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

Music ⭐️ Johnny Booth on Audiotree

29/01/2024

πŸ”— youtu.be

Love Audiotree and love Johnny Booth. Hope the latter makes it over to the UK some day.

Book 🀩 Cixin Liu - The Three Body Problem

14/01/2024

Super intriguing story throughout, and I'll immediately move onto the next one.

The only criticism I have is that the prose feels very clinical and cold, and I can't tell if it's the translation, the author, or just how books are written in China.

Film ⭐️ Killers of the Flower Moon

14/01/2024

A very, very long and slow burn. So detailed and beautiful and sad and evil. We had to watch it over two nights because I can't do a film like this in a single sitting, but that's just because I was sleepy and not because of any problem with the film itself. It is long but on immediate reflection I don't think you could edit it down in any significant way.

Film ⭐️ Saltburn

01/01/2024

I enjoyed this a lot, but let's not pretend that it's anything more than Parasite for a western audience that doesn't want to read subtitles.

Film ⭐️ Dumb and Dumber

22/12/2023

Consider this a freebie from your boy. If you want to enjoy this film again as an adult, watch it with a ten-year-old who's never seen it. I may live to regret showing this to her, but whilst we were watching she was so happy. Imagine being ten and learning that they made films that match your stupid annoying sense of humour. That's real happiness right there.

Film πŸ˜’ GoldenEye

22/12/2023

I don't think I like James Bond

Book 🀩 Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Memory

04/12/2023

The perfect end that I wish wasn't.

Film ⭐️ Nope

02/12/2023

I like it, but it drags on a bit in the last act.

Book 😑 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 🀷 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 ⭐️ 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 ⭐️ 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 ⭐️ 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.

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