Movie And TV Reviews: Lady Bird, The Post, Molly's Game, Goodbye Christopher Robin, Westworld, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

See all of my movie reviews.

Lady Bird: Greta Gerwig's first outing as a director is a smashing success. I have complicated feelings about Greta, in that I admire her intentions in writing and playing in quirky comedies, such as Frances Ha. However, I felt that her movies were not quite there yet, not quite jelled. The characters were too unrelatable, and the plots too chaotic and off-putting. This is the first one she really gets right.

Christine is a teenager who calls herself "Lady Bird" for no discernible reason. The movie is basically an arc in the life of Christine and her relationship with her mother as she navigates the last year of high school in Sacramento. She makes and loses friends, fights, makes up, and fights with her mother, and tries to get into a college on the East Coast that will get her far away from her family.

I have been a big fan of Saoirse Ronan, from Atonement to Hanna to Brooklyn. She and Laurie Metcalf, as well as the rest of the cast, give perfect performances. If there is any flaw to the movie it is that it could have been more: more sweeping, maybe have another deep relationship arc in addition to the main one. But that's hardly a flaw. Worth watching.

The Post: Hanks, Streep, and Spielberg give us another newspaper drama, this one about the publishing of the Pentagon Papers that broke the story about how a series of US presidents and higher ups were all lying about the Vietnam War, pretending that the US was fighting to liberate South Vietnam when they knew all along that the war could not be won and the real aim was to broadly fight China.

It's a good movie, if not a great one. Roughly on par with other newspaper movies I've seen, including Spotlight and All the President's Men., but with a narrower aim. The main conflicts are a) publish or not? and b) can Streep's female character assert authority at the paper without making a major blunder? Streep plays the owner of the Washington Post, a position she inherited from her late husband, and a woman bullied by her all male board. She is seemingly willing to let them bully her until she finally takes a stand. Hanks plays the chief editor who is pushing to report a story while the government wants to sue them for espionage.

If you happen to draw a parallel between the historic ideals of freedom of press versus a tyrannical, corrupt president and anything happening today it's because we once trumpeted these ideals very clearly. Reality has a bias toward the truth, which any amount of modern obfuscation cannot truly suppress. And it is good not to lose sight of the ideals for which we stand.

Molly's Game: If it's been a while since you've seen a Sorkin picture, you'll find it is like riding a bicycle. You will immediately be expecting to see Josh Lyman or Sam Seaborne walk in from some corner of the screen.

This is the story of a woman who uses some incredible insight, people skills, and brass balls to end up running a high stakes poker game for important celebrities and executives, first on the West Coast and then on the East. The enterprise lasts until the feds and the mafia move in on her. The story is told from a series of flashbacks interspersed with her finding a lawyer and navigating her legal case. It is based on a true story.

Jessica Chastain does a fine job in the lead role. Everyone else does fine, except Kevin Costner who seems out of place as her often distant but high pressuring father. Regardless, it is a Sorkin story, which means witty, clever, entertaining dialog and characters who are ten times brighter and more accomplished than most people you will ever meet. Well crafted with great cinematography.

Goodbye Christopher Robin: The story of A.A. Milne, his wife, and his son Christopher Robin, how the Winnie the Pooh books came to be, and the effect they had on their lives. Spoiler: on the one hand the books are the most successful children's books of all time. On the other hand, they destroyed the life of Christopher Robin and his relationship with his parents. The movie actually gives us a slightly happier ending than the real life events.

Milne's wife is shown to be a bit of a shrew, with just enough redeeming moments to make her two-dimensional, but not really likable. Alan Milne is more sympathetic, although he blatantly and blindly uses his son poorly without much thought. It's all pretty tragic.

It's a decent movie for what it aims to be, somewhere on the same level as Becoming Jane or Miss Potter. It is well acted and lovingly directed and filmed. It tells its story well enough. But it's not a very important story or movie, for all that, and only the falsified, slightly happier ending gives the viewer any kind of comfort.

Westworld (season one): I saw a few episodes of Humans and couldn't get into it. I was a little concerned about the level of violence I heard about in this series (I won't watch Game of Thrones). Somehow, the fact that the violence happens to robots makes it easier to take, although the question remains exactly whether the robots are or are not conscious, so you have to decide that for yourself if the violence is watchable or not.

I am a huge fan of Evan Rachel Wood; she and everyone else do fine jobs. Unlike Humans, the stories are quite captivating, with a number of whodunits and what's going to happen nexts that got me hooked. The stories take place in the facility that creates and maintains the robots, as well as in the play world of Westworld, and they include scenes that occur as flashbacks from the robots' perspective, despite the fact that the robots are not supposed to have memories.

There is nudity, but respectfully done and never gratuitous. The sex scenes are all pretty unsexy.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season one): The next series from Amy Sherman Palladino (Gilmore Girls, Bunheads), this one succeeds better than Bunheads did. Bunheads had a few great scenes, but it was too unrestrained in ridiculous plot and ridiculous dialog, which made it hard to relate to. This series only has one Bunheads-style conversation that set my teeth on edge in episode two. Thankfully that was the only one.

Midge is a perfect 1950s Jewish housewife who is supported by her husband and who in turn supports his occasional forays into standup comedy. He's not good at it, and one day he decides that she is not supportive enough of him and he leaves her. She then discovers, albeit reluctantly, that SHE is good at comedy. Cue a lot of denial, drinking binges, and attempts to make a go at standup comedy, all the while continuing to navigate her 1950s Jewish family, neighbors, friends, children, and still husband, all of whom remain blissfully unaware of her secret life as a comedienne.

It's not as good as Gilmore Girls, which had the great triple relationships between the three women, as well as their suitors, husbands, and the funky Connecticut town Stars Hollow as color. The supporting characters here are not as fun, there is no funky community background. But we have a few great scenes with a young Lenny Bruce. The best scenes are the ones where she does her Lenny Bruce style-standup, something which could not really have happened in the time period of the show, and so represents a kind of wish fulfillment on the part of Amy and for the viewers.

Amy's dialog is distinctive, and it's fun to hear. I just wish the show also had a teenage daughter.

Sticking With Star Realms!

What's going on everyone!?

Today for the #2019gameaday challenge I decided to redownload the Star Realms app and give it a shot since it's been a year or so since I last played it.

Even after so long away from the app. I'm reminded of the beginning versions that were in my opinion, superior to the newer version. 

The reason being that while the now version looks nice and has some awesome features, I felt that they could have left the background normal and not tried to make it require so much memory to run the game.

But anyway, I dont want to stray too far off path here, lol. The game is as amazing as the first time I played it and man do I love it!

Surprisingly even after so much time away I was able to jump right back in and even scored a win for myself! 

As always, thank you for reading and don't forget to stop and smell the meeples! :)

Visit To Uclan Games Design By Joe Nelson

UCLan Games Design students were delighted to welcome an important visitor from the games industry to their studio this week.

Namely, a fantastic opportunity to hear from Joe Nelson, Game Director at Ninja Theory on the 5-time BAFTA-winning "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice". Joe studied Game Design at UCLAN in Preston so we are particularly proud of his achievements.

Joe Nelson is a game director at Ninja Theory, having been design lead on Senua's Sacrifice" and previously working on both level and system designs.

His presentation described how to develop a plan for your game design to maintain a feasible story and authentic feel throughout the project. Joe's talk was a unique and fascinating insight into the depths of research and design planning that go into a game such as HellBlade.

It was great to welcome Joe back to the course in his capacity as a Games Director.

The Obscure Ultima, Ultima: Escape From Mt. Drash

Back in Ye Olden Days, I knew nothing of blogs and was content to post materials on forums and newsgroups and the like.  I contributed a few writings to GameFAQs back before the days when it was purchased by GameSpot.  The only actual FAQ for a video game I ever contributed that described how to beat a game was for the VIC-20 game Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash.  When GameFAQs took over, I removed all my content from that site.  Now, having finally been able to play the game on original hardware, I think it is time to revive the old FAQ.  Moreover, no longer limited to plain, monochrome text, I can do more now that I have my own blog and the ability to add images, color text and link video.  Let's take a trip into a rarely visited part of the Ultima Universe.

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You say "obsessed" as if it is a bad thing.

Summer Internship Opportunity

Please let me know if you are interested:

This is a summer paid internship position.

The intern will be the main Unity developer for an educational program that is being designed. Unity dev skills with C# coding skills are both required. 2D dev experience, mobile development experience, and HTML5 experience would be great, but is not required.

The project will be a mobile and desktop game, built in a 2D environment.

Playing Grim2/Madrak2 In The July Scrum (Plus Match Report)

My wife was kind enough to allow me to play in the local Scrum League taking place this month. For those that don't know, the Scrum is a Steam Roller event that takes place over the course of a month, one game a week. 

My Pairing

I've only started to get back into the WM swing of things and as such I don't feel I have enough games to really expect to actually win the Scrum. So my main goal for the event is to simply enjoy it and frankly, learn my way around playing competitively again.  We've got the new Steamroller 2018 Scenarios to play with, and simply learning to deal with that is going to be an adventure all its own.

As such I was faced with a choice on what to run: use well established "strong lists" or to play something off the wall that I've cooked up.  The established "Strong Lists" were going to be stealing Tim Banky's Madrak1 Band of Heroes list (Champs, min Long Riders, Fenns + UA) and Borka2 Power of Dhunia list.

Given that I was also in the process of being tempted to play Convergence soon, I didn't want to just grind games with a strong pair to get competitive with it especially since when I was last playing WM I had ground out a lot of Madrak1 games already.

So I went with some off beat choices with old favorites from MK2, to try and continue a Tour of Trolls: Grim2 and Madrak2.

Trollblood - Grim2 WW

Theme: Kriel Company

3 / 3 Free Cards     75 / 75 Army

Hunters Grim - WB: +25

-    Muggs & Krump

-    Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0

-    Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 19)

-    Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 6)

War Wagon - PC: 16

Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0

Feralgeist - PC: 2

Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9

-    Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3

Northkin Raiders - Leader & 9 Grunts: 15

Greygore Boomhowler & Co. - Boomhowler & 9 Grunts: 17

Thumper Crew - Gunner & 2 Grunts: 0

For Grim2 I really wanted to get games in with the War Wagon more than anything, and I figured both Raiders and Boomhowlers of all things would actually pack a sufficient melee punch as well for the normally shooty oriented Kriel Company.  I also opted for double Bomber vs. a Glacier King in order to maximize shooting output and having access to Far Strike on Grim for non-feat turns.

The Madrak2 list is one I have played previously and discussed here.

Trollblood - Madrak2 Toughallo

Theme: Band of Heroes
3 / 3 Free Cards     74 / 75 Army

Madrak Ironhide, World Ender - WB: +28
-    Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0
-    Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 15)
-    Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 13)

Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0
Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0
Eilish Garrity, the Occultist - PC: 5

Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
-    Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
Trollkin Long Riders - Leader & 4 Grunts: 20
Trollkin Long Riders - Leader & 4 Grunts: 20
Kriel Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 11

Match Report 1

My first matchup was vs. the Scrum Overlord himself, Mark.  He's our resident Convergence player, so I was quite excited about the matchup since I'd get to see how Convergence would play.  His lists were:

Axis – Destruction Initiative

Axis

-Corollary

-Diffuser

-Galvanizer

-Inverter

-Inverter

-Inverter

-Inverter

Attunement Servitors

Ellish Garrity

Elimination Servitors

Elimination Servitors

Reflex Servitors

Optifex Directive

Transfinite Emergence Projector

Iron Mother – Destruction Initiative

Iron Mother

-Exponent Servitors

-Corollary

-Mitigator

-Prime Axiom

Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex

Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex

Ellish Garity

Attunement Servitors

Elimination Servitors

Elimination Servitors

Elimination Servitors

Optifex Directive

Transfinite Emergence Projector

Transfinite Emergence Projector

My matchup analysis for this was correct, even though my conclusions weren't particularly great for my chances.  

Axis had enough juice to push through Madrak2 to the point where I wasn't going to be able to kill enough to get through the feat before attrition swung too hard on me.   Mother would eat Grim2 alive, but Madrak2 would run right over her list.  This left Grim2 into Axis as probably the closest to a 50/50 for me, despite the fact that Destruction Initiative brings tons of shield guards. My Grim2 list brings an incredible number of shots to the table and should theoretically push through them. 

There was also the idea that with the Axis/Mother pairing in CoC, Axis handles Hordes while Mother handles Warmachine. I went in dropping Grim2 and expecting Axis and that's exactly what happened. 

Our scenario was Spread the Net, which I didn't have nearly enough playtime on. 

At the roll off my +1 to go first failed me, but Mark decided he wanted me to go first anyway, preferring to be able to score first.  Initially I thought Mark was making a huge mistake here, but in hindsight he was being rather brilliant. Spoiler Alert: I lost the game. 

Apologies for my lack of pictures here, but I was under clock pressure. I will attempt to rectify this for the next games in the Scrum.

What ended up happening was that by making me deploy first, Mark was able to counter deploy his TEP so that he would be able to get shots into me more easily where if I deployed second I could have mitigated the TEP's influence somewhat. 

At the top of turn two I burned way too much clock thinking about taking an assassination, only to realize that it would be impossible because the CoC walking vectors all have steady.  As such I was under clock pressure from the get go. 

Instead I feated and shot an Inverter off the table, positioned to score my flag and zone, and tried to mitigate the incoming TEP damage to my two units. 

Mark was able to shoot the Feralgeist off my flag (yay Optifex Directives) and run a servitor to contest my zone, conversely he killed what I was contesting his zone with (I didn't put enough in) and feated on most of my army.  Between Jacks and the TEP I lost nearly all of my Raiders but Boomhowlers were largely intact, with some being out of the feat and they had Mirage on them.   Mark is able to score his zone and flag, while also leaving two Inverters staring down my beasts and Grim.

Turn 3 is where everything went off the rails. I had 4 Boomhowlers in charge range after Mirage of the TEP, as well as a Raider who could walk and punch it under the Feat.  I landed the Mortality on the TEP from the Runebearer and started activating the units to hopefully punch it to death, but I was low enough on time that I wasn't smart enough to use the Stone for strength. DOH!

Here my dice did come up rather short, with two charges putting only 1-2 points on the TEP and the Raider doing next to nothing.  All plans swapped to killing the TEP so it doesn't wreck the rest of my lines, which was largely a mistake. I had a plan with the War Wagon to kill the servitor contesting my zone, then shoot/kill the servitor on Mark's flag and moving into contesting range while also scoring my zone with it. This diverted to get what shots I had left into the TEP and to burn shield guards.  This also meant my bombers and Grim2 were shooting at the TEP to finish it instead of killing at least one of the Inverters in my face. 

In all my haste I neglected to move part of Grim's unit to contest my zone and I left his inverters alive in the middle, although jammed by the War Wagon.  Mark scored his flag while I scored my own with the Fell Caller. 

Here Mark arguably had a workable assassination on Grim, though he was able to get a much easier path to victory.  Mark cleared out what I had in his friendly zone and scored with a Galvanizer, his solo scored his flag again, and since I had nothing in my zone he was able to run one Inverter in to score that, and then all he had to do was get the other Inverter from the middle to contest my flag and he wins. Mark tries to kill the Boomhowler in the way, missing all his servitor shots, Axis's spell, and a Diffuser shot, forgetting he can just cast the Bulldoze spell to avoid taking any free strikes at all.  I had Mortality on the Inverter, and so I was able to take two boosted POW15's on the jack, with one damage roll hitting triple 6's, but it wasn't enough and he's able to run to contest my flag – ending the game. 

Conclusions

Man the rust from not playing for a few months and not having played Grim2 since MK2 really was noticeable.  I also didn't read the TEP card close enough when investigating convergence, thinking that it lost the ability to put servitors in the back arc to get extra shots, when PP just moved the rule for that to the permutation servitors section.  Also forgetting Steady on the jacks was a major issue which caused me to burn too much clock.  I also simply made a lot of positioning mistakes that Mark was able to capitalize on very effectively.

After the game Mark asked why I didn't attempt an assassination on Axis during turn 3 while under his feat, despite his 5 camp he only had 2 shield guards I arguably had enough guns to get the job done.

In truth I saw the shield guards and camp and decided to avoid it, not realizing exactly how dicey my chances were getting.  I could have used Grim's unit to gum up the Inverters to stop counter charge, or at least partially done so, stuck a mortality and then powered through as much as possible into Axis.

Overall I'm looking forward to trying more games with Grim2, but we will have to see what this week brings.   

From the Convergence side of things, I'm definitely intrigued by Mark's list and while I would probably swap one Inverter for another jack (I only own 3), I like the idea of 1 TEP in Axis. It certainly looked fun to play. 

The Blog At 400 Posts

400 blog posts?   Have I really written so many?  Blogger says I have, so I'll have to accept that.  I suppose its time for one of those meta-blog entries where I talk about stuff that doesn't fit into a traditional blog post.  So let's start with a revisit of one of the only useful parts of the previous "Blog at xxx Posts" posts, the Youtube channel recommendations list.  I subscribe to many more channels these days than I used to, so let me tell you why you may want to take a look at them as well.  The channels I recommended (LGR, Pixelmusement and PushingUpRoses) in my early blog post remain recommended of course, but let's add some fresh blood to the list.  I will be using categories to help organize recommended channels, but just because a channel falls into one category does not mean it holds no value outside that pigeonhole. 

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You say "obsessed" as if it is a bad thing.

Delivery Drivers Of The Wasteland

Wasteland Express Delivery Service has a little bit of everything. At its heart it is a pick up and deliver game where each player attempts to be the first one to complete three "priority first class contracts," usually a multi-step process involving several pick ups and deliveries across the board. At the same time, players need to play the cargo market, a supply and demand system that requires them to purchase resources and then sell them on for a profit. This money is then used to buy upgrades for their trucks, in order to be able to play more efficiently.

On top of all that, what would a lawless wasteland be without raiders? The game includes three raider trucks that move around the board and attack the players, or at the very least get in their way, forcing them to take longer routes to get to their destinations. Players move the raider trucks depending on where their own trucks end up after moving, which introduces some additional tactical decisions ("if I move there, I can move that raider out of the way, and/or have it land on my opponent") and also a bit of "take that" player interaction.

Depending on how you decide to use your truck's limited upgrade space, you can even make a viable income out of chasing and attacking the raiders. Each raider truck carries resources which are won when they're defeated, and those resources can then be sold on for cash to use for further upgrades.

The game uses a ton of tokens and cards which make it seem more complicated than it actually is. There is a lot to take in, but the game play flows well, and we have found that once we get going we rarely need to refer to the rule book. And the amazing component trays that come with the game (a rarity these days) do a great job of keeping things organized.

It's a lot like Firefly: the Game, with the pick up and deliver mechanic and the non-player raiders wandering the board, but in some ways I like Wasteland Express better. While Firefly does an excellent job of immersing its players in the world of the TV show, and provides solid game mechanics, it can also fall victim to a "supercrew" situation where a player with the right combination of crew cards is pretty much unbeatable, and that removes a lot of dramatic tension from the game.

Wasteland Express doesn't take place in quite such a well-developed world (although it does a lot with the flavor text on the cards), but it does a better job of retaining the tension: combat with the raiders is always at least a little uncertain, and the cargo market can drop out from under you, suddenly devaluing all that water you were planning on selling for a massive profit.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) A great game that's easy to play but with a good amount of depth, with a fun theme and very well-made components.

• Wasteland Express Delivery Service official website
• Wasteland Express Delivery Service on BoardGameGeek

REAL TO SIMS #2 - Small & Luxury Apartment - + DOWNLOAD + TOUR + CC CREATORS | The Sims 4

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A Note On The OGRE Vehicles

   Really quick - an old friend of mine, Tim Harrison '94, asked me about how I did the numbers.

   I cheated.

  6mm (1:285 if you prefer) Micro Armour decals. These are German turret numbers. I also use 1:300 scale aircraft decals for some national markers, like the Combine Canadian GEV company or the Paneuropean Swedish Armour company I have painted.

   Speaking of the Canadians, I finally have their Light GEV elements on the paint table. I think I am going to do them as a single larger squadron of six, maybe. I have seven right now. I might paint the last one up as a scout/observer for the 301st Armour (that's the black with yellow group).