Life is Strange: Before the Storm: It was always you, Chloe Price

I wish I could’ve played BtS before the original Life is Strange. It actually makes me disappointed that I didn’t play the prequel first, because after playing BtS, it’s clear that the first iteration of the series was really about Chloe, not Max. It was somewhat apparent in the first game, what with Max such a blank slate and Chloe’s presence imbued in almost every decision you make. Though the storyline focuses on a variety of characters, the one that keeps popping up is Chloe, who *spoiler alert* also figures prominently in the finale. BtS thankfully expands on her character by giving her a prequel that delves into her relationship with Rachel Amber, the girl missing at the beginning of Life is Strange.

In BtS, Chloe isn’t the same spunky rebel from the first game. She’s shy and unsure of herself as a 16-year-old. You get to figure out how to interact with the characters that surrounds Chloe: her mom, her mom’s new boyfriend, kids at high school, and her new crush, Rachel. That pretty much sums up the game. There is an intricate plot, which involves Chloe and her relationship with Rachel, and while it drives the game forward, the game plays as so much more because it lets you develop something of your own kind of relationship between Chloe and those surrounding her. There are certain things which cannot be changed in the game, like the death of Chloe’s father and the drama surrounding Rachel’s family life. It’s really in how Chloe deals with everything that’s going on—or, more precisely, how you have her deal with it.

This time around, there’s no time rewinding function, so every choice you make is set in stone and immediate. I thought this would ruin the aesthetic of the game after how integral it was to the first LiS, especially how it was used to solve problems, but it was relieving not having to worry about it this time around. It made more sense following Chloe in real time, with all her personality and eccentricities, and having decisions that were permanent. It’s not like she can go back and try to save her dad like in the first LiS, so why go back at all? She has to face everything that’s thrown in front of her, from her mom shacking up with a guy she doesn’t like to getting kicked out of school. Her emotions are front and center in a way that LiS never really dealt with explicitly until BtS. They’re raw and insecure in ways that only a 16-year-old could experience, especially in the scenes that deal with the loss of her father. She has no idea how to approach life afterwards, relying on visions of her dead dad to help guide her, often leading to confusion, anger, and frustration. She doesn’t have a friend to rely on—Max had skipped town two years earlier—until she meets Rachel, who connects with her through the frustration of her own family life. The two lean on each other, growing as people as they navigate the story. That you control Chloe’s interactions to a certain degree lets their struggle flow through the player even more, boosting your own connection to these two. It’s just a great, engrossing way to tell Chloe’s story.

Part of the emotion that comes from playing the game is knowing that Chloe eventually loses Rachel somewhere between BtS and the first game. You knew her relationship with Rachel wouldn’t last and that she’d become lost in the time between when BtS ends and when she finally meets back up with Max. It really does coat the entire game in a cloud of sadness. Unfortunately, once you know what happens in both games, it’s impossible to go back and replay them with a different set of emotions (at least for me it is). It has me constantly wondering how I would’ve viewed the first game if I played them chronologically. A bit of a spoiler here, but the end of BtS doesn’t show what happens when Rachel goes missing, so at the end, the two are still together. I can’t imagine how I’d feel playing out the first game with Max, finding posters of Rachel Amber scattered throughout the school and then meeting Chloe in the washroom, knowing exactly who she is and what she’s been through. I can imagine a deeper sense of dread, knowing something is totally off, and I’d probably also get a bit nostalgic, watching Chloe temporarily get killed by Nathan, maybe even shocked. The hurricane barreling towards Arcadia Bay, though…that probably would’ve made more sense to me at the time. But just like that, time passes and you become exposed to all the little secrets everyone’s been holding on to, and there’s no turning back. For anyone who’s played through BtS, you know that was always the point.

Captain Marvel: Makes up for in strength what it lacks in heart

As an entry into the MCU, Captain Marvel fits in well enough as an origin story. All the right elements are there—almost formulaic—but the formula is so good that it’s worth watching in theaters. It’s funny, has an intriguing story, and its characters are full of one-liners that hit the right spots, with references to the 90s and older MCU movies. The MCU refences are written in exceptionally well, especially the winks to the audience about Nick Fury’s eyepatch. It’s also fun to watch people fly around in the air and blow shit up real good. However, and it’s a big however, the titular character is hijacked by the breakneck storytelling, making the movie a bit less than the sum of its very good parts.

Without delving too much into the story, the problems stem from Carol Danvers’ (Brie Larson) journey, from fighting the Skrulls as a Kree soldier with amnesia to figuring out who she really is and what she’s capable of.  The issues aren’t with Brie Larson in the role either; she’s a great actress and she does okay with what’s given to her. She has a snarky, quit-witted attitude here, which is used in small doses throughout the film. The problem is that she’s not given much of a character arch to do anything with besides make some sly quips. Her arch is more within the physical realm, where she learns to believe in her powers over the course of the movie. That’s just not enough for a clearly feminist endeavor. The message that a girl can do or be anything is only used in broad strokes, but it doesn’t really line up with her personality. I’d assume that her personality would reflect that she’s being held back and that it would also let loose once she begins to assert herself. She doesn’t really communicate any of that, though, through no fault of her own. The script just doesn’t call for her to do all that much, save for shooting lasers from her hands and some karate moves, so the dramatic scenes later in the film fall flat, making the ending less exciting than it ought to be.

Like I stated above, there are a variety of good to great elements in the rest of the film. Samuel Jackson steals the show, with great dialogue and comedic timing that rivals anything from Thor: Ragnarok. All the other secondary players are fun, particularly Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), who plays the British straight man to perfection, as well as Marie Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), who also adds some heart to the story. The 90s jokes are on target, though the movie is definitely shot like a 2010s film and has absolutely no stylistic relation to the 90s except for some clothes, brand names, and toys (all forgivable). And finally, like all MCU movies, the action is shot fluidly and vibrantly, full of green and blue streaks carving up the sky, followed by Captain Marvel’s bright orange lasers. Oh, and Goose the cat is great too.

For all the movies the MCU has pumped out over the last few years, Captain Marvel is somewhere in the middle. It has mostly everything you’d want in an MCU movie, to the point where they’ve perfected their brand of humor and sci-fi storylines that help build their massive superhero world. For such an above average production, it’s disappointing that its universe-spanning plot had trouble fitting in time to really develop the personality and character of Captain Marvel herself. For a film that leans on feminism the way it does, it’s too bad there wasn’t as much focus on the heroine as there ought to be. I mean, girls can be just as strong as men, but physical strength isn’t the only measure of strength there is. I just wish I had seen more of the other kind.    

Thor: Ragnarok: The best superhero comic book movie ever made

Yes, it’s a bold and outlandish statement. It’s something people argue about, especially with Black Panther receiving several Oscars this year and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse receiving an actual best film-related Oscar. I haven’t seen the new Spider-Man or Captain Marvel, though I really do want to, but I’ve seen Black Panther, which was not half as engaging or as fun as Avengers: Infinity War. I’ve also seen countless other comic book movies, from the DC universe—taking yourself too seriously never works, especially when you have super powers—to the X-Men films and The Crow. Thor: Ragnarok is the best of them all, mostly because it hems close to what it should be: a comic book.

Thor: Ragnarok does not take place anywhere close to Earth, which makes it unusual in the universe of superhero comic book movies. It follows Thor (played by…oh come on, you all know who plays Thor by now) as he fights back against his evil sister, Hela, and gets stuck on a planet ruled by crazy people, where the Hulk is their biggest celebrity. It sounds weird, and were it not based on an actual comic book story, it probably would have never been cleared by the film studio, but hey, here we are! The movie’s theme of family is perfect for the tone of the film, which is where Thor makes his claim to the throne of all superhero comic book movies. Its style is really that of a comic book, with the quips in the right places, the humor snappy and smart, and the scenery so vivid and imaginative that it almost looks like the frames of an issue of Thor.  

If you’re looking for other reasons why it’s the greatest superhero movie, think back to the 80s. Are you old enough to remember Back to the Future? If so, that’s what watching Thor felt like. In each case, the premise is something totally gonzo, and it’s also secondary to the characters and their chemistry. No one who’s ever watched Back to the Future cares that it’s a time travel movie. They want to watch Marty McFly’s genuine reactions and interactions with all the ridiculous things put in his path, while rooting for him to succeed at the same time. Thor is put into a similar situation, and you can’t help but love him. His quips are funny and relatable. The situations he’s put in are bizarre, yet there’s something affable that makes each scene memorable. No, it doesn’t have the same “half of the universe is floating away!” scene that the Avengers had, but it strings smaller ones together in a more consistent manner. It also highlights more character flaws than most comic book movies (although I acknowledge that the Avengers series generally does a good job of mixing flawed characters together in interesting ways, except for the Iron Man series, where resolution was just Tony calling upon a million robots he could’ve used at the beginning of the film to kill off the bad guy). The resolution here is infinitely more satisfying than most other Marvel movies, with a firm build-up to something that’s outright fun and badass, followed by an ending that’s also pretty quirky–SPOILER ALERT, BUT I’M SURE EVERYONE’S ALREADY SEEN IT ANYWAY–where Surtur just demolishes Asgard.

The one other thing that make Thor: Ragnarok better than the rest is self-awareness. This is a movie that could not have been made at the beginning of the MCU but fits perfectly with where it’s at right now. It can take risks and make clever jokes based on the previous films. It’s also the springboard, both chronologically and stylistically, to the heralded Avengers: Infinity War. The funniest bits of Avengers were, not coincidentally, the ones with Thor, and the success of Thor: Ragnarok probably gave Marvel Studios confidence that using cosmic settings with far-out characters would work.

Comedies don’t get a lot of praise as the best movies of all time. Many point to Christian Bale’s Batman series as the best superhero movie ever, mostly for its gritty, realistic take on the character. That’s fine and all, but what would you rather wrap your head around, again and again, for two hours? The new series of X-Men movies are especially guilty of this, making their characters so self-serious that there's nothing to really cheer for, while the other MCU movies lean a bit too much on either cheap gags (think Ant Man and the Wasp) or story threads meant to have a huge impact on the world itself (like Ultron or Civil War), but ultimately fall flat because we want to care more about our plucky characters than the world which they inhabit. Thor:Ragnarok makes it very clear that it cares more about its characters than Asgard itself, and it's all the better for it. 

Altogether, Thor: Rangarok is a movie most people love, but it's really better than that. Back to the Future is emblematic of this problem, where the most heartfelt, oddball comedies aren’t ever considered as “great” movies at the time, but years down the road, when people look back at all the self-serious crap that’s passed us by, they’ll be staring at Thor as the landmark superhero movie that officially kicked off Marvel’s biggest phase.  

Velvet Buzzsaw: A painting that tries to say a lot but no one wants to look at (Rating: 5 art critics on 10)

When I watch a horror movie, I look for a few things. I want a bit of suspense, a gradient of laughs (could be just a few if it’s a more serious movie and a lot if it’s total B horror), and interesting death scenes. Jason X was big and dumb, but it made the most of its teenage kill fodder by making the deaths as cool and funny as possible. Falling onto a giant screw and spinning around and around on it? That’s cool! I like it! Hell, Final Destination is an entire 5-movie franchise based on intriguing ways to die. I still have an image of that gymnast suddenly falling awkwardly to her death etched in my brain. This is exactly where Velvet Buzzsaw goes wrong.

The film revolves around several competing art dealers as they backstab each other to market and sell art. All the main characters are the dealers (and a critic), one of whom discovers a batch of artwork in the apartment of a man who just died. Instead of sending the paintings to the junk bin, one of the art dealers, Josephina, snatches every piece of work and starts selling them on behalf of the company she works for. Naturally, this doesn’t bode well for anyone who has anything to do with the paintings, as a supernatural force starts to play with them.

The movie is fun for the first half, skewering art critics and dealers for being total douchebags. They strong-arm museums into showing their new collections, they critique others work poorly to get back at their ex-lovers, and they don’t respect anyone’s opinion except their own. It’s so bad that the artists are now working for the dealers and some of them are making poor artwork because of it. At a funeral, they even critique the casket one of their peers is buried in. The dialogue is fun on its own too, so pretentious that you can’t imagine any normal person speaking that way. Except for art critics, of course.

The trouble lies in what happens once the supernatural force comes for the corrupt critics and dealers (minor spoilers to follow). They keep getting knocked off, one by one, by otherworldly ghosts and apparitions, kind of in the spirit of the Twilight Zone or The Ring. Unfortunately, it’s just not enough. This is a movie that espouses vitriol against those who take artwork for granted. If you’re going to discuss good art, you best make sure your movie has some serious aesthetic value, like the paintings the critics are chiming in on. These death scenes…they’re just not enough. They make me want to critique the film in the same way Jake Gyllenhaal poopoos all over that casket. There is nothing inspiring to these death scenes, nothing glorious and breathtaking that would make me want to buy them, no matter how deadly they are. I get that the message of the film is that art belongs to the people, but if that’s the case, go to the people for the best, dumb, most absurd ways to kill a person and make it a thing of beauty. These death scenes need to be as gaudy as the tastes of the art critics to really make it count.

So, the movie works in one way, as a critique of the art industry. It doesn’t follow through entirely, and that’s a shame because I love me some good, hearty gore and destruction in my horror movies. The performances were all above average, the set pieces were there to be had, the script was well-written and intriguing. Just like a mediocre painting, though, it needs to be more inspired to make me buy it.

Escape Room: Made by escape room enthusiasts for escape room enthusiasts (Rating: 7 survivors on 10)

Escape Room is exactly what it says it is: a movie about escape rooms. There’s really not much more than that. It’s fun, sort of dumb, reminds me of Saw a bit, and makes for an hour and a half of people cleverly finding ways out of elaborate set pieces meant to kill them. You could probably do worse during January and February, when studios dump most of their weak-sauce films.

The film is about several seemingly random people who are sent boxes containing an invitation to the ultimate escape room. Once there, they must find clues within a certain time limit before their environment offs them. So, they go from room to room searching for clues, dangling from ledges, avoiding hypothermia, and finding key puzzle pieces that lets them get to the next room. There’s the awkward, shy college student, the cocky businessman, the down-on-his-luck guy who works packing boxes, a pretty, athletic woman, a random truck driver-looking guy, and a young guy who loves doing escape rooms (because of course he does).

All the characters play up to their stereotype throughout the movie, but not in any over-the-top or funny kind of way. The plot is thin…and I mean thinner than Tara Reid on drugs! (Hi-yoooo) It’s got some twists, but they’re not half as intricate as the escape rooms they designed for this thing. Overall, it’s really the most disappointing thing about the movie, because the escape rooms are fun enough, with plenty of suspense to keep you guessing when a character might get knocked off. Of course, like a Rube Goldberg machine, things happen that, in turn, set off other events within the room that cause chaos and destruction, torturing our heroes as we cheer for them to make it out alive. Each room is well-designed, shuffling from one type of atmosphere (outdoors in the cold) right into another (a billiards bar). It’s just that the writers focused all their attention on the rooms themselves and forgot to add the same kind of dynamic to the story, from the initial character introductions and foreshadowing to the dull conclusion.  

Look, you have two choices: either you want to see people escape from these rooms, risking life and limb, or you want to do an escape room yourself. Both are good options, and both will kill around two hours. Should you spend $20 and see Escape Room in theaters? Probably not. Is it worth renting when you have nothing else to watch? Yeah. Is it better for your brain to solve puzzles on your own instead? Of course! Just don’t expect too much out of either, because the prize at the end is rarely worth it—unless the escape room you finish gives you cash…cash or like LEGO sets or something, then it’s totally worth it.

Why You’ll Never Have to Worry About an Invasion of Undead Zombies

Zombies are THE most popular movie monsters in history. Since Night of the Living Dead came out in the 60s, way too many movies have focused on hoards of the undead taking over the world and mindlessly eating anything with a pulse (my personal favorite of the last few years was Zombeavers, a film where—you guessed it—deadly zombie beavers terrorize some kids in the woods). It even spawned The Zombie Survival Guide, a national bestseller, with some believing that there could eventually be a zombie apocalypse in the near future. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s hogwash and you all should be ashamed of yourselves. What gives me the right to shame you like that? I know enough about basic biology to tell you why there could never be such a thing as a bloodthirsty, undead mammals. Remember, undead is key here, as there are plenty of bloodthirsty mammals in this world (lawyers, for instance).

So, where to start? The most noticeable thing about the undead is that they don’t breathe or circulate blood, yet some of them seem to move even faster than healthy people. These two things run counter to each other in obvious ways: we need oxygen to breathe and we need to remove carbon dioxide in order to remain alive. These two molecules circulate through our blood and our lungs, taking in oxygen and removing carbon dioxide. In zombies, none of that occurs, so oxygen never gets to the cells and carbon dioxide is never removed. In normal humans, lack of oxygen can affect the body in many ways, but the worst way is by killing your brain cells, the same ones that coordinate thought and movement.

Why does the lack of oxygen kill brain cells in the first place? Well, oxygen is used for a very specific function in the cells: its main purpose is to donate electrons to the electron transport chain, which generates something called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is the primary molecule used for energy in every cell of your body. So, no oxygen means very little ATP generation. There are ways, such as glycolysis, which make ATP but don’t require oxygen, but your brain can’t subsist on glycolysis for long. It needs oxygen and, if it doesn’t get it within minutes, cells start to die. But they don’t just slowly whither away because they don’t have enough energy to perform their basic tasks. Some of these cells actively kill themselves via something called apoptosis—a coordinated cellular program that involves multiple factors signaling to the cell to cut it up into little pieces.

After all that, you’d be left with a zombie that’s pretty well braindead. I mean, it goes along with what they are, but how would you coordinate even basic movement without a brain? All functions run through nerves that link your muscles to your brain, which dictates movement. But suppose for the sake of argument that a poorly functioning brain could be induced via virus or something to stimulate enough nerves to move your body parts. Early on, those body parts would be way too stiff to move, and later, once they’re relaxed, you’d never generate any force to move them. Another funny side effect of having very little ATP is rigor mortis. In your muscles, there are proteins that work throughout your muscle fibers, called actin and myosin, that form something of a molecular lever. The actin-myosin complex generates force on its own, and it releases its stiff posture through ATP binding. So, ATP binding is actually needed to relax your muscles, and when there isn’t any, your muscles just seize up. Eventually, your proteins will just degrade without any ATP to make new ones through RNA and protein synthesis.

And there you have it. There will never be any undead human zombies in your or my lifetime (or ever). You can now frame that survival book and sell your intricately designed and well-stocked zombie shelter because you don’t need it. It was all in your imagination. Now, when it comes to LIVING flesh-eating human zombies, you may want to stay indoors.

Feast: The concentrated charm of Disney in just 6 minutes

I initially bought Feast—NOT the horror movie featuring Jay from Jay and Silent Bob—for $2 on the PS Network way back when my first son was around 2 years old. We’ve had a boston terrier for 6 years (she’s almost 10 years old herself and her hair is turning so grey) and we love her very much, even though she has bad skin allergies, steals my kids’ food all the damn time (NICKIE!@#$%), and smells awful when she scratches. When we saw the same kind of dog on the thumbnail for a Disney movie, we laughed and agreed that it had to be bought. Over the last 2 years, it’s probably the best thing I’ve purchased from the PS Network, games included.

The short film, which lasts around 6 minutes, revolves around the life of a dog, Winston, who lives life on the street eating scraps until a man finds him and gives him a home. From there, we see the developing relationship between the man and his girlfriend in flashes through the eyes of Winston, who’s only concern is eating delicious junk food. That’s the gist of the short and I wouldn’t want to say much more for fear of ruining the cute, quirky little surprises they inject into the 6-minute run time.

If you liked Wall-E or Up, you’ll for sure like this little tiny short. It’s Disney at it’s best, taking a heartfelt story, breaking it into visually stunning and emotional moments that almost anyone can relate to, and winding it up into a cohesive whole that’s fun to watch for every single second. It's use of Winston as an onlooker around the central theme of love and life is expertly done, focusing on the people around the dog while making them secondary players at the same time. And just like Wall-E and the flashback scene from Up, which used barely any actual dialogue, Feast barely uses any either, relying on expressions and the cinematography to carry the full weight of the story. For 6 minutes, there’s enough ups and downs to keep everyone’s eyes glued to it, whether you’re a grown adult with children or just a kid yourself.

EDIT: This post originally stated that Pixar produced Feast, which it sure as hell looks like it had. Anyway, this has been corrected to Disney. Apologies to all those I've offended.

Bird Box: Won't somebody please think of the children?!

There are some things to like about Bird Box, the movie where weird aliens/monsters descend upon Earth and cause anyone who sees them to commit suicide. There are also some things that are truly dumb and silly and make you roll your eyes—just look at that picture! They’re rowing down a river blindfolded! All considered, though, it’s a typical end-of-the-world monster movie with a story that has fresh (well, sort of fresh) ideas but doesn’t really find a meaningful conclusion for them to go to. 

So, the story revolves around Sandra Bullock—totally forgetting what her name in the movie is, which isn’t a great sign, for either the movie or my memory…oh yeah, Malorie—as she traverses a river with her two kids, Girl and Boy (not shitting you, these are the names Malorie has given the two children), blindfolded so that the movie’s monsters don’t look into her eyes and cause her to kill herself. The rest is told in flashbacks to explain how her and the two kids got there, beginning with her visit to the doctor, where things start to go haywire and people start offing themselves in the street. That initial set up is also pretty bland, regurgitating things you’ve seen before in an end-of-the-world movie. There’s nothing particularly fresh about it, with things that might disturb you only if you’ve never seen any recent horror movie ever. People die and survivors are forced to fend for themselves. What a novel idea! One of them even believes in hokie-pokie mythological gods or something! What?

Anyway, there are two things that the movie does well, and that’s make it somewhat suspenseful and make Malorie’s journey atypical. The suspense is pretty straightforward, from hidden monsters lurking around trying to effectively kill people to our heroes being blindfoldedly navigating obstacles, some of which are just really too stupid to ever ever ever try (please, don’t take part in the Bird Box challenge and try driving a car blindfolded, there’s no way you’ll make three feet down the road). Malorie’s storyline is somewhat interesting in that from the beginning, she’s reluctantly pregnant. She doesn’t really want kids or the responsibility that goes with them, making the fact that she’s now responsible for keeping two of them alive during a monster infestation even more strenuous. It’s an interesting idea and, to the detriment of the film, it isn’t explored in nearly the amount of depth that it needed to be. Most of the film focuses on Malorie right before she gives birth, making her relationship with her kids vague at best, showing you only one or two scenes of how she handles it from day-to-day. I wish I could get to know the kids, because they’re only really dangled like pieces of meat for the grinder, making their names Girl and Boy actually kind of fitting in the grand scheme of things. I laughed when I found out that those were their names, as if the director couldn’t tell the audience in a more direct way, “THIS WOMAN DISLIKES CHILDREN,” but really, why not? There’s absolutely nothing about them that makes them special in the movie, except that they make stupid decisions at bad times because the movie needs suspense. Now if you think about it that way…the suspense is cheapened by the manipulative dangling of the kids. I guess it’s filmed well, though.

If you like Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich, you could do worse than Bird Box. It’s got good production and interesting ideas. I just didn’t get too into it, because every time a fresh idea would appear, it would get cut off at the bud. A better way to have written the script is to forget about the flashbacks and give the audience something more concrete to hold on to, like a tense, lifelike relationship between Malorie and her kids. The backstory provided too much filler and not enough atmosphere, a glaring problem for an apocalyptic tale that requires a bit of world building to keep you intrigued. By the end, no matter what the final destination was for the characters, I didn't really care all that much. 

A Simple Favor: Nailed it!

I imagine A Simple Favor was intended to be as neat and pretty as the stuff Anna Kendrick bakes in the movie. The movie is basically a mash-up of two genres: mystery and quirky, screwball comedy. From the start, both seem to work pretty well, and I was laughing along with the crowd I watched the movie with (all 2 other people) within the first 15 minutes. So, the quirky, screwball comedy part checked out initially and drew us in. Once one of the main characters goes missing early on and the mystery surrounding her sets in, it’s also pretty fun to figure out what happened and what secrets the movie is setting up for you. The ingredients were all there for a pretty spectacular and insane final product. And…well, that’s where it goes right off the rails into something so bad that it reminded me of those cakes from Nailed It (that show where terrible bakers try to make artistic desserts).

Elaborating too much on the plot isn’t something I can really do in this review without spoilering it. The premise begins with a geeky mom, Stephanie (Anna Kendrick), who befriends another mom at her son’s school, Emily (Blake Lively). Emily is the exact opposite of the timid, down-to-earth Stephanie, as she drinks heavily, works a high-profile job in fashion, swears all over the place, and manipulates people at a whim. Their friendship is mostly played for laughs at how different the two are, which is probably what made the movie so appealing at the start, since they both have a pretty fun chemistry together. Unfortunately for the audience, their friendship is cut short as Stephanie is asked to pick up Emily’s kid after school one day and realizes that Emily is missing, which sets Stephanie off on a quest to figure out what happened. That all happens early on, so it’s not messing with what happens later on, but it gives a good idea of what you’re dealing with if you do choose to watch A Simple Favor.

To fairly judge this movie, I don’t even think you need to know the rest of what happens. They mix in mystery with a performance from Anna Kendrick that’s mostly comedic, somewhat dramatic, and altogether likable. There are enough twists and turns to keep you invested as the story plays itself out in real-time and in flashbacks that explain what happened. It’s the endgame that was really a problem for the movie that wastes all the mystery and suspense built up over an hour—the writers were building towards something big and then they pooped all over it. The film doesn’t raise any dramatic stakes, mixing in too much quirk at the end, and flops all over the place, not sure how to really tie the strings together to make something coherent that shocks the audience. The only thing really keeping you watching is Anna Kendrick; she keeps the whole thing moving along as she gets feistier and feistier. Damn, though, if that ending isn’t some cake that looks beautiful when someone competent makes it (think those old 80s or 90s thrillers) but looks like it was smushed to an unrecognizable, dumb mess here.

Prior to watching A Simple Favor, I had heard good reviews but neglected to look up what the movie was about. I’m glad I ordered it online, as it was entertaining enough for a crowd of 3 to sit through the entire thing on a weeknight. It’s definitely not an 85% movie as Rotten Tomatoes would have you believe, though. It mashes two types of films together and presents something to you that’s half-finished, as if the writers didn’t have enough time to really flesh out the ah-hah! moments that a good mystery needs and coated it with comedy to hide some of those faults. I mean…I liked it, but only as much as someone who doesn’t know how to bake can make a gigantic volcano cake with dinosaurs and lava.

Jurassic Park and Jurassic World: Why can't we clone dinosaurs yet?

I’ll preface this blog by stating that I have a Ph.D. in biology with post-doc experience too. I’m not an expert in the field of cloning, however, so there may be people who disagree with the arguments I’m stating. To those people, I say…put it in the comments, I’d love to hear from you! If you’d also like more info about some of the details because you don’t own a science background, you can also post it in the comments and I’ll respond promptly. Also, I know they're movies and that they're not meant to be realistic, but that definitely isn't going to stop me from making you think about how silly the idea of cloning dinosaurs is. 

Now then, nearly everyone who enjoys movies has seen both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World (hereto referred as JP and JW), including me. JP is a series built on the premise that humans could effectively clone dinosaurs from bits of DNA hidden in the preserved blood of mosquitos. They were both pretty great movies (although the most recent sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, wasn’t great), with THE most memorable animals ever developed for film. The dinos from JP had so much personality and were so realistic that I remember people debating how feasible it was to create them way back in the 1990s. Still, some have been talking about bringing old creatures back to life, like the wooly mammoth, which lived thousands—not millions—of years ago. Dinosaurs, however, are an altogether different thing.

Look how tiny that velociraptor is!

I’d like to assume that people reading this blog know what dinosaurs are, but I won’t assume that they know everything about dinosaurs, so I’ll take the educational road and give the details I’ve learned after reading books to my dino-obsessed 4-year-old son. Dinosaurs lived around 250 to 65 million years ago in the Mesozoic era, which is divided into three different periods: Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. Jurassic Park doesn’t actually mean anything, since most of the dinosaurs it focuses on lived in the Cretaceous period, especially Tyrannosaurus Rex, which lived at the end of the Cretaceous. They were basically reptiles with specific types of hip bones that walked on land, some had feathers, and eventually evolved into birds (fun fact: animals like the pterodactyl and mosasaurus aren’t actually dinosaurs!). Dinosaurs and a whole swath of other creatures ultimately went extinct, though no one is sure exactly why (probably a giant meteor combined with a rise in volcanic activity and the fact that it took dinosaurs an exceptionally long time to gestate). Also, the velociraptors in the films aren’t really velociraptors, but probably a mix between the pack-hunting deinonychus and a utahraptor.

The science behind JP and JW involves taking mosquitos fossilized in amber, harvesting the blood they sucked from dinosaurs, purifying the DNA from the blood, and cloning dinosaurs in what can effectively be called top-down synthetic biology (basically, using a shell, like a bacterial cell without DNA for instance, to insert genetic material you know works and creating a new lifeform from it). From a scientific perspective, there is so much wrong with all this wtf. First of all, how does anyone know that the DNA they’re looking at comes from a dinosaur? No one knows the first thing about dinosaur DNA, yet they somehow identify it as belonging to X dinosaur species. How do they even know how many chromosomes it has? I can maybe see how they might differentiate dinosaur DNA from any sort of unicellular bacteria that might also be in the sample, but still. There would only be one way to verify the sample and that’s trying to clone the DNA into a nucleus-free cell and seeing what sort of animal you’d get. Now, say you wanted to try this approach and clone the animal, which basically means taking the DNA from somatic cells (like muscle cells or anything that’s not a gamete, like sperm or eggs), and replacing the DNA from a fertilized egg with the somatic DNA, then letting it grow inside the uterus of the animal. You need a fertilized egg from the same species of animal and you need to let it grow inside the uterus of the same species. You might try to remove the DNA from a fertilized egg from another kind of reptile, then let it grow inside the egg until it hatches. But how big should the egg be so that the embryo develops normally? Will it get the proper nutrients inside a lizard egg? Maybe you can make synthetic eggs and artificially supply nutrients, but you still don’t know the size or nutritional requirements for the animal to grow. It might work, but it’s unlikely you’d find just the perfect situation for this DNA to produce a living, breathing animal without complications.

An example of how complicated regulating gene
expression can be.

This brings us to our most bizarre plot twist: they say that to make a new dinosaur, they need to “fill in the holes” with the DNA of other animals. With regards to genetic engineering, that they need to fill in the holes of the genetic code with DNA from frogs and other animals is puzzling. How do they know that the genetic code needs filling in, since they’ve obviously never seen dino DNA before? What parts need filling in? And how are they filling it in? I suppose the how is actually the easiest part of the whole bonanza. Assuming they needed a few genes to insert into the genome, they could pretty efficiently modify the genome using CRISPR, a gene editing technique that’s become famous for producing the first ever genetically modified babies. First, they’d need to sequence the entire genome of the dinosaur, find the appropriate area to insert a gene, and devise constructs that they could insert. You wouldn’t insert them directly into any “holes” per se, but into continuous lengths of DNA that make up chromosomes. So, if you want spikes (I'm looking at you, triceratops hybrid from my son's JW book), you could theoretically insert the gene for spikes into the dino genome when it was only a fertilized embryo, before implantation into an artificial egg. HOWEVER, this is extremely short-sighted as there are probably numerous genes that coordinate to produce spikes, so you’d need to know how the entire system worked, then insert it ALL into the right spot in the genome to have an organism that produces spikes in the right place at the right time. Gene circuits can be extremely complicated, with multiple proteins and other DNA sites (promoters and enhancers) regulating the expression of a gene and its levels, as well as microRNAs that regulate the stability of the transcript you’re producing, and post-translational modifications to the protein of interest. The chance you’d magically find a gene that does what you want it to in an organism that you’ve never worked with before is just…stupid. You’d also have to do it without affecting the rest of the genome and producing any undesirable off-target mutations, which could have pretty unpredictable effects on your dino, like making it more prone to developing tumors (dino cancer, a novel concept!).You'd also have to find the appropriate gene (remember, you've never seen dino DNA before), and you COULD overexpress it during the right period of development, but that would still take a whole lot of time to get right (if it ever worked). And don't get me started on merging two dinosaurs together, like the Indominus, which would produce zero fertilizable embryos. What parts of which genomes did they even decide to incorporate?! My brain is slowly melting...

The likelihood that dinosaurs will be revived within our lifetime is highly improbable, but you never know. People get creative and come up with all sorts of weird things, like robots that feed people tomatoes. Artificial intelligence and 3D bioprinting (which can be used to print living 3D models of tissues) are also avenues that could be used one day to create a reasonable facsimile of a dinosaur, though both technologies are still in their relative infancy, with a long way to go before we can use them to even make functional organs, let alone full dinosaurs. So, the best thing to do in the meantime is to simply wait, get comfortable on your couch, and go re-watch your favorite movies…like JP and JW.

Bandersnatch: DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO

I was excited to finally sit down and watch Bandersnatch this past weekend. Over the last year, I’ve become enamored with games like Until Dawn and Life is Strange, both video games that let you choose how the story is told and what the ultimate fate of the characters will be (for my full review of the excellent Life is Strange, go here). So, when I heard Black Mirror decided to produce something that sounded similar, a choose-your-own-adventure movie, I knew I had to see it. Unfortunately, 15 minutes in, it felt like they backtracked completely and lost all my trust that this would be an experience on par with the games that have done it so well already.

The main story is relatively simple: a young video game designer tries to get his game developed in the 1980s. The game, coincidentally, is about a book that’s also a choose-your-own-adventure. However, something went horribly wrong with the author, and things go awry with our game developer as well. I won’t go too much into the actual plot for fear of spoiling it, but for something with so much apparent choice, you don’t really have much at all. Some of your early choices may get rebuffed and lead you back to the same spot, where the film asks you to click the “right” choice to move on. Right there, I felt as if this story had a problem. If I’m going to watch something where my choices affect what happens onscreen, then let them affect the story in a meaningful way. Let me push my character down an uncertain path and I’ll backtrack myself later if the first iteration is worth following. Even if my choices lead to a similar conclusion, how I get there might be different, and that still has a greater emotional impact on me than making my choice a kind of fake-out. Life is Strange did this very well, working towards an ending that only really has 1 choice, but making everything else along the way affected by my actions. I felt bad about treating certain characters badly in Life is Strange; here, I couldn’t care less.

Now for some spoilers that might clarify what the director might have had in mind: SPOILER WARNING, TURN BACK NOW.

One of the many choices that don't affect anything else. 

So, the whole premise of the story is that the game developer eventually realizes that the audience is controlling him but can’t do anything about it. You can choose for him to kill his dad and that leads to a whole new set of movie choices. These choices all appear to lead to similar conclusions, though, and the movie keeps bringing you back to a given choice, letting you pick a different one, so you can see all the endings, one after another (at least, that’s how I think it works, I didn’t stick around to go back through all my choices). I can understand the high-minded premise that the developer is being manipulated and so is the audience by getting only so many options that all lead back to one conclusion. It’s an interesting premise, if that’s what they were going for. If that was the case, I think they could’ve done something a little more creative with it instead of just having you rewind back to a previous starting point, though I’m not sure how they could’ve made it work better. It also seems like there wasn’t much drama built into the scenario of killing the dad, since the movie ends so soon afterwards, with little suspense as to whether someone will find out or not.

OKAY, YOU CAN COME OUT NOW, SPOILERS ARE FINISHED.

I can see where this type of movie is an interesting exploration of control. I just don’t think they went far enough to really explore anything. Maybe games like Until Dawn and Life is Strange had more resources and time to work with, but they feel like more engrossing experiences, with stories that are written to completion. Bandersnatch felt like it could have used another year in production (writing included), although reading up on how long it took to film, maybe it needed more work conceptually than putting in more time and effort. I can also recognize that there may be 5 different pure endings, but I’m not sure what they are nor was I willing to wait until the end to find out. It’s not the first Netflix show to be choose-your-own-adventure—I know there’s at least a Puss N’ Boots series that has the same feature—but it felt like it desperately wanted us to think about the nature of that relationship. It’s too bad it only really scratched the surface.

Bohemian Rhapsody: Sacha Baron Cohen was so right…

Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t a terrible movie per se. If you like Queen and you don’t mind turning your brain off, you’ll have a ball. However, if you’re a normal person who appreciates any semblance of good storytelling, this one is not for you. In fact, I’m not surprised if the Razzie for worst screenplay goes to this promotional video. It was truly that bad. I’ve never written a screenplay or helped produce a movie, but I can tell you that this is not the film I’d look to for inspiration if I ever wanted to get into the business. For marketing purposes, sure. It makes the band look GREAT. But considering how tragic and complex the life of Freddie Mercury was, it’s a shame it turned out this way.  The movie is basically a polished point-by-point account of the goings on of the band, from their inception to their concert at Live Aid in the 80s. There isn’t much more than that. There are some conflicts along the way, like a music producer who doesn’t believe in the band’s vision and Freddie’s bisexuality turning him into the tamest party animal you’ve ever seen on film, which causes a rift between himself and his girl. Nothing is ever truly explored though, because every time some conflict arises, it gets settled somehow by the band members showing the audience how they came up with a brand-new hit song followed by several minutes of the band playing to bigger and bigger crowds. Freddie’s loneliness and hidden sexuality are portrayed in such a glossed-over way that I can’t possibly see it being as simple as the movie made it out to be. There’s barely any mention of drugs, for crying out loud! And I just came upon this article, which tells you all you need to know about why this movie is worth skipping: they left out every interesting story and replaced it with lip service to the remaining band members, who get to be the heroes.

If you like Queen and their music, this movie might be worth your time. They have some inspiring recreations of their sets, though I think I’d still rather watch the YouTube clip of Queen at Live Aid than the re-enactment here. It’s fun and all, but they focus so much on random extras rocking out that it feels kind of cheap, taking away from the actors who are doing a serviceable job to inject some energy into the film. You don’t go to a concert to see the audience up close either, and I sure as hell don’t care to see people cheering the band on in a bar. The Live Aid scene also goes on for quite a while; it felt like 15 minutes of watching them play, which was bothersome but might play well with those coming for the music.

Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t a BAD movie. It’s well-produced, decently acted, and has a positive message. I just can’t get over how disingenuous it all is to the legacy of Freddie Mercury, who probably would have bared it all for the camera in the name of showmanship and honesty. Without the whole true story of Freddie, the entire thing becomes an after-school special that’s as lazily written as anything I’ve ever seen. That Sacha Baron Cohen ditched the production when the band members vetoed his ideas about centering the film around Mercury is telling. The band wanted the movie to be about Queen, not Freddie, but when it all comes down to it, well…the band’s story is pretty much all about Freddie, no matter how you spin it. Otherwise, the whole production felt like a sham meant to cater to the band, which is too bad, because Freddie really deserved better.