Legendsofanus

The Flash is a huge 200$ movie and yet, it's one of the best examples of superhero fatigue. We have a story about a kid who wants to go back in time to solve his past and save his family but in doing so inadvertently loses his reality. This kid has to realize he needs to let go, Batman even tells him that much in the beginning.

But alas, If Barry had just stayed home I wouldn't have had to waste my 2 and half hours struggling to finish this film. It's just so boring, there's really no heart to the film, to the character. Ezra Miller is a sore street pole who just sticks out whenever the movie tries to lean into something emotional. I can't feel sorry or care for a grown man-child, that performance just isn't convincing to me sadly.

Bunch of other things didn't work for me in a similar fashion. For example, this movie in particular in the DCEU, really embraces the Fast and Furious-style action sequences which is that it will have a bunch of dumb random shit happening on screen to give us a scene of momentum and then finish with the characters landing somewhere safely, in a hyper theatrical manner. It looks too outlandish, even more so in an era where Superhero movies are trying to be anything but more ridiculous. Atleast it sticks to something, I'll give it that much.

Visually it's just such an ugly film at times, especially during the last huge action sequences which looks like someone put a green screen barren field from a PS2 texture pack and added assortment of random vehicle textures. Everything moves really floaty too, not a good sense of action and punch in most of the scenes

The rest of the plot would be spoilers and I'm not going to spoil it for you, just remember that it doesn't have the feeling of a good payoff. It ends kind of abruptly and you're left underwhelmed, confused but slightly cheerful now that it's over.

I did enjoy the sound design, the action sequences sound fantastic and everything else does too. It was nice hearing cars crashing into eachother so clearly while background music and everything else is going on.

For what it's worth, the performances outside of Miller's are fine. I wasn't really won over by Batman(s) performances but wasn't annoyed by them. Sasha Calle managed to get me excited during the last fight which is a big plus, she's emotional charged and believable and delivers every line with a charged earnest voice that convinces you she really is Supergirl. I haven't seen her in anything else but I'll keep my eye out from now on. She was great

Overall: A 5/10 as I wasn't brainrot dead by the end but there's also really no need to watch this movie unless you like your movies to get you a little excited and leave you feeling bored and unsatisfied.

Even though I'm not from US or any western country that might celebrate Christmas or have snows, Home Alone has been a part of my childhood. Especially the first one and the horribly titled Home Alone "3", both of these used to play fairly regularly on TV and I just thought they were so much fun. I still remember Home Alone as a very well structured compelling story that felt like it had a very organic pace. So when I saw there was a sequel I was...sort of hesitant.

Most comedy sequels are not that good mainly because they try to rip off the feel of the original film, the only thing of value they bring is a higher production value which doesn't say much for how sincere the creators are or how compelling the movie itself is.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York falls in those same traps, we have a very similar plot setup which even the characters admit feels similar but it doesn't have that compelling energy or curiosity to it. I think unlike the last time, this time we know Kevin will be okay because the ridiculous novelty of seeing a child alone (albiet in a much bigger setting) and seeing him live on his own has kind of worn off. Kevin even felt kind of annoying here because he sure seems like a very seasoned adventurer with the way he carries himself in his interaction with adults. There's not... this sense that this is a child who's finding his way in a massive city.

The movie also feels like it's pigeon-holed to follow a certain path and that feels tiring to watch too. This is a problem with bigger comedies, when you have an extremely large setting and not enough stimulus to move the plot somewhere organically, you end up going in a lot of places that feel redundant, to see Kevin walking around New York looking for a plot beat to interact with just doesn't give off a lot of energy and charm in my opinion.

So yes, I ultimately did get kind of bored by the whole setup but there are some good things in it too. First of all, this movie is a gem in today's age, I mean how many Christmas comedies get made in this modern age? And if there are, most probably they are infused with some wide-appealing genre like PG-13 action just so they can convince people to show up. Second, Chris Columbus despite the movie's faults with pacing and a rehashed plot, I think has directed a really well made film. Everything looks gorgeous, the physical stunts all look really good and believable on screen and the film really showcases off New York in a great way, it feels like you're taking a trip for the city yourself. This is all before the movie settles on a few principal locations of story importance but those first few minutes at the start of watching the whole city is awesome.

And really, I think the familiarity of the plot isn't inherently bad, sure it feels tiring to me but I bet people enjoy this type of stuff: to watch the same kind of comedic antics but in a grander scale I guess isn't a big egregious crime especially in comedies but I just wish it had more originality to it.

Anyway, I don't mean to knock this film off completely, I'm glad it exists and I guess it is the most natural place a story like this could go to. And yes, despite getting bored, I did have a few laughs so that's good

6.5/10

The Holdovers is about a professor who despite his wishes has to look after the few kids in his boarding school that are not going on vacations. It's made by Alexander Payne and also the first film I have seen from him.

I watched it last night and have been thinking about our ever since. The movie was obviously a success and was even nominated for Best Picture but I have mixed feelings about it.

This movie is like watching a modern artist create a clay pottery out of traditional methods. It even has that analogue feeling to it in the way it's filmed, how the shots have little burns( I don't know what they are called but like little black dots that randomly appear as it used to when we watched old films).

It has textures, coloring and cinematography so tangible that you can almost smell the wood on a kitchen cupboard, feel how the doors would feel if you were to reach inside the film and touch them.

Our two primary main characters is a stubborn professor trying to adhere to the integrity of his work and a student who just wanted a good vacation during Christmas as they learn to live with the cards they are dealt and change over the course of the movie.

The soundtrack is really good, it has lot of Christmas tunes and old songs that help you settle into the setting of this world.

I have never seen Paul Giamatti in a film before but he plays the main role really well, conveying that stubborn and i-don't-trust-you attitude that makes him unlikable at the start of the film and seeing his character learn and grow by the end was really good.

Overall: It looks really nice and is very well paced as well, the 2 hour 30 minute something runtime never feels like it is dragging but the movie is certainly too long for something where nothing really memorable happens.

Back to the Future Part III picks up the story from I don't know where cuz I haven't seen the previous two movies!

Thankfully, the movie spends it's first ten minutes thoroughly reflecting on what happened last time in very purposeful long monologues, or I wouldn't have known what was going on.

This time, we are going to the wild wild west and for a plot that seems like it's only there to be an excuse for more adventures, the movie manages to nail the aesthetics of an old western film really really well. It looks downright gorgeous, wide open plains, small towns with local bars and shops, everything from looks to sounds it's awesome. In a way this reminds me of his other film Cast Away and how it's opening places such a huge emphasis on real settings and sounds. We get that feeling for an entire film, there are background sounds of people living their life, horses running to-and-off, it feels real and authentic.

Along the way our characters see and do a lot of the things that Western films are known for but manages to bring it's own peculiar twist to them, robbing a train and having a good old duel included.

I also really liked how the characters have their own little arcs within the film and that really helped lessen the the feeling of this movie being derivative because atleast it brings something new to the table. It also makes the film have a bit more substance as well which makes it memorable.

So yeah, solid distinctive characters and their own stories, an awesome western score, beautiful visuals and presentation. It's a great movie and clearly a movie that's meant to be fun to watch, even if it looks a little too dumb for my tastes near the end and really strains my suspension of disbelief. Really well paced too

If the show consisted entirely of its intros and outros, this would have been an easy 10/10. I have loved every one of them, beautiful animation and music and a charming heartfelt touch that feels absent in the show itself.

I'm....not a big fan of the rest of the show. I think it's just okay, while the battle animations are gorgeous and in typical shonen fashion the characters and world-building have distinct characteristics and traits that make all everything unique, I still didn't find the world of Jujutsu Kaisen a compelling one. To have a setting where curses are born out of the filth and negativity of human emotions, the series doesn't yield itself to a proper horror aesthetic.

The closest it gets to this is in Season 1 where most of the battles happen in the dark, either inside or at night and they all have a feeling of suspense and dread. Episodes like "Cursed Womb Must Die" or the bridge curse carry this theme well. But the rest of the show understandably softens that impact by being a shonen series. Episodes filled with battles after battles, so many different powers and laborous monologues explaining everything just doesn't work for me as I have never been a shonen fan after my teenage flirtations with DBZ.

Another problem, a massive one, is that while Jujutsu Kaisen has a story that has the typical good like themes, foreshadowings, twists and friendships, I feel like it suffers from not knowing how to tell them on a large scale.

Mini-arcs like the Kyoto Student Exchange Event and Hidden Inventory are some of the better part of the series because they tell you what the stakes and mission is, but the wider story seems to take inspiration from The Witcher and the worst seasons of Game of Thrones by having characters appear wherever they want to for a story beat and threats that come out of nowhere to make up an excuse for a battle. I didn't enjoy the Shibuya arc much especially because of how random and quickly everything starts and ends, certain characters vanish for a couple of episodes and then appear when they have a battle but it never feels like we are building towards something. This feeling of isolation/fragmentary conflicts and events made even the larger fights boring for me as I struggled to finish the show.

Regarding the animation change for the 2nd season, I don't mind it. It's clearly there was a purpose for this change as they must have thought the more realistic proportions and movement of characters wouldn't translate well for some of the crazier fights in Shibuya, thus they moved towards a little more minimalistic but still beautifully intense style of fights that show a more artistic variety to each of them. Example being Choso vs. Yuji with it's blue/black sharp color pallete with neon lights.

Also did anybody hate that sorcerers were fighting in bright daylight, leaping out of buildings in Hidden Inventory? Very Pacific Rim: Uprising-esque of them to do that

Overral: I could compare it to Demon Slayer, in that both are beautiful looking shows with a very typical shonen story and incredibly basic characters. Animation-> 4.5/5

Story/Pacing: 2.5/5

Sound design and music: 5/5 (as I didn't find anything wrong with the performances and loved the score)

This is the type of movie that made me fall in love with watching movies. It's fun, has an engaging plot and a number of different plots that are just fun to witness. I really really like how, even though we as an audience have grown accustomed to finding man with evil plans at the centre of a new anomaly, this movie doesn't reveal it's cards too hastily. Rather it builds the ambience of the massive ship Cygnus, accompanied by an amazing soundtrack by John Barry and stellar production values, and reveals the mystery bit by bit creating the mystery and it's revelations at the same time.

I enjoyed almost everything about it, from the robot sidekick subplot to the miniatures and robot designs to it's action sequences that it lets loose in the last act. If only the sense of intrigue and wonder had been kept at the same pace as the rest of the movie, even then it ends spectacularly, going almost mystical upon us.

I wish Disney made more movies like this and this is for me, easier to recommend then Star Trek: The Motion Picture (only saying this because they both came out in the same year and were even nominated for Best Visual Effects together) especially because it's just that much more fun.

This is actually my first vampire movie, and before I start let me just say I prefer the Anne Rice vampires more than the Twilight variety so if you've got recs in that vein, give them to me!

Anyway, Fright Night was awesome. It's an 80s film about a kid who suspects his neighbor is a vampire, and nobody believes him.

I loved it but I don't think will be rewatching this mainly because of the slow pacing and how the plot circles around the same few threads, it doesn't get nearly as crazy or charming as I had hoped it would.

Fright Night is still an immensely fun movie to watch with an interesting premise and a colorful distinct cast of characters. More than a movie, it feels like a tradition, there will probably be a lot of movies wanting to be like Fright Night and try to give us the current generation equivalent to this film.

The practical effects are superb and so are the gory kills and I love how it pays homage to older horror vampire stuff while building a new modern ground for films to come, sort of like Scream where teenagers are used to watching slasher films. A classic!

I loved it so much, Tom Cruise has continuously impressed me with his performances which feels somehow even more desperate here than in "Magnolia" and Penelope Cruz who I was ready to hate because of how much she stands out and how tired I am of movies casting beautiful actresses who can't even voice their lines properly. But in the end, she did win me over especially with how much the movie gives character and texture to her accent and Spanish origin.

This feels like another Black Mirror episode come to life but I would say it is markedly different. If BM had adapted this you can bet they would have gone for a far more cynical and nihilistic twist that would have been gut-wrenching, even when the movie was ending I realized I was still somehow preparing my guts to be wrenched but nope. In the end, Vanilla Sky is part annoying life of a rich guy turned slice-of-life turned psychological thriller which eventually actually cares about living and the many possibilities of it.

It's also one of the most beautifully shot films of the 2000s IMO, everything looks gorgeous. There is a touch of reality that feels tangible so you don't expect anything to go wrong, lulling yourself in the false assumption about the film's identity. It completely looks and plays the part of a serious one-hour true crime drama, then a romantic drama and just keeps evolving until you come to a point where all life either begins or ends

What a lovely film, Cameron Diaz was a beast to watch!

Strange Pictures was published by YouTuber Uketsu in 2022 and translated into English in 2025. The book is about multiple drawings connected to different murders and the interlinked story connecting them together, told through simple writing and hand drawings.

One way to take this book into perspective would be to call it "telegraphic horror", I suppose. The first chapter starts with an epistolary form and it's obvious to see that it's meant to be simple enough to engage readers and hook them in without any purple prose or complex sentences.

The diary entries and minimal storytelling reminded me of those exciting times as a kid when I used to read creepypastas and every mystery seemed like a larger than life puzzle that felt like it could be solved and which kept me interested even when I took a break from reading them.

That's the kind of charm Strange Pictures started with and moving forward it does demand more from it's readers in terms of attention to sustain the allure of its mystery, it felt earned because I wanted to figure out what the drawings meant and why the second chapter started out in such an unrelated fashion.

One minor criticism would be that it's marketed as a horror book for Jungi Ito fans but I never found that abyss like horror of human nature and I wouldn't say the book goes that far in it's character's mind, therefore to me it's still a better mystery and suspense novel with pictures then a new horror addition to Japanese canon but I guess it comes close.

Anyway, if you're going through a reading slump and would like to read something fast and exciting and mysterious and have had any interactions with reading creepypastas as a kid then I would wholeheartedly recommend this unique experience. I loved it

4/5***

I have to be honest, I have no idea when Nietzsche Wept and it is only in editing this review that I have realized how the title relates to the movie, I haven't read the original book or read any major works of any of these men but surely a novel adaptation of a fictionalized account of some real men can't really be judged by the merits of it's characters.

The way the film is, I would not recommend a soul to watch it, how much of that is to be reflected also in the works of these great minds is yet to be seen as I have not read them but surely the book that this film is based on must carry part of the burden. But the film is dry, heavy, superficial and constructed only to be a mental masturbation of recollections from the real writings of these men and of their countless scenes philosophizing in the romantic way that absolutely, cruelly takes away their realism and honesty and seeks to replace it with it's truth, a truth that does not agree with me. It's not even that what the film talks about is uninteresting but rather that it is produced in a closed/uncompelling obtuse way that it did not engage me in the movie's narrative and I'm someone who watched and loved "All the President's Men" as a kid

I don't have a liking for the vision of this film, it's badly filmed, the soundtrack is fine even if it feels lazy collecting just the classical musicians repertoire and using them in the painfully obvious way ("SWAN LAKE HAHAHA" scene comes to mind) but nonetheless that music is effective for a reason. It was great to hear some tones, some sounds of those musicians again.

5.5/10 A rather abysmally paced film that perhaps has a worth in all of its talk and walk but is so poorly shot and structured in my opinion that it is of the most superficial quality in my eyes. The stereotypes of the characters are not even properly constructed that it starts employing them in it's story to an immeasurable degree which just makes them look like mouths with words, not people.

Although (or perhaps because) I came to "administration" late in my academic career, I am constantly amazed at how obediently people accept explanations that begin with the words "The computer shows..." or "The computer has determined..." It is Technopoly's equivalent of the sentence "It is God's will," and the effect is roughly the same.-Technopoly: The Submission of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman, pg. 115

Technopoly as a word is entirely Postman's creation, he describes it as a "state of culture" and "state of mind" which consists in the "deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology." As among the symptoms of this state of mind, he includes a conscious focus on more efficient machines without considering the cost of that efficiency, relying on statistics alone as the sole truth and the trivialization of old traditions and symbols of our past.

It is a obvious thing to see that in today's tech-driven world, the more technologies we develop to communicate better, the more isolated and alienated we have become. This is slowly giving rise to a society where we are more comfortable with not thinking critically, of not having the power to make our own decisions and telling our concerns to AI rather than people we are close. This has not happened overnight, and according to Neil Postman, these visible differences in our psyche and daily lives have a long history that starts when we started letting technology take more prestige and power in our culture. This book is his hope that we become more aware of Technopoly's effects in our lives and do something to resist them.

Neil Postman presents a number of evidence and arguments backed by his keen observation and thorough research about the dangers of letting technological innovation and the drive of progress consume our lives. He explains and shows circumstances that we have all seen and felt, especially more rigorous forms of advertising and consumerism than was present in his own times.

What he presents as a solution is less than enough however, his solution I might add is one he gives timidly but with a full sense of hope. It is one where education is the cause of our collective salvation and the only way to overcome this need to progress more efficiently. I however think that it cannot be so simple as that, because as capitalism and our own markets have proven again and again, a message designed to be a cautionary tale can be sold perhaps to even the same people that participate in the cultural submission to technology.

These points withstanding, Technopoly: The Submission of Culture to Technology is a great book to warm yourself to these thoughts that we are ingrained in the grid of consumerism and technology that we don't even realize it.

Being longer than a Star Trek TOS series episode, this movie still shares a ton of DNA with it's originating series. Once again, we find the Enterprise and it's crew against a mysterious and very destructive entity and see them overcome it with logic and reasoning and bravery too.

This, if it was a normal episode wouldn't have me put it as compelling as "Charlie X", "Where No Man Has Gone Before" or even the episode with two Kirks which I have forgotten the name of but undeniably it presents an interesting, curious set of events that have very value of a classic sci-fi story. Which is a shame because I feel like it was a little under-handed, possibly because even in a normal Star Trek episode we have more causalities and tension than in this entire movie but it's not without it's merits.

For one, the movie knows it has a higher caliber of visual fidelity and special effects and uses it to it's utmost by often showing us exteriors of an object or the Enterprise for minutes just so we can visually feast on it. The effects barring the astronauts that looked awkward floating in space, all look brilliant and very imaginative.

This is a must-watch for anyone watching the TOS series because it's essentially at its best, more Star Trek. Though it may not reach the character-driven complex narratives of a series like Deep Space Nine