I’d planned on watching this a little earlier but it does seem appropriate to watch this alongside the drama of the 2020 US elections. This is a documentary that tells the story of how Dilma Rousseff was impeached as president of Brazil and how Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ended up being imprisoned. It is highly relevant to Brazil’s current situation as the eventual victor of the whole kerfuffle is Jair Bolsonaro who remains president today.
Continue reading The Edge of Democracy (2019)
This Russian novel is probably best known as the inspiration of the video game of the same name though I have not played it as I rarely play shooters these days. It was however first made available online in the Russian language, making it an early example of the web fiction that I read so much of these days, and the author Dmitry Glukhovsky apparently started writing it at the age of 18. I decided to check it out after reading some good reviews of it and while it certainly feels like a Russian novel, I found that I don’t like it much at all.
Continue reading Metro 2033
My days of reading H.P. Lovecraft are long behind me and though I’m now innured to the literary tricks that he used to infuse his stories with mystery and horror and I’m wise to the more problematic elements in his characters, reading them is still a treasured childhood memory. Given how pervasive Lovecraft’s influence has been, it’s been mind-boggling that no one has thus far made a good adaptation of his work. Some have tried, but they’ve mostly been low budget, poor quality stuff. This particular film isn’t completely faithful to the short story but I think it’s good enough that we can consider it a success.
Continue reading Color Out of Space (2019)
Films about a group being uplifted through the power of music is a genre in of itself, especially when it’s literally a group of children as it is here. Not actually being much of a fan of rock music, I had no real interest in this film save that it was directed by Richard Linklater and because it inspired a stage musical version by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Now that I am much more interested in.
Continue reading School of Rock (2003)
This is a small Spanish science-fiction film that has garnered quite a bit of international attention, especially after most of the world entered lockdown due to the ongoing pandemic. I think it’s more of a horror movie than science-fiction however and is more about slick presentation than meaningful substance. It is after the debut feature of Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia who before this directed commercials.
Continue reading The Platform (2019)
Like for so many other people, playing Planescape: Torment was for me a uniquely memorable experience, one of the few games I have ever played whose story I can still recall with startling clarity and emotion. Naturally when they announced this game as a spiritual successor, I was intrigued but also skeptical. I felt that I had to play this eventually out of loyalty to the original game and having done so, I’m left with mixed feelings. This does feel a lot like the game that inspired it, perhaps too much so because it seems to be trying too hard, yet at the end of the day it still feels inferior in almost every way.
Continue reading Torment: Tides of Numenera
Since every one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films is probably worth watching, I’m just filling in one of the blanks. Unfortunately in this case, I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. It’s basically something of a drug trip film which I tend to dislike and it has an overly complicated plot which makes things even worse. But from what I understand, it does seem to be rather faithful adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel it was based on and it does feature the director’s usual high standard of craftsmanship.
Continue reading Inherent Vice (2014)