The Collectivist

Mute (2018)

Imagine being Duncan Jones just sitting around in his local movie theater while trailers for Blade Runner 2049 are playing and he knows he has this coming out on Netflix in a few weeks. Going from Moon to what is essentially a direct to DVD Asylum film version of a recent sci-fi classic but with more John Wick parts? Brutal.

One of the purist examples of style over substance this side of Only God Forgives and an almost total waste of a very game Paul Rudd.

Rad Rodgers (PC, 2018)

This might be flat out one of the best looking platformers in years. The backgrounds and models are all just gorgeous. It’s a shame that the game itself is so openly derivative. I mean, you know what you are getting into when a game named “RAD RODGERS” namechecks Commander Keen and what not, but there is nothing new here that Rad Rodgers does differently from any other modern-retro throwback platformer. This may as well be a remake of Ruff N Tumble.

It’s also really short, but it stays entertaining the whole time even though you know you’ve already done this before. I’d be a little more forgiving if it wasn’t for its really, really, really forced self aware style of humor. For the 1000th time, mentioning your game’s faults and handwaving them as retro doesn’t make them not faults.

Crossing Souls (PC, 2018)

It’s a fun story-driven action adventure game with just fantastic pixel art and design but the action aspects of the gameplay aren’t anything special so it is so, so, so hard for Crossing Souls to shake the feeling of sameness in a world where Stranger Things and It have put the Realistic Kids in Fantastical Situations genre back on the frontburner of pop culture.

Gotta give it credit though, the story goes to some much darker places than you would immediately expect. It doesn’t stick the landing with a sort of cop-out ending but up until that point the story is far and away the strongest element.

The Ritual (2017)

The Ritual is the rare movie that picks up AFTER you see the monster as opposed to that being the moment things fall apart. It’s a steady build beforehand as well which helps, taking a lot of its structure from the Descent by starting with a tragic incident that leads to the four future victims struggling with interpersonal strife while also having a giant beast hot on their tails.

It’s hard not to look at The Ritual - a film about four blokes getting lost in old Scandinavian woods - and not immediately go “oh Blair Witch” but that shortchanges The Ritual pretty harshly. I mean, yeah, its similar in the sense that its a psychological horror movie about people falling apart while being stalked in the woods by an monstrous creature, but unlike in the Blair Witch you actually want to see this thing as much as possible because its fucking awesome.

The Square (2017)

Finally, a movie that accurately represents the internal conflict between a strong love of art and a sneering derision for other people who love art.

The Square seems like a movie about nothing at first glance, when really its a movie about one very particular thing and how that ripples outwards. Much like Ruben Östlund’s previous brilliant cinema nerd darling Force Majeure. The Square isn’t as cohesive or focused as Force Majeure - it occasionally feels like an anthology film due to the different ideas it tries to balance - but it is the driest possible satire about modern life and the role contemporary art plays - or doesn’t play - in it. The perspective of the film revolves around an art curator and how the decisions he makes after being robbed in a confidence trick lead to an increasingly more absurd series of events.

The main issue with The Square that holds it back from being an actual brilliant film instead of a film that aspires to brilliance is that while the film reads as a takedown of bourgeoisie art snobs as opposed to being reactionary or anti-art, the only people who are going to notice that are other bourgeoisie art snobs. As good as it is it’s still just a bunch of bourgeoisie nerds clapping at how they aren’t as bourgeoisie as other bourgeoisie nerds.

Grey’s Anatomy (2005-????)

For the longest time, my girlfriend and I have been using “couple that stays home and binge watches Grey’s Anatomy” as the most terrifying worse case scenario for a relationship. It would just be so aggressively normal. We’ve been saying that for 8 years, and will probably say it for another 8 before ER Except Dumber finally gets put out of its misery.

Almost Famous (2000)

I liked Almost Famous but never liked how so many kids I went to high school with who loved this movie were full “OH WHY COULDN’T I HAVE BEEN BORN THEN” doofuses and I just could never stand that. Me and my best friend were known for hating “classic rock” because of what a revulsion I had for the people who like, couldn’t live without music man, but also never listened to anything that their parents didn’t show them first. We both just hated the middle of the road shit that got played on The Wave or The Eagle or whatever the fuck the classic rock radio station called itself.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah. Almost Famous is supposed to be about what a nerd the main character is as he is coming of age while writing a story about the popular rock band Stillwater but ends up playing out more like a full length humblebrag, which makes sense considering this is supposed to be loosely based on Cameron Crowe’s own life touring with rock bands during the era. It actually works though and the story has a lot of relatable moments knocking around. It probably made your parents nostalgic as hell too.

Deep Sixed (PC, 2018)

If you like multitasking and having to keep a whole lot of plate’s spinning at the same time in a sci-fi dystopia that is as tongue-in-cheek as it is unforgiving, do I have a game for you. Deep Sixed was getting called a “roguelite” but that is only because people really want procedural generation and high difficulty to be genre elements. It doesn’t have a whole lot in common with recent roguelites and certainly doesn’t have anything to with Rogue outside of those two things. Deep Sixed is more its own enjoyable beast.

It plays like a cross between FTL, Cook Serve Delicious, and a Lucas Arts’ adventure game. There is a story of course but most of your time is spent trying to keep the bucket of rusted bolts you are in spaceworthy. Most failures come entirely from not managing the demands of your ship in time and oh boy is there a lot to manage. Most of the aspects of your ship can break down and can only be repaired or maintained in a very specific way, which can be found in the in-game manual. The very, very large in game manual. A simple repair might have one or two steps, but the more important and dangerous ones get much more in depth.

It’s a fun thing really, because at first you start to wish that something would carry over into your next playthrough after you die in order to make things a little easier on your nerves, but then you remember all the steps to one of the more simpler repairs, and then all of the steps to a more difficult one. When your realize the thing you are carrying over from one death to the next is your own accumulated knowledge of the game’s systems it feels very rewarding.

Battle Beast Simulator (PC, 2018)

Uh. It certainly is what it is.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance (PC, 2018)

The story is kind of decent but it betrays its conceit as a realistic medieval life simulator or whatever pretty quickly. Also the whole “writer being a dude who probably loves NSBM thing” is a turn off but otherwise it has the pieces to be an okay game. Just the pieces though. The whole package is a little ehhhh. 

It’s just that all its effort to enhance realism and be historically accurate gets relegated to feeling like a lesser Skyrim due to how rough it is around the edges technically. It runs like shit and even a month after its release its still buggier than a lollipop in an ant farm, which is not a good combination with Kingdom Come’s granular finicky combat system and huge amount of quests respectively. Maybe they should have spent less time explaining why brown people weren’t invented yet in the game’s timeline and more time polishing all the things that are supposed to be fun. This is almost guaranteed to be the kind of game that I keep installed for ages but never actually play again.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

The Rock is no Robin Williams, but he is The Rock which is fine I guess. Jumanji makes a few smart decisions - one of which being that the players become “avatars” stuck in a video game - so what seemed like a really stupid idea ends up being kind of fun. I spend a lot of time ripping on the studios for their awful decision making but they made the right call here by gearing this more towards people in the age group that actually would feel nostalgia about Jumanji as opposed to making it a full on family movie, and then making sure the movie doesn’t only trade on nostalgia. Plus, saying it is a sequel as opposed to a remake is really window dressing but is is appreciated as it gives them just enough cover to keep you from getting irrationally mad at some of the dumber things in here potentially ruining your childhood memories. 

Although, while I used to think Jack Black was the most annoying one-note comedic actor working today this movie has helped me realize that the actual most annoying one-note comedic actor working today is Kevin Hart. I wish Joel Embiid would dunk that dude into the ocean.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

Resident Evil closes out the Paul W. S. Anderson era with a film that solidifies its legacy as a series of poorly plotted movies with no coherent plot or direction that uses laughably cheap CGI and loud noises to target people who thought the Fast and the Furious movies were too cerebral.

It’s borderline unwatchable and also the second best movie in the franchise. I wish I could be excited about James Wan being involved in the inevitable reboot but I’m sure he will detach from the project so that he can focus on making films in The Conjuring Extended Universe based on every single object in any of the movies.

The Resident Evil series made over a billion dollars by the way. Enjoy trying to cope with your day while knowing that.

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

I watched this less than an hour ago and honestly don’t remember a single thing about it. It is, again, almost the exact same movie as the one before. These movies set themselves back to the status quo more often than Family Guy episodes.

Oh, no, wait. I remember one thing; the entire opening scene is a complete shameless rip off of the opening scene in the remake of Dawn of the Dead except with the added bonus of making the structure of the film incoherent. 

A few questions; how does Umbrella have the resources to build giant recreations of foreign city blocks for the sole purpose of them being destroyed? Why, after establishing that the entire world is in full post-apocalypse, are there still governments trying to buy nebulous weaponized viruses? Is there even a one percent chance that anybody brought up those glaring problems while this script was getting shit out into the world?

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

The trailer for this film should have just been someone with a monocle going “Hey remember those kind of entertaining ideas that the last Resident Evil set up about Alice’s clone army and super powers? Haha fuck you movie viewer, let’s get rid of all that stuff in the first 10 minutes of the movie and just go right back to the same bullshit you’ve already paid us to watch three times. Thanks for the money you god damn rube! We didn’t even bother acknowledging the fact the last movie showed the planet as a dustbowl, look at all these oceans you fucking moron!”

A lot of big budget films think their viewers are the dumbest people on Earth but only the Resident Evil series might be right. Resident Evil: Afterlife begins by insulting you and making damn sure you know you’ve wasted your time on the last movie, and then ends with what can only be described as the most Monster Energy and Guy Fieri’s Shirts Presents action climax of any film in human history. I’m scoring this movie as terrible but honestly you need to watch it just for the last fight scene which, again, could not possibly be any dumber.

Jyu-Oh-Sei (Spring, 2006)

I like an anime that doesn’t waste any time. Jyu-Oh-Sei is the story of recently orphaned twins who get sent to a planet run almost entirely by man eating plants. They learn the only way to get off of the planet and discover who killed their parents is to defeat each of the four “Rings.” It’s a comfortable feeling plot but it has enough going for it to remain fresh.

At only 11 episodes it moves at a very steady clip so, while there isn’t a ton of time to flesh out some aspects of the characters there also isn’t enough time to get bogged down in some of the filler that turns so many decent anime into slogs. The story is interesting enough that it does the heavy lifting that the characters don’t anyway.

Clumsy Knight (PC, 2017)

It’s sort of like Heroes of Might & Magic if Heroes of Might & Magic was made in Flash and had no depth to it whatsoever. It plays exactly like every other P2W mobile game that gets those elements stripped out of it and then ported to Steam for a quick buck.

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

I want to thank the Resident Evil franchise for reminding me that I actually only want to write very short reviews of these things because, I mean, fuck, how many times can you say “holy shit is this stupid” before you run out of ways to say it.

Extinction takes place in a world where zombies have caused, uh, global warming and, uh, now the seabeds have dried up for, uh, some reason and everything is a desert. It then spends the next nearly two hours in areas that were already deserts before the zombies inexplicably turned the world into Mad Max so why even bother? Every creative decision these movies make could be followed up with “why even bother.”

Again, it’s dumb as hell but it is more “watchable” than the previous sequel. The dumber and louder Resident Evil: Extinction gets the easier it is to stomach. Alice is still an impressively boring character but at least now she has psychic abilities and clones I guess. The Mad Max influence and the sheer ballsy stupidity of the clone angle make this a valid choice for a bad movie night but not much more.