Messages

46

Off Topic / Re: What TV/Netflix show are you currently watching? (Megathread)

« on: March 21, 2025, 07:32:40 pm »

Adolescence - It's a technical masterwork, but the first two episodes are written so hackneyed and generic that I was tempted to drop the whole thing.  Maybe it's just me being a jaded American, and knowing how poor our corrections system is, but I just didn't buy it.

Everything turns around with episode 3.  Smaller and more intimate, the dialogue takes a sharp turn from on the nose and boring to sharp and insightful.  I guess they just didn't have a handle on a procedural?  Amazing performance from Owen Cooper, followed up by a terrific Stephen Graham in episode 4.

Finished the second season of Severance. Still a great show, maybe the best on TV, but it's a step down narratively from the first season.  The mysteries just aren't quite as compelling now that everything is generally in place for all the characters.

47

General / Re: Good Retro Gaming Youtube Channels

« on: March 18, 2025, 11:49:25 am »

I Finished A Video Game- Has very long in depth retrospectives covering the history and quality of game franchises like Castlevania and Parasite Eve.

Big fan of this channel.  I've watched his 6 hour retrospectives on both Metroid and Castlevania.  Love a good (ver) deep dive.

48

General / MOVED: How to deal with rude drivers cutting me off?

« on: March 18, 2025, 09:15:59 am »

This topic has been moved to Off Topic.

https://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php?topic=13029.0

49

Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: March 16, 2025, 07:23:37 pm »

Duck Soup - Probably the best and most well-known Marx Bros movie, with good reason.  Groucho and Harpo in the mirror is just top tier cinema.

Plane - Solid, but not incredible by any means.  50 minutes before the first punch is thrown, which would have been fine if it took place right at the end of the first act, which was surprisingly the best part of the movie.  Never boring, but it comes real close a couple of times.

Anora - i really loved this, but i had one major issue.  The first act goes on too long. I don't care about all the sex, but you learn everything you need about Ani and Ivan after about 15 minutes.  It's all beautiful shot, acted, and edited, but it is pretty redundant pretty quickly.  Once the flunkies are introduced we are off to the races, though.

50

Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: March 15, 2025, 11:38:21 am »

Murphy's Romance - This was so charming!  Sally was cute as a button, and Garner was suave as hell. It was never gonna set the world on fire, but it's fun to watch.

The Emperor's New Groove - Probably Disney's best attempt at just a straight-up comedy.  Eartha Kitt gives an out of this world performance and Kronk is the world's most perfect himbo. Unfortunately, I don't think how heavy they Pacha / village storyline is meshes with the Looney Tunes-esque rest of the film.  It also does not help that David Spade is so good at being an ass I can't buy into the self-reflection or redemption too much.

The Castaway Cowboy - White savior garbage, that I'm pretty sure is at least some degree of racist.  James Garner mostly innocent, though.

51

Off Topic / Re: What TV/Netflix show are you currently watching? (Megathread)

« on: March 14, 2025, 06:37:52 pm »

Finished the second season of my rewatch of The X-Files.  Some of the best TV ever.

Having just finished the third season of Invincible I think it is currently my favorite running comic book adaptation.  It manages to hit almost all of the crazy tropes you'd expect from several different levels of scale (street, world, galactic, magic) while being both legitimately funny and suitable dramatic.  Good stuff.

52

Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: March 12, 2025, 12:21:25 pm »

The Little Mermaid - Song for song the strongest soundtrack in the whole Disney canon, with Part of this World and Under the Sea being favorites for the best individual song.  Also just staggeringly gorgeous, again arguably the best looking film in the company's history.  Beautiful colors and silky smooth animation.  The only, sadly notable, flaw is how little agency Ariel has in the finale.  But the rest is just so perfectly executed.

Kill - This is really good, and I appreciate the use of a unique confined space, but it feels cheaper than it should based on the rest of the production value because of all the bad CGI blood.  I'm sure that the promised violence would have felt appropriately overwhelming if there was way more practical work. Doesn't really earn any of the pathos it tries to wring out of the final confrontation, either.

53

Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: March 08, 2025, 04:54:34 pm »

Lady Snowblood - I thought I'd seen this before, but guess I was wrong. Just absolutely slick as hell, and easy to see why QT was so enamored with it.

Crimson Tide - Not sure how this one slipped past me for so long.  Denzel and Hackman are just electrifying, and Tony Scott, as he is wont to do, directs the shit out of it.

Mickey 17 - A lot of really fun stuff in this, but I feel like they never spent quite enough time on most of them.  Ruffalo is a riot and Pattinson is game for everything they're having him do. Third act gets a little messy and drawn out, but never outstays its welcome.revenge.

Promising Young Woman - It treads water quite a bit in the first half, but the last act really landed for me.

54

Off Topic / Re: What TV/Netflix show are you currently watching? (Megathread)

« on: March 03, 2025, 07:01:08 pm »

Second season of Chucky is pretty hit or miss.  Other than the first episode it spins its wheels for way too long before really kicking into high gear.  Once it does kick in I really liked it.  We get to see more of what Tiffany has done to Jennifer Tilly's life in the best episode of the season, and it redeems the entirety of the Glen and Glenda story.

Scavengers Reign - Just absolutely oozing with creativity.  Part Over the Garden Wall and part Heavy Metal with a dash of hard sci-fi like The Expanse. I don't feel like it really nails the ending, mostly because we stop encountering new biomes as the storylines start converging in the same place.  I could have just watched this show come up with weird fucked up little guys for several more episodes.

55

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: March 03, 2025, 10:52:15 am »

Cat Quest is the most rudimentary RPG I have played in a while.  The graphics are nice, and it is an overload of cutsieness, but the gameply loop was fun enough to spend a couple of hours running around and grinding out kill quests and reading cat puns.  Don't think it could have held out for much longer, though.  Ends at just the right time.

56

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: February 25, 2025, 06:05:58 pm »

Superhot didn't take long to beat at all.  I really wish there was more of it.  It's a hyperstylized FPS where nothing moves unless you do, so it's really more of a puzzle game.  I had a lot if fun figuring out the levels.  I could have easily played a couple of more hours.

57

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: February 24, 2025, 03:57:47 pm »

SKALD: Against the Black Priory is an old school RPG in the vein of the old Apple II or Commodore 64 titles.  It's not as ridiculously difficult as those, as doesn't have nearly as many "gotcha" traps in the dungeons.  It was made by an incredibly small team (it might have just been one person) and is an obvious labor of love. While appreciate a general lack of instakill traps and the like, I do think there could have been a little more variation on the encounter types and dungeoneering.  Overall I really liked, but didn't quite love, it.

58

Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: February 22, 2025, 04:11:42 pm »

The Quick and the Dead - Nobody has ever made movies like Sam Raimi.  I've always liked this, and it was interesting to watch now that I'm more familiar with Westerns and their tropes. It just feels a tad disjointed plotwise, with stuff like blind kid feeling like remnants of a cut storyline. Hackman delivering, as always.

Bridget Jones's Diary - Genuinely don't understand what Bridget was supposed to have seen in Mark. More surreal and whimsical than I expected. Not really my bag, in general, but I don't regret watching it at all.

The Monkey - Totally unhinged in the best possible ways.  Liked this so much more than Perkins' Longlegs.

Malone - I liked this quite a bit.  It's a solid cast all around, Burt isn't quite phoning it in.  It's a decent mash-up of The Beekeeper and Road House, but without any of the silliness.

The French Connection - Masterfully edited and perfectly paced.  It's a classic sports car of a film.  It has a look you love, and, when running, it just purrs. Subtlety?  Nuance? What're those?

Postcards from the Edge - Great performances from a deep bench cast, but it just feels so... slight? Like the mother / daughter stuff is great, but it kind of glosses over the actual addictions and just uses them as ammunition in the family fights.

Married to the Mob - Pretty much everything in the criminal focused storyline is completely fantastic, but the screwball federal agent story only works about 50% of the time.  Terrific cast across the board, with Modine being the weakest link, but I think that might just be related to how the character is written.

A Man Called Sledge - The first 10 minutes or so are so poorly shot and edited I'm surprised that the rest of the film is even watchable, let alone actually pretty good.

59

General / Re: New Gaming Genre for Metroidvanias?

« on: February 20, 2025, 09:23:00 am »

Figured like this was a good place to roll around with this list that I've been thinking about: All Metroidvanias I've played, ranked:

I came across the trailer for Laika: Through the Blood the other day and have been meaning to ask what someone like you who's a fan of these types of games thinks about it. I generally don't play these kinds of games, but it seems somewhat unique from an outsider's perspective. I also just realized after skimming through its Steam store page description that it's being teased as the first "Motorvania."

I've heard of it, but I'm personally not a big fan of the overly gimmicky stuff (that's why Roku is so low on my list).  If it is something that interests you, though, you should check it out.  The people that have played it do seem to like it.  If I get it as part of a Humble Bundle or something I'm sure I'd check it out eventually.

60

Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: February 14, 2025, 07:56:27 pm »

The Invisible Man (1933) - Wildly impressive and totally chaotic for a 1930s production. Not especially scary but an effective thrill ride.  Lots of maniacal laughing.

Of the few classic horror films I've watched, The Invisible Man was far better than I was expecting it to be. Claude Rains plays the titular protagonist in such an unhinged manner, and those practical effects are commendable.

He's so much more of a bombastic personality than all those other Universal Monsters.  It was great.

The Gorge - My kind of ridiculous, high-concept, sci-fi claptrap. Derrickson does a lot of interesting stuff with tone here, practically flailing through different genres, and makes it look easy. A good 50% of the script is cliché platitudes from those genres though. So much that neither of the talented leads can make it sound convincing.

Flow - Like watching someone play a walking simulator.

Lake Michigan Monster - Not quite as good as Hundreds of Beavers, but these guys are hugely talented filmmakers.  Pretty sure they're going on my "I'll watch anything the make" list.

Paddington in Peru - Pretty handily the weakest of these films, but when they are all still this good can you really complain? I still had a big smile on my face the whole time.

Fancy Dance - The road to hell is paved by the concern of a well-intentioned but ignorant white lady.