WeView

⭐4/10 I thought this one was really bad. I went in with an open mind and an open heart, so much so that during those early moments of utterly generic setup and corny dialogue, I was thinking, surely this is commentary on traditional Hollywood action cinema with intentionally cliche writing and over-dramatic delivery?  It's not that. It's just not a good movie. In brief, this movie is about sweet Viggo Mortenson being confronted by some cartoon villains, but oddly enough kills them both with no issues and becomes a big hero. But how was this plain, quiet, mysterious diner-owner able to dispatch evil villains so easily? Is it possible he might have A History of Violence??  I can't necessarily fault the actors for the sins of this movie, because of course I could never fault the rightful King of Gondor, but I think they did their best with some truly terrible writing. Everything here is so lame. The high school bully has some of the most hilariously cliche lines, t...

⭐9/10 Take me back to 2009 when you could make a movie where Nazis were unabashedly the bad guys and it was funny to see them tortured! This is a movie about Brad Pitt leading a group of guerilla Jewish-Americans, hunting down Nazis during WWII and killing them in ways that will inspire fear in the rest of the Nazis. But Brad Pitt is a major hick that pronounces it Nat-zee and his group of fighters are clearly not the most sophisticated or well-mannered men.  But it doesn't matter! Because opposite them is Christopher Waltz as the "Jew Hunter," one of the most terrifying villains put to screen. He is a hyper-competent detective who is always one step ahead, and I absolutely love this brawn vs brains matchup, because how often is it where the good guys are the brawn? It makes for some explosive, absolutely hilarious interactions where the Americans have to brute-force their way out of delicate situations.  This movie is told in a super distinct manner, essentia...

⭐8.5/10 In this movie, Ethan Hawke is a reverend at a church who is confronted with a depressed parishioner who defeats him in a 1 on 1 counselling session as the counsellor becomes depressed rather than the parishioner getting better. It's a super bleak movie that kinda asks the question, how do we not despair when everything is going to shit and society could likely collapse during our lifetime?  This was a super relevant movie because I too deal with these thoughts, more now than ever with fascist dictators popping up everywhere and AI going unchecked and summer temperatures being broken every year and the income gap widening with a recession on the way. I'm also like, the person who is supposed to have some answers on how not to give in to despair? Well if I wanted to find some answers for myself, this movie was not providing them. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that this is a pretty much all bleakness. Not only in its content but it's stylings,...

⭐8/10 My latest foray into the superhero slop fest! I know this genre has really died down, but it's funny to me how this isn't even the latest superhero movie to come out. They are still trying very hard to keep the slop flowing!  Honestly if it wasn't for my years of investment into this specific superhero, painful hours with my new girlfriend trying to show enthusiasm for the fourteenth episode of Lana and Clark switching bodies, I don't think this movie would have meant anything to me. But I thought this was a super faithful adaptation of the Superman IP. It's corny! It's campy! It is all very silly and lighthearted, but the central message is clear: Clark is a good person.  I loved the introduced premise in this movie, obviously one that has massive parallels to today. If there is a person with all the power in the world, how would you go about solving the various world conflicts? There are obviously complexities, and I don't exactly think t...

⭐ 8.5/10 This was a large book I read basically in a week while on vacation, so it will always have a special place in my heart. It's the story of a boy who is born into a difficult life in Virginia in the late 90s, and follows him as he grows. The book says its a modern retelling of David Copperfield, which I have never read, but funny enough I found a kids version of this book on our trip and just looked at the pictures and was shocked at how direct of a retelling this is. Names and events are all basically the same, just modernized, at least from what I can tell from my 2 minutes skimming Copperfield. Not sure if that diminishes the book to me, but I certainly would have been more impressed if this was an original piece. Regardless I found this book incredibly engaging. The life of Damon is tragic, with continual hardship. Even when good people enter his life, or promising events occur, you can feel him backslide because of the people around him and the circumstances of his lif...

⭐ 9/10 This show had been on the list for a long time, it just took Jess finally saying she didn't want to watch anymore for me to burn through it. This show is great - super easy premise that then boils over into a million different things. 2 people get in a road rage incident that quickly escalates from grudge to full on war. One thing I noticed halfway through is how much was happening, how much time was elapsing, how many things change episode to episode, and I love it. Each episode I could feel theories brewing up about where this would end up by the end of the season, but they would blow past my ideas in an episode or two and then tons of other unexpected things would happen. Feels like its counter to the reddit theory-crafting game Severance or Lost have drilled in to us, and also very modern in its pace. The performances here are great, Steven Yeun and Ali Wong are both incredible. Steven is this sad broke guy who just messes up everything, and Ali is a ball of fire who li...

⭐5/10 Is this Spielberg's worst movie? I mean what was he thinking? The saddest part about this movie is that there is nothing to redeem it outside of the spectacle. I have watched so much Jurassic over the last years and have recently read the book. It is crazy that nothing has even approached being good outside of the original IP. This movie should have been evidence enough: if Spielberg can't do it, then it's time to put the IP to rest.  This movie is about the same thing as like 4 or 5 others. People have to go back to some Jurassic Island for some reason or another, and things go bad. Even though this is the first time this plot was done, it still sucks. And the premise, for the first time, is probably fine! Everything else sucks. The characters are boring or stupid. The dialogue is silly, the action is campy. The original was a little campy too, but there are a number of silly scenes that are going for a super young audience and don't belong in this mo...

⭐9/10 Weapons: now a certified Weview classic! I absolutely loved going to the movies for this one. Little by little I have begun liking horror movies more, and this might be the scariest movie I've seen, but also maybe my favorite among them.  I echo a lot of Kyle's thoughts and you can read his review for a summary, but yeah, what a premise! How exciting! Hard to screw a premise up that's this good, but they totally took it and ran, adding tons of flair and inserted some unique storytelling techniques. I loved the shifting perspectives, my favorite being Austin Abrams as a dead beat who is both convincing and genuinely funny.  Right, funny! Because along with this being a horror, it is also super funny not unlike the recent Peele movies. The final sequence had the theatre roaring and that's what cinema is all about baby. There's a lot of snappy, clever editing, but also a ton of genuine laughs that are a big release from major tension. The main thing t...

⭐ 9/10 Wow. This movie was awesome. I remember seeing the trailer for this movie and I was immediately skeptical. It came across like a schlocky, hammed up Blumhouse-esk horror ride filled with cheap jump scares and shallow characters. BOY was I wrong. The story is deep, the characters are so well developed, the story is super unique and this movie is legitimately terrifying. I don't want to go through the story too much because I don't want to spoil anything, but in short, a class room of kids go missing, all except one that is, and the town obviously goes into turmoil. The first person the citizens blame is the teacher of that classroom, but this quickly falls through as a dad of one of the missing children begins to investigate the disappearances himself. The mystery thickens when the enigmatic Gladys (aunt of the single remaining student) gets involved. While this is happening, a good cop makes some bad decisions and ends up getting twisted up in this sinister plot. How is ...

⭐10/10 I'd always had a bit of interest in this game, but I was not expecting this. A marvel on every level, this is now one of my favorite games of all time. Buckle up cuz this will be a long review.  For a quick overview, this is a game about a our lead, Selene, crash landing on a foreign planet (Alien movie vibes) and having to fight her way to a signal, except every time she dies, you start the game over with very limited progress. The problem (and one that has drawn criticism) is that runs are very long, sometimes upward of 3 hours, so death can be devastating.  So let's start with a personal story. I'm not amazing at video games, but I do enjoy some hard ones if I'm invested enough. I was able to fumble my way through games like Hollow Knight and Elden Ring, and cruised through Dark Souls 3. But I have been brick walled by some others like Sekiro or Lies of P. I died a TON in my first twenty hours or so of Returnal. And then I read reviews. People were...

⭐6/10 I really have no thoughts on this one, but I watched it and so I'm legally forced to write a Weview (free me). Jess chose it for whatever reason (her mind is a mysterious thing) and it was acceptable enough to get through but not good. A few laughs, a few nice animated moments, and all the exact story beats you'd expect for a movie like this. It's like Toy Story except less funny and the voice acting is so-so (Louis CK as the lead??) and I will forget all about it in a week. 

⭐5/10 This is the third and final movie in the Kevin Sullivan Anne trilogy, and not one we were particularly excited to watch. This is now fully Anne fan-fic with this story having essentially no bearing in the novels. That's totally understandable because the later Anne novels do not lend themselves to film adaptation, but still, this was a super strange choice. This movie is about WWI breaking out, and Gilbert serving as a doctor, and then Anne going to Europe to... save him? Kinda unclear, and in retrospect I am more realizing that the thrust of the movie was entirely pointless because had she not gone, things would have turned out the same.  It's all super anti-Green Gables. While LM Montgomery was all about positivity and appreciation of beauty, this is more of a dramatic war epic. It clearly has a vastly increased budget and scope, but I think it is also clear that Sullivan just wanted to make a war movie and had access to the Green Gables name, so why not?  ...

⭐9/10 This is the book which was eventually adapted into the award winning movie of the same name, a movie I watched earlier this year and really loved. However, rather than being a narrative in really any sense, this is more a work of investigative journalism in which the author spends years studying this phenomenon.  The phenomenon, for those unfamiliar, is one in which following the recession, thousands of (mostly) seniors bought vans or RVs to live our their retirements in, living minimalist lifestyles and doing seasonal work to keep afloat. It was a lifestyle born from necessity, but gave way to a fulfilling, sometimes beautiful way of life. The book itself focuses mainly on a few people, including the author who bought a van and lived in it for a few months to get a better idea.  This book is phenomenal. Not only is it well-researched and nicely written, but it is about a topic that has become near and dear to me. It's honestly a lifestyle that appeals to me,...

⭐8/10 This is an early Coen Bros movie that has lots of Coen hallmarks. It's artsy while still being somewhat accessible, it has funny, sharp dialogue, features a strange ending, and works on multiple levels like they usually do. The Coen Bros usually hit a nice middle-ground for me where you feel encouraged to read into stuff more after the credits role, but you're still able to enjoy yourself as you watch.  I felt this one was maybe a touch too smart for me. This movie is about a man who is having a really bad week, with his wife leaving him, dealing with work BS, his brother having a mental breakdown, etc. But on a deeper level it's kinda about embracing mystery or embracing the unknown, or at least being okay with not knowing the answers, all sorta related to Schrodinger's cat. It's all related to lots of Jewish methos and theology too, and now that I write this all in one place, this movie is maybe about a bit too much, because I'm not sure how ...

⭐ 10/10 This has quickly become my favourite show on TV the past few years. Its a documentary on big wave surfers, and it is the most beautifully filmed thing you can watch. Season 1 follows Garrett McNamara as he establishes the big wave surfing scene in Nazare Portugal, and Season 2 follows the lives of many of the surfers that have come to Nazare to take part in what Garrett built. Season 3 is the same cast of characters, and seeing how their lives have changed is really fascinating. In 2 Garrett is getting older and fighting the desire to surf with his own mortality, suffering many injuries that should probably end his career and struggling to see other surfers overtake him. In 3 he is essentially retired, and he's like a caged beast. He still surfs, but he picks his spots, and when anything goes wrong his wife is furious. They have kids to think of! This is a 5 episode season and the final 3 were some of the best of the whole series. One of them is a trip a handful of them ta...

⭐ 8/10 Lonesome Dove is now on my Mount Rushmore, so of course I had to read another McMurtry. Why not the next one that is in the collection already own? Like Dove this book thrusts you into the old West in a way that feels genuine. Reading these I often think about my love of fantasy, and the thing I love there is a distinct world that feels real and lived in. McMurtry's dialog does exactly that, and I love how it takes me a couple pages to sink into the style before I am completely swimming in it. The dialog is sharp, the setting is vivid, and the life of the characters is completely alien. He is able to romanticize a way of life I would never survive in. This book follows what is essentially a love triangle. Two men in love with a woman, and she is in love with them both, and they kind of share here their whole lives. The book is split into three parts. We witness their young adulthood from Gideon's eyes, a realist who is a hard worker but can't ever commit to his feel...

⭐ 9/10 Any time a movie gets a 10/10 on WeView it climbs closer to the top of my watchlist. Scorsese makes great movies, so of course I was going to like this one. It is impossible not to think of Taxi Driver the whole time, and like that movie I was expected an explosion of violence that never really comes. Comparing Travis Bickle to Rupert Pupkin is not difficult, and both are surprisingly modern. Taxi Driver really put incel energy on the big screen, but I think this movie's depiction of parasocial relationships in the modern age is pretty incredible. The internet didn't exist but Rupert is the most "online" person ever, playing out scenarios in his head, convinced that the people he idolizes would love him if they ever got the chance to meet them. We have unlimited access to everyone we idolize and it feels like every day I am surrounded by a barrage of opinions, but also people trying to become famous! And that's ultimately what Rupert dreams of, everyone kn...

⭐ 8/10 Long before I had a kid I had heard this was one of the best modern show for young kids, and while I don't have a lot to compare it too I did really like it. Basically 50 8 minutes episodes, and I thought most of them were creative and simple and charming. There were a couple that made me emotional, especially being a fresh parent and seeing how excited my son was to watch. The dad in the show is goofy and playful in a way that is very endearing, and I think that's kind of the show's main idea. Family's playing and being silly together is what makes for a fun childhood and rewarding parenting, it doesn't have to be complicated. I will say that a bunch of the episodes are just the dad coming up with a silly game that they play, often resulting in some sort of unexpected emotions. It felt a bit repetitive, but each episode is pretty unique so I was impressed with the amount of variance. My favourite episodes were when the kids would play with other kids, and s...

⭐ 8/10 The fourth book in the Red Rising series, it had moments I really enjoyed but I didn't love it. That's kind of my review for the series as a whole, but I found reading this one to be a bit more difficult than previous entries. It had been a couple years, and I had completely forgotten everyone. So many times we would bump in to a character and I would recognize the name but completely forget their significance, which was kind of sad. I think the reason this was bearable at all is because this is the first book with multiple perspectives! So there are new characters I can be with and form a relationship to and start with a blank slate, for the most part. By the end I felt fully back in the world, and promised myself I wouldn't take years to get to the next one. I think this is a cool sci-fi world, and its refreshing after Sanderson to read fantasy that skimps on the details and leaves a ton to your imagination. The book never felt slow despite being twice as long as ...

Look at that cover! This is a YA horror book written by a trans Canadian author that knocked my socks off. A small town has secrets it's trying to hide, and after the death of a boy and a newcomer arriving, things start slipping out of control. It's a book about being trans or queer and living in a small town, and how a community creating a facade of a perfect town can backfire. Also maybe closing your eyes to anything that's "not your business" is not good actually! It's violent and full of rage, and I loved the way it played with time and perspective. Check the triggers, but if you're interested in reading it, I'd recommend going in blind without looking at reviews or a longer description! This is a short book of essays about ableism and disability justice, specifically relating to technological advances for disabled people. Most of the essays focus on a different type of technology for different disabilities (prosthetics, hearing aids, cures for aut...

⭐ 8.5/10 Man, I can't believe how much I enjoyed this book.  I remember seeing the movie, The Martian, a few years back and really enjoying it. I've always been a big sci fi guy, especially when the sci fi in question is similar to the technology we have now. I'd pick a "near future" sci fi book or movie, over a "distant future" sci fi book or movie any day! I love science, physics, biology, chemistry, etc, and I really enjoy it when the author of the sci fi novel I'm reading shares in that passion. Andy Weir is that guy on steroids. This book is chalked full of physics, math, biology, engineering, and makes the character he is writing seem like a believable scientist. This book is a pretty prototypical "Earth is in peril and humanity must band together to save it" type of story. I say prototypical because it doesn't deviate from the formula too much and yet still manages to make a story that is super original and interesting.  Essenti...