Video Game Review: Tomb Raider 3

Tomb Raider 3

PlayStation

When I was a teen in the late 90's, Tomb Raider was a big thing for me. While a lot of the media focus tended to be on Lara Croft's physical appearance, I couldn't have cared less about that. I was all about the 3D environments (which were relatively rare in this age of gaming), action, exploration, and thought provoking puzzle solving that came with the series.

The original Tomb Raider was great. The second game was even better in my mind. I expected the series to grow and continue to get better with Tomb Raider 3. However, I find that it took a slight step back.

The first thing to note is that the controls are exactly the same as the previous titles in the series. Running, walking, swimming, side stepping, jumping, hanging onto ledges, and the lock on style gunplay are all identical to everything we've already seen from Tomb Raider in the past. There are a few additions to what Lara can do in this game, but nothing game changing. For example, you can hold down the right shoulder button while running for a brief burst of speed. Woot.

Lara also can pilot new vehicles. There's a paddleboat, an ATV, a handheld submersible thingamajig. While nothing too spectacular, these do offer a slight diversion from your normal running around style of gameplay.

What this all really amounts to is that as far as controlling Lara, nothing much has changed. This is basically the same game as Tomb Raiders past, only with new environments.

These new environments are pretty cool though. You start in the jungles of India. You've got greenery everywhere, quicksand, ancient temples, rivers full of deadly piranha, and - of course - bad guys out to claim the treasure before you can. Some of the atmospheric effects in this level are cool. I like the occasional rainfall. The coloring in the sky on on the ruins is beautiful. It just all feels really authentic. Pixelated, yes, but fun.

When you finish with India, you can actually select which level you want to play next. Each one is broken into three or four stages. First you've got the South Pacific, which is a cool level. It is the most India-like level in the game, however. Again, lots of clear water and green jungle ruins. This is different from India in the fact that it is more of a primeval setting. Angry villagers, hungry dinosaurs (!). There's even some white water rafting. And the sunset-y colors are pleasing to the eye. I like this level.

You've got London. You travel across rooftops, you explore the city's underground and subway tunnels. You poke through buildings and a museum owned by one of the major villains in the game. I'll admit to not liking London much. It is home to some of the hardest levels in the game, and a lot of your tasks seem to be particularly obscure. Where do I go? What do I do next? asasasasjlaslrtrgfddfg!!!!

And then there is Nevada, which is probably my favorite level in the game. First you explore a desert area, looking to find your way into Area 51. When you do get into Area 51, you lose your weapons and have to sneak around the facility, using the other prisoners to beat up the guards and do your dirty work for you. Eventually you get your guns back, and explore the rest of the facility. If you guessed that an alien spacecraft would pop up in Area 51, you guessed right.

All three of these levels can be played in any order. When you finish them, you are shipped off to the fifth and final level of the game: Antarctica. Expect snow, expect underground caverns. Expect minecarts. Asshole minecarts. Seriously, fuck these things. The whole area has kind of a "the Thing" feel to it, which is cool. Beat this level and all its stages, you beat the game.

I love the classic Tomb Raider gameplay. I love the levels. They are all fun to look at and very cleverly designed. Where the game goes off course for me is in its difficulty level.

The first two Tomb Raider games had some difficult moments, but nothing too overly challenging. Some of the puzzles took a while to solve, but after a little poking and prodding things would become pretty self evident. This game, however, not so much.

First of all, we'll start with the difficulty. Beware of cheap deaths, because they are going to happen. A lot. Running along, not a care in the world: bam. The ceiling collapses on you. The ground drops out from below you. A previously dormant grate blasts fire at you and burns you to a crisp. Fine. This is Tomb Raider. If you've played the other games at all, you should be used to stuff like this happening.

But they seem to happen a lot more than usual here. Throw in the fact that this game has a save system that limits the number of times you can save, and this makes things even more frustrating. Imagine you've been playing a half hour or so since your last save, trying to hold off and not waste a save crystal when - oh crap - something cheap and unexpected happens and kills you. Now you've got to go back and play the whole last half hour of the game over again. And this happens quite a bit in this game. My stats at the end of my playthrough said I had been playing for about 15 or 16 hours. I seriously doubt this. Throw in the number of times and I had to reload from my last checkpoint, and I bet it took me 30 to 40 hours to beat the game. Not that I mind a game that takes a little longer to beat, because I don't. But not when the only reason it takes so long to beat is because the game is screwing me over and over and over again and I keep having to backtrack over old ground. It is ridiculous, and at points I had to simply turn off the game and stop playing I was fuming so badly.

If I had to offer a bit of advice for future players, it would be to not worry about running out of save crystals. I tried to hoard mine and then when the last level came around I had about 15 of them saved. It would have made the game that much easier and enjoyable for me if I had just used them more liberally earlier in the game. Don't worry about running out. Because I was - and then I ended up not having to worry at all.

My other complaint is that the levels - while they may look nice and are otherwise brilliantly designed - often have a lack of direction to them. I usually don't like having to use walkthroughs to help me through a game, but I feel as if it was unavoidable here with Tomb Raider 3. Soooo often would I get stuck with absolutely no freaking idea of what I was going to do next. The levels are so big. Switches and items on the ground are so easy to overlook. I don't have any idea how in the world I managed to beat this game back in '98 or '99 without the help of the internet. I was completely lost at many points in this game, even with internet guides holding my hand every step of the way.

Couple that with the difficulty, the limited saves you get, and all the cheap deaths, and it really really detracts from the fun factor of this game. There are a ton of fun stages, but there are also a ton of stages that are a complete pain in the ass. Like, for example, all of London.

That being said, I do like the game. It holds a sentimental place in my heart, as do the first two titles in the Tomb Raider series. It is the last old school Tomb Raider game I owned. My brother played it, and actually did pretty well in it, which surprised me because he had never shown an interest in the first two games. I also used to bring the instruction booklet of this game to high school and read it at my desk so that other kids would see it and start talking to me about it (yeah I was a pathetic nerd, tell me something I don't know). Somewhere along the line I ended up losing the manual, so you can look directly through the case of my copy of the game and see the disc. I never did find out what happend to it.

It's not my favorite game in the series. In fact, I would rate it below Tomb Raider, TR 2, the 2013 reboot, and the Prince of Persia-esque PS2 versions of the game... well some of them anyway. But even with all its flaws, I still hold a soft spot in my heart for the game. Sure its frustrating. Sure it can be downright rage inducing at points. But it is a really good entry in an iconic series. I can't say it is a classic. I can't say its great. But I can say it is really good.

Overall: 

B

Video Game Review: Goldeneye 007

Goldeneye 007

Nintendo 64

Everyone knows that Goldeneye 007 is considered an all time classic, certainly one of the best games ever released for the Nintendo 64. But I can admit to not being too excited about this game when I first heard about it. This was back in the mid 90's. Some video game magazine ran a large 15 page preview on the game. They outlined the levels, the weapons, the gameplay, the controls, everything. The game looked like it might be okay, but I was not a big James Bond fan back then, nor did I know anyone else who was. I never thought in a million years the game would end up being as big a hit as it did.

When it came out, I rented a copy and played it over the weekend. I liked the game, but I wasn't able to finsh it as I couldn't make it past the damned jungle level. I think that the level is a walk in the park these days (especially on Agent mode, which I undoubtedly was playing back then), but I just couldn't finish it. I ended up renting the game one or two more times, finally finishing the level and completing the game both times.

I thought that was it, that I would never play the game again. Usually when I rent a game that many times and play the crap out of it like that, I don't bother to buy it. But with each renting of Goldeneye, I fell a little bit more in love with the game each and every time. Plus the multiplayer mode was a ton of fun, and I wanted to have a copy of the game handy if and when I had friends over.

So I bought it. The game was still relatively new and I paid full price for it. So it was kind of a waste of precious resources (especially for a 15 year old) renting the game three times and then paying full price for a new copy of it. But it was well worth it.

I played the hell out of the game, not only in single player mode but with friends as well. I became a multiplayer champion, the kid that everyone hated to play against. In fact, often times I would be ganged up on by people so they could take me out first when we'd play. Even going 3 against 1, sometimes they were still not successful enough to take me out of the game.

Multiplayer was a ton of fun. It offers pretty standard player vs player battle mode (up to 4 people could play at a time), but there were a ton of levels, a lot of different weapon modes to choose from, and a few variations of battles to pick from. I remember the man with the golden gun (one hit kills) being a fun mode to play. Finding secret hiding spots, ambushing players... walking around, having to constantly be on the lookout for proximity mines... keeping tabs on where weapon caches and bulletproof vests would respawn... the game was just an absolute blast to play with my friends.

I also became quite good at the game in single player. I beat the game on the three main difficulty settings, unlocking the secret levels and each and every hidden character in multiplayer. Man, it was an incredibly difficult task. To this day, I don't know how I did it. I struggle now to get through the game on Secret Agent difficulty, but I will get to that later. Still, it was quite an accomplishment. I don't know if I could do that today, even if I invested all of my time into playing this.

Over time, the Nintendo 64 gave way to a new generation of consoles. This game got shelved. Unlike a lot of other titles I put away when I am done playing them, I still would pick up Goldeneye every few years or so and give it a good play through.

I'd say it has been at least five years since the last time I played the game. I had wanted to play an N64 game for my next review, and it was a no brainer that I was going to pick this.

Right away, I was able to pick up the game and get into the swing of things as if I had just played it yesterday. The control scheme is very accessible, the game easy to handle and play. Although the game is 20 years old (damn, I am ancient) - it still holds up relatively well. The graphics are vibrant and colorful. Your weapons damage the environment, enemies react to where you shoot them. This was groundbreaking stuff for 1997. The characters look, for the most part, like their film counterparts. But what really stands out to me is the game's music. Goldeneye has a classic soundtrack that I found myself humming along to one more than one occasion.

The level design is classic, this isn't just a "shoot everyone" brainless first person shooter. Each stage has missions and objectives you must complete before you can move on. No two levels are alike (well, except for a couple later stages in the game where you revisit old haunts) and each stage seems to have its own life and personality. Every level of the game feels new and fresh, and that is something that can not be said for a lot of games. The variety in the stages and the various tasks and objectives you must complete in each one definitely keeps you interested and wanting to play more and more each time you finish a stage. Plus, when you play on higher difficulties, new objectives in each stage open up, giving the game even more replay value.

On my most recent play though, I set out to beat the game on Secret Agent difficulty, which is the second of two difficulty options presented to you at the beginning of the game. Apparently, on my last several play throughs I must have played the game on just plain old Agent difficulty, because holy crap I had a tough time beating this game. I was fine until the level with the bunker, when a nearly endless supply of enemies would gang up and slaughter me time and time again. I must have spent two or three hours trying to beat this one level, which I could never remember having problems with in the past. And it only got harder. The tank level (don't get me started on that), the level where you start in the elevator (I forget its name), and the god damned Aztec level. Ugh, please kill me now. And to think, I beat this game as a teenager on the difficulty ABOVE Secret Agent. How I did that, I have no fucking idea.

As classic as the game is, I was able to find a few flaws with it that people probably don't think of when they bring this game to mind. I'm sure a ton of people play the game on Agent difficulty, which is pretty easy. But the jump in difficulty from Agent to Secret Agent is soooo steep. The thing that irritated me the most: definitely the respawning enemies. So many levels send an endless flood of foes in your direction, to the point where it starts to become very tedious to finish a level. You can clear a room, check it, and advance to the next room only to have an enemy appear out of nowhere behind you and start shooting the living crap out of you, taking out half your health in the process. This irritated me immensely. As you progress in the game, the enemies do more damage and become sharpshooters as well. Sometimes you get blasted the second you step around a corner, without even a split second to react. It can get very frustrating at times.

Still, there is no denying that this game is amazing and is still a great classic. Playing it brings back so many memories to my mind. Great single player mode, great challenges. Kicking my friends' asses in multiplayer. Experiencing this game as a teen in the 90's definitely changed my opinion on first person shooters and what they were capable of. I had only played games like Wolfenstein and Doom at this point in my life. This was a total eye opener for me. Shooting people in the foot and seeing them hop around in pain, shooting them in the head and killing them instantly - these were things that you just didn't see in the mid 90's. You could shoot out windows, destroy items sitting on tables. Even shooting the differently textured walls and floors and hearing the different sound effects was a thing of beauty back then. Not even doing the missions, just walking around and firing at things to see what would happen was an amazing experience. Plus it transformed me from someone who couldn't care less about Bond to a big fan. I wouldn't say hardcore, but I do love the series.

It's just a really great game. If you had asked me what I would grade it coming into my most recent play through of the game, I would have said an A+. No question. Playing it again in 2016, nearly 20 years after its initial release, I was able to spot a few of the game's flaws. The respawning enemies and frustrating difficulty on the non Agent difficulty levels definitely brings it down a wee bit for me. I'm all for a challenge, as long as the challenge is fair. But this was just ridiculous in some spots. The point of playing games is to have fun, and there were definitely many spots in the game where I was just getting pissed off rather than having fun.

I won't let my chuck the controller through the wall moments ruin my memory of the game though. Goldeneye is a classic. Its impact not only on the genre but on my life as a young adult in general is something that can not be denied. Maybe I didn't have quite as much fun as I thought I would, plus I don't have anyone to play multiplayer with so that whole aspect of the game was skipped over for me, but it is still amazing.

Overall:

A

2016 Movie Ranking Countdown: April

Another month, another 5 movies will move on to my ultimate movie ranking list at the end of the year. I watched 12 films in the month of April, so narrowing it down will be a little bit harder than usual. Which 5 will move on and what will be left in the dust? Let's find out!

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I watched this movie late last year and it ranked in my top 3 favorite movies of the year, if I remember correctly. The movie was so good that as soon as it ended, I considered firing it up again and immediately watching it one more time. That NEVER happens with me with movies. I didn't watch it again, but instead decided to wait a few months to give it another shot. See if I would like it even more with it being not so fresh on my mind.

Turns out that may have been a bad mistake. This is still a great movie, but that sense of wonder and "wow did I just see that?" which I experienced the first time around was not present on my second viewing. I had a hard time getting into it, I thought things moved a little too fast. I wasn't as enchanted by the world of Mad Max as I was the first time. In fact, I hate to say this, but I pulled my phone out about 10 minutes into the movie and started playing games. No, Dan! Noooooo!

But luckily I pulled my head out of my butt, and I put the phone away and started paying attention during the second half of the movie. It may have been too little too late though. While I did enjoy the second half, and I started to notice things I hadn't the first time around, it was really like I was only watching a half of a movie. I tend to zone out everything around me when I am playing on the phone. Which is a shame because this is an amazing movie, and as a result of my foolishness it may miss out on cracking the top 5 for this month. I haven't made up my mind yet though. Let's see how these other movies stack up.

I've been on a big Stephen King kick lately, and when I noticed that this short story from Full Dark, No Stars had been made into a movie, I had to see it. This is by far the story from Full Dark, No Stars that stood out to me the most. It is about a female author whose car breaks down while returning from a book signing. A good Samaritan stops to help her, but quickly things go wrong and she finds herself raped, beaten, and left for dead in a drain pipe. When she wakes up, she goes on an epic quest to find her rapist and would-be murderer and track him down to kill him.

There are twists and turns along the way, but I won't spoil anything if you haven't seen or read the story. The movie does change some things from the book, but I actually liked the changes here. This is a very worthy movie version of a very disturbing short story. Even though it is only a made for TV Lifetime movie (which I didn't realize until after watching this), it was still quite good.

I'm a fan of the Maze Runner books, but the first movie was only just okay by my standards. I had heard the second film was good, so I decided to give it a shot.

It turned out to be true that this film is better than its predecessor. It is sleek and beautifully filmed. Great action scenes, nice looking scenery. It is fast paced, it is intense. And it has a lot of really great appearances from actors from nerd shows that I like to watch. Want to see Littlefinger square off against Gustavo Fring? You have come to the right place.

I really, really wanted to love this movie. But it turns out I only just liked it. While it is true that the film is very well made and is infinitely better than the original, there is just something about it that screamed forgettable to me. Once again the urge to pull out my phone and play games in the middle of this turned out to be too strong to resist. I don't know what is wrong with me. I am either playing games while watching movies or falling asleep. I wish I could just enjoy things like normal people do, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards for me.

It may still make my top 5 for the month, just because I realize how well made the movie is. I liked it enough to revisit it at some point later on in the year, so it has that going for it.

I've read the book version of the Martian. While it is funny and has some really tense moments in it, there were quite a few pages filled with boring techno babble and science chatter. While it made the book seem scientifically accurate, like the events in it could have actually happened, it also was enough to bore me from time to time.

I figured the movie version of the Martian would play out very similarly, and I was not mistaken. Visually the movie is a masterpiece and one of the best looking films of all time. I like the cast, I like the characters. I am not a huge Matt Damon fan, but he was great in this, as were all of the supporting characters. Ned Stark is a bad ass here.

The problem I had with the movie is the same problem I had with the book. It tends to drag in parts and get bogged down by scientific gobble degook. If you have ever seen Apollo 13, this movie is very similar to that one. Except instead of 3 guys trapped in space, it is 1 guy trapped on Mars.

Despite the lulls in action, I still enjoyed myself. I think it could have been a little better, but overall it is a really solid movie. And the end made me tear up a little bit, so it has that working in its favor. Usually I don't cry in movies, so when a film can elicit such a reaction from me, it has done a good job.

I had heard this movie was terrible, so I had very low expectations for it. I came in expecting it to suck, but at the same time I was prepared for the chance that I would like it. I think my low expectations actually served in my favor here, as I truly did enjoy the movie.

It has a great cast, a fun story line. And it is a story line I can relate to, growing up hanging out in video game arcades and playing a lot of the same games that these guys did. Pac-Man, Centipede, Millipede, Defender, Space Invaders... hell yeah! If aliens ever invade Earth using characters from these games as their attack vessels, sign me up to fight them off!

I am sure that by no means is this a world beating film. I am sure that, watching this in a different context, the sappy love story and outrageous plot would have put me off to the film. But I don't know, I just had fun watching this. It's not meant to be an award winning film, it is meant to entertain kids, families, and people like me that grew up with these kind of games. I liked it a lot.

And visually it is really stunning too. I wouldn't be surprised to see this make my top 5. Which is funny when you consider how critically bashed this film is, and you compare it to the heavyweights it is up against.

I referenced in my Big Driver evaluation that I've been on a Stephen King kick lately. One of the reasons I am so into his work again all of a sudden is partly because I have recently read 11/22/63 and watched the Hulu miniseries. The story is about a man who goes back to save JFK, and it really got me thinking about the assassination and all the conspiracy theories.

When I saw this on Netflix, I decided to give it a chance. This is a documentary that deals with JFK's last day alive. Why he is in Dallas, what he did leading up to the assassination, and the assassination itself. This was a nice little miniseries, but it was nothing earth shattering for me. This didn't dive into any conspiracy theories, didn't speculate much on why it happened. It was more of a fact based narrative explaining the events of that fateful day.

It was good and I enjoyed myself watching it, but it left something a little to be desired for me when I was done with it.

After watching the Day JFK Died, I was still starved for more information on the Kennedy assassination. Searching for JFK on Netflix, I found this documentary as well. This is more of what I was looking for in the first place.

Why was Kennedy killed? Who could have done it? Who had a reason to do it? Why was the trajectory of the bullets so screwed up if they were fired from 1 gun? Why did people on the street smell gunpowder if the shots were fired from such a high vantage point with the wind blowing out?

This was the documentary that dealt with all the conspiracy theories regarding the assassination. Some of these theories were pretty interesting, some were stupid. I thought the theory about him being accidentally shot by a Secret Serviceman going for his weapon was an interesting theory, especially since it was backed by a ballistics expert, but I have read about this theory since watching this documentary and it has been proved false.

I enjoyed this a lot, and it really got me thinking as to what could have happened back on November 11, 1963. It is a mystery that may go unsolved in our lifetime. If it ever gets solved.

I watched this movie last year, in 2015. I fell asleep about halfway through it and missed a good chunk of it, but I still ranked it on my list. I believe it got a somewhat middling ranking if I remember correctly.

I decided I owed it to this movie to go back and watch it again this year, while attempting to actually stay awake for the whole thing. I succeeded in my goal, but I didn't really enjoy the movie as much as I thought I would. Sure there are some genuinely scary events in this movie. It is rare when a film can scare me or creep me out, and this one was able to do it on a few occasions.

I just think that knowing the twist of the film, plus having seen most of it so recenty, kind of ruined it in my mind. I wasn't able to get into it like I was hoping I would be able to. I kept pausing it and doing other things, and I think it took me over 3 hours to finish a film which really isn't that long to begin with.

I gave it a chance. I do like the film, but it is too similar to other things I have seen to really stand out too much in my mind.

I've always been intrigued by the premise of this film. It has Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is a big plus. It's about zombies: another plus. But for some reason I had my doubts.

Just because Arnold is in this doesn't mean it is an action movie. In fact, it is far from it. The film is mainly a psychological drama. Arnie is dealing with the impending death of his daughter, who has been bitten by a zombie. There is no cure for this. She is going to die and there is nothing he can do about it.

Usually when I watch movies like this where there is this kind of impending shroud of doom surrounding the characters, I get really into it. But for some reason I just wasn't feeling this movie. It's not the characters, it is not the acting. As far as I can remember the movie seemed to be pretty well made. I just couldn't really get into it, and now that I think back on it, I can barely remember anything about it. Maybe I just wasn't in the proper mood to watch it.

Some other day, some other time, perhaps.

This isn't typically my kind of movie. FBI vs drug cartel. Lots of shootouts and elaborate scheming.

But I had read in the Entertainment Weekly that this was supposed to be a really intense, hardcore movie. I like Emily Blunt. I like movies that put me on the edge of my seat. Why not give it a shot?

The movie gets off to a really good start. The FBI raids a drug house, they find dead bodies in the walls. People are shaken, they puke. A sense of dread and foreboding settles in. I am like - okay, this is gonna be good.

Unfortunately the rest of the movie doesn't hold up to the strong beginning. Emily Blunt's character is drawn into some kind of a plot to battle the Mexican cartel. There is a lot of elaborate scheming and double crossing going on. Benicio Del Toro's character is a double agent, or something. There is a big conspiracy uncovered at the end. Emily Blunt's facial expression never changes.

I just felt very "eh" about the whole movie. This is a subject that doesn't particularly interest me. I kind of got bored after a while. I started doing other things and only half paid attention. The movie didn't grip me like I had expected it to. I recognize that it is a well made movie, I just wasn't feeling it for some reason or another.

That's several movies on the list now that I have recognized as well done films, but for some reason or another I haven't been able to get into. I think its an attention span problem on my end, but who knows?

This is something I have wanted to see for a long time, if only because it stars the actress who plays Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones. In this movie, she travels to Japan to track down her sister, who has vanished into the "suicide forest" thing they have over there.

The movie delivered some legitimate scares. Just the whole forest thing itself was creepy, not to mention the fact that the whole movie takes place in a foreign country where nothing is familiar. That makes the whole thing just a little bit more unsettling.

I really liked the movie, although I did think the ending was kind of stupid and didn't make a whole lot of sense. If it doesn't make the top 5 for this month, you can blame the ending.

I was surprised to see that this movie got harsh reviews from the critics, because I had a good time. My tastes are weird. I like Pixels and the Forest which everyone seems to hate, yet I didn't really care for Sicario, Maggie, The Others, etc.

The last movie I watched in April!

I came into this movie not really knowing what to expect. I knew that the trailers for the film looked good, but as far as its actual story line, I had no idea what it was about. Something with ghosts.

The story revolves around a girl named Edith. She sees ghostly visions of her mother warning her of a place called Crimson Peak. Some of these ghost scenes are kind of creepy. Again, I don't scare easily but some of the scenes put me on the edge of my seat a little bit.

She meets some dude played by Loki from Thor - you know, the guy that all 20 to 30 year old chicks seem to go nuts over. Turns out he and his sister are running some kind of black widower scheme where he marries women with money and then they take the money and share it between the 2 of them. The sister gets upset because Loki is falling in love with this woman, and that's not part of the script. Edith finds out that the place where she and her new family are living is called Crimson Peak.

Fights break out. Stuff happens. You are led for most of the movie to believe that ghosts are the main antagonists in the film, but they aren't. It was a good movie. Not sure if I liked the very end, but I think the movie as a whole was solid enough to earn an entry into my top 5 for the month, especially seeing as how I watched a ton of movies I couldn't get into.

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It's a tough call, but I must choose only 5 from the list to make my ultimate year end ranking.

The 5 moving on are:

Big Driver

The Martian

Pixels

JFK: The Smoking Gun

Crimson Peak

It was a really, really tough call. I wanted to include Mad Max. I really did. I also wanted to include the Forest. Even the Scorch Trials probably deserved to move on. But 5 and only 5 were selected.

4 months into the year, and here are my top 20 movies so far, based on me pulling 5 each month:

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Cake
American Sniper
Predator
Friday the 13th Part 2

Locke

Evil Dead

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Elysium

Snowpiercer
Room
Manson Family Vacation
Deadpool
Goodnight, Mommy
Unforgiven

Big Driver

The Martian

Pixels

JFK: The Smoking Gun

Crimson Peak