Recent content by Bartholen

Went and saw Obsession for a second time. It's much funnier when you know where it's going, and there's lots of small details to appreciate. Inde Navarrette is a goddamn superstar. I guess my main puzzlement with this movie is how many people think that Nikki has genuine feelings for Bear. I...

After finishing The Boys I turned my eyes to other things and subscribed to HBO. I checked out the first two episodes of Smiling Friends first of all. I'm pretty sure most people here are familiar with it. I'd seen clips and compilations of it online, and they were pretty representative of the...

After the murderous disappointment of The Boys finale I decided to go and rewatch the first episode for a bit. And holy fuck, the difference is just staggering. There's more budget in the first episode than probably the entirety of S5. It's not just that there's more effects-heavy scenes: every...

I was so checked out during the finale that I didn't even stop to think of this. Why would The Boys suddenly be okay with her, but especially why Butcher? If anything, she should have gotten the cruelest kill in the series, seeing as she's no longer superpowered and is effectively just another...

This is yet another area where the clear lack of budget ends up hurting the show. For example, could you imagine a scene where Homelander in a fit of insecure panic sets up an exclusive show for his most diehard fans where he butchers Starlighters to show his powers and stroke his ego? I think...

If you don't mind being spoiled about the comic, there's a tragic irony to the show now:

The Boys finale, 5/10 A sucky-ass, drag-ass season ends with a mediocre finale. Not nearly as terrible as I'd expected, and about as good as I'd hoped. And so it ends, not with a bang, not with a whimper, more of a tacit "Well, that's a wrap. Everyone go home". The series ended up being two...

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, 5/10 Watched this to see if the two later movies of the trilogy worked better as one giant film and no, they don't. This is even more of a mess than Chest: there's even more characters, backstabbing, switching allegiances, deals and motivations this...

The Boys S5E7 Jesus christ what a snooze. I legit don't know how the finale could salvage this overdose of sleeping pills. This season officially sucks. One episode left of the whole series, yet everything's hanging in the air as if we were only halfway through. Boy, I sure am glad we had time...

Hurry up Tomorrow, 2/10 Had another one of my bad movie nights, and this was the first one we watched. It's a companion piece film to The Weeknd's album of the same name, and it's (nominally) about a fictionalized version of The Weeknd - played by The Weeknd himself no less - struggling with...

So something got fucky with my PS5, and it decided to reverse-delete my Lies of P saves, ie. restore the ones I thought it deleted, but in return deleting the save I'd most recently started. Oh well. I was playing it to go through the DLC again anyway, which I was about halfway through on a NG...

I decided to rewatch Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest after not having watched it possibly since the 00s, so I watched about half of it. This one I had much less recollection of than the first: I remember action setpieces and Davy Jones, but the mechanics and details of the plot eluded...

Mostly stylistically, because gameplay wise Lies of P is kind of an amalgam of all the Souls games, but perhaps most closely to Sekiro: the emphasis on parrying and filling a stagger bar are core to the experience, and dodging is nowhere nearly as viable as a tactic as in Bloodborne. Unlike...

I started up Lies of P again. I think Shadow of the Erdtree may have permanently damaged my relationship with soulslikes. I just cannot bring myself to think of playing Elden Ring again: my foremost thoughts of revisiting are all negative. The hours-long startup process of gathering the golden...

A.I. - Artificial Intelligence, 4/10 Boy, what a stupid-ass movie. This is the notorious collaboration turned posthumous hybrid between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg about a boy robot in the not-so-distant future who wants to become a real boy. It's perhaps best remembered for basically...