Free to Play movie

Yesterday I watched the Free to Play movie, produced by Valve. I can be only seeing inside the Steam gaming platform. I’ve never knew that it has video player functionalities.

Without any further due, the verdict: very boring.

The film is about video gaming as an sport, particularly about Dota 2. It tells 3 parallel stories of players that will participate into the biggest tournament ever. The prize would be one million dollars for the winner. At the time, it was, but light years, the biggest prize in history.

The 3 main characters are not particularly captivating. They are portrayed as nerds that are taking a lot of pressure by family members to work or study instead invest the whole time into gaming. The characters keep saying that they are motivated and determined to win. But that is all. You see that they are facing difficult situations, but nothing different from a teenagers entering into adulthood: what should I do with my life?

Despite the fact that the announcement alone of a such big prize created a huge repercussion on the internet gaming community and media, the tournament is poorly described. During the whole film, I was never sure what was going on in the competition.

But one thing it was very impressive the CG scenes that describe some parts of the matches in the competition. I believe that Valve CG animators entered in action. They were short but very, very well done.

The bottom line is that this film is, in fact, a propaganda about video game as an sport and the Valve game Dota. It repeatedly say that this competition was a milestone and it might actually be the case. But even being free to watch, Free to Play is not worthy.

My Rating: 4★★★★

2013.07.22

Life of Pi

#cinema #review

Great visuals. That is by far the most commented and notorious quality of this touching movie. This film have several common qualities with Cast Away. The main character, because of an disaster, is isolated to the world. Alone, he enters into a routine in order to maintain sanity. But from external eyes, it seems that they are, in fact, becoming lunatic.

This piece is beautiful not only for the eyes, but also for the heart. The main message is tolerance. Tolerance especially towards religion choices. It is very linked to religion theme, while not a sermon.

The main problem of the film is the somewhat long sequence of loneliness. While important to give motive to the religion, it is long enough to make some people sleep.

In the end, I recommend you to watch to reflect. Probably the book that inspired the film is more deep, but this piece is strong enough to provoke some thinking about religion, personal choices and differences.

My Rating: 7★★★★★★★

Metacritic: 79

Rotten Tomatoes: 86

2011.05.20

Game of Thrones

#cinema #review

This year I watched several TV shows. Battlestar Gallactica (which I hated), Downton Abbey (which I loved), Breaking Bad… But Game of Thrones, oh my… Game of Thrones is an amazing show!

I’ve read the book as soon as I’ve heard that it would become a show produced by HBO. HBO series are generally very well conceived. I still remember Rome. The book is very good, with a great environment and great characters. I still have to read the others books from the A Song of Ice and Fire series (A Game of Thrones is only the first book), but that one is great enough to make me happy.

Back to the TV show…

There are several characters that you can empathize – you can understand their motives and actions. No one is purely good or purely evil. The show does a great job by presenting them with a reasoning depth. This is a great achievement because the story uses dozens of characters.

The cast is great. It’s natural to question some cast choices when we read the book first. When reading, we only could imagine their faces and quite often we did not pay attention to some details that the author really put there. But in Game of Thrones, I liked all the choices. I was particularly afraid to see the implementation of my favorite characters: Arya, Tyrion and Ned Stark. But all 3 impressed me.

The first and second episodes exaggerate a bit in sex scenes. I liked 😉 but some people might complain. Violence, that I thought would be pure gore, was quite moderate. The adaptation took the advantage of one of the book’s greatest features: the cliffhanger ending on each chapter. We finish a chapter or an episode wanting more.

Most of the critics are a bit correct about the difficulty on following some parts. It’s due to the rich and complex universe created for the books. The producers had to choose if the series would or not contain the deep ambient. And they chose yes. I agree, but there are several other films and shows that are much worse (ex Matrix trilogy). I really really recommend to see Game of Thrones. The opening sequence will be enough to you embrace this amazing series.

My Rating: 10★★★★★★★★★★

Metacritic: 86

Rotten Tomatoes: 89

2011.01.10