It’s no revelation that some old timey songs can have a sinister subtext. One of my many issues with Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, a predictable and ultimately pedestrian mystery, is how coy she seems to think she’s being with her old timey public-domain soundtrack. For instance, the movie opens with the music to “Where or When”, an innocuous little Rodgers and Hart ditty about deja vu. The main characters are literally driving in a circle. Peggy Lee begins singing eventually:
It seems we stood and talked like this before We looked at each other in the same way then But I can’t remember where or when
Then an earthquake cuts her off. What could it mean?
Write ‘n’ Fight has every sign of being a gag instead of an actual game. And even if it is an actual game, it’s just a very very indie fighting game. But as far as gags go, I’ve seen a lot worse than shirtless Hemingway stylishly fending off Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s infamous right hook. “REFLECTION CAPTURES NEED TO BE REBUILT,” Hemingway thinks urgently.
According to an email bcc’ed to me from a Gmail account claiming to represent the game, Write ‘n’ Fight will be released on Steam tomorrow morning for 40% less than whatever undisclosed price it will cost. And the only reason I’m curious about it — Lovecraft wouldn’t have stood a chance against shirtless Hemingway — is because there’s apparently a turn-based mode where you and your opponent enter a string of moves that are then executed in order. Which is exactly how I like to play my fighting games: while I’m doing something else instead.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra gave the original Orphan the Hitchcockian touches it needed to be more than just a throwaway evil kid movie. And it had a great cast. Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga know what they’re doing. But what made Orphan stand out was Isabelle Fuhrman’s performance. She was a new kind of evil kid. So innocent looking, of course, but so off-kilter with the Little Bo Peep ruffled dresses, the lace choker and ribbons around her wrists, and the Estonian accent. Who even knows what an Estonian accent sounds like? But the diminutive Miss Fuhrman — she was 11 years old when they shot Orphan in 2006 — was a powerhouse, and she carried the movie with ease. (To see her carry another movie, check out The Novice from 2021. She shows off a physical intensity you usually only get with action movies and fight scenes.)
So it’s great that she’s back in an Orphan sequel, right? Well, kind of. Since her character died at the end of the first movie, this has to be a prequel. But the actress is an adult now, so how can she play Esther, who is a couple years younger than she was in the original? I mean, yeah, the twist is that she’s a grown woman trapped in a child’s body, but no one would look at Isabelle Fuhrman today and mistake her for an eleven-year-old child, much less a nine-year-old child.
So Orphan: First Kill made the, uh, interesting decision to cheat.
Nope writer and director Jordan Peele seems to like horror movies as much as we do. We’re divided on this particular one, but at least we agree we saw something we’d never seen in a movie before. Given our long and storied careers watching movies, that’s quite an accomplishment!
When I need food, I drive past the local grocery at the bottom of my hill and hang a right on the way to the Von’s, a chain supermarket farther down the boulevard. But today I just need bananas and I’m not driving through a half dozen stoplights just for dang bananas. I will, however, drive to the local grocery at the bottom of the hill. So, hello again, local grocery. I haven’t seen you since I realized you don’t carry kale. On this muggy summer weekday afternoon, I’m here for a couple of whatever sad bananas you’ve got in your bin, hopefully more yellow than black.
Tom Chick and Kelly Wand have spent their lives wrestling with David Cronenberg movies. Why stop now? Suffice it to say, we each bring a lot of baggage to Cronenberg’s latest.
Welcome to the single most extensively researched episode of the Quarter to Three Movie Podcast. Tom Chick and Kelly Wand have pored over the source material for Taika Waititi’s latest Thor and they bring their expertise to bear in an extensive discussion of space vikings, theology, magic weapons, god butchery, kids, and comic books. You have been warned. Speaking of warning you about things, we also saw Black Phone, which we start talking about at the 1-hour, 24-minute mark.
Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt co-wrote a script for Thelma, which Trier directed. Now Vogt has written and directed his own script for The Innocents, which has a lot in common with Thelma. We take advantage of the overlap for a twofer podcast on Thelma and The Innocents, and according to Tom Chick, you should watch Thelma first. According to Kelly Wand– Wait, what’s going on? Something’s…off.
Parody games don’t have a great track record. Most of them are cash-grab garbage that fail to successfully mimic the game they are spoofing. Like parody movies, the best ones are good genre products on their own merits while they poke fun of other titles. Here then is The Looker from Subcreation Studio, a largely one-man outfit consisting of Bradley Lovell.
The Looker’s inspiration is immediately obvious, but there’s a lot more going on. The Witness doesn’t just get targeted. Other games like Layers of Fear take their licks too. It’s a free game, so there’s not much to risk but time and your sense of humor. Keep in mind that it’s all a joke. Hardcore puzzle aficionados need not apply.
Tom “Marmoset” Chick and Kelly “Tagline” Wand drive up the onramp, adjust their rear view mirrors, activate their turn signal, and carefully merge onto the highway to the danger zone! But why is Marmoset upset that real F-18s don’t fly like that? And why is Tagline hung up on what became of Kelly McGillis’ character? Can’t they just enjoy their 80s nostalgia like the rest of America? Tune in and find out!
Tom Chick and Kelly Wand join Jessie Buckley and Rories Kinnear for an unnerving vacation in the English countryside. Are they all in a horror movie, an allegory, both, or neither? And what do we mean when we talk about whether a movie is “scary”? What’s the last movie that scared us? Finally, if you thought the final scene of Men was disturbing, just wait until the synopsis version!
Remember back when Wizards of the Coast updated Magic the Gathering by changing the hand size of your initial draw? Rather than drawing seven cards, you instead just took your full deck into your hand. It made every match more exciting by simultaneously giving the players more choice and more power. It was the final tweak that Magic the Gathering needed to become the monster success we know today. In fact, if Wizards of the Coast hadn’t made that change, you would probably never have heard of Magic the Gathering. It would have languished in obscurity along with all those other card games with small hand sizes of five, six, or seven cards.
Today, something similar happened to another card game called Back 4 Blood. The developers at Turtle Rock released a major update and now, at last, Back 4 Blood is the game it wants to be. Since I’m a huge fan of the game (scroll down to #3), let me tell you all about it!
EA and DICE are launching Zero Hour, the first new season of content since the game released eight months ago. There have been small bits of cosmetic content as well as some substantial patching prior to this, but this marks the first time Battlefield 2042 will ask players to pay for additional content if they hadn’t purchased one of the higher launch tiers of product. Zero Hour offers a new map, a new Specialist, new stealthy helicopters, and the requisite Battle Pass of goodies to grind.
Will it be enough to attract new players and bring back those folks that have scattered after the anemic launch and subsequent delays? You can expect the game to get at least a small bump of activity from people curious to try out the new stuff, but it’s going to be tough to win back Battlefield fans put off by the Specialists, the lack of decent maps, the goofy progression systems, and the general jank that persists. With another Call of Duty right around the corner, it may be impossible.
Hmm, something called Interceptor on Netflix. Here we go again, another half-assed action movie for their roster. I’m sure I’ll have completely forgotten about by the time it’s over, if not sooner.
We’ve got plenty to say about Sam Raimi’s Marvel movie — including a synopsis featuring three celebrity appearances! — but we should warn you there’s a fair amount of talk about Everything Everywhere All At Once. We couldn’t help ourselves. We’ve been ensorcelled.
