2023 in Review -- Movies

Here's one more post in my look back at 2023 -- this time about the movies I saw last year.

As luck would have it, I watched 52 movies over the course of the year, working out to an average of one a week. They were not at all so evenly spaced, though. In fact, I'd seen half of those movies just one quarter of the way into the year. (Then along came The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, consuming huge swaths of my time.)

I caught 16 of those movies out at a theater, one at the symphony (when I saw Danny Elfman's score from Tim Burton's original Batman played live to picture), one on an airplane (Weird), and the rest from the comfort of my own couch. 24 of the movies I saw were 2023 releases, which puts me slightly ahead of where I was the year before when I first made my Top Movies List for 2022.

But the thing is -- I'm far less confident in my list than I was last year. It's always the case that I wind up revising my annual list as I catch up on more movies, and "good but not great" movies near the bottom of my list get pushed out by worthier fare. But this year, "good but not great" would make up at least half my list. It may be that I haven't seen the right movies yet... or it may be that, for my tastes, 2023 wasn't actually a very good movie year.

So this time around, instead of posting a "Top 10" list, I'm going to launch this provisional version of my list as a "Top 5" only, and hope to extend it later. My picks (so far) for 2023 are:

1. Flora and Son
2. Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse
3. Renfield
4. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
5. Barbie

Even though I have seen several of the movies in the "award season" discussion, Barbie is the only one I wanted for my list. I liked-but-didn't-love The Holdovers, was lukewarm on Oppenheimer, and thought too little of Past Lives and Asteroid City to even bother with a review post. (Maybe if either becomes an actual Best Picture Oscar nominee, I'll circle back.) Meanwhile, the 2023 movies I most want to catch up with right now are on nobody's award radar, but rather just intrigue me with high concepts (No One Can Save You), compelling casts (A Haunting in Venice), or both (Leave the World Behind).

Here's hoping that 2024 brings some better movies -- perhaps movies that were held from 2023 during the Hollywood strikes?

Updated 9/3/2024:

1. Flora and Son
2. Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse
3. Elemental
   
4. Renfield
5. Godzilla Minus One
   
6. Anatomy of a Fall
   
7. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
8. Barbie

Voyager Flashback: Collective

When a television show adds a new, cute kid to the cast of characters late in the series run, that's called a "Cousin Oliver." When a show adds four new kids to a show that already has a cute kid (Naomi Wildman)? That's Star Trek: Voyager's "Collective."

Voyager encounters a nearly inoperable Borg cube, where almost all the drones aboard have been killed by a mysterious virus. But even though the handful remaining are only children, they pose a threat to Voyager when they capture an Away Team... and the group's leader shows irrational, emotional behavior.

The "Cousin Oliver" is generally regarded as a negative, desperate trope for a TV show -- so I'm being a bit flippant to invoke it here. When the rescued Borg children are brought aboard Voyager at the end of this episode, it's not really done to be cute; it's actually opening up a lot of story avenues. Of course, it's basically juicing Seven of Nine's gradual takeover of the series, since the story avenues are pretty much all for her -- can she now learn to be a parent and mentor in much the way she was parented and mentored by Captain Janeway. (Kate Mulgrew had to be thrilled. This move sort of makes her character into a "grandmother.")

But besides the long term, this story about "child Borg drones" actually makes for an interesting one-off episode. It actually allows for a Borg episode that doesn't utterly de-fang them just so the Voyager crew can emerge victorious. If the Borg are erratic and vulnerable here, it makes sense in the context of this story. And of course, it makes for a good Seven of Nine episode in the moment, giving her quite a conflict to resolve. On the one hand, she's already bonding with the children (and Icheb more than the rest -- a trend that would continue in future episodes). On the other hand, she's rejecting the lot of them, telling Janeway that she thinks not all drones can be saved as she was.

Yet while the episode does a good job of setting things up for the future, it does a rather poor job of acknowledging the past. Seven of Nine shows absolutely no apprehension about going back aboard a Borg cube. When dealing with the young "First" drone, who is single-mindedly trying to relink to the Borg collective, she doesn't share her own similar experience when she was severed from the Collective (nor her regrets over her actions).

Then there's a lot of strangeness throughout the episode -- the sorts of things that would usually form my "other observations" section of a Star Trek flashback review, but there are a lot of them this time:

• Poker is always so bad in TV and movies. Here, besides the illegal "string betting" typical of fiction ("I see your 20... and raise you 50!"), it appears the hand played at the start of this episode is going counterclockwise!

• Remember when photon torpedoes were supposed to be a limited resource? Now, even the Delta Flyer has some.

• Maybe this was an issue with my subjective interpretation, but I always thought that the "Borg voice" we'd hear in communications was the sound of thousands of Borg speaking in unison. But in this episode, even though there's only five Borg kids, their calls to Voyager have that familiar "Borg voice." So, I guess the Borg just run an audio processor over their speech to be spooky.

• It's a weird choice to show that these Borg kids are "half finished" drones by removing large chunks of their armor. They end up with single sleeves and pant legs that look comical. And one of them is showing so much hip that it's practically side butt, which... these are kids, people!

• We learn that the Borg deliberately abandoned this cube after it became infected. Seems weird that they wouldn't self-destruct it, though. They know the value of their own technology, as we've seen drones show up to reclaim parts from fallen drones. Even if they think this cube is infected and thus risky to them, they should know better than to possibly let it fall into someone else's hands.

• Kim using playing cards to mark his path through the Borg cube is a clever idea... except that he places them in random order rather than in a pattern that would make it possible to remember the route (by number, by suit?).

• Also, when the drone we'll learn is Mezoti catches Kim doing this... how did she get there? In the immediately prior scene, she was gathered with all the other Borg in the chamber where we spend most of the episode. Was she like, "oh hey, I gotta go do a thing. BRB."

• There's actually a fifth Borg drone brought to Voyager: the baby who nearly dies before the Doctor intervenes. But we never hear about the Borg baby again.

• When they're planning to release a pathogen aboard the cube at the end of the episode, to overcome the Borg kids, why does no one consider that said pathogen could well be fatal to Seven of Nine also?

• The flip side of finding an amazing child actor is finding these twin boys who play Rebi and Azan. I mean, I don't know that they're bad actors, but I think they get one line each in this whole episode -- which is pretty typical for the rest of their time on the series. They apparently could not be trusted with more.
  

Add it all up, and "Collective" is a tough one to grade. It's an interesting story, but full of flaws. It sets up for future episodes without fully engaging with past episodes. It adds a new wrinkle to the series, but one that's positioned only to give more storylines to the character who already gets the most. Still... it's by no means a "bad" episode, so I think I'll call it a B.

Supreme Overview

Now that I've posted my "Top TV Shows of 2023" list (complete with "honorable mentions"), I want to take a moment to talk about another show that, while not truly close to making that list, was nevertheless something I'd like to recommend.

Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court is a documentary from director Dawn Porter. It was released on Showtime, so depending on what sort of Paramount+ access you might have (say... to watch Star Trek), it may already be available to you. The four-part series is a well-edited collection of interviews with prominent legal scholars, detailing exactly how we got to the current Supreme Court membership we have.

The series begins with a look at the Warren Court era of the 1960s, the period that most people -- even casual observers or non-observers of the Supreme Court -- think of as the "ideal" of what the Court can and ought to be. While the documentary shows just what the Court could do at that time, it also shows that in the moment, it became increasingly unpopular for doing so: the first domino being pushed in the chain. From there, the documentary tracks every new justice to be appointed to the Court, leading up to today.

As you may know, I'm really a Supreme Court junkie. I suppose I've always considered it a natural extension of the fact that to an alarming degree, the amount of civil rights I personally enjoy stems directly from the whims of the nine people who happen to be part of that group at any given time. But the thing is, I really think that more people should be Supreme Court junkies. And for the same reason.

I would certainly think that the rulings handed down from the Court over the last couple of years would shine a brilliant spotlight on that fact. Whether you're LGBT, non-religious... or a student, a woman, or just someone who enjoys drinking clean water, there's a Court ruling in just the last two years alone that notably carved out a big chunk of your freedoms. So if you're not really aware of who's currently a Supreme Court Justice -- and whether you would have voted for the people who put them on the bench --  I highly recommend you rectify that. And this documentary series is a good way to do that.

As a Court junkie, there was really nothing in this documentary that was new to me. It certainly didn't go as deep as I personally would have liked. Still, it's very well made, featuring insightful interview subjects throughout. Heading into a national election year... well, it's not that I needed the reminder of what's at stake. It was welcome all the same.

I give Deadlocked a B. If you're looking for a "crash course" on the subject, you'd be hard-pressed to find something else that packs in so much, so clearly, in such a tight package.

2023 in Review -- Television

With each new year, I post about the movies I watched and games I played in the year before. This year, I'm trying out a new addition: a look at the best TV series I saw. Given how many episodes there are of just how many shows are out there, I'm spending a lot more time on those series than on the movies or board games anyway.

Fortunately, that's not just quantity, but often quality. I'm having some difficulty putting together a worthy Top 10 List for 2023 movies -- which is why I haven't posted one yet. (The bottom of the list looks like it will be rounded out with things I'd rate only a B, that will easily get knocked off the list when a see just a handful of the right movies from 2023.) But for the TV shows, every single series in my Top 10 earned an A- or better in my eyes for its 2023 season -- with several more shows also at that level that still weren't good enough to make it in.

My regular posts about TV shows tend to the extremes: I either post about a series one time (no matter how long it runs), or post about every single episode. So, because I don't have many 2023-specific posts to link to, this Top 10 will include some comments on each. And it will take the form of a countdown... because it somehow feels more fitting.

10) Star Trek: Picard. The third and final season was a nostalgic injection straight into the veins of any fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I may be slightly overrating the season overall to give it an A- (though certainly many episodes were at least that good). But I'll slide a thumb on the scales without apology, simply for this now being the final adventure for these characters instead of the horrible Star Trek: Nemesis. Add in that at least half the core cast were given their best scenes in decades of playing these characters, and yes, this deserves a spot on my list.

9) The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. This show was admittedly never as good as it was in its first season. But the crackling dialogue and nimble performances never wavered in quality, and this fifth and final season really honored that by doing right by all the characters. Fans always sensed where the show "had to end," so this season cleverly added a flash-forward structure to confirm that ending, thus highlighting the journey as the essential thing.

8) The Other Two. I don't know many people who watched this Max show... and the few who did seem to think the show jumped the shark in the final season. I agree it did so -- in the truest sense of that overused phrase. The Fonz jetskiing over an actual shark was a delirious departure from reality, which is exactly what The Other Two did in its third and final season. What began as a mostly grounded series about the corrupting influence of fame became hilariously untethered in the final season, with non-celebrities literally invisible to those in the business, an elaborate parody of the movie Pleasantville, a barbed mockery of pretentious multi-night theater productions, a complete skewering of method acting, a dinner in a fake Applebee's, and more. I laughed uncontrollably at every episode; they really did save the best for last.

7) The Fall of the House of Usher. I just blogged about this show a week ago, so you can go read that for the full details. Suffice it to say, I appreciated the way it wove a new and modern story around source material from Edgar Allan Poe, I liked the dark and moody atmosphere, and I loved the performances.

6) Heartstopper. If season 2 of this wonderful show was a step down, it's only because season 1 set the bar so incredibly high. (And because it had stiff competition from another Netflix show putting diverse stories of teenage love front and center. See below.) Heartstopper remains the show I wish had been around when I was younger, though I'm so glad it's at least here now. I can't wait for more stories of Nick and Charlie and their friends.

5) Schmigadoon. The first season of this musical comedy felt like a one-off, made possible only because a bunch of top-tier Broadway talent had Covid-sized openings in their schedules. But not only did they reassemble everyone for a season two -- it turned out to be even better than the first. Part of that may be that I personally have much more familiarity with the musicals from a decade later that formed the basis of season two's parody, but I also think the story took a more sophisticated look at "happily ever after." I'm glad lightning did strike twice here.

4) Shrinking. For the first episode or two, this show was "fine enough filler until Ted Lasso returns." But this show from most of the same creative team soon surpassed Ted Lasso in my eyes (even without accounting for the fact that when we did get the third and final season of Ted Lasso, it was "good but not great" compared to the previous two seasons). I legitimately grew to love every character and performer on Shrinking, as the writing deftly balanced sentiment and humor without becoming cloying or unreal. I'm eagerly awaiting the next season.

3) Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I did blog about this show from week to week, so I don't need to repeat much here. I'll just confirm that yes -- this was even stronger Star Trek to me than the laser-guided nostalgia missile of Star Trek: Picard. I would rate the season overall an A (as, obviously, I would for all the remaining entries on this list).

2) The Last of Us. Before this premiered, I would have said I didn't need a new zombie-based movie or TV show in my life again, ever. But this show was always about its core characters and their relationship first, zombies second, in a way that every zombie story claims to be (and then quickly forgets). Any of about three or four episodes of the first season of The Last of Us could lay legitimate claim to being the best hour of TV of the year. My only hope is that they somehow maintain the quality and don't go the way of all those other zombie tales in their next season.

1) Sex Education. The only minor flaw in the fourth and final season of this show was that "moving on to college" separated the characters I'd come to love, for large chunks of the story. Still, it was a perfect ending to a wonderful show, with episodes 6 and 7 being especially superb. With natural-feeling inclusion of even more diversity than Heartstopper, the show was a breath of fresh air compared to most television. And while the cast will now go their separate ways, it sure seems like we'll be seeing more of them.

A few honorable mentions:

• I watched both The Peripheral and Slow Horses season 2 during calendar year 2023 -- though both were released in 2022. If this were purely a list of the best TV I watched last year, regardless of when it was made, both would have earned a spot in this list.

• Slow Horses released season 3 in 2023 -- but in December, where the holiday crush and a general television backlog kept me from completing it. It's great from what I've seen so far, though. Maybe when I've finished the season, I'll find it takes a spot on this list.

• I said that several other shows would also get an A- from me for their 2023 seasons, even if they weren't quite great enough to crack the top 10. Those would include: 
  

• Ghosts. The best network show I'm watching was especially harmed by the twin Hollywood strikes, but the show will finally be back early this year to resolve their "who got sucked off?" cliffhanger. (Which, if you haven't seen the show, doesn't mean what you might think.)
  

• What We Do in the Shadows. This show has always been good; shockingly so compared to the film that spawned it. Season 5 was no exception. I hope the upcoming final season isn't either.
  

• Harley Quinn. The blink-and-you-miss-it teases at the end of each episode weren't always fun, and I certainly missed having Clayface around in every episode. Still, the show remained hilarious and anarchic in season 4; if anything, it upped the ante in weird risks they took with major DC characters. And a whole episode subplot devoted to Bane learning to make pasta? Sublime.
  

• Silo. Season 1 of this show surpassed the books it was based on in terms of quality. I hope that continues, as season 2 will move into very hard-to-adapt material.
  

Of course, with so much quality TV out there, and the audience more fractured than ever, I'm sure this list will be met with plenty of "did you watch THIS?" responses. I did watch probably more TV than I should, though -- and this was the best of what I caught.

Updated January 19, 2024:

My latest Top 10 list is:

10) The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
9) The Other Two
8) The Fall of the House of Usher
7) Heartstopper
6) Schmigadoon
5) Shrinking
4) Slow Horses
3) Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
2) The Last of Us
1) Sex Education

Voyager Flashback: Tsunkatse

Star Trek: Voyager had, for a few years, put a big two-part episode about two-thirds of the way through its season. There was no two-parter in the middle of season six, but their "big episode" still came, in the form of "Tsunkatse."

Seven of Nine and Tuvok are captured by a devious alien who forces Seven to participate in brutal arena fights for a massive, planetary audience. As Voyager tries to find and rescue their crewmembers, one of the other fighters takes on Seven as his pupil, teaching her how to survive long enough to be rescued.

The "bigness" of this episode came in the guest stars. For Star Trek fans, the highlight was beloved Deep Space Nine veterans Jeffrey Combs and J.G. Hertzler as the architect of the fights and Seven's Hirogen mentor, respectively. For the executives cutting the advertisements at UPN, the highlight was "The Rock" (as he was credited here on screen) -- Dwayne Johnson himself, at a point where he was still a WWE star, and a few years before he became one of the most bankable action stars in Hollywood.

Really, none of these roles seem like they amount to all that much on the page; the episode relies on the talents and charisma of the actors to make them work. All three performers do. Penk is barely a character, but Jeffrey Combs brings his considerable talents to bear, making him a fun-to-hate villain in just a few scenes (admittedly, by giving a performance that's about 75% Weyoun). Meanwhile, The Rock does all his wrestling signatures of the time. Apparently, he was concerned at being typecast and was reluctant to take the role; just last year, he explored those feelings in an episode of his Young Rock sitcom that was a fictionalized account of making this Voyager episode. (But even at this early point in his acting career, he has to win every fight he's involved in.)

Yet it's J.G. Hertzler who gets the best part (even if his character isn't given a name). Whether you see the twist coming or not -- that he and Seven must fight each other in the end -- you can feel sympathy for his backstory about being separated from his son, for having been forced to fight like this for nearly two decades, and for now just wanting to give up. It all builds nicely to the question of whether Seven would actually kill someone in cold blood who she knows that closely. (The episode would have you think this more ambiguous than it actually is; in the final moment of the fight before Voyager rescues them, it sure seems to me that Seven has decided to strike the killing blow.)

Generally speaking, I like the episode. (And I won't deny, the stunt casting of Deep Space Nine actors totally hooks me.) Still, I find a number of small nits to pick throughout. It's a little weird how much the main characters are caught up in the fights, even given Chakotay's boxing past; do they not know there are "red matches" to the death in this sport? Was Kate Mulgrew taking vacation time during this episode; why is Janeway written out for the middle of it only to be written back in at the climax? Does The Doctor's comment about Hirogens at the end seem to anyone else to be oddly racist for the character? And is it really a satisfying ending that Penk is left out there to keep enslaving people to fight in his arena?

I have a few nits behind the scenes as well. The use of stunt performers for the fight scenes is painfully obvious; not only does Jeri Ryan's double clearly look nothing like her, but the fight choereography is vastly more complex whenever the main actors have been swapped out. Penk's CG ship looks a bit too pristine, without enough surface texture to look realistic. Plus, there's actor Tim Russ' gripe about the episode; according to him, this was originally a Tuvok episode, rewritten for Seven of Nine so it would focus on her for the big promotional stunt. He's not the only Voyager actor who claims episodes were taken from his character to give to Seven of Nine. And if he tells it true, then it's a bit of salt in the wound that Tuvok has to comfort Seven about her emotional crisis in the final scene.

Other observations:

• I'm always entertained by "makeup on top of makeup," as we get here with Neelix's sunburn.

• There are several good lines throughout. I especially like B'Elanna's quip that "the Borg wouldn’t know fun if they assimilated an amusement park," and Tuvok's exchange with Seven of Nine about how the silence between them was not awkward at all.

• The arena fights feature big taiko drum-like background music, which is a fun shift for the show. Though I'm unclear whether only we the audience are hearing that, or if it's actually being played within the world of the show, to the fight spectators.
  

For a stunt episode, "Tsunkatse" isn't bad. Basically, I feel like it "justifies" the stunt. Still, I wouldn't call it a truly great episode -- just a good episode with great performances. I give it a B.

2023 in Review -- Games

Another year in the books -- and with it, another year of entertainment. It's time for me to take my traditional look back at what I enjoyed over the past 12 months. First up, the board games I played in 2023.

Interestingly, I played almost exactly the same number of different games in 2023 as I did in 2022 -- 79 games in this lap around the sun, compared to 78 the year before. But I played significantly more games, reaching 273 plays for 2023 (versus 201 the year before). This was my highest total plays since 2020, a year where I perhaps paradoxically played a lot more games (because so many of those plays were virtual, with friends, using Board Game Arena).

Here's the list:

24    My City
24    My Island
19    The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
10    Rear Window
9    Clever 4Ever
9    Exit: The Game – Advent Calendar: The Hunt for the Golden Book
9    Fun Facts
9    The Great Split
9    Kokopelli
6    The Quacks of Quedlinburg
6    Secret Hitler
6    That's Pretty Clever!
5    Clever Cubed
5    Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
5    Just One
5    Splito
4    Cockroach Poker
4    Joan of Arc: Orléans Draw & Write
4    Merlin
4    SCOUT
4    Twice as Clever!
3    Azul: Master Chocolatier
3    Concordia Venus
3    Distilled
3    First Rat
3    Forest Shuffle
3    Inside Job
3    Roll for the Galaxy
3    Viticulture
3    Wandering Towers
3    Wingspan
2    Arcana Rising
2    Azul: Summer Pavilion
2    Codenames
2    Glitch Squad
2    Herd Mentality
2    Noobs in Space
2    Paint the Roses
2    Planet Unknown
2    Point City
2    Project L
2    Sagrada
2    So Clover!
2    Star Wars: The Clone Wars
2    The White Castle
2    World Wonders
1    Aurum
1    Azul
1    Azul: Queen's Garden
1    Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig
1    Calico
1    Can't Stop
1    Cascadia
1    Clank! Catacombs
1    Coloma
1    Dune: Imperium – Uprising
1    Earth
1    Empire's End
1    Ex Libris
1    Great Western Trail
1    Great Western Trail: New Zealand
1    Heat: Pedal to the Metal
1    Majesty: For the Realm
1    Nidavellir
1    Nokosu Dice
1    Old London Bridge
1    Parade
1    Patchwork
1    Pelican Cove
1    Ready Set Bet
1    The Search for Planet X
1    Secret Identity
1    Skull King
1    The Speicherstadt
1    Take 5
1    The Taverns of Tiefenthal
1    Telestrations
1    Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West
1    Wild Tiled West

The usual caveats here:

• I don't count the games made by my work if I played them for work (in unfinished forms).

• I count a few games by the "session" -- The Crew, and the Exit: The Game Advent Calendar (has anyone ever been able to actually do one of those "1 per day for 24 consecutive days?").

What jumps out at me:

• This is the closest I've ever gotten to a "10 x 10," that challenge to play 10 different games each 10 times throughout the year. How close I got depends on whether you agree with my accounting of a couple of the games involved. Is a play of an Exit Advent Calendar one single play, or more? (I counted it by sitting, not as "24 plays.") And no one would really count The Crew "by campaign playthrough," would they? (It's not like I counted it "by hand dealt" to reach my total; I mean that on 19 separate occasions, we played multiple hands of the game.)
  

• My friends and I played the legacy games My City and My Island in their entirety in 2023, so naturally those both topped the list. We've got a couple more legacy games already on deck for 2024 -- Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West (which we began right at the end of 2023), and Sagrada Artisans. (Those two put me well on the road to a 10 x 10. Maybe I'll chase after that for 2024.)
  

• A couple of games remain my group's go-to "time for one more?" games -- Kokopelli, The Quacks of Quedlinburg, and The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. I expect these to continue their reign in 2024. (We've always open to "newer" takes on The Crew, but they don't seem to stick. See: Inside Job.) Another popular "one more?" choice is one of the "Clever" games. If you roll all four into one, I played that 24 times in 2023 -- tying it with the two legacy games. (That said, I can't imagine we'd have played the same one that many times. The variety between the versions helps a lot to refresh the experience.)

• On big group game nights, the most popular selections have changed a bit. Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig has been displaced by The Great Split, and So Clover has given ground to Fun Facts. Just One and Secret Hitler remain in the mix. But while it looks like Rear Window ruled the "group game" roost in 2023, I don't expect it to repeat next year; about 1/3 of my group really likes it, another 1/3 tolerates it, and 1/3 truly dislike it.

• Maybe I should go for playing each variant of Azul in 2024. Looks like I missed Stained Glass of Sintra in 2023.

• I think each one of those 4 Merlin plays involved a different mix of things from the "Big Box" version of the game. But I'm inclined to say that "straight-up, no expansions" is the best. (And in my opinion, the Morgana expansion is never to played, under any circumstances.)

• There were several late-in-the-year additions to my group that I expect could rack up more plays in 2024. (I haven't even gotten around to blogging about them.) These include Forest Shuffle, Great Western Trail: New Zealand, Point City, Project L, and The White Castle.

• All 3 Roll for the Galaxy plays were on Board Game Arena. I really like that game a lot. But also: I kind of never want to play that game in its physical version; digital play is so much faster and easier.

• All 3 of the Viticulture plays were cooperative, using the Viticulture World expansion. We might have played more of that, because the coop version is interesting... but it's also brutally, punishingly difficult.

• Games I really would have liked to play more of than I did: Concordia Venus (a personal favorite), Distilled, and First Rat.

We'll see what hits the game table in 2024!

Voyager Flashback: Memorial

Not every episode of Star Trek can be wildly original -- certainly not with over 900 episodes of it across the entire franchise. But a few ideas seem to get remixed again and again, as they were with Star Trek: Voyager's "Memorial."

Harry Kim, Tom Paris, Chakotay, and Neelix return from a two-week mission on the Delta Flyer. They bring with them unsettling, fragmented memories of a war they became embroiled in on an alien world... and atrocities they may have been personally involved in. The rest of the crew is determined to seek the truth and fill in the gaps in their memories.

The "stew" that is this episode comes from ingredients well-stocked in the Star Trek pantry. Voyager itself has already done an episode specifically about "implanted memories of brutal war crimes," and another that entangled a character in an alien war. Meanwhile, The Next Generation did an alien abduction story that echoes the "what happened to us?" mystery of this episode in many ways. In short, the "been there, done that" meter pegs high for me on this episode.

That wouldn't be bad, in and of itself, if this episode had anything new to say, or remixed the ingredients in a compelling fashion. But this story isn't tailored to its characters in any way. Shouldn't Neelix be especially affected by the violence he experienced, given the loss of his family to a weapon of mass destruction? Perhaps Tom Paris might be impacted in a particular way relating to his past criminal incarceration? Maybe Harry Kim is hit especially hard because he's never been in a war zone before? But "general trauma" takes the place of any specificity here; it really could have been any four characters on the Delta Flyer, for all the difference it makes in this story.

Perhaps the episode could have been improved by going harder at making us (and/or the characters) really experience the atrocities involved. Maybe this simply wasn't possible on the UPN network in the year 2000, but the episode is so cowardly about avoiding controversy that it doesn't even make an act break out of the moment when a PTSD-addled Neelix endangers Naomi Wildman; Chakotay talks him down, gets Naomi out of danger, and then we get the commercial break.

Another problem may be that Voyager has established such a constrained acting style at this point that when someone breaks out of it, it feels out of place. Indeed, the show literally cannot contain it. In a scene where Tom Paris experiences his most intense war flashbacks, Robert Duncan McNeill gives such a loud, shouting performance that he spikes the audio and they don't even bother to replace it with something cleaner. (Perhaps looping the dialogue of such a big performance simply wasn't possible.)

Still, "Memorial" is not without merit. The production value is pretty good. The on-location filming of the monument in the meadow adds a lot of bang for the buck. The musical score gets a bit experimental, with more electronic elements than you usually hear in an episode. Footage from The Untouchables is cleared for use on Tom's television. Smart camera placement throughout emphasizes the PTSD.

And the final debate -- the ultimate point of the episode -- is good. Is the notion that one should "never forget" sufficient to justify inflicting a mental invasion on others? Is it right to repair the memorial in the end, or would it have been right to dismantle it? Even the characters don't agree on this, and I wish the episode had had more time to explore this at length, really digging into why each character might feel the way they do about it.

Other observations:

• One complaint about being stuck on the Delta Flyer for two weeks is that someone left their plate in the replicator. Seriously, who would do that? This isn't even as "hard" as loading a dishwasher. All you have left to do is say "computer, recycle."

• I don't attach any particular significance to this, but it does seem weird that two different people (Harry and Naomi) both burn their hands on a hot cooking pot in the same episode.

• The one character (predictably) who does get a tailored moment in the story is Seven of Nine, who, as a Borg, talks with Neelix about feelings of guilt over participating in atrocities.

• It feels like there's a Dune fan on the writing staff somewhere, adding a T to the front of a planet name to create "Tarrakis."

I wish this episode had said more specifically about the characters involved, enough to justify its similarity to other Trek episodes that have come before. "Rerun" that it is, I can only give "Memorial" a C+.

Ushering in the New Year?

As much as Netflix would have me binge its offerings, that's just not how I roll. Indeed, I often want to savor a show when I'm particularly enjoying it. That's why I've only just finished The Fall of the House of Usher, two-and-a-half months after its appropriately-timed pre-Halloween release.

Of course, it was always likely that I was going to enjoy the mini-series. It was the latest from writer-director Mike Flanagan, whose previous offerings include not only series like Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Hill House, but the surprisingly excellent movie of the supposedly impossible-to-adapt Stephen King novel Gerald's Game. Flanagan also makes a habit of working with the same actors as much as he can, accumulating a reliable "repertory company" of talented performers. So I'm at a point where I want to check out anything he creates.

In this case, he was synthesizing his own modern day tale of gothic horror out of bits and pieces lifted from the works of  Edgar Allan Poe. My own knowledge of Poe runs rather shallow: I've certainly heard a few of his poems over the years, I've read a short story or two, and am loosely familiar with plot elements of a few others. That put me in an interesting place for viewing The Fall of the House of Usher, where I felt engaged in three different ways in roughly equal measure. Sometimes, the story would completely surprise me with its twists in turns. Other times, I would know exactly what was coming thanks to familiarity with the source material. Still other times, I'd embrace the atmosphere of the macabre and anticipate what was coming next just by os-Poe-sis. My response to the show was also divided in roughly equal measure: I enjoyed the mini-series on its own terms, and it made me want to seek out the specific original Poe writing that most inspired it.

The visuals of this mini-series were stellar. Every episode was directed by Mike Flanagan himself, or by the director of photography, ensuring the same heightened, dreary look throughout. The performances were even better. Carla Gugino might be the best actor of all in that "Flanagan Repertory Company" I mentioned, and this story spotlights her in a delightful way. Meanwhile, the structure of the season overall allows a different performer to take center stage in every episode; I found the episodes featuring T'Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli, and Kate Siegel to be especially strong.

The "FRC" picks up a couple of new actors as well, both making a big splash. Mary McDonnell is excellent as the cold and conniving Madeline Usher (and Willa Fitzgerald, who plays the same character in 40-year old flashbacks, really shows how closely she studied McDonnell to deliver a similarly calibrated performance). Meanwhile, Mark Hamill gives great villanous energy as family lawyer Arthur Pym. I hear Hamill is already cast in Flanagan's next project, and it's no surprise to me from watching Usher why actor and director would seek to work together again right away.

It's not a completely flawless series. For one thing, at eight episodes, it might be a touch long. The formula of each episode is made abundantly clear very early on (in case you missed the not-subtle title), and I found myself wondering if perhaps there were one too many "Usher kids," one too many episodes, before the grand finale. (For one thing, it began to strain credulity how long one man is willing to sit in a chair and listen to a meandering story, as the overall framing device dictates.) Still, for the high highs in the series overall -- the most delicious come-uppances, creepy deaths, and well-executed jump scares -- I was willing to forgive the occasional indulgences.

Overall, I'd give The Fall of the House of Usher an A-. Now that I'm finished, I have a notable hole in my TV viewing for something fun to savor.

Playing Camp

Are you a fan of Christopher Guest mockumentaries like A Mighty Wind, Best in Show, and others? Well, then you're no doubt sad that Guest hasn't made one in several years. But there is a new movie this year that feels very similar: Theater Camp.

Theater Camp is set exactly where the title says. When the head of a summer camp for theater kids is hospitalized, her resident staff tries to carry on without her as her decidedly non-theater-immersed son tries to take over the finances and management of the camp. "Documentary cameras" capture all the strangeness of characters taking their work way too seriously: a faculty who treat the productions like they're Broadway bound, and kids as committed to their performances as though they're up for a Tony. Hilarity ensues -- and it's particularly hilarious if you've ever been involved in a theater production yourself at any point in your life.

I said this movie had the feeling of a Christopher Guest film, though it likely wasn't created in quite the same way. Where the Guest films are known to be improvised in large part, Theater Camp looks to be mostly scripted -- the work of its two debut directors, Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman, and two more of the stars, Noah Galvin and Ben Platt. With all of them having a theater background (full of exposure to the tropes they want to lampoon), and most of the rest of the cast being actual kids, it seems unlikely they'd often just let the camera roll to "see what happens."

In a way, it is those kids -- mostly "unknown" -- that are the best part of the movie, even if Platt is an actual Tony winner, Galvin has starred in a sitcom, and Gordon has appeared in things from Booksmart to The Bear. The wildly over-the-top performances of these young actors is made even funnier by how often age-inappropriate the material they're working with is. It's arguably a form of the same joke told repeatedly, but at a tight 90 minutes, the movie doesn't come close to the end of how funny it can be.

Though, admittedly, Theater Camp is a little bit slow to get started. A powerhouse cameo from Amy Sedaris as the real camp manager almost gets things off on the wrong foot; she gets to play broad (as she does best) and doesn't have to create a character that's built to last for an entire narrative. Once she's "taken off the board," the movie is a bit slow to find its rhythm, balancing the comedy with the story. But it does get there. And the finale, a performance that's been built up for the entire movie, is absolutely as hilarious as all the build-up leads you to hope for.

I give Theater Camp a B. Hopefully, you don't have to have any personal history with theater to enjoy it. But if you do, this may well be a "must see."

Voyager Flashback: Virtuoso

Star Trek: Voyager was producing a staggering 26 episodes a season, so it could hardly afford to hold an episode idea for later when something needed to go in front of the cameras right now. But the sequencing of episodes, even in a largely unserialized television series, can matter a lot. And it really hurt season six's "Virtuoso."

When Voyager visits an alien planet, the local population is stunned to learn of the existence of music -- and infatuated with the one who introduces it to them, The Doctor. As his celebrity grows, the Doctor considers leaving Voyager to become a global superstar... and Janeway considers limiting his autonomy by forbidding him to go.

There's an interesting story here in the Doctor's evolution from "unfeeling program" to "person in all but flesh and blood." But there are two big problems with the timing of it. As with another (better) Doctor episode earlier in the season, we're simply past all this. Voyager is in its sixth season, the Doctor has long since been fully accepted as an individual by the crew, and to craft a story at this point that pretends otherwise requires rolling his character development back a year or four.

More specifically, this episode comes immediately after "Blink of an Eye," in the course of which the Doctor spent three years (by his reckoning) living on an alien planet, establishing a family, and having another life. Now this episode turns largely on the idea that the Doctor is being offered something here he has never had before. True, time will be passing for Voyager if the Doctor leaves now, and that's a new element. But the Doctor has now already lived a life on another world, has already found love (it seems) and fathered a child (somehow; adoption?). So yeah, while the Doctor here is meant to be tantalized by celebrity (while also being infatuated with one woman in particular), it feels hard to believe these things would appeal to him quite this much when he was literally just telling us last episode how glad he was to be back on Voyager after years.

Part of the friction here is that to the writers, this doesn't seem to be a story about the Doctor as much a story about fame generally. That's why we get details like signing autographs, fan mail overstuffing the ship's communication systems, aliens going bald to imitate their idol. It's a story that could have happened to anybody, perhaps, though the Doctor certainly has the right naivete about the subject to cast him as the protagonist.

But it's not like the Doctor is the only one behaving strangely. It's unclear why Voyager stays at this planet for so long. They're not "stocking up" on any vital resources; why are they delaying their trip so long for all this? Why do the alien Qomar, so formal and calculating, lock in the Doctor and only the Doctor as the conduit for music in their society?

Yet there are a few good scenes, especially late in the episode. Seven of Nine's embittered reaction to being abandoned by her friend rings true. The Doctor's heartbreak when he is ultimately replaced feels real (even if part of you feels like he deserves to be taken town a rung after his behavior). B'Elanna's counsel against changing a core part of yourself is just plain good advice. Janeway being moved to tears by a final song that leaves the aliens bored is just the right final (ahem) note for the episode.

Other observations:

• If this episode had been made today, there's no way the Doctor would sing "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Now the writers would pause to think about the original likely context of that tune.

• The Doctor also sings "That Old Black Magic." This is the second time Voyager has used this song.
  

• The Doctor's final performance is the one time in the entire series where the character's singing isn't recorded by Robert Picardo himself. And while I get the urge to go for a trained opera singer for the moment, they should have at least tried to get a recording that actually sounds like it exists in the environment depicted. (It's obvious Picardo is lip-syncing.)
  

• The final song we hear, written by one of the aliens, is a fun bit of composition, weirdly dissonant, full of unusually long notes, and generally like the rock aria from The Fifth Element on steroids.
  

Despite some good moments, I found it hard to let go of the "why is this happening now?" kinds of questions that permeate the episode. I give "Virtuoso" a C+.

Pipe Dreams

One of the more provocatively titled movies in recent memory was the eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline. This indie film was released in the U.S. earlier this year, and I was recently able to catch up with it on Hulu.

The movie is the story of eight characters who band together to destroy an oil pipeline in the desert, striking a blow to control climate change. As final preparations take place in the present, we flash back in turn to each of the characters involved, learning their backgrounds, how their activism was activated, and more.

It's an interesting movie in many ways, a foundational one being that it is inspired by a non-fiction book (of the same name, by Andreas Malm) while itself being a fictional narrative. The core of both works is the idea that with the climate situation being as dire as it is, the only moral response is overt eco-terrorism to bring about change as quickly as possible. The film feels like a story about characters who read the book and from there decided to take matters into their own hands.

And it is character that's key here. Each of the eight is nuanced and complex, with their own intriguing histories. The movie paints them all in varying shades of grey, giving them all sympathetic motives while not entirely excusing the fact that they're all essentially terrorists. The use of flashbacks to illuminate character is hardly a new idea, but it nonetheless works very well here. In particular, the sequencing of the flashbacks is quite clever; it usefully keeps some characters more murky until key moments in the "present day" narrative.

Essentially, it's a heist movie -- and if you know me, you know how much a love I heist movie. When the "big day" came, I was quite wrapped up in whether this group would be able to pull off their scheme. Perhaps an absolute top-shelf movie would have made more of questioning whether you want these characters to succeed -- and there was certainly some hand-wringing about that from many reviewers when the movie was first released. Setting that aside, though (if you can), I was engaged.

The movie feels like the very making of it was also something of a guerilla operation, small and inexpensive, with mostly unfamiliar actors. Mostly, that fits with the story. But there are a few jarring elements -- a big one being the overt electronica score by Gavin Brivik. It feels to me like the composer may have watched a lot of Mr. Robot (the only other touchstone for "moral terrorism," I guess), figured "that's what the music should sound like," and then imitated it. But not very well. Without understanding what can make an electronica score sounds good, this one bulldozes conspicuously over most of the film.

Still, I liked the movie overall. I give How to Blow Up a Pipeline a B. Assuming you're OK with not interrogating the morality too deeply, you too might be entertained.

Voyager Flashback: Blink of an Eye

Star Trek isn't typically a show built around "high-concept" science fiction. But occasionally they dip their toe in that water, as they did with the sixth season's "Blink of an Eye."

Voyager enters orbit around a planet where time moves at a highly accelerated rate: one day on the planet is a mere second aboard the ship. When Voyager becomes stuck, its presence begins to affect the course of history for the aliens on the planet below.

I'm often down on Star Trek episodes that focus too much on the guest stars and not enough on at least one of the main characters. But this episode is a bit of an exception. It's a cool enough concept -- watching a society mold itself around Voyager over nearly a thousand years -- that it doesn't quite need a deeper emotional heft. The intellectual stimulation is enough. Hell, Star Trek fans get a full meal just in the debate over what the Prime Directive even means when they've been interfering with an alien culture for centuries.

And there are at least little tendrils of impact for some of the main characters. Chakotay flexes his often-dormant anthropological muscles. The Doctor is sent down to the planet at one point, and winds up enduring years of separation (by his reckoning). I wish even more could have been made of his experience, though. We're told he starts a family and has a son -- and we know firsthand how powerful the effect of having even a fake family had on him. Yet the only lasting impact of the experience seems to be that he misses watching sportsball and having someone to talk about it with.

But a story about time moving fast doesn't leave time for personal details, I suppose. And it's not like only the main characters are getting shorted there. The astronaut played by Daniel Dae Kim (here a few years before he broke through on Lost) has a truly interesting story, if only the episode had time to tell it. He volunteers for a space mission and winds up being gone so long that everyone he knew on his own planet ages and dies. Then he has to go back and persuade his government to pursue a particular course of action; how does he do it? What is the rest of his life like?

Despite all these things I'd really like to see more of, I really don't think their absence is where the episode falls a little short. Instead, it's that even streamlined like this, the episode calls for more than a weekly television show can portray convincingly. This episode calls for numerous alien sets: a pre-industrial Legend-of-Zelda type village, a Renaissance observatory, a crewed space capsule, and more. But the budget doesn't exist to render all these things (and all the associated props and costumes) with more than what could be raided from the studio vault.

Similarly, the episode calls for a lot of guest stars... and it seems that when you need to cast this many actors all in a single week, you're not going to be able to find good ones for every role. Daniel Dae Kim is solid, of course (and his is the most important role). But others are pretty weak -- one so bad, apparently, that his original vocal performance is obviously dubbed over after the fact by someone else. And all these people need an alien makeup too... which no doubt is why the production reached for an easier one, a sort of melted version of the Cardassian spoon forehead. Essentially, it seems impossible for "the best version of this script" to have been filmed on a television schedule -- and so what we get is by necessity "good but not great."

Other observations:

• There's another character scene between Seven of Nine and Naomi Wildman, the latest of many. This has become such a thing that it's making me feel that Star Trek: Picard may have missed an opportunity somewhere by not following up on this relationship somehow, having Seven meet an adult Naomi at some point.
  

• CG may have been shorted in the budget this week to try to help the other departments. While the planet itself looks good enough, Voyager seems weirdly fake in many of the shots (especially the first shot of the episode), as though it wasn't given full render time to fill in all its usual details.
  

I should perhaps be more willing to look around the rough edges of this episode and give it a higher mark. But I'm going to call it a B+.

Hold On?

Director Alexander Payne has been in the Oscar hunt a few times before, and the buzz is he will be again with his latest, The Holdovers.

In 1970, a boarding school is breaking for the holidays and all the students are leaving. One curmudgeonly teacher has the task of watching the handful of students who have nowhere to go. One of these students in particular is struggling to come to terms with a secret, unshared trauma. Meanwhile, the cafeteria administrator is also staying on campus to be closer to the spirit of her son, who was recently killed in the Vietnam War. These three broken people might have the pieces to help put each other back together.

The Holdovers is notable for Payne working again with Paul Giamatti, star of one of his first critical darlings, Sideways. But the similarities are really only at the surface level. Sideways isn't terribly interested in exploring why the main character is the way he is, but is more fixed on how he's messing up his present. The Holdovers is much more about history -- and isn't subtle about the fact: Giamatti's character is a teacher of ancient history.

I found the movie to be rather slow-paced. And it really keeps its three primary characters siloed from one another for a long time. I suppose that makes sense; if bringing these three closer together is going to help all of them heal, then you have to take that process slowly or you don't have a movie. And yet, you spend a lot of this movie feeling like you know at least generally where it's going, and wondering why it's taking so long to get there.

There are some weird diversions along the way that the movie doesn't really pay off. Another faculty member at the school, played by The Good Wife/Fight's Carrie Preston, is dangled in front of the audience for a while as potentially important, but really just fizzles out at the end of Act Two. A janitor character saunters in at a point where we thought we'd met every character still at the college for the holidays, yet not to play much of a role in the story.

But that doesn't mean I disliked the movie. That's because it had two really strong points in its favor. One is the final 30-to-45 minutes, where things finally pull together. It turns out that the movie does have a few surprises in store: revelations about each of the characters that truly reframes what you've seen so far. The journeys for each of them really entwine in a satisfying way as this bittersweet tale leans into the sweet.

The other huge strength is in the performances. It's probably no surprise to anyone that Paul Giamatti is fun as this crusty and initially unlikeable character. It's probably only slightly less surprising that, in a movie that turns on casting a strong young actor, they've conducted a deep enough search to discover Dominic Sessa, who plays student Angus Tully. But stealing the movie from both of them is Da'Vine Joy Randolph as cafeteria administrator Mary. She's hardly new to acting; she has a Tony nomination under her belt. But I don't believe I've seen her on screen before, and I'm certain this role will change that -- she deserves to find many more roles from this.

I do hope there's a movie in the Best Picture hunt this year that I like more enthusiastically than this one. But I was ultimately satisfied with how this one comes together, and I wonder if Christmas has found a new melancholy classic. I give The Holdovers a B.

Voyager Flashback: Fair Haven

In the previous episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the crew finally established regular contact with Earth -- as important a moment for the overall story of the show as possible. Naturally, you'd want to follow that up with... a story with the lowest stakes imaginable? That's "Fair Haven."

Tom Paris has created a quaint Irish town on the holodeck. And now that a space phenomenon is going to stall Voyager's progress for days, crewmembers will be using that program to lift their spirits in the off time. For Captain Janeway, the program becomes more than a diversion when she falls in love with the owner of the local pub. But can she really have a romantic relationship with a holographic character?

Because of the budgetary realities of television production, the holodeck can never really be what a Star Trek character might really use a holodeck for; it would simply be too expensive to show too grandiose a setting. Still, it compromises the fiction a bit that they're always running programs of contemporary Earth. This would be something like a modern-day human wanting to spend all their vacation time at a Renaissance festival. It's about as historically accurate too. Fair Haven (the town, not the epsiode) is loaded with cultural stereotypes and broad caricatures.

According to staff writer Bryan Fuller, the writers considered other settings for this episode, including a "futuristic aircraft carrier, an Agatha Christie-type drawing room, a haunted castle, a movie studio" and others. Would that we had gotten one of those more interesting options. But no, of course, we get the one that can be filmed on a generic "Europe" backlot set over at Universal Studios.

Adding to the lack of excitement, it's clear right out of the gate that basically nothing is going to happen in this episode. The teaser before the credits, by definition meant to tease us with what interesting story is to come, shows Paris getting hit up for money by the town drunk, Harry flirting with a local girl, and the Doctor dressed up as a priest. Ooo, I can hardly wait for this one! We go on to equally exciting "come back after the commercial" moments like the bartender goading Janeway into a spirited game of ring toss.

After a lot of aimless scenes (highlighting the guest characters we don't care much about, rather than the recurring characters of Voyager), the episode finally stumbles into something at least a little interesting: Janeway's romantic plight. In several ways, we learn that the writers have categorically ruled out any kind of relationship with Chakotay, no matter what chemistry they may have seemed to have in the past. (For one thing, Chakotay tells her to go for it, strongly implying that he himself has slept with a hologram before.)

This does lead to a few nice scenes. The Doctor (an appropriate choice) advocates that a holographic love interest is real enough for the feelings they can make you feel. There's still deeper talk about how "the little, annoying things" can actually make a relationship, because Janeway's ability to simply erase any such things from her bartender boyfriend only underscores how unreal he is. There are also some light comedic moments throughout that do work. A scene featuring Tuvok's space-sickness -- and Neelix's story about gross food, which aggravates the condition -- is quite funny. Seven of Nine has a fun interaction with that town drunk.

But you also have to overlook a lot of things that don't make sense. Janeway is pursuing her romance in a public holodeck program, the equivalent of screwing in a dorm room without putting a sock on the doorknob. If she's so concerned with maintaining an appropriate relationship with her crew, she'd never do this (not when all she has to do is lock the holodeck door). When a big bar fight breaks out, crewmembers are sent to Sickbay with injuries; wouldn't the safety protocols have to be off for that to happen? In the end, when Janeway orders the computer to deny her access to edit the Fair Haven characters, couldn't she just countermand her own order if she wants to later?

Other observations:

• The "space tidal wave" that rocks Voyager is toilet water blue.

• Tom Paris totally knows what's going on with Janeway; he seems to be specifically needling her about "which 10% of the program to save" at the end of the episode.

This episode may be something of a test to the viewer: is it better to try something big and be memorably bad, or (as this episode does) to just be thoroughly boring and forgettable? When it comes to grading "Fair Haven," I feel like the episode would have to be worse than just "boring" to get a truly terrible mark. So I'll give it a C-.

A View to a Killer

The prospect of a new movie from director David Fincher is no longer alone sufficient to rouse my interest. I disliked his last effort, Mank, enough that now there has to be something more than just his name attached to the movie for me to consider watching.

Fincher's newest film is now streaming on Netflix. The Killer is the story of a nameless assassin whose carefully ordered world is upended when something goes wrong on a job. Soon he's on a globe-trotting vendetta, even as he tells himself that none of what he's doing is personal.

The "something more" that pulled me into this movie was the writer, Andrew Kevin Walker. He's responsible for the script of Seven (or "Se7en"), arguably Fincher's best movie -- though certainly a stand-out in the director's career. These two re-teaming felt like reason enough to be curious. Though Walker was here adapting a French graphic novel rather than writing an original script, it certainly seemed as though these two collaborators could absolutely serve up "moody and violent" with great results.

Of course, I'd like to think I wasn't actually expecting "another Seven" here, as those expectations are too high to saddle a new movie with. But I probably was expecting too much, at least, and I did wind up being a little bit disappointed. The Killer is kinda-sorta an "art house John Wick." It has only a fraction of the wild action of Keanu Reeves' adrenaline-charged franchise, but it is similarly crafted on the thinnest of a narrative skeletons -- it's a framework for set pieces. But in The Killer, those set pieces are often intellectual more than physical. Confrontations are as likely to take the form of a coolly intense conversation as a physical brawl.

In its own way, I think The Killer has the same key flaw as many of the John Wick movies. I've noted of John Wick that while I like parts of each movie well enough, I often find the whole to be a bit monotonous and repetitive in the action. The Killer can be that way in its intellectualism. Walker's script is literally monotonous: there's more voice-over from the main character than actual spoken dialogue. And it's literally repetitive: the main character is always reciting mantras meant to tell the audience how methodical and professional he is. I totally see what you're doing here; that doesn't make it any less repetitive.

Still, like John Wick, there are charms to be had. One of those is the charming star, Michael Fassbender. It's kind of wild how much charisma Fassbender exudes on screen, because this is likely the least charismatic, least emotive, most restrained character he has ever played. Yet even when he's being flat and cold, he's got a "can't take your eyes off him" quality. That might sound at odds with the story here, but on the contrary, it plays right into it all. You feel the dangerous potential beneath the icy surface, and you are transfixed by what the character does even when you might want to look away.

There are interesting supporting performances throughout the movie as well. The way everything unfolds is evidence of the original graphic novel roots; the chapters are literally identified on screen like a new "issue," as the titular killer pursues a new target. But many of these targets are interesting characters of their own, particularly Charles Parnell as a wicked lawyer, and Sala Baker as an imposing adversary literally called The Brute. And then there's Tilda Swinton -- THE actor at #1 on your list if you're looking for a memorable character (no matter the size of the role) in your movie. This isn't the kind of big, "swing for the fences" sort of Swinton performance that you sometimes get, but she is able to go toe to toe with Fassbender and turn the movie's most outwardly sedate scene into its most inwardly fraught and tense scene.

So all told, I think I would give The Killer a modest recommendation, and a B-. You have to already be interested in something about it; it's not the kind of movie that's ever going to "win you over" if it doesn't sound like your thing. But it is a case of many talented creative people showcasing what they can do: even if it's not their personal best, it's still not bad.

Voyager Flashback: Pathfinder

When is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager not really an episode of Star Trek: Voyager? When it's season six's "Pathfinder."

Reginald Barclay has become obsessed with creating a method to communicate with the starship Voyager, despite their tremendous distance from Earth. His efforts have landed him in hot water at his job, and now he meets with Deanna Troi to recount how he got here and what he might do next.

This is an unusual episode of Voyager that I find difficult to rate. From one perspective, it gives the entire episode over to the guest stars; the actual Voyager crew (as opposed to their holographic counterparts) doesn't even appear on screen until there's barely 5 minutes left in the episode. And as far as how those guest stars relate to the main story? It's never really clear why Barclay cares so much, since he's never actually met any of the Voyager crew before. (Barclay's earlier appearance on the series, remember, was the Doctor's hallucination.)

But of course, it's not like Voyager exists in a vacuum. The series is Star Trek: Voyager, and the real appeal here is for fans of The Next Generation. And boy, does this episode lean in. Barclay is back with a new obsession/addition, and is again spending too much time in the holodeck (where he's programmed real people to fawn over him). His conversation encompasses the Enterprise, Geordi, Data's cat, and more. It's a reminder of characters you know and love.

Well... alright, I don't know many people who actually "love" Barclay. But I really am thrilled to see Troi again. Marina Sirtis reportedly agreed to this appearance without seeing a script, just on the knowledge that Dwight Schultz would be guest starring. But it's actually an episode in which Troi does real counseling. And, as Sirtis noted in an interview, she got to be more serious and less "wacky, zany," as Troi was in her last two appearances in First Contact and Insurrection. (Though Troi doesn't come off perfectly. She's going to take a leave of absence to help Barclay? Sounds like she's got an addiction herself.)

While the episode doesn't really feature Voyager, the story is still very much about the core premise of the show: that the ship is stranded far from home, and that any contact with Earth is a Big Deal. Tom Paris' father (recast since his last appearance) is on hand to add personal stakes. And despite any flaws the episode might have, I must admit: that first time Voyager hears the call from home, and is able to talk in real time with Earth? It is moving.

Other observations:

• Voyager has actually found a few shortcuts toward home since they last communicated with Earth. Technically, the attempt to communicate with them should fail, because the ship is far ahead of where Starfleet would reasonably be looking.

• It's never really clear why Barclay's boss is against trying the plan to use the array for communications. No "cost" is ever articulated; it's not like any resources are being consumed, or that doing this causes any sacrifice to anything else. He just... doesn't want to do it?

• Admiral Paris has a photo of his son Tom on his desk... though it's actually a photo of Robert Duncan McNeill as Nick Locarno.

• For once, we see holodeck safety protocols functioning correctly. When a holographic character tries to shoot security officers, the weapons are ineffective.

I don't love how much the Voyager characters are sidelined here in their own show. (Indeed, this episode might have been the first step down the road that ultimately led to the much-derided series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise.) Yet at the same time, I'm a sucker for seeing Next Gen characters again, and I have to admit that this episode really sticks the landing and makes you feel the weight of an emotional moment. So I'll give "Pathfinder" a B+.

City Living / Island Flopping

My board gaming group has circled back to legacy games this year -- those campaign-style board games that permanently change each time you play them. It started back in the summer when we played designer Reiner Knizia's 2020 creation My City, and then continued when most recently we completed his follow-up from this year, My Island.

I certainly want to post about My City, because we enjoyed it reasonably well. It's a tile-laying game that uses polyominos. In each game, a shuffled deck of cards is revealed one by one, each card indicating the next building shape that each player must place on their board. Buildings come in three "categories," and how you place them to maximize scoring is one of the elements that changes from game to game in the legacy campaign.

That campaign sounds daunting at 24 games... but each individual game takes only about 30 minutes to play. That's why the campaign is actually organized into "chapters" of 3 games each. You're sort of intended to play 3 games in a sitting (though certainly, you don't have to); there are only minor changes between games of a chapter, while the more significanat legacy adjustments are introduced as you begin a new chapter.

My City starts off frankly too simple for experienced gamers, but the activity of playing it is fun and fast enough to see you through to a point when things start to become more interesting. Spoiling those twists and turns would be ruining the fun of discovering them for yourself. But I can say that even some of the simplest elements of the design have intriguing ramifications again and again. For example, this is one of the few polyomino board games I've played in which the pieces aren't double-sided: the non-symmetrical pieces aren't "reversible," and that trips you up again and again as you wish for zigzags to "zig" the opposite way."

The game grows gradually, reliably more interesting as you work your way through the campaign -- and we did so rather quickly. My City probably won't "blow your mind" (unless it's your first legacy game, period), but we enjoyed enough to want to seek out the sequel when we learned it was around the corner. I'd rate My City a solid B.

In contrast, however, I cannot recommend the new follow-up, My Island. If you play My City and enjoy it, no doubt you, like us, will be interested in how Reiner Knizia tweaked it for a sequel. For starters, he switched from a grid of squares to a grid of hexagons. He also switched from tiles in which every square is the same "category" to tiles in which different hexes have different characteristics.

These minor changes, combined with interesting new rules about placement, makes My Island a much stronger experience right out of the gate than My City. My Island is another 24-game (8 chapter) campaign, and by just a few games in, everyone in my group was feeling like this sequel had surpassed the original.

Unfortunately, the rising arc of enjoyment we experienced with My City was reversed for My Island. At right about the halfway point of the campaign, the game begins to come apart at shocking, disappointing speed. New added elements have a dramatic impact on the speed of play, turning a breezy 30-minute game into something that can easily take 4 players close to an hour. And the balance falls apart, with random chance able to give a player a significant edge over the rest that just keeps widening over the rest of the campaign.

We did finish My Island, but by Chapter 8, nobody in our group seemed particularly enthused to do so; we just felt like we couldn't come that close to the end only to quit. (Sunk cost fallacy?) My Island does have the option for some form of post-campaign play, and since we enjoyed it so much in the beginning, there's a chance we might explore that at some point. Maybe. After we've forgotten how burned we felt by the back half of the campaign. Overall, I'd give the game a C-.

I probably wouldn't have bothered to write about My Island... but My City could well be worth a look, and it seems appropriate to then warn you, if you like the first game, what may then follow if you explore the second.

Voyager Flashback: The Voyager Conspiracy

Fresh on the heels of a Seven of Nine episode, Star Trek: Voyager serves up... another Seven of Nine episode!

In an attempt to maximize her time, Seven of Nine reconfigures her Borg alcove to download data from the computer into her brain while she regenerates. But the vast amounts of information quickly overwhelms her, and she begins connecting unrelated events in elaborate conspiracy theories. Soon, she has Janeway and Chakotay pitted against each other for command of the ship.

Conspiracy theorists and their wild notions have been around a long time, of course. For the bulk of that time, they've mostly been a light-hearted lark to laugh at. But it seems like social media has poured gasoline on the fire, and that whackadoodle theories spread these days much more easily (and dangerously) than they used to. Thus, this episode that was surely meant only as breezy fun when it aired in 1999 now reads quite a lot differently. Not that every episode of Star Trek must have a message, I suppose... but what is the message here? Stay off the internet? Too much information is a dangerous thing? (Near the end of the episode, there's talk of "quality being more important than quantity." Sure, I guess?)

It's interesting to me how correct this depiction of a conspiracy theorist really is. No amount of refutation or new information can dissuade Seven of Nine from her imagination; she just incorporates or ignores, then forges ahead. She actually confronts a child to demand who she's working for. She puts herself at the center of her ultimate conspiracy, because of course it's all about her. (Set aside that it's reaching the point where Star Trek: Voyager kind of is all about her.)

It's not like this episode is hardly so awkwardly dated that it makes you go "yeesh"; there is still fun to be had. Longtime fans can enjoy the thrill of twisting and distorting the show's history. Current events are connected back to the very first episode of the series. Janeway might have planned being trapped in the Delta Quadrant on purpose! Kes was forced off the ship because she knew too much! The Doctor has been a conduit for secret communications with Earth! Chakotay is still working for the Maquis!

But while the episode is fun, a lot of it is also unclear and unresolved. When Seven of Nine feeds essentially the same story to both Janeway and Chakotay, does she not know she's repeating herself or is she trying to pit the two leaders against each other? What was the deal with the tractor beam Seven detects near the Caretaker -- did she just make that up? And is the trust between Janeway and Chakotay really this fragile? Sure, the two pull back before doing anything truly terrible, but they both seem a little too ready to trust Seven of Nine over each other.

Other observations:

• Lots of flashbacks in Seven's conspiracy narrations -- both to actual footage from past episodes, and new elements created for this episode. My favorite is "flea cam," at the moment an alien insect gets inside the ship's computer.

• The visual effects of the space "catapult" look pretty cool.

I wonder if I liked this episode better when it first aired than I do now. (I don't clearly remember.) I also wonder how it will look in another 20 to 25 years. Now, at least, I give "The Voyager Conspiracy" a B-.