Cowa-Sequential

After Earth was one of the biggest bombs of last year both critically and commercially but I could not get myself to stay away. This is also the logic that lead to me seeing M  Night Shamalan's Last Airbender which proved to be a massive disappointment. I enjoyed Will Smith in Independence Day, Men in Black and even I am Legend so my expectations  may have been higher than they souls be. After Earth stars Will and Jaden Smith set in the far future as a father and son that crash land on a planet which they discover used to be Earth. However it is not the same Earth that we know as it has evolved to be hazardous even deadly to Humans. They are not alone as a deadly alien creature with a taste for fear and human blood has also crashed with them. Now Will and Jaden must survive a harsh climate to reach a beacon to call for a ride home.  The movie's main theme is that Fear isn't real but the danger is. The trailer and posters for this movie were  lying when they implied...

I recently saw the new film Ride Along starring  Ice Cube and Kevin Hart with some friends. Ice Cube has been a go to Black actor ever since the original Friday from the 1990s. Hart is a comedian that's becoming increasingly popular with several films coming out. In Ride Along Ice Cube stars as a hardened  Atlanta cop on the trail of a shadowy crime lord and Hart stars as a High School Security guard who's dating Cube's sister with intents to propose. Hart wants to approval to marry his sister but in order to do this has to prove that he is worthy of her. They make a deal that if Kevin could get through a day shadowing Cube's work as a cop, he would give approval . Don't be confused, this movie is a buddy cop-esque comedy. Kevin is a FPS addicted guard who dreams of getting accepted into the police academy and becoming a police officer while Ice Cube's a loner that doesn't play by the rules who is obsessed with catching an illusive criminal named Omar...

In a continuation from the last Vs. article, I will talk about another 3rd party Wii game. No More Heroes is a 3rd party action that stars anime nerd Travis Touchdown that uses his beam katana and wrestling moves to on a quest to become the top  ranked assassin in the world. The game was developed by developer Suda51 which also developed Killer 7 among other titles. It is a over the top game filled with bad puns and cheesy & crude humor. While the graphics are nothing to write home about , the niche title managed to spawn a sequel NMH 2: Desperate Struggle. California based city of Santa Destroy serves as the open-world setting for the game which Travis can traverse on foot or by motorcycle. The game's mini games vary from doing menial motion controlled tasks to defeating a certain number of enemies. The game is mission based game where you have to do sidequests to earn enough money to buy into the next level/ assassin contract. In addition Travis can gain more health and imp...

Nintendo's Wii was the most successful console it ever released with over 100 million units sold dwarfing even the NES. However aside from Wii Sports, conventional wisdom stated that the Wii was all about waggle and had no games.  While the Wii was supported by Nintendo's first party franchises, its third party support lacked many key franchises that were on the Xbox 360 and PS3. The Gamecube also missed some titles but due to its similar capabilities to the other consoles of its generation, it had more cross platform titles due to easier portability. Given that the Wii was clearly the least graphically powerful console of its generation, this wasn't often the case. Games often skipped the console because a Wii version would most likely be an entirely different a new game. The Wii did receive a decent amount of third party support and two games that particularly held my interest were Ubisoft's Red Steel 2 and Suda51's No More Heroes. Many of theses games may have be...

Jennifer Lawrence is back as Katniss Everdeen in the sequel to 2012's Hunger Games, Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Back in 2012, I read the Hunger Games Trilogy and liked most of it except the latter portions of the final book Mockingjay. I was excited to see the original Hunger Games and I believe it was fairly faithful to the book and as a bonus, got to see the ever lovely Jennifer Lawrence. The Hunger Games spawned cultural phenomenon on its way to its billion dollar box office gross. Now a year and a half later, the sequel is trying to capture the same spark.  Is this girl still fire? Catching Fire begins showing a Katniss that has clearly been traumatized by the events of the 74th Hunger Games. As she struggles to return to her regular life in District 12, she discovers that even for victors there is no going back. While she still has a strong connection to her family, her relationships with Gale and Peeta have suffered. Elsewhere Katniss and Peeta's gamble to end the last...

Over Christmas I saw the second movie of the Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug. The movie detailed the Bilbo and the Dwarves' journey through the Mirkwood Forest  to the Lonely Mountain, ending with their confrontation with Smaug the Dragon inside the mountain itself. As a fan of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy I was thrilled to hear that a Hobbit film was being produced but was skeptical when I heard it was being made into three films. The Hobbit isn't a thick book so I was concerned that the movies would suffer from stretching the story out across nearly 9 hour.s Fortunately, this really didn't dampen my enthusiasm. In preparation even I re-read the Hobbit recently in order to familiarize myself with the parts that I may have forgotten. I enjoyed The Hobbit: An Expected Journey, but does the sequel bring more to the table and can it live up to the legacy of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy? The Desolation of Smaug as the title suggests, is a more serious film than its ...