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⭐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'...

⭐9/10 First off, thanks to Beans for gifting me this game for my birthday. A kingly gift.  This is the follow-up to Returnal, a game very near and dear to my heart, one of my favorite games of all time despite some obvious flaws. In a lot of ways, Saros solves those flaws, and is also a better game in a lot of ways. It's faster, more frantic, and a little deeper mechanically. It also has more of a story and introduces some characters whereas Returnal is a one-woman show. I loved playing Saros, and yet I can't help but feel that the ways they solved Returnal's issues created more issues of its own.  First I'll start off with the few minor-ish negatives. In terms of presentation, I never connected with this game the same way I did Returnal. I loved the deep-space, dark aesthetic of that one. The minimal story suited it well, and moreover never takes you out of the gameplay. You discover the history as you go along, and it has some pretty great moments of overw...

⭐8.5/10 This was again a nostalgia-bait download that I got on my switch for very cheap that I could play for an hour or two to relive the sights and sounds and then forget about forever. Except again that's not what happened and I poured my mind, body and soul into this game for a good 20 hours, bringing home the Ultra Grand Championship of the Universe.  My goodness, what an absolute gem they were able to create 30 freaking years ago! I played this game for a million hours when we got the CD disc free in a cereal box, and all the tiny little details came flooding back very quickly. A word I hate but keep coming back to is whimsy - there is no better word for this game! It is so damn charming at every corner, every line of dialogue written and recorded with love. You can imagine the developers having a ton of fun making this game. So many classic lines are etched forever into my everyday parlance especially when I'm playing baseball. "He's caught in a pick...

Oops, skipped a month there! I'm putting both months together now, but instead of talking about more books, I'm just picking the best of the best!     David Nicholls has quickly become one of my favourite writers, because every book that he writes is just so lively and funny and human. This one is about Charlie, who is 16 and spending a summer feeling adrift when he meets an intriguing girl, and so in order to spend more time with her he joins a theater camp, despite having no interest in Shakespeare. It's about first love, but it doesn't feel like a YA book because the story is being told by adult Charlie, who has gotten an invite to a reunion for this summer camp, and he's reflecting on his past and this experience through his adult eyes.     This book had a  bit of a slow start, as we just follow this kid who's a big mess as he begrudgingly tries acting and tries to flirt with Fran. But eventually it turns into something really lovely about first love, the me...

⭐9/10 Man, what a shockingly odd and wonderful movie. For the other movies in this series, I've kinda just said that this is your standard good-not-great zombie fare with all the usual genre tropes. That cannot be said of the Bone Temple. The other ones were directed by Danny Boyle and this is the first one that isn't, but rather Nia DeCosta who doesn't exactly have an impressive resume. But this is certainly the bold step that could add to it!  This movie is a direct sequel to 28 Years Later which has a ridiculous ending that I hated.  Spike is saved by the strangest bunch of 90s action figures at the end, an ending that doesn't match the tone of that movie at all, and felt like a silly artistic flourish that was unnecessary and lame. I couldn't believe that this movie actually picks up there and was initially very skeptical. They are so super weird, and the violence to start this movie is abhorrent, about as bad as anything I have ever seen, and i was ...

⭐6/10 As I was scrolling Google images for a thumbnail, it really hit me that there isn't an exciting image in the entire movie. It's a Spielberg movie and it's about aliens, there should be nothing but cool images!  This was my most anticipated movie of the year so I was certainly disappointed. It's a movie about the main characters having possession of world-altering intel - that aliens exist and have visited earth - and they want to share it publicly. It's a cool premise, but this movie kinda devolves into a weird, early 2000s action movie of the good guys running away from evil secret agents in suits with ear pieces.  The first 2 hours are pretty up and down. There's some cool ideas, but it's all a little silly, all the characters are very stupid, many of these problems would be resolved if people just talked to each other, and the sci-fi elements are a bit under baked. The action sequences are underwhelming and there's some truly horrend...

⭐ 7/10 Like 3, I hadn't seen this one since the theatres, and I remember very little of it, so I knew it wouldn't be great. And it's not. This movie brings basically nothing to the table, and almost actively negates what I would consider to be core tenants of these movies. There are a couple good jokes and new characters, but aside from that this movie does nothing for me. It tries to introduce the idea of lost toys, toys that find meaning outside of their owners, but is that what we want? Isn't the whole purpose of these movies that toys are meant to be played with by kids? It feels very 2019, find your own happiness, but toys existing on their own is sad to me, not empowering. Ya, Bo is cool and tough but we also catch a glimpse of the bad guy finding a child, and that's the most meaningful part of the movie! Because that's what all the other movies have been about. So while this isn't a retread its more of just a nothing movie. The one new concept is For...

⭐ 8/10 This show is kind of everything I thought it would be, and that's a show that's quite good but not great. This plays out like a prequel to Boardwalk Empire, another show I thought was high quality but I didn't love. Its a classic tale of a mob family trying to make their way from a small player to the big leagues, much like Boardwalk Empire these guys specialize in gambling. I do love mafia stories, Sopranos and Scorsese stuff, and this felt indebted to everything that came before. One thing it has going for it is the setting. This post WWI Irish family, each with their own demons, trying to become to run their business but also protect their family. I thought the accents and everything were great, a specific period that I think is what draws people to shows like this. It's also a tight 6 episode season which I appreciated, never felt like there was any filler or any teases to be resolved next season. A complete story that had me excited to watch more. All that ...

⭐9/10 Everything I thought might be true of Hatchet really was true of Brian's Winter. I read this one in a weekend and found it much easier to get through, pretty much getting rid of all the issues I had, and telling a much more compelling survival story.  It's a funny book because it retcons the last one, and actually Brian wasn't saved and has to survive a winter. Has that ever been done before? Either way I love the choice as it's so much more interesting than having to contrive a motivation for him to go back or something. And now he gets to level up all his skills, and he's already a cool, tough preteen rather than the whiny baby he was to start the first.  Yeah, this book is awesome. I did this one on audio and the reader is absolutely fantastic and reminded me of sitting in a circle listening to the teacher read, except that the teacher is now a very good reader. There are also musical accompaniments and I'm not sure there's a better audi...

⭐8/10 I am certainly one to be won over by nostalgia and revisit my old favorites even though doing so is mostly just a good way to ruin fond memories. Still, I figured I could get through it in a weekend and it also helps me understand what books for kids are like. I mean, this was my absolute favorite as a kid for a good two years, and I must have read this book a dozen times. I was super encouraged when my nephew told me it was also his very favorite for a time.  But I didn't read it in a weekend because this book was rough to start with. The writing style is dramatic and insufferable for the first chapters and not a lot of fun to read. But it gets better throughout and by the end it was pretty clear why I would have liked it as a kid. You really do learn so much about survival reading something like this, and I remember feeling so smart, like I could have done all this if I was lucky enough to be stranded in the Canadian wilderness.  But alas, a child who reads...