Pistol: Season 1 Review

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Pistol premieres Tuesday, May 31, 2022, with a full season drop on Hulu.

Ask anyone to pick a band that best exemplifies the punk era and most will say Sex Pistols, even if they’ve never actually listened to them. They formed in 1975 and only lasted two and half years before they flamed out in the wake of the heroin overdose of their bassist, Sid Vicious, and bad blood amongst the remaining members. In the years since, the legend of the toxic romance between Sid and Nancy Spungen has somewhat overtaken the output of the band itself. The new FX series, Pistol, is an origin story approach to telling their story, mostly from the perspective of guitarist Steve Jones (Toby Wallace), from the band’s initial days through to their 2002 reunion performance. The six-episode series certainly contextualizes the punk scene, and Sex Pistols’ place within that era, but it lacks depth when it comes to making any of the players resonate as real people. Aside from Jones’ backstory, no one else in the band gets much of a history and as such, the episodes play out more like a scripted docuseries that lovingly recreates their big milestones but feels undercooked in giving us insight into who they really were as actual people.

All six episodes of Pistol are written by Craig Pearce (Moulin Rouge, Elvis) and directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting), based on Jones’ autobiography, Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol. The limited series retains Jones as its central character, with the first episode, "Track 1: The Cloak of Invisibility," diving into his late teen miscreant years, where he stole David Bowie’s lipstick-stained mic, and the gear of other major acts of the day, when he crept into the empty London’s Hammerstein Odeon in the wee morning hours. Steve is the product of a terrible family situation, sexually abused and browbeat by his step-father; essentially, he’s the quintessential angry young man who steals, does drugs, and dreams of making it big with his band The Strand, which he then lamentably renamed ​​The Swankers.

It wasn’t until he tried to shoplift clothes for the band from Malcolm McLaren (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Vivienne Westwood’s (Talulah Riley) avant garde clothing store, Sex, that Jones’ life really changed. Impressed with his brash counterculture ideals and ambition for his band, the pair take Jones under their wing, seeing him as a potential agent of chaos Malcolm especially wants to thrust onto stuffy, conformist English society via angry music. Through them, Steve meets store clerks Chrissie Hynde (Sydney Chandler), who wants to start her own band, and Pamela Rooke, aka Jordan (Maisie Williams), a style icon of the punk era. And then Malcolm saves Steve from going to prison for theft, and in return he becomes Steve’s band manager. And much like today’s boy band impressarios, he reinvents every aspect of their lineup and image into what will become the Sex Pistols.

Initially, the series has a good energy to it, shot to look like it's all been captured on film with excellent period production details, from the Sex store to the makeup and costumes that are spot on for the times. Boyle even cuts in plenty of period stock footage so you get the aesthetics and historical context of the time, from how the Queen looks to The Beatles and even just the faces from London streets. It’s effectively immersive and fleshes out the restrictive socioeconomic issues that fomented the anger of the youth. Dubbed the forgotten generation, the punks were looking to push back against all norms and Malcolm’s vision was for the Sex Pistols to “f— the world” with their noise music and angry egos shoved together like kindling inside the band.

At one point, Westwood calls out all of the men in the band, but especially McLaren and Jones, as “lost little boys” who used it as an outlet to flail against those who belittle them or made them feel less than. And while that may be very true, Pistol falters in trying to get that psychology across with any subtlety or depth. For one, the dialogue is often very ham handed, along with the ways in which past traumas are presented. In the first two episodes, Jones’ anger about his low self-esteem, lack of focus, and issues with his step-father are framed mostly as gauzy, drug-induced memories that plague him while partying or trying to perform with the band. It’s like pop psychology distilled into visuals that really don’t feel organic to the time, or to how any of the men would actually be processing their lives without the benefit of therapy or the modern day understanding of trauma manifests. There’s an anachronistic vibe that permeates everything that doesn’t sit well because it plays like faux introspection. And that shows itself again jarringly in "Track 3: Bodies," which tries to backwards engineer the Johnny Lydon-penned song about a real woman he once met into a character that is literally woven into the fabric of the band across this episode.

On the other hand, the attempt at understanding what makes Jones tick doesn’t carry through consistently with the rest of the band. Lydon (Anson Boon) is basically plucked off the street, as is, and presented as such for the rest of the series. And then John Ritchie (Louis Partridge) is introduced as literally “the other John” who gets renamed as Sid Vicious and then succumbs to the pitfalls of fame with drugs, alcohol, and his passionate yet toxic affair with Nancy (Emma Appleton). It’s all very surface-level, with yelling at one another or whining about one another becoming the abiding modulation. It works if you just love to watch band squabbling, insults being bandied about, or simply observing their ascribed personalities acting out on stage. Outside of that, all of it gets tedious by the fourth episode as the story devolves more into the players just acting out their seminal performances, while sniping at one another behind the scenes.

Strangely, the finale episode is lacking in any earned emotions.

No one is very admirable, except for some support characters like McLaren, Hynde, and Westwood. Actress Sydney Chandler brings a lot of wit and determination to her characterization of Hynde. She’s got a burning purpose, even when the stakes are against her, and a warmth towards Steve and their shared passions that in turn makes him a little more likable. Riley’s Westwood is the parent in the room, a firebrand when it comes to self expression but very much backed by a fierce intellect. And Thomas Brodie-Sangster is a whirlwind of pretension and obnoxiousness, which is what makes Malcolm so fun to watch every time he’s on screen. In real life, you’d want to kill him, but in the series his position as the specter behind the punk puppets pulling all the strings is fascinating. He and Brodie-Sangster’s performance of him is one the most insightful takeaways in regards to the true history of the band.

Strangely, the finale episode is also lacking in any earned emotions. Maybe watching man-boys self-destruct for six hours without taking any joy in the music they're making, and definitely not in one another, is the only outcome you can expect. But it makes the dissolving of the band and even their reunion come across as rather perfunctory. There’s no roundup of where they went next, or the successes they had apart and then eventually together again with infrequent Sex Pistols reunions. Pistol just captures a moment in time when the band blared in excess to the disgusted and delighted ears around them, which is interesting to observe, but as a series makes for an unemotional watch.

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Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special Review

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Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special is now streaming on Netflix.

Part eulogy, part COVID-era video event, Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special is a gift left behind by the absurdist stand-up virtuoso — who died of cancer in September 2021 — followed by a half-hour discussion by a group of comedians who considered him a friend. It’s as wryly funny as any of Macdonald’s most memorable bits, only it arrives with an added melancholy: it was filmed in early 2020, right before the legendary comedian was set to undergo a complicated procedure. He would live for another year and a half, but he seems to have intended for the special to be released after his impending passing, so it feels distinctly like the work of a man reckoning with his mortality. Of course, given his stature as a beloved (and in his own way, mysterious) performer, that reckoning comes wrapped in a nesting doll of hilarious non-sequiturs.

What Nothing Special inadvertently captures — in a way traditionally shot and edited specials may not have been able to — is Macdonald’s carefully crafted deadpan chaos. Shot in a single take (household interruptions and all), it plays out in the form of a wildly unstructured rant about dealing with a changing world. Only in true Macdonald fashion, his off-the-cuff musings disguise a lively game of punchline hopscotch, with details and stealth jokes returning, often subtly, several dozen minutes after they’ve surely been forgotten.

Delivered mostly to a webcam, and cutting away to a second angle only on occasion, the special is almost akin to a podcast appearance over Zoom, in which Macdonald (his enormous headphones balancing neatly on his baseball cap) is allowed to run wild for almost an hour. In that sense, it feels intimate, like a video message left to you personally from beyond the grave, in which otherwise light rambles about death and childhood are imbued, retrospectively, with a sense of gravity, now that we know more about the health issues he was dealing with at the time.

Even his closest friends had no idea until after he died. Six of them (David Letterman, Dave Chappelle, Molly Shannon, Conan O’Brien, Adam Sandler, and David Spade) even say as much when the special ends, and they sit around on couches trading stories about him while discussing his unpredictable style. All the while, the hat he wore in the video sits quietly on a shelf just over Chappelle’s shoulder; that it goes unremarked upon is fitting, since the comedians reveal that Macdonald wasn’t one for overt sentiment.

The routine itself may not be sentimental, but without an audience’s laughter to accentuate his pauses, Macdonald’s intentional, uncompromising rhythm soon begins to feel introspective. Many of his initial jokes deal with changing terminologies and a widening consciousness around gender and sexuality, and while Macdonald admits to being of a different generation, and a man who can’t possibly know it all, his punchlines all come from a place of attempting acceptance, and trying to understand as much as he can before the end. He was rarely a performer who punched down — then again, it was never easy to get a read on which direction, if any, he was punching in the first place, given his mischievous cadence and the dozen or so layers of irony in which he shrouded every statement. In the special’s post-script, even his pals approach him as a lovable mystery, though not one without his own demons.

The Norm Macdonald character is a delight unto itself, and getting to spend a final hour with him is worth it.

You get what you get with a Macdonald stand-up; not every joke lands, but he was a performer who reveled so much in his own comedy, even the duds, that beyond a point his routines were less about the words themselves, and more about the witty delivery. The Norm Macdonald character — whose comforting, old-world radio presenter cadence seems to exist out of time — is a delight unto itself, and getting to spend a final hour with him is worth it, even if you end up not laughing at all. Then again, that’s an unlikely outcome, since he was one of the very best.

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Unhuman Review

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Unhuman will be available on digital VOD on June 3, 2022.

Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton's Unhuman is humorously billed as a "Blumhouse Afterschool Special," which means it's nothing like the filmmakers’ more mature work. After winning Project Greenlight's third season as writers on barroom creature-feature Feast, the duo amassed notoriety by writing a few of the Saw sequels and The Collection franchise (Dunstan would direct the latter, like he directs Unhuman). Dunstan and Melton's signature quickly became savage slashers emphasizing "torture porn" gore, but Unhuman proves they can connect with the genre’s softer sides. It's teenage gateway horror through and through — sometimes feeling too much like "olds" are writing "youths" — but executes an anti-bullying punch that successfully blends vicious undead peril and public service formats with a devious smile.

Unhuman takes the "scared straight" approach to horror when Brianne Tju's outcast heroine and her cliquey classmates are caught in doomsday chaos. Their field trip driver rams into something, blood drenches the windshield before the bus breaks down, and radio broadcasts reveal a chemical attack has sent America into pandemonium. Those infected start turning into savage monsters through makeup effects that trace over veins and reflect zombie attributes. Popular jocks, tabletop Dungeon Master shut-ins, and heckled brace-faces must band together if there's any hope of survival. Maybe with the apocalypse incoming, they can stop calling one another hurtful names and realize they're stronger together than zinging everyone else from afar?

At first, I thought the "Afterschool Special" title card was a cheeky throwaway gag until Unhuman asserts itself as a deathly, filled-with-consequences learning experience. Another title card says "Presented by the Student Teachers Division (STD)," and that's the vibe Dunstan and Melton lovingly sustain. Their screenplay intended to speak loudly against the harms of bullying, and that's when Unhuman is at its best. Amidst heads being bludgeoned open and heavy-metal mutants chasing underage targets, characters are permitted monologues that rage against the idea that what happens in high school stays in high school. There's a heartfelt message at the core of this horror flick with training wheels that means a whole lot to someone who still remembers "descriptive" cafeteria nicknames like "meatball" and worse.

Although, Dunstan and Melton are significantly better writers of adult-age horror than emulating teenage dialogue. Prom queens and gamer bros speak in brand names like "Fortnite" or "Dolce." The basest blueprints for an outbreak survival thriller see frantic teens scampering through minimalist blacklight raver hallways and dilapidated apartment complexes. The restraints of a Blumhouse Television production means rabid attackers funnel through the same in-construction backgrounds without much definition. Centerpiece fight sequences between healthy children and their zombified friends have a lesser Scott Pilgrim vs. The World vibe as the camera zooms tight on faces — negating extensive choreography — while comic book panes separate brawlers. Unhuman is injected with colorful light filters and youthful energy but wobbles as a wonky tonal ride that keeps pushing forward with wholesome-horror intentions.

Don't expect 28 Days Later or World War Z by intensity standards, even though brats prattle through horror movie references (World War Z included). Bloody splatters aren't excessive and gruesome elements are hindered when the camera keeps what would be effects-heavy glimpses out of view. The power of Unhuman comes from the realizations children confront, whether that's ditching their fat-shaming cruelty or evolving past Mean Girls imitations. Horror is used as a serving platter for a cleaner mood-booster aimed at adolescent demographics who will latch onto the preachable harmfulness bullying causes. It’s not exactly on par with George A. Romero's comparatively subtle social commentary — but sometimes we have to hear truths out loud. Unhuman does a wonderful job winning the audience over in a wounded and twisty third act despite itself scene after scene.

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Crimes of the Future Review

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Crimes of the Future will open in limited theaters on June 3, before expanding on June 10.

Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg’s first time behind the camera in eight years, is a deeply frustrating film, filled to the brim with big ideas captured in uninteresting fashion. While Cronenberg remains a conceptual powerhouse, returning to his days as a body horror maestro, his approach to one of his more thoughtful and intimate scripts leaves it wanting for passion, intrigue, and even disgust, the kind that might make the experience feel viscerally complicated, rather than distant and removed (though its performances are certainly engaging).

Set in the future where pain and infection have all but disappeared, and where select humans are blessed with the ability to feel pain as they inexplicably evolve new organs, the film follows a pair of performance artists, Caprice (Léa Seydoux) and Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), whose canvas is the human body, and whose M.O. involves Caprice publicly extracting Tenser’s new body parts in a form of ritualistic surgery. As broad premises go, it’s a fantastic idea, detailed through biomechanical designs that blend skin, bones, and machinery to create therapeutic contraptions reminiscent of elaborate torture devices. Things grow more complicated as Caprice and Tenser capture the attention of police and government bureaucrats concerned with the way human beings are changing — among them, Kristen Stewart as Timlin, a nervous, starstruck surgeon who logs and tattoos each new Tenser organ to mark a new stage of evolution — leading to questions of political allegiance in a rapidly changing world.

Cronenberg’s matter-of-fact approach to this premise yields an amusing absurdism, as his characters elaborate on political mechanics and the illicit nature of their art. Though as they go long on extolling the virtues (and vices) of this new world, the camera rarely captures the way they get swept up in their macabre passions and bodily modifications. It’s a keenly observant film, but one whose observations are about emotional impulse and response to physical stimuli; unfortunately, it rarely embodies that response.

On paper, it’s a work of stunning transhumanism, in which people discover brand new methods of arousal and expression, now that they possess effective carte blanche (physically, if not legally) to explore the inner contours of the human form; as Timlin says in the trailer, “surgery is the new sex.” It’s a line reminiscent of Cronenberg’s Videodrome, in which the mantra “long live the new flesh!” is repeated ad nauseum; in concept, Crimes of the Future feels like Videodrome and Cronenberg’s Crash smashed together — ideas of interwoven bodily and technological evolution colliding with self-destructive forms of desire — all wrapped in a film that shares its name (albeit little else) with the director’s very first feature from 1970. It’s Cronenberg reaching into his past in order to examine his own self-expression, with characters that question whether these new forms of creativity are born from impulse or intent (Cronenberg, in the process, places art itself in the volatile space between want and need), and whether creators themselves can be canvases. Is film the art, or is it merely a medium for the real art — i.e. the artist?

The question of where the idea “art” truly lies — whether in the physical realm, or in somewhere beneath the flesh, as something we ingest, regurgitate, and excise as easily as bodily fluid — is as poignant as anything sci-fi body horror has ever asked, but in Crimes of the Future, the question so rarely goes beyond spoken words. Before the film lays its cards on the table, and presents its most esoteric ideas about the overlap between the synthetic and the biological, Cronenberg creates intrigue through still, clean compositions, and tableaus that both merge and separate characters from their surroundings. For all his wonderfully messed up cinematic ideas, he doesn’t get nearly enough credit as a precise visualist — but this measured formalism ends up a detriment whenever Cronenberg’s “new sex” (and his new “new flesh”) become the central focus.

Crimes of the Future isn’t the triumphant return David Cronenberg fans might have hoped for.

It’s somewhat dissatisfying to watch a film whose wild ideas of sexual exploration, and self-exploration, are so plain and so viciously dulled, as if the only desired emotional responses to them are either disgust or lack thereof. The actors all try their damnedest, both to embody Cronenberg’s ideas (the slowly mutating Mortensen, for instance, delivers each line like a man about to hack up his own lungs) and to capture the sense of twisted allure so clearly underlying the story: the conflict between physical and emotional, and the few volatile moments where they align. But this time around, Cronenberg seems to have little interest in meaningfully exploring the many things discussed in the dialogue, from the nature of the body as a vessel for ideas, or the evolution of sexuality in ways that threaten establishment. The characters are all having a much more interesting time dissecting these ideas than the camera has dissecting their physical and emotional selves, so the result feels less like watching a Cronenberg classic in the making, and more like watching other people describe one.

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Showing Up Review

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Showing Up was reviewed out of the Cannes Film Festival, where it made its world premiere.

The starving artist is a well-worn cliché but Showing Up paints it with a new perspective. Struggling to finish her upcoming show, Lizzie (Michelle Williams) isn’t just starving – she’s ravenous. Living in a rented apartment with no hot water, the pressure is on to open an exhibition that will launch her burgeoning career. Unfortunately, she’s surrounded by other artists… and they’re all wrapped up in themselves.

Her neighbor, Jo (Hong Chau), is an artist too. More importantly, she’s one of Lizzie’s oldest friends and happens to be putting on her own exhibition – well, two. And she certainly won’t let Lizzie forget that. Showing Up isn’t an examination of the ruthless, cutthroat art world. No, it’s much more subtle than that. Instead, it focuses on Lizzie’s quiet longing. Suffering in silence, she rarely finds her voice, let alone the time and space to focus on her art. And when she does, it turns out that she’s very much not alone.

There’s a lot of expectation on Lizzie – too much. Embedded deep within the local artistic community, there’s always someone else focusing on their project. And at the moment, Jo’s two exhibitions dominate the artistic landscape. This rarely gives Lizzie space to breathe. Dominated by her own insecurities, she finds them intensified by the constant sidelining she experiences at the hands of her friends and family. Jo is the genius friend, her brother is the genius sibling… and nobody pays any mind to her.

It’s a tough place to be, emotionally, and Michelle Williams portrays the internal struggles of a neglected artist with beautiful precision. A wrinkled nose, and a muted glance, are all it takes for her to externalize the anguish Lizzie is bottling up. It’s a masterclass in subtlety from an actress who’s in top form. But focusing on the art within the film, the way Williams handles the clay when making her statuettes is mesmerizing and hypnotic.

Director Kelly Reichardt lingers almost too long on her hands as we watch her shape the putty into a limb or massage the clay to create the look she wants. Each shot is like a long, slow breath and we’re inhaling and exhaling along with her. The end result is an exhibition that comes alive – each statuette having a highly personal connection to the artist, and giving us a glimpse into the themes and subjects that dominate her life.

Elsewhere, John Magaro presents a cautionary tale as Lizzie’s brother, Sean. He, too, is in excellent form, skirting the edges of a mental health condition while others talk about his past behavior with hushed mentions. His erratic nature soon comes bubbling to the surface, but Magaro handles it with such sensitivity that the character never comes across as an insensitive caricature. It’s another muted performance, reflecting the thoughtful nature of this artistic family. An understated role, Magaro plays it with the integrity it deserves.

Showing Up is a wonderful vignette of a tortured soul.

Fittingly, Lizzie primarily works with delicate pottery, moulding intricate statuettes. There’s an underlying tension throughout Showing Up that her exhibition could metaphorically come crashing down at any moment. But the physicality of her pieces means this is often played for laughs – a basketball-playing student veers ever closer to her kiln-fired work, while a strange friendship with an injured pigeon adds another layer to the potential drama.

In fact, there’s a visual symbolism throughout Showing Up that reflects the film’s artistic nature. The quiet melancholy of Lizzie’s injured pigeon reflects her own predicament. She’s bound by expectation and will only feel herself when she’s finally set free. The trouble is nobody is in any rush to come to her aid. The heating in her apartment will get fixed… eventually. Her brother might turn up to her exhibition… eventually.

Lizzie lives in a perpetual state of “almost there” and it’s quietly disheartening. Throughout the film, you’ll find yourself rooting for her to rage against the dying of the light… but she’s not that kind of artist.

Showing Up is a wonderful vignette of a tortured soul, a watercolor that gives us a glimpse into the inner turmoil of an artist struggling to find her place. Reichardt paints with broad strokes at first, then pencils in the details with fine precision. A splash of color is added through the flaws and quirks of her friends and family, before finishing off this gorgeous work with artistic flair – a bold signature that makes this unmistakably a Reichardt. Showing Up has a lot to say about finding one’s place, and it’s in no rush to let it all out. But when it does, you’re shown a beautiful glimpse at a work that might just leave you breathless.

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Kao the Kangaroo Review

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Kao the Kangaroo reminded me why I fell in love with 3D platformers back in the N64 days. While I missed the Dreamcast console-exclusive original back in the day, it surprised me how familiar this reboot of the 22-year-old series felt, though the revived Kao doesn’t exactly try hiding how it’s looked to other modern platformers to create a highly derivative comfort-food experience. It’s a lot of fun, colorful, and certainly rather nostalgic; just don’t come in expecting a Crash Bandicoot 4-level challenge.

Stories of heroes rescuing loved ones against the odds is nothing new in this genre, so suffice it to say that Kao’s not breaking from tradition here. Dialogue could’ve been stronger, too; there’s good humor to it, but that’s sometimes weakened by outdated pop-culture references. Kao’s mom referencing “taking an arrow to the knee” is hardly topical, and the younger crowd a game like this is aimed at probably won’t recognise it. Still, there’s a pleasant cast joining our young hero like his wise teacher, Walt, whose more grounded nature keeps scenes entertaining by acting as an effective straight man for Kao.

Now, this wouldn’t be much of a mascot platformer without wildly varied environments, and Kao packs four visually appealing worlds. Between the uncomfortably warm Lava Caves hiding within the sunny Hopalloo Island, Hungry Jungle’s tropical sights, and the (hopefully) self-explanatory Frozen Mountains, they’re fun to explore even if they fall into the usual tropes. Each location serves as a hub that’s filled with collectibles, though runes are the only batch you actually need to concern yourself with, since they unlock new levels.

Once you begin exploring, Kao quickly finds his father’s old boxing gloves, which absurdly happen to be home to a strange and sassy entity who provides him with supernatural abilities. Alongside your standard jabs and combo strikes, Kao can build up to powerful finishers by hitting multiple enemies. These gloves also store up to three elemental charges, starting with fire before unlocking ice and electricity. They provide some nice visual flair to his finishers but, more importantly, also help him clear platforming obstacles like spider webs or freeze water to create a bridge. Otherwise, Kao’s dodge-roll also attacks enemies, making it a blessing for defensive strategy, with an understandable trade-off in that these don’t hit nearly as hard as a straight punch.

Traditional ideas are sampled and remixed effectively enough.

Kao's packing some strong moves and the new developer, Tate, has given us plenty to do with them by providing us with decent enemy variety. We’ve got the usual grunts taking swipes at you up close, but things like goats firing sheep at you with a launcher keep this interesting. Every world’s capped off with a boss fight, each of whom provide some fresh tricks -- I won’t spoil them all, but Hopalloo Island’s boss, Terror, leaves a trail of fire behind him after attacking, while Hungry Jungle’s Jayabaya lobs projectiles from afar that Kao can punch straight back. Nothing groundbreaking, sure, but enough to avoid predictability.

Between climbing across vines using his ears, grappling across floating hooks, and making temporary platforms appear once you’ve struck a purple crystal, levels carefully and effectively avoid repetition. There’s the odd bit of puzzle solving too, including one challenge where Kao must link the lines together on a crystal to make it whole, clearing your path upon completion. Another level had me running away from an enemy rolling towards Kao on a giant log, taking clear inspiration from Crash Bandicoot’s Boulder Dash. Again, nothing entirely original, but traditional ideas are sampled and remixed effectively enough.

You’ll find no end of hidden secrets, so I’d recommend thorough exploration. Are there secrets behind those waterfalls? You bet! Levels hide plenty of collectibles: between extra lives, heart pieces, treasure chests packed with coins, and diamonds, there’s plenty to grab, and cash can buy new costumes from each hub world’s shop. That includes a retro look for Kao, which will likely please original fans. Every level also hides three letters spelling KAO, which can be tricky to find, and some enemies drop scrolls that unlock fresh lore for the ‘Kaopedia.’

If you’re not feeling it for another platformer collectathon, fear not. Like I said before, only runes are essential for progression and nothing else is mandatory. But it does beg the question; why are some of these even here? The letters can be tricky to find, much like it was in Donkey Kong Country, so I understand there’s a sense of accomplishment in finding them. But across my entire playthrough, I couldn’t find any practical use for these collectible diamonds. That includes during the post-game, which takes you back to before the creative final fight, letting you complete things you missed.

Kao is fairly quick, but it felt like the right length.

Thankfully, items aren’t the only secrets found during exploration. There are 14 mini bonus levels, known as Eternal Wells, hidden within these stages, and each requires you to complete a set challenge. That can be something simple, like defeating several waves of enemies, though more commonly it involves completing trickier platforming challenges, earning more coins, or collecting more diamonds. Each hub world contains a separate Well, so if you find one but struggle to complete it you can still go back at any time, there’s no need to dive into the main levels and find it again.

That said, even after beating those wells, Kao is a quick experience that needed just nine hours to complete, taking 20 mins on average per level. If you’re not fussed about exploration or the Eternal Wells and are simply here to see this campaign through, you’d probably manage it in about seven or eight hours. In fairness, though, not many platformers are longer than that; big-name games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Super Mario Odyssey are one thing, but smaller efforts like A Hat in Time or Ary and the Secret of Seasons clock in at similar lengths. I’m just glad Kao doesn’t overstay his welcome -- it felt like the right length, and Tate’s balanced this well.

The main problem was that I just didn’t find it particularly tough, and there’s no difficulty settings to crank this up to challenge me on a second playthrough. It’s not a complete cakewalk, (that dodge roll comes in handy when confronted by enemy groups), but those extra lives scattered everywhere quickly stack up. Death came infrequently, even more so once I began finding heart pieces to increase Kao’s health. I didn’t mind this so much, though. I won’t pretend this structure doesn’t feel formulaic after four worlds, yet Kao nails the basics.

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Obi-Wan Kenobi Two-Part Premiere Review

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This review contains full spoilers for episodes one and two of Obi-Wan Kenobi, now available to view on Disney+.

Star Wars has often explored the burden of emotion and its complicated relationship with the Jedi. For Anakin, it led to the dark side. For Luke, it saw him abandon his duty. And in Disney Plus’ new Obi-Wan Kenobi show, we see Ewan McGregor shoulder the devastating toll of living through multiple nightmares. The two-part premiere opens a series that is surprisingly complex and unexpectedly mature; a slice of Star Wars that feels heavy and layered. It still comes with the big sci-fi moments you expect of Star Wars - this is a show with lightsabers and blasters from its very first moments - but it’s combined with what feels, at least so far, like the most well-balanced Star Wars story for quite some time.

Director/showrunner Deborah Chow and her writing team make their vision clear from the very start. Opening as Order 66 is initiated, this is a show about living amid the death of one age, and the start of a darker one. George Lucas envisioned the Empire as a reflection of many things, but Obi-Wan Kenobi really leans into the Nazi parallels. The incredibly tense sequence in the cantina, in which the Grand Inquisitor intimidates locals for hiding a Jedi, evokes the Third Reich’s inhumane hunt for Jewish people. There’s even a little of Christoph Waltz’ Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds in Rupert Friend’s terrifyingly charismatic portrayal of the Grand Inquisitor; he too is an impeccably well-spoken and intelligent tyrant. It’s a shame he’s already been killed off, really, as his colleagues don’t carry anything close to the same level of menace.

But while vital to the journey, the ongoing hunt for the final surviving Jedi is just the broad picture. In a wonderful performance from an understated Ewan McGregor we see a man wracked by guilt and sorrow. In his slow, deliberate movements and tired eyes McGregor reflects a man whose real struggles lie in his inability to let go of Anakin Skywalker, rather than the galaxy’s plight. His new camp on Tatooine has been established not to watch over Luke because he represents hope for the future, but through an inability to let go of one of the remaining links to his fallen brother.

While not the actual last of the Jedi, there’s a parallel between Obi-Wan’s journey here and the one Luke endures in, well, The Last Jedi. It’s a similar breaking down of a once sparky and hopeful character, and the rediscovery of their driving force. Obi-Wan’s arc has only just started, but across these first two episodes we see a man who abandoned the Jedi code begin to find his purpose again. On Tatooine he refuses to help another Jedi escape from the inquisition because he doesn’t want to risk his semi-selfish mission of watching over Luke. That Jedi’s corpse is next seen strung up in the streets in a shot that highlights Chow’s ability to bring darkness without being inappropriately violent for this kind of show. This moment is the first nudge; Obi-Wan needs to return to the ways of the Jedi. He needs to help people.

That arc begins in earnest when Obi-Wan agrees to rescue ten year-old Leia, kidnapped by gangsters as part of a ploy by Inquisitor Reva (Moses Ingram) to capture Kenobi. This plotline works on so many levels. Firstly, this show is going places. In two episodes we’ve already visited three planets and accomplished the first major goal of the storyline. This is a pacey, focused, and energetic series despite its frequent pauses to let the emotion boil. Secondly, it’s a thrilling game of cat and mouse. Reva’s use of scum and villainy to maneuver Obi-Wan into a trap is genuinely fun and enjoyably twisty. The sequence in which she places a bounty on his head – where it's revealed that seemingly every fourth person on Daiyu is a bounty hunter now on the prowl – even feels like a nod to the exciting finale of John Wick Chapter 2.

But most importantly, Obi-Wan’s mission to save Leia brings character growth, and sets him on a path to quite literally confront his past. I really like that Kenobi’s emotional path is mirrored by his physical one, and the match cut between his and Vader’s face at the end of the two-part premiere provided the perfect chilling indicator of this. His ability to leave Luke behind to do right by the Jedi code and rescue Leia shows that Obi-Wan is making the right moves, but the only way he can cleanse his personal demons is to face Anakin in person. This promises a real treat of an emotional and physical showdown later down the line, and I hope Obi-Wan Kenobi can deliver on that promise.

The undistracted focus on the emotional journey means Obi-Wan Kenobi is off to a great start. But while that is its chief achievement, there’s plenty more to discuss. Vivien Lyra Blair makes for a surprisingly likable young Leia, even with her sometimes inexplicable ability to know almost everything about anything. If she’s to be Obi-Wan’s answer to Grogu then it’s no bad thing. She helps provide a little levity among an otherwise surprisingly serious slice of Star Wars. The same can be said about Kumail Nanjiani, who brings his usual charm to grifter Haja Estree.

Talking of Estree, he’s an example of how this two-part premiere satisfyingly links threads together. He could have been nothing more than an amusing aside, but I enjoyed how his unexpected attempts to do good are undermined by his own selfish grifter tendencies, and how that bit of character work propels Obi-Wan’s own situation forward. The whole two-part premiere is full of this intertwined scripting; the links between Obi-Wan, Leia, her kidnappers, and Reva all make for a show that feels nicely coherent and planned. It’s safe to say that Star Wars doesn’t always get that right, and so I hope this aspect remains on course for the rest of the series.

Obi-Wan Kenobi has little to prove when it comes to story, but it does need to go a way to convince me of its action chops. Very little of this premiere is action-focused, instead opting to use lightsabers as terrifying tools of interrogation rather than swords. When it does that, it succeeds. But chase sequences and shootouts so far feel simple and workhorse compared to the best of The Mandalorian’s action direction. Things will inevitably heat up as the story progresses, and so I just hope Chow’s action directing finds its footing by the time humming blades finally clash.

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Apex Legends Mobile Review

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At first, Apex Legends Mobile seems like an ill-proposed idea. After all, Apex on the Nintendo Switch didn’t work out as well as we’d all hoped, and it’s a struggle to properly experience the best parts of Respawn’s battle royale on that platform due to the lack of horsepower. However, Apex Legends Mobile is not a direct port of Apex Legends; instead, it is its own standalone experience that is extremely polished and well optimized for iOS and Android. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying my time playing on my tiny screens -- and that’s coming from someone who is not usually a mobile-first gamer. In fact, in some ways I found myself liking Apex Mobile more than I do the PC and console version, given the current state they’re in.

Apex Mobile isn’t cross-platform compatible with its sibling but it’s not a big departure, either: it uses the same basic formula of playing in teams of three, and of the 10 Legends available at launch, nine are the originals from Apex Legends’ launch: Bangalore, Bloodhound, Caustic, Gibraltar, Lifeline, Mirage, Octane, Pathfinder, Wraith. Having the original group available feels fine, especially since these Legends are still highly viable in the original game – and they’re even more so here without the additional Legends who were dropped in the PC/console version after launch.

The 10th is a first: a platform exclusive named Fade, who is pretty reminiscent of Ovewatch’s Tracer in that he comes with a recall ability that blips him back to where he was a few seconds ago. He makes a great solo-player Legend because his kit is built to really benefit his own survivability and maneuverability. While his ultimate throws nearby enemies into a void where they can’t take or receive damage, if you’re in trouble you can also step into the ult’s radius to enter the void and become invulnerable yourself. So Fade’s entire kit can really serve to keep him surviving as long as possible on his own.

Fade's Bona Fides

• Passive: Surge After sliding, Fade gets a slight speed boost. This ability has a 10-second cool down before it’s activated after a slide again.
• Tactical: Flash Back Fade’s suit phases him into the void and recalls him to his last location, up to 60 meters.
• Ultimate: Phase Chamber Fade throws an activator core from his suit and the explosion deals minor damage and sends everyone in its radius into the void, rendering anyone affected unable to damage or be damaged.

Releasing Fade as a mobile-only Legend is an interesting decision since I could see his movement abilities being used in creative ways on console and PC. There haven’t been any platform-specific Legends before, and while I understand wanting to entice established Apex players to try out Mobile, it feels a bit odd and unfair to the community that’s made this game as successful as it is. In any case, the collection of the 10 Legends in mobile are more than enough to pick from, especially since in this version of Apex the abilities don’t seem to matter as much as basic gunplay and outshooting your enemies. And the less clutter you have with different Legend abilities on smaller mobile screens the better, so this roster feels appropriate for what Apex Mobile is right now. But this also makes Fade being a mobile-only Legend feel like a bit of a waste.

The main limitation at the moment is the fact that Apex Mobile doesn’t currently have full controller support (I was able to connect PlayStation and Xbox controllers via Bluetooth and they did work at times, but not consistently) so you have to play using the touchscreen of your phone or tablet. I played on an iPhone 12 Pro Max, which is now a year and a half old, and the performance was smooth – I rarely got any stutters and the environments loaded in quickly with barely any texture pops. I only had one experience of lagging with too many effects in one of the busiest areas in World’s Edge (in the location Fragment) in my few hours of playtime.

It looks how I expected Apex Legends on the Switch to look.

At the same time, textures look detailed, and I’m able to make out what items are on the ground without zooming in. In fact, it looks how I expected Apex Legends on the Switch to look, and honestly Respawn might’ve done better to release this version on the Switch instead of overextending the console version. The maps have been adjusted slightly to fit the environment of mobile and keep the rotations through their locations feeling natural. The UI looks a lot like the PC and console version, just fitted to a smaller screen with minor tweaks, so it’s very easy to look at and understand what’s happening. The menus are easy to navigate and you can collect all of your completed daily and weekly challenge rewards with one click of a button.

While adjusting to playing with touch controls isn’t awful, it definitely feels a bit cramped and difficult to use the full potential of Apex’s movement. You can rearrange your screen controls as you want, setting your virtual thumbsticks, crouch, jump, fire, and ADS buttons however you like. This setup is pretty nice, but because Apex is so much about movement mechanics, all of your buttons need to be kind of close together so you can quickly press one after the other for the proper combos. Because of this, I found myself accidentally firing or punching the air way too frequently while running or trying to loot or move quickly out of fights.

Playing with touch controls isn’t awful.

Apex Mobile does use the core Apex movement really well, including its standout signature run-and-slide move that gives you a slight speed boost, and the movement combos are all there… just a bit harder to hit. But all things considered it feels pretty good, and it’s as close to the non-mobile game as could be reasonably expected.

What We Said About Apex Legends

Apex Legends has become my go-to game when I want something fun and competitive. Being able to squad up with friends and try out different combinations of Legend abilities in the hunt for that satisfying Champion win screen is the perfect mix of thrilling and approachable. The consistent updates keep the gunplay from ever feeling repetitive and boring, and no match is ever the same as another, no matter the mode or map. The combination of Legend abilities and its large arsenal of excellent weapons is always fun to experiment with, especially with a squad of friends. And while the occasional audio and server issue can make an otherwise smooth slide down a mountainside frustratingly bumpy at times, I still find myself easily spending hours queueing up for “just one more game.” - Stella Chung, March 15, 2021

Score: 9

Read the full Apex Legends (2021) review

To make up for the fact that Apex’s interface can feel a bit crowded on a phone screen, a third-person perspective is available that you can switch in and out of at any time. It took a bit for me to get used to but it feels pretty smooth in this mode. (Not that I want it on other platforms – it would feel out of place.) There definitely is an advantage to playing in third-person in that you can see way more of your surroundings and peek around corners to spot enemies who can’t see you. That advantage is so impactful that playing in first-person almost always feels like you’re doing yourself a disservice. However, you can choose to play in locked first-person or third person before you queue in, so it is separated in the same way that PUBG separated its lobbies on PC by perspective – you’re never forced to play against people who can do something you can’t.

There definitely is an advantage to playing in third-person.

Aiming weapons on the smaller screen is a bit harder as well and again, I found myself accidentally firing earlier than intended due to the cluster of virtual buttons on my right side. The best way I found to deal with that was to just aim and fire as I directed my aim to enemies and let the auto-reload hit as I kept my aim focused on them. Probably related is the fact that the time-to-kill is a bit faster on Mobile, which honestly felt fine since it takes a bit longer to fully line up a shot with these controls.

One of the nice things Apex Mobile does is automatically pick up loot and open doors so you’re not constantly having to move your fingers around the screen while trying to move forward and around. However, it doesn’t just pick up everything around you, only the same ammo type that you’re using at the time. Once you equip a weapon, it’ll auto-pick-up that ammo and healing items until it fills the amount of slots it takes up in your inventory.

Not everything works so smoothly on a small screen, though. Shield Swapping (grabbing a dead enemy’s shield in the middle of a fight to restore your protection) has become a fundamental tactic in Apex, and while you can do that in Apex Mobile, it is a bit slower since you have to scroll the inventory wheel to find the shield you’re after.

On the plus side, a change that feels really good is that the backpack system in Apex Mobile is expanded from the PC/console version, which compensates for the fact that aiming is a bit difficult and you’re bound to miss a lot. The ammo system allows you to carry stacks of 90 in each slot (as opposed to 60), so you can carry way more ammo in a level-one backpack. I was surprised by how much space I had even while carrying 240 ammo for two assault rifles and four stacks of healing items. However, there’s so much space in a level-one backpack that I often didn’t even need to pick up a bigger one, which makes that system feel moot. Surely there’s a happy medium that can be struck between the two extremes?

I also noticed that the audio in Apex Mobile is a bit easier to pick up directionally than it is on Apex Legends, where directional audio has been faulty for quite some time. Your screen even shows audio indicators in a visual form, directing you to where shots are coming from, which helps immensely when you’re not wearing headphones. (This is something that Fortnite uses that I’ve been actually wishing Apex would adapt.)

For modes, Apex Mobile has the standard battle royale mode plus team deathmatch, ranked battle royale, and limited-time modes that unlock every so often. Battle royale features the World’s Edge map (Kings Canyon will come later), while team deathmatch has maps based on both Kings Canyon and World’s Edge. These maps have been slightly altered for mobile, just adding a few more loot box options throughout the maps and small changes to points of interests, but the maps were essentially the same as the PC/console versions. The maps didn’t feel too big for mobile and World’s Edge felt really fun to explore since a lot of the POIs in mobile aren’t on the PC/console version anymore. So it was very nice seeing a mix of new POIs and older ones and not feeling the quality of the map’s loot and locations drop at all. More importantly, the pacing in battle royale matches felt pretty decent, longer games lasting about 20 to 25 minutes if you’re lasting into the final three squads.

Team deathmatch has two teams of six in a small section (known as a point of interest, or POI) taken from the map World’s Edge or Kings Canyon, in which you pick out your loadout from any weaponry you want at the start of each match. So, for example, I played a game of team deathmatch in a small POI called Market which is a very small indoor market building that’s located in the map Kings Canyon. It’s a very fast-paced mode that has you constantly fighting, and it rarely slows down because you regenerate health and shields even if you run out of healing items. It’s a fun way to play because you can jump in and out of matches and just fight without having to loot and run a full game of battle royale -- especially since Mobile is meant to be played anywhere and maybe you just want to get a quick round in before your next meeting.

However, I was a little disappointed to notice that in playing Apex Mobile, whether on team deathmatch or battle royale, using your Legend’s abilities is less of a focus, making it feel like less of a team-based game. On PC/console you definitely want to be using every bit of your Legend’s kit to your advantage and work on the synergies you can have with your team. But in Apex Mobile, it’s more about the Legend combinations and teamwork; even in battle royale, it just felt like a longer game of team deathmatch and solo play since most of my teammates opted to simply run into fights on their own and not combine abilities or support. That’s probably because it’s much easier to drop into battle royale in Apex Mobile and survive on your own than on PC/console, in part due to there being bots in the servers and also having more ammo in your inventory means you can survive longer in fights without having to stop to loot. I still enjoyed playing and winning matches whether my team was with me or not, of course.

Microtransaction Reaction

Like in the PC/console game, purchases in Apex Mobile are all purely cosmetics and never anything that will help you win, and all are completely optional. First and foremost, Apex Mobile has its own battlepass that is separate from the PC and console game, complete with daily and weekly challenges you can work on that will progress through it to earn Mobile-exclusive skins. The Premium Pass, which is the basic and cheapest battlepass for Mobile, is 799 Syndicate Coins, or roughly $8 USD (slightly cheaper than the $10 pass on PC/console). The Premium Pass Plus grants you extra rewards and an 80% additional battlepass XP bonus and costs 1,599 Syndicate Coins, which is about $16 USD. There are rotating in-game events that have different skins, emotes, and Legend banner unlocks that you can purchase with coins as well.

Since Apex Mobile is free to play, the model works out well – especially since Apex Legends has established a strong battlepass system that encourages you to continue playing to unlock season-specific skins for guns and Legends. Because the mobile battlepass has completely different items and seasons than Apex on PC/console, it’s not be a complete waste of an investment if you find yourself playing more often than expected.

Some of the skins released on Apex Mobile are platform exclusive, which is a nice draw, but like the exclusive Legend it makes me a bit sad that we won’t see some of these incredibly cool skins on PC/console. The designs are very well crafted and eye catching: Lifeline has a special kitty motorcycle helmet skin that looks rad, and Wraith has a cool sports-like racing skin that I’d have loved to have access to on the other version.

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Arma Reforger Early Access Review

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Arma Reforger is not Arma 4. Bohemia Interactive has made that abundantly clear during the slightly confusing rollout of the new entry in the storied military simulation series, which hit early access on Steam last week. Instead, it’s meant to be a "test bed" for features and design choices that may or may not be integrated in a future numbered franchise entry, which means that in every sense of the word, Reforger is unfinished. Textures flicker in and out of reality, flagrant bugs litter the battlefield, and nearly all of my matches ended in a sudden, anticlimactic disconnect from the server. In its current state, Bohemia's latest is a deeply frustrating experience. And yet, when everything comes together, Reforger is still totally capable of mustering that steely, one-of-a-kind Arma immersion.

Arma 3, the previous game in the series that launched almost a decade ago, is one of the most expansive video games ever made. The spirited Arma community has been blessed with countless expansion packs and a thriving mod scene, which has given rise to other PC classics like DayZ and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Reforger, on the other hand, effectively shipped with two modes: a capture-and-hold warfront on a grand scale, and a "Game Master" variant that allows one player to edit the action in real time like a D&D dungeon keeper. Both of these take place on the same map; an impressively gigantic fictional Atlantic island called Everon which originally appeared in Bohemia's Operation Flashpoint all the way back in 2001. And just like Flashpoint, Reforger takes place in 1989, with a fairly boilerplate US vs. Soviet gestalt.

Anyone coming to Reforger expecting the barest set of first-person shooter features — like say, any semblance of a single-player mode — will be sorely disappointed. Instead, it functions like an alpha test unloaded for the most dedicated members of the Arma community. The problem is, alpha tests usually don't cost $29.99, which is what Reforger is retailing for right now. There are certainly hardcore players out there who will relish the chance to nurture the next chapter of Arma from its earliest, primordial stages, but as a more casual fan, I frequently felt like my time would’ve been better spent further exploring Arma 3.

The environment is gorgeous — Bohemia has imported all of its work to the new Enfusion Engine.

My Arma Reforger matches tended to go one of two different ways. Sometimes I was dropped in the middle of a map, on a server that appeared to have no other human souls occupying it. The environment is gorgeous — Bohemia has imported all of its work to the new Enfusion Engine, which powers a much more vibrant environment compared to the relatively staid Arma 3. (Lakes shimmer in the sunlight, patches of grass drift in the wind. It doesn't pack the same visual punch as something like Battlefield 2042, but it's a huge step up for the series.) I fumbled around in the wildlands, ambling between military encampments to sieged townships, not seeing a single enemy soldier until my PC mercifully sundered its connection to the playing field. If you are not already plugged into a dedicated group of Arma-attuned friends, then this will likely define a lot of your early travails with Reforger. Outside of a basic tutorial, Bohemia hasn't provided nearly enough scaffolding to onboard amateurs to its universe, which seems especially shortsighted given how Reforger is the first game in the series to make its way to consoles. If this is to be Arma's attempt to court a mainstream, shooter-playing audience, then it makes a horrible first impression.

But then there were other matches where I spawned in the midst of a dedicated group of milsim lifers, and in those moments, Reforger sings. Appreciating Arma requires a small bit of roleplaying faculty, and after ingratiating myself with a cadre of nice, capable troops and liberating a slew of outposts from our NATO oppressors, I felt horrible when I shot one of them in the face during a chaotic bout of friendly fire. (We were being assaulted from all directions. I got confused!) Arma’s simulation style is so much more slow-paced than its typical FPS brethren, and Reforger keeps all of the immersive tendrils that have defined the series in the past. There's no minimap or radar, navigation must be orchestrated with a compass, and communication with distant battalions can only be achieved with radio chatter that gets increasingly fuzzy the further you are away. These really helped ground me in the landscape of Everon, and Reforger also allows you to outfit the various checkpoints around the island with sandbag barriers, vehicle depots, and armories, which lets the battle grow and evolve over time. Contrasted with the hypersonic murder-arenas of the average Call of Duty map, a round of Reforger feels like a far more rewarding long, attritional campaign.

I felt horrible when I shot one of them in the face during a chaotic bout of friendly fire.

These flourishes are simultaneously brilliant and maddening, and they're best enjoyed with a group who are all on the same page. I found myself emotionally connected with my avatar's life in a way that I simply don't in other multiplayer games. In one memorable sequence, a partner and I crawled through the underbrush together towards an enemy's headquarters, unsure if any resistance was waiting for us. A flurry of machine gun shells interrupted the silence, and I had no idea where they were coming from. I've been shot at literally millions of times over the course of my video game career, but for the first time ever, the nauseating dread of warfighting jumped off the screen. Reforger makes me feel the weight of the assault rifle in my hands, and when it functions correctly, it's indispensable.

I do not mean to make Arma out to be a painful, traumatic dirge. In fact, this game can be quite funny sometimes. I've been in plenty of tipped-over jeeps as our driver took a hairpin turn a little too harshly; everyone in the voice coms screaming as we try to put it back on its wheels with the help of a hand grenade. (Hey, it works in Halo, right?) There is a certain comic poetry whenever you're iced out by a random headshot from the wild blue yonder, if only because it reminds you that for all of our martial bravado, we are extremely mortal. Your mileage will depend on your demeanor, of course, but I enjoyed my time in Reforger the most when everyone I was playing with was willing to laugh after a fight went bad. To my surprise, I didn't find Arma to be quite as skill-focused as, say, Counter-Strike or Valorant. It's a game to be experienced, rather than dominated.

What We Said About Arma 3

Arma III’s complexity is a double-edged sword. It takes a long time to comprehend, but once you’re comfortable enough with its mechanics to take advantage of them under pressure, you’re able to engage in a kind of large-scale tactical combat that’s simply not offered elsewhere. Weak sound and a sparsely decorated map are forgivable, making Arma III’s nearly endless content definitely worth experiencing as long as you know there’s a long, dark tunnel to get through before you can see the light. - Emanuel Maiberg, September 18, 2013

Score: 7

Read the full Arma 3 review

Of course, even my best sessions with Reforger usually ended with a server failure. There's a meme going around the Arma subreddit about how almost none of the community have played a match to completion. It takes a long time to fully rout the rival faction, and with the stability being so fraught, you’re much more likely to watch the infrastructure go kaputt than finish off a crusade. That makes Reforger a difficult game to recommend right now. Bohemia is clearly still working out the kinks with the Enfusion Engine, and I'm not particularly keen to pay for the opportunity to be cast as an unpaid game tester.

I may have some talent for finding problems, though: I uncovered some glitches that torpedoed my games. At one point my character's head was stuck turning over to the left; another time their finger was perpetually pointing forward as if the enemy was truly everywhere. There are a lot of issues, par for the course in any game in its earliest stages, which Bohemia has been transparent about. But for anyone who isn't inclined to be on the absolute cutting edge of Arma's future, there's another milsim on the market that is a lot less buggy, has a wealth of features, and a decade's worth of fan support. It's called Arma 3, and it also costs $29.99.

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Elvis Review

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Elvis made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. It opens in theaters June 24.

Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis tells the story of the King of Rock & Roll at the speed of light, as jittery and alive with energy as young Presley himself was when he’d take the stage back in the 1950s and gyrate the crowd into a frenzy. There are times when that is absolutely the best approach— even with some notable omissions from his life story, there is a lot covered here — but Luhrmann’s film would have benefited from stopping to catch its breath more than it does. It’s that inconsistency and occasionally troubled pacing that prevents Elvis from reaching the dizzying heights it’s striving for, but, as a lifelong Elvis fan, this heartfelt take asks the right questions about its subject and makes it clear why Elvis’ contribution to American pop culture remains so lasting and important.

At the center of it all is a star-making, Oscar-worthy performance by Austin Butler, who nails Presley’s voice (he does a lot of his own singing in the ‘50s sequences and is quite good!) and mannerisms, even if his resemblance to Elvis varies at times. Butler is not going for mimicry here. There’s a light behind his eyes that reveals an intense immersion in Elvis the man; it’s almost cliche to say an actor is channeling the real person they’re playing, but Butler’s nuanced, human portrayal captures the lip-curling superficial elements one expects to see from Elvis while also revealing the passionate dreamer and ultimately broken soul inside him. Hopefully, Butler won’t be overlooked come awards time as Rocketman’s Taron Egerton was.

At the center of it all is a star-making, Oscar-worthy performance by Austin Butler.

It must be noted that Elvis himself isn’t the entry point to his own movie. No, Elvis the film is largely a two-hander between Butler’s Presley and a prosthetics-laden Tom Hanks as his longtime manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker. This story begins and (sort of) ends with Parker, a shifty con-man with a mysterious past whose hold on Elvis is the main subject of scrutiny here. How did this slovenly carnival barker get his hooks so deeply into one of the biggest stars of the 20th century? And why did Elvis stay with him even when he wanted him gone so that his career could soar even higher?

There are several answers explored here but the Colonel’s ability to snow people — he is referred to as “the snowman” several times, even by Elvis — is fully on display as he manipulates Elvis’ emotions and desire to never return to the poverty from which he came. While his Bond villain-esque accent grows wearisome (the real Colonel didn’t speak like that), there’s a (spoilerish) reason for it and Hanks excels at playing this conniving character out to achieve his own American Dream. Elvis as merchandising machine (and Parker’s meal ticket) is at times amusingly explored, such as when Parker convinces Elvis they should sell “I Hate Elvis” buttons (why should anyone else profit from disliking him?). Casting Hanks — America’s Dad and keeper of the Baby Boomer flame — as the cunning antagonist in a film about America set across the same decades that Forrest Gump covered proves a deliciously subversive move.

Since the film is framed around Parker, we don’t get a full-on look at adult Elvis until later in Act One. There are glimpses of him from afar and snippets of his voice, but we, like Parker, don’t see Elvis in full until he takes the stage at the Louisiana Hayride and sends the women in the audience into a sexual frenzy. The (at that time) vulgar and shocking nature of it all immediately captures Parker, an old carnival barker who knows a profitable freak show when he sees it.

Because it spans a few decades (from the mid-‘40s to the mid-‘70s), Luhrmann — never a storyteller to dilly-dally too long in any scene — steers his film like a Mystery Train that could derail at any moment. Thankfully, it doesn’t, but that breakneck speed doesn’t leave much time to emotionally take stock of certain major events, such as the death of Elvis’ beloved mother, Gladys (a melancholy, anxious Helen Thomson). We witness the aftermath of her death but for the worst tragedy of Elvis’ life, her actual demise is handled in as much time as a commercial break.

Even when Elvis wins (against the Colonel’s wishes), he ultimately loses – and that’s the tragedy at the heart of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis.

Outside of Elvis and the Colonel, most of the other characters are thinly sketched, including father Vernon Presley (Moulin Rouge!’s Richard Roxburgh) and wife Priscilla (whose courtship is sped through probably to dodge the problematic nature of a grown man becoming involved with a minor). As Priscilla, Olivia DeJonge gets a few decent scenes later in the film, but there’s not really as much depth given to Priscilla’s relationship with Elvis as is deserved. Stranger Things’ Dacre Montgomery, however, gets a decent amount of screen time as Steve Binder, the TV director who helmed the 1968 Comeback Special that restarted Elvis’ musical career and restored him to his badass rocker roots after a long spell in lame Hollywood movie vehicles.

The Comeback Special also allows for a fair degree of humor as Parker assures network execs it is actually a Christmas special and that Elvis will wear a gaudy sweater and sing wholesome Yuletide tunes (he doesn’t). This and an earlier ‘50s sequence where Elvis defies a police warning to not so much as wiggle his pinkie onstage showcase Elvis as a rebel trying to break free from the softening of his image by the Colonel, who wants to rebrand him as a wholesome, All-American family entertainer (Elvis’ stints in the US Army and Hollywood eventually accomplish that). But even when Elvis wins (against the Colonel’s wishes), he ultimately loses – and that’s the tragedy at the heart of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis.

I’ve seen every movie and miniseries ever made about Elvis Presley and have always been frustrated at how much they neglected to address the role that Black culture and music played in his personal and professional development — as well as how dangerous Elvis was considered to be back then for crossing racial boundaries and challenging the sexual mores of the segregated 1950s. Not so in Luhrmann’s film, which gives Black artists’ contributions to American music and to Elvis himself a far greater role than they have ever had before in any prior project about him. It is long overdue and, hopefully, many of these Black artists and musical trailblazers will also get the big-screen biopic treatment they deserve.

The likes of B.B. King, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Mahalia Jackson, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, and Big Mama Thornton all appear as characters in the film, while the soundtrack includes modern remixes and new music by artists such as Doja Cat to make the linkage across generations and cultures clearer to modern viewers of all races. Elvis the film — which was produced with consent from the Presley estate — is certainly operating as a response to the long and widely held view that Elvis simply stole Black music and profited from it.

The film is certainly operating as a response to the long and widely held view that Elvis simply stole Black music.

Luhrmann’s Elvis takes pains to show his upbringing as a poor white kid living among poor African Americans in Tupelo, Mississippi, and how Black juke joints and gospel music revivals hooked him at a tender age. This film’s Elvis clocks in a lot of time on Memphis’ Beale Street (“the Home of the Blues”) and at the Handy Club, where he openly acknowledges the talents and influences Black artists have had on him.

If anything, Elvis the movie almost over-corrects in its attempt to reframe Elvis within the era of the Civil Rights Movement. You would think he marched with MLK but he didn’t. Elvis himself never wrote a memoir, never did an in-depth Rolling Stone interview or a Dick Cavett talk show appearance like many other stars of that era did. His story has been told by everyone else and much discourse has formed to fill in the holes in the narrative of his personal views. Luhrmann’s film, however, might lead one to assume Elvis was far less conservative than he was. (Elvis, after all, once traveled to the White House by himself to ask President Nixon for a federal narcotics agent badge for his personal collection so he could play his part in the war on drugs.)

Luhrmann’s film wonderfully showcases Elvis’ love of music, presenting it as his first true love (as much as he yearns to also be a great actor). Butler deftly conveys that passion and glee Elvis felt for music, particularly when he’s seen conducting his band to deliver just the right level of near-ecclesiastical fervor he needs in order to perform at his best. The artist element of Elvis has often been glossed over in the many biopics made about him. While even more of that would’ve been appreciated here, at least Luhrmann’s instincts prove right in showing the influence music, in general, had on Elvis and what it truly meant to him as a form of expression. (The film also nicely plays up Elvis' love of comic books, making him into an OG fanboy.)

Everything from Elvis’ dance moves and specific mannerisms to the clothing he wore in iconic photos is meticulously replicated here. Ditto Memphis’ Beale Street and the stage of the Vegas Hilton (although his home, Graceland, isn’t shown quite as much as might be expected). Much of the film is set on the road, especially in the last half as Elvis’ incessant touring, drug use, and divorce from Priscilla take a hefty toll on him. Luhrmann and his team deserve kudos for their near-slavish attention to detail throughout, something non-Elvis fans may take for granted but those of us who have watched the ‘68 Comeback Special or Elvis: That’s the Way It Is multiple times will surely appreciate its precision and fidelity.

Elvis’ drug-addled downfall arrives late in the film. Although his drug usage is first hinted at in a scene set in the ‘50s, it’s not until the end stages — when his place as a long-standing Vegas attraction has been sealed like a tomb — that we see Elvis the TV set-shooting, lyrics-slurring, hothead emerge. Presley’s actual drug usage had been happening for a long time before that but scenes of the Colonel and Elvis’ personal physician “Dr. Nick” doing whatever it takes to make sure he stays on tour and taking the stage in Vegas ultimately prove heartbreaking as Elvis resigns himself to blacking out windows to keep out the sunlight, hiding behind dark glasses, and letting uppers and downers dictate his daily behavior. It makes for an ultimately tragic story, not that dying at 42 years old allows much room for an upbeat conclusion.

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This Is Us: Season 6 Review

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The following contains full spoilers for This Is Us Season 6, which wrapped up on May 24 on NBC.

Tasked with wrapping up some of the show’s most emotionally charged stories, the final season of This Is Us — the non-linear NBC family melodrama — takes a winding and unconventional approach, but one that feels perfectly in tune with the series. The plot, essentially, concludes about two-thirds of the way through the final block of 18 episodes, paving the way for a fantastic run of focused, cathartic chapters that proved, week after week, why the show is so beloved. When things finally come to a close (in the quietly devastating series finale, simply titled “Us”), the result is as moving and satisfying as it is mysterious and poetic.

The season kicks off with flashbacks to the Challenger Disaster, the televised 1986 explosion of a NASA space shuttle. Pearson parents Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) have to navigate the wildly different reactions of their elementary school-aged children, Kevin, Kate, and Randall (played, in this timeline, by young actors Kaz Womack, Rose Landau, and Caron Coleman), in a self-contained, life-lessons style story typical of This Is Us, but it’s also a subtle roadmap to the rest of the season.

As shots of the pre-launch Challenger play on a classroom television, the siblings watch on with excitement, but we, the audience, know what’s about to happen. There’s little we can do — no character we can reach out to, hope as we might — as things hurtle towards disaster. Season 6 functions much the same way. Flash-forwards in prior seasons have shown us that, in the present, the already fraught long-distance marriage of Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Toby (Chris Sullivan) — who got together in the pilot after meeting at a weight loss support group — won’t last much longer, and that Rebecca’s Alzheimer’s will get much, much worse in future episodes. The cards have been on the table for some time; these outcomes are inevitable, and there’s little we can do but prepare, as the show’s most vital facets are threatened. This Is Us has always been about love and memory, and the horrible idea that these things might be lost looms over the proceedings. The Pearson kids have already lost their father by the time the series starts, and the thought of losing another parent is almost too much to bear.

Of course, this doesn’t prevent This Is Us from remaining one of the funniest shows on television. All it means is that it needs to strike a more careful balance — which it does. Randall (Sterling K. Brown), the Pearson adoptee, has a particularly tough time coming to terms with his own adopted daughter Deja (Lyric Ross) trying to carve her own path and move in with her boyfriend Malik (Asante Blackk), a plot that unravels delicately for the teenage couple, and hilariously for the most high-strung of the “Big Three” siblings, as Randall wrestles between his discomfort — with the help of some vintage banter from his quick-witted wife Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) — and his desire to ensure Deja has a bright future. All the while, Randall is also forced to accept his helplessness to change his mother’s condition as it worsens.

The first hints of this arrive when the police finally track down the man who broke into his home in Season 4 (as the show wraps up, it brings back numerous threads from the past, all with distinct purpose). Randall, ever the fixer of everyone’s problems, shows up to court to make sure this man won’t harm anyone ever again (and that his own family can sleep safely), but this thief turns out to be little more than a former junkie with no memory of the event. It’s a deeply sympathetic scene, as is Randall’s on-the-fly adjustment of his plan, as he’s not only pushed to change his idea of what it means to help people (and pushed to accept that some things may be outside his control), but he's also forced to stare his mother’s future in the face.

A character equally forced to prepare for the future is former Hollywood star Kevin (Justin Hartley), who finally comes into his own as a father and learns to take on the responsibilities of not only raising twins, but caring for an aging parent (he finally builds his mother the home Jack always meant to, as the wistful sounds of The Cinematic Orchestra’s “To Build A Home” return one last time to close the loop on this story). With his addictions finally under control, Kevin’s hurdles this season involve taking those final, terrifying steps to make amends, and to accept that his chronic singledom is a consequence of romantic idealizations. For a show that frequently adds a layer of gloss to romantic scenes, this ends up being a particularly poignant self-examination; This Is Us has always been a show where the idea of “family” is unconventional, and for Kevin, this means accepting his role as a co-parent with not only Madison (Caitlin Thompson), the mother of his children, but Madison’s new fiancé Elijah (Adam Korson), even if he rubs Kevin the wrong way through no fault of his own.

Despite numerous sets of flashback timelines, This Is Us has always been strongly rooted in the present.

However, of all three Pearson siblings, the biggest challenge this season belongs to Kate, now a mother of two, raising them both (including a visually impaired son) in Los Angeles while Toby visits once a week from his job in San Francisco. Kate’s past, involving her abusive boyfriend — a thread explored vividly and viscerally in recent years — makes her especially vulnerable in this scenario, at least from a standpoint of fear and codependency. Toby is by no means abusive, but the couple can’t seem to stop their mutual frustrations from taking the form of barbs and personal jabs. At one point or another, they’re both at fault for the way things turn out, but the show’s masterstroke here is framing their divorce not as an inevitable tragedy, but an inevitable evolution of their relationship (they, too, end up better friends and co-parents than spouses, despite their grand love story). Their crumbling marriage is the glue that holds this season together, so when this plot point is wrapped up as early as Episode 12 (“Katoby”), it’s a bit of a surprise, especially as the rest of the show begins taking place several years in the future.

Despite numerous sets of flashback timelines (when the siblings are toddlers, tweens, and young adults, and even when Jack is a young boy), This Is Us has always been strongly rooted in the present. It isn’t some fantasy idea of the present either; the show is one of the very few to not only deal head-on with COVID-19, but with the massive upheaval in social consciousness caused by nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Season 5 saw characters frequently masked and separated by the pandemic, and it even featured an enormously charged, deeply cathartic thread of the Pearson family finally coming to terms with Randall’s identity as a Black man in a white family, and the parts of his experience they couldn’t previously put into words (the show has always been partially about Blackness navigating white America).

The siblings, having worked to mend their relationships last year, and having come to a deeper understanding of each other, begin Season 6 as better versions of themselves (or at least, versions of themselves with the potential to become better), but whatever problems they’re able to solve, the biggest ones that face them now don’t have solutions. After a series of four stellar episodes with differing perspectives on the trio’s childhood (anchored by Logan Shroyer, Hannah Zeile, and Niles Fitch as Kevin, Kate, and Randall as young adults on a bad day), the season’s final third unfolds about five, seven, and ten years into the future (the late 2020s and early 2030s). Kate is happily remarried, Kevin is more composed and philanthropic, and Randall is on his way to positions of political importance — but none of them can stop the march of time.

The 15th episode, “Miguel,” finally concludes the story of how Rebecca came to marry Jack’s best friend Miguel (Jon Huertas) years after his death, another subplot with a monumentally high bar, but one the series clears with aplomb. It’s an episode filled with flashbacks to Miguel’s childhood and his years in isolation, away from the Pearson family, but it also unfolds in a present (some years from now) where Miguel’s own health is waning as he tries his best to care for the ailing Rebecca. It’s a deeply moving chapter that sets the stage for the final few episodes, in which the Pearson siblings must prepare, against all odds, for their mother’s passing.

In some ways, they’ve already lost Rebeca. Moore has spent years playing a dignified older version of the character, but her glassy-eyed expression through much of Season 6 proves difficult for the kids to accept. Since she’s also their living connection to the little family rituals of the past (Jack was always one for tradition), it feels like what little part they still have of their father is being lost as well. However, as they go on to learn, these little moments are things they’ll inevitably carry forward too, with their own kids, as they finally try and fill their parents’ enormous shoes.

In the penultimate episode — which plays particularly like the series finale of a more bombastic show, but This Is Us knows better than to end on some romanticized crescendo — two key elements from earlier in the series make a comeback. The first is the long-dead William (Ron Cephas Jones), Randall’s biological father. The show’s events kicked off when Randall first tracked William down, and he became a surprisingly large part of the Pearsons’ lives. This episode, “The Train,” is about the Pearsons gathering to say their goodbyes to Rebecca as she slips away; in her mind, she sees this process as walking through a train and revisiting people from her past. William’s return, in this imagined construct, is a warm and welcoming presence, as well as a testament to the way This Is Us has balanced Randall’s story as a man caught between his adopted and biological lineage. Perhaps this is some imagined version of the peace Randall hopes his mother will feel at the very end.

The idea of the big picture bookends the entire season.

The second element the show brings back is a subtle one: an abstract, Jackson Pollock-esque painting which William points out to Rebecca aboard the train. First appearing in Season 1, it was painted by Kevin, and composed of many overlapping streaks of color; Kevin once compared the individual layers of this painting to people and experiences, which one could step back and observe as an overlapping collage of life itself. The “big picture,” so to speak.

This idea of the big picture bookends the entire season. When it begins, we know where things will end up to some degree (both for the Pearsons in the present, on their way to divorce and disease, and for the kids in the flashback as they eagerly await the Challenger launch). In the final episode, the trio is left to deal with their mother’s passing, and Randall in particular has trouble seeing beyond his mourning. The episode’s flashbacks (featuring the welcome return of Parker Bates, Mackenzie Hancsicsak, and Lonnie Chavis as tween Kevin, Kate, and Randall for the first time this season) don’t follow some grandiose event en route to one of Jack’s life lessons. Rather, they follow a simple, rainy day — an unremarkable day, and a pretty bad one for young Kevin and Randall — during which Jack, Rebecca, and Kate just want to play, and watch old home videos, which the boys readily reject.

Kevin and Randall are in that phase where they’re eager to grow up, and anything connecting them to their childhood — including having fun with their parents — feels like a burden. It’s deeply ironic, since we know what comes to pass, and we know that they may eventually grow to regret not having spent more time with Jack and Rebecca. We can see the big picture, even if they can’t, which makes this mundane scene of tweenaged sulking seem almost tragic (though it’s also undeniably sweet, as Jack teaches the boys to shave for the first time).

However, the comforting idea that This Is Us eventually offers is that even though we’re shackled by the present, and even though we may never be able to see the beauty of life’s dynamic portrait until we look back on it someday, there are moments when this idea of the big picture, of family, and of life as a connected fabric lived with other people, can be the most important, vibrant, inspiring, and comforting thing in the world, brought on by a mere awareness that what we’re painting will eventually become a complete and beautiful portrait. And so, when the show’s final montage begins unfolding (and Siddhartha Khosla’s thoughtful music tugs at the heartstrings one last time), and we see all the generations of the Pearson family, playing with their kids, and passing down memories and traditions, the big picture comes into view, if only for a moment.

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