Phil

VIP

EP

9

Most of the fiction I've been exposed to involving Puritanism and witchcraft has revolved around the idea that the hysteria surrounding witchcraft in the New World birthed a greater evil than any actual witchcraft ever did. What Robert Eggers' debut film does so masterfully is blend the human frailties that come to the fore when witchcraft-related hysteria emerges with a palpable, thick and dread-filled evil that soaks into the entire film.

Much has been written of the lengths Eggers and his crew went to to ensure historical accuracy and they certainly do a magnificent job of creating an ambiance that never allowed me to relax while watching. The characters speak in quasi-Biblical tongues, their hair lank, their countenances sullen. It's a hard life they've chosen for themselves and it's made all the harder when Samuel, a baby, disappears.

The titular witch is used sparingly and two of her three appearances are images that will stay with me for a long, long time. Eggers does well to find a balance between not showing too much and showing enough to suggest a horror beyond what's shown directly: blood and fat, pale moonlight on gnarled skin, a weathered hand.

The cast are all extraordinarily committed and I admired just about every performance in the film. I was especially impressed by Harvey Scrimshaw - he perfectly plays a young man on the cusp of adolescence, questioning himself, his religion and the environment around him. The ensemble scene around him while he suffers from possession is the high point of the film and this is in no small part because of his staggering performance, veering from thrashing in the throes of a fit to religious ecstasy.

There was one point in the film where I was given a fright outright but what's so effective is the atmosphere of dread that's slowly and carefully increased throughout. I've been thinking about the film for days, and I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come. Many commentators, on the site and others, were sorely disappointed that it didn't reflect the more prevalent trends in horror at the moment but I'm glad that this film has carried on a tradition of horror that seeps its way into your consciousness and stays.

Initial Reaction
After two viewings

The Good
• Deadpool himself is as funny as ever. Ryan Reynolds keeps up a fantastic performance and really gives it his all.
• Cable is also really good. Josh Brolin, despite being in many movies this year. Has given a great performance.
• Jokes are really funny when they hit, and they hit hard.
• Secondary characters are also really well done. Some anyway. More on that, below in the spoilers
• It has a true charm to it. Making it more distinct than the first. But not outshining it.
• The action was on point. The director really knows how to capture a great fight scene, and there are plenty here to enjoy and marvel at.
• Villain. This point is actually a fairly good one, but also has spoils. So read below if you really want to know. What I can say is that Ajax is nowhere near as memorable compared to the bad guys here.
• The amount of balls this movie has. It just does things, I would never expect them to do. The first movie gave us shocks at what they could say and show. Now they just go and toy with that to the next level. And I loved it.

The Bad
• Plot. It's not the best. It's also not that simple. The first Deadpool was very straightforward even with the time jumps. Here, it's a bit of a mess. Not to mention it's kind of a rip off of T2. But it acknowledges this at least
• Some jokes don't quite land. They reuse some of the same lines from the first movie, and it feels as if it really is lazy writing. As far as it seems, they are trying to make Deadpool's catchphrases more clear. But to me, it was just annoying.
• The jokes seem to build off the story in this. Whereas the first one felt more improvisational and made it seem like the plot revolved around the humour. Here it just seemed like the comedy was slotted into this action film. But it's not all that bad, just let down the overall tone of the movie.
• CGI is actually pretty bad. It's so distracting, it takes away from the comedy they try to sprinkle over it.
• Wade. He is focused on more than the first. And I just didn't like how they were trying to go about it.
• Along with the focus on Wade, the emotional scenes don't mix that well with the comedy like they did in the first.

Other Things
• You're going to want to stick around for the mid-credit sequences. They are some of the best ever in a Marvel movie, and in movies in general.
• There are two mid-credit scenes (almost back-to-back) and no end-credit scenes.

Spoiler Things
• The X-Force joke is so damn good that I can forgive the lack of build in the team up until the very humorous end. Again such a great ballsy move. Props to the studio.
• The villains in this movie, aren't really present in terms of villains. The first Deadpool had a villain, he had to beat him. Done. This sets it up to be all about Cable, but it actually gives us villains that turn out to be the same as Wade. Which is great for a Deadpool movie to show anti-heroes having a connection with the villains they are fighting.

Conclusion
DP2 is not better than the first. It lacks the simplicity and catchy humour that it had. But, it does grab onto you and takes you on a ride that is not as funny, but is just as enjoyable than the original. I don't see it being as rewatchable like the first. But as its own movie, it holds itself up for a fun experience, wonderful character portrayals, and a damn good time.

This movie shows in a very good way how the next virus outbreak that will be just as big or maybe even bigger as the Spanish Flu is gonna happen in the 21th century. And believe me, sooner or later IT WILL HAPPEN.

I liked the electronic music that was playing at the beginning of the movie. It had sort of an panicked tone to it that together with the people who where getting sick and dying set a thrilling tone to the first part of the movie.

I found the movie to be very realistic. Jude Law character was spot-on. When there is gonna be an outbreak we will see people on the internet (who have no medical training whatsoever) who think they have found the cure and millions of people will listen to them. There will be millions of people who stop going to work, who stay at home and avoid contact with anyone. Others will do whatever they can to get their hands on a vaccination, even if that means killing someone else.

I liked the fact that we got to see the story from so many different angles. It really gave an overview of the entire situation and what the virus had for an impact on all the people involved.

The end of the movie was a bit disappointing. In my opinion that could have been a lot better. But overall i find this movie to be really good.

Attack on Titan (aka Shingeki no Kyojin in romaji) has proven to be one of the rare shows that sparks the attention from people who don't regulary watch seasonal anime. I mean, just look at the numbers on trakt alone: Two of the other more popular shows that started at the same time, Maou-sama and Gargantia don't even come close (less than a 100 watchers on the last episode). But not only that - even in the anime community itself it gained immense popularity and currently is still in the Top 10 on Myanimelist (kind of the western Facebook of anime). What is to take away from this is certainly that it seems to make for a good entry-level show but it's not one without flaws and I can't frankly understand why it gets that much praise (oh hello SAO!).

I first came into contact with it's manga because it ranked extremly high on Mangaupdates with some of the genre tags I browse. After reading the first 15 or so chapters I deceided to put it on hold. It didn't impress me and the art was everything but pretty (given that it was the authors first series and he didn't draw much before this). So when the show came around I saw potential for improvement given that the art could only get better plus action never suffers from being animated. This also means I had certain expectations and some of the early tension had been lost on me due to knowing some twists.

Now the story itself has plenty of shortcomings but is still entertaining. It starts out like your grimdark show about the struggle of mankind (in this case versus the titans) but it falls into the usual shonen trappings further down the road. I also find most of it's characters kind of stagnant in terms of developments and it's everything but subtle. The source material is still being published and is probably not even at the midpoint of which thr first season maybe adapted half of. This also means there isn't an ending yet. There is plenty of padding going around in the show and they added some filler to end it before the start of a new arc. I don't think the filler was all that bad but the padding put it's toll on it. Some episodes are extremly tedious to the point that nothing at all happened.

One the shows biggest problem for me comes in terms of animation quality. There are good looking scenes and the 3D rendered high-speed slides through the city on their 3DMG always looked great... it's just that it was inconsistent to the max. Quite early you begin to notice copy pasta and the worst possible use of stillframes with narration or dialogue over it. This is done a lot in the industry and it isn't necessarily a bad thing but the way they do it in this is so in your face and frequent you just can't help it. There was some talk about them lacking animators and that they were apparently looking for more but that couldn't have been the only issue. Around the episodes that relied on it the most a new OP hit the show with plenty of quality animation so yeah... The level of detail also decreased towards the end whenever it wasn't a closeup or something in the focus.

I guess this sounds really negative but I still gave the show a 7... it is just frustrating to see this hyped to the heavens when it really is far from perfect. If you're looking for an action show, sure - give it a go. It's just nothing great. I'm sure there will be more coming down the road (there have been spin-off stories already) and I cannot wait to see the train-wreck the live action movie planned for 2014 will be.

R.I.P. Moe titan.

EDIT: There has never been a movie like this that I didn't like but I really wanted to read and talk more about with other people. I guess Darren Aronofsky at least got people talking about his movie, even if people didn't like it.

What a weird movie. I really thought the sound design was great. Really creepy and creates great tension.

So Jenifer Lawerence is Mother Earth and Javier Bardem is God? Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer are Adam and Eve and the heart crystal is the apple of eden? I don't know much about the bible but that is what I got. I guess the message Daron Aronofsky is trying to say is we treat the Earth like shit. It is going to kill us all but its bound to repeat again? I don't know, it is a weird movie.

EDIT2: So after seeing this after a long time of not thinking about it I realized that Darren Aronofsky really hates humans. The bat shit crazy third act can not make up for the boring first two acts. And knowing that this is just the bible made it even worse. I don't hate this movie but I'm definitely not a fan.

"If my best friend hides his farts from me then what else is he hiding from me, and why does that make me feel so alone?"

Honestly, I am just glad a movie like Swiss Army Man exists.

Coming from the directors of the "Turn Down for What" music video comes one of the weirdest films I have ever seen in my entire life. The film opens with Hank (Dano), attempting to hang himself on a stranded island, but instead ens up finding Manny's (Radcliffe) deceased corpse wash ashore. After this, Hank discovers Manny is not only just alive, but he has an array of unexplained supernatural abilities, including an "erection compass" (I shit you not), extreme flatulence, super human strength, and even more.

The film's premise is so bizarre, but it constantly manages to be relatable, no matter how crazy the movie continues to get. The film feels rewarding as you watch it, and not just based on a gimmick to show a bunch of dumb stuff happen on screen for 90 minutes. The film has an apparent purpose, and thats what makes it stand out; Beneath all the insanity, it has a lot of heart.

The cinematography is beautiful, and coupled with the score, there are many scenes in this movie which are absolutely serene

Its well acted, its genuinely hilarious, and it really will make you think at times - which was a pleasant surprise, to be honest. My only gripe with the film is that the third act (the last twenty minutes to be specific) drags on too long and the momentum is somewhat lost by the time the credits roll by.

All in all, Swiss Army Man is an extremely enjoyable film, and one that truly is memorable, especially in a time when we're constantly being plagued by sequels and unnecessary reboots.

[9.0/10] Not since The Sopranos has there been a show on television so devoted to examining the psyches of its characters. I feel like I need to rewatch this episode five times to truly unpack everything there is to glean from such a dense, psychologically complex episode. If there’s been a consistent theme to Season 3, it’s been digging deep into what makes the show’s main characters tick, what makes them who they are, and “Rest and Ricklaxation” both literalizes that (by separating its title characters into their constituent parts) and plays it out in fascinating, emotionally-wrenching detail.

The impetus for that is Rick and Morty going into a psychological toxin-clearing chamber at an intergalactic spa. The catch is that the chamber doesn’t just free you from harmful it elements, it removes those elements, personified as “booger” versions of you, and keeps them trapped in a chamber. So while the real Rick and Morty are feeling happier and more relaxed in the real world, the concentrated toxic parts of them are caught in the chamber working frantically to get out.

The initial results seem predictable, if a little twisted. Toxic Rick is even more hateful and self-aggrandizing than Real Rick. He’s constantly touting his own genius, constantly belittling Morty, and constantly lashing out at the world. Toxic Morty is entirely self-hating and debased, little more than a subservient wart of a person accepting any and all abuse.

What’s interesting is that it seems to flip the good/evil dynamic in Healthy Rick and Healthy Morty. While Healthy Rick feels compelled to rescue their toxic counterparts once he knows of their existence, Healthy Morty likes his own happiness and is constantly resisting any attempt to set things back the way they were under a the guise of not questioning it.

Now splitting protagonists into their good and evil sides is nothing new. (Lord knows the Star Trek franchise returned to that well time and time again.) But the twist, and the thing that makes the episode really stand out from the pack, is that the divergence point for “healthy” Rick and Morty isn’t some arbitrary definition of toxicity, it’s what they themselves view as the toxic parts of their being.

Which leads to all kinds of interesting complications, not the least of which is that Toxic Rick isn’t just some personification of bad, and Healthy Morty isn’t some noble personification of good. It’s a brilliant, fascinating choice to depict Healthy Morty as this honest but heartless, manipulative douchebag. The things that Morty sees as toxic in himself -- his self-doubt and self-loathing -- weigh down an overconfidence and disregard for others’ that, left unchecked, turn him into an uberpopular, successful stock broker, but one who doesn’t really care about anything else or anyone.

It’s a deranged echo of Inside Out’s thesis that negative emotions are vital and valid and help make us stronger individuals. There is something so frighteningly recognizable about Healthy Morty, between his offhand quips about his food being organic to maxims about saying important things face-to-face that reveal a deeper soulless beneath despite all the crowd-pleasing pablum. Toxic Morty isn’t a pretty sight or an encouraging reflection of the real Morty -- he’s deeply unhappy, horribly self-defeating, and outright declares that he wants to die. But the idea that these are the things keeping Morty from becoming a wide-eyed, smiling little monster is one of the boldest and darkest takes this show has offered on one of its main characters.

But that’s only half the impact of the twist. The other, and arguably more foundational reveal in the episode is that Rick really does care about the people in his life, at least Morty, but he views that as toxic, as “irrational attachments” he’d rather overcome. It’s striking in that it answers one of the basic questions the show has been teasing out forever now -- whether despite his protestations to the contrary, Rick loves his family. “Rest Ricklaxation” suggests that he does, but it’s something he hates in himself, which explains how and why he’s always trying to disclaim any such affections.

Rick may acknowledge the other parts of his personality as “toxic.” He admits narcissism, of disregard for the rest of the universe in favor of his own brilliance. But without that, without the parts of him he views as holding him back psychologically, he only has a general care for the world, about the impartial welfare of all, without any personal attachments to his grandson or anything else. The episode digs into who Rick and Morty are, what they hate about themselves, and the people they become without that, which tells you so very much about the show’s title characters.

Meanwhile, amidst all this deep psychological examination is an episode that just works on a nuts and bolts level. The conflict of reconciling toxic and healthy versions of Rick and Morty propels the episode nicely. Seeing a Rick-on-Rick battle throughout the Smiths’ house is thrilling with plenty of creative turns. Healthy Morty’s quiet psychopathy builds and builds keeping a comedic hum the whole time. And there’s even some amusing social commentary as Rick’s toxicity ray covers the globe and Morty’s restaurant acquaintance yells out “sea cucumber!” The main event of “Rest and Ricklaxation” is the show boring into the mental processes and damage of its protagonists, but it keeps the tension and the excitement up for what could otherwise be an overly cerebral exercise.

Like nearly all sitcoms must, it then returns things to the status quo. But while for most shows that’s a return to normalcy and sanity, for Rick and Morty it means returning those two characters to the fraught place where they began the episode. One of the most harrowing scenes in the entire series is the two of them sitting in Rick’s craft in the intro. Morty cries; Rick screams in anguish and admits he wasn’t in control, and the episode doesn’t turn away from the unnerving distress and damage these two individuals have accumulated over the course of their adventures.

This is what the combination of good and bad in Rick and Morty gets them. There’s the sense that both need that balance, to keep them tethered and, in different ways, to keep them caring about people, but the results of that cocktail -- of self-glorification and self-loathing, of brash confidence and debasement, of personal fulfillment and global concern -- doesn’t create a pretty picture for our heroes either.

Wow. GLOW is such a fantastic show with a lot of unexpected depth to it. I didn't know what to really expect (other than Alison Brie wrestling other women) after just skimming some reviews online and trying not to spoil myself, but it was very well made dealing with a myriad of different social issues and themes. I never thought that so much drama and intrigue could come out of making a female wrestling league/show.

There are definitely a decent amount of feminism and SJW vibes, which can usually turn me off to a show/movie if taken overboard. However, I thought the tone of the show struck a very nice balance to those themes with wisely timed comedic dialogue and chose not to go too overboard on stating some of the "obvious". I really liked the emphasized theme of "things don't just happen; people make choices" that is expanded upon. There are some times you can't just blame society and everyone else for everything, and at times, you have to just take some responsibility yourself.

Alison Brie did a great job as the lead in this one, and hit the humorous parts quite well. She definitely doesn't play the typical spunky girl who never gets down in order to overcome all obstacles in this one. Lots of bad shit happens to her constantly in this show (some of it self-inflicted), and she has to eventually deal with the consequences. Some are dealt with better than others. She really developed her character throughout the course of this season, but she never really crossed into that "totally likeable" realm for me.

However, this is alright because the other supporting characters in GLOW were fantastic in their roles as well. I was pleasantly surprised that the show was really able to flesh out almost every single character/female wrestler introduced and give them all some plot lines and conflict to overcome (even Sheila the wolf girl!!). My favorite girl/wrestler was probably definitely Debbie, played by Betty Gilpin. She is just badass and goes totally YOLO at times. The end of episode 1 was just pure f'n gold. I could watch that entire scene over and over again. It was so well acted out between Alison Brie and herself. I also really enjoyed Marc Maron's character, the director Sam Sylvia, who adds a ton of crass humor into all the dialogue that he's given. He could have just mailed it in as the sleazy coke'd out director, but he completely owns the role and adds so much to the show.

Anyway, I really enjoyed GLOW and I'm hoping for confirmation of a second season ASAP because the creators definitely left a few loose-ends hanging and we still have a lot more potential story to unfold. Looks like Netflix has another hit on their hands. Watch/binge it if you can at least before GoT owns all our lives starting in July.

Got back from watching Ant-man and the Wasp. I really enjoyed this one. I loved how it was its own adventure and relatively self-contained in terms of the MCU. I actually really liked the original Ant-man a lot more than I thought I would when I saw it, so it's no surprise that the humor and tone of the sequel works for me as well. Paul Rudd definitely plays a solid Ant-man and I love me some Evangeline Lilly, who is the star of this one. Even the secondary characters of Ghost/Ava, Foster (and others) were pretty well fleshed out and had good backstories and development to them.

What really made me like this movie was that it had a very good "end game"/goal to strive toward (don't want to spoil it too much), so it made the adventure, journey and conclusion that much sweeter. It's definitely better than some of the other MCU movies where they just inject a rando bad guy trying to destroy the world for some nefarious reasons.

I definitely recommend checking this out if you liked the first at all. If you haven't seen the first, you'll miss out on a ton and not have a good idea of the what is going on emotionally and what is at stake. The original Ant-man is a great movie as well, so this just gives you another excuse to watch it :P

Quite possibly one of the most amazing episodes of any show I've seen. The humor throughout, addressing/explaining the depression the way it was done towards the end, Jimmy having his own mental fight over which decision to make and then making the less selfish one. Acknowledging that he truly does care for her, and loves her. Right after having said to her what he thought it would be like in ten years with her. He saw the car and it reminded him of all the good times that she was there for & with him, just so much going on throughout the whole episode.

Most importantly for me though, was when he built her a "box" to separate her from the rest of the world. He got in it and took care of her. Saying, without words, that he's there for her no matter what and she is his life now, she is everything he wants and he'll go through any amount of hell for even a moment of heaven with her. Aya Cash's acting, particularly at the time she said the line, "You stayed?!" - so many surprise feels.

I've recently started dealing with depression issues that have been undiagnosed for a number of years. I'm still learning about it & myself, and my amazing wife is learning with me and helping when I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel or when I can't see how I've become. I can never explain it to her and this show has helped to give a voice to something I can't understand enough to explain. Every bit of this season, and the end of this episode, was incredible, witty, funny when it should be, serious when it needed to be. Perfect balances all around. Nothing I've watched in a long time has evoked as much emotion for me as this episode did. My wife & I watched the ending SEVERAL times.

[7.8/10] It’s occasionally hard to know how to unpack an episode of Rick and Morty. The show has so many layers to it, of irony, of parody, of character, of story, of theme, that’s hard to separate each into discrete groups and consider what exactly the episode is trying to say. I consider it a feature, not a bug, but it does sometimes make the show hard to write about.

That said, there’s a few things (I think) we can take away from the episode. The first is that, as evidenced by this episode and the series finale of Community, Dan Harmon does not particularly care for The Avengers and its related films, now the baby of his old friends The Russo Brothers. “Vindicators 3” does a nice job of parodying these films with the Vindicators themselves, poking fun at oddly specific or impractical problems with convenient or unnecessary solutions, and through Rick more directly commenting on them.

The show has fun playing around with colorful superheroes and mixing them into R&M’s sad sack world where people more readily die and friends and families are more apt to turn on one another than be united by the latest adventure. Bringing in Gillian Jacobs certainly helps the proceedings, and the escalation as the heroes keep getting picked off in Drunk Rick’s amusing Saw-like series of death rooms fits the weird creativity of the show.

Now I’m a fan of the MCU movies, so I’ll admit to bristling a bit at the criticisms of the episode, but I also think that’s kind of the point. The mouthpiece of the show (and to some degree, it’s creators) is Rick, and while Rick rails away at the formulaicness and lack of complication to the Vindicators (and by extension, The Avengers), the show also acknowledges that everybody loves them and hates him, and that it’s not unfounded.

One thing I appreciate about this season of Rick and Morty is how the show’s been committed to exploring its protagonist as a bad guy, and filter it through the lens of the people around him coming to realize that. Morty is his companion through all this excitement (and his sandwich shop punch card to pick an adventure is a nice touch) and seeing Rick not only rain on his parade and excitement about working with The Vindicators, but realize that his grandfather is the one keeping him from more of these sorts of adventures, that he’s being treated as guilty by association, is a very interesting tack.

Hell, I love the fake out of this one, where the group supposes that Morty is the only thing Rick thinks is worthwhile about The Vindicators, and the episode plays up a tearful drunken confession, only to reveal that it’s Noob Noob, the Mr. Poopybutthole-esque underling at The Vindicators’ base, whom Rick was blubbering about. More and more, we’re getting indications that Morty’s questioning how much his grandfather cares about him, how much he wants this insane man to be in his life anymore, and I’m more more and intrigued by it.

Of course, the whole thing naturally (and amusingly) ends with a big party and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style rap about the heroes, but the scars are still there. As much as Rick derides The Vindicators (and by extension the du jour superhero movies) as insignificant relative to him and what he can do, they’re something that other people appreciate, something that makes him seem less uniquely brilliant and superlative, and maybe that’s what really bothers him. Rick is the type who always has to kick over someone else’s sandcastle, and Morty’s starting to realize he’s tired of it.

[8.4/10] My first (semi) live IASIP premiere! Huzzah!

Like everyone, I wondered how the show was going to deal with Dennis’ absence, but I probably should have expected what we got, a delightfully meta riff on what the absence of an essential character means, replete with boatloads of raunch and comedic takes on co-dependence and remaining static.

Maybe that’s a little high-falutin for a show as juvenile as IASIP, but I don’t think so. Especially as this show has gotten older, it’s gotten more ambitious, and dare I say deeper, even as it slings episodes where people play a sex doll like a tuba.

I think my favorite thing in the episode is how it explores the ways in which The Gang is fixated and dependent on Dennis as an ingredient in their group, while being blind to the ways in which he holds them all back. It’s striking how better situated and successful everyone seems to be with Dennis gone and with Cindy (Mindy Kalig, ably taking part in the show’s particular banter) calling the shots. The plans are better formulated, there’s more positivity, and everyone seems do be doing well overall.

Everyone except Mac, that is. I appreciated the tack where Mac, most of all, is still fixated on Dennis, and without his sexuality to repress, he’s now just repressing his crush on Dennis, replete with a lifelike and disturbing sex doll. The meta humor of Charlie and Dee assuring Cindy that no one knows why Mac does what he does (probably just a cry for help or attention) and to ignore it and move on was well done in that vein.

But Mac gets The Gang stuck on the “Dennis-shaped hole” in their lives in the same way that Mac does. The bell tolling as the camera zooms in on the unnerving face of the Dennis-esque sex doll is a great running gag, and I like how the episode uses it. Dee is feeling self-confident, Mac is proud of his body, and Frank and Charlie are competently executing (and appreciating) the plan for once, only for them to hear Dennis’s negging and have it still bring them down.

It’s a frickin’ neurosis, and the show uses it both for humor and for its dark character explorations. The way everyone instantly regresses, and falls back into old habits is well done. I even like how they tie things in with The Waitress, using the whole “absence” thing to tie into Charlie never wanting to talk to her and then tying that into her hearing the Dennis doll too, showing that he’s burrowed into everyone’s brains. Community’s pulled the same trick (and with a similar, albeit more network-friendly version of the same archetype), but it still works in IASIP’s more sophomoric setting.

And I like how the show turns that into a miniature referendum on whether the show itself will evolve (which it has, despite maintaining much of the same style and humor) or whether it will remain the same, reuse the same ryhthms, and so on. It’s not the first time the show’s tackled this sort of thing, but it does it well here, with Cindy representing change and something new, and a surprise return from Dennis himself representing the comforting but sclerotic business as usual.

Of course, this is The Gang, so they go with the easy and familiar. Dennis returns, the status quo is maintained, and with it, the rest of the group are doomed to confidence-shattering insults and failure once more. There’s something implicit in that -- the show kind of admitting that it’s not inclined to evolve or get better in a self-aware but kind of cynical way -- but then again, maybe they know that those familiar rhythms are part of what we love about the show, even if tired bird jokes start to grow thin for both writer and audience. Either way, it’s good to have IASIP back.

I could feel a sweet taste in my mouth coming out from the cinema after Ready Player One knowing I’d be coming straight back here, my very own “Oasis”, to write this very review about a movie that I hope will be a landmark for all the other people, who like me live in a world where “pop culture” isn’t just a part of history, but it’s a part of real life… or simply IS real life.

Ready Player One isn’t a movie for everyone. It’s a gem that is only to be understood by the people who it is made for. A hymn bellowing aloud to every single person who struggles in life.

The misunderstood, the shunned… people who don’t know what place they have on this earth, people who don’t know how to start living, people who hide and those who create an invisible shell around themselves separating them from everyone else… people like me… the internet people.

Those of us that live in a world where comic books aren’t just “books with figures for kids”, where videogames aren’t just brainwashing violence, where movies matter and they have to be talked about, where the line between fantasy and what is real and tangible is so thin, that it enables us to expand our minds and so deeply changing every single one of us: the way we talk, the way we look, the way we think, how we interact, how we live!

Those are the people Ready Player One was made for. Me and you reading this.
This is for US.

I feel sorry for those who cannot possibly feel the relevance this movie has. Who did not understand any of the references, the little things this movie was brought up upon, the lingo the characters use, the way they are portraited the way in which it takes them a blink of an eye to feel like family, to trust one another completely and depend on each other, the need they have to feel included and not eclipsed by society.

There is only sadness in that, at least for me writing this, I could not live a life without this, it would be colorless.

Ready Player One is an amalgamation of pop culture concentrated in 2 hours and 20 minutes in the form of a videogame where everything your imagination wants is right in front of you.

The characters will fight against an “EvilCorp” to take control of “Oasis” the virtual reality that is the pinnacle of society’s future by racing to find the ultimate “Easter egg” and ensure the community is safe from exploitation by greedy goblins that do not want you to install “AdBlock” as a mod.

The movie struggles to have a very clear line between real and virtual because of the consistent switches between CGI and “regular” film, this up until the very end where it finds balance and leaves the viewer, who understands what is going on, with a message that to me is most important in all that happens: take a break from the internet.

I shouldn’t need to say this – but render unto Caesar the quality of CGI is out the roof, everything is super-detailed and the animations are PHENOMENAL, which is on-par with the few real-life choreographies that are featured in some of the switches between real and virtual that I mentioned earlier. The colors are so vivid and perfectly placed some of the scenes are dreamy and give a sense of everlasting life to what is happening which further thins the line between you – the viewer and it – the picture.

Steven Spielberg is a master at giving life to what could very well look bland and lifeless and for that, I shall thank him till the day I die.
It’s always a pleasure to see Easter eggs and references inside movies, like we’re used to with the MCU, but I daresay this one is an entire different level.

Let me explain to you why: Everything you see, from the WIRED magazine, to the “Twitch” streaming mention, to the DeLorean to the Iron Giant, Tracer, Halo, Gears of War and also all the Back to the Future tingling sounds that warm my heart, these aren’t just references or Easter eggs, and this is why this movie it SO GOOD, they ARE the movie!

It’s just a facet of our life that is there to remind ourselves that, however sci-fi the movie might look like, if you think deep enough it’s actually a mirror of everyday life (if you’re a nerd, like me).

The story itself isn’t too shallow or a Denis Villeneuve mindfuck, it’s a simple low and high climax with a big reveal and a moral story, so it’s a textbook good story… but it is the way it was shaped to enclose everything that just fucking shoots at your brain so seamlessly that makes it even better.

Besides my personal opinion, I think the cast overall was just spot on. I don’t think I can contribute objectively on this subject, for this particular work.

I rarely enjoy Ben Mendelsohn, especially as a bad guy.

What I can say is that I loved the perpetuating and profusing synergy between Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke. I LOVED how bad-ass Lena Waithe looked OOC and how massive her character looked in-game which also showed some soft spots which gave it more depth.

Win Morisaki did one thing near the end of the movie that I won’t spoil but I screamed the name of that thing in the room and everybody was both pissed and annoyed by me (Don’t regret it)

In general, I just loved the crew altogether, bit of a weak villain but honestly, it’s not that bad, it’s really hard giving dignity to someone who you know is going to lose anyway, unless you are Andrew Kevin Walker and like fucking up everyone’s mind.

To end this review I would like to say I almost cried in 10 scenes purely by nerd-gasm, I definitely cried when Win Morisaki did that thing that I cannot speak of without spoiling, with the big purple sword and that bang-bang-bang-bang and those tin-tin-tin from Back to the Future and also all the brum-brum-brum, also cried on the dance swooshy-swoosh scene where they – and so I kept crying and I had to hold my breath when she did that thing with the bike that they mentioned and that was my big “whoa” and then the movie ended and they said that thing and I was like “fuck that I don’t take days off I gotta learn RS6 Siege”.

Peace.

You can find my reviews on real life @WiseMMO on Twitter.

[7.6/10] If I had my druthers, I’d go into every movie cold as cold can be. No trailers. No synopsis. Nothing but a reliable recommendation that what I was about to see will be good. If I can manage it, I prefer to be surprised by a film, to let its wonders and splendors unfold without any preconceived notions or expectations.

I could hardly have gone in less cold for The Disaster Artist.

I’ve watched The Room at least once a year since I first saw it in 2010. I’ve shared it with friends and (reluctantly) family. I’ve gone to midnight screenings where plastic spoons are thrown and audience members shout ripostes and inside jokes back at the screen. I’ve heard Greg Sestero himself provide live, running commentary on his most infamous on-screen appearance. I’ve seen predictably awkward interviews with Tommy Wiseau and struggled through his disjointed jumble of a sitcom. I’ve read the book, by Sestero and Tom Bissel, that The Disaster Artist is based on. And I’ve quoted and ruminated and formed deep, committed opinions about Wiseau’s unlikely, unintentional masterpiece and everything that’s spun out from it.

Which is to say that mine is an inherently unfair opinion when it comes to The Disaster Artist. Because rather than taking the film as I find it, I cannot help but compare it to what I know of the story it’s interpreting, the ways that it reflects and condenses both the book and film it’s based on and around, and my own expectations for how that story should be told. It’s the sort of thing you can try to compartmentalize and set aside, but it seeps in, if for no other reason than that it affects how the movie feels to me, however much I might like to take it in as though I were wholly unwashed.

Apart from my personal hang-ups, The Disaster Artist is a fun story of a young man and his oddball friend finding the world’s most bizarre-but-earnest way to ever “make it” in Hollywood. It is a thoroughly funny flick, one made by individuals who clearly have plenty of affection for the source of their fun, and seem to have as much sincere joy in recreating it as they do any derisive schadenfreude from pointing out how inept a film The Room is. There’s a lot of love in The Disaster Artist -- for The Room, for Wiseau and Sestero, and for the idealism and determination it takes to make a movie, any movie, that can earn such a reaction from its audience.

But there’s not a lot of complexity or darkness. That’s fine in a vacuum. Lord knows there’s plenty of grim and gritty takes on a myriad of lighter properties out there. But it strips one of the most interesting features of the book -- its revelation that Tommy Wiseau was not just the deluded but harmless object of fun that fans of The Room had (somewhat patronizingly) constructed him as, but could instead be scary, or repugnant, or genuinely horrible to the people in his orbit.

The Disaster Artist grazes this idea, showing Tommy to be unreasonable and think-skinned at times, but it mainly wants you to root for him, to succeed in this strange quest and, to be frustrated with him at times, but ultimately to hope that things work out with his improbable hopes. There’s nothing wrong with that. Like most characters translated from real life to the silver screen, the Tommy Wiseau of The Disaster Artist lacks many of the rougher edges of his flesh and blood counterpart, more of a naive and fearless dreamer, albeit an inept one, than the difficult figure he cuts in real life.

Despite the quirks and kinks that are sanded down for the cinematic translation, James Franco is Tommy Wiseau in the film. The Disaster Artist may leave out uncomfortable details of Wiseau’s life and personality, but Franco captures every bit of his mannerisms and demeanor without resorting to caricature and makes it all look effortless. He disappears into the role, one that could easily have been a series of tics and exaggerated impressions, which instead makes this larger-than-life, almost unbelievable individual feel like a real human being, regardless of his eccentricities. It’s the biggest achievement in The Disaster Artist, and one that speaks to Franco’s commitment to the character and the real man underlying him, who is so faithfully translated in his presence and bearing, if not in every detail of who he is both on and off the set.

The same is true for Franco (who also directed the film) with regard to the The Room itself. The Disaster Artist faithfully recreates scene-after-scene from the ignominious original with clear reverence for the source material. The movie parcels out these remade sequences judiciously, making them enjoyable but not tedious for longtime fans, and true enough to pique the interest of first-timers who may not realize how accurate the recreations are. There is an attention to detail on display, demonstrating how Franco & Co. did their homework.

Thankfully most of the comedy comes from the characters, or original takes on situations described in the book, rather than mere efforts to prompt the audience to point and laugh at reenactments from The Room. Seth Rogen in particular steals the show with his sarcastic comments as the film-within-a-film’s on set director. The Disaster Artist is anchored around The Room, but its creators have the good sense not to just cannibalize the curio they’re aping.

Instead, Franco and his team use The Room and the story of its creation, to deliver an Ed Wood-esque lesson in the beauty of making something you believe in, that can affect people and be the culmination of your dream and your hard work, even if what you produce doesn’t meet traditional standards of quality or garner the reaction you imagined. The Disaster Artist seeks out the beauty in the singular-if-inept qualities of The Room, in the misguided but idealistic Tommy Wiseau, and in the rocky but rewarding friendship between him and Greg Sestero. That is certainly laudable.

It just doesn’t line up well with reality. That’s not necessarily a problem, or at least it shouldn’t be. That’s the beauty of storytelling and adaptation, it can plumb the depths of real life and mine it for nuggets of truth and purity from the inevitably more complicated affairs of real people, and transform them into something digestible and heartening.

But there’s an irony to that process in The Disaster Artist because The Room wasn't just supposed to be Tommy Wiseau’s magnum opus. It was meant to be his star-making debut and self-feting. Johnny of The Room is clearly Tommy’s idealized version of himself: generous, surrounded by friends, and meant to be seen as underappreciated for his magnanimous nature by anyone and everyone in his life. The Room is meant to reveal Tommy Wiseau as an artist and a talent, but it’s also a personal calling card, one where the thin veneer between Tommy and Johnny unveils a man who not only thinks of himself in terms of these delusions of grandeur, but believes this film would instill those same delusions in other.

And yet, as all great art does, The Room ended up revealing the real parts of its creator, and they were not as attractive or commendable as Wiseau tried to present them on the screen. The Room does evince a sense of idealism, yes, but also a clear sense of vanity, of perceived martyrdom, of inescapable misogyny. Wiseau tries to present an idealized version of himself, and ends up showing his true self, problematic warts and all.

The irony is that in creating a dramatized “behind the scenes” version of the “real” Tommy Wiseau, it’s The Disaster Artist that presents an idealized version of him. The Tommy of this film is too lacking in perspective to realize how unlikely his dreams are to be realized, but persists nevertheless. He can be difficult at times, but primarily because he values his project and his vision. And he can be a bit overly possessive, but it’s always framed out of a sense of hurt, of believing in a friendship he doesn’t know how to properly reciprocate.

The film meant to show us the true Tommy Wiseau instead gives us Wiseau’s best self, while the man’s own attempt at hagiography puts his worst impulses on display. That too is the glory of film, where one man can be the subject of two films, each presenting very different versions of who he is, and both can be true after a fashion. The Disaster Artist may not present the Tommy Wiseau I’ve come to know through his work and words and choices before and after The Room, but it uses what he represents, more than what he is, to lionize the medium itself and the fools who would dare fraternize with it, when it recreates him and his work on the silver screen, and in that way, does more justice to Wiseau than even the man himself could.

[7.5/10] What do I come to Rick and Morty for? Surprisingly thoughtful emotional material coupled with beaucoup sci-fi weirdness and sci-fi storytelling, and “Rickmancing the Stone” had that in spades.

Most of the episode takes place in a Mad Max-style wasteland, and while that setting already feels a little passe (that’s what you get for going a year and a half between seasons), it makes for a nice launching board for each of the characters to find their own way to deal with Beth and Jerry’s divorce.

My favorite of these is Morty’s. We’ve seen that Morty has deep-seated issues he doesn’t know how to process other than with rage and violence before (most notably in the purge episode) and so a Rick-injected murderous arm with a mind of its own proves to be just what the doctor ordered. It works for character development as whomping people in the “blood dome” helps him deal with his disgust at his dad’s lack of a backbone, but it also works for comedy, with the arm gesticulating and using sign language to try to communicate. Plus the heart-to-heart between them as the arm goes on a roaring rampage of revenge gives a nicely off-kilter texture to the whole thing.

Summer’s was less my favorite, but still good. Her dealing with her current issues with her dad by shacking up with the leader of the post-apocalyptic wasteland tribe (who was, I think, voiced by Joel McHale?) had some juice to it. (Their discussion about his mustache -- particularly the “hat on a hat” bit -- was especially funny.) The fact that Rick messes them up by bringing electricity and the same workaday B.S. of the real world is a fun twist, and Summer hugging her dad and appreciating his “this is all bullshit anyway” mentality is a nice bow to tie on the whole thing.

Rick is his usual amoral but story-driving self. I love his plot to try to create android to fool Beth. There’s something amusing about him trying to retrieve Morty and Summer despite his claims that there’s “infinite versions of them” because to find replacements would be more trouble than its worth. Plus the robots are hilarious, with Robo-Morty’s protestations that he wants to be “alive” and run through a stream being particularly funny in that pitch-black science fiction way that R&M does so well.

On the whole, this was a great episode to kick off the new season (aside from our April Fools Day preview) and to have the characters (and the show) process Beth and Jerry’s divorce rather than just move on like nothing happened.

(As an aside, I assume it’s Rick who’s causing the wind to whisper to Jerry that he’s a loser and having stray dogs chew up his unemployment check? Presumably to prolong this current situation and keep him from developing the stones to go after Beth again? Neat/characteristically horrible if so.)

I kind of wished this might be a Netflix show so it could get a wider audience, but i'll see how the season turns out. It's nothing but zany so far. Interesting style, semi-predictable plot from the second episode, and has elements of Invader Zim, Farscape, and a beautiful art style for the world building.

The Pilot is ... tedious. It's still fun, Mostly because they introduce a 'gag' moment where Gary is on the cusp of dying, and this primes you for a very different character moment in the show towards the end of the pilot, and you'll get the theme of the show from that point on, i.e.

it's a rollercoaster of drama and irritating moments. and occasionally action and fast moving scenes that remind me of Invader Zim, but also some of the action moments from Rick and Morty Season 3/4, but slightly faster-paced and more stylised. Still, it's quite good for animation to deliver on those surprises.

(When the bounty hunter turns up, the name is Avocato, not Avocado, though.)

But stick with it, the 2nd episode cuts down on the background and just jumps right into the first arc of the show, which will likely be where they pivot and explain the title in the main arc of the show, i.e. Redeeming Gary, by going on serially botched adventures, one at a time. Even if it cribs a little bit from the Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy a tad too much at times, it's more of a homage than theft at this point since Gary the main protagonist, is supposed to be bitterly unlikeable and profoundly stupid, and yet, all you can say after he's driving you insane is ... he means well.

I did like the more adult themes and blood which is unique in western animation, and the voice acting talent is superb. Some of the 3D roto work is impressive and the gags are well tuned and zany rather than telegraphed too much in advance.

[8.7/10] One of the defining Finn moments for me will always be his refusal to kill an “unaligned ant.” Finn’s not above kicking butt when necessary, but killing, particularly someone who has at least some good in them, is the sort of thing that understandably rocks him to his core. So accidentally killing not only someone who means well, in his own twisted sort of way, but who is a reflection of him, is an understandable heavy thing for him to confront.

There’s a mournfulness, a regret that hangs in the air as Finn makes his way back to the treehouse. Jake immediately knows something’s wrong. BMO recognizes that Finn has killed someone (maybe from her experiences with AMO?). And it’s the perfect sort of shock to keep the show’s main character in after such a harrowing, soul-straining experience.

It reaches that point after Fern tricks Finn into entering some old ruins, and then aims to trap him there so that he can take over as the “real Finn” (having mastered his shapeshifting ability to pull off the impersonation). It’s a nice touch for Finn to get so frustrated so quickly and admit he has abandonment issues that exacerbate his problems. And as I mentioned in my write-up for the last episode, there’s something understandable, if terrifying, about Fern’s pretzel logic here and attempt to take over Finn’s life to try to self-actualize.

Finn manages to solve his problem via his PB-constructed robot arm. In the bit that brings most of the episode’s comedy, Bubblegum’s little voice message to Finn (particularly her little hand-puppet bit) and deadpan responses to Finn’s unrelated questions (“what are you doing?” “I’m a weedwacker!”) brought the laughs in an otherwise heavy episode.

It’s heavy because Finn gets out of sorts enough to attack Fern, because his great goal in life is to make everyone happy and see the best in people, and having to see a version of himself that would not only lock him away but try to take over his life has to be an unmooring experience for the young hero. His pleas that it doesn’t have to be this way resonate, and add another level of tragedy when his hope to avoid such “finality” is interpreted as “fatality” and obliterates his doppelganger. The mysterious wizard who collects the remnants of Fern suggests there’s more to come, but the power of the episode comes from Finn crossing a line he’s never crossed in this way before, even accidentally, and the magnitude of force that event has on this kind, decent kid.

BLACK MIRROR JUST GOT ESOTERIC!!
I would argue over half of this latest season explores the supernatural from demons to folklore and (black) magic, which the show has never explored before from my memory (this binge has made me want to rewatch a lot of the episodes though). In fact, the first and second seasons are almost the antithesis of this sort of thing where it would centre around politics or would only blame humans for things like greed, envy or lust barely realising at the time that these are labelled as deadly sins in the Bible for a reason. I'm willing to bet that Charlie Brooker has had a mindset shift about the world since 2011 - as have I and so many others.
This final episode certainly rids any subtlety that may have been had with exploring demonic possession but this honestly makes it the most hilarious Black Mirror has ever been - I laughed countless times at Paapa Essiedu's perfect performance.

It's already proven (from reviews I've read in the last two days) that much of the audience are reminiscing over the days where the show would only talk about technology but I personally loved the direction it's gone in for undoubtedly its best season since s3. Joan is Awful and especially Mazey Day were mid but both still had a super likeable element to them. The other three episodes, including this one, were fucking killer!
Charlie Brooker said "let's try live action South Park for 2023" and I'm all here for it.
Bravo.

8.5/10. One the last truly great episode of the classic era. From the opening soccer parody, to the hilarious commentary on firearms' place in American culture, to the jabs at sleazy motels, "The Cartridge Family" brings both the laughs and the biting satire that the show is known for. I'm especially fond of sequences like the one at the table with Homer trying to put the safety on and finding increasingly (and hilariously) implausible ways to up the ante in messing with Marge's picture.

While the perspective of the folks behind the episode is quite clear, they do a good job of establishing that as wacky as certain gun owners can be, the problem isn't people with guns -- it's people like Homer with guns. To that end, the scene with the NRA members who are as shocked at his behavior as Marge was is a key. But beyond the political side of the episode, there's a solid emotional throughline as well, of Homer realizing that without a family and the woman he loves to protect, a gun is pretty useless to him, even if, as he acknowledges, he can't let it go.

All of this adds up to a hilarious episode with solid insights about gun culture in the USA and enough character-based and emotional storytelling to tie it all together.

An easily missable and forgettable semi-supernatural (bullet bending, some kind of adrenaline ESP, and other assassin magic) action flick that is actually better than it seems. On the second viewing, I found a direct giveaway to the main twist half an hour into the movie. It's not hidden, but neither is attention called to it. Just a quick little shot that will make you go "huh?" and then it moves on. I also found a reference to the writers, "J.G. Millar" at the end (on a cubicle, a reference to J.G. Jones and Mark Millar). There are probably other little things hidden throughout that are less obvious than, say, the words on the bullets that are made obvious (and what the keyboard keys spell). The movie may try to be a little more clever than it was by aping Fight Club with the monologues, but it never holds itself out as a serious film. It's a witty action flick not unlike the Fast/Furious films (and it has its fair share of car stunts, too, and some Dom hasn't done yet) but with assassins. It may not be a Best Picture winner and it may not have made IMDb Top 250, but you could do a lot worse on a Friday night.

I heard about this film some months ago but I didn't expect it to be released in here. When I heard that it would be I knew right away that I had to have the chance to watch it at the big screen because it looked visually appealing and the different story caught my attention too.

The Congress is presented to us as a futuristic story about Robin Wright, the actress that plays herself. The cinema industry is not easy we all know that aging is not a good thing in Hollywood. The parts start to get smaller and start to be less and less. Beauty almost always wins in a world that sells beauty and youth for all eternity. The new Hollywood era in The Congress is exactly the non existence of actors. All actors are scanned into a computer, then the computer does all of the rest. They just have to sign a contract saying that they are "property" of a movie company. But this film is not just that. From that point, we jump into 20 years ahead where people are be able to chose to live in the real world or in an animated world that offers them the freedom of being whatever they want to be with a total different perception of what the world once was before.

The whole concept of this film is very innovative. The combination of live-action and animation is absolutely very well made. Visually is great, very colorful and imaginative. Creepy sometimes but beautiful at the same time. Definitely an unique film.

A lot of moral questions are presented to us like, what is freedom afterall? Why humans are so superficial and selfish? What about human consciousness? It's very deep and we need to find all of the hidden messages beneath what we are watching.

It is definitely a film that will make you think about a lot of powerful issues that exist in this world. It looks amazing and all of the themes addressed are very important but I think sometimes might be a bit confusing and overcomplicated. That's why I can't give it the 5 stars and I also don't know if I can recommend it to any one. I just can speak for myself and for me it was definitely worth watching! I think that it's a film that need to be experienced because is much harder to explain.

I loved the first Deadpool so I had very high expectations for this one. I was a little disappointed, I still enjoyed this movie a lot but I didn't love it like I thought I would. Maybe it is because the first one was so fresh and different and simple and the sequel is more of the same just more complicated. It could also be the promotion cycle just overloading on jokes and taking a little bit of the wind of the sails.

First off Ryan Reynolds is still perfect. He lives and breathes Deadpool. Josh Brolin is great too but just doesn't have a ton to do here. Hopefully we see more of him in the future. And a shout out to the fantastic Zazie Beetz. She is amazing in the show Atlanta and now I hope everyone gets to see how wonderful an actress she is. This movie also has a few great cameos too.

The movie itself is a mixed bag. The action is a lot better but the CGI can be pretty bad at times. The plot is bigger but more messy. It does some really unexpected things and I enjoyed that. The jokes are great, at least the ones that land. I think the first movie is constantly funny but this feels more like an action movie with a lot of jokes. There are a ton of references, which most are funny now but I wonder how they will age? The music is pretty good too. The opening credits James Bond rip off is really great.

Overall I liked this movie a lot and want to see it again but not right away. I look forward to seeing more Deadpool and hopefully some X-Force movies.

P.S. This has one of the best mid credits scenes any movie has ever done.

Edit: Watched the Super Duper cut and I didn't notice that much difference. They did change some of the music, I like the original soundtrack better. Still the same Deadpool and some jokes are different. The first half drags and that extra time makes the movie feel a lot longer even though it really isn't.

[8.2/10] When I saw that Oliver & Co. were covering Alex Jones, I rolled my eyes a bit, expecting this to be yanking at the low-hanging fruit. But I actually really liked the direct LWT went with this. The best LWT episodes typically have a strong thesis, and that helped this episode become more than just a series of easy digs against a televised nut. Oliver didn't just point to Jones's more outlandish statements to paint him as a loon; he took Jones at his word to put the show in its larger context and paint him as a shill. It's easy to laugh or shake your head at Jones's out there claims, but it's more troubling that he's not only puffing up these imagined problem, but claiming that he can offer solutions. There's something far more corrosive and despicable about that, and looking at him through that lens gave the episode a focus and impact that a more scattered dig-fest wouldn't have.

Otherwise this was business as usual. The opening rundown was entertaining; watching news anchors try to avoid saying the most vulgar parts of Scaramucci's statement was entertaining; and it's always a treat to have Jack McBrayer around. But on the whole this one succeeds on the strength of its main segment, which had a nice throughline to attacking Jones beyond just spotlighting him as a crazy man.

This movie, like many horror films like it, rely heavily on concept rather than writing. It's true, the concept of a spirit that you can only see when you turn off the lights is perfect. We often saw questionable shapes in the night as children, and our mind would then create more disturbing imagery after that. It's only fair that a movie would attempt to do the same thing, but when you rely more heavily on concept, you lose track something important: depth and reason.

Simple scares are easy, but they aren't quite enough anymore. We need a reason to latch onto something in order to understand what we're watching...and to discuss it after viewing as well. To put it lightly - the spirit in this film didn't seem to have a real reason to be as violent as it was. I could probably list off more reasons for it not to be violent. I personally wanted to know why it was so angry at these specific individuals, and I couldn't really find anything. I did understand that it was vengeful for another reason - but without spoiling anything - there is a valid point as to why it shouldn't have ever felt threatened by this family. So I'm a little lost.

All in all, it felt like a movie that drew its strength from the premise and little else. The acting in the film wasn't so bad, in fact the boy's acting was quite impressive for what it's worth...which isn't a whole lot. It's not a terrible movie by any means, in fact I quite enjoyed the premise. I just wish it had a little more backbone and depth when it came to the writing of the characters. That being said, if you are a fan of horror movies - you should check out the movie. You might love it. You might not, but...who am I to judge?

9.7/10. I always appreciate it when SNL has standup comedians on because, unlike many other performers, standups have a clear comedic voice -- it's essentially a necessity in their line of work -- and that allows the show to have a certain clarity and focus in its perspective that makes those episodes stand out. Getting a solid set from Chappelle riffing, as he is wont to do, on the election, on racism, on the unique position of being both black and wealthy in this country, was worth the price of admission alone, and as always his insights and laughs were cathartic. His closing bit about seeing the progress this country has made, and how it prompts him to want to give Donald Trump a chance, and the hope that he'll give the historically disenfranchised a chance too, was sincere and affecting -- the perfect way to end the monologue.

The cold open was affecting too. Kate McKinnon's not the world's greatest singer, but having her sing "Hallelujah," in a way that serves as the perfect mournful epitaph for both Leonard Cohen and Hillary's 2016 campaign, was an inspired choice. It's always a bit polarizing when the comedy people get a bit serious, but the hushed, sad atmosphere of the performance worked for me.

The election, understandably, permeated a lot of the show. The sketch after the monologue, with Chappelle hanging out with a bunch of stereotypical liberals on election night, did a nice job at capturing the sort of confidence morphing into shock that a good chunk of SNL's audience experienced. And the perspective behind the sketch (aided by a cameo from another great standup comedian, Chris Rock), that the African American community wasn't shocked by this, but rather sees it as a lot of more of the same, and that there's a naivete and myopia to the coastal elite crowd experiencing this, was the kind of nice specificity you appreciate from having folks like Chappelle and Rock host the show. (And the "kids talk politics" sketch felt like a neat little coda to that.)

Politics, again as expected, played a big role on "Weekend Update" as well. Jost and Che continue to offer cutting commentary in the wake of the election. (Che's chuckle at "united" in "United States" was a nice opening touch.) And their pseudo joint monologue at the top of the show did a nice job at commenting on the election and the response to it. Bits like Jost's "women of color in the senate" montage were great, and Kate McKinnon's Ruth Bader Ginsburg is always a fun mix of political commentary, goofy dancing, and amusing insult humor.

But the show was funny even when it wasn't digging into the political side of things. The "Inside SNL" sketch was a fun, inside baseball bit. The idea of turning the criticisms of a sketch into a post-game press conference was a nice way to explore the critiques of the show, and the way it leaned into the legitimate criticisms of this cast (which, I have to admit, I myself have made) from Kyle Mooney's broadness to Leslie Jones's unpreparedness to reliance on wacky props, worked well. It was a nice way for the show to respond to those criticisms without seeming too thin-skinned about it. And despite that, I actually liked the pre-taped sketch about Leslie and Kyle dating. It had a different energy than a lot of SNL bits (and Leslie and Kyle bits for that matter), using understatement and sincerity and drawing out the comedy from the little exaggerations on the edges. A highlight to be sure.

Really, the weakest spot was the Walking Dead parody, and even that was solid! It was a thrill to see all the old Chappelle's Show characters again, but there wasn't much of a point to the sketch beyond the nostalgia factor. (Though, Tyrone Biggums's weird speech at the end was good for some laughs.) The other pure comedic sketches worked for me as well. I have to admit I groaned a bit when I realized were gearing up for another "Kate McKinnon is the last girl at the bar" sketch, but the writing of the episode ("that gave me a hard-off") and the absurdity of Kenan's bartender character finding signs of the apocalypse and handing out yellow cards, won me over. And the middle-aged dude still breastfeeding sketch is the kind of out there premise that gets a little gross, but embraces the ridiculousness of it for laughs (and Kyle Mooney's character being oddly into it was a nice touch.)

Overall, it's as strong an episode as SNL has had in what has already been a strong season. I don't know if this is the kickoff of a Dave Chappelle "comeback" as he stated in the goodnights, but if Dave can bring this level of wit, insight, and humor to television once again, I will be incredibly grateful for it.

One of the best documentaries I've ever seen. A good doc should be detailed and engaging, but it should also tell a story. This does that effortlessly and there wasn't one moment across the 6 hours of it where I wasn't mesmerised.

I can't say I was even particularly interested in the behind-the-scenes world of the Disney theme parks, but this revealed things I had never even considered. The people ("imagineers") involved in making these things are so creative and talented, and the level of detail and craftsmanship they put into their work is incredible.

The last time I went to a Disney park was in 1997 on a family trip to Florida. We did Disney World, Epcot and MGM Studios. I also went to Disneyland Paris (then called Euro Disney) at some point in the early/mid '90s. They were all fantastic experiences, but I was really curious to see how the parks must have been updated in the time since then. They are all constantly changing and it's quite amazing to see how the creators keep them relevant.

I liked that this wasn't shy about exploring the things that didn't work and the mistakes made along the way. It was great to see them realise that they needed to understand and respect other cultures before they could slap an American theme park in different country.

[8.0/10] I don’t know what to do with movies like Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will, films that represented important advances in cinema technique and whose influence is still being felt today, but whose subject matter and messages were utterly abhorrent. Pocahontas is nowhere near as morally repugnant as these films glamorizing the Klan or Hitler, but it still forces us to reconcile an amazing technical achievement with an unfortunate flattening and distortion of history.

The 1995 Disney release tells the story of John Smith and the Virginia Company reaching “the New World.” Little do they realize (or, more accurately, care) that there is a tribe of indigienous people living there, most notably Pocahontas, the headstrong, free spirited daughter of the local chieftain. She and Smith fall in love. She teaches him the beauty and connectedness of nature. And, of course, their love and bravery love help resolve the mutual prejudices of the British settlers and the Powhatan tribe (save for the unctuous Governor Radcliffe).

The problem is this is a massively bowdlerized version of the real story. That’s nothing especially new for Disney. Much of Pocahontas’s story feels of a piece with the studios other princess movies, most notably The Little Mermaid, where quick love stories rule the day and the hard edges have been sanded down.

But there’s something more pernicious about softening actual history than in adapting old fairy tales. The movie’s love story feels more than a little gross when you learn that Pocahontas was a preteen during the events depicted (and, not for nothing, the romance may thankfully never have happened at all). It glosses over other unpleasant and disturbing parts of her story in service of an easy tale of love bringing understanding between two peoples. (And hey, that’s before the uncomfortableness of watching a kids movie starring Mel Gibson these ways, which is its own satchel of hummingbirds.)

Even if you can forgive that as standard Disney sap, there’s something far worse about how the film transforms the real history of colonization, a brutal affair that’s left scars on indigenous communities to this day, and all but sweeps it under the rug. That brutality is turned into a “both sides have their prejudices” late-movie tune, and a “we’ve learned that we’re not so different and can live in peace” ending that ignores the harsh realities of what followed. The standard Disney “happily ever after” lands much harder when real people are still healing from the awful truth centuries later.

Despite that, Pocahontas, while provincial, has its heart in the right place. Sure, there’s some bland nineties corporate inclusivity at play, but the thrust of the movie’s showpiece “Colors of the Wind” number is that the settlers, despite their pretensions to civilization and superiority, are the ones who are naive and ought to be taught. The film’s antagonist is a representation of the idea that greedy, social-climbing capitalists will harness and stoke prejudices to paper over their naked cash grabs and veiled efforts to bilk the workers, to whom they think themselves just as superior, something more than a little radical for Disney.
Hell, there’s even some decent comic satire of colonial arrogance when Governor Radcliffe rhetorically inquires why the Powhatans attacked them, and his valet responds, “Because we invaded their land and cut down their trees and dug up their earth?” The film does indulge in some reductive “noble savage” tropes, and its “both sides”-ism feels particularly quaint from the vantage point of 2020, but the movie is raising these issues, even if it can’t satisfactorily grapple with them in the confines of a cuddly kids film.

And yet, if you can set aside the bundle of thorns that is the movie’s historical revisionism, mixed-bag messaging, and prejudice-spouting star, you will be treated to one of Disney’s most gorgeous, euphonious musical films ever.

Pocahontas is awash in a stunning palette of sunset hues. Glowing blues, pinks, and purples sufuse the film, adding to the spiritual tenor of the piece in places, but also just showing off the brilliant paintings that Disney’s animators and design team could create. It’s more revisionism, but the movie manages to make the fetid swamp that is Jamestown look like a series of impossibly scenic vistas, each more inviting and idyllic than the last. True to the movie’s themes, the setting and the land come alive in almost every scene.

That’s to say nothing of the film’s wonderful effects and elemental work. The movie is draped in fog and vapor, with the two lovers seeing each other through the mists and the warring peoples’ anger and hatred represented in a collision of smoke. Water is an essential visual motif in the picture, and its flows and splashes and settles on the screen with all the unpredictable fluidity its real life counterpart.

Time and again, the movie returns to characters’ reflections (Hello Mulan fans!), using funhouse mirror distortions or natural shifts in perception to reflect the same in our heroes or villains. And the wind is just as much a thematic landmark for Pocahontas, conveyed beautifully in the swirl of leaves through secluded setting, or just the waves of the title character’s tresses in the mountainside gusts. If you watched this film on mute, you would still be in for a treat based on the film’s aesthetics alone.

But if you did that, you would miss Pocahontas’s wonderful songs. Composer Alan Menken returns after his triumphs in The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, and has not, if you’ll pardon the expression, missed a beat. Menken knows how to create the soaring rush of a major moment with his score, but also finds creative rhythms and stacking melodies in the film’s choruses. He prepares a sonic feast here, with melodies that suit the movie’s needs and stick in your brain.

By the same token, the lyrics of Disney newcomer Stephen Schwartz (who would go on to write Wicked), are pithy and often clever. At times, his words lack subtlety. (“They’re different from us, which means they can’t be trusted,” may be the most thudding lyric in Disney history.) But particularly when he’s writing for Radcliffe, Schwartz finds a comic edge and drops some sharp lines. Purely as a musical, Pocahontas is unimpeachable.
Lest it otherwise be forgotten, Pocahontas is not just a love story or a musical or an attempt at history -- it’s also a cartoon! The movie remembers this in scenes featuring Meeko the racoon and Percy the pug. The pair’s lighthearted Tom and Jerry routine doesn't fulfill Disney's legally mandated animal sidekick requirements, but allows the animation team to craft all kinds of amusing, slapstick sequences to keep the kiddies smiling and show off the funny animal bona fides that helped give animation a foot in the door.

That comic relief is a welcome tonic to a solid, if unspectacular plot. Make no mistake, separate and apart from the social and moral issues surrounding the film, this is a fairly standard Disney princess story (albeit one in service of a woman of color), with all the shopworn trappings that come with that. Pocahontas is independent and doesn't want to listen to her father. She and her beau fall in love at first sight. They bridge their differences and help avert the final conflict. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And yet, the script is supremely solid and functional. Every character’s major motivation and personality is established and built to intersect. Secondary characters like Pocahontas’s fiance or the young colonist who admires John Smith are given good reason to act and intervene. The essential themes of the movie are baked into even the smallest interactions. Even Radcliffe is a delight of a villain -- officious, small-minded, greedy, and insecure -- making him a memorable baddie. The narrative here is no great shakes apart from the broader problems it invokes, but it works as a structure on which to build the film’s visual and musical glory.

It’s just hard to separate that glory from all of those problems. Pocahontas is a great movie despite those undeniable issues that hover around the film. It’s virtuoso visuals, exceptional soundtrack, and dazzling animation should earn it a place of pride in the grand Disney pantheon. Nevertheless, those wonderful features are inseparable from the difficult truths the movie either whitewashes or rewrites for popular consumption.

It’s still a film that any animation buff should watch, and whose beauty and melodies are worth being shared with the younger members of the audience. But any screening for the kiddos should be followed by a long chat, about what really happened and about how tricky it can be to appreciate art that dazzles the eye and pleases the ear, while remaking or ignoring so many real life scars.

So little of this review has to do with the actual show, it just hits home in too real a way.

The true brilliance of this show is the fluidity and awareness. Most of what Adam seems to speak to aren't even really secrets or ruinous of any half-decently informed person, but he speaks to the people who are on both sides of the equation. I'm Adam, but rarely manage to entertain or endear myself to people. I don't have the calculated and rehearsed TV show, but the instinct to tear down all of the dumb distractions and terrible justifications for behavior and beliefs is at my core. Doing it in service to make things better even more so.

The show manages to stay positive and caricatures without belittling the kind of push back commentary you get from someone who's world you're "attacking." The fact that it tries to remain sympathetic and end on high helpful notes I think speaks to a level of patience and maturity towards the subject matter.

Adam manages to take "check out these factoids!" and turn them into mini-immersive worlds and memorable scenes that can stay with you. For as straight-forward of a premise, the execution and creativity is undeniable. You want other shows to put even half the effort. Going forward, whenever someone wants to criticize my know-it-all-ism or call me negative for being well-enough read, I'll just point them to this show and practice shutting up.

This movie was released soon after my father had passed away in a similar situation, but in an FPSO ship, and for that reason, it took me so long to be able to watch it and I still don't want my mother to do so.
My father died saving his crew and I can tell you from experience that there's no justice in this world, nor even for big things like this.
I can only feel empathy for the families of those who died in the Deepwater Horizon, the deep damage the incident caused to them... it's sad to think they probably didn't get any real support from those companies afterward, just like we didn't get any as well from the big Norwegian company my father worked to.
In the end, you can read all the accident reports you can find, with their "consequences" for the accidents sites, but you won't find one that includes the consequences for the families of the deceased ones and the trauma of the survivors.
There should be so much more movies about these "accidents"... maybe it'd raise awareness of how dangerous and risky this work is and why it should be better and heavily regulated and supervised - but not by the companies operating them, but by neutrals affiliated to the Navy, who won't cover up the wrong things in the name of profit. If there was more serious supervision, many of these accidents could be avoided, for the good of the sailors, crew and the sea.

"Need To Know" stars William Petersen (CSI) as an investigator looking into why people in a rural community are going insane. Francis McDormand, playing a woman whose father is a victim of the "disease", also assists in the investigation. In the opening scene, a farmer walks aimlessly along an old dirt road. He whispers something in the ear of a stranded motorist, who begins to laugh and wail hysterically, instantly driven insane by the farmer's secret. This is an absolutely terrific opening and left me on edge, wondering what just occurred. It totally geared me up for the story to come. There's also a great scene where Petersen's character is attacked by a kindly old woman. Later, he visits McDormand's father in the mental hospital. The room appears to be covered in blood and her father rambles on non-sensically. It's downright creepy.

The ending is great and it made me wonder what may have happened to the world as time went on. I especially enjoyed the last scene and shot of Petersen as he breaks the fourth wall and turns toward the viewer almost as if he's compelled to pass along the life-ruining secret. The silence followed by a distant scream from the farmhouse is very effective, as is Charles Aidman's closing narration. This is my favorite story of all of the '80s revival episodes.