Marvel’s Jessica Jones (Review)

Jessica Jones stars Krysten Ritter as the title character in Marvel’s 2nd Netflix treatment following this year’s amazing Daredevil and it is a lead up to the upcoming Iron Fist and Luke Cage series, Jessica Jones is a risky series for Marvel because it about a less known character and a Female one which is still not very common as far as superhero genre goes. A little background check Jessica Jones was created by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos in 2001’s Alias Issue #1, the show is an adaptation of that story with some modernized twist to fit into the Marvel Netflix Universe’s dark and serious tone, if you have seen Daredevil back in April you know it takes place in New York city after the events of the first Avengers movie, while the shows don’t deal with the aftermath of that event it is a world who is aware of superheroes and different people which is pretty great because we don’t get to see our heroin in a silly costume and she doesn’t call herself “Jewel”, instead we get this badass chick who might have just become one of my new favorite marvel characters, now to the review here is what I liked and disliked about the show.

Likes
+ The villains : the way I see it this season was as much a Jessica Jones story as it was a Kilgrave story, we dived deeper into Kilgrave’s origins than we did Jessica’s, David Tennant plays the character so well which makes the character a lot more interesting than it already is, he is perhaps one of the top psychos in the superhero genre right up there with the likes of Joker and Loki, aside from Kilgrave we also get a look at Nuke and he was terrific but his role was more of an asshole antihero I am looking forward to see more of him in the upcoming seasons.

+ Darkest Yet : Jessica Jones explores Rape and Addiction and Alcoholism like no other Superhero show before it, the themes of the show are so dark they are not and happen so fast sometimes you can’t catch you breath.

+ The Cast : I talked about how great David Tennant is and the rest of the cast are also doing amazing jobs, maybe the weakest is Rachael Taylor’s Trish but she more than makes up for it with her physical performance and ehm eye candy, seriously that woman is pretty.

+ NOT AN ORIGIN STORY : I can’t tell you how sick I am of origin stories even though Daredevil did a fine job but I just really didn’t want Jessica Jones to be an origin story and I am so glad it wasn’t, in a way the show was a detective show which worked really well.

Dislike:
– The Side Characters : The twins, the next door junkie and the shark lawyer’s lesbian triforce they just took me out of the otherwise excelente and well written scenes to a point they ruined the pacing, I really wish they just take them out of the show next season.

Verdict : Marvel’s Netflix treatment is getting better with every installment, while Daredevil set the Dark nature of the series with it’s excelente first season Jessica Jones took it to a brand new level with its introduction of a fantastic heroin and excellent storyline.

The Hunger Games series (Review)

With the last movie hitting the theaters this weekend and millions of fans rushing in to see the conclusion to one of the biggest movie franchises in recent memory, based on the popular young adult series The Hunger Games is set in the fictional country of Panem which is a very weird dystopian or post apocalyptic country consists of 13 districts all ruled by the one mighty president Snow and his army of peacekeepers and their annual Hunger Games, a yearly competition between the districts where they put young fighters against each other in a brutal fight to death as a way to keep them in line, now this story is pretty long so I am not going to sum it up here all you need to know that every component of a young adult novel series is in this series from the Love triangle to the Father figure to rebellious and badass girl who for some reason everyone seems to fall in love with so without further adieu let me give you my take on what worked and didn’t work about The Hunger Games movie series :

Note : 
1- I will probably spoil everything here so if you haven’t seen all four movies don’t read any further.
2-haven’t read the books and I am only talking about the films here.

Likes :

• The Quality of the films : if you compare them with something like Twilight The Hunger Games are pretty enjoyable movies even though they fall into the same category, the movies are well directed greatly acted and beautifully designed, one of the best parts of this series is the costumes they feel like a part of the world and they don’t just look weird and futuristic.
• Casting and Acting : the cast of this franchise is one of the best, with Jennifer Lawrence leading the pact, if there is ever a perfect casted character this gotta be one of them, and not just her everyone else is doing a great job, RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman it was painful to know this was the last thing he did and I think they handled that last scene well the one he couldn’t complete.

Dislikes:

• Setting : I am a sucker for a dystopian post apocalyptic cyberpunk setting naturally I should have loved Panem, but this world makes no sense at all for starters the government system is like a Nazi regime but they care about what the districts think of them president Snow doesn’t care about killing kids and women and children but he cares about he cares about the words he says to them, it just feels incomplete and weird and honestly I still can’t picture a world map for these districts, they should have made that part more clear.
• The Love Triangle : Oh where do I begin? the Love triangle is like the big selling point of the story while none of it make any sense, the fact that Katniss kisses Gale whenever she feels like it but still wants Peeta is just weird, and both these guys are as lifeless as they can be they are so one dimensional and lifeless I honestly think if one of them died in the first part and lived on as memory for Katniss things would have been much better.
• The Ending : The last novel of the saga is considered the weakest one and it was split into two big budget movies for some “Artistic reason” if you know what I mean, if they didn’t do that it might have ended being a decent action flick which is pretty good but it just wasn’t, basically it was a behind the scenes movies about shooting propaganda while they washed over the action leading to an ending that was so predictable and boring, at least we got some closure about Katniss becoming a mom because isn’t that what every girl want?

Verdict : Overall The Hunger Games Saga is an interesting series filled with a lot of foreplay and not much of a climax.

Spectre (Review)

Spectre stars Daniel Craig in his fourth outing as James Bond and it was directed by 2012’s impeccable Bond flick Skyfall Sam Mendes, when I first heard about Spectre I had one worry “are they gonna make Skyfall 2 to cash in on Skyfall’s success?” because you know Skyfall is the most successful Bond movie ever in terms of critical and commercial success so that worry was legitimate even though I love Skyfall I would like the franchise to go to a different direction with every movie to make it feel like a standalone action movie, and I was pleasantly surprised that Spectre is not Skyfall 2 and with that is both good and bad at the same time, well maybe not Bad just not super awesome.

Likes

+ Classic Bond : Everything you know and love about Bond movies is in there from the over the top action to the women and the cars and gadgets, Daniel Craig is still great as Bond he still wears the hell out of the suit and can seduce the pants off anyone.
+ Great Action : Spectre puts Bond against the biggest crime syndicate on the planet so naturally there will be a lot of action sequences in the process, paired with Sam Mendes’s amazing shots and you got a really amazing action movie that anyone can enjoy despite their love for the franchise.
+ The Score : before we got into the movie my friend wondered if this movie will have a great soundtrack like Skyfall did and man we were blown away by it, they are just blood pumping and really well designed to complement the action, also the title screen paired with Sam Smith’s Writings on the Wall was awesome despite what some make you believe.
+ The Cast : while the main villain played by Christoph Waltz didn’t get much screen time but that man can always deliver lines perfectly and the rest of the cast like Ralph Fiennes’s M. and Ben Whishaw’s Q. reprised their roles and were awesome to watch, perhaps the best one of the cast was Léa Seydoux as Dr. Swan which is the latest Bond girl which made me feel like Bond really needs a badass woman to make him perform those miracles and she did exactly that.

Dislikes
– Pacing : The back and forth between MI6 and where Bond was took me out of the experience a few times, I could understand why they did it that way the script really needed it but at the same time it was a bit disappointing at times.

Verdict : following something like Skyfall is a really hard task, a lot of great Movies and Games and TV shows end up getting criticized by critics who love to compare them, it happened to The Dark Knight Rises, it happened to Mass Effect 3 and it happened to this year’s True Detective Season 2, there might be legitimate grounds to compare the two movies but when you look at Spectre as a standalone action movie it is an awesome one while being a great Bond movie at the same time.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Review)

For me Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid was always the best way to sell me a console, I bought the PS2 for MGS 3 and I bought PSP for MGS PO and I almost bought PS4 for MGS 4 but I didn’t because I was living overseas back then and I wanted to eat food, despite how I felt about MGS 4 which I thought it was a let down I went in The Phantom Pain with an open mind but also a sceptical mindset that I might not like everything I see here, for me the age of long cut scenes and hour long codec conversations is over and I can’t go through that anymore, feeling that you have no impact over the world is a thing of the past for me and I am glad it was the same for Kojima :

The Likes
+Open World Greatness : The Phantom Pain lets you run wild on two HUGE maps, while the settings are kinda boring some kind of City would have been more amazing as far as I am concerned still the fact that you can be the Phantom that haunts an entire army who steals their resources and kidnaps their best soldiers is a joy ride.

+Stealth Action at it’s best : in a way MGS V feels like all the evolution Kojima implemented on each MGS game in the past 27 years in one package, the gameplay mechanics here is the best thing right now with small additives like reflex mode a bionic arm modification and the buddy system just makes everything amazing, and it is that great gameplay that makes the repetitive mission design of the game not tedious and actually fun.

+The Man Who Sold The World : in other words Big Boss’s story, the whole thing and if you played it you know what I am talking about, despite how some people felt about it for me that bait and switch worked so well and made me feel like I had something to do with this story and I wasn’t just there to watch cutscenes, The game takes a lot of inspirations from classic books such as 1984, Lord of Flies and Moby Dick, one of the things I really enjoyed about the game is how it tied loose ends in other MGS games before it connected dots to other MGS games that is coming after it in the chronological timeline.

Dislikes

-Helicopter rides : After 100 hours This is Pequod arriving shortly at LZ becomes very very boring, not just that travelling within the open map is kinda hard because you don’t have any fast travel options which forces you to exit the map and land somewhere else and go through 4 loading screens, not the best use of my time Kojima!

-Lense Flares, Slow downs and the overly abstract nature of the cutscenes : don’t get me wrong I love things that you need to rewatch couple of times to understand it but some of the cutscenes doesn’t make any sense, remember the firethorn unicorn, or the fire whale? and so many slow downs and Lense flares to make J. J. Abrams run for his money.

Verdict

With all the things you can do in MGS V it boils down to one question : after 130 hours did I enjoy my time in MGS V? Yes I absolutely did, will I go through it again like I did with the other MGS games before it? No, MGS V is not that kind of game and it is very very different than the games before it, and it is without a doubt one of the best games of 2015,