I was going in as “let’s give it a shot” and come out “omg yes”. The style, music, cinematography, vibes, and Jordan’s acting were all on top. The story was not that strong though, but how it was done won me over still.
Sinners (2025)
Dredd (2012)
This was a huge surprise. I had it on my watchlist for a long time as a catch-up thing, like something I knew I should not miss, but had no actual expectations. I assumed it to be on the level of the Robocop remake (not great).
Now that I finally watched it, I’m blown away. Great directing, interesting visual style, actually good actors doing actually good acting, good music, absolutely no “but why did they do that” moments, and an absolutely top-notch cyberpunk depiction.
It felt like a DLC for the Cyberpunk 2077 game when you’re playing a cop and see the megacity and the run-down future from their point of view. I can actually see how this movie made it to the inspiration list of the game’s artists. (Okay, now I googled this, and yeah, it’s obviously there.)
Mad Max (2015)
From a rusty dirt box to a golden muscle car in 46 hours.
First I didn’t like how the game forced me to do looting and progress painfully slow to be able to get to the story progression, but soon enough I got hooked and unlocked some of the idle loot generation methods so the engine started working and it was more about exploration, easy but fun fighting, and earning progress at a nice enough pace. At the end, I could help but max it out completionist style. My favorite bit was the beautifully done post-apocalpytic style: this game has almost ten years on it at the time of me playing it, but I had zero complaints about visuals, it looked fantastic to me.
Overall, it was definitely a memorable experience, and a true Sisyphusian Mad Max storyline.
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
It was interesting how old school, physical-looking, slow-moving kaiju met top-notch, realistic, modern visual effects. Also, great angle to look at the post-war Japan’s life as drama weaved into a monster movie.
Alien: Romulus (2024)
There are pros and cons, but it’s easily the best Alien movie in a decade. In my ranking Alien and Aliens are on the high pedestal of 10/10, and then Alien 3 and Resurrection are both 6/10 movies. Romulus fits somewhere on the benchmark of the latter two, perhaps a half mark upwards, and definitely way ahead of any of the prequels or Predator crossovers.
What’s going for it:
- I really appreciated ground time, showcasing what a mining colony looks like, streets, a slice of society, struggles outside of the scope of a single mission.
- We got glimpse of a new part of alien life: we’ve never before seen them between bursting out as an alien baby and reappearing as a big black monster, and now we saw that there’s an in-between cocoon phase.
- The whole movie was beautifully shot: colors, atmosphere, consistency of the retro-futuristic setting. As for props, the scenes were built amazingly well, and the aliens looked bad-ass.
- Acting was fairly good, and the writing had no painful “why would you do that?!” moments.
What felt hmm:
- The whole cast felt very young, had a bit of a Children of the Corn vibe to it. Although I could think that miners die young, working class has children early, so this is just what this society’s reality looks like.
- Sometimes I felt that the retro-futuristic technology to be kinda gimmicky. Like I’d see today’s youngsters playing with old props, well, which is the case. Maybe it’s just a hiccup of my suspension of disbelief.
- The alien-human hybrid was creepy but rather in an odd-weirdo than a frightening way. I liked the Newborn version better in Resurrection.
- CGI recreation of Ian Holm looked underproduced.
- There were a lot of plot vehicles that felt exactly like plot vehicles and not embedded well enough so that I don’t see behind the scenes. For example, “you have 36 hours to pull it off”, so there’s a time pressure; “now you have rather 20 minutes”, so the time pressure is elevated; “there’s no air in there”, so you have some limiting factor to overcome; “the gravity switches on and off every X minutes”, so we can use this later as a physical stunt; etc. I know elements like this are part of a story as it is, but still, I can hear the conversation in the brainstorming session how these ideas came about and what plot needs they answered. It’s just too on the nose, like an exercise at a creative writing class.
Mark of the Ninja
This game had very nice artwork with great atmospheric music and just enough action-puzzle platformer gameplay. I wouldn’t go for all the extra material and achievement hunting but the 10 hours was well worth the playthrough. One thing bonus was the ending: I totally didn’t see this beautiful piece of art coming at the conclusion of the story. That I would replay a few times just to look at it.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Stunning in terms of visuals and theme. A few things that I feel worthy to highlight:
- The character, set and costume designs are remarkable.
- The world behind the movie is something that I am totally blown away by. I want to know so much more than I had the chance to catch in the flick.
- Charlize Theron, obviously. Note: if you like to see her act grim and dark don’t miss out on Snow White and the Huntsman, which may be a much better movie than you might expect.
- The voices are acted and added in a sterile and distanced manner, which produces an absolutely unique atmosphere. Like the conversations were not happening in place but layered over the story like some kind of narration.
- The music was great, but in a few occasions the pathos was over the top and out of context. Still it’s something great to listen to even on its own right.
- And the guy with the guitar! OMG. Every single appearance made me grin like an idiot.
I gathered quite a few poster art (official and fan-made) below.
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