Monthly Archives: August 2018

Movie Review – Crazy Rich Asians

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TL;DR – During the film, I along with the whole cinema, laughed, cried, gasp ‘oh no you didn’t and I can’t remember a film that had that same reaction

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene

Crazy Rich Asians. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

There are some films that simply be being made are making a statement of intent. These are films like last year’s Black Panther (see review) and Wonder Women (see review), films that “conventional” Hollywood wisdom states that they shouldn’t be made because they won’t make any money. There is a long history of information coming from focus groups that people are not interested in films helmed by women and people of colour, information which is inevitable proven wrong time after time when the box office numbers are released. To put this in perspective, the last live-action film from Hollywood to feature a predominately Asian cast was The Joy Luck Club twenty-five years ago in 1993. This means a whole generation of people have grown up and not seen their stories or people like themselves up on the big screen, and well folks this is why representation matter. So while Crazy Rich Asians is important for just existing, it is even more power from the fact that it is also a fantastic film in its own right and one of my films of the year so far.

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Movie Review – Mirai (Mirai no Mirai, 未来のミライ)

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TL;DR – Mirai is a film that ricochets from one emotion to the next, from joy, to despair, from excitement, to an existential crisis, but at no point does it lose its heart, and that is such a tough act to get right.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Mirai. Image Credit: Studio Chizu/Madman

Review –

Have you ever walking into a film with absolutely no idea what it was going to be about? No TV ads, no trailers, no opinion peaches, a complete blind experience. For me, it has only truly happened once with The Forbidden Kingdom. Well, today I have another entry for that list with Mirai. Not only did I have no idea what it was going to be about, I had no idea it was about to hit me in the feels in a very complex way.

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Movie Review – The Happytime Murders

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TL;DR – Take everything wrong with Bright, smash it into Who Framed Roger Rabbit with all the charm removed, and sprinkle in some jokes about puppet sex and you pretty much have this film.

Score – 1.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is some behind the scenes footage during the credits

The Happytime Murders: Image Credit: STK Films/Roadshow Films

Review –

Well … that was an experience, I’ll tell you that much. I mean it has a lot of bits that usually I really like, like the noir setting, a ‘who done it’ mystery, and a story that is wanting to subvert a genre. I also really like Melissa McCarthy as an actor, and well they also upset Sesame Street and well that’s interesting all in itself. However, none of this matters because at no point does the film come together and at best it hits moments of being mediocre.

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Map-It Civilization VI: Full Map

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TL;DR – Every single feature of Civilization 6 (at time of posting) in one map

Civilization VI Full Map

Article –

I had been asked a couple of times whenever I posted my Civ 6 maps or my Civ 6 city maps why didn’t I combine them all into the one map? Well, the simple reason is that right back at the start I tried but it just was not feasible. I had tried to add all the cities into America and they didn’t fit, which made the prospects of adding countries like France or The Aztecs next to impossible. However, After Rise and Fall was released and I went through and created a new map from the template I was working with I wondered if it was possible to upscale it to a size where I could fit in the Netherlands. The Netherlands was the most are compact civilization in the game so far so it became my bellwether and it worked and thus began the long, long process of putting this map together. This was a process with just as many success as well as failures, however after all that work, here it is.

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TV Review – Disenchantment: Season One

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TL;DR – What we get is a series with some interesting moments and characters, but feels more of a prologue to something than a season in its own right

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

 

Disenchantment. Image Credit: Netflix/Rough Draft Studios

 

Review –

When you think over the parody genre, it is surprising that there are not more quality entries into it. Part of this is because many take the easy way out and just fill their shows with pop-culture references that instantly date them. To really do a parody justice you really have to understand the genre and works you are parodying to an almost obsessive level. These are your Galaxy Quests, and your 22 Jump Streets. Today we take a look at a new series working in this territory Disenchantment which delves into the myriads of tropes around the Fantasy genre, and mostly succeeds. Now we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Movie Review – To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

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TL;DR – It looks at the complicated emotions of love and how we respond to it.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene

To All the Boys I've Loved Before. Image Credit: Netflix

Review –

The teen romance is a genre that use to be very popular but you don’t see it as much anymore in recent times. Part of the reason is that quite often these were the mid-tier films falling between Indy and Blockbusters that got squeezed out of oblivion in the rush for everyone to make their tent pole crossover franchises. Also the genre has gone through some shifts in the wake of works like John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars. However, as people realise that the big multi-film franchise can’t happen all the time, we have started to see the resurgence of these mid-tier budget films and all of this brings us to today’s film To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before a Young Adult/Coming of Age film about love and loss and the need to hide your letters better from well-meaning but potentially destructive siblings.

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TV Review – Disenchantment: A Princess, an Elf, and a Demon Walk Into a Bar

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TL;DR – An interesting start that gives us a real direction as to the tone and where the series is going.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

 

Disenchantment. Image Credit: Netflix/Rough Draft Studios

 

Review –

I was coming into Disenchantment with a bit of a mixed mind as I have an interesting relationship with Matt Groening’s work. When I was growing up we were not allowed to watch The Simpsons so when you did see it at a friend’s place it was this little rebellion, so I hold some of those early episodes to be quite dear to me. However, I can’t tell you the last episode I watched, at this point, I could be over seven seasons behind. On the flip side, while all this was happening Futurama came and went, and then came again and then went again, and I would count it in the top ten TV Shows I have ever seen. So where would Disenchantment fall? Well from the first episode we can see that it is at least going to be interesting.

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Movie Review – BlacKkKlansman

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TL;DR – Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is at times hilarious, at times deeply provoking, and at no time will it hold your hand as it explores the deep centred racism in America (spoiler: it is not just America)

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

BlacKkKlansman. Image Credit: Focus Features/Universal Pictures

Review –

I was not one hundred per cent sure what it was that I was getting myself into when I walked into to see BlacKkKlansman. I knew it was about a black police officer infiltrating the KKK and that it was based on a true story but that was about it. Spike Lee is a filmmaker whose work I am unfortunately not that familiar with, so was this going to be a comedy, was it going to play it straight, was it going to do both while being deeper for it? Well with that in mind let’s take a look at the race relations of the 1970s which in no way reflects on America of today … in no way …

So to set the scene, in 1972 Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is hired as the first black police officer in Colorado Springs. While this is meant to be a step forward for race relations, Ron is hidden away in the records room taking abuse from his fellow police officers. That is until one day an important African-Amerian activist Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins) comes to town and they need someone to go undercover at the speech and well every other member of the police force would stand out. It is here where he meets Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier) one of the event organisers, and listens to the speech which focuses on promoting the cause of African people from white oppression, up to and including armed resistance. Happy with his success the police decide to move Ron into the intelligence division and on his first day he responds to an ad in the paper about a new KKK chapter starting up in the town. One slight problem, just a small thing really, but it kind of won’t work if they ever have a face to face meeting. So Ron enlists officer Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), Ron is Ron on the phone, and Flip is Ron in person, and all of it flows from there.

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Movie Review – Vitamania: The Sense and Nonsense of Vitamins

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TL;DR – Where this documentary excels is in both illuminating complicating an issue, namely vitamins, that many people take for granted which are part of that is $100 Billion dollar industry with very little or in some cases no regulation.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Vitamania. Image Credit: Screen Australia/SBS

Review –

As a society, I really feel that we are becoming more and more attuned to what it is we are putting in our bodies and the negative consequences that could have. We’ve had the discussions about fat, salt, carbs, and most recently sugar, however, in all those discussions have we missed something that we need to have to give that same level of scrutiny to. This is, of course, vitamins and I think you would have already guessed from the title of the documentary. Many of us take all sorts of dietary supplements, but are they actually beneficial for us? This is the question that the documentary helmed by Sonya Pemberton and hosted by Derek Muller is out to explore. This is a question that I am interested in myself as I grew up taking vitamins and as an adult there is a lot of noise in this issue ranging from “You are just making expensive pee” to “You are killing yourself if you don’t” and it is difficult to work out what is the reality. Which is what this documentary sets out to do through information, interviews, case studies, and the occasional song.

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Movie Review – The Spy Who Dumped Me

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TL;DR – At times deeply funny, and also quite shocking, while it doesn’t quite reach fantastic it is clear that a lot of talent and care has gone into the film, even though the full frontal nudity and language will be a barrier for many.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There are mid-credit scenes

Image Credit: Lionsgate

Review –

This was actually quite a bit of a surprise, there had been a lot of bad buzz about the film floating around, and I honestly had no idea what to expect of the film other than the most blatant rip off of a Bond title since Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. However, the one thing that was clear from the first few minutes is that a lot of care has gone into the construction of this film, because there is a lot they could have phoned it in, but no they put the effort in.

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