Medium Mashup

Category: Reviews

Reviews of Movies, TV, and Games

  • The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Review

    daily-show

    It’s hard to even remember The Daily Show with Craig Kilborn. What eventually became a comedy institution began life as, essentially, a thirty-minute SNL Weekend Update. It wasn’t as terrible as many people sometimes remember it being, but it was completely unremarkable. But when Jon Stewart took over the show, he single-handedly changed course. In addition to being funny, The Daily Show had the opportunity to be sharply satirical, not only in regard to news and politics, but also the very institutions that create sensationalized stories rather than inform the public. It is impossible to overstate Stewart’s importance to The Daily Show’s success

    This obviously gives us reason to worry about The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Without the brainchild at the forefront of the show, how could it be successful? But the truth is, in television, successful shows tend to run on momentum as much as they do creative impetus. Again, Jon Stewart’s influence over The Daily Show was immense, but his contribution was more like building an engine than a single work of art. Behind the scenes, there are scores of writers, producers, and technicians who know Jon Stewart’s vision of The Daily Show inside and out. Stewart was the engineer, but they make up the actual engine.

    Even without the engineer onboard, if the first episode of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is any indication, that engine is chugging right along. The writing is just as witty as under Stewart, and the actual joke construction feels very similar to what we’re used to. Noah himself also seems extremely game and surprisingly comfortable in the host’s chair. It’s apparent that the writers are still writing material for Jon Stewart’s delivery and mannerisms, but Noah is seamlessly handling the same type of material. It’s almost surreal seeing somebody who looks and sounds so different so quickly acclimating to the show.

    This familiarity and comfort is probably intentional, and a smart way to go for a first episode. If there’s a message that the writers seem to want to get across, it’s that The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is still the same show people have enjoyed for the last sixteen years. They hang a lantern on the fact that there is a different person in the seat, but the first episode still feels like comfort food, a welcome return to a successful formula. We may no longer have Jon Stewart delivering the news every night, and Trevor Noah could very well evolve the show into something more suited to his background over time. But for now, we can rest assured that the engine is still running just fine.

  • Stardust Review

    Stardust

    Last week, I reviewed a modern fairy tale movie called Winter’s Tale. It was not very good. After we watched Colin Ferrell and his Pegasus become stars together, my fiancee urged me to watch another modern fairy tale movie called Stardust. This one, she assured me, was much better, and given its pedigree, I had no reason to doubt her. The film is based off of a book by Neil Gaiman, one of the greatest authors of modern fantasy and fairy tales working today, and directed by Matthew Vaughn, one of my favorite modern filmmakers. No matter the quality, watching a movie forged by such different artistic voices had interested me for some time.

    So it’s perhaps no surprise that Stardust is a good movie. It’s got all the trappings of a fairy tale story: inanimate objects that are somehow alive, magic, other worlds, true love, etc. But unlike Winter’s Tale and other failed films in the genre, the rules of its universe feel somewhat intuitive and the character drama is earned. The tone and feel of the film is reminiscent of The Princess Bride. It’s a love story at its center, there are moments of danger and menace, but it’s generally a light-hearted adventure story.

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  • The Flock Review

    My review of The Flock, as seen on Unknown Hosts! You can catch our live show every Wednesday at 8 pm ET/7 CT/6 MT/5 PT!

    http://twitch.tv/unknownhosts

  • Winter’s Tale Review

    winters-tale

    I won’t mince words: Winter’s Tale was a disaster upon release. With a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a worldwide gross of only $30 million, there is no world in which Warner Bros didn’t regret releasing this film. The rumor is that it was a long-gestating passion project of Akiva Goldsman, who had worked on so many films with so many powerful players in Hollywood that he was able to call in favors and assemble an all-star cast and crew to bring his dream project to life. Every one of them likely wishes they had just said no.

    That being said, it could have probably worked better than it did. Right from the start, Winter’s Tale establishes that Colin Ferrell’s Peter Lake has existed in multiple time periods, that he was shipped out in a tiny Moses-boat when he was still a baby, that everybody has a “miracle” for somebody else if the two can meet, and that there is a dog spirit (guardian?) that shows up to rescue Lake in the form of a horse, which is actually a Pegasus. When the Pegasus-dog-horse showed up, I checked my blu-ray timer to see how long the movie had taken to establish all this nonsense. It had been seven minutes and thirty seconds. Winter’s Tale wastes no time leaping into crazytown.

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  • Until Dawn Review

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    (The first half of this article is spoiler-free. The second half contains only light spoilers, but goes into the game’s mechanics in a way that could limit one’s enjoyment. The transition is clearly marked, so if you intend to play Until Dawn, please do not read that section until you are finished)

    If you’ve played Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls,  Life is Strange, or any of the recent Telltale Games series’, then you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Until Dawn. Dawn uses the same “Your actions have consequences” framework as its predecessors, and works with the same combination of choice and quicktime events that made most of them enjoyable.

    The difference, here, is the genre. Unlike the heavy drama often found in these narrative-choice games, Until Dawn exists wholly within the b-movie slasher-horror realm. All major characters are teenagers (appropriately portrayed by actors and actresses well into their 20s and 30s), the location is a creepy house hidden away from civilization on a mountain (with a series of cabins, mineshafts, and an insane asylum to boot!), and there are tons of cheap scares and red herrings to keep things interesting.

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