Film βοΈ The Last Airbender
09/09/2023
Tabitha and I watched Korra together and I enjoyed it a lot. Not sure why I thought I wouldn't.
I didn't realise this was M Night Shyamalan, but it is absolutely a film of his. Terrible dialogue, weird overacting, Chekov's guns literally everywhere. But it's silly and fun and it made me want to watch the animated series (yes I know I should've watched that first shush).
Film π€· They Cloned Tyrone
08/02/2023
Netflix asked their picket-line-breaking AI to make them a Jordan Peele film with a hint of Black Dynamite and Sorry to Bother You's atmosphere and it could not be more obvious.
Book π Ada Palmer - Seven Surrenders
07/28/2023
Still a great story, still really annoyed by how it's written.
Cinema βοΈ Oppenheimer
07/26/2023
I don't think I can really be objective about this or anything. This is like a cinema banquet. I didn't eat my snacks; I didn't drink any of my drink. Just sat there being carried along by the most filmiest film that has ever been filmed. It's all of everything: sound, visuals, performances. I loved it all and I would have happily seen it again immediately after a drink and snack break but instead I walked two miles across Glasgow because that's how far our hotel room is from the IMAX.
Film βοΈ Baby Driver
07/20/2023
This is a strange movie but I think that's because it's kinda high-brow and I'm not really used to high-brow car films. I'm a Fast franchise guy, you know this by now. Baby Driver is your thinking boy's car film.
I think one thing I like about this film is that the stunts and chase scenes are mercifully short. It seems like the 2020 thing to do is have these uncomfortably protracted action sequences that honestly I'm just waiting to be over. Baby Driver has none of that. None. It's lean, it's got some good driving, it's got a goddamn contrived-as-shit backstory, it's got Jamie Foxx being unhinged as heck. I like this movie.
It does have something I don't like though: Kevin Spacey's shit-eating face I want to punch him so bad but realistically I'm not a fighter; he could probably kick my ass.
Film βοΈ Wet Hot American Summer
06/27/2023
There are so many stars in this it's kinda strange to watch for the first time now. Even I got sick of saying "whoa it's ... from ...", and I loveΒ doing that!
I enjoyed this a lot. It's a solid premise with some cool "wait what just happened" bits of surrealism. Definitely going on my Friday Night rotation.
Film βοΈ Entourage
06/23/2023
In my defence, we watched the TV show. I absolutely do not recommend watching this, but I did enjoy it.
Film π‘ F9
06/18/2023
This movie made no fucking sense at all. And I say that as a general fan of the series. They're getting more and more stupid and difficult to forgive blatant lapses in realism. They came after magnets?! Oh hell no. Magnets do not work this way.
There wasn't even that many cool cars in it. Sure there's a nice Noble and a new NSX and that '68 Charger is pretty wild but I need these movies to be a cornucopia of outrageous cars and this wasn't it.
Film βοΈ Fire of Love
06/17/2023
It's crazy how much beautiful footage of volcanoes these two got. I really can't oversell it; they were wonderful photographers.
Book βοΈ Ada Palmer - Too Like the Lightning
06/15/2023
Another incredibly frustrating book/series. The philosophy, sci-fi, characters, and lore in general in this book are amazing and when I started out I could absolutely see how this spansΒ seven books.
But, after a very short amount of time, I got really tired of the constant and unnecessary erotic undertones, and the obsession with all the characters having loads of honorifics that must be written absolutely every single time a character is addressed. I think, in a way, that it was the point that all these silly titles people give themselves are meaningless and largely completely conceited, but it just made this book really annoying for me to read.
I loved the underlying story so much in spite of how much the rest of it annoyed me, though, that I persevere...
Cinema βοΈ Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
06/02/2023
Exceptional. Leans into the animation style so hard, and the payoff is pretty huge actually. Builds on the first in every way.
Does rather feel like it ends in the middle though. Not sure I'm happy about where it ends.
Book π€© Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Ruin
06/01/2023
I feel like this could be a 100 book saga, with the amount of ideas here, and how they're all coherently stitched together.
Book π N. K. Jemisin - The World We Make
06/01/2023
This was supposed to be the second book of a trilogy, but ended up being the final book of a duology, and it really felt rushed and lacking in solid ideas and direction.
Book βοΈ N. K. Jemisin - The City We Became
06/01/2023
The premise of this book is so weird that every time something happened in it, I had to think about whether it actually made any sense to me in the context of this new world that had been created. The fantasy side of it is so fun, and it reminds me a lot of games like Astral Chain and Gravity Rush, where some secret parallel dimension keeps leaking into ours (that sort of thing is very muchΒ for me), but the side of it brimming with New York stereotypes got old for me quite quickly. This didn't need to be a trilogy, in my opinion.
Book π€· Blake Crouch - Recursion
06/01/2023
Blake Crouch is basically Andy Weir, if Andy Weir didn't know how to string a sentence together and didn't have an editor. Some of the prose in this book is absolutely awful, and completely ruins what would've otherwise been a solid story.
Book π€© Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
06/01/2023
This book ruined my life. It's one of the most upsetting, bleak, and realistic things I've ever read. The fact that it was written in 1985 just makes it more upsetting.
Book βοΈ Andy Weir - Project Hail Mary
06/01/2023
An Andy Weir book, but aΒ really enjoyable one.
Book π€· Andy Weir - The Martian
06/01/2023
Andy Weir writes sci-fi for fans of action movies. The same people would like The DaVinci Code, Comic Sans, and Coldplay if someone else hadn't already told them to hate it.
It's enjoyable, but it's nothing more than a shallow page-turner in a spacesuit.
Book π€© Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
06/01/2023
All the tone and energy of Narnia without any of the religious idolatry.
Book π€· Kameron Hurley - The Stars Are Legion
06/01/2023
So forgettable I read it twice by accident.
Book π€© Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun
06/01/2023
Another that I still think about a lot. A beautiful study of friendships, relationships, and what it is to be human.
Book βοΈ Ursula Le Guin - The Dispossessed
06/01/2023
Enjoyable read, but so bleak it took me ages to get through it. I had around a two year break in the middle.
Book π€· Abdulrazak Gurnah - After Lives
06/01/2023
Wasn't bad but not really my sort of thing. It did indirectly teach me a lot about how World War One started, though, which was unexpected.
Book π€© N. K. Jemisin - The Stone Sky
06/01/2023
This is an absolutely wonderful trilogy of future fantasy/dystopia novels that I would strongly recommend to anyone with a passing interest in race issues, magic, imbalances of power.
Book βοΈ Ann Leckie - Ancillary Mercy
06/01/2023
This is a brilliant sci-fi opera that I'm genuinely surprised isn't more popular.
Book βοΈ Ann Leckie - Ancillary Sword
06/01/2023
This is a brilliant sci-fi opera that I'm genuinely surprised isn't more popular.
Book βοΈ Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice
06/01/2023
This is a brilliant sci-fi opera that I'm genuinely surprised isn't more popular.
Book βοΈ Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
06/01/2023
I absolutely loved this book, and I still think about it often. I will accept no other version of a VR future than the one in Snow Crash.
Film π John Wick: Chapter 4
05/24/2023
Nope this is not good. It's too long and too stupid and the fight scenes are way too long to the point that they're boring and the dialogue is terrible. The first one was legitimately decent and the rest just aren't worth it. I like the soundtrack though.
Film βοΈ The Wrong Guy
05/22/2023
If I ever stop loving films like this, just kill me. What's the point in cinema without silly shit like this I mean really.
Film π€· My Spy
05/20/2023
In my defence I knew what this was going to be and it was it. Utter dogshit but now I'm 1.5 hours older so job done?
Film π The Super Mario Bros. Movie
05/18/2023
I love the nihilistic Luma, and it made me want to dig out and play every Mario game I own. But no. Just no, this isn't what cinema is for, for me.
Film π€· Wrath of Man
05/18/2023
Solid take on the heist format, but honestly very little in the way of tension. There's never any point in this movie where I wasn't 100% certain that Jason Statham was going to end a load of lives.
Film π€· Sicario: Day of the Soldado
05/12/2023
More American borderline-war-crime propaganda and attempts to justify the war on drugs. Let it go, folks. You lost. It's entertaining and tense and beautifully constructed but for fuck's sake let it go. I hate films like this. It's dumb action pretending to be highbrow. Let's just not. As a tense shooty circle-jerk it's great, but it has delusions of grandeur. Like when I get drunk and try to write poetry.
If there was an Oscar for arms, though, Josh Brolin surely would've taken it for this. Damn his arms look good in this film. Wish I could be bothered to cultivate forearms like this.
Film βοΈ The Bourne Identity
05/05/2023
When I'm in the mood to watch a James Bond film, this is actually what I want to watch. But my god it is stupid in places.
Film π‘ Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
05/05/2023
Probably the worst film I will ever watch multiple times.
Film π€· Persuasion
04/27/2023
I just don't get films like this. I know why I watched it, but why would you watch this? It's a five minute story dragged out to 1.5 hours, with fancy costumes and fake Olde Englifh accents. I just don't think, as a story, it offers anything worth considering. Maybe I need to read the book. In which case, it's a very long trailer for a book.
Film βοΈ The Darjeeling Limited
04/25/2023
Like if Wes Anderson made Fear and Loathing, in India. Such a lovely, meandering mess. Felt a lot longer than one hour thirty, which would usually be an insult, but here it's more of a comment on just how much you can achieve in such a short period of time if you don't preoccupy yourself with things like structure and story. Made me feel like maybe I do get jazz.
Film βοΈ Nobody
04/22/2023
It's John Wick with Bob Odenkirk. That's it. That's the pitch. Better than John Wick 3 though.
Film π‘ 2001: A Space Odyssey
04/05/2023
I honestly think this is just stupid and not good, but it's obscure enough that people are going to be like "ohhh yes it's brilliant such an incredible commentary don't you just love all the metaphors let's talk about them you go first". It's that kind of movie. Either I'm smart and it's stupid, or it's smart and I'm stupid. Either way I didn't enjoy it. Especially the last 25 minutes.
I read a review that said "a small sphere of intellectuals will feel that Kubrick has said something, simply because one expected him to say something". That's a far more concise way of putting it.
Shame as I really thought I'd love it.
Film βοΈ The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
04/01/2023
Did not see myself liking this but it's a super meta, and self-referential action movie and not in a cheesy, annoying way. I mean it is cheesy but it's not annoying about it.
And weirdly surprisingly strong commentary on adult male friendships, being vulnerable with, and opening up to other men. Didn't expect that. Doesn't even play out in a stupid, homophobic way like literally every other movie that ever approaches the subject. For that, alone, I'd recommend it.
Film π€· TRON: Legacy
03/12/2023
Very stylish, very stupid. My favourite thing about films like this is imagining the actors prancing around in front of a green screen saying stupid-but-very-serious lines and wondering how the hell their career ended up here.
Film βοΈ Moonrise Kingdom
03/02/2023
I wasn't into Wes Anderson films until recently, and I'm not sure why.
On watching them recently, many for the first time, I realise that he's one of very few directors who uses every available feature of cinema to tell his story. They're so excessively detailed and beautifully-photographed (almost to the point that they remove you from immersion to marvel ar what you're seeing), but in terms of story they're fairly simple. I think it's a wonderful skill, to tell a simple story in a complex and baroque way without seeming contrived and unnecessary.
Film βοΈ Isle of Dogs
02/26/2023
Ridiculously beautiful. Unbelievable attention to detail the the characters and set designs. Want to watch it again right now.
Film π€· The Mummy
02/26/2023
Visually it's aged surprisingly well. The rest of it is just kinda...fine? I guess.