The Funeral

Looking around for something to watch, I chose:

The Funeral (1996).

This gangster movie, directed by Abel Ferrara is about a trio of brothers who run a gangster crew. There is the oldest, Ray (Christopher Walken), the middle brother, Chez (Chris Penn) and the youngest, Johnny (Vincent Gallo).

The movie, set in the 30's, opens with Johnny's casket being delivered to Ray's house. Someone put three bullets in Johnny's chest, and the body is being delivered for the wake. The question everyone wonders is who shot Johnny? There is no shortage of enemies, as we get to see in multiple flashbacks. Johnny was a communist, a loudmouth and a ladies man who had no scruples about bedding married women, and that is on top of being a gangster.

A great part of the film is told in these flashbacks, mostly as memories from his older brothers who are struggling with guilt and grief in equal measure. There are also the long suffering wives, as no one in this movie is even remotely happy. In fact, this is one of the darkest, most gloomy movies I have ever seen. Most of the scenes are set in dark rooms, but even the few scenes we get in sunlight are so bereft of joy that the sunlight becomes wan and depressing.

Mechanically the movie is good. The set pieces, the actors and the music are really good and hammers home how bleak the movie is. The song in the opening shot is Gloomy Sunday, aka the Hungarian Suicide Song. This should tell you how things are going to be.

Overall, I can't say I really liked the The Funeral. It's just so unflinchingly miserable, but I also think it is worth watching just once. I think it is essentially a “reverse gangster movie”, as in there is no glamour, no style, nothing that would make the lifestyle worth having. Other movies like The Godfather or Goodfellas show some positives even as they demonstrate all the negatives. The Funeral have no positives, it is all unrelenting misery.

So, do I recommend this movie? Weird as it may sound, yes I do. Despite all the pain on display, The Funeral is a compelling movie. You get the feeling that something is going to happen, and you want to be there when it does. If you're in the mood for a gangster movie, maybe choose something else, but if you are a fan of crime cinema you should watch it at some point.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

Nobody again

A couple of weeks ago, I watched a movie called Nobody but not the one with Bob Odenkirk. This week I watched:

Nobody (2021)

which is the one with Bob Odenkirk, perhaps best known from his role as Saul from Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad.

Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk) is a middle aged accountant who lives in a nice suburban house with a wife and two kids. He takes the bus to his accounting job, he misses the trash pickup every week, his life is frustrating, boring and dull.

One night they have a break in and the thieves steal some cash and his daughters kitty cat bracelet. This is one step too far, and he sets out to get it back. It turns out that Hutch is in fact quite a lot more than an accountant and a suburban husband and father. He is an Auditor, the kind of person the three letter agencies call when they need someone permanently removed. And he's good at it. He soon finds himself accidentally involved in a war with a deranged Russian mobster and his crew. Things will get very bloody indeed.

The movie was inspired by a couple of real break ins that Odenkirk suffered and how people talked about it after the fact. All the “if it happened to me I would have” and the “if it was my family, then” hurt, and he channeled it into Nobody. The movie is essentially a wish fulfillment story of how we all wish we were secretly a total badass one man army.

Visually Nobody is very nicely made. There is really nothing too ground breaking but I liked that I could follow the fights. Many modern action movies screw up the fight scenes, but Nobody does it really well.

The soundtrack features some really good songs, so that was a pleasant surprise. The real star of the show however are the stars. I haven't seen much of Bob Odenkirk before, but this movie really proves how good of an actor he is. Not necessarily because Hutch is a badass. It's easy to look tough, but because you can see his frustrations through the facade he wears for his children and how hard it is to push down his lethal instincts. Both Christopher Lloyd and Michael Ironside have small roles and it is always fun to see old veterans do their thing. Even though seeing how old they are reminds me of how old I am. Oh well, such is life.

Watching Nobody I was reminded of John Wick. The one man army wrecking people left and right is nothing new in film, but I found something in Nobody that many other movies miss: humor. Nobody is not a comedy, it is in fact pretty grisly, but there are some really good comedic moments that lift the movie to a higher place than just another violent romp. It is in fact funnier than a lot of what passes for comedies these days.

So, do I recommend this film? Yes, absolutely. Just be aware that it is incredibly violent and bloody. If you're okay with that, watch Nobody. I'm probably going to have to watch it again. Like I said, it reminds me of John Wick but also RED (2010).

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

These things happen.

It so happens I've caught a spring cold and been so busy blowing my nose to the point where I'm unsure if I have any brain left in my skull. 

As a natural consequence, I've been too tired to actually come up with anything this week, so I'll give you some comedy instead. I have two full stand up shows, one with Bill Burr and the other with Jimmy Carr. Both are fantastic comedians but be aware that they both like abrasive and controversial humor.

Join me again next time and until then, have a fun week (and don't get sick)!

 

 

Starfield May patch beta

During the week, Bethesda released the beta for their upcoming Starfield patch. I took the opportunity to try out the Steam beta and these are my thoughts on the matter.

First off, lets talk difficulty. On release Starfield had a classic difficulty scale going from Very Easy to Very Hard. The patch takes that and breaks it into several distinct pieces.

You can now set you own efficiency in combat, as well as the enemies efficiency, and you can set them separately! The same goes for space combat. If you make the game easier you get less XP and likewise if you make it harder you earn more XP. This means that seasoned FPS players can give themselves a harder challenge on the ground, but make the dog-fighting in space much easier until they get the hang of it.

You can adjust your carry capacity, and at max you can carry over a thousand pounds of stuff. To go along with this, you can adjust how much or little money vendors have, to buy all the things you salvage. Like with combat, these changes modify the amount of XP you get.

There are also options for environmental effects and healing, but I haven't had much time to test those.

The ground map is significantly changed. Gone is the boring field of dots and instead we get a vibrant map that actually shows you things. Cities are also mapped out and I can't tell you how nice that is. To make things even better, if you pull up your scanner in town, you can see all points of interest, and if you have been there at least once, you can quick travel from the scanner. Such a great quality of life improvement!

Next up is ship interior decoration. All ships have a button on the wall that opens a building interface similar to the one you build outposts with, and you can also get there through the scanner. This allows you to decorate your ship any way you want. I haven't had time to properly explore this yet, but it looks very promising. You can also buy habitat modules that are empty from the start to give yourself a clean slate to build on. This makes it so that your ship can be a proper base and not just a vehicle.

A smaller thing is that when you start a New Game + you are given the option to change your character including redoing your traits if you wish.

Finally, they are experimenting with adding ground vehicle to the game, but as far as I know, this isn't in the patch and only in the testing stage at the moment.

The addition of these changes do so much to make Starfield an even better game. I liked it from the start, but this patch gives me great hope that this game will bloom into an even better experience. I'll add a video showing off the changes if you want to learn more.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!