Medium Mashup

Category: Reviews

Reviews of Movies, TV, and Games

  • Blair Witch Review

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    When taken completely on its own merits, 2016’s Blair Witch isn’t bad. It’s an above-average movie in the “found footage” horror sub-genre, written and directed by the team that created You’re Next (which is very good) and The Guest (which I have not seen). There are plenty of jump scares, some surprises, and a real escalation of horror that caps off with an especially intense ending. It’s hard to deny the film’s competence, which is ironically the movie’s biggest flaw.

    Blair Witch feels like it was created for all of the people who saw 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project” and said “That sucked! It’s so boring!” 2016’s film is the original turned up to 11. Instead of whispers and laughter in the shadows, we have deafening noises and uprooted trees. The creepy stick figures that served as a creepy harbinger of doom in the original have their own twisted purpose here, there’s more gore, more definitive fates for the different characters, and a far lesser desire to hide the supernatural elements from the camera.

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  • Sausage Party Review

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    The most interesting aspects of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’ Sausage Party are what they’re NOT promoting. Sure, the movie revels in its own bad taste, with just as many sex jokes and f-bombs as you’d expect from the Pixar-but-perverted slant of its ad campaign. But the film has far more to say about the failings of organized religion: its usage to paper over very real human fears, its role in global conflicts and warfare, its hindrance of actual scientific development, and its tendency to shame people for their inherent desires. Sausage Party empathizes with believers, but never obfuscates where it stands in regard to faith.

    It’s a bold, refreshing, and inherently risky stance for a studio film to make, which is probably why it’s not the part of Sausage Party that is being sold to the masses. Sausage Party’s moral can be boiled down to “promote Atheism over religion, but don’t be a dick about it,” which is a hard sell to a country in which over 75% of the population identifies themselves as having faith in a higher power. Sausage Party is not likely to change anybody’s minds on such a grand subject, but it’s fascinating to me that a project could be greenlit at all,  let alone be one of the biggest success stories of the summer.

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  • The Night Of Review

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    The real strengths of HBO’s The Night Of are placed right front and center in the first episode. The hour chronicles the titular night, and we sit with future-murder-suspect Nazir Khan as his journey out to a party goes from ethereal to tragic. This episode is impeccably directed, with gradual shifts in tone emphasized by the color pallette and a softened depth of field. Director Steven Zaillian does a terrific job of drawing our attention to the little details that seem small in the moment, but will be significant down the road.

    The decision to begin a criminal procedural mini-series with an episode that features practically no procedural elements is a real stroke of brilliance, and it colors our perspective of the whole show moving forward. We trust that Nazir is innocent not only because we know that his account of the night is truthful, but because he is our initial eyes and ears into the world. We have no reason to doubt him, since his perspective is our reality. Meanwhile, introducing some of the key points of contention in the first episode makes the procedural elements even more engaging. We have a real point of reference from watching the events unfold on our own.

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  • Hardcore Henry Review

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    Hardcore Henry is a lot smarter than people are giving it credit for.

    Perhaps that’s not surprising. The film is a representation (and arguably, a glorification) of all of the things that run rampant in modern video games. Shot entirely in first person, Hardcore Henry is gloriously over-the-top in its action, breathlessly paced, and one of the most violent films in recent memory. It’s also crude, short on character development, and far more interested in cool moments than a traditional plot arc.

    But Hardcore Henry is absolutely aware of these things. They’re not so much flaws as intentional nods to the video game medium, both positive and negative. This becomes overtly apparent towards the end (more on that in my Spoiler Section below), and for better or for worse, Hardcore Henry shows a great understanding of the “language” of the gaming medium.

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  • Stranger Things Season 1 Review

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    Of all of the Netflix Original Series so far, Stranger Things feels like the most attuned to the binge-watching model. Despite their serialized natures, series like Orange is the New Black and House of Cards are still relatively episodic, giving each hour some semblance of its own story. Stranger Things, though, feels like an 8 hour movie. The episodes give the viewer decent stopping points, but there’s never any suggestion that the show is meant to be consumed one episode at a time. The show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, mean to hook you at the start and keep you attached until the very end.

    They’re quite successful, too. It’s true that Stranger Things borrows from a whole host of 80s movies, especially those written and directed by Stephen King and Steven Spielberg: ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, It, The Goonies, The Shining, and more. The influence of other filmmakers can be felt as well; the teenage storyline feels like a direct engagement with the work of John Hughes, and the creature designs are inspired by the work of John Carpenter (this connection is even directly acknowledged when a couple characters are watching The Thing on TV). But just making a series of nostalgic references doesn’t make for good TV. The most impressive aspect of Stranger Things is how engaging its individual storylines are and how perfectly it weaves them together in its later chapters.

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