Reviews

Literature

mymovingfingerwrites, 2023, 640,000 words
Finished on 12th of September 2026
★★★⯪☆ ♥

I'm not sure if I would normally review fanfic like this, but I enjoyed this one enough that it feels like it deserves a spot. It certainly had a lot to keep me going, considering its overall length is greater than all of the Lord of the Rings.

In discussing the mythos of the Harry Potter franchise, a common refrain I've witnessed and used myself is that the structure of its world makes less sense the more you pry into it. It is very difficult, using all available textual evidence, to put together a framework for how things work or why. I'm caught between thinking that it's too great of a task because of a dearth of concrete information, and thinking it's impossible because various pieces of evidence we DO have are inherently contradictory.

In general, I think fanfic opts to ignore canon in favor of a framework for magic that suits their ends. This fic is no different, adding entirely original ideas or at least expanding on them in ways that feel responsible and effective. Key example would be "magical portraiture." You ever wonder about how photographs are enchanted, and why some of them appear to be sentient while others are simple loops? This fic actually delves into that with some explicit detail.

It doesn't escape from the overall pattern, however: in a conversation with McGonagall, reference is made to the four basic elements of ancient Greek philosophy, meant to serve as some sort of basis for why various magics work. I'm sure if the author attempted to expand on that too hard, it too would become contradictory, or at least become insufficient with more than light scrutiny.

All of this is to say that this fic manages to juggle its time well enough between advancing a story while also being satisfying enough with its descriptions of how things work. I'm mostly talking about this in contrast with something like the infamous Yudkowsky fanfic Methods of Rationality. I hold Study of Resonance to be a superior version of that idea, where you have an intelligent protagonist using knowledge in creative ways to fix complex problems. Granted that Methods of Rationality is meant to be a didactic work (which it fails utterly at, in my opinion) and this one is more simply an exploration of what is kind of a ridiculous idea.

To wit: the basis of this story is that Percy Weasley feels a horrible guilt at Fred's death, and those of other students from Hogwarts after the war with Voldemort. Using a ritual, he resolves to go back in time in possession of all the knowledge he has of how things unfold (with some cursory discussions with Harry Potter about what exactly was going on and why). He doesn't have the full picture, but he still has his prior schooling and all of his dealings at the Ministry from the first go around.

This fic has what I think are some uncommon character interactions: Percy becomes very close with Moaning Myrtle, Snape, and various incarnations of Tom Riddle. I will not delve too deeply into it though; if these interest you, then by all means begin reading the story for yourself. And prepare for a little homoeroticism, if you're not used to that kind of thing.

I was very impressed by this fic, although I think the author rushed in places or was simply pressed for time. It could have used another round of editing before publication of some chapters which are rife with typos, and at times the descriptions feel a bit mechanical. Overall though, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Percy's quest, and his explorations of the arcane. A high recommend for anyone who wants a good, lengthy Harry Potter fic.

Inadvisably Compelled, 2023, 166,000 words
Finished on 14th of September 2026
★★⯪☆☆ ♥

This is a shill featured on Makin's Shills List. I'm surprised by a couple of the reviews for this up on there, including Bolas, who insists that he hates this story and finds it totally ineffective. I agree that the prose and characters are a little formulaic: I can tell you the main objectives of each character very easily, but they lack deeper feeling of being people. Contrary to some of the criticism, I found the dialogue to be fine, or at least easy.

On the other hand, sunlight as a metaphor for truth is like a surface level take of what this story is about. The themes of the story deal a lot more with PERSONAL truth, which I felt was handled well enough. At any given time the characters are grappling with their attachments to the world and how these shape them as people. I won't get into spoilers since the story is short enough that it can be read without much fuss, but suffice to say that I felt like the ending worked well enough.

This being said, it does feel as if the encounters that the group of explorers undergo lack a kind of grit. Ukaresh is by far the best one, everything else feels like it touches too lightly on the world around them. I get the feeling that the author had the roadmap and names of places decided but did minimal planning for how the world interlocks outside of what the characters see. Still a fun enough romp if you can handle words that feel pretty obviously picked out of a thesaurus.

Tamsyn Muir, 2019, 112,000 words
Finished on 24th of July 2026
★★★☆☆ ♥

I'm unsure how common this kind of YA literature is, and am considering how much to say about it. The main characters Gideon and Harrow themselves were quite engaging, and their relationship was compelling. After extended discussion with some others, this novel did have some problems though. The supporting cast was bloated which led to second and third act kill-offs; not necessarily a problem on its own, though it makes me question why the set up couldn't have been pared down a little. The setting was also quite interesting, with a pretty sharp blend of scifi and magical elements (though in the end, I think it's all meant to be strictly scifi). The other main drawback that was pointed out was the dialogue being extremely smarmy or Joss Whedon-esque at times. I think that's more or less a superficial complaint, though it was slightly grating at times. Apparently there are sequels but the last one is yet to come out. I'll refrain from continuing until it does.

Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969, 85,000 words
Finished on 27th of May 2026
★★★⯪☆ ♥

The back half was definitely far better than the front, as it lacked the awkwardness of the first several chapters. I had a lot of thoughts during the main characters' trek across the ice sheet that I'll come back to.

I'm amused by the comments that call the writing sexist, in a way. From a modern lens that is probably correct, though I can't help thinking about the time this was released and what more common perceptions of sex and gender would have been back in 1969. My own father was born in that year, and still to this day he mostly displays behavior that would be associated with traditional masculine norms, a loose machismo. During the course of discussion, Alice appropriately brought up that progressive ideological thought surrounding gender wasn't stagnant or necessarily primitive back then, but I can't help believing that the vast majority of people either did not know or did not care about such things, at least not in my geographical region. All of this is to say that I think that, while accurate, accusing the book of being sexist is rather unfair.

In a way I think the book is very not sexist. There's a passage or two I found to be very compelling: I think it's important to remember that these characters (aside from Genly Ai) are fundamentally not male or female, they are specifically androgynous and commonly display features that we would associate with both sexes. Much of this book is about developing an appreciation for cultures literally alien to our own, and it is too easy to interpret what is (intended to be) completely different as being more similar to us than it really is. A few times at least, I think the story succeeds in highlighting the Gethenians' psychology. Genly is constantly rationalizing the behavior of various people he's met by comparing it to behaviors he associates as being masculine or feminine. This is also consistently rebuffed as a foundational misunderstanding of how Gethenians actually work.

Outside of the sex/gender aspect of the book, I also had the realization that Dune had come out just four years prior to this book's publication, which most likely had a significant impact on the descriptions of ecology and the development/use of technology. It's not as robust as Frank Herbert's stuff by any means, but the emphasis of language to describe the different types of precipitation was fun, and I really liked the idea of the Chabe stove even if it seems unrealistically effective.

In all, a worthwhile pick. I'll probably have to read Le Guin's other works in this vein.

Philip K. Dick, 1962, 70,000 words
Finished on 5th of September 2026
★★★★☆ ♥

After ruminating on this for a little while, I think this could be the best book I read this year unless I'm lucky. I was astonished by how much I liked it. The alternate history concept of Nazi Germany (and Imperial Japan) winning WWII is probably more popularized to people of my age and younger by the property Wolfenstein, but this rendering was--perhaps to no one's surprise--far more tasteful and nuanced. The surprise standout cast member was Mr. Tagomi, whose spiritual considerations outshined basically everything else by a large margin. The philosophical war he engages in with the piece of jewelry near the end of the book was nothing short of enthralling. No one in the cast was a bad addition to the story though, not even the mean, stunted Robert Childan.

One could probably point out the story's treatment of the Japanese imperialists as a bit fetishistic by modern standards, but I'm not so sure. It is clear that both of the major factions in charge of the world have their problems, many of them severe. Instead of considering it on a wider scale, I think that the individuals present make this story in a big way. Their private considerations are moving, and their debate or pleas with the world around them hit hard. There's a quiet desperation present in almost every character whose perspective we see. I can't remember reading any of Philip K. Dick's other stories but I'm going to have to now.

An unexpected effect of reading this is that I grew fascinated by everyone's usage of the I Ching, or the Book of Changes of ancient Chinese culture. Falling out of popularity after 1900 AD in real life, I wonder what exactly led to the author picking it up for this novel (he apparently consulted the oracle in writing the book which led to a somewhat unorthodox structure). I've dabbled in mysticism before but do not put any real stock in it, so I suspect it will be little more than a passing fancy for me. For the meantime, though, it has been somewhat enriching to read about this tradition that has all but passed away. Its use throughout this book is nothing short of inspired.

John le Carre, 1974, 100,000 words
Finished on 17th of August 2026
★★★⯪☆ ♥

The only spy novel I've ever read, and probably my only real exposure to traditional spy media (I'm unsure how much Mission: Impossible qualifies, and have somehow never seen a James Bond movie. There are two comedies I've seen, Get Smart (2008) with Steve Carell or Johnny English (2003) with Rowan Atkinson, but I certainly don't count them). I'm unsure what I expected, but this is very obviously British in tone and feeling. It has a rather understated feel to basically everything, with the climax of the story being little more than catching two people in the act of talking about treasonous espionage.

This is to the story's benefit, in my opinion, allowing one to soak in the details of the plot without being overwhelmed by Things Happening. While I found it a bit overwhelming to get used to John le Carre's vernacular, I was rather taken in by at after a while and looked up a comprehensive glossary so I could keep up. The more nuanced twists and turns of why characters were doing certain things or what certain information meant was a refreshing change from the fantasy or sci-fi novels I'm more accustomed to reading, where either the impetus or the result or both tend to be rather obvious in their scope.

The character of George Smiley was also rather interesting. Not immediately relatable, yet I felt compelled to respect him in some ways. One particular detail that stuck out to me was how his physical appearance contrasted with his character: specifically, he is described as rather obese (though given this was in Europe in the 1970s, that assessment might be contested now), suggesting that he lacks control. Throughout the story, however, Smiley is a figure of immense restraint and patience, never losing his temper throughout the course of the present conflict. It's a very minor detail in the scheme of things, but I found it remarkable for some reason.

I would like to read more spy novels after this, especially those in the rest of Carre's oeuvre, but it's rather low on my list of things to do. I'm not really given to mystery stories in general, but maybe one of these will grip me more than I'm expecting.

Franz Kafka, 1925, 48,000 words
Finished on 27th of June 2026
★★★☆☆

I read Metamorphosis back in college, of which I remember only the barest of bones. I thought I would thus be prepared for this, but I was taken aback by just how discomfiting this work is. Part of that is certainly diegetic, where the myriad problems of society Josef K is faced with confuse and provoke you constantly; I do think that it's clear why this novel was only published posthumously, though, seeing as it's literally unfinished in certain places. I'm sure some further editing from Kafka himself would have yielded some needed polish.

This is not to say the book isn't really good in its current form. There is a lot to unpack in it: the seeming construction of society as a whole is jarring until you piece together that everyone is in everyone else's back pocket in some way. Much clamor is made about the law, but the law's exact form feels like vapor. Customs and rules are impenetrable to anyone not in the know. Josef himself is like an animal, ruled by his immediate passions and desires at times (going so far as to assault the young woman Bürstner). His conversations with the painter and at the church near the end are both illuminating and yet exhausting. A sense of dread looms over everything.

We were having a discussion about this on the Homestuck Discord (this book being the Book Club entry at the time), and Alice made an interesting comment about how Josef feels like he is above the legal proceedings of the titular Trial, but in trying to call it out or resist the affair, he becomes a greater victim thereof. We never learn what the charges are, and instructions pertaining to the legal process are practically nonexistent. One might naturally consider this to be a farce, as Josef does, and he tries very hard to withdraw from the nightmare. In doing so he upsets the matter even further, and at the end of the story he is executed (although the manner in which this happens makes it feel extrajudicial, more like murder).

I'm not really sure what to tease apart from all this. Josef is hardly blameless: he is the chief clerk of a bank and treats his subordinates in the same way he despises to be treated by his superiors, in and out of the banking system. His treatment of women is also obviously terrible. The end result is something of a morass. The only real thematic connection I can make is a suggestion that society is a frightening labyrinth, which feels a bit too pedestrian for this (I'm certainly forgetting historical context that Kafka was going through over the course of his lifetime).

Not my cup of tea in the end. Regardless, worth the read for the challenge alone.

Movies

John Singleton, 2003, 1 hour and 47 minutes
Watched on 16th of February 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

This movie was bizarre for somewhat minor reasons. I am surprised yet again: I thought Vin Diesel was in all of these, but he was not in this one (nor will he be in Tokyo Drift apparently, spoiled myself on the fact that one's a standalone story). Paul Walker was an effective protagonist for this sequel though.

In keeping with the tones of homoeroticism (which were SUBSTANTIALLY heightened throughout), Brian has changed roles from the uke to the seme. His love interest is now Roman Pearce, played by Tyrese Gibson. I described the gay subtext in the first movie plenty: suffice it to say that a gender and sexuality studies major could effortlessly turn this into their capstone project.

The plot is like a more threadbare version of the first one, so I will not bother to describe it beyond saying that I felt the minor cast was done a lot more justice in this--there's a bunch of people who you just never saw again in the first movie until they were suddenly needed again, but in 2F2F you see the like sidekick drivers a lot more consistently and they're much more fun (top of the list is Suki screaming "SMACK THAT ASS" as she flies through the air in her hot pink car).

Far more fascinating to me were certain elements of the production: whenever someone used nitro, there would be this incredible warp speed effect on the visuals outside the car. It was pretty well rendered but felt a bit silly. In general though, the film quality felt weirdly cheap compared to the first movie? Upon reviewing some clips of both, I believe the issue is that the first one used shadows and colors much more creatively (examples: there's a scene where Vin Diesel enters the kitchen to tackle his lover from a side area, with a shot of him emerging from full darkness. There are also a few scenes taking place in clubs where everything is bathed in various reds and blues), the lighting in 2 Fast 2 Furious is a lot more flat and even so that almost everything feels illuminated in white pretty effectively. Made it feel a bit more like a TV show than a big budget movie. I swear the overall resolution was lower though, and there were a couple of scenes that felt remarkably like green screened footage because of the color contrast being weird as hell.

In point of fact I actually went to look up the budgets because I was dead convinced this one was significantly reduced. Completely wrong: the first movie was 38 million dollars and 2F2F was 76 MILLION. Aside from one scene where there is a fucking trillion cars on screen, I have no idea where most of that money went. Maybe that was Paul Walker money--it seems Vin Diesel was offered $25 million to return and he turned that down. I don't know if Walker had the same kind of star appeal at that point. Maybe most of it was spent on random partying in Miami?

Shout out to Lance Barnebe: there's an on-screen detail at one point that's very quick, very easy to miss. A police agent from throughout the movie is conducting a raid on the antagonist and he stands in front of his big computer monitors to coordinate things. Most of the stuff on-screen is just random numbers, but at one point there is a call transcript that appears. Aside from one podcast that no one has ever listened to in their life called I think "Life in the Fast Lane," I don't believe anyone has written down this transcript on the internet, but I thought it was funny so here it goes:

"Caller: Hello?"
"Incoming Call: May I Speak to Marcus?"
"Caller: This is Marcus, who's this?"
"Incoming Caller: Hey! Marcus, wassup. This is Lance, Lance Barnebe from school How' you been doin'"
"Caller: Hey! man, your out of the joint finally? Is it legal or am I going to have to turn you in for reward money?"
"Incoming Call: Marcus, you never change do you."
"Caller: Haahaa. I'm serious dude? I can't be conversating with an escaped convict."
"Incoming Call: Don't worry, I'm out on good behavior. We learn from the joint that some things aren't worth getting in trouble for."
"Caller: Good, I'm glad to hear that. So what can I do for you?"
"Incoming Call: Do you know where I can get a gun?"
"Caller: What do you need a gun for? I thought you had changed your ways like that."
"Incoming Call: I swear it's nothing like that, since I take care of this job I will never turn to crime again. I promise."
"Caller: Your stupid man. What if you get caught this time around! You'll never get out of prison again. Besides what is this job, any ways."
"Incoming Call: I'm going to kill my parole officer so I don't have to--"

I want to talk to whatever production assistant wrote that shit.

All this being said, very fun movie. The 75% slop 25% good movie ratio holds for the most part. For now, I'm glad there's like a dozen of these things to get through.

Vik Rubenfeld, 1989, 1 hour and 30 minutes
Watched on 10th of May 2025
★★☆☆☆ ♥

Absolutely stunning in its shittiness, everything I could have hoped for. The line "O Hitler, who art in Hell" has been rattling around in my skull for days. Ridiculous script and terrible acting come together like a bad date, and make this film a great addition to Bad Movie Night.

Lewis Milestone, 1930, 2 hours and 32 minutes
Watched on 1st of March 2026
★★★★⯪ ♥

I have nothing to say about this film which hasn't been said already. I was simply unprepared for its stark conclusion, contrasted well enough with some moments of levity. A movie I will surely watch again someday, though it'll take some mental preparation.

Jared Hess, 2025, 1 hour and 41 minutes
Watched on 12th of April 2025
★★☆☆☆

I was looking forward to this as more of a midnight movie experience and we kinda got one. There was a lot of hooting and hollering, and someone inadvertently started a trend where we would clap every time Jason Momoa suffered injury, whether physical or spiritual. However, about halfway through the movie a theater attendant came in and said "You all need to stop laughing and clapping so loudly, or else it's going to be a problem. Other theaters in the building can hear you." I suspect this was a manufactured excuse intended to nip things in the bud, given the raucous videos I've seen of showings across the country. It really took the wind out of our sails though. Shout out to the teenagers who, when Jack Black finally said "Chicken jockey!", blew up some confetti cannons anyway.

The actual movie itself is not that great, but had some cheap laughs. I was surprised how much this was about Jason Momoa's redemption arc from being a failure and not really about the kid character. Danielle Brooks and Emma Myers were both like nothing characters though. Can't wait for Minecraft the Movie 2 in like 2028.

Wes Craven, 1984, 1 hour and 31 minutes
Watched on 11th of October 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

Surprisingly fun, this movie had a lot more camp in it than I expected which was to the film's immense benefit. Some genuinely creepy stuff mixed with a lot of dumb or even creative fun. I physically laughed out loud at Freddy Kreuger's synth tongue wagging and him leaping out of a mirror. Will have to rewatch next year with roommates.

Pierre Perifel, 2022, 1 hour and 40 minutes
Watched on 1st of February 2026
★★★☆☆

It's alright. Clearly intended for an audience younger than I am, but it still managed to be entertaining throughout. The characters are very simple and with the exception of the protagonist they do not change, but they don't really need to for a plot like this. The animation was also quite attractive throughout, with lots of attention paid to detail. Difficult to reconcile with the fact it's clearly furry bait though.

Akira Kurosawa, 1960, 2 hours and 15 minutes
Watched on 13th of October 2025
★★★☆☆

The plot of this one was a tad too circuitous. It wasn't necessarily hard to follow, but I felt like there was a lot less breathing room. I may have just been distracted but I found myself somehow not as enthralled. Still filled with brilliant acting and some humor that rounded things out well enough.

Justin Lin, 2002, 1 hour and 41 minutes
Watched on 15th of June 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

For a movie that's vaguely folded into the universe of Fast and Furious, this story is shockingly engaging on an emotional level. There's a lot to discuss about themes of identity and resisting stereotypes. Though it's not discussed as openly, it's interesting to see characters struggling with growing up in such a high pressure environment and taking their failures hard, in a way that sticks with them. Just overall very pleased with how good this movie was.

Ridley Scott, 1982, 1 hour and 50 minutes
Rewatched on 20th of April 2025
★★★☆☆ ♥

I have a tradition of watching this about once a year while either drunk or stoned. Ironically, despite the date I decided to watch it this time while pretty much sober. It's kind of telling, then, that this time I enjoyed the movie a lot less than usual.

The worst offense is probably Harrison Ford's acting. The cop they have interviewing Leon at the very beginning should have played the main character instead. Everything else was pretty great though; the actual feel of the movie is thoroughly enjoyable, and there's always that scene where the sun opens up at the Tyrell Corporation that for some reason pulls the whole movie together for me.

David Lynch, 1986, 2 hours
Watched on 4th of February 2026
★★★★☆ ♥

I was surprised by how my attention was arrested throughout this film, despite how slow the first third is; the rest is thrilling enough to make up for it. Even then, before I had even thought of it 45 minutes had gone by in a flash. Somehow I noticed important effects such as the use of bright, overhead lighting without even realizing it--Lynch's composition of scenes is powerful, making it easy to be interested in what's going on at all times.

The actors in this were all remarkable for various reasons with, oddly enough, the potential exception of Kyle MacLachlan. I cannot decide if I thought that his acting was subtle or merely weak. It could be that the other main cast members were just so expressive by comparison that he sort of fell out of the limelight, so I'll reserve judgment for his other roles.

The actors in this were all remarkable for various reasons with, oddly enough, the potential exception of Kyle MacLachlan. I cannot decide if I thought that his acting was subtle or merely weak. It could be that the other main cast members were just so expressive by comparison that he sort of fell out of the limelight, so I'll reserve judgment for his other roles.

Blake Edwards, 1961, 1 hour and 55 minutes
Watched on 22nd of June 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

Absolutely stunning. The glorification of Big City Madness (not sure if a more appropriate term for this exists) and the natural chemistry of the two leads shines through. I found myself perplexed by a lot happening in this movie, nothing more so than the behavior of Audrey Hepburn's character, but goodness if I wasn't taken in by every second of nonsense.

Peter Weir, 1974, 1 hour and 41 minutes
Watched on 13th of July 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

Consistently perplexing movie. There's so much going on in this that's just vaguely uncomfortable because it doesn't fit together quite right in a human sense. As a result I'm struggling to decide whether I think the plot is somewhat incoherent or if it successfully gels together into a shambling, tragic mess in a way that makes sense thematically. Worth a watch either way, although I was shocked at the age of the protagonist's actor: this is the Australian Outback so one can argue it's a rough environment to live in, but Terry Camilleri looked pretty rough at only 25 years old.

Yang Qing, 2016, 1 hour and 34 minutes
Watched on 10th of November 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

Jim Wynorski, 1986, 1 hour and 35 minutes
Watched on 24th of May 2025
★★⯪☆☆ ♥

Much ado was made of these Italian robots hunting teenagers down, but the best thing about this movie might have been the soundtrack. I love those tinny synth sounds, it never felt like it got old. There is unfortunately a jock-character whose tendency for chewing gum drove me batshit insane whenever they showed his jaw working mechanically up and down. Otherwise a fun group watch.

David Twohy, 2004, 2 hours and 14 minutes
Rewatched on 17th of August 2025
★★☆☆☆

No review for this entry.

Peter Chung, 2004, 35 minutes
Rewatched on 17th of August 2025
★★★☆☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

John Milius, 1982, 2 hours and 9 minutes
Watched on 5th of April 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

Feels weird that I had never seen this before, it was right up my alley in some respects. Many times throughout college and after I've wondered about pre-historical societies that might have popped up and died away with no firm record of their existence--one can do a great deal with just wooden implements, although it often deteriorates without leaving much physical evidence. Putting aside the anachronistic use of steel and other materials that they could not reasonably have known about (and obviously all of the sorcery shit) this is a wonderful nod to that era of humanity steeped heavily in mythology which spawned all of the names we are now familiar with as figures of legend.

There are a couple of scenes in this that were genuinely cool. At one point Conan is on the verge of death (or already dead) and his companions seek the aid of a wizard living on the edge of the wastes. He does a lot of esoteric bullshit and then in the middle of the night, Conan is wrapped in spirits which wish to tear him away into the afterlife. His companions literally wrestle with these ghosts to save him; it's not a particularly complex scene but something about its construction gave me goosebumps. I think the magic of it all was just a light enough touch that when stuff came down to brass tacks, it was rather impactful.

To be frank, I was also expecting a lot more sexual harassment. On the contrary, they make it a point that Conan treats women relatively nicely, wrapping a concubine up in his furs to protect her dignity (right up until he has sex with her in front of their captors). On the whole though, very little is made of his encounters with women aside from his love interest. I found that kind of surprising and it added a lot of warmth to their relationship.

Reading the Wikipedia article of this movie revealed that there was a whole host of this kind of crap that came out at the time, which I loosely knew about, but now I feel a vague urge to watch more of this kind of sword-and-sorcery stuff, although most of it sounds like cheap crap. We shall see either way.

Richard Fleischer, 1984, 1 hour and 43 minutes
Watched on 31st of January 2026
★★⯪☆☆

A distinct step down from its predecessor. Conan the Destroyer has plenty of the same elements through a strange assortment of characters, impressive sets (though some of the effects felt very cheap at times), and Arnold swinging his sword at people. What's missing is the emotional throughline of the film: despite not having to spend any time on Conan's backstory in this movie, the connections with the newer characters Malak, Zula, and especially the love interest Jennha bore little chemistry. There is a distinct goal connected to Conan's desires, but after the initial setup its presence throughout the film is rather weak. Still a decent watch but disappointing as a follow up to the original.

James Wan, 2013, 1 hour and 52 minutes
Watched on 12th of October 2025
★★☆☆☆

A few genuinely interesting and unsettling moments could not make up for this film's glacial pacing.

Ken Russell, 1971, 1 hour and 43 minutes
Watched on 10th of August 2026
★★★★☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

David Lynch, 1977, 1 hour and 29 minutes
Rewatched on 18th of January 2025
★★★★★ ♥

As I'm sure many others were doing, I decided to rewatch some of David Lynch's stuff in his memory. We set up a group to watch it, which I thought was rather risky: the movie is just as impermeable as I remember it being, and in a lot of ways a movie can be diminished by watching it with other people, if it's not the right kind of experience. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how many people we retained and the larger reception to it was almost exactly what I wanted. Lots of questioning what we're seeing on the screen, people discussing it in real time and trying to wrap their brains around the visual elements of the film.

I last saw it in college some ten years ago and I remember being rather baffled, but in a lot of ways the movie is actually rather straightforward. What originally felt like completely jarring and nonsensical cuts from one scene to another were not nearly so confusing upon a rewatch, like the lady in the radiator.

Lynch's exploration of the anxiety inherent to modern domesticity is as captivating as it is slow and meditative. There were certain details for which I could not help uttering "what the fuck" under my breath, like Mary's mom having her episode whilst Henry cuts the man-made chicken. So many small details I had forgotten from my original watch were refreshed in my brain and whenever I was not pleasantly perplexed, I was utterly enthralled.

I had an urge to rate it just under 5 stars but upon thinking about it, I don't know why. For how boring this movie can seem in the first half hour, I was still so engrossed in the visuals and sounds that I can't help admiring it completely. RIP Lynch, I'll watch the rest of your stuff this year if I can help it.

Justin Lin, 2021, 2 hours and 23 minutes
Watched on 13th of April 2025
★⯪☆☆☆

Somewhere in Los Angeles in May of 2018, Justin Lin, Alfredo Botello, and Daniel Casey sat down to write the script of this movie. It was a different, more innocent time; they order a few drinks to loosen their fingers and chat amicably about the direction of the series. Up the stakes each time, do something crazy. It's fun and people enjoy it plenty.

They order a few more drinks as the night goes on and their pencils fly. The question keeps surfacing: "How?" How are they supposed to up the ante this time? Well you gotta bring back some cast members, that seems fine at least. A few more drinks appear on the table and are swiftly imbibed. It's getting a little hard to see the paper now. Where did the notes on the movie's continuity go? Oh man, I think it's in the garbage. Fuck it, get a few more drinks. In fact, just bring a couple bottles. Before long it becomes a full on bacchanalia. There is no more writing, only sheer animistic revelry. Shouting and other strange, inhuman wails are heard emanating from the writing room throughout the Universal Studios facility.

At some point the next day, the sun finally pokes its timid face over the mountains of Hollywood to spy upon the ensuing destruction. Botello and Casey are both out cold, people are asking if they should call an ambulance. Nursing the mother of all hangovers, Justin Lin cracks open a bloodshot eye at what they managed to write down and says "I don't care. Just get it started."

Or at least, that's how I imagine writing the screenplay went.

I'm not even going to talk about the plot this time, it's not worth it. The only thing I feel like commenting on is the weird sense of shame and embarrassment that wound its way through this movie. There is so much navel gazing that it wraps back around to feeling like it's not aware of itself anymore somehow. I'm somehow not really excited to see the next one.

Justin Lin, 2009, 1 hour and 47 minutes
Watched on 1st of March 2025
★★⯪☆☆ ♥

First, a funny story. It seems this is actually the movie we watched first, which explains much of the questions I had about the film quality from the 1st to the 2nd. In reality, we went 4 -> 2 -> 3 -> 1. In my defense, the names are practically identical. So, I will put my review for the first movie on the page for the fourth movie, since I have already put a review for the fourth movie on the page for the first. Is everyone confused yet? Good, let's continue.

Honestly, it's astonishing how well the second movie flows from either of these. The overall plot is the same: Paul Walker is an undercover officer and gets in close with the gang, he starts undressing Vin Diesel with his eyes and it gets serious enough that he betrays his profession by aiding and abetting a criminal.

Where this one doesn't work so well is that individual details of the plot are not as exciting. That likely wouldn't have mattered so much if we hadn't done this in the wrong order, but the stakes being low is not offset by more ridiculous action. Instead of heisting drugs over the border, they go to Race Wars. This is unfortunately not as dramatic as one might think. One of the members of the crew is an ADD twink who panics after losing his car in a race and then some Asians do a driveby on him, which sets off the final chase. The ending of the movie is way more abrupt: Vin Diesel and Paul Walker show each other their cocks in a drag race where Diesel gets t-boned by a truck. Definitely more thematically pleasing given the overall story, but the tradeoff is that this felt a lot more jarring than the other installments.

I'm not exactly watching this for a well-rendered plot, so being better art is not really to its benefit. On the other hand, I fully expected the gay shit to be at a low due to the release order but somehow this one still managed to deliver. You've got one of the drivers in Vin Diesel's crew wearing fishnets the whole time and getting jealous of Paul Walker flirting with a woman during his gay panic. I wasn't paying great attention to this one so I don't remember if anyone said anything spectacularly homoerotic, and there was a striking lack of being in each other's face.

Overall I think this makes me want to return to the more over the top nonsense. I'm sure Fast 5 will deliver in that respect.

Justin Lin, 2013, 2 hours and 10 minutes
Watched on 29th of March 2025
★★☆☆☆

This was the most frustrating watch of the series so far. While in the midst of it, I felt a bit excited about the fact that they were pretty much mask off about this just being an action-heist series now. Unfortunately, I feel the plot is a bit too discombobulated or maybe just stupidly put together in order to soak in that. There are several sequences and decisions that sort of defy logic, either in-universe or during the process of script-writing.

It's been a couple of days so much of it is fading from my brain already, so I will keep the overture of the plot brief. Hobbs calls Dom and his crew together to capture a terrorist (apparently he's just a mercenary? I definitely thought it was terrorism) named Shaw, and entices them with images of Letti alive and well (and apparently working for said terrorist/mercenary). He says if they complete this job for him, they'll all get full pardons, so they go to London for the hunt. A series of incredibly dumb things happen.

The first thing I remember saying "Huh?" to is Dom getting shot by Letti at their first encounter. There's really no way to soften this: Dom gets shot in the fucking chest at close range. In the next scene the crew is all shown discussing stuff back at HQ and Dom is sort of quietly pulling the bullet out as he mulls stuff over. I guess he's too badass for the laws of physics or something.

Then a bunch of stuff happens while the crew tries to track down Shaw and his gang. There's a scene where Han, Roman, and the token Chaos Butch working with Hobbs are chasing a couple mercenaries including Letti through the London Undeground. Han and Roman both get taken out by a single guy, the Chaos Butch fails to secure Letti. This is okay in theory but it didn't accomplish anything in any direction. Reading the Wikipedia article, this scene is actually completely omitted from the synopsis. They just wanted to have a scene where people fight in the Tube I guess.

At some point they uncover a connection between Shaw and Braga, the cartel guy from the 4th movie. Braga is currently in prison, so Brian hatches a plot where he travels to said prison in LA to interrogate Braga for information on Letti and how she got sucked into the circle of terrornaries. This is already kind of stupid on its face: a big deal is made of the fact that they're all still fugitives from the law, and Brian is put into the prison through some kind of deception on the part of the FBI. After learning one thing--Letti has amnesia--and brutally maiming Braga and two of his cronies, Brian is pulled out of the prison and goes back to London. The Wikipedia article says exactly three words about how he accomplishes this: "with FBI help." There's so many things wrong with this whole scene that I don't even feel like getting into it, suffice to say that after abandoning his duties at the agency TWICE for the same guy, I don't think they would be too keen to help him out at all.

Even so, I would be able to swallow this if not for the followup when he finally gets back to HQ. He goes to tell Dom about Letti and Dom says "that information is for you," or some nonsense. He didn't even want to fucking hear what Brian found out. I understand there's some personal guilt involved where Brian feels responsible since Letti was undercover at his behest. However, Dom was (apparently) married to this chick and he doesn't want to know what's going on with her? Yes yes, I am complaining about shlocky one liners in the shlock franchise. I guess it's all only minorly important but in aggregate I had this sense of confusion about why people were doing things or their response to things happening.

Anyway. The movie's plot is about the mercenaries trying to steal various pieces of equipment necessary to make an EMP device of some sort. The movie approaches climax when the mercenaries steal a tank and drive it across several miles of Spanish highway, flattening dozens of cars in the process. There is a ridiculous rescue shot where Vin Diesel crashes his car so he can fly through the air and catch Letti, with both of them safely landing on the hood of a car without injury to either person. The mercenaries are captured and brought to a NATO military base. Shaw reveals that they kidnapped Mia to force their release. At this point, NATO understandably does not seem interested in trading an ultra-proficient band of mercenaries for one fugitive, so Hobb pulls his fucking Deagle out and points it at the head of like the commander of NATO, effectively letting Dom make the decision.

I'm getting tired just typing all of this out so I'll get to the point: the climax of the movie is they crash the mercenaries' getaway plane on the longest runway in the world. "Calculations suggest that the runway must be at least 18.37 miles (29.56 km) long for the sequence to take place, with estimates up to 28.83 miles (46.40 km). The longest paved runway at the time was Qamdo Bamda Airport at 3.42 miles (5.50 km)," according to Wikipedia. Somehow everything is fine, except for Gisele, whose name we only consciously learned when Mia noticed she was missing and asked where she was. We had been referring to her exclusively as Gal Godot the entire time. She sacrifices herself to save Han, I guess. We don't actually see her die though so she's probably fine.

The more I think about this movie the less I like it. The entire middle of it was a disoriented mess whose only redeeming factor was the interplay between the main cast. They're all effortlessly charming goofballs when they're futzing around in the garage and clowning on each other. Despite his acting chops, Dwayne Johnson even manages to be a likeable member of the Family at the end when he says to watch out for Roman's enormous forehead (Tej does a spit take at this comment that I cannot tell whether it's real, it was one of the things I thought of most after the movie was finished).

Yep, you guessed it: it's time for me to talk about them being gay again. But only briefly. This is probably the least gay movie of the bunch, to my mild disappointment. It's kinda hard to avoid that when both of the Big Gays actually have established relationships with women--and those relationships are actually shown on screen in any measure. I think we've come to the conclusion that Brian is just bisexual and Dom is trisexual--men, women, and cars. The only real treatment we get is that in the final confrontation, Dom and Brian (and Letti) are in a car together. The two guys look at each other and say "Ride or die," which at some point became a catchphrase. Neither of them acknowledge Letti's presence as they gaze longingly into each other's eyes before potentially dying in a blaze of glory.

Actually, if anything it feels like Dwayne Johnson has been sort of edging in on the action. There was that weird lip thing that Vin Diesel did while talking with Johnson at the end of the fifth movie, and then again at the end of this one they have a fantastically awkward conversation where they stand kind of at each other's side and stare past each other in opposite directions. The framing of the shot made it look like either of them had really big heads depending on who was closer to the camera. I don't know, it feels kind of like a reach. I'm sorry for anyone who cares: we've hit peak straight (except the token straight couple Han and Gal Godot are both presumably dead now, so maybe not).

Or, you know, the Family kind of feels like a huge polycule now. There's that cop from Brazil who Dom was in a committed relationship with until he learned Letti is still alive. She very gracefully says that if she knew her husband was still alive, she'd go to him in a heartbeat, so I guess she's fine with getting cucked by a dead woman. Really, a lot of these dynamics would be solved if they just indiscriminately started forming throuples and quadrouples.

In all: kind of a messy film and not fun enough shlock to make up for it. Sadness abounds.

David Leitch, 2019, 2 hours and 16 minutes
Watched on 10th of April 2025
★⯪☆☆☆

Throughout this ordeal I lost track of how many times we looked at each other and said, "This series used to be about racing cars."

It's really not the plot itself so much as the larger context which surrounds it. Many times during this and the other movies of Nu-Fast and Furious, my thoughts returned to the first movie produced all the way back in 2001. The climax of that movie especially comes to mind, where Dom and Brian have a street race that causes a singular car to overturn unexpectedly.

Now look at it. What in the actual fuck have we come to, here. An ideologically motivated cybernetic soldier trying to reshape humanity with an engineered supervirus. I broke a little bit in the course of this movie because the scale of it was too much for me to process for a minute.

I really don't know where to begin. The movie doesn't even pretend not to be gay from the outset, with a bifurcated display of our titular pair performing their morning routines to a song called "Better as One," which lyrics include the following:

"Can we make it different?

Can we make it better?

Can we make love reign supreme?"

The dynamic between Hobbs and Shaw is actually genuinely fun. It's by far the best part of the movie when they're allowed to engage in whatever shenanigans and openly mock each other the whole time, got a few earnest laughs out of me. Not hard to tell why they were inspired to make this spinoff.

The rest of the movie however is a fucking bizarre mess. Idris Elba is a fun antagonist but the organization he works for is ridiculous; I wonder what's happening at Race Wars while this enigmatic being in charge of Eteon is trying to wage its own war against the weakness of humankind. Despite already having their come together moment in Fate of the Furious, the main duo apparently go back to hating each other after that and they need to learn to work together as a couple again for no good reason.

Honestly, their entire dynamic is just insane. This is technically from Fate of the Furious but the behavior extends to this spinoff as well: at one point Hobbs and Shaw are fighting in one of Mr. Nobody's countless repositories, and Dwayne Johnson is threatening violence as usual. He starts to say: "I'm going to slap that dick," at which point we fucking lost our shit. The full quote is "--that dick garage off your face," the meaning of which is obvious though no less homoerotically inclined. Elsewhere, Hobbs mentioned beating Shaw's ass "like a Cherokee drum." I don't even know what the fuck that means.

To my point: Dwayne Johnson's and Jason Statham's primary means of communication are through overt reference to each other's genitals. There is an astonishing amount of threats of violence or oneupsmanship that revolve explicitly around their dick and balls, or their ass, or sucking dick or taking it up the ass, et cetera. At one point Hobbs is heatedly talking about Shaw's sister Hattie, saying "she wants to climb this meat mountain" or some such grotesque nonsense. It's all vivid imagery, is the point I'm getting at.

The only thing I really, actively disliked was the inclusion of Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart as overeager federal agents trying to shoehorn into the action. Their performances were viciously unpleasant and I actively hated every second they were on screen.

Without dragging it out too much this time, the movie's climax takes place on Samoa. I know Dwayne Johnson produced this movie; I don't know how much he forcibly influenced the script, but we did not expect there to be three hakas in this franchise. There's also bootleg Samoan nitro, which we laughed very hard at.

The shlock of it all didn't really make up for the absurdity of the premise and the scope of where this series has gone. It's not to say they tipped their hand too much, because in the grand scheme this is far from the dumbest shit they've done, but it didn't feel balanced for some reason. Maybe we were just tired. Whatever the case, not even Jason Statham avariciously licking his lips whilst staring at Johnson's rippling muscles was enough to rescue this movie.

Rob Cohen, 2001, 1 hour and 46 minutes
Watched on 15th of February 2025
★★★☆☆ ♥

Details from this franchise have continuously been sprinkled in my ear throughout the years, so that my understanding of it is spectacularly warped. I have never known what is real or not about this except that Vin Diesel and some other names I dubiously recognize are in it (imagine my pleasant surprise upon discovering that Greg Cipes also appears in a minor role).

This being said, then, I was taken aback by just how grounded this first installment was. This is literally just a sort-of heist movie surrounding cars, and the most gripping part about it had nothing to do with the central conflict about Vin Diesel's girl. On the contrary, there was such insane homoerotic tension between his and Paul Walker's characters, that--granted I'm seeing this almost a quarter century after it came out and cultural expectations have shifted enormously--I half-expected them to start kissing on like three separate occasions. Gal Godot was also in this movie as a thinly veiled attempt to give Vin Diesel a case of the Not Gays, as Red Letter Media would put it, and by gum I would not say it worked. All her advances enticed him about as much as a wet sack of rocks, but goodness gracious were he and Paul Walker all over each other at the slightest provocation, good or bad.

The rest of the movie was a relatively less engaging series of street races and at times confusing action sequences involving a preposterous amount of cars in confined spaces. I've heard the rest of this series gets fucking ridiculous, especially after the 4th one. I cannot wait to see where they take this nonsense. On a sliding scale I would say this one was like 20-25% good movie and 75-80% slop: great ratio for something you turn your brain off to. Thinking about the plot for literally two seconds filled me with questions that I quickly lost interest in answering because Vin Diesel would say something in his usual gravel-y affectations. I don't know any other actor who can make such a living off of looking very intensely pissed off.

Justin Lin, 2006, 1 hour and 44 minutes
Watched on 1st of March 2025
★★⯪☆☆ ♥

I don't know what weeb got this to happen but holy shit. Maybe that gives a bad impression, because as far as I could tell this movie actually did some decent justice to the titular city in terms of showcasing what all is in it. We got some lovely looks at the waterways and mountains, the underground scene looked cool as one wants, they even had a rooftop soccer match at one point. This honestly had really nice casual pacing in places.

But the pretense for getting there was paper-thin. 35 year old high school student Sean Something is a delinquent who keeps racking up driving-related offenses, and after nuking a construction site with his muscle car the cops tell his mom "This is the last straw, it's juvie or JAPAN." So clearly they opt to send him to Japan (to live with his Navy dad, so there's that at least). In no way did I expect this to be a High School Transfer Student Mystery. Absolutely insane.

*Sigh* Yes, it's time to talk about the homoeroticism. This one is honestly a bit difficult to peg on the Gayness Scale of the entire Fast and Fujo series, it was a lot more Japanese than gay. But. then they had the obligatory bits where two sweaty, angry men get up in each other's face and just hover like that for about 15 seconds. approximately four microns away from snogging. You also had Bow Wow in this movie and his name was Twinkie. Eventually they give up the ghost and literally just call him Twink. All those guys living together in a car garage with a guy named "Fuckable Little Guy," it probably got a little bit steamy from time to time.

Other than that it was pretty straight I guess. The anime nerds must have had their little hands all over this one, like I said. I don't want to get too into it, aside to say that they had an Initial D race down the mountainside as the finale of the movie, which leads into my next point: the justifications for why things were happening were probably the worst part overall, easily weaker than the first two we watched. The antagonist's Yakuza uncle accepted the aforementioned race to resolve a dispute instead of just shooting the protagonist and dumping his body in the ocean for some reason. I assume it was something about honor and saving face, but it was honestly really dumb.

Favorite detail: Sean's screen name in class while he messages the love interest is "Bama Boy" and just so: that guy has the thickest Forrest Gump accent ever. I rate this one a little lower because the plot was just not as tightly written, had too much shit happening for no reason and some of the street racing felt pointless.

Justin Lin, 2011, 2 hours and 10 minutes
Watched on 16th of March 2025
★★⯪☆☆ ♥

It feels like there's too much to talk about with this movie. So much of the direction makes more sense to me after reading the Wikipedia article:

"While developing Fast Five, Universal Pictures deliberately departed from the street racing theme prevalent in previous films in the series, to transform the franchise into a heist action series involving cars."

I find this to be a bit disappointing, personally. There's a scene in the first movie (the actual first movie, not the movie we watched first) where Brian gets into his first street race and at the end, his car is nearly falling apart at the seams because he pushed it too hard. Dom then expertly assesses the damage while everyone is crowding around the wreck. It's lively and sounds convincing, and more to the point it's what I would expect from a film series that revolves around street racing and the culture thereof.

Now, there is a much greater emphasis on action throughout Fast Five than its predecessors, to the point that it doesn't feel like it's even the same franchise in a lot of respects. I guess nothing lasts forever, but I was hoping for more tense braggadocio (which we did get plenty of, in fairness) and excessive ogling of each other's internals. There is a couple of sections involving the underground racing scene but the first such scene almost feels thrown in out of a sense of obligation: the gang says "we need some fast cars" and then Dom and Brian go talk smack on the locals to goad them into betting their pink slips. That part was all rather standard, but we don't even get to see them do the race! The movie didn't have enough room for it apparently, too much screentime spent on developing a heist scenario against the local crime lord I guess.

Hollywood's meddling aside, Dwayne Johnson's involvement is by far the most confusing element of the entire affair. Playing a Diplomatic Security Service agent named Hobbs, Johnson's primary motivation appears to be an obsession with doing his job. At the beginning he states emphatically that Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are "just names that appeared on his desk," so in his professional dedication he brings a team and a small army's worth of munitions to apprehend the villains. They make a point to paint Hobbs as being an "Old Testament" kind of guy, meaning that he is fanatically obsessed with getting his task done come Hell or high water.

I can appreciate this characterization. Where things fall apart is, after eventually cornering Vin Diesel in their garage pre-heist and throwing each other through about three or four corrugated steel walls, Johnson's team gets killed by the primary antagonist's goons on their way to extradite the criminals. Johnson, driven to avenge his teammates, decides he wants in the heist. This development is so baffling to me that it nearly took me out of the rest of the movie.

The heist itself took me the rest of the way out. Sparing the details: Vin Diesel and Paul Walker drag a 7 by 12 foot steel safe with cables all the way across Rio de Janeiro and cause tens of millions of dollars in damage to various public and private properties, and though we don't see anything on screen, I am sure that there were also several dozen deaths. The safe is constantly tumbling violently behind them, and they use it repeatedly as a kind of high-speed mace to destroy police cars and at one point a bus station. It's such an absurd escalation from the grounded nature of the first four movies.

Eventually the heist ends on a long bridge where Vin Diesel successfully bludgeons about six police vans using the safe, displaying the movie's only use of nitro (didn't even refer to it by name, it was like an afterthought). After disabling the crime lord's own van, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson appear just in time to finish the job. Dwayne Johnson, ostensibly still in the employ of the federal government, summarily shoots the crime lord in the fucking face without even one second's hesitation. He decides that the criminals he originally appeared to hunt down have earned "24 hours" and they make off with the money.

To be fair, this is kind of fitting with the overall tone of these movies where whichever protagonist is charming enough and they develop a network of sorts. But Johnson's character is this walking truck full of steroids and actively teaming up with Vin Diesel breaks the thread of his motivation for me just a bit too much. I guess that's the worst problem I have with this movie, looking past the incredible amount of violence and mayhem. There is at least some notion of discretion in the previous installments, but after partaking in what would surely be an incredible international incident, Johnson just ends up back in the United States continuing his work, as indicated by a mid-credits scene.

That's another thing actually. We were making jokes about the Fast and Furious movies doing a Marvel thing where all the main characters from previous installments come together to kick some ass, and they actually did it! In 2011, one year before the actual first Avengers movie! I'm not sure to what extent this influenced Marvel Studios, probably not much, but I was so amazed by this for some reason. The stinger in the middle of the credits especially got me, it was like every fucking blockbuster movie I ever saw in the mid 2010s coming back to haunt me.

My whinging aside, this movie did have a lot to appreciate too. I think the overall presentation of Rio was not very flattering, if I recall there was some complaints from the local authorities when this movie came out saying it played up stereotypes of the city. But the character work in this movie (Dwayne Johnson aside) was quite good! There's a Puerto Rican pair of singers playing members of the crew named Leo and Santos, who we recognized from the fourth movie, and their banter was actually pretty charming. Despite the heist stuff not really being in the spirit of its predecessors, it's also rather fun too. Tej being a super smart tech type feels a bit odd compared to him just setting up races in Miami before, but if you're gonna supercharge the plot and fuck with it, might as well change around some personal details too.

This all being said, it's time for Gay: this is probably the most heterosexual film of the lot so far, and we noted that Mia and Brian are explicitly expecting a kid now. We weren't taken in by that fucking crap for a second, this just means that Mia and Dom are sharing Brian like some sort of fucked up throuple. In seriousness, there was also a lot of gay stuff still, not quite as much getting up in each other's faces and stuff like that but lots of male on male tenderness and "friendly" dialogue. I don't know, it feels like the director may have rewatched the originals and said "oh man, this was a little much." Didn't stop Vin Diesel from awkwardly twitching his lips while staring longingly at Dwayne Johnson's face near the end of the movie though.

Overall I feel like I enjoyed this one the least so far, though it was still enjoyable enough. From what little we saw of the sixth one through its trailer, that might be a transitional problem and when it goes whole ham on being a stupid action series, it'll be more fun. Time will tell.

Louis Leterrier, 2023, 2 hours 21 minutes
Watched on 27th of April 2025
★★☆☆☆

I mentioned in my review for F9 that it felt like the writers were somewhat embarrassed by their script. I've read that critics described the plot of this one as "feeling like it was written by software," but I'm not really sure about that. Instead it feels like it was written in a sense of total confusion, or that they were scared about what to do anymore. The Wikipedia articles describes that one of the writers said: "[Dante] is the yang of [Dom's] yin, the antichrist of his Christ". This is one of the funniest things I've ever read and, as it happens, that imagery is one of the clearest aspects of the plot.

Everything else is a muddled mess. The only reason I give this film two stars is because there are a few details that are the right amount of ridiculous that I openly laughed out loud. Briefly: an alcohol-powered flying kayak, a scene where Han trips on "fun muffins" for five seconds which does not come back up and is not discussed in any way for the rest of the movie.

Way more embarrassing but still funny is that at various points there are literal images/clips from previous movies littered all over the place which don't make sense for anyone to have. Examples: Dom has a picture of the end of FF4 where he and Brian are getting ready to take Braga. Did Gisele take that picture before she walked up to them?? And whilst in the middle of a big bad monologue, Dante is playing numerous videos that no one could reasonably have taken UNLESS they happened to watch the previous movies. It's so fucking lazy and funny when you first notice it.

The worst part is that this is a cliffhanger. I really can't encourage watching this until the next one comes out, if ever considering Universal Studios got spooked by the "underperformance" of 750 million dollars. Maybe you shouldn't be spending 350 million bucks on a fucking movie.

F. Gary Gray, 2017, 2 hours and 16 minutes
Watched on 10th of April 2025
★★☆☆☆ ♥

With each entry in this series we plumb new depths of shlock. This one isn't quite the greatest in that regard--I think that the seventh entry holds that title currently--but this one is the most fun so far for weird reasons. Despite starting off rather modestly with an honest to god street race in Havana, the sheer visual nonsense exceeded my expectations.

I believe that Furious 7 has the most daunting stunts of the series so far, just in terms of sheer effort of portraying it on screen convincingly. There is a glut of description on the article for the 7th movie, describing what lengths they went to for filming purposes. On the other hand, the production notes Wikipedia has for Fate of the Furious are rather scarce, if interesting. Of note: "Principal photography began on March 14 in Mývatn, Iceland,[44][45] where strong winds sent a plastic iceberg prop flying into a paddock. The prop struck two horses; one was wounded and the other mortally injured (it was later euthanized)."

There is no mention of the entire ridiculous heist based in New York City where they caused a pile-up with approximately four million cars. This is explicitly disappointing; previous movies have boasted numbers in the low hundreds for "total destroyed cars" and we were estimating closer to a thousand this time around. There may be a description of this somewhere but I am too lazy to find it.

That aside, there's a lot to digest. A couple simplistic observations I want to get into: first, I had an epiphany that Dominic Toretto is just the street racing version of Goku. This follows from the principles that whatever challenges he's faced with he will eventually meet with aplomb, AND he has a penchant for turning adversaries into allies. That's really all that needs be said about this.

Second: there's a new character, the protege of Mr. Nobody limply called "Little Nobody" per a joke from Roman. This person is supposed to be the new Brian, to our mild disappointment. My partner noticed this connection almost immediately because of Little Nobody's kind of twinky, overeager disposition. This fellow is no Brian, but it's not through being an overtly bad replacement. To be sure, he actually has some semblance of charisma and slots in okay with the rest of the crew. It's a difficult thing to replace a key character like this in the midst of an overarching story and by the end I found myself fine with it.

There is a third thing that we were perplexed by continuously: Tyrese Gibson's lines. I remarked more than once that it sounded like they let him on the set without a script and just filmed him candidly, because he was lightly gibbering or yelling the entire time. I swear to God it sounded like he was just spewing whatever inane nonsense popped into his mind on set. At one point they're in the Siberian tundra and he says something to Ludacris or Nathalie Emmanuel about "not recognizing himself when he takes a piss." We were so baffled by this that we had to rewind the video twice just to make sure we heard it right.

Roman has served as a weirdly consistent voice of reason since his inclusion in Fast Five: he's the only one that ever questions the severity of whatever job the family is about to do and is the first one to say "I'm out" when it becomes clear how dangerous the stakes are. In a room full of super-competent, hyper-charged freaks he's the only regular-ish Joe. Nothing lasts forever though, I guess the curse of becoming an action star could avoid him only for so long as he summarily shoots four military men and kills them effortlessly once he gets fed up.

What else: Jason Statham's inclusion was a surprising delight, there was some odd fun in him being a killer nanny rescuing the Toretto brat. Dwayne Johnson had enough pull to get the Siva Tau in this movie twice, which was weirdly shocking. Charlize Theron was a sufficiently convincing psychopath to the point I kind of hated her character, though it begs the question what she needs with nukes if she can do everything else we saw in the process of acquiring the warheads. Can't wait to see how she comes back and/or joins the family.

Oh, yes, and the perennial gay. A sea change has occurred: Vin Diesel is officially out of the picture as Chief Gay. Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham have taken center stage as the new fujo couple, with a dash of violence and verbal abuse. There is a spin-off movie featuring these two characters that I will also review in short order, sparing this already bloated review.

Overall, I think this is the best of Nu-Fast and Furious where sheer enjoyment goes. The story was much less tight than Furious 7 insofar as Vin Diesel being monitored constantly yet somehow stringing former associates and enemies together to fuck over his adversaries, but the rest of the crew's shenanigans were so entertaining I couldn't be bothered to care. The cohesiveness of this franchise ran dry some time ago, all we can do now is cling with whitened knuckles to the steering wheel.

George Miller, 2024, 2 hours and 28 minutes
Watched on 27th of September 2025
★★★☆☆ ♥

An effective character study, it was interesting to get a different, more sustained perspective on this world. Unfortunately, while there's still apparently plenty of physical stunts in this movie worthy of praise, it feels somehow like a step down from its predecessor. Some of the backgrounds especially are substantially touched up and it takes away from the sense of intense grit that I enjoy so much about Fury Road. The arc of the story itself is fine, though for some reason I didn't feel sucked into it as much as I wanted; too many threads that didn't come to bear, I suppose. Still a fine use of almost 2.5 hours.

James Wan, 2015, 2 hours and 20 minutes
Watched on 30th of March 2025
★★★☆☆ ♥

As far as action shlock is concerned, this is what the sixth movie should have been. In summation: the plot is conveyed a lot more clearly and all the action that occurs (mostly) has a forward effect on the plot. Said plot continues to escalate preposterously, but it's so fun and over the top this time that I just don't care.

Jason Statham is the older, more badass brother of Shaw from the sixth movie, who vows revenge on his brother's behalf. This somehow leads Dom and his crew into working for a mysterious figure called Kurt Russell, and they travel around the world at his behest trying to rescue a James Bond gadget that lets you spy on literally anyone anywhere. In the process, they drop cars out of a cargo airplane, drive a "supercar" through the tops of three skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi, and a terrorist selfishly explodes Los Angeles trying to hunt the Family down.

It's pretty insane when packaged like that, but I promise that the narrative flowed pretty reliably from one point to the other. It was actually kind of refreshingly straight forward.

In the mid credits stinger to FF6 it shows that Jason Statham is who caused Han's car to explode. I thought that we saw pretty clearly it was a yakuza guy who killed him in Tokyo Drift, but after discussing the matter with some friends it is now clear that my brain retroactively hallucinated an entire guy. In the original scene, the car explodes on its own pretty much. I don't know why I was so shocked by this.

Everything that happens in Los Angeles is the most glorious shlock I have ever seen. Those of you who have seen this movie before will undoubtedly remember Dwayne Johnson flexing his plaster cast off, but I was more impressed by the scale of the destruction done to the city: several on-duty police officers are killed by missiles shot by a predator drone, an entire communication tower and a parking garage are both completely demolished.

The final confrontation between Vin Diesel and Jason Statham involves a couple of blows to the head with large, heavy metal tools. At some point I wanted to keep track of how many concussions and skull fractures these characters should have suffered from being thrown around and smacked in the face with stuff, but I gave up on that pretty quickly.

Now this may strike some of you as a little offensive: at the very end of the movie after everything is done and settled, there is a scene where Dom is leaving the beach and Brian pulls up next to him. They proceed to have the suggestion of a street race but then the movie starts dissolving into numerous flashes of Brian and Dom on screen together from the previous movies. I knew Paul Walker died around this time but was not aware of the exact timeline, so for the span of five seconds I genuinely believed that they had given up the ghost and inserted an actual gay AMV into the movie. I'm not lying about this, I was in visceral disbelief until I realized it was supposed to be the Paul Walker tribute.

But I guess that kind of puts a wrap on the DomBri situation. I'm not as moved as audiences/critics at the time seemed to be, but it's also over ten years since Paul Walker's demise. It was a pretty decent touch though, it's clear that they had some real affection for each other in real life through the development of these movies.

I don't really know where the series can go from here though. I thought what they did in Rio de Janeiro was bad, and although dozens of people were killed by a tank in the last movie, the climax of the movie was kind of contained in a NATO base away from the public eye. In this one there's really no way to get around just how many people were killed and the sheer scale of destruction. Kurt Russell at one point says "You have a funny idea of what staying under the radar means," which is really all that needs to be said about it.

Throughout the movie, there was this pervasive sense we had of, "this series used to be about cars." Actually, at the beginning of Furious 7 there's a scene where Dom and Letti end up going back to fucking Race Wars from the first movie. I remember thinking that was kind of ominous in a way, it's like the director wanted you to remember the more grounded origin of these characters. There's so little resemblance to the tone of the first movie anymore that I think I've been convinced to let go and just enjoy the ride. Universal Studios clearly does not care about adherence to reality, so why should I?

I've been promised that the remaining sequels continue to up the ante in unbelievable ways, so maybe I should just abandon my misgivings here. The possibilities are endless for this street rat and his ragtag crew of super spies.

Jaymes Thompson, 2007, 1 hour and 46 minutes
Watched on 19th of January 2025
★☆☆☆☆

It can't be said that this movie is for anyone like me: the opening credits are paired with a song and dance from a woman in garish clothing and incredibly fake blonde hair where she says "You better watch out for the straights." Despite how obviously tongue in cheek it was, I couldn't help feeling slightly offended. But again, this movie was not made for me.

Our main cast is revealed to be a gay couple where one is apparently a figure of note in the BDSM community called "Mr. Leather" and the other is a drag queen, an ambiguously lesbian couple who do drugs and make their own edible body paint, another gay couple with no distinguishing features, another lesbian couple where one is a crossdresser who wants to be a musician, ANOTHER gay couple but they include someone who is possibly a fujoshi (wasn't sure if it was actually a throuple or what).

They're all coming to a convention or possibly various gatherings out in the middle of nowhere, and all the places they could stay in the city are full. They end up renting rooms at a bed and breakfast called the Sahara Salvation Inn. Billed as friendly towards the queer community, it turns out that the inn owner is a psychotic Republican Jesus freak who is attempting to forcibly convert a gay man to straightness and wed him with her extremely mentally unstable daughter.

I'm sure there's a lot of subtext or established queer culture that I'm missing and so didn't enjoy this movie as much as I might have otherwise (looking up the IMDB for this movie revealed the phrase "fag-hag" to me). That being said, some of the stuff was obvious enough that even I in all my heteronormativity could understand it without problem. The main things I bothered to internalize from this movie are the following:

- a convoluted sideplot about the daughter's history of being a sex-crazed lesbian in denial. After ravenously humping some sort of tropical tree, she murdered a nun who was also trying to stop her from forcibly fucking her classmates. This woman also has a shrine to George W Bush and other key figures of the Republican party like Dick Cheney and Ronald Reagan;

- the mother running the bed and breakfast was once a hotdog salesman at the Republican National Convention. She has bathroom sex with every Republican delegate at the same time and subsequently gives birth to a boy named Manfred who was the combined progeny of all of them, whom she keeps in the attic;

- this spawn had fucked up Nosferatu teeth, milky white eyes, and a wet bloated cocoon for legs, serving as the primary killer of the guests. Manfred had this incredible ability to make people explode into pure blood and gore in an instant, and a speediness which defied any explanation involving his lack of legs;

- the two cross-dressing guests ended up dating each other (oh yeah, casual infidelity was a feature of at least half the guests) and taking over the hotel after the mother and daughter were both killed in the final confrontation. For no conceivable reason they end up assuming guardianship of Manfred and continuing the tradition of killing the bed and breakfast guests.

- assless chaps.

The movie managed to have enough restraint to not become self-referential or TOO campy, which I think is to its benefit. On the other hand it did have a couple of scenes which were literally just softcore gay pornography, which I did not enjoy as someone who is not gay. I looked up the Rotten Tomatoes score of this movie and it's sitting at 17%, so I think one star is a little generous.

Highlights of the movie involve some hilariously stupid lines: favorites include "How many chai lattes have you had today, kitten?" and "Wait! Do you want some couscous?" Additionally, the best acting of the movie belongs to one of the gay guys tied up in a pink princess bed who got real close and personal with the owner of the inn, and his screaming is so convincing that I couldn't help laughing at his bulging neck veins. Aside from that, this is almost assuredly not good enough to be a group B movie watch, especially if anyone involved is not okay with various nudity. Despite everything, I was somehow not expecting to actually see a dong. Even Tommy Wiseau had enough self-respect to keep that out of his movie.

Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman, 1926, 1 hour and 15 minutes
Watched on 7th of March 2026
★★★☆☆

Description

Mamoru Oshii, 1995, 1 hour and 25 minutes
Watched on 23rd of July 2026
★★★⯪☆ ♥

I was not blown away by this movie like I expected I might be. Nonetheless, certain bits of imagery feel like they have lodged into my brain, such as Kusunagi floating face up towards the surface of the sea, or the city passing by on a rainy day. I'll need a rewatch to appreciate this movie more fully.

Graeme Clifford, 1989, 1 hour and 45 minutes
Watched on 4th of May 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

I don't know what I expected when I started watching this, but it wasn't what we got. There was a good amount of heart and an imminently followable plot in this, I was surprised to look and see that it was pretty negatively received. I guess film critics are squares that don't know nothin' about skateboarding. Also a stunning number of parallels to Fast and Furious, to the point that I'm choosing to accept this as an unintentional entry in the franchise universe. I will not explain further.

Akira Kurosawa, 1963, 2 hours and 23 minutes
Watched on 20th of October 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

This is honestly like two movies in one: it starts off as a kidnapping drama that turns into a police procedural. Imminently more followable than The Bad Sleep Well while not compromising on complexity, I was surprisingly pleased by this and it had some disturbing themes throughout that elevated the material. Definitely deserves a rewatch in the future.

Mike Cheslik, 2022, 1 hour and 48 minutes
Watched on 13th of April 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

Walter Lang, 1956, 2 hours and 13 minutes
Watched on 25th of April 2026
★★★★☆ ♥

I dimly remember seeing this when I was a child, and am surprised at just how much of the overall plot I had completely forgotten. Nothing of the secondary romance plot between the bride and the man from Berma remained in my head, for instance.

I feel almost obligated to scrutinize the movie from a modern lens, mostly with regard to its orientalism and the treatment of women. I'm comfortable enough handwaving the second as a historical artifact, and offset somewhat by Anna's nature (though not entirely, given her tolerating or even indulging the imperiousness of the king); the first I'm not quite as certain. I have a loose desire to read the memoirs that this story is based off of, or maybe a more academic text if one is available, but realistically I'll never get to it. Suffice it to say I wouldn't be surprised if the film's treatment of the people and culture of Siam would be considered crude or offensive in the eyes of a current day audience.

That being put aside, the characters and emotional arc of the musical were unexpectedly gripping. The desire of the king to lift up his people and his internal struggle over how exactly to do it, Anna's affection for her students; every time I watch a famous older movie like this I'm surprised by how it manages to draw me in. It's not exactly a complicated plot progression, having very few twists or turns to speak of, and I'm not sure how much of my enjoyment was simply because of the spectacle (the play based on Uncle Tom's Cabin was enthralling for instance). I could think myself in circles; there's no getting around the fact that I enjoyed it immensely.

Chris Appelhans, Maggie Kang, 2025, 1 hour and 40 minutes
Watched on 23rd of August 2025
★★☆☆☆

I actually kind of liked some of the details in this, although they were hugely overshadowed by the music (and I know this take is very unpopular) being fucking awful. Part of that is me not liking pop music generally. However, my partner has been an ardent fan of kpop for literally a decade and a half at this point. Through this I've listened to enough kpop by osmosis that I can tell you that the music in this film was a very, very bad fit for the setting.

The visuals were interesting at times and the character dynamics were fun, but for something that's oriented around kpop as a genre and cultural sensation, it was easily the worst aspect of the film by far and that is an enormous problem. Every time a song came on we were actively groaning and suppressing the urge to fast forward. I wish I could say I'm surprised this thing is Netflix's biggest animated hit but somehow I'm not.

Robert Eggers, 2019, 1 hour and 50 minutes
Rewatched on 24th of May 2025
★★★★⯪ ♥

Unquestionably funnier the second time, although the complaints about the symbolism not making sense at times also hold water. The acting in general was so fun I couldn't even care about questionable thematic cohesion though. Near the end I also somehow managed to hallucinate that instead of "MONKEY PUMP" they were screaming "MONKEY JUICE," I'm not sure how that swap happened but the brain works in mysterious ways.

Takashi Yamazaki, 2019, 1 hour and 33 minutes
Watched on 18th of July 2026
★★★☆☆ ♥

Visually arresting, what little familiarity I have with the tropes of Lupin III indicates to me that this movie was in great form. The pacing was superb, with just the right blend of fast action scenes versus slow dialogue that afforded some room to breathe. The plot itself was adequately interesting too, with a mystery that I was genuinely curious about.

The only other Lupin content I've watched in full is Castle of Cagliostro, which I only faintly remember. Based on this movie alone, I feel like looking into some highlights from throughout its daunting fifty year history of movies and shows.

George Miller, 1979
Rewatched on 10th of August 2025, 1 hour and 33 minutes
★★★★☆ ♥

The amount of enjoyment I got out of this was absurdly greater on a rewatch. There's so many deliberate decisions that I feel I missed out on without knowing the overall plot, including a few background details that don't matter which I really enjoyed. I still haven't watched Road Warrior or Thunderdome, I'm going to have to after this though.

George Miller, 1981, 1 hour and 36 minutes
Rewatched on 13th of September 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

George Miller, George Ogilvie, 1985, 1 hour and 47 minutes
Watched on 14th of September 2025
★★☆☆☆

No review for this entry.

George Miller, 2015, 2 hours
Rewatched on 27th of September 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

Kaljo Kiisk, 1969, 1 hour and 19 minutes
Watched on 30th of July 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

Following in the tradition of many post-WWII films, this was fairly evocative of the paranoia that permeated the German military near the end of the war. SS Officer Windisch is seeking an informant for Allied forces in an asylum for the mad and disabled, gradually questioning himself and his mission as the culprit eludes him. The only Estonian movie I've consciously watched but it was a good choice: a lot of the filmography is kind of slow and static but occasionally there are some very interesting decisions with the camera work, and there are some pretty memorable characters too.

Harold P. Warren, 1966, 1 hour and 14 minutes
Watched on 22nd of March 2026
⯪☆☆☆☆

This movie is squarely in the territory of bad, and not good in any way. Any value that can be squeezed out of it is because you can't help asking yourself "why." The history of it is more amusing than the film itself. I think I watched the MST3K rifftrack many years ago and had a decent time with that, but watching the movie by itself this time around I was squarely bored and almost couldn't finish it. There's no getting around the dogshit pacing and the complete lack of anything happening, aside from the slow freakout between all the women in the last half. Still, Torgo's theme kind of rocks.

Travis Knight, 2026, 2 hours and 20 minutes
Watched on 20th of June 2026
★★☆☆☆

I have no real, personal fondness for He-Man as a property. I've watched the first season with friends and it was a pretty fun time, but the smear of being a thinly veiled advertisement for kids toys causes me to bounce off in much the same way as Transformers. Perhaps if these franchises underwent the same treatment as the Gundam 0079 trilogy, I would have a reason to really dig into them.

That being said, greater fans than I have said that this seems to have a pronounced respect for He-Man's mythos. Based on some of the visual comparisons I've seen, at least, I believe that. Less convincing is the tone of this movie, which is at times genuinely vulgar. The worst offense in this vein is when Teela literally calls Cringer a pussy. That is not a joke or an exaggeration, and when it happened I briefly felt like I was having an out of body experience.

This isn't necessarily a problem, outside of being jarring when you hold it up to the source material. Speaking strictly within this movie itself, it is a problem tonally because the movie feels like three different people wrote the script: one of them was a lifelong fan of the show and wanted to do it some big-budget justice, one of them only saw a quick Youtube review of the series, and one of them was an AI. I say this because the tone doesn't really switch between different moments effectively. There are some points where a noticeable affection for the setting and the tropes of the original series shine through (at the very end, the entire gang laughs in an exaggerated fashion as a direct visual homage to how episodes of the TV show often ended). These moments are notably devoid of the raunchy or more profane humor that permeates other parts of the movie (Skeletor bafflingly describing Adam's "creamy thighs" or characters cursing way too much), and then some sequences feel like a flimsy glue piecing everything else together.

This had the aggregate effect of never really letting me get into the movie properly, although some scenes really tried their hardest. I still enjoyed myself, but most of what I laughed at was my sheer puzzlement at how the scenes were slotting together, or what characters were doing and saying. The climax of the movie has some parts that felt like they were ripped straight out of a Mortal Kombat game. I don't know man, what I'm trying to get at is that this movie was a mess, but it's an enjoyable enough mess. I'll probably never watch it again, but it might be good for a bad movie night someday. Most shocking of all is that this is another film performance of Jared Leto that I felt kind of worked. Between this and the main villain of Blade Runner 2049, he should just be a method actor for creepy megalomaniacs.

Rintaro, 2001, 1 hour and 53 minutes
Watched on 12 of September 2026
★★★☆☆ ♥

The animation was eye-popping in many places, although the CGI has aged enough to show some cracks. The story I found adequate though vaguely puzzling, mostly for specific details such as the nature of the superweapon; what purpose does artificially creating sunspots serve, let alone for world domination? Would they just hold the world hostage? I guess that's pretty secondary to the plot focusing around Kenichi and Tima, whose journey from the underbelly of Metropolis up to its very heights was pretty riveting. Pretty good weekend watch, if you've never seen it.

Brian De Palma, 1996, 1 hour and 50 minutes
Watched on 14th of June 2025
★★★☆☆ ♥

I'm sure that an overexposure to the overture of this series is responsible, but I didn't enjoy this quite as much as I expected. It was still rather good overall, though the ending sequence managed to take me out of the movie somewhat. It's difficult to even say why, because by definition all the stuff in this movie is prefixed by the word "impossible" and it's not like the heist in the middle was any less ridiculous. Somehow the ending was just a lot less believable or tense. Didn't stop me from cheering every time someone ripped a latex mask off though.

John Woo, 2000, 2 hours and 6 minutes
Watched on 16th of June 2025
★★★☆☆

No review for this entry.

J. J. Abrams, 2006, 2 hours and 6 minutes
Watched on 22nd of June 2025
★★⯪☆☆

No review for this entry.

Christopher McQuarrie, 2023, 2 hours and 43 minutes
Watched on 6th of July 2025
★★☆☆☆

No review for this entry.

Brad Bird, 2011, 2 hours and 13 minutes
Watched on 23rd of June 2025
★★★☆☆

No review for this entry.

Christopher McQuarrie, 2015, 2 hours and 11 minutes
Watched on 29th of June 2025
★★☆☆☆

This one is notable for having an extremely fun first half that somehow turns into one of the biggest slogs in the back half. This happens again in 7, I don't need to leave a review for that one.

Christopher McQuarrie, 2025, 2 hours and 50 minutes
Watched on 7th of July 2025
★★⯪☆☆ ♥

A fairly competent finisher, I thought the stuff with the submarine was especially enjoyable. The ending did drag but not as bad as previous installment. A little too much going on at the end and definitely some dumb plot stuff to justify what the writing wants but it was fine Hollywood slop.

Baz Luhrmann, 2001, 2 hours and 7 minutes
Watched on 10th of May 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

As the common refrain goes, I'm not really into musicals. To be sure, the musical aspect of this was the part I liked the least by far (the song choices in particular were grating). I found myself surprised at how much I was captured by the story and the performances though. Will probably benefit from a rewatch at some point.

David Lynch, 2001, 2 hours and 27 minutes
Watched on 6th of February 2026
★★★⯪☆

The first of David Lynch's movies where I don't feel quite satisfied, though perhaps not through any fault of the film itself. I enjoyed specific scenes more than anything in Blue Velvet, and maybe Eraserhead. However, I do not feel as if the entire thing congealed in a way that worked for me.

This movie is quite thoroughly about Hollywood, and somewhat instinctively I despise Hollywood. I hate it for being a vicious place populated by disgusting people, but that seems to be part of David Lynch's thesis with this movie. I'm also generally not fond of stories which dip very far into the surreal--not the movie's fault, that's a personal preference. I guess I can say that I know some people who I think would love the shit out of this movie, which speaks to the fact that it has real power.

Phillip Noyce, 1978, 1 hour and 50 minutes
Watched on 22nd of February 2026
★★★★☆ ♥

An astonishing, close up look at Australia's history in the late 1940s to the mid 1950s. It's a historical drama so one might expect it's got that glaze of seriousness, but the Australian larrikin spirit is alive and well in this film and helps it to avoid being stiff.

I was surprised at just how much I liked these characters from the brief glimpses we get into their lives; there's a pervasive sense of ambition being checked by the unerring march of time. The main cast are all professionals and rather motivated, but through no real fault of their own they are rendered increasingly helpless. The more personal stakes are all rather understated while being instantly recognizable, too. Can't recommend this film enough to anyone who enjoys a simple drama, helps if you like the shit Australians end up saying too.

George Romero, 1968, 1 hour and 36 minutes
Watched on 21st of March 2026
★★★☆☆ ♥

I'm not sure what to think of this movie upon a rewatch. It's extremely somber, and slow-paced in a good way. Still obviously good, but I think maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for it this time around, and felt somewhat bored throughout the brunt of it. I did appreciate the visuals in a more direct way this time around, with the stark blackness beyond the boundary of the light functioning as a menacing void. Writing this several months after the fact, I'm not sure any of the social commentary was strong enough for me to latch onto, but I wasn't paying as much attention as I could have probably. I need to actually watch some of George Romero's other stuff, somehow this is the only one I've gotten to.

Louis Leterrier, 2013, 1 hour and 55 minutes
Watched on 7th of June 2025
★★⯪☆☆ ♥

An unexpectedly funny movie to watch in a group, I was nonetheless taken out of it somewhat by the fact that the tricks shown throughout are fucking crazy and some shouldn't work by any stretch of the imagination. Also Woody Harrelson as a mentalist is absurdly overpowered. I'm not sure if it would have been more or less enjoyable if the movie had gone all-in on the magic tricks being insane bullshit, or if something a bit less ridiculous would have been better.

Jon M. Chu, 2016, 2 hours and 9 minutes
Watched on 19th of July 2025
★★☆☆☆

I have rarely seen a film this baffling. Every aspect of the original is enhanced here, in all of its grubby and self-indulgent ways. The screenwriter does a fancy little trick of their own where they show how the main characters do their stunts SOMETIMES, such as when they're doing the large version of Three Card Monte. However, all the stuff that begs the most explanation is either the result of ridiculous and fake technology, or conveniently glossed over. This is up there on the list of movies that have made me cycle through sheer, irritated confusion and laughing at how aggressively stupid the plot is. I'm not sure if this scratches the itch for a Good Bad Movie as much as the first one did though.

Christopher Nolan, 2026, 2 hours and 52 minutes
Watched on 26th of July 2026
★★★★☆ ♥

A massively impressive work of filmmaking. The runtime is an obvious detraction but there's really no getting around the sheer breadth of the story. Nolan's treatment of it has attracted quite some controversy, with the author Emily Wilson--whose translation Nolan cited as an inspiration for his own version of the tale--notably lambasting his effort. Strictly in a classicist sense she's not wrong for this, but there's no getting around the difficulties of trying to have it all in one single film. This is one of those titles that I feel would genuinely benefit from being split into multiple installments, but for an effort that tries to keep it in one self-contained volume, this is about as good as it can get.

Being an amateur fan of history, I was taken with the sort of "maximally realistic" presentation of this story. Unexpectedly I felt captivated by the palace politics angle of Telemachus with his mother at home, and the struggle to maintain the Ithaca household without succumbing to the suitors. On the other side of things, I was genuinely enthralled with Odysseus's adventures home. Easily my favorite part of the movie was their consultation of the seer Tiresias.

On a side note here, I had absolutely no problem with any of the casting. Complaints about Elliot Page are essentially worthless, as are those towards Lupita Nyong'o. It is greatly amusing that there was such an uproar about this movie containing anything that diverges even slightly from historical reality, both given the fantastical nature of the story and the success it's enjoyed since release.

In all, the only thing that took me out of the movie was a misunderstanding I had near the end. It has been joked about quite a lot because it does sound kind of bad even in the right context: one may have heard the hamfisted lines where Odysseus says "our age of bronze is collapsing," which is easily the worst line of the movie. Much ado is also made about "the people of the sea," which I was taking to refer to "the Sea Peoples" which are a real life historical theory about why exactly the Mycenaean civilization vanished. I was working off of an outdated model of this idea where the Sea Peoples are a collection of people literally from across the Mediterranean, such as from the north and east coasts of Africa, whom then came to raze the Greek peninsula and islands. I initially thought that the People from the Sea mentioned in the movie are an enigmatic threat posed by said invaders. I thus had a rather heated argument with some people on Discord about what exactly Odysseus was talking about when he said "we are the People from the Sea," where they insisted that Odysseus was referring to his own homecoming sowing fear among his people.

More modern scholarship suggest it was a combination of foreign invaders, but also a lot of people in the Greek peninsula and islands themselves that turned to piracy in times of hardship. Apparently this simply caused enough hardship that the Mycenaean city-states could not withstand the pressure, and trade routes collapsed after enough pillaging made it infeasible to continue. In Nolan's Odyssey, this seems to be a more favorable interpretation of the aforementioned line about "we are the People from the Sea." It was not literally that Odysseus and his men, and the rest of Agamemnon's fleet, were the People from the Sea, causing havoc and spreading rumors of the end of the world. Rather, their abuse of Zeus's law precipitated their own destruction in the vein of Greek myth, where hubris begets one's own downfall. Agamemnon wins the war, but he and his soldiers all pay a price for it.

My original, faulty interpretation of this was almost enough to ruin the movie for me, but with the passage of time I really don't know what I was up in arms about. The film is a staggering accomplishment either way. If only someone could make a decent Iliad, although this movie shows enough of it that it's probably not worth tackling anytime soon. What I would REALLY like is a production that's well-funded and produced like this one, but which really takes its time to render the Iliad and the Odyssey as faithfully to the original text as possible. I doubt there's much of a real audience for that, but I bet if it were done well it could be something else.

Tim Burton, 1985, 1 hour and 30 minutes
Rewatched on 20th of September 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

Paul Ruben's manic laughter is somehow more infectious every time I see this. There's always something new to appreciate about this movie whenever I happen to have an excuse to watch it.

Peter Cattaneo, 2024, 1 hour and 50 minutes
Watched on 30th of March 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

It may come as a surprise that I also watch real movies from time to time. Full disclosure: I may have been inordinately affected by this movie because for the last month and a half I've exclusively been watching the Fast and the Furious series, and I was so pleased to hear the main character of The Penguin Lessons using words like "pragmatic" and "idealistic."

In short: a British professor of English named Tom Michell travels to Buenos Aires for a teaching job immediately before the revolution of 1976. He is a severely jaded figure and seems intent on skating by with as little effort as can be mustered. When the coup finally occurs, he takes a holiday to Uruguay; in the midst of an abortive tryst he rescues a penguin. Initially reluctant to take charge of the creature, they both find their way back to the college where Michell teaches.

I don't want to say more, the movie is genuinely good enough to deserve a watch in the theaters. Again, I may have been affected overly much because my brain is fried from horrific action shlock, but I was rather moved by the end of the story. Michel is played by Steve Coogan, whose performance is fantastically dry with emotion shining through in all the right places. Jonathan Pryce I was less impressed by--his character is a British gentleman colonist figure or some such as the school's headmaster, literally saying "here here" and other stereotypical affectations. Even he managed to be sympathetic towards the end though, kind of bending under the weight of his obligations.

In all, a delightful experience. I was shocked that Wikipedia doesn't have even a synopsis up, for this or the autobiography it's based on. I might have to purchase the book and do some more research on it in the future.

Alan Parker, 1982, 1 hour and 40 minutes
Watched on 21st of September 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

A visually stunning experience that added context to an album I've heard countless times, dripping with meaning and visual symbolism at nearly every moment.

David Twohy, 2000, 1 hour and 52 minutes
Rewatched on 16th of August 2025
★★★☆☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

Jackie Chan, 1985, 1 hour and 29 minutes
Watched on 24th of November 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

Bruce A. Block, 1987, 1 hour and 30 minutes
Watched on 19th of January 2025
★☆☆☆☆

I just got done writing my thoughts on The Gay Bed and Breakfast of Terror and despite how much I shit on that movie, this one is somehow worse.

To be sure, this one is more consistently entertaining; Cindy Cathcart is a poor sweet orphan child raised essentially on the streets. Much emphasis is paid to the fact that she was unfailingly sweet and demure despite being surrounded by ruffian children of the worst degree and being constantly failed by the system. By chance, due to some reforms she is offered a chance at an uppity Swiss finishing school called Von Pupsin Academy, owned by Eva Gabor, AKA Duchess the cat from the Disney movie Aristocats.

Where this movie fails worse than Gay Bed and Breakfast, then, is in how little sense the plot makes and how weakly scenes flow into each other. In Animal House/Revenge of the Nerds fashion, every girl attending this academy is a fucking psycho, sex freak, or some exotic combination of the two, with a substantial portion of the running time dedicated to detailing the girls' prodigious sexual endeavors. There is an inexplicable fixture in the school hallway which Cindy's roommate explains thus: "That's the Whore Horn. Every time a girl's had an orgasm, she sounds it." After boarding at the school and befriending a handful of eccentric stereotypes, the rest of the movie is an unintelligible string of escapades which do not really further the story except as some hormone induced fever dream.

There is some pretending of a larger plot where the mistress of the school--a vicious, corpulent fraudster named Stinkenschmidt--is convinced that Cindy is "spying" on her for ????? reasons. Stinkenschmidt thus employs a couple of bratty rich girls in conspiring to expel Cindy. However, this features only rarely until the end of the movie where Stinkenschmidt accosts the girls at the nearby Boys Academy (which also seems to function as a sex trafficking ring? Absolutely fucking bizarre development where some Sheik who I couldn't stop calling the Shah of Iran tries to literally buy Cindy and rape her).

Naturally Cindy is expelled. This leads her to actually use her seedy upbringing to a limited extent by engaging in a convoluted plot: dosing the mistress with aphrodisiacs in order to record the fiend for blackmail, exposing her defrauding of the school? It's all kind of incidental and hazy in my mind even just a scant couple hours after finishing the movie.

There's honestly too many things that were just bizarre and had minimal connection to each other, and the finale is so fucking crazy that I'm still processing how it even got written in the first place. I commented more than once that I could practically smell the cocaine in the director's office all the way from 1987. All I'll say is this: small Swiss town is overrun by teenage girls in a literal tank. As the featured song by Hurricane says: Girls Are Out Tonight.

I'm underrating this movie for how much fun I had watching it, but I'm sure trying to watch it again would be fairly unpleasant. It's one of those things where the enjoyment is in being caught completely off guard by what you're seeing, and I doubt it could be replicated if seen twice within a span of less than ten years. It's also fairly off-putting if you can't tolerate sexual humor, which is made all the more awkward by the fact that these are teenage girls. There's a "lose your virginity" scene for one of Cindy's friends which is so weird that I think I had an out of body experience watching it.

The Rotten Tomatoes score for this movie is somehow at 50%. This is just mind boggling to me, and I will not abide by it. The girls are not out tonight; they are grounded and need to do some thinking about their lives.

Joel Crawford, 2022, 1 hour and 42 minutes
Watched on 20th of September 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

Akira Kurosawa, 1985, 2 hours and 42 minutes
Watched on 27th of October 2025
★★★★⯪ ♥

An incredible tragic tale, constantly stirring with gorgeous, sweeping visuals and close character moments throughout. I feel a compulsion to rewatch this when I have a moment to give it proper attention, though it's only slightly hampered by a runtime closing in on 3 hours. I want to watch more of Kurosawa's stuff based on this.

Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1948, 2 hours and 13 minutes
Watched on 18th of May 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

A wonderful movie without a doubt. I was kind of distressed near the end because, without giving too much away, the main character seems to suffer through so much without having any real agency of her own. Makes sense for the time period but much of the conflict is being in the middle of two forces tugging her in different directions.

The middle of the movie, more positively, has an immaculate sequence where the protagonist is featured in the titular ballet for the first time. I don't know the technical parts of the special effects used but it was almost dream-like in quality. Without exaggeration, I was enchanted by this scene.

Wolfgang Reitherman, John Lounsbery, Art Stevens, 1977, 1 hour and 18 minutes
Watched on 15th of June 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

I'll admit straight up that tearjerker characters like sad little orphan girls never fail to get the water works going. That aside, this movie had a lot of good silver age Disney magic. The opening backgrounds being paintings is a touch I appreciate a lot, and the character designs were all very distinctive. The relationship between Bernard and Miss Bianca was especially fun: we physically laughed whenever she was just unspeakably based in the face of danger. Can't believe I've slept on this movie for so long.

William Wyler, 1953, 1 hour and 58 minutes
Watched on 2nd of February 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

A joyful romantic comedy, Roman Holiday is outside of my usual circuit in the same ways as The Russians are Coming. I had no idea this film existed, although it is apparently quite significant historically as a romance story.

Princess Ann of Unspecified European Country is doing a goodwill tour of the continent. In Rome she is overcome with weariness caused by her royal duties and throws so much of a fit that her attendants get a doctor to inject her with opioids or some shit. Before the fentanyl kicks in she looks longingly at the peasants dancing on a river barge to lively music. As soon as she is left alone she escapes to go out on the town.

Joe Bradley, a sleazy reporter for a local American outlet, stumbles on Ann passed out atop a low wall and--not recognizing her--reluctantly takes responsibility for her well-being, bringing her back to his apartment. The next day he is late for work and, while getting an upbraiding from his boss, realizes he is aiding and abetting a crown princess. He decides to twist the situation to his advantage and makes a bet with his boss that he can get an exclusive, comprehensive scoop on the princess.

Eventually Ann wakes up and, believing herself to be undiscovered, asks Joe for some cash and takes off. Joe follows her around as she gets a pixie cut (the barber finds her cute and invites her to a dance on the river barge later), some ice cream, and a single flower from an angry florist because she wasted all of her fucking money in like one hour. Joe "runs into her" and invites her to see the town with him. Meanwhile, Unspecified European Country sends a huge team of essentially secret service agents to get the princess back while claiming she is missing her appointments due to taking illness.

While getting coffee, Joe invites his photographer friend Irving to candidly take pictures of her for his scoop. Irving suffers repeated injury to both his spirit and physical well-being because Joe is very bad at giving hints to shut the fuck up, so he resorts to spilling numerous drinks on him and actually, physically harming him to stop him from spilling the beans. Once the slapstick is over, the three traipse all throughout Rome together, letting Ann do normal people stuff for the day, such as driving clumsily through Roman traffic and nearly killing several pedestrians.

This culminates when they go to the dance on the river barge; the secret service discover her and attempt to forcibly bring her back to the palazzo, but Joe hulks out and mercs a bunch of them in short order. There are simply too many for his thunder fists to keep up, so Joe and Ann escape by jumping into the river, leaving Irving gets shit on I guess. Once safely on the bank of the other side, they share a kiss. Going back to Joe's apartment to dry off, Ann hears on the radio that her countrymen are getting increasingly worried about her, and she decides she must go back to her responsibilities.

She has Joe drive her to the palazzo and despite causing untold grief to her attendants Ann displays a newfound confidence, basically telling them all to fuck off as she resumes her post. The next day, Joe decides he cannot bring himself to go through with selling the story, telling his boss there was nothing to his lead.

Ann delivers a press conference, and to her immense surprise Joe and Irving are there. Declaring her intent to "greet the press," much to the consternation of her already anxious attendants, Irving hands her the photos he took as a memento of her time in Rome, and Joe plays off something she said about the faith in the connections between people. She departs and Joe slowly walks away, The End.

I admire the restraint this movie had in giving it such a bittersweet ending; I was half-convinced the script would make Ann forsake her responsibilities altogether, but I was actually made a little emotional by their parting words. In reading the Wikipedia page I see that there were plans for a sequel that never materialized; thus, I like to imagine that Joe became disillusioned with his job as a reporter and moved to the country to try and be with Ann eventually--royalty are known to marry commoners sometimes, after all.

In totality, it is amazing to me how engaging this movie is compared to a lot of modern stuff given it has such a simple, straightforward plot. There's something to be said for being able to write something heartfelt that makes you not care about how complex the story is. I don't recall the last time I felt the chemistry between two on-screen characters so strongly--one must imagine Joe and Ann happy. I also liked the cinematography of Rome in general, it seemed quite lovely as presented in the film. I'm going to have to start watching more of these old movies, I'm sure there's a lot of dreck too but I've been missing out on the good stuff apparently. If I had to describe it in one word, "charming" would be at the top of the list.

Norman Jewison, 1966, 2 hours and 6 minutes
Watched on 1st of January 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

Not the kind of thing I usually watch, but I'm glad I did. The set-up: a Soviet submarine at the height of the Cold War runs aground on a fictional island off the east coast because the commander of the vessel "wanted to see America up-close." He sends a covert team of nine soldiers on-shore in order to find some sort of sea tow so they may escape before drawing attention and causing an embarrassing international incident.

This immediately runs into problems: the first islanders they encounter are actually a family renting a house for a summer holiday, father one Walt Whittaker. One of the two soldiers capable of speaking English with any reliability is forced to hold the family hostage at gunpoint while the commanding Lieutenant Rozanov takes the car with the rest of the troops. Walt, however, escapes confinement and sets off to warn the townsfolk.

Honestly there are too many individual scenes to recount here in detail, but in essence the Russians' presence is revealed and the movie is a continuous escalation of the islanders becoming hysterical over the "invasion." There's a lot of high quality gags in the movie that are based around the literal game of Telephone, translation problems, and Red Scare nonsense. Honors go to the scene of the Russian troops poorly practicing English so they can scream at children: "EMERGENCY: EVERYBODY TO GET FROM STREET," and a scene where practically every townsperson drives up on the airfield armed to the teeth.

I should say here that this film is notable for the time for not portraying the Soviets in a totally unflattering way (Soviet filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk said he was "moved to tears" by the more sympathetic tone). The team of soldiers are presented as quite personable and polite, apologizing for disturbing the townsfolk and all that. There's even a touching romance between the soldier guarding the family and one of the daughters (or a caretaker of theirs? I can't remember at this point). The Soviets hijack a high-powered speedboat and fuck off somewhere in the ocean, but eventually the submarine breaks free on its own due to the rising tide which obviates the matter.

The vessel arrives at the island port, where the commander is alarmed by his missing personnel and initially threatens to open fire on the entire town and kill everybody (did I say this film was flattering for the Soviets? ). In the end, just before all hell breaks loose, one of the children who had climbed up the church's steeple for a better look at the Soviets takes a tumble--the poor boy is turned into a cheap plastic puppet by dark magic and trapped hanging perilously by one of his suspender straps. The Soviets and townsfolk team up to save the boy, though the most histrionic islander has already called the US army on a radio. Truly they are all in a pickle!

The townsfolk, however, have the wonderful idea of providing an escort for the Soviets since they're all buddy buddy now. Two Air Force jets are scrambled to check things out, do a couple fly-bys, shrug their shoulders because they can't exactly carpet bomb American citizens, and go home. Everyone cheers at staving off certain death for everyone involved, then the Russians depart.

Older movies aren't really my thing, and neither are comedies, so this had a lot going against it on a personal level for me. Despite this, I managed to enjoy it quite a bit. I rate it at 3.5 out of 5 stars more as a reflection of my personal engagement than in anything the film did specifically wrong, except maybe that the run-time was a tad long for the subject material. I also felt that some of the humor was more awkward than funny, but most of it landed just fine. Overall, I appreciate any work that celebrates connections between people, and with a thing so fraught as the Cold War it is especially nice to see a film that does not try to put anyone involved down or treat them indignantly.

Amir Shervan, 1991, 1 hour and 36 minutes
Rewatched on 25th of October 2025
★☆☆☆☆ ♥

A bit more downtime than I remembered, but aside from one uncomfortable moment this movie endures as quintessential 80s/90s garbage action schlock. This is a potential stepping stone for people who want to make fun of B movies on a more technical level, like several shots which are supposed to be connected but are clearly separated on a spatial level, or obvious gaffs and stupid background details. None of this is to mention the dialogue and acting, which is sometimes boring but usually baffling. Excellent candidate for a drunken shitty movie night, if you can stand occasional gratuitous nudity.

James Wan, 2004, 1 hour and 43 minutes
Watched on 25th of October 2025
★★★☆☆ ♥

Definitely outside of my wheelhouse, but this was surprisingly like a "real movie," with enough connecting details throughout the plot that I found myself intrigued by something that felt meaningful. The acting left something to be desired but I'm not sure if that's the actors themselves or if it's a mid-2000s thing. There's a decent build up in emotional intensity and tension that makes the grittier details feel properly earned. In all, a surprisingly good time.

Darren Lynn Bousman, 2005, 1 hour and 35 minutes
Watched on 25th of October 2025
★⯪☆☆☆

As opposed to the first one, this was just awful. This one had the sort of torture porn that I initially assumed was the entire series, and why I had largely avoided it up to this point. I was immediately less compelled by the story and found the focus on the traps to be to the film's detriment, mostly ignoring emotional themes in favor of showcasing devices of escalating cruelty. In all an annoying and unrewarding experience.

David Fincher, 2010, 2 hours
Watched on 8th of June 2025
★★★☆☆

This movie felt effective: even though I don't care for Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook at all, this managed to invest me in the story at least a bit. I kept wondering to myself exactly how dramatized the events are compared to what must have happened in real life. The more impressive aspects of the movie are Jesse Eisenberg's acting and everyone in the movie being profoundly unlikeable.

Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski, 2008, 2 hours and 15 minutes
Rewatched on 11th of May 2025
★★★★⯪ ♥

Holy shit. I saw this movie in theaters, once about 10 years after that, and again now. It just keeps getting better every time somehow. There's clearly an incredible love for the source material and the visual flare is not to be underestimated (though certain techniques and the age of the CGI were the main detraction). I was hit particularly hard by the climax of the story though, it feels like it comes together flawlessly in the end and makes for one hell of a climax. Unbelievable how much critics slept on this movie at the time.

Nicholas Meyer, 1982, 1 hour and 53 minutes
Rewatched on 13th of February 2026
★★★★☆ ♥

Certainly more direct than the first Star Trek movie in terms of conflict and themes, I can see why people generally remember this one more fondly. Having the hindsight of more than 40 years after this film's release, it's interesting to consider whether this film's popularity is what caused newer Star Trek movies to feature a lot of dire revenge plots. The pacing is much better even if I found its relative quickness to be less satisfying than the steady contemplation from the Motion Picture. I think Khan is a strong enough character that the more violent nature of his involvement is fine--and it certainly helps that the movie doesn't feel the need to spend any time on his backstory, getting straight into the heart of things. It also feels overtly mature, with all the details paid to Kirk growing older.

In fully watching the original series for the first time, I couldn't help thinking that the relationship between Kirk and Spock didn't really feel that intense as opposed to the historical shipping of the two. Spock and Bones are a different matter, with the two fighting like an old married couple quite frequently. However, this movie made their camaraderie and closeness extremely apparent. I wonder what the timeline is with fans insisting they have a romantic connection, because it would have been an obvious takeaway from this movie. Overall a very good watch which doesn't pull punches.

Leonard Nimoy, 1984, 1 hour and 45 minutes
Watched on 15th of February 2026
★★★☆☆ ♥

There were a few things about this film that I found interesting, but weirdly enough none of them are Spock himself. The entire first half of the movie revolves around Kirk and his senior staff resolving to steal the Enterprise and take her against orders. This sequence was the most engaging part of the movie, and everything after it with getting to the Genesis planet was not all that interesting. Second, I note that klingons here have pretty much assumed their appearance that would stick for the entirety of Berman Trek. Kruge is not really a compelling villain though, with his sole motivation being the acquisition of a weapon. Finally, I appreciated the treatment of the Genesis device politically--it's the sort of thing that I don't think new Trek would really even consider, where this machine that's meant to be an engine of pure creation can also be construed as a weapon of mass destruction.

This movie's emphasis on spiritual matters, what with Bones (literally?) possessing Spock's soul, doesn't feel as satisfying as the stuff from Wrath of Khan. I'm not sure Star Trek should treat on stuff that overtly mystical, although one can easily enough make the matter secular by saying Spock's "katra" is simply his mental patterns and memories. That feels unrealistically complex to shove onto someone else though. Between that and the latter half of the movie being kind of a bore, this one is definitely a step down but still has lots of goodness to it.

Leonard Nimoy, 1986, 1 hour and 59 minutes
Rewatched on 21st of February 2026
★★★☆☆ ♥

More impressive than the Search for Spock for having a more complex plot while still being coherent. I can't rate it higher because that movie at least had some themes going on (even if half of it was "friends are important"), this movie has almost nothing and is instead just a fun romp through San Francisco with the captain and crew. To be honest, the most compelling emotional element is someone they pick up from the past and none of the original cast, which is odd.

I have to say, despite being pretty silly visually, the Probe from the future that starts this whole mess off is actually quite frightening. Once you know the plot it's a bit less so but it's just this giant rod in space that repeatedly emits horrific shrieks, fucks up every piece of equipment you have, and causes devastating storms planet-wide. I'd say it's pretty effective as a mysterious opener.

William Shatner, 1989, 1 hour and 47 minutes
Rewatched on 22nd of February 2026
★★☆☆☆

Reuploading under the correct title because I made the horrific mistake of posting this under Star Trek VI, which rocks. I blame Roman numerals.

The only failure of the original Star Trek movies. Everyone knows this one kind of sucks but my perspective on why has radically changed with a rewatch. Rather than the themes of the plot itself, which are more complex than I remembered from whenever I saw this movie some years ago, I was taken aback at what a god awful mess the plot and script are, unable to be saved even with the dynamics of the main trio. There is so much wrong with the construction of what they're doing and why, and with unusually convenient circumstances for Star Trek such as Sybok's parentage. I think I can safely avoid watching this one ever again.

Nicholas Meyer, 1991, 1 hour and 53 minutes
Rewatched on 28th of February 2026
★★★⯪☆ ♥

A sorely needed return to form after the previous installment, and one that feels like it really pulls the original series together as a whole. The so called "undiscovered country" is breaking new ground by striking down prejudiced thinking, and ushering in a new era of cooperation. There's a lot going on in this movie thematically and there's some aspects of it that are visually quite good (even if some of it is also kinda bad).

The ending of the movie felt like a proper send off to everything, and gave me a sense of frisson I haven't experienced in months. They got it just right, and I can say in total earnestness that I'm really glad I revisited this franchise and watched it all the way through, even the parts that weren't so good. What a ride.

Jonathan Frakes, 1996, 1 hour and 51 minutes
Rewatched on 5th of April 2025
★★☆☆☆

I first watched this as a young child for some inscrutable reason, again a couple years ago when I really started digging deeper into Star Trek as a property. I feel like it served better as a group watch where some levity could be had at its expense; this is not in its favor as a Star Trek story, unfortunately. Far too many moments that are wildly out of character and a kind of gross obsession with dumb one liners that occasionally didn't even make sense. The effects were a lot better than I remembered though, and some moments managed to be rather fun when I unclenched a little bit. Just not a good Star Trek: TNG movie unfortunately.

Jonathan Frakes, 1998, 1 hour and 43 minutes
Rewatched on 6th of April 2025
★★⯪☆☆ ♥

Marginally better than First Contact but not by much. Thoroughly hampered by a kind of mediocre script, I hear this touted most often as "the TNG movie closest to the quality of an actual episode," but I guarantee you that if the plot of this had been truncated and made to fit in the show as a standard 40 minute episode, it would be one of those we skipped in our group watch.

Which, in fact, we did! There's an episode remarkably similar to this in concept (though admittedly lacking one of the central conceits that made this plot more important, I guess) that we did not watch, where Picard and his crew decided to do the exact opposite thing they did in this movie. Nonsense rife with the sort of character assassinations that people hate in these movies, though they attempted to offer some sort of explanation in-universe for why they were all acting like meathead morons.

That having been said, this was also more fun in less offensive ways than First Contact. I think most of us actually managed to enjoy ourselves throughout, so I'll call it okay.

Robert Wise, 1979, 2 hours and 16 minutes
Rewatched on 13th of February 2026
★★★★☆ ♥

The discussions relating this film to themes of sexuality are plentiful; this time around, however, I was more stunned by how much this is a feast for the eyes. Just as Scotty gives Kirk an extensive outside view of the Enterprise refit, so too does the film give us several long (almost too long) shots throughout of the Enterprise and V'ger. The film is slow in a methodical, intentional way that lets you absorb the information being offered as much as you wish. A lot of the shots in this are absolutely gorgeous, with vibrant use of color, direction, and an especially prominent sense of symmetry at times. There's also this extensive use of intense synth sounds while inside the anomaly that continually raised the hairs on my arms. That's probably the 1979 at work but I wasn't complaining one bit. This is my third time seeing the Motion Picture and my appreciation for it only grows as the years go on.

Stuart Baird, 2002, 1 hour and 57 minutes
Rewatched on 12th of April 2025
★☆☆☆☆

Dog shit.

Larry Cohen, 1985, 1 hour and 33 minutes
Watched on 24th of May 2025
★★☆☆☆

Cornball acting and a somewhat predictable script congealed into something that was just unfortunate enough to not be very enjoyable. From the very first scene someone in the watching party called out that it was going to be a kind of play on The Thing or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The one character who was actually really fun was on screen for far too little time to rescue things, but to the film's credit he is used rather well whenever around. Some of the visual effects managed to be interesting too, but there just wasn't enough to fill the vast bulk of the runtime. There is exactly one thing that we had no idea was coming but to my deep disappointment that thing was just blunt racism.

Akira Kurosawa, 1957, 1 hour and 50 minutes
Watched on 6th of October 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

For a movie from almost 70 years ago, I felt captivated by this in a way that was almost surprising. There's so much time spent on certain scenes that it lets you soak in everything, and it's rather successfully creepy at times. This is the first Kurosawa movie I've seen, and the first movie I've seen with Mifune, and it's an instant winning combination.

Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1984, 1 hour and 30 minutes
Watched on 25th of May, 2025
★★★★☆ ♥

Going into it I was not convinced this movie would win us over but by the end we were swept up in the whirlwind of visual gags. Val Kilmer's acting was also surprisingly engaging at times, although most of the enjoyment of course revolved around what was happening to him rather than in his delivery especially. Some of us were confused by the anachronism of stereotypical Nazi Germany-appearing officers even though the film is set in East Germany during the Cold War; I guess this is intended but it's one of the main detractions I can think of purely from an enjoyability standpoint. Otherwise, solid all around.

Peter Weir, 1998, 1 hour and 43 minutes
Rewatched on 10th of May 2025
★★★★★ ♥

Most of the reviews I've read for this movie focus on Truman for obvious reasons. Something that really struck me on this rewatch, however, was the climactic scene showing the audiences around the world watching him. As he chooses his freedom, they erupt into gladness and cheer for him, mirroring real life audiences and connecting to them emotionally. What a perfectly executed concept this entire movie is.

Jacques Demy, 1964, 1 hour and 31 minutes
Watched on 12th of July 2025
★★★★⯪ ♥

Maybe my sentiment against musicals is just a carryover from childhood. This doesn't exactly fit the mould considering they are singing the entire time, but I was surprised by the plight of these two ill-fated lovers and how much it affected me. I felt spoken to by the melancholy of these people being tossed about by circumstance, every character has a wonderful complexity to them--there are no "bad people," only humans that are guided by their fates for better or worse. It goes without saying that the music is wonderful throughout, generally gentle with staccato and pulsing moments every now and then. A must watch for everyone.

Mamoru Oshii, 1984, 1 hour and 41 minutes
Watched on 31st of January 2026
★★★⯪☆ ♥

Not having seen a single episode of the show or the first movie, this was nigh incomprehensible at first. With that being said, I was pleasantly surprised how quickly the characters all seemed to slot into their various roles; though I struggle to remember their names, they were nonetheless recognizable. Additionally, the story of this fit well with the subtitle "Beautiful Dreamer" in that there was not a lot of substance happening while still being mesmerizing at times. Some discussion afterwards helped to illustrate how influential this movie was in anime for certain tropes, which I found illuminating. I might have to seek out the rest of the series after this if I find the time for it.

Alfred Hitchcock, 1958, 2 hours and 9 minutes
Watched on 7th of September 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

No review for this entry.

Rich Lee, 2025, 1 hour and 29 minutes
Watched on 9th of August 2025
⯪☆☆☆☆ ♥

Only time will tell if this film manages to endure as a sort of so bad it's good experience, though near the end it starts to show its hand a tad too much. I don't have the endurance to watch it a second time so soon and figure it out, but I was having a fucking blast on a first watch anyway. It has plenty of throwaway lines that manage to elicit a laugh but it may be one of those things that's only really enjoyable to show to someone who's never seen it before.

Stephan Elliot, 1997, 1 hour and 46 minutes
Watched on 5th of October 2025
★★★⯪☆ ♥

Insane almost from start to finish, managing to surprise several times throughout. This movie was a critical and commercial bomb for reasons that are somewhat obvious, at least in the time it was released, however I found myself enthralled. I'm going to have to find a less eccentric Australian movie to watch eventually, because everything I've seen from them so far has been filled to the brim with freaks of every stripe. I didn't think I would feel so unnerved by an insane commune after The Cars That Ate Paris, but this gives it a run for its money. Perhaps marred by a little too much shameless potty humor, but honestly it just feels natural after a while. The more prominent problem by far is a plot that feels like it goes absolutely nowhere for the middle of the movie, but is made up for in the third act with a climax that I somehow did not see coming despite a supremely obvious thread throughout the story. In short: I need justice for Stephan Elliot.

TV Shows

Gooseworx, 2023, 9 episodes
Finished on 21st of June 2026
★★☆☆☆

I'm not really sure what to say about this. I'm writing a review for it almost three months post-watch. I guess I was somewhat underwhelmed by the conclusion, but the sheer degree of response to it at the time--whether animosity or praise--has me feeling a bit weird. I think the term we floated around repeatedly was "baby's first existential crisis," which is a tad harsh maybe. I'm trying to dissect it in my mind as I write this, but there isn't a lot that I really want to say. I and others I discussed this with were experiencing some kind of burnout with what we called "deep lore," the idea that a piece of media has hints to a more obscure backstory for those who are curious to learn more about the mythos of a given story.

I don't think I was sufficiently compelled by The Amazing Digital Circus to want to learn more about it though. All of the stuff that I did want to know about was kind of laid out at the end, which I actually appreciate. There are a lot of specific details in the very last episode that would require almost a frame by frame perusal, and while that's not really a lot of effort it did not entice me at all. The two fronts of the show are the nature of the circus itself and the people within it (which was somewhat obvious, I think) and Jax's identity. This latter thing I'm not equipped to remark on thoroughly, not being anything close to trans myself, so I won't bother.

These things aside, most of the episodes didn't have terribly much going for them. There was one episode which made me and the people I was watching with laugh quite a bit, but the rest were often overly dramatic. We frequently made fun of the emotional moments portion of each episode, and the later episodes I think had multiple of these sit-downs where two characters start really digging into their feelings in an overt way. The aggregate effect was a bit comical. Despite my talking it down here, I liked it well enough. The show being so short makes this an easy enough recommendation, especially for people who are starting to reach that age where they consider themselves and the world around themselves more closely.

Akira Toriyama, 2001 (NA Toei release), 153 episodes
Finished rewatch on 20th of May 2026
★★★⯪☆ ♥

Every few years I get a bug up my ass to rewatch Dragon Ball and some of its sequels in their entirety. I guess the bug struck me again, because here I am after about two weeks.

I'll save some of what I want to say about this for the Kai review following this one, but suffice it to say that I think Dragon Ball is the best one of these for tonal reasons. The fighting takes over in Z/Kai and becomes the only real focus of the series, but Dragon Ball usually pretends to (and often actually does) include globetrotting, which is rather fun. Goku is also not as obscenely overpowered compared to the rest of the cast, which renders them somewhat useful at times.

I think that the mix of having exploration segments with more fighting-dedicated stuff works to set this series apart from the others in the franchise (while avoiding some of the immense idiocy of, say, GT, which I still cannot successfully watch for some reason). It fully sank in this time just how creepy of a character Master Roshi is, where I'm not sure a single episode involving him occurs without predatory behavior towards women. It's weirdly offset by him actually being somewhat effective when it comes to the King Piccolo arc, but by dint of the misogyny alone I may need to make this my last watch.

One thing I was quite interested in this time around was trying to detect filler that could be effectively skipped. As it is, I think Dragon Ball has very little aside from some of the stuff I like, including the globetrotting. Some arcs are completely unnecessary, and I don't actually like the Red Ribbon stuff, but you can't get rid of them because they fold into the parts where Goku goes to Korin's Tower, which is plainly indispensable. Making a Kai version of this would be a significant challenge, though with some clever editing it might be done (and maybe the creepy sex pervert stuff could be minimized too).

Akira Toriyama, 2009, 167 episodes
Finished rewatch on 10th of June 2026
★★★☆☆ ♥

I am an ardent defender of Dragon Ball Kai. I've tried to watch the original Z, for which my memory is completely hazy, a few times since becoming an adult and failing each time just because this version already exists. The main differences include, obviously, a vast swath of the filler being cut, but more importantly the voice work being reworked in Kai. The English Z dub sounds fucking awful no matter how you slice it. Additionally, the music was reworked (although there was a scandal with potential plagiarism, so it got turned back into an older score by Falconer halfway through). I'm a bit torn on this and prefer the newer music since the scenes were obviously designed with that in mind; if you try to watch this with the older music it feels rather anemic.

I have a rant that I bring up every time I end up discussing these shows. Dragon Ball has more of an emphasis on travel, since getting around the world still actually presents something of a challenge for its characters, and there are neat things you see when people arrive at their destinations. Z probably has more of this than Kai shows by virtue of filler (I swear I'll get to a Japanese dub of the show eventually), but Kai is largely action based, and its pacing works pretty well for that. My thesis, then, is I think Dragon Ball up through the end of the Frieza arc of Kai is nearly perfect, at least for showcasing a protagonist starting from nothing and becoming as strong as Goku does. That whole brunt of this franchise is an immaculate escalation of strength and fighting prowess, showing you the stuff that he learns and experiences throughout his time growing up, culminating in his fight with Frieza. The destructive power of the people involved never feels like it has gone out of proportion, even if it takes you by surprise sometimes, and it is above all satisfying to watch their increases in power. From soup to nuts it's coherent and you have a firm grasp of the scale of what you're watching the entire time.

After the Frieza arc, the series turns into shit. Aside from the first parts of Imperfect Cell, I have never liked the later arcs because they lose all sense of proportion. Frieza's saga ends with a planet being blown to smithereens from the sheer scale of fighting, which was very intentional on Toriyama's part; why do you think the setting relocated to Namek? But then everything happens on Earth after that, and you can't blow up the fucking Earth. This constricts the scale of the fighting despite the major players ostensibly being many, many times stronger than Goku or Frieza were on Namek. This strains the imagination and immediately starts to feel unsatisfying by comparison. There are attempts made to give you some sense of scale, but they are few and far between, and totally overshadowed by poor animation for reasons I'm unsure of. Let us not even speak of the Buu saga, which is unacceptably long and repetitive (even if it has some more fun stuff like Gotenks).

I wonder if I'll end up rewatching it again, but maybe not. I may have gotten my fill of stuff I've seen already. The next time I should probably just do the Japanese dub of Z and get a fuller picture of the show.

Akira Toriyama, 2015, 131 episodes
Finished rewatch on 29th of June 2026
★★☆☆☆

I had seen this before on its initial release, and was somewhat disappointed by its conclusion. This second go around I think the show is fairly bad throughout. The parts I enjoyed most were distinctly unlike other Dragon Ball content, essentially being a humorous slice of life. The fighting in general was anemic and completely lacked any sense of scale or structure. It is an obvious problem that Goku is vastly overpowered compared to other people; this show's solution to that problem appeared to be ignoring it.

To my shock, the Zamasu saga actually proved to be the one I thought was best? In my initial watch I kind of hated that entire stretch, but this time around it had some obvious benefits: a villain whose goal wasn't (explicitly) world/universal domination. One might argue that Zamasu still wanted to rule over things, but his motivations for doing so weren't for imperial reasons, like Frieza, or strictly personal satisfaction like Cell (or just to mindlessly destroy shit like Buu). He had a rather unique motivation of quasi-religious ideals, which places him in a separate category from most Dragon Ball villains. This alone made the saga interesting, but it was also notable for having real consequences (mostly in terms of directly precipitating the Tournament of Power).

I don't know. This is not adequate to rescue the rest of the show. Paradoxically, despite the art being much cleaner, it somehow looks bad and lazily animated in general (I assume more effort and attention were paid to maybe one scene out of every saga, if that). Something about the shininess of it bothers me. I also feel like the action of it sparks no excitement: it has no rhythm, and the complete absence of scale (shouldn't their mere punches be enough to destroy the world after a certain degree of strength?) robs the setting of any tension. I just didn't care. I'm definitely never touching this one again.

Tim Robinson, Zach Kanin, 2019, 3 seasons
Finished on 25th of August 2026
★★★☆☆ ♥

I'm not an avid fan of cringe humor, but this tips into the surreal often enough that I was fine with it. To be sure, all the bits I liked the best were the ones which played more into the latter quality. People being embarrassed about something awkward by itself does not really make me laugh, but then Tim Robinson often manages to break that tension with a complete non sequitur, or some demented nonsense. Particular favorites are the pay-it-forward drive thru gag and the old man costume in the mall, both of which I had seen previously.

The nice thing about this is that it's exceedingly short, only about 5 hours across all three seasons. This is easily worth a revisit in the future to see if anything else sticks out.

Video Games

House House, 2026
Main game finished on 17th of August 2026 with 10.7 hours played
★★★★☆ ♥

A fantastic little puzzle game. The goal is somewhat opaque by design, with the fun being rooted purely in the discovery of your environment and finding puzzles to solve, or equipment to use.

I played this with two other people and my main complaints are that if one is separated, even with the included tools such as flares in designated locations it is very time consuming to meet back up with them depending on overall distance. In that vein, the time spent getting anywhere feels much too long at times. It has the (most likely intended) benefit of giving you more time to talk about stuff and plan out what you want to do, but all the same an option for moving around just a bit more quickly would be ideal. At minimum, make it possible to respawn directly in the starting hub without closing and reopening the lobby.

That aside, the game is pure simple fun and is easily worth the price of $20 USD. I'm sure this will go on sale, and if you have anyone you like playing games with, this is a no-brainer. Just be sure to set aside at least two or three hours for a given play session so you can feel like you made substantial progress by the end. I can't overstate how much I appreciate the design philosophy of making a game where the point is to hang out and solve puzzles with your friends. This game is the term "friendslop" personified, in a good way.

Gas Powered Games, 2005
Finished playing on 13th of July 2025 with 57.9 hours
★★★☆☆ ♥

The first Dungeon Siege is near and dear to my heart, particularly in conjunction with the Legends of Aranna expansion. I've completed both several times; by comparison, I've only managed to complete Dungeon Siege II once before, when I was a teenager. Not for lack of trying, though I think previously I had made a mistake in doing Dungeon Siege I in preparation for the attempts, and thus burned myself out prematurely. This time I went straight into the sequel and managed to beat it again.

I write this with the distinct knowledge that Dungeon Siege III is a far more radical departure from the first two in the series, though I've never played it: Dungeon Siege II is much closer to the original in a lot of respects, with just enough augmentation that it stands apart mechanically. The environments somehow don't feel as interesting, but it's difficult to tell how much of that is sheer nostalgia for the original. I certainly didn't find myself compelled by many of the sidequests, ignoring most of them. Somehow the overall conflict of II is both a lot more prominent and yet less engaging than the Legends of Aranna expansion (though perhaps on par with the conflict in the original game).

Despite these things, I found it to be great fun just romping through an area and laying waste to everything in my path. The pacing between finding rest areas and going through the wilderness was fine, the last area being quite an exception--it feels like the final dungeon is a full quarter of the game's length, which boggled my mind the longer it went on. There was also a little more going on than just slashing or casting spells, too; puzzles that actually required a mite of concentration, or bosses that needed to be dealt with in some sort of sequence.

In all, it scratched the itch I was hoping for. I keep hoping that eventually I'll find something which compels me in the exact ways that Dungeon Siege I and II both manage. I've been pointed to a variety of titles, in particular Neverwinter Nights, which might fill its shoes. I've tried it without much success, but perhaps another attempt is warranted eventually.

Halo Studios, 2026
Finished on 16th of August 2026 with 23.7 hours played
★★★☆☆ ♥

This is a weird one. There are many aspects of this game that felt competently assembled, but there are also many hints to me that the development team did not understand Halo, or even did not understand what the team was trying to do with it. Granted, at this point it's nigh impossible to discern how much of this is due to shoddy development as opposed to meddling from Microsoft. I'm unsure exactly how accurate this is, but what I've been told is that the managers/executives in charge of Halo's development are the ones responsible for stuff like the aggressive microtransaction stuff in recent installments, and stuff like the drastic development hitches for stuff like Halo 5 and Infinite (it is unlikely I'll play these again anytime soon in order to give an effective review, so just getting out of the way: Halo 5 is a 1.5 out of 5 stars and I will almost certainly never play it again because it was painful; Halo Infinite is a 3 out of 5 stars and I will definitely revisit it down in some years).

Regardless, this one was odd. In a few respects it feels extremely faithful to the original in a good way, mostly with regard to structural design of most areas. Other things such as the gameplay--movement, gunplay, enemy behavior, level layout--were radically altered, and I would say mostly for the positive. Granted that Halo: CE is a 25 year old game, and with each year that passes that age becomes more noticeable, so something that feels more modern is quite nice. At the same time, many of these aspects also feel like they fall short in some respects. The enemy behavior is notably ripped directly from Halo: Reach, noticeable in the way that all enemies dive instantly once you start pelting them with needle rifle rounds, or how they respond to you while in active camouflage.

More grievous problems are how the game treats you with regard to mission objectives. Cortana now periodically reminds you what you're doing, which in theory is for the best but in practice becomes swiftly annoying. I saw a lot of irritation on the Halo subreddit concerning stuff like exploration: in the original, outside of obvious kill barriers like falling off the side of a cliff, you could conceivably go anywhere if you could catch the right polygon to stand on or clip through a wall, or grenade jump. For no reason I can really identify, the devs have been highly aggressive in removing your freedom to explore in ways that they did not strictly intend. It's not as if players can really cause damage this way, and my confusion is amplified by the inclusion of the Agoraphobia skull modifier (which allows you to literally fly freely around the map). Why bother with kill barriers in places you can very easily reach on foot if they just give you the freedom to explore anyway?

A less substantial complaint, but still notable, is the inclusion or changing of certain details from the original such as the appearance of the Halo ring in the main menu. This is highly iconic, and predictably people were upset about it; the original, despite the low graphical fidelity of the time, manages to convey a titanic and mysterious structure. This remake has designed the ring in such a way that it looks rather dinky or plastic, almost like a toy. This is even weirder in the face of the fact that cutscenes show the ring in a way that makes far more sense for an ancient and enormous object. I suspect that things like this are the result of the devs being squeezed for time--perhaps the ring in the main menu was a placeholder?

There are other minute details, only one of which I can easily remember off the top of my head. At one point in the level Two Betrayals, the player will go through a door and notice numerous Flood infection forms laying still on top of a dead Covenant elite. In the original, I believe the intent was to make it seem like the Flood was eating this dead alien. I'm sure Bungie hadn't put that much thought into what the Flood as a faction/entity do, are how they work. However, this little details is fairly incongruous with what we understood of the Flood now, as they were expanded greatly in Halo 2 and 3 (and other material, I'm sure). It's not like this ruins the game or anything stupid like that, but the fact that the detail was not changed in the slightest either means it was near the bottom of the list of priorities (understandable if so), or the developers did not really understand the significance of this or other similar pieces of visual info, and kept it unnecessarily.

I guess I don't really know what to make of that, so I will leave it for other people who care more to find out. The qualities of the game may actually be better assessed through the strictly original content: alongside all of the first game, there are three totally new levels. I saw a lot of criticism of these on the subreddit, but aside from the arena fight of the first level (truly tedious and unfun) they seemed mostly okay to me. Nothing to write home about either.

So, with this and my nitpicks on detailing aside, more substantive elements of the gameplay such as how combat feels was all more than fine. Great even. Playing this game in coop was a blast (which makes it burn all the more that multiplayer for this game does not yet exist, if it ever will). When the shortcomings of a game are probably due to interference from a higher power, it becomes difficult to dislike the game itself. Still, any of the positive aspects of this game's design are difficult to take seriously when Microsoft lays off the dev team once the game is released. Halo seems doomed to a cycle where it cannot accrue talented devs who know what they're doing, and thus no trust can be placed in the content that comes next. There's also rumors swirling that they're going to remake Halo 2 and 3 just like this one, and that seems intolerable compared to making new games entirely. I have a sad feeling that this franchise is destined for the dustbin within the next ten years.

Nexile, 2019
Finished playing on 26th of July 2026 with 22.9 hours
★★★☆☆

I got the full game, including the two extra paths. True to its name, you are a king and jump. A lot. It's definitely in that mold of games which refuse to handhold you, reminding me somewhat of Bennet Foddy's Get Over It. I appreciate that sort of thing, but it's only the kind of game you want to complete if you have ample time at your disposal, which I do not. In this case, I specifically gave up after reaching the same point no less than ten or a dozen times, where falling down meant a solid 15 to 30 minutes of climbing back up with several hard checks.

I did complete the main game at least; the second path, with all of the snow and ice themed stuff at the beginning, proved too punishing for me to want to continue. The timing for controlling your jumps is rather precise, on the order of milliseconds, and with a laundry list of media to complete I think I just couldn't muster the patience. I may return to this someday, but there's just too many other things to play in the meantime. I did feel the telltale satisfaction of beating the main route, which is really what these things are all about. Maybe I should check out the Sisyphus game one of these days too.

Ice-Pick Lodge, General Arcade, 2015
Finished playing on 30th of August 2026 with 52 hours played
★★★☆☆

I tried playing this game briefly some years ago before my friend Misha helpfully pointed me towards Pathologic 2. In summary, Pathologic Classic HD has three routes: the Bachelor, the Haruspex, and the Changeling. Pathologic 2 is a remake of the Haruspex route. I have not played Pathologic 3 yet, which is a remake of the Bachelor route. So far I have only beaten the Bachelor route of Classic HD.

Touching on Pathologic 2 for a moment, it was an incredible experience. The game on its intended difficulty is nothing short of harrowing, with the challenge increasing each time you die (and you can die very, very easily). I was completely captured by the game's portrayal of a culture on the edge of the Steppe between Kazakhstan or Mongolia and Russia. There's a high chance I'll replay it at some point and make a more at-length review, or maybe the Haruspex route on Classic HD will scratch the itch anyway.

As it is, the Bachelor route was rather different. It's hard to distill down the reasons why, although the biggest things are that Classic HD is far older and thus way jankier in general, and I have the benefit of playing through largely the same story already. The use of terms like menkhu do not confuse me, and the nature of the fight against the disease throughout the game are not anywhere near as obscure.

More finely, the Bachelor is a total outsider to the isolated Town where the game takes place. The important characters you interact with have a distinct history and relationships with each other, and as a result the Bachelor is often used as a messenger for disparate factions to trade political blows. This is less frustrating when you know the overall shape of the plot.

Far more irritating was the gameplay itself, which mostly consisted of traveling from one side of the Town to the other repeatedly in order to complete certain objectives. The primary obstacles to doing so involved entire sections of the Town becoming infected on each day, and the presence of criminals who would without exception attempt to kill you. It took some practice not to instinctively try to sidestep the first thugs you encounter, who throw knives. The knives fly faster than you can sidestep, so you have to flick your camera over to the side and walk forward to escape it. Later, others throw molotov cocktails at you, and unless your health is high you could die in one hit without even seeing where the incendiary came from.

The worst thing was when this happened and you hadn't saved for a while, since the game has no autosave feature at all. Similarly, not planning your route effectively and ending up having to load a save from the beginning of a day. From start to finish, apparently the Bachelor route can be completed in as little as 16 or 17 hours. On average it can take 25-35. With the generous aid of a guide and a map, I took about 50 hours to complete all side quests in addition to main objectives.

Something that threw me quite badly was near the end of the Bachelor route, when you meet a couple of figures known as The Powers That Be if you meet certain conditions. Without getting into too much detail, I felt like their addition was somewhat unwelcome and hamfisted. A brief talk with Misha helped assuage me about these characters in particular, because they're more thematically connected to the ending of the game than I thought. It gets into a bit of meta territory (especially if you manage to save ALL important side characters and talk to an additional couple of people) that I feel does not really serve the game. However, it's a minor note as opposed to your constant, protracted dealings with the people of the Town throughout the game.

In the end I think this was worth it despite the sweat and tears, and I am desperately hoping that it will prime me for the eventual Haruspex and Changeling runs. I've heard the Haruspex route is not especially worse, but apparently the Changeling route is quite grueling if only because it's rather repetitive in some ways. That being said, playing this game is more a labor of love than something you do for fun.

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