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⭐7/10 It's western season baby! Opening this summer with what many consider to be the best ever made, Sergio Leone's magnum opus. While I agree it's got plenty of style, and Morricone's score is as good as ever, this movie fell short of their other greats for me.  First off, this movie is absurdly slow. I would actually say this was like what Pluribus was for the Gilligan. Leone has always been methodical in his directing, but this was simply too much. The opening is 15 silent minutes of cowboys being bored, passing time, and while I respect the boldness of such a move, it should have ended there. This movie is 3 hours and felt like 4. It was a pretty tight story, and the movie structurally was a lot like A Few Dollars more, a movie I loved. But that movie was much shorter and sharper, and while I appreciated the patience of this one, letting us get fully immersed and invested in a sweaty, grimy, hot west, my patience ran thin by the end. Another issue, I th...

⭐9/10 What a lucky break for Chalamet in that he could play himself in a movie! He was born for this role! I admit, as a leader of the Chalamet haters club, he absolutely rocked it in this one. This is a movie about an absolute piece of shit human being trying to be the best at ping pong. I disagree with Tim's take that there is much push and pull here, that his charm overcomes his insufferability, and I don't think there's really ever a moment where I thought, hey maybe he's not so bad! Not that I think that was his takeaway, but I think this movie is less about a man's pursuit of greatness, but more an exploration of complete narcism and ways we justify selfishness, even to ourselves.  I didn't really find myself cheering for him because I wanted him to succeed, but more because you see how much stock he puts into all of this, and seeing him fail would be painful like seeing a man burn alive no matter who it is. Still, I think you can't help bu...

⭐10/10 Again, I just finished watching the movie shortly after reading the book, but it's not the first time I've seen it though it's been a while. It's a Coen Bros adaptation, and they seem to follow the source material super carefully for books they adapt. I think McCarthy pretty much writes screenplays with his novels so it works really well, but for that reason it's hard to deferentiate the two mediums. I think the Coens go for a bit of a dark-comedy style horror movie, making it a bit lighter than the book, but essentially it's the same thing nearly line for line.  I give most of my thoughts on the story in my book review, so I'll try to keep this a little more brief. To summarize my thoughts: it's a perfect movie, and Javier Bardem gives one of the most iconic performances for a villain ever. And yes, the haircut is the most terrifying thing about him.  That first confrontation between the two main characters stood out to me as a perfec...

⭐ 9/10 This is a documentary about the biggest chess scandal of 2022! I followed this story very closely at the time, and I found this retelling really excellent in laying out all the players and external factors. Basically Magnus is the GOAT, lost to Hans who is a cocky young American, then threw a fit and quit the tournament and accused him of cheating. The fallout was immediate, Twitch streams deep diving how he could have possibly cheated, with the joke becoming that he used anal beads. I loved how this documentary made no one the good guys. The leaders of chess.com, a site I despise, are first shown throwing around kettle bells and being like, we don't look like your average chess players. Yes you do! Cocky and cringey. Anyways, they run the worlds biggest chess site, and are completely beaming talking about this scandal because it coincided with COVID and Queen's Gambit, which led to a huge surge in usage on their site. All publicity is good publicity for them, even if i...

⭐ 7.5/10 Relatively low score, similar to how I felt about the first season, but that doesn't take away from my awe at this project. The amount of work to Truman-show somebody like this is crazy, the amount of planning and expense alone, only in the age of billion-dollar tech companies making TV could this happen. The idea is the same as the first season, some dude is hired as an intern at a hot sauce company, goes on their company retreat, but doesn't realize everyone else is an actor. They put him in a million awkward or high-pressure situations and we watch as he figures things out. I think this setup is worse than the first season, since jury duty is more self contained, and I can see that guy actually believing what he is experiencing is real. Anthony in this season literally expresses a bunch of times "this feels like a movie or something", which they laugh about in the end but I think is an indictment. If that was me I would be searching for cameras everywhere...

⭐ 10/10 This is still basically the only kids show we watch, and this final season was tremendous. The same still holds, I love the animation and the voice acting and the compact episodes, but there were a couple episodes here that have become trademark episodes in this house. There is one about contractors (tradies) who come to build a pond in their backyard, while the girls spy on them. We had contractors in our house at the time we saw this and Ezra was obsessed with the episode, we watched it every night for probably a month and I still never got tired of it. Seeing everyday things through the imagination of kids is the power of this show, but weaving in intrigue for the parents is always present. There is another one about their aunt coming to visit, and its clear she doesn't come very often. The reason for this broke my heart, something relatable to many adults in our life, my heart just aches thinking about how Bluey's mom explains to the kids why its hard for her to vi...

⭐8/10 This is a coming-of-age movie about an 8th grade Chinese-American kid. I think it's phenomenal and reminded me a ton of other great coming-of-age movies like Eighth Grade or to a lesser extent Lady Bird, but because those movies already exist, I certainly found it a little harder to be blown away. An authentic depiction of the hell that is early adolescence might not be novel at this point, but I will say that this one still stood out to me a bit because it's a young boy this time, and it takes place in 2008. Hey, that little guy was me!  I don't think I have a ton to add. I thought the writing was a little questionable to start, but gets better. I thought all of the child actors were totally serviceable and the dialogue pretty authentic to what I remembered at that age, though they tend to mix a lot of 2008 slang with modern, gen-z slang.  Still, it's a good movie about navigating puppy love, appreciating your mom who is fighting her own battles, even...

⭐8/10 This was a show made just for me. Food, travel, and two of my favorite hobbits come together to make a wonderful, wholesome tv series. I have followed these two sporadically since Lord of the Rings, and I think they're pretty talented! They have pretty great chemistry after years and years of being friends, they're pretty funny and they're good with guests.  They explore some creative locations and I appreciated the in-depth look at the culture of the places they visit. For instance they go to Texas and so they go to a high school football game or a state fair and get fried stuff at concession stands. They go to Switzerland and visit places where they make cheese, go to remote Costa Rica and visit tortilla makers or coffee roasters. I think they do an awesome job of travelling off the beaten path and I think I learned some things watching this show. This isn't just going to the big cities and visiting the Michelin star restaurants, though they do that ...

     This is the first fiction book I've ever read that was written by a non-speaking autistic person, which immediately caught my attention. It revolves around Upward Bound, a daycare for adults with disabilities. Each chapter focuses on a different person who is a client there, works there, or is connected to it in some way. The central character is Walter, who seems to be closely based on the author himself, as he is also non-speaking but has a university degree and aspires to be an author. Through the different characters, we get a lot of looks at the people who make up a place like Upward Bound, as well as how it's run.     There's so much about this book that I found revelatory and thought-provoking. Through Walter we get to learn about the inner life of someone who isn't able to communicate in traditional ways, having to rely on a spelling board and someone trained in that form of communication, but because Upward Bound doesn't have the resources to suppl...

⭐9/10 This is now my second McCarthy book and I am a believer. What a bold, unique talent he is, and I wish I would have gotten to his stuff earlier. It's everything I like in books, a literary look at big-picture stuff like the nature of violence and greed, the soul of a nation, death and morality, all told in nice prose that can turn on the jets when needed.  This is also the second book in a row I read which was adapted into an all-time great movie, so I had a bit more context with which to understand it. Unlike the Godfather, I think there is a bit more going on under the surface. Even when a major character basically has a multi-chapter monologue at the end, I still wasn't totally sure what this book was trying to say, but it gives you plenty to think about and I think questions are always more valuable in art than answers.  I think this book works on a lot of levels with an engrossing plot and vivid characters. Chigurh is an all-time movie villain, but his ro...

⭐10/10 There is no way I can have a normal opinion about this movie. Jess recommended it as one to watch with an edible, and so while we were fairly zooted, we were pretty much dying the entire runtime of this movie. It is a mockumentary about show dog handlers as they prepare for a big show, and they are predictably all deranged and ridiculous.  It is a very, very strange movie with a sense of humor that is hard to describe. It felt very Tim Heidecker to me, lots of following strange people saying strange things, much of it presumably improvised. It opens with a couple in a therapy session talking about how their family dynamic has not been the same ever since their dog walked in on them having sex, and then it gets weirder and weirder from there. It features a ton of amazing names from Jennifer Coolidge, Parker Posey, to Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara (once again) being the most dysfunctional couple ever recorded. It also features a Cam-and-Mitchell type couple whic...

⭐10/10 Again, I don't need to tell anyone that this movie is a masterpiece. However, unlike part 1, I was really thinking that this one would fall short of the original. It has been at least a decade since I've watched it and forgot most of the details, and my primary thought while watching was that it was a beautifully shot movie with awesome locations, that it features awesome actors giving compelling performances, but ultimately that it was too long and the main characters too tiresome. I thought it lacked the sun that was Marlon Brando that everything else could orbit around.  The ending of this movie proved me wrong. Spoiler warning for both 1 and 2.  I'll try to keep this a little more brief because nobody needs my thoughts on this movie in 2026, but yeah, my main complaint was that Michael was too unlikeable and his insistence on certain principles too tiring to hold me for over 200 minutes of a movie. He's a terrific character, and that glower is unm...

⭐9/10 It's been a long time since I've read a theology book, but I decided to visit one from my good friend Greg Boyd. Nobody has had a bigger influence on the way I think about the Bible than Greg, and I will admit that I am so familiar with his theology that very little in this book jumped out to me. I've heard pretty much every argument he makes here in some lecture or sermon or podcast at some point, but still it was good to catch up on these points.  This book is an attempt to make sense of the horrifying violence of the Old Testament. Greg's main argument is that the God that appears in the Old Testament often seems completely inconsistent with his character revealed in the person of Jesus, so how do we reckon with it? He goes through some of the options that scholars have put forth, ranging from disregarding the OT to attempting to justify the violence as a form of righteous love, but has trouble accept theories similar to the former because Jesus him...

⭐10/10 For a decade I've tried to search out games that Jess and I can play together, and I've had a little success! She's reluctantly agreed to play things like DC Online, we had a ton of fun playing Overcooked and Mario, and I created a monster when I introduced her to Stardew. But this game is the first I feel like we've been truly obsessed with, putting all else aside to get a few sessions in. Surely my devoted followers have noticed my lack of movie reviews this month - it's because we can't get enough of Sunderfolk! This is a tactical RPG released by Secret Door and published by Dreamhaven which are all teams filled with ex-Blizzard personnel, the team that brought us pretty much every classic from the mid-90s to the mid-2010s. They have always been innovators, and Sunderfolk is kinda the first game of its kind. It is a multiplayer game that you get on console or PC, and then each player uses their phone as a controller, but all look at the sha...

⭐7.5/10 This is a collection of Japanese manga short horror stories. So ya know, a bit different than my usuals! I should also mention that I got this free at a little library in Toronto which is super cool, and I read it pretty quickly.  It's super hard for me to know how to rate this. I have zero context with which to place it. I had heard the name Junji Ito before, but this is actually the first manga of any type that I've ever read. On the one hand, I really enjoyed it and was always happy to go through them, flying through each story in fifteen minutes. On the other, I can't say I felt anything too strongly throughout, and certainly never felt, like, scared. And yet I found these stories quite compelling, some of them super creepy and twisted and like they could be the backdrop for an awesome novel or movie. But my more prevailing thought was that rather than being great short stories, that these were beginnings of ideas that needed to better fleshed out. J...

⭐10/10 You know I had to go back and watch after reading the book. I know I'm not breaking any news by saying this movie is a masterpiece, but this movie is a masterpiece. I can't say I have any specific attachment to the movie, but it's one that I think is truly flawless. The classic lines, the timeless scenes, all delivered by the best actors in perfect roles.  I watched this one for the first time as a teenager and I think it was something of a gateway for me, introducing me to these stronger thematic elements in movies, starting to understand that a story can be told in the subtext, that a movie can say something without saying it. In retrospect the themes aren't exactly subtle, but I think this movie was so popular for a reason as anyone can understand what it's trying to say, but everyone can also acknowledge that it's said with some deftness. I remember getting to that final, striking scene and things all clicking and having one of those silen...

⭐8/10 I think like a lot of people, I didn't realize this was a book before it was a movie, but I'd become interested after Tim's glowing review. I recently came across it at a thrift store and flipped through a few pages while I waited for someone, and then I couldn't put it down! I think that's a pretty rare feeling, but I simply couldn't leave the store without it -- and I feel like that's something a Don would say.  I mostly had that same feeling all through reading it. I think Puzo is a super talented writer and has a bunch of timeless lines here. As Tim mentioned, the movie is a super faithful adaptation and most of the best lines there were here first. The story is of course super compelling and then there are those great literary elements, the classic tale of the fall of man. I mean yeah, it's well-written, it's got plenty of sex and violence, has some literary strength and an examination of the human condition. This is the quinte...

⭐7/10 This title is misleading because this is actually a book that goes through the entire medieval calendar (which I suppose is in the subtitle). I thought it would be more about habits and survival tactics of medieval people, but it's really more about holidays and festivals throughout the year.  No real strong opinion here. It's a good book that's super well researched. It uses a ton of first-hand accounts and so there's lots of quotes with beautiful Anglo-Saxon passages, but this book was too niche even for me.  It was sorta one of those books where I knew most of the more interesting points, and probably won't remember the more obscure ones.  Still, it was short and I never really minded going back to it. Not my favorite book on medieval history and definitely not one I would recommend as an introduction to the subject, but a good one nonetheless. 

⭐10/10 Two Chosen reviews on this blog back to back? What good little church boys this website must host - except no! This show took me years to watch! In fact, I was the one to originally recommend the show to Tim, and here he is reviewing season 4 while I only finished 1. His reward awaits him in heaven.  There are a few reasons I took forever to watch this show, and none of them are the show's fault. We watched it as a devotional of sorts, oftentimes when we missed church (is this me saying I only missed church 8 times in 2 years..?). I found this show super edifying, often giving me a better appreciation of the gospels and the characters in them.  But the bigger reason was that I always felt super emotionally invested every time we watched, and I shed tears pretty much every episode. It wasn't something we just tuned into on a Tuesday evening. It's hard for me to separate the craft of this show from its source material, but I think the way it sets up conflic...