Phoebe in Wonderland

It’s kind of ridiculous, but the premise of Idiocracy basically convinced me to have children. Yes, it’s a comedy, and one with extravagant extremes, but the core idea isn’t wrong. And I can’t really sit back and complain about that while also being part of the problem. But I’m not here to talk about Idiocracy, which has uneven quality at best. I’m here to talk about Phoebe in Wonderland, which is amazing (and is available via Netflix insta-watch, if that’s your thing). It is in fact nothing like Idiocracy (I’m already beginning to regret using that as a segue), except that both of them made me think about parenting.

Phoebe in Wonderland is a story that represents everything I fear and everything that excites me about the possibility of being a parent. You have this brilliant vibrant child who is everything you could want: imaginative, creative, and smart as can be. But then you also have the sort of thing that every parent fears: that their child is broken. And that situation threatens to tear the parents apart (both from each other and from themselves). It’s a story of the best and the worst. It’s a story that forces me to confront the question “even if it’s hard, is it still worth it?”

I feel compelled to write about this movie, but I’m having a hard time deciding what to say. It’s not quite true that if I told you more it would spoil the experience, but I do feel like it would lessen it. This is a story in which uncertainty made the journey stronger for me. So here’s what you need to know: It’s a beautiful film, it’s well crafted, and for me it was extremely impactful. I often judge a movie by the conversation it spawns afterwards, but in the silence after this one there was absolutely no discussion as I grabbed for the remote and immediately rated it five stars. If you at all consider yourself to be in a similar place in life as me then I highly recommend you watch Phoebe in Wonderland.

Rise of the Argonauts

Played on Xbox360

I’m not as much of a slave to my Gamefly queue as I am to my Netflix queue. Given the various platforms and their different economic models it’s hard for rentals to be a large percentage. At any point I’ll generally have a disc out from Gamefly, an MMO I’m poking around in, a handheld game for the bus, some slow burner on the console that would take too long to rent, and some downloadable game. But I’m always trying to push as much of my gaming to rental as possible, which is the smartest option for my rate of play. It has the side effect of encouraging me to try games I would never risk real permanent money on. Which means I throw stuff into my queue that is sometimes pretty borderline.

Oh, hello Rise of the Argonauts, I’m talking about you now. Not long into the first sitting I found myself wondering why the hell I threw this game into my queue. Ancient Greek mythology is up my alley, so that had to been a factor. But this game has a huge identity complex. The core gameplay mechanic is a third person action game. You know, a God of War knockoff. But Argonauts isn’t nearly as good, even compared to other knockoffs. You aren’t actually provided enough opportunities to swing your aggression around to succeed at being that type of game. Early on I was given an upgrade to a weapon before I had been given an opportunity to use the one before it. Instead of fighting there’s lots and lots of dialogue.

For a game with so much talking the dialogue animations are awkward. Wait, they’re not awkward - they’re absent. Jason stands there in the same pose for every single conversation. And there’s some serious recycling of the voice talent for bit parts. I think I had only talked to my fourth NPC before I hit a repeat.

I finished my first sitting and seriously considered putting the game back in the envelope right then and there. But something compelled me to stick with it. I definitely wanted to solve the mystery of why I chose to play the game in the first place. I knew where the answer was - in the GameTrailers video review. Most stuff in my queue first goes through a video review check (games are such a long time commitment that I like to see them first). But I knew that if I went back to the review at this point it’d bias my experience, so I held back and instead just flat out avoided the game for a week.

Eventually I came back, with revised expectations. This is clearly not an action game. It’s something… else. I started looking for the positives. Jason may just stand there stiffly as he talks to people, but statically he looks pretty good. And his voice acting is quality. The interpretation of Greek mythology is a bit off canon, but at least they commit to their variations. I found myself honestly invested in what was going to happen next.

And then I remembered why I rented the game in the first place. It was precisely for that mix of compelling story but crappy gameplay. It’s the flip of the video game cliché. I had left a little test for myself in my queue: I wanted to know if a game that failed at being a game but still had a decent story behind it could satisfy me. I’ve played a ton of games that strike the opposite balance and walked away content. Could I do the reverse?

The verdict? Well, I played the game to completion, but all that really means is that I’m willing to ride out a train wreck. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. I did continue to care about what was going to happen all the way until the end, but I was also pretty desperate to put that game controller to good use the whole time. Any time I play a game I could have easily reached for the remote instead of the controller, but there’s something about my mood that decided on the interactive option.

Yes, Rise of the Argonauts has a story, but it’s far from cinema quality. Nor does it muster enough quality interactivity to elevate the story to be more than it is. I’m left dreaming about how much better it would be if it had excelled more at either end. But it didn’t, so I guess it’s a failure. Oh well, back it goes in the envelope. We’ll see what present I left for myself next.

Scarface

I’m pretty much a slave to my Netflix queue these days, as that it is by far my primary source of video entertainment. Whenever someone recommends a movie to me, or if there’s some repeating pop culture reference to which I am clueless, the movie goes in my queue. The rate I feed the queue is definitely faster than the rate at which I consume it, so over the years the queue has grown obscenely long. Generally I try to manage the top of the queue to keep titles up there that suits my current mood or are at least recently contextual. But every now and then I lapse, and, well… get Scarface.

I don’t know what specifically convinced me to add Scarface to the queue. It’s probably just the fact that it’s one of those movies that people are generally aware of. You know, Al Pacino, “say hello to my little friend!” Having never seen the movie I could describe the cover and vaguely repeat the tidbits I’ve picked up from conversations over the years. This is the sort of situation that stuffs a movie into my queue. Which is too bad, because the review scores are lies. The ratings my friends gave it based on memory are lies. Scarface is not worth your three hours.

One of the problems I having here is the same I’ve been having with this Castlevania thing: I experienced this movie in the wrong order. I’ve seen films like Blow and American Gangster. This is not my first cinematic encounter with drugs and crime lords. It’s unfair of me to make any comparisons here, because Scarface is a movie that really paved the way for those more modern titles. In its day it was a ballsy epic that blew people’s minds. But for me, in my timeline, it’s a story I’ve seen before and seen better.

What I will say is that Al Pacino is the redeeming aspect of this movie. Having seen him in so many other movies it’s clear he is playing a specific role here and not just some stock Al Pacino character. It’s not a likeable character, but he nails it. He also totally looks the part, ranging from sleazy to decadent throughout his rise to power.

But that’s pretty much it. It’s long, there’s heaps of cocaine, people swear a lot, and there’s violence. Where does this get compelling? I gave it two stars, with Pacino’s performance pulling it up out of complete oblivion.