Medium Mashup

Category: Reviews

Reviews of Movies, TV, and Games

  • The Witch Review

    witch

    The key to appreciating The Witch is right there in the full title: “A New England Folktale.” The film is essentially a cautionary tale centered around a way of life and a set of standards that are extraordinarily outdated, and as such, is quite fascinating. It takes its lessons and its presupposition of the supernatural very seriously, and one could imagine the first generation of American Puritans creating such a film had the medium been available to them.

    The Witch makes its point abundantly clear from the start. The first thing we see is the central family voluntarily leaving their community to go off on their own. This single moment is framed as an irreversible error, as community is all that’s keeping the dangerous and ungodly nature of the American continent from harming them. We see the daughter Thomasin recognizes this, and from the moment the town closes its gates, we know our family is doomed.

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  • Oxenfree Review

    oxenfree

    Oxenfree borrows from a number of other recent narrative-driven games. The way it introduces its characters is reminiscent of Until Dawn, its exploration and coms towers call back to Firewatch, and its horror elements crib from any number of recent indie horror titles. However, despite its influences, Oxenfree is very much its own experience, perhaps because of its stripped down approach to gameplay and stylization.

    Of the four face buttons on Oxenfree’s interface, three of them are devoted to selecting dialogue options. That leaves only one button for physically interacting with the environment, along with a shoulder button to bring up a radio (which is crucial for many of the game’s puzzles and events), and another shoulder button for the map. Given the limited and seemingly wasteful control scheme, it would be understandable to assume that Oxenfree is poorly designed or, at the very least, under-engaging.. However, because half of the game’s buttons refer specifically to dialogue and character interactions, they end up emphasizing that portion of the game and re-orienting the player away from traditional game elements and toward narrative and conversation.

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  • Frank Review

    frank

    I’m not quite sure that the movie “Frank” is about any one thing, in particular. It engages with a lot of ideas that struggling and aspiring musicians deal with, such as inherent genius, hard work, tragic beginnings, and what it takes to be creatively successful, but it doesn’t have anything specific to say about any of them. Unlike most films, though, Frank doesn’t suffer from its shotgun approach to the complexities of the creative process. Instead it feels like an artist venting about said frustrations through a quirky, compelling yarn centered around a man in a paper mache mask.

    Despite the marketing focus on Frank (the masked man) himself, the protagonist of the film is actually Domhnall Gleason’s Jon Burroughs, a struggling keyboardist who lives with his parents and spends much of his free time “writing music,” or more accurately, people-watching on the beaches of Ireland. The film’s first act is strangely similar to another Domhnall Gleason movie, actually; like in Ex Machina, his every-man character is swept away to a remote location with a genius figure who hand-picked him as a collaborator. From there, though, Frank takes a much different path.

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  • Uncharted 4 Review

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    For three entries now, the Uncharted series has established itself as the best in the video game industry at spectacle and set-pieces. What Naughty Dog achieved over the last console generation was largely unmatched, and their blend of explosive action, great dialogue, and tight mechanics is carried forward in their latest, and supposedly final, Uncharted title. But despite its similarities in form, Uncharted 4 is operating on a different level than its predecessors. After their landmark title The Last of Us, Naughty Dog was no longer content to simply do action movie tropes very, very well. For the final entry in the series, they really want to say something about Nathan Drake, his relationships, and his addiction to adventure. What they accomplished is not only more spectacular than most of Hollywood’s biggest summer films, but far more substantive and meaningful as well.

    This approach does come with a price. Uncharted 2 is perhaps one of the greatest games of all time, largely because of how brilliantly paced and constructed it is. No sequence feels like it outstays its welcome, and the transitions between the various types of gameplay are perfectly orchestrated. But because story is so important to Uncharted 4, and because Naughty Dog really wants to nail every element of the series one last time, the game’s segments can run longer than in previous games. This has led to complaints from a number of game critics, particularly due to the game’s first and final acts.

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  • Captain America: Civil War Review

     

    civil-warSomebody at Marvel must have sold their soul to the devil.

    That’s the only way I can explain how a movie like Captain America: Civil War, which juggles enough characters to make Batman v Superman and the previous Avengers movies look quaint, works so beautifully. Civil War isn’t just good, it’s the best team-up movie Marvel has produced to date, and possibly the studio’s best film yet. Despite running for two hours and twenty-six minutes (just slightly longer than the Avengers movies), Civil War never ceases to be entertaining. Just about every scene is enjoyable in its own right.

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