Book π‘ Ada Palmer - The Will to Battle
21/11/2023
No, I give up. I can't stand it any more. Maybe I'll come back later but this was making me actively angry by the time I put it down.
Film π€· The Creator
17/11/2023
This is a bad movie, dragged out to make a really long bad movie. Normally I would avoid speaking so objectively about a film, and I hope this self-awareness will give weight to my opinion and save someone two hours.
The only redeeming element to this film is the art direction. The story is meandering and unengaging. Performances are hammy. It just doesn't work; and I really wanted it to work. I am so ready for a big budget sci-fi, but I guess I'm waiting for Dune.
Cinema βοΈ The Boy and the Heron
12/11/2023
Very beautiful, loved the soundtrack. I think there's a lot of metaphor buried in here that I wasn't quite able to excavate. Could do with another couple of watches, which I would have absolutely no problem with.
Film βοΈ Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
06/11/2023
I liked it. Cheesy as all hell but I feel like that's the point. Solid ending. Probably not going to watch it again.
Film βοΈ 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 βοΈ 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 βοΈ 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 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
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 π Ada Palmer - Seven Surrenders
28/07/2023
Still a great story, still really annoyed by how it's written.
Cinema βοΈ 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 βοΈ 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 βοΈ 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 βοΈ 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 π‘ 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 βοΈ 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 βοΈ 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 βοΈ 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 π€© 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 π 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 βοΈ 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 π€· 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 π€© 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 βοΈ Andy Weir - Project Hail Mary
01/06/2023
An Andy Weir book, but aΒ really enjoyable one.
Book π€· 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 π€© Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
01/06/2023
All the tone and energy of Narnia without any of the religious idolatry.
Book π€· Kameron Hurley - The Stars Are Legion
01/06/2023
So forgettable I read it twice by accident.
Book π€© 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 βοΈ 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 π€· 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 π€© 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 βοΈ Ann Leckie - Ancillary Mercy
01/06/2023
This is a brilliant sci-fi opera that I'm genuinely surprised isn't more popular.
Book βοΈ Ann Leckie - Ancillary Sword
01/06/2023
This is a brilliant sci-fi opera that I'm genuinely surprised isn't more popular.
Book βοΈ Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice
01/06/2023
This is a brilliant sci-fi opera that I'm genuinely surprised isn't more popular.
Book βοΈ 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 π 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 βοΈ 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 π€· 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 π 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 π€· 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 π€· 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 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
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.