matthewwalker66

It's a massive shame how underappreciated the Mummy is, considering the amount of aspects it balances and gets right. It only has a 60% on RT and only seems to have a small following, despite being an excellent action, adventure and monster films. I rewatched it recently, and only confirmed prior thoughts of greatness. Here some of the pros/takeaways I have:

-The setting is perfectly realized: the movie does an incredible of taking the viewer to 1920s Egypt, a setting rarely used in film. The beautiful desert shots, egyptian-like score and specific period set pieces contribute and enhance the film in many ways. It's often just a joy to look at and listen to the film. -It does a fantastic job with it's creatures/mythology. The story blends aspects of Egyptian mythology/history seamlessly, as it showcases various locations, gods, objects and characters. It is a lot easier to get into the movie with the excellent world design created here. -The story is fresh and exciting. -The actors/characters are excellent. The Mummy has an almost entirely unknown cast (Rachel Weisz being the only actor/actress to star in critically-applauded films) and yet nearly every performance in the film works in its own way. The two massive standouts are John Hannah as Jonathan, honestly in my opinion one of the best comic-relief side characters in movie history, and Arnold Vosloo as the Imhotep, an excellent villain with the perfect amount of humanity. Brendan Fraser is an excellent lead, Rachel Weisz is solid, and even most of the minor characters contribute to the film.

After watching the excellent green room, I was certainly interested in some of the director's older works. His feature film, Blue Ruin was almost universally praised (96%), and few movies are more exciting than thrillers, so I gave it a watch. Being a lower budget unknown film starring virtually no one I knew, it was a little harder to get my hands on but provided a less familiar feel. This was a good thing and the indie feel to gives every shot a certain authenticity that makes it beautiful to watch.

Blue Ruin starts off with a bang. Given the entire revenge premise, I was shocked at how early a certain event occurred and was wondering how the rest of the film would play out. After a exciting opening filled with intrigue and wonderful acting by Macon Blair, the movie gets incredibly slow. It's about 90 minutes long, and unlike Green Room "thrills every minute" approach, hardly anything happens after the 30 minute mark. A few interesting characters and plotlines were introduced here and there, but for the most part, it became so uneventful it was nearly boring. Had I not been hooked by the excellent first act, I may have dozed off during the middle.

Just as I was thinking about how disappointing this movie was, the event that I had been waiting for finally happened. The suspense was generally lacking due to the slowness of the film and everything major happening within such a short time frame, the end literally had my heart pounding. The intensity ramps up to a full 10 for the first time in the movie, and the result is one of the most exciting conclusions ever put to film. While the middle drags the film down a bit, this ending more than made it worth it.

The Lost Legacy doesn't really do anything the best in the series, but is overall the best package simply because unlike every other Uncharted game, there isn't a single tedious moment of gameplay (except perhaps the final fight with Asav, but that lasts mere minutes). Throughout the game, Chloe is a fantastic protagonist and while Nathan Drake is one of the greatest video game characters, it is actually a good thing for one to play from a different perspective. This removed the incredibly boring Drake's journal sections in turn of a more reward lockpick system and more visually appealing photos. The areas in which you could use stealth weren't as well constructed as they were in UC4, but the combat was and the combat was generally more exciting and less frustrating. Sam Drake is an awesome addition again, but is left out just enough to remind that this isn't a Nathan Drake tale. The two aspects that Lost Legacy absolutely knocks out of the park are the puzzles and the visuals. The puzzles, for the first time in the series are actually enjoyable to figure out and the visuals, while similar to UC4 are absolutely stunning. The open world (Chapter 4) has gotten some criticism for not having much to do, and while this is somewhat true, the open world is still fantastic because it is a first for the series and there are still 11 hoysala tokens to find, meaning there are still 15 substantial things to do on the map. The reward for finding all of the tokens gets you The Queen's Ruby, which makes the treasure hunting actually doable. Taking each UC game as whole, this is surprisingly the very best.