Legendsofanus

My second sci-fi and overall film of 2025 and a lot better than the poorly aged Things to Come (1936).

Metropolis tells the myth of the Tower of Babel and uses it to paint a ruling class and working class struggle that comes together as effective and believable. Though I didn't enjoy some of the drawn out scenes, especially towards the end, they felt very repetitive but most of the time it is intense and gripping and I was really hooked by it's story and analogy.

What really surprised me was how beautiful it still looks, the upper futuristic city with it's bi-planes flying by and the giant posters to the offices of workers with their elaborate mechanisms that they work with, everything looks great.

A work of this caliber by Germany reminds me of their rather modern sci-fi series Dark. Both never forget the human drama within their stories no matter how crazy the non-human elements get.

I watched the version available on Tubi and while it looked pretty great and the image quality was most of the time clear, i have to say that their is a jazz score all over the movie to account for the "silent" film. It may be distracting to you or it may not.

7.6/10 Definitely worth watch and a pioneering sci-fi film, it's so old that the movie uses the word "Machine-Man" instead of robot!

One of the most tender, beautiful and real movies I have ever seen. It's one of those movies that leaves you with a pang of nostalgia even though you have never been with these characters in Mexico in your whole life.

It's an exploration of Mexican culture, life and politics in it's Goddard-esque direction of two best friends who go on a road-trip with an older woman to a imaginary beach.

Reminded me so much of Masculin Feminine and like that movie first it puts bare the thoughts, urges, life moving by itself of people in Mexico city by showcasing teenagers moving in a panorama of love, drama and friendship against the backdrop of political unrest, the tangible diffusion and overtaking of capitalism, of nature and beauty and how precious life is.

I have always thought that graphics don't do as much at making a game beautiful as it's art style. The visual medium that video games employ allow them to show us anything literally so why stick with a realistic render of everyday people when it's so easily forgettable?

Games that have a more realized, distinctive look to them always have more staying power in our hearts, particularly older games.

The game Gris is one such example, it rendered me speechless when I started playing it, made me laugh with amazement at how it's world moved, looked and breathe as though something like a different reality.

There is so much construction in Gris, so many meticulous careful design choices that it's amazing it even plays as smoothly as it does. This is a video game about the exploration of grief, every level and scenario and cutscene is speaking in a intriguing metaphor of death, life and utterness of destruction and loss.

However, Gris never forgets it's video game roots and this is what impresses me the most about it. From the first button you press to the last walk-off moment, every level and puzzle is designed with an expert knowledge of how metroidvania games execute exploration. What I mean by that is that the developers very clearly have thought of how the camera angle affects what path we take, the sound cues to inform you of an action without telling you outright, the visual cues and then the level design itself that is so nonlinear in it layout but still ends up to the exact point from where you continue forward. It never feels like you're going along a straight line, it feels like you're discovering your own path forward, as if the game world is opening itself up to you and maintaining that illusion showcases the thought and effort put into each of Gris's amazing looking levels.

I don't want to talk about the story a whole lot because of how abstract it is, there are no dialogues, not even screen texts beyond explaining the button prompts and new powers. There is a lot to think about and a lot of visuals and music that you experience as you play through it that talking about it feels like diminishing the effects of it.

What I can talk about is that, it is short and of course I really liked the gameplay specially the later stages because of the amount of control you get as you unlock more powers in the game. The puzzles become really alive and though they are never difficult to figure out they still have that satisfying "a-ha!" feeling to them when you figure out what to do. Exploration is always rewarded with collectables and there is an in-game achievements section as well to encourage replayability and a chapter select after the game ends.

Overall, 8.5/10 Gris is a short but memorable experience about death, loss and ultimately acceptance and while it never gets to be dark and harrowing in terms of visuals, it still makes you feel plenty of sadness. Highly highly recommended and it's on Game Pass.

Historical drama movies have been around as long as movies have and they have always offered to its audience, in a varying degree, a real event that happened on this earth. They have tried to tell those real significant stories, emotions and events as accurately as they can in a film medium.

That means a lot of things, that means negotiating a tight runtime, that means dramatization and that means telling a good story while staying true to the real story. That's a lot of work and juggling for one movie.

Selma is an interesting case in that, it is a movie about Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful march from Selma, Alabama to the state capital and it occurs after a lot of the work had been done by Dr. King. It is hard to tell a good story when most of the story is already done, but to deal with it is a necessity, it's one of the most important marches and it makes for an inspiring, sometimes startling but strong film.

Thankfully, Selma passes most of these obstacles with near grace. The movie does this by building up to the actual march basically it's entire runtime. It essentially sums the story and struggle of the actions and events that happened before the march and by the time Dr. King's last speech starts, you're completely sold on the film. You're emotionally invested and you want to see these people get their vote and that's what makes it an inspiring powerful movie.

Certain things did distract me, I did say it passed with near grace. For one, director Ava DuVernay's decision to tell a dramatic real story is helped by the film's editing which doesn't let any scene linger too much and pauses and breathes when it needs but on the other hand, her decisions to shoot violent scenes like a Zack Snyder action film doesn't sit well with me. I was still invested but I feel they didn't still as hard to me as it did to it's characters mostly because I was distracted as fuck by too many cuts, jumps and songs being shoved in on top of slow-motion scenes.

That's about all for my complaints. I loved the acting, you really see Martin Luther King Jr. in David Oyelowo's performance and the way he enacts King's speech. I mean to be honest I have never seen the actual man or his speeches but I was sold that this guy, this actor is him. Everyone else either shines or gets glossed over, a natural thing to happen with too big a cast like this. I wish we got more screentime for King's colleagues but it is what it is. The music despite my previous complains, is brilliant for the most part. The inclusion of country folk songs as a whole is a plus for me, it sounds different and it gave a county vibe to the film.

Production design, from costumes to cars to interiors, everything is solid. I liked how they used archival footage and sounds, that really made it feel more tangible.

8.1/10 A beautifully directed, inspiring and well-paced historical drama movie about a protest led by Dr. King. It's certainly worth watching despite it's very minor flaws holding it back from being perfect.

Just finished watching Charlotte's Web and I don't know how to feel about it. I had heard that it was a sorta darker film for children and I'm coming to it after having watched Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio last week, also never read the book.

Well, I don't know how to feel about it. At one side I am crushed by the ending and the fact that again, it's a children's musical film being honest to earth about realities of life and making peace with it. One of the most affecting scenes for me was when one of the goose mother's eggs doesn't hatch and she just gives him to the rat to eat or whatever, I have never seen that kind of accepting attitude to life and death in a movie. Both this and Pinocchio talk differently about death of course but Charlotte's Web has a more "cycle of life" and just a physical nature feel to it that seems to cement how inevitable death is.

The musical numbers I enjoyed as well, the best one for me in terms of nuance was how when they sing about what's similar in all the animals and the writer's basically explain convergent evolution so clearly that I found it really cool.

The animation looks old but I didn't mind it that much, it's been a long time since I have seen a Tom & Jerry cartoon so it was really nice to go back visually to those simpler times though the movie really doesn't look too bad, the animation is wonderfully detail to convey emotions and story through the detailed backgrounds even using some different techniques like in Templeton's gluttony music scene.

Now this is where the movie trips me and doesn't make sense. I don't like Wilbur much, his central story has a threat and problem but he doesn't solve it or even do anything other than moan and whine which makes him unlikable compared to Charlotte for me and because the main story belong's to him and not Charlotte, I feel like I can't recommend the movie to someone without being honest about it and saying that the main plot is good as an overarching plot with all characters involved and not as one story about a pig trying to avoid death. The movie is about the later plot and sells it but it's not a particularly well excecuted plot in itself.

That's why it hurts my brain, but I do like it.

The Ritual is a 2017 supernatural psychological folk horror about four friends who get lost in a forest in Sweden and well, start dying. It's a Netflix original

I would like to think of The Ritual as one of those intermediary horror films that don't do a lot of new things and therefore slip into the obscure but still are made very well, the production design in this film particularly comes first in the things it does good. The scenes where Luke our protagonist sees himself in a store aisle in the middle of the forest look as surreal as they should and that's all thanks to the film's commitment.

6.6/10 It's not a tightly paced movie nor does it have particularly ingenious kills for a horror movie but it makes up for it in it's atmosphere, intriguing lore and beautiful cinematography.

Wow, such a great game and such a different genre too. Essentially an interactive computer interface. I did not really expected to engage with it as much as I did because of how the narrative is about an impartial investigator destroying people's privacy and reading everything about their lives.

But Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You (2016) managed to surprise me, not only was it well written and beautifully playing with Orwellian themes, it also was an engaging gameplay experience. I completed the game in about 8h 25m so it is a short game but the control that I felt I had in my hands to make the story go where I wanted by deciding what piece of information I wanted to submit felt just the right amount of narrative tightness and player freedom.

I can already tell it has so many little variations in it's ending that you could come and play it again after you have moved on and get something completed differently. Also, it manages to talk about privacy and information and data that is perhaps even more relevant than it was back in 2016.

Very similar to Hypnospace Outlaw another game where you are an "online enforcer" but with of course very different themes, this one is a lot serious than Hypnospace Outlaw.

I do have some complaints about the game, the major being that the computer interface and it's very aspects didn't feel as interactive and engaging as to compliment an increasingly complex story. They sort of remain the same static mechanics (you click something, it does the same thing that has happened before regardless of it's thematic value) that they were introduced as. This removes a sense of compelling intrigue in the gameplay itself and really starts to wear down on you if you try to finish it in one sitting.

Overrall, a recommended 7.5/10

Do give this game a try if you're looking at your library for something different and as it requires a lot of reading, be a little patient with it in the beginning. This was given free on epic games before so I assume most gamers already have it

If the first Jurassic Park movie was about humans trying to contain nature and use it for their own gains, then The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a movie about humans DOMINATING nature through any means necessary and using it for their own gains. sigh

It's bigger, bloatier, noisier and more heavily packed with less intense action sequences featuring characters we have barely gotten to know about because the movie's writing can't seem to know what idea or issue to focus on at one moment, showing us glimpses of characters and objects that might prove to be important, dedicating whole shots to them to eventually led to a luke-warm, fizzling out (what better example than the damn opening scene! It almost made me yawn) -- but it also is about pretty much the same idea and thesis we have already done and covered in Jurassic Park. This is oddly referenced in the movie when one of the main character says to the villain, "Now you are [insert first movie's villain name]", like, really? The villain was pretty much a standard villain that you see in a thousand movies.

Even the music wasn't that inspiring, it had bit more action and bite to it but it wasn't memorial and I wouldn't be able to hum it if there was a gun to my head.

The character's are mighty, mighty stupid idiots. These people that are scientists, businessmen, safari rangers seem dumber than the usual horror movie protagonists.

That is not to say the movie is never sane and good. The technical aspects of it - Spielberg's direction included - are amazing. There's a motion and momentum to the action sequences and a feeling of weight to the dinosaurs that makes everything feel more authentic and realistic and it is a delight to watch. The dinosaurs look - exept for some of the dated special effects - really good too. T-Rex and the small compies and the velociraptors are all equally a delight to watch.

This would be such a better movie if only the action scenes were done in a way that was less dumb (though they are still thrilling if you can stop thinking logically about them and just feast your eyes and ears on them) and the plot was a lot more compelling and thoughtout than what we got.

The worst thing about The Lost World: Jurassic Park is that it feels like it starts with a limp and then just keeps limping in it's half-hidden subtleness and half-heavy action way and feels like it never truly opens. Even the first big scene which looked amazing (the InGen making landfall on the island and getting to work) just doesn't payoff, it fizzles out in it's conclusion.

My overral rating would be a generous 6/10.

P.S: Julianne Moore was more beautiful in this movie than any shot of nature or dinosaurs.