Two Cents is Too Much: Ender's Game

It's about time I reviewed something again! Here comes Ender's Game, only the most celebrated scifi book in forever (citation needed). If you haven't read the book*, fair warning: there's a ton of spoilers below the jump. Even if you saw the movie but didn't read the book, there are still spoilers.

* And if you haven't read the book, go read it. Now. It's the only book I've bought multiple copies of solely to loan out to people to read. All of my copies are out at the moment, so you'll have to ask someone else. 

I wish I got the Federal Network with my cable package.

But before I get into the review, I wanted to unveil my new plan for reviewing things. I've been trying to find a way to encapsulate two separate axes of rating. The first is hype vs. reality, expectations vs. inevitable disappointment. The proto-idea had been bouncing around in my head for a while when I finally read the Movie Plus-Minus* post by Joe Posnanski. The idea is that we as humans judge things not by their absolute value, but rather their value relative to our own expectations. You know you've had that thought; you were so excited to eat that burger, watch that movie, read that book, that when you finally eat/watched/read it, the burger/movie/book was unable to live up to your expectations. And you've had the converse as well; picking up something you expect to be mediocre at best, only to be blown away.

* Posnanski** took the name "Plus-Minus" straight from the Fielding Bible, which makes sense, as he writes a sports blog. I prefer to call it the "Hype-O-Tron". 

** Whenever you see an asterisk followed by an italicized comment on this blog, it's a Posterisk, and I totally stole it from him. The guy is brilliant, if not for his sports writing, then for his writing style in general.

The other axis is quality vs. enjoyment. Sometimes we really enjoy terrible things. Other times, we look at world class works of art and say, "Eh, I'd rather clip my toenails" (I'm looking at you, Citizen Kane). For example, Starship Troopers is not a quality movie*. The acting is sub par, parts of the plot make no sense, and the execution of all the actors (save NPH) it pitiful. Yet I can watch that movie anytime. It's definitely a comfort movie for me.

* If you get a chance, read the book. It's so much better than the movie in terms of quality, yet it's still eminently enjoyable. 

Two axes, you say? Sounds like a job for a graph!

No one ever accused me of being good at graphics.

So you can see, Starship Troopers was far lower quality than I expected, but I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would.

Now, on to Ender's Game (after the jump, you know, to hide them spoilers).

Two Cents Is Too Much: I Am Legend

Holy carp what a movie. I can't say anymore without ruining it but go see it now if you haven't. 

Two Cents Is Too Much: AVP-R

The easiest way to get back into blogging is to convince yourself you've started anew, either with new content or a new feature... or both! Introducing Two Cents Is Too Much, a collection of my reviews of various things that are probably not worth anything (ask my about reviews some day).

In today's episode, I'm talking about Alien Vs. Predator - Requiem, or AVP-R. At first I thought the "R" stood for "Rated R", since the first AVP was rated PG-13. In the end, the R rating was the only thing good about the movie; hearing curses every other word was great. Otherwise, this movie sucked. 

AVP-R reeked of other terrible SciFi sequels, like Starship Troopers 2. Its like the producers forgot to hire writers (maybe this was written during the writers strike). There was no plot to speak of. Instead the movie focuses on a series of fight scenes with bad lighting among various alien species and humans. I left 30 minutes in to grab popcorn and I didn't miss a thing. The best part of the movie was when one of the main characters yelled "Get to the chopper!" sans Austrian accent. Ahh, memories.

So don't go see it in the theater. Don't buy it on DVD. Wait until it's on TV, then check to see if anything else is on... I'd rather watch Chuck Norris sell the Total Gym ("Two months? Wow!") for 100 minutes than watch AVP-R again. I even had to watch the first AVP when I got home just to get the taste out of my mouth.