Tales of Berseria

Another 2017 title completed. Hoping to generate a decent list of games to bring to the table to help contribute to GameTimeBro's rankings of the best game to come out this year.

I can tell you one thing, Tales of Berseria will not be one of the top games.

My only other experience with the Tales series comes from Tales of Symphonia on Gamecube. I mostly remember playing it in my basement with Sheridan. For whatever reason, I have some rose-colored memories of the experience, but could tell you very little about the game itself. Nevertheless, when the new title was released this year, I though "Why the hell not give it a go?"

Fifty hours later, I sorely regretted my decision.

Now, I wouldn't say that Tales of Berseria is a "bad" game -- though I certainly wouldn't call it a "good" game either -- I just don't think it's what I wanted from a JRPG. Here's the quick breakdown of what didn't work for me.

Gameplay: The combat system was fun and very family to what I remember about Symphonia, but it never once felt challenging. Even with all the tinkering you can do to your attack moves, items, etc., it felt like it made little to no difference in the end. I basically just button-mashed my way to victory. That would have been fine if the game was maybe 10-15 hours long. But at 40+ hours, I need something a little deeper and a little more strategic/challenging.

Story: Man, I don't know what was coming or going here. Sure, JRPGs are generally known for their convoluted stories, but keeping up with all the rules and terms to this fantasy world felt tedious. Eventually I just referred to Wikipedia to keep straight and stopped making a concerted effort to really follow the details of the plot. Is the problem here on me for not trying harder to keep track of all the moving pieces in the story or is it on the game? I'd like the to think if the game was struggling that hard to keep my attention, then it's at fault. But it could also come down to a matter of taste.

In another vein, I think some might argue that this story stands out from the rest in the franchise in that it's rooted in a tale of vengeance. Something really dark and brooding. Seeing that I don't have this experience with the franchise, this argument doesn't elicit any feelings with me. 

Design: Here's something I will speak in favor for the game. While the graphics aren't going to blow anyone away, it was a fun, colorful world to explore. The aesthetics design maintains the course for the rest of the Tales series in that it's got that anime flare to it. However, would have like the game to feel more of an open-world, kind of like Breath of the Wild, but I get that's a pretty high bar for any game to match with.

All-in-all, when this game was over, I was far more pleased that it was done rather than having any sort of satisfaction or emotional connection to the characters' stories. It was enough just to know I don't have to play it anymore.

That said, would I ever return to the Tales series? Maybe... 

I've always heard good things about Tales of Vesperia, but if it doesn't vary enough from my problems with the core of this game, perhaps the series, in general, just isn't going to fair well with me. 

For the sake of curiosity, here's my game rankings for this year, thus far...

Top of the Lake: Season 2

Here's the second season of Top of the Lake, a show from New Zealand that won all sorts of critical acclaim back in 2013. I finally caught up and watched those seven episodes a few months back and didn't quite love them as much as I'd hoped to. As always, hype's dangerous, right? But with this season - called "China Girl," which, hey, a little racist, but then, also, Australia - I figured I could give it an episode and decide where to go from there.

And I liked it! Ironically, I liked it more than I liked the first season, which puts mine in the extreme minority of reactions. But Elisabeth Moss is just phenomenal here, as she so often is, and the story, though a bit more farfetched and contrived than in Season 1, was also a little bit more exciting and funny and there were more principal characters but fewer secondary and tertiary characters to keep track of. I can see it straining credulity, sure - but that didn't bother me so much. Anyway, you could do a lot worse than to check out Top of the Lake on Hulu and I'm sure elsewhere.

Super Punch-Out!!

You know what's awesome? The SNES Classic. Shout out to Keith for keeping his eyes peeled and his Google alerts hot on my behalf while I was off getting into bike crashes in Norway - thanks to him, I've got my very own throwback nostalgia machine with, like, fifteen games I've played and mostly loved, and a handful I've not played but hope to love.

You know what's not awesome? Super Punch-Out!! is not awesome. It's not even very good. It's a pattern recognition button masher with a few memorable characters. It's... it sucks. What is the point of it, in 2017? Are there big time Super Punch-Out!! fans out there who are really happy this was included in the SNES Classic? I mean, probably, sure. But damn - there's almost nothing to this game beyond recognizing enemy attack patterns and reacting accordingly. And if you want to say that virtually all old video games boiled down to that in one way or another - or even if all current games do, too - I can't really argue. But still. This? This is nakedly only that. Oh well! The SNES Classic is still really good, I swear.

Culdcept Revolt

Oh boy, it's Culdcept! Culdcept is a game that's been around for twenty years or so. I was introduced to it on PS2 ten years back, in a friend's basement. He called it "Magic: The Gathering meets Monopoly," which is really, really apt. Because that's what it is. You and your opponents loop around on a small board rolling dice and claiming different territories by placing creatures on them. When you land on an occupied space, you can either pay the toll or go to battle with a creature of your own for control of that space. Use your magic points (or "G") to summon creatures, equip items, or cast spells. It's a relatively simple game with a relatively steep learning curve - a pattern I tend to love!

What began as a goofy curiosity, which consisted largely of multiplayer sessions where we'd yell "King Tor-tai!" and "Wall of Nice!" at each other eventually revealed itself as an intricate strategy game. I eventually bought my own copy and plowed through the single-player story one summer.

Now, ten years later, Culdcept is back, baby! On the 3DS! (There was also a game on the Xbox 360, but I could never find it for a decent price point, even years after the fact.)

And folks, I have dumped - get ready for this - sixty-odd hours into this game. Sixty! It's already closing in on my all time highest playtime logged by my 3DS! And I'm probably not even done yet, as I've only played one multiplayer session. But I'm done with the main story, and even if the post-credits bonus quest appears to be almost as long as said main story, hey, that's good enough to call the game beaten and to post about it on the blog.

Not a lot left to say, except that this game, addicting as it is, can also be a total and utter crapshoot. There's plenty of luck involved, after all, in rolling dice and drawing cards. And the forty-minute length of so many of these matches made for some extremely frustrating nights. At a low point (both in this game and in real life) I stayed up until 1:00am on a work night just to beat a frustrating battle against two twin witches. Then when I lost I made it 1:45... and then 2:30... and then 3:15... and then I finally quit at 4:00am, but holy shit, the damage is already done when you're up until 4:00am on a work night.

But that one, awful night aside, I really have enjoyed my time with this game. It's a perfect dual-tasking game, too, just ripe for paying half attention to it while you watch TV or football or whatever.

Mindhunter: Season 1

Here's a new crime show from Netflix (shocker!) about the early days of criminal psychology in 1977, right around when the term "serial killer" was termed. One genre I've never, ever been able to muster two shits for on television is the criminal procedural - NCIS, Law and Order, Bones, CSI, the whole bag of them. But this isn't really so much a case-of-the-week type of show as it is a "moment of change" type show, which actually is one of my favorite genres. Things are one way, at one point. Then something happens, and then things are another way, and the ability of different characters to adjust and react is essential as we witness a sea change of an entire industry. (This is Mad Men, this is The Americans, this is absolutely The Wire and The Deuce.)

I'll back up. I haven't even mentioned David Fincher yet. He's not the show's creator, but he's an executive producer and the director of four of the ten episodes. It's a very David Fincher show, too. Gritty and dark, but without sacrificing its pop and soul and humor. (See Gone Girl, see Fight Club, see Seven, see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Well okay, Seven is extremely dark and without any pop or soul or humor. But you know what David Fincher brings to the table.)

But yeah, something about this just sat right with me. The main character, Holden, is an earnest boy scout type young FBI agent who concocts the idea of interviewing imprisoned murderers to try to figure out what makes them tick, what makes them go. His partner, Bill, a barrel-chested square-jawed veteran, is supportive but also disturbed. Their boss wants nothing to do with any of it. A criminal psychologist from Harvard wants to turn their informal interviews into a years-long study. And all the while, the agents' home lives experience some rough waters. Holden, he's just way too into all of this shit, and gets so far into his own need to understand serial killers that he begins to see the world through a sociopath's eyes. Bill, meanwhile - and man, Bill is the best part of this show - despite a history of crime investigation, he just can't stomach the sexual nature of some of these murderous rapists' crimes. Things like, you know, cutting off your mom's head and raping her in the neck. Yowza!

The season wasn't perfect; the first episode is fine, but the script is an absolute disaster, with some of the most naked expository dialogue I've ever seen. And the way the season ends isn't really very satisfying, either. But these ten episodes were immensely watchable and I'll be back next year for sure!

The Void

Hey, it's a late October horror movie!

This one's all kinds of Lovecraftian. It's like Green Room with animated corpses and tentacles instead of skinheads, taking place in the dimly lit and claustrophobic environment of a small rural hospital in the middle of the night. There's some decent gore in here but, goodness, no hour-and-a-half horror movie should feel this long.

In the end, a so-so effort.

Channel Zero: Season 2

"Wait, Season 2?" you're asking, completely aware of everything I have ever seen and posted, and everything I have not. "What about Season 1?"

So, Channel Zero is an anthology horror show on Syfy. Every season is based loosely on a different creepypasta, and this season was called No-End House, based on a creepypasta of the same name. I'm not a big creepypasta fan by any stretch, and had never heard of the story being adapted and expanded here into a six-hour TV season, but I figured, back in mid-Septemebr when this season debuted, hey, why not, it's spooky television, 'tis the season, whatever.

I liked it! The first episode really had to hook me in order to keep me coming back and, well, it did. It's decidedly low-budget by modern cable standards, but the way it was shot - nothing but plain, drab, Canadian suburbs in flat wide shots - gave the whole thing a good and creepy vibe.

I'll admit that I slowly lost some of the details of the plot as it unfolded, but the basic premise here is that a couple of college kids decide to check out this new haunted house on the edge of town comprised of six rooms, each one scarier and freakier than the last. They start off in a large group, but as panic and fear set in, the group is scattered and must face the later rooms as individuals; one gets the sense that this is intentional, as the main girl's experience in the fifth room deals explicitly with her own dead father. Anyway, barrelling through the nearest exit door, she comes across one of her friends, and together they flee for their homes. But the houses all have the number six on them... and when our main character arrives home, who's that whistling and cooking breakfast in the kitchen? Yes, of course - it's her dear dead dad!

So the sixth and final room of the house, it turns out, is the creepy alternate world. This is all the first episode, by the way, so I've barely spoiled anything - and still, it's worth watching! Even if you bail here.

The remaining five episodes sort of lose some steam. The characters slowly figure out that they're still in the house, but with perks like "my dead father is back," do they really want to leave it? What follows is this weird mess I only half-understood that dealt with amnesia and cannibals - and of course, yes, a mid-season heel turn by one of the college kids, who is embracing life in the alternate-house-world, danger and all. But, sure enough, after some ferocious and gorey in-fighting, our group makes it back to the haunted house (within the sixth room, within the house?) and makes it back through the exit to the real world, just as you'd expect

But, folks, here's what you wouldn't expect - this is only the end of episode four. I won't even begin to spoil the remaining two!

So yeah, I was about as into this as I'd have expected to be, jumping in on a whim and all. Will I go back and watch Season 1? For that matter, will I be back for Season 3? Eh, who knows? Too soon to tell. And far too much other TV.

XX

It's four twenty-minute shorts mashed together into a horror anthology. The gimmick this time around is that all four shorts are directed by and predominantly feature women; three of the four shorts had to do with motherhood in some way, and two of those had to do with kids behaving weirdly.

Here's the thing, though - I feel like I've seen two dozen short horror films in the last couple of years, what with this anthology format exploding in popularity during this decade. And they're just not very good! None of them are good. They're fun little snippets at best, and when they're thematically tied together, sure, great, whatever.

That said... they're good enough for a quick background viewing to get you in the mood for some scary-creepy seasonal fun.

Neo Yokio: Season 1

The title is a portmanteau of "New York" and "Tokyo," and both names and describes the futuristic city this all takes place in.

The art style is this not-quite-anime form that still looks and feels cheap as hell.

The main character is voiced by Jaden Smith and feels more or less inspired by his Twitter account - all existential nonsense and philosophical mumbo jumbo mixed with being totally "on brand."

The premise is some sort of half-spoof-half-celebration of vapid materialistic culture run amok in a techno-utopia.

The length is six episodes, and thank goodness for that.

The platform? Oh baby, you know this is Netflix. But apparently it was a leftover show from Fox and FX's ADHD block.

It's not very good, but it's an interesting kind of not very good - occasionally funny, fully self-confident, proudly and boldly about whatever it is it's about. This isn't something worth seeking out by any stretch, but if you're looking for something absurd, give it a go.

The Babysitter

A fun enough throw-away 80-minute horror-comedy thing from - who else - Netflix. Y'all remember McG? Like, opening credits of The OC, "created by McG?" Yeah, he made this. It's really stupid and eye-roll inducing, but if you're looking for some silly Halloween fodder, you could do worse than this slasher.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Marissa turned this on somewhere around the ten-minute mark last night, then turned it off again about an hour in, and I was paying half-attention at most, so take this with all the salt you want, but, yeah, I wasn't into this. I know I often repost my own Letterboxd reviews here, but let's let David Ehrlich weigh in instead:

there are all sorts of issues with this movie, which pales in comparison to even the first two Harry Potter films, but rather than grouse about the clumsy knotting of the various plot threads or how Newt Scamander is a nothing character or how the fantastic beasts are all like the dullest of Digimons (except for the kleptomaniac platypus), i just want to whine about the devastatingly poor use of CG. we've become so concerned about how this stuff looks that we tend not to think about the value of what it *does,* and its application here is gruesome. this old timey new york city is a sterile, hollow hellhole of copied-and-pasted buildings... every scene feels empty, even when the streets are crowded with life. and is the villain a generic floating CG cloud? *of course* the villain is a generic floating CG cloud. there is no sense of tactile physical reality to this movie... Hogwarts felt like a real place, this feels like a half-sketched memory. and that feeling is hardly contained to the visuals.

Yeah, co-sign. This is why the pros are the pros.

Four more of these, by the way. Four more magical whippersnapper gobbledygook bullshit fests. Hollywood, baby!

Baywatch

Yeah, so this was bad. It's the type of tonally inconsistent comedy that never should have been made, which seems like Zac Efron's bread and butter at this point. I'm not a big star apologist by any stretch but truly, the Rock is the only decent part of any of this. It's two hours long and felt like close to three. It just fucking drags, man. Also, here's a thought - maybe if you are making a comedy movie, it would help to use any actors with a comedic background whatsoever. I get that comic actors and fuck-me beach bodies can't often be found in the same package, but holy shit this was rough.

Big Mouth: Season 1

I didn't have a lot of interest in this offering from Netflix, but enough people online said enough good things about it for me to check out. And I liked it! It's an animated show about puberty. Yep, let that sink in. It's nothing obscenely clever and feels a lot like if Family Guy had Nick Kroll and Jason Mantzoukas and Jenny Slate. That's a start, sure, but what makes Big Mouth actually work is that it's unlike anything else I've ever seen. On the surface it's just a show about a bunch of tweens dealing with their weird-ass gross bodies and hormones. (Who wants to see that? No one wants to see that. Ugh. And yet!) But really, of course, it's a show about tweens going through puberty, made by and for adults like you and me. Jason Mantzoukas said in a podcast that it was like "the Geeks part of Freaks and Geeks," which is a great way to think of it. It's also, notably, about girl tweens almost as much as it's about boy tweens; male puberty has been done to death in pop culture by now, but how many shows and movies out there are cracking jokes about first periods and girls having desires of their own? I mean you've got Tina Belcher, I guess, being perpetually horny in her own specific and weird way, but this is like that on steroids, with one of the young women even "meeting her vagina" for the first time in a very literal sense. (The vagina is voiced by a bubbly Kristen Wiig.) If all of this sounds just too weird for you, and like borderline child pornography, hey - I get it! But it's really not that, at all. It's about what a weird time middle school is - something we can all relate to, even if it makes us cringe!

Ten episodes, half an hour each. Give it a go. The first episode has a bit where a bunch of anthropomorphic dicks are dunking basketballs. You'll know probably right then and there if this is for you or not.

Room 104: Season 1

Anthology series! They're all the rage, right? So, here's one from HBO that isn't even an "every season is different" type of show, but rather an "every week is different" show. It's set in a hotel room and every week features a different person or couple staying in the room. (Yes, it had, weirdly, the exact same premise as the TBS show The Guest Book and they debuted within a week of one another. But this one's a highfalutin theater thing, telling a bunch of little one act plays. Two or three of them were straight up horror stories. One was a 25-minute dance performance. One had an all-too-relatable college student in the '90s trying to walk his mother through the harrowing process of saving his work on his computer over the phone. One was a weird pizza guy porn thing gone awry. One featured a terrorist preparing to go to the RNC (or DNC?) with a homemade bomb only to be thwarted by a conversational repairman. There were weeks where I really enjoyed the show, and weeks where it was completely forgettable and disposable. In that sense it felt a lot like a lesser Black Mirror. But it ended with a good run, I thought, and I see no reason why i won't be back for more next year. So, good on Room 104.

To Have and Have Not

This is my fourth go-round with Hemingway, and it's just not his best effort. That said, it's an experimental, short book, sort of a compilation of short stories about this boat captain smuggling contraband between Key West and Cuba. Or at least it starts out that way. What it ends up being is some sort of viewpoint-shifting slice of life story about life in the Keys during the Great Depression. It's a bit of an interesting mess. Credit to Hemingway for experimenting, you know? Nowadays a perspective-shifting novel is nothing new, but back in the 1930s maybe he was trying something really different. It doesn't quite work, doesn't really make a thematically consistent or tonally satisfying story, but I still enjoyed the highlights and the book wasn't really long enough for the mistakes to drag out much.

The Beguiled

Plane movie! This was a really quick and easy watch, a bunch of medium-to-big-name actors you're familiar with remaking an old Clint Eastwood movie under the direction of Sofia Coppola. I like Coppola, and she's really grown on me through the years - owe Lost in Translation a rewatch and need to finally get around to seeing that much-maligned Marie Antoinette movie.

Anyway, this is good. Solid stuff. Late in the Civil War, Union soldier Colin Farrell is injured and left to die in the woods outside a schoolhouse for ladies in Virginia. Nicole Kidman runs the joint, and immediately sees Farrell as a threat and treats him like a prisoner. Second-in-command Kirsten Dunst has all sorts of compassion for the guy, perhaps feeling a little trapped herself. And Elle Fanning, the oldest of the young girls, she's a femme fatale of sorts, happily playing jailbait, openly lusting for Farrell when she's alone with him and then telling the other women he's forcing himself on her. Four younger girls round out the house, and a few of them have some significant moments, but this is really mostly a story about the four adults in the room, so to speak, collectively unwilling or unable to just keep it in their pants.

Also, props to the production design here, which between the costumes and the set and the sound (mostly the sound) really conveyed what a hot, dank, sweltering summer it was in them Virginia country woods. 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

I found this collection of short stories, coming in at just over 150 pages in total, very natural to "get," tonally, and yet almost impossible to describe. This is, of course, a testament to the difference between Raymond Carver's ability to express and emote through sparse language and subtext and my own inability to cram three sentences of meaningful reflection together. This is about loss and sadness, but the very quiet and understated kind, not the big dumb tearjerking melodrama and tragedy so many lesser authors might have attempted. There's a melancholy here, but a subtle one. A handful of these stories end in overt tragedy or at least heavily imply an impending loss, but most of them are just quick little slices of late nineteenth Americana. The whole thing feels like late afternoon, late summer. Not evening, not fall, but, you know. Close.

All the Pretty Horses

I struggled with this one, just like I struggled with my first McCarthy go-round in The Road. Here's what I could muster up on Goodreads, and I don't think it's one of my better or more insightful paragraphs:

Reads like a sunset. For all his talents, McCarthy's greatest strength might be how thoroughly and deeply he can paint a scene in a few simple sentences with an economical vocabulary. Can't help but imagine all those Coors commercials with Sam Elliott's voice are trying to imitate it, really. The book's a modern Western, which is to say an anti-Western, a story that pits a young man's code of cowboy ethics against the harsh realities of the world. What if Ned Stark had carried a six shooter instead of a broadsword and gone to Mexico instead of King's Landing? Yeah - this is that sort of story, giving way to "cold cruel world" nihilism without ever losing that penchant for romance and beauty on the margins of it all. It's about exposing idealism as a dangerous myth, but it's not about tearing down the ideals themselves. A perfectly fine read that might have gone down just a bit easier if McCarthy weren't fundamentally opposed to using quotation marks around his pitch-perfect dialogue. The scoundrel.

Meh. Never a good sign when all I can do is half-heartedly touch on the themes of the story less succinctly than you could pull them off of Sparknotes. Maybe McCarthy just isn't for me - but the frustrating part is, he really should be! The ideals of the American cowboy running full force into the wall that is the cold indifference of the world - that's something I can get behind, usually. And I'm not kidding when I praise the man's descriptive word-paintings. This really is some beautiful writing! Oh well - plenty more opportunities for me to get behind Cormac McCarthy, I'm sure.

Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light: Season 1

Come on, that title!

This was very nakedly an eight-episode advertisement for Final Fantasy XIV, an MMORPG that's already been out for a number of years. And yet, it was also this oddly touching story about a young man and his father. The kid - around twenty it seemed, and living at home - notices that his father had been acting super weird and quiet and distant lately. So the kid, remembering how he and his father bonded over playing early Final Fantasy titles on their Famicom all those years ago, sets his old man up with a Final Fantasy XIV account. The kid then stalks his father online in the game, acting as a sort of guardian angel when his dad's low-level character stumbles into trouble. Eventually the kid befriends his own dad, and of course his dad has no idea it's his son until the very end. (Or did a small part of him know all along? (No.))

How delightfully masculine! How deliciously Japanese! The father's too ashamed to open up to his son directly, and the son's too respectful of his father's silence, so instead they reconnect anonymously thanks to the power of the Internet and Final Fantasy - wow!

Like I said, it's nakedly an advertisement for a video game, and the cynic in all of us should absolutely hate this thing just for existing. But it has its charms, against all odds. Certainly nothing anyone needs to check out, but, yes, this is in fact out there on Netflix. Amazing!

Two more things, before I forget. One is that this little series, albeit scripted, is apparently based on a real story. The second is that the kid's avatar is a busty, beautiful, blonde woman. Japan, everyone!

The Vietnam War: Season 1

(Oh Jesus, let's hope there's never a Season 2.)

In a September that saw all kinds of new seasons of television drop on every channel from broadcast to streaming, I thought it might be almost impossible to find the time for an 18-hour documentary about the Vietnam War. But I also felt it was important to watch an 18-hour documentary on the Vietnam War. Certainly more so than, like, the fourth season of Transparent, you know? I've also never seen any of Ken Burns' work. I know, right?

I found this thoroughly informative. "Enjoyable" is probably an inappropriate word to use, but I liked how much I learned, if that makes sense. (History nerd!) To this point in my life I'd always thought of the Vietnam War as just this messy morass of jungle-fighting in Southeast Asia - which, granted, it was - without ever understanding the timeline of it all, the political machine at work that churned out bad decision after bad decision, the complicated ethical quandary of reconciling "we shouldn't have gotten involved with this war" with the pot-committed notion of "but we shouldn't quit now." It's a tragedy, obviously, and an opportunity for a lesson learned. I'd say "let's not forget this one," but the fact that I hardly knew the half of it at 29 years of age despite being well-educated and all makes me a bit of a cynic on that front.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Gosh, I don't know how to react to Marvel movies anymore. I really didn't care for the first Guardians of the Galaxy very much, but can't deny that this was brighter and bolder and wackier and just more fun, in general. And, shit, that's what a comic book movie ought to be, right? Fun? And that's what this was. But Jesus, when the flying raccoon and the baby tree stump join forces with Captain America and the Hulk in a couple years to save the universe or Marisa Tomei or whatever, the tonal inconsistency is going to make my goddamn head explode. "Oh, we take these movies very seriously, and have been building to this cathartic death scene for literally over a decade. Now check out this blue motherfucker over here!" Yes, that's right - the biggest thing preventing me from liking this movie without reservation was my inability not to think about how it takes place in the same universe as Iron Man 2. Good work, Marvel. Everything you do supports everything else you do, and taints it just as well.

But no, really, this was completely absurd and, as such, enjoyable.

Table 19

This was a frustrating movie in so many senses of the word. Its failure both critically and commercially hardly resonates as any sort of big deal, don't get me wrong, and it's not so much frustrating that a movie like this should have been better as it is that this movie could have so easily been so much better. Let's quickly highlight the elements that work.

For one, there's a good assembly of people here! Not a star-studded cast by any stretch, but it's a great mix of recognizable character actors and TV people. From left to right on that poster alone we've got Stephen Merchant (Ricky Gervais' number two man, Hello Ladies), Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Spider-Man: Homecoming), June Squibb, Craig Robinson, Anna Kendrick, and Lisa Kudrow. Not pictured here are the guy from Everybody Wants Some and the virtual reality haunted house episode of Black Mirror, Monica from Silicon Valley, Hannah's mom from Girls, or Andy Daly. Oh, or how about the voice of Margo Martindale? The screenplay comes courtesy of the Duplass brothers. Just lots of people I enjoy seeing get work, really. No one here to root against, and plenty of people to appreciate.

Okay, for another thing, the premise here was clever and seemed easy enough to pull off. If you've seen any trailers for this one, you already know it, but just in case, here it goes. A group of strangers get shafted to the "misfit" table at a wedding. They're all cold and annoyed at first, but over the course of the next four to eight hours, wouldn't you know it, there's a Breakfast Club type bonding as they come to know each other as more than just "the couple with a failing marriage" and "the old lady" and "the overeager kid playing way out of his league trying to hook up with someone tonight."

Except... they never really get there. The movie ends with them having arrived there, the last six people on the dance floor, richer for having experienced each other and the evening, but that's not really the same thing, you know? They're just sort of cold and awkward at first, and Anna Kendrick's character is going through some shit, and once they all realize her history with the bride and the best man they sort of collectively console and comfort and support her, and then all go off to hang out together and smoke some weed and comment on what a beautiful day it is. There's no real farce. There's no real drama.

And, worst of all but rather predictably, there's no real comedy. It's a cute enough movie, a fun enough movie, but it's completely forgettable, completely happy to just go through the motions without a single memorable scene or sequence, no quotable lines, no zany back and forth dialogue that really sings. It's absolutely disposable and forgettable. And there's nothing wrong with that, and I can't say it's a bad movie, but again, to circle back and bring this home, it's a movie that so easily could have been a better movie.

I haven't even touched on all the weird holes in the script and the way the bride-groom-best man-Anna Kendrick-maid of honor polygon doesn't work at all, but who cares? Certainly not you! My apologies, and thanks for making it this far.

Gone Home

Oh hey, a video game! Remember those? Here's Gone Home, which at least Keith and Sweeney have already played through. It's free on Xbox Games with Gold this month, and why not check it out? It's a quick one, and it probably took me only two or three hours to play through.

Both Keith and Sween were hesitant with praise when I told them I was playing Gone Home, each saying something to the effect of, "It was a big deal in 2013, but I wonder how well it's held up." I don't want to say anything at all that could spoil it, but let's just say this started out as an absolute horror game and... subverted my expectations. Games! Art! Free. Enjoy!

Stan's TV Dump: Summer 2017

Let's find out what I couldn't bring myself to stick with over the long summer.

BAILS:

Sense8: Season 2

This just wasn't ever for me. Loved the idea here - eight people around the world are connected in a vague way and can swap places with each other in moments of crisis, almost like a good Heroes concept. But something about the execution just never landed. I loved, or at least liked, most of the characters, but what's the overarching plot here? I could have kept going with Sense8, but it was always a Marissa show and she wasn't exactly pushing for it, you know? Two episodes into Season 2 was as good a point as any for me to quietly call it a wrap on my end.

FAILS:

Great News

This wasn't awful, but God, who has the time or patience to stick around and wait for big network sitcoms to figure their shit out anymore? Parks and Recreation had a rough first season, the American Office had a rough first season - it's true, network sitcoms rarely impress at first. But with the rise of all these singular-vision six-to-ten-episode prestige half-hour shows on streaming and cable channels, what exactly is appealing about this, and to whom? John Michael Higgins? Horatio Sanz? Nicole Richie? And it's produced by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey? Really, who is this for? Thirty-three-year-old women who miss 30 Rock? Sixty-seven-year-old men making the daring trip over from CBS? I mean, no harm no foul and all, it's not like I'm rooting for this thing to fail. I just can't imagine NBC thought it would be even a modestly successful show.

The Mist

Ugh. Great novella, arguably an even better movie, and still I knew from the get-go that this TV adaption would suck some major ass. And boy, did it ever! What made The Mist work so well in book and movie form was that it stuck a bunch of people in a grocery store and surrounded it with horrifying Lovecraftian monsters. Yes, the people ultimately turned on each other, because Stephen King loves nothing more than to explore the dark side of human nature. But either way, there was tension galore and an understanding that each and every one of these people could (and probably would) meet a grizzly end in short manner. The Mist was never going to be a good TV show. It's just not meant to be stretched out into a weeks-long event, it doesn't need an ensemble cast of heroes. But damn, this Spike adaptation was just every bit as bad as the CBS Under the Dome series that somehow lasted for three years and for all the same reasons - shitty acting, watering down some very raw and potent source material, unnecessary secondary plots, you name it. A predictable mess!

Gravity Falls

This wasn't bad. I jumped on into it after how much I enjoyed Steven Universe and Over the Garden Wall - why not give another kid-friendly but well-reviewed series a shot? This one's from Disney, and it's about two kids at a surreal and supernatural summer camp. (Kristen Schaal voices the girl because Kristen Schaal is required by law to be in at least one out of every five shows on television.) And listen - again - not bad! Nothing wrong with it. It just felt a little more, uh, kid-oriented than something I feel any need to devote twenty hours of my time to. Sorry! Still haven't given up on Adventure Time, though...

I Love Dick
Certainly not the show with the most buzz, but the buzz it had was pretty good, all the same. I wanted to love it and expected to at least like it, but alas, I just couldn't get into it! Would have made for a quick and easy finish, too, what with just the eight or ten episodes or whatever it was, and all of them half an hour. Nope - sorry! It just didn't click for me. I'm glad so many other people liked it, though.

American Gods
Not all fails - and not all bails - come from complete disinterest in a show. Some of them come from more of a combination of slight disinterest and viewing difficulty. Something on basic cable that's always on demand is a really easy thing to catch up on; something streaming, even better - when you already pay for the streaming service. But American Gods? That shit's on Starz, and really, who the hell is paying for Starz? And why? Starz is the channel you barely notice when your cable provider gives it to you for free for three months. The thing is, though - we would have probably paid for a month of Starz in order to catch the rest of American Gods if the first episode had been anything more than an occasionally interesting clusterfuck. The lone scene in the episode that had me interested in the show whatsoever was a fairly graphic sex scene, not because of the sex itself but because of the way the room was lit and the way the scene was scored and more than anything the weird way it ended. Otherwise? Meh. Too many hour-longs out there as it is, and after stumbling my way through Twin Peaks I don't feel any need to delve back into whatever the hell this was. Still have the book, though, and I still plan to read it, too! One day.

The Defenders
Marissa and I didn't even bother with Iron Fist, but figured we'd give this a shot. We lasted something like one and a quarter episodes before turning it off for good, just not giving a shit whatsoever. Even at a mere eight episodes, I had no interest at all in plowing through another season of Marvel on Netflix. Life's too short! There's too much other, better television! Who has the time? And so forth and so on. (Even Trevor seemed non-impressed by this one. That right there's the only vote of confidence I need for this bail!)

The Tick
I had no real interest in this one, but when I saw that it was only six episodes I figured I could give it a try. I quit after just one episode. I wasn't into it at all. Nothing wrong with a superhero spoof, but I just expected something more fun than this thing. Trev tells me the early 2000s version from Fox is much better. Maybe I'll check that out one day! This one? Nah, never again.

TALES:

The Great British Baking Show S7 E3: "Bread Week"

This is such a goddamn delight. It's more calming and soothing than any reality TV show or competition TV show out there. Just a bunch of British people being self-deprecating about their work while they bake delicious looking food. You watch this show, and you learn - actually learn - about baking techniques. Who goes home every week feels largely like a secondary concern to how much everyone has learned and can teach about the proper way to make a cream pie. It's soothing, not stressful. Contrast that to...

MasterChef S8 E6: "Silenced by the Lambs"; S8 E12: "In a Pinch"; S8 E13: "Gordon's Game of Chicken"; S8 E20: "Finale" 

Ugh. I watched two or three seasons of this show and only ever felt stressed and manipulated when doing so. The editing here is miserable, with judges pausing mid-sentence dramatically a dozen times per episode. "This tastes..." [reaction shots, musical cues, commercial break, return, repeat sentence] "This tastes... delicious!" [music changes from war drums and dramatic fanfare to relieving, triumphant strain]. Everyone seems stressed and angry, rivalries between the contestants are played up as much as friendships. The judges dramatically spit out food and remorselessly shame its creators - the whole thing's just messy competition television that feels less and less necessary by the season. Marissa still watches it, so I still catch it now and again, but damn.

Beat Shazam S1 E8: "Episode Eight"
"Name that song based on three to five seconds of audio!" It's the game we've all played before - hell, I think VH1 or MTV had a show based on it twenty years ago. And now it's a summertime sensation! (Sensation in this case means that it was pulling numbers just shy of Big Bang Theory reruns.)

Grey's Anatomy S14 E1: "Break Down the House"; S14 E2: "Get Off on the Pain"

Yeah, I've seen a handful of Grey's Anatomy episodes over the years. Hashtag, "blame the wife." Holy shit, when's this show going to end? They've already killed off McSteamy and McDreamy. Yes, killed - not written off, but straight up killed! Oh, and every single character is related now in some giant family tree of affairs and divorces and secret babies and such. I don't even have anything of substance to say here. Kudos to Ellen Pompeo for making an entire career out of playing one character, I guess.

The Mick S2 E1: "The Hotel"

Y'all might recognize The Mick from my first TV Dump of the year. I bailed after two episodes. Well, you know what they say - comedies, and in particular broadcast network comedies, often need a handful of episodes, or maybe even a whole season, to find themselves. Well, I went ahead and watched the Season 2 premiere. And... nope! It's just not a good show! It's a fine show, nothing special, and I'm happy enough for Kaitlin Olson, but seriously - what's the appeal here? It's just a broadcast-friendly version of any of the umpteen Comedy Central shows about delayed-onset adulthood. Who out there, with this much to watch on television, is clamoring for The Mick?

And, wow, okay, let's call that a wrap on summer television. It's October after all.

Rick and Morty: Season 3

Boy, you know what sucks? This season of Rick and Morty just left me feeling cold. And not, "damn, dark!" cold, but more like, "this? this is what took them over a year and a half to make?" cold. The show is really, really doubling down on its multiverse-based nihilism. Like, if there are infinite realities and infinite versions of everyone, no individual world - yes, entire world - really matters at all. It's an interesting approach. Multiverse theory is so often presented with never-ending optimism, like as long as you can imagine something existing, it does! Limitless potential, right? Well the third season of Rick and Morty really took pains to show just how droll it would be to actually, you know, be capable of traversing the multiverse with ease. Rick is essentially omnipotent - and bored as all hell because of it. You'd have a drinking problem too, you know?

It's a shame, because there are few shows on television as creative and inventive as Rick and Morty. A single episode of this show will usually contain more fresh ideas and concepts than entire seasons of other shows, and that's Dan Harmon for you. But it's also starting to feel more than a little messy and overstuffed, and that's also Dan Harmon for you. This guy's his own worst enemy! Community also peaked early, remember?

Gah! This wasn't even bad. It was good! But it wasn't great. And Rick and Morty used to be, and really ought to be, great. Oh well.

American Vandal: Season 1

It's a Netflix true crime parody about a case of high school vandalism. Someone has spray-painted a bunch of dicks on the cars in the faculty parking lot. But who? Starts out feeling like this dumb, trivial show, and frankly, that's what it ends up being. Still, I enjoyed it - and it ends with a big old gut punch that I shouldn't spoil. Eight episodes, half an hour each (or so). Give it a try, maybe.

Barton Fink

So I'm definitely at the point where I'm closing in on seeing every Coen brothers movie. Their early work in particular is still something of mystery and interest to me - old enough by now to be judged in a timeless vacuum and acclaimed enough for all kinds of critical analysis to exist online. Anyway, here's Barton Fink.

What can I say? It's a great, simple, complex movie. Simple in its plot, with a pretty barebones story and only four or five characters and, I dunno, three settings or so. But complex in its meaning, in its symbolism, in its undertones. I'm all for that, in a movie. You say "pretentious," I say, "fuck off and let artists strive for something, bud." I got Shining vibes from this movie's hotel scenes, and a quick glance around the Internet afterward tells me I wasn't alone in doing so. Also, John Goodman in particular was just phenomenal here. Which is never surprising, but always pleasant.

For now, it's too early for me to rank this against the rest of the Coen repertoire - they're just so, so good at what they do, and I need to give some serious reconsideration to a few of their movies I've only seen once - but suffice it to say this was a really good movie. (Shocker.)