I Came By Review

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I Came By premieres Wednesday, Aug. 31 on Netflix.

I Came By is a slow, wicked thriller that contains a handful of surprising breaks to convention. It's a small, unassuming film featuring 1917's George MacKay as a vandal who, after a streak of breaking into rich people's homes, accidentally picks the wrong target in a devious serial killer played by Paddington and Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville. I Came By's third act may devolve a little bit into slugfest territory, but overall this is a rather shifty and shocking game of cat(s) and mouse.

Aside from the perverse fun found in watching Bonneville get gruesome, I Came By is a neatly packaged crime story that unspools a rather morbid vigilante tale. Without digging too much into specifics, due to the aforementioned bending/breaking of traditional narrative structure, this is a film that's figured out a way to keep you engaged and guessing through a very simple story in a manner that also helps it stand apart from other maniac movies. Characters who you assume are supplemental at the start become integral as the acts progress.

MacKay and Percelle Ascott play Toby and Jay, childhood friends who, in adulthood, moonlight as renegade eat-the-rich graffiti artists who spray-paint "I CAME BY" on the penthouse walls of the wealthy and corrupt. After Jay bows out of their small two-person movement because he wants to focus on starting a family with his girlfriend (Strike Back's Varada Sethu), Toby plots to rob the estate of activist judge Sir Hector Blake (Bonneville) by himself. But down in Sir Hector's basement, Toby uncovers more than he bargained for.

In the tradition of movies like 2018's Bad Samaritan, 2016's Don't Breathe, or even Hitchcock's Psycho, I Came By revels in the idea of a low-level rule breaker entering the wrong body of water and crossing paths with a truly dangerous shark. And Bonneville is Dexter-esque here (if, say, you were meant to hate Dexter Morgan) as a killer who seems to almost operate at his best when he's cornered.

Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire, Trainspotting) plays Toby's mother, a therapist who has now wound up with a very "angry young man" in her house. The film touches on their mother/son rift, hinting that it has to do with Toby's late father and an inheritance she won't allow Toby to have, giving Toby a nice complicated center as someone who despises the rich but is also pushing away his mom because of money. Macdonald is great as an embattled working mom who gets caught up in her son's malicious misadventure.

And, of course, Bonneville is memorable as well as a monster whose sociopathic charm has a very short leash. You'll long to see Sir Hector take the fall here, even as the movie tries to make a clumsy point about false altruism making evil intentions. Plus, you'll actually learn more about why Sir Hector does what he does than you do about the other characters in the movie, which works because he's the whirlpool in the equation -- and everyone else starts to circle, and get sucked into, his torrent.

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Stargirl Season 3 Premiere Review - "The Murder"

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Stargirl Season 3 premieres on Wednesday, Aug. 31 on The CW. The below review discusses some plot details, but no spoilers.

DC's Stargirl is special. Its story, themes, and characters -- all of which developed organically over the course of the first two seasons -- ground themselves in the notion that how we treat each other matters. Its playful energy and steadfast commitment to its innate innocence instantly distanced it from its sister shows. Now, as the Arrowverse-adjacent superhero series enters its third season, showrunner Geoff Johns and the writers are pulling out all the stops to elevate it even further.

The premiere, titled “The Murder,” brings The Gambler (Eric Goins) back into the fold. The Colonel Sanders-looking criminal mastermind returns to Blue Valley determined to atone for his past lawbreaking… or is he? The Justice Society of America is hopelessly split over whether or not reform is possible for former Injustice Society members. The Courtney Whitmore school of thought insists that light can pierce any darkness, that a lifetime of dastardly deeds doesn't make someone a hopeless case. Conversely, the Rick Tyler/Yolanda Montez approach to trust aligns more with a “guilty until proven innocent” mindset. Testing the JSA further are Cindy Burman (Meg DeLacy) and the overbearing Crock parents (Joy Osmanski and Neil Hopkins), who all insist they've changed for the better.

What We Said About the Series Premiere of Stargirl

IGN's Jesse Schedeen gave the first episode of Stargirl an 8/10, writing that it's "just the sort of charming, wholesome superhero series the world could use right about now. Despite a rough opening act, the pilot quickly finds its footing as it hones in on the story of Courtney Whitmore and her strained family relationships. " Read the full review here.

And yet, even as Courtney deals with these new problems, much is the same. Amy Smart's Barbara Whitmore is as good-hearted and attentive as ever. Beth Chapel (Anjelika Washington) remains a vital foil for the JSA; without her, Courtney would be left to manage her hotheaded teammates alone. On the periphery, Mike (Trae Romano) and Jakeem (Alkoya Brunson) still struggle to make cases for themselves as heroes. It's a busy season for Stargirl, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

“The Murder” adopts the tone and structure of a whodunit, setting up a season-spanning murder mystery while still deepening and darkening existing arcs. We get a ton of new insight into the Gambler, who until now was an underwritten baddie lost to the wind. Some of the Gambler-focused plotting seems fairly predictable initially, but those of us who are caught up know that Johns and his writing team are partial to surprises.

Stargirl has always been liberal — and brilliant -- with its curveballs, and this bouncy season opener sees the show at its most surprising. The closing minutes are gasp-worthy; even the most comic-savvy viewers won't see the first twist coming.

But if anything separates Stargirl from other super-outings, it's the tone. The soapy angst of other CW DC shows is mercifully low-key here, glimpsed only in more brooding characters such as Yolanda (Yvette Monreal), Rick (Cameron Gellman), and Cameron (Hunter Sansone). Even then, though, the melodrama never overwhelms other, more measured emotions. Instead, the writers opt for something closer to The Breakfast Club than Days of Our Lives (and thank God for that).

If the premiere is anything to go by, the Stargirl/Starman dynamic will be a game-changer.

Casting-wise, Stargirl couldn't have found a more perfect performer for its emotional and thematic anchor. Luke Wilson's Pat Dugan is Middle-Class Fancy incarnate; a living, breathing manifestation of “This lawn isn't gonna mow itself.” The “cheeseball by day/sidekick by night” routine is a snug fit for Wilson, who is no stranger to the everyman role. But Pat Dugan is far more than your run-of-the-mill suburban dad. Remember: he chose this life after years of running around with superheroes. Even then, though, he still carries an air of “I can school you ten ways to Sunday without you realizing it.” And he totally can, too. The guy is a wealth of wisdom, insight, and understanding, a paragon of stepfatherhood who has been a guiding light for Courtney and her friends. “The Murder” finds Pat pulling double duty as a mentor to both Courtney and Starman (Joel McHale). More specifically, he's forced to mediate when Courtney and her idol realize they have to share custody of the cosmic staff they use to fight crime.

If the premiere is anything to go by, the Stargirl/Starman dynamic will be a game-changer. For most of the series, Starman was a relic of the past, a symbol from whom Courtney could learn and a beacon of hope for her when she needed it most. Now that he's alive and crashing with the Whitmores, he has become an unexpected — and unwilling — problem for Courtney and the JSA. Not much is clear just yet, but it's safe to say that Starman's return will continue to complicate things for Courtney.

For starters, the staff is now bonded to two people, cleverly spinning the expression “Don't meet your heroes.” Starman's pride, temper, and attachment to how things should be starkly contradict the idealized version occupying Courtney's imagination. Luckily, McHale takes the challenge seriously and imbues his character with a melancholic waywardness. The requisite goodness that draws the staff to its wielders is still actively guiding him, but so is his impulsiveness. He's a good man who never created a life for himself outside of his superhero identity. The consequence is a person who doesn't know what true contentment looks or feels like.

McHale does a bang-up job carrying his end of the mentor/mentee relationship, but the back-and-forth works because Brec Bassinger has the chops to keep up. She continues to impress with a lead performance that reinforces her casting as one of the best decisions DC has made in years. Her take on Courtney Whitmore is everything the character needs to be: kind, fair, and gentle… but totally up for kicking ass if trouble's afoot. (Johns, who co-created the Stargirl character in 1999, has spoken openly about how incredible Bassinger's audition was). What's more, her chemistry with co-stars Washington, Wilson, DeLacy, and Monreal continues to be one of Stargirl's greatest strengths. Some of the episode's best moments happen in the Blue Valley High cafeteria, where the JSA members discuss supervillains over trays of colorless slop.

Stargirl has always been about seeing the good in others. Its big heart and keen sense of self make it one of the most self-actualized superhero adaptations ever. With “The Murder,” the stage is set for what will hopefully be an outstanding season of superhero television.

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Immortality Review

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It would appear that the recent decision by Warner Bros. to scrap the release of its near-completed Batgirl movie was motivated entirely by boring old tax reasons, but what if there was something far more sinister at play? Such is the setup for Immortality, the latest investigative thriller from the makers of Her Story and Telling Lies, which had me scouring through an archive of FMV footage from three unreleased films in an attempt to discover exactly why they never saw the light of day. In spite of some surprisingly shallow search tools what followed was a thoroughly absorbing undertaking that began as a sort of jigsaw puzzle but morphed into the motion picture equivalent of a Magic Eye poster, and I sat completely transfixed as each piece fell into place until suddenly Immortality’s true subject snapped into focus and its shocking bigger picture was revealed.

Connecting the three unreleased films is Marissa Marcel (played by Manon Gage), a model turned actress who starred in each of the doomed productions and subsequently never worked again. She’s introduced in the opening clip of Immortality by way of a 1969 guest spot on a Johnny Carson-style talk show, charismatic and full of optimism for her upcoming big screen debut, but from there her ill-fated career is experienced as a jumble of out-of-sequence on-set takes, table reads, rehearsals, and 8mm home movies that span a 30-year period of time. Gage gives an absolutely electric performance in the main role and I couldn’t take my eyes off her, quite literally so since I had to scrutinise close to 200 clips of her by the time Immortality’s roughly nine-hour story had reached its end.

A feast of found-footage that was every bit as easy to buy into as the original Blair Witch Project.

The footage itself is utterly believable, not only due to the era-specific film stocks and aspect ratios used, but also a slew of smaller details – from the archaic bullying in between takes from a misogynistic director during the 1968 production of Ambrosio, to the perfectly cheesy turn of the century pop performance in 1999’s Two of Everything. There’s a rawness throughout that enhances this sense of authenticity even further, with actors struggling not to giggle at a naked cadaver before the snap of a clapperboard cues a dramatic scene in a morgue, and stagehands stepping in to rig primitive special effects. Immortality almost had me fully convinced that I was poring over a collection of lost clips from productions that actually existed – a feast of found-footage that was every bit as easy to buy into as the original Blair Witch Project – which made my efforts to piece it all together all the more determined.

Splinter Celluloid

Actually navigating your way through Immortality’s expanding catalogue of clips involves a process that effectively marries the whirring mechanical playback of an old-fashioned Moviola editing machine with the advanced AI-based image matching of modern search engines. You can scrub forwards and backwards at variable speeds, jump instantly to either end of a reel, or even go frame by frame. Such fine control over playback is paramount, since unearthing new clips demands that you hit pause and click on a face or prop in order to instantly jump to a matching instance in another piece of footage. I quickly found myself tumbling down rabbit holes and teleporting between time periods as I gradually reconstructed the plots of all three films and, more importantly, got a deeper insight into the relationships between the main players through candid moments that played out after the director yelled “cut.”

This setup may sound reasonably straightforward for a non-linear story, but there’s actually substantially more going on in Immortality than initially meets the eye. To go into too much detail here would be to disarm it of its most astonishing story moments, but needless to say there are subtle clues that point to more malevolent forces at play from very early on. These initially came in the form of doubletake-inducing flashes of horror while I was scrubbing through a clip at speed, which triggered alternate sequences featuring an enigmatic provocateur known only as The One (played by Charlotta Mohlin) when examined more closely. Mohlin is absolutely spellbinding in the role, and her increasingly ominous influence on your ongoing search paves the way for a series of chilling revelations and alarmingly eerie imagery that give the term ‘behind the scenes’ a disturbing new meaning.

Cutting Room Flaw

Being able to criss-cross back and forth between footage by simply clicking on objects or faces may well be a more streamlined setup than the typed search terms of Her Story and Telling Lies, and it’s certainly far more controller-friendly for console players, but it can also be somewhat haphazard. Occasionally I would click on an object in the foreground, like a hand holding a keycard for example, only for Immortality to interpret that as me selecting the window behind it and thus match-cutting it to some random window in another clip. It was similarly disappointing whenever the cursor would change to indicate that a certain person’s face was searchable, only for it to just bounce me back into the sequence I was already in.

The image-based search function also means that Immortality feels oversimplified as far as the actual investigation side of things is concerned, and I got the overall impression that the majority of my discoveries came as a result of dumb luck as opposed to being the direct result of any real deduction. There were certainly a handful of memorable occasions when I felt rewarded for being eagle-eyed – freezing a frame in the split-second a character offscreen was revealed in a reflection, for example – but more often than not I just continually clicked on the same faces and objects until I’d exhausted the number of new matches they uncovered, before moving on to the next. It’s a method that can seem annoyingly approximate at times, like when I clicked on a very distinctive smiley face pendent and it matched it with an entirely different piece of jewelry, and that regular randomness makes the process feel a bit like forgoing a proper Google search in favour of spamming the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button instead.

That said, even though I rarely felt like I arrived at them under my own volition, Immortality’s major story revelations never failed to startle me. The complex narrative is masterfully crafted; looping around and layering on top of itself and continually recontextualising events via a drip feed of new details, gradually deciphering the initially cryptic monologues delivered by The One and bringing the real reasons behind Marcel’s apparent exile from the movie industry to the surface. In fact, so shocking was the moment that it all fell into place and the truth became fully apparent to me, that had I been livestreaming my playthrough the picture-in-picture shot of my face would have been thrown into a dolly zoom like I was the leading man in a Hitchcock movie.

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Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 Review

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Samsung effectively runs the foldable smartphone market with its Galaxy Z Fold line of tablet-turned-smartphone behemoths and its Galaxy Z Flip line of pocket-friendly throwbacks. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is the latest from the latter camp. Four generations of foldables in, and the Z Flip 4 isn’t doing anything terribly new. So, for a $1,000 phone, let’s get to the bottom of what it actually has to offer.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 – Design and Features

You’d have to look really close to spot a difference between the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and last year’s Galaxy Z Flip 3. The shape of the phone is largely unchanged, with just under a millimeter shaved off the width and height. This makes for a phone that gets downright compact when it’s folded closed, though kind of beefy at about 0.66 inches thick, and then can sprawl out when unfolded to unveil a 6.7-inch display.

If the 1080 x 2640 Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ support, and a 1200 nit peak brightness sounds a bit familiar, that’s because it’s spec-for-spec identical to last year’s display. Make no mistake, it’s a looker, especially when pumping out HDR visuals. Samsung does a great job hiding the crease where the screen folds over, but it does have a tendency to show itself if the screen is dark or there’s a lot of one color going over the crease (such as a white background behind text).

At the top of the screen is the same hole-punch selfie camera. The display is flanked by stereo speakers, one on the bottom of the phone and one in the earpiece. These produce enough sound for casual listening, and they remain decently clean at max volume.

The right edge of the phone houses volume buttons and a power button that also doubles as a fingerprint scanner. When the phone is folded open, they’re far up the phone and hard to reach without going two-handed or an awkward hold. That’s just one situation where the phone regrettably calls for two hands.

The aggressively tall screen (it has a 22:9 aspect ratio, and the phone is 4.4mm taller than an iPhone 13 Pro Max) is hard to navigate one handed. Even unfolding the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is best accomplished with two hands – the classic thumb-pry-and-flip of the bygone flip phones is possible, but takes a bit more of an aggressive flip than I’m comfortable with on a $1,000 phone made of mostly glass. Though Samsung has switched to Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the outside of the phone, I’ve yet to see a phone with any kind of glass that won’t break if it’s flung hard enough. Meanwhile, the interior ultra-thin glass is still sensitive enough that Samsung has to advise not putting too much pressure with finger nails.

Thankfully, the phone at least boasts some water resistance with an IPX8 rating that suggests it can withstand full submersion, though there are seams in the frame where it would likely take some time for water to fully evaporate out. It’s odd that Samsung would call the Z Flip 4 “the only water-resistant foldable smartphone” when last year’s Z Flip 3 also boasted an IPX8 rating.

The Z Flip 4 continues to carry a 1.9-inch, 260x512 Super AMOLED cover display on the outside. This provides a convenient peek at the time and date, weather, timers, contacts, and music playback. It’s semi-customizable, but falls short of the options a smartwatch would provide. The cover display can also show notifications, but its best trick is that it can serve as a viewfinder for taking selfies using the two rear cameras situated right next to it.

Wireless charging and reverse wireless charging are supported on the Z Flip 4, and Samsung advertises up to 25W fast-charging as well (up from the 15W of the Z Flip 3), though it may well require a special Samsung charger that’s not included in the package.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 – Software

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 comes running Android 12 – a detail curiously absent from the phone’s specs online. It has One UI 4.1.1 over the top, which keeps the phone feeling more like a Samsung device and less like the Pixel 6 line. Samsung keeps its launcher well-focused, providing plenty of tools and means for customization without hammering me over the head with everything it can do. I especially appreciate that the quick settings menu continues to show more options and information all at once instead of taking the new route seen on the Pixel 6, which shows less and requires more time and interaction to get anything done.

There are some extras for the phone’s folded states. As mentioned, the external display gets some widgets, though surprisingly few. The phone also has a special split-screen mode that can activate when it’s partially folded. But I’ve only seen it provide a small space below the active window for a button for the notification shade, screenshots, brightness and volume controls, and one to toggle a touchpad zone that brings a mouse pointer onto the screen – to do what? I can only imagine. It feels a little like using the world’s smallest laptop, and not in a fun way.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 – Gaming and Performance

While the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 might emphasize style over more practical elements, it’s not totally neglecting power. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 and 8GB of RAM inside are more than up to the task of everyday operation, keeping the phone feeling smooth right alongside that 120Hz refresh rate. Even gaming for an hour on GeForce Now, the phone kept its cool. It’s got enough muscle in there for local gaming as well.

The phone packs in a 3,700mAh battery which has proven more than enough to get through the day, especially if I use the external display to check notifications instead of lighting up the entire internal display every time I want to see who texted me.

The phone can come with 128GB of storage as a base but has upgrades to 256GB or even 512GB, giving users plenty of options to fit their needs. 128GB will likely do well enough for users who don’t take a lot of video, while the larger capacity options can fit more before needing to offload to an external storage device.

The 5G connectivity held up well, generally getting better reception and speeds than my Galaxy S20 running on the same network. Different antennas, band support, and new modems can provide a meaningful upgrade that goes under the radar on the spec sheet, but there have been some definite improvements in this department

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 – Camera

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 cameras are largely unchanged from last year’s model, and that’s not the worst news. Those cameras were carrying their weight, and this time around they can still do so. The only notable change is that the main wide-angle sensor got a bump from having 1.4-micron pixels to 1.8 microns, which means more light-capturing goodness.

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 has the following camera setup:

• 12MP wide at f/1.8 with OIS and 1.8-micron pixels
• 12MP 123-degree ultra-wide at f/2.2 with 1.12-micron pixels
• 10MP selfie at f/2.4 with 1.22-micron pixels

These cameras aren’t magic, like you might get on the Pixel 6 Pro, Galaxy S22 Ultra, or iPhone 13 Pro Max. It can’t turn pitch black into a visible image with minimal blur and it’s not snagging crisp detail with a 10x telephoto zoom. But, what it can do is capture what you see with some striking clarity in a rich color palette.

The wide angle is the star of the show, serving as both a competent shooter for normal photos and standing in a league of its own for selfies. Even though the internal selfie-camera is easily respectable, there’s almost no reason to use it outside of video chats because of how easy it is to use the rear sensor for selfies.

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 captures a high level of detail in bright conditions and holds up well even as the scene dims down to more overcast conditions. In the dark, it has a moodiness that somewhat helps make up for the bit of blur caused by its longer exposure times.

The color the main camera is capturing is rich. Though the ultra-wide sensor appears to lose a hint of the vibrance coming through the main sensor, it doesn’t feel like a huge sag in quality. It’s also impressive how well the main camera performs when using digital zoom. It can make fine print legible and comes close to the clarity of even the 10x zoom on my Galaxy S20 (which has an optical advantage), even though neither produces a very useful image at that zoom level.

For day-to-day shooting, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 continues to be a respectable option, though it’s easily beaten by standard smartphones that emphasize photography over fold-ography.

Purchasing Guide

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is available from Samsung for $999.

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Madden NFL 23 Performance Review

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EA’s latest entry in the long-running Madden series sees some upgrades over the previous-generation game, including improved visuals, presentation, and animation. Today’s analysis is all about graphics, performance, and comparisons between platforms and generations, though I won’t be delving into the details of the sport simulation.

Performance

I’ll be looking at PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S, as well as PS4 Pro as the representative for the previous-generation consoles. All of these target and hit 60fps at all times during gameplay, though with the stop-start nature of the game, these segments are rarely that long. The only time I noticed a drop from that solid 60fps line was when the game shifts into realtime replays, inaugural segments, or video wipes, as these can cause short pauses that blend between them, and the video wipes all run at or around 30fps. That said, since these segments represent the TV presentation style, they weren’t of any consequence to gameplay.

The only exception to that 60fps target is in the Quality mode replays on Series X and PS5, which now target 30fps rather than 60. This is the case on PS4 Pro and Series S as well, which only have a single mode, rather than Quality or Performance to choose from. Again, the impact here is minimal considering these sections are non-interactive, and aside from the shifts into these segments, they hold that 30fps with no issues and then blend back to 60fps once play resumes. All in all, every format and mode delivers a smooth and consistent level of performance.

Loading is fast on current generation consoles, with PS5, Series X, and Series S all coming in less than three seconds from the menu. The PS4 Pro is slightly slower at around ~10 seconds, and also has other changes and cutbacks on presentation style, video quality and character models.

Graphics

The current generation version does offer upgrades in a couple of key areas, the biggest being the Field Sense animation system. Many may recognise this in other guises, such as Naughty Dog’s similar Motion Matching system used in The Last of Us Part II, or Ubisoft Motion Blending as we saw in For Honor. It has also been used in previous FIFA titles from EA, which did include last generation consoles. But here, this new motion blending technology is only available on the PS5, Series X and Series S. This aims to keep a multitude of motion-captured animation cycles in memory and then dynamically blend between many of them in real time based on a multitude of factors as they happen, such as foot position, speed, velocity, and even mid-air collision. The aim is to achieve even more realistic and convincing human movement and interaction during the games and replays.

Realistic human movement is a key aspect for sports games like this, where the human eye and brain is naturally good at detecting when things like body weight, limb position, and collision feels and looks unrealistic. And in this sense the new entry is a great first step to improving the quality of the simulation. In comparisons of last gen and current, you can certainly see cleaner, more organic shifts of animation routines as players turn, spin, and get tackled. At times, the PS4 Pro version highlights key frame jumps between two or more animation cycles as models warp into a new position or jump out of current ones. By contrast, the FieldSense system does increase the accuracy of motion – this is highlighted best in the replays, which can show some excellent levels of blending.

However, the main issue is that this is not always the case, and it does not hide every single blend. This means the ones that do show up stand out more, as the quality is not consistent. This is compounded by heavy clipping in many areas – in both gameplay and replays – as well as some severe gulfs in model quality at times – which are upgraded on the new generation systems also – likely due to the extra bone-rigged models required to run this new animation system. You can see the models look smaller and less, well, buff in some sections, as do some of the various pyrotechnics and particle systems. But they do offer increases in triangle count, which can be seen on the deformation of arms and other areas when skeletal rigs move into extreme positions. This means the new consoles are pushing more polygons per frame whilst computing higher bone density on animation and blends, which is overall better. As is the lighting which offers better per pixel coverage, higher shadow, and shading quality, along with higher detail in stadiums, grass, and textures.

Finally, the physics-driven hair system can also improve model quality, as seen here with Mr Madden himself, offering much denser geometry of hair rather than the flat, motionless hair fins of the PS4 Pro version, though this does vary depending on the model in question. While some might argue that some visual changes are not necessarily an improvement, ultimately the current-generation versions do offer better detail, shading, materials, and post effects over the last generation versions.

Resolutions

All of this means we get some varying numbers in resolution counts. Starting with the lowest first, the Series S offers a fixed 1920x1080 output both in gameplay and real time cinematics, which is not a surprise as FIFA games which use the same engine were also 1080p. The shock may come from the PS4 Pro, which targets 3200x1800 and uses a checkerboard resolve to hit that level, meaning the final output image is sharper than the Series S, but it has lower quality pixels, and the heavy chromatic aberration the game uses lessens the sharpness of the higher resolutions.

The chromatic aberration also affects the bigger consoles, which both target 3840x2160 in the Quality mode always, with the noted 30fps frame rate during replays. This is the sharpest image you can choose and overall the game is very stable in most sections with quite a flat lighting model and minimal specular or noisy pixels cropping up. The difference comes in the Performance mode, which targets 3200x1800 to enable the doubling of the real time replays to 60fps – but either this is dynamic or the checkerboard technique used here can falter, meaning we can get counts down to 2560x1440 on both consoles. In gameplay both modes target the same levels and outputs, which use a checkerboard technique to present 3840x2160, meaning the change to Quality mode only increases the replay resolutions along with increases to the bokeh depth of field, which can revert to a cheaper Gaussian blur filter in dense geometry shots, along with subtle shadow and hair changes – but this may be as a result of the lower resolution buffers. In all, even in side-by-side comparisons, the differences show that the increase in resolution is not as noticeable as the reduction in frames per second. Regardless, the choice being present is the best thing – and most importantly gameplay is identical from both, so pick your poison.

What We Said About Madden NFL 23

Madden fans will tell you that it hasn’t been a great decade for EA’s football sim. Like the NFL itself, the profits have continued to grow, but the product has suffered. Madden NFL 23, though, provides a glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel with a handful of smart enhancements to animations, AI, and passing mechanics that make subtle but meaningful improvements to the moment-to-moment football on the field. To be clear, Madden still has a long way to go to catch up with other sports sims, the majority of which are more refined, less buggy, and have a clearer identity. After playing Madden NFL 23, though, I finally have a little optimism that it’s on the right path — maybe not an emphatic “Boom!”, but clear forward progress for a series that so desperately needs it. – Kat Bailey, August 19, 2022

Score: 7

Read the full Madden NFL 23 review

The increases that Madden 23 offers on current generation are good, but not great. Most players will likely not notice the improvements in the animations system in moment-to-moment gameplay, and even less so the increases in model quality and replay frame rates. Also, the improvements here are not consistent or even always better than the older models – at times crowds can look equally bad with fixed vertices being ill-placed with no movement when it should be cloth, low polygon arms being front and center in replays and heavy collision, and obvious jumps between animation cycles still cropping up. I hope this is a basis for the team to work hard on significantly expanding the move sets and blending techniques in use here for the next game in the series, along with redesigning many of the player models to work better with this new system and increasing the fidelity on offer. Other small changes would also be welcome, such as updating or even interpolating the video wipes to 60fps when in the performance mode, so they do not look as jarring. All in the boosts that Series X, Series S, and PlayStation 5 players get are certainly welcome and visible, but I doubt last gen players will feel they are missing out on much.

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The Patient Two-Episode Premiere Review - "Intake" & "Alan Learns to Meditate"

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The Patient debuts on Hulu with two episodes on Tuesday, Aug. 30. The remaining eight episodes will release weekly, on Tuesdays.

The creative team behind The Americans -- writers Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, and director Chris Long -- is back with a gripping new series. The Patient is smaller in scope but, like The Americans, it showcases what could be a pulpy premise, one filled with cheap thrills, and firmly grounds it in slow-burn tension and earnest drama. Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson star in what's basically a "serial killer in therapy" series, but none of it is delivered for laughs as this hook is played totally straight, making everything nicely believable.

Though there other characters, this is really Carell and Gleeson's show, with Carell diving headlong into understated drama, Gleeson portraying a sociopath who desperately wants to change, and the script making all the right moves so that we can believe a rather harrowing, anxiety-riddled set-up. It's not uncommon for a weekly streaming series to give us two or three episodes right out of the gate, so that viewers can invest more at the front end and, hopefully, choose to continue. For The Patient, which runs shorter episodes (at about a half hour) anyhow, it's absolutely necessary since more than a few metaphoric walls need to get broken down in order for Carell's therapist, Alan Strauss, to agree to help a madman.

Because -- not to give too much away -- Alan's not doing it of his own free will, at least not at first. These first two chapters -- "Intake" and "Alan Learns to Meditate" -- are crucial in getting him (and us!) to a place where the proper maniac therapy can even start. You'll find a lot of modern tricks of the trade in the two-part premiere, like an in media res opening, multiple flashbacks throughout, and the use of dreams as backstory fillers, but these format breakers are more forgivable here since we'd otherwise just be watching a two-person play.

Carell is wonderful as a serious, caring mental health professional, with a haunted recent past (that will surely get explained over the course of the season), who begins treating a mysterious man for "anger issues." This man, Gleeson's character, can't fully share his true nature with Alan, so they hit a dead end with the therapy. The man then gets desperate -- and things get dark -- when Alan wakes up in cellar, chained to a bed. It's a bonkers start but, as mentioned, the episodes do the necessary work, despite Alan being terrified beyond belief, to get them talking.

The key here is Gleeson's killer truly wanting to better himself. And Gleeson, though showing hints of a fractured mind, is great at coming off as sincere in his character's efforts to heal and improve. He hates living the way he does, and feeling the urges he feels, so one can find a small pocket of sympathy for him while knowing what he's doing to Alan is horrific. He's also been made a "foodie," which is a fun way to illustrate his need for rigidity and an ability to appreciate finer things.

It's heightened but never so much as to push us away or disengage us from the characters.

Sure, the FX on Hulu "hub" is no more but The Patient is still an FX-developed series streaming in the same manner as shows like Devs, Reservation Dogs, The Bear, and a handful of others were. This is brought up only to highlight that FX is a place where excellent shows are being made by both new voices and old favorites (like this Americans team, or Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine from Black Sails making The Old Man). The Patient is another reminder that those who created some of our favorite shows from the last decade are out here doing new, thrilling things.

Like The Americans, the Patient is able to generate intrigue from quiet and suspense in a slower, deliberate pace. It's heightened but never so much as to push us away or disengage us from the characters. Carell is our "in" here, as an everyman pushed into survival mode but it's Gleeson who's the key to unlocking this. He's exceptional in portraying a man-made monster willing to do the work. If he'd come off too ghoulish, this would've become more of a horror story than necessary.

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House of the Dragon - Episode 2 Review

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Warning: the below contains full spoilers for House of the Dragon's second episode, which aired on Aug. 28 on HBO. If you're not caught up, check out our spoiler-free review of last week's premiere.

At the end of the strong opening episode to this Game Of Thrones spin-off, everything seemed to be unusually hunky dory for Westeros. Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock) was anointed heir to her father Viserys’ (Paddy Considine) throne, while troublemaking uncle Daemon (Matt Smith) went into exile in a huff. Alas, this second episode, taking place six months later, sets up the potentially titanic conflicts that will drive this series, and which could spell ruin for them all.

The most obvious threat bookends the episode: the Crab Feeder, aka Craghas Drahar, haunts the kingdom’s shores. A mysterious figure, he fires on Westerosi ships and stakes out his victims on the shore at low tide to be devoured by Westeros’ apparently vicious crustacean inhabitants (I suppose it makes sense that even the crabs are cursed with an insatiable bloodlust there). It’s a strikingly shot scene, the low golden sun nicely playing off the black smoke of burning ships and the horrific gore at ground level, but also grotesque. For Craghas himself, however, the series falls back on prejudiced old tropes equating disfigurement with violence, hiding his scarred face behind a Phantom Of The Opera-style metal mask.

This seaside carnage is the first sign we’ve seen of the large-scale massacre we’re accustomed to in Westeros; if last week was all about the carefully limited violence of the joust and the all-too-real dangers of childbirth, here the scope widens to whole battlefields of victims at once. And it’s still only week two. At this point in Game Of Thrones they were still on the Kingsroad, throwing stones at a puppy.

No wonder that Steven Toussaint’s Lord Corlys argues for war against this outlaw. As per usual Viserys is reluctant to act, creating a rift between them. That rift is torn wider by the episode’s main plot: the question of the king’s remarriage. Corlys and his Targaryen wife Rhaenys (Eve Best) propose their daughter Laena (young Nova Foueillis-Mosé currently). She’s the king’s first cousin once removed, so continues the Targaryen tradition of intermarriage; she is also the daughter of his oldest ally, House Velaryon, and marrying her would show that the two old Valyrian houses are as tight as ever. If she’s about 10 and he’s around 50, what of it? Gross medieval rules apply, apparently.

Ick factor aside, the proposition makes sense to the king’s entire small council, even to Rhaenyra. But all of these planners have reckoned without Viserys himself. On one hand, Considine’s character shows a commendable reluctance to marry a literal child. On the other, his growing affection for Alicent (Emily Carey) leads him to a decision that alienates Corlys, shocks the rest of the council, and could jeopardise his relationship with Rhaenyra forever.

The problem is not simply that he’s marrying Alicent – though marrying your daughter’s bestie is simply not a good look. The issue, which runs all through this episode, is that Rhaenyra’s position is still not secure. She’s the heir, but still not in the king’s confidence. She attends (some) meetings of the small council, but is still serving drinks. She senses them trying to maneuver around her but seems to have no supporter of her own to turn to. It’s an untenable position, made worse by her father’s decision not to warn anyone, even Rhaenyra, of the announcement he’s about to make. So much for working together to protect Westeros from the apocalypse foretold in the Targaryen dreams.

Daemon and Rhaenyra’s confrontation is the best moment of the series so far.

Rhys Ifans’ Otto Hightower, meanwhile, works hard to suppress his smugness that his manipulations have paid off. Ifans does a lot with very little in this episode, showing a wariness of Rhaenyra, an iron fist with Alicent, and a delicate sense of what will sway the king. Watch the early scene where he talks of the wisdom of a match between Viserys and Laena, but bemoans the “pain” of marrying for duty that the king must bear. Otto knows that Viserys has never opted for pain in his life, where there was an easier road, and sure enough he won’t here either. It’s a lovely bit of writing by Ryan J. Condal, and of acting by Ifans.

The single most significant event this week is probably this marriage, and Rhaenyra’s immediate horror. The show’s attitude to sexism is odd, so far. On one hand, this is yet another fantasy series that has freely chosen to replicate a patriarchy, unlike Wheel Of Time for example, because it’s one thing to conceive of dragons but another to conceive of sexual equality. The only good reason for it will be if it can give the female characters sufficient agency and character to actually say something about the wrongs that such discrimination creates in our world, and the needless waste of ability that it causes. It’s not entirely clear, yet, if this show will do that, or just stick with murder.

But enough speculation: Daemon might die if we don’t discuss him already. After sulking on Dragonstone for half a year he’s clearly bored mindless, so he decides to claim his brother’s attention by claiming a dragon egg for his own, announcing his plans to marry his girlfriend Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) and promising the egg to the child they might one day have. Given that the wedding seems to be news to Mysaria, and that she isn’t pregnant, this is acting out on a royal scale. Otto, showing a measure of bravery that we didn’t expect from him, leads the mission to retrieve the egg despite the clear possibility that Daemon will just set the dragon on him. But it’s Rhaenyra who saves the day.

Their confrontation is the best moment of the series so far. Daemon and Otto are squaring off on the long path up to Dragonstone (recreated in studio rather than in the Spanish location, San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, where it was first filmed, it seems), their mutual hatred almost crystallising in the air around them. Then Daemon’s dragon, the “Red Worm” Caraxes, crawls down from the top of the cliffs and there’s a palpable sense that shit just got real. These dragons, with their sinuous long necks, are closer to Tolkien than Dragonheart, more Smaug than Toothless, and they’re deeply frightening weapons.

Just before Otto is lightly fricasseed, however, Rhaenyra arrives on her dragon Syrax, and she talks her uncle into handing over the egg. The connection between them, established even in the first episode as they flirted in front of the Iron Throne, holds good however disappointed he was that she supplanted him as heir. Rhaenyra looks particularly Daenerys-like in her riding gear, and proves similarly effective. Smith, meanwhile, is great at the sort of sudden turn that Daemon does, arguing for his rights one minute and flipping over the disputed egg the next, apparently on a whim. Sure, he’s offended his brother, his niece, and his girlfriend, but Daemon knows when to cut his losses and wait for the next chance for mischief.

That chance comes, as luck would have it, very quickly. After storming out of council when the king announces his plans to marry Alicent, Lord Corlys retreats to his home on Driftmark and invites Daemon to visit. He proposes an alliance: they’ll both go and take down the Crab Feeder, thereby increasing their standing in the Seven Kingdoms until Viserys has to take them both seriously. What could go wrong? No doubt we’ll find out next week.

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The Invitation Review

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The Invitation is now in theaters.

Despite the message Sony's imaginary marketing campaign for Jessica M. Thompson's The Invitation sends, it's not dead-on-arrival. While identifiably inferior to the films it's easily compared alongside, The Invitation is creepier, lustier, and more hauntingly atmospheric than trailers detail. Shades of Radio Silence's shotgun wedding in 2019's masterful Ready or Not and countless sweltry erotic vampire tragedies ring truest, albeit in inspiration, never recreation. The Invitation suffers from split personalities as vampire elements disappear for the film's more young adult midsection, long enough where there's never a harmonious fusion of horniness and hangry neck biters. It's no Bram Stoker's Dracula, yet few are — The Invitation lands squarely in the almost-forgotten-to-okay vampire cinema ranks.

Game of Thrones actress Nathalie Emmanuel stars as Evie, a parentless New York City caterer with a ceramics passion who uses an at-home DNA test to locate and connect with her English second cousin, relator Oliver Alexander (Hugh Skinner). He insists they meet while he's visiting New York for work, then demands she accompany him back to their homeland for an elaborate countryside wedding as a chance to meet her unspoken-of relatives. Evie agrees, jets first-class to a mansion overseen by lord Walter (Thomas Doherty), and is pampered by her Alexander clan. Although, there are rules like forbidden quarters and no wandering outside bedrooms after dark — red flags to any horror fan.

Ambitions for Thompson's The Invitation — no connection to Karyn Kusama's murderous dinner party movie of the same name — are like throwing darts at a PG-13 horror mood board. Anonymity hides monstrous vampire figures who feed upon sacrificial wait staffers behind midnight-black shadows, never to reveal nastier creature designs. Evie's attraction to ripped-and-regal Walter is meant to excuse perilous advancement in Thompson and co-writer Blair Butler's screenplay. The Invitation bounces between basement feeding sessions steeped in James Wan-esque shadowplay and romantic chivalry as Walter lays on billionaire hunkiness thicker than bisque — never achieving ultimate balance like, say, how The Boy Next Door packages erotic thrills. At PG-13, there's only so much of each Thompson can execute anyway.

Luckily, the performers all seem to understand their assignments, from Sean Pertwee as grumpy butler Mr. Fields to Stephanie Corneliussen as Evie's immediate socialite rival, Viktoria. Emmanuel and Thomas Doherty are steamy, swoony, and so, so hot in a very teenager’s Dracula fanfiction way that works, with a special callout to Doherty feelin' himself as the eye-candy heartthrob. The Invitation isn't rewriting vampire fantasies or indulgent explorations of eternal damnation, yet the actors frequently chew the hell out of stock "Spooky Manor" scenery. Hugh Skinner as the disturbingly generous “nice guy,” Alana Boden as Evie's lone female companion with a curious fixation – they're all embellishing the obvious enough to elevate where possible.

When The Invitation struggles, it's swinging and missing without much strategy. An inefficient finale blazes through Evie's vampiric gauntlet despite more robust buildup material that coaxes sultry patriarchal warfare from outsider paranoias proven accurate. Visual effects as fire spreads throughout the elaborate and priceless estate are wonky at best, astoundingly unpolished at worst. These excessive moments sell camp as evil vampires suck from victims' legs, licking their blood-drenched skin with this almost orgasmic pleasure on their face, but there are also countless misses that forget about pacing or overall horror experiences. Undead bridal catfights, boogeyman bedroom frights, and champagne toasts over slit throats all sound deliciously obscene — but Thompson is missing that extra salacious gear found by Neil Jordan (Interview With the Vampire) or Tony Scott (The Hunger).

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Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed Review

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There was a time, back in the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox era, when a lot of sequels were what kids today would call “just a bunch of DLC stuck together.” That’s basically what we’ve got with Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed – a loyal, graphically updated remake of a 2006 sequel that goes to new locations, adds a handful of new weapons and enemy types, revamps the upgrade system, and extends the story. Even so, it plays so similarly to 2020’s Destroy All Humans! Reprobed that it feels like a clone of what I played two years ago – except its comedy act has already worn a bit thin.

Bearing that in mind, I have pretty much the same praise and the same complaints about the quality of this remake. The gameplay has held up fairly well in that it’s pretty satisfying to bounce around with a jetpack blasting people with a Palpatine-like lightning gun and popping their heads to collect the brains inside. Cartoony character models and 4K textures look respectable when making out details like Crypto’s pointy teeth, and the dynamic lighting effects cast by various ray guns are a nice touch. It’s the animations and lip syncing that seem behind the times; stiff movements and strange gesticulations during cutscenes remind us of a world before motion-capture animation became the norm and give everyone an action figure look – you can't unsee the barely articulated fingers. It’s also noticeable that there aren’t that many unique faces among NPCs, and it’s fairly common to come face to face with a doppleganger every minute or two when you’ve possessed a human body (which works very much like the first game’s HoloBob disguise).

There are a few other hints that this is an old game that’s been upgraded, as well: for one, there’s not a single cryptocurrency joke in a 2022 comedy game where the main character’s name is literally Crypto. But more egregious than that, when you arrive on the Japan map you’ll hear prolific voice actors like Yuri Lowenthal and Steve Blum playing some Japanese caricatures they would probably wince at today. This, more than Crypto’s newly amped-up horniness, is very likely what inspired the warning you get when you start a new game, which cautions that “the story, words, and images contained within may be shocking to the modern human brain.”

There’s not a single cryptocurrency joke.

Skipping ahead 10 years after the first game to 1969, Crypto’s new enemies are buffoonish Soviet KGB agents who’ve discovered the Furon presence on Earth. Joining him are his old boss Pox (voiced by Invader Zim’s hilariously shouty Richard Horvitz) and hypersexualized KGB defector Natalya Ivanova, who is there largely to inspire a constant barrage of sleazy jokes from Crypto. Naturally, absolutely nothing is taken seriously, but that doesn’t stop Destroy All Humans 2 from spending a lot longer on dialogue than its humor justifies. Listening to an alien imitating Jack Nicholson riff at length on the fashion sense of hippies, call a Soviet “Ivan” for the umpteenth time, or rattle off pickup lines like “If I told you you have a great body would you hold it against me?” wasn’t exactly cutting-edge comedy back in 2006, much less today. Mercifully, you can skip most of it easily once you get tired of it.

What We Said About Destroy All Humans! Reprobed

Blasting through the bright and cheery 1950s world of Destroy All Humans! is a simple but satisfying kind of fun, and there’s a lot to be said for that. Just like the original, this remaster’s comedy is a little hit or miss but its attitude is in full force all the way through thanks to some overpowered alien abilities that let you mow down the puny human resistance like an overlord. – Dan Stapleton, July 27, 2020

Score: 7

Read our full Destroy All Humans! Reprobed review

By modern open-world standards – yes, even compared to the latest Saints Row – Destroy All Humans 2’s five modestly sized maps are barebones in terms of interactivity and things to do beyond destroying simple-minded humans. They are based on San Francisco, London, Tokyo, Tunguska, and a secret base circa 1969, but outside of payphones virtually nothing is interactable, and they don’t have the abduction and rampage challenge missions the first game does. Local color comes from scanning the thoughts of pedestrians, which contain some of the best jokes you’ll find – many make reference to ‘50s pop culture and current events, while others are just about going commando. I do give Destroy All Humans 2 credit for letting us destroy nearly any building (though they’ll come back if you reload the map), and they’re largely bright and colorful playgrounds to blast enemies in.

That fighting could be a bit more engaging, though. I started out on the second-highest difficulty and found myself feeling nearly invincible out of the gate. I died once in the opening couple of hours as I learned how Crypto’s recharging shields worked, but after remembering that his high mobility meant I could simply fly away when I was in danger I didn’t lose another fight until about a dozen hours later. At around that point the challenge finally kicks up a notch and some of the bosses actually fight back in a meaningful way. Even so, my final death count was just 16 after around 25 hours played, and that counts a couple of boss fights where I died multiple times as I experimented and figured out how they worked. There are some mutators you can enable to make everything harder (or easier, or just to give people big heads), but not until you’ve already beaten a mission for the first time and want to replay it.

Even in large numbers human enemies simply don’t stand a chance.

The main reason it’s usually so easy is that the vast majority of fights in missions are against human enemies, and even in large numbers they simply don’t stand a chance – even before you start upgrading your arsenal to more efficiently eradicate them. The fact that you can quickly and easily grab nearly any enemy with psychokinesis and launch them into low Earth orbit even faster than you could blast them with a ray gun – and without spending ammo – makes nearly every encounter trivial and the consequences of being spotted by the police basically irrelevant. (It is notably hilarious that British police will immediately open fire when you’re noticed; UK police don’t typically carry guns.) Admittedly, that’s in keeping with the theme of being a technologically advanced alien invader, but the power-fantasy appeal of these slaughters wears off a lot quicker after having done all of this in the first game already.

Combat never actually gets all that interesting, but it becomes a little more demanding when you start to encounter beefier enemies who are shielded or vulnerable to a specific weapon, requiring you to switch between them instead of picking a gun you like and pulling the trigger ‘til it goes click. The new weapons don’t do much to change things up – the Dislocator disc amusingly bounces targets around randomly but isn’t terribly efficient at killing them, and the others mostly amount to new area-of-effect attacks. By far my most used was Gastro, a summonable flying sidekick who shoots enemies for you; he’s handy when the going gets tough.

What saves the missions from being almost entirely made up of simple firefights (often requiring you to scan brains to find your target first) are the secondary objectives that pop up. Maybe you’re prompted to use a specific weapon to kill some specific enemies, or avoid touching the ground when traveling across the city. A lot of these are mundane, but every so often there was something that changed up the straightforward objectives and made me work a little to get a perfect score on the mission and earn the maximum upgrade points.

Body-snatching isn’t used nearly as often as it is in the first game – in fact, just about the only time you need to do it is to get missions from people who only speak to a specific character or, for example, a generic black ninja. I admit I didn’t really miss the light stealth of the first game’s missions, but I never quite got over the disappointment of not being able to use the weapons or abilities of a character I’d possessed.

The flying saucer gameplay is still not great.

Also mostly unchanged is the flying saucer gameplay, which is still not great. Aside from blowing things up, most of the other tasks it’s used for are moving large objects from place to place, or as an inconvenient form of fast travel between unlocked landing zones. Also, every time you come to a new area you’re encouraged to unlock upgrades by flying around and hoovering up dozens of humans of various stripes, such as police or ninjas or KGB agents. Given how simple it is to deflect incoming missiles and obliterate targets on the ground, the only challenge is searching the map for the specific kinds of humans you need – once you know where they are, it becomes almost as dull as actual vacuuming.

You could likely burn through the main missions fairly quickly, but I did every side mission I could find – which was quite a lot. Many of them revolve around converting people to your alien god-worshiping cult, and those generally have you impersonating humans to get a mission – usually killing other humans – after listening to another excessively long introduction that repeats the name “Arkvoodle” way too many times. These missions are certainly useful for feeding the expanded upgrade system (each weapon now has six upgrades instead of three) but it was a little anticlimactic to find that all of this missionary work amounted to a new weapon unlock and didn’t tie into the main story.

It’s kind of a shame Destroy All Humans 2 doesn’t support online co-op, but split-screen is suitably retro and lets you and a friend double down on destruction. (It can also be done over Steam’s Remote Play Together streaming feature if you’re on PC.) There’s no friendly fire and you can’t pick each other up, which limits opportunities for goofing on each other, but few games aren’t improved by running around with a friend. There’s also a Duel mode where you compete to see who can break the most stuff the fastest, which is fun but very much like what you do when you’re just playing co-op in the campaign, and a PK Tennis game that’s sort of like the regular sport but harder to control. I don’t see that last one one taking off, to be honest.

Bugs weren’t too bad, but it’s definitely not the smoothest ride I’ve ever had even among open-world games. I saw things like being unable to get out of the flying saucer until I restarted the mission, vehicles suddenly launching themselves into the sky without being touched, character models from gameplay persisting into a cutscene and standing around like a confused extra who’d walked into the shot, and a handful of crashes in my 25 hours played (which I’m only forgiving of because the aggressive autosave system meant they didn’t cost me more than a few moments’ progress).

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Me Time Review

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Me Time premieres Friday, Aug. 26 on Netflix.

Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg star in Netflix's new buddy adventure Me Time, the latest in a long line of "stick-in-the-mud" vs. "way too much" friendship comedies wherein dudes learn to find a comfortable middle ground and not be the absolute worst. Hart and Wahlberg fill the story with high energy and fun performances but the best aspects of the film came from previous movies, including director John Hamburg's own I Love You, Man from 2009.

In the case of Me Time, the reason Hart's Sonny is friendless, or at least hasn't really connected with his childhood friend Huck Dembo (Wahlberg, with a superb doltish movie name) in over a decade, is because he's rigidly dedicated himself to being a househusband and helicopter father after starting his own family. It's a different type of self-dug hole in that regard as the film, clumsily for the most part, addressees the issue of giving away too much of yourself for fear that you have no value outside of acts of service. It's a noble theme, though Me Time is mostly about the tropes that come with this genre of comedy.

The more cut-and-paste elements of Me Time include obligatory animal hi-jinx (which cause injury to both people and the animals), a required music superstar cameo (including a performance), computer-generated shenanigans, an alarming maiming that's more gruesome than funny, an older character who's uncomfortably horny, misunderstandings that lead to vandalism, and several other clutch cliches that only serve to deaden the film a little. What works best are some of the actual lines and exchanges that capitalize on Hart and Wahlberg's fast-talking chemistry.

Me Time isn't without laughs, it's just kind of an inorganic pile-on. Regina Hall plays Sonny's successful architect wife, Maya, who's nicely treated like a full third here given that Maya also has a work/life balance in need of tweaking. The most underdeveloped of the three, actually, is Wahlberg's Huck, whose man-child catharsis at the end happens too speedily as the movie tidily figures out that everyone can have everything they want in terms of family and career.

The main focus is on Sonny's life crisis and how it's affecting his family but it would have been nice to see Huck get more time in the spotlight. There's only one scene with him sans Sonny and it goes by in a blink.

After being teased at work (which is over-volunteering at his kids' school) and embarrassed in front of Maya's top client, Armando (Luis Gerardo Méndez, who Sonny is convinced is trying to woo his wife), Sonny is talked into spending Spring Break by himself while Maya attempts to fill his shoes with their children on vacation. It isn't long before Sonny decides to have a reunion with Huck for his former best bud's birthday bash in the desert.

It's here, in Me Time's second act, that Hart's unique timidity and Wahlberg's dopey enthusiasm shine the brightest. It takes a while to get there (there are some first act school colleague exchanges that could have been trimmed) but once these two actually share the screen it's a much sillier and more engaging story. The promise/premise of the movie is these two and their scenes get held back to an odd degree.

Me Time has a strong core cast and some distinctive moments of levity (especially when involving an Uber driver played by Ilia Isorelýs Paulino) but there's very little that's fresh here. That said, if you're into watching Hart and Wahlberg play into their strengths as comedic performers, not really straying out of any comfort zone, then Me Time might make for a fine hyperactive distraction.

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Samaritan Review

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Samaritan debuts on Prime Video on Aug. 26 on Prime Video.

Caught between the worlds of superhero movie and anti-superhero movie, the Sylvester Stallone-led Samaritan is a start-to-finish snooze. Hinging on a late reveal that doesn’t feel like a secret, the film from director Julius Avery (and written by Bragi F. Schut) is filled with textures and perspectives it has no idea how to wield, mashing them into a hodgepodge of non-ideas borrowed from other, better movies, both in the superhero genre and in pop culture at large.

While the trailers sell the basic premise — Stallone as a super-strong loner, who a young boy, Sam (Javon Walton), believes is the slain superhero Samaritan — they leave out some key details revealed in its animated opening, narrated by Sam. A few decades prior, Granite City (a rough-and-tumble Atlanta) was plunged into chaos thanks to a pair of invincible twins in nondescript metallic costumes. One brother, Samaritan, supposedly fought for good, while the other, dubbed Nemesis, wreaked havoc with a magical hammer forged from his hatred for Samaritan. Both are believed to have perished in a fire, and despite neither one being seen in ages, they’ve left an indelible mark on the city — or rather, their graffitied logos have. Some recall Samaritan’s heroism and Nemesis’ villainy. Others, like local gangster Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), with his Nemesis tattoos, believe Samaritan to have been a protector of the rich and powerful, while Nemesis was a fighter for the people.

None of this amounts to very much beyond events unfolding in the background. The main story is ostensibly about Sam’s search for Samaritan, who, for reasons unknown, he believes to be alive. It’s a thinly veiled metaphor, in the vein of E.T., for Sam’s fatherless upbringing and his search for a role model — that is, until the film makes it all but explicit before discarding the idea altogether. It’s one of a handful of volatile themes approached as mere gestures. Cyrus, who ends up taking Sam under his wing, speaks in broad platitudes about Samaritan, Nemesis, and their supposed impact on the city, a concept also mentioned by news anchors with scattered lines about inequality, but Cyrus’ plan to resurrect the Nemesis mantle features only a vague resemblance to economic upheaval. The villain both speaks in the faux-revolutionary cadence of Tom Hardy’s Bane from The Dark Knight Rises and even wears a similar bomber jacket, a look that’s completed when he steals Nemesis’ welder mask from a police lockup. But his societal revolt has about as much grounding in reality as Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial.

To make matters even stranger, very little of this plot has anything to do with Stallone’s character, a garbage man named Joe Smith, whose spare time is spent recovering and repairing analog relics like old radios. It’s a fitting hobby for a supposed superhero in hiding (though Samaritan and Nemesis don’t so much resemble comic heroes as they do Shaquille O’Neal’s Steel). However, Joe’s involvement in the story is almost incidental, limited to other characters like Sam and Cyrus egging him on in the hopes that he’ll reveal his identity. As Sam, Walton is a sprightly delight, but neither his character nor Stallone’s talks with anything but doublespeak about Samaritan, Nemesis, death, and secret identities, all meant to obscure something that happens late into the third act, but seems imminently obvious from the animated opening sequence to anyone who’s ever seen a movie. You may have figured it out just by reading the premise, which isn’t a problem in and of itself, but there’s nothing more to it than the matter of what Joe may or may not have done in the past.

Samaritan and Nemesis, who briefly appear in flashbacks, are broad stand-ins for childlike notions of good and evil, but the stray lines of dialogue hinting at further complexity may as well be billboard advertisements reading: “Depth: coming soon.” In Samaritan, the superhero-as-police analog isn’t so much a deconstruction of the Avengers, and other protectors of status quo, as it is an excuse to manufacture opposing sides for mind-numbingly staged action scenes lacking any sense of “oomph” (let alone any sense of comprehensibility). Samaritan and Nemesis, who exist in the minds of Granite City as logo art, barely rise to the level of symbolic, even as people glom onto the words themselves — “Samaritan” and “nemesis” — as if they have inherent meaning beyond what they’re ascribed.

Granite City, at the very least, feels like a real place plagued by real poverty, but the filmmaking renders its problems mere window-dressing to the much less interesting tale in its foreground, of whether or not Sam will convince Joe to admit that he’s Samaritan. The music, by Jed Kurzel and Kevin Kiner, builds commendably in its intensity, but nothing on-screen ever rises to match it. Even Stallone comes off as positively bored by the idea of playing a superhero, but without getting to participate in any of the fun (picture the late Rocky sequels without any boxing, or even boxing gloves).

Nothing Stallone does, or says, or performs, ever hints at any meaningful self-reflection beyond the mere facts of his secret identity.

Samaritan would likely feel at home alongside the late 2000s/early 2010s wave of “realistic” superhero movies, in response to the early days of Marvel and DC’s cultural dominance (think Defendor, Super, or Kick-Ass), but it has no whimsy about itself, no perspective on the genre, and nothing to say about the moral dimensions it constantly harps on in its dialogue. It would be one thing for its protracted reveal to be underscored by a story of regret or metamorphosis, but nothing Stallone does, or says, or performs, ever hints at any meaningful self-reflection beyond the mere facts of his secret identity. In the process, this identity is the only question that ends up being relevant to young Sam, despite the bare-bones presence of deeper drama underscoring his search.

It’s too blinkered to make a statement, and unfolds too mechanically to leave an impression.

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GoldenEra Review

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GoldenEra is now available on digital.

If you’re reading this GoldenEra review, then you — like myself — probably spent entire summer vacations, endless Saturday nights, and chilly snow days playing Rare's GoldenEye 007 on Nintendo 64. The console first-person shooter changed at-home gaming forever, paving the way for FPS titans like Halo: Combat Evolved and Call of Duty. Documentarian Drew Roller charts the history of Goldeneye 007's renegade developers, immense popularity, and everlasting legacies by interviewing everyone from Rare creators to IGN gaming journalists (I spy Peer Schneider). It's not exceptionally groundbreaking for the format, but as a niche video game doc about one of the N64's most iconic cartridges? GoldenEra shoots straight and clears its missions.

Roller succeeds in marrying background stories, quippy anecdotes, and GoldenEye 007's pop-culture impact without an overly serious dryness. Interview subjects are primarily recorded in-person, but for isolated video callers, Roller cheekily frames their feeds on an in-game screen surrounded by radar blips and control panel functions. There are also recreations of Rare programmers bashing away on keyboards in the GoldenEye 007 universe, using the same boxy pixelation, white-coated scientist skins, and three-dimensional levels seen in Rare's product. It's more than just random gameplay clips and talking heads — GoldenEra strives to entertain as much as it informs, and these details show creativity in a lecture-driven art form.

GoldenEra spans the first whisper of Nintendo's approaching Rare (formerly Rareware) for a GoldenEye 007 tie-in to Graslu00's infamous playthrough of the canceled 2007 Xbox Live Arcade remaster. We're regaled by Rare's GoldenEye 007 project squad about their time in Twycross, Leicestershire, working non-stop hours in converted horse stables that became their production offices. Rare's roster included everyone from ex-biochemistry researchers (David Doak, who you've probably killed in GoldenEye 007's "Facility" level) to pub-rockers turned virtual composers (Grant Kirkhope). A rag-tag undercurrent colors Rare's perfect storm of conditions, when Nintendo allowed quality to trump release dates and nurtured ambition that spawned the most influential multiplayer experience in the video game universe.

There's a fascinating story told from the perspective of Rare's employees about how perfectly the planets aligned for Goldeneye 007.

As a GoldenEye 007 obsessor, GoldenEra sets its crosshairs on the most intriguing elements of GoldenEye 007: why it stands apart from the FPS crowd, how it positioned consoles as viable FPS systems, and the reaction of even computer software developers. GoldenEye 007 is the undisputed best James Bond video game adaptation, and GoldenEra explores further than just coding and Rare's ranks. Roller incorporates GoldenEye 007 speedrunners, independent filmmakers, and spiritual sequel Perfect Dark as Rare's timeline evolves well beyond GoldenEye's 1997 release window. Storytelling isn't solely development heads droning on about character mapping or landscape sculptures until GoldenEye 007 passes tester expectations. GoldenEra addresses an entire culture around GoldenEye 007, from Oddjob cheaters (you know who you are) to serving as Steven Spielberg's inspiration for playable World War 2 recreations in Medal of Honor.

However, there are sections of GoldenEra that are less engaging than the enthusiastic sum, like promotion for James Miskell's mockumentary features. After Roller passes GoldenEye's release benchmark, Rare's awards parade, and more, we reach the "aftermath" section. The documentary meanders into Miskell's set for Bringing Back Golden Eye, his follow-up to cult comedy Going for Golden Eye — which is a lull. GoldenEra is best when focusing on the in-game phenomenon of GoldenEye 007, from its immaculate behind-the-scenes teamwork to modders who've dedicated their lives to keeping GoldenEye 007 alive with upgraded graphics or hybrid reimaginings (GoldenEye 007, but with Mario characters). It's at its worst when deviating from the core throughlines, taking swings on less noteworthy GoldenEye "spin-offs" that lack spectacularity. Rare's GoldenEye 007 masterminds aren't always allowed to speak about the most exciting talking points, so I understand why Roller uses N64 animations and set visit footage from some indie video game mockumentary — but GoldenEra sometimes struggles when moving away from its basic operations.

Disclosure: GoldenEra includes an interview with IGN Chief Content Officer Peer Schneider, in the context of providing background around GoldenEye 007’s release. This did not have an impact on our review.

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The End Is Nye: Season 1 Review

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The End is Nye premieres Aug. 25 on Peacock.

For 29 years, Bill Nye has been banging his enthusiastic drum for all things science. He’s been one of the most recognizable faces of “cool” science advocacy starting with his series Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993) which enlivened science programming with its zippy editing, fast-moving graphics, and engaging experiments. Nye’s latest, The End is Nye, is less frenetic in pace but just as engaging and watchable as he presents realistic natural disaster scenarios and how they pose huge threats to our planet. Within Disaster Simulator sequences, Nye is our guide in playing out how scientists, governments, and individual citizens would be impacted, and respond, in these worst case scenarios. While the overall content is frankly terrifying, Nye’s dry wit and genuine optimism about how science remains the key to our global salvation is actually a hopeful blueprint to fix our overwhelming environmental problems.

Each of the six The End is Nye episodes tackles a singular natural disaster like super volcano eruptions, a global Hydra storm, sun flares, and even the eruption of the Pacific Ring of Fire. From their standing set, the Disaster Institute, Nye walks us through the basics of the problem and the scope of the potential outcome so we have competency going into the Disaster Simulator sequence. Nye is essentially our ground level narrator for that as he joins a recurring troupe of actors who roleplay very relatable real-world scenarios. They act out the human mistakes made along the way — including cameos of executive producer Seth MacFarlane consistently playing the a-hole contrarian in every sketch — so the natural disasters unfold in the worst possible ways.

With the escalating seriousness of global warming and the subsequent impact of mass droughts, floods, and outsized weather events, Nye and writer/director Brannon Braga (Cosmos: Possible Worlds) make sure to ground all of the natural disaster scenarios with contemporary obstructions including politicization, mandate rejections, nationalism, and normalcy biases that might thwart reasonable decisions, reactions, or problem solving. In doing so, they make clear that while our planet and environment is constantly threatening our safety, we’re also helping it along with increasingly poor decisions. Nye then goes to the lab to use science to unpack how we can avoid succumbing to potentially planet-killing events.

If you love disaster movies, the series will most definitely be your jam because Nye, Braga, and their visual effects team stitch together real footage with high-quality green screen to approximate a Roland Emmerich level of devastation every hour. There’s everything from weddings buried in ash to subsumed towns and a coffee shop owner drowning in Houston to scratch that apocalyptic itch. If The End is Nye wanted to just shock and scare, there’s plenty in every episode to nudge you towards going fetal in a corner somewhere. It’s not a binge watch, for sure. But thankfully, Nye comes out of every Disaster Simulator sequence with a breakdown of what we can feasibly do now to reverse course, or at least diminish it significantly, with current science. There are demonstrable scientific paths laid out that Nye illuminates in their various stages of development, so there’s something tangible to support and advocate around by each episode’s end.

In tandem with the varied cinematic techniques and fun writing, Nye is very much the star of the show. Even in the bleak Disaster Simulator scenes, he’s very funny with his well placed acerbic comments and reactions to what’s going on around him. There are recurring segments like the Act of Cow which points to a moment in the past where humanity screwed up something major to serve as cautionary tales, and carefully constructed jokes that build to entertaining payoffs. Plus, it’s refreshing to see Nye’s personal frustrations get softly vented with regards to poor government responses and our inane citizen reactions to reasonable science suggestions. Listen, we all need a boot to the ass about our lazy behaviors every now and then and Nye is a reasonable messenger. He’s had a courtside view of what we have and haven’t done about climate change, sustainable building, and growing renewable energy. As such, the episodes clearly portray how humanity continues to prefer the paths of least resistance, or to lean into normalcy bias when it’s antithetical to our safety. Not to mention, we “love to burn things” on a level that’s killing us all, which should just doom us and our behaviors. But Nye keeps nudging science right back at us in new endeavors like The End is Nye so we can finally hear what we need to hear, and teach the next generation what steps to take next. Thank goodness Nye hasn’t given up on us.

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