Plecostomus Reviews

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

Yet another perversion of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece

[4/10 · 3 September 2006]

As far as this film goes as a horror film, it's not that great. It was made more for entertaining the mind that giving you nightmares. The acting wasn't too hot, scripting was a little corny, and story was deliberately altered in some very serious ways from the book!

I wouldn't get so much on this movie's case if it wasn't advertised as "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." The story only resembles that of the book! Before you go and invest three bucks in this movie (or however much closeout movies cost in your area) please read the book. It is a beautiful piece of literature that has never been successfully portrayed on the silver screen. I expected truncations, sure, what story adapted for the theater doesn't. But it's not so much they removed portions, they incorporated segments of their own design! And bad ones at that! So bad it negated much of what the original story had to offer!

Please don't be fooled by the title "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" because it's not! Watch this as one of those "wanted to be dramatic, but didn't quite make it" movies. Please Branagh and Lady, spare us the grief and actually read the book before you blunder into putting someone else's name on your crap!

The City of Lost Children (1995)

Actually, quite good!

[8/10 · 3 September 2006]

The first time I saw this movie I shook my head and wondered why I wasted three dollars renting this movie. It seemed to me that the storyline was worthless. However, I gave this movie a second chance, and this time instead of constantly reading the subtitles I paid more attention to the acting and events taking place on-screen.

I was shocked. The amount of creativity and symbolism blew me away. A lot of questions I had accumulated throughout my first viewing were answered by watching the movie carefully.

I recommend to everyone who thought this a poor movie to watch it again. If you don't speak French (like myself) try not to get so involved in the subtitles that you miss critical detail. It's there, and it's important, trust me!

Betrayal at Krondor (1993 Video Game)

An awesome classic for the hardcore roll play gamer!

[9/10 · 18 May 2006]

This has to be my favorite RPG out of the dozens I've played. A DOS 3d environment (at the time, pretty dang cool), integrated photos of real actors, an in-depth storyline, and absolutely beautiful music! First of all, the battle segments of this game are quite intense. Although the graphics are low quality (DOS stuff), the battle is mostly photos of real actors taking fighting stances with simple combat movements. The battles are fought on a chessboard style field that allows for character movement and Line-Of-Sight calculations. Depending upon the abilities of the fighter, it is perfectly possible for him to launch an arrow (or spell), miss the target, and hit an ally, doing him just as much damage. At first this line-of-sight style of fighting seemed cumbersome and frustrating to work with, but over time I accepted it as "more realistic" (for a fantasy video game at least).

The game has a good length, however, characters a split into separate parties during the course of the game. Some parties are used more than others making assets and experience gained by these characters less rewarding. Not a major setback, but it is slightly disheartening when you acquire several hundreds of gold pieces with one party, and never getting to use it on anything useful because they are no longer used in the game.

The music is just awesome! If you have the CD version of this game, I highly recommend using the CD music feature. If you must use the MIDI music, you may want to hear it on a high quality sound device before judging it. The artist has shown a good deal of talent in this program.

The only downfall is the level of intricacy in the story can make the objectives unclear. Read carefully, because occasionally the directions on what to do next in the game will appear in some dialogue never to be repeated. If you skip it, you'll either wander around the map for hours without aim, or have to search the internet for directions.

Nine out of ten stars from me. This game is a free download now on the internet. It was released by the Dynamix company when they created a sequel to the game. It won't contain the CD music, but I still highly recommend this to the RPG or other adventure gamer.

The Brothers Grimm (2005)

Interesting story, but poorly edited...

[4/10 · 4 December 2005]

(Yes, it has a couple spoilers) First of all I must say the main story in this film is quite interesting, however, it had a happy ending (completely straying from the original Grimm fairy tale style).

The acting wasn't bad with the exception of some of the children. Believability of the characters is pretty good, with the following exception:

For some reason, characters in this story take a random 360 degree personality change and become an entirely new character altogether (the Torturer becomes a loving friend to his victims, the undesirable animal gutting hunter becomes a fair maiden worth kissing in the end, etc). It left you with a feeling that critical parts in the storyline were dropped in the editing process.

The computer graphics in this movie were, for the most part, unbelievable (like the kid in the horse). If you've seen this movie and remember that part, I shouldn't have to continue on this point. They definitely needed more time and money for these instances.

This brings me to the most disappointing part of the whole film, the editing! The story was extremely disjointed and lacked a steady flow (even for an action/adventure). If they had to sacrifice sections of the film for time's sake, they did a very poor job at combining the remaining parts. The tempo of the action changed back and forth so quickly (and in conjunction with the character flaws) you really don't know what result you were hoping for in an action packed event.

Four out of 10 stars from me. This movie most definitely could have used some more time in development. Unfortunate that such an interesting storyline be lost on something as poorly done like this.

MegaRace (1994 Video Game)

Fun For the Time

[5 January 2005]

Megarace happens to be one of the best DOS games of all time! Remember this game was made several years ago so the graphics aren't up to today's standards, but for back then racing awesome cars through 3D race tracks shooting your opponent down with bullets, lasers, and rockets was top notch! Also, the performance given by Christian Erickson was well done giving a sense of comedy to the futuristic television program called "Megarace" featured in this game.

I'd recommend this game to racing fans around the world, but modern operating systems just can't seem to handle the sound processing (something to do with invalid IRQ numbers and memory addresses), and if you aren't getting the sound and awesome music, you're missing a big part of the game! But if you do have access to a good DOS machine or a decent DOS emulator give this game a spin.