Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

Category: Movies

  • Independence Day Resurgence: Everything that is Wrong with Modern Action Movies

    Today I saw Independence Day: Resurgence, because I wanted to watch something stupid with big explosions and I have forgotten enough of the original to make it feel like I was doing something novel. Of course it was fun – big things got blown up, there were tidal waves and monstrous destruction, heroic fighter pilots…

  • Library Wars: A Chaotic Disquisition on Librarian Vigilantism

    I’m in grim London for a week, doing some work at Imperial College while the looming skies glower down on me. One great thing about flying ANA to London is you get to see Japanese-language movies with English subtitles, something that’s almost impossible if you live in Japan. Since my Japanese is not yet good…

  • The Force Awakens: An Entertaining but Disappointing Addition

    [This review contains SPOILERS so please don’t read it if you haven’t seen the film]. I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Sunday, and really enjoyed the spectacle and the homecoming feeling of it, but reflecting on some of the things that niggled at me during the movie, I have decided now that it…

  • Why are there so many Daddy Issues in American Action Movies?

    On the plane back from Italy I watched Ant Man, which my friend told me was better than expected and because I saw Jurassic World on the way over to Italy. Ant Man was an okay movie – the action scenes were okay, the ant-dude got a few decent moments of humour, the ant-control stuff…

  • Mad Max Fury Road: A Savage Masterpiece of Eco-feminist Violence

    Mad Max: Fury Road is a masterpiece of Australian cinema, that makes the rare achievement of building on its predecessors in the series to bring post-apocalyptic film-making to what must, surely, be its apotheosis. Visually stunning, with a brilliant sound-track, incredible pace, and a simple joy in hedonistic old-school road wars violence that is deeply…

  • The Battle of Five Armies: The Final Hobbit is Great Fun, but Too Gorgeous

    One of the English loan-words that Japanese people misuse slightly in a really cute way is gorgeous (ゴージャス). In Japanese gorgeous refers not to something really nice, but to something that is overdone or just a bit too much – not necessarily unappealing or unattractive, but just a bit too much. I’ve heard the word…

  • World War Z: Nothing Like the Book, but Still Great

    I don’t really think it’s possible to make a movie of World War Z, which is basically a kind of public policy review document. I also don’t think that the new movie is a particularly good first attempt, but it is a lot of fun. As an adaptation of the book it has so many…

  • Abraham Lincoln’s Secret Writings

    Historians often struggle to come to grips with the more pathological eras of human history. The holocaust, world war 1, Stalin’s terror and the history of slavery are terrifying periods that are difficult for ordinary people to grasp. Why did people do these things? How did whole populations get caught up in frantic social movements…

  • Current Viewing: Ripper Street

    I cannot recommend Ripper Street highly enough. The actors are excellent, the dialogue fine, and the English a joy to listen to. The setting is grim and nasty, the lead characters compromised and gritty, but it has none of the bitterness and cynicism that so often accompanies those traits in a TV show. It’s also,…

  • Peter Jackson’s Hobbit: Too Many Goals for One Movie?

    In the last week I have watched the Hobbit twice, first with my partner and then as part of an end-of-year party with my players. In both cases, the people who attended the movie with me gave it the thumbs up – we all really enjoyed it – and I can definitely say that it…