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Marriage Story (2019)
Marriage Story (2019)
2019 | Comedy, Drama

"What a surprise! Actually a movie about people! No special effects, no super heroes, no gunfights; just a riveting two hours and 15 minutes about some human beings you can recognize as real, going through the agonizing upheavals of a marriage that is no longer working, and therefore facing the daunting, heartbreaking throes of divorce. That’s Noah Baumbach’s new picture, “Marriage Story,” and it is right up there with the best of this exceptional director-writer’s finest work, thus only confirming my long-held opinion that Baumbach is vividly among the top picture-makers of his generation. It is a joy to see and hear actors speaking dialogue that is superbly crafted and profoundly believable. And to watch a film during which the camera is always in the right place for the actors to shine and the scenes to play most effectively for the audience. All this talented and insightful direction, of course, results in brilliant performances. If there is a more nakedly affecting and moving turn by an actor than Adam Driver’s here, I certainly haven’t seen it. He’s always good, but this is truly striking, vividly touching, and simply as good as it gets in modern pictures. I always enjoy Scarlett Johansson’s work, and she certainly doesn’t disappoint here. And Alan Alda’s aging character is memorably drawn. Like so much of the best American movies, Baumbach’s work here is both deeply personal (though not autobiographical) and at the same time quite clearly universal. I really hope that this picture is successful enough to encourage other filmmakers to bring real people to the screen, and to tell stories that resonate with reality."

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Beatdown: Streets of Justice
Beatdown: Streets of Justice
2019 | Card Game, Comic Book / Strip, Fighting
Ever wanted to be a street level thug? Or the hero that fights said thugs? I haven’t really. But! I did used to love playing the Street Fighter games growing up. Now, you cannot Hadouken in real life (right?) and take out E. Honda, but you CAN fight thugs in the street… if you really wanted. You know what? I’m just gonna stick to fighting via card play. Wanna help?

Beatdown: Streets of Justice is a cooperative, push-your-luck, fighting card game that pits you and your team of heroes against waves of thugs and a boss fight. As it is cooperative, the players win by beating the boss (typically in the third wave of fights), or lose by being all knocked out. Silly heroes.

DISCLAIMER: We were provided a copy of this game for the purposes of this review. This is a retail copy of the game, so what you see in these photos is exactly what would be received in your box. I do not intend to cover every single rule included in the rulebook, but will describe the overall game flow and major rule set so that our readers may get a sense of how the game plays. For more in depth rules, you may purchase a copy online or from your FLGS. -T

To setup, each player takes a player mat, chooses a hero to play, and takes the dice of matching color to use during the game. Shuffle all the different decks of cards and place them on the table within easy reach of all players. The Attacks deck will include the base attack cards plus all cards that match the players in the game (like Invicta’s attack cards if she is in the game). Place tiny clear cubes on your starting health, as well as the starting health for the thugs you will be fighting in Wave 1, and you are ready to play!

Beatdown: Streets of Justice (or just Beatdown from now on) is played over three waves of fights where the heroes will play cards and do their fighting and then the bad guys will take their turns to fight. Generally, play will go like this: on a player’s turn they will play a card from their hand or one blindly from the top of the Attack deck. This is the opening to their “combo.” The Attack cards will typically have a damage amount and a combo rating number. In order to play more cards to the combo, the player will need to roll their d10 and roll a number equal to or higher than their accumulated combo rating (the little numbers showing in the green arrows of cards played + the green arrow number on the hero card). A combo can continue as long as the player can roll higher than their combo rating, but a failed roll doesn’t necessarily mean c-c-c-combo breaker, but rather that the hero has left themselves open for attack by the thugs. I won’t go into any more detail on fighting, as the rules are a little complex and I will let you discover those for yourselves.

After the heroes have taken all their turns, if thugs are still on the battlefield, they will now take their fighting turns. Flip over an Enemy Attack card from the deck for each enemy and resolve it against the heroes. Each baddie will make their attacks and if heroes are still conscious another round of the wave will begin. New thugs do not enter play, as they only populate at the beginning of a Wave. The thugs are no joke, and the bosses are even rougher. Can you be defeated? Yes. I was defeated in my first game. Can you be revived? Yes. Between Waves the players can participate in a Shopping Phase where they can use trophies (the cards of enemies they have defeated) to purchase health back, revive a fallen hero, or purchase a revealed Loot card to help in future fights. Play continues in this fashion for three Waves until the heroes complete the Boss Wave (by defeating all enemies) or all the heroes are knocked out.

Components. I have some good news and bad news here. Good news first. The dice are great. The tiny clear cubes are… tiny and clear. And they are just fine. The cards are good quality, as are the cardboard mats and tokens. The card layout is good too. The bad news: the rulebook is a little confusing for the first couple read-throughs and the art style does nothing for me. I appreciate the way the rules are very informal and make several chuckle-worthy jokes, but I feel like it could flow different and more efficiently. Similarly, in an industry where art can really make a good game great, this one is lacking. It’s really a shame, because everything else about the game is really good quality. The iconography is… fine, but the character art in-game is an issue I have with this.

Beatdown is actually a really decent game once you are playing. The rulebook needs work, and the art needs an update, but those grievances aside, Beatdown is an enjoyable experience at the table. I usually play pretty conservatively in push-your-luck games, but I went all out with this one and was more often than not rewarded handsomely for it. If your group enjoys cooperative, push-your-luck, fighting, card games give this one a look. Just don’t pay attention to the character art. This all said Purple Phoenix Games gives this one a 6 / 12. Improve the rulebook and art and that rating improves.
  
Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game
Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game
2018 | Card Game
I love playing games with other people. Absolutely LOVE it. However, I also love playing games solo as well. When a game comes along that is specifically designed for solo play only, I tend to like them more than multiplayer games that include a solo mode. Also included here are cooperative games where the solo player just quarterbacks multiple players. But a game that is designed for solo play and even includes it in its title? I cannot recall many games I have played like this. But how is this one?

Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game (simply Orchard from here on out) is a solo game where the player is attempting to harvest the most fruit from trees that are bred for high yield. As there are no players to play against, the player will instead compare their ending score with a table in the rulebook. Will the player’s game result in a “Pal-tree” score or will they score enough to be considered “Almost imposs-apple!”?


To setup, place the dice and Rotten Fruiteeple on the table. Shuffle the 18 cards, deal two decks of nine cards (two games worth), and choose a deck to play. Flip the first card over to start the orchard, shuffle the remaining cards and draw two into hand. The game is now setup and ready to begin!
Turns in Orchard could not be simpler: Play a Card, Place Dice, Draw a Card. From the two-card hand, choose one to be placed in the orchard with one very important rule: the newly-placed card must overlap another card in the orchard by overlapping matching tree types. So, a card can only be placed if the apple tree overlaps an apple tree, etc. More than one icon may overlap the existing card, but each icon must match types below it.

Once the new card has been placed, for each icon overlapped, a die matching the fruit type is placed on the icon. If this is the first time the tree has been overlapped, the die face is placed with value 1 showing. However, the die will increase in value each subsequent time it is overlapped (total die values of 1, 3, 6, 10). Therefore, when a card has been overlapped four times on the same icon, the maximum number of points has been reached for that icon. Should a player wish instead to forego any die placement and be unable (or unwilling) to place a card correctly, they may place any card, overlap an icon, and then add a Rotten Fruiteeple atop the mismatched icon. This spoils the fruit for the remainder of the game, so no further dice may be placed upon it, and also reduces the final score by three VP at game end for each token placed.


Finally, when the card and die have been placed, the player draws another card into their hand. When the final card has been played, or no further legal placements can be made, the game ends and the player totals up the dice values to arrive at their final score.
Components. This game is 18 cards of good quality, a bunch of custom dice, and two Rotten Fruit meeples. Everything is good quality and size, and it fits into a really cool sliding deck-box. The art, for me, is fine. The colors match fruits from the real world, and the dice match those color well enough too. I feel like different fruit choices could have been made to increase accessibility for our color-blind gamer friends. The plums and apples are both small and round (with an ever-so-slight different shape on the apple). I don’t know what other fruits would have been more appropriate – I’m not a botanist. Similarly, the dice are custom made with the pips looking like a plum or apple, and two sides of the dice showing a leaf icon. Perhaps in the interest of differentiation, instead of the leaves, the different dice colors could instead show the matching fruit style (if only the plum and apple looked differently enough). So instead of leaves, the red dice could show apples, the yellow dice could show pears, and the purple dice could show, I don’t know, eggplants? I am not color-blind, so these do not affect me, but it is something I have taken to commenting on as I review more and more games.

All in all, Orchard is a really good little game of overlapping and puzzling out next moves. The games are super-quick and engaging, and I always want to improve my score each time I play. When a game forces me to play again and again I feel it is a sign of a good game. I have plans to keep this one in its own special place where I can just grab it and go, instead of being dwarfed by my collection of much larger game boxes. If you are like me and pine for good solo play, then perhaps you should check out Orchard: A 9 Card Solitaire Game. The rules are light, game play is simple and fast, and it keeps drawing me in every time I look at the box.

Also let me know your highest score because I apparently am trash at this game, even though I really enjoy playing it. Have you scored in the top tier? Those must be some delicious fruits.
  
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
1951 | Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"A Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando. I just want to put there. All these movies that I’ve listed, including Casablanca, you have flavors, which I like it. Drama. Comedy. And again, we may argue back and forth about what is drama, what is a comedy, right? What is melodrama? The Room never did melodrama. The thing what I listed all the movies, they’re not melodrama, they are relate to real life. Streetcar Named Desire, for example, you have, my understanding was, the time the movie was made, the main characters, Brando and… He actually raped the girl. And they cut this on the movie. That’s my understanding, that it was part of the script. So this is again saying that Streetcar Named Desire give us some evidence that people were still cautious what we present in the big screen that certain ideas or situation between two people, you cannot do it. Today’s society, as you know, we go extra miles. The Room is perfect example. We show the nudity, we show the certain stuff, because I myself, I was struggling as a filmmaker, as a director, how I present the scene. Same, you see, if you look at Casablanca, a relationship between two main characters, how they, you see… I love it, black and white movies. Sometimes you can educate yourself that you don’t have to physically show it, sexuality, but it’s there because you can feel it. Now, just because of our culture, I decided to say, “Hey, we go extra miles.” And I was struggling with this. You see, I had talked to Greg. I don’t know if he remembered but I said, “Hey, okay, is it Johnny naked or not?” I said — and I was so frustrated — and I say, “Hell with everything because I don’t know how… I want to be real as much I can.” Even though people say… Remember, The Room, and is again, The Room is supposed to be play. People forget that; they are short-handed. [laughs] I don’t want to be too negative, but that’s the history of The Room. So I will say, originally I was supposed to… I wanted to put into play, but it didn’t come out right. Actually it come out better because more people can see it. That’s basically what happen."

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Ricki And The Flash (2015)
Ricki And The Flash (2015)
2015 | Comedy, Drama
6
5.0 (3 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The iron lady goes all iron maiden
Meryl Streep has always been one of our most reliable actresses. The three-time Oscar winner has starred in some iconic films, from Sophie’s Choice to The Devil Wears Prada and from Kramer vs Kramer to The Iron Lady, she can turn her hand to almost anything.

However, her latest role sees the fan favourite star as an ageing rock star who must heal the voids in her family after an incident. But does Ricki & the Flash do Meryl proud?

The film sees Streep play Ricki Rendazzo, aka Linda, a musician playing in the pubs of California, estranged from her family after years of absence. Suddenly, she’s thrown back into the mix after her daughter Julie, played superbly by Meryl’s real-life offspring Mamie Gummer, faces a personal crisis.

Starring alongside the Academy Award winner is the ever-reliable Kevin Kline as Linda’s ex-wife Pete. His scenes with her show real chemistry and the relationship they share is completely believable.

Having Streep’s daughter on the screen with her was a masterstroke by director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) and they share more than just a familiar face. Their mannerisms are completely in sync and match up together in more ways than any acting class could have taught.

Unfortunately, the clichéd script and predictable story really let Ricki & the Flash down. There’s not an ounce of originality here, despite the great casting, and the ending is signposted not only in the film itself, but in the trailers – the cardinal sin of movie marketing.

What is a pleasant surprise however is Meryl’s cracking vocal performance. With her belting out hits like Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance and Pink’s Get the Party Started left, right and centre, the soundtrack is positively sizzling and a real highlight throughout the film.

Nevertheless, Demme’s usual visual flair, for which he won an Oscar back in 1991 with The Silence of the Lambs, is nowhere to be found here. The cinematography is inoffensive enough but lacking in any real punch, a disappointment given the film’s bursting energy.

I feel that Streep too is aware of these shackles and her characterisation, whilst capable, lacks the finesse of some of her other work. Let’s remember though, that Streep at her worst is many other actresses at their best.

Overall, Ricki & the Flash is a capable film led by a pleasant and inoffensive cast. Meryl Streep is always reason enough to give any movie a go, but this somewhat muddled comedy drama is towards the bottom end of her work.

https://moviemetropolis.net/2015/09/06/the-iron-lady-goes-all-iron-maiden-ricki-the-flash-review/
  
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
1992 | Drama
The cast (2 more)
The screenplay
The location
On paper, a film about a bunch of real estate salesman sitting around an office insulting each other and going to any length to get the customer to buy what they are selling may sound boring and uninteresting.

Let m tell you, this film is far from that and is one of my favorite films of all time. If you even put aside the stellar cast of Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and Alec Baldwin (best role of his career), the screenplay by David Mamet (based on his play) is so full of rich, entertaining words, you can't believe what you are hearing.


Some of the battles between the salesman trying to get their sale or insulting each other after something goes awry have to be heard to be believed. The Alec Baldwin speech is really great; however, the one I always remember is the lashing Al Pacino gives Kevin Spacey when Spacey says the wrong thing.


Unbelievable!


I highly recommend as I have seen many times and enjoy even more every time.


  
AP
A Perfect Manhattan Murder
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Nic and Nigel Martini are back in Manhattan for the Broadway premier of their friend Patty’s play. While Nic is happy to see Patty and their mutual friend Harper, she is less enthused about seeing Harper’s husband Dan, a Broadway critic who is as boorish in real life as his reviews are harsh. The morning after the play’s premier, Dan is found dead, and the police quickly zero in on Harper as their prime suspect. Nic is certain that her friend is innocent, but can she prove it?

Once again, we are treated to a fantastically fun story. We get to know Dan and meet the suspects before he dies, which means we don’t waste any time diving into questioning suspects. I didn’t see the ending coming at all. The characters are a little on the thin side, but I don’t mind. The quips and banter flies fast here, and I was constantly laughing. This series continues to be a wonderful homage to The Thin Man.

Read my full review at <a href="http://carstairsconsiders.blogspot.com/2017/11/book-review-perfect-manhattan-murder-by.html">Carstairs Considers</a>.
  
CM
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Disclaimer: I received an e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

Jake Matthews is a US Marshall, and a damn good one, at that. However, a notorious killer by the name of Max Baxter has chosen Jake, by name, to play a part in his little games. Max turned himself in to Jake after the FBI failed to catch him on their own, and now, four years later, he's broken himself out of prison and is on the run again. And guess who's invited to catch him this time?

This story is a real attention-grabber within the first couple chapters. It's also a rather exciting cat-and-mouse game, as we bounce back and forth between Jake and Max, learning about each one from his own eyes as well as from the other's. Max is back at his usual tricks, but he's directly involving Jake for this one, and it will take all the Marshal's training, intelligence, and cunning to not only outsmart the killer but save his victims, as well. Will he succeed, or will Jake be yet another notch on Max's belt? You'll have to find that out for yourself.

4 stars
  
The Quiet Year
The Quiet Year
Gorgeous illustrations (5 more)
No prep needed
Good inspiration for post apocalyptic settings
Great first TTRPG
Cheap! ($6)
Replayable for different communities
Fantastic Post-Apocalyptic Story Gaming
Absolutely gorgeous single-session GMless story centered game. Players must navigate a year in a community after an apocalypse. Each week is represented by a card from a standard 52 card deck, each suit a season.
   When a card is drawn it introduces a new choice to be made by a player about your community, with limited organised discussions about these choices replicating failures in communications in real communities. This choice is then represented on a map of your community that you build as you play.
    This game is absolutely brilliant as a first TTRPG, a first session to build the setting for a post apocalyptic game in another system or just as a standalone one shot. It only takes one 2-3 hour session, some paper, pens, 6 sided dice, a standard deck of playing cards and the PDF. The questions it asks prompt very interesting ideas about your community to build somewhere that feels alive and fully fleshed out. A great buy!
  
The Gingerbread Train: Santa&#039;s Secret Gift
The Gingerbread Train: Santa's Secret Gift
Ann Tarpley Fancesco | 2017 | Children
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
What a cute book. I enjoyed it. The story is written well. The storyline is made for children. Though they may need a little help. Children will enjoy this book. It genders natural and that good. The age group may be set for 4 years old and up.

The pictures are done well. Pictures are someone telling the story. As I was reading, I wonder if Matthew was dreaming or if it became real. The story set on Matthew mostly but his sister does come into play.

How the story goes makes you on a journey a bit. Will Matthew see a gingerbread train? What is so sweet and lovely about it? I enjoyed looking at this train. The train seems to come in the afternoon and only when I child is there. How this story ends is lovely and done well. Though I wonder what happens after the holiday.

If your children enjoy trains and love playing with them. This book is good for them. Parents can read the book to their young children. Children can read it if they choose to do so.