Winter refuses to let us go so we refuse to let go of our remotes! Pull up your quilted blanket dear reader and cuddle up for another episode of What I’ve Been Consuming.
TV
The Last of Us - Boy oh boy oh boy! This show is just delivering in every sort of way. Episode 7 is another excellent episode, but a somewhat quieter one. While it doesn’t share the wild emotional swings of fear and sadness as Episode 5 it still manages to strike a powerful chord. Young love is hard to capture in a realistic way, but the show creators as they’ve shown before, are more than capable of building out a strong relationship in a short amount of time. Ellie and Riley are both navigating a friendship that may be growing into something more and the fear and hope and yearning that comes along with this is so deftly handled by both actors that it almost makes me yearn for that time again. (Can I skip the heartbreak though?) As most game players know this romance will never see a natural end, but it’s the journey that matters most here. Quit reading what I’m writing and just go watch it.
Deadwood - I’m finally getting back to rewatching/finishing this series. I had started watching it years ago when it was originally airing, but never finished it. Then I tried to watch it again when the movie was coming out, but I was once again unable to. After recently finishing Episode 8 of Season 1 I finally feel like I’m on a roll here. This show is such a fully realized and unvarnished Western that it quite possibly erases any romanticism about the Wild West. That time was dirty, merciless and filled with more cursing than a high school bathroom. Deadwood is not a nice place to live and I barely want to visit, but seeing how there is a small spark of soot-covered goodness here, I’ll pop my head in just to see who survives and what’s left of their moral fortitude once the dust has settled.
One-Punch Man - I recently finished up Season 1 and found myself pleasantly enthralled by the eponymous character. At first I found him somewhat annoying, but I gradually came around to him. For me the real power of this series is in all the amazing characters. They’re all just so distinctly drawn and designed that I can’t wait to see what new quirky characters show up next. This is why I love anime, the weird crazy characters that always show up in these strange far away worlds. More of this please!
Movies
The Good Nurse - Man was this just a scary movie. It’s not a horror movie by any means, but by the ending text crawl your pretty shook at the absolutely cold hearted corporate overlords that are running hospitals. Eddie Redmayne plays the titular “good nurse” with a dark cloud of dread hidden beneath a cheery helpful facade. Jessica Chastain is also the titular good nurse. She is also the brave overworked mother who ultimately exposes him. The movie is dark and slow moving, but you can’t escape it once it begins. It’s all just so simple and sinister. And as the closing supers reveal, the ultimate horror is a lot more than one “good” nurse.
Night Teeth - This was a decently fun vampire movie. It doesn’t really bring anything new to the genre, but it is slickly produced and uses its money well. It seems more focused on the love story that develops throughout the movie and thereby less interested in what the movie is supposedly about, which is vampires. There’s the typical genre tropes; a truce between humans and vampires that is under threat of breaking, a hidden vampire underworld and warring factions of both human and vampire. It looks slick, but I found myself more interested in some of the side characters who are portrayed by more magnetic actors in Sidney Sweeney and Megan Fox. Alfie Allen also appears, but feels underused. It’s good to see Debby Ryan here, but she is underused as well as she is stuck with playing a lovelorn young vampire. Lucy Fry, (who I completely did not recognize from Bright) does well here as the vampire BFF who is nothing but trouble. Overall a decent vampire flick that had potential to be a lot better.
Slayers - Am I on a vampire kick here? It’s looking that way. I stumbled across it while browsing around Hulu and it caught my eye when I saw that Thomas Jane was in it. I didn’t have high expectations for this one and boy was I proven right. There’s a lot of seemingly good ideas going on here, but other movies do it so much better. Fun video game style supers? Go watch Scott Pilgrim. A grim depiction of modern day social media obsessed teens? Go on Tik Tok! Or Twitch or Only fans! A haunted vampire hunter on a mission of revenge? Watch Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Or Blade, hell even the third one is better than this. Ugh I feel bad that Thomas Jane got suckered into this one.
Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania - Whoo what a fun ride this is! It’s good to be back with this crew. I do miss Scott’s regular crew and although Michael Peña’s Luis is hilarious I missed David Dastmalchian’s Kurt the most, but bonus he does voice a new character for this movie. I’ll leave it to you dear reader to find his voice. Paul Rudd is consistently good in this role, but he does get a bit of a backseat here as Michelle Pfeifer and Jonathan Majors do steal the show. Majors does wonders with what is a thinly written character. Pfeifer also makes lemonade out of almost nothing here, but her constant reluctance to talk about the Quantum realm quickly gets tiring. For me the real meat of this movie is in all the minor characters and the world design. From the amazing looking rebels to the world itself I was absolutely enthralled. I know people are divided on Modok’s design, but for me his humorous and honestly sad arc somewhat made up for it. He’s a tough character to recreate in live action and while it wasn’t great, it was more than good. The story moves briskly and never really lags. It does suffer somewhat from not giving Kang much of an introduction or purpose other than world (or in this case multiversal) domination, but again Majors is such a good actor that he makes it all seem worthwhile. This is a fun movie very much in the Marvel style and one that keeps the Marvel train chugging along for better or worse. I personally don’t need all my movies to be masterpieces of the genre. Sometimes a good movie is just that, a good movie.
The Knock at the Cabin - As has been for awhile, an M. Night Shyamalan movie is always a toss-up. You’re either going to be caught completely unaware by the twist and love it or be left completely underwhelmed. I actually fall somewhere in-between where I don’t ever really hate his movies. (I never watched Avatar as I believed all the reviews and given that it wasn’t his own concept I didn’t feel the need to see it anyways. I also have yet to watch Old.) This one I was pretty hyped for as I love me some Bautista! This movie sets an uneasy mood from the start. Slow dread seeps into every frame. Once we get inside the house, the dread comes with us and doesn’t let up until the end. Bautista is indeed good and the three other strangers, Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Abby Quinn are also all good. They represent a group trying to save the world, but to accomplish this must force a family of three to make a decision that seems drawn from an especially torturous Twilight Zone episode. While I don’t want to give away the ending, you’ll either love it or you won’t, which, as I said, is par for the course. See this movie for the masterful way Shyamalan builds dread and fear and wonder. Your mileage may vary on everything else.