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knox170
Reviews
Los ojos de Julia (2010)
An enjoyable thriller
I really enjoyed this film. The tense and exciting opening scene drew me in immediately, and the film had me on the edge of my seat for the whole thing. Perhaps, after the first scene, the film takes a bit of time to get started, but the climax is extremely tense and hard to watch without shouting at the screen.
The plot is that a woman called Julia, who is suffering from a degenerative disease that is slowly making her lose her vision, finds her already blind sister who hanged herself in her basement. She believes that her death was suspicious, but is alone as the police and her husband thinks she is chasing ghosts.
There are some really clever little additions the director put in, such as when Julia goes blind, the camera angles are done in such a way that you never see anybody's face, except the husband, who previously in the film "taught" her how to feel his presence when she went blind, and Julia herself, which I thought was a nice touch. The film genuinely fills the viewer with a sense of paranoia, which is what separates this film from the generic disturbia like serial killer horrors. I am a great horror fan, and this film disturbed and scared me a lot more than the rubbishy cheap thrillers like paranormal activity that the film industry spews out today.
That said, I do have a few criticisms about Julia's Eyes. The plot is good, but a few clichés sneak in, like the classic husband-doesn't- believe-wife story, which seems to be a favourite of Del Toro (the same thing was used in The Orphanage)which I feel is overused in horrors nowadays. People complained about the scriptwriting, but I speak Spanish, and the subtitles don't do the film justice. The killer is pretty guessable from around the middle, I actually dismissed the fact it could have been him because it was too obvious. That is my major concern, and I had to explain one of the twists to my friend who I was watching the film with. The film also ends on an unbearably cheesy note.
However, the twists are great, especially the one about the husbands suicide, and completely unguessable (except who the killer was), and although the film wasn't nearly as good as Pan's Labyrinth, Devil's Backbone or the Orphanage, it was still a very enjoyable thriller with some extremely exciting moments. I also finished the film appreciating my vision a lot more than when I started, which I guess is a good point.
Darksiders II (2012)
Enjoyed it massively
I really enjoyed Darksiders 2. It seems most of the issues I had with the 1st game have been addressed; there are more weapons so you can choose our fighting style, a much greater line of character customisation, generally more to explore in the game and the main character's one liners aren't quite so terrible. I am still dubious about the general stereotyping of the makers (blacksmith type people twice the size of Death with ridiculously proportioned bodies and huge hammers) as all having Scottish accents, and Death, the reaper, being British, and also the size of people's heads in the game in ratio to their bodies makes them all look like they have an IQ of less than 50. The story is pretty generic and not all that great, with clichés-o-rama throughout. Also, I felt there may have been a few too many unnecessary combos, I found myself using the same ones over and over, and the secondary weapon turned out to be much more effective than my scythes, being both faster and dealing more damage. But in contrast, the game looks stunning, the variation of places you go and see is still fantastic- just as in DS1, the parkour elements are fun, although easy, and the puzzles are nicely spaced and original. The boss fights are great, and the side quests are a nice addition, although there are aren't too many of them and they seem to have been added in just because the developers could. The idea of Dust as a kind of in-game hint giver was good, and meant I didn't have to resort to the wiki. In conclusion, a great game, seems to be taking a lot less from titles like Legend Of Zelda and implementing many more original ideas, while still staying a solid action-RPG. A massive improvement on DS1, I would definitely recommend it.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)
Something NEW please
I'm not rating this low because it was a bad game. I'm rating it because it has had absolutely nothing new since MW1, except for maybe zombies. Apart from a few bug fixes in the engine, a few new guns and maps, it is the same game. If you are a CoD fan and want to see how the story pans out etc.. then buy it, by all means. But, if you are a casual gamer who is just looking for something new like I was, don't buy it. It was a big disapppointment. I think it's unfair, more than anything, on smaller developers who actually put effort into making a new game with original ideas for their title to be swamped by CoD and Halo, when all they did was Ctrl V, Ctrl C from the last game and still make more money than any film. I know fanboys will defend this game to the grave but I wouldn't mind if the millions of dollars that went into making this game actually went into something new and interesting, not just the same cover based shooting we've seen over and over for the last ten years. Frankly, I won't be buying Black Ops 2, when it should probably just be released as DLC for BO1. Sooner or later, people will stop buying CoD, and it will end up being bought only by the people with gun fetishes who fantasize about being in the army, unless it finally pumps out some new ideas. And to anybody who is going to hate on me because I actually bought an argument that makes sense against their beloved franchise, I really don't want to hear it- I already know what you're going to say, and frankly, I don't care.