Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Hi my name is Steve, I'm a 95 year old WWII vet, who slept for 70 years under ice.  I'm now a spy serving under Col. Fury of S.H.E.I.L.D.  This is the story of...

CAPTAIN AMERICA: 
THE WINTER SOLDIER 

STORY

2 years after The Avengers, Steve Rogers has become an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and he leads of team of black ops soldiers called S.T.R.Y.K.E. which includes the Black Widow.  Steve is doing well adjusting to modern life, but does't understand the change of mindset that the government has had.  He eventually comes to trust no one at S.H.I.E.L.D. after a dastardly plot comes to light, and is called a fugitive for a crime he hasn't committed, and he gains a sidekick named Falcon. The moral of the story is, that when you cut off one head, two more shall take it's place. 

CONTENT
There is language, but it's infrequent.  Violence is shown A lot through this film, and it's pervasive and frenetic.  I would go as far to say it's more violent than 2008's The Dark Knight, with more gunfights, deaths, and action sequences, minus the psychotic Joker. 
Black Widow, a character introduced in Iron Man 2, is one of my least favorite avengers, and she has a very prominent role in the story, which she's mainly there to be "SEXY" at certain points.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

It's a different type of film than The First Avenger, with it's more plot focused on action than story.  While this is the definitive best film of phase 2, I don't think that Black Widow: The Winter Soldier has the magic of the first few films in the series(sarcasm). So, should we be looking forward to the Avengers: Age of Ultron next year? I guess, but I'm becoming somewhat weary of the Marvel release schedule, as I felt this film borrowed ideas from other film's, and while cool was kind of uninspired, but still a fun watch.  What makes this film stand out is The Human Torch...umm...Captain America, and his heroic age values.  
7.5 out of 10

DETAILS
STARRING
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
Scarlett Johansson as The Black Widow
Samuel L. Jackson as Col. Nick Fury
Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce 
Sebastian Stan as The Winter Soldier
Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Falcon

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo
Rated PG-13
Published by Paramount
Released April 4th 2014





        

Mortal Kombat (1992)

Fighting, it is the key to our lives...not really, but every once in a while it's fun to crush someone in the glory of battle...if it's not real...


MORTAL KOMBAT

GAMEPLAY
One of my favorite fighting games(of the ones I've played), this include everything you'll ever need to fight-3 buttons and a D-Pad.  The attack buttons, are dodge, punch, and kick, these can be strung together to create a combo, although I've never personally figured this out.  The fights are to the K.O. in the first couple of round's, but in the final round it's to death(hence the title).  The winner is the decided by who is best 2 out of 3, and each round is 99 seconds of brutal fighting.

GRAPHICS and CONTENT
For the time this was released, it was one of the best graphical games ever coded.  The sprites are pixelated images of actual people making it have a more realistic tone.  Much like the Apple v. Samsung debate of today, the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo were head to head in the video game market.  In the original arcade release, Mortal Kombat had a lot of gore, such as the spine rip finishing move(yowzah), but when it was released for the SNES and Genesis, the Content was toned down...a lot.  But later a cheatcode was found that allowed the genesis version to be played with the blood on, making it the overall better version.  A quick fact is that this game inadvertently caused the created the ESRB...to rate the Genesis version M.

CONCLUSION
It's fun, it's violent, but nevertheless...it's a good fighting game.  In the amount of time I played this in the emulator, I never achieved a combo, but I do believe that was due to not knowing what the controls were.  The difference between having the gore on and off is huge, as the whole mood of the game changes.  I think that the "clean" version would be rated T if it was released today.  Overall...

8.5 out of 10  

DETAILS
Released in 1992
Rated M by the ESRB
Developed and Published by Midway
For SNES, GENESIS, and Arcade, with numerous ports to modern consoles.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Space...The Final Frontier.  These are the voyages of the Starship "Enterprise", her 5 year mission-To seek out new life and new civilizations, to explore strange new worlds, to boldly go where no man has gone before?  Unless it's a sequel to a reboot?  
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
So since this review is happening so long after the film is out, i'm going to spoil part of the film by stating that this, unlike the first of the reboot series, this one is a remake. More specifically, a remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. 




STORY
Around a year after the events of "Star Trek", the crew of the enterprise is surveying a class M planet named Nibiru, and when there's a volcano that is about to erupt that will kill everything on the planet, the team put's Mr. Spock inside a volcano with a cold fusion device, but in order to get him out of the volcano, they have to fly the enterprise over the top of the volcano, allowing the native species to see them, thus violating the prime directive.  Captain Kirk's command is revoked for this action, and Spock is resigned to another ship.  Around this time a fugitive named John Harrison instigates a bombing in London on a Starfleet archive, and then flees to the Klingon homeworld of Kronos.  Captain Kirk's Command is re-instated and he takes his crew on a manhunt for John Harrison-the most dangerous adversary the enterprise ever faced, in both the n+ew series and the original series(Hint Hint).


CONTENT
Star Trek has many times been compared to classical music, when compared to the rock n' roll style of star wars.  This changed with Star Trek (2009), so basically the enterprise take many more hits in this film, than it did pre-Search for Spock(Enterprise was blown-up in that one), people being sucked out of the ship while it's at warp, and a mega gunfight with the Klingons(they all die as well).  There's some sexual innuendo, most notably the underwear scene, but all together this makes up for 10 seconds of the film.  Language is the biggest issue of the film all together, as it is all throughout, although not constant.  


CONCLUSION  

As this may not be the best film ever made, and has it's many flaws, it's still one of the better Star Trek adventures of the bunch, (12 films, 500+ episodes).  I personally enjoyed this one more than 2009, but that was due to seeing all of the references to things that happened in the original series.  It's a fun watch, but as I like to say it's a great movie if your a trekkie,  if not, than it's just a good one.


                                8 out of 10


DETAILS
see IMDB