WeView

⭐9/10 Yes, I'm allowed to post comedy specials because I make the rules around here. Comedy isn't funny to write about, so I won't take long, but I would just like to say that I was early on the bandwagon, watching him live in Toronto when he was kinda starting out. I love him. He is Cam from Modern Family but with some bite and mental illness.  This special is pretty much all gold. I had heard a lot of these jokes before, but this is a perfect entry point into his work if you haven't seen him. I don't love when comedians try to get too serious, and he does that a bit here, but it's a good balance.  Yeah, watch it. It's on Crave/ HBO. 

⭐9.5/10 I feel like I've got somewhat complicated thoughts on this one. This movie, from Paul Thomas Anderson, is being touted as the greatest film of the last decade. I watched it opening night and loved it, but was also perplexed as to why it was getting such praise. It is fun and engaging, but it doesn't exactly seem as if it's trying to be a work of undeniable genius like There Will Be Blood or the like. But I will admit that I've been thinking about this movie all weekend, but also not sure if it's because I'm supposed to believe it's genius or because it actually is...  Either way, this movie rocks. It is about Leonardo DiCaprio as a former American revolutionary who has a daughter and they get mixed up in trouble as his past still haunts him. That's not really the plot, but really all I want to say without giving too much away. But the thing that struck me was that this is a big budget action movie. PTA doesn't really make those......

⭐9/10 This was the perfect show at the perfect time. It's hilarious, it's exciting, it's intense, it's smart. It really is the ultimate crowd pleaser, sure to engage pretty much anyone from the jump.  It's about Steven Yeung and Ali Wong getting into a road rage incident which sets off the craziest beef that completely spirals out of control. You become instantly invested in who gets the upper hand, and it's funny to watch because both of these characters have some admirable traits, yet they are so deeply flawed in more significant ways. Yeung is a hardworking handyman trying to support his family, but is also a completely insufferable narcacist. Wong is a successful businesswoman trying to keep it together so she can live a simple life caring for her daughter, and yet is a deranged sociopath with massive anger issues. The characters are incredibly written, so lifelike and well-realzied by their respective actors.  The plot is snappy and has a great ...

⭐ 4/10 I'll start by saying I have seen the trailer for this movie and it will be an absolute smash hit. Great actors, perfect directors for something like this, fun trailer, when the story of history is told and my WeViews come back up everyone will say I am wrong. I had a friend I hadn't talked to in forever at a party last weekend say he read this and loved it and thought of me and I had to share my hot take... This book is unreadable! I am truly baffled by the universal love for this. Now let me explain, I love sci-fi, and I also really like science! I took astrophysics as an elective in university, you know, the the course where you usually take something to raise your average. This book felt like studying for an exam, but not in a way I used to enjoy. He completely bombards you with new science, but also an onslaught of explanation and experimentation. The book would pick up steam, and then there would be minutes of explaining procedure and scientific method that would c...

⭐ 8.5/10 This show is completely about how Hollywood romanticizes itself. Seth Rogan's character Matt becomes the head of a movie studio, a guy who loves "cinema" and wants to save it from all the slop, but ends up just being someone who fuels the slop machine. This push-pull of him trying to back projects that make money, but also please his superiors, is where a ton of the comedy comes from. In our age of streaming something that is kind of backwards looking like this is very timely. I shouldn't say backwards looking, its just interesting how people are dressed, what people drive, what the offices look like, clearly they are nostalgic for what Hollywood used to be. At the end of the day this show is funny, and that's what makes it worth watching. A couple of the episodes devolve into people losing their mind because of drugs or some other reason, and I don't find that funny at all. But a bunch of the other episodes remind me of the high-octane Bear episodes...

     ⭐ 6.5/10 This book is pretty mid. I'm not entirely sure what it is that I didn't like, it just didn't hit the way I was hoping it would. I read this book as a prerequisite for the movie that just came out because the movie looks like it has very positive reviews. If the film adaptation has good reviews, the source material must be good right? Well... sort of. This book has some interesting attributes to it. For one, this was supposed to be a critique on the Vietnam war which definitely comes through in a poignant and thought provoking manner, and the writing is fairly good for Stephen King standards which for the most part makes for an enjoyable read. I just couldn't get into it as much as I wanted to despite the interesting premise. I unfortunately feel that the premise of this book is more compelling than the work itself. Essentially, there is this long standing tradition in this book's version of America called the Long Walk. This Long Walk is a walking mar...

⭐ 10/10 This movie is perfect. Perfect. And before anyone tells me that I am overstating it, no, watch it. The Coen brothers are (in my opinion) unmatched in their ability to tell a story. Now this movie is based on a book so one could argue that it isn't really them telling the story, but still, they have this ability to make words come to life in a mesmerizing way. The book is unreal, Cormac McCarthy is my favourite author and this book is one of his best, so this movie might have been a slam dunk waiting to happen, but it isn't even just about how good they are at telling the story, they're good at making Cormac McCarthy come to life in this movie. In his books, Cormac feels like an unnamed narrator; one so integrated in the story that he feels like another character, disembodied and vibrant. This movie doesn't have a narrator or anything, but there feels like there is a soul in this movie, a ghost that haunts the dialogue, an essence that fills each character, an i...

⭐8/10 This was last year's Game of the Year winner, and unfortunately I played it between Returnal and Silksong which I think will be personal all-timers. Of course I couldn't help but keep comparing it to these other games I love and wonder what was missing for Astro. This game is good for sure, but I spent a lot of time wondering if I actually liked it.  This is a 3D platformer very similar to Mario games in that the story is kinda silly and childish and not the focus, but rather the focus is unique mechanics and creative challenges. People will say that this game is distilled fun and nothing else, but I kept wondering, am I actually having fun? It's an interesting question because I'd be about to take my character down a waterslide and be like, oh this will be exciting, even though I know there is no challenge or even any inputs involved, but the visuals and magical, tangible controller vibrations somehow make it feel like you're going down it yourse...

⭐10/10 My two favorite things: food and history! This is again not actually a book, but a university course consisting of 36 half-hour lectures. I had a good feeling about this course going in, but this became an all-timer for me very quickly. I think this course is one of the best ways to learn a general human history, a way to learn about food, and a way to learn about the development of culture and advancement. It's a specific course, but it covers a ton and is a very interesting lense to view history through. Everything has always revolved around food! The lecturer is also awesome. He's a great speaker, but also incredibly passionate and entertaining. You can tell he loves this material and is great at dividing and organizing it into bite-sized (get it??) lectures. I will always have a heart for early human history, which is the first few chapters, but some favorites I wasn't expecting were the chapters on Islamic influence on cuisine, the chapters on global...

⭐7/10 Another favorite of a Weview reader, and so I want to be careful with my criticism, but as I always say: friendships are temporary, Weview is eternal.  I don't actually have all that much to say about this one, but I think that's kinda the problem. I never disliked this book at any point, but I never fell in love either. Obviously I think I'm not the target audience, that this is mostly meant for kids, but I've loved kids books in the past. The problem with this one then is that it's really not funny like most kids books. In fact it's pretty much humourless, and so you're putting a lot of the plot, and the plot never grabbed me.  This one is well-written, and obviously a lot of thought and love went into this. There are some interesting ideas introduced, some likeable characters especially once my guy Iorek Byrnison is introduced. Another thing I'll add is that the audiobook is absolutely fantastic and possibly the best choice here.  Bu...

⭐ 9.5/10 I know that this might be a super high rating for this movie but I honestly don't care because I want to give it a straight up 10, however, that might be slightly too high of praise. Barely. I have watched all of Ari Aster's other movies and I have to say I am 100 percent a fan boy of his. I remember the first time I saw The Strange Thing about the Johnsons and if you haven't seen that movie, there is no way I can describe to you how disturbing that movie is. Hereditary gave me nightmares when I first saw it at the age of 20. At that time I hadn't been sincerely frightened by a horror movie in a long time. Despite that, Aster made it happen. I felt the same mix of awe and uneasy when I saw his movie Midsommar. Less scary than Hereditary but an unbelievably good movie nonetheless. But it wasn't until I saw Beau is Afraid that I truly got the vision. Despite the mixed reviews, I couldn't get over how locked into that movie I was. It was abstract, funny, ...

⭐6/10 Ah, a merciful end. I think the greatest strength of this show is that there are very few duds. This show rarely has you dying of laughter, but it also rarely swings and misses. But holy smokes, season 11 has a lot of misses. In previous seasons, you will laugh every minute or so. In this season, there will be intros that are painfully unfunny or moments that really make you cringe, and not in a good way. I'm sure there were changes with the writers or something because this is pretty clearly not the same show.  That doesn't mean this season can't still bring it! In fact, some of the bigger swings result in some classic Modern Family moments, like maybe the spa scene or the whole arc with Phil bonding with Clair's former lover in France. There are some gems, but they are fewer and further between for a show that has consistently been rock solid.  I'd say I'm sad to see this show go, but I have been in the process of letting go for honestly a ye...

⭐ 10/10 A godsend! Jess and I randomly stumbled into this one night and instantly fell in love. We both love trivia, and I used to watch tons of Jeopardy as a kid. This is basically easier Jeopardy with modern questions that we knew a ton of answers to! Hosted by Colin Jost, who is great, this is strangely 3 teams of three. Not sure why, maybe just a chance to get more people involved, but it also means tons of the questions are being answered, which makes it fun. Over the course of the tournament we both grew attached to certain teams, hated other teams, and when the playoffs began we were legit tense every Final Jeopardy! There were crazy comebacks, insane wagers, wild Daily Doubles that either propelled people to victory or completely sunk them. A very fun show, and we are sadder that it is over than I think I have ever been. Something I need answered is some of the wagering strategies. I get the general idea, but there were unexplainable bets that costed teams wins in several key ...

⭐8/10 This was Jess's choice when she got back home, the first movie I watched after my blood-soaked week of boy movies. And this is also a boy movie! Death at a funeral? There has to be at least one murder right?  This is a British comedy about Mr Darcy's dad dying and everything going wrong at the funeral. We watched the first half one night and it was okay and we weren't sure we would go back. But the second half absolutely makes up for it as things completely spiral and we were dying by the end.  So yeah, good movie, not a ton to add. Some great moments, but also a few that didn't really land, especially in that first half. I would say it's a crowd pleaser, but with a lot of these British comedies it can get pretty outrageous and absurd at times and is maybe not for everyone. But it was for me!

⭐ 6/10 The final of the McMurty collection I own, the first was a masterpiece, the second was memorable, and this was an outright dud. I read it quickly, so I wouldn't say it was terrible, but my goodness this is the horniest book I have ever read! Did not expect that. Basically a bunch of high school kids all sleeping with each other. When that gets played out, one of them starts hooking up with his football coach's wife, and she loves it. The football coach leers at the girls they used to date in a disgusting way. Other adult women show up and either flirt or sleep with these boys. There is a spontaneous trip to Mexico to visit prostitutes and watch porn then come back. The boys go to a farm drunkenly one night to get their fix in another way... just 100 pages of lust and desperation. I will say there is a thread in all three of these books of feeling like you missed the good ol' days, like something is ending and you don't know where you fit in what is coming next. ...

⭐6.5/10 I was anticipating this adaptation of a book I read this year, but I admit I kinda had low expectations. This is a story about a group of seniors in a retirement home who try to solve cold cases who then get wrapped up in a real life crime. I thought it had potential, but wasn't sure how it would work as a movie and was pretty worried about how it would be Netflixified.  My favorite thing about Osman and TMC is that it is very funny, but a bookish funny, and not in a way that would really translate to screen. This movie tries to be funny, and sometimes succeeds, but whereas that's the whole point of the book, this one just tries to get off a few Marvel-esque jokes. It focuses on the plot of the book, and while I thought the mystery of the book was tons of fun, pretty complex and thoughtfully developed, it is maybe not enough to carry a film on its own.  Or maybe it could have, but we'll never know because this movie butchers a few key features of the boo...

⭐ 7.5/10 This is Mario Kart - consistent and a game I will probably still be playing in 10 years. Its lots of fun, but outside of the racing there is not a ton to pump up the score. I got the credits rolling after beating all the main circuits, so why not review? So this one does have a bunch of new mechanics, and it was cool learning them and feeling bad at the game for the first time since I was a kid. However, it did not take long to learn. There is this open world that is interesting, and I like how all the tracks are tied together. But the open world is a bit disappointed, with challenges scattered randomly throughout it without great rewards or any way to track progress. I don't want Metroidvania world discovery in Mario Kart... but maybe I do? The challenges was fun, it just felt so unstructured. Once I felt like it had taught me the new controls I basically never went back to it. The racing is fun as always. Great music, great tracks. The Rainbow Road finale was actually r...

⭐7.5/10 The last movie from my run while Jess was away. The Killer! The perfect name for a movie to cap off this series.  This is a movie that follows a professional hitman, and it follows him very closely, being inside his brain. A character study, if you will. He is good at his job because he is super logical and careful, and you see the wild lengths he goes to do his job well. But also he is a sociopath, so you see how this kind of story would unfold for a guy who is unable to feel things, or at least who has trained himself not to feel things. It's all about how empathy is weakness, and fear is the mind killer or something like that. But then things go wrong and the goons are sent after him, and so this is actually a Jason Bourne movie if Jason Bourne was super unlikeable. It's still the same cold, calculated, hyper-competent protagonist, but this character is supposed to have no redeeming qualities.  Except he also kinda does? I guess that's my issue with t...

⭐7.5/10 The marathon of movies I can't watch with Jess continues! I was struck by the similarities between this one and History of Violence, both these kinda odd hyper-masculine movies from the early 2000s with similar themes. Both classic "I'm worried your baby thinks people can't change"-type movies where our heros have dark pasts that they are trying to run from, only to learn that you can't escape old habits... I found much of this movie to be not great. I find the premise to mostly be silly, and again some strange male fantasy where I could kill everybody in the room, but my desire to change is holding me back. But if you provoke me I'll have no choice! Not great. But in this instance, I found the writing to be much more passable and most importantly I found the romance at the heart of it to be a bit more compelling. Annette Benning plays the love interest, and while I don't think her role is exactly advancing the feminist cause, I do ...