Very few horror films are so horrifying as to make me not want to finish watching it but this one qualifies. It does this not by using shots of gore or jump scares but by having you realize that all of the characters in it are children, and that by being children they are capable of doing anything because they don’t know any better. This film is similar in many ways to Chronicle which I’ve always felt was underrated and it does a great job at front-loading the horror to make you understand that anything can happen in it. Still the inherent constraints of its chosen genre, such that only the children know what is going on and matter, made it irritating to me after a while. To me, it’s a very strong film but some way short of being great.
I’m skipping over almost all of the MCU shows, only picking those of particular interest to watch. This one doesn’t even have much of a connection to the MCU beyond the name. The real draw for me though was the involvement of Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, and of course the fact that Moon Knight is one of the more obscure, unusual heroes in their lineup. Never during my childhood would I have imagined that someone would one day make an adaptation based on this character. In the event, this is a surprisingly serviceable television show. It has all of the usual faults of its production values not being quite top notch and the ending is just cheap, but overall I rather liked the series.
My wife is a huge Studio Ghibli fan so it’s always a happy surprise to come across one of their films that she hasn’t watched yet. It’s always so wonderful to see these hand drawn animated films that are so full of detail today and the setting of what must be the most perfect and idyllic Japanese small town ever adds to the pleasure. The plot is too sweet for me though and the main character is so much the ideal, diligent good girl that she’s just unreal. It’s a very beautiful and pleasant film to watch but not anything to engage with seriously.
Not much in the way of science news this month that is particularly worth highlighting. The AI scene is still moving very quickly of course with new models released weekly but that wouldn’t be of interest to the general public.
One paper that may turn out to be significant is this one that claims to offer a new perspective on the causes of the obesity epidemic. Put simply a person gets obese when more energy goes into the body than goes out. Everyone knows of course that less exercise means less energy being spent. But the authors here argue that there is a difference between energy expenditure from reduced physical activity and the basal energy expenditure (BEE) just from living. They claim that the data show that BEE has dropped over the past three decades. Exactly why this is so is unclear but it may be linked to a lowering of human average body temperatures over time. I’m wary of this seemingly letting people who simply don’t exercise enough off the hook but it is an important consideration to take into account.
Another important article is this overview of phage therapy. Most people will be aware that the effectiveness of antibiotics diminish over time as bacteria evolve resistance. Without new classes of antibiotics being developed, this leads to increasingly many superbug infections that are untreatable. As this article explains, one solution is bacteriophages, viruses that infect and kill bacteria. Bacteriophages were little studied in the Western world however but they continued to be developed in the former Soviet states making the current centers of expertise in this field. The best part of this is that viruses can evolve just like bacteria to match their defenses.
Finally this counts as one of those announcements that is exciting to know but likely will have no real consequences at all. This is about the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting LP 791-18, a dwarf star about 86 light years away. What makes this particular planet is that it is Earth-sized and about the same mass and has an equilibrium temperature that makes it possible for water to present in liquid form. Combined with tidal heating and strong volcanic activity, it is a fantastic candidate for searching for extraterrestrial life.
I added this to my list because I loved the two previous films I’ve watched by the filmmaking duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger so much. Unfortunately this turned out to be a lesser film that at times comes close to being campy. It takes some interesting twists that keep it from being trite including pitting the United States against Britain in a contest over moral superiority. There is some startling imagery and some fascinating perspective presented here, but ultimately this is too shallow a film to worth bothering with.
I’m pretty much done with the films of Jean-Luc Godard but I just had to watch this one which I believe is his only one that can be considered truly science-fiction. Godard’s films are famously obtuse but this one is pretty transparent to me about a secret agent who infiltrate a technocratic dictatorship. Everything in it, its themes, its ideas and concepts has been done to death by now. It is still impressive as a very early showcase of these tropes and how Godard appropriates plain old Paris to look dystopian is fascinating. My least favorite part is the utter ineffectiveness of the security apparatus of the police state. Godard isn’t an action movie director of course, so what passes for action scenes in here are just laughable.
I never got around to playing the War of the Chosen expansion pack for XCOM2 which was probably a mistake given how good everyone says it is. This smaller, standalone builds on it with human and alien populations having achieved peace but naturally there are still dissident factions from both sides who are unhappy. This game puts you in control of Chimera Squad, composed of both human and alien soldiers, who are assigned to keep the peace in City 31. This squad isn’t part of XCOM but the Reclamation Agency meant as a police force rather than a military force. Unlike the XCOM games, each member of the squad is a unique individual and losing even one of them means game over.
