Legendsofanus

This was definitely one of my most anticipated watches ever. I have been hearing about this film non-stop ever since it won the Best Picture and became the first foreign film to do so. Parasite is about a poor family that injects itself wholesale into a rich family's life by pretending to be not related, so that all of them can work for this rich family. It's a crazy fun concept

And having finished it last night, I....liked it? I'm still not completely sure if I loved it. I really enjoyed it but came out feeling like it could have been shorter. The movie peaks at the flooding scene and all the rest felt like a fever dream. Still it's a really tense and well-made movie that deserves to be watched and I haven't seen many Tarantino films or even black-comedy ones so maybe it's just a taste thing since the second half really leans into that "random violence"/chaotic imagery.

The performances are everywhere in the best way possible, actors moving in and out of scenes and there's a lot of physicality to them that just looks absolutely incredible. Coloring is great as well, some of the outside scenes are shot beautifully but the real star of the movie are the interiors, they feel like their own characters that are saying something important to the plot.

Editing is also amazing, loved it every time the camera moves or turns corners without any cuts giving the movie a thriller-esque vibe as if we are watching a heist in this very small scale narrative.

The plot kind of blows itself to bits by the end of the movie and I didn't really mind that but like I said, I think the movie had the opportunity to end powerfully earlier. Atleast it looks like it will keep me busy a few days thinking about it's themes and what the movie was trying to say, it's amazing because you really end up looking at your house and surroundings differently after watching the film.

I don't know why the film is called Parasite since I thought parasites need a healthy host to live and all they do is benefit from the host, the poor family in this movie does that sure but they also work really hard to achieve it that it feels wrong to say they're parasites. Then staying up late at night, reading a bit about these organisms I learned that some parasites are able to trick the host's body into thinking it's a part of it and that I think feels much closer to what the movie was trying to show. All the world's a stage and everyone is trying to be a good parasite to better their prospects**

After all there's a strong implication in the film that even if these people are good at their various house/teaching jobs, the rich folks would have never hired them if they knew they were living in such a destitute state.

Where the Red Fern Grows is about a boy named Billy who saves up enough money to buy two coon hunting dogs. The story is about his adventures and hunts with these dogs that he names Old Dan and Little Ann, and it's a story about their bond with eachother.

If you have ever lost pets as a kid, I highly highly don't recommend/recommend you read this book as it will feel cathartic but it will also paralyze you with sorrow for an hour or a half. Beyond that, it's a neat little book about a boy riding out with his coon hounds and hunting game.

Anthony Heald did an amazing job with the voicing the main character who's a 14 year old kid. He sounded innocent and curious but also desperate whenever the story commanded it. The adults he voices in an accent and they all sound great, there's even a few bawls from the dogs thrown in which sounded amazing so I was really happy with the audiobook adaptation of it.

I have never seen a raccoon or even knew anything about the coon hunting culture in the Ozark mountains but the book is pretty easy to read and you never feel lost. The hunts are a big highlight of these book and some of the more important ones were a thrill to read through.

There's a lot of sensibility in the book as well, it doesn't shy away from the brutality of the hunt or real life but it also tries it's best to show that there can be something noble in it as well or atleast a way to do something more nobly.

There are some really dark scenes and dark imagery in the book but it's not scary per se and a little bit of adventuring thrill makes the book feel engaging and impactful.

I really enjoyed my time with this little book, the pacing is easy and it's a nice journey to go on with a few serious moments.

For my next read, I'm thinking of going to Stephen King's Tower but I don't know the correct way so if there's a chronological order comprising those books and any important ones I could use that or just go through the published order. I'll be listening to them as audiobooks

I heard about this movie a long time ago when it making the waves about being the first major studio gay film and thought how they would do a rom-com with gays. It's about a gay person who's afraid to come out and discovers a pen pal online and they talk about the woes and experiences of being gay

In short, I expected a lot more from it than what I got.

Love, Simon is an okay, predictable fun time that nearly drags on but manages to keep a moving plot that results in a (predicting here) forgettable but enjoyable experience. Most of the runtime for some reason is spent on narrating emails that the two guys write to each other. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Even when the text is short and clearly visible and readable on-screen; nope the camera has to jerk and pan in on the screen so you can read it word by word and listen to it being narrated. I mean, I get that the writing is an important part of this movie but goddamn have some faith in your audience members and only pay attention to the big moments, let us soak in the words of these characters. A secondary problem this creates is that when the movie shifts back to Simon and his reaction, you can't take it all in because you have just been lectured by his narration. I felt like I would have gotten more out of the actor's, who plays Simon, reactions if they let those moments just happen naturally.

Anyway, the other reason for this long runtime of the film (long by my standards of how long a rom-com should be anyway) is that the movie luxuriously spends a lot of time manifesting Simon's thoughts into real scenes that are played out for our benefit. And they are for our benefit because sometimes the movie is too on the nose about it albiet the pride dance is a fun scene for sure

Despite these two big issues and a general familiarity of the movie itself, it feels like you're just watching another teen rom-com and that you're just here to have fun. And it is fun, not very funny, but fun and the performances are good so you're never really bored. So the familiar feeling helps the movie and in the theme park of rom-coms this is certainly one of the smoothest rides I have been on.

Music isn't bad and there's a lot of it even an original song by Bleachers written for the film. It's very well directed too, especially the set design man, every background is predominantly made up of primary colors- red green blue and yellow, and it ends up giving the movie a thematic significance to it's aesthetic which is really pleasant. The guy Simon talks to on the emails is named Blue so that feeling of color being used for plot is there from the start. I'm only mentioning this here because the only other gay thing I have seen which is Heartstopper, also played extremely and memorably well with colors.

I should mention that it's also a very cringe-worthy film. This is a personal taste thing but I really like it when movies create cringe or extremely awkward scenes and pretend like it's normal. There are a lot of cringe things in Love, Simon but the fact that the background music doesn't miss a beat or the way it's shot feels earnest makes me admire the film for not just making fun of those ridiculous scenes but carrying them with the same wavelength as the rest of the movie.

Overall: Love, Simon is a good teen rom-com that happens to have a gay main character. Don't expect to be blown away by that. I still recommend Heartstopper if you want to actually be wowed while watching something gay

6/10

This is actually my first Rob Reiner movie. I have been looking for Princess Bride to watch but it's not on Netflix and I can't really pay for any other streaming services. Anyhoo

This coming-of-age story about a group of kids going out to see a dead body has the familiar tug-at-the-heart feeling of kids going out on one last adventure even though they have no idea how much will be changed at the end of it. There's beauty in the way it's shot and the music is especially great because it sounds fantastical and poetic, it almost reminds me of The Lord of the Rings soundtrack and that's fitting because this is a journey too.

I didn't really care about the kids much, though I understand that's more because I was really annoyed by the kids in The Goonies. Seeing another bunch of kids reminded me of them and took me out a bit but their journey was what worked for me. Along the way, it also feels like the movie is telling us to make peace with death, to not ridicule or run away from it.

I can't find anything bad to say about it. I was worried after all the meme-ing Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo had been put through that maybe they were just a joke and that seeing them on film would be painful but these two managed to be one of the best parts of the film. I didn't care about much about the songs as I generally never do but if it's any metric of it's value: I did end up listening to the soundtrack on Spotify after the movie

It's a beautiful movie from start to finish, top notch production design especially that Ozdust ballroom. Though admittedly we don't see as many different locations as I would have hoped with the film being almost like a magical school movie reminding me of Harry Potter.

Wonderful pacing, really good acting by both girls and a lush beautiful scenescape make this one of my fav live-action fairy tale movies ever.

Stuff like this is why cinematic experience still has value and I wish I could have seen it on the big screen. Even if you don't like the girliness of it all and cringe at certain moments in the film, there is just so much joy and energy in the film that you can't help but be sucked in

A cinematic experience the likes of which we see less and less in these superhero/lollipop-action fatigued times.

It's a good day when the action film you're watching actually makes you question how the character is possibly going to do all the things he needs to to save the day. This movie feels restrained compared to other action movies that can't keep their budget in their pants and have to blow up everything to be satiated. Casino Royale is good I think because it feels like there's a story and development here that we have to get invested in to enjoy the film. The opening act is a glorious chase action scene and honestly all the action sequences in the film are brilliantly. Mostly due to how vertical the film takes them: a sinking house (going down), a stairway fight as the characters go downstairs and the upward mobility of the opening sequence. I liked the poker scenes too but I have to say, the tournament perhaps intentionally or not, doesn't really have a sense of continuity to it. The final showdowns are great but I felt they were a tad repetitive with the all-in's. Tho I suppose the film even here cautions restraint instead of making some overblown cheesy outsmarting competition as I have seen some films do

Daniel Craig is great as Bond, ruthless and yet betraying that he's a smug egotist womanizer at his core. Mads Mikkelson plays a terrific villain, he's so full of himself and I love that the movie didn't give him an origin story. That was what I was dreading to be honest.

It's fairly emotional in the final act too but by that point the film had run too long for my taste. That and a couple of stupid plot points are really what keeps the movie from ranking higher but it's a thrill for nearly 75% of the film. Definitely one of the better action films I have seen this year.

7.5/10 Wikipedia refers to it as a spy thriller but the two Bond films, this and No Time to Die, felt pretty normal thrilling action films with high stakes and hot women. Is it just because of the casino setting and less action than the other films?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/51532459

I have just started getting into reading magazines and specifically using Libby to read bits of articles here and there. I like the current political stuff and some media coverage but on the whole it hasn't been a very interesting experience until I came across this short story

I didn't even realize The New Yorker published short stories, at first I thought it was just an excerpt. It's about an Indian girl who has to go live with her aunt for a little while while her mom and dad work through the grief of having gone through a miscarriage.

The mystery and intrigue builds up in little blocks, each paragraph showing us a little moment in Nidhi's (our protagonist) life: her life with her parents, the going away to live with her aunt, meeting her aunt's mentally handicapped daughter...

I thought it was really well-written and compelling and by the end of it it built such a well-realized cast of characters that each had shades of darkness and human qualities in them that I wanted to explore their stories more, to spend a little more time with their thoughts and personal griefs.

It's a simple coming-of-age story that read like a thriller that was brilliantly paced and I would love it if other people learned about it as there wasn't a lot of discourse online

I have just started getting into reading magazines and specifically using Libby to read bits of articles here and there. I like the current political stuff and some media coverage but on the whole it hasn't been a very interesting experience until I came across this short story

I didn't even realize The New Yorker published short stories, at first I thought it was just an excerpt. It's about an Indian girl who has to go live with her aunt for a little while while her mom and dad work through the grief of having gone through a miscarriage.

The mystery and intrigue builds up in little blocks, each paragraph showing us a little moment in Nidhi's (our protagonist) life: her life with her parents, the going away to live with her aunt, meeting her aunt's mentally handicapped daughter...

I thought it was really well-written and compelling and by the end of it it built such a well-realized cast of characters that each had shades of darkness and human qualities in them that I wanted to explore their stories more, to spend a little more time with their thoughts and personal griefs.

It's a simple coming-of-age story that read like a thriller that was brilliantly paced and I would love it if other people learned about it as there wasn't a lot of discourse online

I'm trying to think of something good to say about this series, trying to look at it as an ambitious portrayal of darkness and depravity in the Marvel universe but it's much too lightheaded and too fleeting to be taken seriously.

Essentially a "What if?" scenario featuring the protagonist Phil Sheldon, from Alex Ross's grounded Marvel comic books "Marvel's", the book shows us a world where basically everything that could have gone wrong with our heroes does go wrong.

Captain America becomes a cannibal, Iron Man incapacitated, Peter Parker never gets to be Spider-Man and is a freak with a skin disease caused by a radioactive spider. Things like these and many more often with exaggerated details of violence and ugliness are showcased page after page.

It's a really short book too, just 68 or so pages and rather than telling you a proper story it just takes you around on a tour to see the fates awaiting the different characters or groups in the Marvel universe. I really disliked it, the lack of focus and story and just the pacing of it all makes reading it have no impact which feels like it would be the opposite of what was intended.

Indeed, as you read this book it feels more absurd than horrific. Like someone was trying to be very clever and failed to be original.

The artwork on the other hand is atleast good looking. Gone are beautiful realistic portraits drawn by Alex Ross and instead we get this moody panels where everything is grey and overcast. Like you're looking at burnt paper. It does help out in accentuating and developing the horrible descriptions of these characters by drawing them in as many distorted painful positions as possible but ultimately falls short of "this looks so good I must own it and touch it" standards of Kingdom Come and Marvels. It looks best when the scenes are more brightly lit

Around the second half of the second issue, the art style changes hands to be a bit more comic book-y but I didn't mind that. I didn't care enough about it

I do like that this comic proves that just bring grimdark and "realistic" doesn't make a book good and I appreciate it for that much atleast though I still think DC's Kingdom Come is much better at reflecting that sentiment than this meaningless tale of cruelty. This is the kind of book that feels like it would be perfect for "The Boys" watching modern realistic superhero watchers of today but ends up holding nothing substantial inside, much like the later seasons of the show.

4/10 The only inspiring and worth reading part of this whole comic book is the opening poem/epigrapgh. I love how cleanly it sets up that what you're reading is just a different universe and how it name-drops the original comic book and Ruins.

PS: I wish Doctor Strange 2 had explored some of these darker multiverses instead of giving a busy and distracting cameo scene of random heroes

This game was a missed opportunity in my opinion. It's such a cool setting and I can't believe something like Far Cry with it's infinite radio towers and forests hasn't even managed to sell a forest area this well as Firewatch does in only a few hours. The map is small so you get quickly familiar with the few choice routes you like to take and the in-game map which is a real map that the character holds instead of a HUD element feels really intimate and useful.

But that's where the gameplay mechanics peak, most of the game is your average walking simulator's "I hate it when you go off path" type of deal which normally annoys me but in this game it felt especially frustrating. To see Henry do the same animation multiple times to get from one area to the next (chopping a tree to make a bridge, jumping over, jumping down, climbing down) doesn't get more immersive than it was the first time around, it actually makes the game feel monotonous in a way. Also the whole traversal thing is pretty uninspired: all of the actions that your character takes are automated and you just have to click a button for him to do it. That basically means if the game gives you an axe, sorry a PULASKI, it just stays there unable to be used by the player unless you click the button to chop a tree or clear a path and Henry automatically does it. It all kind of turns into a Spider-Man 2 on PC situation and if you have ever played that game then u know how boring it is.

The problems even seep into the storytelling department. Because Henry carries a walkie talkie to communicate to Delilah, the other main character of the game, everytime you pick up a note in the game to read these guys have a conversation. Almost everytime this pattern repeats and establishes itself and I don't know if that bothers anyone else but to my brain it tells me that the notes I'm picking up aren't worth reading because the characters are already summarizing their emotions and thoughts on it before I have even read it. Now other games do have commentary like this when you pick up an item but it's always short, not like Firewatch. This and the fact that the game keeps building up mysteries without resolving any of them and the infrequent abrupt time jumps without any clear character dynamic developing between the characters made me care even less about what was going on.

The game gives you dialogue choices, to flavour the text and I never really told Delilah in the game about what was going on with my character so maybe that lack of character development was my bad.

I'll also say that the opening of this game is the most emotionally powerful and engaging part of this game. It reminded me of old text adventure games I used to play with no voice acting and a simple wall of text where you have to pick options to basically tell Henry's backstory your way and it's done really well. I wish more games used this simple narrative device instead of making long introductory cutscenes

Overall: 6.5/10 Maybe it's my expectation that was too high or maybe I wasn't just in the mood but I'm so bored with it that even finishing this short game again with the audio commentary on feels too much. On that note, how the fuck do you make a painless and simple audio commentary experience in a game where the vast majority of storytelling drama comes from audio dialogues in your head. To have to differentiate between them is just too much; it's not like an action game where the audio talks about the game as you fight the bad guys.

I wanted to start this by saying that not only do I not watch a lot of supernatural horror movies but they also don't do a lot for me. It's a really big sub-genre of horror that has been heavily saturated with jump scares, tired tropes and just the over-familiarity of the audience with the material: a haunted house, an evil presence, objects flying around at random, a worried mother.

Yet, The Exorcist feels authentic and real and makes me believe in the terrible circumstances of it's story. Part of the reason for this is the careful it takes in to build up that story over the course of hour and a half before the exorcism even begins. Another part is the direction itself. This is a gorgeous movie even when we are not staring down the face of a demonic child playing with adults. Numerous scenes where people are just walking around in broad daylight as the camera follows them: rarely static and mostly in a panoramic shot as it moves with them, turns around, looks at people and things. All of this makes the film feel lush and heavy and serious, giving it an air of realism that I have seldom experienced in a movie of this genre. The beautiful landscape shots of Iraq and it's streets in the opening of the film still looks really good

The build-up is really well done as well: we have all seen the mother who is worried about her possessed child but to connect her character with the growing modern age and have her be an actress in the film industry is what really sets her apart. Her character (played by Ellen Burstyn) is a modern well-to-do western woman who takes her kids to doctors, psychiatrists and who more importantly believes in the modern medicine. We see her progressively getting more and more desperate as nothing she does or the doctors do helps her daughters and the answers they give her irritate us because they sound like vague bullshit. Interestingly the scenes most uncomfortable to watch are the tests being done on Regan by these machines in a lab.

The other important part of the plot is the priest played by Jason Miller. A priest who has begun to get tired of his spiritual beliefs. Life has been hard for him and he struggles to take care of his mental health and his mother's degrading health.

These two plotlines (and two characters) run almost separately for the first hour until, connected by a murder, they start to merge together almost organically as we build up to the exorcism itself. Throughout this, we see Regan's (the possessed kid) condition getting worse and worse as the demon does more and more shocking scenes on-screen which works as a very well realized pressure cooker for the movie's plot urging the characters to hurry up and try to save her.

It's a shame the exorcism itself fell a little flat for me; it's brilliantly lit and directed, the shot with Regan floating in the air as the priests repeat "The power of Christ compels you" looks like it could be painting, but it also looked a little dated to me.

The reason why I call it The Godfather of horror movies is that it does a lot of things right that even newer horror movies don't seem to have learned to do. Much like how The Godfather is still a better crime film than most criminal gangster type movies today.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/50316606

I can't talk about this comic book without stressing the important fact that much of the joy and wonder and amazement that I got out of this book was due to the fact that I was already familiar with a lot of the stories in this comic book.

That's one of the strengths and weaknesses of this book, it relies on you as a fan of these stories and much of the themes of this book depend upon you knowing these characters beforehand. Now, I have never read more than a handful of comic books but I have seen a lot of the movies which helped a lot.

Marvels is about our main character Phil Sheldon, a photographer in New York as he lives through the 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s and witnesses the stories of many of the major characters from Marvel Comics. We see Captain America fighting the Nazis, the rise of Fantastic Four and the arrival of Galactus, we see Avengers forming and taking on new members and of course the X-Men and how they differ from other heroes.

I have no idea how it would feel to read these stories if you were unfamiliar with most of the stories because one of the reasons why this book works is that it reflects our own childhood wonder and amazement of these characters onto us. We see people marveling at them just as we used to, just as I did when I was a kid watching Spider-Man on an old CRT. Without that reflection, I think much of the appeal would be lost.

Of course, Alex Ross's drawing is amazing and it feels even more cinematic somehow than Kingdom Come. In that story the amount of busy action sequences left me disoriented at times but here even though there are some really cool battles against foes, much of the focus is on everyday people. I like how these scenes have a momentum to them, the sense of pace as Phil walks the streets or runs toward his house feels impactful even though there's nothing grand going on action-wise.

What I love about also is how people are hostile towards these heroes, especially the mutant X-Men who are treated like commies and hunted down at every turn. The scenes of human brutality hit a lot harder than any large scale action sequences could. The book also manges to be consistently grounded, this is not one of those stories where an average guy gets in a team-up with superheroes and forms a relationship with them. Instead,

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the only time he comes too close them, he ends up losing his right eye.

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It's not a criticism per say but I find it very strange and interesting how this book forms it's own version of superhero fatigue within the story. Phil Sheldon towards the end gets so sick and tired of people admiring these heroes whenever they get saved and accuse them of villainy when things are peaceful that he doesn't want to be a part of it and retires, leaving the story at an inconclusive end for him and the reader.