Rambo: First Blood Part II was ripped off beat-for-beat by Metal Gear Solid – at least, the first forty minutes or so. Many of the details are slightly different; for one thing, Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna) finds Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) in a prison at the start of the film whereas Colonel Campbell (Paul Eiding) sends goons to drag Solid Snake (David Hayter) out of self-imposed exile in Alaska. Rambo is going into Vietnam to investigate the possible existence of POWs whereas Snake is being sent to rescue two civilian men from an American military group who have gone rogue and captured a military outpost just south of Alaska. Admittedly, the more I look into these specific details, the harder it becomes to justify saying Metal Gear Solid ripped it off – it’s a ‘know it when you see it’ thing, where each scene in the opening of the film feels like it has a specific equivalent in the game.
Which is why I wanted to write about it. MGS is up there with Watchmen in terms of great creative riffs on an already existing work; providing, if you like, an example of how to approach this kind of creative reinterpretation – in fact, you could call Metal Gear Solid a revisionist action story, just like The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly was for Westerns. The fascinating thing is, just as looking for similarities makes you see differences, looking for differences only highlights the similarities. Rambo: First Blood Part II is infamous as, alongside Commando, creating the model of an unstoppable killing machine for an entire generation of young Western men. Not that this idea didn’t exist before; simply it codified one particular expression in a very Reaganite kind of way.
When I say that the film itself is more nuanced, I only mean slightly; specifically, it was a sincere attempt by Sylvester Stallone to make a movie for the Vietnam veterans who told him they’d appreciated and related to his character in the first film (which is a nuanced take on a tortured, violent man), and he wanted to make a movie where they would get the specific, redemptive closure they wanted that reinforced their sense of masculinity and control (“Do we get to win this time?”). This clarity of vision ends up translating to a film that works, step-by-step to get Rambo from the prison he ended the last film in to heroically butchering bad guys and blowing up a helicopter with a rocket launcher.
I disagree with the film’s politics, but I admire the full-throated expression of a very specific emotional state to ease the mental anguish of another person; the existence of American POWs left behind in Vietnam is nonsense, but it’s an expression of the anxiety and grief of real people missing real people. Metal Gear Solid ends up pulling out a more progressive underlining of this theme; just like Rambo II (I’m not typing out the full name anymore), it’s about a government apathetic towards its own foot soldiers who sacrifice everything to keep the system running; in many ways, it’s more absurd, but I also believe more sophisticated and more true to life. This extends to everything; the characters have more complex personalities and histories; there are many more plot twists that evolve from more complex worldbuilding; granted this all comes from it being about six hours longer than the movie, but it’s also a sustained effort to say something more interesting.
But it cannot be ignored that this is all building off the work done by Rambo II, and knowingly so. It has the same ideas, it’s just taken them further. The plot of Rambo II serves as a set of training wheels for Metal Gear Solid; the writers ask themselves ‘how would these characters and their situation actually work?’, and then ask themselves ‘where would this actually go?’. The broad structure of the story is original; the larger section of the first third is a template it’s riffing on.
This is what excites me about revisionist storytelling; there’s a dual pleasure of being a greasy little troll delighting in watching a sacred cow get slaughtered (or at least tipped) and the pleasure in seeing basic, fascinating ideas from the original being pulled out and taken further. It’s a cliche to point out that the ‘deconstructionist’ storytellers are doing so out of love, but it’s a useful one here – it’s comparable to the guys who come in after a pioneer, reshaping and rebuilding a stronger narrative.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Red vs Blue, Season Two, Episode Three
“It’s pronounced ‘margarine,’ dumbass.”
“No one’s ass is being covered.”
This actually enters into season four of the original run partway through – the divisions for Tubi seem really arbitrary, but whatever. The repartee is becoming really snappy at this point, building naturally as characters riff on each other until it hits a climax and moves on. We also have a Good, Bad, Ugly situation, where we alternate between the Red, Blues, and O’Malley, each building up the other; O’Malley attacks, which ends up splitting the Reds and Blues as the latter flee (heading into Blood Gulch) and the Blues become embroiled in the mystery of the thing that attacked Church.
Caboose ends up friends with Andy which is funny even outside Andy being a Noo Yoik asshole.
“Leave no fool left unkilled! This army has a no-fool discrimination clause.”
Church takes great glee in getting Andy to believe they’re trying to stop Tex from losing her temper, not Andy (“Also that you like to punch people in the head while they sleep!” / “That was you?! I thought the tooth fairy was mad at me!”)
“Tucker! Look! hot girls!”
“Nice try. You just want me to turn around so you can knock me out and take the sword.”
“Now the hot chicks are making out!”
“Okay, that’s worth the risk.”
“Sorry, Donut, but military procedure is very clear on the ‘not it’ methodology for making decisions.”
Who Shot Pat?
In terms of plot, this is a period piece about poor Brooklyn high school students caught up in gang violence; in terms of style, it’s a student film with a bit more ambition. All the actors are having enormous fun – a very young Sandra Bullock shows up as one of the female leads, and you can see she’s going to be a star purely because she’s taking it all the most seriously (there’s also Allison Janney in a very small part). The title plot actually takes up a very small part of the film; it’s mostly slice of life.
Violated
Another strong contender for Streaming Shuffle. This caught my eye as I was flipping through Tubi because it was a serial killer narrative made in 1953 – at least in terms of plot, it more strongly resembles the slashers of the Eighties than Psycho and strongly resembles Peeping Tom, although the villain isn’t technically revealed until the final act (even if it’s very obvious). It’s also an interestingly-constructed film; sloppy, in a lot of ways, but also fresh and exciting. It manages to invent a very modern camera setup with the camera whipping between people as they talk during a conversation, for example, and all the murders are very exciting and even surreal in their staging.
Also: it has an incredible-looking cat AND an incredible-looking dog.
The Housemaiden
Exactly enough of a Paul Feig film that I scoffed in surprise and recognition when I saw his name in the end credits. This is basically a Lifetime Movie Only Moreso, which let me guess the entirety of the plot of the film as soon as a particular bit of dialogue was dropped. Like, I enjoyed watching it, but it’s very predictable if you know what to watch for; my nonbinary partner enjoyed the feminist revenge aspect of it very much so, and I see how his Hollywood Dude Feminism has matured into something slightly more complex in presentation, if not in principle – he doesn’t have the evil dude get his dick shot off in this (I was genuinely less condescending about it in my head before writing this).
Violated immediately added to the Tubi queue. Actually quite intrigued by Who Shot Pat? too.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover – started watching this on Boxing Day and found it too abrasive for the festive season, didn’t want to give up on it though so finished it off on Saturday and… still hated it, sorry. I really enjoyed the other Greenaway film I’ve seen (Zed and Two Noughts) but this one is basically a compendium of all the stuff I struggle with in movies. Emphatically not for me.
Black Bag – solidly enjoyable spy fun, I go into Soderbergh movies with a hefty degree of trepidation given the number I’ve failed to connect with but this is pretty crowd-pleasing stuff even if it probably won’t stick with me for long. I liked Michael Fassbender’s performance, feel like he was channeling Michael Caine a little (in demeanour, not accent).
The Soft Skin – I’ve had this Truffaut box set for a million years and still only watched half of it for some reason. He seems to have been pretty scathing about this one himself but it’s an enjoyable romantic melodrama with some good “men are awful” themes that continue to resonate in 2026. Also the first non-Rochefort film in which I’ve seen Francoise Dorleac and she’s very good indeed, such a shame her career (and life) was cut short.
Seinfeld, season 5 episodes – “The Pie”, consistently funny although the wordless, childish reaction to the various foods that people don’t want to eat didn’t really work for me. The mannequin that looks like Elaine and Kramer’s itch subplots were funnier. “The Stand-In” pretty good too – I have queries about the actual nature of stand-in work that the episode did NOT answer, but Kramer’s friendship with his little-person co-star was a strong central plot and Jerry’s plot about trying to make a friend in hospital laugh was enjoyably dark.
Live Poetry – two friends are getting married soon and they’re both involved in the local poetry scene so they picked the first monthly night of the year as a kind of makeshift stag / hen party. My second visit to this particular poetry night and it was mostly different people taking part, interestingly – I assumed it would mostly be a core group of regulars. The standard was pretty good and the final poet of the night was a Russian guy who did an incredible comedic poem about seeing a cow running alongside his car that was genuinely brilliant. Fun times!
Woo (romantic definition) live poetry! And Mickey is a great foil to Kramer, obviously the size discrepancy is fun visually but as a personality his quick temper bounces off Kramer’s hipster doofusery very well.
Babylon 5 — back on Tubi! Hooray! And the possible exit of a much-hated character, double hooray! Although I’m not celebrating completely until the end of the season in two episodes. A lot of shit has been wrapped up though, and a very interesting morally grey area is acknowledged but sort of blipped over, perhaps that too is not yet done with. Extremely funny moment where a woman is onscreen for maybe 90 seconds and three lines of dialogue and I immediately clocked her as Jerry’s Two-Face girlfriend from the Festivus episode of Seinfeld, talk about a mixed legacy.
Busting — Elliot Gould and uh Robert Blake are vice cops in 70s LA, arresting hookers and knocking around porn shops and infiltrating gay bars, and for what? The damn strip club boss who is also dealing heroin has powerful friends and is preventing them from getting results, you stupid chief. So they go rogue, with mixed results. Gould and Blake have solid chemistry and as a time capsule this is wonderful sleazy stuff, it is also not exactly a great depiction of the people they are busting and apparently a lot of gay groups protested — that is fair, but I do think director Peter Hyams shoots a courtroom scene of ugly mockery with an eye to the people being mocked. And Hyams also wilds out on action, a foot chase through a crowded market is fantastic and in general his camera is smooth and mobile in the service of showing this action, not for its own sake — you can see where his son John of Universal Soldier fame gets it. The end is a very odd downer that is in dialogue with another Gould movie of that period, but without that film’s snap. But any fans of wokka-chicka wokka-chicka funk action should check this out.
The Shrounds — “Grief is rotting your teeth” is the first line of the film, establishing a connection between soul and body that the rest of the movie fucks with. What an odd, odd film — often very funny (the world’s worst date occurs early on) and erotic (there is a pretty damn explicit sex scene that is also funny) and of course disturbing, much of this is coming from a body’s decay after death and diminishment in life, scars and amputations abound. But there are also increasingly complex conspiracies, not something new to Cronenberg but very pronounced here. Vincent Cassel’s Karsh, the Cronenberg stand-in who has invented the technology to watch a corpse decay in real time as a way of staying connected with his dead wife, doesn’t really understand anything and spends much of the movie having things explained to him, and these explanations become increasingly suspect. He’s not connected to his work and he is constantly mediating his life through screens — this is partially just accurate to life now (I really don’t think a lot of films have figured this out the way Cronenberg has here) but also part of his unmooring — this climaxes with a creepy as hell scene involving an AI assistant that he has given the voice and cartoon appearance of his — you guessed it — dead wife. There is a weird push and pull of the previously sexless Karsh getting laid a lot as the conspiracies take off, is this him finding connection again despite the screens and confusions or are these just further evasions of things he doesn’t want to acknowledge? The ending is ambiguous but I think points to an answer, maybe one another David explored before he left this mortal coil last year. Glad I finally made time for this, it will stick.
Really need to see The Shrouds, Crimes of the Future is one of my favourite Cronenbergs and the way he really leaned into his sick sense of humour there was a total delight.
Same here!
Red Rooms
Rewatch. Still chilly, effective, and possessed of a good sense of the grotesque–Kelly-Anne’s courtroom transformation, especially when she goes for the braces, is as viscerally horrifying as almost anything in the genre–but it’s a tad too glossy for its own good.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space
Rewatch. This has a slightly slow start (which gives the limitations of the actors and the screenplay too much time to make themselves known), but once the klowns are bopping around town killing people in circus-y, Looney Tunes-y ways, it’s a candy-colored delight. I love and respect the Chodo Brothers’ devotion to puppets, animatronics, and highly specific gags; there’s so much dogged creativity here. Of course we’re going to get a balloon dog on the hunt. Of course a clown is going to drive an invisible car. Of course shadow puppets and regular puppets and popcorn and cotton candy and pies and funny bicycles. What’s surprising is that there is an actual and quite good horror scene in the middle of all this (the ventriloquism bit)–it works, and it’s like the pinch of salt that intensifies the film’s sillier flavors.
Final Destination Bloodlines
First time in English. I think the only thing that went completely over my head when I saw the Spanish version in Uruguay is that the resuscitation (alas, not resurrection) scheme is nicely set up by a couple of not-too-obvious references to the little brother working as a lifeguard. Anyway, this is a blast–the cheerful, bloody, vivid chaos of the big opening disaster is absolutely one of the top scenes of 2025–and as our host’s article on it notes, it deftly plays with the franchise’s history in some very fun ways.
The Phoenician Scheme
Definitely towards the upper end of my Wes Anderson ranking. Benicio del Toro may have been cinema’s MVP for 2025. Superb running jokes, nice sense of heart, brilliant use of Michael Cera.
After Life
Rewatch, as it was my pick for Movie Club. What I thought about most this time around is how people are sent on into the next stage of the afterlife not with their restaged memory or with its otherworldly documentary-like capture but with a low-budget, handcrafted cinematic experience put on for them: you leave your life and humanity behind with this Peak Human experience of empathy, collaboration, creation, and physical engagement. Beautiful stuff. Great discussion.
Cera is MVP of Scheme, del Toro seemed a bit lost to me — obviously his character is unmoored but maybe because of the episodic structure he never seemed to find the center that Hackman does in Tenenbaums or Murray does in Life Aquatic (which Scheme seems closest to and is also not my favorite Anderson, so maybe it’s a larger vibe I have issues with). He’s not bad by any means, but the business around him takes over.
And I love this contrast between Killer Klowns and Red Rooms. That courtroom scene is not getting out of my head, it is incredible horror, but so much of the movie feels like signifiers to me (all the exercise stuff in particular) — well-shot glossy things that mean Things. Klowns is cheap and less elegant but its things are just things and they are gnarly and fucked up and meant to fuck you up, not to be something else, and they succeed incredibly well.
Hmm, I’m starting to doubt myself on Phoenician Scheme, it’s dead bottom of my Wes Anderson ranking at present but I’m wondering whether I just caught it on a bad day. I loved the use of Michael Cera but generally it felt too much like it was just reusing most of the plot points from Life Aquatic which felt a little too self-cannibalistic even for a director who reworks a lot of similar themes.
I’m definitely more in your boat on Scheme! Anderson is hitting familiar beats, yes, but he’s also doing so in a more disjointed way than before — Aquatic’s quest has detours but isn’t on this point-to-point videogame stage level, and his more recent works play a lot with concentric or linked structures while still having a stronger theme holding everything together. I think it will play better on rewatch with more known expectations, but I don’t see it rising much.
I thought Asteroid City was one of his best, and also felt like he was breaking some new ground, so this one felt like a big step back to me. Some great individual scenes though so I might enjoy it more with adjusted expectations.
You and Dave have me suspecting that Phoenician Scheme and Life Aquatic are a linked pair, either rising or sinking together, since I also have a big soft spot for that movie (though I don’t really disagree with “self-cannibalistic” as a description–or with Dave’s videogame point here).
Life Aquatic is a 10/10 for me – albeit probably boosted by it being the first Wes Anderson movie that I saw. I don’t mind the frequent Anderson themes recurring (estranged fathers, a mid-movie death, the cast of regular players etc) as long as they’re balanced out by new stuff, and I guess I just felt like the balance was off here and it left me siding with the “he just does the same thing every time!” camp for the first time.
Ah, gotcha. I think this felt a little different in tone to me even with the technical similarities–a bit more madcap and hard-edged, maybe?–which helped it feel distinct, but one of the reasons I hadn’t gotten around to it earlier was that I had worried about it feeling too much the same, so I can see that.
There are still a couple gaps in my knowledge of Anderson’s filmography, but for right now, my lowest entry is Isle of Dogs, which left me with that rare “this is well-done but does not justify its own existence” feeling.
Yeah I wasn’t fully convinced by Isle of Dogs either – although I’ve been meaning to revisit for years!
Die My Love – Back in 2019 my untreated sleep apnea got much worse: projectile vomiting, diarrhea, anxiety so bad I was shaking. If I wasn’t sick, I was waking up early and watching Joe Pera or David Lynch clips. Sleep deprivation turns everything into a haze – you’re up early enough that you feel like you’re dreaming with everyone else even though you’re awake. You’re depressed too: you don’t know how to get out of the dream, let alone do anything else with your day. I’m not a mom and I’m not married, but Die My Love knows how all of this feels combined with new motherhood, isolation in the middle of nowhere. I already want to see it again though the thought of a rewatch puts a pit in my stomach. The best Jennifer Lawrence has ever been, a beast without an outlet for this ferocity and despair. (Have seen critics claiming what this says about motherhood feels trite – they don’t notice what seems crucial, that Grace is a writer, and having a baby seems to take something out of her that was vital to her.)
This Is Spinal Tap – Rewatch after being in two bands. Fond memories of live sets in empty bars on random bills, playing in Club Bohemia while the promoter put away folding chairs and tables! This is that dismal feeling on a funnier and much bigger scale, Nigel and David sulking as their tour devolves into 1200 seat arenas, then record store signings where no one shows up, and finally military bases where no one wants to hear blues metal. (Bruno Kirby is funny as the limo driver and pretty astute when he notes long-haired hard rock is merely a fad.) The Jeanine character is relying on the trope of the interfering rock girlfriend/hanger-on, but there’s real sweetness in Spinal Tap getting back together on stage, living out their arrested development dreams in Japan. The songs also unironically kick ass, “Big Bottoms” has been in my head since last night.
What makes Jeanine work better than just the Yoko stereotype is that she’s not breaking up the band, she’s breaking up David and Nigel — their relationship is expressed in ways that Jeanine horns in on and it’s a relationship with deep emotional connections, she is using their language but is not fluent in it (not that anyone here is particularly adept at expressing things).
Ebert had a surprisingly – for him – queer reading of their relationship that made sense to me.
The Vintage Space, “An Absurdly Deep Dive into Apollo 13” – Historian Amy Shira Teitel has scaled back her YouTube content to work on a new book, but every so often just throws a lot of research and effort into things that interest her and her audience. You would think that over two hours of new content about something that has been explored in books, documentaries, and movies so much would not be very gripping. And yet I watched this in one sitting when most movies over 90 minutes chafe. This works because Teitel combines graphics to make the technical side easier to understand, strong narration from a good script, and lots and lots of archival recordings of the conversations between Mission Control and the spacecrafts. This also presents a very different view of things than the movie, as it seems that half the contingencies taken to save the crew had already been planned for, and the other half were developed in a very short time after the explosion. No one ever panics, and almost everyone is on top of things. Instead of drama, the ultimate in NASA competence porn. And as a bonus, we get to hear a lot of the rather unique sense of humor that both Mission Control technicians and the astronauts possessed, dry and silly and not quite gallows humor.
The Practice, “Gideon’s Crossover” – Two episodes back, there was a rather pointless crossover in David E. Kelley’s Boston Public (one Fox), a blatant attempt to boost that show a bit. This time, an even more pointless crossover to Gideon’s Crossing, a doctor show starring Andre Braugher that lasted one season. The best guess I can see is that ABC allowed the former in exchange for the latter. Beyond that, Helen faces a choice of whether to have an eleven year old rape victim testify, or to rely on the single shaky witness. And Bobby defends a man accuses of killing his teenaged stepdaughter, a case that seems winnable until there is proof the man slept with the victim. These cases are definitely interesting, a step up after so many weeks of going in circles. Charles Napier guest stars as a judge, which just feels all wrong.
Frasier, “Bully for Martin”/”The Mother Load,” part one – In the former, Martin’s supervisor is being an asshole to him, but Martin refuses to push back. Frasier cannot bear to see it and talks to the supervisor’s supervisor, who is also his dad. In the end, Martin and the supervisor find common ground: difficult sons! M. Emmett Walsh is the supervisor, Robert Picardo the son. Pretty okay. In the latter, just as Niles and Daphne are ready to move in together, her mom and brother show up, and Daphne has to pretend she’s still a virgin! And then we learn her dad has left her mom! Meanwhile, Frasier’s offscreen rivalry with his upstairs neighbor Cam becomes onscreen. The stuff with Daphne’s mom is literally forgettable since I didn’t remember that she comes back, and stays! The stuff with Cam however has stuck with me, in part because Broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell is so good.
MASH, “The Novocaine Mutiny” – Frank presses court martial charges against Hawkeye for conduct unbecoming while Frank took over for a week. Some funny stuff, like Frank’s version of events making him into a super-doctor, but the premise really makes no sense. And the repeated “Hawkeye could be executed” stuff is utter nonsense.
Zootopia 2. . I’m like 90% convinced the writers were thinking specifically of the Nakba, leading very comically to Ginnifer Goodwin having to defensively explain that the movie is not about current events and doesn’t even apply to current events. It joins Superman as a 2025 family blockbuster where both supporters and critics pick up on the subtext (which is barely even not just text-text) and everyone involved has to pretend it’s not there.
As a movie, it is a very solid kids buddy cop movie. There’s a little will-they-wont-they in it. Very solid.
The antagonist family of Lynxes had a real Succession vibe. Brian Cox would kill it as a business Lynx. Other disney takes on succession I want to see: Scrooge and his nephews, Walt and his real-life heirs, Statler and Waldorf and the muppets.
Succession, up to s4e6. Connor’s wedding, the meeting in Norway, and the shareholder presentation are all time classic tv episodes. As we head into the home stretch they are on an incredible run.
I want to give a shout out to their little couch gags in the opening titles with ATN headlines changing every season.
All the drama is played straight but everything we see about what Waystar Royco / ATN actually does as a business is a total shitshow.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Haven’t seen this since it was a Movie of the Week on the OG Dissolve, and it’s way better than I remembered (by a whole star if you can trust my letterboxd). Just as good as any artier movie about capturing the offhanded weirdness of actual dreams — my favorite bit is the boiler room set, so mundane I’m not even sure it is a set. But the way it’s lit and shot turns it into something otherworldly. (I’m looking forward to rewatching New Nightmare soon, but I hadn’t realized how I have no idea how much that movie’s version of hell echoes the kind of place Freddy has hung out in from the beginning.) Wes Craven got away with selling Rod’s ’50s greaser stereotype to ’80s teens. Freddy’s a lot scarier here than he would be later on, but I was kind of surprised how influential even this poker-faced version was on the next generation of supernatural clowns, especially the way he’ll mutilate himself to scare the kids and amuse himself. Some of the echoes make sense — The Mask shares a director with Nightmare 3 . Some, not so much — it’s hard not to see a lot of Robert Englund in Beetlejuice even though Tim Burton’s horror touchstones don’t seem to go much past 1970 otherwise. I also appreciate how much more human-scale Freddy is here. I don’t think it’s a coincidence he doesn’t go after adults until he’s desperate, and once he’s dragged out of Heather’s dreams, her booby traps clobber him the same as anything else. It could make him less scary, but it doesn’t, because a guy who could actually exist is a lot scarier than the cartoon bogeyman Freddy would evolve into.
When I first learned about the high concept of this series (guy who kills you in your dreams) as a kid, it literally kept me up all night. Even as a grown-ass man, everything in here from Freddy’s phone call to Nancy on scared me shitless.
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge
First: misleading title. Except for a lot of blatant (and bad) recreations of whole scenes from the first one, this isn’t a continuation of the same story at all. There’s hardly even any nightmares on this version of Elm Street: other than a few dreamy bits in the first act and unexplained fantasy imagery later on, Freddy acts more like a conventional ghost/demonic possession. I won’t mention my letterboxd score, because this one’s unrateable: extremely entertaining, but God only knows how much of it’s intentional. If nothing else, it gave me more appreciation for Craven’s skill ar “filmmaking within your means” on Part 1. There’s one especially ambitious shot of a school bus stranded on a cliff over a lake of fire that looks like it belongs in an abnormally dark episode of Thomas the Tank Engine. But there’s brilliance here, too: that shot of Freddy’s eye looking out of the protagonist (Jesse)’s throat is an all-timer.
This has been reclaimed over time for the bonkers subtext of Freddy as a symbol of repressed homosexuality. What’s fascinating is it’s barely subtext, but it’s never quite clear if anyone involved with this knows just how gay this all is (give or take the S&M gym teacher. Doesn’t get much more obvious than that!). I’m thinking especially of dialogue like “he’s inside me! He owns me!” And then there’s sequences like the one where Freddy keeps Jesse from getting it on with his girlfriend, so he sleeps in his mostly nude male friend’s room until Freddy gives the dude a more-than-vaguely erotic death scene. It’s kind of funny what a big deal people made out of the Jackie Earle Haley remake making Freddy a child molester instead of just a child-killer, because his relationship with Jesse and Heather makes that, again, barely subtext.
It’s not particularly surprising but the brass balls it took to blame the homoerotic content of Nightmare II on its star is sure something. Jacob Tierney watched that shit and thought ‘I think it was a little unsubtle.’
What Did We Play?
Finished Viewfinder which was up there with my favourites in the “first-person puzzle adventure” genre, it doesn’t get wrapped up in convoluted storytelling like some of them do but the writing is strong, an emotional climate-change / apocalypse plot told in sparse voice memos and dialogue with a CGI cat with a Scottish accent. The puzzles are inventive and clever and I thought the length of the game was just right, which is to say “most of the negative reviews say it’s too short”.
Grabbed a few things from the Xbox sale for future investigation and so far I’ve ended up bouncing between Control (which is nicely dark and odd) and Red Dead Redemption 2 because I fancied something big and sprawling, although so far it’s been incredibly linear – I assume it’ll open up soon.
F-Zero 99 on Nintendo Switch
Tried the Holidays event, which introduced three new secret tracks. I have only found one, and it’s absolutely mental.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes – Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics on Nintendo Switch
Played a few matches on Arcade Mode. It was a lot of fun until I made it to the final boss, which isn’t.
For the record, I’ve beaten MvC2’s final boss before, so it’s OK.
“I disagree with the film’s politics, but I admire the full-throated expression of a very specific emotional state” — have you seen the 2008 Rambo? Because politically it is ugly as hell, Rambo not as restorer of honor but angel of death who is the only possible response to brutality, but as a depiction of evil people being destroyed by a person who is himself nothing but destruction it is incredible, bloody action on a scale and tone that doesn’t come up a whole lot.
Still the most upsettingly violent film I’ve ever seen, against fairly stiff competition.
There’s that famous Pauline Kael line about Straw Dogs being a fascist film and that is stupid, but this is arguably a fascist movie in its violence in a way Peckinpah never hits, even in his movie where Nazis are the protagonists. Unsettling!
Year of the Month update!
Here’s the movies, albums, books, TV, and games from 1985 for you to write about next January.
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez: Tim and/or Fables of the Reconstruction
Jan. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Advice on Lice
Jan. 16th: Gillian Nelson: The Wuzzles/The Gummi Bears
Jan. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Breakfast Club
Jan. 23rd: Gillian Nelson: The Golden Girls
And coming February 2026, we’ll be looking at 1957, including all these movies, albums, books, TV, yadda yadda.
Feb. 6th: Gillianren: The Story of Anyburg, USA
Feb. 13th: Gillianren: The Truth About Mother Goose
Feb. 20th: Gillianren: Our Friend the Atom
Feb. 27th: Gillianren: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle
The idea that the Evil VC would strand their own dudes out in the jungle or wherever for over a decade just to keep some POWs from starving to death before they could be tortured to death is so hilarious to me, not least because so many people thought it actually happened.
“The idea that the Evil VC would strand their own dudes out in the jungle or wherever for over a decade just to keep some POWs from starving to death before they could be tortured to death” is essentially Guantanamo Bay, so…
Fair. But, at least in the Chuck Norris version, the POW camps are literally campsites, which is a lot harder to buy than a permanent installation with A/C, running water, etc.
It’s really funny/dark.
Ehh, they both ripped it off from MacGruber anyway.