9.75 While many of my favorite video games throughout history tell stories that evoke emotional reactions through character development, plot twists, and touching moments, these are all areas in which video games are largely following in the footsteps of other media such as movies and novels which have been around for much longer. But as…
I’ve been reflecting a lot lately about how lucky I was to grow up at the time that I did. Born in 1994, I was raised at a time when Disney was hitting its greatest streak and Pixar was changing the course of animated film forever (with a bit of healthy competition from DreamWorks). I…
***1/2 Though it starts as a typical (yet hilariously sharp) anti-corporate political comedy, Sorry to Bother You morphs into one of the most surprising and fascinating movies I’ve seen in years. Curated by ’90s “gangsta rapper” Boots Riley (of The Coup fame) in his directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You never loses sight of its…
**1/2 We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men are created equal, war never changes, and Ant-Man is the runt of the Marvel universe. Armed with a script more bogged down in sci-fi nonsense than The Phantom Menace and its midi-chlorians, Ant-Man and the Wasp is the worst Marvel movie I’ve seen. Is it…
**** Few artists in the history of modern music are as diverse as David Bowie was. Most great artists are able to evolve over the course of their careers; Bowie did it over the course of singular albums. Compare the grounded sentimentality of “Be My Wife” with the extraterrestrial wail of “Warszawa.” For the uninitiated,…
***** I can’t remember what I was expecting when I went into Is This the Life We Really Want?, Roger Waters’ first studio release in my lifetime. While I’ve been a casual Pink Floyd fan since I first got into music, they’ve never really been one of my favorites. Often, I find myself gravitating toward…
8.25 At turn of the century, following the runaway success of Nintendo’s Super Mario 64, the gaming landscape was rife with 3D platformers eager to stand out among their peers. Coming in a couple of years late to the party, Insomniac released Spyro the Dragon for the Playstation in 1998, building off of what had…
10 Since great gaming began in earnest with the launch of the NES, there have been many titles ascribed a legendary status. But few receive universal praise. Final Fantasy VI is one of those games. The lineage of Final Fantasy runs deep in my family. From the first moment my brother, my cousin and I…
9 No developer was able to drum up as much anticipation and praise for their blockbuster releases last gen quite like Rockstar. With a lineup of star-studded releases from Grand Theft Auto V to Red Dead Redemption to L.A. Noire, the company was hitting it out of the park every time they stepped up to…
8 With just about every one of Nintendo’s console releases, there has been an era-defining Mario title to accompany it. The original NES was, in many ways, defined by Super Mario Bros. a game that significantly altered the fate of the industry. The N64, as flawed as it was in comparison to Sony’s disc-based PlayStation,…
The Soundtrack Online 