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IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Jumper

This week’s IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! brought to you by a generous donation by Amanda d’Adesky. Thank you for your support!

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/jumper.mp3]

Jumper is an existential treatise on the nature of the conjectural power of teleportation. The schizophrenic, random nature of the story is paired with a tendency towards awkward shot composition, layered with somewhat passable CGI to create an experience not unlike the one an individual would have if they did, in fact, discover they had the aforementioned power. It’s a breathtaking overarching statement on the nature of human existence that…

Wait a second, no. No, that wasn’t intentional. This flick is just a mess.

Get used to shots like this – they try to justify the whole film’s existence.

Jumper introduces us to young David Rice, a 15-year-old kid with a crush on a girl and problems with a bully. His halting attempt to chat up his would-be paramour has the bully acting the way bullies do, and David ends up under an iced-up lake staring down an early grave. He jumps – that is to say, teleports – into the local library, soaking wet and very confused. He learns to control his power and does what I think any 15-year-old would do: robs a couple of banks to pick up awesome toys and eventually settles into a swank pad. Apparently his jumping ability also gives him the power to grow up looking like Hayden Christensen. Eventually, however, the fun comes to an end when a group of quasi-religious para-governmental hunters called Paladins, lead by a white-haired Samuel L. Jackson as ‘Roland’, come looking for David. Are they mad that he’s robbing banks? Do they want to harness his power for their own ends? No – they just want him dead because “only God should have this power.”

Don’t worry, any potential religious fanaticism on the part of the Paladins or cool young adult rebellion courtesy of the Jumpers is completely undermined and utterly without teeth, since Jumper is way too busy trying to look cool. The supernatural nature of the protagonist’s ability is simply a vehicle to take the camera from one exotic location to another. Now, as a method for promoting travel, Jumper works. I wouldn’t mind seeing Rome or Egypt or Tokyo myself someday. But I wouldn’t want to go with the guy we’re supposed to be rooting for in this film.

‘Rachel, I know you might be talented, but people are here to see us make out.’

There are two problems with him. Blame for the first falls on Hayden Christensen. It could have been assumed, in the wake of the atrocious Star Wars prequels, that the portrayal of Anakin Skywalker, supposedly one of the greatest and most virtuous Jedi before his tragic fall from grace, as a selfish emotionless wooden childish dunce was less the fault of Hayden and more that of writer/director/creator/deity/nutjob George Lucas. Seeing Jumper, however, it seems that David & Anakin are completely interchangeable. Both of these characters are uninvested in the lives of others, completely without strong emotion or drive and do nothing to connect with the audience. This problem is underscored heavily within the first fucking minute of the movie with David actually narrating for us, describing his experiences rather than showing us and letting us figure it out on our own. And he calls the audience ‘chumps’. This kind of thing worked in ‘Wanted,’ but it doesn’t work here. Of course if I’d paid for a cinema ticket, I’d feel very chumpish indeed, sitting there in the dark picking metaphorical splinters out of my ear.

If I could digress for a moment: Mark Meer, voice actor for the male Shepard player character in Mass Effect has been called somewhat unemotive in comparison to his female counterpart, Jennifer Hale. The opening narration of Jumper by Christensen is so bland, wooden and lacking in life that Mark Meer’s voice acting seems downright bombastic in comparison. Interchangeable as the characters of David and Anakin might seem, though, David is clearly more of a deliberate delinquent rather than pretending to be a guardian of truth and justice, which leads us to our second problem, a problem I shall illustrate by quoting fellow critic Confused Matthew.

“Our supposed hero and protagonist is an asshole. I mean he doesn’t listen to anybody, he’s not very nice, he treats everyone around him like shit and he only ever thinks about himself!”

This is the exact same thing Matthew says about Anakin Skywalker in the second two Star Wars prequel films. He also says it about young Simba in The Lion King, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, Hayden’s portrayal of David raises one of Jumper‘s many questions: Other than taking a little delight in agreeing that robbing a bank without chance of normal authorities catching you sounds like fun, how are we supposed to empathize with, cheer for or even like this smug, arrogant, womanizing, selfish jerkass?

Jumper‘s questions are not the kind posed by films intended to raise them during the narrative (“Who is Keyser Söze?” for example) or as a result of the narrative’s themes (“Is the HAL 9000 a computer or a living being?”). They’re problematic questions, areas of weakness in the movie’s premise, plot and pacing. Why does the Jumpers’ ability sometimes cause massive structural damage and sometimes not? Even when just jumping himself, David sometimes breaks walls or causes ceilings to collapse, and other times he just bamfs from one side of the couch to the other without so much as jostling a cushion. Also, why do Jumpers engage in short-range combat? You’d think that with the ability to teleport any distance to any location at any time, any Jumper worth their salt wouldn’t stick around long enough to get involved in a punch-up. If you had this ability – okay, if I had this ability, and a Paladin was en route to tase me into submission before gutting me like a fish, my plan would be to jump right behind him, grab him by the shoulders, jump 30000 feet straight up, let go of the Paladin and jump back to the ground. Unless parachutes are standard issue equipment for them, that Paladin’s going to have a very bad day, and even if he does have a parachute, by the time he touches down I’d be halfway around the world. The character of Griffin does get a little creative with his ability here and there, including a scene with a sports car that’s one of the few spots in the movie where I found I was enjoying myself, but for the most part the Jumpers seem incapable of directly fleeing the Paladins or dealing with them in guerrilla-style warfare. Maybe they’re just in awe at the sight of Roland’s ridiculously white hair.

Also, why the fuck was Big Ben chiming the hour when it was clearly showing only half-past?

He’s just as upset about that hairdo as I am. Seriously, guys, what the fuck?

I didn’t think Jumper could get any worse. And then, at the very end, Kristen Stewart appears. Now, it’s not her fault that the Twilight “saga” is the way it is. I didn’t get mad when I saw her, I honestly felt sorry for her. Jamie Bell & Rachel Bilson may be the standouts in this exercise in random trendy blandness, but theirs isn’t the only potential going to waste. You can almost feel Kristen’s inevitable backslide into paper-thin contrived super-stardom, and there’s something tragic about that, because when she was getting started as an actress there was potential there that I fear Stephenie Meyer might have strangled in the crib. Maybe I’m wrong and The Runaways will kick all kinds of ass. But I’m wandering off my point. Or maybe I’m jumping!

Remember Push? That film did everything Jumper does – angsty male lead, cool superpowers, exotic locales – but does it better and in a less random and confusing way. If you’re looking for something somewhat new and different in this genre, go watch Push. It’s intelligently written, directed without contrivance and the actors actually seem somewhat interested in what’s going on. Don’t watch Jumper. It’s an ill-conceived, poorly-executed mess. It adds nothing to the superpower action genre other than more evidence that Hayden Christensen is half Ent. The writing is poor, the acting is sub-par, the special effects induce yawns instead of excitement and the whole thing feels like a very cynical dollop of bland, generic action to placate the masses. At least when I play Halo, my hands occasionally tense up from holding down the fire button as I march Master Chief invincibly into incoming fire, which reminds me that I’m involved in something that’s supposed to be entertaining. Jumper requires nothing from the viewer, promises nothing and delivers nothing. It’s pretty much a waste of time, and if you were to jump anywhere, it should be far, far away from this movie.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

March 5, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/gamers.mp3]

Currently, the prevailing definition of the word “gamer” is “someone who plays video games.” However, the label has an older connotation. For years, gamers were people who populated the tables of college dorm basements, comic store back rooms and Mom’s dining room, one of them hunched behind a screen describing unspeakable horrors while the others rolled dice, complained about rulings and flung Cheetos at each other. Thankfully, that hobby is alive and well in the world of testosterone-charged first-person shooters and time-destroying MMOGs. With love in its heart and tongue firmly in its cheek, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising shows us how these “real” gamers live and play.

Produced by the Dead Gentlemen, Dorkness Rising is a follow-up to the original film called The Gamers. However, it’s not necessarily a sequel. The story centers on Kevin Lodge, a man struggling to create a unique campaign world for Dungeons & Dragons and writing up its first module. His regular gaming group, however, is frustrating him at every turn due to their shameless power-gaming rules-mongering ways. To fill the ranks of their small group, one of the players – arrogant, by-the-book Cass – enlists his ex-girlfriend, Joanna. It turns out that Joanna, like Kevin, is more interested than the story than the rules. The perspective shifts between the players and their characters, and as the adventuring party embarks on their quest to retrieve the Mask of Death from an evil necromancer, the gamers themselves begin to grow in their understanding of both their characters and the reasons they play these games.

At first blush, there’s a lot of similarity between The Gamers and Dorkness Rising. It has gamers rolling dice, yelling at one another and making off-color jokes at each other’s expense. If you’ve never sat down for a session of Dungeons & Dragons before, you’ll get a pretty good idea of how they tend to proceed. There are plenty of jokes about both the nature of table-top role-playing games and the people that play them. Some of these might fly over the heads of a general audience, but anybody who’s rolled dice to determine a hit against a goblin’s armor class can tell you they’re right on the money. Beyond the scenes and jokes themselves, the film’s probably been responsible for an explosion of conversations that begin with someone saying “Dude, something just like that happened to me when…”

The surprising thing about Dorkness Rising isn’t the humor, however. This film has got a lot of heart. It parodies the lives of gamers and plays up the hilarity of some of their arguments out of love rather than spite. The story has a lot to say about the nature of friendship, the way people immerse themselves in their hobbies and the process of storytelling itself. Despite the ways in which certain characters behave, the film never resorts to mean-spirited or blatantly gross-out humor to get a laugh. That isn’t to say that this comedy is high-brow, by any stretch – there’s bawdy jokes aplenty. But the jokes never really exist for their own sake. Like action that has the audience riveted in a well-directed film, the comedy in this story grows organically from character interaction and growth.

The only real drawback to this film is that it’s aimed at a very specific audience. A lot of the jokes, references and situations will be utterly lost on anybody who hasn’t ever played a table-top role-playing game before. And beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot to say about Dorkness Rising. Chances are, if you’re at all connected to table-top gaming, you’re aware of this film and you know if it’s up your alley or not. While there’s a lot to like about both of the films in The Gamers series, beyond their good-natured humor and the surprising quality of the storytelling in the second one there isn’t a whole lot to say about them. They’re funny and clever and aimed straight at table-topping dorks everywhere. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then by all means pick these up on your Netflix queue. But not everybody’s going to enjoy the same kind of thing. That’s just as true in the gaming world as it is when it comes to movies. I remember this one time I was playing a rogue in a Planescape campaign and…

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Wanted

February 26, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

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I think it’s safe to say that just about anything can be adapted into a film. Even in this little obscure corner of the Internet, quite a few adaptations have been reviewed as they’ve passed through my mailbox or browser. Starship Troopers is the adaptation of a novel. The Mutant Chronicles adapted a tabletop role-playing game. In The Name of the King had something to do with the video game Dungeon Siege . …I think. These adaptations run the gamut of being generally faithful to their source material, to preserving the spirit of the original while rewriting a good portion of it for one reason or another, to bending the franchise over a rail and gleefully going to town while making obscene gestures at the fan base. Wanted falls into that middle category, adapting a comic book for the big screen in way that might not be terribly recognizable to the comic’s fans but is still charged with enough of the original’s spirit to not descend into an incoherent disappointing mess. Like X-Men: The Last Stand did. I still have nightmares…

If anything can disperse the aforementioned nightmares, it’s this. ‘Wanted’ indeed.

Wanted was a short-run comic book series penned by Mark Millar about a down-on-his-luck office schlub named Wesley Gibson who has his hum-drum life of corporate drudgery interrupted by a sexy foul-mouthed assassin named Fox who informs him that his father, the greatest killer of super-beings who ever lived (appropriately dubbed ‘The Killer’) has died and left his son a substantial fortune. To earn it, Wesley must embrace his destiny of super-villainy, overcome years of self-deprecation that anybody who spends any time in a cubicle can tell you is a side-effect of office work and kill a whole lot of super-heroes. There are a lot of super-powers thrown around the pages of Wanted, but Wesley’s power is, simply, making people stop breathing. With bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.

The film adaptation does away with the super-hero motif, making it more a straight-forward badass action flick and less an examination of what a super-powered world would be like if the super-villains had won the seemingly endless struggle between good and evil. Wesley is still an office schlub, Fox is still hot, and there are still lots and lots of bullets. However, instead of joining a fraternity of super-villains, Wes joins a fraternity of assassins who use their work to ensure the tapestry of fate does not come apart at the seams. They get their orders from a magic loom. And no, I have no idea how that thing works.

I wish I looked that good working a desk job.

Much like the comic book, this movie is less about the “what” and more about the “who.” Wesley as a protagonist is someone with whom just about anybody can relate, and like his blonde comic-book counterpart, we actually find ourselves cheering for him as he breaks free of his corporate shackles, learns to curve bullets and embarks on a journey to discover who he really is, because that quiet mousy pushover in that cubicle is not him, or who he wants to be. This journey of self-discovery is a bit more violent than most, but it’s still a journey worth taking.

The other thing Wanted has going for it are moments that worked just as well in the comics as they do on the screen. There’s the moment where Wesley shoots the wings off of flies, moments where he lashes out against his co-workers, the moment where his pseudo-mentor Morgan Freeman drops the F-bomb and the moment where Angelina Jolie as Fox walks around dressed only in her tattoos. Some new elements that take the place of super-villainy have moments of their own, like the moment where Wesley curves a bullet for the first time or uses a car in a very interesting way to get a shot on his target. They’re the kind of moments that make me smile, even upon reflection.

Angelina Jolie and the luckiest car in the world.

The biggest problem Wanted suffers from is that these moments are not necessarily directly related to one another. They are, instead, strung together with a plot that has all of the tensile strength and cohesion as a slightly frayed string of dental floss. In losing the super-powers, Wanted also lost a lot of its color and charm. The graphic novel had me rolling or cheering just about every other page. The film manages a few laughs and a smile or two, but isn’t quite the same. It is, in essence, the generic corner store version of your favorite soda pop – it’s still fizzy and tastes kind of similar, but you can tell the difference.

Seriously, hearing ‘Red’ drop his Precision F-Strike on us is worth the price of admission.

Wanted wavers a bit on the line between recommended watching and something you should skip. What puts it just barely in the positive column is the very self-aware nature of the film. Unlike some other adaptations out there, it’s ashamed of neither its source material nor the idea of taking the piss out of itself. Cleolinda Jones, in the preface to her Wanted in 15 Minutes, says that this film is “outrageous and stupid and funny and knows it“. James McEvoy is having just as much fun here as he did playing Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, if not more. Of course, in Narnia he didn’t have the chance to make out with Angelina Jolie. I had fun watching Wanted, and reading the graphic novel again afterward was even more fun in light of this adaptation, which makes it a success for me and earns a recommendation. It’s not the greatest badass action film out there – Shoot ‘Em Up is a better self-parody of the genre – nor is it the best comic book adaptation film to date. That honor belongs to Iron Man and the only thing endangering it is coming out on May 7th. Because if anything is going to dethrone Iron Man, it isn’t going to be Wanted – it’ll be Iron Man 2. And I cannot wait for that.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Sneakers

February 19, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

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If some of the screenwriters and directors in Hollywood are to be believed, computers are magical devices. Hook yours up to a wall socket, type really fast, and hey presto, the Pentagon’s your bitch. Some hackers out there are so good they can do this while being held at gunpoint, or shall we say ‘pleasured’ by a hot blonde or even both. Of course, computer networks really don’t work like that, especially high-profile governmental and military targets. It takes quite a few elements to breach the security of even pedestrian marks such as banks and research labs, from tapping phone lines to bluffing your way past the front desk. For a great cinematic example of how this sort of thing really works, as well as one that ages well, look no further than a little 1996 film called Sneakers.

When he was in college, Martin Brice and his buddy Cosmo played digital Robin Hoods, hacking into the financial resources of prominent jerkass politicians to redistribute their wealth to people who need it – the National Organization to Legalize Marijuana, for example. One of their attempted hacks gets Cosmo caught while Martin was able to flee the country, due to a rather serendipitous pizza run. Years later, Martin’s operating (under a nom de plume) a small group of misfits called a ‘tiger team’ which basically puts security systems through acid tests. The team consists of an ex-CIA operative, a conspiracy theorist technical adept, a blind man who’s a consummate phreak due to great hearing and a juvenile delinquent genius. Everything is going swell until a couple of shady NSA agents contact Marty, call him by his old name and tell him that he needs to steal something for them if he wants to stay out of jail. …And that’s all I’m gonna tell you.

Michael Weston was taking notes from these guys.

There are some specific dates given over the course of the film that would normally cause it to feel too dated. However, the charisma of the team’s members, the whip-smart writing and the very nature of the capers helps the story not only age well but remain grounded and therefore more interesting to watch. The quasi-magical nature of computers in, say, Hackers is replaced with practical and mostly realistic things such as directional microphones, motion sensors sensative to body temperature and careful planning. When computers and encryption do get involved, the underlying math is not only explained but shown, giving the elements weight and helping them serve the story rather than dazzling us from seeing story weaknesses with flashy graphics and ludicrous jargon.

“Check it out, Marty, it’s the latest in ‘I don’t want to get my head blown off when the mooks find me here’ fashion.”

While there are some weaknesses in the story – the way in which things appear after they’ve been hacked, for instance – they’re not bad enough to break the film’s flow. Rather, they’re smoothed over by some great performances. Robert Redford is one of the consummate leading men of both my generation and that of my parents. Sydney Poitier’s stoic, cautious nature is played beautifully against the manic mind of Dan Akroyd. The late River Phoenix aquits himself very well as the youngest member of the team, while David Straithairn convincingly shows how a blind man would operate in these situations and how valuable he is in spite of his disability. Mary McDonnell is remarkable as Marty’s Girl Friday and Ben Kingsley pulls off being both charming and menacing with ease. And all of these front-line well-rounded actors work with a script that never seems to fall flat or even miss more than one or two steps.

Okay, the film is a little dated. That mainframe behind those two could probably fit on an iPhone now.

If I were asked to describe Sneakers in one word, I’d likely have the same reaction I do when I see someone slapping an aribtrary numerical score onto a review (which involves some very unpleasant indigestion) but the word I’d end up using after downing some Pepto-Bismol is “intelligent.” The film’s premise, mechanics, relationships and even humor never feel dumbed down or half-assed. It’s not the kind of movie that talks down to its audience, which can be rare given some of the pedantic fare running around the local cinema. Still, this braininess means that it’s focused more on character development and concept exploration than sex and violence, which means that some of the twitchy attention-deficit action junkies might consider this film too ‘boring’ and file it away with Empire Strikes Back or Gattaca while they clamour for the Avatar sequel. If you want to watch a caper film that’s every bit as funny as any of the recent Ocean’s Insert Incremental Number Here films while being at least a few notches smarter, Sneakers is waiting for you on the Netflix streaming service, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to enjoy it. Otherwise, Halo:Reach still isn’t due out until autumn. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, there.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Starship Troopers

February 12, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 4 Comments

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/starship_troopers.mp3]

I’m not going to mince words. Robert Heinlein is the reason I got interested in writing fiction. Granted, it was his novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls that started the wheels turning in my head, but Starship Troopers was also evocative and fascinating to the nascent mind of this young writer twenty years ago or so. While the book was released and is still enjoyed today by youth, Paul Verhoven’s film adaptation is decidedly not for kids, what with the ludicrous amounts of gore and the gratuitous nudity. But is it good? The short answer is… “mostly.”

“Um… sir? Did we remember to pack that bigass can of Raid?”

In the future, veteran soldiers have revamped global society so that citizenship is determined by civil service in the armed forces, meaning that rights such as voting, procreation and higher education are earned, not given. Growing up in this society are Johnny Rico (Casper Van Diem), Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards) and Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris). The three friends graduate high school and enter the service just before the malevolent aliens known as “arachnids” or “bugs” wipe out their home town of Buenos Aires with a meteor strike. Carmen enters the fleet as a skilled but unorthodox pilot, Carl disappears into the dark cloister of military intelligence, and Rico, unskilled at math but a determined athlete with a decent head on his shoulders, signs on for the Mobile Infantry, the Federation’s hard-nosed badass rapid-deployment “do or die” answer to the United States Marine Corps.

Best reason to join the Mobile Infantry? Right there.

What begins as a near-future high school romantic drama turns quickly into a near-future war story. Unfortunately, this transition isn’t a one-way street. Instead of focusing entirely on the horrors of war, the shadow cast by the society in which these characters live or even the nature of the arachnids, the film keeps looking back over its shoulder at the romance plots and the beautiful people caught up in them. The transitions between themes aren’t terribly smooth, and it makes the pace of the film a little disjointed. The writing is fine, based as it is on tried and true science fiction tropes, and the characters are, for the most part, reasonably fleshed out with a few exceptions. It feels a bit like this movie is trying too hard to be too many things at once, which leads to what I feel is its biggest flaw.

Everything that is good in this movie is counter-balanced by something that could have been better. Good performances by the likes of Dina Meyer, Neil Patrick Harris and Michael Ironside are almost cancelled out by the wooden efforts of Denise Richards and Patrick Muldoon. The boot camp sequences that hearken to films like Full Metal Jacket and Jarhead are undermined by plodding, procedural CG sequences of space travel. Any rousing feelings evoked as the Mobile Infantry unit called the Roughnecks pay back the bugs for assaulting our race are watered down with audience-generated questions like “Why are they still using bullets in the future?” and “Why are their weapons so huge and cumbersome if the Mobile Infantry is meant for rapid deployment?” If the film had focused solely on the Roughnecks instead of constantly cutting back to Carmen’s fleet antics, the whole thing would have been a bit more coherent and the overall product would have improved. Yes, we would have had less opportunities to check out Denise Richards, but she’s little more than eye candy in this, and Dina Meyer completely outdoes her in just about every regard.

Dr. Horrible visits Himmler’s tailor and kills bugs good. Would you like to know more?

The best part about Starship Troopers, in my opinion, is its undercurrent of fascism. Heinlein wrote this as a cautionary tale against militarism overshadowing democratic process while still being supportive of military action, but screenwriter Ed Neumeier and director Verhoven take a more satirical approach to this aspect of the story. The framing device of “Federation Network” broadcasts that play like old wartime newsreels display a deceptive wholesomeness which conceals an underlying message that one class of society is valued more than another by the government. Even the supposedly helpful prompts of “Would you like to know more?” seem just as much an opportunity to misinform and propagandize as they are an aspect of interactivity. There are all sorts of political and societal ramifications of this sort of structure and the particulars of those ramifications could spark some great debate. But the best part of the film is also something of a disappointment, in that there isn’t more said about it or done with it. A FedNet bit here, a few lines of dialogue there and it’s right back to the violence and tits.

Still, I’ve seen worse adaptations than Starship Troopers, and when it works, it works rather well. When I saw it as a younger man, I thought it was thrilling and exciting despite the fact that Heinlein’s power suits had proven too problematic for the special effects of the day. Then again, maybe that was due to seeing Dina Meyer shirtless (not once, guys, but twice). Having watched it again with a more critical eye, I still enjoyed the majority of it, but some of its flaws are rather glaring, Denise Richards’ performance and the constant cuts back to her side of the story being the biggest two. But if you can get over that and forgive Verhoven his love of excessive gore – this is the man who brought us RoboCop, after all – Starship Troopers does manage to entertain. It does for movie watchers what Halo does for game players for better and for worse. It’s decently produced and nice to look at, but there’s aspects of it that keep it on the level of “average” and hold it back from being excellent. Being available on Netflix’s Instant service, you can watch it just about anywhere, but at over two hours and containing bare breasts and bloodshed aplenty, it’s not recommended for lunch break viewing at work.

Starship Troopers isn’t bad, in fact it’s pretty damn good in places, but overall it’s not that great either. Unless, of course, you’re a political conservative. If you are – and I have no idea why you’re reading this stuff if that’s the case – you are going to love this film. A future where political and military power are practically one and the same, and doctrine both at home and on the battlefield are determined by a select few who survive warfare and have mostly the interests of the military at heart? After watching this, I think quite a few conservative pundits in my country would have to consult their physicians because they’d suddenly be unable to get rid of their erections.

Tag: Netflix (page 18 of 24)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Jumper

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Wanted

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Sneakers

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Starship Troopers

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