READY PLAYER ONE

READY PLAYER ONE (2018)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Screenplay by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline

Based on the novel by Ernest Cline
Starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, T.J. Miller, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki


I was going to recuse myself from writing about this one. The book it's based on was written by Ernest Cline, who I knew as BBI Rafterman years ago on the Buckaroo Banzai mailing list I maintain. Aside from having a nice Banzai site, he wrote a well-regarded fan script for the mythical BUCKAROO BANZAI: AGAINST THE WORLD CRIME LEAGUE. I think I still have some early drafts on 3.5" discs somewhere. Meanwhile, you can head to his site and read it here if you like.

But then I remembered that I'm not a pro and not getting paid to be objective and no one really cares if I might be inclined to say positive things about the movie even if it turns out I hated it just because I knew the author online years ago, so here we go...

TOMB RAIDER

TOMB RAIDER (2018)

Directed by Roar Uthaug

Screenplay by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons

Story by Evan Daugherty and Geneva Robertson-Dworet
Starring Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Kristen Scott Thomas


So, I had a chance to check out the new TOMB RAIDER film. This one is a reboot that goes back to the beginning, showing how Lara Croft picked up her tomb-raiding hobby. It's heavily influenced by the 2013 version of the game, itself a reboot of the game series. In it, we got a younger, inexperienced Lara who had not yet faced the challenges that turned her into the kick-ass character we've known for the past twenty-two years. (Good grief! Twenty-two? Yep, the first game came out back in 1996.)

Both the 2013 game and the 2018 movie take young Lara to the lost island of Yamatai, believed to be the final resting place of the 3rd century Japanese Queen Himiko. Movie and game pit Lara against an assortment of enemies after Himiko, who was believed to have supernatural powers.

The movie also mixes in a bit of the 2015 Rise of the Tomb Raider, replacing the first game's bloodthirsty cultists with the second game's evil organization, Trinity, which hopes to find Himiko's tomb and harness her power for themselves.

Alicia Vikander, the second Academy Award winner to portray Croft, really throws herself into the role. She's maybe a little petite for Lara (she's apparently only 5'5") but she's solid muscle and once she has her 'trial by fire' moment in the film and really goes on the offensive you have to feel a bit sorry for the bad guys. She also nails the emotional side, grounding this Lara as a daughter who has refused to accept the loss of her father when she was a child and now has a chance to find out what happened to him.

Leading said bad guys is the always cool Walton Goggins as Mathias Vogel. Stuck on Yamatai until he and his men find Himiko's tomb Vogel has maybe gone a bit crazy, something Goggins excels at without a bunch of overblown posturing. Just looking in the guy's eyes can give you a chill up your spine.

Daniel Wu tags along as the captain of the ship that gets Lara to Yamatai, and whose father also disappeared on that last fateful journey of Lord Richard Croft, played by Dominic West.

While the more grounded, semi-realistic action is a welcome change from all the over-the-top cartoon stuff out there these days (there is some of that, of course, and some nice nods to action scenes from the game) and surprising in a film based on a video game, I can't help but think it would've benefited from being a bit more like the game in regards to the plot and some of the enemies. I also missed her supporting cast from the game, but this movie was all about Lara and that's okay, too.

Overall I thought it was a pretty good action movie, obviously in the Indiana Jones mold as it has evolved thru the years in both the Tomb Raider and Uncharted games.

Movie Time!

So here's the thing; I'm still doing a lot of overtime, including weekends. So I've not had the time to watch/read much worth talking about here and even if I had...I'm tired.

But darn it! I'm going to keep trying to put something in this space every week, so if you want you can watch a movie I made while playing around with The Movies PC game several years ago....

Various and Sundry

Another one-day weekend so something of a grab-bag tonight....

Hurricane Irma is on everyone's mind around here right now. The predictions keep pushing it westward, which is good for where I'm at but doesn't do much for those in its path. Keep your heads down, people. Especially you, Dad.

(Amusing Irma note - at work they passed around a business card with the phone number we're supposed to call to make sure they aren't closed or on a delay or whatever when there's "inclement" weather. I laughed when I got mine because in the years I've been there, thru snow and ice and what have you, I only remember the recording being changed for us twice. If the roof is on the building, they expect us there. And if it's not, they probably expect us to be there to clean up.)


Been replaying the first Mass Effect for the umpteenth time. I can't help it. I love my Shepard.

Commander Calico Shepard

I've gone thru the original Mass Effect trilogy multiple times over the years. I'm also about halfway thru my second run of Mass Effect: Andromeda.

That game got a lot of hate - enough that EA and Bioware have effectively abandoned it now (except for some multi-player stuff - big whoop). I think they gave up too easily. Between the sour feelings about the end of Mass Effect 3 and the general dismay that the new games wouldn't have Shepard, they really had to expect a ton of criticism. I'm not going to deny there were some issues on launch, but I'm not sure I've played a big game where there weren't. Even the original trilogy has issues that haven't been fixed to this day. Oh, well...I still liked it. I'll play it at least one more time after the current run. I may not love my Ryder, but she's a lot of fun and grows on me a little more every time I crank it up. In fact, now I'm wanting to get back into it when I finish this.

Pathfinder Cici Ryder

Book-wise, I've recently read Carrie Vaughn's BANNERLESS.

I'm a big fan of Vaughn's writing in general, and enjoyed this a lot, too. On the face of it, it's a post-apocalyptic murder mystery, but it's also a small, deeply personal look into the life of the Investigator, Enid. This isn't a Mad Max sort of world, where everyone scavenges whatever they can thru any means necessary. Possibly because in this instance the Fall, as it's called, was something of a quiet apocalypse. No big war or alien invasion or super-virus. Just a society that was hit by more and larger storms and other events until it was too much. One day the power went off and just never came back on. And right now, with Irma bearing down just weeks after Harvey and Jose' waiting in the wings, with the western half of the country seemingly on fire...it doesn't sound like that far-fetched a scenario.

That should have bored anyone reading this enough for this week. If you're in the path of one of the storms or fires or plagues or whatever else is out there, watch out for yourselves and each other.