Posts tagged money
“Ender’s Game” Is Game Over
Nov 16th
“Game Over”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Ender’s Game is based on Owen Scott Card’s novel of the same name for young adults, and so if you are not a young adult, meaning a teenager, you can skip this movie.
In my opinion, even if you are a young adult, a teenager, immature, or even fascinated with video games, you can skip this movie.
Sure, Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, and Ben Kingsley appear in it, but they are there only as adult window dressing for a story that is about kids and for kids.
The hero is Ender Wiggin, the time is in the future, and the plot is that Earth has to be saved from a future invasion of aliens.
Already, I can hear the room filling with a loud chorus of Ho Hums.
We are told that the world’s smartest children are the planet’s best hope, and the reason is that the future invasion will be fought like a video game, which is strange when you think about it, because the only reality casualty in playing video games is something that might just be called “remote thumb” in order to correspond to tennis elbow.
Anyway, don’t think about it, because there is nothing in this movie worth thinking about, except that the filmmakers are probably hoping that this will be the first in a series of franchise movies and there will be more coming, on which they can lose money.
Anyhow, Ender is a young teenage boy who is bullied at school, but who is clever enough at playing video games that he is singled out for special training in anticipation of the future alien invasion.
Ender has a sister, and he tells her, “All I could think was, what would Peter do?”
Peter is their brother, who was selected for training before Ender, but he washed out of the program, which consists of being treated like privates in a military boot camp, but with training that consists of floating around in huge zero gravity sets and firing weapons at each other.
Can I get a “Ho Hum”?
Of course, there are one or more kids who give Ender a hard time, of course there are other kids who support him, and of course Ender succeeds and advances to higher levels of more rigorous training.
Ender’s Game just makes me say “Game over!”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Runner Runner” a Loser Loser
Oct 13th
“Loser Loser”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Runner Runner stars Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck in a movie about offshore gambling, and it brings to mind an eternal truth about gambling: “The house always wins.”
In this case the house is the movie theater, and the loser is you.
Timberlake plays Richie Furst, who is earning his masters degree in finance at Princeton and is also a teaching assistant, but he spends a lot of his time playing online poker, which causes him to be called into the dean’s office for a meeting.
The dean tells Richie that he has his hands in his fellow students’ pants, he is an affiliate for online gaming, and then says, “You will close up shop immediately.”
Like all gambling suckers, Richie doesn’t listen to reason, he plays online poker again on a popular Website, bets everything he has, and loses it.
However, Richie’s two buddies and colleagues use statistics to convince him that the Website cheated him, and so Richie travels to Costa Rica, where the Website is located, to confront the owner of the Website.
Affleck plays Ivan Block, the owner of the gambling Website, and after Richie learns that Block is like The Wizard of Oz and nobody gets close to him, Richie manages to get an invitation to meet Ivan on Ivan’s boat.
Ivan tells Richie that he thinks Richie is exceptional, and Ivan offers Richie a job working for him.
After Richie proves himself to Ivan, Richie now believes that he has almost everything he wanted, and he invites his two buddies from Princeton to come down to Costa Rica and work with him.
However, Ivan confesses that he hates his business and that it is not fun anymore, even though it allows Ivan to do whatever he wants. There are payoffs and bribes to local officials that are necessary for him to run his business, and it is also very dangerous.
Yes, Richie gets beaten up a couple of times doing his job for Ivan, who even knew it would happen.
Ivan tells Richie that everybody has something worth more to them than money, and in Richie’s case it is his father.
You know how some movies seem to have been made just because of the exotic location? This is one of those movies.
Runner Runner is nothing more than a loser loser.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”