30 Days of Night

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Here’s another movie I watched for podcast purposes. I’m in like August of 2020 right now on all my podcasts, and you can see how this is going to be a problem for me. Also, though, it’s not perfectly fair to say I watched 30 Days of Night. See, it was on last week[1] while I was working, and this usually works out fine for me, subtitle movies excepted. Do I miss some fine plot points of my TV shows and random horror movies on shudder? Sure, maybe! But I know what’s going on, and if I don’t I run things back and rewatch and pay closer attention for a while. No problem! Or if I realize that haha no it’s actually that complex, I watch it while not at work instead.

But this time… I just could not bring myself to care. Like, I thought I knew what was up. Northern Alaska, dead of winter[2], axial tilt means no sunrise for, let’s say, thirty days? All of which equals vampires! And so there’s this initial rush of people dying, and you have survivors, and it was all making sense, until at some point I realized that it was already halfway through the month even thought I thought it was still the first, er, night. Calendar night. You know. And maybe if I’d gone back then it would have been okay, but I figured no problem at least now I know how things are going, but then time kept jumping[3], and I kept not caring enough about the characters to try to keep up, and finally at the end, well, it was a perfectly cromulent ending I guess and ultimately I still really don’t care that I maybe probably don’t actually know what happened in the movie?

So, uh… meh.

[1] two weeks ago? I bet you can already tell where this is going based on that uncertainty alone.
[2] a) get it? b) good boardgame tho
[3] This is based on a graphic novel [series?] that I’ve never read before, and I wonder if this was the source of the time jumps. (Or alternately maybe there were not any particular time jumps, and I was just paying even worse attention than I assume.)

Everything Everywhere All at Once

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I’m not sure there’s a point in talking about the plot or storyline or character beats of Everything Everywhere All at Once. It would be some combination of entirely spoilerful and also incomprehensible. Which is not to say that the movie is incomprehensible, so much as that I’m just pretty sure it works much better on screen than it would in print. As an example: there is no way I could explain mid-life lesbian relationship with hot dog fingers world and make you believe it was kind of glorious. So now you know why I’m not going to try to talk about things that legitimately matter about the movie, if I can’t even explain that.

(You should watch it, though, if that was not yet clear.)

Here’s what I find interesting: it won best picture. Did it deserve to win best picture? I mean, it’s the best 2022 movie I’ve yet seen[1]. But it’s a sci-fi comedy about Chinese immigrant inter-family politics. Last time I checked, that kind of movie doesn’t win best picture at the Academy. …or maybe it does? I haven’t been paying attention for a little while. But it certainly did not used to do such a thing. And it’s like, the family drama part actually felt like Oscar-bait[2], but what blows me away is that the voters made it far enough into the film to see that part and bite on it.

Anyway: I’m glad to see this kind of movie be acclaimed, and I loved it, and you should still go watch it. It’s just surprising, is all.

[1] I might like No Way Home as much or more, but that doesn’t make it a better movie, if you see what I’m saying. Also, oops, I’m being informed that was a 2021 movie anyhow, so, uh, yeah. Man, I didn’t see much of anything last year, did I?
[2] not in the bad way

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

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The internet hated the third Ant-Man movie. This is no secret. And… as a movie, okay, I get it. It had maybe seven actors running around in front of green screens and emoting at explosions and creatures and whatever in the hopes that the CG people could keep their eyes pointing in the right direction. So when Martin Scorsese says whatever he said about superhero movies being soulless, I understand where people like him are coming from.

But this wasn’t Martin Scorsese, this was a broad cross-section of the kind of people who go to see all of the Marvel movies. And I just don’t really see the problem? The entire premise, as laid bare in the first ten minutes, was predicated on people who are nominally on the same team not talking to each other, nor apparently to their therapist.[1] So okay, that’s a little dumb. But really, when you get down to it, Quantumania only had one task, which was to introduce the viewing audience to Kang the Conqueror, and if they had to stretch credulity (but not violate any established character beats) to get there? Who cares.

They could have done a lot worse! I liked the crazy hunter-killer bot that I will steadfastly refuse to spoil. It was dumb, but it was fun dumb. I like this take on Scott Lang where his power isn’t that he can shrink or grow or talk to ants, it’s that he has an entire family to back him up. (I like that by implication Hank Pym was not a successful superhero because his powers were the inverse of Scott’s. It tracks.) I was a little disappointed, maybe, that the leader of the rebels wasn’t Jarella, but look, these movies are not for me, on some level. I’ve gone too deep![2]

Here’s what I will say in favor of the “not a good movie” camp. It was two hours, but it felt like two and a half, minimum. Still and all, and granted that I was primed by months of internet hate, but I really don’t think this was nearly so bad as what people say. It was bottom 50% of MCU movies, but was it bottom 25%? i’m not convinced it was. As a counterpoint, for example, I literally do not remember what Ant-Man and the Wasp was about. I know there were a lot of Pym particles and… I was about to say, and a geography defying bus chase, but that was Shang Chi. So, nope, nothing.

Well, unless you are Martin Scorsese, reading this review. From your perspective, sir, I get it, and this was a legitimately terrible movie. (But some of them have been pretty fantastic, and you’re just not the audience, is all. Don’t forget that it’s important to judge a movie from the viewpoint of its intended audience, not just from your own.)

[1] side-note: I wonder who acts as therapist to the superheroing community. I think I’ve seen Doc Samson do it, but he frankly wasn’t very good, plus he’s a superhero himself, so it seems sort of like a conflict of interest. I bet Marvel does something with this someday, but I’m surely at least 10-15 years away from it. But the MCU is in modern times, not in 1987, so you’d think this would have come up before now.
[2] get it?

Skydark

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I have a feeling that, with the loss of the original author, there’s at least a decent chance I have something like eighty Deathlands books left to read that all have randomly extruded titles. The somewhat better news is that the new author[1] has a better handle on the characters than in the last book.

Skydark does raise a logistical problem as the series gets ever longer. There are only so many years and so much geography in the continental (former) United States, for Ryan Cawdor to have history everywhere they go. Unless we are operating on Marvel time, it’s already straining credulity. Apparent solutions are a) talk about the pasts of the other characters from this time and place or b) continue on with recycled enemies and NPCs occasionally or c) you know, go somewhere and the characters don’t have a history there. And to be fair, b and c already happen with some regularity. Which leaves me sad about the broad absence of a.

This time out, anyway, the band of violent wrong-righters encounters a mutant who for once got himself a fairly beneficial mutation, as a result of which he leads an army of the most terrifying of all human mutations, the stickies, in numbers never before seen. The story is fine[2], but the science part of the science fiction went a bit off the rails, and you can tell that the last two chapters were reserved for the editor fixing some of the logistical and characterization continuity errors that this author introduced into the series.

Which was a relief, as I came into the final stretch of the book prepared to be pretty scathing and concerned about how many of these books I own. But now I think we’ll be back on the rails soon. I approve of gradually more epic plots, as long as the characters and the rules don’t change drastically. It’s a little late in the game for that, is all.

Last thing: I want to give a shoutout to the meaningless blurb phrases on each cover. Like, they’re always the most enigmatic version of a fortune cookie, but this one is just special. “When all is lost, there is always the future.”

I’d say you can’t write this stuff, but objectively, someone could.

[1] Or another, newer author? Ugh. I don’t think I’m going to look it up every single time.
[2] my complaints about Ryan’s overstuffed past notwithstanding

Beacon Pines

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So walking simulators are a thing, right? Although I’m always leery of using the terminology, because am I trying to say “it’s like a game, but you don’t have to have any gaming skills to play it,” and more importantly, is that extra judgy / gatekeepery? I think I’m overthinking it, especially since I like both kinds of games, and others for that matter. Anyway, all of this to say that Beacon Pines is sort of that kind of game[1], but with a choose your own adventure twist.

See, you play as a tween elk/llama-looking semi-orphan in the titular town, with a best friend and a treehouse and a mysterious corporation and a dark past. Well, I got mixed up a bit; the kid has the first two, the town has the latter two. …although there’s some bleedover. Only, all of that is not exactly right, because what you actually play as is the reader of a book, except the book has a personality and is in search of a satisfying ending. Maybe even a happy one?

Anyway, easily recommendable way to spend 8 or 10 hours, unless you are allergic to anthropomorphic animals or implausible pseudoscience.

[1] which Wikipedia Pete helpfully calls a “narrative adventure”, which is probably a better name anyway

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves

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A very long time ago, someone made a movie about (and called, I believe?) Dungeons and Dragons. It was… it was not a good movie.

Honor among Thieves, on the other hand, was a good movie indeed. It’s hard to explain, though, because of the various tacks one could take. Plot? It’s half heist movie, half family drama, and half redemption arc, all rolled into a fantasy comedy made by people who not only understand all the facts about how a D&D campaign works, but also what playing in one is like. Like, Michelle Rodriguez’ barbarian? I have played that character before. (I was a wizard at the time, and it wasn’t strictly speaking a Dungeons and Dragons game, but…) That paladin? Is what I have been waiting to see my whole life that would make me want to play a paladin or have one in a game I was involved with, as opposed to the choice of either a) person with a stick up their ass who exists to ruin the adventure for everyone else or b) person who should have just been a fighter instead, since they never did anything even vaguely religious. (The second one is better, but still, what a waste.) Chris Pine’s bard was… okay, I don’t think anyone can fix bards for me, and delving any deeper would stop this from having an even tenuous claim on being a movie review. But my point is, he made a valiant effort!

So, to sum up, it was a rollicking good fantasy comedy that made me want to go home and sit around a table with my friends doing something similar for multiple hours per week. Movie: check. Full length advertisement for a Tactical Strategy Rules TSR, Inc. Wizards of the Coast Hasbro game: check.

And it had a heart. That’s not nothing.

Golf with Your Friends

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So here’s an idea that I think should have happened a long time ago, but either never did until now, or else I never noticed. Mini-golf, right? People have made video games about mini golf that defy, if not physics herself, at least what a non-billionaire could spend on fancy courses. But if anyone has made the video game equivalent of that, and also you and your friends are the only people at the course and you’re drinking and playing hurry up golf where you’re all just constantly hitting the ball as fast or as slow as you want (but there’s a timer) and if your strokes happen to run afoul of each other as you play, oh well it happens!

That stopped being a sentence at some point. But my point is, if anyone ever made the video game equivalent of that before now, I missed it. Golf with Your Friends is exactly that, by which I mean, yes, it’s what I just described, but also, it’s exactly what it calls itself. At least, it’s that for me, when I get together with my friends of a Tuesday night and play things for a few hours.

A plus, would putt again.

Immortals Fenyx Rising

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This review is seriously overdue, but in my defense I didn’t decide until I started the third game of the Season Pass[1] that I was going to review it separately instead of all together in one giant go.

Anyway, the thing about Immortals Fenyx Rising is that you have to get past the terrible name. You just have to. Imagine, if you will, that one of the titans has come back, and the fate of both humanity and the gods rests on the back of a lone mortal. Imagine further that the entire story is being told in recap by Prometheus to Zeus, in high snark, while Prometheus has as a fully visible “ulterior” motive to get Zeus to see just how awful of a parent he is. And that story is performed by you, Fenyx, the shield-bearer to (and story-teller for) a boatful of heroes who were all just turned to stone, along with most everyone else in the world.

Handling that little problem involves fighting infinite waves of monsters, leveling up your gear and powers, solving various and sundry puzzles scattered across the land, learning a great deal about Greek mythology[2], and constantly snickering at the narration.

People compare it to Breath of the Wild, the (for now) most recent Zelda game from a few years back. I will say a) that it’s easier, b) that it’s funnier, c) that it’s easier to get a handle on what’s going on, d) that it’s a smaller game, and e) that it’s probably not as good. That a) piece is honestly the only problem with this game. I am a completionist, and I tried to do most of the puzzles and things in advance of the main plot. The result was that for the last quarter or so of the game, I already had all my powers and whatnot maxed out, so other than puzzle-solving it was a little boring trying to get to the conclusion.

I mean, not when Prometheus and Zeus were talking, or any of the other characters. Just when I was fighting pushover monsters on my way to a chest with yet another reskinning of my fourth-favorite set of armor. But that means that I was meh on like 15 hours out of a 90 hour game. That’s not so bad. (Don’t check my math.)

[1] I still don’t entirely understand what a season pass even is. Does it mean that you get to play all future expansions (but not sequels, one presumes) ever? Just for this “season”? And if the latter, this brings me back around to having no idea what that means. What decides a season, other than the people who are charging you for its pass? I have a lot of questions about modern gaming, I guess.
[2] Mostly not the big obvious bits. I would say easily a third of the references, and maybe more than, were things I’ve never heard of (but that I have no reason to believe were made up, given how much I did recognize as accurate).

Cars

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The boy has been watching Cars practically nonstop for the past four months. (Six?) But I didn’t ever sit down and watch it myself until this week. Common wisdom is that it’s a ripoff of Doc Hollywood, which would be easier to comment on if I, uh, remembered almost anything about that movie. I mean, the broad strokes, yes, in that a hotshot racecar|doctor learns that small town life is worthwhile and also falls in love. But I think I should be able to speak at a little more depth than that, to confirm or deny.

Anyway, at the end of the day, Pixar or not, it’s a kid movie, and unless maybe if you also are really into stock car racing (which I am not), it does not surpass its origins in the way that, say, parts of Up did. But it’s good enough to watch when his eyes light up like that, even if I think he should be watching Star Wars instead.

Return to Treasure Island (1992)

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The next week’s letterboxd theme[1] was “central and eastern European animation”, which… I definitely have confirmation bias here, and to be fairer still, a lot of the things I had no access to sounded pretty interesting. But what we landed on was a US edit of a Soviet adaptation of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, where the adaptation a) was dubbed[2] and b) edited, I am informed, solely to remove live-action musical interludes. so I think it still counts, as the point was the animation.

The animation was… it had a certain style of its own beyond what I’m about to describe[3], but it was mostly a match for what I’ve seen come out of the 1930s, before Disney and Warner Brothers got fancy, and following the rules and physics of a Looney Tune. It followed Jim Hawkins from innkeeper to treasure map holder to British naval enlister to fort holder to pirate battler. How much of this is true to the source material, I honestly don’t know, but man, I assume it cannot have been much, because in addition to bad animation, bad music, and an overly jokey tone, the plot was far more terrible than a beloved classic could possibly be in real life.

Full disclosure: I got sleepy about a third of the way in, but I followed large chunks of the rest of the film, and I definitely got enough detail to form an opinion on everything except the plot. I’m possibly going to rewatch the parts I missed, and in the unlikely event my opinion changes as a result, I’ll say so. But… wow. Just wow. This was by far the worst thing to have come out of the website weekly experiment.

[1] I am making it appear as though we’re catching up. We’re not, I’m just been on vacation this week.
[2] I have no way of knowing, of course whether there was any initial propaganda nor whether it was edited out. The movie was made before the breakup of the USSR and the adaptation was made after, for whatever that’s worth.
[3] Mostly it (the style) was the hyper-realistic (compared to everything else) low camera angle on people walking forward, with a kind of rolling, striding gait. It was… mesmerizing, is what, possibly because they lingered on it far too long since it was a cheap loop that filled time.