Protecting The Private Life

General A larger number of sources of advantage or disadvantage  beats a lesser number of sources of the opposite kind. That is, each source of either advantage or disadvantage can negate one source of the other, instead of all sources. For example, gaining advantage from 2 sources can not only negate 1 source of disadvantage, but you then still gain advantage on top of that. Not only does this raise the skill ceiling of combat, but it addresses the problem of more than one source of advantage being useless, despite it being easy to get from multiple sources. The ease with which players can gain advantage from class features etc also discourages them from trying to find it by fictionally positioning their characters in an advantageous position. Note that this doesn't mean you can get "double advantage" or anything like that! You either have advantage, disadvantage, or neither. Combat If you reach 0 HP  and are downed, you gain a level of exhaustion. This prevent...

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The 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons is, for many people, the best edition of D&D to date. Similar to previous editions, the various systems that make up the rules are separate enough that creating house rules is fairly painless, with the possibility for unforeseen ramifications kept to a minimum. The Dungeon Master's Guide is, in many ways, an enormous collection of house rules, ready to be used or ignored to meet the needs of each play group. These house rules go by the name of "Variant Rules" in the DMG. While a great system, 5e is not without its shortcomings. One common complaint is that despite Inspiration being a good mechanic, the rules for actually gaining Inspiration are far too vague for players to feel that they can reliably recoup it once they spend it. This leads to players simply sitting on their Inspiration until they're at risk of death, and the rules for gaining Inspiration slowly fade into the background, forgotten. And lets be honest ...

The Theory of Everything was released at the same time as The Imitation Game, and a cursory glance would make them look very similar – they’re both basically biographies of genius scientists, right? This assumption somewhat dampened my experience of The Theory of Everything, because it’s very much focused on being a love story, based on a book written by Hawking’s first wife. It does what it aims to do very well, but don’t watch it expecting the same sort of drama or themes as The Imitation Game. One thing that cannot go unmentioned is the acting, specifically Eddie Redmayne playing Hawking. The number of times I found myself thinking “Wait, this guy isn't actually disabled is he? He’s just pretending right?” was incredible. Watching him trying to pull his body up a flight of stairs with fingers that don’t work… It’s incredibly powerful stuff and there’s no doubt he deserves his Oscar nomination. As much as the movie succeeds in portraying Hawking’s relationship with his wife ...

While nobody expects Wes Anderson to use anything other than his iconic style, it’s a style done by nobody else, and it really shows you the infinite creative potential of film-making. Merely by being so different, it begs the question – why are all the other movies coming out these days just so damn “same-y”? Once you move past similar directors like Quentin Tarantino, why does everyone else seem to insist on just churning out the same style, movie after movie? The same color palette, the same editing techniques, the same narrative structure, the same camera angles, the same music; the list goes on. It’s a real shame. The Grand Budapest Hotel doesn't really need any praise beyond that. You’ll know within the first 5 minutes whether it’s a movie for you, but try not to be put off by the initial oddness. From start to finish, I kept saying to myself, “this is so weird ”. Never did I do so without grinning like a Cheshire cat though. It’s been a long time since I've had such a...

Exodus is the perfect example of a 5/10 movie. Nothing was particularly wrong with it, and nothing was particularly amazing about it. The main roadblock Ridley Scott and his writers had to overcome was the basic narrative – it’s literally a movie about a tonne of “God cards” being played. Similar to the plot device of deus ex machina (where a situation is magically saved by an unexpected/unlikely intervention of some kind), Exodus suffers from the main characters being powerless to affect almost anything at all throughout the movie. All the audience and the characters can do is watch as God brings down horrific events onto innocent people, one after the other. There’s no real struggle for the characters to undergo, or for the audience to invest in. This isn’t an unsolvable roadblock though, as Darren Aronofsky showed us with Noah * . The story of Noah is very similar in that it’s mostly about an unstoppable, horrific act of God (though admittedly not as bad as the story of Exod...

Interstellar is an interesting beast. It’s a movie of grand ideas squeezed as efficiently as possible into 3 hours. It’s a movie about space travel, but it’s also a movie about the human condition. Too big for its shoes? While watching the movie, I kept getting the niggling feeling that every scene had the edges shaved off, and was just slightly shorter than it really needed to be. Ideas were ever so slightly cut away from before finishing, perhaps missing a little bit of extra dialogue, or just some breathing room for the audience. It was never enough to cause problems, but the feeling never really went away that Nolan’s vision was slightly too big to fit into 3 hours. One specific situation that kept arising was the lack of establishing shots - it always seemed like we simply cut to the spaceship arriving at the next destination, without giving us a chance to see what the destination looked like from afar. When the destination is a black hole, that’s kind of a bummer. But again,...

Source: Google As my plane descended into Swedish territory, I couldn't have asked for better timing. Dawn had barely arrived, fog surrounding the thousands of islands littering the "coastline". It was difficult to tell where the sea stopped and rivers began, but one thing was for certain – the Swedes don’t lack trees. Dense forest stretched as far as I could see – which is quite a substantial distance when you're several kilometers off the ground. As the plane headed inland, quaint green fields started to break up the mass of trees. Classic bright red barns with pointed roofs suddenly called into question my assumption that they only existed in fairy tales. Clearly, my plane had been diverted to Narnia sometime in the night. Source: Google Source: Google As a bullet train (boasting 100% renewable energy, like there was any doubt) shot me from the airport towards Stockholm, Narnia slowly gave way to a modern cityscape. But not entirely modern – my p...

Rush is the most beautiful and terrifying display of raw power I have witnessed in recent memory. It simply wasn't possible to see and hear such speed and not be overwhelmed. There's really not much I can say about it – I can't think of a single fault. The cinematography was breath-taking; the acting was excellent; the soundtrack was classic Hans Zimmer; the pacing was perfect. This isn't a movie about cars or racing – it's a movie about a rivalry more powerful than even the constant risk of death. It is a movie of such pure intensity and everyone should try and see it. 10/10 I feel like I should make it clear that this is not blind praise – it's objective praise. Criticism is all well and good, but unfounded cynicism is merely tiresome. I genuinely cannot find fault in this movie.

Definitely a mixed bag. So mixed, in fact, that it didn't really feel cohesive, and the high highs and low lows are easily examined separately. I'll start with the lows: From start to finish, there was a vibe of an amateur editing job. The first 20 minutes were muddled, boring, and frustratingly lacking in anything for the audience to invest in. The plot soon recovered, but putting me in a bad mood straight out of the gate isn't what I was hoping for. And as painfully long as the beginning was, the end was shockingly abrupt. Even on a shot-by-shot level some of the editing choices seemed odd, and the whole affair left me disappointed far too often. As if to hammer the point home, somehow someone thought it was a good idea to assault the audience with fucking GoPro footage. It was hideous. It was jarring. It was just plain embarrassing. How such grainy and unnecessary footage made it into the final cut is beyond me. Not only was it far, far below the quality of the...

How you view Ender's Game depends largely on whether you've read the book or not. As someone who's read it, it's difficult to imagine how the movie would come across to someone who hasn't, so this review might be a little biased. I can sum up my thoughts in 2 points: The movie was as faithful to the book as a movie can be. The book is about the slow mental evolution of Ender, coupled with the methodical destruction of his emotional psyche at the hands of his teachers. The keyword here is "slow". This left the movie with 2 options: either have 50% of the movie be montages, or accelerate everything by extreme proportions. Both options suck, but the former sucks more, so they went with the latter. This completely removed the impact of Ender's transformation over time, and left no room for even a single character to be fleshed out. When none of your characters carry any weight, all you're left with is the spectacle of the zero-gravity...

Captain Phillips is an experiment in what happens if the main character doesn't panic, is smart, does everything right, and stays calm for 95% of the ordeal. The movie is exceptionally well-made and I can't pinpoint anything that it did wrong. However even when immersed in a traumatic situation, if the main character isn't stressed or scared, then why should the viewer be? This is the question I found myself asking when about halfway through the movie, I found my immersion (and interest) waning. By not getting emotional, it also made it difficult for Tom Hanks to show off his acting chops, and instead the main character remains impenetrably calm for almost the entire movie. It's simply not the kind of thing an audience can be expected to empathise with. Fortunately, we're given a really strong ending with Tom Hanks' acting finally given a chance to hit the audience hard. It's a movie that does nothing wrong, but lacks any real drive or tension simply be...

The Good: Gravity is the most visually breathtaking movie I've ever seen. It is exactly the kind of movie that the 3D effect was meant for, and is absolutely worth seeing on a big screen and in 3D. It wouldn't nearly have the same effect at home in 2D. The technical brilliance of the film lends itself perfectly to its main aim: immersion. My experience involved a racing heart, white knuckles gripping my chair for dozens of minutes on end, and praying for the tension to be over. And of course as soon as it calmed down, I couldn't wait for it to ramp up again. The music fit perfectly with this, punctuated at just the right times with the utter silence of space. The silence had a surprisingly huge effect on the action as well – after being desensitized to most of the explosions in movies these days, to see it happen in 100% silence was extremely eerie and intense. The complete lack of gravity added to this as well – nothing moved like I expected it to, and suddenly every ...

Having seen other works from Sophia Coppola (Lost in Translation, Somewhere) I knew what to expect, but I still wasn’t prepared for the surrealism that permeates through “The Virgin Suicides”. Within the first 30 seconds I was enthralled; unable to guess what would happen or how things would play out. The basic plot of the movie is utterly depressing, and yet the somewhat alien interactions between the sisters (and their interactions with the world) negate this depression to the point of being a pleasant curiosity. And yes, it’s as unusual as it sounds. It’s the kind of movie that makes you sit there at the end, staring dumbfounded at the credits, soaking in exactly what it was you just saw. Absolutely nothing is resolved or explained by the end, and yet it remains extremely satisfying with no real questions remaining. It should by no means be described as “entertaining”, at least not in the traditional sense, but instead as “compelling”. It’s definitely not for everyone. Ki...

Despite the bland name, “The Lookout” is a surprisingly insightful look into the lives of damaged, flawed people. Nearly every character with even a handful of speaking lines had an interesting, nuanced background, while remaining very much rooted in reality and the lives of ordinary people. It’s a pity that by the end of the movie, there really wasn't time to resolve all the different relationships and character struggles, and it left me feeling unsatisfied despite the objectively excellent climax.  By far the most glaring example was his ex-girlfriend, who only gets a quick conversation in a dream when there was a hell of a lot more potential for exploration. In many ways, the bank heist actually gets in the way of the main character’s opportunities for growth, rather than enabling it. After putting all that attention into introducing and growing a swathe of characters, it was a pity to see it all ultimately boil down to a movie about money. The movie certainly doesn't ...

“Dear Zachary” could very well be the saddest movie you will ever see in your life. Just when you think things are starting to turn around and get better, the movie slams you back down, over and over again. What starts as a biography quickly turns into a true crime documentary, with an audience that is extremely emotionally invested by that point. Not only is it a true story, but everything from the filming, interviewing, producing, music, and editing was done by one family friend of Zachary’s father. It’s incredible how good of a job he did – especially with the editing. Bits of the narrative are cleverly hidden until they can have maximum impact, and the result is some really impressive pacing that keeps you constantly on edge. The emotional turmoil "Dear Zachary" puts you through really can’t be described. The movie puts the complete annihilation of an elderly couple’s hopes and dreams on full display, and doesn't pull any of its punches. Moments like when they desc...

Contrived, cliché, and uses “magic” as a free pass to fill the movie with ridiculous plot holes. CGI is constantly used instead of real illusions, losing all credibility and sense of magic. There’s some clever one-liners and cool action scenes every so often, but they’re few and far between. It’s a movie about magic without actually having any magic of its own. Unless you’re after some extremely light entertainment, just go and re-watch The Prestige. 4/10

I am so sick of shaky cameras. After being blown away by District 9, it was shocking to see Neill Blomkamp stoop to such lazy filming. None of the fight scenes were fresh or engaging, and the camera only stood still long enough each fight to show off some new gadget before going back to indiscriminate blurs of punches or guns firing. Everything was just so derivative and ordinary. Occasionally you’d see a cool camera angle, a clever use of silence or a particularly nice special effect, just to let you know there was at least some creative spark left. However these were few and far between and were nowhere near enough to salvage the movie. Blomkamp showed us in District 9 that he likes to commentate on society, and he did an excellent job of handling discrimination in that movie. In this movie, however, whatever commentary he might have originally had clearly got lost in the process. While the first quarter of the movie has some nice scenes of Matt Damon living in slums and dealing w...

Drinking Buddies is a subdued drama depicting very real relationships. What might seem like an open-and-shut plot actually turns out to have a very human story. In fact it appears to be right on track to have a fairy tale ending, until you realise that it’s only 90 minutes long, not 120. It’s important to keep this mind, because the otherwise satisfying ending might come as a bit of a shock to some and feel very abrupt. With a story like this, success rests almost entirely in the hands of the script and actors. Fortunately, Drinking Buddies delivers on both. The chemistry between Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson is a pleasure to watch, and leaves the audience in no doubt that “Drinking Buddies” was a good title choice. The chemistry between Jake Johnson and Anna Kendrick is also great, but in a much more intriguing way. Their relationship shows just how much complexity can be involved when trying to define “love”, and avoids all the standard tropes for a relationship like theirs. Th...

In my mind, “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” is the other half of a parody duo with “Cabin in the Woods”. While nowhere near as intelligent as Cabin in the Woods, it tackles the same absurdities found in modern horror, but from a great new angle: the “psycho rednecks” are completely ordinary people, and rather than being tragic heroes, the college kids are utter morons who manage to repeatedly kill themselves. It’s absurd, over-the-top, over-acted and silly, and all of it is completely intentional. The movie knows exactly what it’s aiming for from start to finish, and doesn't stray from it for a second. While the premise might not have been enough to last 90 minutes on its own, the decision to add an actual psychopath into the mix added perfectly to the parody and made for a great climax. In the end, it’s not as clever as Cabin in the Woods, nor does it pull off the impossible and parody the horror genre while also being a horror itself – it’s simply a comedy. There’s definitely nothi...