One Good Point (Movie) - The Flash

SPOILERS FOR THIS MOVIE BELOW. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE THIS EXACT MOVIE SPOILED FOR YOU, DO NOT READ FURTHER.

So I listen to a few podcasts that talk about movies and shows, most of them done by The Ringer. I enjoy the Midnight Boys, House of R, and The Big Picture. And basically everybody I listened to talk about The Flash was pretty quick to shut it down. There was a fair amount of anticipation for the movie, and almost everybody to a person was disappointed with the film. But, this was a solid reminder that not everybody likes or dislikes the same stuff.

Now don't get me wrong; there were some very big problems with the movie. The CGI ranged from decent to absolutely abysmal. I don't know what those things were that Barry was saving from the hospital nursery, but they were definitely not human babies. Some sort of gelatinous hypothetical human-slug hybrid, maybe. And the couple of "cameos" at the end of the film that were very plainly CGI inclusions were unnerving examples of the uncanny valley, and someone at some point ought to have put their foot down and stopped all that.

But that said, I actually enjoyed the film.

I'll be the first one to admit that I had big time nostalgia feels when we saw Michael Keaton's Batman on screen, and every needle drop of that old Batman theme song was effective. Sometimes I'm an easy target. But the adventure itself was also pretty decent, a classic superhero story of a hero becoming their own worst enemy. The movie didn't have a single over-arching villain, not exactly, but not every movie needs to follow the same exhausted formula. I liked the characters, liked the journey, and liked the destination.

I'm not sure if it was just the terrible CGI that turned everybody off to the movie, or if people were just predisposed to dislike the movie because of the many problematic encounters that Ezra Miller has had over the past few years, but I think The Flash was a solid film in the end. Certainly not the train wreck that I was led to believe it would be.

Click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can watch The Flash today!

One Good Point (Movie) - Pitch Perfect 2

NOTE: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PITCH PERFECT 2.

I really enjoyed Pitch Perfect. I like music, I like cover songs, and I like sports movies (and don't fool yourself; Pitch Perfect is essentially Hoosiers). Plus Anna Kendrick is both incredibly talented and eminently watchable. So, it follows that I would watch Pitch Perfect 2 at some point, if the opportunity presented itself.

And so it did.

Pitch Perfect 2 hits a lot of the same notes (haha, pun!) as the original, with a compelling primary story of teamwork and achievement, and secondary stories about coming-of-age, perception-vs-reality, and personal priorities versus expectations. It's all well-written and well-acted, with the trademark humor and needle drops that made the first one such a hit.

One thing I do sometimes is think about what sort of changes I might've made to a show or movie. I'm not sure if it's such a great habit all the time, but someday maybe I'll put forward all the changes I would've made to the last two seasons of Game of Thrones, and you can tell me if it wouldn't have vastly improved that monstrosity.

Anywho, here comes the spoilers!

I thought the ending of Pitch Perfect 2 was good, but in kind of a cheesy, classic sports movie (see?) way.  The Bellas come out victorious as world champions, with a rousing rendition of an original composition, bringing a number of past Bellas onto the stage for the end of the performance. Lovely.

But, what if...

The Bellas finish with the highest score, and the crowd delights in the performance's combination of originality and nostalgia. However, because the performance included singers who are not current members of the Bellas, the team is disqualified, and the Bellas must disband for good. It puts a tight bow on this chapter of these characters, and also gives immediate prominence to Hailee Steinfeld's character Emily as the only? underclassman, and the new steward of the Bellas' acapella legacy. On top of all of that, it's not what people would expect from a sports movie (I'm committed to this bit), so it would be a fun twist.

Anyways, if you've read all the way down here, one more note. There's a scene where Chloe and Beca are laying super close to each other late at night, and Chloe tells Beca she wishes she had done more experimenting in college. There's a whole other Pitch Perfect movie that I would watch the hell out of that starts right at that moment.

Ahem. Anywho, fun movie!

If you'd like to watch Pitch Perfect 2 right now, click here to see where you can stream it on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Movie) - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I'd heard years and years ago about how this movie was a calamity, and the specific reason that most people brought up was the lack of realism about the ability to survive a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator. While I can't speak to whether or not that's particularly realistic, I also am not too sure about the realism of the Ark of the Covenant burning away the bodies of the unworthy, or the realism of a hundreds of years old Templar protecting the Holy Grail.

My point being, I don't come to Indiana Jones for aggressive realism. I come here for fun, and that's the most important meter for measuring the quality of this particular movie. So, was Crystal Skull fun?

Yes!

While I'm not particularly sold on Shia LaBeouf as "the next generation of Indiana Jones," the movie overall is a success. It's got the same classic framework of pursuing some legendary treasure, assorted unsavory foreign authoritarian regimes (Soviet-era Russians this time) pursuing the treasure with less discretion, and investigating a combination of urban and wilderness environs in pursuit of clues.

For me, the first 40-45 minutes of the movie were absolutely top-notch Indiana Jones content. Harrison Ford's performance is pristine, purely Indy, and every supporting character, scene setting, and line of dialogue hits just exactly right. LaBeouf's character falls a little flat for me personally (in a Marty McFly sort of way), but not so much that it makes the movie unwatchable. And the film has the right number of callbacks to give you some nostalgia bumps without falling completely into "he said the thing!" territory.

Watching the movie also reminded me just how much fun a good Indiana Jones story can be. So in the time since I watched it, I've also re-watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I'm fully ready to tune in for Dial of Destiny soon. Who knows, maybe that'll be one of the additional movie reviews I'll write up before the end of the year?

If you've been waiting around forever like I have but want to finally watch Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can stream it today!

One Good Point (Show) - Twisted Metal, Season 1

I know, I know, I said I was moving back to movies, and now this is two more shows in a row. Well guess what, you sons of bitches, there's more shows coming, too. Just buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Speaking of riding, Twisted Metal! I was excited to see the existence of the series; my brother and I played the hell out of Twisted Metal: Black, and before that, I played a fair amount of Twisted Metal 2 and 3 back in the PlayStation days. I'm not much of a racing game guy, and honestly Super Mario Kart never really did much for me, but a demolition derby? Yeah, I can get into that.

As I mentioned when talking about Mad Max, we've got another post-apocalyptic wasteland full of ridiculous, over-the-top characters who have sort of a casual relationship with right, wrong, life, and death. And honestly, during the first two episodes, I wasn't sure if the show was going to hit. Even the first time we meet Sweettooth, perhaps the essential character from the games, he strikes as a little outlandish for outlandishness' sake.

But somewhere around episode 3 or 4, I realized that the show had hit its stride. It finds a good balance of levity, violence, sexuality, and heroism between a wide variety of characters. You find yourself appreciating and rooting for not just a single protagonist (or two protagonists in this case), but a bunch of different folks, people who are trying to get by in this brutal world while still holding onto some semblance of their humanity. The action, the humor, and the character connections are all really compelling and highly watchable, and the cast is really well chosen.

The end of season one leads directly, aggressively into a season 2, which has been confirmed thankfully. I'm ecstatic to see the next season, and unlike a lot of stuff I've watched, this will be a show that I do watch right when it comes out. I can't wait for more murder-on-wheels with funny, sexy, insane people. What more could you want??

Twisted Metal was released by Peacock, so you'd better believe you can watch it on Peacock. Where else? Check JustWatch to find out!

One Good Point (show) - Harley Quinn, Seasons 1-4

Technically I started this show last year, but I didn't review it in my end-of-year stuff, so I'm reviewing the full series to date right here, right now. And I also just discovered today, as I wrapped up season 4, that there'll be a season 5 starting this November. Will I watch it on time? I think you can say with some certainty that I will not. But on the off chance that I do, I'll post my little review thingy right when it ends.

But for now, we talk about the content we've got!

Season 1 of Harley Quinn was an absolute tour de force. It was everything I hoped it would be, from the action and humor and subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) shit-talking of dumb people. There are shows that hit with too heavy a hammer when it comes to "woke" ideals, but somehow this show managed to be completely irreverent and confrontational in an unapologetic way, while utterly avoiding the cringy sort of content that bogs down some newer shows. The first season was legitimately one of the best seasons of television I've ever seen, animated or otherwise.

Season 2 was good, it draws on a lot of the same ideals, and continues to build the characters that it established in season 1. It doesn't quite hit on all cylinders in the same potent way, but still a very solid season.

Seasons 3 and especially 4 seem to have sort of lost their way a bit, though. By the time we got into the middle of season 3, it seemed like the show was more focused on trying to advance a spiderweb of storylines, and not as focused on being entertaining. The jokes feel a little more "sprinkled on top" rather than a natural part of the characters' interactions. I'm hoping that season 5 gives us some more of those clean, early-season interactions, but based on the cliffhanger from the end of season 4, I'm still expecting lots of story focus, so we'll see.

One last thing. I like Bane a lot, and he's got some awesome lines in this show, but his voice absolutely kills me. I get that it's an animated series and a little bit sillier than what you'd get in a live-action product like The Dark Knight Rises, but the voice actor does like a clownish impression of that Bane voice, and it's just a mess to me. Other people might like it, it wouldn't be the first time I was the only person who hated someone's voice (I'm looking at you, 2000's jam band O.A.R.), but I stand by my opinion.

As with a lot of these series, this is a show specifically created for a streaming service, so you're almost certainly going to see Harley Quinn on Max and nowhere else. But for all you completionists out there, here's yet another link to the show's page on JustWatch, still one of my favorite sites for finding where to watch movies across my many streaming services.

One Good Point (Movie) - Mad Max: Fury Road

Okay, back to movies!

This is another of those "modern classics," the movies that everybody talks about, that pierced popular culture and that gets referenced nonstop, with memes and references and nostalgia. And now I'm finally caught up! Over the course of 2 hours, I "got" like seven hundred jokes from the past ten years. Most of them were about "bait," but still, worth it.

So how was this as a movie, outside of memes? It was pretty good! The characters were eccentric, entertaining, and over-the-top violent, basically exactly what you would expect out of post-apocalyptic characters these days. I've played enough Borderlands to know that in general, human life is minimally valued, and explosives are the name of the game. I enjoy Tom Hardy a lot just as an actor, and he did a great job of being kind of on the edge of sanity for most of the movie, although sometimes his maddened mind settled almost too much, enough to form calm, coherent thoughts, but again, in the wastelands, you expect people to be a little bit nuts...or a lot nuts.

One thing that didn't work quite as well for me were the moments where they seemed to speed up the action slightly, accentuating the frantic-ness but in an unnatural way. I found those spots a little bit jarring, and they took me out of the fiction for a brief period. Ultimately they weren't enough to fully detract from the movie experience, but it's a little ding for me.

The prequel Furiosa came out this year, and Max is constantly shoving it in my face as a recommended movie to watch, so it's possible I'll crank that up before the end of the year. Anya Taylor-Joy is supremely watchable, and I'll watch most Marvel alumnus in stuff, so the inclusion of Chris Hemsworth is a positive as well. We'll see! The queue remains... massive.

To find out where you can watch Mad Max: Fury Road these days, click here to go check out its entry on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Show) - Gen V, Season 1

Remember all those middling comments about season 4 of The Boys, how it was a little much sometimes, and the various stories felt like they weren't really tied together, and the characters felt incomplete? Yeah, so Gen V isn't like that at all.

Gen V fucking rocks.

I actually did watch Gen V before I started season 4 of The Boys, which was mildly important. Gen V introduces a couple of small-time characters that show up in The Boys, and while you don't really need to know the full extent of their backstory, it does help to give some explanation as to why these two random attractive super-powered people showed up here, what their powers are, and why they would side with Homelander in all of this. But that's not what makes Gen V worth watching.

Gen V takes place largely at the Godolkin University School of Crimefighting, a perhaps overly self-described college setting where aspiring young heroes try to prove their mettle and become fully established "heroes" (as much as anyone in the mainstream becomes a hero in the world of The Boys). The protagonist is a young woman named Marie Moreau, who has the power to control blood, and who has a predictably horrifying backstory. But admirably, from this trauma comes a desire to do good in the world, something that's not so easy to come by in the world of The Boys, and something that sets her against some powerful forces.

While Gen V does a good job of creating questions about every character's... well, character, those questions make the heroism of the protagonists even more impressive. There are the customary betrayals and turns, and some of the worst folks at the beginning of the show end up as some of the folks you're rooting for at the end, but it all feels so naturally written that these characters do exactly what you believe they would do. One problem a lot of shows have is that people do things that make no sense. A betrayal happens because it's "entertaining," but when a betrayal isn't earned, it just feels like a way to get a cheap, short-term pop. It's the difference between season 3 of Game of Thrones and season 7 of Game of Thrones, full characters versus fragments. Gen V has full characters.

The show isn't perfect, as there are a few characters who feel kind of flat, too flat for The Boys universe. But then you get a scene like the one where Sam attempts to evade capture from a military response team, and you know this production team knows exactly what they're doing. I won't describe it any further than that, to avoid any sort of spoilers, but if you've seen the show, you know the scene I'm talking about. It's just perfect.

I'm looking forward to the second season. The writing for these characters is I think at least as strong as any season of The Boys, and I'm hopeful that a second season can keep up that prolific performance.

Click here to see where you can watch Amazon's Gen V! (Spoiler alert: It's gonna be on Amazon Prime Video)

One final tragic note: Chance Perdomo, who portrayed Andre Anderson, one of the main protagonists in the show, was killed in a motorcycle accident in March of 2024. The character won't be recast. I don't really have any other notes on that, I just felt like it would be weird for me to not mention it in this article.

One Good Point (Show) - Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Seasons 7 and 8

So for starters, I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed Brooklyn Nine-Nine. From the little previews and clips I saw online, the show looked too absurd for me to really enjoy; I like sitcoms as much as anybody, but there's a level of silliness that sometimes I find off-putting. And while 99 gets pretty silly here and there, it's actually a gentler sort of silliness than you might expect.

So then, seasons 7 and 8! Well, the show continues the same general format: diverse but slightly over-dramatized police work, occasional silliness, occasional heartfelt moments, and overall satisfying conclusions. Season 7 is pretty eventful, lots of character progression, people have babies, classic guest stars return, and it's all very entertaining and very much what you would expect.

Season 8, however, is a whollllle different animal. Season 8 debuted in 2021, after Covid, and more importantly for this particular show, after the George Floyd protests. Plenty of shows, especially sitcoms, could've just gone about their business and done another standard season of episodes, with the standard police-related hijinks that the first seven seasons offered. But Brooklyn Nine-Nine did something pretty daring. They acknowledged the importance of George Floyd's death and the aftermath, and the evolving public perception of police, and they did so in a way that was true to the show while still being pretty responsible.

Rosa leaves the police force to become a private investigator, specifically focusing on improper police behavior. Jake wrestles with the classic concept of being "one of the good ones," and is confronted with his own bad behavior, even while doing "good things." The series hits on the ideas of ally-ship, mortality, identity, and (as all good final seasons ought to do) turning the page on a part of your life.

There are a ton of emotional moments in the final season, and the two-part series finale is saturated with them (possibly over-saturated with them, but that's how it goes with TV). The jokes are good, but I found the social commentary to be a refreshing way to buttress the final season. Sometimes at the end of a run, a show can get too attached to old jokes, tropes, repeat guest stars, and overall less creative content. Brooklyn Nine-Nine stayed compelling to the end, in different ways perhaps, but compelling to the end.

And R.I.P. Andre Braugher. Holt was the best character on the show.

You can click here to find out where you can watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine right now on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Show) - The Boys, Season 4

ALERT: This review has some major SPOILERS. Usually I try to avoid them, but this show in particular feels like it needs some specifics. So, you have been warned!

If you know me (and if you're reading this, chances are you do; I don't get a lot of widespread appeal over here), you know that there are things about The Boys that aren't going to hit quite right for me. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate violence and gore, and brutality and villainy, and sexuality from all angles. 

But The Boys has a habit of taking those sorts to the extreme, sometimes to the point where you wonder, is this a thing that advances the show at all? Or is this just to give people something to talk about the next time they see each other? A certain urethral scene from a previous season comes to mind when I bring up this point.

This season of The Boys was no different in that regard; there were multiple extended scenes in multiple episodes that just felt unnecessarily crass, even if you forego my own general lack of appetite for such content. The scene with Hughie impersonating Webweaver and getting himself into a sexual abuse scene with Tek Knight went on way too long, with way too little story relevance, and way too many punchlines. And then the entire episode at the farm felt like someone's personal fan-fiction idea given way too much air.

But despite these (in my opinion) missteps, The Boys has historically been a show that has been able to appeal to a broad group of fans, myself included. Some fans enjoy watching superpowered beings blow each other up (or just blow each other), some fans like the modern pop culture references, and most fans enjoy the wild adventures, dangerous heroics, and compelling, three-dimensional characters engaged in four-dimensional storylines. This season, however, failed to deliver on that last key component.

The characters this season felt almost dumbed down, and not just to make Sister Sage look good. Each member of The Boys felt like their story had gotten a little less interesting, and pieces of the story dragged so much from episode to episode. Frenchie spent like four full episodes agonizing about having murdered his new lover's family. Then he goes to the police to admit his crimes, goes to jail, and then... is released. And that's kind of the end of it. Like, what? Why did we spend so much time with Frenchie's agony over that situation to have it just brushed aside in the end?

I'm fine with the things that happened at the end of the season (Victoria Neuman's demise, Butcher's turn, Sage's reveal), but it felt like half of the characters could've been left out of the season, or (preferably) given storylines that had more relevance to everything else. The characters felt much more like they were having individual stories this season, instead of the interweaving of numerous stories into a single, cohesive narrative.

The acting was still spot-on, and Karl Urban remains a must-watch talent for the small or large screen. Ever since he took off his helmet in The Two Towers, I've been a big fan. That reminds me, gotta add Dredd to my list of movies to watch. It never ends.

The Boys has built up enough goodwill with me that I'm still excited to see the final season of the show. And I'm hopeful that the stories that felt less important or unresolved from this season will come to a head in that final season, and it'll all feel worth it. We shall see.

The Boys is an Amazon show, so you can see it on Prime Video. But if you'd like to add it to your JustWatch lists, or see if it might be available anywhere else, click here to have a look at its JustWatch entry!

One Good Point (Show) - Cowboy Bebop (Netflix)

This show started off with such tremendous promise. I'd seen a few episodes of the original anime series, and enjoyed it well enough, but not so much that it kept me engaged beyond those first few episodes. There's something about anime that seems to get in the way of my enjoyment, something about the visuals maybe. Regardless, the show didn't resonate with me.

However, somewhere in the first fifteen minutes of the live-action version of the show, I found myself completely enthralled with the whole... everything. John Cho as Spike Spiegel was great, equal parts brutal and pithy, and the explosive violence, reckless gunplay, and the intermittent clever quips made for a fun, outer space, wild west experience. Then when Daniella Pineda gets brought on board as Faye Valentine, I was riveted. The characters felt fun, dynamic, and unpredictable.

And then the show got wrapped up in trying to tell a story, and for me, it all fell apart.

The entire storyline involving Spike's history with organized crime just fell completely flat, and while there are a lot of reasons, I think one in particular is that that story didn't work in a ridiculous world. The story was too serious, too unsuited for this unserious world. We're talking about a world that smacks of Borderlands, with its over-the-top violence and outlandish characters. The brutal and utterly humorless tone of the Syndicate feels inappropriate for the show, and it's almost as if there are two completely different shows being made here at the same time.

The most prime example of that disjointed feeling is the character Vicious. We're supposed to hate him for his cruelty, and while he is cruel, and I do hate him, the two aren't really linked. The character is so uninterestingly written that it seems like the actor felt like he had to push the bombast to eleven, and then up, and up, and up again. But when you have a poorly written character and you crank them up, all you get is something even worse. It's like when I find a low-quality song on YouTube. I think that turning it up will make it sound better in my headphones, but all it does is amplify the flaws. Vicious is an incredibly flawed character, and ramping up the volume is just going to give you a headache.

I understand why the show wasn't renewed. I wouldn't have renewed it, not in its current form, with its existing storylines or the full cast. But there was a ton of potential here to do something fun and kooky and action-packed. I'm hearing that the Borderlands movie is a train wreck, so maybe this is just a really hard balance to nail. But somebody's gotta be able to do it. I mean Guardians of the Galaxy happened, right?

If you want to watch the Netflix Cowboy Bebop series, this is gonna blow your mind, but your best bet is to search for it on Netflix! But you can click here just to make sure.

For posterity, you can also click here to see where you might be able to watch the original Cowboy Bebop anime series as well!

One Good Point (Show) - Arcane

So, you've heard me talk about how animated shows and movies don't usually resonate for me. I had that same concern when I started Arcane, even though I generally like the idea of game worlds as a premise for a movie or show. I mean, Dungeons and Dragons was my movie of the year in 2023. But Arcane managed to completely overcome that predisposition against animated content. I absolutely loved this show.

The show was really well-constructed from top to bottom. The different sections of the city felt unique down to their bones, from an aesthetic standpoint of course, but also from the way that characters' behavior changed based on which "type" of people they were around. And you got a distinct difference in the characters as well: their mannerisms, their tone, the way they think about the world around them. And just in general, I love that steampunk magical type setting; it's my favorite type of magic/technology for D&D games, where yes, magic is a thing and it's a source of power, but people can use advanced technology to complement or combat magical prowess.

The first couple episodes focus on the experiences of a band of ragtag downtrodden youths from the undercity of Zaun, and their protective foster father figure, Vander, who is unsurprisingly the character with whom I identify with most: big guy, beard, heroic tendencies. He's not as funny as I am, but hey, we've all got our flaws.

But you can tell right away (even if you weren't paying attention to all the trailers or artwork) that the show centers around Vi and Jinx. And I've got to tell you, this relationship is executed in utterly pristine fashion. The way that this series shows the emotional dependence that Vi and Jinx feel for each other is so incredibly effective. This is one of those situations where sometimes animated series can fall short, but between the expertly crafted facial expressions and just the best voice acting I think I've ever heard, you feel every single moment between them. When things go sideways (that's not a spoiler, it's a TV show, things go wrong), the reactions of each of the characters is so... human. I felt tremendous empathy for Jinx in particular, but both characters are genuine, complex, and incredibly compelling.

Obviously, as you see me writing this now, I didn't watch the show when it was first released. It took me a couple years to come around to it, and this here, this is the onnnnnly situation where I'm okay with there being a longer delay between seasons of a TV show. The two years between House of the Dragon seasons? Fuck off. The like, nine years between seasons of Stranger Things? Get outta here. But this extra time we've had between season 1 and season 2 of Arcane has given me the time I apparently needed to actually watch the show.

And now I'm ready. Season 2 is scheduled to be released on November 2nd of this year. THIS YEAR. When that happens, I'll be watching the episodes immediately.

Can't. Freaking. Wait.

It's a Netflix show, so it's gonna be on Netflix, but just in case you're feeling weird and want to triple-check that, click here to go see the JustWatch entry for Arcane!

One Good Point (Show) - Blue Eye Samurai

So, basically everyone I ever talked to about Blue Eye Samurai was absolutely bananas for the show. "All-time great," "best show of the year," "award-worthy," etc. And...I thought it was good. I found it slow at times, and I'm not someone who's usually impressed by anything accomplished when it comes to animation, so the visuals were just fine, didn't add anything for me. It wasn't distracting at least, the animation quality; that's about as much as I usually hope for when it comes to animated shows/movies.

One of the things that bugged me on several occasions was the number of times that our protagonist Mizu got stabbed. It reminded me of the Punisher series on Netflix, where Frank Castle got stabbed, shot, mauled, hit by a car, blown up, a thousand different potentially fatal injuries, and he just kept going. If you want me to believe in the danger that this character is facing, you can't fake-kill them over and over. By the end of the first season, I was nigh convinced I was watching a superhero show, and not an historical fiction.

I also didn't love how the villains were sooooooo evil. Part of what we kept getting told by the narrative was how this character, Mizu, was being consumed by their thirst for vengeance. We're asked to question them, is all this bloodshed worth it, just for the vengeance of...being born, I guess? But then when you show me that the person Mizu is hunting is the absolute most despicable, vile, heinous person ever to walk the face of the planet, that conversation becomes less compelling. Yes, revenge makes sense, this guy is an absolute monster.

Don't get me wrong. There were some fun characters, a lot of interesting interactions, and the story was engaging and mature, which I appreciated (not just for the boobs... but I mean, nothing wrong with a few boobs now and then). I just wasn't as wowed as everybody else. Good show, not all-time great show.

One Good Point (Show) - House of the Dragon, Season 2

It occurred to me at the end of the season 2 finale of House of the Dragon that I have this whole second tab on my list of reviews to do that I've been ignoring. The name of that second tab is "Shows." So, buckle up. The next few quick-hitter reviews will all be about various shows that I've watched (or at least finished) this year.

The first season of House of the Dragon was imperfect, but I enjoyed it a lot. I found one of the primary protagonists in particular super compelling, and it's not the one everyone else likes to pay attention to (Daemon), but it is the one you would think I would find surprisingly interesting. Viserys Targaryan, depending on your point of view, could be anywhere from a terrible king, a serviceable king, a fine king, or even an outstanding king. And in fact, over the course of his long reign, he at different times matched each of those distinctions.

Season two begins shortly after the death of King Viserys, as sides are beginning to be taken, and blood is beginning to be spilt. This season begins with a pair of attempted assassinations (one successful, the other not so much), and though the early losses don't involve characters with whom we've established much of a rapport, they do a fair job of rocking the boat. The middle of the season sees greater conflicts with greater consequences, including the biggest non-natural death of the series so far, the first large battlefield clash on Westeros, and the first "dance of dragons," a glorious clash of the massive, terrible creatures, with flame and blood and ruin following close behind.

If I have one gripe about the season, it's that the pacing left us with a finale that felt very incomplete. I found myself checking the timestamp a handful of times during the episode, wondering if there's enough time for some tremendous, season-clinching event to take place. Though I did still enjoy it (I'm a big enough fan of great conversations in elegant rooms), the episode was building and building and building, and as the end credits began, it felt frustrating to know that it'll be YEARS before we get to see the great battles that we anticipate just moments after the final scenes of the finale.

Overall, while I believe the finale was a misstep, I recall most of the season very fondly. The penultimate episode had some tremendous moments, and an incredible ending scene, and the dragon fights did not disappoint. I'm still very much looking forward to the last two seasons of the show; it's been solidified that the show will stop at four seasons, as the story will be told in its entirety by then. Although it's another two years away, I do look forward to next season, and the untold calamity that will almost certainly populate those episodes.

Stay tuned soon for a follow-up post that combines two of my favorite things: Game of Thrones and lists!

The answer is probably going to be "HBO / Max," but in case you want some visual confirmation of that, you can click here to check JustWatch and ask the question, "Where can I watch House of the Dragon today?"

One Good Point (Movie) - Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

So shortly before Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness came out, all the talk in my friend group (and apparently in a number of other friend groups) was about this other multiverse movie. Then, after we all saw Doctor Strange, the chatter was all about how this other movie was the better multiverse movie. I resolved to see it... but of course, we don't rush into that sort of thing. So here we are, two years later, finally giving it a shot.

The premise is pretty conventional for a superhero-type movie: mysterious being threatens all of reality; dashing rebel seeks out a 'destined' savior who knows nothing of their fate; adventure ensues, with a revelation that the mysterious being has some connection to the savior; the culmination plays on that connection in an emotionally resonant way.

But really it's not about any of that. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (or EEAAO from now on) uses the idea of multiple versions of ourselves as a vehicle for examining where meaning comes from in our lives. The different lives of the various characters reflect various "levels" of achievement, failure, and connection, and the movie uses those reflections to not just consider all the possibilities that might've happened if one, two, or ten things had happened differently in our lives, but also the way we assess the value of our lives, based on how much of our imagined self-image's potential has been achieved.

I thought the movie was pretty good. The emotional beats of the story were a little drawn out and predictable, but the characters were compelling, and surprisingly realistic, in spite of the absurdity of so many of the situations they faced. My one main dissatisfaction was that the antagonist's mentality didn't resonate as well with me as I think it did for a lot of other people, but that's not terribly surprising. You're intended to feel some empathy for the character, and while I absolutely did feel that, I didn't feel any compulsion to forgive her behavior. I get why the main characters do; it just falls short for me.

Now, to answer the question brought up at the beginning of this review: Was EEAAO better than Doctor Strange 2?

Yeah. Although Zombie Strange was pretty rad.

Want to watch Everything, Everywhere, All at Once right now? Click here to check JustWatch and see where you can do that!

One Good Point (Movie) - Philadelphia

I present to you another in that list of "classic" movies that I'd never seen, and I'm pleased to keep crossing these movies off the list. There are a few more in the hopper already, and who knows, maybe this is the year I finally watch Titanic.

Probably not, but maybe!

Philadelphia (released in 1993) is an interesting movie about a very emotionally charged topic, especially at the time it came out. Tom Hanks plays Andrew Beckett, a gay man who contracts HIV and eventually develops AIDS, and who believes he was fired from his job because of it. Denzel Washington plays Joe Miller, an attorney who initially refuses the case, but comes to take on the lawsuit and represent Hanks as the plaintiff as he sues his former company for discriminatory conduct.

The core of the movie is powerful and realistic, and Denzel absolutely nails his role. He plays out exactly the point of view that so many of my "enlightened" peers (and if I'm being honest, myself as well) would hold, where it's fine if people are gay, but "I don't want to see it." In at least four different scenes, Washington illustrates the ways in which those of us who like to think of ourselves as supporting queer folks come up woefully short; so often we think of queer people as an "other" group.

One scene that struck me vividly took place in a pharmacy, where Miller gets asked out for a drink by a man he didn't initially realize was gay. Miller reacts with anger and disgust, using the sorts of words we don't use in polite company anymore, thank goodness. What's just as noteworthy in the scene, however, is how the rest of the folks in the store react. They seem to share Miller's disgust, and don't intervene when he gets aggressive, and then find the other man offensive when he simply responds by calling Miller an asshole, which, in fairness, is exactly what Miller is acting like in this scene.

He does evolve over the course of the movie, and though his evolution might seem a bit faster than you would expect in a real world scenario, it's slow and indirect enough that I think it's pretty powerful. Pushed into the position of seeing these scenes as an outside observer, a viewer in 1993 (and even plenty of viewers today) ought to consider their own emotional reactions to similar situations, and realize some of their own hypocrisy. There's a difference between "putting up with" queer people and actually accepting and embracing queer people as human beings, with every right to exist and be themselves as anybody else. Philadelphia points at some of the moments in a person's everyday life where they might fall short of being truly accepting.

I do wish the show had a little more courtroom time, but part of that is just me being a courtroom drama kind of guy. I love rules, I love talking about rules, I love solving puzzles and answering questions. That's really the second priority of this movie though, and it's understandable that we didn't get quite as much court time as I would've liked.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, though I think I enjoyed the grounded performance of Washington more than the sometimes overly dramatic performance by Hanks. Still, I found it emotionally powerful, realistic, and the sort of movie that gets you to think about your own place in the world, about your responsibility to your fellow human beings.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch Philadelphia today!

One Good Point (Video Game) - Helldivers 2

Over the past two years, I've bought two sequels to games whose originals I haven't played: Baldur's Gate 3 and Helldivers 2. So at this point, I feel pretty silly for putting off playing games like The Witcher 2.

Early in 2024, there were a couple of games that took off like a rocket, and Helldivers 2 was one of them (the other one was Palworld, which I've never played). I had it recommended by a friend whose gaming taste I trust implicitly, and I also heard a rousing endorsement on a media podcast that I trust less, but still trust some. I waited a full month to see if a discount might drop on Steam, but I finally pulled the trigger at full price (which at $40 is still perfectly reasonable).

And I gotta say, this game met all of my expectations and then some.

I remember the first time I opened the game. I watched the intro movie and was tickled by the Super Troopers hyper-patriotic vibe. That vibe continued just as strong into the tutorial, with fantastic humor in addition to helping you get acclimated to some of the game's unique mechanics, which brings me to the first, most important point about this game:

It's fun.

Sometimes you can play a game and find certain mechanics disjointed from the rest of the game, or half of the game is fun, but then there are some tedious escort quests, or it takes way too long to progress and expand your abilities. Helldivers 2 seems to be a game designed solely with "fun" in mind, and the strategems are the best example of this. You immediately get access to a destructive orbital cannon and a machine gun, but you also verrrrry quickly begin to unlock other options. Exploring new weapons and utility items becomes a natural part of the game's progression, and the pace is well-constructed, doing a great job of empowering you with new options at a pace that is neither too fast nor too slow.

But the game also has a number of long-term goals to pursue. You can upgrade modules on your ship to improve your various strategems, unlock new primary and secondary weapons to take into the field, and gain access to special boosters that apply not just to you, but to your entire team, increasing your survivability, stamina, vision, and more.

And that's one other vital part of this game. It is utterly and completely a team-oriented experience. Your group gains exactly the same experience, medals, requisition slips, samples, all the various things that you accumulate, you accumulate together. You get bonus XP if you get your team out alive, but your mission is a success if you accomplish your goals, no matter how many of your Helldivers make it out alive... even zero. But by the same token, friendly fire is permanently enabled. Cooperation and coordination are essential to a positive gaming experience, and while you do get the occasional knucklehead, my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. Your fellow Helldivers want to be victorious with you.

Does the game have long-term staying power? I believe it does, as long as "long-term" means "a couple years" to you. There's a plainly untouched 1/3 of the galactic map that clearly beckons a new enemy faction, and there's a broad base of strategem and weapon/equipment ideas that could definitely be implemented still. Based on the fun-first outlook that I believe the developers take when working on this game, I expect they'll continue to offer interesting twists and new opportunities to fight for managed democracy and defend Super Earth.

Helldivers to hellpods!

Click here to buy Helldivers 2 on Fanatical today!

One Good Point (Movie) - Deadpool & Wolverine

Continuing my many-years legacy of only watching MCU movies in the theater, I headed out to the local cinema to watch Deadpool & Wolverine with my brother the other day. My most recent theater trips were to see Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3 and The Marvels, both of which were fine, but a continuation of the downward trend that Marvel movies have had of late.

This... was not that.

Deadpool & Wolverine is the first officially MCU "canon" movie in the franchise, although without getting into the specifics of the storyline, it's a little bit debatable how much the story actually interacts with the MCU. Still, it's under the Marvel umbrella, and Deadpool's fourth-wall-breaking humor plays on that fact extennnnnsively throughout the film. Every scene is punctuated by clever asides and quips, and the movie delivers on its title and promise, giving the audience a great deal of interplay between the titular characters.

In predictable fashion, it's incredibly violent, terribly vulgar, and somewhat sexual, keeping the faith with previous Deadpool movies. The cameos are almost all executed flawlessly, and even the ones that didn't hit perfectly were still fun to see. And without spoiling the deets, you've absolutely got to watch the end-credits scene. For pure entertainment value, there might not be a better one in the history of the MCU.

"Will this movie save the MCU?"

I don't know if it can do all that, but I will say this: Deadpool & Wolverine is a blueprint on what to do with other movies. The next Doctor Strange movie should be a Doctor Strange movie, with mysticism, sorcery, and Steven Strange's pompous, witty self. The next Shang-Chi movie should have incredible fight scenes, moments of hilarity, and those Ten Rings should continue to be some of the coolest artifacts in the Marvel universe. The new Blade movie should be dark and bloody and gothic, with over the top violence. Somewhere in the course of Wakanda Forever and Thor: Love & Thunder, the movies got distracted somehow, and forgot the only really thing that matters: you gotta make a good movie. Deadpool & Wolverine is a good movie, first and foremost. If you get back to making good movies, the "greater story progression" becomes less important.

Anyways, we'll see what happens. I'm looking forward to Captain America: Brave New World, and the rest of the upcoming calendar. Capture this momentum please!

Deadpool & Wolverine won't be available to stream for a little bit, but when it is, this link will take you to see where on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Movie) - Network

 You can check another classic film off the list!

I've always been interested in movies about the news, shows about the news, stories about the news. I loved the last season of The Wire, where they explored a newsroom and the various pressures and motivations that go into that sort of environment. The Newsroom had its moments, and if they had focused less on the not-terribly-endearing romantic relationship between the two main characters, I think they might've had something. But long before either of these was Network, a movie about a newscaster who goes off the deep end on live television, and how his corporate overlords and the world at large reacts to that.

There's a different sort of essence to older films. There's often a bit more high-minded dialogue, or maybe it just seems that way, as slang from the 60s and 70s feels less informal than modern slang. But there's no denying that the language in Network was heavy; while the actual conversations might've felt a little scripted (which of course they are; it's a movie lol), the terminology and literature references used feel like the sort of level of discourse you would get from the brilliant writers, editors, and thinkers of the era. To simplify, the dialogue has a naturally unnatural feeling to it. It doesn't sound like the way average people would talk to each other, but it could very well be the way that this certain subset of people talked to each other.

The story is completely wild, and yet in today's modern media environment, it doesn't seem nearly as far-fetched. The things that Howard Beale says that nearly get him canned from his job and draw rabid attention from the masses would barely lift an eyebrow in today's diverse news media menu. In a world with people like Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, Bill Maher, and others, Beale's commentary would feel almost right at home.

While watching, I found myself constantly struck by the way today's world would react, and you do actually see a lot of overlap between the way Beale speaks and the way Donald Trump speaks. The main differences would be that Beale always finishes his sentences, and that he works with complete, full-thoughted sentences to begin with. Trump kind of seems like a person trying to cosplay as Howard Beale in front of his friends.

But I digress, this isn't a politics blog... most of the time.

The romantic storyline between Max and Diana felt a little out of place, but Max is ultimately kind of the audience avatar, looking at Howard as a person who needs help, rather than a resource to exploit. And Faye Dunaway's character Diana is terribly, terribly interesting. I would've been (and would still be?) interested in a spinoff movie following that character, exploring her casual acquaintance with actual humanity, and how focused she seems to be on fame, success, noteworthiness. Even just a spiritual successor would be cool; if anybody knows of such a movie, let me know!

All in all, Network was a very good watch. It was a reminder that there are some real bangers in this massive list of unwatched movies, and watching them isn't just about crossing films off the list. Sometimes, the movies are actually really, really good.

Click here to go to JustWatch and see where you can watch Network today!

One Good Point (Movie) - Clue

Click here to find out where you can watch Clue right now!

At some point in everyone's life (literally everyone), you find that you like Tim Curry a lot more than you realized. For people older than me, it was probably earlier, probably after they saw Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time. For younger folks, it might've been his voice work as Nigel Thornberry in the Wild Thornberrys. But at some point in everyone's life, he becomes someone whose appearance on screen brightens your day.

For me, it was seeing The Three Musketeers, one of the seminal movie events of my youth. It was one of the first times I was excited to see a movie before it came out, and mostly lived up to my expectations. But one of the key components of this whole experience was the revelation of Tim Curry as Cardinal Richelieu. As a youth, I only ever hated the bad guys in movies and shows. They were just something for the good guys to triumph over. But something about Curry's incredible charisma made something click in my mind, and I realized villains are what make the story meaningful. It's only a good story because of how much you hate the villain. Plus the bad guys get all the best lines.

Anyways, this was all a roundabout way to say that Clue has been on my radar for a long time. Then one fateful afternoon, I made a show of jumping into the pool for my nieces and nephews and managed to rupture my Achilles, which put me in a chair for the day (and, you know, weeks). So, without much else to do, I was wandering around on the various streaming services and found myself face to face with the movie I'd thought about for so long.

And the verdict? It was quite good! Though the movie occasionally suffers from what I call "drama kid syndrome," (where it slips into humor that's so off-the-wall that it feels like it's written specifically for the amusement of the performers), it's got plenty of clever wordplay, which is precisely what I was hoping to find. Curry is fantastic, and each of the other performers rises to the moment as well. The banter in this movie is top notch.

Now that I've finally seen Clue, I feel fully prepared to watch Knives Out... but alas, it's not on a streaming platform at the moment. Sometime soon though; be prepared!

Click here to find out where you can watch Clue right now!

One Good Point (Movie) - Dune, Part Two

SPOILER - TO ANYONE WHO HASN'T WATCHED BOTH DUNE MOVIES YET, THIS REVIEW WILL HAVE MASSIVE SPOILERS, IN THAT IT WILL TALK ABOUT THE MOVIES IN ANY SORT OF DESCRIPTIVE TERMS. BE WARNED, ALL YE WHO ENTER.

Ahem, now that that's out of the way.

Dune has always been a story that's enticed me, but like so many things that entice me, I've somehow managed to avoid watching or reading any of its content for decades. I like sci fi, I like grimly realistic future settings, I like monsters, I like palace intrigue, but it took this long and this many entries into the fiction before I finally got into it. But hey, better late than never right?

I enjoyed Dune a lot, though I specifically enjoyed the first two hours more than the ending. I found the interactions between the great houses, the grand schemes, the brutal warfare, and oh my goodness, that confrontation between Baron Harkonnen and Leto Atreides, *chef's kiss*. The stuff with Paul Atreides and his mother was less compelling to me, as it felt more whimsical and spiritual. So when I heard more about Dune, Part Two being more closely tied to Paul and his journey, I was a little wary of what I might find.

But it turns out, it was fantastic.

The film does focus heavily on Paul Atreides, and while there's definitely still some spirituality and whimsy to his adventures, it feels less tacked-on, and more essential to the story at large. But the movie also offers plenty of grand-scale happenings, the politics of the great houses, the machinations of various other factions, and a whole host of stellar acting performances.

The movie also dives headfirst into the idea of Paul as a messianic figure in this world, which is understandable; he's got a unique combination of martial prowess and spiritual destiny. Whatever you might think of the reality of sorcery in this world, there's no denying that Paul does things that other people cannot do, and he is widely seen doing these things. You can only pilot a sandworm the size of an aircraft carrier so many times before people start to notice.

If you liked Dune, Dune Part Two is gonna have more of the stuff you liked, more of the characters you liked (and hated), and does a great job of expanding the world and driving the story forward. And it gets you absolutely jacked for what comes next. I haven't read the original books (yet?), but there's apparently a good bit more canon content available, and with where this movie ends, you're fiending for more. Bring it on!

If you want to watch Dune, Part Two right now (and you really should), click here to check JustWatch to find out where it's streaming!

One Good Point (Movie) - Annihilation

I've discovered my prime locations for finding movies to watch, at least on Netflix and Peacock: the "leaving soon" lists. Something about the knowledge that a movie is leaving a streaming platform and the potential convenience of watching said movie will decrease in the near future gives me that spark of motivation I need to go from "I should watch that sometime" to actually hitting Play.

One such movie that benefitted from its classification in that category is Annihilation, starring Natalie Portman. I didn't know much at all about the movie when I started it, but someone had mentioned it favorably on a podcast so the name rang a bell, and the preview image showed people looking worriedly at the corpse of a massive crocodile. So, monsters, accolades, and impending departure from a streaming service, the holy trinity for me when it comes to watching a movie.

Without giving up too much of the story, the movie mostly takes place in a mysterious and dangerous wilderness, inside a strange looking barrier where people and technology have been disappearing. The team finds... more than they bargained for? Or more realistically, exactly what they bargained for: danger and mystery. 

The movie has a definite classic "prestige" movie feel, with lots of intense emotional moments to go along with some tense action and thrilling revelations. I actually found myself reminded of 2001: A Space Odyssey during the second half of the movie, but in a surprisingly unannoyed way. Those of you who know my movie opinions know that I find 2001 to be overly drawn out to the point of being boring...exceedingly boring. But while this movie definitely had some long scenes, the tension was such that I was thoroughly engaged the whole time.

Overall I found this to be an interesting and enjoyable watch. The final "twist" was fairly predictable, but still well-executed, and the whole last half-hour is a really great culmination to an already pretty good movie.

If you'd like to see where Annihilation is available to stream right now, click here to check JustWatch!

One Good Point (Movie) - Anaconda

 Oh man.

So as most of you know, I enjoy a good monster movie. Jurassic Park is probably my all-time favorite movie, and Jaws is right there with it. I was pretty sure Anaconda wasn't going to hit those highs, but even cheesy monster movies can be pretty fun if you've got a good cast, and theoretically, this movie had a good cast. Jennifer Lopez has had some good roles, Jon Voight as well, plus Owen Wilson and Ice Cube. And I'll watch pretty much anything with Kari Wurher (if you're a big time perv and haven't seen Kate's Addiction, phew, go do that. But don't tell me about it, perv).

But very early in the movie, you realize that no, no this isn't that. Somehow both the practical and CGI versions of the giant snake are unimpressive. I'm sure the visuals reflect the in-world descriptions, a 40-foot long snake, but it just doesn't measure up to the bigger, scarier monsters in the better monster movies. The dialogue is often ridiculous; shortly after a scene where multiple people are killed, two of the characters are joking about creature comforts like wine and cell phones. It's completely disjointed, and takes away from the tension of the movie. If this guy is only worried about getting his next pinot noir, why should I be worried about the giant killer snake?

By far the most incredible aspect of the movie is Jon Voight though. I can't fathom how this even happened, unless someone owed Voight some money or people just deferred to Voight out of respect, but this is an absolute debacle. Like, to the point that it can only have been done in jest. No one could have seriously watched his performance in this movie and said, "This is a thing I want to be associated with." There's other bad acting and terrible dialogue in the movie too, but Voight is a tour de force of catastrophe.

Overall, I'm perfectly glad to have finally seen the movie. It's wildly bad, but now I know that it's wildly bad, and I can be conversant about how bad it is. And it sets the stage for (hopefully) a near future monster movie that rises to the occasion.

If you'd (for some reason) like to watch Anaconda right now, click here to use JustWatch to find out where you can stream it!

One Good Point (Show) - The Acolyte, Season 1

I'm a massive fan of pretty much anything Star Wars. I love the original trilogy, I enjoyed the prequel trilogy more than most, and... well, we won't talk about the sequel trilogy, but that didn't stop me from continuing to watch The Mandalorian, Andor, The Book of Boba Fett, or Ahsoka. And it would never stop me from playing a number of Star-Wars-based video games, as well as turning off the standard music for Starfield and putting on a curated collection of Star Wars music instead. I love me some Star Wars.

Even so, I did my best to avoid any sort of spoilers or trailers coming into The Acolyte, and I did such a good job that I had no idea who any of the cast was when I finally arrived. I think ultimately that's a good thing, though I did spend a few minutes here and there during/between episodes looking up various actors to figure out where I saw them before. Which, by the way, was Squid Game (for Lee Jung-jae) and The Good Place (for Manny Jacinto).

Okay, let's get to this actual show!

(Spoiler alert: I'll try to avoid anything momentous, but there will be some details you can't get around)

The Acolyte is a Disney+ series in the Star Wars universe that takes place about a century before the events of The Phantom Menace. It was originally billed as a mystery show, but like Ahsoka before it, it kind of abandons the whole mystery premise a couple episodes in. But unlike Ahsoka, this show probably benefits from the gearshift (I absolutely loooooved the first two episodes of Ahsoka, but found the back half less appealing as the show effectively became a sequel to the Clone Wars animated series).

The first couple episodes of The Acolyte are a bit over-acted at times, and there were a lot of situations that felt like kind of forced drama, where you knew the moment was supposed to be tense, but the dialogue or performances didn't carry that tension. Two of the main characters are a pair of twins, which is one of those classic television tropes that I have trouble getting behind, similar to time travel. Also, the characters are supposed to be about 20 years old, but they carry themselves like teenagers, and are largely treated like adolescents as well. This makes it difficult to really respect the decisions they make as adult decisions. By comparison, Cassian Andor is supposed to be 21 in Andor.

One thing the show does well though is embrace its essence: it is a Star Wars show. There are dangerous creatures, countless aliens, various space vessels, good and evil, lightsaber battles, and an ongoing question in your mind about who might be secretly a Sith lord. While it starts a bit slow and doesn't elevate to Andor levels of quality (a largely unfair comparison, because Andor is so freaking good), The Acolyte ends up telling a pretty good story, and leaves you with enough questions to make you want to see more.

One last comment I'll offer: this show was edited terribly when it comes to episode splits. I'm not sure if there was some last-minute corporate demand to extend/shorten the show, but the ending moments of some of the episodes in the back half of the show are jarring. For this reason, I strongly recommend a binge-watch. Plan on watching the whole thing over a weekend and I think you'll have a pretty good time.

Click here to check out JustWatch and see where you can watch The Acolyte today!

One Good Point - Public Enemies

On paper, I should love this movie. I enjoy a good crime/heist/gangster movie as much as anybody. Goodfellas, The Untouchables, Ocean's Eleven, the whole spectrum of criminality has always been fertile ground for entertainment in my book. I also usually like Johnny Depp; he's charismatic, and does a good job of portraying morally grey/bankrupt characters. And Michael Mann directed it, a guy with Heat and Collateral under his belt.

But it was just not very good.

The pacing of the movie was jarring, with frantic moments that weren't set up properly or allowed to breathe, and then lingering scenes that felt like they didn't add anything to the story. Depp's portrayal of John Dillinger was fine I guess, but I don't think the movie did a good job of explaining why this literal mass murderer would've been celebrated at all. Through some additional reading, I found that people seemed to like that Dillinger was robbing banks, as the public trust in banks and the federal government was very low. You know what wasn't captured in the movie though? ANY OF THAT.

One last note: I did not like the video quality of this film at all. During many of the darker scenes in the film, the picture became incredibly grainy, to the point that I was wondering if there was something wrong with my television. But it wasn't that; it looks like was just a directorial/production decision, presumably as a way to make the movie feel more "old-timey." If that was the case, there's got to be a better way.

Anyways, I don't recommend the movie, but here's the traditional link!

Click here to see where Public Enemies is streaming right now!

One Good Point - Barbenheimer

Ahh, the movie event of 2023!

What? What do you mean? Of course I participated in it... just not until 2024. What's the rush, right?

Barbie

First things first, full disclosure, any movie with a heavy dose of Margot Robbie is going to innately be more entertaining than movies without Margot Robbie. That doesn't mean I can't be objective, but there's a baseline value we're working from here.

Going into the movie, I was expecting a couple things:

• Margot Robbie will look perfect. Check.
• Ryan Gosling will be entertaining, but I won't like him as much as everybody else did. Check.
• There will be a couple of jokes that are subtle and not laugh-out-loud funny, but I will laugh out loud at them. Kind of check (there was one).
• There'll be 2-3 moments where the feminism of the movie feels like it overrides the story. Kind of check (there was, again, one).

Overall I enjoyed the movie. I thought that despite effectively portraying Barbie as a kind of clueless, blank slate, Robbie did a good job of making the character relatable. Setting big business against her did a lot of that legwork too. Gosling did well too, Ken just became the sort of antagonist that I have no patience for. Those of you who know me in the real world would be able to draw pretty simple comparisons to other folks who irritate me.

Hint: It's the same people who reduced the movie to that one heavy feminism scene and dismissed it out of hand.

Click here to see where you can watch Barbie today!

Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan is a serious filmmaker. I've only seen a couple of his films so far (including watching Interstellar literally hours before I wrote this!), but he's a very gifted storyteller. The Dark Knight is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, and you have to wonder if The Dark Knight Rises might've been even stronger if not for Heath Ledger's tragic death; rumors abound that the Joker might've played an integral role in that last film of the trilogy.

But we're not here to talk about The Dark Knight (this time). Oppenheimer was alright, but it was... something less than the other Nolan films I've seen. Not length-wise; it was very long, and you felt every minute, something that sets the movie apart from Nolan's best work. I think that impression wasn't helped by jumping around the timeline unnecessarily, and this might seem sacrilege, but I think Robert Downey, Jr.'s role could've been eliminated from the movie almost entirely and it would've benefited the story.

And somehow, in a movie about a literal nuclear bomb, the scope of the effort somehow felt not large enough? I'm not sure what it was missing exactly, but even after the movie ended, I felt like I was still waiting for *something* else to happen. It's entirely possible that it was a movie you gotta see in a theater, for the (spoiler alert) nuclear explosion; maybe that puts a bow on the story better than when you're in a living room.

I will say that the acting was tremendous, particularly Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt. I would've been happy to spend another half hour with Blunt's character. She seemed to perfectly capture a quiet  internal torment while absolutely eviscerating people who cross her. Florence Pugh was good, depressing, but that was the point. And Downey did well, too; I just think his part in the story wasn't necessary.

Tune in over the next couple weeks to read what I thought of Interstellar!

Click here to see where you can watch Oppenheimer today!

One Good Point - Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)

Every time I told people that I was watching Battlestar Galactica for the first time, they were shocked that I hadn't already seen it. My Star Wars and Star Trek credentials would suggest that I would've definitely watched it long ago, perhaps even as the show was originally airing, but alas. Back in 2004 I was very busy... well, I'm not sure what I was busy doing. Playing a lot of Diablo II and Civilization II mostly, I think. But for whatever reason, I didn't watch a lick of BSG when it first came out.

But in 2023, after watching Katee Sackhoff kick ass in another season of the Mandalorian (which, screw you guys, I enjoyed season 3 despite its flaws), I finally saddled up and started watching BSG. I caught the first 1.5 seasons on Peacock in full binge mode, as right after I started, they added a note that the show would be leaving Peacock at the end of the month. It was June 27th.

I investigated some other ways to watch the show after it left Peacock, but ultimately my motivation petered out until earlier this year when I noticed it was available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. I started up again and discovered that I had apparently managed to stop watching right at a massive lull in the action; once I picked the series back up, the excitement ramped back up and I zipped through the rest of the four-season show.

There are a lot of things to like about Battlestar Galactica. The aforementioned Sackhoff is one of the biggest bright spots towards the back half of the show, but there are strong performances across the cast. And the premise of the show is fantastic. How would a small group of humans try to survive as a caravan of space-bound refugees, after a massive, near-complete genocide of their species? The idea is compelling, albeit bleak.

Unfortunately, I think this is a show whose whole comes up a little short of the sum of its parts. The individual characters are interesting, the twists are mostly cool, and there are some awesome concepts for the sorts of scenarios that would develop in such an environment. But the execution of these ideas ends up being a little bit of a disappointment. The characters are interesting, but the ways they interact sometimes feel wooden; a lot of the dialogue in the show had an unnatural sort of tone to it.

This is also a weird thing to complain about, but this show had some of the least believable portrayals of drunkenness that I've seen in shows or movies. I've seen drunk people, like, a lot of drunk people. The drunk people on Galactica seemed like sober people trying to act drunk.

HEAVY SPOILERS BELOW!

My biggest complaint, though, is with the culmination of the show. Any sort of science fiction property has the tall task of trying to explain how something impossible is possible. It doesn't have to be elaborate though; Jurassic Park found one idea that seems feasible enough to a layman (ancient mosquitos with dinosaur blood in dried amber), and they handwaved the rest with "cloning" and "computers." Done. Perfect.

From the very beginning of Battlestar Galactica, we had the question of how is Gaius Baltar seeing this image of his seemingly deceased Cylon lover when no one else is seeing her, and what's her purpose? We dance around the idea of Baltar having some kind of microchip in his brain, of him being a Cylon himself, or simply a fabrication of a traumatized mind. And in the end... angels? Angels is your explanation? And that's essentially the explanation for Starbuck too? But even with all of that, we don't get any actual meaningful vision or interaction with this "higher power," just a quick zinger at the very end of the show about how "he doesn't like" being called God. The whole thing felt cheap and lazy, and took so much of the air out of the show for me.

In the end, it was a fantastic premise that had some amazing moments and stretches, but in the end didn't live up to its full potential. I'd be absolutely game for a modern team giving it another try though.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this show right now!

One Good Point - Resident Evil HD REMASTER

So far I've talked about a few movies that haven't really lived up to my hopes (or for which I didn't have much in the way of hopes, and matched that lack of excitement). Well, it's high time to talk about something that lived up to my hopes and then some: Resident Evil.

I've never been much for scary games, scary movies, scary anything really. I can appreciate some compelling horror/thriller content, and I do very much like monster movies, but spooky creepy stuff doesn't usually do much for me. But I have to say, after getting past my initial jumpiness at turning corners and finding zombies, the core gameplay of Resident Evil was a ton of fun. I enjoyed entering this mansion and slowly peeling back layer after layer, finding out new pieces of the story with each unlocked door and solved puzzle. As I played through it, I found myself already thinking about whether I might enjoy playing it again.

One particularly unexpected turn was that I actually enjoyed combat in the game. I've watched streams of Resident Evil playthroughs, and I had briefly played Resident Evil 5 at a friend's house, and I remember being frustrated with the controls. Having to stand still while shooting is not what I'm used to at all. But after just a handful of encounters in my first playthrough of this game, I felt the game provided a harrowing and enjoyable twist on combat, a stark contrast to most of the other modern adventure games I've played (Dead Rising, Grand Theft Auto, etc). The "clunkiness" of the controls are one of the prime examples of something being "a feature, not a bug." You're supposed to find the combat uncomfortable and frightening. That's the point.

I'm sure it's far too late to be able to offer much in the way of meaningful recommendations for this game; it's been out forever, and if you were thinking about playing it, chances are you already have. But on the off chance you haven't, I strongly endorse this game, and I'm looking forward to giving future games in the series a shot.

Click here to view this game on Steam!

Click here to view this game on Fanatical!

One Good Point - Ready Player One

This is one movie in particular that I'd been especially looking forward to finally watching. It didn't rise to Marvel or Star Wars levels of urgency, and I definitely had access to the movie a couple times via streaming services before I finally got around to it, but a movie about futuristic immersive video games and the evils of mega-corporations? Yeah, that's about my wheelhouse.

And it was... pretty good? In hearing about the premise, and in reading/watching the Hunger Games series, I was expecting/hoping for another story about young adults being thrust into the greater world, and that's sort of what this is, but there are a few too many cheesy moments that sort of break the seriousness of things. The massive final battle is the perfect example, where it's a climactic clash between good and evil, but the tension gets slightly dampened with the insertion of random pop culture cameos. That said, as a sort of popcorn action-adventure movie, it was enjoyable.

I also was kind of surprised at how uninteresting I found Ben Mendelsohn's villainous character. He's a great actor and I had high hopes, but he's sort of another symptom of the same disconnect I felt with the movie between gimmick and seriousness. Interestingly, I would've expected T.J. Miller's voicing of i-R0k to be too silly, but he did a good job of balancing the two aspects of the film. And Olivia Cooke's Art3mis felt like a character who exactly captured the essence of the movie's world.

My sister bought me the book like a decade ago, still haven't gotten around to that. But hey, maybe 2025 will be my year to catch up with reading. For now, it's full steam ahead with movies!

Oh, one more thing. This movie definitely made me want to finally follow through and watch The Shining, so that's on my 'high priority' list for the year. I watched the first five minutes sometime last year, at like 3:30 AM, and I decided that watching a scary movie right before bed probably wasn't the best call. My dreams are scary enough as it is.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this movie today!

One Good Point - John Wick: Chapter 2

Alright, time to make some enemies.

The original John Wick was a fine movie. I watched it many years after it came out (of course), after I already knew there were a couple more John Wick movies, so his survival wasn't ever in doubt for me, but even still, I thought it was just good, not great.

John Wick: Chapter 2 wasn't good.

I get that Keanu Reeves isn't known for his soaring soliloquies or his rapier wit, but his performance in this movie felt utterly flat. The plot had no rising action; you got dropped onto the track at full speed, stayed at full speed, and ended at... you guessed it, full speed. The action scenes were good, but there's a ceiling to how entertaining an action scene can be if it doesn't feel meaningful in the context of a story.

Maybe worst of all is that they try to give you little teases about some larger over-arching story, a High Table organization that promises to be even more riveting next chapter! Maybe someday when I'm feeling forgiving, I'll give Chapter 3 a try. But with my vast list of unwatched movies that I actually am hoping will be good, I'm in no hurry.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this movie right now!

One Good Point - Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

 As was the case with my movie-watching experience, I'm immediately following up the second Fantastic Beasts movie with the third one. All of my information was fresh going into the third one, though it did take a moment to get used to Mads Mikkelsen as Grindelwald. He does a great job though, and while his portrayal is a bit different from Johnny Depp's, that's not where this movie falters.

Where this movie falters is in kind of basic storytelling lol. It's more complete than Crimes of Grindelwald, as it does have a definitive ending, and answers most of the questions you have lingering from the first two movies. But there are frankly too many instances where some problem gets overcome by "magic" or "beasts." And look, I get that that's the whole point of the series, right? It's a fantasy story, there's going to be some fantasy to it. It just feels like this movie comes up short when it comes to incorporating that human element that the original series was able to deploy so effectively.

I'm not mad at the effort, though. I think the world of Harry Potter has some room to tell interesting stories, and I'm always open to renewing compelling IP; I'll watch every live action Star Wars thing they come out with until the day I die. I wish this movie series was better, but chances are I'll tune in again when the next one comes out...eventually.

I thought about finishing this post with a ranking of every Harry Potter movie, as I do love lists. But I haven't watched a lot of those movies in a while, and we're in a "look forward" mode here. Eventually someday though, sure, I'll rewatch them all and put together a list.

I fucking love ranked lists.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this movie right now!

One Good Point - Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

So to set the stage here, I enjoyed the full first run of Harry Potter movies. I'm good with magic, and I felt like the Harry Potter stories did a good job of balancing fantastical whimsy and human emotions and experiences. They were a little more angsty than they needed to be at times, but that's the deal with movies about kids/teenagers, right?

Fantastic Beasts is a series *not* about kids or teenagers, but rather about (unsurprisingly) fantastic beasts, as well as a couple of, you know, humans. This second installment, The Crimes of Grindelwald, was okay, but it felt very much like an interlude movie. It advances a few relationships, and gives you more time with the titular villain, but was ultimately not very satisfying, adding questions and offering few answers.

One other note I have, and it's something that comes up oftentimes for me, and I've noticed bothers me in many, many stories these days. Without spoiling specifics, there are a couple of scenes in this movie in which swaths of folks are killed, and these deaths seem only to serve the purpose of convincing the viewer (and/or the protagonists) that their enemy is dangerous. This can be useful if done elegantly, but for the most part I find wanton murder to be a frustratingly heavy-handed device for storytelling. I know for certain that's the reason it took me a while to come around to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and it's still not my favorite aspect of the movie.

Anyways, Crimes of Grindelwald was fine. I don't think I would recommend unless you're a real Potter-head, but if that's the case you've already seen it anyways.

Click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can watch this movie right now!

One Good Point

So far this year I've been watching a lot more movies than I normally do. I have this massive list of movies I've been aiming to see for years, and with assorted inspiration, I've finally started to tackle that list.

In the spirit of getting myself to write more, I'm going to write tiny little "articles" about these movies that I watch. The premise I'm working under is "One Good Point," as in, my goal is to just try to say one meaningful thing in my mini-review, and then post it. I have a habit of agonizing over articles, watching them grow and grow until I've written six pages on Brett Saberhagen. And I mean, I like doing that too, but this can be a small thing. That's how we build skills, right? We practice.

So! Coming up soon (hopefully), a flurry of small articles about the many movies (and a few shows) I've watched this year.

I'll still do my end-of-year rankings; I'm a man love who loves a Top 5 list, and you couldn't stop me from doing that. See you soon!

2023 In Review - Movies

Along with TV shows, this year was a pretty good year for me with movies. I have a lifetime of all-time classics that I've never seen, and I managed to cross a few of those movies off my list this year. Here's every movie that I (can remember that I) watched in 2023, ranked!

#1 - Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

I waited a while to watch this movie, making sure I found just the right time and place, and the payoff was tremendous. Chris Pine was exactly the right stereotypical snarky party leader that you find in all the best D&D groups, and each other character fit their role to a T. The villains were dastardly, the side characters were fun, the action was tense, and the story made sense. My one note would be that in the Dungeons & Dragons movie, I would've liked the dragon to be a little more terrifying, but that's a small note. I loved, loved, loved this movie.

#2 - The Fifth Element

What the hell took me so long to watch this movie? It's sci-fi and Bruce Willis, what more could you want. The themes are great, the action is great, and the comedy is top-tier. But Mila Jovovich as Leeloo was easily the highlight of the film. So many memorable quotes, large and small, and with an insane combination of cuteness and sexiness. This was definitely one of the highlights of my classic catch-up efforts. "Moooolti-pass."

#3 - Dune

The first half of this movie was absolutely mesmerizing. The grand scale, the machinations of different great houses as they vie for power in this distant corner of space. Politics, intrigue, violence, Oscar Isaac, I loved it so much. The last hour or so was a little more focused on characters I was less interested in, and a story that was a little more spiritual, and didn't really resonate the same. But overall, still a tremendous movie.

#4 - The Nice Guys

I saw a clip from this movie a dozen times on Netflix before I finally watched it, and I loved the clip every single time. I don't know why it takes me so long to decide to watch movies. Just a time commitment thing I guess. Anyways, this movie was a lot of fun! Russell Crowe is fantastic, and Ryan Gosling complements him perfectly (although he gets added to the long list of actors who can't really portray a drunk person). The end of the movie got freaking insane, and lost me a bit, but the characters were great, and I would definitely recommend this film to anyone.

#5 - Blade Runner 2049

I imagine I had a pretty rare experience with these two movies, watching 2049 just a few months after watching the original Blade Runner for the first time. You can really see the differences in picture quality, but they do a good job of recapturing the essence of the original film. I hemmed and hawed between these two films; I liked them both, but I think the supporting cast and story are stronger in 2049, so this one gets the nod above the original."

#6 - Blade Runner

Seriously, this was the first time I ever saw Blade Runner. There are a few all-time classics that I still haven't seen, but we can chalk this one off the list. I liked it a lot, but I think even more than the actual movie, I absolutely loved the idea of the movie. The setting, the concepts, the moral questions, it was all just awesome to think about. The actual journey of Decker as he tracks down replicants was great as well, though I thought the antagonist was a little more murdery than he needed to be; I like when a villain pushes you to question, are they really a villain?

#7 - Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

SPOILER ALERT. I can't really talk about my feelings about this movie without giving some mild spoilers. I loved the time they spent on Spider-Gwen, though Miles' story didn't really grab me the same way. Far too much of the movie was spent on an extended chase scene that led into the final scene. That final scene was fantastic, and I was super excited by the cliffhanger...right up until I realized it was a cliffhanger. It's disappointing to watch a fun movie and find out you were only watching half of a fun movie.

#8 - Violent Night

This movie was sold to me as ""Die Hard with Santa."" That is a fully correct description of the movie. It's got a full complement of over-the-top action lines and ridiculous holiday-themed fights, and David Harbour does a fantastic job portraying jolly old Saint Nicholas. John Leguizamo as a villain was a little too silly for me, which says something when it's a movie with Santa literally fighting kidnappers. But it was fun, entertaining, and self-aware.

#9 - Bullet Train

Bullet Train was an odd little movie. I enjoyed the brother assassins, and their creative use of Thomas the Tank Engine as a way to classify people. And Brad Pitt's semi-hapless character was a fun protagonist. The final 'bad guy' was a little too over the top (which is saying a lot, coming from me), but the many confrontations on the train itself were interesting, and the action was good. Overall a fun time.

#10 - Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3

It was a perfectly fine movie. It had a lot of solid jokes, good action, and decent music (though a cut below the previous two iterations in all of those regards). But the biggest problem I had with this movie was that it felt soooo heavy-handed with the emotional beats. After the fifth fake-out almost death, you begin to feel kind of manipulated. And Adam Warlock was a wholly unnecessary character, despite it being a fine performance.

#11 - Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Jonathan Majors absolutely owned this movie, and it's a shame (but completely understandable) that his off-screen behavior is going to prevent him from being in any future Marvel properties. I liked the zany quantum realm characters, though I feel like the movie suffered a bit from spreading its story too thin. The Wasp could've been completely removed from this movie and you wouldn't notice a difference. Hopefully future Ant-Man stories zoom back in on the fun characters and smaller scale stories that made the first movie one of my favorite superhero films.

#12 - John Wick

I finally caught John Wick on a random Thursday night this year (it might not have been a Thursday, it was you know, a metaphor or whatever, a 'royal' Thursday). The movie was about what I expected: big time violent, tons of guns, a whole mess of bad guys getting their just desserts. I don't know that it hit me the way that it seemed to hit a lot of other people, though. Taken was much more of a revelation for me when it comes to hyper-violent action movies. But hey, maybe the John Wick sequels will be less of a disaster than the Taken sequels were.

#13 - Starship Troopers

This felt like two different movies. Half of it was a cheesy, over-the-top action movie, with appropriate surprise deaths and swarming monsters. The other half was a scathing indictment of blind patriotism and government/military overreach. I did really enjoy having to wrestle with the uncomfortable dynamic of fighting a ruthless enemy, and how the protagonists used unspeakable tactics to fight them. It really leans on that idea that there's no such thing as an honorable war. It's just war.

#14 - Terminal

This is a tough movie to rank. Margot Robbie does a phenomenal job portraying her character, an ambitious femme fatale assassin, and Simon Pegg is brilliant as well, playing a man with a mysterious terminal illness. The other characters are decent; Mike Myers as a weirdo janitor is kind of charming. I really enjoyed so so much of the movie, but the ending was just all over the place. It was going for something dramatic and shocking, and I guess it was both of those things, but personally it just kind of landed with a thud. But damn, can Margot Robbie act.

#15 - The Thing

Nick has been pestering me to watch this movie for decades (he hasn't been pestering me, he just mentioned it a few times), so this year I finally gave it a go. The special effects are...well, you don't have to worry about being freaked out about a realistic looking monster. But the story itself was good, the acting was good, and the tension is very real. I wouldn't put it on the same level as Alien, Jaws, or Jurassic Park, but it's a solid thriller.

#16 - Jurassic World: Dominion

Look, nobody is going to confuse Dominion for the original Jurassic Park. Honestly, none of the sequels come close to the original, and that's okay. This one continued to stretch the bounds of incredulity, but it did so with a full embrace of nostalgia, bringing back a bunch of the original cast. And the movie knew what it was. It only took itself as seriously as was reasonable, and embraced its role as a kooky adventure movie for longtime Jurassic Park fans. It wasn't anything special or amazing, but it was a good little capstone to the Jurassic Park experience.

#17 - Nobody

I wasn't sure that Bob Odenkirk was leading man material until I saw Better Call Saul, but he was fucking tremendous in that show, which to me was even better than Breaking Bad. I know that's sacreligious to say, but a guy gets to have opinions. This movie was no Better Call Saul, though it had some fun action, good gags, and the guys you wanted to die for the most part did die. In a year where I watched John Wick for the first time, this one falls a few slots behind that, but it was still good.

#18 - The Marvels

I went into this movie hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. It had some problems, and I still don't know if they know how to write for Captain Marvel, but there were a lot of fun moments, the action was pretty good, and I left the theater feeling pleased at the experience overall. That's not a sure thing these days with Marvel, so I'll take it.

#19 - Dragonslayer

I was expecting the movie to be a lot cheesier than it was, but it was actually fairly mature and thoughtful. It's got some great dramatic dialogue, which is always a plus in my book, and while a lot of the dragon effects were very dated, the movie didn't rely so much on the actual dragon; much more of it was focused on the *threat* of the dragon, the anticipation, the expectation. The protagonist was kind of a whiny little shit, so that docks it a few points, but it was a fun watch, a nice classic adventure movie.

#20 - Venom: Let There Be Carnage

From the first time I ever saw Venom as a kid, on TV or in a comic book or most likely as an action figure, he was just the coolest-looking character around. The first Tom Hardy Venom movie was a lot of fun; the symbiote looked cool, the internal monologue was a funny device, the fights were exciting, and the bad guy made sense. This one was a little bit more of a mess, both visually and narratively. I'll tell you what though: Michelle Williams in a Venom suit was an absolute win.

#21 - Super Mario Brothers: The Movie

This movie was...fine. It wasn't offensive, it wasn't poorly made, it wasn't poorly voiced. But I just could not bring myself to care about any character. The best moment in the whole movie was the opening battle between the penguin kingdom and Bowser's army.

#22 - Black Panther 2

This movie had maybe an impossible job. It was charged with saying goodbye to both T'Challa and Chadwick Boseman. It also had to follow up on one of the most lauded superhero movies of all time and elevate a new Black Panther, and do all of this in an environment that's becoming less and less patient for superhero movies. I think the movie sort of collapsed under the weight of itself, between all those responsibilities, and the various characters it tried to give space for. It was too long, too wide, and not deep enough.

#23 - The Host

One of the previews for this movie cited Jaws as an inspiration or comparison, and for those of you who know me, you know Jaws is one of my favorite all-time movies. This movie...is not Jaws. It's a fine enough monster movie, with some surprises and thrills. Nothing special, though, not worth a recommendation.

#24 - 21

I started this movie sometime in like 2015, back when I liked gambling and had illusions of figuring out ways to 'beat the system.' It didn't grab me at all back then, but eventually I saw it on Netflix and gave it another go. And...well, it didn't really grab me this time either, but I did finally watch it. I found I didn't really sympathize with the protagonist, which made me not really invested in his plight. And Kevin Spacey's character is just kind of a butt. Cross it off the list though.