Die Another Day (2002)

As another era of James Bond films came to an end, most were quick to dismiss the final contribution of Pierce Brosnan to the series. "Die Another Day" received lukewarm reviews when it came out, and years later it's still dismissed by many as the last straw to a tired franchise that had gotten stale and moldy enough to start making penicillin out of it - clearly only being salvageable by scraping everything and rebooting it, which four years later they would do. Even at the time I remember walking out of the theater thinking it was trash.

But here's the crazy thing, and it's something I honestly didn't expect: Upon seeing it again after a decade, I actually don't think "Die Another Day" is that bad. I won't lie to you and say it's a great movie, because trust me it has issues to spare, and when it's dumb it's really dumb. And maybe I was in a bad mood that day in 2002, or maybe I was expecting too much from it. Or perhaps it was because I hadn't yet seen the true lows of the series that I couldn't appreciate it when a Bond movie managed to be merely "alright." While absolving the film of its faults due to other films before it being worse isn't what I'm setting out to do here, I do have to take the big picture into account and offer a moderate defense of "Die Another Day." It's really not anywhere close to as horrible as its reputation suggests.

They're molding him into Ernest P. Worrell. The devious bastards.

The opening finds Bond in North Korea going under cover to disrupt a diamond-trading-for-weapons deal run by Colonel Moon (Will Yun Lee) and his partner Zao (Rick Yune). When, after being betrayed by an unknown source, Bond's cover is blown (along with Zao's face after an explosion imbeds diamonds in it) he attempts to escape but fails, and Moon is presumed dead after Bond drives him off a waterfall. Being disavowed by MI-6, Bond spends the next 14 months in prison being tortured before he is exchanged for Zao, who had been captured elsewhere in the meantime. M (Judi Dench) revokes his 00 status because she thinks he may have squealed under torture, but Bond is too pissed to let Zao run loose on account of him, and there's still a traitor to find. So, like in "License To Kill," he goes off the grid to settle some accounts. In my opinion it's one of the better setups the series has had.

That leads us to one of the weirder plots of the franchise, involving a satellite that can serve as a second sun, a hotel made from ice, weird neon headsets out of "Tron," a billionaire entrepreneur/professional thrill seeker named Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), and gene reassignment therapy, a truly absurd concept that takes the relatively simple process of plastic surgery and makes it a thousand times more complicated and physically impossible. It's kind of a wild ride while it lasts, and while it could be called many things ("silly" being a notable option) it's seldom dull.

Oh, and there's an invisible car, too. Most people will remember that.

As you can see, the gadgets in "Die Another Day" have made a prevalent and clamorous comeback. It's possible that Bond has more toys in this movie than he's had in quite some time, although I have yet to make an official count. Whether or not you like that is up to you. Some people don't care for that aspect of the franchise, but personally I enjoy the gadgets. I always have a good time watching him get good use out of them, which he most certainly does here.

Unlike "GoldenEye" or "The World Is Not Enough" which brought out this sweet car to basically do nothing but drive around, the car in "Die Another Day" gets put through the freaking gauntlet. This car must have gotten more use than any other car since maybe "The Spy Who Loved Me." And the car in that one doubled as a submarine. And yeah, here it's invisible. And yeah, that's dumb. The way they explain the tech is just slightly plausible enough to make you almost buy it, but I'd almost prefer it if Q had admitted that they had found a wizard in the London subway system and had hired him.

I mention this because I think that's one of the things that made "Die Another Day" work for me, at least a little bit. It's so packed to the brim with wild stuff going on and crazy gadgets and locations and action segments that it's a fun ride despite the stupidity. Even when there are scenes like Bond and Graves sword-fighting through a posh mansion like Inigo Montoya and the Six-Fingered Man, it's still a possessing of just enough of a flippant attitude about the whole thing while refraining from being overly goofy about it that I actually found myself having a good amount of fun. They could have made this really silly and did the Roger Moore thing of winking to the camera, but they didn't. And that, to me, made all the difference. It's stupid. It knows it's stupid, but it's not treating YOU like you're stupid. Does that make sense?

Aww! The hovercraft is smiling! He's so happy to be helping James out!

Before you get the wrong idea and think that I'm heaping wild praise upon "Die Another Day," allow me to clear the air a bit: This is still not a very good movie. There are things about it which are bad enough to nearly ruin the experience. It's just that the good things in it are good enough to still make it watchable. It's akin to an argument given by Christopher Hitchens but written down by a dyslexic 4th grader. The grammar, spelling and penmanship is horrid, but man is it full of rock-solid ideas.

I've mentioned the good, mainly being the abundance of action and gadgets, but it's also worth mentioning Brosnan again, since he's just too awesome as James Bond. I can't help it, I love the guy. Toby Stephens is also fun to watch as a Bond villain. He's kind of like what you would get if Hugh Grant and Eric Stoltz screwed. I dug it. I wasn't as big of a fan of Rick Yune, though. He was scary I suppose, but I don't know. I couldn't understand why he never took the diamonds out of his face.

 He'll tell you it's from an explosion a British spy set off in his face, but the real story was that his older brother got really mad at him while they were playing that board game Forbidden Bridge and slammed his head in the box that held all the jewels.

But here's the bad, and it's bad. We'll start with the slightly less awful, being that that the editing in this film is pretty janky. Being the first millennial Bond film, I guess we had to go really stylized with it. And by stylized I mean ""The Matrix" happened." Much like nearly every other action film after Neo said "Whoa," there are some truly bizarre random slow downs and frame-rate sputterings that pop up very often that would look more at home in a music video. In fact the entire movie kind of looks like a car commercial. That's the only way I can describe it. Although in its defense I'm sure it would have aired during the Superbowl. It doesn't go full blown Paul W.S. Anderson, but it's close.

And as much as I actually like Madonna as an artist and am a fan of her music, the opening theme is terrible. It bleeps and bloops at us like a laptop starting up, completely devoid of the style and swagger the best of what came before possessed. You gotta have sleaze and swing in a Bond opening. It's not something you're supposed to rave to, it's something you smoke a carton of cigarettes while playing cards to. But I don't even think this would cut it as a song to play in a club, let alone at the front of a Bond movie. It doesn't put me to sleep or anything, but it does set a tone of things being slightly off.

"Ah yes, Mr. Bond. After this drink, we shall fight to the death in a good-natured fashion. By the way, why is Madonna here? And why is she the only one who gets to wear black?"

However, the most egregious fault the film has can be summed up in four syllables: Halle Berry. Good. Grief. I ragged on Christmas Jones for being insufferable, which she was, but at the same time Denise Richards really can't be blamed for being a terrible actress in it because she's Denise Richards. What did you expect? But Halle Berry has been accused of being good at her craft. Apparently they even saw fit to give her an Oscar for it at one point. I have no idea what her excuse was here.

Here's the thing: Jinx isn't a bad character. In fact she's kind of awesome. She's a CIA Agent who is pretty lethal in her own right, and doesn't always need Bond to save her. She does occasionally, but there are moments where she handles herself just fine, and is pretty useful overall. She's not the kind of whimpering bimbo we're used to. And I liked that. But here's where it starts to go south. Fast.

SHOOP DA WHOOP!!!

You see, I see what they were attempting to do with Jinx. They were trying to make a female James Bond. And I suppose that's an...alright idea. They've done the "Bond meets his equal" schtick before, but that was simply involving skill levels. And Jinx is tough and savvy and is a decent spy, so there they've essentially succeeded. But when I say they were trying to make a female James Bond in this movie, I mean they were trying to clone him. And even if that was a good idea, which it isn't, she's less Pierce Brosnan and more Roger Moore. Oh dear.

The issue comes from the dialogue. That's where you can tell they weren't interested in Jinx as a character at all. They just wanted another mouth to put rejected Bond quips into after they'd been determined too dumb for him to say, so they switched the pronouns and gave them to her. Every line of hers...EVERY SINGLE LINE out of her mouth is some cringe inducing pun or innuendo, oftentimes flying in the face of whatever the situation is and coming across as irritatingly childish at best and horrifyingly distracting at worst. For the love of Sean Connery's toupee, even Bond picked the moments to bust out the one-liners. He wasn't always on. There is a time and a place for snark. If I wanted unfunny crap spewed out constantly no matter the situation, I'd watch something Joss Whedon wrote.

"Switch them off or I'll be half the girl I used to be!" Somebody got paid to write that. Halle Berry got paid to say it.

But for all that is good in this world, I don't think anyone could have given a worse performance than Halle Berry did. It's shocking how bad she is here. Don't get me wrong, the dialogue would have made the character always suck no matter what, but I can envision a scenario in my head that features an actress not making Tanya Roberts look like Meryl Streep in comparison. At least Denise Richards looked like she was trying. It's really stunning how much Halle Berry looks like she does not give one single crap, simply flying by on an eternal smirk saying "Hey look at me! I'm Halle Berry! I'm a Bond girl! Yay! I don't have to act today! This is fun! Penis joke!" All the meanwhile Brosnan is playing it relatively straight and Rosamund Pike is over there completely showing Berry up every step of the way. Where's the justice?

Literally every line of hers can be followed up with the phrase "SHUT UP, HALLE BERRY."

If there was one thing that utterly guts this film, it's her. Everything else is actually not that bad. Like I mentioned before, it's a lot of fun, it's pretty looking despite some weird CGI going on, Brosnan is still the mack daddy, and it calls back to A LOT of older Bond films. A decent drinking game could be made if the players all had good enough knowledge of the series. In fact it seems a bit like an over-caffeinated version of one of the older Connery flicks like "You Only Live Twice" or "Diamonds Are Forever." I kind of liked it.

So with that we bid farewell to Pierce Brosnan. With the exception of one film, I had quite the fun journey with him. With a 75%, he had one of the better records as far as veteran Bond actors go. But once again the series would sit silently in the wings for a brief hibernation once again, as Hollywood broke out their new favorite toy: The Reboot. After this we got a new start along with another new Bond. Nobody was exactly sure what we would get, but it's pretty clear that no matter what it was, it would have a substantial coating of grit.

This is actually a really good trailer, but man it's like reliving my hatred for Halle Berry all over again. Watch at your own risk.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Die Another Day" is not nearly as bad as its reputation suggests. No, it's not that great, but that's mostly due to weird stylized editing and a legendarily bad performance by Halle Berry. But if you can grit your teeth and suffer through her wretchedness, this isn't a bad little action flick. This is middle of the road Bond. Not one of Brosnan's best, but still far from the worst.

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

CASINO ROYALE

The World's End (2013)

Being a huge fan of Edgar Wright's work, going so far as to call "Shawn of the Dead" one of my favorite comedies ever, it goes without saying that "The World's End" was up very high on my list of Most Anticipated films of 2013. Like I do with most movies that I'm really looking forward to, I purposefully kept myself somewhat in the dark about it, going so far as to not even watch the trailer for it. And for some reason it didn't play in front of any film I've seen this year. So I went into "The World's End" with basically a clean slate, only expecting quality based on past experience and the cast.

Thankfully what I ended up getting was, as expected, a very well made film that was exciting, stylish, mysterious, funny and surprisingly heartfelt all at once. And while this was only to be expected since that list of attributes could be slapped on the box of every movie Edgar Wright ever made, it still is worth repeating because it just goes to show how impressive of a filmmaker this guy is. I'll say this right now: There are few directors out there whose works are more consistently entertaining than Edgar Wright. When this guy makes a movie, it's to your benefit to pay attention.

"The World's End" follows the adventures of five friends from school who once had a legendary night of pub crawling in their younger days. Twenty years later the de facto leader of the group, Gary (Simon Pegg), who is now a high functioning alcoholic, attempts to get the group back together to relive that night, which in his mind was the greatest moment of his frankly pathetic life. The rest of the group aren't really into it, having moved on and realized that Gary is a titanic schmuck some time ago, but eventually they all cave in and agree.

Oh yeah. Who wouldn't follow this guy?

Past that point is gets a little weird. Once the pub crawl begins, it becomes clear the town and people in it are a bit different since they were last living there. At first they chalk up to them being older, but pretty soon it starts going an "Invasion of the Bodies Snatchers" route, and things get officially, as the English would put it, cocked up. This leads to an escalation of sci-fi craziness that would seem bizarrely out of place had it not been written in such an effective and exciting manner.

The cast is pitch-perfect and made up of some of the funniest people I can think of. Of course Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are two of my Funniest People In The World in No Particular Order, but Martin Freeman does his best revival of his turn as Watson in "Sherlock" to play the uppity one to hysterical effect as well. What's amazing about Simon Pegg though is how much of a pathetic scumbag he's playing in this, but still manages to be somewhat charming and loveable, and you actually want to see him succeed. I suppose that's just called "acting talent."

The script, penned by Pegg and Wright, is full of the usual rapid fire, too-smart-for-most-American-audiences cleverness that is predominant throughout the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy of this, "Shawn of The Dead" and "Hot Fuzz," but whereas those films hit the ground running at a thousand miles an hour, "The World's End" takes it's time and is a bit slower paced with both story and jokes. The laughs aren't as densely packed as the other films, which gives it a sense of maturity the others lacked but at tradeoff of not being as memorable or endlessly quotable. That's not to say it isn't funny, which it very much is, but it's not nearly as goofy as the rest of the trilogy.

"Reservoir Dogs" would have been far less tragic (and more drunk) if it had been these guys. About the same amount of profanity, though.

All of Edgar Wright's films have recurring themes, among the most common of them being growing up, whatever that means. And finding out what becoming "an adult" is all about and what it means to each individual person is at the forefront of the story of "The World's End." Ultimately it's about Gary making amends for his past transgressions (kind of) and coming to terms with himself and realizing what it takes for him to be happy while embracing his faults. And ultimately he saves the world by doing so (kind of). And thanks in no small part to some surprisingly powerhouse acting on the parts of both Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, it winds up being a rather moving story.

While it may not reach the levels of side-splitting hilarity as the rest of Edgar Wright's filmography, "The World's End" is a worthy final entry in the Wright/Pegg trilogy. It's always nice to know that no matter how many wretched, unfunny comedies are spewed out en masse from Hollywood, there's at least a few people left who still get it. You just have to go to England to find them.

Check out the trailer. I chose the one that DIDN'T give too much away.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The World's End" is a delightful romp of drunkenness that is charming in the way that only Edgar Wright and his cast of regulars can manage to be. Despite being more leisurely in pace than "Shawn of The Dead" or "Hot Fuzz," it's the most touching and visually impressive entry in the series. And while it's not as jammed to the brim with gags both overt and subtle as the others, it's still very, very funny. You gotta check this one out.

Doom (2005)

It's an old question, but it's one that bares repeating. And the main reason it bares repeating is that we keep getting subjected to movies that serve only to make the audience shamble out of the theater scratching their heads and asking it aloud to each other throughout the car ride home. They are not out of line to ask, either. In fact the question is quite logical, but may be unanswerable because reality does seem to defy common sense in this case.

"Why are video games so hard to make into movies?"

I don't have the answer for you. I really don't. It seems to me that video game movies, particularly the games of this current generation of consoles would be easy, at least from a script standpoint. Most games nowadays are pretty much interactive movies anyways. Have you ever played any of the obnoxiously numerous "Call of Duty" games? Those things are Michael Bay movies that let you choose when stuff blows up, which is often because out of the 8 buttons on the controller, 6 of them call in a napalm strike on the area directly ahead of you. As for the other two buttons, one of them spawns an ethnic person, and the other makes their head explode.

What I'm saying is at that point, all the hard work is pretty much done for you. Just play the game and write down what happens. BOOM. Script. If that's what they actually did it would save me a lot of annoyance, since I could just spend 2 hours watching a piece of crap like "Call of Duty" and get it over with relatively quickly instead of having to play it for 6. It would be cheaper, too. Having to choose between $9.50 for a movie ticket or $60 for a game isn't a tough call, especially when you know it's probably going to suck either way.

And shut up about multiplayer. If I wanted to get called a "fag" by 7th graders while they beat my ass I'd buy a time machine.

Oh, he may look tough. But s00perKrunk69 can't even drive yet. And he has zits. Lots of zits.

Video game movies have rightly earned a really bad reputation for their crap. Out of all the movie adaptations of popular games, and there's been a lot, you could count the passable ones on one hand. Which ones those are is subject to debate, and there would probably be a lot of changes to the list depending on who you asked, but I seriously doubt anyone's number would ever go past 4 or 5 movies. If that. I'm guessing most people would struggle to think of more than 3 video game movies they consider decent.

As for myself, I can only list 5 that I thought were decent. One of them is a movie you probably didn't know existed, "Oni-chanbara," a Japanese film adaptation of the "Bikini Samurai Squad" games, which in a reality shattering perversion of common sense was actually pretty good. I liked "Silent Hill" alright, "Mortal Kombat" from back in the day was kooky fun, and I don't care what anyone says, the Van Damme "Street Fighter" was frigging awesome. That movie is one of my "feel good" standards. From Jean-Claude's indecipherable accent to the late great Raul Julia chewing so much scenery you could have finished a basement with the contents of his lower intestine, it's fantastic. And I will duel to the death any who say otherwise.

He is so American. Just look at that tattoo. That's the most American arm I've ever seen. Yup. America.

The other movie is "Doom." Yes, I know, it's an unpopular opinion, but I actually thought that "Doom" was a reasonably solid action flick with a (very) light sprinkling of horror elements, and I would argue that it's one of the better video game movies I've seen up to this point.

I know that the biggest argument against "Doom," and indeed the argument that is always leveled at video game movies, is that it wasn't faithful to the source material. In that regard, I'm going to go ahead and disagree, but only to a point. First off, it's obvious that the tone of the film is more in line with "Doom 3," which was not as action-packed and mindless as the original games, in which you hit the ground running and never stopped pulling the trigger. "Doom 3" was more about atmosphere and anticipation of what's ahead, with fewer enemies and more horror elements as opposed to straight action. I'm not saying that makes "Doom 3" better, but that's the tone they went for.

"Doom" is obviously going for the "Doom 3" tone, and in that regard they succeeded. If they hadn't done that, and had gone for the original game's style, the whole movie could basically have been an hour and a half of that scene from "Predator" where Arnold and everyone else fires like 40,000 rounds of ammunition into the jungle. The only difference would be replacing every tree and bush with demons, and have them keep coming at them like clowns piling out of a car until there's a pile of them 90 feet deep. Not a single word would be uttered during the proceedings.

I dunno, maybe that could have worked.

Another argument against "Doom" was that there were no demons, and yes, here's where I will concede that they got it wrong. Instead of a portal to Hell being opened and all manner of gross stuff pouring out of it, they give us genetic mutations and gene augmentation which for some reason is attracted to evil. You see, in this movie, a race of humanoids on Mars created a 24th pair of chromosomes, which made them super intelligent and super strong. If they were good, that is. If you were bad, it still did all those things, but it also turned you into a bloodthirsty monster. Since in this movie there's a gene for the soul which labels you as "good" or "bad." So apparently "Doom" is Calvinist.

Okay, I can't really defend that. I'm not even going to get into describing all the why of how that's dumb, because you don't need me to. And yeah, it's the biggest problem of the movie, and the one point against it that I totally agree with and can't understand the purpose of. Was the phrase "Portal to Hell" just too much for the writers to comprehend? Seems to me that not only would that have made it more dark and disturbing, but it could have been more interesting and entertaining as well. Plus with a bit of clever writing you could tie it into "Event Horizon," and that would have been awesome!

I would have loved to have seen Karl Urban blasting his way through Hell. I can see him covered in offal and gore, bringing his shotgun up to shoot a winged demon in the face, its black viscera and brain matter splattering on Karl as he then proceeds to kick it in the chest, sending it tumbling over a precipice to plummet into a roiling lake of fire. I'm trying to think of a movie that's done anything close to that, and I'm drawing a blank. You'd think that if there was ONE movie that would have jumped on that idea, it would have been "Doom." It's enough to make a guy start writing fan-fiction. Ah well.

I think my favorite thing about "Doom" is the cast. Everyone knows I'm a huge Karl Urban fan, but I like The Rock, too. He's ridiculously entertaining and a legitimately good actor for the stuff he does. If you want him to be a badass, say no more. The man's 6' 4", like 500 lbs of muscle and can squint really well. He can be funny, and he's even got a fairly good dramatic range on display in stuff like "Faster." I don't mean this to sound condescending, but especially for a professional wrestler, the man's a shockingly good actor.

Karl and The Rock work really well together in "Doom." They gave what I found to be surprisingly good dialogue between them a lot more depth than you would expect. The Rock's character Sarge and Karl's character, Reaper, obviously have great respect for each other. When that starts getting interesting is in the back half of the film when Sarge and Reaper start having very different ideas on how to deal with the situation on Mars, because both of them are right in different ways.

Karl should have known The Rock would turn heel. After all, he is a wrestler.

Sarge, being the one in command, is doing precisely what his orders told him to do, even if it means killing everyone there and sacrificing himself and his entire squad if need be. Reaper is more emotional and refuses to go along with the script once Sarge starts issues orders akin to fighting a hangnail by cutting off the arm, very much in a "Let God sort 'em out" way. And what I liked about that was that honestly, Sarge is the one making the most sense.

I'm not saying it's not cruel and terrible or that I could ever do it, but if you were facing a situation with an outbreak that would potentially kill everyone on the planet, and it came down to making a choice between saving every single person regardless of their condition, or making damn sure that there was no way it could get out, and so be it if everyone there dies, you have to admit that the later is the more logical, if admittedly crueler choice. If you really think about it, Sarge, despite turning into the bad guy at the end, is doing far more to save the world than Reaper, our hero is. In fact, by surviving and escaping at the end, he's very likely putting the world in mortal peril.

An action hero surviving an action flick. What a jerk.

The end of "Doom" also has some of the best dialogue between the two as well. My favorite exchange in the movie comes right before their showdown, when they come to the decision that they're probably going to have to kill each other. Sarge asks if Reaper is planning on shooting him, to which Reaper casually replies "I was thinking about it, yeah." It's very John McClane, and it showcases why I love Karl Urban. He can deliver on the action movie lines, and that's no small talent.

That being said, I wasn't a fan of everyone in the movie. Richard Brake as Portman, the impossibly sleazy creep is pretty annoying, and his character doesn't get taken out near quickly enough. Portman is what you would get if Christian Slater and Iggy Pop merged and crapped out a rapist who started doing his best "Perverted Master Roshi" impression. It's unpleasant. Ben Daniels as the super-religious whack job Goat wasn't as annoying because he shut his mouth and wasn't up in everyone's face about it, but like Portman I had a hard time understanding why this guy is on the active duty roster for a Special Forces team.

If you carve a cross into your arm every time you blaspheme, a Section 8 should be an option.

Those were really the only two annoying characters though. The rest were basically stock and unmemorable with no real defining characteristics, and it was easier to know them by their cliche niches than their names. There was The Rookie, The Pervert, The Religious One, The Quiet Ethnic One, and finally The Big Angry Black Guy and The Smaller Friendly Black Guy, or alternatively Bill Duke and LL Cool J. Okay, it's not actually Bill Duke and LL Cool J but the resemblance is uncanny.

That's about the level of depth we're talking about. But it never seemed like an issue to concern yourself with because you knew they were all going to die anyway. That's how these movies roll. And there's nothing wrong with that. I only had three problems the characters, the first being that Porter The Pervert is around way too long. Although I love that during his death scene Sarge, without a second's hesitation, completely annihilates both the monster and Porter with the BFG without bothering to even attempt a rescue of Porter, whom at that point could have easily been potentially still alive.

The second thing was that Mac, The Quiet Ethnic One, does precisely nothing of value, and has but a single line before being randomly decapitated. I felt bad for the actor because he got screwed. At least Sonny Landham got to look badass by cutting himself with a machete.

Not saying it helped matters, but still, that was awesome.

Third, I hated the scientist, Dr. Carmack, played by Robert Russell. This freaking guy was near unwatchable. I know what he was going for, playing a beyond freaked out guy who has lost his mind and is in a constant state of hyperventilation, but he's so damn annoying with it. He's got this thing he does with his tongue darting in and out, and between that and him puffing his cheeks with his rapid fire breathing he looks like a sweaty rodent. About the only cool thing he did was pull off his own ear. That was sweet, but the stupid tongue thing just drove me up the wall. It was the same thing David Tennant did in the forth "Harry Potter" movie. And they get the camera SO close to his mouth while he's doing it. So annoying.

Finally we have the matter of the First Person Shooter sequence, which I've heard many people label as the moment where it finally keeled over and died. This was the final straw for some audience members. This was Fonzie on skis right here. For them, the 5 minutes where we are looking through Reaper's eyes wasn't so much a tribute to "Doom" as it was tea-bagging its corpse.

Oh yeah. Such a betrayal. This looks nothing like "Doom."

Honestly, I think those people are nuts. The FPS sequence for me was possibly the best highlight of the film, if not certainly the most memorable. More than anything in the rest of the movie, that part was the most fun "Doom" got, and I think it could have used a lot more of that hokeyness, because "Doom" should be before anything else, fun. As I understand, an early concept for the movie was to have the entire film be in first person like that. I'm not sure if that would have worked, but I would have loved to have seen it.

Look, I know I'm not going to convince anyone that "Doom" is a good movie. I'm not naive. If you're not into that kind of movie or genre, or if you think it's too big of a betrayal and can't look past its faults, then yeah, it's going to be painful to sit through. But if you're like me, and can see it for what it is, which is a cheesy sci-fi action flick that plays it safe but competently, at the very least you have to admit that it's trying. And for what it set out to do, it succeeded with at the very least a C+.

After all, it could have been worse. It could have been PG-13.

Check and mate, "Doom" haters.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I like "Doom." I like the two leads. I like the look and feel of it. I like that they actually gave a story to what is a game with literally no plot besides "Mars. Demons. Shoot." Is it a great movie? No. Did it ever have a chance to be? Not really. Is it better than your average video game movie? You're damn right it is.

Wrath of The Titans (2012)

For anyone who saw the remake of "Clash of The Titans," they will remember it as a lackluster, boring mess with not nearly enough clashing or Titans. It was more like "Mild Scuffle of The Big Things." There didn't seem to be much room for improvement, either, especially after "Immortals" showed us that for some reason Greek mythology about monsters and Gods in titanic struggles for the Universe is generally really, really dull. I don't know what it is about these movies, but they can't seem to get a decent one going. The best case scenario we could hope for with the "Titans" sequel was a certain level of "not sucking."

And I got just that. It didn't suck. It wasn't that great, but it didn't suck.

MEDIOCRE.

 BECAUSE IF YOU'RE TOO GOOD, THEY'LL EXPECT SOMETHING FROM YOU NEXT TIME.

"Wrath of The Titans" starts off about 16 or so years after "Clash of The Titans," and Perseus has gone back to his life as a fisherman and is raising his son since his wife died off camera in between films. In keeping with the story, the Gods are growing weaker since nobody prays to them anymore, and it's getting to the point where they are half a step away from being mortal and dying.

In their desperation, Hades and Ares come up with a plan to get their immortality back by doing something exceedingly silly like releasing Chronos, the ancient creator of the Gods, so that Chronos might grant them their powers again. And of course, Zeus is the only one who remembers that Chronos had tried to kill them all and destroy the Universe before they imprisoned him. One might cut Hades slack by imaging that it had probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but honestly, when the plan goes belly-up like it obviously would, Hades has nobody to blame but himself.

But he seemed like such a trustworthy fellow...

With Zeus imprisoned, Perseus has to save the day like always, and you can pretty much write the story from there. There are no big plot twists or anything not happening like you'd imagine they would. It's pretty par for the course.

So what is it that makes "Wrath of The Titans" better than "Clash of The Titans?" Well, that's an easy answer: Action. The biggest difference between the two movies is that the sequel actually has a decent amount of it. And while some of the same problems plagued "Wrath" as plagued "Clash," they tended to be less and not as frustrating in nature.

I've said that the first film's biggest problem was that it put Perseus up against creatures that were far too powerful. For that reason, Perseus can't really fight them properly, and has to instead go around looking for a one-hit-kill-loophole to exploit, which makes sense, but it tends to undermine the badassery of the hero. I mean, I'll bet Schwarzenegger would have at least found a way to punch the Kraken in the face.

Ngyaaaaah!!! You kill my fatha!! Eeyaaagh!!! Git to da Pegasus!!!

I seriously need to be in charge of all the movies, but my vision may be too much awesome for the public to handle. Anyways.

The good thing about "Wrath" is that Perseus actually does some fighting against things that aren't that ridiculous for him to take on. I mean, true he does fight Ares, the God of War and win at one point, which while a bit out there at least involved swinging swords, punches and headbutts. That's preferable to holding up a Medusa head and saying "Here, look at this." At least he's doing something.

The casting of "Wrath" is held over from the first movie, with Sam "Oh please James Cameron make Avatar 2 and 3 so people will care about me again" Worthington as Perseus, Ralph Fiennes as Hades, and my personal unapologetic man-crush Liam Neeson as Zeus. They're all pretty much the same as last time, only this time Zeus doesn't whine as much, and Hades doesn't wheeze anymore, so improvement all around on that front. Worthington is still way too English to be Greek.

One notable addition to the cast, however, and by far my favorite part of the movie was Bill Nighy popping in to play a crazy old outcast God, Hephaestus. I swear, I could watch that man act all day long. When he's given an odd, quirky character, he turns in some of the most unique performances of anyone I've ever seen every time he shows up. It's quirky yet never annoying.

And no, he's not "The Science Guy." I'm so tired of having to explain that. Watch "Shaun of The Dead" for crying out loud.

 He's quite alright. He ran it under a cold tap.

There were some problems, naturally. The biggest plot hole of the movie involves the final, ultimate destruction of Chronos, which was well within the God's grasp from the beginning...which begs the question why they never used it to finish him off. The other question that sprang to my mind is why nobody is praying to the Gods anymore after the events of "Clash of The Titans." I mean, that was some heavy stuff. Zeus basically came down and said "LISTEN TO ME OR I'LL KILL YOU." That didn't change any minds?

Oh well. I'm just happy something got punched in the face in this movie.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Wrath of The Titans," for all the good things I've said about it, wasn't a great movie. It was just OK. If you liked "Clash of The Titans" for some weird reason, you'll love this because it improves on it in every way. If you hated "Clash of The Titans," well, this one is better. It's not great, but it's better. Recommended for a rental and lowered expectations.