The Gamers is about a role-playing group that can’t seem to win their campaign.  Enter Daphne, a girl who has never played an RPG before hoping that adding to their party number might solve their dying problem.  The movie switches between the events going on in the campaign and the interactions between the real life gamers.  What really helps the movie succeed is that they don’t take the game too seriously.  The players are constantly trying to work around the Dungeon Master’s story rules in order to succeed.  The campaign party is made up of a death prone bard, a mage who forgets what sex he is, an arrogant monk, a fighter with lots of intelligence and little hit points, and a pallidan sent to make sure they don’t  kill too many innocent civilians. While the actually campaign story is pretty dull, watching the character’s interactions makes the movie very epic.  Add a +10 for Pirates vs Ninjas reference and you have one really good flick. Rating: 4/5

The Movie Hero

The trailer does not do the movie justice, but quite frankly it is hard to make a trailer for this kind of movie.  What kind of movie is it or rather what movie it isn’t?  Let’s say you are sitting in a movie theater watching Indiana Jones save the day and get the girl. That’s nothing special, but what if Indiana Jones knew you were watching his adventure? What if he knew he was the star of a movie and everything that entails, he knows he is going to get the girl and save the day before his adventure even begins.  Better yet, what if he knew all this and decided to keep his audience informed on the action rather than those long stares where the audience ponders whats he is planning to do.  Now switch out Indiana Jones for a guy with no job, no car, no girlfriend, and who is generally considered insane and you have The Movie Hero.  It has all the plot elements you would expect from any action movie, but just because the star, Blake, makes sure they are there because his audience will want them. What makes the movie great is that he very vocal about the fact he is a movie. Some people go along with it and some try to convince him he isn’t in a movie, even though the person watching the movie obvious knows he is right. The concept and the charisma of the main character drive the movie home even when the plot falls into all the tired cliches. Rating: 3.5/5

Ink

I’ve saved the best movie for last and I’m just going to start by saying you should really check this movie out. This movie has a lot of things layered on top on each other and to try and explain half of it would just result in spoilers so I will just keep to the main elements introduced at the beginning.  There is another plane of existence on top of our and in it exists a group of people called Storytellers, who create good dreams for people, and the Incubi, who create bad dreams.  The Storytellers are the good guys and the Incubi are the bad, well as the Storyteller Allel waits for a young girl named Emma to fall asleep so she can make her dream, a monster named Ink shows up. It fights off Allel and the other Storytellers, captures Emma, and dissapears in the land of the Incubi.  In the real world, Emma’s dad is informed that his daughter has gone into a coma by her grandparents.  He lost custody of his daughter and now that she needs him, he won’t come.  The story revolves around the Storytellers trying to get back Emma from Ink while the father deals with his daughter being in the hospital and how he had to lose her once already.  You have plenty of action, some nice comedy, a lot of suspense, some incredible scary villains, all wrapped into one awesome package.  It also features some of the cinematics I have ever seen.  Truly an epic movie. Rating 5/5

Note: All these movies are currently available for viewing from Netflix Instant Viewing.