Horror Movies, a Ridiculous Puzzle, and Four Days of Board Gaming
I started the month strong, averaging one horror movie a day, but then I kind of slacked off as I got busy with other things. So, here's what I've watched since the last update:
Irréversible - a French film by Gaspar Noé, considered part of the New French Extremity movement, which is known for pushing the envelope into some very dark, brutal, taboo territory with a very in-your-face presentation. I think it counts as horror, in that it is totally horrific. It's basically a rape and revenge film in the same vein as The Last House on the Left, displaying some of the most extreme brutality I've ever seen in a movie. The story is told backwards, in the style of Memento (it even starts with the end credits rolling backwards), and proves to be a brilliant showcase for irony. Overall, it's a rather arty film, with camera work that is, at times, worse than Cloverfield, though it's obviously a metaphor for life spiraling out of control. As the film moves to the earlier parts of the story, the camera becomes more stable. Irréversible also has an amazing amount of nudity, including at least one penis that was digitally added afterwards. Though it trades heavily in shock value, I found it far more watchable than torture films like Hostel, with a slightly more meaningful underlying message. It stars Monica Belluci and Vincent Cassel, who are a couple of my favorite French actors, and they do an awesome job with this material, which I read was light on scripting and heavy on improv. It's a well-made, interesting, compelling film, I just don't think I know very many people personally, who would care to watch it. In other words, while it gets my recommendation, I'm not recommending it. See, I love irony.
The Five-Year Engagement - okay, not a horror movie at all, just something I watched in the meantime. Directed by Nicholas Stoller, the same guy who directed Get Him to the Greek and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, written by Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel, with a producing credit from Judd Apatow (among others). And even with that pedigree, I thought it was kind of so-so. It's got its moments, sure, and overall, it's a fairly decent movie about growing up (after you're already a grown-up). The movie has lots of wacky characters, though there are quite a few gags that seem shoehorned in, that make the whole movie seem less genuine. In the realm of Judd Apatow movies, this one comes up a little short, though it's worth watching if you're a Jason Segel fan.
Snow White and the Huntsman - I figure this movie is "horror" for the same reason Twilight is horror: Kristen Stewart's acting. Yeah, I went there. I'm mostly kidding, although, Kristen Stewart's acting is certainly not the draw for this movie. This is basically a fantasy movie, where the basic elements of the Snow White fairy tale are given a total Lord of the Rings makeover. What's the real selling point? This movie is gorgeous - the sets, the cinematography, the CGI, the art direction, the costumes - just wow. The dwarves involve some of the most impressive effects I've ever seen, topping even the last Lord of the Rings movie. (I know, that was now several years ago, and The Hobbit will soon proceed to kick all manner of special effects ass.) Snow White and the Huntsman is probably worth watching just for the visuals, as the story is not really all that new, and the acting, in general, is nothing special. Although, Charlize Theron does a pretty awesome job as the evil queen. Seeing her in Snow White totally makes me think she would have made an awesome Sersei Lannister for A Game of Thrones. (I don't dislike Lena Headey, but I do think Charlize Theron comes a lot closer to the Sersei in the books.)
The Thing - One of the classic John Carpenter movies. This is one of the few bug-hunt type horror movies that stands up well against the Alien series. In addition to the extremely creepy manifestations of "The Thing", there's also an awesome paranoia vibe, since "The Thing" can take the form of any person, as well. The remote and totally isolated location also produces a tension of its own, much like the isolation in the Alien series. Kurt Russell and Keith David head up an all-male crew, for this horror-action bro-fest. It also features Wilford Brimley in one of his early theatrical roles, back when he was "A. Wilford Brimley".
The Ward - I followed up one of John Carpenter's classics (1982's The Thing) with his most recent directorial effort, 2010's The Ward. While I definitely think Carpenter made some of the all-time great horror movies in the '70's and '80's, I've really been unimpressed by his more recent work. I thought Escape from L.A. and Vampires were both pretty terrible. The Ward, however, was not bad. On its own merits, it was a pretty good insane-asylum-based horror movie. On the downside, it doesn't really break any new ground. Had this movie been made in the '70's, it would have been pretty original, but, in 2010, it's following in some oft-trod footsteps. If you expect there's a twist, and you see it coming a mile away, that's probably because you've seen a lot of movies like this by now - if, for example, you've seen Shutter Island and thought that it was far from original. Well, if you enjoy this movie for its own merits, that's cool. It's not bad. Just don't expect to be blown away.
Insidious - This movie starts off with some pretty typical haunted house tropes. Early on, I was actually kind of bored with it. I was cracking wise, MSTing, which I also enjoy. Like, wife holds up sheet from child's bed, with large bloody hand print on it, "What do you expect me to do about this?" Reply: "Treat it with Oxy-Clean and wash it in cold water." But I digress. I thought, this movie has got a long way to go before I think it's good. And then, they shook things up. They brought in some interesting, funny characters and diverged radically from the typical hackneyed tropes. The movie suddenly got better by orders of magnitude, and by the time it was done, I sat back and said, "That was good." This movie had a pretty fresh take on the "haunted house" sub-genre, and I enjoyed what they did with it. It probably wouldn't make my Top 20 list, but I do think it's worth watching.
The Descent - First of all, I didn't now this movie was British. It's set mostly in America, but it was filmed in Britain and the writer/director and most of the actors are British. If I'd known that, I'd have seen it sooner. Also, it came as a complete surprize to me that it's the same writer/director as Doomsday (Neil Marshall). Doesn't ring a bell? That's a pretty generic name - I generally think of it as 28 Years Later or Escape from Scotland or possibly even Mad Max vs. Timeline. Doomsday is a strange movie. Strange and awesome. If I'd known The Descent had the same writer/director I'd have seen it sooner. (Side rant: Dear Movie Industry, I would have seen The Descent in the theater, when it first came out, if you knew how to properly advertise a movie.) Anyway, I'm rambling. So, how about The Descent???
I really liked it. It's creepy as heck. A group of adventurous women, always looking for a bigger action-adventure-thrill, and man, do they get it. One woman sets them up for the adventure of a lifetime, unbeknownst to the rest of the group, by doing one of the stupidest things imaginable. At that point, they were probably all going to die, even if nothing got worse. Oh, but things got worse. The claustrophobia and inherent dangers of the cave setting really make this a tense movie. There are just some downright scary parts that have nothing to do with monsters. The caving shots are just beautiful as well. After about half a movie of facing the normal desperation of being trapped in a cave, they encounter some of the creepiest creatures ever in a movie. And it's all pretty plausible. That sort of leads into the second phase of the movie, wherein things get REALLY bad. But are the monsters really the biggest monster in the cave? Maybe, maybe not. You'll have to see for yourself.
This movie is bleak like that movie where they just floated along helplessly until they got eaten by sharks (Open Water), but in The Descent a lot more stuff happens. And crawling around caves and across ceilings and through pools of blood is just cooler than floating in the ocean for 2 hours. As horror movies go, The Descent is pretty spectacular.
I also caught the end of the 2002 Carrie remake as my brother-in-law was watching it. It was pretty bad - way too made-for-TV for my tastes. I mean, when your big-name actor is Patricia Clarkson... Anyway, what I saw didn't leave me wanting to watch the whole thing. (I do still want to watch the original Carrie, though, as I've never seen it.)
The Puzzle that Wouldn't Die - not a movie at all, just an actual puzzle, and its real name is "Purple Passion". The perfect puzzle for jigsaw-loving masochists, it's over 500 pieces, circular, and solid purple. Yes, solid purple, as in, there's no pattern to match up, so you're just stuck finding pieces that fit. I estimate that I worked on it for about 24 hours, over the course of three days, finishing with an 8-hour all-night marathon session. To complicate matters, I didn't know the exact piece count, and I didn't know (and couldn't tell) if any pieces were missing. It turns out that, miraculously, all the pieces were there, despite the pieces being loose in a partly torn-open box.
Well, I'd never tried one of the insane-challenge puzzles before - you know, the double-sided, no edges, single-color type puzzles they make just for the absurdity of it. The fact that it was circular was not really so bad. Granted, it didn't have any corners, but the outer ring took only about an hour to finish. The solid color, however, was a killer. With 500 pieces, all the same color (still over 400 after I'd done the border) there was just an insanely large search space, and so much sameness between all the slots and tabs. There was really way too much trial-and-error for my tastes. At some points, I'd just take a stack of 100 pieces and try them all in a particular spot. At a couple points, I exhaustively tried every possible piece that could fit. I questioned my sanity at several points in the process. Yes, the answer came back, you are insane. But I was also stubborn, and the further I got, the less inclined I was to give up. And, of course, things sped up dramatically toward the end, as the search space narrowed. In my first hour (after finishing the border), I put about 6 pieces in place. In the last hour, about 60 pieces.
Was it ever fun? Well, not really what I'd call fun. It was generally satisfying to find just the right piece from across the table from a pool of 200 choices just by visually matching the shape. At other points, I applied some logic to narrow the options, and toward the end, I'd figured out enough about the puzzle's structure that the circular shape was actually helpful in finding pieces. Satisfying, at times, but also horribly boring between those times, and over all, not fun. Still, I'm glad I finished it - tick the "Purple Passion" off the list of insane puzzles I've solved. I'll try others, but I wouldn't want to do the "Purple Passion" again.
Games:
Thursday
Locke and Key - Billed as a partly "co-operative" yet competitive game, this game seemed to me to be mostly competitive. It's a card game where the players play cards of various strengths to collectively overcome challenges. The mechanism for resolving challenges is much like the one from the Battlestar Galactica board game, except that non-matching colors generally count for nothing, rather than counting against success. The major difference seems to be that Battlestar Galactica has two clear teams, that win as teams, so playing for individual points is not a factor. If, for example, a challenge has a rating of 8 blue, and 2 players each play a 3-point blue card, with a third player playing two 2-point blue cards, the group will overcome the challenge, (any non-blue cards played by any player will count as zero). Only the player who played the highest on-color card total (since you can play up to 3 cards) will score the 8 points for overcoming it. There are also rewards for second place (and clear-cut tie-breakers, since two players played 3-point cards in that example), but the winner is the player with the most points, so it really seems to be mostly competitive. As for why you would help anyone else overcome a challenge, that wasn't really clear, although, you might get some side benefit from playing a certain key card or combo. When we played, We did defeat most of the challenges, despite not really over-analyzing the strategy of "helping" each other.
In addition to the strength cards that you normally play to overcome obstacles, there is another type of card called a "key" card. They're from a different deck and all feature shiny keys (basically foil cards, they look very nice). Key cards generally allow special bending of the rules, or give extra bonuses to the strength cards played, or allow other benefits like drawing extra strength cards when you defeat a challenge. You don't start with any keys, but you can get them (by discarding two strength cards) as one of the options on each turn. You may also get them as second-place rewards on some challenges. And I recommend getting keys early, as you may not have a use for them later in the game (like, getting a key that's only good for white challenges, after all the white challenges are gone).
Locke and Key is a tie-in to the graphic novel of the same name, and the artwork is taken from that, and is quite nice. None of the players in our game were familiar with the source material, and that didn't seem to matter at all in the game play, although, I've read in other reviews that the game is a pretty good tie-in if you are a fan of the graphic novels.
Friday
Sneaks and Snitches - I blogged about this one before. Still not sure what I think of it, but I still enjoy playing it.
Vegas Showdown - Probably one of the most Euro-style games that Avalon Hill ever released. I've liked it for a long time, though it's been out of print for several years. It recently came back into print, in a shiny new box. Other than the shiny box, I think the components in the reprint are pretty much the same as in the original, and the game play is identical. Each turn, you bid on casino improvements. You have several options for things you can bid on, as well as a couple of actions you can take if you don't want to bid, or have no money left. The winners of each bid get an improvement that they can add to their casino, like Table Games, a Lounge, or a Buffet. Improvements generally raise your casino's income, capacity, or fame (fame points are the victory condition). And you get a steady payout each turn based on income or capacity, whichever is lower, so you want to steadily raise both numbers. The physical layout of your casino can also generate victory points. Overall, this is an excellent resource management and auction game, and one of Avalon Hill's best ever. Glad to see that it's back in print.
Tichu - I like Tichu, but I'm not very good at it. Well, I've only ever played about 10 times - so, I still consider myself a novice. Then, on top of not being all that good, I got some amazingly weak hands. The one time I went out first, I hadn't called Tichu, and I honestly didn't feel like I had a Tichu hand. If I'd called it, I'm sure they would have stopped me. There's still a lot about the game I don't get, though. I should probably play against a computer to get some practice.
Tikal - Though this is one of the classics, I'd never played it before. The theme is jungle exploration, uncovering pyramids and treasures. Each turn, you have 10 action points that you can spend on various actions, which cost varying numbers of points. Everything in the game costs points, from moving to excavating to trading treasures. Moving around can cost as little as 1 point per hex, but can go as high as 6 points or more in certain hexes. Setting up camp costs 5, but helps you move workers into more remote areas of the board. Given that there are lots of options on each turn, it is somewhat susceptible to analysis paralysis, though, that wasn't a huge factor in the game I played.
You also uncover a tile each turn, which you get to add to the board. The number of tiles is fixed, giving the game a fixed number of turns. Some of the tiles are volcano tiles, that trigger scoring at various semi-random points throughout the game. You can get points from treasures you uncover, which you can also trade with other players to make sets of 2 and 3 matching treasures for extra points. The main source of points is from occupying pyramids. Whoever has the majority of workers at each pyramid on a scoring round scores the value of that pyramid, based on its height (one option is to increase the height of a pyramid, increasing its score). You can also, twice during the game, claim a pyramid for yourself, so that only you can score it in the future. Tikal is really a game about efficiently managing your actions each turn. It's one of the classic Euro-games, and I liked it a lot.
Saturday
Pandemic - I played Pandemic with only 4 epidemic cards (easy setting) and we had one of the quickest, cleanest victories I'd ever seen. I don't think we actually had any outbreaks, and we'd only hit a couple of epidemic cards by the time we cured everything. It was a pretty amazing game, although, on the easy setting it should have been easy for an experienced group.
Goa - This is just an awesome Euro-style game. I'd played it before, and loved it enough to buy a copy when it was out of print and hard to find. I hadn't played it in a while, though, and forgot how good it is. It's got auctions, resource production and management, and a nice system that lets you upgrade your infrastructure to make all of your actions more efficient - produce and ship spices, colonize new areas, build plantations. The mechanics are elegant, and the strategy is compelling. Overall, Goa is a great game. (It's also back in print now.)
Small World - I always enjoy Small World. Sometimes I even do well at it - this was not one of those times, but I still had fun.
Dungeon Fighter - This was one of the more awesome finds of the weekend. It's a dex-based dice-throwing dungeon-crawl adventure game. One of the players was skeptical of "throwing things" as we were getting started out, but everyone seemed to enjoy the game once we got into it. Everyone gets a character, following the typical fantasy archetypes (fighter, rogue, wizard, etc.) and you deal out a random dungeon and populate it with random monsters. Then, as a group, you go from room to room fighting monsters. If not for the "throwing things" aspect, it would be pretty typical. Combat, however, is handled by tossing dice onto a large target board with concentric rings of varying values. The region where the die lands determines the damage, and I definitely felt like you had some control over that in a normal toss. If the die lands with a special icon face up, you activate a special power, and that's definitely more random, but a nice bonus when you can get it. Not every toss is a "normal toss", though. You might have to toss the die off your elbow, with your off-hand, over your shoulder backwards, or blindfolded. I still feel like there's an element of skill that can be developed, but, tossing the die off my nose, I didn't feel like I had much control over it. After several failed off-the-nose attacks, we decided to swap out that opponent (there's a way to do that, that's covered in the rules). Assigning the various "trick shots" is one of the ways they raise the difficulty of various monsters or rooms. It also looked like most magic weapons came with the trade-off of requiring a trick shot in exchange for extra damage. There are also defensive and utility items that you can buy at various spots in the dungeon, and there are also opportunities to buy healing.
We were doing pretty well as we got into it, and there's a fair amount of thrill involved in the physical act of tossing a die with accuracy while jumping in the air. It's also a purely cooperative game, since you're all on the same side, and you build up a nice camaraderie from that. You really get excited when your teammates land really good shots. I like dex games in particular, and I really enjoyed it, but even the skeptics seemed to be won over by the end. Monsters get progressively harder as you go, and we made it pretty close to the end. At that point, the monsters were doing quite a bit of damage each time you missed, and we all got killed in the same combat, which is one of the ending conditions. (If anyone survives, the "dead" characters can be revived, with reduced power.) After we got knocked out, we looked at the final boss, and I don't see how we could have defeated him. I mean, I'm sure it's possible, but you'd definitely need to build up a lot of skills in dice-tossing and also buy some pretty nice equipment by that point. I don't suppose we were too likely to beat the dungeon on our first try, but now I definitely want to play Dungeon Fighter some more.
I was going to play some Werewolf after that, but by the time we finished Dungeon Fighter, the Werewolf crowd had petered out. There was at least one person who was still very gung-ho to play again, but she couldn't round up enough of a group to make for a decent game. Definitely one of the drawbacks of Werewolf - it needs a pretty big group to be a good game.
Avalon - Well, I'm not a big fan of The Resistance, though there's a group at the DGM that's seemingly always up for it. Avalon is a new King Arthur-themed version of The Resistance, with basically the same game play. It's not exactly like The Resistance, though, which is its saving grace. Avalon introduces some new roles, like Merlin and Mordred, and those roles have special abilities, which makes for a more interesting game. In the first game, I was sitting by Merlin, who knows the identities of all the bad guys. If Merlin gets killed by the Assassin, though, the bad guys win. So, ideally, Merlin needs to signal who the bad guys are without giving himself away. So, the guy playing Merlin did a great job of signaling me, without being spotted giving signals. Then, I was generally twichy and suspicious, and I picked an all-good team, which made the bad guys think I was Merlin. So, we pulled off a win for the good guys, and the Assassin killed me, sparing the real Merlin.
In the next game they added in Mordred, and things were not pretty. I was a good guy once again, but couldn't tell who Merlin was, and therefore couldn't get any information. In that respect, it played out a lot like classic Resistance.
Sunday
Space Alert - I played with a couple of folks who had never played before, and seriously, it's a lot to take in the first few times you play. I know when we started out, we left out the robots and missiles and jiggling the mouse, and gradually added in the complexity over the course of a few games. But the guy running this game just through in everything all at once. We actually did a pretty good job of staying out of each other's way, and I focused on an internal threat and single-handedly defeated it. We fared less well against the incoming ships, though, and it had a lot to do with the new folks not understanding the details of range and timing and other things that had not been clearly explained. Seriously, I get it, it's a lot to take in and the best way to learn is by doing. Now, what I totally don't get is that the guy who was teaching the game rode up and down the elevator on THREE successive actions, while doing nothing on either floor. Not only does that accomplish as much as riding the elevator once and doing absolutely nothing for two actions, but you also run the risk of clogging up the elevator when somebody else needs it. We all agreed, he must have been a Cylon.
Pandemic - and then I played Pandemic twice with 5 epidemic cards and the mutant strain. Yeah, those were some pretty tough games. In the first game we got smashed by cascading outbreaks. In the second game, the mutant strain killed us... after we had cured it.
And that was my weekend at the Dallas Games Marathon. I played several games that I love, and discovered a couple of awesome "new" games: Tikal, which is far from new, but new to me, and Dungeon Fighter, which actually is extremely new.
Earlier this week, I hit the ATM, to get money for the upcoming trip, and I got 10 crisp, new bills with consecutive serial numbers. I always think that's pretty neat.