I started The Seance of Blake Manor tonight and while I don't know how the mystery will resolve... Diabolik, is that you?!

The Killers, 1946, a gorgeous noir flick adapted from Hemingway starring Burt Lancaster in his debut, and Ava Gardner in what Wikipedia informs me was her breakout role.

It's an unfortunate constant that videogames so often attach to a genre which they represent badly. Recently Bloodlines 2 did to noir what sunlight does to vampires, and had me flying towards relief. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett provided that and more. Great book.

I watched The Naked Gun and while I laughed, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the onscreen romance between Neeson and Anderson's characters.

Watched Del Toro's Frankenstein.

Munich, 2005. Spielberg knows how to spin a yarn, but this movie needed something more. It doesn't feel like it comes out of the reality which it depicts, with great embellishment and gorgeous cinematography, but out of the Hollywood dream factory. It's simply built with the wrong grammar.

Trouble Every Day, Claire Denis' 2002 erotic horror gig with Vincent Gallo, Beatrice Dalle, and regular Alex Descas. Its genre identifier is a bit bold, as, regardless of its themes, and even imagery, it felt like watching any of Denis' previous works. I think showing gore requires some bad taste.

Demons, 1971, Toshio Matsumoto, is so classically structured it wouldn't surprise me if it was adapting something. The web makes this sound like a gory revenge flick. It is a tragedy and it does not hold back.

Continuing Claire Denis' filmography with Nenette and Boni. Denis' depiction of sexual fantasy is so disarmingly straightforward sometimes -- because it's so real. And it's usually a key force that's rarely acknowledged in the coming of age milieu.

Finally watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I now realize was the last of the classic Spielbergs I was missing. What can I say: class.

I watched Lo Mao aka The Cat, a 1991 movie about a cat burglar from outer space who is also a literal cat. The creature from the Thing is also involved for some reason. Even more mysterious is the inclusion of a romance subplot involving (yawn) human characters. Good bad.

I've experienced all manner of imperfection in games, some of it even beneficial. But Bloodlines 2 is the first game I've played that, relative to its neighbors, appears to suffer from lobotomy. Wish I was a fly on the wall during some of those meetings.

Onibaba.

I Can't Sleep is Claire Denis' third feature. Visually closer to the previous No Kill, No Die, splashes of blue are our constant companions. While I respect Denis' commitment to outsiders, the movie is both too unfocused and its characters so hermetic that it failed to build into anything for me.

Cronos: The New Dawn won't be many people's darling. It has that eternal game problem: its digital actors stink and their lines are shaky and overwritten. But I still enjoyed it. Its narrow interest of being a horror game shines through in its positional play, sound and art design.

I watched Flow.

I've learned over the years that bugs and jank don't make a game boring. Some of the most boring games I've ever played are superbly polished AAA joints. The production quality isn't a boon, but an imposition. These games aren't allowed to appear less than respectable. Jank can be liberating.

Some endings are complete surprises, some known well in advance. There are those that fall neatly into place. Others humbly shuffle on and off the stage. Still others must be orchestrated, frogmarched, or finessed. And some leave you utterly befuddled. And that is Hades II.

LIFEBAR 005 begins now!!! Starting with a hot take: What if @easbygames.bsky.social told you that MyGM Mode in WWE 2K25 was one of the best post COVID-era strategy games available???

Steam sale time! Pillars of Eternity I & II are the finest CRPGs of this generation. Together, they are 20 bucks and they will allow you to a. learn how to live with an insufferable piece of shit, b. vibe with the piece of shit-ness of history writ large.

I spent half an hour with the Industria 2 playtest tonight and I felt more tension in that time than during the entirety of Silent Hill F. That game is doing something very right.

I swore I was done with superheroes but I watched Mask of the Phantasm, one of too many Batmans in a world that never gets tired of Batman origin stories. Not only does Phantasm share the same fate, it also buys into a secondary trend of Bat-fiction: explanations for why Batman is still single.

Alien: Earth was supposed to be so much smarter. In the end, it's the same old TV, the glimmer in its eye fading away as its early touches of brilliance and character take it nowhere. Even its visual language gets stale. Prometheus with a delayed fuse.

I played Metal Eden, (came for the similarities to Metroid, stayed for the music), and found a game that plays much like Doom 2016, replete with tactically switching between your many guns, plus wallrunning. Fights take place in small arenas, the story gets told to you by guys on the radio.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans sounds like a game published by Don't Nod, but it's actually a masterpiece of the 20s, and, I learned this from Wikipedia, one of the earliest silent pictures to feature sound effects. It's a gorgeous melodrama that is already speaking our cinematic language.

Whatever fealty Silksong earns from me, it swiftly claws back with some truly dishonorable design. There was joy in the struggle, but now I'm starting to regret my time.

I watched S'en Fout La Mort, Claire Denis' second feature. It's a cramped, Mean Streets-y picture with a gritty look and unromantic colors. We always look over someone else's shoulder as black migrants Dah and Jocelyn set up a cock fighting ring for a shady -- you know how it goes. Not Denis' best.

I waited too long, but at last, I've read Wuthering Heights. I'll note only this: over the decades, many women have longed for a love like Heathcliff's, and some were cursed to have their wish fulfilled. May they abide in peace, if they can.

The web spent the summer godding up Ryan Coogler's Sinners. I found the movie so bogged down in convention that it is not so much invented as picked out of the catalogue of the collective imagination.

The Wandering Village: spent blissful hours on this compelling city builder set on the back of a giant, traveling dinosaur. I'd say, diplomatically, that the game draws a lot from Ghibli's Nausicaa, and leaves somewhat to be desired in the character department.

Beau Travail inspired me to go through Claire Denis's filmography. First up: Chocolat. It's astounding how good the movie looks. The composition, color, provide such details that give a life, force, and personality to each shot. Impeccable blocking and mis-en-scene of course.

I watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles last night and caught myself thinking of "classic Hollywood" not meaning pre-1960 but pre-2000. When you could count on a movie like the above mentioned to look decent and showcase some great blocking.

I love Pyre. If you give it the power to beat you, it becomes a real journey of success and defeat that moreover sits outside the Souls paradigm. This is a precious thing.

well shit, the social media vulture looked away for a bit and you got us from 69 to SEVENTY EIGHT out of the 100 new Unwinnable Monthly subscribers we need to unlock a Final Fantasy and politics issue! help us get the remaining 22: unwinnable.com/subscribe/

Fate decided to combine different levels of grind in Final Fantasy XV and I decided to elucidate how that touches something real. Thanks to Artemis for having me, and thanks to @smashvillain.etheirys.social for the pics.

Asura is Hirokazu Koreeda's latest project, a series for Netflix about four sisters who learn that their father is cheating on their mother. The angle is humorous, but there's something very un-Koreeda about the soapy script and direction. Still, it makes for a frank look at older gender dynamics.

“Of all the ways AI has killed us in fiction, the reality is the meanest and stupidest.“ @letominor.bsky.social reminds us that, if current events are to be considered, Grok will be a greater threat to civilization than any SHODAN apocalypse fantasy. lifebarmag.com/praise-the-m...

Treme', by David Simon and Eric Overmyer, is a soulful yet sobering journey. Full of as much (musical and culinary) joy, and yet tinged with such disappointment and anger as anything I've seen on TV. Enough to make a man fall in love with a place he'll never see.

28 Years Later: part Attack on Titan, part I Am Legend, part Lord of the Flies. Not to suggest that it's derivative, but the cross-pollination is notable in Alex Garland's script, which doesn't necessarily play to expectations. *Will* we build Jerusalem in Britain's green and pleasant land?

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Cléo from 5 to 7 was what I expected from a pioneering nouvelle vague flick but it also managed to surprise me with its homage to silent movies, not to mention cameos from Anna Karina, Jean-Luc Goddard and Eddie Constantine. I continue to learn.

I'm in here with this piece on System Shock 2, in which I state that "image trained replication may only come across as the surface imitation of a pathetically limited toy managed by minds too small to understand the smallness of the machine that they built." lifebarmag.com/praise-the-m...

ITS TIME!!!!! Come see what we cooked up for Issue 004!

We've reached 67 out of 100 new Unwinnable Monthly subscribers in our drive to release a Final Fantasy/politics issue, and we are dangerously close to the nice number. Make the issue and the nice happen by subscribing for $5: unwinnable.com/subscribe/

🚨 LIFEBAR ISSUE 004: SUMMER 2025 IMMINENT🚨 With contributions from: @tierknee.com @letominor.bsky.social @amisma.bsky.social @jdharlock.bsky.social @dontfeedthecharlie.bsky.social + MORE AUGUST 1ST!

Monster is Koreeda's latest, wonderful feature, a drama about the pain of appearances and how they make one less than human. This equivocation can take place during a brief encounter, or through a film camera. That camera may linger a moment longer and suddenly reality twists. Who is the monster?

Years ago I put over 200 very brisk hours into FFXIV. It struck me as a self referential spiral of fan appeasement which consistently dodges opportunities to be great, and never questions why its elements are chosen or why they are thus arranged. Tropey, boring, overlong.

Played The Drifter over a couple nights. It's nice to see the point & click puzzler still going strong.

No essay for Stop Caring this month, but I am releasing this triple threat of personal updates/a call for pitches/a request for donations If you are interested in writing for Stop Caring, please read this. I only have 4 spots available for the year, so the time to pitch is now/in the near future.

Time to back up the car. Help us get to 100 new Unwinnable Monthly subscribers, and we'll get to work on a Final Fantasy and politics issue: unwinnable.com/subscribe/