#mini-review

I must say that after replaying these games, I've developed many new opinions towards them.

Minor Threats #1 - Introducing The Cast

Been hearing a lot of praise for this book (its sequel/spin-off, the Alternates, is currently on going), written by Patton Oswalt, Jordan Blum and Scott Hepburn and it's it's actually really good?

Admittedly the premise itself isn't exactly new, being based around a bunch of d-list characters in a patische superhero setting, but the style and execution is really what makes the world work. Kind of a grimy version of Astro City, where the decades of superhero activity have made it so entire neighbourhoods are built on the bones of kaiju and giant mech too large to be removed for proper disposal, and where an entire district is in constant temporal flux due to the fall out of a battle with a time-travelling supervillain. Lots of great worldbuilding and characterisation here.

The plot of the mini-series? Following the death of Dusk-Boy (the book's Robin expy to Batman's the Insomniac) to the villain known as the Stickman, the city's superhero community have come down hard on their resident supervillains in an attempt to find the murderer.

The problem here is that the Insomniac's violence is escalating as his rage at his adopted son's death is causing him to become increasingly violent, while his cohorts are racing to find the Stickman first (or failing that, getting the supervillains off the street) in case their friend just straight-up kills someone (making the public loose faith in superheroes in the process).

The fact that the situation has gotten to the point that no one in the supervillain community, even the retired ones like our main protagonist, Frankie, are unable to go outside without being harassed or brutalised while the search for Stickman goes on, leads for our team to come up with a plan. Find the Stickman themselves, then either kill him or turn him over to the superheroes in order to return to some kind of normalcy.

Hans Vogel is Dead

What is it: A Luftwaffe pilot is shot down over London, and crash lands in a magical fairy tale realm.

The Good: “Nazis in Narnia” is just a phenomenal hook, and the art does a great job of selling the chaotic mystical setting. The relationship between Hans and Reineke the fox-who-is-not-a-fox is a good grounding story for a comic as wild as this one. The comic does a lot of “tropey” fantasy things but uses them very well, allowing it to maintain a fast pace and focus on the character relationships without having to bog down in the irrelevant minutia of the monster of the week.

The Bad: Hans Vogel being a literal nazi is startlingly incidental to the story. It does get mentioned occassionally, but he could have been a soldier in any army without anything changing, and it seems like a bit of a waste of the premise. The comic also goes from mystical set piece to mystical set piece very quickly, which can all run together, and make this a rare instance of a comic that may have been better to read live than it is to archive binge.

Dave the Diver (Mini Review)

Revitalize a floundering sushi restaurant by catching your own fish during the day and serving your catch to demanding customers at night. 

Part fishing sim, part restaurant management

Catch fish, set the menu, and hire staff to help you run the restaurant

Exploration is encouraged through a constantly changing dive location and story beats pushing you to dive deeper

Lots of wacky characters, sidequests, and upgrade systems

First two thirds of the movie are very good, the mid-act commits SO hard to its bit of “entering a fantasy time portal to 60′s London”, you have no clue how or why or where its going and it feels no need to answer those for you quickly, its great. Everything with the mirrors constantly switching around our main girl Ellie’s existence is Peak Edgar Wright and beautifully staged.

It is absolutely unfair how attractive a main lead this movie has; Ellie is the pinnacle of a quirky/artsy ingénue girl skirting the line between introvert and insanity, while her presumed alter-ego Sandy is Queen’s Gambit’s Anya Taylor-Joy as a cynical Mod-fashioned seductress, and the idea of both of those women bundled up into one eyeliner-smeared package is a level of my-fetish catering Hollywood is rarely horny-on-main enough to deliver.

Alas, it falls apart quite hard in the final act; its escalation of “60′s fantasy turned sexual slavery hellscape” is paced beautifully during the second act, it crescendos in clawing, faceless rape-spectres spilling over into the real world then just...stays there, as you have 4-5 scenes of the same attack being launched at Ellie in different buildings with no discernable trigger for a half hour. You need more cards in your hand to play them for this long a film, Mr. Wright.

The characters also collapse in on themselves to make the film move toward its finale - Ellie’s aspiring-beau John, who has had all of 30 seconds of interactions with her before things go down, sticks by her side through Ellie having psychotic break-down mid hook-up, her telling him she is being stalked by ghosts that she is also cosplaying for ~reasons (they are, to be clear, fashion design students in modern London), and her trying to stab one of her classmates in the face in the middle of a library in front of dozens of people. Really need to emphasize that last one there, she tries to murder a classmate because of *ghosts* and this dude rolls with it. Other characters follow suit - a old dude at a bar must have been paid to act like every rapist red flag in the book as set-up to be a same-color herring in Ellie’s quest to figure out the ghosts haunting her, and her landlord decides to just surprise-monologue her entire villainous backstory for no reason whatsoever and try to kill Ellie on top of it just to move the film along. Some classic “we wrote the emotional beats first and just filled in plot to get us there second” energy.

Speaking of the villain, the whole film Diana Rigg is playing Ellie’s extremely-unimportant landlord and you are just waiting for that shoe to drop, how is she connected to the ghosts from the 60′s, she HAS to be, its Diana god-damn Rigg, former Bond Girl in a movie that introduces its retro wonderland with a Thunderball poster, you did not cast her to simply collect rent checks I know its coming!!!

Finally, we have our moment of uncomfortable Hollywood feminism, ~woo. This is a film about being haunted by the ghosts of rape culture, which is fine and great. Yet the twist is that supposedly-innocent-victim Sandra was in fact a mass murderer who took out her rage at her sexual exploitation on the men who hired her, and buried their bodies beneath the floorboards Poe-style (and is the landlord 50+ years later and still alive, if that wasn’t clear). When Ellie learns this, AFTER Sandy-cum-landlord has tried to kill both her and her slavishly devoted boytoy, they have this “I understand your pain, they deserved it” moment. Yeah, those monsters, those men who...hired a sex worker?? The man (Matt Smith, in this case) who tricked her into the life was a monster, sure, and I am far from saying those other men are blameless, but amoung her dozens of victims are surely a lion’s share who simply thought this was her job consensually and didn’t think much of it. “The patrons of sex workers deserved to be murdered, Feminism!” is definitely not a statement the creators would agree with, but its sort-of what the movie’s message is. Its a very odd scene that definitely came about from the modern myopia around political theming in films.

Scream VI is the latest entry in the long-running horror franchise and the sequel to the meta-reboot-quel by the Radio Silence crew. 

If I had to summarize Scream VI in one word it would be ‘satisfying’. Satisfying in its approach to the various character arcs, Easter eggs, set pieces, etc. Everything was just so damn satisfying.

The film has probably one of the most shocking opening sequences since the original Scream film and really leans into the legacy of this series Which is fitting because this film stays pretty focused on the notion of legacy and what it means to families just as much as franchises. Thematically, it’s a return to the first few films. Melissa Barrera takes these weighty ideas and runs with it, injecting a ton of personality into our lead, Sam Carpenter (just for the record, I thought she was fantastic in Scream V, but I do have to agree she brings her A-game here). She’s given probably the fullest and most intriguing arcs in the entire film, and nails it.

 Jenna Ortega’s returning Tara is likewise giving it her-all, as is the rest of the ‘core four’ (dubbed in-character by the surviving gang from the last film). Of course, it wouldn’t be Scream without some mysterious and untrustworthy additions to the cast and friend-circle and all the newcomers are all pleasant additions. 

Radio Silence really upped their game here with one especially harrowing ladder sequence (which, quality of the film aside, isn’t really worth the 3D). The film is a visual feast in general, every whodunnit clue felt fair and this time they spun me for a loop and I fell right into a red herring. 

So last night I decided to watch a movie while twisting my hair instead of a TV show, and I settled on Jack the Giant Slayer on HBO Max because it was about to expire and disappear into the ether (I guess?).

Here's the thing. I remember when this movie came out, but I wasn't sure I wanted to see it because it looked a little m'eh to me. Don't get me wrong. The special effects looked great, and I loved the cast. But I just wasn't interested in seeing a contemporary adaptation of the Jack and the Beanstalk story.

Well ... flash forward 8 years later and I humbly say, "I was so wrong!"

This movie is soooooo cute and fun, and surprisingly violent for a family film. Seriously, the number of people who are shown getting clobbered by giants, beanstalk stems and flying objects thrown over the castle walls is ... disturbing.

And even though I didn't buy Nicholas Hoult as an 18 year old for a minute, it was a lovely story that was just unique enough to make it feel fresh and fascinating. Stanley Tucci and Ewen Bremner left me loving to hate them. (Is there nothing the Tucci can't do?)

Ian McShane -- I swear that man has looked the same age for 20 years -- was wonderful as always. Eleanor was pretty good too for someone stuck with the just-rebellious-enough princess role.

The special effects were as brilliant as expected, and I was seriously on the edge of my seat when Jack was riding his horse at break neck speed trying to catch the drawbridge before it closed. I honestly wasn't sure he was going to make it.

I genuinely enjoyed every minute of this film. But more than anything, I especially enjoyed seeing my baby, Ewan McGregor, looking the hottest he's ever looked in any film in the 25 years since I've began following his career.

Honestly. Look at this hair and costume combo:

The coiffure is just ... perfection. And the beard and mustache game is working his face shape like it was just meant to be. Add to that the clothes, the bravery, the snarkiness, and the general Ewan-ness of it all, and I suddenly want to read fanfiction starring his character right now.

I know I'm late to the adoration for this particular film, but I enjoyed it so much I just had to share.

That is all.

So, I have a prime membership I keep forgetting to cancel, and decided to use it today and chose a random film that looked interesting.

That ended up being I Am Dragon. It’s in Russian but it has English subtitles.

I was not expecting it to be even half-way good because I tried to watch an Ashlad movie Amazon has and I hated it.

This I enjoyed a lot. So much so I’m going to keep my review as spoiler-free as possible despite it being a 4-6 year old film. I phrase it like that because its IMDb page says it was made in 2015 but Amazon is claiming 2017.

So, acting—I have likely never seen these actors or actresses in anything else before because I don’t normally consume Russian Language media, so all I can say is the acting was—for the most part—solid. I think the character of Igor and the older sister character -Yoraslava- were the two weakest performances and even they really weren’t bad.

The actress playing Mira —the protagonist— started rough but her performance only got stronger throughout the film. The actor playing Arman could be a bit...off at times but considering his character, that actually does work.

The effects were on par with your average PS3 game but I wasn’t expecting top-of-the-line. The Compositing was wonderful. It never felt like the titular Dragon wasn’t actually there. 

Costumes aren’t something I can fully critique because I am not really familiar with Russian clothing but the really beautiful garments were well gorgeous. 

Premise was interesting if not something I could sort of predict here and there but that’s not a bad thing. Tropes are tools. Execution is what really matters.

The ending had me going for a little bit but over all, I think this is a hidden gem.

Solid 9 out of 10.