(Been slowly recovering from a debilitating late stage post-concussive sensitivity flare, so this post is my first real creative project in weeks.)

Lists of unrelated movies with oddly specific similarities are a popular trend on Letterboxd, and ’s lists especially have inspired my own. So, why not share some of my lists here, and with expansions that the Letterboxd character limit won’t allow?

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) / JUMANJI (1995)

A prologue sets up the hero’s small town childhood, and later in life, he’s magically transported to a timeline where his absence has digressed his hometown. When the timeline corrects, his lip is bleeding, and his last scene takes place at a Christmas party with his wife where “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is played.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) / STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (1996)

After the second act culminates with the film’s most sustained action set piece, the hero surrenders himself to the villains in a relatively restrained third act until a third party melts their faces off.

THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984) / THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003) / REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005)

A sci-fi / fantasy threequel that culminates with a fight over a river of lava where one side wins by taking advantage of higher ground.

THREE AMIGOS! (1986) / A BUG’S LIFE (1998) / GALAXY QUEST (1999)

Featuring music written by a Newman cousin, a group of actors gets confused for the characters they play and eventually embody their fictional counterparts to save an oppressed colony.

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991) / THE MUMMY RETURNS (2001)

A popcorn sequel that takes place years later than the actual gap between productions, where the first film’s central couple now have a young delinquent son; the female lead is now able to mostly hold her own in combat, and has a frightening vision during a slower middle act amid the constant action; a new villain utilizing an unprecedented attempt at CGI is introduced; callbacks to the first film are made in new contexts; and the ending gives the series nowhere else to go despite subsequent attempts to continue it.

SPEED (1994) / GRAVITY (2013)
(Pointed this out in my Gravity review)

A relentless thriller with a one-word scientific term title about Sandra Bullock boarding at least one vehicle in danger of exploding that contains an image of Saint Christopher.

SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL (1997) / TITANIC (1997)

A 1997 film where a boat trip captained by an actor introduced in the 2002 middle chapter of an iconic fantasy trilogy goes horribly wrong, and the female lead’s romantic past is centered around a Jack.

SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004) / THE INCREDIBLES (2004)

An all-timer superhero film from 2004 where the primarily red-clad hero develops an identity crisis, deals with a hot-headed boss, battles an enemy with robotic claws, stops a moving train with his own body, and at one point hurts his back.

BATMAN BEGINS (2005) / NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE (2005)
(I started coming up with this one in a dream)

A 2005 blockbuster based on beloved source material where Liam Neeson mentors a young man who abandons his life in a mansion for a time and obtains combative tools as he journeys through snow on his way to rid his land of deeply rooted evil, but the villain doesn’t die by his hands.

THE SHALLOWS (2016) / KILLER WHALE (2026)

While on a getaway to mourn a loved one, a blue-eyed blonde rips up her wet suit to treat bodily injuries as she gets trapped bikini-clad on a small rock by an aquatic predator for multiple days.

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Hollywood took the strangest lesson from the success of Tim Burton’s Batman.

It wasn’t: People want comic books they all know and love adapted.

It was: People want specifically 1930s-themed comic books adapted, no matter how obscure they are. (And I’m realizing that I now have to specify 1920s and 1930s because we’re now in the following century’s 20s and nearly in its 30s.)

As such, Disney capitalized on Batman hard with their own attempted box office juggernaut in 1990, Dick Tracy, based on the 1930s comic strip.

The result was one of the most comic book films ever made—not so much a masterpiece in storytelling, but definitely so in otherworldly production design. And while it turned a profit, the hope that 90s kids would turn a 1930s-style noir into a Batman-level juggernaut turned out to be an overestimation.

But such a disappointment didn’t stop Disney from trying again with their first ever superhero film—years before they bought Marvel Studios—by adapting a comic from the 80s that homages 1930s serials: The Rocketeer (a comic I would check out myself if its love interest weren’t overly sexualized).

And sure enough, it resulted in an outright flop, due to the Disney brand being seen as too kiddy to attract older audiences at the time (the film’s darker and more sensual moments beg to differ), the obscurity of the source material, and the overall mistiming of when such a film would be in demand.

The film itself does have problems, from a central romance whose couple keep putting down each other’s dreams to a first act that feels at once slow, bloated, and in need of a little more character development.

And yet, whence the story really kicks off at that first act break, its retro sense of pulp adventure feels special. It’s what got its director Joe Johnston the job of directing Captain America: The First Avenger, which I feel is also an underappreciated superhero film until the final third of the runtime is paced more like an extended montage than a properly built up narrative.

In a film that takes place in LA centered around a pilot and his aspiring actress girlfriend, what most humanizes The Rocketeer is the middle class supporting cast who meet at the local diner, and one of my favorite moments is a brief look a fed and a mobster give each other in the finale where they realize they’re now fighting on the same side against an even bigger threat to the American public.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the film is sold in large part by James Horner’s musical score—one of my all-time favorites, capturing the wonder of flight on the same level as John Williams’s Superman theme.

It’s been argued that the film would be too niche to find a wide audience no matter when it was released, but it’s possible its retro charm could have been embraced as a breath of fresh air were it released during the coming comic book film boom that Disney themselves would play a key role in shaping.

Although The Rocketeer has found a cult following throughout the years, it isn’t secretly one of the greatest superhero films ever made. But it is one of the most unique, and it never fails to leave me with a smile on my face.

★★★☆
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A long overdue revisit for me.

Getting stranded on Mars would be a dire situation, and when a sandstorm here forces a crew of astronauts off the planet, accidentally leaving one of their men Mark Watney behind alive, it is indeed a dire situation.

And yet, Matt Damon plays Watney with a winning if at times cocky sense of humor that prevents the journey from getting heavy. You could call this “A Space Odyssey” because it’s about Damon trying to get home, but in space! (I still can’t picture him as Odysseus in particular, but he’s a really good actor.)

Its sense of humor—which also offsets all the science talk—even extends to referencing the Council of Elrond in the presence of Lord of the Rings’s own Sean Bean, including mention of the book-exclusive Glorfindel!

The first half of this rewatch was even better than my lone theater viewing! It wasn’t until the second half where I was taken out by a couple of developments that come out of nowhere and some blatant 2010s Hollywood China pandering.

Rarely have I seen a film strike such a balance of brainy and crowd pleasing. Although even with this being Ridley Scott’s most optimistic film I’ve seen yet, he slips in borderline body horror with Watney’s self-surgery early on. (It also manages to get away with two F-bombs and several implied ones in a PG-13, although I’ve seen a couple even more recent PG-13’s that each had three.)

The infamously anti-religious Scott also allows a moment where Watney tells God that he’s counting on Him, even acknowledging that using a crucifix for wood shavings would only be allowed under circumstances as rare as needing to light a fire for survival on a planet where that’s the only wood source.

In this day and age, I do question whether the general public would actually come together to cheer on the preservation of one human life like it does here. But perhaps such a depiction in fiction could inspire it to happen in reality.

★★★★
Teens+

If you’d like to join me tonight at 8PM EST, I’ll be live-streaming Pragmata!

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As I’ve said before, Pragmata is the AAA game I’ve anticipated the most for years, first catching my eye with its vague and bizarre announcement trailer released six years ago. Even its very title builds intrigue, because…

Well, what the heck does “pragmata” even mean?!

It’s amusing to see many of the comments on that trailer comparing it to Hideo Kojima—the madman behind Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding who cinematically revolutionized video game storytelling with the former—because the finished product isn’t nearly as bizarre as that first ever impression let on, especially not in a zany Kojima way.

It’s actually concept artist Yonghee Cho in his first time directing, after all.

The story brings us to a high-tech base on the moon—the Cradle—as system auditor Hugh Williams, who’s sent with a team to investigate why Earth has lost contact with the Cradle. There, we find out that the base’s AI system IDUS has gone rogue and killed all the humans, with hostile robots under its control.

We also find a highly advanced android—the titular pragmata—designed to look like a precious little girl who we nickname Diana, and she just might be the most endearing video game companion I’ve ever known!

As she rides on our back and hacks into the Cradle’s systems, including the robots’ outer armor so that we can deal them real damage, she’s as much the player character as Hugh is. Having to hack into every robot also adds an element of strategy to every encounter, and the shooting mechanics feel like an evolution of what its own developer Capcom started in Resident Evil 4, except here—thankfully—we can actually move while aiming!

And yet, for as challenging as the combat is, only a couple of optional bonus challenges killed me, so I essentially didn’t die at all! Had close calls, though.

The Cradle gives us a shelter to return to in between the action where we can upgrade our gear, costumes, and hacking nodes; build Diana set pieces of Earth activities to give her a taste of the planet; complete those aforementioned bonus challenges for extra currency; and even have additional conversations with Diana. Given how deeply it lets us build our dynamic with her, it must count for something that she’s making many players want kids of their own!

The pairing of the two leads makes for a compelling dichotomy of young optimism and experienced realism, with each one’s outlook shown most clearly in what each anticipates will be the fate of a third party (whose surprise presence I’m disappointed to learn was revealed in a trailer just before release).

The concept of a humanlike android does raise the story’s most ambiguous moral questions. How ethical is it to create machines in our image, including in the image of a specific person, as we learn is the case within the game’s universe? Would such a machine gain a rational soul? I don’t think it would in reality, but Hugh does, and I can accept such a concept in a work of fiction.

There are even trees in the Cradle made of special metal being mined from the moon—lunafilament—that function like real trees. Would we be essentially playing God by recreating the world through technology?

Despite these uneasy questions, the father-daughter dynamic at the heart of the story as well as only a dash of vulgarity make this arguably the most wholesome AAA game in years that’s not explicitly aimed at family audiences, especially when all the enemies are just robots!—even if many of them look freaky. (Of course, Lord of the Rings is plenty freaky and still very wholesome.)

Beating the game unlocks multiple replay modes, including a new game plus that carries over all your upgrades to the story’s beginning. Though I have yet to play them, it’s still safe to say that, between this and Planet of Lana II, that’s two for two of my anticipated games this year living up to the hype!

★★★★
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Full reviews I posted here in April:

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I revisited The Martian (2015) for the first time since I saw it in theaters, and it’s almost as great as I remember it being! It’ll be my next full film review.

I reached one-thousand films logged in my eight years on Letterboxd (technically nine because I deleted a profile before this one), and I capped off this milestone with… Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), considered by many to be the worst film ever made. And boy does it feel like a rough cut of an alien’s student film! How can any actual person be this genuinely clueless about depicting human behavior? I had fun laughing at the sheer incompetence, though—so incompetent that I admire that it was made at all!

I do feel conflicted that (should I even put a spoiler warning?) an evil pagan cult gets its way in the end, but then again, it’s hard to be outright angry about such nihilism when it’s presented so amateurishly.

I also realized after writing my positive review of Mercy that Manos was the last movie I watched before it, so ANY movie would look good after that!

GAMES

I said I’d save full game reviews for Backloggd, but I’m not really finding an audience for them there either, so I’ll still post full game reviews here.

The only full game review I posted here in April:

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Resident Evil 4 (2005) was the most fun I had with a game in a long time! …And because of its morbidity, I feel conflicted that it was. So, I’ve decided the full game reviews I post here will be for more wholesome titles. I have posted my expanded thoughts of RE4 on Backloggd, though.

Gris (2018) is the spiritual predecessor to Neva (full review), but I don’t have as much to say about it. I did find a game-breaking glitch early on that made me hesitant to give it another chance, but I’m glad I did give it that chance. Not quite a great game, but a beautiful one—visually, musically, and symbolically.

I’m just about done Pragmata (2026), one of the only big-budget games I’ve been hyped for in the past few years, and it’s thankfully living up to the hype! And if it stays as wholesome as it is—maybe the most wholesome non-Nintendo big-budget action game in years—I’ll definitely review it here!

BOOKS

I read the Christopher Columbus and Hernando Cortez chapters in Anne W. Carroll’s Christ in the Americas (1994)—which I first read way back in high school and had a high admiration for Cortez since—as an unintended primer for John Eidsmoe’s Columbus & Cortez, Conquerors for Christ (1992), for covering the whole history of Christianity in America became overwhelming.

Eidsmoe goes into both first-hand and well-researched secondhand sources to prove Columbus and Cortez’s motivations to spread the Gospel to the New World—more than to win land for Spain or discover riches—in both their moral successes and their moral failings. And given the horrifying descriptions of the Aztecs’ human sacrifices, thank God we converted them!

I don’t agree with Eidsmoe’s at times Protestant interpretations of Catholic dogma, but he overall respects Catholicism as a valid form of Christianity.

Now, the twist for me while reading Robert Lewis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) is that the story is told from Jekyll’s friend’s perspective, with Jekyll and Hyde’s connection remaining a mystery until the end—making it the most culturally spoiled plot twist next to Darth Vader being Luke’s father! Jekyll does ultimately use grave means to end his own predicament, but at least we’re not meant to sympathize with him.

From here, I’m finding that what really keeps my attention is mythology and fantasy, so the subjects I read about could start feeling samey.

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Thanks to continued if slowly improving concussion symptoms that prevent me from seeing movies in theaters, this is my first new film release of the year.

The premise of a cop in the near future getting put on trial by an AI judge with ninety minutes to prove his own innocence through the titular Mercy Program looked surefire on paper, so I was disappointed when it got poor reviews.

The curse of a January release.

Now having finally seen it myself… I can see why many wouldn’t roll with the massive suspension of disbelief it requires. The AI tech often functions like magic: hacking into systems it shouldn’t have access to, and being used in serious violations of privacy to gather evidence both for and against lead Chris Raven, which includes video evidence nobody would have actually filmed…

I can also see how the third act’s escalations could take others out of it.

Yet, within that suspension of disbelief, I was thrilled by how the puzzle that builds up the mystery is pieced together, and in real time. It helps that this has the best Chris Pratt performance I’ve seen yet, playing a husband whose drinking and anger issues legitimately call his innocence of his wife’s murder into question, and that Rebecca Ferguson is reliable as always as the AI judge.

I’m reminded of Minority Report—arguably Spielberg’s last true classic—in how the high tech system a cop bets his life on is turned against him, and also in a later reveal that I won’t spoil here. Although it also borrows The Fugitive’s “wife happens to say her husband’s name with incriminating timing while dying” as if there weren’t already enough cards stacked against him!

I’m not making a case that this film has secret genius that almost everyone else missed. But like with last year’s similarly contained thriller Drop, I genuinely enjoyed it in spite of itself, and I’ll take that as a decent start to my movie year.

★★★☆
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Alas, I’m left unable to fully judge one of my most hyped games of the year, Planet of Lana II, due to its Middle Chapter Syndrome, which Marvel movies turned into a peeve of mine. But that’s certainly not to call it a bad game!

I really enjoyed the original, but the pace of its puzzle-solving didn’t give it immediate replay value for me. This followup, however, has a steadier balance of platforming and puzzle-solving, including Lana’s new abilities to climb and swim, plus level-culminating escape sequences that remind me of Ori and the Blind Forest’s. Despite a longer length than its predecessor, it feels faster.

The trailer for this with its subtitled dialogue concerned me that the mystique of the storytelling would be gone. Thankfully, only the prologue is subtitled.

With A.I. being a big topic of contention in this day and age, these games seem to be saying that A.I. is a tool that can be used for good or for ill. But this one also puts Lana on a quest for vengeance late in the game whose cliffhanger leaves its stance on such a theme ambiguous. It also doubles down on the original’s hints at paganism through a forest village that spiritualizes animals, although such expansions on environmentalism are further reminders of Ori.

Despite my frustrations with Middle Chapter Syndrome, that cliffhanger does set up a direction for its successor that fascinates far beyond its thematic ambiguities, and I’m really looking forward to the conclusion, whenever that is.

★★★½
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My Easter viewing, even if this isn’t the happiest story to celebrate Easter with.

Due to the shared subject matter of the Spanish evangelizing South America, John Eidsmoe’s Columbus & Cortez, Conquerors for Christ (I once thought that the most evil regime in history happened within the last century, but now... the Aztecs were even worse than the Nazis) made me want to revisit the less controversial Liam Neeson Jesuit film (the alternative being Silence).

As others have pointed out, what’s really missing is the natives’ perspective. Their human dignity is emphasized, but none of them really come to life as characters, only seen through the eyes of the missionaries and colonizers.

That said, the lead missionary, Fr. Gabriel, is the most poignant depiction of a priest I have yet seen on film, staying by his flock not by fighting to save their lives as slave trader-turned-Jesuit-turned-warrior Rodrigo does but by standing with them to save their souls in Portugal’s violent takeover of their land.

It’s been a point of contention since its release whose side the film falls on, and what seals for me that it’s on Gabriel’s side is his speech, “If you’re right, you’ll have God’s blessing. If you’re wrong, my blessing won’t mean anything. …If might is right, then love has no place in the world… and I don’t have the strength to live in a world like that,” followed by the proven futility of Rodrigo’s breaking of vows.

Of course, the film also has stunning camera and location work and a sublime musical score by Ennio Morricone, even some impressive stunts!

Director Roland Joffé is an agnostic, but I wonder if a full-on Catholic would have been willing to go this gritty, including in the accuracy of the tribal attire, or lack thereof (they hired actual indigenous tribes, after all). Certainly the modern faith-based market wouldn’t go there!

The weirdest fact I know about Joffé is that the infamous live-action Mario movie was his idea. But, he’s also responsible for this contender for the greatest Christian film ever made. …Which makes the Mario connection even weirder.

★★★★
Mature Teens+

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LE MORTE D’ARTHUR (1495) ~ Sir Thomas Mallory / Tran. Keith Baines

This translation made it clear for me how inconsistently Arthur lives up to his own Round Table’s ideals, and even how the otherwise voice of wisdom Merlin gives Arthur the idea for a particular atrocity! But as a Discord user said, we’ll only romanticize the story if we don’t read the original version. especially helped put my finger on how Arthur and his knights are like King David, in how they set high ideals for themselves but often fall short of them.

This was the first time I really felt the quiet power of Lancelot and Guinevere living the rest of their lives in penance for breaking the kingdom, and the remaining knights of the Round Table dying in battle on Good Friday. Not to mention, Arthur early on taking the title of Roman Emperor by force—which I can’t find in any modern retelling—is at once hilarious and badass.

THE TROJAN WAR (1952) ~ Olivia Coolidge

I’ve read several versions of the most influential myth ever told, and this retelling covers more ground than any I’ve read, including side stories I didn’t know about, such as Laodamia and Protesilaus, and Trolius and Cressida, the latter of whom were invented in the Middle Ages. It also covers the Greeks’ returns from the war without covering the entire Odyssey. As with most youth-targeting versions, this cuts down on the gods’ side of the story for the sake of family friendliness, though it doesn’t sugarcoat the war crimes both factions commit.

KING SOLOMON’S MINES (1885) ~ H. Rider Haggard

Not as fun as the Indiana Jones it inspired, but still fun in its own way! In fact, I’d seen Cannon Films’s shockingly racist adaptation that turns it into an Indiana Jones knockoff. But while the book may not have aged perfectly, its own natives are far more humanized than the movie’s mindless cannibals who try to cook the heroes alive in a giant cauldron. I also appreciate how it considers the social and psychological consequences of violence that’s committed even for a just cause.

FILMS

Like with my reading, mythology was a big movie theme this month. In fact, it began last month as my re-read of Arthuria inspired me to check out Arthurian movies and rank them on Letterboxd, where I log a lot more of what I watch (including a string of oddities I began this year). As such, I’ll cover an Arthurian film this month because I experimented in lieu of highlights last month. But first:

ILYA MUROMETS (1956) ~ Dir. Aleksandr Ptushko

I’d never heard of the Russian folk hero this adapts until I came across this on Tubi, and while I usually expect schlock from fantasy movies—especially on Tubi—this one had me going “Wow!” multiple times from the sheer hand-crafted spectacle! While made during the Soviet Union, I see it more as a celebration of Russia’s heritage than of its then-current political climate. What definitely is questionable is how it depicts no other Asians than villainous barbarians.

EXCALIBUR (1981) ~ Dir. John Boorman

The only good cinematic retelling of the compendium I’ve seen, even when trying to shove the whole thing into two hours makes it feel like a summary at times. Its brutality and nudity that largely reflect the source also restrict it to a mature audience, and I’m uncomfortable with the magic said to come from a metaphorical “dragon” when that’s biblically a satanic connotation.

Even so, its dreamlike atmosphere makes it feel like one of the most mythic films ever made, even when it takes serious liberties with the source. The armor is shiny, the Round Table is shiny… even Camelot’s stonework is shiny! Reframing Mordred as a force specifically bred to destroy Arthur even feels more mythic than Mallory, and Sir Patrick Stewart (as King Leodegrance) hacking other knights with an axe to the tune of “O Fortuna” is something I didn’t know I needed!

LONE WOLF MCQUADE (1983) ~ Dir. Steve Carver

I watched Invasion U.S.A. (1986) in honor of modern myth Chuck Norris’s passing, and I felt that there could have been a much less mean spirited choice to honor him with. Thankfully, this followup is! I’m still not yet convinced there’s an outright good Chuck Norris movie out there, but this is pretty close to it!

The biggest things holding it back are some silly plot points and Chuck leading with a complete lack of charisma outside of his physicality. Thankfully, the cast around him makes up for the latter; I was cheering whenever Chakotay (because that’s all I know Robert Beltran as) joins in on the action, whose finale delivers EVERYTHING: shootouts, martial arts, vehicular combat, pyrotechnics... And the Western-inspired musical score goes hard, like out of a Sergio Leone!

THE AVENGERS (2012) ~ Dir. Joss Whedon

Superheroes are essentially our contemporary mythology, and because I’ve never gotten to see Lord of the Rings in theaters, The Avengers was THE event film of my lifetime. This is the first time I’ve rewatched it since I’ve expanded my palette with hundreds of movies for the past several years, and I never would have thought I’d come to a point in my life where a movie like this would feel like a palette cleanser! It’s still a blast to revisit, still a cinematic miracle that so many disparate elements were pulled off together this breathlessly.

GAMES

I posted all my game reviews from this blog onto Backlogged, where they’ll likely be more appreciated. It’s also where I’ll post my full game reviews from now on.

I’m not going to do another review of Halo: Combat Evolved (2001), but I will say that I’m playing it again to join a nephew on his first playthough!

PLANET OF LANA II: CHILDREN OF THE LEAF (2026) ~ Dir. Adam Stjärnljus

This was one of my most most hyped games of the year, so OF COURSE it ends on a BLASTED CLIFFHANGER! Marvel movies turned Middle Chapter Syndrome into a big peeve of mine. Still a pretty good sequel, though, and it does set up a fascinating direction for the third one. FULL REVIEW

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“The Story (Live at Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA - November 2010)”
~ Brandi Carlile

Last July, I discovered this through the radio, and it had me wondering… HOW DID THIS MASTERPIECE ESCAPE ME FOR FIFTEEN YEARS?!

Come to find out, I’d heard one or two Brandi Carlile songs before this, but this was the first one I knew she performed, and it was quite the true first impression! With lyrics like, “These stories don’t mean anything when you got no one to tell them to”, it made me feel more motivated than any song had in a long time, and almost instantly became my favorite song of all time!

“Saturn”
~ Sleeping At Last

One of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, from the instrumentals to the lyrics. “I’d give anything to hear you say it one more time / That the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes.” (Also, I first discovered this song through a janky Zelda fan video made with Garry’s Mod, so, more embarrassingly, even though I only watched it that one time, the song also makes me think of that.)

“Faded”
~ Alan Walker

The electronic melody might make this the downright coolest song I’ve ever heard, and the references to Atlantis add a mythological vibe on top of that!

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I didn’t go into this knowing it was from the same studio as Gris, a hand-drawn platformer I knew about but have yet to play. What I do know is that Neva pulls off a magic trick for a game to win me over: remind me of Ico and Ori.

Guiding its titular magical wolf as a human recalls the companion dynamic of the former, while the latter’s influence is all over its side-scrolling gameplay, gorgeous hand-drawn visuals and musical score, emotional storytelling, and environmentalist themes in a world with a light-dark dichotomy.

Except the dark here truly is evil—an army of supernatural creatures who worship their leader like a god that corrupts the world. And all of this is established with essentially no dialogue—an artistic feat I always admire!

The repetitive combat hindered my enjoyment at first, but it gradually blew me away as we gain new fighting abilities—including utilizing Neva herself—and the bosses and puzzles become more dynamic.

The game sets us on a pretty linear path except to find glowing bonus flowers that instantly bloom when we touch them. And I wish it unlocked more than just a Steam (or whatever platform of choice) achievement to find them all.

A mere two hours in—halfway through the game—it felt like I was at the final level, but it turned out to be a vision, making me concerned that every level afterward could be the last and then relieved that it wasn’t, up until the actual finale battle; I don’t know if it’s because I’d built up my reflexes well enough that said battle felt easier than it should have been.

Regardless, while it is a short experience with a slightly underwhelming final boss, I’d still call what it does in so little time a masterpiece! It’ll be interesting to play Gris afterwards and see how it influenced Neva.

★★★★
Tweens+

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I was first introduced to the Predator franchise through Aliens Versus Predator 2, a gory game my brothers and I still don’t know how we got away with playing so young. Since it was PG-13, my first Predator movie—and Alien movie for that matter—was the first Alien vs. Predator movie! (Which I just revisited for the first time in years for my birthday and still had a good time.)

What I’ve seen of the Predator franchise since has become more and more my cup of tea. I see why the 1987 original is beloved, with many memorable lines and solid suspense, but its violence is a bit too visceral for my taste. The first of this franchise’s recent renaissance, Prey—a prequel that should have been called Predater—is also gruesome, but CG gore doesn’t put me off as much as practical, so I really enjoyed it in spite of its unintentionally corny dialogue.

( and I did a double feature of Prey and One Crazy Summer, and we had a great time with both even with the complete tonal whiplash.)

Now we come to Badlands.

Completely breaking from the franchise’s human-versus-hunter formula, the predator—properly Yautja—is now the protagonist, hunting a legendary creature on a planet filled with inventively designed but deadly wildlife to prove his worth to his tribe. And I’m really impressed that a modern Hollywood popcorn film let its lead speak through subtitles the entire time!

But we do get an English-speaking cast of androids from the Alien universe’s Weyland-Yutani Corporation, and Elle Fanning’s double-role as the bubbly, legless co-lead Thia and her menacing “sister” Tessa has introduced to me just how versatile she is! It’s also because these androids’ blood and innards are milky white that the MPA gave their intendedly R-rated mutilations a PG-13.

What made me question whether this was actually meant to be R is a cutesy monkey-like creature that ripped me right out of the experience. I can appreciate the Ewoks and even Jar Jar because Star Wars is primarily a kids franchise, but seeming kid appeal in Predator?! Thankfully, it turns out not to be a pervasive presence, and a big twist behind it especially saves it.

That means what’s left to sour the experience for me is a vengeful denouement that contradicts the leading Dek’s arc up to then of realizing that violence should be used to protect rather than assert dominance.

In spite of that, this is still a pulpy, even often funny adventure that proves to be the most off-brand Predator movie, but most the me Predator movie! Heck, if they still made tie-in game adaptations, I’d totally play this one’s!

★★★☆
Teens+

MONTHLY READING ROUNDUP

• KING ARTHUR: TALES OF THE ROUND TABLE (1918) ~ Andrew Lang

• BEOWULF THE WARRIOR (1954) ~ Ian Serraillier

• LE MORTE D’ARTHUR (1485) ~ Sir Thomas Malory / Tran. Keith Baines (In Progress)

• THE TROJAN WAR (1952) ~ Olivia Coolidge (In Progress)

For more of my film takes, check out this very blog, and my Letterboxd!

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I’ve given my thoughts on the Halo franchise leading up to 4 in my December and January media highlights/roundups. What I didn’t mention there was that Reach was original series developer Bungie’s final entry, and 343 Industries, a studio dedicated solely to the franchise, was formed from there.

Alas, their launch with Halo 4 proved divisive, and such division continued through Halo 5 and Halo Infinite, neither of which I’ve played. But 4 was the first Master Chief game I played, so my fondness for it may be pure bias.

One point of contention is that we’re fighting an offshoot of the Covenant after the trilogy was about their empire disbanding, and while I argue that the Covenant was a big enough empire for not all of its members to follow its rules, I can see how that could feel like a big step backwards to others.

Yet, I feel that such familiarity is balanced out by a new faction: the cybernetic Prometheans. I love their design, both visually and aurally, and it’s especially satisfying to headshot the doglike Prometheans because it makes them pop like POPCOOOOOORN! (See my December roundup to understand that one.) Also satisfying is how a couple levels give us mechs to obliterate enemies with!

The overall graphical detail blows me away for its generation, especially when ODST’s human faces looked so awkward on the same hardware only three years prior. And while the score lacks the grandiose choirs that Marty McDonnell brought to his entries, Neil Davidge crafts a memorable score of his own here, complete with the most hype-inducing final level music I’ve heard in any game.

The story’s wisest decision is centering its core around personal stakes for Chief and Cortana that reveal their humanity and care for each other, wherein it turns out an AI has a limited lifespan, and Cortana’s on the cusp of her limit.

Along with a deeper dive into the characters is a deeper dive into the lore, whose own thematic caveats replace the trilogy’s anti-religious sentiments.

This is the first mainline game to address that Spartan super soldiers were trained and genetically engineered from childhood against their will, which gets treated like a further step in human evolution that’s the key to defeating the villain, who’s had a godlike influence over human history. It also reveals that Cortana was made from a clone of her designer, implying the clone’s death.

Not to mention, Cortana’s outfit continues to be a bit too much of an eyefull, as is one death here hands down the most shockingly graphic in the franchise.

Despite these caveats, Halo 4 is one of the most underappreciated games I’ve ever played. I think Reach is the franchise’s masterpiece, but I put 4 on par with the trilogy, balanced out by both its own problems and what it does better.

Given how the franchise has gotten even more divisive from here, though, perhaps this is where I’ll leave it, on a personal high note.

★★★½
Mature Teens+

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I’ve been highlighting media I enjoyed the most from each month. This month, however, I’m switching it up by listing everything I watched, played, and read, whether I liked it or not (and also including December stragglers from after I posted my last highlights). I’ll give brief thoughts on each title, and if you want to know more, I’ll link to my expanded thoughts in either my Letterboxd reviews (for movies) or official reviews on this blog.

WATCHED

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND (2025) | ★★★★ | Teens+
Deemed this my favorite movie of 2025, though I actually say more about it in my Letterboxd review.

LIGHT OF THE WORLD (2025) | ★★½☆ | Kids+
An inspired take on the Gospel that’s unfortunately bogged down by a sense of humor that feels more DreamWorks than DreamWorks’s actual biblical retelling. (Letterboxd)

F1: The Movie (2025) | ★★★☆ | Teens+
Not the must-see as Top Gun: Maverick, but still solid, which is better than I would have expected from Kosinski back when he’d only directed Tron: Legacy. (Letterboxd)

STRANGER THINGS 5: THE FINALE (2025) | ★★★☆ | Adults
This series kept me invested in spite of everything it was easy to roast it for—the first non-pre-established IP series I’ve finished since Lost! (Letterboxd)

THE WILD ROBOT (2024) | ★★★½ | Tweens+
Pretty good, even if I’d like to have seen a much less safe version where the animals don’t talk and the finale doesn’t come down to explosions. (Letterboxd)

KAENA: THE PROPHECY (2003) | ★½☆☆ | Mature Teens+
Took one for the team just so that another Discord user wouldn’t be alone in his “WHAT DID I JUST WATCH?” experience. (Letterboxd)

FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN (2001) | ★★☆☆ | Mature Teens+
Funny to read how these sentient wax mannequins looked so real back then that A-listers were worried they’d be replaced by them. (Letterboxd)

DISTRESS SIGNALS (2022) | ★★☆☆ | Adults
The kind of minimalist production I find really fascinating as an aspiring indie filmmaker but would probably bore anyone I know out of their minds. (Letterboxd)

HERCULES IN NEW YORK (1970) | ★★★☆ | Tweens+
The kind of comedy I’m not sure when my laughter was intended by the filmmakers. (Official)

A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987) | ★★★☆ | Adults
Love when I find an absolutely bonkers Chinese fantasy movie (that doesn’t cross a line with shock imagery like a couple I’ve seen). (Letterboxd)

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) | ★★★★ | Teens+
Best Western I’ve ever seen, and with all due respect to the Seven Samurai it’s based on, this is more fun! I can see why it gets retold every other generation. (Letterboxd)

STRANGE MAGIC (2015) | ★½☆☆ | Tweens+
Took another for the Discord team... Despite it making me laugh consistently, this isn’t a movie you even watch. It’s a movie you survive. (Letterboxd)

HALO 4: FORWARD UNTO DAWN (2012) | ★★★☆ | Teens+
Aged into the best video game movie I've ever seen! Which isn’t to say that it sets a high bar for the genre, but it’s a solid bar at least. Strictly for fans, though. (Letterboxd)

PLAYED

ERIKSHOLM: THE STOLEN DREAM (2025) | ★★★☆ | Mature Teens+
Can’t think of another game I’ve played that’s this tense yet chill, though I wish the ending didn’t go too far to punish the villain. (Official)

HALO 3: ODST (2009) | ★★★☆ | Teens+
My first full playthrough! The first Halo game that takes us away from Master Chief (not counting the real-time strategy Halo Wars), refreshingly putting us into the viewpoints of multiple non-super soldiers on the same mission, including a christian! Although the familiar digitized faces like Nathan Fillion’s look weird in late-2000s graphics.

HALO: REACH (2010) | ★★★★ | Teens+
My first Halo, fitting for the chronologically first one. My all-time favorite shooter, and if it’s not the best one I’ve ever played technically (I’d give that honor to Half-Life 2, if in a “too addictively designed” way), it’s the best one I’ve ever played narratively, reminding us that fighting in a war requires self-sacrifice, no matter how cool we can make our armor look or how fun it feels to shoot up aliens.

HALO 4 (2012) | ★★★½ | Mature Teens+
One of the most underrated games I’ve ever played, though that could be bias talking because this was my first Master Chief game. Heck, I’m gonna publish an official review of it!

READ

• THE TWO TOWERS (1954) ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

• THE RETURN OF THE KING (1955) ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

• THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH ~ N.K. Sandars (1960)

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The demo for this made me hyped to buy the full game, and with former big time developers behind it, it’s one of the most polished indie debuts I’ve ever played! Its cinematics animated in-engine were the first time a game I played from this generation made me think, “Wow! This almost looks real!”

It has us as commoner Hanna uncovering a government conspiracy within the fictional Scandinavian city of Eriksholm, although everyone’s British accents threw me off from where it’s supposed to take place before I looked it up.

The camera zooms out overhead as we sneak past and knock out enemies who have really poor hearing and eyesight—combining stealth, puzzle-solving, and strategy. It even introduces multiples characters to switch between with their own unique abilities, enhancing both the gameplay and the storytelling! I can’t recall another game that feels so tense yet chill, at least in the early hours.

The first half of the story convinced me this would be one of the decade’s masterpieces for me. Then Hanna’s motivation in the second half gave me reservations, and my verdict on the game requires discussing the climax:

While Hanna doesn’t go through with murder, and the villain’s fate leaves him with the possibility to repent of what he’s done, the goal is to make him feel sorry through punishment that I feel goes beyond what justice calls for, even if it’s legal. And as Saint Thomas Aquinas says: “Justice without mercy is cruelty.”

While that diminishes the game’s greatness for me, it’s still very well-designed with a well-told story, and I want to see what River End Games does next.

★★★☆
Mature Teens+

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I kicked off the year with interestingly bad movies, including Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within—the infamously uncanny (and New Age-y) first ever attempt at a photorealistic animated film… Distress Signals—an obscure minimalist indie survival film that compelled me more than it would compel anyone I know…

But this romp about Hercules getting banished from Mount Olympus to New York was the highlight of them all—the definition of “so bad it’s good”!

It’s very clear that this is Schwarzenegger’s acting debut—hired because his agent said he had stage experience but didn’t specify it was the bodybuilding stage. But I wouldn’t have it with a better performance! (The original release redubbed Arnold because of his thick accent, but after Arnold became a cinematic icon in the 80s, his voice has since been restored.)

The film clearly intends to be funny, but the fact that Arnold himself is still most embarrassed by how fake his fight with a bear looks calls into question just how dimwitted it was intended to be. One of the funniest parts is when Zeus summons Samson, because I don’t know whether the whole crew actually thought Samson came from Greek mythology or it was a deliberate joke!

They do get the Olympian gods’ pettiness right, though.

There is a good stretch in the middle where I didn’t laugh once, but it had me laughing so hard otherwise that I can forgive that. While it’s certainly not a good movie, it certainly brought me joy! Heck, it may be the most I’ve enjoyed Greek mythology onscreen behind Troy, and for complete opposite reasons!

(On that topic, Troy and National Treasure are both 2004 movies with Diane Kruger as the female lead and a Sean Bean who doesn’t die.)

★★★☆
Tweens+

For more of my film takes, check out this very blog, and my Letterboxd!

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DISHONORABLE 2024/2025 FILM MENTIONS

Argylle (2024)
Would probably take The Last Jedi’s place as the definitive example of subverting expectations in all the wrong ways if more people saw it. A fun enough first half that ripped out all of my emotional investment in the second half.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)
The MonsterVerse was the cinematic universe that felt tailor made for me, and I enjoyed how gradually bonkers it got since it started with a Nolan-esque take on Godzilla. Then this one went so far that it completely jumped the shark for me.

Friendship (2024)
My mind actually keeps coming back to this one, partly because it’s the saddest comedy I’ve ever seen, despite having one of the funniest gags I’ve ever seen. How did a guy this socially clueless manage to marry Kate Mara in the first place?

Into the Deep (2025)
The most notable thing about this is how a little Latina girl sees her dad get eaten by a shark, but then she’s played by clearly Caucasian actresses in two later stages of her life, so it’s like the trauma from the shark attack literally turned her white.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)
The heck happened here? This is the biggest disappointment since The Rise of Skywalker! The second half delivers the series’s signature set pieces, but the first half’s constant heavy-handed callbacks and accompanying flashbacks reminded me of The Matrix Resurrections, and there’s one spoiler I can’t forgive it for.

TOP FIVE GAMES OF THE 2020s (SO FAR)

5. Planet of Lana (2023)
A puzzle-based side-scroller whose pacing doesn’t give it immediate replay value, and that disconcertingly says we’d all revert to paganism under certain circumstances, but it also offers beautifully simplistic storytelling, endearing characters, intuitive puzzles, and an at times ethereal musical score.

4. Solar Ash (2021)
Much of its story had me worried that nihilism would have the final say, but thankfully, that final say is much more hopeful than I feared: that we can never reverse disaster, but we can always rebuild from it. And that makes this 3D scating-based sci-fi platformer as poignant as it is intriguing and inventive.

3. Viewfinder (2023)
Has one the most unique mechanics I’ve seen in any game—replacing pieces of environments with the contents of photos—and with a poignant story whose conclusion albeit can only be explained through sci-fi magic.

2. En Garde! (2023)
Not the the most artistically accomplished game I’ve played this decade, but perhaps the most sheerly fun, mixing slapstick swashbuckling with absurdist wit!

1. Ori and the Will of the Wisps (2020)
While I still prefer Ori and the Blind Forest’s simplicity, I wouldn’t argue against this being called the greatest video game sequel ever made, richly building upon its predecessor’s world, mechanics, and emotional resonance.

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I started this blog with a thorough film year in review for 2023 (well, after I deleted an introductory post about projects I’ve since abandoned).

After that, my 2024 film year was cut short by post-concussion syndrome, and I spent 2025 playing catch up on the last couple of years, and not enough to get well-rounded impressions of each year.

Even though I’ve been able to watch movies and play video games again, I still need to take regular breaks from the screen, and I don’t dare see movies in theaters with my current condition. It’s painful having to miss the Jaws 50th anniversary, Superman, and Avatar: Fire and Ash on the big screen.

Back when I watched less movies, there were films like The Avengers that I’d watch over and over again, whether in theaters or at home. In recent years, my favorite of the year would be lucky to be watched twice!

Given how there’s still a lot of films I haven’t seen from these last couple years, and how the 2020s are now halfway over, I’ve decided to split this post into three lists: TOP FIVE FILMS OF 2024, TOP FIVE FILMS OF 2025, and TOP TEN FILMS OF THE 2020s (SO FAR), followed by some gaming thoughts.

Also check out this addendum of a couple lists I wish I’d thought to include here.

TOP FIVE FILMS OF 2024

5. Damsel (PG-13 / Netflix)
Such a subversion of fairy tales should have irked me, but it ended up ticking so many specific boxes for me: medieval fantasy, creature horror, survival thriller…

4. Monolith (NR)
Really inspires me as an aspiring indie filmmaker for how its eerie story stays captivating with essentially one onscreen character in one location throughout.

3. Inside Out 2 (PG)
I wanted the followup to Pixar’s magnum opus to be solid, and that’s what I got! If Zelda also turns out solid, then this decade will meet my highest expectations!

2. Young Woman and the Sea (PG / Disney+)
Would have gotten lost in the sea of inspirational sports dramas in decades past but feels like a breath of fresh air nowadays! Also features christological imagery unlike any I’ve seen applied to a woman in a secular context.

1. Hundreds of Beavers (NR)
This unparalleled achievement in madcap anarchy homages everything from the Silent Era to the Looney Tunes to classic video games—all on a shoestring budget! It even recurrently references Catholicism, albeit not exactly piously.

TOP FIVE FILMS OF 2025

5. The Naked Gun (NR)
In terms of last year’s absurdist comedies, it was a tossup between this and AJ Goes to the Dog Park, but I went with The Naked Gun because it’s the one I watched twice. And as heretical as it is, I enjoyed it even more than the classic original!

4. Last Breath (PG-13)
No other film title has reflected my breathing pattern during the film itself this accurately. Even more remarkable is the truth behind it! How Chris Lemons got out of this not only alive but with no brain damage is nothing short of a miracle.

3. Long Distance (PG-13 / Hulu)
OF COURSE this mid-budget sci-fi-survival-creature thriller was made so much for me specifically and nobody else that it’s since been taken off of streaming!

2. Superman (PG-13)
Despite one subversion of the Superman mythos that doesn’t sit well with me, this is my favorite live-action superhero movie in years, managing to go creatively all-out without drowning out its sense of heart.

1. The Ballad of Wallis Island (PG-13)
A sweet, hilarious, and heartfelt story about a lottery winner using his fortune to get his favorite band back together for a personal gig that, even with its undercurrent of sadness, brought me more joy than any other film of the year!

TOP TEN FILMS OF THE 2020s (SO FAR)

10. Quiz Lady (2023 / R)
Despite the third quarter of the runtime going straight-faced, this had me laughing to the point of coughing multiple times!

9. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023 / PG)
Its potential impact is held back by its middle chapter syndrome, but if Beyond the Spider-Verse pays off this trilogy as masterfully as its predecessors set it up, then Across will be one of the greatest middle chapters ever made.

8. Tetris (2023 / R / AppleTV)
Takes serious liberties with the story of how Tetris made it out of the USSR, but as a thriller on its own terms, it strikes a riveting balance of humor and suspense.

7. RRR (2022 / TV-MA)
My first Indian production, and perhaps the most movie I’ve ever seen, with a guy belting out a musical number while getting tortured at one moment and another guy swinging around a motorcycle like a bo staff at another!

6. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022 / TV-14 / Roku)
UHF will always have my heart, but this brilliant parody of musical biopics had me laughing harder than any other film this decade!

5. Belle (2021 / PG)
A sci-fi anime retelling of Beauty and the Beast—which I think is even better than Disney’s ever-iconic version!—with thoughtful commentaries on trauma, virtual reality, and online culture, along with some beautiful musical numbers.

4. The Ballad of Wallis Island

3. Full Time (2021 / NR)
Deemed this my favorite of 2023 for its U.S. release, and it builds tension as masterfully as the best thrillers I’ve seen with barely even a threat of violence, all before it ends with the most cathartic light at the end of the tunnel.

2. Top Gun: Maverick (2022 / PG-13)
I couldn’t even finish the original, so it’s a miracle that its belated sequel—the rare kind that stands perfectly on its own—ended up as this decade’s platonic ideal of a crowdpleaser, perfectly balancing action, drama, and humor!

1. Hundreds of Beavers
It was a tossup between this and Maverick, but I went with Hundreds of Beavers because it’s the one I actually want to own on DVD. WHY ARE ALL THE PHYSICAL MEDIA FOR THIS AMERICAN INDIE PRODUCTION REGION 2?!

Gaming is the art form I’m most passionate about behind film, but since games are more expensive and more time-consuming, I don’t keep as up-to-date on them, often waiting years for new releases to go way on sale.

As such, I’ll list some general gaming highlights of 2025:

• revisiting the Halo trilogy for the second time ever and realizing Halo 2 is actually pretty good (chronicled in my December media highlights)

• discovering Solar Ash (2021) and Viewfinder (2023)

• revisiting Ico (2001) and Shadow of the Colossus (2005) after first playing them nearly a decade ago and bringing a third of my life full circle

• the Motorslice and Pragmata demos; Diana from the latter may be the cutest dang character in gaming history, though my nephew thinks her cuteness masks that she’s secretly evil and will be the final boss, AND I HOPE NOT

• buying this year’s Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream with Christmas money and loving it so far

And to make us all feel old, here are major gaming anniversaries this year that mean something to me personally:

• Another World’s 35th

• Tomb Raider’s 30th

• Halo: Combat Evolved’s 25th

• Smash Bros Melee’s 25th

• Zelda: Twilight Princess’s 20th

• Half-Life 2: Episode One’s 20th

• Portal 2’s 15th

• Zelda: Skyward Sword’s 15th

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Of course, I watched a number of Christmas staples, including Die Hard (1988), the Christmas action movie… The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), the funnest version of arguably the morality tale… Jingle All the Way (1996), the Christmas guilty pleasure… and Carry-On (2024), a solid Christmas thriller.

I’ve already highlighted It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), so here’s my second favorite Christmas film: Elf (2003). I can give Jovie falling in love with a manchild a pass over Padme doing the same because Jovie’s movie is intentionally stupid. Yet there’s such a sincerity to its stupidity that its emotional moments genuinely land! Not an objectively great film, but it brings me great joy.

I’m not sure how much to count The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion: The Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) as a Christmas film, but I would say that Disney would never produce something this Christian today if it weren’t for this year’s Fantastic Four: First Steps. Its world building doesn’t have enough rhyme or reason to put it in the same league as Lord of the Rings, but it’s still one of the only good medieval fantasy movies, and perhaps the best one behind Rings.

The Night of the Hunter (1955) is a semi-fitting discovery. I’d known about it for a long time, but I didn’t know that it ends at Christmas time, or even just how grim it gets! But for as haunting a meditation on wolves in sheeps’ clothing versus true Christians as it is, it thankfully leaves us on a hopeful note.

Of course, it wasn’t all Christmas movies.

I revisited a couple of Rob Reiner’s films in honor of his tragic passing: The Princess Bride (1987) and Misery (1990). Funny to think that both a whimsical fairy tale with some of the sharpest dialogue I’ve ever heard and an intense thriller with one of the scariest performances I’ve ever seen share the same director. Although they do both involve their protagonists poisoning wine.

And while I’m at it, Misery and Elf are both about a book-publishing James Caan getting harassed by a weird person during the winter. Of course, the master of movie comparisons Cow Shea takes his analysis even further. He even inspired me to come up with my own crowning achievement of film analysis:

To cap this off, I revisited The Fugitive (1993)—arguably the 90s thriller—after realizing how Samuel Gerard may be the prime example of an antagonist who’s not a villain, earning my favorite actor Tommy Lee Jones his only Oscar win; the way he deadpans one simple “Shut up” put me in stitches! Harrison Ford also shows more of his dramatic chops here than in his most iconic roles.

PLAYED

Pragmata (2026) is one of the only upcoming triple-A games I’m hyped for, and its demo did not disappoint! But even if the rest of the game disappoints, at least Diana seems to be the cutest dang character in gaming history.

But the month’s main event was a revisit to the Halo trilogy—a favorite of a canonized saint, Carlo Acutis! (I’m really glad the Church has indirectly confirmed that enjoying shooters doesn’t send you hell.)

The original, Combat Evolved (2001), is arguably the most influential TV console shooter ever made. The level design could use less backtracking, and the last levels overwhelm me with enemies, but it’s still solid. The story is less interesting for its characters than for the world it builds, and it pulls off one of gaming’s greatest plot twists, shifting the main threat from an intergalactic regime to zombifying parasites! Blasting those spores with a friend back in high school was making me go, “MMMMMMM! POPCOOOOOOOOOORN!”

Halo 2 (2004) is the trilogy’s creative highlight—a complete reevaluation unlike any I’ve had in a long time after I was calling it “Halo Too Lazy” years ago! I’m not a fan of its deeper delving into the villains’ religion that, well, gives religion a bad name, nor of its rage-inducing late-game difficulty spike. Still, the basic mechanics and level design are smoother than CE’s, and the co-protagonist’s arc of him and his race growing disillusioned with their empire’s genocidal regime and causing a civil war gives the story some actual depth.

I wish I had more to say about Halo 3 (2007); it feels like the trilogy’s most creatively samey, but it’s still a pretty good conclusion—the best looking, the best scored, and the best at making us feel like we’re fighting in a war.

Alas, Saint Carlo didn’t live to personally experience this trilogy’s end, but Halo 2 certainly isn’t a bad last impression, even if having gaming’s biggest budget at the time couldn’t buy them enough time to finish the story as planned, resulting in one of the most infamously abrupt cliffhangers in the medium’s history!

READ

Frankenstein (1818) ~ Mary Shelley
Actually read in November. Iconic adaptations take serious liberties with this poignant cautionary tale about both playing God and failing to show kindness.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) ~ L. Frank Baum
Also a November read. A fine fairy tale, but it may or may not be lifelong bias telling me that the movie improves its villain, heart, and theme.

The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
Third ever readthrough, and perhaps the most I’ve appreciated its pacing!

The Grassman Terror (2025) ~
The climactic answers to its mysteries are weird even for a Bigfoot enthusiast like me, but it is generally fun and well written.

PERSONAL PROJECTS

I want to do more creatively than appraise others’ media, but I still have to take regular breaks from using screens and reading due to my concussion syndrome. But even before my brain injuries, my biggest film projects over the past few years have crashed and burned in pre-production. But, when I’m back in a position to do so, I’m going to try and get my first attempt at a dramatic short off the ground. I’ve figured out a story that could be both simple and moving, discovered more filmmaking resources, and even been in talks with potential crew. But again, I can’t rush to get this filmed until my brain’s healed more.

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WATCHED

THE GOLD RUSH (1925)

Not only is this the Charlie Chaplin film the foundational film comedian himself was proudest of, but it’s also one of the films that planted my love of the Silent Era! (My thoughts on Safety Last! and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.) The protagonistic Little Tramp pretending to be frozen stiff so he could be taken into a warm house for a hot meal is one of my all-time favorite film gags! The one real flaw is the romance; after the dishonest ways love interest Georgia treats the Tramp, I don’t feel their climactic union is really earned. One of my favorite love musical pieces is associated with her, though.

PLEASE STAND BY (2017)

Both a largely wholesome coming of age dramedy and the best movie about Star Trek fans I’ve seen next to Galaxy Quest! It even features Star Trek Into Darkness’s Alice Eve in a much more dignified role for her! Its depiction of autism has gotten mixed reception, especially given the neurotypical Dakota Fanning in the lead, but I’ll side with the autistic viewers who’ve found it respectful. It’s also one of two films I’ve recently watched where a Fanning sister recovers way too quickly from a concussion, now that I personally know how that actually works—the other being the far less recommended I Think We’re Alone Now.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT (2018)

After seeing this year’s Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, my suspicions that it wouldn’t top Fallout as a finale are confirmed. This one moves at a propulsive pace, has memorable villains, ties the franchise together with subtlety, and gives Ethan Hunt a poignant arc of proving how his value for even the one life pays off. It does try to a bit too hard to be Christopher Nolan for its own good, from the gritty tone to the booming score to the convoluted plot. Heck, I remember all of this being so much to take in on first viewing that I walked out of the theater feeling like I’d been through a war zone! But the years since have turned this into one of my top highlights of the past decade.

AJ GOES TO THE DOG PARK (2024)

As indie as they come—essentially a feature-length YouTube skit about a guy aiming to become mayor so he can re-open a local dog park. It’s too stupid even for me at times, including one of the most out-of-left-field endings I’ve ever seen! And yet, there’s little about it that’s truly distasteful (most questionable are a vulgar term, a brief pentagonal image, mild irreverence, and a bizarre montage about elbows), so generally, it’s just my kind of randomness!

THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (2025)

The other Vanessa Kirby blockbuster here besides Fallout is the first purely standalone Marvel film I’ve seen in a long time! It has gotten a lot of middling user reviews, and to be fair, I am a bit tired of the kinds of apocalyptic stakes it offers. What I do find remarkable is how it uses these stakes to explore the value of life with a depth rarely seen from Hollywood! Heck, it’s the latest entry in The “Pedro Pascal Protects a Child” Cinematic Universe! I’m also amused by how one plot point reminded me of a Spongebob episode, and I want a whole movie about the Fantastic Four battling the Red Ghost and his Super Apes.

PLAYED

HYDROPHOBIA PROPHECY (2011)

While I can see why this isn’t beloved, its combination of light platforming, light puzzle solving, and strategic cover shooting really hit the spot for me—all at a breezy length! What I most enjoyed was the dynamic between protagonist Kate—whose design I really like—and her earpiece sidekick Scoot. Although I didn’t catch the story’s overpopulation theme until I researched the game, and said story ends on a “Wait, that’s it?” note. Nonetheless, I found it a lot better than what most reviewers are saying.

THE ENTROPY CENTRE (2022)

I’ve seen few games borrow from others much as this borrows from Portal, from its female first-person perspective to its dilapidated science facility to its comical AI companion to its puzzle-solving gun that moves puzzle-solving cubes. Except this gun reverses an object’s trajectory through time, which is really cool! It also made me realize how much I prefer puzzle games to be short, for I almost gave up on this one several times… And yet, I ended up looking at walkthroughs only thrice. The ending also leaves us with more disturbing implications than I would have liked… And yet, I’m glad I stuck with it.

OTHER

I really wanted to beat Raji: An Ancient Epic (2020) before the end of the month so I could review it here, but then I ran into a game-breaking bug whose every solution I could find wouldn’t work for me, so I’ll have to play through the whole game again... But, I was really liking it, so I want to mention it anyways.

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