"When Marnie Was There" Review

by Alex Hill

4/5

"Anna" (Hailee Steinfeld) lives in a fog. Her isolation is shown and told matter-of-factly. An asthma attack, puberty and self-worth issues all come to a tipping point. A lot of Ghibli protagonists seem to have everything figured out before the story begins, all the more convenient for them to save the day. Anna can barely stand being alive in this state. She doesn't even know how to save herself.

Tell me if you've heard this one before: A person with an illness is advised to go to the country for the "fresh air", which conveniently allows the animators to draw pastoral scenes. This is not exactly treading new ground. It's pretty much how "The Secret World of Arrietty" and "My Neighbor Totoro" begin. Maybe this would be more of a problem for me if it weren't so damned charming.

"When Marnie Was There" is a familiar story told with warmth and sincerity. It could have been told with more clarity, but I also think uncertainty is at the heart of it all.


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Fave Things Of 2014: Part II

Part 1 of the list can be found HERE. This will conclude the main list, and then after this is the Grand Jury Prize.

Brace yourself: the nerd levels get critical from here on out:

5. DARK SOULS II

2014 in gaming was... Sonic Boom. It was Rambo. It was the clueless, lazy design of Assassin's Creed Unity. The disgraceful sound-design of Thief. The unplayable, unplaytested Master Chief Collection. The hollowed-out husk of a game that Destiny was supposed to be. The embarrassment of the Elder Scrolls Online. The toxic cynicism and entitlement of Watch_Dogs. The contempt for the human race that was The Walking Dead: Season 2.


2014 was Duck Dynasty: The Game.


We're not just talking about games that didn't live up to their hype; This is the year where the entire industry stopped trying. We've reached an event horizon where we're lucky if a game is barely functioning after a year and six patches.


And how did gamers react to this? And to the clear corruption and ineptitude infecting game reviews and news coverage that gives rave reviews and coverage to garbage? They saw all of these problems, and their solution was to... send threats to women. An actual conclusion reached by a frightening number of people is that everything wrong with games can be traced back to vaginas.


This hobby has never been uglier, emptier and more insulting to the people who keep it alive. This is as low as video games have been since the industry crashed. Roger Ebert and Jack Thompson were wrong about video games, but by God did we ever try to prove them right last year.

Anyway, I just think there's an irony to the fact that a Dark Souls game didn't hate its' audience as much as everything else last year.


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"The Wind Rises" Review

by Alex Hill

5/5

Via kazetachinu.jp

Sometimes I see a movie with my mom on a Tuesday night, because it's cheaper to go on Tuesdays. As a movie plays, there are usually interruptions. She'll ask who an actor is on screen, or for a snack or something, since I'm the one holding the food. For the two-hour running time of The Wind Rises, neither of us made a sound. Save for the crunching of popcorn behind us, and some laughter at a specific character design, a peculiar quiet descended on the audience. For the most part, we watched in silent reverence.


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