Fortnite

Here's the last thing I bought! It's mighty expensive at $1600, but it makes a easy go of a complex operation. Set it and forget it and keep a sponge wet it's about all it takes! All it takes is a 4-day dry and a 4-day cure.

I agree @djw180 The Fall of the House of Usher is worth a watch for Mark Hamill’s performance alone. Plus, I’ve been on the fence about watching Kaos. I will definitely give it a go now. Thanks!

I just finished watching The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix. Highly recommended! It's a horror-drama in 8 episodes, very loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe short stories or poems with each episode named after a different work of his. I have never read any of them and some had not even heard of, but I now at least know the brief synopsis of them from Wikipedia. What the creators have done is woven together a plot primarily based on the short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" that greatly expands on that. The first episode has the same name as the whole series. Roderick Usher, corrupt billionaire head of a major pharmaceutical company, invites an old adversary, lawyer August Dupin, to his family's derelict house, to confess to a host of crimes. Dupin has been trying to prosecute the Ushers for decades but they always got away with it. Now, following the recent deaths of all six of his children, supposedly in freak, horrific, unrelated accidents, Roderick wants to come clean. Most of the story is now told in flash back, both to the early years of Roderick and his sister Maddie (the brains behind their rise to power) and the children's recent deaths. The next 6 episode each focus on the violent deaths of a different son or daughter, each related in some way to the Edgar Allen Poe story that episode is named after. The final episode, The Raven, then brings everything to it's conclusion, revealing the true cause of all that has happened. It's very, very good. It is a bit bloody and gory at times, but never over-the-top, always done for a reason and usually to fit in with the story that death is named after. It features Mark Hamil in the most un-Luke-Skywalker-like role you can imagine. I never really rated him as an actor in Star Wars, but here, as the Usher's ruthless lawyer he is excellent. Another Netflix series I think is worth a mention is Kaos It's a modern day story of Greek Gods and Heroes, in a world where they most definitely exist and are still worshipped by mortals. Jeff Goldblum is Zeus and there's other recognisable faces amongst the rest of the cast, including David Thewlis as one of Zeus' brothers and fellow god Hades and Suzie Izzard as one of the Fates. It loosely follows the story of Orpheus in the Underworld, but this is part of a bigger plot with both gods and mortals having to accept what fate has in store for them, whether they like it or not.

What I Watched This Week #148 (Oct 28-Nov 3) Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person dir. Ariane Louis-Seize/2023/1h30m Sasha (Sara Montpetit) is a teenage vampire who, much to the exasperation of her parents, refuses to kill as she has too much empathy, a decision that is slowly killing her. She meets suicidal Paul (Felix-Antoine Benard) and he offers his life for hers, but over the course of the night the two form a bond and find a reason to live. Deadpan humour and charmingly awkward teenage romance add a lightness to what is a very deep emotional drama that is more complex than it at first seems. This put me in mind of a strange mix between A Girl Walked Home Alone at Night and Napoleon Dynamite. There's a beautifully staged scene where the two listen to an old record and, without a word, nervously steal looks at each other for an unbroken three minutes and it has more depth and meaning than most films manage in an hour and a half. You really get the feeling that you're caught up in that dramatic first flush of love where you feel like Romeo and Juliet. The two lead performances are extraordinary, especially Montpetit, and the direction has a real warmth to it despite being set mostly during the night. I loved this. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Jigsaw dir. Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig/2017/1h31m Most of the time while I was watching this I was thinking “have I seen this one before..? No. No, I haven't. Wait, have I? I have! No? Oh, yeah I have”. I think this is the eighth film in the Saw franchise, and by this point they all just kind of blur into one homogenous mess. It's a shame because I think the original is a really good, tense thriller with a great, if ridiculous, twist. 2/10 Terrifier 3 dir. Damien Leone/2024/2h5m It's Christmastime and, five years after the events of the last film, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) is back playing Santa and everyone is on the naughty list, especially Sienna (Lauren LaVera) who bested him the last time they met. Not as long as Terrifier 2, this is still bloated and full of ridiculous bits of lore that makes the whole thing feel like a parody at times, I actually found myself invested in the character of Sienna here. I think LaVera does a decent job in portraying the trauma and PTSD she's suffering after the last film. Again, the gore here is very well done but so gross that it becomes banal. The best thing about this film, as is the case with the others, is Thornton's performance as Art who manages to be both creepy and funny. 4/10 Immaculate dir. Michael Mohan/2024/1h29m Sydney Sweeney plays Sister Cecilia, an American nun recently arrived at a remote Italian convent. Things take a sinister turn when she becomes pregnant despite being a v*rgin and she starts to think that all is not so holy at the convent. This religious horror doesn't do anything new and owes a huge debt to the likes of Rosemary's Baby but it does do a very good job of ramping up the tension and supernatural elements at a deliberate pace until it's ready to go for broke in the final act. There are a couple of unexpectedly gruesome moments that shocked me more then anything in the Terrifier films precisely because they are so unexpected. Sweeney gives a good performance as a true believer who must become a fighter in order to survive, and there are a couple of memorable supporting performances from Dora Romano as the Mother Superiour and Alvaro Morte as the charismatic Father Tedeschi. A well made, if uninspiring, thriller with a memorable smash cut to black ending, emphasis on the smash. 7/10 Joker: Folie a Deux dir. Todd Phillips/2024/2h18m This sequel to 2019's Joker picks up from the end of that film with Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) in prison awaiting his trial for multiple murders. While inside he meets and forms a relationship with Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), the two seeming to make the perfect couple. The first film was a well made rip off of Scorsese's The King of Comedy elevated by an incredible performance from Phoenix that didn't need a sequel. Thankfully this isn't taking the predictable route of charting Fleck as he wreaks havoc as the crown prince of crime but instead does something interesting and sees him try to face his many mental health problems while struggling to break free of his anarchic alter ego. This hasn't gone down well with comic book fans as it strays far from the source material, but not being a big comic book guy myself that isn't an issue for me. Phoenix is once again excellent, really giving his all in his performance. Gaga is also good and I liked how her character became a kind of antagonist in always pushing Arthur to be Joker. Brendon Gleeson has a supporting role as the lead prison guard and as much as I like him, and he does give a good performance with what he's given here, his character is too much of a caricature, one scene even implying that he and some other guards r*pe Arthur. Steve Coogan also pops up in one scene as a television reporter interviewing Arthur and it just came across as Alan Partridge doing a bad American accent to me. I haven't mentioned it yet but this film is also a musical - another sticking point for a lot of people – and I think it works well at portraying Arthur's mental state. I loved the moments where we go full fantasy and Arthur and Lee are singing and dancing on an old school style soundstage like a musical from the 40s and 50s. But I am a musical fan so I'm probably biased. Don't believe the anti-hype, not everything here works but it's going for something different and for that alone it should be commended, and I honestly think it's better than the original. 8.5/10 Piece by Piece dir. Morgan Neville/2024/1h34m Piece by Piece is a hybrid biopic/documentary about the life and career of musician and producer Pharrell Williams starring the man himself and featuring appearances by the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Justin Timberlake. The gimmick here is that the whole film is animated with Lego. This makes for a playful, vibrant and imaginative film that matches Williams' method for creating music, putting it together piece by piece until you have something new. This is also a very funny film, making full use of the medium and the absurdity of everything being Lego to make some hilarious visual gags. Being a family friendly film this does smooth off some of the rough edges of his story but I still found Williams to be an open and honest subject not afraid to discuss his shortcomings. I love it when the style and form of a film like this matches its subject – Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould and the David Bowie doc Moonage Daydream come to mind – and Piece by Piece does just that with its eclectic and imaginative presentation. 9/10 Strange World dir. Don Hall, Qui Nguyen/2022/1h42m Farmer Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal), son of legendary explorer Jaeger (Dennis Quaid), must go on his own adventure deep beneath the surface of the planet when his crops, which also acts as the planet's energy source, start to die. The plot here is quite simple but it has an excellent third act twist that I though worked really well and fits in with the environmental themes and message of the film. What works best here is the look of the world beneath the surface, populated by really well designed creatures that feel truly alien, as do the environments. Not quite as good is the family drama between Jaeger and Searcher and between Searcher and his son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White). It's the classic case of simply sitting down and talking to each other would solve all their problems, but then there'd be no film. The performances are all good, with Quaid's bombastic 50s b-movie style bravado standing out to me. This won't go down as a Disney classic but there are some really good ideas here alongside some gorgeous animation. 7/10 @djw180 The Bad Sleep Well is the least faithful of his Shakespeare films, the other two are much more recognisable.