Film Review: Supergirl

Holy crap, they made a Supergirl movie? When did this happen? Why did it happen? Sure, I've seen all four of the Salkinds' Superman films (I grew up on the first two; they've been with me my whole life), but for whatever reason, I never knew of this film's existence until recently.

Well, there are reasons why some movies fall into obscurity: Supergirl is pretty silly and stupid. It taps into all the same colorful, cartoony, and corny elements that made Superman III and Superman IV so ridiculous. What action and heroics Supergirl goes through is pretty lame, lacking in any major thrills or spectacle. Special effects are plentiful, but are quite gaudy at times. Above all, the entire film is overshadowed by its constant focus on a sappy romance and, for some odd reason, showcasing witches as the evil villains. Witches...really?

The story for this film is as stupid as they come: the opening scenes are loaded with some of the stupidest and nonsensical exposition ever written, and everything from then on is just one random thing after another. Supergirl herself can be an appealing character, but she comes across as a ditz at times. All the characters are pretty shallow and dumb.

This film has okay, but rarely exceptional, photography and editing. Acting is extremely hammy and over-the-top: Helen Slater is probably the only decent performance here, even though she acts a little ditsy in certain scenes; Faye Dunaway acts like she belongs in the movie Hocus Pocus, while Peter O'Toole acts like a slacker version of Lawrence of Arabia. Writing is nothing to scream about either. This production uses sets, props, costumes, and special effects that are extravagant, but also somewhat cheap and gaudy. Music is not bad though.

Supergirl is to the Superman franchise what Red Sonja is to the Conan movies. Diehard fans might want to give it a rental someday, but everybody else should avoid.

2/5 (Entertainment: Pretty Good | Story: Awful | Film: Poor)

Video Game Review: Mass Effect

Even though intergalactic combat constitutes the most exciting aspects of the gameplay, the original Mass Effect is a role-playing game to the core.  Like other great RPGs, Mass Effect allows you to build your character, customize your abilities, and then the game sends you off on an epic adventure.  The adventure of Mass Effect is one of the best:  once you gain control of the starship Normandy and unlock more of the story, you're given free reign to literally explore the galaxy.  The main storyline constitutes just a few major chapters, pitting you against armies of aliens and synthetic life forms, before building up to an intense climax where the fate of the galaxy is at stake.  Or, you can pursue oodles of side quests sprawled across numerous star systems.  You're free to fly your ship from star to star, surveying planets, resolving crisis situations, responding to distress calls, and fighting more aliens.  You could even blow it all off and just chill out with your crew.  No matter what you choose, the gameplay is addictive, thanks to its sublime combination of action, exploration, and fantastic worldbuilding.

Best of all, the story for Mass Effect is well-built.  It utilizes a very deep mythology, full of distinctive alien races (some new, some ancient, some organic, some robotic), unique planetscapes, and mythical artifacts.  The story starts off with a simple, standard premise, but as the story unfolds, a few significant twists propel the story into the realms of brilliant high-concept sci-fi.  Throughout the journey, you have the choice to play your character really mean, really compassionate, or neutral; any way you play it, Commander Shepard remains an appealing character.  He is ultimately surrounded with other quality characters, if you choose to get to know them.

This game is going on six years old, but it still holds up surprisingly well.  Graphics can be rather rough around the edges, but the game still boasts some impressive textures and some very well-rendered environments.  The actual gameplay works really well; maybe not as smooth as the sequels, but it's still intuitive and easy to play.  Just a few buttons allows you to command an entire squad and employ their special abilities and weapons.  However, I did run across a few silly glitches, with squad members boxing me in or shooting at random spots where they think enemies are.  Graphics rendering can also be a little slow, at least on the Playstation.  Sounds are generally good, although a few spots sounded a little weak.  Voice-acting is fantastic.  The game's music is really cool too.

Mass Effect is easily one of the best games I've played in a while; I've grown to love its fantastic galaxy and its in-depth history.  It only shows its age a little, but the experience of playing through its story and exploring its rich universe is most rewarding.  Highly recommended!

5/5 (Entertainment:  Perfect | Story:  Perfect | Game:  Very Good)

Book Review: Dr. Bloodmoney (Or, How We Got Along After the Bomb) (Philip K Dick)

"It's death, he thought.  Death lighting up spots, burning up the world's life, second by second.  He continued to watch." - Philip K Dick

A post-apocalypse PKD novel? Sounds great, right? The man had previously staggered my imagination with the bleak futuristic cityscapes in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (although my memory of that might be biased from my love of its film adaptation, Blade Runner).  This earlier novel taps into some of the same oddities that populate other PKD novels:  Dr. Bloodmoney is a bizarre world full of mutants, telepathy, telekenesis, and surreal dreams, all set in a post-nuclear-war environment.

Frankly, I found Dr. Bloodmoney to be a rather dry read.  Even though something about Androids and Ubik managed to keep me engaged, I found this book to meander a lot, seeming to lack a coherent direction or central conflict, causing me to lose interest often.  Things did get interesting in parts, especially regarding the phocomelus and homunculus characters, but otherwise the book felt like a bit of a chore.

As mentioned above, I felt the plot for this book was rather weak.  It is full of interesting characters, each with their own distinct voices, personalities, and issues, but the sequence of events felt rather random to me.  With the concepts the book deals with, the whole thing comes off as weird.  Given that this is a story about a community and some supernatural elements, this almost felt like something Stephen King would have written.

However, the writing is pretty solid.  It is all well-written, dialogue is great, descriptions are okay, and the book is generally good without being overly wordy.

Overall, it's not a bad book at all, I just wish it had a clearer story.

3/5 (Entertainment:  Average | Story:  Average | Book:  Pretty Good)

Film Review: Fargo

This is probably one of the most bittersweet pictures I've seen. Bitter, because I always felt it's a rather bleak and disturbing affair, but rendered sweet thanks to the colorful group of characters and their amusing banter (which is nicely emphasized with all those accents they have there, don'tcha know?). Parts of this film are pretty amusing, but parts of it are pretty sad. The whole affair is a funny-but-sad case.

This story is pieced together from a couple of real-life cases, but populated with fictional characters. It's a pretty simple set-up: a man arranges to have his own wife kidnapped, hoping to weasel money from her father in the form of a ransom. What should be a simple and painless situation becomes a total disaster, because nearly every character thinks they know what they're doing and they think they're so hot, but they're all really inept. A series of mishaps and bad decisions causes a cascade of murders and a rather tragic outcome. Well, heck, the final scene is one of the bloodiest and messed-up things conceivable. As crazy and funny as it is to see things deteriorate over stupid mistakes, it is a sobering reflection on crime, greed, and humanity overall. I think the cop sums it up well at the end, for after running through the situation, she asks, "and for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, ya know. Dontcha know that?"

All that being said, I feel the story does take one too many random tangents. A lot of screen time is spent on the cop's personal life, which never really has much relevance to the case. I suppose it's perfect for showing a little more humanity on screen, and to contrast directly with the other guy's family. However, I do believe these extraneous scenes slow down the pacing a lot, and sidetracks from the main story.

This film has good, straightforward photography and editing. Acting is effectively perfect from the whole cast, and the writing is good. This production uses very real-looking sets, props, costumes, and locales. Carter Burwell's music score is haunting, dramatic, and beautiful all at once.

This film has garnered its share of acclaim for darn good reasons. I always believed it could be a tighter film, but it is still well worth seeing for its great cast, its distinctive dialogue (complete with accents), and its ability to instill feelings of amusement and sorrow.

Recommended.

4/5 (Entertainment: Good | Story: Good | Film: Very Good)

Film Review: RiffTrax Live: Starship Troopers

"It's sorta like The Deer Hunter, only with a bunch of perky kids." - RiffTrax commentators

This is my first foray into seeing a film properly heckled and picked apart by a professional team.  I've always heard of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and this RiffTrax stuff, but since they were doing a live presentation on one of my favorite films, I felt it would be worth a cinema trip.

Starship Troopers in itself is a real hoot of a film.  It's very over-the-top in every regard:  the violence is bloody and extreme, the society portrayed is so fanatical that it's ridiculous, and the execution overall is cheesy (perhaps purposefully so).  The cast is not particularly illustrious, and the film is showing its age.  So, yeah, it lends itself pretty easily to mockery.

The RiffTrax group offers a decently hilarious commentary on many things that makes Starship Troopers inherently laughable.  They often fill in the gaps in the dialogue with their own lines, giving hilarious responses to some of the characters' silly lines.  They harp a lot on the actors; especially in making Denise Richards out to be a total ditz, while commenting on her later role in The World is Not Enough.  They've also mocked Casper Van Dien, trying so hard to look handsome, and Neil Patrick Harris, still carrying his Doogie Howser iconography, and Patrick Muldoon, described as the "Rob Lowe on discount." The commentators also made good fun of the film's frequent cliches, especially with the gung-ho dialogue during the war scenes.  They've harped on the repetitiveness of the action scenes, the low-grade special effects, certain logical gaps, some pop culture references, and just about anything else you can think of.

The presentation of this show was generally good, although I felt some of the commentary was drowned out by the movie's louder music, action, and dialogue, so there were a few jokes I missed out on.  And for some odd reason, they brought out something called a "gorilla gram" during the film's nude scenes; obviously a tongue-in-cheek attempt to distract everybody from what was on-screen.  The film is not presented in the best possible video or sound quality, but for this type of show, it hardly matters.

Overall, I laughed quite a bit during this show.  As much as I enjoy Starship Troopers on its own, it is a riot when it's riffed.  For those who love to laugh with folks making fun of a film, this should be a satisfying experience.

4.5/5 (Entertainment:  Very Good | Content:  Very Good | Presentation:  Good)

Video Game Review: inFamous: Festival of Blood

This is a neat little add-on game for inFamous 2, available either on the Playstation Network or as part of the complete inFamous PS3 collection on disc.  Festival of Blood is basically a side story that pits electric superhero Cole MacGrath  against vampires.  Yep, after fighting armies of freakish gangsters, mutated giants, super-duper robots, and gnarly swamp monsters, vampires are now part of inFamous lore.  What will they think of next?

Building on the same engine of inFamous 2, this game plays smooth and fast.  Some things have been tweaked though; when Cole becomes a vampire, pressing the up button on the D-pad now turns you into a swarm of bats that rushes across the map (sadly, that means the precision beam power is gone).  When you use this power, you drain the blood gauge at the corner of the screen, and you will have to frequently bite people or kill vampires to refill it.  Fighting vampires is the big draw here, and they are a challenge; they take a lot of zapping and beatings to fully defeat, and even then, you have to stake them in the heart, or else they'll just get back up and harass you some more.  I found a lot of the enemies to be a little annoying, due to their resilience and constant teleporting.  This game is made to be short and small-scale, so you don't earn experience points for your progress.  Your powers unlock by completing challenges, rather than assigning points of any kind.  These aspects make the game a little less inviting, since you don't really have that much control over your character, and there's little motivation to do much beyond the basic storyline.  The only thing to really shoot for here is getting trophies (which are easy), and playing through the story.

The story for this game is generally okay, but nothing to really scream about.  It's certainly not as brilliant as the first game, or as in-depth as the second.  It's basically just a yarn with a straightforward objective.  There are only, like, five or so story missions, and it'll only take a few hours to beat it.  The final boss is surprisingly easy too.  It's a short and shallow affair, but it it notable for being able to tie in vampire legend in with the world of inFamous.

A lot of the game's strengths will be the same as with inFamous 2.  As noted above, some features have been changed or truncated to limit the gameplay.  The game even cuts off most of New Marais, so that you only have the first island to play through.  Graphics are still good, the levels receive a nice gothic make-over, and some cool music is added in.

It's a short and forgettable expansion pack, but inFamous fans might get a kick out of it.

3.5/5 (Entertainment:  Good | Story:  Average | Game:  Pretty Good)

Manga Review: Ghost in the Shell (Shirow Masamune)

"It is the near future.  The world has become highly information-intensive, with a vast corporate network covering the planet, electrons and light pulsing through it.  But the nation-state and ethnic groups still survive.

And on the edge of Asia, in a strange corporate conglomerate-state called Japan..." - Shirow Masamune

More and more, as information technology continues to evolve at accelerated rates, I often wonder how much prophesy there actually is in the Ghost in the Shell saga. Originally published in 1989, under the title of Kōkaku Kidōtai (Mobile Armored Riot Police), this manga presents a complex, convoluted, confusing world where minds and machines often merge, human flesh is often augmented with cybernetics, and people often fight and die for the pursuit of information.  The manga follows a unit of highly-trained and well-equipped special forces operatives:  Public Security Section 9.  Their mission is to hunt cyberterrorists with extreme prejudice.  This comic covers several episodes, many of which reveal startling implications and revelations concerning the evolution of technology.

This manga definitely offers its share of thrills and action.  It can get fairly pulpy, but it's still a very high-brow thriller with heavy emphasis on politics and technobabble.  It can actually be a bit dry and confusing with such in-depth concepts - it can be quite a challenge to understand the nuances of this futuristic Japanese society, with its multiple ministers and departments all scheming and pulling off their own covert ops and dirty double-dealings.  It's even more challenging to comprehend the technical aspects - terms like "barriers," "autistic mode," "ghosts," "dummies," and many more are tossed around liberally.  Even the core premise - having cyberbrains that can connect directly to computers and the Internet - is a trippy concept, and the book takes every advantage to explore its many implications.  Surely, if you can connect your consciousness to the world wide web, you can pull up all the information you want, track down anybody you want, hack into any thing - even hack into other people, or perhaps "fuse" with their consciousness.  As the book goes on, things ultimately become highly metaphysical, with the concept of an actual artificial intelligence born and evolved in the web.  With concepts like these, GITS is every bit as smart and prophetic as the works of William Gibson or Phillip K. Dick.

Fortunately, the comic is never a bore, for it is evenly-paced and it never lingers long on the heavy stuff.  In fact, I was surprised to find a lot of cheeky humor littered throughout the comic, keeping the tone balanced.  It is populated with colorful, fun, and badass characters; they aren't tremendously deep, but they are an endearing bunch.  The stories seem pretty random, but they build up some interesting connections that lead to an interesting conclusion.

This comic features great artwork.  Designs for the characters, settings, vehicles, machines, and weapons are awesome, and everything is well-drawn.  The actual writing is pretty good; I probably would have preferred a little more exposition to sort out the hardcore politics and technical stuff, but as it is, it definitely feels authentic and well-researched.

Ghost in the Shell handles some seriously fascinating concepts.  With computers constantly becoming faster and more intelligent, some of the ideas in GITS may become a reality some day.  What's really neat is that GITS is not a grim future necessarily; scary perhaps, but the comic never really condones or condemns cybernetics.  It shows what futuristic law enforcement, espionage, and terrorist-hunting could look like, in addition to showing the evolutionary direction of human technology, and perhaps the human spirit.

Recommended.

4/5 (Entertainment:  Good | Stories:  Pretty Good | Book:  Perfect)

   

Film Review: Elysium

This film represents a natural evolution of the rough, intense, deeply sociopolitical textures that Neill Bloomkamp previously worked with in District 9.  Many comparisons can be made between D9 and Elysium; they're both particularly ugly films that face certain ugly truths through the thin veil of sci-fi, and they're both set in some of the trashiest slums ever filmed. At the same time, Elysium borrows a lot from the anime Battle Angel; both are stories in which the rich and poor are separated between the Earth and some high-flying city, and the characters fight their way to the top with some help from cybernetics. There are also individual scenes that reminded me of other things: one scene reminded me of Total Recall, the main henchman was like an evil version of Metal Gear's Solid Snake, I couldn't help but to think of the Ghost in the Shell saga and the works of William Gibson with all the high-tech surveillance ops and brain-hacking.

Despite being somewhat unoriginal, Elysium is every bit as awesome and awe-inspiring as I expected. The action hits hard and rough, with frequent fights and shoot-outs, all made even more explosive and incredible with a plethora of futuristic gear. The film can get pretty gruesome, for there are a few exploding bodies and painful-looking injuries, but it's still nowhere near as gnarly as District 9. Some incredible slow-motion shots and gorgeous special effects make the excitement stand out even more. In between the action scenes, the film maintains even pacing with strong conflicts and quality visuals.

As noted above, the story covers pretty standard sci-fi ground. It does employ some interesting concepts though: the actual Elysium space station is a magnificent utopic space habitat (a Stanford Torus design), the likes of which is often envisioned by futurists and sci-fi authors, but has never actually been produced on the big screen for some odd reason. The world of Elysium is visually fantastic and really cool.

The actual plot is solidly-built, with its foundations firmly set in conflict and action. It takes some really interesting twists and turns; the climax is a little predictable, but everything leading up to it is a real roller-coaster ride. Characters aren't particularly deep; the villains are especially one-dimensional. However, the film does its best to humanize the heroes and the poor people they fight for, to best emphasize its key themes. The themes are not all that subtle, and the political stance is not something I personally agree with, but I appreciate the effort and nobility of the film, as it underscores such hot topics as immigration, healthcare, and class warfare.

This film uses pretty rough and gritty photography and editing. The camera does shake around a bit during some scenes, but it didn't agitate me nearly as much as I thought it would: I could see the action perfectly well, and I thought a lot of the camera angles and compositions were cool. Acting is alright: Matt Damon is a pretty generic action hero here, Sharlto Copley (hey, the dude from District 9) is flipping crazy, and Alice Braga offers the most touching performance of the lot. Surprisingly, Jodie Foster is the weakest link, thanks to her butchery of the French accent. Writing is not bad. This picture has really cool and real-looking sets, props, costumes, and special effects. Music is pretty good too.

I felt this was a perfectly satisfying and awesome sci-fi adventure, despite a few quibbles. District 9 remains a fresher, more original, and more deeper experience; I think it's because it offered something nobody had really seen before. Elysium, on the other hand, offers something we've all seen before, so it hasn't struck as hard with audiences. Personally, I think I prefer Elysium over D9, for having a more complex plot, more incredible action, and more far-out ideas. Both would make a great double-feature, and I do hope director Neill Bloomkamp continues to pump out similarly raw and uncompromising pictures. If you're a big sci-fi fan like me, Elysium is definitely worth seeing; I'd recommend it as a rental to casual viewers.

5/5 (Entertainment: Perfect | Story: Very Good | Film: Very Good)

Film Review: District 9

We’ve all seen sci-fi films and stories before, where aliens come to Earth and lay down their dominance through superior technology and intellect. But in the case of District 9, we have something else entirely; it’s a rough and brutal film, where aliens are not as the sleek, powerful, awe-inspiring beings from heaven. Instead, these aliens are wretched, and humans treat them like dirt. Therein lies the strength and power of the film; it serves to showcase modern issues concerning refugee camps, shanty-towns, and social corruption, while simultaneously demonizing humanity. With themes like these, District 9 proves to be a truly unique, sobering, and thought-provoking experience.

The film's first half is purely rough documentary-style, with interviews and news footage cut in throughout. Then the second half resembles an actual film with lots of action (and some very gnarly violence).  The movie runs at an even pace, and it is consistently entertaining throughout.  It does a great job of using the mock interviews and footage to introduce the concepts and all the background information, before progressing into an intense and explosive climax.  In spite of this, the plot is well-structured.

Within this framework, the story is quite decent.  It starts off a little random, but the film sharpens its focus as it goes on, building a solid narrative from its characters.  The characters aren't particularly likable, but they serve to reinforce the stark themes concerning corruption.  It gets very interesting to see the main character mutate into one of the "Prawns," practically forcing him to feel the aliens' plight.  In this manner, the audience also comes to feel the plight of District 9.  These themes and allegories aren't particularly subtle, but they are noble.

Photography is solid half of the time and pretty shaky at other times; it’s good all around, and there are plenty of invoking images.  Acting and writing are not bad.  Production design features some great sets, props, costumes, creature effects, vehicles, and weapons. Music is decent too.

District 9 is one of the most uncompromising sci-fi pictures to date; it's an ugly film that forces us to behold the ugliness of the slums, and the inhumanity of just sweeping it all under the rug for a profit.  The gnarly settings, bloody violence, and rough footage may not sit well with many viewers, but if you can handle it, it's a must-see.

Recommended!

5/5 (Experience:  Perfect | Story:  Very Good | Film:  Very Good)

Film Review: Tank Girl

First thing's first: the film's opening credits montage is pretty darn cool. With the rock music and the flashing comic-book images, I was lured in with the promise of a truly punk-spirited post-apocalypse adventure.

Well, the film delivers, in the sense that it's set in a post-apocalyptic world, and there's adventure. This is also a very wacky film, with cartoony comic relief, cheesy action, and a very cheap production value. The good thing about this film is that the main character's attitude is so wild and fun that accentuates the goofy nature of the film, and delivers the punkish vibe I was expecting. Everything else, however, tends to be rather ridiculous. It makes for a weirdly mixed experience overall.

This story is pretty basic stuff, lacking in depth or emotion. The plot wanders all over the place, lacking in specific direction. Chances are that you've seen better structure and deeper meaning in other great sci-fi films that bear all the same plot elements and characters. Tank Girl squanders its storytelling potential in favor of just being kooky.

This film uses pretty standard photography and editing. Comic book images are cut in at various places. A couple of scenes are animated, and those are probably the coolest parts. Acting is extremely cheesy and over-the-top; Lori Petty uses such cheese to craft an deliciously fun and hip performance, while a very young Naomi Watts plays a perfect square, and Malcolm McDowell does his usual schtick. Writing is pretty simple-minded. This production has sets, props, and costumes that are so cheap-looking, colorful, and clean; the film almost looks like what you'd get if Pee Wee Herman's playhouse survived the apocalypse and went just slightly feral. Music is alright; the score is okay, and a number of good songs are used to give the film a little more oomph to the punk factor.

Much like the actual tank in the film, Tank Girl is a cheap-looking, colorful, gaudy, haphazard assortment of random parts and cute decor. It's definitely cheesy, but it is pretty fun that way regardless. I'd say it's perfectly fitting next to other weird, cheap, and cheesy flicks like the Super Maro Bros movie, or Howard the Duck. If those appeal to you, then Tank Girl might be up your alley. Otherwise, move along, nothing to see here.

3/5 (Entertainment: Good | Story: Poor | Film: Poor)

Film Review: 10,000 BC

Going way back in time - long before the rise of civilizations, long before the bronze age, and long before ancient history as we know it - this film brings to life a prehistoric world of rampaging wooly mammoths, wicked saber-tooth tigers, giant birds, and warring native tribes. It is a brisky-paced, visually fantastic epic with plenty of action and peril.

At the same time, it is pretty much more of the same. But while common sword-and-sandal epics like Centurion, The Pathfinder, and the various Conan movies make the effort to be grim and bloody, 10,000 BC takes the silly, cheesy, popcorn-movie path. It's a formula that Roland Emmerich works with very well, but it's not a particularly good formula for this genre. Most of the dialogue in 10,000 BC is pretty bad, a lot of scenes are incredulous (some are even laughable), and the film overall just looks too slick for its own good.

This story covers pretty standard epic-movie ground. It's actually the same type of story as Apocalypto; both movies involve a tribe being subjugated by a superior race and marched to a more advanced city as slaves. But while Apocalypto was purposefully violent, grim, and authentic-looking, 10,000 BC is the exact opposite; it's bloodless PG-13 fare, with colorful scenery and formulaic heroes and villains. Characters don't really stand out at all, even though the film does its best to invoke themes of destiny and heroism. In the end, there's nothing much enlightening to this film; it's strictly a light and shallow adventure.

This film employs some good, solid photography and editing. As for most everything else, I can't help but to shake the feeling that this is 21st century people in 21st century make-up and clothes in 21st century sets with 21st century special effects and 21st century props, trying so hard to replicate a prehistoric look and style. Despite all the neat-looking designs, every set, prop, costume, and special effect just looks so clean and slick that it never really looks right; the effect overall is like seeing a museum diorama brought to life. This even extends to the acting and writing; everybody does their best to sound and act like natives, but the dialogue is so simple and modern that it never really works, and the performances are pretty iffy. On the plus side, the music is alright.

I wonder if 10,000 BC would have been awesome under the direction of Mel Gibson, Marcus Nispel, Peter Jackson, Ridley Scott, Zack Snyder, or any number of other good directors of epic films. Heck, I even wonder what this would have been like under Terrence Malick. But with Roland Emmerich behind the wheel, this is straight-up light and silly. If you're really curious, or a big fan of historic epics, then this might be worth a rental, but otherwise, average audiences can find better.

3/5 (Entertainment: Good | Story: Average | Film: Marginal)

Film Review: Battlefield Earth

"When we attacked your planet, all your soldiers and all their advanced technology could only put up a measly nine-minute fight, before they were exterminated.  Which is why, man is an endangered species." - John Travolta

Having been a sci-fi fan all my life, I read L. Ron Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth in high school, and got myself thoroughly psyched for its film adaptation.  At the time, I was never really all that interested in things like plot holes, logic, or in-depth storytelling; I just wanted to see cheap CGI and random stuff blowing up.  So naturally, the film delivered!

The older and wiser I get, the more I see how bad the Battlefield Earth film really is.  However, I never found it boring; the film has its share of action and spectacle, especially in the last act, which features cool harrier jets flying around shooting things up! The film suffers a little drag in the middle, but otherwise, I always found it fairly engaging.

The story is not a bad adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard's book, per se.  A lot of the film's scenes and concepts are translated effectively from the novel.  That being said, the film only covers the first half of the book, and it does muck things up a bit; the film's exposition is scatter-brained, and completely lacking in some areas, making most scenes appear random and lacking in logic.  The film never really explains that Psychlo air explodes upon contact with radiation, so the ending doesn't really make sense.  The film never explains much about the Psychlo corporate system or their obsession for gold.  The film shows a little blip about Jonnie's father, but it serves little purpose.  Worst yet, the film takes some really stupid shortcuts:  it takes a huge suspension of disbelief when the humans use a flight simulator to become avionic experts.  With all the stupid things the humans do to achieve victory, the film makes the Psychlos out to be even more stupid, as they sit back and let themselves be routed.

All minor nitpicks aside, the film's story has a good enough structure, but the characters are as shallow as they can be.

The filmmakers went really happy with the Dutch camera angles; nearly every shot is angled or tilted in some really funky way.  Aside from that, the shots are pretty solid, and editing is okay.  Acting is pretty silly:  Barry Pepper probably offers the best and most earnest performance here, but can only do so much with what he's given.  John Travolta is the big star here, but his performance is infamously cheesy.  Writing generally gets the gist of the original novel down, but flounders with the smaller details, rendering the plot rather flimsy and stripping away the power of the dialogue.  This production uses some rather cheap sets, props, costumes, and special effects, although at times it doesn't show as badly.  I think this film actually has decent designs and a very interesting color scheme, but it also tends to be a bit gaudy at times.  Music is not bad.

Battlefield Earth is an awesome novel that deserves to be an awesome film.  This film gets so much right and so much wrong at the same time; as a fan of the book, and a sci-fi fan in general, I found the film enjoyable enough, and I was hoping for a sequel to tackle the last half of the novel.  Obviously, that'll never happen.  The best I can hope for now is a remake that could to perfect justice to the story.  As it is, this film will suffice as the ultimate guilty pleasure.

3/5 (Entertainment:  Good | Story:  Marginal | Film:  Poor)

Film Review: Wing Commander

Space battles! Ah man, I can't ever get enough of them.  Some of the coolest moments in film and TV have beautiful starfields and nebulae with giant starships and fast fighters blasting each other to hell with lasers, torpedoes, and other far-out weaponry.  Cinema has been blessed with many great space battles in the Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Starship Troopers franchises.  Unfortunately, that's as good as it gets; there aren't that many movies that really show space warfare, and I personally wish there were more.  This is probably why I turn to Wing Commander once in a while.

The sole appeal to Wing Commander will be its space battles and special effects.  They aren't that great per se; the graphics are fairly low-tech and haven't aged well.  Regardless, the actual battles are fairly cool, with some nicely colorful backdrops, cool-looking ships, and plenty of explosions and laser beams flying around everywhere.

The rest of the movie is comprised of some of the purest and densest cheese.  It's a light and fluffy film, full of playful banter and juvenile characters; it makes for an entertaining flick in its own right, but it does not leave any lasting impact, and will likely repulse many viewers.

I've never played the original Wing Commander video games, but I have no doubt that they probably have a better story and more immersive universe than this film.  This film covers a pretty standard story, with stuff we've seen before in shows like Battlestar Galactica.  There's nothing much new to seeing space-faring pilots fighting aliens, getting involved with each other, breaking the rules, and inevitably having to make sacrifices.  With the film's lightweight tone, none of it bears any weight.  The film also never lets the audience get to know the characters beyond the surface level.  We also never get to know much about the universe, aside from the fact that there are aliens, there are humans in spaceships, and they're at war.

This film uses pretty standard photography and editing.  Acting is nothing worth screaming about:  Freddie Prinze Jr. looks and acts very juvenile, and Matthew Lillard even moreso.  Saffron Burrows is easily the bright spot here, not only in terms of looks and that awesome accent of hers, but also in taking the role a little more seriously than everybody else.  Writing is average at best.  This production has pretty weak-looking sets, props, and costumes.  The Kilrathi look especially awful toward the end, appearing like giant plastic cat-people.  Special effects are used liberally - there's even one totally useless Matrix effect, where the camera spins around the characters while they're in slow-motion.  As mentioned above, the space battles are cool, but still fairly cheap.  Music is not bad though.

Not a great film by any means, and certainly not the best space combat movie ever made.  But in a genre that's rather lacking, I find Wing Commander fun.  If you enjoy epic space combat like I do, then this is worth renting once.

3/5 (Entertainment:  Good | Story:  Average | Film:  Marginal)

Film Review: Pulp Fiction

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you." - Ezekiel 25:17

Pulp: the word itself conveys a sense of roughness, grittiness, blood and gore, and some serious edge. Pulp fiction refers to a type of literature printed on cheap wood pulp paper, often telling violent or offensive stories. The film Pulp Fiction recycles the style and content of the pulp magazines of old, to produce a fresh new series of bloody crime sagas. Pulp Fiction is very liberal with its violence - going so far as having good guys, bad guys, and innocent bystanders getting shot up without any legal consequences. The film is also very liberal with its bad language - there are F-bombs and sexual dialogue galore. Parts of the film are pretty shocking. Make no mistake, there is definitely a lot of pulp in Pulp Fiction.

Beneath its blood-soaked surface, the film can be surprisingly light and upbeat, thanks to its playfully witty dialogue and constant stream of ironic situations. It is a comedy at its core - not a comedy that ever makes me laugh out loud per se, but there are plenty of memorable and amusing lines throughout. Above all, it's just funny the way things turn out in this film. Seemingly unrelated characters run into each other, crazy stuff happens, and the outcome can be quite surprising at times.

That being said, I've always felt this film has a pretty weird and random series of stories. It's a series of nested short stories - one story starts, then another, then another, then it goes back to the previous one, until finally connecting back to the scene in the film's opening. The narrative is purposefully mixed-up, jumping around a few different characters with their own situations, which ultimately connects to each other. Each story is pretty interesting though: the bulk of the film focuses on a pair of hitmen, who terrorize and murder some dudes to retrieve a mysterious briefcase. This story is ultimately interrupted by the next, in which one of the hitmen takes the crime boss' wife out, and interesting occurrences take place (including some of the awesomest dancing ever). My favorite of the lot is the episode involving the golden watch, in which a boxer tries to flee from town to evade the boss' wrath, but has to go back to retrieve his father's pocketwatch. Crazy things ensue. The film's last stretch returns to the briefcase situation, in which even crazier things ensue, and the characters contemplate the greater meaning of everything that's happened.

There is a method to the madness, and it works sublimely. With constant biblical references and quotes, the film digs up some subtle themes regarding life and morality. The entire film illustrates the futility of a life of crime; only a few characters escape unscathed, thanks to whatever redemption they manage to find for their wrongdoings, but most everybody else suffers a tragic end from their own wrongdoings. In the end, I felt this film underscored a strong message about living the good life, especially in the shadow of organized crime (which is effectively demonized). Jules says it the best when he says, "The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd."

This film uses pretty solid photography and interesting editing. I feel it captures the ambiance of the locales extremely well. Acting is strong: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, and Uma Thurman are all striking in their respective roles. Writing shows excellent wit, with its plethora of great lines and conversation, and great nuance, with its plotting and narrative. This production has very real-looking sets, props, and costumes. Music is really hip too.

Pulp Fiction is a pretty weird and violent animal of a film, but it seems to get better the more I see it. If you can stomach the pulp, then it's certainly a must-see.

4.5/5 (Entertainment: Good | Story: Very Good | Film: Very Good)

Video Game: Gameplay Tips for Infamous

Infamous is one awesome game where you use electric superpowers and choose to be either a superhero or a supervillain. However, all the power in the world means jack squat if you don't know how to use it. This game can be challenging, to the point of aggravation. It will take hours to traverse across the map and fight bad guys all along the way. Having played the game twice now, I've found that the following practices and techniques can turn this game into a rather easy and enjoyable affair.

Less yapping, more zapping!

IGN Articles
PS3 Trophy Guide
Infamous Wiki

General Tips

• Like many of my favorite games, this is an exploratory open-world setting. After the first mission or so, you'll be given free-reign over Empire City. Each island unlocks after key events in the story, but you will be free to run around all parts of the unlocked islands to find a vast amount of collectables, side missions, and "dead drops." There are huge advantages to finding the blast shards, which will give you more battery cells and a slight experience bonus. Doing the side missions will not only net you more experience and kills, but will liberate the islands little-by-little, and drive away all the crazy gang members. Finding all the dead drops, however, won't earn you much of a reward, outside of a trophy and some mildly-interesting background information.
• Finding the blast shards can be a royal pain. They are everywhere - something like 300 in total - but finding every single one will take some serious time and devotion. Fortunately, it is easy to find most of them; you can just push down on the L3 button and look for the blue dots on the minimap. If you're looking for every single one, it might behoove you to sweep through each unlocked island block-by-block, finding and collecting every shard you see. Online maps may be able to help you too.
• Like I said before, the dead drops don't do much, but if you really have a burning desire to find them all, they're easy enough to find. When you push down on L3, a little gray circle appears on the minimap that'll indicate the direction of the closest satellite dish. You'll know you're close to it when you hear its respective sound effect (a bunch of beeps and noises).
• There is a caveat to doing the side missions. If you complete all the side missions and take over every part of every island all at once, you'll make it nearly impossible to complete all the stunts and earn all the combat-specific trophies. If you're aiming to complete these trophies, you will want to have an abundance of enemies around. At some point, you will need to blast three of them off of a rooftop, or kill so many from a moving train; it's much easier to complete these tasks when there are still bad guys running around everywhere. It does get annoying when you're always getting shot at in every street block, but it's worth putting up with to get the stunts and combat trophies in the long run. After completing those, then you can hack away at all the side missions.
• Toward the end of the story, you may find yourself hard-pressed to rack up enough experience points to unlock your powers (this is especially challenging for getting the trophies for buying all good or all evil powers). Story missions often give you loads of decent experience points, but side missions help too. If you're at the final mission and want to unlock those last few powers before beating the story (which, in turn, could require thousands of xp), I found that you can farm for xp by doing side missions over and over again. To unlock the last bolt upgrade, I actually played a side mission repeatedly where I had to destroy a tar truck. You can't replay completed side missions, so when I saw I played this repeatedly, I mean I purposefully died and restarted the mission. This truck always had an escort of RPG-wielding bad guys and a conduit, so killing all of them over and over again netted at least 100 xp or more each time. And since these guys respawned every city block, I just followed the tar truck and killed bad guys until I inevitably died, taking too many shots in the chest or something. Xp earned during this mission never went away, so it just kept building, until I got the 12000 points I needed.
• Throughout the game, you'll often have to make the choice between being good and being evil. You could flip-flop all you want, but it's strongly NOT recommended. If you want to unlock the right powers and earn the right trophies, you'll have to decide early on if you want to be good or evil, and stick with that decision all the way through. A few mistakes won't hurt much, but the major story-based decisions should be consistent all the way through. There are naturally advantages to either side; being good will earn you xp bonuses for healing people, and you'll be loved, whereas if you're evil you can cause all the collateral damage you want without a care in the world. The actual narrative is generally the same for either path.
• There's not much else to this game; just run across the map from one exclamation point to the other to play through the story, and you'll beat it in a week or so.

The Hardest Parts

• Whether you play this game on normal or hard, there are a few tricky spots in the story-based missions that you'll need to be careful with, because the bad guys will be relentless and victory will be harder to achieve.
• The Bus Escort:  Playing this level is a royal pain.  In fact, I believe most every escort mission in every game out there is a royal pain.  But the bus level here is especially painful, because gangstas will come out of the woodwork with RPGs at every corner, threatening to blow your bus sky high.  Playing this level on hard, however, I found that it can be a surprisingly easy affair.  The trick is, jump off the bus any time you see red blips appearing on the minimap.  Enemies will then focus on you, rather than the bus, and if you do this frequently enough, there will only be a few enemies to deal with at a time.  This gets nearly impossible when you cross the bridge, but the two factions will fight amongst themselves, so you should be able to get by unscathed as long as you don't engage them.  You will still need to clear a path and deflect the rockets though.  After crossing the bridge, continue to take out bad guys little-by-little, jumping off and on the bus as necessary.  Be sure to drain power from the bus when you're low, and keep and eye on the bus' status on the upper-right corner of the screen.
• Powered-Down Areas:  When powering up the different islands of Empire City, you will want to reach the manhole as quickly as possible, but there may be a huge amount of bad guys swarming around the area.  It seemed especially challenging in the Warren.  My recommendation is to use the rooftops and train tracks as often as you can, for they will keep you safe (at least somewhat) from any turrets.  If you're playing for evil karma, you can always bio-leech your enemies for more power (well, heck, you could bio-leech as a good guy too and just make up for it later).  Otherwise, you'll have to use your power sparingly.  If you are running on the ground level, the alleyways can provide more cover from the enemies, whereas open areas will leave you vulnerable.
• The Prison Yard:  Probably the longest, toughest, craziest fight of the whole game.  It's set up like you're protecting Alden, but fortunately, there's no gauge or indicator concerning the prison's health or anything; you just have to take out all the bad guys (or at the least, the last two giant conduits that come barging through).  You will have a few platforms of infinite energy to use, so make the most of it and spam the heck out of grenades and megawatt hammers.  You may have to move around a lot, especially in the last part, to avoid getting swarmed, and to keep some distance between you and the giant conduits.  You don't want them to get too close, or else they'll step on you.  I found that I could run around the prison's entrance for additional cover; Zeke will cry about it, but as long as you don't leave the area totally, it should be fine.
• The Hunt for the Ray Sphere:   Tricky only because there will be RPG-wielding bad guys everywhere.  Fortunately, a lot of them are terrible shots, but it'll still behoove you to deflect the rockets and take out the enemies when you can.  The best that I can recommend here is to keep on deflecting, and drain power from your platform often.

• Boss Fights can be a bit of a pain too, so here's some info on how to deal with them:
• Sasha:  After making your way through the underground tunnels and liberating a few hostages, you'll have to fight this weird seductress named Sasha, and it will seem a bit annoying at first.  You'll be plopped in the middle of a lake of the weird black goo, which you'll want to avoid by staying on the concrete areas.  Sasha attacks with a blast that can send you flying backwards; it can be easily avoided by staying in motion and jumping from place to place.  At certain points, she will also summon the weird ghost-like Reapers, but they can be dispelled easily with a few blasts.  Toward the end of the battle, she'll also summon worm-like things that shoot orange rockets, so it's best to shoot them down as soon as you can.  Upon avoiding all that, you can defeat Sasha by blasting the heck out of her when she's not moving.  Eventually, after so much damage, she'll kneel and a green bubble will appear around her; that's when you run up to her and start a QTE, in which you smash the X button and move the paddle in the direction of her head.  You'll need to do this a few times to fully defeat her.
• Alden:   After traversing across the ruined bridge, you'll eventually have to contend with Alden in a big metal conduit thing.  The power conduit will throw some balls of rubble at you; these can be easily deflected back at it.  It will also shoot some flechettes, which can be pretty devastating; you'll need to take cover behind the barriers and use the shield power until it stops.  In between attacks, blast the sucker as often as you can; little explosions all over the thing will indicate a good hit.  You can use the small lights in the four corners of your area to recharge.  After a while, the conduit will also throw fire out at you, which can kill you easily if you're not careful.  When you see the thing powering up to shoot fire at you, it's best to refocus your attention on the ground, and run away from where the flames are going to land.  If you keep all of this in mind all at once, you can develop a pretty steady rhythm of attacking, deflecting, attacking, hiding, attacking, running, recharging, attacking, etc until the level finally ends.
• Kessler:  This frakking guy will seem impossible at first.  He attacks with devastating beams of power, an earthquake ability, a punch that blows the air around, a power that can pick you up and toss you around like a rag doll, and he shoots little orange orbs out of him that blow up.  If you can even get to the end of the fight, he'll also summon those god-awful flying robot things.  If you try to bum-rush him, he'll actually be harder to kill.  The trick to this fight is to actually focus more on dodging the attacks.  You can jump to avoid the earthquake as it ripples outward (and if those ghost things appear, just zap them to make them disappear).  When Kessler does his super-duper lightning bolt attack, just do a rolling dodge (pressing the O button while pushing the paddle to the side), to avoid each strike.  If you dodge three or four of these in a row, Kessler will kneel for a brief moment; that's when you throw a grenade into his face! He'll still be quick to move, so it's ideal to attack him as soon as he stops for that brief respite.  When you see Kessler zipping around in front of you, be prepared for a fast rolling dodge, or else he'll use that air-punching power that takes away a good chunk of your life.  Avoid the orange orbs, if he spits them out, and don't worry about getting thrown around, since that power doesn't really take away that much of your life.  As far as the robots go, take them out as quickly as you can; Kessler won't do much when the robots are buzzing around, but he won't be idle for long.  The key is to keep avoiding his attacks until he kneels; if you seize that opportunity over and over again, his health will drop little by little, until he finally dies! Then, be prepared for the awesomest twist ending a video game can offer (save for Bioshock:  Infinite)!

Trophy Hunting
Infamous is one of the most do-able platinum trophies out there, but it will require quite a bit of time and effort.  You will need to do at least two playthroughs to get both the good and evil story decisions and powers.  One of these playthroughs will need to be on hard.  You will need to be careful to play as strictly good or strictly evil, and you need to be careful not to miss any opportunities for unique combat or stunt situations.

• Playing through the story as good or evil will unlock a number of bronze and silver trophies automatically.  Beating Sasha earns you a silver trophy.  Making good or evil decisions at key moments earns a few bronze trophies (on a second playthrough, you'll need to make the opposite choices to get the opposite trophy).  Beating the game on hard gets you a nice juicy gold trophy.  Of course, maxing out your powers and karma earns trophies too.  Overall, just playing the game in full will get you at least 50% or 60% of everything.
• Beating the side missions frees up territory in Empire City, so for some of the silver trophies, you'll need to liberate all of the islands by doing EVERY side mission.  If you blast through them all as they unlock, you can take it in stride and systematically liberate the city by the time you reach the final story missions.  However, as noted above, you might want to keep a few parts unmolested, to work on the stunts.  Note that doing karma-related missions will give you a choice of one or the other; if you play a good mission, it locks out the evil one, and vice-versa.  In cases like this, you'll only need to do one or the other, the game will not expect you to do both.  Be sure to complete the mission that matches your karma, so you'll unlock all your karma-related powers.
• Finding all the dead drops is do-able without a guide, simply by following the gray indicator that appears on your minimap every time you ping the area with L3.
• Finding all the blast shards is do-able as you run around everywhere and ping the area with L3.  If you do need a guide or map to find all these collectables, one can be easily found online.
• "Frequent Flyer" should unlock naturally, as you float around the city with your static thrusters.  If all else fails, you can always climb some tall buildings, jump off, and float around for 5 km.
• "Hotfoot" came very easily for me as well, grinding on the train lines for 25 km.  If you're missing this trophy, be sure to jump on a train track in a powered-up district, and grind on it in a constant loop until the trophy unlocks.  It will take a while.
• "Electric Hobo" came easily for me as well.  If you don't get this from doing the story or side missions that involve riding trains, then just jump on top of a moving train and stay there for a while.
• Purchasing every good or every evil power will require a good amount of xp (earned either by doing loads of missions, or killing enemies over and over again), completing the karma-related missions (stick with all good or all evil, because there are exactly 15 good and 15 evil missions, and you need them all on one side or the other to unlock their respective power), and playing through the story.  You might want to focus on buying up all the karma powers first, before upgrading such things as thunder drop or draining or whatnot.
• "Casey Jones" took a while for me to get.  There are just a few missions in the game where you ride a train; be sure to blast as many bad guys as you can while you're doing those missions, from on top of the train.  You could kill yourself during these missions and replay them from the checkpoint until the trophy pops up.  I tried to ride the trains in free-roam mode and shoot bad guys, but the trains move really fast, the camera shakes too much, and bad guys are scarce, so it's best to do this in the missions.
• "Road Kill" can be earned from that mission where you ride the bus.  Contrary to what I wrote above, you'll want to stay on top of the bus and spam grenades to take out as many bad guys as you can.
• "Drop Everything" can be allegedly achieved from a number of tall buildings.  If all else fails, there's always that huge tower in the Warren, and I think that's where I achieved this trophy from.
• "AC/DC" came to me pretty naturally, but if all else fails, the sewer levels do have areas with infinite electricity flowing out of them.  You can always use up some power and drain from those over and over again.
• "Get Off Of My Cloud' requires a lot of high fall takedowns.  I pretty much used shockwave at every chance to blow bad guys off of roofs (a requirement for one of the stunts anyway).  A lot of bad guys will just fall off anyway just by shocking them.  If all else fails, you can play through some of the side missions that involve destroying the water towers, and blasting some of the Reapers off of those rooftops (and you can die and replay the mission over and over again).
• I don't even remember how I got the "Red Baron" trophy, but it's do-able by using shockwave and shooting the enemies while they're airborne.  Best accomplished with good-karma shockwaves, which suspend enemies in the air a little longer.
• "Fish in a Barrel" is easy, get some bad guys in the water and zap 'em! Repeat 50 times.
• "Oh You've Done This Before" came easily, since I stuck grenades on bad guys as often as I could.  You have the power, so use it!
• "The Hunger" is, obviously, best accomplished on your evil playthrough.  Must be enemies; bio-leech fallen enemies as often as you can.  It's advisable anyway to keep your power up.
• "Doctor Cole" is easily accomplished by healing any pedestrians you see on the ground.  People in Empire City tend to be frail and fall down very easily, so there are always people around to save.
• Reaching full good or evil karma is easily accomplished by making consistent decisions.  Saving people, stopping muggings, stopping abductions, doing good guy missions, and other blue things will reinforce your good karma.  Massacring people, causing mass destruction, bio-leeching everybody, and generally being a jerk will reinforce your bad karma.
• Completing all 21 stunts can be a pain.  Here's what you need to do:
• Crush:  Kill an enemy by crushing them with an object.  I accomplished this pretty often by using shockwave to throw cars and dumpsters all over the place; somebody's bound to get killed that way.
• Sticky Bomb:  Kill an enemy by sticking a shock grenade to them.  If you use shock grenades often, this should be easy; aim for a bad guy, throw a grenade, and they'll freak out when it sticks to them.
• Highfall:  Kill an enemy by making them fall from a high place.  Shockwave a bad guy from a rooftop, and this should unlock.
• Enviro Take Down:  Kill an enemy with an environmental explosion.  Enemies take cover behind cars and propane tanks often, so be sure to shockwave them often, and the resulting explosion will take care of this.
• Melee Finisher:  Kill an enemy with the last hit of a 5 hit melee combo.  Melee an enemy five times until they die.  Best accomplished on harder enemies, like the First Sons.
• Air Strike:  Kill an enemy with a lightning bolt move while Cole is in the air.  I found this pretty tricky.  Basically, you'll need to find a rooftop overlooking some enemies, jump down, and blast away at them.  Hopefully, something will hit.
• Bast & Bolt:  Kill an airborne enemy with a standard lightning bolt attack.  I generally got this by using shockwave on enemies, and then blasting them while they are in midair.  Can also do this on falling enemies.  Good-karma shockwaves will render bad guys suspended in the air for longer, making this a little easier.
• Flying Head Shot:  Take out an airborne enemy with a headshot.  I think I got this purely by chance.  Using shockwave, and then a precision bolt to the head should get this unlocked as well.
• Flying Melee:  Kill an airborne enemy with a melee attack.  I found that if you melee people enough times, one of them is bound to do a magnificent flip in the air as you kick them in the head, causing this stunt to unlock.  If all else fails, I read that you can trap a bad guy between you and a wall to force him to fly around.
• Unquenchable Thirst:  Induction grind and transfer to 4 different grinds without touching the ground.  I did this once quite by accident, hopping from all four different train tracks in a row.  Can also be unlocked from power lines, or a combination of lines and train tracks.  Just keep on grinding and jumping from spot to spot until you get it right.
• Premature Detonation:  Kill an enemy by making a bomb-equipped kamikaze enemy explode next to them.  Any time you see these crazy guys running at you with a bomb, shoot them.  You're bound to get this stunt unlocked in the natural course of the game.
• Right Back At Ya:  Use shockwave to deflect a grenade back at the enemy who launched it.  Easier said than done.  I read that Alden's tower is the ideal place to get this done, but I think I accomplished this through the natural course of the game, just using shockwave indiscriminately at anybody throwing rockets and grenades at me.  This stunt is bound to unlock if you keep working on it.
• Air Sticky Bomb:  Kill an airborne enemy by sticking a grenade on them.  Oh God, this was hard.  Probably easier done with the good-karma shockwave, which keeps enemies suspended in the air for longer.  In any case, use shockwave to throw enemies in the air, then throw grenades at them and see what sticks.
• Insult to Injury:  Stick a grenade onto an enemy, then kill them with another power before it detonates.  In the heat of battle, I often throw grenades and zap everything everywhere, so this stunt unlocked naturally as bombs and lightning bolts hit enemies simultaneously.  However, sticking a bomb onto an enemy, and then using precision, will have a higher likelihood of success.
• Whack a Mole:  Kill a conduit with a thunder drop move.  I found a spot where one of those metal conduits was (you know, the ones that spawn the little metal spiders and carry RPGs), and I just kept climbing a building and thunder-dropping on him until this stunt unlocked.  I've also read that zapping the big purple First Sons conduits, and then thunder dropping on them when they shrink, will unlock this stunt.
• Suspended Sentence:  Kill an airborne enemy with the thunderstorm move.  When you get the thunderstorm power, use it on those flying robot things, and this should unlock.  Otherwise, I accomplished this stunt by using shockwave, and then immediately summoning a thunderstorm.
• Up Close and Personal:  Melee five enemies in a row without using powers.  Do what its says:  beat the snot out of five bad guys back-to-back without zapping them.  Probably best done in an alleyway with Reapers, which can get bottle-necked and clustered together for easier beatings.
• Crowd Control:  Kill five enemies at once.  A good well-placed grenade, megawatt hammer, thunder drop, or lightning storm in the very middle of a cluster of enemies should get this done.
• Splash and Crash:  While in the air, hit an enemy with a lightning bolt, and then thunder-drop the same enemy.  Probably the hardest one of them all; I really hated this stunt.  Once, I accomplished this on the ground level by jumping, zapping an enemy, and then somehow thunder-dropping right on top of the guy, and then the stunt was magically unlocked.  On the second playthrough, I had to jump from a tall building, zap the enemy, and then thunder-drop to get it.  It's hard either way, because you'll have to be deft with the fingers:  push X to jump, R1 to aim, L1 to shoot, release, then hold down the square button, all within a few seconds.
• Have a Nice Fall:  Kill 3 enemies at once by making them fall from a high place.  I got this one doing one side mission for evil karma, where a huge number of dust-men were on a rooftop.  Just shockwave them in all directions, and a bunch of them will fall off the roof.  There are probably other good places to get this done; just be on the look-out for areas where bad guys are gathered on a roof, and try to shockwave them off all at once.
• Ride the Lightning:  Kill and enemy with precision while grinding on a rail.  Pretty easy stuff, just grind along on a rail, look out for bad guys, and then use a precision shot on them.  Since precision slows time down, it makes the kill pretty easy, especially if you aim for the head.  If all else fails, you can always go backwards and shoot them some more.  A few side missions have lots of bad guys within shooting distance from the tracks.