Reviews by madstalk

This games has that "one more hour" addictiveness that made other franchises like Civilization so popular. The graphics were nice and vibrant and the setting was unique enough to give this title its own little niche place in the overcrowded strategy realms.

There are some issues with seemingly tacked on army battles and information overload but it was fun to build gladiatorial arenas and aqueducts.

This game was really tough but the atmosphere of the haunted house Edward Carnby is investigating was awesome - especially by 1992 standards. The controls are a bit floaty and the game can be devilishly difficult at times but it is the early gold standard for survival adventure games.

It also did a good job of presenting an interesting story and some interesting puzzles. They often fall into the hunt for key open door category but the game did a good job of dressing them up and really utilizing that unique atmosphere.

This is the rare RPG shooter that gets everything right. The graphics are wonderful, the environment is memorable and the shooting includes strategic aspects that add a lot of depth and make each encounter memorable. There are also some light RPG elements here in the form of plasmids that alter your characters abilities. It's no Baldur's Gate but it does feed into my compulsive need to collect and see everything a game has to offer.

The real star here is the environment and story. The game takes place in an underwater utopian world that's essentially gone to rot. There are tons of unique enemies and individual environments and the story is effective at keeping you invested in the ultimate outcome.

Some of the Ayn Randish references would be distracting if the gameplay wasn't so bloody fantastic. Overall, this is as close to a modern masterpiece of gaming that one can find.

This is one of the most criminally underplayed RPG's out there. The story is great, the graphics were quite amazing for 2002 and the spell/combat system is addicting.

The only major issue with this release is, of course, that it is a JoWood game. This means that you can expect a myriad of bugs - some of them game-stopping. If you can push through that stuff, however, there is some fantastic fantasy gameplay to be had here.

This is an impressive fully featured classic style RPG with a unique atmosphere that actually makes you contemplate the choices you are making. This first version is a bit sanitized when compared to the European version but the developers provided a patch that improved the voice work and added more adult content.

The graphics are quite pretty - the world has tons of tiny details that are very immersing and the character models look (at least in regards to the major characters) amazing and detailed.

The big draw here, however, is the story and writing. This game is massive. The amount of spoken dialogue here is immense and all of it is written quite well. It does get a bit hard to keep track of quests, plot information and locations because the in-game menus need a bit of design overhaul. All that information is there and frequently updated as you play through the game but as your tomes of information grow its hard to find the specific glossary entry that will help you complete some of the quests.

Still, they've made an impressive, engrossing, unique RPG world here - one that is easy to get lost in for dozens of hours. Highly recommended.

The show is alternatively entertaining and, based on the cooking spaces of some of the restaurants featured here, horrifying. I was worried it would simply be a showcase for Ramsay's renowned temper and excessive profanity but, while there is plenty of that, most episodes do a good job of making you root for the recovery and success of the establishments featured. There's a surprising amount of heart here.

The only complaint I have is that they would artificially extend the earlier seasons by including revisit episodes as standalone episodes. This means you would have to sit through 35 minutes of exact repeated material to get 10 minutes of new material. Thankfully they dropped those episodes later on in the series.

1969 was a big year for the Rolling Stones. They headlined their first U.S. Tour in three years and played to sold out arenas including world famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. They were joined on the road by renowned documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles. The result of this collaboration was 1970’s rock doc Gimme Shelter.

Gimme Shelter shows 18 year-old Meredith Hunter being stabbed to death by a Hells Angel at a free concert (held at the Altamont speedway in Northern California) organized by the Stones. It can’t, and doesn’t try to, give viewers the simple answers as to why pool cue wielding Hells Angels are policing the event or why Hunter made the fatal mistake of pulling out a revolver. Those answers didn’t come easy in 1969 and, in the successive 40 years, have been buried beneath half-truths and outright lies. Instead it takes its audience on a vivid trip through the dizzying highs and horrifying lows that marked that ‘69 tour. In the process it probably shows us more about the mindset of that era then a dozen academic texts could.

Gimme Shelter is largely broken into sections. The films begins as your basic concert documentary, showing The Rolling Stones play to enraptured crowds in New York City. It shifts to the planning of the Altamont concert and ends with that chaotic December 6, 1969 night. Its broken up by visits to the recording studio and the editing room, where the filmmakers play footage from Altamont to Stones band members.

The style of the film is steadfastly direct. The viewer is given no graphics, talking heads or narration. The events simply unfold before you. There is some time-line jumping which can be a bit disconcerting but the meat of the film – the planning and execution of the Altamont concert – is largely chronological. The true success of the film is in the visual style and camera work. The Maysles and their cadre of camera operators seem to always be in the right place at the right time. They do a wonderful job of capturing those perfect emotive moments; a slow motion pan over entranced audience members in New York City or a woman crying as she experiences the chaos of Altamont. It’s beautiful and ugly and succeeds at capturing the personal moments and mass conflicts that marked the tour.

It captures a moment in time; weeks before the calendar would turn over on 1969 and the freewheeling 60s. It shows the unparalleled joy of throwing caution to the wind, doing what feels right and indulging in a fantasy world of sex, drugs and the Rolling Stones. Their live performances showcase the transforming power of music matched with an electric stage presence. The Stones bewitch the New York crowd with their unmatched blend of blues and oozing sex.

As the planning for the Altamont concert gets underway Gimme Shelter also captures the opposite side of that coin - the very real consequences of living without fear of consequence. There are dozens of bright red warning signs that any sane person would read as “STOP” but the Stones and their brass push ahead despite last second venue changes, woeful facilities and reports of hundreds of thousands of acid-heads descending on Altamont Speedway.

On the morning of the event we are introduced to the enormity of the chaos. There are thousands of cars parked on the highway and the camera captures dozens of blitzed individuals wondering around the site. By themselves they would cause a SWAT response in a suburban mall but here they simply add to the seething, spaced out piles of humanity. When Mick Jagger steps out of his helicopter he’s promptly punched in the face and the arrival of the Hells Angels (to jeers from the crowd) brings the potent mixture to a boil. Then it’s essentially a trip into one of the levels of hell sound-tracked by Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers and The Rolling Stones. The Maysles capture it all; Hells Angels beating crowd members unconscious with pool cues, naked spaced out women charging the stage, even a dog. Above all they make that thick sense of impending doom pervasive. It is alarming, terrifying and sets the spectacle up for its natural conclusion. Then, there is is, caught on tape. A gun comes out, a knife comes down and a man lies dead.

The Maysles and editor/director Charlotte Zwerin framed their narrative by having Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts sit in on the editing process. After viewing the footage of the Hunter stabbing Jagger seems almost reserved. He pauses before responding, “terrible”. The true beauty of Gimme Shelter is that it doesn’t’ tell you what to think. It shows you the video evidence of that fateful day and lets you draw your own conclusions. Whose fault was it? Jagger? The Hells Angels? Meredith Hunter? The concert promoters? Or, was the whole free love, drugs and rock n’ roll movement predestined to end like this? The only sure thing is that Gimme Shelter is a perfect encapsulation of the continual drug trip that was the carefree 60s for many. No matter how great the high there is the inevitable crash. It is a thought provoking, gripping examination of a glorious decade coming to a grisly end.

10/10

Though it certainly looks like your run of the mill period piece, Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts is a strange beast indeed. Its successes lie in some fine performances by Stellan Skarsgard and Javier Bardem but the story meanders through vaguely defined periods of Spanish history. It's often disarmingly funny - carrying a vibe that doesn't fit the costumes and high drama of the depicted period and Natalie Portman borders on brutal at times. Its a movie that never really finds its way and never really seems to have anything particularly important or interesting to say. It is gorgeous to look at and entertaining in a vaudevillian kind of way but never reaches the peaks of Forman's finest work.

There are war films that celebrate our men in uniform and then there are films like All Quiet on the Western Front - the so called anti-war film. Despite its age All Quiet is one of the stand-outs in the genre - at least in terms of its depiction of the brutality of war. Even through a modern lens the trench warfare shown here is shocking and the rapid camera pans that give a sense of the immensity of carnage on a battlefield will stick in your mind.

The plotting and characterization lack the impact of the battle scenes but there is some success in giving a face to the generally faceless victims of war. All Quiet on the Western Front is bleak, disturbing, horrific but still resonant today.

A strange docudrama that is probably a pretty accurate representation of what Caucasians thought life in foreign (non-European) countries was like. Some interesting footage that was shot on location but Chang is definitely a product of the times. Not essential viewing by any stretch of the imagination.