Life of Pi

I'm pretty late to the Life of Pi party- I feel like at this point, a few years after the film adaptation came out, everyone's pretty much done with this story. Despite being a huge phenomenon when it first came out, and then a big-budget movie adaptation a few years ago, I don't think I've heard anyone mention or recommend it for a while now. Still though, I finally got around to reading it, and I was a huge fan. I knew of the general plot beforehand- a freighter traveling from India to Canada carrying an entire zoo full of animals crashes somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the only two survivors are the zookeeper's teenage son and a full-grown Bengal tiger, stuck together aboard a tiny lifeboat. I thought this was all preposterous, assuming the book was about the two learning to coexist and become friends or something. Not the case! The tiger is a constant threat throughout the whole book, leading the boy to think strategically about how he can possibly stay alive with this man-eating beast living so close. Not only that, but the ability to survive with a tiger in the middle of the ocean for months is actually one of the most believable plot points in the whole novel, which grounds its survival themes as realistically as possible, while having our duo experience all sorts of surreal fantasies on the side. How much of it is real? How much is a hallucination, or a straight up lie by our narrator? In many books I've read before, these are questions I've had to ask. What's different about Life of Pi though is how fundamental it is to the story that there is no correct answer. It's possible that Yann Martel gave us an unreliable narrator, but ultimately that's okay! Not only that, but he draws some pretty huge religious conclusions from this, and it's easy to see why this made such a splash back in the early 2000's. I'm guessing anyone reading this has already read the novel or seen the movie, but just in case, I give Life of Pi my recommendation.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

What a fun little Zelda game! I started this one up two weeks ago and was barreling along with the kind of momentum I don't often build up while playing video games these days. In my first session I ripped through a dungeon and a handful of side quests, and by my second day playing this game I'd put in six or seven hours and it felt like I'd be done the next day. Unfortunately, as so often happens, life got in the way - first in the form of an absurdly long homework assignment, and then by way of a midterm exam I spent the recent long weekend studying for. Come on!

Thankfully, once I finished that test last night, I had nothing but time to dump into The Minish Cap and killed it off in the wee hours of the morning. What should have taken me a few days to beat instead took two weeks, but who cares? This was an excellent game.

It's hard to pin down what makes a Zelda game a good one. First of all, they're all pretty good, and secondly they span a thirty-year period that's seen video games evolve from eight-bit meat grinders to massive stories with fifty-hour playtimes. The franchise also understands the difference between console gaming and handheld gaming, never asking you to spend more than fifteen hours on a three-inch screen despite frequently pushing forty on the bigger ones. But comparisons are both fun and useful, so I'll at least say that The Minish Cap was my second-favorite handheld Zelda game after 2013's A Link Between Worlds.

What I loved here was the balance between exploration and constraint. When it comes to Zelda, ideally I want an open enough world that I can find secrets and hidden paths before I can access them, but I also want something linear enough that I can't get completely lost or bogged down by exploration and side quests. This game straddled that line perfectly, allowing me to spend all kinds of time hunting for heart pieces and upgrades without ever feeling like I was procrastinating on the main quest. This was also the first handheld Zelda game that looked and sounded, well, pretty. No disrespect to Link's Awakening or the Oracle games, but I want to see Hyrule depicted in bright colors with varied environments instead of the same pen-and-paper-looking block-sized sprites.

There's not much to say about the gameplay; this is Zelda and it didn't try to reinvent the wheel. The game's biggest gimmick was probably the ability to shrink down in size at certain points in order to access small areas. It didn't really add much to the game, but it did allow what initially felt like a small Hyrule map to really feel full of secrets and hidden opportunities. Another gimmick was the ability to clone up to three copies of Link in order to push very large stones around. Both of these gimmicks played a central role in the final boss fight, but most of the game's best moments and puzzles didn't incorporate either of them.

If I have a complaint here, it's with the item inventory access. Designed for the Game Boy Advance, The Minish Cap only incorporates an A button and a B button for using items. Assuming I always want your sword equipped, this meant I had to pause the game and cycle through the inventory screens every time I wanted to switch between, say, bombs and the bow. This is a very small complaint and it comes from a place of 2016 privilege, but it took some getting used to all the same. (On the other hand, I was able to abuse the Wii U Virtual Console save state feature during the final boss fight, when I had three hearts and no fairies by the time I understood the appropriate fight patterns. Why go back to ten minutes prior when save states let me advance through the battle on a blow-by-blow basis?) And if I have a second complaint, it's with the way some of the "Kinstones" were implemented - but that's an entire system begging for an explanation I'm just not willing to go into right now - perhaps in a podcast.

Anyway, bottom line - this was a great game and definitely one worth dropping five to ten bucks on if you've got a Wii U.

Stan's Movie Dump: Early February 2016

I thought I'd slow down, but no! The upcoming Oscars have lured me into a frenzy of 2015 release binging, and there's no end in sight. Help me! I have a midterm soon. Anyway, here are 13 more movies from me that range everywhere from "Oscar nominated" to "oh, wow, really?"

The Skeleton Twins

The month began with something old, dated, and culturally irrelevant - a 2014 film! This one has Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader playing depressed fraternal twins. I tuned in for the prospect of witty banter and quirky jokes, but mostly I found sadness. I think I can bets sum this one up by saying that it contains three separate suicide attempts, played completely straight. The best and only truly "memorable" scene was an over-the-top lip-sync rendition of Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," but that probably has as much to do with that being an awesome song as it does with the scene itself. Skip this.

Spotlight

Marissa, Keith, Danielle, and I all made a podcast where we discussed the Oscar Best Picture nominees in detail. Check it out at gametimebro.com if you want to hear about Spotlight. Here's a quick overview of my own perspective: I liked the movie just fine but could have used more tone, flavor, what have you. This was a well-made and seemingly accurate portrayal of the Boston Globe investigation that uncovered the Catholic Church molestation crisis. No individual performance stood out to me - and I'm surprised this garnered two nominations for supporting acting - but the ensemble was great as a whole. See this.

Brooklyn

Once again, go to gametimebro.com for an extended take from multiple people. There's not much to this one, really. It's the story of a young Irish girl emigrating alone to Brooklyn in the 1950s. Saoirse Ronan (that's "SUR-shuh") was just great here. Quiet and awkward and homesick as hell at first, and eventually embracing her new home and the people in it. It's a love story, mainly, but also a little bit of a fish-out-of-water story and just slightly a coming-of-age story. Not much "happens," really, but at an hour-forty in length, who cares? This probably isn't for everyone - Trev was pretty bored, apparently - but, see this.

Steve Jobs

The easiest comparison to make here is to The Social Network - another Aaron Sorkin-penned movie about a technological visionary who changed the world and ruffled plenty of feathers along the way. There's an interesting set up here, as the movie takes place on three different days across fifteen years, all at different product launch demonstrations. First comes the original Macintosh, then the NeXT Computer, and finally the iMac. The tumultuous friendship between Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen, surprisingly well-casted) is explored in depth, as is the relationship between Jobs and his alleged daughter. What's weird is how we just had a Steve Jobs movie with Ashton Kutcher in the title role, and it got panned to hell. Did this movie enter development immediately afterward? Did that movie race to beat this one to theaters and suck accordingly? Whatever. This was fun enough, especially with all that Sorkin dialogue, and Michael Fassbender was great. Kate Winslet and Jeff Daniels were also good. I'm actually kind of surprised this didn't get a Best Picture nomination - it's got the big name writer, a sound cast, it's kind of a biopic and the Oscars love biopics - but, oh well! See this.

Fifty Shades of Grey

My favorite film of 2015 was probably The Duke of Burgundy. Search for it and you'll find it in one of my movie dumps last year. It's a movie about the relationship between two middle-aged women who study butterflies for a living. It's certainly not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I was captivated the entire time - fascinated, enthralled, enchanted by the overall beauty in every shot. I bring this up because The Duke of Burgundy featured plenty of BDSM elements, and so did Fifty Shades of Grey, which just may have been my least favorite film of 2015. This movie has all the makings of an all time dud. Not only do the two leads have no on-screen chemistry, but in real life they actively hate each other. (Good thing there are two sequels coming!) Dakota Johnson's character is supposed to be a typical everywoman, which is fine, but then the movie never bothers exploring or even addressing what it is about her that draws the attention of Grey, the 27-year-old self-made multi-billionaire. (Wait, what? Yes - a man born in the late '80s, who would have ostensibly been eighteen or so when the world economy collapsed in 2007, has "hard worked" his way to multiple billions of dollars since then. His line of work, in general, is never explained.) I know this is lifestyle fantasy porn, and I know I'm not its target audience, but there's just such naked contempt here for delivering what could be classified as a "romantic movie." It's more awkward than funny, but not intentionally or in an endearing way, so it's tough to call this a comedy. But it's no tragedy whatsoever, and there aren't any dramatic stakes to speak of. Can I spoil the ending for you? The movie ends with Dakota Johnson breaking up with Grey after a big fight. Resolution! Marissa has assured me that the book ends that way too - fine, but that just means the book sucks, too. Skip this.

Magic Mike XXL

Maybe it's because I had literally just finished watching Fifty Shades of Grey (yes - it was quite a night) but you know what? I kind of dug this. I never saw the first one, but there's barely a plot here, so it doesn't really matter. This is, of all things, a road trip movie. A crew of male stripper dancers is on its way to some kind of big stripping and dancing convention and occasionally standard road trip movie hijinks ensue. Marissa loves the Step Up movies, so I've seen a few of those, and if you take them at face value - laugh at the acting and writing, but appreciate some of the big dance competition scenes - they're not terrible. Magic Mike XXL felt like a smarter, better, self-aware Step Up movie. This wasn't something I loved, but it was something I was at least able to enjoy. If - IF - you think you'd be able to do enjoy it too, then, sure - see this.

The Human Centipede 3

I was bracing for the absolute worst here. I was underwhelmed by the first Human Centipede movie and then equally bored and disgusted by the second one. And this one has been called, repeatedly and by many people, the very worst movie of 2015. But, for whatever reason, I have to admit - I liked this! It was so, so absurd and over the top, and it knew that, and embraced it. This was far-and-away the most insane the franchise has gotten. It takes place in a prison, and, well, the cover says it all - the movie culminates with every inmate being sewn together ass-to-mouth in a hundred-person long human centipede - except for the death row inmates, who've had their arms and legs amputated so that they can form a human caterpillar instead. I still think the trilogy missed the boat by not going full circle - yes, I'm talking about a human ouroboros here. Come on! But yeah, this movie is so far gone that the centipede itself is kind of an old hat afterthought. The bulk of the movie is spent watching the batshit insane warden go around threatening and torturing prisoners and beating and raping his completely devoted assistant - played by porn star Bree Olsen. It's so loaded with offensive scenes and moments and ideas - at one point the warden imports a jar of "dried African clitorises" to consume for strength, just because, sure, let's lump female castration into the horrifying mess that is The Human Centipede 3. I should have have been appalled and disgusted by this movie, but then, I probably never should have watched the first one at all. Tom Six was able to overpower any sense of taste and decency I had through his sheer volume of absurd vulgarity. Is that commendable? Probably not - but this is the movie I was looking for when I started this dumb little series a few weeks ago. If I sound high on this movie, it's just because I had been prepped with such a low, low bar. It is in fact a terrible movie. A fun one, I thought, but your mileage may vary. I cannot, in good consciousness, recommend this movie to anybody - so skip this.

Chi-Raq

I struggle with Spike Lee's movies. There are some quirks and flourishes of his I just don't care for, but then I find myself wondering if I should allow myself to criticize a decidedly black-voiced director when I would have preferred something different. Are my issues colorblind and warranted, or when I disagree with such an accomplished movie-maker, am I just white-splaining? So, yeah. Chi-Raq left me right there, like so many other Spike Lee joints. I wanted to like it and appreciate it, but I didn't, and I really don't think it's because I "didn't get it" or anything. Who knows? This is a movie about all the gun violence in Chicago, and how there've been more murders in Chicago than U.S. deaths in Iraq since 2003, and how it's a serious issue. Borrowing from some Greek myth or play or something, Spike Lee explores what could happen if the black women in Chicago cut all their men off sexually until the gun violence stopped. It's an interesting idea - these men don't really care about dying, but living without sex? Uh oh. Soon enough a culture war breaks out along the gender lines as women ar elocking themselves into chastity belts and chanting, repeatedly, "no peace, no pussy." The whole movie rhymes, too, which gave it a very Dr. Seuss vibe. I'm not sure that helped, but at leas tit was... something notable? Look, I'm struggling here. This movie just didn't do it for me. I'm sorry! Skip this.

Focus

Fun, sexy, flirty - and no stakes whatsoever. This is Will Smith playing a charming and all-knowing con-man who falls for the seductive and irresistible Margot Robbie. Who's conning who? Because one of them is definitely conning the other one, right? There was a lot of disbelief to suspend here, but so what? These are the roles Will Smith excels at - bravado, wit, confidence - and having said that, I think Margot Robbie even one-ups him here. But for what? Nothing! This was enjoyable and entirely forgettable. You wouldn't regret seeing it at all, but you don't need to see it at all. Skip this.

The Ladykillers

I went ahead and saw a rare throwback from this month (2004!) because it's one of the Coen brothers least-beloved films and I had to find out why. I mean, Tom Hanks is in it, and so are J. K. Simmons and Marlon Wayans! It's a remake of a classic British movie from the '50s about a group of men trying to pull of a heist from their unsuspecting, kindly, and church-going landlady's basement. The heist falls apart - that's not a spoiler, that's just how these Coen brothers movies go - due to ineptitude and in-fighting, and until that final act there really wasn't a ton I enjoyed here. Tom Hanks as a Colonel Sanders-esque grifter was interesting, but it also was something I'm not sure one can entirely be prepared for. You know what was excellent about this one? The music. The Coen brothers sure know how to make a proper soundtrack. Coen fans, obviously, should see this if they haven't already, but everyone else? Eh, you can skip this.

Bone Tomahawk

Loved this. One sort-of recent trend I find myself falling for in independent movies is the horror-slash-some-other-genre mash up. Like, just last December, I saw Spring, and it was a blend of Richard Linklater and H. P. Lovecraft, and I found that utterly irresistible. This one - Bone Tomahawk - starts out as a Western and by the end is something entirely different. I actually took three nights to finish this one - not because it's long, and not because I was bored by it, but because I could feel myself starting to fall asleep and I didn't want to miss anything. Kurt Russell is here, and he's awesome - and what a year he's had! And Matthew Fox is here too - remember him? From Lost? And he's perfectly cast, too. And then there's Patrick Wilson, the endearingly bland and straight-laced cop from this last season of Fargo. Have I mentioned that I loved this? I loved the cast, I loved the tone, I loved how horrifyingly tense it grew, and I loved how much I hated this one particularly disturbing scene that puts any Game of Thrones violence to shame. See this!

Goodnight Mommy

Here's an Austrian horror movie that had plenty of acclaim. I didn't hate it, but most of its power seems to come from a twist ending that - and I rarely say this and mean this - was immediately apparent to me, like, ten minutes into the movie. The gist is that two twin brothers live with their single mother, who one day comes home from a cosmetic surgery procedure wrapped up in bandages. The boys quickly realize that she isn't their mother, but an imposter, and they make a few decisions in accordance with that discovery. It's actually a well-made movie - a bit slow maybe, but it's impeccably shot and it feels very realistic and it's creepy and tense without ever selling out for jump scares. But again, when the big twist is something you figured out so early on that you figured it had to be a bait-and-switch, well, the movie loses a lot of its power. If you're really looking for a movie about mothers and kids and scary shit, check out The Babadook, which explores a lot of the same ground as this one does, and without any subtitles, even. I liked this, so I feel bad saying it, but I feel like you can skip this.

Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom

It's tough to compare documentaries against fictional movies. This one, nominated for an Oscar, is about the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine two years ago that left hundreds of people dead and forced the Ukrainian president out of office. It was full of haunting footage and stories, including a lot of people getting maimed or shot or losing their friends or children, and it's tough not to be moved by the patriotism, the tragedy, and the camaraderie. I'd say the whole ordeal played out like a real life Les Misérables, but that almost seems to trivialize it. All the same, this was a movie - and a good movie is one that makes you laugh, cry, think, or react in some way in general. And as a movie, I'm not sure Winter on Fire succeeds at telling a story. I feel like a dick even saying that - hundreds of people died, and not for the sake of a documentary, obviously - but it still makes me reconsider how good of a documentary this was. Does that make sense? This one's streaming on Netflix (they're the ones who made it) and even though it was more harrowing and awe-inspiring than entertaining or fun, you should see this.

That's 38 movies just 44 days into the year for me. Consider that I saw about thirty movies in late December and I've been burning through movies at a rate of one per day for more than two months now. I'm not proud of this! But it sucks outside and TV hasn't gotten good yet and the only other thing I've got going on is school. Gross, right?

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Shout out to Sween and Keith, who lent me a copy of this game and the Xbox One required to play it, respectively. Thanks, bros!

Two and a half months ago I beat the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider in two days. It turned out to be one of my favorite games I'd play all year. Most of my post touched on how different this newer version of Lara Croft was and how the gameplay felt nothing like the Tomb Raider games of old, but also how I was totally okay with that. So I won't rehash those same old topics. Instead, I want to talk about this game as a direct sequel to the 2013 game. How was it better? How was it not? And above all, where does the series go from here?

Bigger

Like virtually any big title sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider was just "more so" than its predecessor. I'm pretty sure every single technique and power-up and skill from the first game was back this time around, along with a litany of new gameplay aspects like "death from above," changing jackets, learning foreign languages, and an arsenal that seems to have doubled in size. I felt like I devoted about as much time to dicking around and exploring tombs in this game as I did the last one, and this one took me 13 hours to the last one's 11. I don't necessarily think there were more environments or secrets this time around, but they were definitely more open and spread apart this time around - which might appeal to most gamers, but I found the added space cumbersome and tedious at times. In fact...

Not Better

I mean, not worse, really. But where Tomb Raider was such a breath of fresh air, this game just felt like a natural extension to that game's mechanics and overall design. The story wasn't nearly as good - in fact it was almost incomprehensible - and some rapid-fire time-shifting in the early going left me completely unaware of whether or not I was in a flashback for the bulk of the game. (I wasn't.) There were also some notable glitches and bugs, including one reset-inducing freeze. Nothing like what happened to Trevor during his playthrough, but annoying all the same.

Don't get me wrong - I didn't dislike this game at all. But where the last Tomb Raider felt new and exciting, this one just felt kind of been-there-done-that. To be fair, such a huge part of whether or not you enjoy playing a video game has to do with your mindset, and I've been kind of bogged down with homework lately, which gave me a weirdly guilty conscience whenever I took a few hours to play this. (Which doesn't even make sense, since I still have all kinds of free time! Gah, I'm in my own head.) So the fact that this game took me two weeks to beat instead of two days probably shouldn't be seen as an indictment on this game. But it's still something, you know?

Future

Trilogies are the standard units for video game franchises these days, which means we're all but certainly getting a third installment in the coming years. There's a post-credits sequence in this game that has an unseen assailant lining up a sniper shot on Lara Croft only to be told by a superior, "no, not yet." So it's safe to say we're getting that third game unless an important company goes under. My question is what that game should be like. So far, this reboot series has gone with an exotic island and then a brutally frozen environment - just like Uncharted. Why not follow the pattern of mimicry with the third title and set it in the desert or the Middle East? That wouldn't be unlike Tomb Raider at all. Story-wise, I'd normally ask for a "conclusion" of sorts, but these first two games have told completely disparate stories without any linking arcs, so I guess I don't need to worry about a proper ending for any story here. I'm still kind of holding out hope that this Lara Croft ultimately becomes the cold-hearted badass Lara Croft from the original series - but I can acknowledge that this rebooted character is a better one, and with a game called Rise of the Tomb Raider not really shaping this new Lara into that old iconic Lara at all, perhaps this is a dead end. Oh well!

Stan's Movie Dump: Late January 2016

Here's a delightful mix of "Oscar buzz" and "Netflix crap." Enjoy!

The Human Centipede

Here's Sween's post on this one five years ago in its entirety: "Is this the most disgusting movie I've ever seen? Yes, it is." That's pretty succinct, and all I really have to add is that this wasn't just gross and disturbing but also, frankly, boring. It's a shitty horror movie that managed to break into the zeitgeist based on nothing more than its horrifying and hilarious premise. I was a little disgusted, I won't lie - but I was even more bored, all things considered. Is that weird? Anyway, yeah, this sucked ass. (!)

Sicario (2015)

Tense-as-hell action movie about the drug wars going in on in the Mexican border towns. Plenty of harrowing and intense scenes and some solid performances, but not a ton else. Like, as surprised as I am that this wasn't nominated for any non-technical awards at the Oscars, I can't say I think it deserved anything else. Beautiful movie, though. Kind of hope it takes the award for cinematography.

The Revenant (2015)

Hype is a dangerous and powerful thing, and it's just so damn easy for movies not to live up to their Oscar hype. Like, The Revenant was great, and yet I can't help but ask myself, "this is the performance that's going to win Leo an Oscar?" Don't get me wrong - it's a great movie, and he does as well as he always does - but like, damn, I think Tom Hardy was better!

Enemy (2014)

Now this was a damn good movie. Based loosely on José Saramago's The Double, it stars Jake Gyllenhaal as both a neurotic history teacher and his commitment-fearing doppelgãnger. I watched this one through from start to finish and liked it plenty, but immediately went to the Internet for takes on what the hell it was about. The crazy thing is that it worked fine on its face, telling a slightly dreamlike and surreal but easy-to-understand story about two guys and their significant others. But after watching some YouTube clips and reading a handful of Reddit opinions, I understand that this movie was operating on a whole other level. Fantastic! For real, give this one a go if you can. Also, just curious - when has Jake Gyllenhaal ever not been fucking fantastic in something?

The Overnight

Here's a fun but utterly insignificant movie about two couples doing a little bit of swinging one night. A handful of recognizable faces - Adam Scott, Jason Schwartzman, Taylor Schilling - drew me in, and a series of weird developments - butthole paintings, a huge prosthetic penis, breast pump instructional tapes - kept me interested. I can't complain about this whatsoever - it just wasn't anything that mattered.

The Big Short

Man, this movie made me #FeelTheBern like nothing else. Seriously! As far as the film goes, I dug it. Didn't love it like I ought to love a best picture nominee, but then, that's true of a great deal of best picture nominees. As big and famous as this cast was, holy hell was it underutilized. It wasn't until after I finished this one that I realized Christian Bale was nominated for supporting actor. What? Why? All he does is walk around an office building in shorts and bare feet acting quirky. Steve Carell was way better. Ryan Gosling may have been better. Whatever. Props to Adam McKay - never would have guessed that the guy who made Step Brothers was capable of making something like this.

Bridge of Spies

Here's your old school best picture nominee. Spielberg, Hanks, the Cold War, and a movie that's already been made a hundred times over. It's tough to dislike this one - I just can't believe it's earning Oscar acclaim. Then again, the Oscars are #SoWhite and also #SoOld. Seriously though - the appeal of this movie rested almost entirely on Tom Hanks, who wasn't even nominated for an acting role. I don't get it!

The Human Centipede 2

Okay, enough with all these important movies. Here's some utter garbage. The Human Centipede was gross and dumb and, ultimately, bad. I said as much above. But this follow-up was somehow so much worse. It's entirely shot in black and white and it exists "outside" the world of the first movie. This one starts out with a guy watching the ending credits of The Human Centipede and thinking, hey, yes, I'd like to try that. But where the villain in the first movie was cold, calculated, and all kinds of sinister, this new guy is just a complete creep. The first movie's villain was a surgeon; this guy literally uses staples and duct tape to create his twelve-person human centipede. At one point someone gives birth to a baby while trying to escape. The whole thing is just an awful mess. And sure enough, I'll be back soon for the third one!

Room (2015)

Believe the praise and buy into the hype, because this was fucking phenomenal. It's the story of a kidnapped woman who's been living in her rapist's shed for seven years, and maybe more so, it's the story of their five-year-old son who has literally never seen the world outside said shed. It was raw and uncomfortable and tragic and still somehow so hopeful. I laughed and I teared up. Brie Larson deserves the Oscar she's been nominated for. This kid, Jacob Tremblay, could have easily been nominated. Best of all, despite its very heavy subject matter, this movie doesn't melodramatize its punches and it never lets you wallow in any misery.

The Act of Killing

This documentary from 2012 flew under my radar until one of the most buzzed-about movies of 2015 was The Look of Silence, a companion piece. The gist is simple, if absurd. Back in the 1960s there were a series of communist purges in Indonesia where half a million or more ethnic Chinese people died. The paramilitary forces who rounded them up and tortured and killed them all eventually came to power and they still rule the country to this day - the fourth-largest country in the world, at that. Indonesia, everyone! Anyway, this documentary focuses on the perpetrators today, close to fifty years after their crimes. Again, these people are considered national heroes - they've never been punished for their actions, nor have many of them ever really worried about the morality of what they'd done. The documentarian, Joshua Oppenheimer, has gone to Indonesia not only to interview these people but to ask them to recreate all of their heinous crimes on camera. What follows is one of the most bizarre human experiences I've ever witnessed, wherein the killers round up a bunch of actors and performers and begin to reenact their gruesome deeds, most of them chuckling and smiling and reminiscing about it. Between these segments, the camera also captures a number of conversations between the killers, casually discussing how they see therapists in order to sleep at night and take drugs to ward off the nightmares. Does the movie end with one of the most charismatic genocidal killers retching on a rooftop and crying about what he's done? It might. Does this redeem him in any way? That's up for you to decide.

Before I get out of here, I also want to say something quickly about The World of Tomorrow, a seventeen-minute animated short available on Netflix and nominated for an Oscar. It was excellent. See it. Okay, now I'm all set. Later!