I’m not going to beat around the bush with this: Go. See. District. 9.

Starring Shartlo Copley, Jason Cope, Nathalie Boltt, Vanessa Haywood, David James, Mandla Gaduka and Hlengiwe Madlala. Directed by Neill Blomkamp, produced by Peter Jackson.

On to the meat of the review. I’ll try to avoid spoilers.

There is a conceit among several movers and shakers in the entertainment industry, that people are perfectly happy paying their hard-earned money for dumb entertainment. With completely straight faces, they put features on the screen that are little more than vehicles for a string of unrealistic shootouts linked by insincere acting, bouncing breasts, or both. Terminator: Salvation springs to mind from recent memory. If you’re not planting your tongue firmly in your cheek while you do this for the sake of paying homage to this genre, taking the piss out them, or both – I’m looking at you, Shoot ‘Em Up – you are clearly underestimating your audience.

John Frankenheimer’s Ronin takes these films by surprise, kicks their feet out from under them and ends them quickly with a single, expertly-placed bullet. It stars Robert DeNiro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgård, Sean Bean and Jonathan Pryce.

After the Cold War, a lot of intelligence, counter-intelligence and paramilitary agents found themselves without work. Ronin begins as we meet several of these unemployed, smart and very dangerous people gathering in Paris for a job. The job is to retrieve a case. The case is vitally important to their mysterious employer and is being transported by some people who are even nastier than the protagonists.

While the plot might seem simple on the outset, and other films might use that simplicity as a vehicle for the aforementioned bullets and boobs, Ronin focuses on the characters rather than the case. Who are these people, and what motivates them? Everybody seems to have something to hide, and the ways in which they gather information, confront their opponents, and deal with their comrades is an espionage procedural worthy of Burn Notice, but without Michael Westen’s narration.

This isn’t just a character study, however, and there is plenty of blazing action to be had. It’s gritty, unapologetic and energized, with great camera work and a real awareness of the collateral damage involved in things like gunfights and car chases. And while I’m on the subject, I’m not exaggerating when I say the car chases in Ronin are some of the finest ever put on film. They stand on the same pedestal as the classics Bullit and The French Connection. All of this takes place on the impressive backdrop of modern Europe and the subtle acting combined with excellent technical direction keep the film from becoming dated. There’s an immediacy to it, and despite not knowing what’s in the case, we find ourselves eager to see what happens next.

Ronin is well worth your time if you like fast-paced action, well-written and well-acted interesting characters, fantastic film design & direction or movies that don’t underestimate the intelligence of their audience. It’s available through the standard Netflix queue or instantly.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

So Blizzcon has come and gone, and along with hands-on time with Starcraft II and the unveiling of the Monk class for Diablo III, the big feature of the convention was the announcement of the next expansion to the World of Warcraft, Cataclysm. The reactions to the various announcements have been mixed, and I’d like to weigh in on the upcoming additions to the game.

New Races: Goblins & Worgen

What’s interesting to me about the races announced for Cataclysm is that both show a people divergent from those we as players are accustomed to. Goblins, after all, exist in various different cartels and organizations. A Venture Company goblin is very different from one belonging to Booty Bay. I have no cause to doubt that playable goblins will be just as greedy, affable and clever as those we’ve seen in NPC roles, at least when played correctly. As for the worgen, most World of Warcraft players probably see humans as hailing from the sunny lands of Stormwind, and tending towards a friendly relationship with other members of the Alliance. From what I’ve seen of Gilneas, the homelands of the humans bearing this lycanthropic curse, the general demeanor of those citizens will be as dark and brooding as the rainy landscape. I kind of want to roll one of each, if just to see their starting quest chains.

New Class/Race Combinations

This is another mixed bag, at least to me. Some of the choices that will be available, such as human hunter and blood elf warrior, make a lot of sense. Others don’t, and the biggest example is the concept of a night elf mage. It was the meddling of Queen Azshara that caused much of the strife now rampant across the face of Azeroth, and her motivation was meddling in arcane magics. Since those ancient days, arcane magic has been taboo to the night elf race as a whole. Apparently, though, some of the younger night elves (and the game developers) have short memories. Dwarves don’t strike me as particularly shamanistic, either, but I guess someone on the Alliance side needed to join that class if Tauren are getting paladins.

Everything Old (world) is New Again

In running around the older parts of Azeroth in pursuit of Horde reputation, I’ve noticed that the newer content has outstripped the original in terms of graphics. There’s also long been the question of how developers justify higher-level characters with flying mounts being kept from using those mounts to get around Azeroth. The developers are addressing such things by reworking the old world into something new, the result of the expansion’s tagline.

On the one hand, it’s interesting that the developers went this route, and are choosing to rework the world within the same game rather than releasing a sequel (as Sony did with EverQuest 2). On the other hand, it seems a little lazy. Rather than coming up with another new venue that nobody’s ever seen before, all the dev team has to essentially do is detonate a few sub-nuclear weapons all over the existing continents, plant trees in places currently without vegetation, and give new scripts to the NPCs that survive. When the expansion comes out, I’m sure it’ll be stunning to see how the world has changed, but it’ll still be old Azeroth with a more dire paint job.

“Because it’s BADASS.”

Speaking of short memories, there are rumors regarding a changing of the guard in Horde leadership, and the reasonings behind it so far seem somewhat dubious. It’d be heartening to me if the rumors turned out to be false, and the team at Blizzard had paid attention to the precedents set in previous games rather than pretending over a decade of lore didn’t exist. Even if they do go against the established canon, however, I’m still probably going to stand in line for the Collector’s Edition.

I mean, you really only need one kidney, right?

It’s a beautiful Friday outside in Doylestown, and before I dive back into a pile of legitimate work, let’s discuss a movie my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed viewing this week. The movie in question is Doubt, starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams.

Plays that become movies don’t have pulse-pounding action or glossy special effects to keep our attention. They rely entirely on the gravity of their situations and the capabilities of their actors. Mostly all a director has to do is set up the scenes and shoot from a couple different angles. There’s no harm in this approach, as Casablanca proves. It would be easy to make the result a wooden translation of the script, however, especially in when in the hands of the original author.

John Patrick Shanley doesn’t stick to his own stage directions. He brings his work to life on the screen with poise and aplomb, letting his actors animate their roles without tying them to the stage. Here and there, we feel the touch of a true filmmaker rather than a playwright behind their first camera. There are a few shots that are breathtaking in their artistry, underscored not by the lines spoken but rather the fact that they are silent. When words are spoken, it’s clear that every one counts. The pace of the film is slow and deliberate, which might be a turn-off to some viewers, but it lays a foundation for solid storytelling.

Doubt is set in the Bronx a year after President Kennedy’s assassination and focuses on an interplay with a Catholic church between a stoic, traditionalist nun, Sister Aloysius (Streep) and the forward-thinking compassionate priest of the same parish, Father Flynn (Hoffman). When allegations of an inappropriate relationship between Father Flynn and a young black boy are raised, we are given no clear evidence that leads us to guilt or innocence. These individuals, and the institution they serve, are painted in shades of gray rather than black and white. Sister Aloysius is doing the right thing in investigating the possibility of Father Flynn’s indiscretion, but her zealotry evokes the crusading fervor of the Spanish Inquisition. Father Flynn has a sense of humor and conveys real personality, but Shakespeare’s Hamlet taught us “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” Make no mistake, folks: these actors are two of the very finest of our time, and they could power the television with the electricity of their shared scenes alone. Even when they are not speaking, the things that go unspoken between them are louder than every explosion Michael Bay could ever hope to cram into a movie. Amy Adams’s Sister James is terrified of the implications of these two titans doing battle, and every element of the film, from the direction to the acting to the music and scenery cast doubt upon the characters, and ourselves, masterfully.

This is a well-written, intellectual mystery that delivers drama, power and emotion without needing a single gunshot or autopsy scene. Some movies ask you to check your brain at the door, and others let you keep it in your head for a bit then have you bid it a tearful farewell as the action ramps up towards the ear-shattering climax. Doubt grabs hold of your brain and doesn’t let go until long after the movie’s over. The lack of action might cause some people to give it a miss, but I honestly feel those people are missing out on something great. If you’re a fan of any sort of crime drama, put Doubt on your queue and bump it to the front. You will not be disappointed.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

First and foremost, if you didn’t see Jon Stewart talk about the drastic ‘liberal’ turn FOX News has taken of late, watch the clip below. Trust me, it’s worth your time.

I’ve had a problem with Fox’s coverage of politics for a while, and not just because they’re conservatives. It’s fine to disagree with the policies of the government – that’s why we have the First Amendment. One should be able to voice their opinion without fear of harm in a free country. However, while I can tolerate a difference of opinion, I have a very different feeling over what has been highlighted here, albeit in a very comedic way.

Fox News is full of hypocrites.

When there was a Republican in the office of the president, an attack on that president’s policies were unpatriotic, stupid, and possibly an indication of a terrorist frame of mind. Now that a Democrat is in office, it is clearly the duty of a fine, upstanding American citizen to point out how socialist, racist or fascist their policies are, especially if a given policy is all three at once. Expanding the amount of wiretaps put on Americans isn’t fascist if it’s a Republican claiming to protect the country, but trying to fix what’s wrong with health care is clearly fascist because it takes money away from people who have growing piles of it.

When last I checked, this was a country with a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” To me, that means that everybody contributes or even sacrifices for the betterment of the country as a whole. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,” proclaims the Statue of Liberty. There’s no stipulations to that – no color restrictions or religious bias or base income requirements. Now, that might be considered a socialist frame of mind by some, but in my opinion, those who consider a tendency towards charity and goodwill to those less fortunate as socialist are more fascist than they realize.

Fascism, after all, a political ideology that follows the same lines as Darwinist evolutionary theory: “Only the strong survive.” In a free market economy, this could be interpreted as “Only the rich survive.” Instead of promoting the rise of an Aryan race, a lot of conservatives talk about not “spreading the wealth around” and letting the rich hold onto their assets while the poor wither and die in obscurity and silence. They’d be quite pleased if the disenfranched simply ceased to exist, though I’m sure they wouldn’t say “put the homeless in concentration work camps” out loud. Fascist societies of the past saw abortion as a crime against the state, opposed homosexuality, and spread propaganda through media domination and scare tactics. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Women have the right to choose what to do with their bodies, the disenfranchised need help to get back on their feet, and every citizen of a free country should have access to health care without worrying about extravagant bills or obfuscatory ideas such as “pre-existing conditions.” These, to me, are not opinions, but rather moral imperatives. And if that makes me a socialist, I’ll start speaking Russian and eating more borscht.

But I know for a fact I won’t be saying things to contradict those imperatives four years from now. Unlike some people.