Civilized is a first for me as a reviewer: it’s an improvisational podcast. Meaning the actors are just playing off each other. And as such, I can’t really judge it on its plot progression. Narrative, themes, writing quality: all out the window. There really isn’t even a storyline to speak of yet, just a premise.
Today, a very different story than we’ve had in a while. There are no monsters, no horrible revelations. And certainly nothing creeping out of the night. This is a story of two people on a date, one leading the other.
Nimona hit the media landscape with such explosive power that avoiding spoilers was difficult. A stylized, bombastic, irreverent sci-fi fantasy mashup with an animation style reminiscent of Spider-Verse and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has become a winning combination, practically guaranteed to get the attention of the critic community, and I’m no different. The question of Nimona was when I would review it, not if I would.
Have you ever had a coworker steal your lunch? Ever found that the meal you brought from home was no longer where you meant it to be? What if, in this hypothetical scenario, you also could make almost any piece of technology you wanted and had basically infinite resources?
If you could wish for anything, dear reader, what would it be? And, more importantly, how would you phrase that wish to avoid it backfiring?
It’s a long-ago established idea in science fiction that we might live in some computer program. And thinking about it can lead down so many roads of thought. What does that mean about our lives, about our personalities? Who are we outside the simulation?
In human history, the things people regularly drink have profoundly affected the course of civilization.
To call Circle an intense film is to undersell it. Utilizing almost only a single location, this death game story touches upon politics, human nature, mercy, and bigotry. It uses a very simple premise and plays it straight and is one of the best-paced films I’ve seen in a long time.
You may have read this introduction before. I cannot speak for certain. Time can be strange like that. Sometimes it doesn’t move the way you would expect it to move.
Traveling across space is always dangerous. Space is an extremely hostile environment, and that’s before you account for how technology can fail in it.
The most impressive thing about Solitary is how few resources were used to make it. It’s microbudget, finished remotely due to the pandemic, and still a good film.
It was an accident that I found out about the Forward collection on Amazon Prime—but I’m so happy I did. Turns out, if you have Prime, it’s free, and each short story is interesting in its own way. There’s six in all, so I thought I’d cover my thoughts on each of these tales.
