So not only is this another boardgame adaptation, but it’s a card game to boot. As much as I love card games, I’m getting sick of them myself so this will probably be the last one for a while. The good news is that I got a ton of expansions in one package when I got this, which would have been ruinously expensive to buy in physical form. The bad news is that this game was clearly inspired by Dominion but I think I still like the older game more.
Continue reading Ascension
This is a film that wasn’t on my radar at all and I noticed it only when our cinephile friend mentioned that it has been earning great reviews. It has an ensemble cast made up of some big names, but as a non-franchise film in a genre that is now very unpopular, it seems doomed to mediocrity. Yet it is has been doing very well and it just might be popular enough to spark a revival in the much neglected murder mystery genre.
Continue reading Knives Out (2019)
This title marks not just the directorial debut of Taiwanese singer Rene Liu and is also Netflix’s first original Chinese-language film. It also has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, mainly because so few accredited critics have reviewed. Still I wasn’t expecting too much as I had it pegged as a sappy love story and that turned out to be precisely what it is.
Continue reading Us and Them (2018)
After finishing Reach for Infinity, I said I’d check out the other anthologies in the series and here I am with the first of them. Edited by Jonathan Strahan, it includes fifteen stories by a host of familiar names. I’m pleased to see that it opens with a story by Peter Watts, one of my current favorite writers. None of the other authors I especially like though I’ve read their stuff here and there.
Continue reading Engineering Infinity
There’s no doubt that Michael Mann is true auteur though he specializes in thrillers and action films. Even before considering the plot or the themes, the use of colors to give every scene an overt emotional tone and the pulse-pounding music makes this film distinctively his. Manhunter is one of those films that was underappreciated at the time of its release but its reputation improved over time.
Continue reading Manhunter (1986)
Like people, most films have a clear nationality. Even when a director works outside of his or her country of origin, the resulting film usually still tilts clearly one way or another. Oh Lucy! is a rare exception, being a film that has both Japanese and American characteristics. Appropriately enough its director and writer Atsuko Hirayanagi is a Japanese who studied in and lives in the US and this is her debut directorial feature, being itself an expansion of an earlier short film.
Continue reading Oh Lucy! (2017)
We’ve hardly watched any Danish films at all and this time we’re plumbing the depths of cinematic history for this very old film. What’s especially interesting is that this was made during the Nazi Germany occupation of Denmark and so the austere society depicted here can be interpreted as a kind of indictment against totalitarian rule. It’s also great how this film offers a very ambiguous morality that could really be read either way.
Continue reading Day of Wrath (1943)