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⭐ 9/10 My 3 season binge meant that I got to watch this fourth season weekly for most of it, and I forgot how exciting it is to have ongoing shows to look forward to every week, specifically Sunday night. This and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms were such a treat. With this show specifically I forgot how much I love a multi-season show. If I have to pick between movies or TV I will go movies 90% of the time, but with something like this you are really rewarded for the tens of hours you spend with these characters. Seeing how they evolve, and even how the show evolves over time, is something that is basically impossible to do in movies. Speaking of evolution, this show continues to amaze. The first season is a bunch of kids at an internship trying to score this soul-sucking job. Season two we move higher up in the company, the rot on the trading floor trickling down from the board rooms above it. Season 3 we keep going up, the upper-upper class and their relationship with the media and fi...

⭐7.5/10 This is a movie that's up for best picture this month, and kinda falls into my wheelhouse as it's a quirky dramedy led by my favorites Jesse Plemmons and Emma Stone. It's a fantastic premise where Plemmons, a conspiracy theorist, kidnaps Stone, a CEO he thinks is an alien, and, ya know, hijinks ensue.  I get why people love this movie. I think this is a good movie and I wanted to love it more. I don't have much to offer for critiques, but I kinda just wished I was moved by the characters more, or more into the plot, or I wished I laughed more at the jokes. I almost wish they leaned more into the silliness, made this more of a comedy, because this plays out more as a representation of weird people that actually exist. That's fine, I just didn't find it super compelling.  There's also some really cool ideas being explored here. I loved this idea of misplaced suspicion, stuff we see all the time. There is hurt, but rather than seeking to und...

⭐9.5/10 Our latest offering from the Thronesverse, and while the dialogue around Westeros has been pretty negative for pretty much the last decade, I was pretty optimistic about this show. I loved the short story collection they are based on and thought it would offer some levity and charm to a series that has been a little over-serious and grim for most people's tastes.  I will still admit I didn't expect to love this show quite as much as I did. I think it was pretty much perfect. It was funnier than the books, going for some pretty outrageous visual gags, but otherwise it was pretty true to the source. The writing, as in most Thrones adaptations, was consistently sublime, getting the voice of the universe just right. I think this is the result of closely following a wonderful writer with a strong voice, and if a story sticks close to George, it usually succeeds.  Dunk is a character in this universe that we all need, someone who is just and kind and easy to chee...

    KJ Charles never misses, and this is another great mix of historical, mystery, and romance, which is one of my favourite combos.  Zeb tries to stay away from his family, because they're all horrible and consider him a failure because he can't hold down a job. But a distant uncle convinces him to come for a stay in the family faux-Gothic manor in Dartmoor, and to his horror, all of his terrible relatives are there, and so is his ex-lover who hates him for losing him his job. The uncle declares that he will choose which of the men will be marrying his ward and get the inheritance. Zeb isn't interested, but he's stuck there because of the mist, and tensions rise between the family members, especially when they start seeing ghosts and messages appear on the walls.      I love what KJ Charles did with the setting here. It's set in the early 1900s, but the manor was built to resemble a Gothic manor. It's also set in the moors with an unpredictable fog, ...

⭐9/10 This movie right here is the kind that reminds you why you love cinema. In the two hours it takes you to watch it, you will experience wonder and awe and dread and profound sadness and hope. It's perhaps not a perfect movie, but it is a story that grabs you and doesn't let go until you're left reeling at the end, silent as you watch the credits, ready to immediately go back to the start and see how all the pieces fit.  This is a French movie by Denis Villeneuve and kinda feels like what Momento was for Christopher Nolan - an earlier, less grand movie that is tight and driven by mystery and compelling characters. It's about two siblings being left a mysterious will by their mother, her final wish being one that takes them across the vague Middle-east (most of the places are fictional to avoid political commentary) to discover her past. They have mixed feelings about their odd, eccentric mother, but as you learn about her story you quickly start to under...

⭐9/10 Starting our watch of my new favorite show in earnest, though we skipped a few seasons to start because we've heard first few are a little rough.  This show and this season are absolutely awesome. It takes place in Patagonia, and I actually had a bit of familiarity with survival tactics in this area because I read The Wager which is a survival story that takes place there. It's a beautiful, harsh location, and one of the best features of this show is that it's nice to look at.  We get a terrific cast of characters from nature hippies to mountain men, each one having their own strengths and weaknesses. I love the contrast that we get every season, especially in age, where young people have more energy and can recover better, but don't have that experience or knowledge that the vets have. This is a American show with American contestants, but I do wish there were a few people from different cultures who might bring something different. One of the most st...

⭐7/10 This was my latest foray into the movies with Willy and Corney, and these are always super hit or miss. I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. It's your typical kids sports underdog story - like truly, there are zero surprises - but it's got a few good gags and the animation is gorgeous.  I love this trend in animation. This is Spiderverse inspired and works great for this movie. It's super stylish and one of my favorite representations of basketball. It's got a lot of swag and actually looks like it was made by people who either play or actually know what basketball looks like. In a lot of ways this is a love letter to the new generation of basketball lovers, having a uniquely modern feel. It's a bit of a double edged sword because I am indeed not the new generation and romanticize the old school, but I'm glad kids have a movie that is distinctly for them. I wonder if all the slang and trends will look silly in ten years...

⭐10/10 Is this a comedy masterpiece? I was really not familiar with this comedy duo outside of their viral Wii Shop Wednesday sketch, but praise for this movie was high and we actually made it out to the cinema like this was 2008. Man, what an absolute hoot to watch in the theatres. From the opening scene this movie killed me and I was laughing so hard in the theatre that I was honestly embarrassed. This movie is a miracle.  They have a pretty unique style in that this is often unscripted interactions with the people of Toronto. That's right -- Toronto! -- this movie is also very Canadian. It's a bit like Nathan Fielder in that way, though it blends scripted moments with it as well. In fact, I daresay Matt and Jay are something of a combination of my favorites - Fielder, Tim Robinson, as well as Flight of the Concords or even a little old school Rhett and Link. The whole premise is that they are a struggling band trying to get booked to play the Rivoli, a very modes...

⭐9/10 This was our choice for Valentine's this year. In a way it was kinda a tough movie for the occasion - it asks some questions I'm not sure I want to think about. But by the end I was completely sold and really liked this as a unique, creative romance.  In this one we meet a couple who have had a nice, plain marriage for decades, and then when they both die they meet up in the afterlife except there's a problem - she had a first husband and the two of them had a passionate, shortlived marriage when they were young and hot and before he died as a soldier. Now she has to choose which man she spends eternity with - the plain but safe guy she was married to for decades, or the earnest heartthrob whose love was unrealized. It's a cool premise right? I mean, the details aren't super important and you can't think too hard about the details, but it really explores this question in a meaningful, emotionally resonant way, especially because choosing one me...

⭐ 9.5/10 This is a show that I hear about almost every week from one of my favourite podcasts because they have loved it from day one. I heard it described as Succession + Euphoria, and while I love Succession I haven't seen Euphoria because it looks like sex and drugs and no real substance. Well this show certainly has that, but a whole lot of substance as well. I started the first season over a year ago, and it took a while to get through that season, but at some point it finds its rhythm and I could not stop watching. I didn't even have time to review previous seasons because I was burning through them, and it all felt like one big story. Season 3 has a huge ending, and is clearly the closing of a chapter for the show, so before I start 4 I figured I should reflect. Season 1 is about a bunch of new grads starting what is basically an internship at Pierpoint, a massive financial institution in London. If they do a good job and pass the final interview they will secure full t...

⭐ 9/10 This game was $3, and the number of runs I have done the overall cost was probably like a penny a run. This is a roguelike deck builder that is super simple to understand, but every single run you peel back a layer of complexity. I would never say roguelikes are my favourite style of game, and a main issue I have with this game is the huge lack of persistent rewards. But that is also what makes this fun - when you win it feels like skill and understanding, not just getting by because you have grinded to level up base stats or something. I can only compare it to other games like this, and Hades was my most recent. In that one the persistent rewards and stats are huge, so much so that I don't think you really need to change your playstyle throughout. You start to recognize patterns since that game is based on reaction, but in this one the only way to get better is to be smarter. I loved how I would have a run where I would get some terrible card or relic, but then I would bui...

⭐9/10 I randomly came across this show while flipping around on my TV and instantly knew I had hit a goldmine. I had heard of this show, but I guess I figured it was some hacky network reality series that I'd have no interest in and didn't give it a second thought. Silly me! I have been in love with all things survival since I'd read Hatchet as a kid, and this show was made for me specifically as it is basically Hatchet: the Series.  It's a show where contestants are dropped into the remote wilderness with 10 items and are forced to survive off the land there for a specified amount of time. All the footage is recorded by contestants and the items they bring are limited, and so it really is something of a simulation of living in pre-civilized society. This is actually a spinoff season where all the contestants are series veterans, and are dropped into the Canadian Arctic just before winter hits.  I loved every second of this show. There were a few glaring fla...

    I've started the new year strong with lots of 4 and 5-star reads, but not counting rereads, these were the ones that stood out as new favourites!      This was as good as I expected it to be after reading two Juliet Marillier books last year, then deciding to go back to the beginning of her most popular series, first published in 1999. It's a fairy tale retelling, and has this lush, meandering, detailed, atmospheric feel that I adored, even though a lot of those things are not usually my thing. It's also very long, but just like the other Marillier books I've read, it doesn't feel like long and deserves the page count.      Sorcha begins the book as a young girl in medieval-ish Ireland. She's the youngest in her family with six older brothers and a distant father who is always away defending his territory from the Britons. Her idyllic childhood ends when she uses her healing skills to help a young Briton soldier, and again when her father rema...

⭐8/10 What started as a nostalgia trip has quickly developed into an obsession. These games are good! They are fun to play! I don't want to stop!  I am now getting into true nostalgia territory as this is a game a beat a hundred times as a kid and still knew inside and out today. It is an improvement on the first entry in essentially every single way, now introducing a bunch of mechanics that would last the rest of the series. There are a million quality of life changes, such as ways to avoid random encounters or the ability to run from them if not. They also make each online space unique and interesting to explore, and there are plenty of balance changes so that progression feels more linear and fair.  I'll start out with the negatives. The first negative is that the story is way more involved. This is a negative because the story still sucks, and now there is more of it. The story in this game is just the annoying thing that happens between boss fights, and so no...

⭐6/10 Had a tough time with this one. It should be the perfect show for me because it's about therapists and broken people and healing from loss and all, and initially I was completely sold! That opening scene killed me and I was fully on board, and that feeling lasted a few episodes.  By the end, I was just waiting for this show to be done. The one trend in modern TV that I despise is constant therapy talk, characters sitting across from each other and pouring out their hearts, revealing their past traumas by just talking about it. The therapist in me thinks that communication is awesome and they key to healing, but the TV watcher in me thinks that this makes for very uninteresting viewing. My rule of thumb is that in stories, characters should not apologize by simply issuing an apology. I mean it comes down to the basics of writing: I want to be shown that someone is sorry, not be told. There are like thirty apologies per episode and it drives me nuts. I get that ther...

⭐10/10 I've had this movie in the back of my mind since Tim reviewed it, and like him, it was a movie I hadn't seen since it came out but one I loved then and was confident I'd love now. I watched this with a group of guys telling them that this is kinda the best movie of this variety, and by that I mean an action/thriller with government special ops and secret missions and whatever.  I think I was pretty much right. I had a few small quibbles here and there, but otherwise I think this movie is perfect. It's grounded and tight, it's led by performances by some of my favorite actors, the writing is absolutely fantastic, and like all of Villeneuve's movies, there is always something interesting to look at.  The thing that sets this movie apart is allowing for a truly difficult ethical dilemma. They are trying to find a Mexican drug lord, and Del Toro says "to find him would be like discovering a vaccine -- surely you understand the value of that....

⭐8/10 My up and down relationship with Miyazaki continues. Jess sold this one to me saying this was the most linear, logical of his movies, which is all I'm really asking for. I would say that description is probably accurate, though this movie is almost entirely plotless which helps. It is mostly a movie about two young girls moving into rural Japan and exploring life there.  I kinda loved it. It's a super cute movie with wholesome, authentic depictions of childhood in 80s rural Japan. I always connect with stories about kids in rural settings, the magic of country living, the creativity of children there. It reminded me of lots of my favorites, most notably Princess Kaguya by the actual master of anime Isao Takahata. Honestly if this movie had no fantastic elements I may have liked it more, though the monsters were nice enough.  So yeah, nice movie, not much more to add. Obviously if you are looking for a wonderful audio/visual, you will find nothing better than ...

⭐7/10 This is a movie I watched as a kid and thought it would be the perfect romantic, wholesome movie for Jess and I. It's a Tim Burton movie about a popular old man who's always told tall tales, but as he nears the end of his life, his son wants to know the truth behind them. Most of the movie is told through vignettes of when the man was young (played by Ewan McGregor) as he lives an amazing, bizarre adventure.  I was very concerned during the first half, looking over to Jess, swearing that it gets better. We both found the main character to be pretty obnoxious. They capture this type of person very well, not only someone who is a pathological bullshitter, but also completely self-absorbed, and for a guy that is supposed to be likeable we weren't feeling it. The son is kinda supposed to be the bad guy, but I would also be annoyed if my dad only told BS stories about how cool he is.  I will admit that the second half kinda got me. This movie is certainly one t...

⭐ 9/10 A rare podcast review! This is a series that covers the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s, with some stories I was completely fascinated by. I have always been interested in this moral panic, and a couple of these stories I had read about before, but many were completely new and startling. In all cases these sensationalized stories that scared a generation of parents into overprotecting their kids and ostracizing people different from themselves were complete fabrications. The result of racism, homophobia, fear of D&D or heavy metal music. There are instances of past trauma, and in a bunch of instances awful murders or abuse did occur, but in every case they look at devil worship and "ritual sacrifice" were no where to be found. The ones where people do die are scariest, because in all these cases someone innocent was convicted and the actual culprit never found! There is coverage of a book called "Michelle Remembers" that I had never heard of, a Canadian...