The Time Machine

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is a great book. I've already read this once, but it was back in middle school, and I thought it was about time to try it again. I'm actually really surprised that I could handle it in middle school. The language and concepts in this book are both pretty lofty, and it just seems like the reading level may have been a little high for a middle school student. Which probably explains why I had a completely false memory of the story.

Anyway, if you can't figure out what this book is about, then this review isn't going to help you. But yes, it does involve a time machine. The bulk of the story is told in first person from the perspective of the time traveler, and is basically just a recounting of his adventures. The story-telling is passionate, and a lot of the time traveler's personality is conveyed simply in how he conveys different parts of the story. There are some nice mildly hidden meanings within the story, too, but they are no so convoluted as to make you search high and low for them, which I like. I don't like when a story leaves me to make my own inferences, but do so in such a way that makes every hypotheses feel like a reach. I love finding my own meaning in art, but I don't like feeling like I'm just making it up.

Anyway, The Time Machine is a great read, and it's fairly short (just over a hundred pages, depending on your edition), making it very easy to recommend. Thus:

Verdict: Recommended

Childhood's End

Okay, this is a terrible, off-center picture, but I don't feel like photoshopping this one. 

Anyway, I just finished Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke this morning. It was quite good. I've explained in the Revolver review that I don't like giving synopses, and the same applies to books. The most that I'm willing to say is that it involves extraterrestrial life and how their presence changes humanity. There's a lot more to it than that, but you'll just have to read it to find out. But the story is quite good. The book is also fairly suspenseful, and has a good, unexpected twist towards the end of the story. It's also very well written. Arthur C. Clarke writes his science fiction with a level of intelligence that I've only found to be rivaled by Issac Asimov, and there were several parts of this book that were absolutely gripping. It's a good read, and anyone interested in science fiction (particularly fictional case studies about how extraterrestrial contact would change us) should pick it up.

Verdict: Recommended

The Crazies

I just got back from seeing The Crazies at our local cinema. I'm typically not a huge fan of these sorts of movies, as they're all pretty much the same, but this one wasn't too bad. It was pretty suspenseful, and it had some interesting hooks, but overall it was kinda predictable and straightforward. It was a good time, but there's nothing revolutionary about it. The acting was also pretty competent, and I was worried at first that it was just going to be another zombie movie, but I was pleasantly surprised by the behavior of the monsters in the film.

I'm not a huge fan of "horror" movies in general. I really just don't like jump-scares. I believe that there is a difference between negative and positive tension in films (which is a discussion for another time), and I think that jump-scares are 100% negative tension. I'm more of a fan of psychological horror movies, a few of which I will probably review at some point on here. I like wondering what is going on, not how or when somebody is going to get snatched.

But as far as these sorts of movies go, The Crazies was one of the better ones. It was definitely entertaining, but you really won't be missing a whole lot if you don't watch it.

Verdict: Neutral. You won't be sorry either way.

Revolver

I just watched Guy Ritchie's Revolver, and it was absolutely great. I really, really enjoyed this film. The cover may have you believe that is it, in fact, an action movie. Don't be fooled, though. This is a really twisty, turny, and uniquely interesting crime drama. Yes, there are some action sequences (some really awesome action sequences at that), but the overarching storyline is much deeper than just watching people do awesome things. I don't like giving movie synopses, as I think that it's kind of silly to tell someone what a movie is about after you tell them to go watch it. For movies and games, where somebody will be investing a good amount of time in the product, they make more sense, but for a two hour movie, I don't really see the point. But the movie is very good. It's suspenseful and tense, and the characters, although mostly archetypical, are resounding and interesting. I had the main twist figured out about halfway though the film, but was still hazy on some of the important details, and it was still an absolute blast to watch those details unfold. The movie is rated R, but I'm not really sure why. It didn't really have all that much language, and most of the violence was abstracted. You never actually see anyone get shot or killed; it all takes place just off camera.

But the movie was very good. Definitely check it out.

Verdict: Recommended 

[EDIT]: I recently watched this film again, and the violence and language was worse than I originally thought. So I guess it deserves the R rating after all. But it's still a lot tamer than most of the stuff that's been coming out lately.

Mission statement all up in this ma'.

Yo. I'm sure that most of you reading this right now are coming here from my daily blog. For those of you who are stumbling across this out of random chance, you may find my regular blog here.

I am intending for this blog to just be a review dumping (movies, books, games, music, etc.) of mine. I've been doing reviews of things as they come to me over at my regular blog from time to time, but I think that they kind of break up the pace of my daily random posts, and each day that I post a review ends up being a double post and sometimes things can just get lost in the clamor when you have too much happening on one site.

That was a really long sentence.

*Takes a deep breath*

Anyway, unlike my beverage review, there will be no definite schedule for these reviews. I'm just going to do them as I watch things/finish books/play games/so on and so forth. I'm going to add a box in the sidebar of my daily blog to inform people of the latest reviews, so you can check the daily blog for news on that.

Well...I guess that's about all for now. I intend to have the first review up soon, so check back over the next couple of days.

Later.