Raymond Ocdol
Civil War Review

I really did not know what to expect from this movie, I'd seen the trailers and like most people I was pretty fixated on why a 2nd American Civil war was happening. The western forces of California and Texas? The Florida Alliance? A third term president of the loyalist states. Some pretty interesting choices for factions of a 2nd American Civil War and if you were thinking would dive much into this you would be wrong. Civil War is fundamentally about a civil war occurring in the modern USA, journalism specifically war journalism and the people on the ground. We follow a group of journalists as they make their way to DC. Our lead is Kirsten Dunst as Lee a war photographer, followed by Wagner Moura as Joel her college, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Sammy as their old mentor and Cailee Spaeny as Jessie as an aspiring photographer who tags along. Kirsten Dunst is quite the battle hardened pro while Cailee Spaeny's Jessie is the extremely green newcomer and a good part of the movie is Jessie learning the ropes.

Civil War Review
Raymond Ocdol
Top Games 2023

Really wised i got around to playing more this year on top of the giant backlog. Though I did play some other things besides WoW:Dragonflight. My GOTY is below plus some other highlights

Top Games 2023
Movie Review
Raymond Ocdol
Top Movies 2023

My Top 10 Movies for 2023 plus some special mentions at the end.

Top Movies 2023
Raymond Ocdol
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and ...

It's been quite a while since the YA craze and the last Hunger Games movie but here we are 2023 and a new movie, a prequel, the origin story of the main villain. The Hunger Games series were some of the better movies to come out of the YA craze, the quality was a bit un even especially at the end with Mockingjay being split into 2 part but overall solid movies.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Raymond Ocdol
A Haunting in Venice Review

A Haunting in Venice is Third movie is Kenneth Branagh's Poirot movie series, coming just a year after Death on the Nile though I think that movie got caught up in the Fox acquisition and the pandemic. Personally I thought Murder on the Orient Express was decent, Death on the Nile not so much, serviceable but not great for this third I did not have high hopes. Anyway turns out this movie is pretty good and is the best one out of the three.

A Haunting in Venice Review

The Martian Review

The Martian 9/10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOWVl6j87nI

Based on the book by Andy Weir the martian tells the story of Matt Daemon as he is stranded on Mars and attempts to survive long enough to be rescued. This movie is a tremendous movie, thoroughly enjoyable and I think everyone should see it

From the cast, the score, the story the visuals everything comes together to make the Martian one of the best films of the year. Ridley Scott has had a bit of a rough ride lately but in the martian he really does an amazing job.

Starting with the cast you have Matt Daemon the titular Martian who is great, you really see his determination to survive and the struggles he has to go through. Th astronauts who are great and the folks back on earth who are a bit part of why the movie works so well. A lot of the movie is on earth and seeing how NASA and co handles everything keeps everything in perspective. We get to see the perspective from the top to mission control to engineering and see how they all work through problem after problem to rescue one man.

Leading on from that is the story, the dual perspective of space and earth allow each side to be very compelling. We don’t see every detail off Matt Daemon serving and we don’t see everything on earth its just focused on NASA and the challenges that Matt faces. We see with Matt how the condition affect him and what hes done and what hes going to do to survive. The detail is there but a of it is implied rather than shown.

Really good

9/10

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