So I’m a huge fan and advocate of the Worm web serial and this is the much anticipated sequel. To be honest, I first started reading some months after Wildbow started writing it but bounced off after only a few chapters. I’ll go into why more later but it was so infuriating how everyone uses therapy-speak constantly and is so careful, like walking on eggshells, around each other. When I learned that he had finished it earlier this year, I decided to give it another shot and eventually powered through though it was at times quite a chore.
Director Jennifer Kent’s debut The Babadook was a huge success and this is her immediate follow up. The poster and some elements tease it as being another supernatural horror film but it isn’t really one even if some parts of it are horrifying to watch. It more resembles that genre of film that involves a wronged woman who subsequently attempts to enact vengeance against her aggressors. It does twist in a way that makes it more interesting but I’m not sure that it’s for the better.
This film was based on a book that was hugely successful in South Korea and was itself a major cultural phenomenon. Watching this, it’s obvious that it must have must touched a nerve among South Korean women who recognized themselves in the story of its protagonist. I think it tries to do a little too much. The range of topics that can be comfortably covered in a novel is necessarily wider than what we can accommodate in a film. Nonetheless it is a bold and timely rallying call for the country and a wonderful sign that its traditionally patriarchal society is changing.
I picked this up in the interests of trying out more title in the genre of Chinese RPGs. This one is apparently a classic of the genre, being a modern remake of an older and very famous game. As I understand it, the original game held an official license for using the intellectual property of Jin Yong. This sequel doesn’t possess the license any longer and so does away with the more direct references. But it is still crammed with pretty much every kung fu that ever appeared in every one of his novels, plus much else including that of Gu Long. Basically any famous martial art, clan, trope or item you can think of in wuxia, you will be able to find it here.
I’d always known that this film was a huge cultural phenomenon and remember being puzzled by it as I couldn’t make head or tails of the videogame adaptation back in the day. Now that I’ve finally watched it I can understand why it’s a cult hit, as it features performances by such musical greats as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and James Brown. But overall, it’s just too ridiculous and too long of a film for me to like it very much.
The Satanic Temple, a religious group that purports to worship Satan, made international news with their bold statue of Baphomet some years back and this documentary is about the organization itself. As it turns out, the members do not actually worship Satan and do not even believe in the existence of Satan but they do make use of the imagery and Christian mythology to effectively troll Christians and to defend challenges against the separation of state and religion in the United States.
Director Lee Tamahori made his name with the fantastic Once Were Warriors about Maoris in his native New Zealand and now after a long career spent in Hollywood he’s returned to the subject. It even stars the same actor Temuera Morrison, now of course much aged, playing the role of the patriarch of a large Maori family in the 1950s. This one leans a little too heavily on the sentimental side for me but is nevertheless a strong period drama about a setting that is still underexplored.
