The Snowman

 It's the month of Christmas!  ...wait, no.  December, that's it.  

Anyway, its winter, which means Christmas specials!  And I would be remiss not to review one, which is by far my favorite Christmas themed children animation film ever.  The Snowman, from 1982.

The snowman is based off a book written by Raymond Briggs, the book is just a picture book, no words, everything is told through images.  The film also has no dialogue, only music and a soundtrack, not even any sound effects, I think, anyway.  not entirely sure...

anyway, the film follows a boys adventures building a snowman after a snowfall in his country home.  He adds a hat and tie, and an orange for a nose.  In the middle of the night he awakens to the snowman coming to life.

Various kid antics ensue as he invites the snowman, (who is very polite and takes off his hat while inside) into the house.  This includes exchanging various fruit for noses, putting on different clothes, putting on makeup, and riding a motorcycle across the landscape.  ....One of these things is not like the others, but I loved the motorcycle scene and music that accompanied it.

After wards, the snowman takes him on a journey to the northpole.  He can fly apparently.  Don't ask questions.  Despite my jokes above, I LOVE this scene, and the music, and...well, I have video, which someone else took, I own nothing.

God damn brilliant music, animation, and the only part of the entire film that has any vocals.  Anyway, he takes him to the north pole, that...also has penguins on it.  so it's also the south pole.  ...I guess it's just magic.  A snowman party happens, with more kid antics and fantastic animation, until he meets santa, who gives him a gift, and before the sun rises, the snowman flys back to the kids home, where he sleeps, gets up in the morning eagerly to go outside to see that...

...the snowman has melted.  the snowman melted?!  What, no!  This is illegal!  I'm not crying, your crying.

As a kid, this punched me in the gut with emotions, but as an adult it's less sad, since i have been through Life, which is a painful and saddening experience.

The Snowman is amazing, a true masterpiece, and it's probably my favorite Christmas film, even better then Nightmare Before Christmas, and I love that film.  If you haven't seen it, go watch it.  It's a msut see, I think.  10/10 would get punched in the gut with emotion again.

Ratropolis

 Rats are cute.  You can't change my mind on this.  I have owned many rats as pets through the years.  well, five or six rats, anyway.  

But despite this, rats are almost always portrayed as the 'bad guy' or villains in movies.  So when I saw a game called Ratropolis, I had to try it out.  Despite the pun.

Welcome to rat land!  Not affiliated with Disney land.

The story is simple, there was once an ancient massive city that held ratkind, but an experiment that ran out of control turned some rats into Plague rats, so, basically the zombie apocalypse happened to ratkind.  You play as one of the leaders of rats trying to rebuild a city.    There isn't a lot more then that to the story, but there's mention of a World Tree, which always gets me excited in terms of lore, and other multiple choice events that hint at a wider world.

I'll go on about the gameplay more, but first the artstyle of the game itself.  It...it works, I'm not too fond of it but I don't really dislike it really, though the fact that some of the art assets use a 3D model on a mostly 2D game and art is cool.  I really have only one complaint about it, is that the rats look like mice.

I have been lied to!  God damn mice!

The actual gameplay is...odd.  It's definitely a city builder or survival game, but it's also a card game, and a rogue lite.  I describe it as a city defense game where you interact with the gameworld via cards from a deck, which I hope is accurate.  But as said before, there are also multiple choice text events that give advantages or disadvantages to your city as you play.  While unique, and I'm not a fan of cardgames, I do love it.

Anyway, there are three locations you can choose from to build your city, each with different enemies for all 30 waves, though they can be divided easily into plague rats, weasels, and reptile folk.  Each location also has a small but different set of multiple choice text events, making each location feel a little different, which I like. 

You can play as one of six leaders of ratkind, starting off with only one unlocked, the others unlocked through playing the game.  While there are cards that all leaders have access to, most of the cards you will get in the game are specific to a single leader.  While each leader has at least one unique gameplay mechanic in their decks, sometimes two or even more, the decks are more based a theme then a specific gameplay aspect.

The Merchants, Builder, and Army leaders are obvious to what theme they are.  Shaman and Science leader are also equally obvious, but the Navigator one is tricky, it's based around the sea, ships, pirates, and other naval things.  Personally, my favorite is the Science leader, because I like science.  science good.

It also allows me to build towering death traps next to residential buildings.  Rent low, possibility of death, high.

I picked up Ratropolis for only tenish dollars, but even if I paid the full fifteen bucks, I would say I've gotten more then fifteen dollars worth of entertainment out of it, with already more then 20 hours sunk into it.  So if you like cards games, or defense, or rats, get this, as I did not regret it.

Night of the Lepus.

I didn't ask for this.

No one asked for this.  I mean, who would've asked for a -giant killer rabbits- horror film?  

Yes, they decided this:

It's the god damn bunnys.

Would be a good horror movie monster.  I am still flabbergasted at this.  

Yes, a bunny themed horror movie could be a good horror-comedy movie, or even a satire or something, but nope, they played it -completely seriously-.  There is not a single joke or even a "You're kidding me, rabbits?" moment.  Everyone in the film is horrified and scared of this fluffy menace, not once finding this completely god damn ridiculous.  

Apparently this movie came about because of a script called Night of the Lepers was being reviewed by a director or producer, and he spilled wine on it, and to him, he thought it said Night of the Lepus.  While reading the script took away this illusion, he mentioned the idea of a Lepus themed horror movie to his daughter, and she loved the idea, and told him to make it.  

So he did.  Can you imagine what the original script writer of Night of the lepers felt like when or if he knew his script had been rejected for a -rabbit- horror script?  I imagine he's still bitter about that.  They had to hire a new script writer to edit the hell out of that original script.  I would like to have known his emotions and expressions while he worked on that script.

The films basic premise is that scientific testing on rabbits turns them into wolf sized killers.  Despite them saying they're as big as wolves, some times they're only man sized, sometimes car sized, and sometimes even bigger.  This is probably due to the fact that they use a rabbit suit sometimes, and the other times they simply put miniatures together and herd rabbits through the mini-sets.  One time you can even see, barely, someone herding the rabbits along.

The characters have little emotion in their voices, or anything to act on, really, and some of their actions are questionable, but there's only two worth mentioning.  I'll start with the least surprising first, also, mild to medium spoilers ahead, the little girl in the film, that is the scientists couples daughter, is a psychopath.  She releases a rabbit, one contaminated with the evil virus, into the wild, and lies about it, and hides the fact she does it, for no reason.  And no punishment happens to her either.

Second, that's Dr McCoy on the far left.  What the hell sort of contract did he sign that forced him to do this.

I'm a Doctor, not a rabbit wrangler!

 The effects are...almost non-existent, which I can't really blame them for, considering the time, but it involves many mini-sets with rabbits just casually laying about or strolling through them.  And one prevalent rabbit suit.

The rabbits also seem to vary in number from 'only a few dozen' to over a thousand in just a few hours.  I know rabbits are good at reproduction, but I don't think they have time to do It in just one night.  

The suspense is non-existent, the 'horrifying' rabbits are more adorable then anything else, and the actors seem to just want to get their paycheck and get out.  The resolution to the rabbit horde is equally dumb, which shouldn't have worked for at least three reasons, but, spoilers, if anyone cares about that in this movie.

But despite all this, I loved it, for all the wrong reasons.  It's silly, dumb, and extremely enjoyable with just how bad it is.  If you like bad moives, I suggest this one.