WeView

⭐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...

⭐10/10 What a year it's been for games! In the last few months, I've played 3 games that all approach top ten all-timers for me. Between Returnal, Silksong, and now this one, Hades II might actually be the game I was in love with over the others.  That's not to say I think it's the best of the three. I have some quibbles for sure. The things that I usually really care about were not all great here. I don't think this game looks particularly good, with a messy art style and cluttered screen. I never thought the music was great. I also couldn't care less about the story in a game like this, but for the record people didn't love it. I guess my bigger complaint with the story is that I find the presentation so, so dull. It's entirely told through people talking in boring ways. I'm always surprised people enjoy a story that's told this way.  But who cares about any of that! I was utterly taken by this game. I guess I should explain the gam...

⭐7.5/10 This is a super campy 90s horror-comedy that Jess chose under my strict spooky season regime. And she picked a winner! This one features 90s icons Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, as well as Bruce Willis in a bit of an odd role for him, but it worked nicely.  It's a movie about these two super hateable women vying for the attention of Bruce Willis by trying to stay young and hot, which leads them down a dark path. It's super silly and weird, and definitely has all the qualities of a cult classic. It's a theatre kid movie, but I laughed a lot and had a good time.  I don't have that much else to say! I liked it! I thought it actually touched on themes of beauty and pressure for ageing women in some very interesting ways, but again, it's silly, it's not trying to change the world. It's fun to watch and perfect for the season so long as you can stomach some yucky body horror with some laughably dated effects. 

⭐8/10 This is a shorter documentary about last season's Pistons. I've always thought it's funny that I will write reviews about any 2 hour movie I watch, but will watch a million Pistons games and consume 6 Pistons podcasts and whatever, and make no mention of it. Naturally, nobody cares about the Pistons but me, but this documentary is a good way of discussing the media I consume more than any other.  Moreover, I can discuss the funnest season of basketball I've ever watched outside of maybe the Cavs 2016 run. This documentary is great at highlighting what a joy this team was last year. They went from one of the worst NBA teams in history to not just an okay team, but a legitimately good one, and it's hard to attribute anything to this improvement besides the good vibes. They made minor roster adjustments, but this team's run felt magical, something perfect for a documentary like this.  It also highlighted what a wild year it was. They start 0-4 and...

⭐8/10 I'm always on the lookout for a spooky season movie that I can watch with Jess, and this one came to me like in a dream. It's exactly what I wanted. A parody of horror movies but it gets the tone just right and is constantly charming. I'm not super familiar with this universe, but the one thing I remembered was that Wallace is an inventor who's inventions always involve finding the hardest, silliest ways to get what he wants. For instance, his alarm clock puts cheese in front of him so he wakes up, but then retracts so that he hits his head against the trap door every morning. Genius! Everything is so dumb and it's one of those movies that you know was a hoot to make.  But in this movie, Wallace and Gromit are humane pest control agents that keep rabbits out of gardens (again, using the dumbest contraptions conceived), and eventually they have to take down a monster that is eating everyone's vegetables before the big vegetable celebration. What...

⭐10/10 Like Tim, this was one of my most anticipated games of all time, especially because that anticipation grew year after year with every tease. I love Hollow Knight, and would rank it among my favorite games of all time, and yet my thoughts still differ from his namely because I don't enjoy always being angry during my leisure time. So for those who haven't played, this is a 2D indie action-platformer that is known for a lot of things: beautiful art, brilliant design, satisfying combat, and punishing, punishing difficulty. I do think the difficulty is worth discussing because so much of your enjoyment of this game depends on your pain tolerance... but also simply your skill level. Tim beat it in 50 hours, I beat the same thing in 75. This is skill-privilege and it will not be tolerated on Weview.  So I'll start this review with the difficulty to get it out of the way. I really, really wanted to give this game lower than a 10 to highlight the absurd lows this...

⭐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 ...

⭐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...

⭐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...

⭐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!

⭐6.5/10 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 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 ...

⭐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,...