My partner has been out of town the past couple weeks and I have watched a lot of movies. Not that my partner prevents me from watching movies, just that most of the time, I’d rather hang out with my partner than watch movies on my backlog. Movies that, by all accounts, are not bangers or that my partner has little interest in watching.

So, let’s do a lightning round of “B-movies I watched alone because they probably won’t interest anyone else in my immediate friend circle”.

This is a horny movie. A very good movie and I loved it, but please don’t watch this if your parents might walk in on you. But also, in a very British way, it’s a repressed film. Almost every act of horniness is immediately followed by a scene of sexual horror. You can just feel the protestant revulsion of female autonomy throughout.

Despite all the horror, the dialog and acting never rises above the caliber of an episode of Black Adder, in the best ways. In my Letterboxd review I say this film is “delightfully twee” and I still think it’s the best description. It never takes itself too seriously.

Fun movie and I highly recommend!

This movie had potential.

On letterboxed, many reviews throw around the word “neo-noir” to describe this movie. They are wrong. This is a beach read novel thriller. The with the expectant caveats of rote romance, rote story beats and rote twists you can see a mile down the road.

To me, a prerequisite of true noir, is doom. Every character must be spiraling before the movie even begins. Think Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard: He can’t get a script to sell, he’s dodging repo-men, and he’s associating, bordering on open flirtation, with an unavailable woman, long before he even get’s to Norma Desmond’s mansion¹. That’s a noir. White Sands’ characters have too much going for them, too much hope to really qualify as a noir. Imagine the movie Speed, but slowed down, that’s White Sands.

A surprising element of the film however was the absolute stacked cast: Young Mimi Rodgers, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Samuel L. Jackson. Willem Defoe in a rare squeaky-clean protagonist role, Mickey Rourke pre-surgery and it’s always great to see M. Emmet Walsh pop up in a movie no matter how briefly.

I will say I enjoyed the film if only for the novelty of it all.

I am the demographic for this film. A white male, late 30s, early 40s, grew up in the He-Man heyday. Yet, even that couldn’t save this movie for me.

I’ll reiterate a point from my Letterboxed review: This movie is 2.5 hours long. That means, that after an hour of set-up and at least 20 jokes about inclusivity where nothing happened, there was still 1.5 hours left of the film. This is unacceptable. I blame Bridesmaids for making the rest of Hollywood believe that a comedy can be more than 90 minutes.

That’s other issue I have with this film: Who is the audience? Is it for my demographic? Then why is it so childish? Is it for children? Then why are there so many fisting jokes? It just comes across as a bloated, market-tested corporate slop film. Which is a bummer because I really like Nicholas Galitzine and I like that he isn’t afraid to do gay roles even if he isn’t a superstar going for Oscar bait².

Though, “He/Him Man” is pretty funny.

I’m just so mad at this movie for having that opening text crawl. If we were to follow Adam Driver through the opening with no exposition and see that title drop right as he passes a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull, it would have gained at least and extra star on my review.

Not that anything is hidden in the trailer. It’s all right there. Even the coolest plot beat of the movie is spoiled: The ticking time bomb, the element of pressure for the characters to take action is the Chicxulub asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. That’s fucking great. I love it.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty good creature-feature with a couple good scares and fun action. Not to mention getting to see Adam Driver play grumpy old man. Also, this, along with Prey and Ravenous, makes want to see more (well done) historical horror.

After taking a couple months off of Marathon I decided to give it another go and see how season 2 was shaping up. After 10 hours last weekend, I made this to accurately describe my experience with the game:

To recall my earlier thoughts on Marathon: It’s my favorite game: I Hate it.

The new player onboarding is much better, the class balances are well done, I love the CRADLE system introducing something productive to do with junk in my inventory and the gunplay and fights are still intense and fun.

But there are so many weird choices made by Bungie that just boggle the mind. Especially when they are literally pivoting this game toward a less hardcore crowd by introducing PvE only-ish modes.

There is no firing range. This to me is the most egregious oversight. The fact that this game launched without a firing range, to configure controls, try a new gun/attachments, practice shell abilities, etc, is extremely negligent but that we are almost 6 months in without one is just concerning. The most common response I see to this is: Tarkov/Destiny 2 never had a firing range. First off, Trakov does have one, you just have to build it as you progress. But also, in Tarkov, you are shooting real guns. I have general idea of what a real world gun is going to do before shoot it in a match. The guns in Mararthon are sci-fi guns, I have no idea what I’m getting myself into before I load into a match where I can very easily get shot before I even get to use the gun. The Destiny 2 comparison is even nuttier! That game has multiple open worlds with one-shot scrub mobs to make any config adjustments. And even if you do die, you don’t lose your items. So, please it’s not even in the same ballpark.

Locking out maps is annoying and adds zero value to the game and is not fun. I’m never excited to see that the Dire Marsh map is now in night mode. Especially when 80% of the early game quests take place on Dire Marsh. I am essentially locked out from completing those quests for 3 hours at a time because night is inaccessible to a new player. Trakov has a similar mechanic, but that game has a million other quests to do on other maps and flashlight mods for weapons are fairly commonplace.

Last time I quit playing was because extracting from a raid never felt as good as getting killed in a raid felt bad. We’ll see how long I last this time. I just know there’s a better game in there under all these terrible decisions.

Recently I've been putting on my YouTube “Liked Music” playlist and just hitting shuffle. What’s great is that it’s pulling from 2 decades of likes so I’m hearing music I haven’t thought of in years.

Just look at this random pull….

Like passing the aux cord at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Go on this abridged journey with me…

What a delightful whiplash.

** Among other items, a really good read on the Hank Green AI induced capitalism death trap.

** “But The Count of Monte Cristo is not intended to be art. Its intentions are mythopoeic. Its aim is to create a myth.”