Rant - Senseless Murder

I had a review I intended to write tonight. It was even about a game. But then I got home from work yesterday and all the news would show us was scenes from the mass murder in a Connecticut elementary school, and then I started talking about it with some friends and my wife, and it got me riled up.

The first thing that got me cranky was that the first topic that pops up is gun control. And it's not just those sissy Democrats, either - one side starts saying how guns should be properly controlled to stop this kind of thing, and the other side starts saying how if all those teachers had guns, they could have stopped the bad guy, and neither is doing much more than turning a horrible, senseless tragedy into an excuse to jabber about gun laws.

Gun control is the wrong discussion. The dude in Connecticut had Rice-A-Roni where you and I have brains, and if he had to walk those halls with an Airsoft gun and a copy of REO Speedwagon's greatest hits, he was going to kill some kids. And the opposite argument - arm the teachers - is simply insane. Who the crap wants guns in schools? What kind of lunatic would think that was a good idea? Besides, the guys who would be willing to carry a firearm into a classroom of inquisitive six-year-olds is the very last guy I want having one.

But that's not to say there are no discussions we should be having. Let's start with our general feeling about mental health in these here United States. You know what the most common theme you see among homeless people would be? If you guessed, 'bad hygiene,' you would probably be right, but the second theme would be 'bat-crap crazy.' We don't have any patience for loons in this country. We throw you a couple Xanax or prescribe some Prozac and hope you go away. We don't treat our mentally ill very well, especially if they don't have the right health insurance. And given their propensity to lose jobs, they mostly don't. (Cue an argument in favor of socialized medicine, which I am not going to champion right now, but I sure think we're overdue for it anyway.)

Or how about the overly Puritan approach we bring to - well, to everything? Look at the shows your kids can watch with the televisions you put in their bedrooms. Breaking Bad. Revenge. Vampire Diaries. CSI. The Walking Freaking Dead. Those shows have two things in common - one, they are never shy about showing you a dead body with blood oozing out the wounds, and two, you never, ever see a naked ass. The halftime show at the Superbowl could feature heads exploding, but if you get a half-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's star-spangled nipple, fines get levied and people get fired. We would rather our kids see a grown man get his legs chopped off in a car crusher than watch a girl change her bra.

Consider also the decline in social interaction that has come about as a result of our increased dependence on electronic communication. Our children are actually proud of the number of friends they have on Facebook, and less impressed by the number of friends they have in actual, real life. When your best friends are little more than digital impressions, when you don't have to make small talk or be concerned with bringing a hostess gift to a dinner party, basic fundamentals of human interaction break down. This disconnect between perceived reality and actual reality has a psychic toll, one that this country is paying in lives.

Let's also discuss the state of a nation that is terrified of its own shadow. I already hit on this in my Batman review earlier this week, but it's worth repeating. We allow ourselves to be groped and fondled just to get on a plane. Our grandparents - the ones who crossed the Atlantic in seabound troop transports to free the world from the tyranny of fascist tyrants - would be ashamed of us. We abandon personal responsibility and freedom in favor of letting someone else tell us we're safe, and then we're surprised when some pathetic asshole shoots up a school.

While we're on the topic, what about personal responsibility? Does anyone else remember a time when abortion was reserved for special cases, and if you got your incautious ass knocked up, you had yourself a baby? Look at the number of completely ludicrous lawsuits filed every year by people who would rather make someone else pay for their mistake than own up to being a gum-flapping retard. We've gotten so soft, so dependent, and so willing to take a handout that the government has started doling out financial aid to mortgage brokers who destroy their companies through their own greed and general incompetence. In a country where it's so easy to say someone else owes you a living, how hard is it to blame your anger on a bunch of schoolkids, or your parents, or that teacher than gave you a D?

I've saved the best one for last. And by best, I mean most obvious (at least to me). Can you tell me the name of a mass shooter in the last fifteen years? I'm going to guess that you can. Now, can you tell me the name of one single victim? Just one. Any one. If a nutjob sprang to mind automatically, and the victims were statistics, you can thank Nightline. Or 20/20. Or your local NBC affiliate. The news will chase down the killer's identity, flash his picture every three minutes, tell you about his Twitter feed and the problems he had at the DMV last July, but good luck getting the same attention for the teacher who sacrificed herself to save a roomful of fourth-graders. The victims and heroes in those scenarios are forgotten and ignored, while the killer winds up with a Wikipedia entry and effective immortality. When that dicknosed little loser has a choice between offing himself in his mom's basement or becoming a household name, which do you think he'll choose? And Diane Sawyer will be sure to give him a hand with that, too.

I don't get overly political here, because frankly, it's a site about stuff nerds like. I'm no Lou Dobbs, and I don't pay enough attention to always know what I'm talking about. Feel free to ignore every opinion I just spouted off, but do me a favor and shut up about gun control already. We've got a hundred problems more pressing.

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Board Game Review - Zombicide

The zombie-game craze has to end sometime, and I hope it ends soon. Too many games about the shambling dead have begun to clog up the gaming pipeline like an undead deuce in a low-flow crapper. But I am really glad that before the whole phenomenon comes crashing down around us, we can run out and get Zombicide, because even in a market flooded by crappy zombie games, there's room to shine.

Zombicide is a cooperative game about fighting the groaning hordes with shotguns, baseball bats and molotov cocktails. It plays like an extended scene from an action movie, with copious violence, horrifying deaths and an impending sense of doom. It's fast and furious and gory as hell, which makes it absolutely perfect for my taste.

I'll be the first to admit that a tactical zombie game with individual heroes, plastic miniatures and a custom map made of interchangeable tiles sounds a hell of a lot like Last Night on Earth. And since Last Night on Earth is so freaking awesome, you might not think there's a reason to own them both.

Except that Zombicide is not Last Night on Earth. Zombicide is faster, and true to the name, involves an absolutely absurd level of human-on-zombie violence. You'll stomp zombies like you were mowing weeds, but they'll just keep coming. In fact, the more you kill zombies, the faster they come - but at the same time, you get better at killing zombies. There's a brutal cycle where your skill determines how quickly the brain-eaters appear, so the more you do, the harder the game gets. The tension ramps up fast, and if you manage to escape with all your arms and legs, you've done pretty well.

Zombicide focuses on the action. There are no distracting story elements, cameo characters, or unforeseen events. There are zombies, and there are heroes, and there are guns. And there's blood. Lots and lots of blood.

There's also speed. You've got a job to do, and you want to do it as quick as you can. The longer you're out there, the meaner the zombies get. Dawdle too long, search too many empty rooms, and before you know it, you'll have overwhelming crowds of the walking dead choking up the streets. Run like you mean it and kill indiscriminately, because if you don't, you'll get cornered in a dead-end alley, spraying bullets while a wave of diseased walkers rushes over you and buries you in dismembered limbs and rotting eyeballs.

A huge part of this ratcheting tension is possible because Zombicide is a full-on cooperative game, which means there's none of this nonsense where everyone works together and one player wins. Either you all win, or you all lose. Sometimes all you need to do to win is get one guy off the board with the supplies you scavenged, which often means the rest of your group sacrifices themselves to a certain death just so that the fast guy can make tracks and escape.

So Zombicide is excellent, but there are a few things I wish were in there. For starters, I would love to see surviving characters improve between games. If my chainsaw-swinging roller-girl learns how to get bloody with a sawed-off, I would love for that girl to still be bad-ass next time I play. It would really improve the story-spinning side of the game if characters got better as you played. It wouldn't be possible, the way the game works, but it would be fun.

And the cooperative aspect of the game has a tendency to make everyone act like logistics experts. 'OK, if you go first, you can shoot twice at those walkers. The runner will move two, so we need to wipe him out. Since you get that free gun action, you move out, shoot, and retreat back to here. I'll use my free search to see if I can pick up another shotgun, and then spend an action to trade. After all that, you can do some complicated math in your head and then alphabetize your sock drawer.'

The analysis part of Zombicide does make it a little less chaotically violent, but it sure doesn't ruin it. It's still plenty of moving fast and fighting hard, and I'm not sure how the game could get rid of the methodical factor and still be as fun. However, I think it could have been a hell of a lot better with some story-related events. If a zombie spawn card had more random events like crashed helicopters, enemy survivors or zombie flash mobs performing Thriller in the middle of Main Street, that would have really given the game a more narrative feel. As it is, it feels like an excerpt from a story, rather than a story itself.

I really do want to emphasize that I thoroughly adore Zombicide. It is wild and tense and crazy fun. I wish it were a little better, but I can enjoy the hell out of it just the way it is. There are tons of zombies in the box, and the heroes are a hoot. The art is spectacular, and the rules (while obviously written by someone for whom English is not a first language) are easy to learn and play. If you were to trim all the fat off a zombie movie, leaving you just the parts where the heroes run fast and kill stuff, you would have Zombicide. And you would like it.

Summary

1-6 players

Pros:
Exciting and cooperative
Intensely violent
Amazing art and tons of great minis
Fast and fun as hell

Cons:
Feels a little mechanical
A little light on story

I found a really good price on Zombicide at Sci-Fi City Games. I've bought from them before. I would buy this, if I didn't already have the game.
ZOMBIE MAYHEM

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Movie Review - Lawless

I'm a fairly shallow guy. I like sci-fi movies, superhero movies, tough-guy-shooting-people movies, and mob movies (only when I was a kid, we called them gangster movies, but we can't anymore because now that doesn't mean Al Capone, it means guys who buy pants that don't fit). So when I saw the trailer for Lawless, I was like, 'hey, that looks cool!' even though it had Shia LeDoof, and I freaking hate that guy.

I should have taken a hint from the fact that the stupid kid from Transformers was in the movie. That should have been my clue to avoid the movie completely. But it had the guy who played Bane! It had Gary Oldman, for crying out loud! How bad could it be?

Pretty bad, is how bad. It could be pretty bad. Which is to say, it was pretty bad. About halfway through the movie, my wife goes, 'do we have to finish watching this stupid movie?' and I said, 'at this point, I have to review this movie so that I can find some way to get back at the bastards who made it. And that means I have to see how it ends.'

Lawless tells the meandering, unfocused tale of three hillbilly brothers in Virginia who run moonshine during the days of prohibition. There are cool old cars, tommy guns and cops on the take. That alone should be enough to redeem it, but they made the worst mistake they could have made, given the casting - they focused on the lamest character in the whole story.

Shia TheDouche is the star of Lawless, and while I was hoping to see him maybe redeem himself by being something other than the awkward halfwit he plays in every other movie he makes, I was disappointed. He was exactly as useless as he always is (with the possible exception of the latest Indiana Jones movie, which I actually enjoyed despite the stupid ending and the fact that it had Shia DeFruit). He can't shoot a gun. He can't woo a woman without throwing up. He makes stupid mistakes that get his family whiskey still burned to the ground. And he's a candy ass, to boot.

Guy Pierce is also in Lawless, and I actually like him. He was awesome in Memento, and outside of that weird thing where he's the crossdressing performer with the bad guy from Matrix, I can't think of one of his movies where he wasn't pretty great. Except for this one. In this one, he's a deviant freak who murders children and abuses women, and also shaves a weird line down the middle of his head. I get that he's supposed to be the bad guy, but the director sent him so far over the top that he's barely recognizable as a human being.

I blame the writing and directing for the horrid failure of Lawless. They had a great story to work with, one where three fiercely independent and almost preternaturally tough brothers (not counting Shia TheGoof) make their own deals, defy the rule of law, and kill people when it's good and necessary. This could have been exciting and gritty and awesome. Instead it's a story about a weak-minded dingbat who wishes he was a bad man, but instead he's a loser who gets people hurt all the time by being an incompetent boob.

It's not just the misplaced focus that messes up this movie, either. The pacing is horrible. There are some fantastic scenes of death-defying raw heroism, but they are few and far between, being punctuated with stuff so odd and yet still so boring that you will wonder who thought this would make a good movie. Or rather, you would wonder that, if you were to ignore my advice and watch this movie.

Obviously, the director and writer of Lawless were going for a mood piece. They wanted to show what life was like, to give us some insight into the American South during Prohibition. But they also wanted it to be a little surreal, a little odd, to show us how different life was for people who lived in crappy houses and had crappy clothes and made whiskey in tarpaper shacks deep in the mountains. We could have seen all that without the terribly bizarre church service or the disturbing sex crimes, but the creators of the movie wanted to turn a straight-up bad-ass gangster movie into an arthouse flick.

If I were to offer any advice, I would tell you unequivocally not to watch Lawless. It's not even silly-bad or fun-bad or laughable-bad. It's just bad-bad. I haven't been this irritated with a movie since Deathproof. The story that takes place around the main character would have been really cool, but sadly, the best parts are background, and the foreground is wickedly lame and almost painful. Skip this one.

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Movie Review - Dark Knight Rises

[Spoiler alert. I won't spoil Dark Knight Returns, exactly, but I'm assuming you've seen the two movies before this one. Because if you're a nerd, you should have seen that one by now.]

If I had never seen The Avengers, Dark Knight Rises might have been the best superhero movie I ever saw. But I did. So it's not. And actually, The Dark Knight was also pretty damned good. But still not as good as Avengers. I have to stop before I start handing out abritrary numerical scores.

The Dark Knight Rises does a splendid job of spinning the final chapter of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy franchise. Unlike the previous batch of Batman movies, that started out with style and ended with cheesy camp, the Nolan trilogy has a definite start and a definite end. It's a tightly controlled tale that still takes nearly nine hours to tell, which makes for three very long movies.

And they're not as fun as they seem like they should be. Nolan's Batman is very much the brooding semi-psychotic obsessive that we got when Frank Miller gave him a grim-faced makeover, and that kind of character makes for serious movies, even when they are about people who wear Halloween costumes to work. But then, these are not supposed to be 'fun' movies. They're dark and serious and moving and powerful.

I could go into all the stuff about how the acting is great and the casting is great and the effects are great and the action is great, but if you've seen the other two, you already know that. And if you haven't seen the other two, you need to watch those first. So either way, I'm not going to talk about all that.

Instead I will discuss the theme of Dark Knight Rises, because there's a lot more happening than what's on the surface. Nolan obviously has some pretty interesting opinions about terrorism, the United States, and the human condition. He opens with a Bruce Wayne who has to walk with a cane and never leaves the house - years of fighting crime have ruined his body to the point that many of his joints have no cartilage left at all, and his scar tissue has scar tissue. It takes some clever inventions to make him able to walk at all, much less jump off buildings and kick people in the face.

So now I get both political and high-brow, so bear with me a minute. Let's say that Bruce Wayne is the United States. Let's say that when he is the hero, when his strength and ability to whoop the crap out of bad guys lets him save babies, he stands tall. He's psychologically whole.

But then enter the end of Dark Knight, where Batman allows himself to be labeled the villain to save the image of Harvey Dent as a hero. The city responds by outright hating Batman. They enact the Dent Act, which allows them to clean up the streets by denying due process to criminals involved in organized crime. Batman has to hang up his cowl, because he's no longer the hero. Now he's public enemy number one. And Bruce Wayne can't dig that.

To extend the parallel to the United States, compare what has happened since 2001. We are fine with embracing the Patriot Act, which allows law enforcement to decide who is bad and keep them locked up without a trial, which allows Uncle Sam to listen to our phone calls and track our Internet searches and even see what books we check out from the library. We are fine with it, because it keeps us safe. But it can't keep us happy, because while we know we're making the nation a safer place, we also know, deep down, that surrendering those freedoms is against everything that made America the greatest nation on Earth... once upon a time. But that's cool - it's called the Patriot Act. How bad can it be? You don't want to go against the Patriot Act, do you? Aren't you a patriot?

I'm definitely out on a limb here, and I accept that. I may have seen stuff in this movie that normal people missed because it wasn't there. But I don't think so, because the theme continues. In previous Batman adventures, the bad guys are bank robbers or extortionists or murderers, but Bane is none of those. Bane is a terrorist, plain and simple, with the single intent of destroying what he sees as corrupt. Even Joker had other motivations, including a psychotic desire to see the world burn, but Bane is not crazy. He hates Gotham and wants it to end. But he's not crazy. He's determined. He's a new kind of villain - the kind who bombs skyscrapers with suicide jetliners.

There's a lot more in the story. There's the rise of a heroic nation as opposed to the dispirited, unguided desire to ask for change and walk away when it doesn't happen. Nolan shows us how embracing a lie for political ends corrupts not just those in charge, but everyone affected, from the powerful to the disenfranchised. We see that you don't have to be a fighter to be heroic. The subtle but damning messages delivered by The Dark Knight Rises start with the title and end with the credits, and discussing every aspect that holds a double meaning would take a lot longer than you want to sit here reading this. Besides, by now, your 15-minute break is almost over and your boss is going to start wondering why you're not working.

The Dark Knight Rises is a magnificent movie. It's not as fun as Avengers, but it's not supposed to be. It's the crowning piece in Nolan's trilogy, the final page in his powerful three-part message. Sure, it's dark. Hell, it's in the name. But it's dark for a reason, because Christopher Nolan has a rather dark view of the United States, and while he also shows us hope for a better future, he doesn't seem particularly optimistic that we can get there without a serious, dramatic change in the way we think and live.

For that matter, neither do I.

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Standalone Expansion Review - Puzzle Strike Shadows

I don't feel like writing. Just read this review, because everything I could say about the base game applies to Shadows:

http://drakesflames.blogspot.com/2011/01/chip-game-review-puzzle-strike.html

Ha ha! Just kidding! I would not be that lazy with a game review! You deserve more. Also, my guy at Game Salute would get pissed and quit sending me review copies. That's the real reason.

So hopefully by now you've read the original Puzzle Strike review. Everything I said there applies here. Just don't read the review of Third Edition, because in that one, I make a huge boner mistake and sound like an asshat. I mean, more than usual.

Shadows is a standalone expansion for Puzzle Strike that has everything that was in the original Puzzle Strike box, except it's all different. Well, most of it. The standard chips are the same, but the chips you can buy are different, and so are the characters. There are, however, the same number of chips, and the box is the same size. So, I don't know, it's the same, but completely different.

The new stuff in Shadows is really the reason to pick it up. Presumably you've been playing the original Puzzle Strike so often, and have so many games under your belt, that you desperately needed a new box of puzzle chips so that you could do completely different stuff. That was not really me - I don't have time to play anything as often as I would like - but if it's you, stop reading and just go get Shadows.

On the other hand, if you're on the fence, you should know that the new stuff in Shadows feels more in-your-face. We set up one game where we deliberately put all the underhanded, nasty, dick-punching chips in the middle of the table, and it was ridiculously fun. It was also mean as hell. How those people are still my friends, I can't really say.

The characters have a lot more interaction, too. The dominatrix chick will make other players play the chips you want them to play, or just deal out wounds. The cutesy blond girl will heal everyone at the table. The bruiser monster guy will make everyone throw away money. The handsome bearded man will keep other players from getting ahead by cutting off their ability to spend money. Essentially, all these different characters do different stuff than all the different characters in the other box.

I like the actions in Shadows, too. There's one cheap chip that gives you a huge turn - but then you lost the chip forever. There's an attack that throws just a little pain on every other player, and you can do it as often as you want. There's one that I think is horribly overdue, where you get to just go find your character chips. Basically, Shadows has a lot of variety, and it's not just rehashed crap from the first time.

Let me boil this down. If you like Puzzle Strike and want more of the same, but different, that's what Shadows is. If Puzzle Strike comes out of your closet every six months, and then you play it twice, there's no reason to throw more money at this one. If you haven't bought either one yet, I like Shadows better, but it's got more advanced strategy, so it's really not for beginners.

Come to think of it, the entire review could have been that last paragraph, and you would have had everything you need to know. I wrote more so that publishers wouldn't think I was lazy.

Summary

Pros:
Same pros as Puzzle Strike

Cons:
Same cons as Puzzle Strike

Do you want this? You can get it here:
http://www.sirlingames.com/products/puzzle-strike-shadows

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TV Review - The Walking Dead

OK, I've held off long enough. I was all, 'everybody has already seen The Walking Dead. We don't need a review of a show that anyone with two brain cells is already watching.' And then the mid-season finale was last night, and I was all, 'holy crap, this show is the best frikkin show ever,' and lost all restraint in my need to talk about how awesome The Walking Dead is.

I'll get this out of the way first - I'm not reviewing the comic book. Seriously, ever. I love it, and can't wait for December 12 to find out what happens in the next issue, but it's the kind of book that when you ask a comic book nerd what he's reading, he'll go 'Walking Dead,' and you both shrug and go, 'well, yeah, duh.'

And I wasn't going to review the show, either, for a very similar reason. If you're a zombie fan, you have to be watching this show, so what more is there to say? But after the episode I watched last night, I just can't contain myself any more. The Walking Dead is fantastic, and I simply have to tell everyone who will listen that they ought to be fans, even if they already are.

If you are a fan of the comic book who (for no possible reason I can fathom) is not watching the TV show, you should know that it follows the comic only as a general guideline. There are characters on the show who are not in the book. There are people in the book who are not in the show. There are different scenes, different stories, and completely varied orders of events. Most importantly, you never know who will die. There's no guarantee that just because your favorite lasted 50 issues in the comic book, he can't get struck down halfway through season one (not that I'm saying that happened, or even referencing a particular character or incident. It's just an example. No spoilers have been revealed).

What I can tell you, without giving anything away, is that the show is impeccably timed and incredibly tense. The storytelling is precision perfect, often gut-wrenching, and thoroughly addictive. The second half of season three won't be out until February, and man, I can't wait. It's not even just because of the horrible cliffhangers they left us last night. I want the show to come back, and not just because I want to find out what happens. I want to spend more time with the people on the show.

And that's really what has me hooked - the characters in The Walking Dead are beyond believable. I watched eight seasons of Lost, and those overly attractive castaways were never more than puppets on strings. But in The Walking Dead, I feel like I'm spending an hour every Sunday night hanging out with a bunch of people I actually know. Even the ones I hate, the ones I hope will die - I still feel like I know them, like I'm not watching from a recliner in my living room. It's like I'm sitting on a filthy plastic chair at the side of the room while they argue about where to go next.

It takes a lot more than great writing to make me this connected to a show. To feel like these people are this real, they have to LOOK real. Even the attractive people are dirty most of the time, and not all of them are good-looking. They tend to be fit, but if they were lard-asses, zombies would have caught them by now, so I can see past the fact that all the women have killer asses. They look like normal, believable people. They have bad hair days. They grow filthy beards. They wear torn clothing and sleep on mattresses that I would swear I can smell - and they smell like dog farts.

The effects and makeup are also excellent. Just one flapping rubber mask, just one off-kilter contact lens, and the illusion would break down. Not shatter, necessarily, but weaken. And yet every episode just continues to build the feel that you're not just watching this horrific world. You're in it. You can feel the sticky Southern heat, smell the rotting corpses, taste the bland oatmeal. Everything about the show brings you into their world.

I would be lying if I said the show was flawless, though. Early on, there were problems. It took a while for some of the people to grow on me, and especially around the first half of season two, the show was flat-out slow as hell. The pacing was completely off, and it was almost work to sit through another hour just to turn to my son and go, 'man, is anything ever going to happen on this show?' That problem is GONE, by the way - this season has been absolutely phenomenal. Not too slow, not too fast, just the right amount of development mixed with just the right number of gruesome deaths. But if you're plowing through the reruns, keep in mind that you have to get through some slow patches to get to the genius.

And for a long time, they were also having a lot of trouble giving me a reason to give a crap about some of the characters. One guy in particular was so irritating that I just wanted a zombie to eat him so he could be interesting (if you're watching the show, you may know who I mean. Be cool and don't spoil it). Some people seemed to be deliberately stupid. Some were just intentionally unpleasant, beyond what normal people would be. The writing has been so amazing this season that it's not hard to forget the low points from before, but they were there nonetheless.

Finally, I do have one more problem with The Walking Dead, and it relates to both the show and the comic. I am seriously over the 'people are the real monsters' drama-queen bit. Other zombie-related entertainment has shown that you can definitely tell a good zombie story where human beings are not mostly douchebags, but it still plays as a recurring theme. At this point, it seems like it's written by a bunch of crappy poets sitting around a coffee shop on a Tuesday night listen to an open mike and saying, 'deep, man, deep.' The best zombie entertainment is allegorical, but this particular allegory has been done to death.

However, The Walking Dead obviously has no intention of altering its direction, and while I don't agree with it completely, I'll be damned if I'm not entirely hooked. I can't stop watching. I know there's heartache ahead. I know there are deaths and sorrow and pain, and yet this particular story has 100% of my attention. There's no guarantee of a happy ending, and I don't care, because in this case, it's not about the ending. It's about the people and how they change as the show progresses. That, and how they totally kill a ton of different things. That part is also awesome.

Oh, one more reason I'm reviewing this tonight - there's a big marathon coming up on AMC. If you're behind on the show, or missed an episode, or just want to dive in at the beginning, you can get completely caught up when they run every episode over New Years Eve and New Years Day. Yes, it's a month away, but that will give you time to get your order in with your cable company. Because if you're not watching The Walking Dead, you should be.

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Classic Movie Review - Aliens

My parents were very, very Christian. The first time I saw an R-rated movie, I was 17 years old. They didn't want to let me see Back to the Future because they heard that the mom has a crush on her son (which was true, but it was 1950s mom and 1980s son, so that was OK). I once had to leave a party because my friends decided to watch Commando, and I was not allowed.

But my old man had a weak spot - kick-ass sci-fi. The exception to the R-rated movie thing was when there was an awesome science fiction flick we could rent from Wherehouse (you might remember Wherehouse as the place where you got videos before Blockbuster put them out of business. You might remember Blockbuster as the place you got videos before the Internet put them out of business). So even though there was copious profanity (or, as one guy says at the beginning of the movie, harsh language), I got to watch Aliens on VHS. Though by the time we could rent it, I was already 17, so I still didn't really get to game the system.

Aliens is one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time. Ridley Scott kicked off the phenomenon with ideas he cribbed from HR Geiger, but it was James Cameron who made the movie fans wanted to see. Hard-assed space marines battling acid-blood bugs in a derelict planetary colony? Yeah, like you could pass that up.

It's almost a moot point to review Aliens. If you haven't seen Aliens, a movie that has been available for more than 25 years, then I'll send the nerd police around to repossess your nerd badge. The original was a sort of high-concept horror-in-space flick, and while it was OK, it was largely unremarkable. The sequel put it on the map, and marked it permanently in the collective sci-fi geek consciousness.

In case you're one of the very few actual nerds who has not seen this absolute classic of space movies, I'll run it down for you. Ripley, the tough broad who managed to eject the creepy alien from her ship in the first movie, gets recruited to return to the planet where the first bugs were found. Predictably enough, things go poorly, as the hard-hitting marines are under-equipped to deal with a threat of this magnitude. There are excellent explosions, thrilling gun battles, moments of tension and suspense and outright fear. And then lots of people die.

The brilliance of Aliens is not just in the great plot and excellent camera work. The action scenes are spectacular, but the stars of this movie shine brighter. Some of the lines in this movie are etched into my brain like alien acid - 'It's game over, man! Have you ever been mistaken for a man? In case you haven't been keeping up with current events, we just got our asses kicked!' OK, most of the best lines belong to Hudson, but there's still the eternally memorable, 'Get away from her, you BITCH!'

The story has betrayal and greed, heroism and redemption. Characters who seem like cowards turn out to be loyal and brave. While virtually nothing goes right for the marines and their civilian escorts, their strength in the face of adversity is inspirational. Corporate greed is overruled by human compassion and grunt common sense. And as I may have mentioned, there are more explosions than a Michael Bey movie.

Aliens was so good that it spawned lots of great material. The creators of Space Hulk, for instance, should be paying royalties to James Cameron, instead of trying to shut down every reference site that dares to post a rules summary for a game that's been out of print since the Clinton was president. There were comic books, video games, and a whole slew of sequels (and if you've seen the third movie, you know the only smart thing to do is pretend it never happened at all. You know, the way we do with the Star Wars prequels).

You might be wondering why I'm reviewing Aliens at all. It is a rather old movie, and most of us have seen it already. But it was at the top of my mind because I watched it this evening, and was amazed that after 20 years, it's actually better than I remember. After all that time, I still remember the names of the marines, even the ones who got killed early like Frost and Spunkmeyer and, of course, Drake. I anticipated all my favorite lines, laughed at Paul Reiser's ridiculous 80s haircut, and was on the edge of my seat even though I've seen the movie a half-dozen times.

Aliens is just as fantastic as it was the first time I saw it. I don't care if it's been out for two and a half decades, it's a magnificent movie, and if you don't like me reviewing old classic nerd flicks, ask the guy with the gun to your head if you can read something else. If you haven't seen Aliens, you need to correct that oversight as soon as you possibly can. Maybe right now.

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