As promised, I finishing the final part of what ought to really be the first complete book starring Murderbot. I do believe this may well be my favorite entry of the set of four as there is somewhat less combat in here and instead Murderbot mostly has to deal with infiltrating a large space station while posing as a human and spends a lot of his time agonizing over meeting his original crew again. Finally we get the conversations and emotional closure I’ve been longing for over Murderbot being accepted as a person. This doesn’t redeem the series as a whole in my eyes but it does make bring it to a suitably fitting end.
After years of not watching a single Malaysian film, I suppose I’m picking up the slack now. The Story of Southern Islet is still really not that well known and this is director Chong Keat Aun’s first film. Nonetheless I believe it’s the best Malaysian film I’ve seen in a long time and is able to hold its own against the world’s best. Chong is actually a reasonably well-known figure in our local cultural circles but this is his first foray into directing. The result is an impressive debut that proves that he really does have the technical skills and artistic vision to have a promising career ahead of him.
Pedro Almodóvar’s films can be hit or miss with me and this one is definitely a miss in my book. The main story is perfectly cromulent even if some decisions in it seem a little suspect. On top of that is tacked on a secondary story about excavating the mass graves of victims of the Franco regime. This lends dramatic weight to the film but feels like a cheap trick as it’s so tangential. If it had been made by a lesser director, I think it would be a solid credit in their filmography. But with such renowned names attached to this project, it ends up being underwhelming.
I’ve stopped regularly playing boardgames a long time ago, yet I still experienced a touch of big box envy when I read about the Kickstarter for this project and all of the miniatures it contained. So when I saw the digital adaptation available for free on Epic, I naturally snagged it as quickly as possible. It really is a complete and faithful adaptation of the original boardgame and therefore includes an insane amount of content. In real-life playing through a full campaign might take months and even playing alone on this digital version might take over 100 hours. Alas after learning the rules and finishing several scenarios, I’ve discovered that this is too hefty a commitment for me. Even at a lowered difficulty level, this is tuned to be hard enough to require near optimal decision-making. I’m grateful to have been able to finally try this game out for nothing more than the cost of my own time but this is too stressful to me to be much fun.
Immediately from the opening shots, you can see why some have called this essentially Skyrim the movie. Unfortunately the plot and even its themes are far more straightforward and less sophisticated than the video game. This is a Viking revenge story pure and simple, deeply steeped in Norse mythology and played completely straight. Given that period film rarely go back so far, this has some exotic appeal. Yet it is so traditional, so old-fashioned in its sensibilities that it’s difficult to discern why someone would decide that making it in 2022 would be a good idea.
This film by Orson Welles is both shorter than it was meant to be and looks older than it should. The reason for the first is that the studio edited and cut the final film against Welles’ wishes and for the second is that it’s meant to show the grand old times before the age of the automobile. There are quite a few bits in it that I liked, such as Welles’ narration of how the rich old families used to live. Yet on the whole this didn’t work for me. The romance between the two leads is central to the story but Welles is I think not a very good director of romances. The butchering by the studio is also very visible and completely ruins the ending.
This anime is like an explosion of tropes: living a new life in an online virtual world, a magical girl who can stop the world in its tracks through the power of song, even freaking Beauty and the Beast. All presented in the form of fantastically dense and beautiful art, this is almost overwhelming to the senses but more or less does work. I think there’s some mixed messaging in its treatment of online spaces and I’m not fond of high school romance stories. Still this is a worthy update of the familiar tale and as my wife notes, one far more suited to the current era than the Disney version.
