right! so, we’ve been rewatching star trek: the next generation because one of my nesting partners has seen barely any of it, and despite having seen every episode multiple times both myself and my other nesting partner are more than happy to fix that.
we actually made it all the way through the first two seasons before i realized, “hey wait a second! this can probably be #content!” partially because i didn’t really have a catchall blog when we started.
this one grew on me the longer i read it as the case became more & more complicated. it was an uphill battle, but it got there. i know getting into mystery novels is going to involve putting up with some pretty juvenile notions of what justice is, which is why murder on the orient express was such a pleasant surprise for its comparative lack of those. death on the nile was, regrettably, not nearly so obliging.
alright. knives out surpassed speed racer as my favorite movie of all time a while back, so it’s past time i wrote a long, serious review of it. spoilers throughout.
setting the stage
“but let me assure you this, my presence will be ornamental. you will find me a respectful, quiet, passive observer of the truth.”
the first time i saw this was not under the most ideal of circumstances. it was honestly one of the most stressful and traumatic days i’ve ever had.
my finacx and i were both coming down from adrenaline and needed something to do to take our minds off of it. ve was actually the one who suggested a movie, but i readily agreed. when my parents were getting blackout drunk on weekends, going to the movie theater was what i did as a combination of a reason to get out of the house and a way to take my mind off of things. that’s how i first saw speed racer, actually. so it was a pretty familiar way to self-soothe.
again, it was actually my fiancx who suggested knives out. i had never heard of it, but as a the last jedi stan i was well up for a rian johnson-directed mystery movie.
i had no idea what i was in for.
i’ll actually go even further than that. moonfall is the best roland emmerich movie since independence day and it isn’t particularly close. i was severely tempted to say it’s better than independence day but i think that’s a pretty clear case of recency bias.
for real, though. what did we like so much about independence day? if we had to sum it up briefly it would probably be something along the lines of likable characters in a visually impressive movie that put earnest effort into bringing an inherently silly, easily digestible concept to life. and what did independence day: resurgence give us? unlikable characters in a visually dull movie that put no effort into bringing a stale concept to life. i’ll give you three guesses which of these two descriptions can be ctrl+c/ctrl+ved over to moonfall.
even though half of them were literally characters in the first independence day, i can tell you next to nothing about the major characters in independence day: resurgence except for dr. brent spiner. and i don’t WANT to tell you about his story because i’m still livid that that soulless movie took the only genuinely good thing about itself and carelessly flushed it down the toilet.
moonfall’s characters are as two-dimensional as independence day’s, but importantly not as one-dimensional as independence day: resurgence’s. i remember literally all of them. i know who and what they care about. i know how they relate to each other. all of their actions feel real and motivated. independence day: resurgence just moves people around for the next plot point and people’s motivations are, idk man, they read the script i guess.
but where independence day: resurgence really spectacularly failed, and moonfall succeeds, is in the obvious effort that went into the film’s visuals. i’ve compared independence day: resurgence to a set of video game cutscenes or the pilot for a television show not just because of its lazy plotting and lack of dramatic vitality, but because its visuals are just stunningly mediocre at their best and astonishingly awful at their worst. for long stretches of the movie you just CAN’T SEE ANYTHING, and it feels like this was done on purpose to hide the lack of effort that would otherwise be on display.
moonfall does what a disaster movie, or any popcorn movie whose central draw is visually stunning special effects shots, should do. it makes sure you can see EVERYTHING. it doesn’t make you feel cheated. and it rewards you with stunning shots of the moon just absolutely tearing apart the earth as it makes its terrifying descent. i gasped out loud at a few of the scenes in this movie. (i also saw it in d-box, which i highly recommend because a well-made disaster movie is basically a theme park ride with added pathos.)
on top of all the little details that make this a spiritual successor to independence day, there’s one obvious, big picture one overriding everything else. this is maybe the most 90s blockbuster-like movie i’ve ever seen despite the fact that we are currently living through a boom period for 90s nostalgia. and i would frankly be 1000% onboard with this becoming a more common experience. though my real fervent desire is a revival of the 00s blockbuster scene, the 90s will do just fine too. just PLEASE save me from the mcu-addled shared universe purgatory the 2010s blockbuster scene devolved into. PLEASE. i am literally begging you.
this movie met or exceeded all of my realistic expectations, and even some of my unrealistic ones. there were only two unrealistic ones it didn’t meet. the first was having adele belt out, “let the moon fall, let it crumble! and we will stand tall! together!” which, like. there are probably legal reasons to not do that, plus the fact that a normal person wouldn’t have thought of it. then again this movie has a bizarre dialogue callback to the lost world: jurassic park for no apparent reason, so who knows?
the day after tomorrow
i think the only genuinely likable characters are the homeless guy, the nerdy black kid, and the rich white twink you’re supposed to immediately dislike because he’s positioned as a romantic rival to jake gyllenhaal but he literally never makes a move on the girl and even encourages jake to tell her how he feels.
any one of them would’ve been a better protagonist than jake and his dad dennis quaid. well, except for the rich twink. i think he’s actually perfectly utilized as affable, completely inconsequential eyecandy.
worth revisiting for the orgy of so-so cgi weather disasters, but aside from the aforementioned (all of whom are side characters) there isn’t a single character in this who doesn’t drastically overstay their welcome.
this would be a lot more of a chore to watch if it took itself more seriously, but luckily it knows what it’s about so it’s just fine. not emmerich’s best effort or one of my favorite disaster movies or anything. just fine. c-rank
2012
wow yeah, that wasn’t as bad as i remembered it being!
it was drastically worse.
murder on the orient express by agatha christie (novel 1934)
right, so, this was somehow only the second agatha christie book i’ve read? i’ve since read death on the nile, but yeah.
my first was murder in mesopotamia, which i read in grade school and loved and always intended to read more of her but just never really got around to it? i also skimmed and then there were none and the murder of roger aykroyd when i was supposed to read them in junior high and college respectively.
pretty much every time i’m compelled to read a mystery book or watch a mystery movie, i’m reminded that, dang! i actually really like mystery stories, and should probably deliberately seek them out more often. and then i proceed to literally never do that because i’m very smart like that.
the asterisk in the title is because i am a fake gamer enbyboy, so i didn’t actually play it. i watched one of my partners play it on discord.
the thing that appeals to me about most video games isn’t gameplay & optimizing all your stats and whatever, it’s story. i will always, always, always opt for whatever the easiest mode is, etc, so as to experience the story as painlessly as possible. by and large, that’s what draws me to video games, with the exception of some where the gameplay is so familiar it’s almost soothing (sonic, pokemon, dr. mario).
but i digress! get in the car, loser! is the latest game by indie game developer christine love. i’m a massive fan of her visual novel ladykiller in a bind, which is hella gay and one of the two primary romance plots is probably the most thorough and accurate meditation on the psychology of dom/sub relationships that i’ve ever seen in fiction. also it’s super hot and super emotionally satisfying, so uh yeah. it’s kind of one of my favorite games of all time.
get in the car, loser! is a much different game. for one thing the gameplay is clearly more complicated than “click on the dialogue option you want,” and there are no branching story paths. but it’s also telling a completely different kind of story. sadly, this one doesn’t feature extended explicit depictions of intense, loving bdsm scenes. but it does feature a ragtag group of queer girls (and one enby) on a quest to literally save the world, so that works too i guess.
the de facto protagonist of the game is sam, a black trans girl who is a formidable magic user and the party’s healer. she’s dragged into the adventure by grace, the gorgeous cis girl she’s crushing on who bullied her constantly. as one of the party’s two dps members grace wields the sword of fate and enough bravado to more than make up for sam’s meekness. then there’s angela, in the words of the game “an actual literal angel” who is the party’s other dps.
which, uh, just leaves the party’s tank. valentin. the blue-haired musclebound enby himbo who i totally don’t have a massive, embarrassing crush on ha ha haaaaa…. shut up. you’ll have a crush on them too when you play this game, trust me.
what it does have in common with ladykiller is that its writing is phenomenal. the protagonists are lovable, their group dynamic is so positive they like… bully each other? supportively? like, one character says something negative about themself, and another character immediately says “i will literally fight you!” everyone is so full of fighting spirit and so heroic in their own ways. this is the queer superhero adventure i’ve been waiting for.
despite its defiantly positive tone, it also isn’t afraid to go to some pretty dark places. the villains you’re fighting are just… well, they’re just nazis, guys. the metaphor is not subtle.
and they come at you with snot-nosed bullshit like “freedom of speech lol” and “why are you afraid of civilized debate” and just… they’re just the fucking worst? and there’s plenty of dialogue from them that is genuinely reprehensible, but this is like… a masterclass in how to depict these manbabies?
there’s no mistaking that they are just total garbage, they’re not glorified in any way–they’re shown to be the massive fucking weenies they are in real life–but the story doesn’t shy away from the fact that they can do very real harm.
the last act of the game includes an extremely thorough and explicit discussion of how to combat these fascist scumbags, and the conclusion everyone comes to is essentially “do whatever is effective in stopping them from hurting people while not falling into the trap of glorifying or enjoying violence.” it SUCKS that we have to fight these wastes of space, but not fighting them would suck a hell of a lot more, so there you go.
nor is all the serious stuff devoted to external conflict. you know what else sucks? depression. and there’s an entire act devoted to the trans girl main character having a depressive spiral and just extremely explicitly confronting all her insecurities and her insecurities about her insecurities because yeah we fucking have those.
but as important as all the serious stuff is, the real draw for me is still the incredibly wholesome party dynamic where everyone is flirting with each other and aggressively complimenting each other and just… being so authentically queer and amazing. it really felt like exactly the kinds of queer friend groups that actually form in real life, and you just… fucking NEVER get to see those in fiction.
i kind of selfishly hope christine love gets back into visual novels at some point (especially if they’re anything like ladykiller, heck!), but the fact that she considers herself a writer first and a game developer second is very apparent here, and honestly as long as she doesn’t skimp on the amazing writing i’ll look forward to whatever she does next.