Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

This afternoon my family joined the rest of North America (apparently) and checked out the newest Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy.

Directed by James Gunn (director of one of my favourite horror-comedies, Slither), Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG) was something I wasn't really expecting from Marvel these days, a stand-alone feature.

I mean sure, it has a few cameos from the other Marvel films (characters, plot points, and props), but as much as I loved The Avengers (and I really did), it really worked best if you had viewed all of the films leading up to it, while GotG could be watched by pretty much anyone, whether they had seen the other Marvel Cinematic Universe films or not.

The action was fun, the story was sweet, and considering the film had five leads, you got to spend enough time with each of them to care about them as characters, which was a pretty nice treat.  Yes, there are a lot of extra treats for Marvel fans in the film, but seriously, this may be one of the better Marvel films to start someone on, showing them the types of stories that the film Studio can tell.

Game Review: Lollipop Chainsaw

So I just finished the zombie-themed horror comedy game Lollipop Chainsaw yesterday which pits an eighteen-year-old cheerleader/monster hunter against a potential zombie apocalypse and in the end it was pretty fun.

The best parts of the game were the concepts and dialogue, the banter was witty, the zombies were silly (think Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead wherein the zombies generally speak one liners and you get the idea), and the idea of racing through zombie hoards with the goal of getting home for your birthday party and pairing zombie destroying with interpersonal relationships was pretty fun.  A personal highlight - fighting the video-game themed zombies in levels which mirrored classic arcade games.

The game did fall a little in the control department - the controls felt a little clunky, and often I would be hitting the combos as outline with no result multiple times before a combo would occur.

I did like the fact that each level ends with a report card (counting zombie kills, number of continues used, etc), so it would be easy to play the game again and see if you could beat your old score.

Having long been a fan of the films of James Gunn (Slither, Super, etc.), I felt the game had a pretty fun feel overall, but could have had some help in the monotony of the levels - different types of zombies appeared, which was fun, but each level was a "clear the room and move on" type, with limited puzzles or other types of games involved.

Genre Character of the Week: Sheriff Bill Pardy

Like most people, I'm a huge fan of the character who is in over his head. Whether it's a cop out of his element like in Die Hard or even a security guard out of his element in Paul Blart: Mall Cop (who will get his own post here one day), these kind of characters resonate with the audience due to one simple fact - we are able to ask ourselves, What would I do in this situation? Of course when the character is in a genre film, the stakes are immediately raised, which is why this week's character is Sheriff Bill Pardy (pictured below), from the Horror/Comedy film Slither.

Bill (played by Nathan Fillion), is the Sheriff of a small town in South Carolina, and he is still in love with his Junior High crush Starla, who is now married to the richest man in town. The problem begins when alien slugs begin showing up and taking over the bodies of the towns folk.

Now before anyone comments on it, yes, this film bears a lot of similarities to Night of the Creeps, and Bill is kind of a mixture of the two main leads from that film, but I think that as Slither borrows concepts from so many '80s horror films, this is forgivable.

In the end, I love that Bill does exactly what we all wish we would do in this horrible, not to mention disgusting scenario. He does his best to take care of the citizens of his town, and although he isn't the main character of the film (that would be Starla, played very well by Elizabeth Banks), I really admire his courage.