PhilThePill Dot Online

Author: philthepill

  • Some Movies I’ve Watched

    The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

    The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (★★★½)

    The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is an adventure film without pretense. As such, its job is to deliver its characters from set piece to set piece. In this movie, Peach and Toad end up in a sleazy underworld casino almost in a similar fashion as Finn and Rose end up in a snobby casino planet in The Last Jedi, but there’s less concern about finding an unremarkable macguffin person and more with just getting their stuff back.

    I kind of found that refreshing!

    (And, you know, I love The Last Jedi, but one of the ways it made itself vulnerable to bad faith criticism was the obvious desire to just Do Adventure Stuff, but still tie it into a theme that the plot of the trilogy wasn’t organically producing. We all agree casino planet was weird, right? Well, Mario Galaxy pulled it off more successfully, that’s all I’m saying.)

    Good Fortune

    Good Fortune (★★★)

    **This review has some spoilers.**

    There’s certainly a better version of this movie in which the Gabriel character is played by someone who not only has an alien affect, but who commits to the unraveling of the angelic character and the full-on corruption by humanity. But, hey, Keanu is charming. We love to see him.

    Good Fortune would have you think it was written by someone who’s been really fantasizing about organizing gig workers as opposed to a guy who takes oil money from a murderous state. As it stands, it probably isn’t going to join Norma Rae in the pantheon of labor movies simply because it’s more of an observational comedy about how much it rules to have money compared to how much it sucks to not have money.

    But I was kind of getting into the mythology and lore here. I enjoy the idea that Sandra Oh assigns certain angels to specific drive-texters because there’s kind of a grand plan that hinges on it There’s a very brief, but memorable performance by the mentat in Dune, who is played by that legendary character actor whose name I should remember. It’s all just a backdrop for “rich people party like this, while poor people don’t party at all” and – spoilers, but not really – it will lead up to a point where your greatest fantasy is that some rich people will eventually be forced to feel empathy and thus do the right thing.

    Notice how no one in this movie actually succeeds in organizing! Interesting.

    The Secret Agent

    The Secret Agent (★★★★½)

    Among the many magic tricks this movie pulls off is the impeccable set design, taking me to a time and place that, no matter my personal familiarity, feels organic.

    Beyond the critical central performance of Wagner Moura, there are countless shots that convey the richness and strangeness of refuge from persecution; the strange bonds that form when you are displaced from comfort and when perverse incentives create dire enemies out of once-innocuous scoundrels.

    It all builds to a frustrating truth - that real life continues after the movie ends and even the fumbling ineptitude of evil can only delay the inevitable. But on the other side of the coin is also the inevitability of the forces of good.

    The Wolf Man

    The Wolf Man (★★★)

    I watched this on a long train ride and it was the right kind of movie for the moment. Claude Rains was perhaps my favorite role. The shots in the foggy forest are iconic.

    I know there's the lore that this movie was conceived to have you questioning the veracity of the werewolf story, but the screenplay really did little to have you pondering the question of man's inner evil until a late-film monologue between Rains and Lon Cheney.

    "Wuthering Heights" (★★★½)

    I understand the satisfaction of engaging with theatrical adaptations of literature as a someone versed in the source material. I read Wuthering Heights for the first time in the weeks leading up to this movie so I could experience that satisfaction. And I did walk away with the feeling that having the original book so fresh in my mind made the movie less interesting. However, the cascade of smugness that English class nerds have unleashed on this movie is something else.

    I don't think Emerald Fennell didn't "get" the book. I think she read the book in a certain mindset and an idea stuck with her. She then used her considerable talent to bring that idea to screen and I would say within the confines of her version of the story, it works! It's visceral. It ruminates on death from the outset. And it is invested in the idea that Wuthering Heights is ultimately a story told by people with bias and rooted in the ideas of what should be proper and what is transgressive. She also really wanted Cathy and Heathcliff to do the nasty. Multiple times. As a montage.

    So, I dunno, maybe you do yourself a disservice when you walk into a work of film and decide you're going to use "accuracy to the agreed-upon themes of a book" as your enjoyment rubric. Seems like you're setting yourself up for a bad experience.

    (Heathcliff should never be white, though).

    Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

    Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (★★★★)

    This was great as a movie I caught on a whim in theaters on a Friday morning. Original characters participating in a sort of low-sci-fi adventure through the mundane that gets interrupted by the fantastical. Its biggest flaw is that it tends to focus its social satire on easy targets: mostly "kids and their phones." It's a spiritual cousin to Idiocracy in its disdain for common people and air of superiority.

    However, when it finds a satirical idea, GLHFDD really commits, mining some effective dark humor from the most chilling of premises. There will be twists and if you've watched enough movies, you will predict them, but overall, this has stuck with me as one of those movies I would have loved picking up at Blockbuster and raving to my friends about.

    See, now it's got me doing the schmaltzy nostalgia thing.

  • My Latest Backloggd Review

    Pokémon Legends: Z-A

    Challenge: Engage in criticism of this game without mentioning “windows” or “voice acting.”

    Legends Z-A excels as a prototype of the new kind of Pokemon city we could get. Sidequests integrated with the city. Imagine if modern cities had locations like the museum, the sewers, the abandoned laboratory and some – some – of the key wild areas.

    The Battle Royale is initially an extremely compelling gameplay loop, working alongside the new battle system to create a sort of mini-stealth hunt-and-deploy tactics game. Unfortunately, LZA does not want to put in the time to keep this compelling for more than 30% of the game, so it eventually becomes a barrier to progress rather than an end unto itself. Still, I want a version of this real-time system to return.

    On the whole, this does not reach the revelatory heights of Legends: Arceus. Limiting you to Lumiose shouldn’t be a main part of the reason, but the limitation is felt due to the initial lack of wild areas. Imagine if there were unique Pokemon and battles to be found in the museum, the old building, Quasartico, etcetera. But the wild areas are the limits of ingenuity for this game.

    Still, if you’re a Pokemon fan who’s been enjoying the Switch era and not a weirdo who gets personally enraged whenever the Nostalgia Factory fails to hold up a mirror to your imagination and clone whatever $300 million production budget chimera you’re imagining, then Legends Z-A is worth your time. There are great Pokemon to find, a fun new battle system to engage in, and some discussion to be had about the dangers of nostalgia.

    Also, I don’t care about windows. I hope the windows in Gen 10 are even worse.

  • An Organizing Note

    I’ve been working with some groups that try to get tenants organized to push back on the abuses of various types of landlords. This was my first campaign seen from beginning to end.

    Tenants in Durham came out to City Council’s late October meeting to support an ordinance that would make it a misdemeanor for landlords to collect rent on slum-like conditions, including lack of water and multiple fire hazards.

    Four members were initially skeptical and hostile to the ordinance, hemming and hawing on whether it would put Durham in conflict with the state legislature. But dozens of people came out, pushed back, and spoke out.

    The ordinance passed 7-0.

    This isn’t a magic wand for tenants living with these conditions. It’s not within the scope of the city’s powers to enforce a penalty for the crime of being a slumlord. But it helps tenants put such landlords on notice. It helps tenants in a lawsuit seek rent abatement. And it helps tenants in eviction court to get the resources they need.

  • I read The Satanic Verses for Book Club

    Our book club theme for September was “banned books” and our nominations list included this one, Looking for Alaska by John Green, Sold by Patricia McCormick, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, and The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.

    Interestingly, the one we settled on by a substantial margin was the book that wasn’t banned by a typical Western and Christian-influenced censorship apparatus. Whereas books like “Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Fun Home” are banned for exploring queer identities, “Verses” was censored in over 20 countries due to controversy over its portrayal of Islamic mythology. The book’s place in history is anchored by the fatwa declared by Iranian religious leaders more than thirty years ago. The bounty placed on Rushdie’s head did eventually lead to an assassination attempt by a random New Jersey man just a few years ago. (Rushdie survived and published a memoir revolving around the violence).

    The uncomfortable thing about online discourse of this book is that there seems to be a micro cottage industry of people who use this book as a way to grind an axe against Islam as a faith. Looking for videos on the book will often surface a dark muttering of commenters who say that the fatwa controversy surrounding “Verses” justifies everything they think about Islam and Muslims.

    A befitting irony for the novel’s themes of narratives that are imposed on people and events is that this is hardly a book dedicated as a polemic or committed to poking a finger in the eye of Muslims. It can be irreverent – cheekily so. There’s cynicism about organized religion and since Rushdie was born into a Muslim family, he uses the backdrop of Islamic history to make some points. But if you’ve ever read a satirical retelling of Christian Biblical events, like Lamb by Christopher Moore or seen The Life of Brian movie, you’re already familiar with this approach from writers emerging from Christian worldviews.

    Ultimately, my favorite chapter of Satanic Verses is one of the several allegorical visions that alternate with the main plot. It involves a village that has become extremely devout due to the power of a prophetess and is now embarking on an arduous pilgrimage on foot to Mecca. The chapter’s title, “The Parting of the Arabian Sea,” indicates what the final obstacle will be for these pilgrims. I suppose one could walk away from this chapter and say “wow, Rushdie really portrayed some truths about the darkness of religious extremism,” but I came away feeling like this was Rushdie’s acknowledgment about the power of faith and some of the downsides of steadfast skepticism.

    Faith is a well. One can draw strength from it, but that well can be poisoned. In a desert with no other reservoirs, one can become so dependent that it leaves you vulnerable to corruption. But in the harsh conditions of reality, an oasis can still be the only reason we preserve and find respite.

    I guess I just felt like Rushdie’s views on the faith background he came from are a little more nuanced and complex than the discourse would have you think.

  • 6AM, Waiting for the Oven to Preheat for My Kid’s Crescent Rolls

    I’m watching Drop and it’s a solid thriller – sort of displaced in time, because it uses the sort of broad strokes that I imagine an old school thriller would, but it’s dependent on modern technology.

    Do you know I’ve never seen Rear Window? Hell, I’ve never seen Psycho. I have the DVD. I picked it up at a library sale all the way back in Arlington, but I’ve never “made the time.”

    Making the time. What a concept.

  • News Articles I’d Like More People to Read

    Over the summer, a slew of bands began to make similar announcements on social media: They’d be pulling their music off Spotify, the largest streaming service in the world.

    It started in June with indie rock quartet Deerhoof. Within weeks, groups like Xiu Xiu, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and Hotline TNT followed suit. The wave of departures continued into September; most recently, The Mynabirds, WU LYF, Kadhja Bonet and Young Widows have all decided to leave Spotify. So why are musicians — many of them independent — removing their songs from the most popular streamer globally, which has nearly 700 million users?

    All artists cite Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s ties to Helsing, an artificial intelligence defense company…. In 2021, Ek’s venture capital firm Prima Materia invested more than $100 million into the German startup. This past June, Prima Materia raised more than $700 million for Helsing, where Ek is now also chairman….The Financial Times reported that Helsing is now producing its own drones, aircraft and submarines.

    https://www.npr.org/2025/09/09/nx-s1-5522297/musicians-leaving-spotify-protest-hotline-tnt-king-gizzard-and-the-lizard-wizard

  • Buying a Car in Dystopia

    I suppose one of the more significant things to happen to me recently is that I got rear ended on my way to pick up my kid, leading to the car being totaled and us having to buy a new one.

    The best thing I can say about our car habits is that we’re a one-car family, so I guess our emissions could be worse. But whatever car we do have, one of us drives it daily and when I do it, it’s several inefficient trips.

    I suppose this would have been our opportunity to go EV, but the payout from the insurance -while generous – was $9,000, leaving us with a a total budget of about $20K. You can get like a used Nissan Leaf for under that budget, but there were just a lot of question marks regarding an EV that may have been traded in because it got damaged.

    The point is, the ultimate choice of car was a compromise. It’s all gas, not even a hybrid. It’s the biggest car I’ve ever consistently had to drive, despite the fact that it’s a “subcompact” SUV. It’s struggling to get 25 mpg at the moment. It kind of feels like I got owned.

    I guess I owe the planet a couple of trees or something.

  • Travel diaries, January 23, 2025

    You ever been frantically leaving messages and calling a dozen cousins to see if they had time to see you over the weekend?

    Just me?

  • The Self-Illuminating Monotony of Papers, Please

    I finally got around to playing this classic that had been sitting in my Steam library for a few months. What proceeded was a strangely compelling four hours of gameplay.

    The scary thing about Papers, Please is how much the grind lulls you into just following orders. Even knowing this is something of a morality simulator, the need to just make a few bucks immediately drove me to compromise. The game may have taught me more about myself than I wanted to know.

  • Diary Update, January 19, 2025

    My brother and I actually had a good conversation.

    The consulate situation started off easily enough, because they granted me an appointment as soon as I walked in. But, somewhat predictably, my lack of readily accessible documentation made any process of obtaining an ID card come to an impasse.