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

HBO

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Entourage Review

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Not bad

I'm not super familiar with Entourage, but the trailer for the movie looked interested so I hope to go into this with and open mind. Its also an HBO show so that should at least make it somewhat decent. I found Entourage the Movie to be pretty good, it was interesting, the characters were interesting and it had some good moments. Also compared to the last Drama Comedy I saw (Focus) this was hands down better than that.

I will say this, the movie is pretty short. From what I know there show was 30mins so this is essentially 3 episodes and in a way it kind of felt like that. There are definitely threads that go through the entire movie but everything is more or less resolved nicely. The movie was more about the characters their interactions, how they supported each other and how they reacted to their problems, which I guess is probably what the show is like. Favourite character was definitely Ari, some great lines out of him and the way he handles things is very entertaining. Strangely Vince was the least interesting character not sure how he's like in the show but he was a bit blander than the rest. Then again he was probably also the most grounded character which I guess is something you need with all these different personalities.

Overall I think if you liked the show you will probably like this Movie. It's not high art but it was entertaining has piqued my interested about the TV show (which is not on any NZ streaming service at the time of this review). Anyway it has its moments and was a pretty solid albeit short movie.

8/10

Disclaimer: One of the Accounts I work on at work is Roadshow, the distributor for WB Films including Entourage. I also worked on the campaign for this movie and saw this movie at an early screening.

 

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