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⭐9/10 I have been all over the map in my ratings for Tarantino movies but this one puts him back in my good books. I said in my Hollywood review that Tarantino violence usually works because he builds up the most insidious of villains and so the audience is okay with whatever violence is done against them. Hollywood didn't work for me because the villains were just young hippies, whereas in Django they are slave owners, in Basterds they are Nazis, and in Kill Bill they are rapists. So yeah! Slice all you want!  But on a more practical level, the absurd amounts of violence work here because it is so silly and over-the-top that one is never actually really grossed out or squeamish. This movie is an ode to classic Samurai and Western movies and is the perfect movie to itch that 12 year old brain that's still very much alive in me. It's a super simple premise where Uma Thurman has been wronged, and so she wants revenge on all those involved. She sets up the confront...

⭐8/10 I am pretty much always skeptical when a beloved IP gets some sort of universe expansion, and ATLA has one of the worst track records outside of Korra. I hadn't even planned to watch this, but was pleasantly surprised when it reviewed pretty well.  I will say I don't think this movie really adds much to the universe. It's a lot of fan service, and the story is a little bit of a nothing story. It felt like an arc that would fit comfortably within any season of the main show in an episode or two, and the characters and universe aren't developed in a way that's interesting enough to explore some years in the future. I had the distinct feeling that I will remember this like I remembered El Camino, which is to say not at all, but I enjoyed while watching it and it was cool to see some loose ends tied up.  All those negatives aside, I do think this show had a lot of merit mostly in the form of looking amazing and featuring some of the coolest action sequ...

⭐9/10 This book is about Teddy Roosevelt's trip to the Amazon Rainforest in the 1910s. It kinda checks every box for me, being an interesting survival/ exploration story with a super unique setting and a compelling main character. I didn't know really anything about Roosevelt, and this actually takes place after his Presidential terms. Roosevelt, like any US president, is a complicated figure, full of admirable and less admirable traits, but it is undeniable that he was one of the most interesting people to ever live, treating his life like a series of wild side-quests that spanned the globe and changed the world.  This was pretty well his final side-quest where he wanted to map an uncharted river that runs through the middle of the Amazon Rainforest (The River of Doubt, no Ri Roosevelt River). I read Gran's Lost City of Z last year, and that book mentions this expedition. I already knew a bit about the rainforest from that book, but I wonder if this book would ...

⭐8/10 Absolute classic of a 90s action flick. Keanu is a cop who has a run-in with a Batman supervillain who rigs a city bus to explode if it ever drops below 50mph and so they have to disable it on the fly. Really, really stupid premise and at no point in this movie would anyone ever believe they would make it out alive. The dialogue is all pretty cheesy, the romance is very 90s hero-and-damsel, and there is a stunt in here that is ridiculous... and they do it twice!  It's a mindless action movie, but I couldn't help but be endeared by it. This is a movie that knows what it is, which is always very important, but unlike today's modern action movies, it's all insane stunts rather than a green screen CGI fest. There is an explosion that is so big that one simply cannot fathom the joker-level insanity to light a pile of money on fire like that. I had a big grin on my face for most of this movie, and it reminded me of watching Fall Guy recently. They just don...

⭐4/10 Another dud for Disney Pixar! I thought this movie kinda sucked. It lacked that original or interesting idea that has been the hallmark of older Pixar movies, and really just wasn't very funny. It tries to make up for a lack of humour with that frantic energy that some animated movies have used to better effect, but it didn't work for me. It reminded me a lot of Turning Red which I also thought wasn't any good.  Obviously this movie isn't for me, but I'd be pretty disappointed if I was a parent and had to sit through this. I think Pixar's best quality was always that it has appealed to adults as much as kids, and it's a shame that hasn't been the case in a while. There is a laugh here and there, and the movie has a nice enough message, and one I'm passionate about, but couldn't be bothered to care about in this case. Yeah, I'm having a hard time coming up with any other positives so I think that speaks for itself. 

⭐ 7/10 I think we need to have a conversation about expectations, but at this point in his career every Nolan movie is an event. This has been true for a long time now, but since Oppenheimer he now has the critics on his side, so every movie now needs to be a masterpiece. In my mind this isn't even close to that, and while its a great movie my own expectations make me think about it worse because of the overwhelming praise for something that I thought was just good. I don't think that's being a contrarian, I wanted to love this movie and did everything in my power to see it as early as possible. But there's no denying that not loving the movie turns into not liking it in the face of such undisputed passion from the rest of the world. Nolan can make some beautiful images, and in this grand epic I really only thought there is one portion that will stick with me, and that's the Trojan horse. Its scattered throughout the movie, but every time that horse was in frame I ...

⭐ 7.5/10 This was a bit of a slow burn, but by the end of it my mind was racing. It's a pretty simple premise, a guy gets obsessed with finding an actor that looks identical to him, and when they finally meet they are actually identical. His life is already unravelling, but once they actually meet things accelerate and get very weird. It's a hard movie to describe, or even to understand. I'll start by saying its cool seeing movies filmed in places that look familiar, here its Toronto and Mississauga. But he throws this hazy tint on everything, and its impossible not to see Blade Runner 2049 or Dune, Villeneuve's later movies. The only thing I could think of the whole movie was David Lynch, and the feeling of watching someone's nightmare. And then at some point Isabella Rossellini shows up for a single scene, one of Lynch's former partners and muses, so the Lynch thing seems intentional. There are confusing setups that don't come back until the end, odd refe...

⭐6/10 Watched this when I had my nephew and niece sleeping over which is the only time one can justify watching The Meg. And you know what? In those circumstances I thought it was a lot of fun! This movie knows exactly what it is, the action is exciting enough, the CGI looks totally passable, and I thought the final confrontation was pretty cool. I won't mention the acting or writing because I'm in a charitable mood. But the AC was turned low and the snacks were good and that's the important part here. 

⭐7/10 This is a very funny back-to-back with The Odyessey, especially as they have almost the same score. That felt wrong to do, and yet? I probably enjoyed them about the same!  This was Jess's birthday movie of choice, and very on-brand for her. A group of 3 women all have lousy rich husbands who leave them for younger women, and so together they plot their revenge. I love this trope, and I think it works better in the 90s when things like this were a bit more playful. I also loved how well realized these three women were, perfectly flawed and silly in their own right.  Fun movie, I laughed a lot, and Diane Keaton still holds my heart. I recently watched Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her which is a similar movie and she plays a similar role, both of them really great. People love the ending, but I found it a little cheesy and unearned. Whatever, it was good, simple fun, though I'd wager it was a cultural battleground like Barbie and the like were recently. 

⭐8/10 I feel a little like a stick in the mud. I haven't really been big on any of the recent blockbusters, even the ones that everyone else loves. That's especially true of Nolan's most recent movies, Oppenheimer being the one I truly can't understand anyone liking. That's not really true of The Odyessey. I can see why people liked this movie, but I'm still having a hard time understanding the universal love of it. To me it was a fun spectacle but really little more. The music is grand, and one can appreciate the work to create these epic moments, but I was certainly never moved by anything I was seeing on the screen, and was especially unmoved by any of the story elements.  I've never read the story so I had little context or appreciation for how this was being adapted. None of this would ever really fly in a modern movie otherwise and lots of these run-ins with mythical creatures felt rushed and under baked. Why are these big guys killing the ...

⭐ 9/10 This movie was advertised super well, mainly in that there is a twist, and I sadly spoiled it for myself. When Zendaya is asked what the worst thing she has ever done is, and her response is shocking to everyone that hears it, I thought, I bet it won't be that shocking. But it is, and her past sin is something I have always been really fascinated by, so I was really kicking myself for doing that. This twist happens fairly early, after a beautiful meet-cute and relationship montage that really had me believing in these two. The acting throughout by both of them is phenomenal, and I thought Pattinson in particular was incredible. Anyways, they are engaged and planning a wedding when this new information comes out and it throws everything into question. And rightly so! I think the best compliment I can give a movie now is that me and my wife talked a bunch about it after, and her reactions to how it affected them were very different from my own. And I think that's kind of ...

It seems silly to put a star score on this book, or even to review it, but why not. The movie comes out tomorrow and I finished this just under the wire. My biggest takeaway was that despite never reading this I knew everything about it. A combination of Wishbone and all other media that is inspired by it meant that every story beat was familiar, but still exciting! This is the proto-epic, so obviously everything is inspired by it, but it was cool to feel the parts of Tolkien in this, and a bunch of my other favourite books. "There and Back Again" could easily be the title of this book! Even something like, finally getting back home and now having to fight a war on your own soil, the return not being what you want it to be immediately, a part of Return of the King I always liked and feels directly tied to this. I can't say I am the world's biggest Nolan fan, despite loving several of his movies, and I thought the Odyssey was a strange fit for him until I read this. T...

⭐10/10 This is long, but I wanted to post the opening paragraphs of this book because I think it captures so much about it: William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library. This manuscript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: “Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues.” An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seld...

⭐ 7/10 If I had written this review a day ago it would have seemed really well timed, my praise of Sam Neill, but now it just seems like I am trying to get clicks off his death! But he is easily the best part of this season, going full villain after his heart being broken to end last season. I think he is really incredible as a villain, and it bothers me that he was only really a side character here, where my worst fears of just running back season one with a new mob boss villain came true. Actually, there are two bad mob bosses now, a Jewish one and an Italian one! Season one at least felt like it had some interesting story moments, this just felt like running it back. Grace and Inspector Campbell end last season with the sound of a gun and a cut to black. It looks like he killed her, but actually she shot him! But he's fine, just walks with a cane now. Super lame, especially because Grace does almost nothing this season. She's happy with a nice guy in New York, but then she ...

⭐9/10 This is the follow up season to a show I loved, and I was super confident I'd love this one too because just look at that lineup! This season features all new characters in a new storyline, totally detached from Season 1, and even the premise is quite different.  In this one, a young couple (Melton and Spaeney) are down on their luck, but luckily get leverage over their boss and his wife (Oscar Isaac and Mulligan) to get things they want. Each of these characters are wildly different, especially in terms of how they approach conflict, so it's fun watching them lock horns all season.  My most prominent thought watching this was: out with the old and in with the new! Isaac and Mulligan are some of the best actors we have, and I felt they were completely outdone by Melton and Spaeney who might very well be the best we have in the next generation. I think their characters were a lot more interesting and all, but man, they capture these layers and complexities so ...

⭐7/10 This is a super unique Australian movie from 1971 in which two white Australian siblings get stranded in the outback and have to find their way back home. They are helpless, but fortunately run into a teenaged Aborigines boy who helps them survive.  First off, this movie is absolutely gorgeous, one of the prettiest movies I've seen. It is primarily sweeping shots of the outback with beautiful music playing with tons of shots of animals and nature. It is wonderful to look at, both surprising for a movie this old, but also only possible to make in this era because it is so authentic and real.  This movie has minimal dialogue and even half the dialogue is in the boy's native language that is not captioned and we don't understand it any better than the main characters do. It is unique in its storytelling, and even more unique in its authenticity. I read that the director really had no plan, but went into the outback and just shot whatever he saw.  This movie...

⭐9/10 This is the third book in the Lonesome Dove series, and much like the second, I think it's awesome but falls short of the original. It's again a pretty thick novel, but one I went through somewhat quickly (for me) because I find these super readable and propulsive despite being pretty slow paced.  This one goes back in time to when Call and Gus, the two main characters of Lonesome Dove, were just young men beginning their lives as Texas Rangers. This is a minor spoiler, but in this one they are young and foolish and sign up for a campaign that was damned from the beginning, so it ends up turning into more of a survival story as they try to cross the plains with no resources, fighting off enemies and terrors of all sorts. It's super compelling! I love survival stories, and this one (like most of McMurtry's works) was inspired by a true story.  I guess one minor complaint I'd have is that McMurtry is intense about his realism, and that commitment oft...

⭐ 10/10 The first trailer that played before this was for the new Minions movie, and I felt a pit in my stomach. Toy Story 4 lowered the bar for me, and seeing the trailer for the most popular animated franchise made me lose all hope. It was like 3 minutes of gibberish speak, slapstick humour, and it culminated in a massive monster accidentally sitting on a tower that went right up his butt, zoom way out, huge yell. Just utter slop for the lowest common denominator. And you might say, Tim, these are kids movies, relax. But I just watched all the Toy Story movies, and have been dying to find quality movies to watch with my kid. We can make good entertainment that doesn't rely on butts and farts. Which takes me to this movie. The first thing you hear is the notes of "When She Loved Me" and I could feel my insides warm and my eyes tear up. They had me. But this wasn't just a nostalgia play! My main complaint with 4 is that it has nothing new to say, and I thought this m...

⭐ 8.5/10 This is the sixth (!?) Red Rising book, and all of them have been solid 8/10s... until now! The back half of this book was phenomenal, with exciting action and dramatic turns, I was completely absorbed in a way I haven't been since the first trilogy. Let me back up. This book also took me 3 months to read. I found the first half a huge slog, and like I mentioned in Dark Age I think I just forgot too much in the long gap between books. I think part of that is the author's fault, since the naming sucks! I get that this is Roman Empire but in space, but that means all these names are hard to distinguish from each other since they all sound Roman! I was thinking again of the genius of George R.R. Martin, or obviously Tolkien, names that sound regional, and in ASOIAF just knowing a last name tells you so much about what they value and what their motivations are. I finished this book and beyond Darrow and Sevro I don't really know what side most people are on. That'...