Wine Not?

Among the board games I played for the first time in 2025, Wine Cellar wouldn't really be at the top of my list of favorites. But it does absolutely, perfectly find a niche to fill in my game collection.

Wine Cellar is a card game about collecting wine, played with irregularly shaped cards -- very long, and very narrow -- representing bottles of wine. Each card has a unique number in the corner, from 1 to... well, the upper limit depends on the number of players. (You exclude cards for lower player counts.) Each card also shows a variety of wine: each is tagged as red, white, rose, or sparkling; and each shows its country of origin. Players are dealt a hand of 8 wine cards to play.

In each round, a number of cards (equal to the number of players) is presented face up in the center of the table. Everyone takes one card from their hand to "bid" with and reveals it simultaneously. The player with the highest number drafts one of the central cards to then place in a wine collection face up in front of them. Each other player gets to draft a card, going down through the order of their bids. Your drafted wine bottle is stored on its side, and each new bottle you acquire must be added to the top or bottom of the collection you've assembled thus far -- it cannot be inserted between bottles. Then, the cards you used to bid with in that round become the bottles you bid for in the next.

Once you've collected 8 bottles of wine, your hand will be empty, and it's time to score. There are a few ways to get points. One is the "client" you've been assigned at the start of a round. That client prefers two styles of wine of the four, and each bottle you've collected in one of their preferred styles scores you points. The client also prefers wines from one or more specific countries (the number of countries depending on the number of players). Each bottle you've collected from a preferred country is worth points.

But also, every wine bottle lists 8 point values on its label, from left to right. That ordered stack you built as you collected? Well now, you read these point values according to the bottle's position in your stack. The top bottle you have scores the points for the #1 position on the bottle. The next bottle scores for #2, and so on cutting a diagonal line through the depicted scoring values, down to the bottom bottle of your stack, which scores for position #8.

I have yet to play Wine Cellar with "non-gamers," but among even casual gamers, at least, I have found it very easy to explain the game. (With the actual components in hand, it isn't as convoluted as the above might sound.) It plays quickly. It takes up to 8 players. It has an appealing wine theme, with bottles showing actual varietals (both familiar and more obscure). Details, like the unusual card shape and storing bottles on their sides, are charming and add to the experience. For all these reasons, Wine Cellar has popped up a fair bit in large group gaming nights among my friends.

But... it's not that deep a game. The rules include suggestions on how to play a three-round game, with a few tweaks and additions intended to increase the strategic landscape of the game. After playing that a few times, I'm starting to feel that mode is actually just trying to convince me that Wine Cellar is some kind of game other than what it really is. If you bring your gamer sense to bear on the game's client cards, it's difficult to understand the score values assigned to different things. If you really try to bring some strategy to the game -- you may well find it seems to be working great for a couple of rounds, only to seem utterly worthless for the rest of the game.

In short, I'm increasingly convinced not to treat this as a strategy game that takes an usually large number of players. This is 6 Nimmt! with wine. That means it's not a "must have" for every gamer's collection. But I think it is a game for mine. When the mood is right, and the player count is too high for many of my favorites, there's absolutely room for a 20 minute, semi-chaotic card game about collecting wine. My own opinion of the game had dipped for a bit there since I picked it up, but now that I've come around to accepting it for what it is, I think I'd give it a B.

Enterprise Flashback: Countdown

With just two episodes left in season three of Star Trek: Enterprise, the countdown to the end of the season has begun. Literally. The penultimate episode is called "Countdown."

The Xindi weapon is on the way to Earth -- but is not yet ready to be armed, as Dolim lacks the third access code necessary. Through torture and coercion, he seeks to make Hoshi Sato hack it for him. Can she hold out long enough for the MACOs to stage a rescue with help from their Xindi allies? And will bad blood continue between MACO leader Hayes and Malcolm Reed, after a MACO was recently killed under Reed's watch?

It's been a long while since Hoshi Sato played a notable role in an episode, but she's dragged into the spotlight here under the pretense that her language skills make her ideal to hack an aquatic Xindi computer code. I'm suspicious of that, but willing to go along with it to see an underused character get a hero moment or two. I do wish the bulk of her heroism was more than basically "holding up under torture," but that she does -- and at one point even increases the security measures she's been tasked to undermine. She even demonstrates a willingness to kill herself rather than continue to be used by the Xindi.

Most of this episode is positioning things for the finale. We get a "Death Star thermal exhaust port" style contrivance: hit this particular Sphere in the Expanse, and you'll bring the whole network down. A villain moot in the Sphere Builders' "white space" tells us they'll be getting more proactive in trying to stop Enterprise. We get some wistful talk about what our heroes will do when the Xindi crisis is finally over. And in the end, we outline the separate teams who will chase the Xindi weapon to Earth and head out to destroy the Expanse Sphere network.

But the bulk of the episode is devoted to Hoshi's rescue -- its planning and execution. In particular, we get one more potential clash between Hayes and Reed. That's not surprising, since they've buried the hatchet before, only to start bickering again. What is surprising, though, is that Hayes lets Reed off the hook this time. It's not clear to me, on this occasion when a MACO life was actually lost, why now is the moment Hayes lets bygones be bygones -- but here it is. And not a moment too soon, as their childish bickering had grown pretty stale.

But then, I do know the real reason Hayes is forgiving -- we're doing the classic trope where an adversarial character is finally accepted... when they're about to be killed. Trope aside, though, it's a "good death" for the character to have him go down saving one of the mains. Also, after Star Trek has given us so many moments of someone being saved from a laser blast by a timely transporter, it's novel to see that not work this time.

Other observations:

• Way back at the beginning of the season, we learned that future people told the Xindi that humans would destroy their homeworld -- kicking off this whole crisis. This seemed utterly baffling when Enterprise soon discovered that the Xindi homeworld had already been destroyed. Finally this episode gives us clarity on this point, explaining that the Xindi are going to settle a new homeworld, and that humans will supposedly destroy that one. Better 23 episodes late than never, I guess?

• The "bridge" (is it a bridge?) of the Xindi weapon is a fun set. The big gyro in the center is useless and goofy, but also pretty cool looking, and different from other alien environments we've seen on Star Trek.

• When an aquatic Xindi ship is damaged, we see water leak out into space.

• Reed asks for three MACO volunteers for an assault on the Xindi weapon, and gets that and more. I don't feel like it's made explicit why he needs to stop at just three? The more, the merrier?

"Countdown" doesn't really stand well on its own -- nor could it, at this point in a serialized story. Still, I could wish for a bit less "because the story's almost over, that's why." I give it a B-.

The Road Less Traveled

I've praised the Apple TV+ show Slow Horses on more than one occasion -- and it's been in my Top TV shows list every year since I started making one. But now, Slow Horses is not the streaming service's only thriller adapted from a book series by Mick Herron... not now that we also have Down Cemetery Road.

Based on the series The Oxford Investigations (which Herron wrote before beginning the Slough House series), this show centers on Sarah Tucker, a suburban woman who one day meets a little girl by chance on the way home from work... and is then dumbfounded when the girl is injured and orphaned in a fiery explosion. After strange stonewalling from law enforcement, she engages a private detective to dig around -- and is soon being pursued herself as a loose end in an elaborate and dangerous conspiracy.

You might have guessed that Down Cemetery Road sprang from the same mind as Slow Horses -- and even that it actually came earlier. That's because the two series have a tremendous amount in common. There's a common themes in what government entities will do to hide inconvenient problems. The main protagonist is decidedly not a "best of the best" character (though in Slow Horses, River Cartwright often thinks he is). And in both stories, there's a surly, crass curmudgeon who gets things done, played by a great British actor who's decided to try a television series.

In Down Cemetery Road, that's Emma Thompson, whose investigator Zoë Boehm is fun to watch even if she'd be a pain to interact with in real life. Thompson deftly threads the "lovably unlikeable" needle with sarcastic wit and stern physicality. Starring as Sarah, Ruth Wilson completely sheds her villainous past on His Dark Materials to play a clever-yet-desperate woman way in over her head. Either Thompson or Wilson are in almost every scene of the show (at least, the ones that aren't giving us dangerous villains to gleefully root against). Together, the two of them are a great pair to anchor an intriguing story.

But I'll be honest -- it's also a really convoluted story. Down Cemetery Road runs eight episodes, where a season of Slow Horses runs a tight six, and I sometimes felt the extra "weight" of that. I assume the show to be a rather faithful adaptation... but of a book Mick Herron wrote many years before he began the Slough House series. Though I have yet to read one of his books, it's safe to say that any craftsperson improves their craft over time.

I feel like Down Cemetery Road reflects this in almost every way. As I said, the plot is convoluted, truly hard to hold in your head over the course of eight episodes. The suspense is not quite as heightened, with the cat-and-mouse games not quite as varied as the action in a season of Slow Horses. And through absolutely no "fault" of Emma Thompson's, Zoë Boehm isn't quite the indelible character that Jackson Lamb is. Oftentimes, Down Cemetery Road feels like "the first draft."

Still... if that's what it is, it's a fine first draft. There are many characters besides the two leads, and a lot of them "pop" as interesting people to watch -- sympathetic, or loathsome, or frightening -- each just as they're meant to be. The television production is top notch, with extensive shooting on location to give the story great scope. And the final two episodes of the show serve up a rousing climax that's just what a thriller audience tunes in for. 

So no, Down Cemetery Road may not be as good as Slow Horses (and didn't crack my Top 10 List for 2025), but still... if you like one, I find it impossible to believe you wouldn't like the other. I give Down Cemetery Road a B. It was recently announced that Down Cemetery Road will return for another season, and I plan to watch when it does.

Star Trek Flashback: Balance of Terror

Among fans of the original Star Trek, a handful of episodes loom large -- consistently cited as the best of the series. One of these is "Balance of Terror."

The Enterprise is dispatched to the edge of the Neutral Zone, where the mysterious Romulans have apparently crossed into Earth space to destroy several outposts. What soon ensues is contest of wills and ingenuity between Kirk and the Romulan captain, with Enterprise's speed up against Romulan stealth. As the Enterprise pursues the enemy back toward their their home space, we learn that Romulans seem to be related to Vulcans, a fact that makes at least one person on the bridge suspect Spock of being a Romulan spy.

Classic Star Trek was generally at its best when it used a science fiction lens to examine something about modern society, or when putting a fresh coat of sci-fi paint on a tried-and-true narrative. "Balance of Terror" offers both: it examines cold war prejudice and spins a sci-fi version of a classic submarine movie. Though this being a product of 1960s television, neither of these is presented with great subtlety.

Of course, this episode wasn't being written "for the ages" at the time, so nothing about the concept of the Romulans was thought through. Instead, their capabilities in this episode map exactly to those of a "submarine" so that Enterprise can be cast as a "destroyer." That's why they have a cloaking device (a detail that would endure through all subsequent Star Trek), and why they have a slow-moving ship and a torpedo-like weapon with a limited range (details that would not endure). The Enterprise weapons are utilized like depth charges against them. We get the classic ploy of jettisoning debris and then going motionless to hide. The sub battle metaphor is so complete that there's even a section of the story where both ships "run silent," with crew members whispering so as not to be overheard by a "sonar operator" on the other ship. (Whether that makes sense in the vacuum of space maybe depends on what you imagine future technology can do?)

Another story point, chosen for convenience for this one story, would cast an even longer shadow on future Star Trek -- the idea that Romulans are an offshoot of the Vulcans. Whole episodes of later spin-offs would develop this concept; here it's just meant to set up Cold War tensions and give a possible reason to distrust Spock. The most overt bigotry is given to a one-off character, Lieutenant Stiles, who also gets a minor arc of coming to accept Spock when the Vulcan saves his life. Within the context of this one episode, it's perhaps not clear why Kirk trusts Spock so completely -- though it does give Kirk several moments to call out Stiles' prejudice. (And with the fullness of Kirk and Spock's background being explored in the prequel series Strange New World, it tracks.)

There's one other curious detail about the Romulans -- the degree to which their culture matches that of ancient Romans. This inspiration means they have two homeworlds and a praetor (more details that would last), and a very Roman military complete with those ranks (not so much). Even the one canonical Romulan name we get here, Decius, screams "Roman." It's not clear whether the writers didn't want to be totally on the nose with their Cold War analogy, or didn't want to depict "Russian aliens in space."

There are a few details that don't quite work for me. In a cold war, it's not clear to me what drives the Romulans to destroy Starfleet outposts. Nor is it clear why Starfleet orders would be to just let that go. All that in turn slightly spoils the ending for me, where Kirk and the Romulan commander share a moment of mutual respect (as opposed to Kirk being all "what the hell, man?"). But generally, I think the story holds together well -- and I particularly appreciate the added personal stakes of the couple looking to get married just as the chaos begins.

Other observations:

• Scotty sets up a big old camera to film the wedding. 

• There are some interesting shots on the bridge where Kirk and another character (Uhura, or Spock) are held together in focus at different distances from the camera -- both without the typical obvious line in the middle of the screen that marks the use of a split diopter.

• Of course, Spock should be most shocked at the appearance of the Romulans, since the captain looks just like his dad! Mark Lenard looks good in ears here, and gives a good performance. It's only natural he'd be asked to appear again on Star Trek later.

• In dramatic fashion, Spock illustrates the effects of the Romulan weapon by crushing in his hand a sample from a destroyed outpost. But... how did he get the sample? The outpost was destroyed while Enterprise was well out of range, and then the ship turned immediately to chase the Romulan ship.

• As the Romulan "torpedo"-style weapon closes on Enterprise, Yeoman Rand very melodramatically embraces Captain Kirk.

• Cast and crew definitely haven't worked out how to react to the ship being struck by weapons. There's an unintentionally hilarious moment where people fly every which way -- including Uhura, in the background, falling/walking halfway across the bridge in the opposite direction of the camera tilt.

• In a much stronger moment for Uhura, when Stiles is ordered to another post, Kirk has her take over at navigation... and she just jumps right in.

• Strange New Worlds built their first season finale around this episode. 

"Balance of Terror" does show its age in places, but it still holds up overall as one of the best examples of Star Trek finding its early footing. I give it a B+.

The Suspense Is Terrible, I Hope It'll Last...

Every year, I post my top movie list from the previous year. And it seems like every year, that's all I need to do to stumble on another movie I really enjoy. That pattern holds this year.

A House of Dynamite is the latest from director Kathryn Bigelow. It's a political thriller that dramatizes the launch of a nuclear weapon toward the United States. With less than 20 minutes until impact, dozens of people scramble to formulate a response -- from officers in the White House Situation Room, to military officers tasked to intercept the inbound missile, to intelligence officers all around the country, to the president himself and members of his cabinet. Though the movie cuts around nimbly to all these points of view, there is still far more than can unfold in "real time," and so three acts each replay events from different perspectives to ultimately reveal everyone and everything at play.

Kathryn Bigelow has a long and acclaimed career making suspenseful movies. Sometimes, these have been inspired by -- or have directly adapted -- real life events. But I like seeing her bring her clear action-thriller skills to bear on a work of fiction. She knows how to build tension, and does it again here. That skill perhaps overshadows her skill with actors; she has a massive ensemble cast here, and gets good work from all of them.

To name only a few, A House of Dynamite features solid performances from Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos, Gabriel Basso, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, Kaitlyn Dever, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Idris Elba -- among many, many more. And to me, rising above them all is Rebecca Ferguson. It's not exactly news that she's a reliably great thing about many entertaining movies and shows, but that doesn't mean I should let another good performance go unnoticed.

The movie is a bit of a fun bait-and-switch. It starts off appearing like a quintessential example of what I've heard described as "competence porn": stories that center around smart people demonstrating intelligence and excellence at their jobs under demanding circumstances. The movie becomes even more interesting as that all starts to unravel and elements of the characters' humanity peek through the cracks of their stony exteriors.

I'd heard about the unusual "three-act structure" of this movie -- not a beginning, middle, and end... but a "same story told from three perspectives" approach. I too would divide the movie into three parts, but my divisions would be a bit different:

My first part lines up exactly with the movie's "first act." It's an immediately engaging story with quickly ratcheting tension, and is undeniably the best section of the film. (I think it's no coincidence that this is the portion that features Rebecca Ferguson.)

My second part would be almost "the rest of the movie." Once you've lived through the escalating drama once, backtracking to pick up other perspectives basically can't live up. The story is by no means dull, but it can't soar to the heights of learning how events will unfold as you did the first time through the story. The tension is still palpable... it's just not as taut as in the opening act.

My third part is... well... the final minute. I found the end of the film to be profoundly unsatisfying. I deliberately call it the "end of the film" rather than "the ending," because it really doesn't feel like a conclusion in any way. After 90+ minutes of expertly crafted tension, the end credits arrived not like a crescendo, but like an abdication by writer Noah Oppenheim. In gathering up my thoughts for this review, I really had to remind myself just how much I had really enjoyed the rest of the movie -- and not allow a few final frames to drag down the experience overall.

And so, with that in mind, I will give A House of Dynamite an A-. I still hate the ending... but I think it's worth the journey all the same. I'm slotting the movie at #5 on my Best of 2025 movie list.

Enterprise Flashback: The Council

For several episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, Captain Archer has been trying to reach the Xindi leadership to dissuade them from their plans to attack Earth. He finally gets the chance to make that case in "The Council."

As Archer argues on behalf of Earth to the Xindi council, a shuttle mission inside one of the Expanse's strange spheres aims to retrieve evidence that can help the cause. But behind the scenes, the reptilian leader Dolim plots against Enterprise -- and specifically against their strongest ally among the Xindi, Degra.

The writers of Star Trek Enterprise have been been building to the events here for several episodes now. Yet I feel there's quite a mismatch between their own expectations and what they implied for the audience. At least, this isn't remotely what I was expecting.

All season long, the Xindi council has been presented like so many other bickering villain moots. (Think: that one scene in Star Wars where Vader chokes a guy for thinking the Death Star is cooler than the Force.) On the rare occasions that these meetings haven't just been vehicles for recapping and exposition, they've served to paint a picture of a government body -- a Xindi U.N. So my expectation is that Archer is going to get one chance to go in, make a big speech to the "security council," and try to save the day. His Xindi ally, Degra, even seems to be coaching him for this sort of thing -- warning him about the sorts of behavior that's taboo when speaking to different species of Xindi.

But nope. The writers wanted to stage something more like a courtroom drama. Archer gets to make an opening statement. He then gets multiple opportunities to present evidence. Dolim acts like a prosecutor trying to argue the other side of the case. Not only does this feel like a weird switcheroo, but Archer does an absolutely terrible job as a "lawyer." He brings no real proof; only after things are going poorly does he seem to realize it might be good to present the medical evidence they've collected on the Sphere Builders. (Not that evidence is going to convince someone to go against their religion.) His "case" boils down to "let's hope the shuttle mission works in time."

That mission, at least, is more compelling. While the visuals of the sphere's AI sentry are decidedly inspired by the Sentinels of The Matrix movies, and Reed is yet again made to look bad by the writers, we get a generally effective subplot of a heist not going according to plan. Even if we know the MACO they're with is a redshirt, his death is shockingly swift. We get to see the emotional aftermath of it too, as T'Pol works to reassert her own emotional control. 

Emotional stakes are also effective in the "C plot." As much as Trip wants to punish Degra for the death of his sister, Degra is punishing himself. Getting Trip and the audience to empathize with Degra just moments before he's killed is a bit of cliche plot twist, but it serves this story well. One villain's journey to hero is completed, and a new Big Bad is established in Dolim for the remainder of the season.

Other observations:

• As I said, the Xindi council has been used all season to recap and deliver exposition. To shake things up a little, this episode gives us an argument between Sphere Builders to serve the same purpose, in a Bajoran Prophets-style white void.

• They really pull out all the stops to make Dolim the biggest villain they can. He personally kills the Xindi who helps Enterprise. He's rumored to have poisoned his own grandson. He spends his down time in a "reptile sunlamp" version of a Darth Vader's recharge sphere. 

• After we've seen and talked about spheres all season long, the big Xindi weapon is also a sphere. You could argue this is a visual continuity with the test weapon, or logical since the technology was given to the Xindi by the Sphere Builders. Still, I find it confuses the storytelling a bit.

I feel like the secondary elements of "The Council" work fairly well. But also, I don't think the writers did a particularly good job preparing us for a courtroom drama at this point in story. I give the episode a B-.

Feeling the Heat

A late entry in the 2025 pop culture zeitgeist was the series Heated Rivalry. It was based on a series of M/M romance books by Rachel Reid, and was adapted by Letterkenny co-creator Jacob Tierney for Canadian television. When HBO Max picked up the series for U.S. distribution (reportedly after other streamers said "no"), it became an instant hit.

The show follows two hockey players, captains for rival pro teams, over the course of many years as they secretly pursue a sexual relationship. They remain unable or unwilling to express their feelings to each other through all manner of ups and downs: championship wins, public relationships with other people, setbacks, family drama, and more.

Heated Rivalry has the rote qualities of a Hallmark holiday movie. (The fact that these two play hockey matters about as much as a Hallmark heroine's "big city" job.) But the "will they/won't they" balance tips heavily toward "they will": the show is very Not Safe For Hallmark. If actual porn is a 10 out of 10, Heated Rivalry is pretty much a 9 -- everything but. (Or "everything butt." Ha!)

And yet, for this being such a simple formula, I have surprisingly complicated thoughts about the show. First, something I don't really care for: I've grown weary of "coming out" stories in LGBT+ entertainment. Well... specifically, I'm feeling done with romance stories where the major obstacle to the relationship is the closet. To give a contrasting recent example, I really enjoyed Boots -- a story where the main character being gay and hiding his identity is absolutely central to story, but it's not set up as thing standing between him and happiness.

Yet on the other hand, I'm certainly not saying that there's no added value in more coming out stories. In real life, despite any similarities, no two such stories are really exactly the same. And I must admit that some of Heated Rivalry's best dramatic moments come late in the season (in the last two episodes), when the coming out elements really take the stage. The finale in particular is just a sweet story and a solid episode of television.

But then... it's laughable to pretend that telling an emotional coming out story is foremost on Heated Rivalry's agenda. No, clearly the #1 line item is to titillate. (That's also the #2 item, #3, #4....) There's nothing wrong with that. However, I feel like sitting squarely at the intersection of titillation and "Hallmark-style plotting" is a very specific audience: straight women.

I really try to embrace the notion that not all entertainment is meant "for me." (Nor should it be.) But Heated Rivalry really challenges me in this. It's a show about gay men who also happen to play hockey -- the only professional sport I really take any interest in. That sure feels like it should be "for me." But when I watch it, I often feel like I'm watching a show for straight women who want to see two guys smash. (And possibly their reluctant husbands who might be roped into watching.)

But I feel like I have to take into consideration: it's gotta be a good thing for a story centered on LGBT characters to land so big in the pop culture zeitgeist. In the whole "two steps forward, one step back" march of social progress, we're very much in a "one step back" moment right now. If Heated Rivalry is the unexpected way to take a step forward again? Great! Word is the show has the actual NHL (which has definitely taken "one step back" in supporting LGBT players and fans in the last couple of years) suddenly scrambling to capture this surprising new audience that has taken interest in the sport.

To be real here, it's not like these thoughts were actually swimming through my head while I was watching an episode of Heated Rivalry. I was not immune to its intended effect, peddling the undeniable chemistry between its stars, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. In particular, Storrie really revealed himself to be a talented actor, able to convey deep feelings while nimbly handling a credible Russian accent.

Yet how do I reconcile all that into a letter grade, as I usually give at the end of these reviews? I'm not sure. Today, it feels like maybe a B? I feel I could easy balance out the "math" to a different answer on another day. If you want to see two guy smash (and not on the hockey rink nearly as much as you might think), maybe Heated Rivalry is for you.