😑 hatedπŸ˜’ dislikedπŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ indifferent⭐️ liked🀩 loved

Film ⭐️ Gladiator

21/10/2023

Hans Zimmer is the laziest composer in history omg. So much of the Pirates of the Caribbean music is in this film.

Film ⭐️ The Devil All the Time

06/10/2023

I love this sort of film.

Film ⭐️ Barbie

25/09/2023

I enjoyed this film a lot. I like films that are about characters and what they do, rather than some story arc. There obviously is a story here but it's very much a vehicle for the characters.

I read a review that broke it down as a ruling elite class crushing an uprising by pitting the oppressed class against each other to divide and conquer, and how that is an allegory for politics and society today. I like that a lot as a comparison, and I would love it if that was intentional but I doubt it somehow. Amusing how a film about liberation and empowerment lands as a tale of class oppression.

I loved the soundtrack. Been listening to it for a while anyway but it fits so well with the film. Especially Billie Eilish's song.

Cast was all amazing as well. It really comes across how much everyone enjoyed filming it. I thought America Ferrera and Margot Robbie in particular were brilliant, and I love Ryan Gosling as an airhead with too much confidence.

Film ⭐️ Moonfall

10/09/2023

Oddly not as terrible as I expected. The first hour lays it out like The Core or Armageddon or something like that, and the acting is exactly as urgent and hammy as you'd expect. But actually the story is pretty coherent, all things considered. And the special effects are pretty amazing. The last thirty minutes were particularly enjoyable.

I will say, though, if you find deus ex machina annoying, skip this hard.

Film ⭐️ 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 🀷 They Cloned Tyrone

02/08/2023

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 πŸ˜’ Ada Palmer - Seven Surrenders

28/07/2023

Still a great story, still really annoyed by how it's written.

Cinema ⭐️ Oppenheimer

26/07/2023

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 ⭐️ Baby Driver

20/07/2023

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 ⭐️ Wet Hot American Summer

27/06/2023

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 ⭐️ Entourage

23/06/2023

In my defence, we watched the TV show. I absolutely do not recommend watching this, but I did enjoy it.

Film 😑 F9

18/06/2023

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 ⭐️ Fire of Love

17/06/2023

It's crazy how much beautiful footage of volcanoes these two got. I really can't oversell it; they were wonderful photographers.

Book ⭐️ Ada Palmer - Too Like the Lightning

15/06/2023

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 ⭐️ Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

02/06/2023

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 🀩 Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Ruin

01/06/2023

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 🀩 Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

01/06/2023

I wish I could live for 2,000 years.

Book πŸ˜’ N. K. Jemisin - The World We Make

01/06/2023

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 ⭐️ N. K. Jemisin - The City We Became

01/06/2023

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 🀷 Blake Crouch - Recursion

01/06/2023

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 🀩 Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

01/06/2023

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 ⭐️ Andy Weir - Project Hail Mary

01/06/2023

An Andy Weir book, but aΒ really enjoyable one.

Book 🀷 Andy Weir - The Martian

01/06/2023

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 🀩 Susanna Clarke - Piranesi

01/06/2023

All the tone and energy of Narnia without any of the religious idolatry.

Book 🀷 Kameron Hurley - The Stars Are Legion

01/06/2023

So forgettable I read it twice by accident.

Book 🀩 Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun

01/06/2023

Another that I still think about a lot. A beautiful study of friendships, relationships, and what it is to be human.

Book ⭐️ Ursula Le Guin - The Dispossessed

01/06/2023

Enjoyable read, but so bleak it took me ages to get through it. I had around a two year break in the middle.

Book 🀷 Abdulrazak Gurnah - After Lives

01/06/2023

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 🀩 N. K. Jemisin - The Stone Sky

01/06/2023

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 ⭐️ Ann Leckie - Ancillary Mercy

01/06/2023

This is a brilliant sci-fi opera that I'm genuinely surprised isn't more popular.

Book ⭐️ Ann Leckie - Ancillary Sword

01/06/2023

This is a brilliant sci-fi opera that I'm genuinely surprised isn't more popular.

Book ⭐️ Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice

01/06/2023

This is a brilliant sci-fi opera that I'm genuinely surprised isn't more popular.

Book ⭐️ Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

01/06/2023

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 πŸ˜’ John Wick: Chapter 4

24/05/2023

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 ⭐️ The Wrong Guy

22/05/2023

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 🀷 My Spy

20/05/2023

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 ⭐️ Game Over, Man!

19/05/2023

God this is awful. I might be an idiot.

Film πŸ˜’ The Super Mario Bros. Movie

18/05/2023

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 🀷 Wrath of Man

18/05/2023

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 🀷 Sicario: Day of the Soldado

12/05/2023

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 ⭐️ 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 😑 Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

05/05/2023

Probably the worst film I will ever watch multiple times.

Film 🀷 Persuasion

27/04/2023

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 ⭐️ The Darjeeling Limited

25/04/2023

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 ⭐️ Nobody

22/04/2023

It's John Wick with Bob Odenkirk. That's it. That's the pitch. Better than John Wick 3 though.

Film 😑 2001: A Space Odyssey

05/04/2023

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 ⭐️ The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

01/04/2023

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 🀷 TRON: Legacy

12/03/2023

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.

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