What I Watched February 2020

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Movies

Maria – Some kind of would be female led John Wick style action movie. It kind of works, but it isn’t especially good. There are some good action scenes, but it is mostly just fine. **1/2

Psychokinesis – A Korean superhero movie that is actually a lot of fun. Roon-mi runs a chicken restaurant. She is involved in a real estate dispute with some mobsters working for a big corporation. When her mother dies, her estranged father, Seok-heon, shows up. He now has superpowers. After first trying to use them for petty schemes, he uses his powers to help his daughter out. It is a solidly entertaining superhero movie. ****

The Matrix – Yup, this first one is still great. I have no interest in watching the sequels again. *****

Shanghai Fortress – This movie is shockingly dull. A science fiction action movie about an alien invasion. It also tries to be a romance, but it only kind of works. **1/2

Elisa & Marcela – The true story of the first gay marriage in Spain, kind of. The movie is not good. It is melodramatic and didactic. I didn’t like it much at all. **

Rampant – A Korean zombie movie period piece. Lot’s of political scheming over the throne and trying to use an outbreak of a zombie virus to secure power. It goes badly. This is more of an action movie than a horror movie, but it is enough of a horror movie that I mostly just wanted to shut it off. ***

Back to the Future Part 3 – I know people who are really down on this movie, and BttF2. I don’t get it. The original Back to the Future is pretty much perfect, I agree, and its sequels are not quite on its level. But both 2 and 3 are ridiculously fun in their own right. I really like the 3rd one, as it puts the setup of the series into a new genre. *****

Dragon Quest Your Story – For most of this movie’s runtime it is an enjoyable, if incredibly fast paced adaptation of one of the best video games ever made. The last fifteen minutes turn it into something else entirely. ***1/2

Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks – This is a documentary about the development of Hong Kong Kung Fu movies. It is kind of surface, but it is largely entertaining. It covers the genre from Bruce Lee to close to the present day, covering the ups and down of the genre and its stars. It is a solid primer for those only vaguely aware of the genre. ***1/2

The Last Thing He Wanted – Bad movies are not usually this well made. This movie got miserable reviews and for about the first hour I was somewhat baffled by that. Then it got into its second half and . . . I don’t know. This is a strange movie. Everyone involved is too good for this movie to be this disjointed. **

TV

The Spy – It is interesting to see Sacha Baron Cohen do serious work. And good work. This show is good, but not great. It slips into hagiography at times, flattening a complex historical figure into something more like a straight hero. It is alo really tense and mostly very entertaining. Cohen plays the Isreali spy Eli Cohen, who infiltrated the Syrian government in the 1960s. Knowing historically how it ends makes it hard to watch at times. He has to leave his family behind and become someone else. He gets good information from the Syrians, but eventually the net closes in on him. He can feel it closing, but he is able to be talked into keeping going for all the good information he is getting until the inevitable happens. It is really good.

The Dragon Prince S1-3 – Pretty solid cartoon from Netflix. I never really warmed to the animation style. Still, the show itself is pretty well done. I don’t have a lot to say about it. It is a well executed fantasy story that is suitably complex and original. If you can get past the animation, which I really didn’t like, it is well worth watching.

Godless – This show is amazing. Just a long, loving, beautiful deconstruction of western tropes. The town of La Belle is almost completely without men after a mine accident killed nearly all of them. In their absence, the women of the town have banded together to keep things going. Jeff Daniels plays an outlaw, Frank Griffin, who waxes on about God while committing unspeakable acts. Roy Goode, played by Jack O’Connell, was like a son to Griffin until he double crossed him and took off. He takes refuge in La Belle. Sam Waterston plays a US Marshall hunting Daniels. Things almost never play out like you would expect in this show, at least until near the end. Scoot McNairy is the sheriff of La Belle, but he almost never draws his gun, leading to him having a reputation as a coward. His widowed sister is the real leader of the town. The show lets the characters live as it builds up to the inevitable conflict between the town and Griffin’s gang. It is one of the best things I’ve seen in some time.

The Pharmacist – Another Netflix true crime series. This one is a trip, following a pharmacist as he first tries to find the person who killed his son, then as he tries to get to the bottom of the all of opioid prescriptions that are running through his pharmacy as people start dying. It is plenty entertaining, even if it doesn’t really offer anything new.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Part 3 – This show is something else. I still wish they would cut each episode down by about 15 minutes. I know the 40-45 minute runtime is for airing on tv with commercials, but the full hours that a lot of this shows episodes run feel laborious. I’ve got to be honest here, I am not especially engaged with this show. It is fine; largely well made and occasionally interesting, but I am never really interested. I do appreciate how wide the show tends to go with things, with trips to hell and all kinds of wild nonsense.

Giri/Haji – This show is wild. It is nominally a cop show. Kenzo, a Japanese cop, goes to England to look for his brother Yuto, who is in the Yakuza. Kenzo has to balance his responsibility to bring in his brother, if he is indeed guilty of the crimes he is suspected of, with his duty to protect his brother. There are all kinds of complications, from British gangsters to Yuto’s relationship with a Yakuza bosses daughter to Kenzo’s crumbling marriage, to Sarah, the British cop that takes a liking to Kenzo. Not on that, but the show seems determined to change genre about 4 times an episode. It is always a crime show, but sometimes it is an action movie, sometimes a relationship drama, sometimes it is animated, sometimes an action scene plays out as an interpretive dance. It keeps the viewer off balance and consistently engaged. I really enjoyed it. I don’t know that there is much room for a follow up season, but I would definitely watch one.

Shrill S2 – Another batch of episodes here that are really pretty good. I don’t know that I am directly the audience for this, but I enjoy the show enough to stick with it for its relatively short run time.

High Fidelity – I have not read the book this is based on. I never watch the John Cusak movie. This show is fine. It feels perfectly aimed at a very specific audience and I am not that audience. The foremost reason for that is that I don’t really care about music. Rob is this insane mix of appealing and completely insufferable, a hard trick to pull off. The show is really easy to watch even if you are not particularly engaged with it.

What I Read February 2020

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I finished one big book in February, and then a handful of much shorter ones. It feels good to be reading at my preferred pace. I hope I can keep this up for the next couple of months, before I have to start studying for the bar.

Dune

Frank Herbert

This book is one that has been on my to read list for a long time. People frequently recommended this. It was also compared to a series I like a whole lot, though after reading it I find that comparision to be overblown.

Dune is kind of oddly structured. The outline of the story is a familiar one, but the way it plays out is odd. The book spends a lot of time setting up the situation it is getting ready to blow up. It either starts way too soon or way too late. It is nearly the midway point of the book before the villains make their movie and kicks the plot into high gear. Then the book spends an inordinate amount of time on Paul’s escape. But the time it gets to Paul turning the tables on Baron Harkonnen, there isn’t a whole lot of book left for it to happen in. I don’t know that I mean these observations as criticisms. I really liked the start of the book and the meticulous world building. However, it did seem that many important things, especially in the back third of the book, happened off the page and were merely related to the reader in a line of dialogue.

Herbert did an amazing job of establishing a world and a ton of interesting characters. I wanted to know about most of the players in the book. Really, I was a little disappointed with how little a lot of interesting characters get to do.

In the end, I see why this book is considered a classic of the genre, and I can see its influence on many other series I’ve read. I don’t know that I actually liked it all that much, though.

Dune Messiah

Frank Herbert

I know the first book got into this a little bit, but this sequel is incredibly fascinating in how it just completely undermines the conclusion of its predecessor. Dune is a hero’s journey for Paul, Dune: Messiah examines what it means to be a hero and whether or not that is good. And it comes down solidly on the side of it not being a good thing. Paul has assumed the role of emperor and gotten revenge for his father, but in doing so, he has also unleashed a wave of destruction across the galaxy. Destruction that he is powerless to stop.

The whole book, which is less than half as long as the first, deals with a labyrinthine plot to bring Paul down. A plot that Paul is not especially eager to stop. One part of it has his wife, Irulan, dosing his lover Chani with contraceptives so they cannot produce an heir. Paul is aware of this, but doesn’t stop it because he has foreseen that birthing his heir will cause Chani’s death. So he lets various plots develop, so long as they are advantageous to him. The book puts you on the side of Paul, but the more you see of the situation, the less clear it is that Paul is actually good. It takes the hero of the previous book and shows him to be ineffective and powerless and destructive. It makes for an interesting read.

Sourcery

Terry Pratchett

This is the Discworld book that Pratchett apparently said is where readers should start. It is pretty fun. A wizard goes against wizard custom and has children, which leads to the creation of a sourcery, a person incredibly gifted with magic. As this sourcerer starts to take over the magical world, controlled by the spirit of his father, Rincewind sets out to stop him. Kind of, Rincewind mostly seems to just want to get away.

Like the previous Discworld books I’ve read, the plot appears to be largely there for Pratchett to engage in witty word play. This one also has a lot to say about fate or destiny. Each of the characters feels fated to be one thing or another. Conina is the daughter of a barbarian, but wants to be a hairdresser. Nijel the Destroyer is an accountant who wants to be a barbarian. Rincewind is a wizard who is all but incapable of doing magic. Each of these characters, and more, have to deal with the conflict between what they were “born” to be and what they want to be. I feel like I’ll be saying this a lot in this post, but this book was a lot of fun.

Peril At End House

Agatha Christie

This one is unique among Christie’s Poirot books in that I immediately twigged to the killer. I tend to like the game and am content to let Christie lay out the clues before I start trying to solve the case, here it just seemed pretty obvious. I can’t say I knew all the why, which is the really important part, but I pretty quickly got to who and how.

In Peril at End House, Poirot meets Nick Buckley after seeing an attempt on her life. So he sticks around to try to figure out who amongst her somewhat suspicious friends and relatives are trying to end her life. Unfortunately, despite his efforts, someone ends up dead. Only it is not Nick but her cousin who was wearing her jacket. So Poirot sets out to find out who was responsible. It is a pretty solid mystery.

Lord Edgware Dies/Thirteen At Dinner

Agatha Christie

An actress approaches Poirot for his help in securing a divorce from her estranged husband. He is wary to do it, but he eventually agrees to plead her case. Poirot is surprised when that husband, Lord Edgware, not only agrees but claims he agreed to the divorce long since. The next day, Lord Edgware turns up dead. One person who has an airtight alibi is his estranged wife, the actress Jane Wilkinson. Poirot suspects her, but looks elsewhere. Soon, more people start to turn up dead.

Another largely solid Poirot book. They are all good, but this one kind of fades into the comfortable middle. It is not especially memorable, but thoroughly enjoyable while being read. I think you can kind of feel Christie getting tired of Hastings as the Watson to Poirot’s Holmes here, and he would disappear a few books later.

Now Playing February 2020

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Beaten

My World, My Way – read about it here. I am still a little shocked about how much I enjoyed this game, and how much I miss the days when weird experimental games like this could be released.

Ongoing

Yakuza 3 – I got started with this and I am going to see it through. I was quickly reminded of what I loved about this game nearly a decade ago. The game does a great job of starting with something of a bait and switch. Instead of diving back into the world of crime from the first two games, and instead starts the player in a new area and tasks them with solving the problems with a gang of orphans. It starts with a couple of hours of Kiryu simply playing dad. I haven’t yet hit the part where it turns and becomes more of a classic Yakuza game.

Dragon Quest XI – More slow progress with this game. It is kind of my ideal of a modern jrpg, but I don’t have the time to sink into the extended play sessions that do this game the most justice. Still, I am going to keep making what progress I can with this game. I just did the mermaid quest and it was pretty heartbreaking. Just a tragedy of errors all around.

Double Dragon and Kunio-kun Retro Brawler Bundle – This is a pretty impressive package. Sixteen games, some of them with different versions. These are not games that most people have played a lot. The Double Dragon games were very popular back in the day, especially the first one. I have always been a huge fan of River City Ransom. Most of the rest of the games are lesser known or have never been released in the United States. I have been a big fan of the Kunio games since I first played River City Ransom and World Cup Soccer on the NES and I can’t wait to get into all of these different games. So far, I have played a ton of Double Dragon, which is much harder than I remembered. Or maybe I do remember it being this hard, because I made just about as far as my memories of the game go. I’ve also played some of the hockey game, which isn’t as enjoyable as I remember soccer being, but it is still pretty fun.

Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers – This game is a tough one to get back into after some time away. I am used to the more modern SMT games, and this game does not have some of the quality of life improvements of later games in the series. I don’t really know what I was doing or where I was going. I don’t know what I am doing with my roster of demons. I am not quite sure what I am doing with character progression or where I am in the story. I think I will push through. I do like a lot of this game, it is just a little unfriendly at times.

Upcoming

River King: A Wonderful Journey – This has been sitting on my shelf for years, and for some reason, likely related to the game below, I’ve been feeling some strange pull to put this in and give it a go. Maybe during Spring Break

Rune Factory 4 – Now that I’ve finished My World, My Way, I am moving on to other DS/3DS games that I have not yet finished. I’ve cleared a decent amount of Rune Factory 4 already, but I have trouble balancing the forward momentum of exploring the dungeons and doing the farming and community building stuff. But I’m in the mood for some of the low key pleasures of this sort of game.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

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The narrative that DC is flailing and Marvel has got it figured out is so solidly ingrained now that I don’t see it changing. It doesn’t matter that Marvel’s movies look and feel more homogeneous as they go. Or maybe that is part of their popularity. It doesn’t matter that DC is doing stuff that is weird and good. Once Batman v. Superman came out and people didn’t like it, the narratives were set. DC will always be chasing Marvel, no matter how different the approaches and final products. Warner Brothers has put out some really good DC movies over the last year, mostly using an approach of simply making the best film for each character. Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam were all excellent and, no matter my complete disdain for it, Joker really resonated with people. Birds of Prey continues this, while salvaging the best part of Suicide Squad.

Birds of Prey follows Harley Quinn as she breaks up with the Joker. As abusive and toxic as that relationship was, she learns that her proximity to the most feared criminal in Gotham had granted her a measure of protection that she took for granted. Especially with night club owner and criminal Roman Sionis. Once she is no longer untouchable, he comes after her to get revenge for several petty slights. Luckily for Harley, he is in need of help. Help finding an important jewel, which was stolen from his henchman Zsasz but a young pickpocket named Cassandra Cain. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other people out to get her before Harley does. One is Gotham cop Renee Montoya, who has been trying to take down Sionis for years. Another is the mysterious Huntress, who showed up out of nowhere and started shooting people with a crossbow. And finally there is Dinah Lance, a night club singer who is finally fed up with Sionis.

The story is told from the perspective of the somewhat addled Harley Quinn, so it moves in fits and starts at times. She is telling the story as it goes, and sometimes goes back to tell it in a different way. The disjointed nature of the opening hour works in the film’s favor as it slowly introduces characters and shows scenes from different points of view. In all, the structure calls to mind early Guy Ritchie movies like Snatch, where various groups of criminals bounce off each other in unpredictable ways.

The movie shines in one area especially: the fights scenes. Supposedly John Wick director Chad Stahleski helped with the fight scenes and it shows. They don’t match that series for inventiveness or impact, but the fight scenes here are a cut above most action movies, let alone most superhero movies. Birds of Prey’s action has weight. The scenes are frequently over the top, even silly, but that fits in perfectly with the movie they are making. They are a deadly, ridiculous ballet. The fight in the police station is great and the big one at the end is just masterful.

It also shines with characters. Margot Robbie continues to be excellent as Harley Quinn. The character is seen somewhat as DC’s version of Deadpool, and there is some truth to that. Like Reynolds with that character, Robbie perfectly embodies Harley Quinn. Also, it is a taste that is not for everyone. The Birds of Prey stray a little further from their comic counterparts, but they all get the cores of their characters right. Montoya is a good cop pushed just a bit too far by the corruption of Gotham. She wants to do the right thing, but is so disillusioned with the system that it is starting to break her. As we are introduced to her here, played by the excellent Rosie Perez, she is starting to crack, but her heart’s in the right place. Huntress, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is pretty much straight from the comics. A mafia princess coming back to get revenge on the people who killed her parents. She is a somewhat twisted version of Batman that, in the comics, eventually broke good. The new addition is her social awkwardness, an understandable development for a person who spent most of her life training to get revenge. Then there is Dinah Lance, Black Canary, played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell, who we do not get enough of but has the best arc outside of Harley. She starts as someone who ignores the damage happening to people around her, until it is so in her face that she can’t ignore it. As the movie goes along, she becomes more committed to fighting against it.

The only fly in the ointment is Cassandra, who bears absolutely no resemblance to the comic character. She is almost as much of a mcguffin as the diamond she stole, but mostly works as a sort of kid sidekick to the whole cast, though she ends up in Harley’s orbit for most of the movie.

I’ll admit to being enough of a comic nerd that seeing characters I like on the big screen is still something of a thrill for me, especially when they are character who have not been there before. DC’s B and C list characters are some of my favorites, so seeing Huntress and Black Canary was fun in and of itself. However, Birds of Prey is firing on all cylinders. It has great action, a good sense of humor, and some really great character work. I loved it.

****1/2

What I Watched January 2020

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Movies

Before I get into these movies, I am going to note that I spent a large portion of January cleaning out my Netflix queue, watching all of the movies that had been sitting on my list for years without being watched. So some of those are just getting a score with nothing more. Those will be up first, then my usual quick reviews.

Becoming Jane – ***

Someone Great – ***1/2

Kate and Leopold – ***

The Little Mermaid (2018) – **

Colonia – **½

Red Sea Diving Resort – **

God of War – **

Moonwalkers – **½

Rattlesnake – **

Yucatan – **

Clouds of Sils Maria – ****

The Brawler – *

The Men Who Stare at Goats – ***

Fullmetal Alchemist – **

The Fighter – ****

District 9 – ****

IO – **½

Pegasus – **½

Unicorn Store – **

The Talented Mr. Ripley – ***½

Detective Dee and the Four Heavenly Kings – ***

Knives Out – see review here. *****

The Hateful Eight: Extended Edition – I reviewed this movie before, but I watched this extended edition that is broken into four episodes as a mini-series. It still plays. This is a great, if thoroughly unpleasant, film. I don’t know that I need to watch this nearly four hour long version very often, but it is a wholly entertaining experience. *****

Kabaneri and the Iron Fortress: Battle of Unato – This is another movie split into episodes for Netflix. I moved it up here because it definitely functions more as a movie than a miniseries. I think this would be better if I knew the series; as it is it is a mildly enjoyable animated action movie. ***

Casa de mi Padre – This movie is certainly not for everybody. Will Ferrell stars in a fairly straight attempt at Mexican telenovela. It just pushes things further away from reality at every turn. It is tuned to a very specific sense of humor, which fortunately for me is one I share. This is Ferrell in his strangest mode and I love it. The artificiality of everything just makes it work. ****1/2

Hell or High Water – I absolutely loved this movie. Two brothers, who own a farm that is about to be foreclosed on by the bank, take to robbing small bank branches for small amounts of money. Though it is set in modern times, it plays out like an old Western. Especially as the law men come after the brothers. Despite their actions, your sympathies generally lie with the brothers. Especially with Chris Pine, whose plan this is and is doing it to help his ex-wife and kids. I loved everything about this movie all around. *****

A Serious Man – This was one of the few Coen Brothers movies I hadn’t seen. It is good. Not my favorite, but very good. It is calls to mind the book of Job, with terrible things happening to the main character for no rhyme or reason. ****1/2

End of Watch – I absolutely hated this movie. No part of it worked for me. Certainly not the most egregious, but one of the most obvious reasons, is how it handled the camera. It pretends that the cops are shooting it themselves, but most of the time there is no one holding the camera. It just shows laziness in how the movie was made, which is evident throughout the movie, despite the best efforts of Gyllenhal and Pena. 1/2

Ni No Kuni – I haven’t played the game that this movie is based on, so I don’t know if it reflects the story from that or is largely original, but it is fine. I generally enjoyed it. It feels like it leaves a lot of interesting story on the table, with a lot of possibilities introduced and not fully explored. ***

The Wandering Earth – A big Chinese science fiction movie that largely plays out like a reverse Armageddon. It is entertaining on that level. ***

1917 – read review here. ****

Little Women – read review here. *****

Steel Rain – This one is wild. It involves a plot to assassinate the leaders of North Korea that nearly spirals out into nuclear war. You’ve got a schlubby guy with a failing marriage from South Korea teamed up with a soldier from the North trying to stop things before it spirals into an even bigger catastrophe. It is wild, but interesting. ***

Troop Zero – I don’t know that this movie quite works. It is a weird throwback to some kind of 80s comedy, relying on cute moppets and unreliable parental figures. Troop Zero goes weird with it. It works because it has some specificity, but sometimes it is just too out there. I enjoyed this more than I didn’t, but I don’t think it will stick with me. It certainly seems like something a certain group of kids will fall in love with.***
A Kind of Murder – This is just a straight up noir. It is just a thoroughly competent genre exercise. Patrick Wilson is always great, and this is no different. He is a writer whose wife gets killed. Killed in the same manner as a bookseller’s wife. The police suspect a connection, and Wilson keeps lying to the cops to cover up an affair. It is pretty entertaining. ***

Just Mercy – read review here. ***1/2

The Gentlemen – read review here. ****

The Perfection – Okay, this is a strange thriller/horror movie. I don’t know that I actually liked it all that much, but it is certainly very well made. It keeps the viewer on their toes and gets pretty gross at times. ***1/2

Manhunt – A wild conspiracy thriller from John Woo. You’ve got false accusations, super soldier drugs, gun fights with two heroes handcuffed together. It is very entertaining. ***1/2

Kung Fu Yoga – This movie is essentially Jackie Chan as Indiana Jones, in a China/India collaboration. The movie isn’t very good, but Jackie Chan has still got it. ***

Raging Bull – This is a movie that puts a man’s ugliness on display and just lets it go. It is well made and well acted and just kind of amazing. I’ll likely never watch it again. *****

Justice, My Foot – I have really enjoyed Stephen Chow movies in the past, and finding this one from the 90’s on Netflix was intriguing. It is mostly fine. There is some stuff that has aged very badly, (which isn’t the right way to frame it, as it is not like any of the tasteless jokes were ever good) like some straight up homophobia. Otherwise, it is a fun, silly legal period piece. I enjoyed it. **1/2

TV

Voltron S7-8 – I really enjoyed the first six or so seasons of this show a few years ago, but they pumped out the seasons faster than I could watch them and I just fell off. I circled back around early this year and finished the show off. This is a really good show that mostly sticks the landing. I see why they killed off the character they did at the end, but it doesn’t sit quite right. Still, this show is really good. I am glad I came back to it.

You S2 – The first season of You had this kind of enthralling quality to it, as Joe was so clearly a monster, even if he didn’t realize it himself, and you were watching for it to unravel. Then it kind of doesn’t. Season 2 is probably where I am done with it, because I really don’t care to see anymore of Joe. I can only watch a monster for so long as he slowly wriggles through cracks before I am just done with it. Here he finds a new group of people to latch onto and slowly destroys them, even as they destroy themselves. It ends with a twist that will keep the show going for at least another season.

Lost In Space S2 – I think this is as good as this show is going to be, which is a largely pretty good family scifi show. It is generally enjoyable, but the exciting moments of escape and adventure are sometimes mired in interpersonal relationships that simply are not as interesting. It builds along several episode long arcs that feel a little padded, instead of just telling more focused, interesting stories. Still, I like it quite a bit.

Medical Police – A spin-off of Children’s Hospital. I don’t know what to say. It is a parody of doctor shows and a parody of police procedurals and a parody of something like 24. It is a lot of fun and incredibly stupid. One of the highlights of the year so far.

Violet Evergarden – This is emotional manipulation, the series. Violet is an auto memory doll, a person who writes letters for people who, for whatever reason, cannot write them themselves. She does this work in part because it helps her, a former child soldier with little social development, better understand people. The show parades mostly sad stories in front of the viewer as Violet learns about emotions. I am being too harsh, it is mostly a pretty good show, though it feels a little truncated.

Living With Yourself – This was an interesting little show with Paul Rudd playing a man who goes to a spa that, unbeknownst to him, clones him. The spa’s business involves killing the original and replacing them with the refreshed and improved clone. But the original version of Paul Rudd survives, which leads to the two of them having to work to coexist. I don’t have a lot to say about it; it is mostly pleasant and enjoyable. Like Paul Rudd is in just about everything. I would watch more if they make it.

The Family – This documentary spins itself in circles a little, but it does illuminate the quasi-Christian fundementalist that have been working for half a century to influence American politics. It is religion removed from morality and, as presented here, simply gross. This is not the best made documentary series ever, but it is pretty enjoyable.

Carole and Tuesday – The second half of this music themed anime. This half of the season ends up with the duo being somewhat involved with the politics of future Mars, while also just trying to make their music and capitalize off their success in the competition from the first half of the show. It remains mostly good.

Spinning Out – A melodrama about figure skaters. One family, an overbearing, bipolar mother and her two daughters as well as a rich man, his sons and his new wife. Kaya Scodelario is the elder daughter, who is struggling to recover from a traumatic injury. She is also realizing that she shares her mother’s mental health problems. Added on to that, she has recently switched from singles to doubles. There is a sports show happening, but it often gets relegated to the background for some over the top melodrama. Which is fine, that is what the show is. It just also isn’t really for me.

Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez – This is a solid look into the toxic collection of circumstances that led to the creation of a man like Aaron Hernandez. From CTE, to homophobia, to just the culture around football that allowed him to get away with whatever he wanted. It is chilling and more than a little sad, for many reasons.

Sex Education S2 – This continues to be very good show. I am still confused by the setting, which is a strange mishmash of current and something out of the 90s, America and England. This season expands the scope of the show greatly, moving the focus off Otis and Maeve somewhat and allowing more characters to have more developed stories. That lets the show tell a lot more stories, but it loses something in the exchange. I think it improves the show.

Dracula – The team behind Sherlock have brought that same approach to Dracula. The first two episodes are really good. Those first two episodes are interesting reimaginings of the novel, keeping certain aspects, while radically changing others. Much like Sherlock. I think things really fall apart in the third episode. Much like Sherlock. The whole ride is worth taking, even if the final part doesn’t work at all.

Watership Down – Great voice cast, good story, miserable animation. This show is just ugly. I don’t have much more to say.

The Good Place – It ended near the start of February, so hold me to having more to say next month, but this is one of the best shows of the last few years. Absolutely amazing from start to finish.

Cyborg 009: Call of Justice – The story of this show is fine, as far as justifications for cyborgs fighting ancient mutants goes. What does not work is the cg animation. The Cyborg 009 characters have pretty distinctive design, which is washed away here for generically ugly cg. The show is just kind of a pain to look at, which means it is harder to care for the story.

CW DC Shows – Basically, January mostly had the second half of Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was really good, and if I write about the end of Arrow I’ll have more to say about it.

Now Playing January 2020

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Beaten

Judgment – read about it here.

Life is Strange – This game came highly recommended to me, but I was a little leery going into it. It presents as mostly an adventure game, a genre I’ve had a lot of problems with. While that is the correct classification, it plays more like a slow motion action game. I have long been disappointed that the only way most video games have to interact with through violence, so one thing I loved about Life is Strange is that it is largely free of that. Not that there aren’t violent things happening, this game gets pretty dark, but most of what you do is just have conversations. I don’t know that Life is Strange really breaks through any barriers that keep video games in their bubble, but it at least pushes the edges.

It also tells a pretty interesting story. I know there are several paths through the game, with differing eventual ends, but the one I got was pretty affecting. The two tracks of the plot are the mystery of the disappearance of Rachel Amber, which digs into the small town darkness of the setting, and of Max’s discovery of her power to rewind time and change the past. While Max has this power, it doesn’t really connect with the mystery. Mostly it serves to put Max in increasingly untenable situations. Every new chapter deepens what came before. Most of the characters at first appear black or white, only for the game to reveal depth and grays as it goes along. It never really diminishes some of the awful things that characters do, but it does explain them. The characters end up largely feeling like real people; it is an amazing achievement.

I didn’t love this game quite as much as some people I know, but damn if it wasn’t an excellent experience, one I might feel like revisiting in a few years.

Ongoing

Codename STEAM – A project I have this year is beating a bunch of DS and 3DS games I’ve started but not finished over the last decade or so. That means that a lot of games will be cycling through here. Codename STEAM is one of those games. It is so close to being such a good game; I really wish it had gotten a sequel that could iron out some of the kinks. Since I last played this game, I have changed from a regular 3DS to a New 3DS, and it makes a difference here. The game plays much faster. I’ve already written about Codename STEAM before, and I haven’t really changed my mind about it. I love everything about the game but playing it. I do like playing it, but it is often as much frustration as fun. There is a reliance on foreknowledge in this game, like the game expects you to lose a time or two before you find the correct path through each map. That is annoying when maps can take more than an hour to complete. This game is just so close to being exactly what I want.

LBX – Another on my quest to conquer my 3DS backlog. This Level-5 kids rpg is fine. It has that goofy anime storyline, where everything revolves around the series specific focus, in this case small battling robots. In the first third or so of this game, toy robots are involved in kidnappings, international conspiracies and attempted assassinations, as well as just school ground play. I don’t know how into it I am. There are a lot of pieces and parts to fiddle with on your toy robot, but I haven’t quite figured out how much it matters and what works. Someone will get a lot out of it, I’m sure. I am also not crazy about the battles themselves. They are fine, but mostly play like a kind of sloppy action rpg. Maybe I will have more intelligent things to say once I finish with this game.

My World, My Way – This decade old DS game is another I have started back up. I like it, but I got pretty sick of it when I first played it a long time ago. Maybe I will like it enough to finish it off this time.

Dragon Quest XI – Okay, I started this early last year, but some good time into it and then just sort of drifted away from it as I got busy. Getting back into it, I am reminded that I really like this series. The cast, which I have mostly assembled at the point I am at, is pretty interesting. Maybe not the most memorable in the series, at least not as of yet, but still really good. Sylvando, Jade and Rab are great, but I wish there was a little more going on, or at least apparently going on, with Erik and the sisters. I like the upgrade system, but I wish there was a little more clarity to it. I want to know a little more of what is ahead as I build. That is not a big deal, as there is a way to reset, though I don’t know the cost. This is just a classic, well made role playing game and I am here for it.

Upcoming

Shovel Knight – I’ve not got 3 campaigns to finish in this game and a hankering to replay the original. Maybe I should buy the game again on a new console; I almost feel like I’ve been stealing from Yacht Club games getting more and more on my minimal kickstarter buy in.

Final Fantasy XV – If I can finish Dragon Quest XI, and I am not sure I can before the end of February, I will move on from 2018’s Christmas present to 2017’s Christmas present. I really want to play the game, but I have not managed to get past the first few hours in more than two years. Thanks, law school.

Something Else – This will be a different 3DS/DS game, after I finish My World, My Way. Maybe I’ll finally finish off one of the Shin Megami Tensei games I’ve still got sitting half finished. Maybe I’ll put some serious effort into that DS Valkyrie Profile game or the various Harvest Moons I’ve got.

The Rhythm Section

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It feels like beating a dead horse to write about this movie. It didn’t review well, nor did it make any money. There really isn’t a good movie. There are certainly things it does well, but the package does not come together into any kind of entertaining movie.

The Rhythm Section is a spy movie about a woman, Stephanie (Blake Lively) whose family was killed in a plane crash. A few years after that, she is visited by a reporter who tells her that the plane crash was not an accident, but a terrorist attack. This leads to Stephanie wanting to get revenge. First she attempts it on her own, then she seeks help from a former MI6 agent played by Jude Law. He trains her, then uses her to track down the people responsible for the plane bombing.

The movie creates strange juxtapositions. It is mostly a somber, realistic take on a spy or revenge movie. But it is full of needle drops that seem to come from a much more fun, pulpier movie. It highlights the humanity of Stephanie, showing the toll that losing her family, and blaming herself for it. She is slowly killing herself as the movie starts. She has fallen as low as she can. Then the movie gives a perverse ray of hope; it gives her someone to blame. It shows how desperate she is to do something to get revenge, but how hard it is to take a human life, especially when she has to look the person in the eye to do it. Then she has to train.

A lot of movies, fun and good movies, would breeze through this training, or end up with Stephanie as a cold, bad ass killer. To its detriment, The Rhythm Section is better than that. She trains for a few months and knows enough to get herself into more trouble. She is obviously not ready for this work, but she knows enough to fake. Every attempt she makes to do James Bond stuff ends horribly. She fails repeatedly.

The strange juxtapositions come in with the filmmaking. Sometimes things are shot handheld, to try to appear realistic. Sometimes it is super stylized. Most discordant is the ending, with Stephanie walking off like a supreme badass, which is not what the movie showed her becoming. The ending treats everything before this as an origin story, but there her character arc ends with her having no reason to ever engage in this sort of work again.

It is not like you can point to any one thing that sinks this movie. Lively and Law, and Sterling K Brown who plays an information broker, are good. The movie does some interesting things. But as it goes on it becomes more and more clear that the pieces here just don’t fit together.

**

Judgment

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Judgment is the new game from the studio behind the Yakuza series. I love the Yakuza games. With that series moving in a different direction, Judgment seemed to be an interesting experiment.

Judgment ends up trapped between the game it is and the game it wants to be. Built from the same framework as Yakuza 6, it ends up playing very similarly. But at every turn, it seems to want to be something different. Something maybe more thoughtful. It just can’t be that because it is still, at its core, a brawler.

Judgment simply does not work as well as the Yakuza games. The biggest reason for that is the change from playing as Kazuma Kiryu to Takayuki Yagami. Yagami is just orders of magnitude less interesting of a character than Kiryu is. He might have worked fine in a role like the various other playable characters from Yakuza 4 or 5, but he wouldn’t stand out amongst those guys either. He’s not even on the level of Akiyama or Saejima.

The biggest problem is that he just seems more knowing and worldly than Kiryu. Part of what makes Kiryu interesting is how he reacts to everything as if he’s never heard of it before. Part of that comes from him spending a decade in prison. He simply accepts everything new he finds and works it into his understanding of the world. Yagami is more cynical. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it changes the tone of some of the wackier moments. In the main story it is mostly fine.

As far as the gameplay, the attempts to graft some investigatory stuff onto a Yakuza game ends up with a game that feels unfortunately modal. It is a somewhat fractured experience. You going into investigation mode to look around, chase mode, follow mode, fight mode, explore mode. Each one operates a little differently than the others. The Yakuza games were once more like this, but lately they’ve felt more cohesive. This feels like a step back.

I am being way too negative. There is a whole lot to like here. The fighting is still fun. The game is still packed with things to do. There are a half dozen arcade games to play, the usual array of mini-games and the same Kamurocho to explore.

The mix of story between sidequest and main plot is not as good here as it is in Yakuza games, I really did enjoy this game as a 20 hour action movie. I like the idea of doing the investigative work, of exploring this fake section of a real city from another point of view. It feels kind of like what this studio was trying to do with Yakuza’s 4 & 5, when the game minimized Kiryu and brought in other characters. Judgment is at its best the further it gets away from that other series. It brushes up against the problem that video games mostly only understand how to interact through violence. That leads to the story getting full on preposterous as it goes, and calls for a final boss fight that makes less sense as an ending than the courtroom scene that preceded it.

Judgment_20190610083916

I don’t want to spoil things, but Judgment starts with Yagami being hired to investigate for his former law firm. They are defending a Yakuza boss accused of murder. Yagami’s investigation turns up evidence that it was impossible the guy did it, but also evidence that he knew more than he was letting on. So Yagami keeps looking. Looking into the Yakuza family, looking into an encroaching family, looking into a medical research organization with high connections and shady dealings. Soon, more bodies show up, and Yagami is pulling on the thread of a giant conspiracy. One that reaches deeper than even he knows. It is pretty good stuff; ridiculous but in a fun way.

Judgment might not have ended up being exactly what I wanted, but it confirmed that I want more of what Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios is putting out. And I am very interested to see what they do with the Yakuza series now that they have moved on from Kazuma Kiryu.

What I Read January 2020

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Good start to the year, with four books finished in January. I hope to keep up the pace for the next few months, before I have to really buckle down and study for the bar. I am going to try to finish up some books I have laying around that I haven’t managed to get read.

Mort

Terry Pratchett

I bought some of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books years ago on my kindle, but never got around to reading them. Pratchett is an author that many have told me I should read, and every brush I’ve had with his work has been enjoyable, including the book Dodger a few years ago. So I started with Mort. It’s good.

Mort is about a young man named Mort, who is hired by Death to be his apprentice. It works out for a while. Mort is kind of useless, but he tries hard. As the book goes along, Death takes on some of Mort’s human characteristics and Mort starts acting more like Death. The big problem Mort faces is that when he is sent out to collect a soul, he prevents the death of the woman instead. This creates a split in reality, because the woman was supposed to die. So while Death goes out to experience human life, Mort has to try to fix things before disaster strikes.

What really works is the wit of this book. It manages to be funny and smart, with lots of fun wordplay and gags, but to never let that undercut the drama of the narrative. The book is charming. Death is an especially enjoyable creation; he is the grim reaper, but he is mostly just a guy with a job to do. It isn’t a nice job, but it is a necessary one. He is kind of an outsider, not human, but very intrigued by humanity. It is a really interesting dynamic.

Equal Rites

Terry Pratchett

I found this discworld book to be less successful than Mort. Mort had characters I liked; Equal Rites had characters I wanted to like. For this book to work, you have to buy into Discworld’s magic system, and I just don’t. It seems a little too silly, and the gendered aspects to it are very 1980s. Esk isn’t much of a character; the book sketches her out, but moves too fast to really make much of her. The same goes for Simon. Granny Weatherwax is the most dynamic character here, trying to guide the young woman who can do wizard magic instead of witch magic.

The gendered magic is just not interesting in and of itself to me. The wit from Pratchett’s other books is still present, but it is in service to a story that just didn’t do anything for me. That said, it isn’t like it really disliked this book. It was a step down from Mort, but it was a fast and fun read that once it was over left me just a little underwhelmed. On to the next Discworld book, which is the one that apparently Pratchett suggests starting with: Sourcery.

From Russia, With Love

Ian Fleming

I am coming to the conclusion that I am just not a big fan of Ian Fleming’s writing. This is the fifth or so Bond book I’ve read, and it is my least favorite. I love the movies. I see how they got from the books to the films and not all of the changes are bad. But one thing that tends to stick out in the early (and later, for that matter) movies is the blatant sexism. The thing is, that element is, if anything, toned down from the books. I thought Diamonds Are Forever was bad in that regard, but this book is especially bad.

That would be forgivable, to an extent, if the rest of the book was good, but From Russia, With Love doesn’t have a lot else going on. Much of the book is spent setting up the villains and the Russian plot to discredit MI6 and destroy James Bond. Bond doesn’t really enter the book until about a third of the way in and proceeds to do almost nothing. The few pulpy action scenes are great, but they really take a back seat to a stupendously uninteresting plot. How this became my favorite movie in this series I’ll never know.

Mystery Mile

Margery Allingham

I don’t know that I am really on Allingham’s page here. This book just didn’t click with me. It is likely mostly on me, but this mystery lacked the clarity of character and situation that I appreciate from writers like Sayers and Christie. This book is a lot more vague and formless. I am willing to believe that it is my failure of comprehension; I was reading it a chapter at a time, usually pretty late at night, with long delays between each chapter. It reads more like a thriller forced into a mystery mold. You get the usual collection of characters, and then a death, but the death is immediately suspected to be caused by outside agents, and there is a lot more action and adventure than the usual mystery. I have a couple more Allingham books on my kindle and hopefully those work better for me.

The Gentlemen

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The Gentlemen did not disappoint. While not as quite as light on its feet or sheerly entertaining as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, The Gentlemen still has a lot to enjoy. There is this unfortunate undertone of something really gross just beneath the surface of this movie. The movie traffics in the idea that if it is offensive to everyone, it is offensive to no one and while I don’t think that holds up to any sort of scrutiny, this is not really a movie that invites any sort of scrutiny.

The movie follows Matthew McConaughey’s Mickey Pearson, a marijuana kingpin who is looking to get out of the game, to retire and spend time with his wife. He is looking to sell out to an American billionaire. Also looking to hone in on his territory is an up and coming Chinese mobster Dry Eye. The story of this potential deal is laid out by Fletcher, a private eye hired to turn up dirt on Mickey, who is telling his story to Mickey’s right hand man Raymond. Of course, there is more going on with every character than is initially apparent. Also, Colin Firth shows up as an Irish boxing coach who gets involved trying to keep some of his young boxers out of trouble.

A troubling part of the movie is how it frames its villains. It plays up the foreignness of Dry Eye, and the American billionaire is also Jewish. Fletcher, who quickly shows himself to not be trustworthy, plays up his homosexuality. The movie is also pretty sympathetic to the plight of impoverished aristocrats who can’t afford the upkeep on their giant manors. But to accept this framing as truly troubling, you have to buy Mickey as someone worth rooting for, and I don’t think the movie really makes you root for Mickey. You like the cool, collected Raymond (Charlie Hunnam) and Mickey’s wife Rosalind (Michelle Dockery), who runs an auto-body shop by women for women. But Mickey himself, an American who came to the U.K. and started a drug empire, is not especially sympathetic. The only truly likable person is Coach, a rough and tumble guy who just wants to keep some youngsters out of trouble.

The movie is mostly enjoyable. As it plays out as Fletcher telling Raymond a story, it allows the movie to have some fun with things, with Fletcher spicing up the story when he is missing information or just wants to make something up. It allows for director Guy Ritchie to use some of his fun tricks to spice things up. However, it never quite gets to that incredible tumbling house of cards feeling that Snatch managed. In Ritchie’s earlier gangster movies, you had several different groups of running different schemes that bounce off of each other in interesting ways. The Gentlemen really only has two or three factions and little in the way of surprise. It is still fun, but it feels just a little lacking.

Still, it is fun to be back in Ritchie’s English underworld. Honestly, while I have plenty of complaints, I really enjoyed seeing this. It is not a movie that is going to stick you for long after you leave the theater, but it is a really enjoyable time while you are there.

****