movies. the types I've never seen outside of it. In fact, the vast majority of their movies were really cool horror flicks. This store, sadly, shut down during the VHS era. Where it once was there is now a Pizza place and a Fish and Chips store.

Movieland was a generic member of a chain. It shut down during the VHS era as well (and I got the vast majority of my N64 games and VHS tapes during the shutdown) and was absorbed into the next door TAB. Blockbuster was nearby and didn't last long at all. Barely two years from memory, then it turned into a surfwear store that folded a few years ago and is now a Vietnamese restaurant.

Video Ezy was the most recent one to open, and is the most recent one to close. It opened shop around when the Xbox 360 and PS3 started coming out. It had a slow burst of popularity, as any new store does, which

There is one video store left. Network Video. It's the first video store I'd ever gone to, and has lasted longer than any of the other stores I've listed. It's also, somewhat, the weirdest.

~

I remember back in the VHS days where they used to have a porno section. I was a kid back then, so I used to head in that direction out of curiosity more than anything. When nobody was close by I'd go check out the backs of the covers. This was in the VHS days, where the rules for packaging were almost non-existent so you'd be seeing a lot of nudity and sex on the back covers.

The store was slow to switch to DVDs, which is when I briefly moved on to the other stores. When I went back it had a pretty decent selection, and even now it has sections that were, for whatever recent, mostly absent in the other video stores (like a section for westerns, war films, arthouse, documentaries).

When I first got my drivers licence I used to go there weekly, particularly when I was at university, turning up on $1 Tuesday to take out whatever new releases there were (it was one of the first places I learned to drive to). When they eventually began 50 cent Thursday (for weekly movies only) I was there more often. I'd take five dollars in change and rent out ten movies, and have them polished off by the next week. Doing this I managed to view the vast majority of the movies they had there. Those were the good times.

Then there were odd times. The owner of the store is a man who I will simply refer to as M. M is a guy in his forties who thick-rimmed glasses, a neckbeard and a ponytail. M wears a 'Network Video' branded T-shirt that looks like it's from the eighties. None of his employees (almost exclusively high school girls) ever wore a store T-shirt. He has a black hummer with a personalised plate that he parks out the front of the store.

M knows my name, but I've never told him it before and it's not in my account (that's another story). In the last eight years I've never shown him my store card, I've never given him my phone number and I've never been asked for my password. I've been there so many times, for over two decades, that he just knows me. He seems like a nice guy, but having an actual conversation with him about anything is a physical battle. I've tried to talk to him about movies, and he is not forthcoming with anything.

When he isn't dealing with a customer, he sits at the counter and watches movies on a small monitor he has on the desk. He watches just about anything, from action to horror to anime. He used to be in the store a few days a week, but for the last few years, as video stores have slowly succumbed to inevitable progress, he's fired all his employees and runs the store himself, so he's there from nine am to nine pm, seven days a week.   

~

And this is where we, finally, tie in to the blog title. Network Video, for whatever reason, had a thing for hentai - Japanese cartoon porn. Back in the VHS days they had a few hentai tapes. I remember because, as a kid, I used to home in on any cartoons. I even remember some of the titles and covers. When they eventually killed the porno section (presumably after complaints that kids, like me, were lurking around), the tapes went completely. Only they didn't destroy or remove them, they sold them, so for a brief period of time I could still get my pre-teen perv on. From then, for over a decade, it was devoid of smut. Then something happened...

They started to get in hentai DVDs. There was a period of about six months maybe six years ago where the store would get in hentai DVDs. Not a few, a bunch of them, almost weekly. They'd put them amongst the new-release titles, filling the top row of the shelves with cartoon sluts with giant eyes and watermelon breasts. It was baffling. I'd never actually seen any hentai DVDs before. Like anywhere, not even in the anime/manga store in the city that sells NTSC DVDs and oddly specific anime artbooks. Anyways, the video store had them in abundance.

So there were a few things that weirded me out about this.

1. They would have had to order the specific tapes in. Video stores had to order their tapes in. Back in the VHS days some stores would get in videos if they were requested enough. These sorts of DVDs are the kind that I'd assume would have to be specifically ordered in.

2. There would have presumably been demand for this. You don't get in over a dozen cartoon porno DVDs if there isn't a market for it. So presumably there was demand somewhere. How did this happen? Did somebody once go into a video store and as for some cartoon porn? And once rebuffed would whatever employee who got the request then follow it up?

3.  Despite #2, I don't think I ever saw any of the tapes having been taken out. This store is the type where, if a new release tape has been taken out, they put a little tag on the DVD case to tell you the tape is out. I never saw this on any of the tapes at any time. So the DVDs never got rented but they kept getting more in.

4. The area I live in is basically a retirement village. We have a few actual retirement homes and a store that sells those little electric chair scooter things elderly folks drive around in. Our council actively prevented a hamburger store from opening up in an empty lot because they thought it would attract gangs of wayward teenagers (I'm not even joking). This is the area I live in, and the video store is in the centre of it.  

5. The DVDs never went to the weekly shelves or the 'for sale' rack. After maybe four months, 'new release' DVDs go to the regular weekly shelves. There was no longer a pornography section, but the store had an 'anime' section (filled with popular stuff, like Cowboy Bebop, Full Metal Alchemist and Naruto). They have a rack where they put the DVDs they were selling, and at this time I was at that store maybe twice a week. When the DVDs disappeared from the shelves I never remember seeing them anywhere. Not that I really looked, but my memory is usually quite good.

So for six months there were a bunch of hentai DVDs at my local video store. And then, at the end of the six months, they disappeared completely. Why? How? Were they removed because of complaints? Were they simply removed due to lack or interest? Did some weirdo just ask to buy them directly?

I have a theory.

It was M. He wanted the tapes, so he ordered them in through the video store, put them out to rent (knowing nobody was going to rent them), and then simply took them home. Now this is mostly built upon the weirdness points built up over two decades of light interactions with the guy, but it sort of makes sense. He owns the store, and has owned it for as long as I've been going there from what I can tell.

Of course I have nothing to back any of my crazed conspiracy theories up with, but it makes sense to me.

Remakes suck - Korean thriller edition - I Saw The Devil

Two things happened recently regarding Korean movies I really like.

The first – the American remake of the Korean thriller Oldboy came out in America. I’ve had my concerns on this one for a long time. I simply didn’t think it was a good idea; I thought it was pointless and that they would mess it up. Oldboy isn’t the type of movie that you remake. To my vindication, the general consensus has been fairly negative, questioning even further why the hell the remake was necessary.  

The second – it was announced that there were plans for an American remake of another Korean thriller, I Saw The Devil. This one has a similar tone to Oldboy (both are grim and depressing, with lashings of brutal violence). And already, instantly, I’m worried. Much like Oldboy, this isn’t a movie you remake.

The biggest issue I have against remaking these movies is one of relevance. These movies may have interesting plots, but they’re just a skeleton for the filmmaking. These movies are revered for the directing, the acting, the cinematography, the music, the editing, the sound effects – all the individual parts of filmmaking that come together and make a great movie. And you can’t remake that. Instead, remakes like to just rob imagery. The Oldboy remake apparently re-does the hammer fight in the hallway scene, but ups the ante and gore. That’s the big thing these remakes try to do – instead of aiming for a unique spin or even just general quality, they try to ‘out-do’ anything the original did. I’ve heard the Oldboy remake takes the ending revelation and makes it bigger, dumber and ‘more shocking’. Doesn’t make it a better movie, just a dumber one.

~

I Saw The Devil

 

After his fiancé is gruesomely murdered by a serial killer (Choi Min-sik), a secret service agent (Lee Byung-hun) takes leave from work and tracks the killer down. Once he catches him, instead of killing or arresting him, he beats him severely and tags him with a tracking device then lets him go, only to systematically hunt him down again and again. It's not long before the killer figures things out, and the tables are quickly turned.

It’s quite grim, gruesome and harrowing. This isn’t ‘happy ending’ material, and the movie works more as a character study of the two central characters – Choi is both chilling and juvenile in his brutality, whereas Lee’s cold, detached desire for revenge threatens to consume him. So why the hell remake it?

Like Oldboy, this is a brutal movie that is raised by strong acting, visual flair and stylistic choices. And these aren’t the sort of things you can really copy for a remake, though I’m sure they’ll try. Which takes me to the major point in all this – what the hell is the point of remaking these movies? The main plot is nothing too original, it’s more of a skeleton for the cinematography and acting, and those are two things you can’t really remake.

But you can bet your ass they’re going to try. Foreign movies that get Americanised remakes suffer the worst type of remake. Successful, relevant remakes (usually of old movies) tend to change things up or take a central premise and make something different of it (thereby ‘remaking’ it). This is how we get fantastic remakes like Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’ or Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’. But foreign non-english movies don’t get that. Instead their remakes are just rehashes, beat-for-beat, almost shot-for-shot, following the original’s template, barring a few American changes. And they always end up flat, soulless and bad.

I think I understand why they want to remake these movies, but I don’t like the reason. It’s because some people don’t want to read subtitles. Some people don’t want to watch movies that aren’t in English or don’t star people the same race/colour they are. These are the same people who don’t like black and white movies because they’re in black and white, and seemingly disregard anything that was made pre-2000. These are the people who are killing cinema, asking for the same old familiar swill year after year because they don’t like something different or challenging, they don’t want to have to think or be confronted. And these are the people who are being catered to.

I don’t see the need to remake these movies, particularly when the real strength of these films are the film making side of them. They’re enjoyed for the whole package, not just the main plot, but acting, cinematography, music, editing – all the pieces of filmmaking put together. And you can’t remake all that.

 

Related Rambling

The big thing with both Oldboy and I Saw The Devil is that they’re both movies made by prolific Korean directors. These aren’t one-off films, these are works made by successful directors who have a knack for visual flair and cinematography. Both movies also have the same central star. Choi Min-Sik plays the protagonist in Oldboy and the antagonist in I Saw The Devil.

Park Chan-wook did Oldboy as the middle film in his ‘revenge’ trilogy (Along with ‘Sympathy for Mr Vengeance’ which is great but depressing and ‘Sympathy for Lady Vengeance’ which is pretty great too). Park also directed the intriguing (but too long) vampire movie ‘Thirst’ and the bizarre romantic-comedy-drama ‘I’m a Cyborg, but that’s OK’.

I Saw The Devil was done by a personal favourite of mine, Kim Ji-woon. He’s directed a whole heap of movies I really love, and his output covers heaps of genres (‘A Bittersweet Life’ is a gangster film, ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ is horror, ‘The Quiet Family’ is black humour, ‘The Good, The Bad, The Weird’ is a mad-cap western).

Both directors also made their American debuts this year, and both films unfortunately suffered due to their scripts. Park Chan-wook directed ‘Stoker’, which is stylistically and visually brilliant, with some great acting, but the script is seriously hokey midday-movie stuff and totally destroys the film by the end with a dumbass twist (which isn’t much of a surprise, it was written by the main guy from Prison Break). Kim Ji-woon directed the Arnie vehicle ‘The Last Stand’, which was serviceable, but had an average ensemble-cast script that feels as though it had been edited to include Arnie.

~ 

 

This has happened to Kim Jee-woon before. 'A Tale of Two Sisters' was remade in America as ‘The Uninvited’.

In the original, following the death of their ill mother, two sisters return home after spending time in a mental hospital. While at home they deal with their new cruel stepmother and bizarre, possibly supernatural occurrences around the family home. It’s a creepy, slow-burn atmospheric type of horror that ramps up as it continues.

The American remake takes the first two sentence and then goes completely stupid with it. Barring the central premise, these movies have nothing in common. Even the various twists and revelations are completely changed, here to be more action-packed and stupid to the cruel subtlety of the original. Instead of a sense of foreboding and brooding atmosphere, we’ve got Elizabeth Banks flailing around, doing an ‘evil stepmother’ thing. This is a dumb American remake. How dumb? It starts with a freaking explosion.

Is it worth remembering Remember Me?

Remember Me came out with little fanfare, and was forgotten by the end of the week. In this respect it might have one of the most depressingly funny titles ever. I’ve been curious about it for a while, if only because Capcom of today intrigues me. While they cop a lot of flak, Capcom is at least trying. Sometimes they fail because they try too much and miss what made a game entertaining in the first place (they tried to please everybody with Resident Evil 6 and largely failed). Sometimes they fall flat because they try and do things differently, or hand their ips over to others (DMC reboot under Ninja Theory was a surprising move by Capcom). But the more interesting success story was Dragon’s Dogma, which came out of nowhere and kicked ass. It was my game of the year for last year, and I eagerly pounced on Dark Arisen when it was released. It was an interesting move from a company known for constant rehashes and dead horse beating; a new ip with a western slant.

And that’s what got me interested in Remember Me. A new action game, with a female protagonist to boot, set in future Paris where people steal eachother’s memories. Curiosity grew into a strong desire to play it, so once the price hit a low enough threshold I picked it up. Now I’ve played through it. So the question is simple; is it worth remembering Remember Me?

The answer, sadly, is no. Not really. Remember Me brings a lot of interesting ideas to the table, but their execution is off. It has an interesting world, but never capitalises on it. It brings up interesting themes, but sidelines them to focus on a fairly basic story, It has a dull combat system that had potential if they’d just tweaked it. And, most harming of all, it has some great ideas that are underused, leading to missed opportunities. 

 

Set in Neo-Paris, year 2084, the powerful Memorize corporation has created a monopoly on memories through Sensen, a digital implant everybody has that allows people to interact with their memories. People can share memories with loved ones, and erase bad ones. Memorize exploits this by monitoring and collecting people’s memories. Sensen also has the unfortunate side effect of mutating some people into insane sewer-dwelling subhumanoids called Leapers. An underground resistance group known as Errorists are also running amok, trying to bring Memorize down.

For a story and world concerned with treating memories as commodities, it’s somewhat fitting that Nilin, the protagonist, begins the game with amnesia. At the game’s onset she escapes from a research facility, with the assistance of an Errorist named Edge, then embarks on a quest to find her memory and put a stop to Memorize’s experiments. It’s a fairly basic story, helped along with an interesting world.

There are a few interesting themes the game briefly touches on, but disappointingly never delves into. The division between rich and poor (the slums are prone to Leaper attacks, while the rich are none-the-wiser) makes up social commentary for the first few levels (where the vastly differing settings could have been used to make a point). The actions of the Errorists also bring up some concerns, which are briefly mentioned, but then never get mentioned again (Nilin spends most of the game just doing as she’s told, only briefly pondering on the consequences).

The biggest theme the game could have delved into is the ethics regarding sharing and stealing memories. Nilin, at times, steals and remixes character’s memories, often having a profound effect on them. This opens up all sorts of ethical issues but, disappointingly, the game never bothers to follow that thread. Any concerns about philosophy and ethics are thrown out so the game can focus on killer mutants rising up from the sewer.

The story, likewise, is mostly a straightforward affair, with Nilin learning a little about the world, herself and other characters as she takes steps to bring down Memorize and regain her own memories. There are a few end-game revelations that have varying effectiveness. Some come as genuine surprises, while others are plainly silly (the final revelation is profoundly stupid, leading in to a big dumb final boss).

The visual design is quite fantastic. The slums and sewers are suitably dirty, filled with trash and graffiti. Conversely, the upper-class neighbourhoods are exquisite and affluent, with a pleasingly feasible Europe-but-in-the-future aesthetic. Character models are quite good, with nice details (though the creepy voluptuous robot servants are odd). The Leapers are a freaky bunch as well (the Johnny Greenteeth encounter is all sorts of creepy).

The sound design is alright, with futuristic tunes that often compliment the design. The voice acting however is often embarrassingly bad. While Nilin and a few of her colleagues perform quite well, just about every villainous and ancillary character is a hammy, overacting mess. It’s amplified with some asinine writing (one recurring villain, a corrupt security guard, talks like a dude-bro, while Leapers sound silly when they talk). 

 

The actual gameplay, sadly, is lacking. There are ideas here, but their execution is wanting, leaving some missed opportunities. Combat is a combo-based affair that doesn’t quite work. As you play, you earn experience you can use to learn ‘Pressens’, which are basic strikes performed with either the square or triangle button. Pressens come in four varieties; power deals damage, regen heals you, cooldown reduces the cooldown for special attacks (more on this later) and amplify simply makes the preceding strike stronger.

You fill combo templates with strikes you unlock, but it’s a limited system. There are only four templates (for a 3-hit, 5-hit, 6-hit and 8-hit combo) and you spend most of the game without enough strikes to fill them. It’s a messy, restrictive system that could have been made much better by simply allowing players to create their own combos outside of the templates. The timing for combos is often unclear, leading you to fail a basic combo because the game thought you were trying to do another one. It doesn’t help that enemies constantly attack you, meaning you rarely get to finish a combo. There is a dodge button, and something of a dodge-offset combo feature, but they don’t help too much. Combos only continue if you hit an enemy with every strike, causing you to flail around at times.   

S-Pressens are special attacks. After dealing a certain amount of damage, you fill a focus gauge that lets you perform a special move. These are quite varied, ranging from simply making your hits vastly stronger for a short time, turning invisible for an insta-kill and hacking robot enemies to fight for you.  After using a special attack, it will have a cool down period of a minute or two. And this is what slows down a lot of combat.

The most used one, and the one that essentially breaks the combat at times, is the DOS Attack, which stuns enemies. DOS Attack is required to fight every single boss and many recurring mini-boss enemies. Boss enemies tend to turn invisible, grow shields or teleport, and the only way to opent hem up for attacks is with DOS Attack. The cooldown for it is a whopping two minutes. You’re meant to use cooldown pressens to lower the time, but doing so means you deal minimal damage to bosses. This essentially limits your combos, turning most boss battles into endurance contests. If the cooldown time was halved combat would have a much better pace. You also have access to a projectile weapon, but it’s quite weak with a huge cooldown and is mostly just used for puzzles.

 The game funnels you from one battle to the next, interspersed with basic Uncharted-style climbing traversal. There are limited opportunities to search for some of the numerous collectibles (many of which tend to be in plain sight), so you’re mostly following a fairly straight path. There are some puzzles, often involving pressing switches, so they’re mostly busywork. There are to late-game puzzles that break the pattern, but they’re almost bizarrely obtuse leading to confusion.

The biggest missed opportunity and the game’s most interesting – but underused – mechanic is memory remixing. At certain points in the story, Nilin has to change a person’s personality by delving into their head, finding an important memory and changing it. These segments act almost like limited editing software – you view the memory first, then rewind it and change certain details. You might switch the safety of a gun off, or cause a computer to malfunction, or unfasten a seatbelt. Each change alters the memory, and you have to puzzle it out to reach the desired outcome. It’s the game’s most interesting aspect, yet there’s not enough of it. You only remix memories four times throughout the game. These segments also bring up massive ethical implications that, as stated before, simply never get addressed.

Remember Me has a lot of good ideas, but most haven’t successfully bridged the gap between concept and execution. It’s a game of small disappointments, missed opportunities and brief, underused moments of greatness. With tweaking and improvement it could have been something special, but as it stands Remember Me ends up being mostly forgettable. If found it at a bargain price though, I’d recommend trying it out, if only to just see the missed potential.

 

 

 

 

Xbox One - Part Two: The Disappointing Finale

Ok. Last blog was me relating my thoughts and feelings on the Xbox One, mostly relating to the initial set-up. It was mostly negative, with the console start-up a frustrating, concerning experience that immediately lowered whatever expectations I had of the console.

Once you start using the console, things improve substantially. There are still some concerns (lack of any tutorials or guides is a big one) but once you start using the console/media hub/whatever you'll start to ease yourself into it and find that it gets better with use.

You'll also find that, despite all the hype, it's just another game console, one that's a little prettier but with its own set of issues. The Xbox One will play games. Some of the games are fun, others are less so. You have online features, but sometimes they won't work because of outside forces. And that's about it.

Seems like a bit of a fizzle after that first blog, right? Well, after all the frustration and horror of setting up the console and getting it to work, it ends up as a bit of a disappointment that when it does work it's just a prettier Xbox, with nary games worth playing. Maybe when more games are released and some of the issues are ironed out then I could get more excited, but at the moment it's just another console, albeit one with larger barriers to entry than others.