Moonshot Review

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Moonshot premieres Thursday, March 31 on HBO Max.

It's too bad Moonshot didn't come out a month ago, during the closest thing we have to an official "rom-com season," as it's a sly and witty "enemies-to-more" comedy that nicely blends genre tropes with sci-fi snark. Starring Riverdale/Zack & Cody's Cole Sprouse and Deadly Class' Lana Condor, Moonshot, which is mostly set aboard a transport spaceship to Mars (no, not the moon), is peacefully sweet while also infused with a light subversive edge.

The charisma of the two leads counts for a lot, as does the late-stage use of Zach Braff as the story's future billionaire space magnate -- who normally would be used as a plot device to impart words of wisdom but here is played as a obtuse narcissist -- helping Moonshot tick upwards. The moments when this story zigs instead of zags, and also actually provides some laugh-out-loud lines, make for a cozy at-home watch featuring young pretty things (Scream's Mason Gooding and Fear Street's Emily Rudd also star) making eyes at each other among the stars.

Moonshot isn't all left turns, though. It still very much adheres to the genre's trappings and delivers the comfort food you'd expect. Sprouse's Walt is an unfocused fly-by-the-seat-of-his pants guy while Condor's Sophie is the anxious plan-oriented type, and while it's not the best look to have an extraordinary woman fall for a supremely average dude (Walt's mediocrity is a humorous running joke), the movie still has the good sense to have him be the one to want to follow and support her.

For most of his life, Walt has only had eyes for Mars, idolizing space explorer Leon Kovi (Braff, being delightfully dickish), while also getting rejected from Kovi's Mars project dozens of times due to his severe lack of skill in any and every necessary science. Sophie is a genius in her field and the two mix like oil and water at first, yet both make huge impulsive decisions to head to Mars for love. For Sophie, it's to see her long long-distance boyfriend Calvin (Gooding) and for Walt, it's to keep in touch with (ostensibly) the first girl to ever show him any interest (Rudd).

Moonshot is smart enough to never villainize the other love interests and instead actually makes them feel like good fits for Walt and Sophie at the outset, so much so that you might not even want Walt and Sophie to fall in love at first; you just want them to be with their respective partners/objects of affection. The entire middle part of the story is just the two of them trying to not get in trouble after Walt sneaks aboard the Mars craft. He doesn't want to get arrested and she doesn't want to get caught with a stowaway. The love element here sneaks up on you, in a good way, as it becomes clearer that their actual reasons for going to Mars aren't really what they think they are.

It plays it satisfyingly safe with the love story while mixing in a bit of bite with the sci-fi elements.

You don't usually get rom-coms with, like, actual special effects budgets, so kudos to Moonshot for putting its sci-fi foot forward. This story could have been told in any other setting, for sure, but staging it all in a bizarre, almost WALL-E-esque trashland future gives us something new to chew on and opens up a nice door to the movie's best zingers (which dabble in dark humor about humanity at points). Moonshot has fun with A.I. companions and various bleak prospects for Earth in a way that adds spice to the by-the-numbers notes -- a bit of old and new. Moonshot isn't exploring new ground, per se, and gives you what you expect from a romantic comedy, but its two leads and the overall fun had with the space backdrop creates a sugary, satisfying tale.

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Weird West Review

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In this alternate universe, the West was won by trying a bunch of ideas so crazy they just might work… and if they don’t, hitting the quick-load button to revert to an earlier save and trying something even crazier until you pull it off. Thanks to that freedom to experiment with its world as you explore, Weird West is one of those games that feels like a stealth and combat playground even as it tells five mostly serious, well-written stories with interesting decisions throughout and a thoughtful conclusion. And with so much ground to cover and replayability to investigate, it’s well worth putting up with some quirks and underwhelming loot.

What ties Weird West’s plot together is a group of shadowy figures using a magical brand to force your character’s consciousness into the bodies of various unsuspecting people. It’s a clever play on the way so many games have us take control of a character who already exists in that world but still need to bring us up to speed on their identity: here, our character is going through the same confusion we are. On top of that, the fact that our character is also an amnesiac and has no idea how or why they’re playing this game of musical bodies is another mind-bending layer of mystery that definitely adds some appropriately intriguing weirdness to Weird West.

Although the tone is generally played straight and dark, with murder, mutilation, and blood everywhere while eerie music builds the mood, the writers at Wolfeye have worked in some good humorous dialogue here and there that keeps things from getting too dour. That’s one of many ways in which Weird West reminds me of my fondness for the classic Fallout 2, including the isometric perspective and the overworld map where you’re pulled out of your travel for bandit attacks, traveling merchants, and a witch who just likes to mess with you. The low-detail art style works better from farther above than it does when you zoom in closer to ground level, but it’s certainly not without its abstract charms when it comes to depicting the exaggerated features of creatures like werewolves, wraiths, and insect-infested zombies that move like The Last of Us’s Clickers.

Dark Humor is one of many ways in which Weird West reminds me of my fondness for the classic Fallout 2.

Each of the five characters you’ll inhabit has their own vignette story that can be as short as a handful of hours or, if you take your time like me, an average of eight a piece. We begin with Jane the Bounty Hunter tracking down her abducted husband, followed by a forcibly mutated pigman searching for the truth about who he used to be, a Protector of the Lost Fire Tribe battling a greed demon, a werewolf who is prophesized to lead his people in a battle for survival, and finally a cult member. They all take place on the same large, dense overworld map of a region known simply as “the West.” And while there’s not a ton of overlap between where their main quests lead them, they’re all free to explore and revisit anywhere and anyone they like. Don’t worry about the count of how many days you’ve spent – there’s no time pressure to any of the stories.

The playable characters are largely defined by their sets of four class abilities, ranging from the bounty hunter’s landmines to the pigman’s poison trail and the werewolf’s temporary invisibility. There’s also a universal set of useful weapon skills like electric pistol bullets, silenced rifle shots, and stun arrows, but those must be leveled up for each character individually. However, a set of perks you unlock that remain persistent, and between that and a couple of shared loot stashes that means you’re considerably more powerful in the fifth act than in the first thanks enhancements like more health, doubled explosive damage, and faster stealth movement. That provides a sense of progression even as you reboot from one character to the next.

These irreplaceable companions can permanently die.

While it’s kind of a bummer that you can’t switch back to directly controlling a previous character if you miss their abilities, that’s an understandable limitation when you consider how the story works as a sequence of events. You can, however, go back to their homes and recruit them as one of your two AI-controlled companions (and you’d be crazy not to, since they’re powerful and you get their inventories back) but the AI doesn’t use their abilities with the precision they need to be really useful in combination with your own. There’s also an added tension from the fact that these irreplaceable companions can permanently die (unless you reload a quicksave), so they’re more of a loss than the disposable mercenaries you can hire in that role when things go bad.

Another forgivable letdown is that none of the main characters are voiced – we only ever hear from the Sam Elliot-impersonating narrator, and the voices that play behind the text of everyone else’s speech sounds like spooky whispers or if Bane from The Dark Knight Rises was a Sim. But their personalities come across in the writing when you interact with them, and we’re given plenty of opportunities to define them for ourselves with choices about who to help and who to harm.

When the action begins, gunfights with more than a couple of adversaries get hectic quickly because everybody moves pretty fast and the lead flies faster. Weird West is effectively a twin-stick shooter, and rapidly aiming and firing while managing your lengthy reload times for your revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and bow and arrow is a tall order. However, there’s a slow-motion button that takes the twitch reactions out of fights (except for the reaction required to push that button); with this activated, the real challenge becomes managing the amount of time it takes to swing your gun from one target to the next – it’s not instant – and of course, timing your special abilities for maximum effectiveness.

At normal speed, everybody moves pretty fast and the lead flies faster.

Also, slow-mo will automatically activate when you initiate a cinematic dive move, which eats some of your precious Action Point bar that’s consumed by your abilities, but is extremely worth it because of how much damage you can put out. You get extra bullets in your gun and can fire rapidly, so anything short of a boss-level character will usually melt under a satisfying hail of bullets before you hit the ground.

Pros will know to do this before a fight breaks out, but I relied on slow-mo to give me the time I needed to really take advantage of the environment. Weird West is as much an immersive sim as it is an action game (which makes sense, considering Wolfeye was founded by Raphael Colantonio, who previously founded Arkane Studios, known for Dishonored and Prey) so you can expect plenty of opportunities for physics-based antics. Throw a lit oil lamp into a field and watch the firestorm that ensues; water (including rain) puts out the fire, while wind makes it spread faster. Touching arrows to a flame makes them into fire arrows, while dipping them in poison does exactly what you’d expect. Electricity plus water is another good one to remember. There’s a lot of room to experiment here, and I love when a plan – or a completely accidental win – comes together.

Of course, there’s no XP gained from killing in Weird West, so that means it’s really an expedient means of acquiring loot as you go from point A to point B or defending yourself when you get caught where you shouldn’t be. That’s a wise design choice because it means that if you prefer to sneak through the whole thing, avoiding combat and pilfering the artifacts and golden playing cards that unlock new abilities you won’t be missing out on much by way of progression. Also, it smartly takes the Last of Us approach to companions while you’re in stealth, meaning they’re simply invisible to enemies and you don’t have to worry about them blowing your cover if the AI does something goofy.

Stealth is an exercise for the patient, so much of my first playthrough was done in a guns-blazing fashion, but every so often I’d see an opportunity to thin the herd; with a little timing (and perhaps some quick-loading) you can crough-walk from bandit to bandit, knocking them out and then picking up their unconscious bodies to toss them into a bush or behind a minecart while you deal with their friends. If they’re dead you have the option to bury them if you have a shovel, so playing non-lethal stealth is slightly more of a self-imposed challenge. (Wolfeye says it’s possible to get through the campaign without killing a human, but I was nowhere near pulling that off myself.)

People you’ve saved can randomly show up to assist you in tough fights later on.

There are plenty of people around the West in need of your assistance – the first act’s villains are cannibals who round up people like cattle, after all – and beyond simply being a nice thing to do, a benefit of choosing to help the helpless is that the people you’ve saved can randomly show up to assist you in tough fights later on. That’s a great reward for a good deed, serving as both a bonus and a reminder of recent adventures – it’ll pop up with their name and why they’re helping you, such as “You freed her husband from prison.” The other side of that coin is that characters can form a vendetta against you if, for instance, they flee after you kill their boss or if you capture them alive to collect a bounty, and then they show up to make things a little tougher for you. I’ve even had significant characters show up as bounty targets after their role in the story was complete, which was a nice way to tie a little bow on their story.

All these overlapping systems mean Weird West is hardly glitch-free. I’ve seen moonwalking enemies, missing guns from hands, enemies suddenly detecting me when they shouldn’t have, companions refusing to budge, taking hits to my reputation when I’d left no witnesses, a man self-immolating at a campfire, and more of those sorts of things. One time my character was taken to jail for a night and then… simply floated out of her cell and into the sky. But for a game with this many moving parts, that’s to be expected to some degree – and considering the frequent autosaves (the last three of which are available to reload at any time), I never lost significant progress.

Over the course of my playthrough I spent a lot of my time gathering loot, whether it was picking over corpses, rifling through shelves and poorly guarded cash registers, mining ore, or digging up suspicious mounds of dirt to reveal treasure caches. There’s stuff everywhere, and exploration is almost always generously rewarded. You also have the freedom to profit by unscrupulous means, such as robbing stores by breaking in at night, digging up graves, or just murdering people for fun (and stealing a horse for a quick getaway) at the cost of reputation which – just like you’d expect – gets a bounty placed on your head if it drops low enough.

Each tier of weapon simply does greater damage, without any other special effects.

That said, much of the actual equippable loot is a little disappointing: there are rarities of weapons, for instance, but each tier simply does greater damage without any other special effects, and no matter what armor or gear you equip you won’t see any changes reflected in your character model. Additionally, there’s no real crafting system aside from creating armor vests out of animal skins or using ore to upgrade weapons. That’s fine, except that it makes all the other junk items you collect feel entirely like… well, junk, and the process of separating the wheat from the chaff becomes tiresome after a good while. It leads to lots of inventory management as you decide what to drop in favor of that shiny new item. Given how your companions act as pack mules I’d have liked an easier way to see who has what and move it between them than talking to one, accessing their inventory, moving it to yours, then talking to the other and moving it to theirs. (That’s something I wasn’t so fond of in Fallout 2.)

The larger story wraps up in an interesting way that makes your choices in the many life-or-death situations – and whether you just tried to do good or not – central to a high-stakes event rather than a showy boss battle. It’s a good call and it serves Weird West well. If you’re just charging through you might finish in 25 hours; I took closer to 40 by going off the main path to explore, collecting quite a few bounties, and seeing what the West had to offer. I was not disappointed.

I was excited to start a second playthrough (on hard mode this time) because at the end of each chapter you get a recap list of your decisions and achievements as that character, which looks like a substantial amount of relatively small changes can add up to a big difference. After all, who lives and who dies in a game where nearly everyone who isn’t literally immortal can be killed can lead to some significantly different outcomes.

Only a few hours in, I’ve already found many things I missed on the first run. Instead of shaking down a local farmer for the deed to his land on behalf of a crime boss who had information I needed, I broke into his office by moving a barrel next to a wall and using it to reach the roof of the building next door, then jumping to a balcony and climbing in a window and breaking into his safe. I also stumbled upon a talking doll who asked me to help it break its curse, won a duel, found an amulet that gave my bullets a chance to set targets on fire, and more. (I could've used a lot more amulets like that on my first playthrough; most of the ones I got had bonuses so situational that I barely noticed I had them equipped.) This time I’m making greater use of Jane’s ability to power up her kick, hilariously knocking enemies back and off of cliffs, and I intend to experiment with a lot more powers I overlooked the first time through.

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Halo: The TV Series Episode 2 Review - "Unbound"

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Warning: this review contains full spoilers for Halo: The TV Series Episode 2! If you need a refresher on where we left off, here's IGN's review for the Halo series premiere.

Now that we're two episodes deep into Paramount+'s long-awaited Halo series, the differences between the show and the source material are becoming even more apparent. Where the games are basically massive, atmospheric set pieces strung together by a thin narrative, the series is a much more character- and story-driven affair. It may not be what every Halo fan was expecting or even hoping for in an adaptation, but it's an approach that continues to pay off in Episode 2.

"Unbound" really flaunts the show's most significant deviation from the games, as we see a whole bunch of Pablo Schreiber's unmasked face over the course of this episode. Not only is Master Chief revealing his sweaty mug, he apparently has little compunction about walking around in public in nothing but a padded rubber undersuit. The Mandalorian this isn't.

But, to the series' credit, this seems like a necessary change. With Mando, there's always room for Pedro Pascal and/or his stunt doubles to rely on body language in place of facial expressions. But with something as clunky as Master Chief's Mjolnir VI armor, there's not a lot of room for genuine acting. This episode seems tasked with ripping off the Band-Aid and getting us all used to seeing an unmasked Chief. It's tough to imagine how this would have played out if he had kept the helmet on the entire time.

Schreiber's performance certainly benefits from having so much more face time. He successfully tiptoes that narrow line with his character, portraying Chief as a man whose emotions have been suppressed for decades and is only barely waking up to the world around him. It should be very interesting to watch that performance evolve over the course of the series as John recovers his lost memories and (presumably) undergoes the same transformation as his old friend Soren-066.

Speaking of which, Episode 2 also introduces Schreiber's fellow The Wire alum Bokeem Woodbine, who plays a former Spartan who fled for a life of freedom on the fringes of human civilization. That, obviously, fits right in with Chief's current predicament. It also tees up an intriguing flashback scene showing younger versions of John and Soren on the night they parted ways. Hopefully those flashbacks will be a recurring element over the course of the season, and we learn more about how these ordinary children are forged into superhuman killing machines.

Woodbine's performance is a little over-the-top, unfortunately. For whatever reason, he spends most of this episode shouting at the top of his lungs in an almost comically low register. Does that make him the Carl Weathers to Schreiber's Pedro Pascal? There's also some concern about how Soren and Kwan Ha will factor into the plot going forward. Do we have any real reason to care about Kwan once her story diverges from John's? Why does it matter to the bigger picture what's happening on Madrigal now?

Makee is quickly becoming a fascinating addition to the mythos.

Episode 2 also makes it clear we'll continue to see scenes of the Covenant and Charlie Murphy's Makee sprinkled in between Chief's story. While the show doesn't quite have the budget and scope needed to truly bring this interstellar empire to life, Makee is quickly becoming a fascinating addition to the mythos. In a series all about indoctrination and the suppression of free will, it makes sense to have a major antagonist who mirrors John and has been raised to hate humanity. And again, there's a lot of potential for Murphy's performance to grow as Makee goes into deep cover and infiltrates the UNSC. Can someone who views her own body as alien truly pass herself off as human?

In some ways, it's disappointing to see "Unbound" end essentially where "Contact" did last week, with Master Chief returning to Reach and turning himself in. You have to wonder if there was a more efficient way of getting from point A to B and back to A. But regardless, the scene between John and Natascha McElhone's Dr. Halsey is easily the highlight of the entire episode. Theirs is a very complex, even toxic dynamic, and you really get a feel for that with the way Halsey interacts with and looks at John. There's a mix of motherly affection and sinister opportunism. As much as this series has already done to flesh out Master Chief as a protagonist, Halsey may well be the real star of the show.

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Morbius Review

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Morbius hits theaters on April 1, 2022.

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe has its first expansion out of Venom territory with Morbius, the Jared Leto-led superhero flick about a so-called “Living Vampire.” Director Daniel Espinosa approaches this bat-man’s beginnings with horror flourishes once seen in his sci-fi thriller Life, but they’re never pronounced enough that they’ll satisfy horror audiences. Morbius presents its origin story with the most formulaic structure, as an overly serious Leto is doing the opposite of Tom Hardy’s campy Venom schtick that so many adore. It’s a choice that promotes Morbius’ moral conundrum as a self-conscious vampire over anything considered “superhero cinema fun,” taking everything deathly serious to an ultimate detriment.

We’re introduced to Dr. Michael Morbius as a Nobel Prize winner with a crippling blood disease he’s vowed to cure. His acclaim, and his company Horizon’s breakthrough, is an artificial blood that has saved countless lives — the seafoam-colored liquid represents one of the film’s outlying blasts of color amidst putrid darkness. Morbius works alongside scientist and eventual romantic interest Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona) in the name of his ailing best friend Milo (Matt Smith) since their early private health care treatments. It’s the epitome of serious consequences brought upon by fraternal love as Morbius splices vampire bat DNA with a human subject — himself — leading to his ghoulish transformation into a not-yet-proven-controllable killing machine.

One of the early problems in Morbius is how the origin beats cycle through the monotonous motions. There’s a lacking energy behind Dr. Morbius’ condition because we know he’ll eventually go all man-bat, nor is there any attempt to creatively dump exposition that could have been read as an introductory text scroll. Countless superheroes and supervillains boast the same creation tale — writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless struggle to set apart Morbius’ emergence despite introducing such a horror-forward character. In regards to larger cinematic universes and hopeful sequels, Morbius rolls through introductory motions only to close out just as our interest climaxes. It’s always a first-step movie that exists because it has to exist for later reasons, which becomes apparent as the script fast-forwards through most explanations or descriptive advancement.

Morbius feels churned out of a Superhero Movie factory — except for Matt Smith’s portrayal of Milo.

It’s jarring to watch the digital effects-heavy Morbius so soon after Greig Fraser’s stunning cinematography in The Batman, since the former becomes another blurry post-production eyesore. Nothing is practical as Leto’s chiseled cheekbones turn into the angular, skeletal scowl of Dr. Morbius, who’s trailed by a spectral mist of sound waves whether he’s lunging, dashing, or flying. Morbius is a gloomy, black-on-black-on-black tapestry in so many sequences that monochromatically lose visual interest. Morbius flies past New York City skyscrapers like Spider-Man discovering his web-slinging for the first time, but there’s nothing aerially spectacular. No grand gothic gestures in cinematography, just an F. W. Murnau reference here, or Freddy Krueger cue there.

Morbius feels churned out of a Superhero Movie factory, made from stock parts — except for Matt Smith’s portrayal of Milo. He appears to have just waltzed off the set of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, allowing his dapper underworld adventurer a colorfulness the film desperately needs. Smith’s flamboyance and spirit is the antithesis to Leto’s drearily dour genius, which is a purposeful but inefficient comparison. As the two continually cross paths, it’s Smith who consistently steals scenes despite Dr. Morbius’ name as the movie’s title. Smith does so bloody good playing bad, to the point where everything almost becomes one notch above bearable (read: almost).

So Morbius advances, calling on direct Batman imagery as the winged creatures swirl overhead and taking jabs at Marvel’s mightiest Avengers. A stern tone becomes the film’s downfall, because there’s nothing exceptional about poorly underwritten supporting characters — Adria Arjona, Jared Harris as Milo and Dr. Morbius’ caretaker Emil Nikols, Tyrese Gibson as agent Simon Stroud — and dizzying animated action. Sony’s reliance on digital renders for Venom and Carnage work because there’s an absurdity to their roles as actors talk to themselves, which isn’t a benefit of Morbius. Here, audiences are fed exactly what they’re most likely expecting from this bargain-bat origin that’s a bit exhausting until too late.

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Night's End Review

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Night's End debuts on Shudder on March 31.

While Night's End is a significant departure from director Jennifer Reeder's acclaimed 2019 neo-noir Knives and Skin, it's still a sound paranormal thriller. Knives and Skin oozes rebellious neon styles while Night's End plays by the book in terms of supernatural storytelling of housebound ghost tales — it becomes evident in a matter of minutes that Reeder's directing someone else's script. Writer Brett Neveu imagines haunted-house cinema in a more populated renter's environment by adhering to all the no-no rules of horror characters summoning evil. Reeder, meanwhile, is here to guide audiences through that vision step by step, which gets the job done. It's nothing revolutionary, but shows a steady hand from Reeder. And as someone who's ever-curious about how horror will continue to evolve with technology, Night's End scratches that itch of livestream nightmares and the stupidity of click-seekers.

Geno Walker stars as "anxious shut-in" Ken Barber, which is the film's workaround as a pandemic project with minimal cast interactions. Ken lost his family, lives alone, and only engages with companions Terry (​​Felonious Munk) and Kelsey (Kate Arrington) — and Kelsey's husband Isaac, played by Michael Shannon — via Zoom chats. Otherwise, Walker is by himself in most scenes as Isaac starts a YouTube channel and tries to become famous by engaging with uber-popular user Dark Corners (Daniel Kyri) and their haunting compilation videos. That's when Ken starts interacting with occult specialist Colin Albertson (Lawrence Grimm) and breaks every horror movie bylaw, from reading Latin passages aloud to using ritualistic objects with strange markings.

Night's End is somewhat predictable as Ken investigates the gruesome history of his apartment, complete with a previous murderous tenant. What starts with an odd occurrence as an object falls off Ken's wall in the background of one of his vlogs becomes a haunted-house exploration in tighter corners. Ken researches the "Wellwoods" and tries to learn what spirits could be inhabiting his domain, as Kelsey and Terry urge him to get popular enough to score a crossover segment with Dark Corners. There's nothing unexpected here for horror fans, but Reeder's direction keeps the intricacies of Night's End moving forward at a fine clip.

In terms of horror, Ken is tormented from behind as he sits in front of his laptop. Ghostly interactions usually start when a figure appears in the hallway or doorway behind him, or as his screen glitches to suggest disturbance. It's everything we've seen since "Screenlife" horror rose to popularity with titles like The Den and Unfriended, just specific to Ken's situation. We're watching him reassemble his life after a breakdown, and Walker does well to engage with Ken's inner demons while confronting literal ones in his daily life. Ken struggles to stay consistent in contacting his children and has an obsession with a Pepto-Bismol-type product that he mixes with coffee or liquor, as well as an apparent drinking problem. Not all horror films can present characters like Ken, who draw attention themselves while their nightmare manifests.

What's frustrating is that Night's End feels like it has a low ceiling in terms of production quality. The familiar haunted trappings of Ken's apartment are meant to become more dangerous upon the third act's livestream payoff — but the low-budget affair can only accomplish so much with digital demon effects and what practical crafts we do see. The storytelling delivers, and Neveu modernizes haunted-house blueprints with internet connectivity, but the effects lack the impressiveness of Reeder's Knives and Skin acclaim. It seems to be a case of a filmmaker doing everything possible with their resources, saved by Reeder's confidence behind frightful minimalism that tackles typically isolated horror tale-telling primarily online.

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You Won't Be Alone Review

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You Won't Be Alone will hit theaters on April 1, 2022.

The Wolf-Eateress: her name alone conjures up grotesque imagery of a witch devouring animal carcasses for some nefarious ends. But what if it’s more complicated than that? In You Won’t Be Alone, it very much proves to be. Director Goran Stolevski finds a way to breathe new life into the age-old folk tales with his take on a fabled witch, one that forges a coming-of-age nightmare through a humane lens.

The horror movie tells the strange tale of Old Maid Maria, a witch who terrorizes a small village in 19th century Macedonia. A very mention of her keeps the kiddies in line with threats that this supernatural boogeyman will come for them in their sleep if they don’t behave. And that’s exactly what happens when Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca) claims a newborn.

It’s an interesting setup that sees the young child become the witch’s protégé when she returns, years later, for her prize. But in the meantime, Nevena (Sara Klimoska) has been locked away, kept “safe” within a sacred cave. Now, she knows nothing of the outside world. What follows is an exploration of humanity framed within an eastern European folk tale, one that evolves when she and her “witch-mama” have a close encounter with a local hunter, and Nevena’s curiosity gets the better of her. Nevena isn’t like her witch-mama – she wants more. She wants to know what it’s like to live a normal life.

The transformative magic at the heart of You Won’t Be Alone is visceral and horrific, with the witches literally taking a part of their victims to become them. A crow, a dog, a man, a woman – it doesn’t matter. They can become whatever they want to be, and with superb special effects, the transformation from one person to another looks painful and barbaric, and altogether gruesome.

Of course, that’s just the beginning, as Nevana becomes determined to create a life for herself without human society, as a chance encounter with a new mother (Noomi Rapace) sees the girl take on her form. Of course, Rapace is blinding as she takes over the leading role from Klimoska, embodying the awe-struck girl perfectly as she tries to fit in with those around her. There’s a weird kind of satisfaction in seeing the actress embody this character in exactly the same way that the character embodies others.

And this becomes the central concept of the film: Nevena seeing the world through others. It’s often emotionally draining, with the true horror not quite so visible. You Won’t Be Alone isn’t exactly scary – it presents more of a grinding existential dread as Nevena explores every facet of human emotion through the cadavers of those she has killed along the way.

You Won’t Be Alone forges a melancholy coming-of-age nightmare that touches on all aspects of humanity.

As always, horror provides an ideal medium for exploration of social issues. “It’s a burning, hurting thing, this world,” she remarks. Through her narration, we get the inner thoughts of this otherwise silent protagonist – observations about the harsh world she sees, and how she fits into it. Obviously, there’s ample opportunity for some cutting social commentary, so we watch in grim anticipation as Nevena claws her way through the length and breadth of humanity.

Klimoska adds a weary curiosity to the film’s first half, with Nevena’s naivete underpinning a wide-eyed performance. It’s not all stumbling around looking gobsmacked – she’s clearly struggling with her situation, and Klimoska walks a fine line between revulsion and curiosity at her own witchy powers. Likewise, this strangeness is embodied perfectly by Rapace, who takes over as Nevena’s first host. Rapace stands out as someone who takes on the young girl’s characteristics with ease, becoming the newfound witch with otherworldly ease.

As a debut feature, You Won’t Be Alone is a terrific start for Stolevski. He’s clearly one to watch, with a subtle understanding of what makes his cursed protagonist tick, not to mention a mastery of folk-horror tropes that create an exhausting world for her to traverse. He makes some bold choices, too, telling Old Maid Maria’s story cryptically through tales passed down from mother to child.

You Won’t Be Alone is a somber, cutting dissection of humanity wrapped up in horror-like folklore. The world-building by Stolevski is truly enthralling, creating an exhausting depiction of 19th century Macedonia that feels even more hostile than the witch who comes for you in the night. The unravelling tale of Old Maid Maria clinches it – the monsters of this world are not the witches after all, but the evil that men do. This twist on the genre breathes fresh life into what could have been a fairly average supernatural flick. Instead, You Won’t Be Alone is a beautiful deconstruction of humanity at its most vile.

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MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD Xbox Edition Review

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Retailing for only $899, the MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD Xbox Edition aims to be one of the most affordable ways to join the 4K, 144Hz revolution. Featuring a large but thin-bezeled 32-inch IPS panel, this display comes equipped with features to make the most out of your new console: HDMI 2.1 for 120 FPS gameplay, Quantum Dots and HDR-support for improved color and brightness, and a built-in KVM to swap your mouse and keyboard from your computer to your Xbox. Does it succeed in its lofty goal of being the must-have gaming monitor for your Series X or S?

MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD – Design and Features

The MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD is out to make an impression from the very start. It’s bold in all the right ways: 32-inches, 4K, 144Hz, Quantum Dots, HDR600, tons of I/O… even though MSI has stamped Xbox Edition on the box, this is a compelling monitor, even if you don’t own a current-gen Xbox. But, it’s the experience of using it that shows this is more than just on-paper promises.

The Optix MPG321UR-QD uses a large IPS panel with no curve. It was surprisingly color accurate out of the box with only minor tweaks needed from my SpyderX colorimeter software to round it out. The panel is also quite bright with a peak brightness of 600-nits. Typical brightness in SDR mode measured at 400-nits with my sensor, so right on target, and came in at 450-nits in HDR mode, exactly where you would expect them to be with that rated peak.

The use of an IPS panel usually means better colors and viewing angles, and that’s exactly what you get here. The MPG321UR-QD promises 178-degree viewing angles, and while that’s unrealistic to actually take in the screen, even extreme angles don’t result in unnatural color shift like on TN and VA panels. Colors are also enhanced through the use of quantum dots in the display. It looks rich and vibrant, which only sweetens the eye-candy that is 4K gaming. The downside to IPS is that contrast suffers, with a rating of 1000:1, notably lower than its VA counterparts in this space, including MSI's own Optix MAG321CQR. Backlight bleed wasn’t terrible on my sample, but the typical “IPS glow” is present which limits how dark blacks can become.

MSI touts the panel’s color capabilities, and they make it an appealing option for hobbyist content creators. The feature list claims it covers 143% of the sRGB color spectrum, 97% of DCI-P3, and 99% of AdobeRGB. In my testing, it pegged out my SpyderX Elite at 100% of sRGB (which is the highest it will measure) and covered 96% of DCI-P3, both of which are impressive results. There are also built-in color modes to enhance the accuracy when you're operating in this space, so if you choose to color correct your monitor, be sure to note which mode you’re using and create a profile for each.

If you’re worried about responsiveness: don’t be. The days of IPS monitors being a poor fit for esports and competitive games are over – at least with high-quality monitors like this one. The Optix is rated at 1ms for response time. While that claim might be a little bit of a stretch (we’ll explore this in the performance section), it’s hardly a slow monitor and doesn’t have issues with ghosting.

The display also offers gaming-first features in variable refresh rate and low framerate compensation (LFC). Support for AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync ensure screen tearing will never be an issue and enhances smoothness when gaming. Note that this display is “G-Sync Compatible” and isn’t yet certified, but I didn’t experience any issues during testing. With 4K being the demanding resolution it is, you may find yourself falling below the 48Hz threshold for FreeSync or G-Sync to kick in. If that happens, the monitor will double each frame to ensure you stay in a compatible range for smooth and fluid gameplay.

Returning to the physical features of the display, MSI has gone above and beyond. It features super-thin bezels that make the most of the available screen real estate and help it feel extra expansive. There’s also an anti-glare coating that wards off distracting reflections on the screen. A power button is positioned on the bottom right, but shouldn’t be confused with the navigation joystick on the rear: clicking the joystick won’t turn the monitor on or off.

Around back, the MPG321UR-QD looks particularly classy. It mixes together no less than four different surface textures, but it’s really the use of bronze on the badge, logo, and joystick that tie it all together. There’s a tasteful RGB strip that can be customized inside the OSD, but like the rest of the back, you’ll never be seeing it, which is really a shame.

The stand connects to this back with a pair of two screws. It supports height adjustment across 100mm and swivels 30-degrees in either direction to share your screen with a friend or get positioned on a corner desk. It also tilts from -5 to 20-degrees to stand when you need to stretch your legs. The stand doesn’t rotate, so portrait orientation is out of the question unless you opt for an aftermarket stand, but since it supports a VESA 100x100 mount, finding one should be no problem.

On the underside, we find the I/O, and boy is there a lot of it. The MPG accepts video from four separate inputs: two HDMI 2.1 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4, and USB Type-C. In addition, there are three USB Type-B ports that handle upstream communication to your PC (powering the KVM, hub, and software OSD controls). There are then six USB Type-B ports (four on the bottom, two on the side), a headphone and microphone jack, and a Kensington lock.

That’s a lot of ports, but there’s a good reason for that: this monitor is made to swap between PC and console, and it’s big enough to be exactly that kind of entertainment centerpiece. A KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switcher, allows you to shift connections between systems with a simple OSD toggle. Incorporating it here means that you can press a hotkey and instantly swap not just your display, but also your keyboard, mouse and the headset you have attached over to the Xbox (or, presumably PS4/PS5). Now that consoles support full-size keyboards and mice, this turns out to be quite a useful feature that tied my PC and console in a way they never were before.

If you plan to game on console, the MPG321UR-QD has you covered. Since it features HDMI 2.1 ports, my Series X was instantly able to detect that it was capable of displaying a 4K, 120Hz (144Hz is limited to PC only). In games that support it, the picture is silky smooth, so I highly encourage anyone curious to make a pit stop to their settings menu and enable these features. It also supports HDR10, which was likewise instantly detected.

If you’re used to gaming on an expensive TV, here’s your reminder to keep your expectations in check. With a peak brightness of 600-nits, the Optix is better than most gaming monitors pasting “HDR” on their boxes (typically 400-nits or less), but it’s still a far cry from the 1000+ nit brightness found on many UHD televisions today. It also lacks any kind of local dimming, which is a requisite for a “true” HDR gaming experience. That said, the color depth is very good and the brightness is leveraged well to present a picture that’s definitely a step-up from average 400-nit monitors or less.

There is one glaring omission here: there are no speakers. Since the built-in speakers with gaming monitors are usually pretty bad, it’s hardly an Achilles’ heel, but for a monitor aimed at console gamers that may need a monitor to double as a TV, it’s odd that they’re absent here.

MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD – OSD and Software

The MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD features a plentiful array of options inside of its on-screen display and the Gaming OSD app. These menus are also where you’ll control its more unique features, like the Sound Tune mic enhancer and KVM switch. Navigating the menus is easy and fairly intuitive using the joystick on the back, though I did increase its timeout time to keep it from closing prematurely.

For gaming, there’s a shadow boost feature called Night Vision, as well as the on-screen reticles that are common on gaming monitors. It also includes an on-screen magnifier called Optix Scope, which is clearly in the realm of cheating and you should never-ever use it. At the same time, you can enable motion blur reduction (MPRT), but it comes at the expense of brightness as the backlight strobes to present better motion clarity.

The Optix changes the formula a bit with its use of “smart features.” Its Night Vision tech can automatically detect when you’re playing in dark areas and ramp up shadow brightness to enhance your visibility. The crosshair is also able to detect what’s on the screen and change color to make sure it’s visible on any background. Particularly neat is that the monitor can gauge the brightness in the room that you’re in and adjust screen brightness to match. If you’ve ever turned on a bright monitor in a dark room, you know the searing pain that can ensue, so it’s cool to see it applied here.

In addition to gaming tech, you also have an array of picture modes and enhancements. For professional work, you have dedicated modes for AdobeRGB, sRGB, and DCI-P3. You can add clarity to your picture with the Image Enhancement option, as well as adjust brightness, contrast, sharpness, and color temperature, but there’s no six-axis color balance to calibrate your picture without software.

MSI took a page out of Gigabyte’s book and made all of these options available without ever opening the actual on-screen display. It does this through its new software suite, dubbed Gaming OSD. It’s a small application that runs in the background and is completely optional. Just like on Gigabyte’s monitors, however, moving these options to software makes them much easier to actually use. Being able to change picture profile or enable a gaming feature like Night Vision with a hotkey is far more practical than fiddling with a joystick mid-match. Kudos to MSI for taking this step.

MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD – Performance

Testing the performance of a gaming monitor is a mix of dedicated tests and real-world gaming. My first stop for this display was the UFO Test to see whether it would be responsive enough to prevent ghosting.

While there were definitely some ghosts present, the results are overall very good. I’ve seen VA panels with much worse performance when, in theory, they should be the faster display type. The lack of artifacts on the fastest response time setting also holds promise and makes it a viable option to actually use while gaming.

The next stop was Lagom’s LCD test pages to get another eye on how quickly the display could transition from lights to darks and vice versa.

These results echo the UFO Test. The opposing colored blocks in both images catch the display in mid-transition using a high-speed camera shutter. The result here is again quite good for an IPS panel and points toward solid, ghost-free gaming performance in real world scenarios.

Following this, I put it through the SpyderX DataColor Elite’s monitor evaluation tool. It received high marks with the exception of luminance uniformity. According to the sensor, the center left of the screen was about 19% darker than the rest at its worst point with other left and right thirds ranging from 10-14% darker than the center. In actual use, however, this is fairly hard to perceive unless you’re looking for it, but it is there. The one particularly dark section doesn’t seem so, though, and blends in with the other edge sections just fine.

For actual gaming, the monitor performed wonderfully. I spent the several weeks I had with it playing a mix of PC games and Xbox Series X. Screen tearing and ghosting weren’t ever issues. Since the MPG321UR is the rare monitor that has a usable “fastest” overdrive setting, I was able to leave it in this mode and simply enjoy the benefits of a speedy IPS panel.

Getting started on the Xbox was absolutely painless. It connected immediately and after enabling 120Hz, played seamlessly. The 4K resolution is a perfect fit for the 32-inch screen size, balancing pixel density and usability impeccably well. When used at a desk, it’s just big enough to take up your field of view without forcing you to turn your head to take in the action at the sides of the screen.

The monitor also made it much easier to use a mouse and keyboard with my console since everything was already connected. I could be working on an article one minute, switch the KVM, and be ready to play Call of Duty with the same peripherals the next. I don’t mind using a controller, but as any PC gamer will tell you, mouse and keyboard is where it’s at for first-person shooters.

With all of that said, I still can’t see the MPG321UR-QD replacing my TV for Xbox gaming. While it’s better than normal HDR400 gaming monitors and looks great overall, it lacks the same range as an HDR1000 TV with dozens of local dimming zones. If you’re used to playing on that kind of television, you’ll notice the difference right away. Adding those would surely have driven the price of the monitor much higher, however, so it strikes a good middle-ground for gamers who want their gaming monitor and TV one shared device (albeit with a headset).

Purchasing Guide

The MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD Xbox Edition retails for $899 and can be purchased directly from MSI and other major online retailers.

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Moon Knight: Series Premiere Review

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Marvel's Moon Knight premieres its first episode Wednesday, March 30 on Disney+. Below is a spoiler-free review.

The MCU's sprawling Phase Four marches on here in 2022 with the Disney+ series Moon Knight, headlined by Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke. Moon Knight, sometimes referred to as "Marvel's Batman," mostly due to some surface comparisons culled from the character's earlier days, has always been an interesting, hard-to-pin-down outlier in the realm of superheroes. This first episode -- which plays like a sly, slapstick mystery -- is helped across the finish line by Isaac's fun and rambunctious performance as a bumbling museum employee, Steven Grant, caught up in a dangerous duel between Egyptian gods. The premiere, like that of WandaVision (which didn't start fully answering questions until its fourth episode), asks for patience as it offers very few specifics about poor Steven's mental state, but Isaac's "everyman" is such an endearing rom-com style fool that it all makes for an enticing introduction to a very unique crusader.

In a recent Moon Knight featurette, series star May Calamawy described the series as a mix between Fight Club and Indiana Jones. That label tracks, though let's also throw in The Long Kiss Goodnight, which starred Geena Davis as a government assassin who, after a trauma, finds herself mentally trapped inside a docile, suburbanite alias she created as a cover. There's more of that going on here than Fight Club disassociation, but ultimately, after this first episode, we still need answers, particularly about the exact nature of Steven's madness because he's very much living half a life. Instead of seeking actual help for what he thinks are extreme sleepwalking episodes, he opts to strap himself to his bed at night, content with just losing large swaths of time and only partially existing within the real world. Even his job, as a lowly looked-down-upon gift shop employee, seems to allow him multiple unexplained days off as if everyone around him might be in on this particular ruse.

Day and Knight

The kick is that Steven's other (real?) personality is a brutal mercenary named Marc Spector. When we meet Steven, Marc has somehow allowed this tamer persona to get away from him in a way that never happened before and the two sides struggle for dominance. That being said, Marc also purposefully and willfully allows himself to be Steven again at times (and sets up Steven's life in a very specific way that Steven himself couldn't manage, including the bed strap at times). So as we move forward, it would be nice to get more clarity as to how these two sides of the same man work, rule-wise, since there are times when Marc can burst in to help save Steven's life and other times when Steven has to willfully give up control to let Marc through.

But even if this never gets fully sorted out, it wouldn't be the end of the world since there's more going on here than the various asterixis related to Steven/Marc's dissociative identity disorder. Just the inclusion of it here, as a wild card element that helps keep Steven, and us as viewers, in the dark initially so that this new arena of Egyptian lore can be ushered into the MCU helps Moon Knight stand out in a good way. Just know that you'll probably have a few questions about how Steven and Marc switch off with one another. Also, Moon Knight fans will know that in the history of the hero, there's one more non-costumed persona -- that of street-wise cabbie Jake Lockley -- that's currently left out of the mix (though this show's Steven Grant is already completely different from the Steven Grant alias from the comics, a millionaire playboy that fed into the Batman comparisons).

Knight to Remember

In the comics, Moon Knight was a mercenary, Marc Spector, left for dead outside of an Egyptian temple, resurrected by the god Khonshu to exact vengeance on evil-doers. When he returned to the States, he adopted two other identities to help him in his crusade to fight crime (it's actually just written quickly that he became rich through investments so he could be moneybags Steven Grant). Over the four decades that have passed since the first Moon Knight run, different writers have played around with Marc's overall reliability as a narrator and whether or not those aliases were merely covers, part of a splintered psyche, or a bit of both.

This new Moon Knight series is unlike any comic run that's come before it (though one member of Marc's old crew does appear in a bizarre-yet-apropos way), but given that Moon Knight is constantly reinvented and refreshed with new takes on his mental stability, the show is actually kind of par for the course in how the character's been handled. His hallmarks are rather malleable and up for new interpretations, and so star Isaac, creator Jeremy Slater (The Umbrella Academy), and director Mohamed Diab are seemingly having a blast with this incarnation of one of Marvel's most unhinged heroes. Slater's time on Umbrella Academy shines through a lot, in fact, when it comes to both needle drops in general and needle drops used to accentuate big boisterous action scenes highlighting Steven's particular brand of haplessness.

Again, though, this first episode doesn't give us the full picture and scope of the series. It seems like the type of story that'll call for a big flashback episode to fill in the many gaps and until then, it's going to be a comedy of errors of sorts. Notable too is that Moon Knight feels very disconnected from the MCU. This is by design, apparently, but it can feel a bit jarring after five previous MCU shows that were heavily tethered to the events of Endgame. It's not inherently bad, but it does make Moon Knight feel like latter-day Marvel Television shows like Runaways, Cloak & Dagger, and the later seasons of the Marvel Netflix series, in which any connection to the MCU had all but vanished. There are no mentions of The Blip or Avengers or other events from the Infinity Saga, keeping Moon Knight (who's had many team ups in the comics, including becoming an Avenger) in a bubble. Thematically, it works for now since Steven is in a very odd cerebral prison, as it were.

Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke

This first episode rightfully focuses all its might and glory on Isaac and the peculiarities of Steven (which includes a purposefully wonky British accent). It's not a one-man show, but Steven being a man trapped inside a sinister swirl of blackouts, bloody aftermaths, and what he perceives to be a nightmarish dreamworld attacking his senses (the towering Khonshu appearing like a sexy Skeksi stalker) is definitely the anchor for this initial outing. Steven's job plants him smack-dab inside a large London Egyptology exhibit where he's able to absorb all the info he can, and may later need, for his adventures. Over the course of this premiere, Steven gets swept up into a madcap maverick adventure that he can't possibly comprehend. The Indiana Jones elements here aren't just the plot's ancient Egypt dealings but also in the way Steven escapes scrapes by using a combination of luck and skill.

Even though Steven's confused, bleary existence roots the series at first, that doesn't mean we're cheated out of the show's other famous star, Ethan Hawke, or that it keeps Steven and Hawke's cult-leader Arthur Harrow apart. No, they have a ton of screen time together and Hawke is able to play into his skills as a gravely whispering obsessive, honed over decades of intense roles spanning multiple genres. Hawke has a ton of horror and sci-fi films on his resume, and thus is easily able to feel at home in this batshit world of wicked deities and multiple personalities.

Ethan Hawke's Arthur Harrow is alluring because there's a quiet kindness deep inside him.

Here, Hawke gets to play around with the time-honored MCU template of Villain with Good Intentions but Bad Execution while also being the one "in the know," to juxtapose Steven's total bewilderment. Hawke's Arthur Harrow (which was the name of a blink-and-miss-him adversary in Moon Knight lore, though this version is its own thing) is alluring because there's a quiet kindness deep inside him. Like all cult figures, he wears the strong charisma needed to attract followers and it's the perfect icky environment for Steven to get weirdly wrapped up in.

It's good that this show not only has these two stars but also uses them to their fullest because, as mentioned, Moon Knight isn't widely known and the series itself is holding back a lot of information for the time being. That being said, hardcore Moon Knight fans out there who never thought this day would arrive might feel like collapsing at the sight of this crazed champion presented fully in front of their eyes. It's also the perfect show to slip into if you're an MCU casual, as it does keep the rest of the long-running story at arm's length. Isaac called this the "the first legitimate Marvel character study since Iron Man" (though that could be disputed, for sure), mostly meaning that it was an origin tale set outside the hulking weight of knowing everything going on elsewhere in the MCU. We're still left -- without the rest of the MCU to prop this up -- with a clever, action-packed war of wills.

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My Dress-Up Darling: Season 1 Review

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My Dress-Up Darling is now streaming on Crunchyroll.

Sharing a hobby with someone is a simple, but intimate thing. What if someone else considers your pastime weird or not what’s expected based on the way that you look? The answer is, of course, that it doesn’t matter, and My Dress-Up Darling doubles down on this lovely idea. It understands and captures the value and the joy of a mutual interest – the stranger and more niche the better – because when you unexpectedly find someone as passionate as you are, it’s undeniably exciting.

While its protagonists Wakana Gojou and Marin Kitagawa start with very different interests, they align perfectly in their newfound ritual of cosplay. Wakana, a hina doll craftsman-in-training, turns out to be the seamster that the otaku Marin needs to complete a dream of hers: to embody the characters that she loves. (The catch: the first character is from an adult video game, something the show takes every opportunity to turn into comedy.) Wakana’s insecurity around his passion, stemming from a childhood friend declaring it creepy that a boy is interested in creating dolls, leads him to connect with Marin -- his first friend in a long while -- and her interests.

In their collaboration on cosplay, My Dress-Up Darling smartly leads with the straightforward sentiment that hobbies should, of course, not be categorized by gender or appearance. It’s hardly a mind-shattering idea, but that’s fine: there’s a simple pleasure in seeing the protagonists share their somewhat niche interests together without judgment. And, as with any good anime interested in craft, there’s a lot of love in the process in Dress-Up Darling, which runs through the difficulties and joys of constructing a costume from scratch as Marin recruits Wakana. But it never feels too instructional in talking about costume making; before getting too in the weeds about any particular element, it always ties back into the emotional thrust of the episode.

It also helps that the double act of Wakana and Marin is just incredibly watchable. They bounce off each other well, and not just comedically, but in the sincere joy that comes from their sharing of interests and art together. They’re also both incredibly stupid in the most endearing possible instances, such as Gojou’s hyper-fixating on potentially making a fool of himself in ways that Marin doesn’t care about, or Marin’s utterly chaotic lifestyle. Better yet is when their mutual cluelessness collides with romance, culminating in a completely outrageous episode in a love hotel. There are only a couple of other recurring characters outside of that central pairing – mainly the sisters Sajuna “JuJu” Inui and Shinju Inui, the former a popular cosplayer and the latter her photographer. In tackling their insecurities, My Dress-Up Darling finds some surprising pathos, but, for now, Wakana and Marin are the focus.

The straightforward premise and small cast makes its decisions to play around with a large variety of animation styles and the details of its character acting stand out even more; every scene is a dance of contrasting and conflicting body language and awkward teenage socializing. Though the rhythms and dynamics of the conversations remain consistent, there are many different angles on how they’re communicated to us, the audience -- it’s always clear on screen how much imagination is going into how each character physically reacts.

Speaking of which: the boy-meets-girl romantic angle might feel predictable on its face, but the show’s dynamic presentation makes it feel fresh. It also doesn’t take long to dispense with any pretense that the two are into each other, and as a result, has a lot of fun in the awkward, blundering navigation of those feelings, especially so when Marin’s unawareness of Wakana’s crush flips around on the hapless but well-meaning boy. The gradual transformation of their friendship (and initially fledgling romance), though played for laughs and acutely aware of the fantasy element, feels surprisingly natural, thanks in no small part to the care and personality of its character animation.

The smaller scale, single-location episodes still feel incredibly dynamic.

The directors finds a lot of charming humor in the simple collision of Marin’s overzealousness and nonchalance compared to Wakana’s naivety (which sometimes begs suspension of disbelief) and complete inability to keep it his cool -- and the considered, often delightful character acting of the animation keeps these elements ever-present in their body language. Wakana is careful, sparing with words and often fairly still, whereas Marin is bubbly, chatty, and hyperactive.

Because of the care and personality that goes into that character animation, the smaller scale, single-location episodes still feel incredibly dynamic. Even a scene of Marin eating a bun has a lot of expressiveness to it, and what would be an otherwise unremarkable instance of fainting is given extra comedic punch through an insert shot where a little cartoon pulls a plug inside the character’s brain. Episode 11, set mostly within a love hotel, finds dozens of different ways to show Wakana panicking and/or having a horny meltdown, before ending with a jaw-droppingly funny and brazen visual gag. Other glorious and off-kilter moments include a wild cut of animation that remakes the iconic ending of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or numerous sequences involving an anime series-within-a-series where the animators get to play around with the aesthetic of ‘90s magical girl shows. The breadth of genre, and that it manages to smuggle in at the margins, is just another part of the fun.

There are dozens of such ingenious moments threaded throughout every installment as each episode director leaves a distinct mark. As a result, the show holds an incredibly broad variety of styles in every scene and mixes everything together well; the standout eighth episode, directed and storyboarded by Yūsuke Kawakami, starts in a more detailed style before shifting to something a bit looser and more expressionistic as the two take an impromptu trip to the beach, the characters drawn with softer shapes to contrast more strongly against its more realistic backgrounds.

The visual creativity ends up being a primary factor in softening up the series’ frequent, in-your-face fan service. There are a handful of leery moments that’ll take some viewers out of it, but for the most part, they can be reconciled with the characters’ subjective perspective -- and sometimes it just gets so absurd that it goes back around to feeling inoffensive. It helps that it’s so upfront about the characters’ romantic interest in each other and candid about the less-than-wholesome nature of the various manga, video games, and anime that Marin is obsessed with, which makes the resultant jokes about sex mostly feel natural rather than simply vulgar. In the aforementioned 11th episode, via a fictional manga within the show, it even pokes fun at this element of itself, and at the potential for contradiction between its slice-of-life sweetness and occasional raciness. Even when it doesn’t quite work that way, there’s at least a pretty great visual joke in these moments. Because of that element, well, it gets away with a lot.

My Dress-Up Darling is a surprisingly sweet, big-hearted standout of the winter season. The craft is incredible -- so much so that even when it leans into fan service, it’s told with incredibly funny visual imagination. None of that takes away from the genuinely sweet relationship at its center, one of self-discovery and finding self-esteem in collaboration and shared interests.

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The Contractor Review

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The Contractor will be available in theaters and on-demand in the U.S. on April 1, 2022.

For me, there is nothing in this world more important than protecting and providing for those I love most, which is exactly why Chris Pine’s new military drama The Contractor hits so close to home. Even if, like me, you can’t relate to the career background of Pine’s Special Forces Sergeant James Harper, there’s a lot that resonates in his painful story and the unfair cards he’s dealt, and Pine’s performance shines through as he carries the heavy weight of his character’s past on screen. Even though the ending and certain action scenes fell a little short of the high bar set by the rest of the film, James Harper’s journey remains a largely compelling one.

Refreshingly, instead of jumping straight into the action and explosions as some military thrillers tend to do, it spends nearly an hour setting the scene before a single bullet is fired. That time is spent introducing us to Pine’s James, his wife Brianne (Gillian Jacobs), and their son Jack (Sander Thomas), showing a loving family whose happy lifestyle is being threatened by ever-growing debt and an honorable discharge that James wanted no part in. Fans of edge-of-your-seat gun fights need not worry as The Contractor eventually has plenty of them, but the time it takes at the beginning grounds the story, the stakes, and it lends much more meaning to what happens next.

Even scenes that might play out as casual pillow talk demonstrate what’s at stake here, including one where Brianne and James discuss the death of a friend who was also in the military. It is presented as not some shocking revelation, but instead as a regular part of their lives, and the normalcy with which they talk about it makes it ever more disturbing.

It’s moments like these, coupled with shots of James and Jack playing in the backyard or being filmed by Brianne in the pool, that paint a picture of a family with a pretty universal want: to live their lives free of struggle and tragedy. It gives The Contractor a certain amount of relatability in what could’ve been instead have been 103 minutes of bullets flying with far fewer emotional stakes.

This effort is aided by its cast, and Pine was a more than worthy choice for the lead. Pine sinks with the weight of a life filled with pain -- both mental and physical, in large part due to a severe knee injury and the fallout from a toxic relationship with a father he is trying not to become -- and he portrays Harper’s heavy baggage wonderfully. He was also clearly up to the task when it came to the action scenes, as I never questioned whether he was a soldier who had committed his whole life to perfecting his lethal skills.

Ben Foster, who plays James’ best friend and former superior, is another standout in The Contractor. The chemistry between them that we’ve seen in prior collaborations like Hell or High Water is on full display here, selling a brotherly trust and banter that extends far beyond the story that’s on the surface.

I was left feeling conflicted as the credits rolled, and not in a great way.

Kiefer Sutherland, meanwhile, plays Rusty, the leader of a team running covert, off-the-book missions to protect national security alongside the seemingly lovely Spring Lake Coffee Roastery. It’s no fault of Sutherland’s, who, on the surface, fits perfectly into the role of a gruff and seasoned vet with a heart, but this character ends up as one of the film’s weaker aspects. Rusty doesn’t get enough screen time to become anything more than two-dimensional, standing as a pretty thin element in an otherwise layered story, which could also be said of the ending.

It’s hard to discuss without getting too deep into spoilers, but I was left feeling conflicted as the credits rolled, and not in a great way. The way it all wrapped up felt a little too tidy, and that’s not to say James and co. saw a happy or sad conclusion or anything in between. Instead, the final moments simply felt at odds with the rest of the film; it didn’t feel truly earned, happened way too quickly, and left little to imagination.

All that aside, the journey to that underwhelming conclusion is an exciting one, filled with mostly solid action, shocking twists, and a mirror that presents us with a simple question: are you sure everything is as it seems? It’s no spoiler to say that the answer is clearly no or we wouldn’t have much of a film, but there are plenty of surprises and adrenaline-filled moments that more than make up for that obvious truth.

On that note, while many of the action scenes carried the heft of a big-budget blockbuster, others weren’t quite as sleek, and briefly took me out of the immersion. There was one close-quarters fight in particular that gave me a headache with how many jump cuts there were, some of which would cut away too fast and return farther ahead than they logically should have. Another scene saw a veteran making a very questionable decision for someone of his experience level followed by a fist fight where a few blows that sounded like they hit the target clearly missed on screen.

In the end, however, The Contractor is more memorable for the focus it puts on the people and families impacted by war, and it’s all the better for it. While any particular fight in the movie might not be discussed years down the line, its message – one about the hard truths its characters are forced to learn, and the willingness to give everything for those you love – is timeless.

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The Oscars Honor 60 Years of James Bond

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Tonight, at the 94th Academy Awards, a brief moment was spared to celebrate 60 years of James Bond.

With the first entry in the franchise's 25-film run, Dr. No, opening back in 1962, Surfing's Kelly Slater, snowboarding's Shaun White, and skateboarding's Tony Hawk introduced a fun montage clip paying tribute to six decades of vodka martinis, rocket-shooting Aston Martins, and suave spy action.

Set to Wings' "Live and Let Die," which was featured in Roger Moore's first outing as 007 in 1973, Live and Let Die, here's the big Bond montage!

Celebrating the classic, the iconic, the legendary, James Bond. 🙌 #Oscars @tonyhawk @kellyslater @shaunwhite pic.twitter.com/f909tKYYc3

— ABC (@ABCNetwork) March 28, 2022

Daniel Craig's five-film tenure as James Bond wrapped up last year with No Time to Die. Currently a James Bond-themed TV show called 007's Road to a Million -- a "Bond-style spin on a race around the world" reality show competition -- is being developed for Amazon Prime Video.

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Ranking of Kings: Season 1 Review

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The below is a spoiler-free review of Season 1 of Ranking of Kings, which is now available to stream on Funimation and Crunchyroll.

Ranking of Kings is a classic fairytale in the making. This anime is all about not judging a book by its cover, but uses its very medium to lure audiences in with the false promise of a cute, Ghibli-esque, family-friendly story. But what it instead unveils is a dark fantasy tale with as much political intrigue and plot twists as Game of Thrones, game-changing action animation, and some of the best characterization the medium has seen in years.

The show is set in a magical world where the king of each nation is subject to ranking based on a number of criteria; where gods exist, magic is real and certain animals can talk; where devils strike bargains with mortals; where there's an entire clan of shadow people. This is the world where we meet Bojji, a little prince born deaf and tiny despite being the son of actual, literal giants.

A wordplay on a Japanese slang word for friendless, Bojji is often ridiculed for being unable to bear his father's crown when he grows up. Still, Bojji dreams of becoming the number one king and meets each day with a sunny disposition and a smile for everyone. When he one day meets a survivor of the wiped-out shadow clan named Kage, the pair realizes they can understand one another, and together they set out on an adventure to help Bojji reclaim his kingdom from the machinations of an entity trapped in a magic mirror.

Yes, this is very much the type of story you'd find in a picturebook for children – after all, the first episode is titled "The Prince's New Clothes." The visual aesthetic is reminiscent of early Nippon Animation (where Ghibli co-founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata got their start) and shows like 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother or Heidi, Girl of the Alps, with simplistic, round, and friendly character designs, soft colors, and painted backgrounds. Even the soundtrack, by artist Mayuko, has a sense of innocence and childlike wonder that brings to mind maestro Joe Hisaishi's work for Ghibli.

That is until you get to the end of the first episode, where Bojji's younger but physically strong and egocentric brother Daida (it fits that Daida shares a voice actor with Attack on Titan’s Eren Yeager in Japanese) decides to spar with Bojji. Here, Ranking of Kings sheds its animation-as-a-book-cover disguise and reveals that it was hiding some of the most kinetic and electrifying action anime has seen in years. Arifumi Imai, who gave us the best Levi and Mikasa fight scenes in the early seasons of Attack on Titan, delivers the type of swashbuckling swordfights even Hollywood hasn't been able to replicate in decades.

Later, Shōta Goshozono gifts us with what may very well be a masterclass in animation directing and visual storytelling. Episode 21 redefines what a fight scene can look like and what animation can do – what cinema can do – with dramatic wide shots, sweeping angles, 3D layouts, and expert use of blocking all coming together to give us an unprecedented fight scene with a detailed sense of scale (more of that on this excellent thread).

Beneath the cute look and incredible action, Ranking of Kings also has a rather dark, emotional story.

Indeed, Studio WIT proves once again that leaving Attack on Titan was the best thing the studio could have possibly done. After all, they’ve made nothing but bangers since then, and Ranking of Kings is undoubtedly their best work since Eren Yeager first took the world by storm back in 2013.

Beneath the cute look and incredible action, Ranking of Kings also has a rather dark, emotional story that gets quite gruesome at times. Characters die horrible, bloody deaths, betrayals hit you harder and with more emotional weight than a Game of Thrones plot twist, and there is imagery that may haunt your dreams — like drinking the blood of a bird that drank the slushified corpse of your father. The darkness hits so hard because of the character work, which the show excels at.

Every character we meet appears two-dimensional at first, an archetype worthy of a fairytale told to children to teach them very simple concepts and lessons, but they’re quickly revealed to be fully fledged, emotionally complex characters. No character is as they first seem, and Ranking of Kings manages to break ages-old fantasy and fairytale tropes left and right, giving us noble knights with less-than-noble intentions and evil stepmothers who turn out to be the most gentle and caring souls in the world.

Then there's Bojji, a character that exemplifies the "he protec" meme and seems practically engineered to be lovable and defenseless, but whose mighty smile that can melt any metal hides a lifetime of pain and sorrow. Bojji is lovable without being infantilized, fragile without being weak. He is the definition of "best boy," and his disability is not treated as a narrative device that Bojji is meant to cure, but simply a part of him that forces him to use other strengths to overcome his obstacles. This is a deeply empathetic show, and nowhere is it more evident than in the way Ranking of Kings places such an importance on portraying Bojji's disability with care (the Tokyo Federation of the Deaf supervised the sign language portrayed in the show).

As a fantasy world, Ranking of Kings manages to be massive and lived-in while only explaining the bare minimum of how things work. Like Mad Max: Fury Road, it’s able to tell you everything you need to know about the world through images, often introducing bizarre and seemingly random characters or scenarios that nevertheless serve to paint a picture of how things work or the sort of people that would exist here — like a mad king who lives alone in the woods and prays to a mysterious sky creature that eats the souls of slain animals and then regurgitates new ones to repopulate the forest. Even the power level is unlike that of any other anime. There is no chakra or nen system here, but even without laid-out rules, you still get a sense of how the powers play out.

Sadly, the second half of the season suffers from some pacing issues, and the finale jumps a few points too quickly in order to reach an unearned redemption for a truly despicable character that never got a proper resolution. Then there is a sort of out-of-nowhere flashback to the main antagonist's backstory that is so uncharacteristic compared to the rest of the show that it prevents it from reaching masterpiece status. The flashback portrays an entire country as two-dimensional backstabbing villains, despite the show otherwise refusing to paint anything as just black and white. To make matters worse, the episode used background art that resembles Japan's very real history of imperialism and colonization in Korea. It is an unfortunate allegory with some despicable possible implications. The fact that — for better or worse — the show never returns to this allegory makes it a very sour note on an otherwise ice cream sundae of pure joy.

Ranking of Kings is a triumph of animation.

Even still, with a unique visual style, complex and memorable characters, and some of the best action animation in years, Ranking of Kings is a story that will be told for years, even decades to come. Long live Bojji.

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