Rocket League: Car soccer is so much better than real soccer

If I asked you to play a video game and told you that it was car soccer, you’d say I was dumb and there was no way you’d spend good money on it. You might think, “This couldn’t possibly work, car soccer is stupid, stop texting me stupid things.” Well you, sir, are a jerk, because car soccer is one of the biggest sports games ever now and it’s also one of the best.

There’s not much to Rocket League. You pick a car, join a 5-minute game, and try to score the ball in the other person’s net by hitting it with your car (duh!). You can rocket yourself into the air with boosts, flip your car around, and there’s a few specialty modes which give you powers, turn the game into basketball or hockey with cars, or force you to prevent the ball from falling onto your side of the field entirely. There are ranked and unranked matches, and each finished match gives you some stuff to equip on your car. That’s… well, that’s pretty much it.

As far as a multiplayer game goes, this one can be frustrating to no end. Unless you actively pair up with people, it’s all luck whether you get a solid, crafty partner or someone who keeps sabotaging your efforts. I’m more antisocial with these types of games than most, so playing with random people often gets on my nerves, especially when the opposition scores a goal and my partner just quits. Playing ranked matches is almost a lesson in frustration, since no matter how well you might play, you can’t control anything else your partner does. Unranked mode isn’t bad, and it’s great just to sit down and learn the game without any concrete result, but they’ve recently taken away from of the unranked features, like all the specialty modes, making it kind of dull. People also like to talk shit (yes, guilty), but every online game is filled with trolls, and Rocket League is probably pretty tame compared with others. If anything, it leans toward sarcasm, since you have insta-chat buttons that let you type “What a save!” every time your partner makes a garbage play and lets in a goal (seriously, what were they thinking? The gall to NOT EVEN TOUCH THE BALL ON A SLOW PLAY COMING AT THE NET, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY AND LET ME DO IT, OKAY ASSHOLE?! HOW DID YOU EVER MAKE IT TO PLATINUM ANYWAY???). 

With that said, the frustration is more than worth it because of the unique gameplay. The designers realized that car soccer need not be a realistic venture and decided to make the cars jumpy and drive flexibly. Everything happens within a second or two, so that you’re never out of a match, even if you’re down by a few goals with a minute left to play. There’s so much style to hopping into the air and directing the ball into the goal that nothing is ever the same from one match to another. It’s a bit stressful but requires both skill and knowledge of how the game rolls, making it a kind of chess-on-wheels. It’s also played in three dimensions, which separates it from any other sports game that’s based mostly on 2D movement, like the NHL or NBA games, or even just regular racing games.

I don’t know what the price of Rocket League is anymore since I bought it for a measly $20 on both PS4 and Xbox One about a year ago. Whatever the price is, it’s worth it for the repeatability and the content that’s always being added. I haven’t ever been able to just sit down and play a game so nonchalantly in my entire life, where you can jump in and out of matches as you wish, vegging out on the couch after a long day of work and playing with the kids. It’s like a couch for my brain, where I can let it slowly unwind and eat junk food at the same time. For one of the cheapest games I’ve ever purchased, you can’t ask for much more.

Howard the Duck: Dumb, stupid, and one of the best movies of the 80s

I know this movie gets a terrible rep. I google searched “terrible 80s movies” as I was wondering what I should write about next and out pops up Howard the Duck to go along with Cannibal Campout and Slumber Party Massacre II (anyone got copies of these I can borrow?). But really? Maybe it’s my strong sense of nostalgia, including having watched this several times as a kid, probably when I wasn’t feeling great and wanted to just watch movies, but I loved Howard and I bet most people who’ve seen it secretly do too.

The movie centers on Howard, voiced by Chip Zien (who no one will remember from anything important ever) and physically played by Ed Gale (I can’t believe this is the same person who was in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey as Station, holy bleep), as he is unwillingly transported from his home world, full of living ducks, to Earth. There, he falls in love with Beverly (Lea Thompson), and tries to send himself back home with the help of a scientist, Phil Blumbertt (Tim Robbins, who is never not amazing). It’s much more complicated than that, and yes, Howard, who is a duck, falls in love with Beverly, who also loves him back, and things…happen. You see how this might go off the rails and become one of the worst movies of the 80s. I mean, duck on human sex isn’t something that an Oscar-caliber movie is going to get away with.

Those who harp on the weirdness of Howard the Duck are missing the point entirely, though. This film is a great piece of 80s fluff, made in the same vain as Back to the Future or Gremlins. No, it’s not as good as those two, but it’s almost as much fun to watch a duck with the attitude of a down-on-his-luck 40-year-old man beat people up and get thrown around himself. It’s full of bad puns, 80s action sequences with mostly practical effects, and the rapport between the actors, for a movie as supposedly terrible as this one, is pretty entertaining. I love Lea Thompson and Tim Robbins, so maybe I’m being partial, but don’t you love them too? And I can’t imagine Howard being any more endearing than he is here. Sure, the idea has been floated of making another Howard the Duck movie, but it’s like saying you’d rather watch Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in all their CGI glory and with zero personality, than the old 90s version, which was a childhood classic. Why was it a classic? Because everyone knows how ridiculous the whole enterprise is, from the actors and directors to the special effects people, yet the actors let their personality flow freely through, making it campy but heartfelt. They don’t care that they’re dressed up in stupid costumes! LET THE ONE-LINERS FLOW THROUGH MY VEINS!@$%^#

For sure, this movie is a strange bird (yes, you see what I did there). It has–spoiler alert—space aliens, a duck civilization that’s close to our own, and duck on human sexual innuendo. But who cares? I’d watch it every time it’s on tv because it makes me smile when Howard says, “That's it, no more Mr. Nice Duck” or “No one laughs at a master of Quack Fu!” People take things way too seriously, as if there needs to be some grandiose point about the world in every movie to make it “good.” I enjoy those movies as much as anyone too (see The Assassination of Jesse James). But guess what? Some movies are made to be dumb and stupid, and I like having dumb, stupid fun. And I’ll be damned if Howard isn’t as fun as anything the 80s has ever made.

Life is Strange: A meditation on the meaning of life through time travel

Life is Strange is a weird video game experience. I’ve played through Until Dawn, and though it has limited gameplay, the effect of the game was pretty straightforward. It asked you to be scared and intrigued, giving you some form of control over the fates of the characters as they solve mysteries and navigate through a typical horror movie scenario. The gameplay was limited (walk around and observe things) as was the puzzle-solving. Life is Strange has a similar gameplay style, heavy on walking around and exploring your environment, with tasks that lead you to the next part of the story. It adds a bit more strategy as some tasks require you to rewind time after you’ve already changed something, and rewards players who investigate everything, either through necessary exposition or changing the story itself. The main difference between Life is Strange and most other story-based single-player games, including Until Dawn, is how the story is told. Even without the aspect of time travel, it’s a unique experience. It shouldn’t really work, because the story is so emo that were it a movie, only teenagers would enjoy watching it. The game revolves around a young girl, Max, who came back to her hometown, Arcadia Bay, after leaving 4 years ago and finds that she’s able to rewind small bits of time. Max is also having visions about the impending doom of Arcadia Bay, as she hallucinates during class about a massive storm heading for town. There are also posters for a missing girl stapled all over the school, and she bumps into her old friend, Chloe, who became friends with the missing girl after Max skipped town with her parents 4 years ago. It all sounds like an afterschool special with some sci-fi thrown in.

Playing Life is Strange doesn’t feel like an afterschool special at all though, and I think it boils down to ownership of the character and the pace of the game. What many movies in the drama genre fail to develop is a sense of identity. They gloss over key details that allow the audience to generate empathy for the actors, either turning them into stereotypes or making them do illogical or unreasonable things. Life is Strange is odd, in that your actions, whether you know it or not, affect the characters, and you get to peer into their lives by looking at all their most personal belongings. The basic storyline won’t change, but by putting the audience in a position to make choices about everyone’s outcome—including Max—in response to certain events, it makes you feel so much worse when you fail to save one or end up hurting another. This effect isn’t a quick burn like Until Dawn, where button presses ultimately dictate whether your character lives or dies. The choices you make can be contemplated and taken back in the moment, if you wish, by reversing time. They’re deliberate and, once chosen, permanent, because the effects are usually only seen later in the game. Just like real life, your choices appear to matter, and many of them are neither right nor wrong. As such, time travel is the perfect theme for Life is Strange, where tinkering with each decision can alter the timeline and affect people in unexpected ways. I should put a disclaimer on that statement though, since there still is a streamlined plot that requires puzzle-solving as well as choices that all advance said plot one way or another. However, the game gives you ample opportunities to fiddle with how it advances, with varying results for each character.   

The pace of the game is perfectly suited to the themes the game explores. You never feel rushed, even when you’re sneaking around, trying to avoid the security guard. The game shines in its quieter moments though, like in Chloe’s bedroom, the dorm where Max lives, or the diner where Chloe’s mom works. They’re small, lonely places that remind you of when you were 18 years old, hanging around at your friend’s house with nothing to do and all the time in the world. The music is also something that’s both relaxing and bittersweet, never veering off to cater to each specific moment, but rather emitting a calm atmosphere over everything and making each revelation more affecting than it otherwise would be. Just the intro, with Max walking down the hallway of her school, gave me goosebumps and had me listening to Syd Matters on YouTube.  

I haven’t played through the entire game yet, so writing this review may be a naïve proposition since I have no idea how the finale will be changed based on my in-game choices. It could end up like Until Dawn, which was disappointing in that there was just one endgame after all and very little can change it. I’m hoping that’s not the case, but even if it turns out that way, I still FEEL like my choices mattered anyway. Things happened throughout my playthrough that I had no control of, yet I still feel like I was somehow responsible. I guess that’s just life though, and like the game says, it’s very strange.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Enjoy it while it lasts

Once upon a time, this was my favorite movie. I was single then, and I hadn’t really had any meaningful, long-lasting relationships up to that point. But Eternal Sunshine made me feel as if I had been through one, bringing out complex emotions I didn’t know were even there. It made me understand a bit more about the way life works, that conflict is a necessary part of our psyche, and to cherish the good times as well as the bad. It also somehow made me yearn nostalgically for my younger self, even though I was in my 20s when I first saw it, because I wanted to reconnect with all my happiest childhood memories.

As with all Charlie Kaufman movies, the story of Eternal Sunshine plays off an original idea that’s meant more as a subject of discussion than a streamlined story. Here, he posits the question: what if you could erase painful memories? Instead of turning the question into something dreary, like getting rid of memories of bullying or abuse, he turns to relationships and walks us through the mind of Joel (Jim Carrey) as he gets the memories of his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) systematically erased. There are some side plots involved, which interconnect with Joel’s story, but the emphasis is on Joel and his memories overlaid with how he feels about them being erased as it’s happening. Each memory acts as an encapsulated moment, with the most recent scenes of bitterness between the couple erased first. As he slowly goes back in time to when they first met, his unconscious mind saddens to the fact that he’s now completely losing the girl he used to love, asking himself, through the projected image of his ex, if he could simply live in the good moments, not wanting to get rid of them at all.

After the procedure—spoiler alert—the two meet up again in a clever bit of fractured storytelling, where they meet at the beginning of the movie, only for you to find out that their meeting occurred after both lovers had their memories erased. Clementine, dating the guy who helped erase Joel’s memories and takes advantage of them to get in with her, realizes that you can’t fake love, and falls for Joel all over again (though it’s not really as cheesy as it sounds, the two are somewhat distraught about finding out they once knew each other very intimately). It’s got a clear message that no matter how imperfect the relationship is, it’s still worth having and holding onto your memories of it.

It’s Joel’s memories that impact the viewer most and tether everything together, though. I haven’t seen the movie in years, yet I can still recall images of the house where he first met his ex-girlfriend disappearing from him, slowly crumbling as he accepts that it’s likely the last time he’ll ever see her again.  The way these scenes are shot is so earnest, with two people who just enjoy being together, like kids in a playground. The camera rarely focuses on anything other than the two throughout these sequences, making everything around them dreamlike, as one room blends into another, slowly peeling away the memories and smoothly fading into the most intimate and happiest moments they had together. Joel’s memories are disconnected and surreal but so clear and vibrant. As an audience, you can’t help but feel sad for his misguided choice to get rid of them, just as he tries as hard as he can to hold on.

Eternal Sunshine would be a worthwhile movie if it merely showed what happened to the people involved in Joel’s and Clementine’s mind wipe. But filming Joel’s memories give it something that many movies tend to skip over: strong, relatable human emotion. It’s too bad Jim Carrey never received any recognition for this movie, because it’s a unique performance, the type that is extremely hard to come by in mainstream movies (I’m happy that Kate Winslet earned a nomination at the very least). These two characters seem to honestly love each other, and the movie takes the time and effort to show you why they do, creating intense memories of the type that most everyone has stored deep in their head. It’s like listening to a song where you don’t even have to know the lyrics; the music just makes you feel a certain way. And even though it makes me sad whenever I see this movie, it’s the kind of memory I don’t soon want to forget.

Trolls: What a delightful little world we live in

Living with kids isn’t easy. When it comes down to having a quiet night in and you want to watch a movie, there’s only so much that parents will tolerate. Power Rangers on Netflix doesn’t really make anyone but my son happy, and I can’t stand watching anything on YouTube for children (some of that shit is outright toxic). Every now and then, we try to find a movie that we think both our kids and us will enjoy, so we were lucky when our 4-year-old got attached to the movie Trolls. When it came out, I didn’t think much of it. I never really liked Justin Timberlake’s music or his SNL sketches, so I thought the movie would be more of the same, with a cash-grabbing toy company out to incite girls to buy new versions of their dolls. I was pretty surprised then to find out that Trolls was an overall fun film from start to end, the perfect antidote to a lazy night at the end of my weekend.

The movie centers around a group of trolls who, after escaping the clutches of the bergens, a race of grumpy creatures who think the only way to be happy is to eat trolls once a year, find themselves being hunted down again by the one bergen, Chef (Christine Baranski, who’s as wonderful here as she is on the Big Bang Theory), who was kicked out of Bergentown for accidentally allowing the trolls to escape in the first place. She cozies up to Prince Gristle, the ruler of the bergens, first snatching several of trolls she lost many years ago, then vowing to bring the rest of them for a new Trollstice celebration, where they’ll all get eaten to make the bergens happy. Meanwhile, Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick) tries to save her friends from Chef with the help of a reluctant Branch (Justin Timberlake).

It all sounds really stupid, I’ll admit. But the story is written so earnestly, with characters that are usually excessively cheerful yet also capable of feeling deep sadness, worry, and regret that you can’t help but get on board with the simple happiness-through-introspection theme that the movie conveys. It’s filled with one-liners, weird, retro creatures, and full-on musical numbers that are catchy and, most importantly, appropriate. I usually despise musicals that make the music a spectacle unto itself. I find them self-indulgent, as if I need 17 people doing the lambada and singing about how excited or sad or whatever they are, droning on and ruining the entire rest of the movie. It’s the complete opposite here though, as each number has its place in the story, either giving a bit of exposition or further the plot, linking seamlessly—and meaningfully—with the rest of the action. They celebrate the characters and their motivations in ways that are more than just singing and dancing, with a few gags here and there to keep with the vibe of the rest of the film.

I think a good chunk of the enjoyment you get out of Trolls will depend on how catchy you find the music and how well you get the jokes. It’s a movie made for both kids and adults, but the humor might still come off between with tweens than your average 40-year-old. It’s still dark enough, what with eating trolls and a maniacal Chef who’s more abusive than just pure dark evil, but the whole point of Trolls revolves around finding positive ways to make yourself happy. And therein lies the ultimate success of Trolls: it’ll make you smile (maybe sing and dance a little too), even if you’re a grumpy ol’ bergen.

Mandy: Go full Nic Cage or go home

I’m not sure what to make of Mandy, the new plug for Nic Cage to do Nic Cage stuff. Critics seemed to really like it—its Tomatometer rating is sitting at a cool 92%, with an audience score of only 67%. I never really trust those scores anyway, because sometimes you’re just the fish swimming in the opposite direction of everyone else, right? Still, it’s worth pondering over what the difference between the two scores mean and what might audiences have missed that critics seemed to enjoy so much about this film. I’m in the 67% crowd since I thought that there were a fair number of things that were fun about the film, while wanting perhaps something a bit more clever out of the script.

The premise for Mandy is basically a set up to let Nicholas Cage do his thing. Red (Cage) and the titular Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) are shacked up together somewhere in the wilderness, living a peaceful, hippie-ish lifestyle when a cult leader and his gang abduct the couple and try to force Mandy into sexual servitude. When she balks at the cult leader, he decides to gruesomely kill her in front of Red and leaves Red crucified to die alone. Of course, Red is no stranger to armed combat and goes seeking vengeance on the cult.

To say that the second part of the movie is a trip belies the tone the director sets out from the beginning. The world is full of odd creatures and is filmed as if you’re watching the story on LSD, with strange camera angles, lingering shots, and a subdued color palette full of mauve and red mixed with darker tones. It’s got a grainy feeling to it, as if it’s supposed to be an 80s horror movie yet comes off as something else closer to 80s home video. Altogether, it’s a weird experience that gets weirder as the violence ramps up and Cage goes full Cage.

And boy, does Cage go full Cage. It’s as if the movie switches tone to a dark comedy as he goes fully insane once he escapes his demise and decides to wreak havoc on the cult members. There are some great moments where he gives his most Cage-like faces as he knocks off each member, one by one. I was most looking forward to these Cageriffic moments, though I ended up leaving the theater oddly disappointed. It’s not that he wasn’t great…I mean, he’s Nic Cage! Doing insane things! It was fun. It’s just there wasn’t enough of it in there for me to really enjoy. It takes so long for him to become insane Cage that I sat around getting a little bored at the impressionistic filmmaking style of Panos Cosmatos. I mean, it’s not like he’s filming an award-winning movie over here; just get to the good stuff and make it clever while you’re at it! By the time Cage goes full Cage, it’s fun, but he’s made to be too invincible for his own good, leaving little suspense or any crafty scenarios for Cage to one-up himself. He’s just crazy Cage the rest of the way, killing everyone in his path (SPOILER), without any real sense of danger or whimsy. I was utterly disappointed by a chainsaw battle scene, and no one should EVER be disappointed by a chainsaw fight scene featuring Nic Cage. It should just never happen.

So, I ask the director after watching a movie that felt so mellow yet featured insane Nic Cage: what? What were you going for here? Was the aesthetic of washed-out colors contrasted with Nic Cage-driven insanity meant to amplify his psychoses? Or was it all just meant as a trip to make Cage a dream-like model of crazy? Whatever it was, it was just okay. I’m sure the critics thought it was a hoot, because how many actively watch bad Nic Cage movies to know the difference? Real audiences were less supportive, and I think that’s because most people watch Nic Cage, not for the high-mindedness of the movie, but for how silly and dumb he can be. If you’re going to use him, you might as well use him the whole way, no matter how unpredictable or stupid things might get. 

Fallout 76: Well, it’s a Fallout game…

Fallout 3 is one of my favorite games and I’ve played through both New Vegas and Fallout 4. Fallout 4 is really where things went off the rails for Bethesda, as they neglected to include the things that made Fallout 3 special, like interesting dialogue and story choices. Nevertheless, I played through the game because the world was so fun to explore and the game mechanics—namely the combat and crafting—were upgraded enough to keep you hooked. I had fun with the different locales and film noir vibe that I wanted to play through the game at least once.

Fallout 76 is Fallout 4 without non-player characters (NPCs) and the odd real player wandering around. There are a few things I expect in each Fallout title, and they’re all here in the newest one: a truly open world, a wonky combat system, a big map to explore, a variety of strange enemies that you can run into anywhere, and a great atmosphere. I’ve heard a lot of complaining online about this game, but I refuse to complain when I’m playing something so similar to the old ones that I really like. Overall, the locations are beautiful, and I haven’t even wandered past the first few sets of buildings. Photomode is neat (I've populated the blog with a few of the screenshots I've taken from roaming around Appalachia) and I love just walking around and observing, taking in a fully-crafted world that’s very surreal and vibrant. The buildings, inside and out, are designed so well that I’m never disappointed when exploring, even if I don’t find any useful junk. It’s also nice to play in a world where you can roam anywhere, regardless of whatever level you’re at, fully aware that you will probably get killed and wanting to visit the farthest reaches of the map even more because of it (I realize that other open world games are like this, but I still find many of them hard to navigate properly, limiting their true open worldiness).

The game mechanics are still wonky, with a little bit of extra urgency since you can no longer pause the game whenever you look at your Pip-boy. It makes choosing the right weapon more crucial to survival and necessitates more hiding and running away when things aren’t going great, so you can heal or pick the right gun. I liked that aspect a lot because the Pip-boy was almost like a cheat code in all other Fallout games, stopping time and letting you fix yourself before going back into battle. The combat would be fun if this weren’t an online game, because the big problem with the system is aiming. VATS doesn’t work like it did in other Fallout games. To be fair, I’m still not sure how it works in this one. I use it mostly to sense any enemies around me, but every time I track them with it, I fail to figure out how to aim while I’m in VATS mode. Instead, I just aim naturally by holding L2. This has its own problems, as I miss so much more often that I should. Enemies that attack close up, like mole rats, are impossible to hit with a gun since the aim has to be exactly on target. Even then, I’ve still missed a bunch of times, probably because of lag. For bigger targets, like Super Mutants, this doesn’t pose much of a problem, but I’m not looking forward to how this plays out when I get to bigger and more dangerous foes.  

The most glaring thing that’s distressing about Fallout 76 is the complete lack of NPCs for storytelling purposes. There was considerable backlash against Bethesda because of how their approach to storytelling in Fallout 4, where the only real choice you could make was in which faction you wanted to be part of. Besides that, there was very little in the way of decision-making, and you couldn’t even complete quests without killing everyone in the room. The writing was lazy and boring, and that’s been replaced by quests that come from terminals, as if Bethesda just wasn’t even pretending anymore that it cared about story and dialogue. It’s okay to keep running around and doing what the computer tells me to for only so long, until you just figure that you’re better off exploring the map once over and calling it a day. I just recently started playing Life is Strange, and I'm beginning to debate whether I'd rather play a game like that, with limited actual gameplay yet an interesting and affecting story, versus wandering somewhat aimlessly around an infinitely larger and more complex world. With a game as big as Fallout 76, the decision should be an easy one, and I can't blame anyone but Bethesda for making me debate how much time I want to spend on their game. 

I’m hoping that my friends buy this game too—COME ON YOU LAZY SONS OF BITCHES, PONY UP—so I can at least run around, build bases, and shoot things with them while having conversations about how work was and how the kids are. With no other humans around because the map is so big that it’s hard to find other players to interact with, it’s a lonely world in Appalachia. When my character sleeps in a bed, it does seem like there’s no one else there, and I’m just looking at the ceiling waiting to regenerate health for a good 30 seconds. Maybe that was what Bethesda was working towards, an atmospheric touch of loneliness that makes you feel something different compared with their older games. The trouble is that, like all Fallout games, everything else—from the menus to the crafting system—need so much brainpower that it’s not even like a pared down, isolated gaming experience. You’re always busy, just by yourself, wondering how you’ll finish the next quest or what perks you’ll get once you level up. Therein lies the problem with having such a huge game and very little story to tell. I’ve got such an intricate world around me, I just wish it all meant a little more.  

As a side note, for anyone interested in the blog, don't be shy to post comments! The blog is in its infancy, so any movie or video game recommendations you'd like to see or any input towards making the blog better would be amazing. 

Zombeavers: An expertly-crafted, thoughtful B horror movie about...zombie beavers

Lately, mainstream horror movies have focused on the scary and supernatural, as films like Paranormal Activity and Halloween gathered huge national and international audiences. Filming a blockbuster horror movie must be feel repetitive at this point; how many ways can we scare you and how realistic does the acting have to be to make you feel horrible about it? Zombeavers belongs to another genre of horror entirely: B horror movies.

There aren’t many truly popular B horror movies. Probably the most well-known B horror movie director ever, Sam Raimi, isn’t even really known for his horror movies as much as his Spider-Man films. But there are a lot of them and they have specific qualities that make them classifiable as B horror. Calling them B horror is a misnomer anyway, because they’re not really horrific in any meaningful way. These movies are meant to be funny by appealing to people’s love of the excess and offensive. They’re not really horror comedies, like Shaun of the Dead, which was funny, yes, but based its jokes off of something more lighthearted. B horror encompasses sensibilities that are more off kilter and low brow, like laughing at someone try a backflip but land on their neck, except in a B movie, their neck would snap in half and the head would fall off, rolling away to an unsuspecting toddler who doesn’t understand what just happened and kicks it like a soccer ball into the net. It’s not JUST that the head fell off, as many gory, torture porn films would have you believe is entertaining, but the punchline at the end sets the tone of self-awareness, that whatever you’re watching is appalling, and everyone knows it, so what are you going to do about it? I suppose you could classify horror movies that are just utterly terrible in here too, because they’re unintentionally hilarious without being scary, and you’d be right. Zombeavers, however, manages to be both B horror and well-crafted, as well as thoughtful towards its audience.

The movie centers around a group of teenagers as they head to a cabin in the middle of the woods to partake in some debauchery and resolve personal issues amongst themselves, standard fare for a horror movie. From there, things go awry as the teens are attacked by zombie beavers, some get bit and turn into zombies, leaving fewer and fewer survivors. Replace “zombie beavers” with “zombies” and it’s a regular zombie movie without anything interesting attached to it. But add in zombies that are also beavers and you open yourself up to all sorts of gags that tell the audience, “we know this is dumb but come see how TRULY dumb it can be.” The movie has a sense of openness around the premise, with a death scene that involves *SPOILER WARNING* one of the teens being trapped by the beavers in a beaver dam (!). It’s not slapstick either, as the actors do a commendable job of playing the straight man in the face of what looks like stuffed animals come to eat them alive. The premise is also injected with some witty, clever writing that upends expectations in several places, including a sunbathing scene that takes an unexpected turn and a pretty surprising ending.   

It’s typical that a film like this has a 4.8 rating on IMDB. It reminds me of how people regard Freddy vs Jason, one of the funnier mainstream B horror movies, or how Hollywood realized that Evil Dead 2 was such a cult hit that they decided to remake the first movie in the vainest, most self-serious way possible. What made Evil Dead 2 such a classic was that it was the opposite of serious, so low-budget and over the top that turning it into a run-of-the-mill scary movie felt so much cheaper than even the original’s production values. Here, Zombeavers opts to take a more entertaining approach to horror, unafraid to revel in its stupidity while being intelligent, shameless, and self-deprecating. And honestly, it’s the reason you go to the movies in the first place: to have fun.

Basket Case: AHHHHH AHHHHH AAAHHHHHHH

This one is a real oldie. Basket Case was released way back in 1982, and it still holds up, even today. What can be said about this glorious movie, whose every line was so perfectly acted, so well-conceived that calling it an Oscar snub doesn’t even do it justice. It should have won for best picture, best actor, and every other award. Wait, what? Gandhi won best picture that year, you say? Who has even SEEN that movie? Honestly, no one in the last 20 years has watched Gandhi and it never even spawned a sequel. Basket Case has 2! Each one was terrible, but still!

I’ll leave it to IMDB to describe the plot of this one: “A young man carrying a big basket that contains his extremely deformed Siamese-twin brother seeks vengeance on the doctors who separated them against their will.” That encapsulates it perfectly. He hides his deformed brother in a basket at a hotel as he goes about exacting revenge. It’s so brilliantly thought out, you don’t even need to ask questions. Of course he would want revenge! The assholes tried to kill his brother by separating him and tossing him in the dumpster! Sigh, what monsters….

I barely need to mention the director’s name, but if I did, it would hook you instantly. Frank Henenlotter—he of the Brain Damage, Bad Biology, and Frankenhooker fame—expertly mixes in poignant dialogue with top notch visual effects to make something both harrowing and comical. I swear it couldn’t look any more real when Belial, the deformed brother, mutilates his persecutors, as he flies across the air effortlessly but with such grace, making you truly BELIEVE in his cause. You feel his pain as he tries to decide whether these people are actually worth killing, then kills them anyway. I can’t possibly ruin the finale, but it’s as unsettling and affecting as anything you’ll see in modern cinema (except maybe that last scene in the Avengers: Infinity War, boy that was a shocker).

Everyone should see this movie at least once in their lifetime. It’s an epic, monumental achievement in filmmaking, something so grand that 2 sequels couldn’t contain the sheer genius of the first. It’s a heartbreaking ode to Siamese twins, but also as capable of sending chills down your spine as movies like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist did in the 70s. So, if you’re sitting around the house and you’re spending 30 minutes perusing Netflix for something to watch because you’ve already binged Breaking Bad and The Good Place, go find a comfortable couch, pop some corn, and watch Basket Case (but not Basket Case 2 or 3, ew).  

Deadpool 2: Mel Brooks, but more violent

Deadpool 2 reminded me of old Mel Brooks movies, like Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Airplane! Those movies were family-friendly, but they were also non-stop farces that made fun of everything and everyone, including Mel Brooks himself. In his movies, nothing is sacred and everyone can be mocked, from the characters to the actors themselves, along with the movie’s own plot and setting as well as any other headline that was popular at the time. You couldn’t be part of a Mel Brooks production unless you were self-deprecating enough.

Of course, Mel Brooks movies weren’t nearly as offensive or as violent as Deadpool or Deadpool 2. It’s almost like they decided to make an over-the-top meta horror movie and ridiculed itself for making one in the first place, all while placing it under the banner of Marvel comics. Of course, this was Deadpool’s schtick from the comics as well, talking to the reader and laughing at everyone. To see it as a movie is something entirely different, though, because how many times in a superhero flick are people shredded to death and that’s the joke? It’s like a compendium of horrible impulses that tells you how bad they are but oh they’re so bad, it’s delightful. There’s a certain glee to it that only Ryan Reynolds can bring, a true happiness in making fun of everyone for being so damn intolerant of his inability to stop himself from doing something terrible.

The plot is pretty thin and stupid. A Russian gangster kills Deadpool’s girlfriend, which makes him depressed and suicidal, only he can’t kill himself no matter how hard he tries. He ends up back with Colossus at the X-Mansion, who tries to snap him out of it by making him a trainee member of the X-Men. Things end poorly when Deadpool tries to settle down a teen mutant at a boarding school who’s threatening to light everyone up in flames because he’s been abused by the headmaster and the staff. Thereafter, he tries to make it up to the kid before Cable, traveling through time to save his family, kills the kid first. It sounds like there’s some real emotion to be mined, but the entire thing is really a ruse to laugh at how stupid and fun (stupidly fun?) it all is. That Deadpool can’t be killed ever makes for some fun gross-out gags throughout the whole thing, all of which I can’t possibly spoil without ruining the film, and they don’t shy away from unabashedly killing off anyone that’s not a central character in the goriest, most obscene ways. The whole movie is laughing at you for enjoying such perversion and depravity.

Deadpool 2 does add a small layer of comicbook meta humor as well, with jokes that only make sense if you’ve followed the X-Men films and some quirky one-liners like “no more speaking lines for you.” Setting up these gags with such an excessively, comedically violent tone makes for something more than a mere splatterfest. It’s a wink to those who know, deep in their hearts, that the Marvel movies are big, dumb things where superheroes get to bash each other into oblivion to save somebody from something for one reason or another. They even integrate that idea seamlessly into the movie itself, with Cable playing the straight man seemingly teleported right out of any other Marvel movie and into Deadpool’s world, full of dicks and cocaine and mayhem. It’s what makes this so much better than horror comedies that use gore without any real purpose for it other than LOOK, DISMEMBERED LIMBS, FUNNY RIGHT?  That self-awareness goes a long way, even if it’s annoying and belligerent.

If you’re an obnoxious person (who isn’t, AMIRITE?!), this movie will cater to your tastes. Yes, it tries way too hard, but that’s the fun of it. It knows that it’s trying too hard and keeps chugging along with more one-liners, spewing them out like bile without really caring about anything, continuity be damned. I read somewhere that Ryan Reynolds isn’t interested in doing another sequel. It’s a shame because of all the Marvel and DC movies coming out—at least 3 major ones in any given year, and probably more now that Disney owns Fox—the franchise that truly understands the meaning of this film genre isn’t the Avengers, Black Panther, or Spider-Man; it’s Deadpool.   

Stir of Echoes: Struggling to keep it together

This is another older entry that I’ve seen multiple times. Like the Assassination of Jesse James, I see another layer each time I watch this movie, things I’ve missed or see a different way after a year or two. Like Jesse James, the movie is dreamlike, with a fog of disorientation followed by a revelation that seems final yet incomplete. It’s unfortunate that this movie came out at the same time as the Sixth Sense, a far inferior movie in terms of pacing and emotional impact. Where the Sixth Sense became popular based on low-key performances from Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment and an ending that was as ridiculous as it was shocking (what a twist!), Stir of Echoes was much more affecting, positioning regular people trying to find some meaning in their lives. As a ghost movie, it’s also a pretty haunting one, with a song that reverberates throughout the final scene, providing a quiet, melancholy twist.

The story centers around Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon), a blue-collar father whose begins to have visions after being hypnotized at a party by his sister-in-law. At the same time, his son, Jake (Zachary David Cope), is communicating with a ghost in the house, who may or may not be a girl that went missing months earlier. After briefly encountering the ghost, he become obsessed with the visions, berating his wife, Maggie (Kathryn Erbe), and Jake as he tries to parse what they mean and becoming more and more frustrated when he realizes that he can’t control what he’s seeing or when he sees it. Maggie tries to figure things out for herself, with the hopes that she can restore her husband’s sanity and figure out what’s going on with Jake

Stir of Echoes’ plot sounds like something that would be perfect for Nicholas Cage: guy who sees a ghost and becomes deranged, becoming abusive to everyone around him until he somehow saves the day. But the movie is so much subtler than that, with motivations behind each member of the family that hit close to home. Tom, a little weary of a normal life, wants to do something important with his life and to find a greater purpose, which contrasts with Maggie, who loves their down-to-earth routine and doesn’t mind that their lives are simple and uncomplicated. The thing that holds it all together is their love for each other and their son, even as Tom desperately tries to find something meaningful in his and Jake’s visions, and Maggie becomes frustrated. Because she doesn’t see the visions either, she becomes increasingly alienated from both of them and sets out on a quest to figure out what’s going on and why. It’s the bond that she and Tom share that ultimately brings them together, putting themselves in danger for one another as they finally realize the horrible truth behind Tom and Jake’s ghost.

The movie represents a realization of what life means for most of us and the rage against it to find something important to hold on to. It’s also a genuine, heartfelt ode to family and its importance in helping each other when things start to go off the rails, no matter how much frustration and anger spills over. I haven’t watched this movie since I’ve had kids, which is a total shame, because nothing for a parent is easier to connect with than a family trying to keep it all together every now and then. One of the scenes that I overlooked initially but eventually resonated most with was where the sister of the missing girl kidnaps Jake because he was talking to her ghost. She’s visibly upset and desperately wants to find out what happened to her sister. But it what it really does is foreshadow the thing that’s truly important to everyone who lives in their small town: family.

Roar: A historic piece of wtf filmmaking

Roar is a truly stupefying movie. It was released in 1981 to what I assume was little fanfare—I was born a year later, so I wouldn’t really know, but it’s not like it won awards or anything—starring Tippi Hedren, Noel Marshall, Melanie Griffith, and Melanie’s two brothers. That this was basically a home movie produced by the Marshall family is strange, and that they had to sell assets, like their Beverly Hills mansion, to make this film is outright bizarre. Go to Roar’s IMDB page and you’ll find an unending supply of interesting tidbits. It gives a pretty complete breakdown of the injuries suffered by the cast and crew, though it somehow doesn’t say that anyone died during filming. This is odd because so many of the people who worked on this movie, including almost every member of the Marshall family, were severely attacked by giant felines.

You would think this would stop people from making such a dangerous movie. You would also be wrong! The Marshall family had the idea to make a film about a father, living in Africa, who is not home when his family visits him unexpectedly. Unbeknownst to them, their father resides with around 50 full-grown lions and tigers, without fencing or any sort of barriers between himself and the animals. It would make a great CGI-animated movie except that there was no CGI or any effects whatsoever. They all went to Africa and played with 50+ carnivorous felines for a few years. I saw this at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal, and the reaction of the crowd within the first 10 minutes was just laughter. It continued until the rest of the movie, but those first 10 minutes were shocking, as the Noel Marshall doesn’t really act as much as he shows himself living with lions. Entering the house, they pin him up against the wall playfully—I guess? Still not sure they really wanted to eat him—and he continues about his business as if there’s nothing abnormal about getting pushed around by a lion. He ups his game after by interfering with a lion fight between the good lion and some bad lion that wants to claim the territory as his own. That they tried to make a plot within this movie about some lion that’s trying to take over is absurd on its own. I mean…it’s like watching a comedy—a fail video that you can’t possibly believe someone actually tried because it’s so stupid and why are they honestly trying to kill themselves oh god I can’t watch.

It’s an unbelievable movie just because of the animals. There’s nothing worth saying about the plot, other than the family spends time running away from lions, tigers, and an elephant, which also tries to kill them in real time. I don’t know that they bothered even trying to act for this movie since there must have been so much distraction, what with lions potentially mauling you to death in every scene. The more you keep trying to wind your brain around it, the more it sees this movie as a surrealistic portrait of insanity, something so rare and weird that the fact that it was made almost 40 years ago seems trivial. There are older movies who pushed limits, like cannibal holocaust did when they decided to kill real animals on-screen or films like I Spit on Your Grave, which bath in depravity. Most had the intention of horrifying you, as you witnessed something disturbing and shocking. But Roar goes into another realm directly, telling you that the thing you’re seeing that is outright shocking is totally normal and something to be celebrated. You just find yourself so awe struck that you can’t help but laugh while the cast are filmed being attacked.   

The greatest achievement this movie makes is ultimately getting an entire family to sleep with lions comfortably, as if they’re cuddly pets. I don’t think anyone could pull it off today, let alone on film (the fact that a film like this has zero chance of being made nowadays not withstanding). If my child decided that he wanted to make a movie like this, I would barricade him in his room forever. What the hell people?! Anyway, I highly recommend watching this piece of remarkable history. It’s an experience unlike any other, something that will never occur ever again. It’s also batshit insane and I’m nearly positive that someone HAD to have died while filming, but the Marshall family covered it up so they could release this ridiculous piece of film history.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: It’s more than the kingdom that’s fallen

I loved Jurassic Park (who didn’t?) and Jurassic World. Some people act like they’re better than the first JW, and they’re not. None of them! JW was the right way to make a proper sequel to JP, providing a great entry into the What If genre of film by just ignoring the inherent problems with making a dinosaur zoo and making a new, larger one that’s even more susceptible to capitalistic greed. Why come up with a dinosaur that’s more dangerous than anything else in the park? More customers and money! Why on earth would you let anyone walk around with dinosaurs, herbivores or not, in a big plastic ball? The whole thing sounds like a terrible idea, and of course it predictably turned into a horror show, because that’s the entire point of the series.

The problem with the JP series was always the sequels. There had to be some excuse to go back to the dinosaurs, some issue with the remaining ones from the park that are just roaming around Costa Rica unguarded. JP2 and JP3 didn’t really solve it in any meaningful way, and neither does JW: Fallen Kingdom. The writers try to get our main characters back to the park with the intent of saving them from a conveniently exploding volcano. It’s not that the premise is unrealistic (the whole series is completely unrealistic, the instantaneous genetic engineering of new dinosaurs as a prime example). It’s that it feels like the characters’ motivations aren’t justified enough. Why would anyone set foot back on that island where the dinosaurs no longer have cages AND a volcano is about to explode? By pushing the emotional impact of saving the dinosaurs, the film is playing the wrong notes with its audience, who don’t care about the dinosaurs as much as they care about the chaos they bring at this stage of the franchise. Eventually, it all leads the dinosaurs into a mansion with an extremely large basement (?) where they’re to be sold off as weapons. That’s a thing that happens. Whoever wrote that into the movie should probably not work on JW3.

The saving grace of JW: Fallen Kingdom is the cast and production values. Both are up to the task of making this thing work as far as it’ll go, with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard doing their best to work in some gags and keep everyone entertained. The dinosaurs are still pretty neat, but the most personality you get from them is a cute stygimoloch that likes to butt things with its head. It’s a shame because the dinosaurs are really the ones along for the ride and they get nothing much to do except eat a few people and attack other dinosaurs. Blue’s backstory is a welcome addition, but it’s still not enough for a movie that prides itself on showcasing how amazing these creatures are.

It’s not a real surprise this movie wasn’t half as good as the original JW. It’s probably better than JP2 and JP3, though not by much. It’s also quite a bit more violent and dark than the first JW, making it a hard sell to those with kids. I can see where they want to eventually take the series, and maybe the producers thought this would be the best way to get there. It’s an unfortunate place for a franchise that already ran into sequel trouble and had people expecting the worst even when the first JW was released. If JW: Fallen Kingdom was truly memorable (or even entertainingly watchable), I think moviegoers would give more of a pass to a third movie that bombed. With a film this average, I can see the franchise going extinct altogether along with those poor genetically-modified dinosaurs.   

Fallout 3: Your first walk into the wasteland is always your best

Yes, I realize that this game is old (old as shit, honestly), but with Fallout 76 coming out and Fallout 3 being one of my all-time favorite games, I thought it would be a great first video game review to add to the list. It was actually one of the first games I ever played on my PlayStation 3 (sold to make way for the PS4, of course). I initially bought the console to play NHL 2010, and after borrowing someone else’s Xbox 360 and playing through Skyrim a bit, I was shocked at how different storytelling could be, even within the first set piece where you’re about to get your head chopped off, only for a dragon to attack at the last minute and save you. After that, I wanted to get my hands on all games made by Bethesda that had a similar style of gameplay.

Fallout 3 immerses you immediately from the start with an extremely clever tutorial, as you begin your journey as a baby, then morph into an adolescent within the tight community of a vault (where mostly everyone lived throughout whatever nuclear wars were happening outside). Your perks are decided during class, and there’s even a birthday party, which gives you time to interact with NPCs. It all leads to the disappearance of your father and your escape from the vault to go find him in the Capital Wasteland of Washington, DC.  

Bethesda sets up your first venture into the wasteland perfectly by spotting you near the top of a hill overlooking the rest of your surroundings. You can see the scope of the land, with quests designed to explore your immediate area, but also so much freedom that you don’t have to do anything the game tells you to. It asks you to venture out and play for yourself, with structures designed to lure you in and flesh out the world around you. That you can interact with almost anything; the game lets you collect items that sometimes don’t mean anything at all except to sell as junk. The interfacing with characters is a bit odd, as the camera focuses up on each one during dialogue, but that’s really the only thing that takes away from the reality of the world around you (well, that and V.A.T.S.). That the gunplay is wonky makes it feel endearing, like if you were dropped into that setting and was given a gun, you too wouldn’t be great at shooting it either. The V.A.T.S. system helps, sometimes giving the game a turn-based RPG mechanic but shooting from a distance without it often gives you a better chance of hitting if you can figure out the spray of each weapon.  

The story mechanics are probably the best thing about the game. Not the story itself per se, as your quest to find your father ultimately leads you to an unfulfilling ending, but the mechanics of how that story and other side stories are told is what’s most interesting. Without specifying it explicitly, the game usually gives you at least 2 options at any given point, leaving it to the player to figure out what those options could be and inviting them to investigate what exactly is going on.  Many games promote themselves on the idea that your choices dictate the outcome of the story (Life is Strange and Until Dawn come to mind), but not many invite you to use your imagination and paint a picture with what’s given to you. Of course, this being a video game, it doesn’t give you unlimited options, but whatever option you choose, it has a lasting impact on the game and your character. Sometimes you’re just not sure how to figure it out but you’re sure that whoever you’re dealing with is kind of maybe evil, so you decide to just use all your artillery and kill the entire lot (the slaver colony is a good example here, and I’m really eager to find a more stealthy way of freeing the slaves). It also gives you incentive to go back to an old save point and attempt to figure things out in a different way, like in Tenpenny Tower, where using the right investigative process will lead you to discover that whoever has control of the building is entirely up to you.

Tennpenny Tower, in all its glory. 

The details make the game’s atmosphere worth spending time in too. Little things like raider camps filled with empty cans and bottles, pilot lights inside ovens, and grocery stores with food items being feasted upon by radioactive bugs. The 1950s theme gives a surrealistic vibe to everything, developing a uniqueness to the world that seems like it could mirror the nuclear fallout of today, but is situated in an entirely different universe. The level design, from the open countryside to the tight alleyways of downtown Washington, makes it feel like there’s always something new to discover. Playing it a second time around, I’m still coming across vaults and hidden areas I didn’t know existed on my first playthrough.

Altogether, Fallout 3 is a well-designed ecosystem meant for exploration and storytelling. I’ve played through both Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4, and neither is as enthralling as Fallout 3. Las Vegas seemed like a good concept for an end-of-the-world apocalyptic game, but the level design was so minimal that your actions don’t feel meaningful, even though the main story was more credible. Fallout 4 reverted back to a denser setting, making an expanded, vibrant city surrounded by all sorts of weird characters, creatures, and buildings. Unfortunately, they completely ruined the story mechanics, making it impossible to really tinker with the plot structure except to give you one of four possible groups to join about halfway through the main quest. It was almost impossible to solve a problem nonviolently; in fact, the game was better suited as a straight up shooter since most quests involved clearing bases full of supposed bad guys. Fallout 3 supersedes the other 2 games for its sheer imagination and true open endedness, letting you dictate the terms of engagement and the result of the narrative.

With Fallout 76 coming out soon (the B.E.T.A. version is already out, though server time is extremely limited), it’s worth revisiting Fallout 3, the game that pushed Fallout into the realm of third-person RPG. With no human NPCs, I’m a little worried though. It seems like Bethesda is banking on a new strategy, using players themselves to help tell the story and build their own world. I was sorely disappointment in the Elder Scrolls Online experience, but that had mostly to do with the fight mechanics than anything else. I’ve already pre-ordered the damn game though—how could I not, it’s another Fallout game!—so here’s hoping Fallout 76 lives up to the same standard of gameplay of its previous incarnations.

Hereditary: It’s reality that scares you

Hereditary is an odd movie. It feels like a slow burn, but it’s more like a ramp that keeps upping itself until it falls right off, like a demented roller coaster where no one really knows they’re on one until it’s too late. It’s definitely scarier than most of what’s been made recently, but the parts that will leave you disturbed long after the movie is over happen early on, before anything supernatural even occurs, as the family, full of vulnerable, fragile people begin to unravel.

The story centers on a family of four as they initially deal with the passing of the children’s grandmother. Several ideas are foreshadowed from the start, with her passing meant to signify that she might now play a bigger role in their lives. The director clearly intended to make the mood as uneasy as possible, with the mother, Annie (played by Toni Collette), noticeably distressed by souvenirs left in her mother’s belongings, and a daughter, possibly affected by a genetic disorder, doing strange things like mutilating birds. Overall, everything seems like it’s held together loosely, with strings ready to be pulled and torn apart. 

Now, the main premise of this review can’t really be discussed without revealing certain plot points, so if you intend to watch the movie spoiler-free, I suggest you skip to the end.

—SPOILER WARNING—

The scene where the daughter, Charlie, suffers from an allergic reaction to peanuts only to be decapitated truly made me terrified, especially for a parent with kids. It takes such a benign, ordinary situation (we’re going to a party, be back later), frames it as a horror twist, and leads to such a tragic conclusion that it overshadowed the entire supernatural devices that came about as a result. The family dynamics that played out, with regret, sorrow, and hurt felt by everyone that ultimately leads to all the strings being torn apart was one of the harsher and more unique turns a horror movie could take. I could easily see where Annie could have developed into the true villain, not based on her possession, but because she couldn’t forgive her son and thought that the only way to satisfy her emotions would be to end it all. It would have been a character-driven thriller/horror movie that would have truly impacted the audience. Unfortunately, the director chose to turn Annie into something manipulated by her mother’s cult because of Charlie’s death, which leads to Charlie's restoration inside her son’s body. Yes, it was that confusing, and not half as interesting as the initial dilemma regarding how Annie’s family could possibly cope with the loss of her daughter. Seeing Annie cut her own head off in mid-air just wasn't half as disturbing as the initial shock of what happened to Charlie, and that was made problematic for the rest of the film as it kept getting sillier and sillier.   

OKAY, YOU CAN COME BACK NOW.

With all that said, Hereditary is a solid horror movie worth watching on Halloween. Everything is spot on, feeding into a real unsettling atmosphere, with well-framed images that stick with you afterwards, as well as some jump scares for those who love movies like Paranormal Activity as much as Rosemary’s Baby. It’s not a perfect movie like some are making it out to be, but it’s highly effective (in parts, at least) and an experience that few horror movies nowadays can conjure up.

Avengers: Infinity War: This is what my favorite audio comic book would look like

Marvel has been making movies for many years now. They succeeded at first with big production films full of well-known superheroes, making them relatable and giving them a bit of personality, and upped things with the Avengers, where those personalities could finally play alongside each other with bits of wit, humor, and drama. The same thing happens all the time in the comics, where the crossovers and team-ups were always some of those most interesting storylines. I always loved reading about how Wolverine would reluctantly team up with Spider-Man and the Hulk to fight who knows what bad guy or watching everyone team up to take on Onslaught. What the producers of the Avengers got right is that it wasn’t just comparing the powers and abilities of these superheroes in real time that was fascinating, but the often-conflicting motivations and personal drama surrounding these people. Many subplots are intertwined along with set pieces that somewhat rationally (with some imagination thrown in) adopt the powers of the characters into something both humorous and moving.  

The latest Avengers movie is the culmination of almost every MCU plotline into a grander, cohesive whole that focuses on the new ultimate villain, Thanos, who wants to wipe out half of the universe because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. It’s bathed in an overarching ideology, with motivations that are full of holes (especially for characters as supposedly omniscient as Thanos, who should know something about colony collapse) but with just enough logic to keep the whole thing flowing. And that’s what the movie does best: it flows. The pacing is tight, the camera never stays too long in one place, hovering around as the characters do. Our heroes deal with their own thoughts and feelings about their predicament within the context of trying to stop Thanos from obtaining the infinity stones and having the power to follow through on his disastrous plan. The writers do a good job of incorporating some semblance of emotion and sharpness into Thanos as well, with a fleshed-out backstory and moments throughout the movie that refuse to let him become any sort of run-of-the-mill movie villain, to say nothing of Josh Brolin’s subtle performance.

For such a long movie with so many different characters and plot twists, there’s not much more left to say. It’s like a comic book that wants you to keep turning the pages—to keep watching to find out what will happen next. I won’t speak about the ending of the movie. If you haven’t seen it, which you probably should, then all you need to know is that it keeps the series going, just like any good comic book would, and I expect the sequel to do so as well. 

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Like a dream of redemption that never happened

I’ve watched this movie at least 10 times, and each time, I see something slightly different. The first time, I saw Robert Ford, a mixed-up young man trying to mistakenly follow in his idol’s footsteps. The next few times, things started to meld together in ways that few movies ever allow. It’s an ambiguous film but direct, with a narrator that sees things as it was, without much to say but what had apparently happened back when Jesse James was still alive. I’ll be forthright and say that I don’t know much about the history of Jesse James or the period. It’s something that, as a Canadian, you’re never really exposed to. But I wanted to learn more after watching this movie.

The story centers around the last few weeks of Jesse James’ life, as he rounds up members of his gang to pull off one last heist. That description isn’t really accurate though, because he spends most of his time interacting with Robert Ford and his brother, Charley, as Robert tries to curry Jesse’s favor and creepily act as if he were Jesse James in misplaced bouts of wish fulfillment. Jesse never really takes Robert seriously, so he vows revenge and gets hired by the American government to kill Jesse, in the hopes that he would become famous as THE man to kill him. That he kills him is in the title, and it’s the lead up to it—the why—that really stands out. It’s a parable about American fame and how you’ve got to earn it the right way if you want to truly be liked by the people.

That still doesn’t really sum up what the movie’s really about either. The score of the movie and the little scenes in between, where the narrator quietly describes how Jesse and his family had to keep moving from city to city in the middle of the night or how secretive he had to be to keep his identity unknown, really make this story about Jesse, his way of life, and how he tried to redeem himself by keeping Ford’s company. A man who no one could sneak up on suddenly killed in his home by a boy who he could size up and understand so well was like a parting gift to that generation. The music gives a gloomy air to what everyone knows will happen, but it’s also pensive, as if signifying that the previous generation is passing on and wondering if he did the best he could for the future—if his actions, robbing banks and fighting against the government, mean anything at all—as society moves on without him. He lets Ford kill him, not even knowing if it’s the right thing to do, but letting Ford try to fill his shoes anyway, hoping that everything he taught him will make him a better man in the end.

The saddest moment of the film, the one that leads to Jesse’s redemption (if you can call it that), is not at the end of the movie, but at the beginning, when he turns to his brother after his final train robbery. Not a word is said, and his brother shoots him a tired, defeated glance, as if there was never any real point to what they were doing. Life had moved on, and it was time to find another purpose. It just took Jesse a while to find it.