Mafia Mamma and Furies (S1)

Shows with organized crime.

Mafia Mamma

In this comedy, a regular American housewife (played by Toni Collette) is invited to the funeral of her only relative, a distant grandfather in Italy and subsequently inherits the name and boss position of her mafia house. Stereotypical mafia funny business ensues, making it hard to take any of them seriously when this regular lady, who is more focused on getting laid for most of the film, literally does everything better than them. I suppose I'm not the intended audience for this one. It was fine, but not recommended.

Furies

In this French series, a regular student vows vengeance against the crime families main enforcer, the titular "Fury", when her parents are gunned down. Nice premise with interesting complications, funny interludes and some decent action scenes. Definitely entertaining but the main cast wears layers of plot armor. Sure, character x is a bad ass but if you are standing in a narrow corridor I expect you to get hit (or at least grazed, or maybe just have a hair snap) by automatic gun fire from your enemies. Works much better when both parties forget to bring firearms. Still a pretty fun ride, and I'll be watching season 2 when it comes out.

All Quiet on the Western Front and American Primeval (S1)

High death count: check!

All Quiet on the Western Front

This German World War I flick focuses on a young German lad who joins the war and how he and his buddies quickly go from "yeah, this'll be great" to "WTF am I doing here" in the trenches against the French. Nice cinematography and effects that really focus on the dirty and sometimes insane business that is war. It goes a bit long but we were definitely entertained throughout the film. My only problem is I couldn't really feel for the protagonist and his crew because they all chose to be there.

American Primeval (S1)

In this (so far) one season, six episode Western, a woman and her child need to get from point A to point B without dying of dysentery, being caught by bounty hunters, scalped by the natives, ambushed by brigands, or fighting against a Mormon army. What? Yes, you heard me. This really portrays the Wild West as super wild with high levels of violence and at least one mandatory death per episode. The script is pretty wild too, with characters passing the idiot ball around regularly. If you don't think about the "(s)he should have done [something smart] instead", you can give this one a try.

August 2024: Countries clash... in the Olympics!

We're more than half way through the games now but prior to the start Israeli athletes had been threatened a repeat of Munich. Israel's response was to take out some of the leaders of their known enemies and just get on with it. Meanwhile in the USA someone had tried to off Trump who is running for President again, but it was current President Biden who pulled out from running for his second term, finally understanding that he might be too old.

That shooter wasn't Olympics worthy unlike this pair (Kim Yeji and Yusuf Dikec).

Not all is well in the Olympics though with complaints ranging from uncomfortable beds to the Seine river (used for some swimming events) being so dirty its causing athletes to fall sick. Russian troops in Ukraine know all about bad water as they have a shortage of it, resorting to drinking whatever they can find. To be fair they might be dying too quickly to care about it anyway, but are still gaining ground regardless. On the water itself it's still humorous that the Russian navy is getting sunk by a country without one.

Some of this is made possible by drones. These things can do everything it seems, from spying on Olympic soccer training to killing helicopters. The UK has recognized the threat at has made an anti-drone laser system (which probably doesn't work well in fog, snow or rain but neither would flying drones). The crafty Ukranians solution is just to shotgun them from an old Yak-52. On a random tangent, I checked if someone made a laser to kill mosquitos and the answer is yes, but it currently isn't practical. Damn.

Meanwhile more bad news for Ukraine as Hungary is upset Ukraine is blocking their oil (despite them blocking aid to Ukraine for over two years) and NATO has also deemed Ukraine too corrupt to join them. Perhaps Russia's joint venture with China to establish a moon base, possibly in Mare Tranquillitatis Pit if they can claim it first, might take some heat off? With the ISS being retired in a few years that would be a pretty big achievement.

Not sure how China plans to bank roll this given their current financial troubles, but maybe it involves assimilating the Tibetans? They've still got around 10 years to work it out anyway. Not sure the way Thailand is handling their finance would be the answer. They're simply handing out digital money to citizens!

Trigger Warning and Under Paris

Movies with strong female leads?

Trigger Warning

When a military level operative (Jessica Alba) returns home due to her father's suspicious death, she decides to investigate for herself. There is a fair bit of action but the quality is only of ho-hum level, putting it just slightly better than the story itself. The part that most annoyed me but also made me laugh is just how "stealthy" the main character is (she isn't) but no one can freaking see her if she crouch walks apparently, regardless of what she is wearing and/or if they're staring right at her. Not really recommended unless you want to be "triggered". :P

Under Paris

Due to pollution (I guess?) sharks are mutating / evolving and one huge shark finds its way into the Seine and as per the title says "Under Paris". While the CGI and premise are ok, the plot details and acting aren't the best. I really hate the animal activists / environmentalists lens on the whole thing as the "saving the shark" thing is what causes the most problems and gets people killed. That said, I do like that the shark isn't the "bad guy". Sure it eats, defends itself and can get mad but its all usually reactionary to something people did (usually our -inept- strong female characters). I also think this movie features the "cleanest garbage in ocean" shot I've ever seen and I really enjoyed the ending. Even with all that I'm still not recommending this one as the bad still outweighs the good.

The Ice Road and All the Light We Cannot See

Two conditions you probably shouldn't be driving in? :P

The Ice Road

When an accident gets some people trapped in a mine, it is up to down to a few truckies including one played by Liam Neeson to sign up for a dangerous drive against time across a frozen lake while hauling a heavy load of equipment to save the trapped men before their air runs out. Since the writers figured that was too boring, they also decided to make it an action movie which results in some very poor brawling sequences, poor effects, and a questionable plot that is teeming with inconsistencies. It's not very good but it might still appeal for people that like watching big rigs doing things they shouldn't normally be doing.

All the Light We Cannot See

This four episode mini-series follows a blind French girl and a German soldier who have a shared passion for radios during World War II. While there are good sets, acting, effects and an interesting enough story, there's a heavy use of flashbacks (*bum-bummmm noise*) and in some parts you can actually feel the plot armor on some characters. Had this been told chronologically I think I would have liked it better. I mean, all the bits are filmed anyway for the audience but how they are revealed is mostly when someone asks a character about their past. Instead of having a plot that spans however many years, the entire story (the part that matters where all the "stakes" are) just takes place in a few days.

Only in occasions where someone is discovering the past through unrelated characters should flashbacks be considered, like in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Anyway, that's just my little nitpick. It's still enjoyable as it is.

The Walking Dead: Dead City and Daryl Dixon

While the main Walking Dead series is done and dusted, its off shoots are still shuffling around.

Dead City

Taking place years after the original series we find Maggie (Lauren Cohan) tracking down a most unusual ally, Negan, (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to save her son. For those who haven't seen the Walking Dead, rejoice - you don't really need to as the plot explores not just what's happening in zombie land but also the continuing tension between the two main characters. Alas, for those who have seen the original that part is a bit of a rehash at this point but it's the main draw for the show and works well. There's some new scenic locations for randomly spawning zombies to appear from and its genuinely entertaining enough to warrant a second season. Thumbs up! Hopefully they find a new song to play on their fiddle moving forward though.

Daryl Dixon

My favorite character gets title billing for his own spin-off!? Hell yeah! Through "a bunch of bad decisions" Daryl (Norman Reedus) finds himself in France because the only thing scarier than a zombie is a French zombie! Seriously though, this series introduces more variant deads and a lovely countryside to slay them in. That's cool and all but story wise Daryl survives many-a-time through epic luck and plot armor me thinks, while tasked with the worst possible plot combination: baby sitting and escorting a child somewhere far away. There are some nice call backs and interesting ideas being fostered here, and hopefully season two lets our main character have a bit more agency and more skill reliant than counting on miracles. Thumbs up again, but if I had to compare these two I'd say Dead City is currently the stronger show.

Decluttering Day 16: Unused bag hooks and an equally unused (possibly expired) foot care kit.

A Plague Tale: Innocence

Awesome story telling.

It is a very trying time for the De Rune family in France, with teenager Amicia having to protect her younger brother Hugo not only from the inquisition that is after them, but also from the English invaders and from a plague of hungry, yet light fearing, rats in the region. Due to being kids armed only with a sling, you are not going to be able to win any face to face fights here meaning this is mainly a stealth game.

They are very, very sneaky.

However, there is a LOT of killing here - especially as your projectiles become more and more deadly. While there is usually a non-violent or "good" approach to many of the puzzles I found it quite liberating when I could finally start killing all the bastards after the children. The rat puzzles are great too (not too hard) and the story and voice acting are really what hooked me into the game. Stay away only if you dislike stealth or animal cruelty. For everyone else, I highly recommend this. Five ignifers out of five.

Ironcast

A steampunk match-three roguelike.

France and England are at war, but to make things fun they are fighting using steampunk mecha and as the pilot of one of these it is up to you to go on missions to take out enemy armor and ultimately the boss... via tile matching. Base tiles give you either ammo, energy, coolant or repair and filling up your reserves let you do various things on your turn such as fire, power up shields, run, etc.

Still a large element of luck as usual.

In between missions you can upgrade your mechs systems and gain abilities through exp points but if you die, prepare to start from (almost) scratch. Yes, its a roguelike but the further in the campaign you go the more campaign unlocks you receive meaning you can start with different pilots, mechs and upgraded stats. For such a simple game I had quite a lot of fun with this one and actually do recommend it for idle or non-gamers as it is super simple, yet quite addictive. I also quite like the France boss theme so I'm scoring: two and a half shields out of five.

Insight: You can chain diagonally and always kill enemies if you can for their salvage (unless you are going to lose). Also, its worth spending to upgrade so that you last longer through the campaign. Make it to the boss and you'll probably have enough to unlock some campaign stuff even if you do get killed!

Eurovision 2021

As usual I'm posting late about this again, but at least it wasn't Covid-cancelled this year! In fact, it has returned strong with some "interesting" dance moves, sparkly people, religious connotations, and a whole lot of eye candy. I'm pretty sure the Italian winners would also fit into that category for some people.

Stefania from Greece wins the eye candy prize.

My special mentions go to team Iceland and the Finland rock #joiners, as well as France and the Black Mamba band from Portugal either of whom I would have been happy to see win. Oh well, maybe my picks will do better next year! :P

Civ VI: King of the Donkeys

[Part of the Civilization VI story]

In the beginning, there were donkeys and barbarians. Some of those barbarians decided to follow me, the great King Gilgamesh to fight the other nearby barbarians while others decided to follow women instead! What an insult! There in the West we found our first neighbor, a Queen Victoria who dared to offer us tea - so with my army of donkey powered war carts, we took control of London sending her fleeing to the nearby village of Sheffield.

Behold, the most dangerous unit at the beginning of time!

Hoping to secure peace, she then agreed to ally with us to fight her Northern neighbor Catherine de Medici and her French folk. With their warriors and scouts unable to stop my donkeys, Paris and La Rochelle quickly fell at which time I returned to capture Sheffield and their so called Queen. With their cities now flying my banner and both trouble makers sent to my donkey-harem, my legions swept to the Northeast where we would face our most difficult challenge yet... India and their elephants!

Insight: There are many ways to win this game, I'm going for the most boring: world domination! If you want a tale of how better rulers fared, be sure to check out the succession game on Time to Loot! :)

Assassin's Creed: Unity

More RPG, more Pay to Win!

This time around we follow the would-be assassin Arno (and friends, if played co-op) as he awkwardly leaps, clambers and struggles to jump into the windows of Paris during the French Revolution. The city, which is packed to the brim with NPC crowds, is massive and well detailed, especially the building interiors. Arno himself is almost fully customizable in gear (think RPG type games) and attire and his story line is pretty decent.

Can't do away with the hood, no sir.

Alas, all that hard work is mostly undone by a number of issues - the first and foremost being greed. Like any Assassin's Creed game, there are a multitude of things to collect such as chests. This time around, they come in four colors: silver (open), red (locked), blue (for those who bought the DLC), and gold (pay to win). That's right. PAY TO WIN.

Obviously that hard curbed my usual kleptomania as by default, I cannot clear the map if I don't pay to win. Even the locked chests have their own problem in that they are inaccessible until you skill up in lock picking, but by the time you do you've probably got Cafe's already generating enough Francs that you can ignore them.

Also problematic are the controls, where the previously single parkour key was divided into "parkour up", "parkour down", and "jump into window / parkour forward". Due to how the map is created I understand why they needed such a system, but a more elegant solution would have simply been a single key that switches between those states. For me, this made Arno behave like a psychotic monkey which made it harder to evade gunfire.

Oh yes, pretty much every one has guns now - and Arno is a shit swordsman. He's the first assassin who cannot counter kill, instead relying on multiple strikes to end an opponent. Dude, if you can't kill a dude by hitting him once with a sword, you probably should stick to guns. Again, I can tell this was a poor design decision - because RPGs traditionally let you hit things a lot before they die.

As a result - do you remember those awesome times when any of the previous AC heroes could just walk into a literal army of enemies and come out on top? Well Arno can't do that. At some point you need to run or die. By default this makes him the worst fighter ever and just makes him even less fun to play since his attire is more heroic than he is.

All up, AC: Unity is not a -bad- game, but it's nowhere near as fun as its predecessors. I give it 2.5 pisspots out of 5 and only recommend it for die hard Creed fans. For everyone else, pick any of the earlier games for more fun.

Versailles

Magnificent debauchery.

Centered on the rise of King Louis XIV (played by George Bladgen) this series had some spectacular settings and production values, provided you make it through the very strange opening episode. The locations, outfits, and props are all fantastic. The acting is good, and the plot is decent though occasionally contrived.

Intrigue, opulence and a lot of nudity and sex are the main stay of the show - though there are a fair number of short action bits throughout. There are characters to cheer for, to hate, and in Louis' case both.

Nice hair, fantastic costumes and settings.

The show made me laugh and it made me cry, and while it is definitely not for everyone it was pretty good for me. That ending though, blargh! Give it a try if you want something a little different.

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Hunting the most dangerous prey.

This French film follows a knight (Samuel Le Bihan) and his native American companion (Mark Dacascos) as they hunt the beast of Gevaudan. Story wise, from a high enough point, it is good - as are the martial arts action segments and the beast (when it eventually shows up). That said there are a lot of issues with it too, the main one being pacing.

Who the heck wrote this?

Especially at the start - it just drags. Too many characters with speaking lines and weak actors who don't need to be there, an unnecessary love story subplot involving strange facial expressions, and general filler. Yep. It's like they have a good movie, but said "we need x more minutes" and just piled it on with lousy content which is a pity.

Not one I can really recommend but if you are feeling in the mood for a B grade foreign semi-action film this one might take your liking. I give it one and a half agents of Rome out of five.

El Grande - Big Box Edition

You can't be the King, but you can rule!

I've had the El Grande - Big Box for awhile now and I think I've finally had enough plays of this territory control game to give it a decent review. The game play is simple enough, first every one places an "initiative" card if you like which determines who gets to act first. Higher numbers trump lower numbers, but lower numbers gain more troops than higher numbers.

Afterwards you pick from a small selection of actions to take to best conquer as much of Spain as you can while simultaneously blocking the other players. The King makes this interesting as you can only deploy in areas adjacent to him (or the tower) but his region itself is taboo and cannot be altered in any way.

It can have a problem of a runaway winner though, as I saw recently where I almost lapped my opponents on the scoreboard.

It's a pretty big board.

Of the expansions we've only played Grand Inquisitor and Colonies which adds France, Africa and America to the board opening up the options for points gaining and makes for a good "alternate" game play. This and the base game are good fun, and I can easily recommend them to competitive gamers.

Tales of the Blight: Assassins

[Part of my Dragon Age: Origins play through. Spoilers ahead!]

With the castle clear we were finally free to see Arl Eamon, still in a coma thanks to Loghain's poison. His wife Isolde was obviously not on speaking terms with me, so it was up to Ban Teagan to suggest I go look for some sacred ashes that might be able to cure him. That was actually the reason most of his knights were away, they were all on a grail ... erm... ash quest. Deciding that maybe one of their knights can do that we go off to do other things (small skirmishes) first like helping some refugees against darkspawn, templars against undead, and Bannorn soldiers against Loghain's troops. Then we walk into an ambush!

Look out for the counter-kills!

A pretty decent ambush with a pretty lure, a good number of skilled enemies and a bunch of well placed traps. Unfortunately for them, my party was simply better. After beating them up I question their leader, an elf assassin named Zevran about who sent him. He openly admits that it was Loghain. Actually he's a pretty funny guy. I decide to let him live by offering him a different job - assassinating Loghain. He refuses because he's scared. Pity. That means he is also useless. After many hours of torture I feed what's left of him and his buddies to Quickly then continue on.

That night Leliana confides that she is actually being hunted by a past acquaintance in Orlais (France?) and that she was an assassin. She also kisses me, despite knowing what Morrigan and I get up to. The next day, what a surprise! Another ambush. Those hunters from Orlais are kind of annoying, so despite Leliana's protests I execute the captives after we get all the information we need from them. The important one being that their employer is in Denerim.

Dead Island Riptide: The Glory of Destruction

[Part of the Dead Island Diary]

Dr. Kessler failed to mention that the church was in the middle of the damned swamp and teeming with zombies. Maybe they were religious zombies? Anyway, after doing what we do best the rest of the team (minus a few who decided to stay at the fishing village) showed up to accompany us through the horrible tunnels. Only there was a slight hitch - the tunnels were flooded. Fortunately one of the guys knew of where to get a mud pump to clear that out. The mud pump was in a distant workshop, obviously overrun by the walking dead.

Luckily Juris joined us at this point and while he was seriously underlevelled the extra hand came in extremely handy since the game decided to trip some balls at this point with disconnects. In the end I found myself alone, marching through the swamp while the others delivered the pump and helped some french guy with some fuel cans. Ofcourse the french guy tried to pull a fast one on us after we helped him out, but we "convinced" him of the error of his ways. By suffocating him.

Back at the church the pump was put in place but the noise of the machinery would attract a lot of unwanted attention, so we were first sent by Colonel Hardy to get some supplies from a downed chopper nearby - specifically a crates full of mines and a pair of miniguns. Juris was pleased. Once our very significant defenses were up the pump was activated and the zombies began streaming in... or trying to. Between the explosions, flying body parts, burning corpses, and heavy gatling fire the reanimated were soon put back into the marsh in tiny pieces. It was glorious.

"Hasta la Vista, baby."

Le Le Le Le Le Le Bombe!

Part of my XCOM: Defenders of the Earth series!

The aliens have planted a bomb in France. Why? No idea, but it's up to XCOM to stop them! This time I sent Panicman with my other rostered rookies, Erik the Viking, Big Mike and Jill the Airhead. The area, two roads with a small convenience store in between with a warehouse at the back, was littered with alien bomb generators that power the bomb which my team could diffuse as they advanced, delaying the bomb's ultimate explosion. Yep. Aliens are stupid.

Counter-Terrorists Win!

At a glance I figured the bomb would be at the furthest point away from me so Panicman and company charged up immediately towards the loading bay of the warehouse at the back, ignoring the convenience store altogether. A squad of the little alien dudes got startled as they approached, taking cover in a parked truck and the warehouse proper. It didn't matter though since a lucky grenade from Big Mike blew up the wall two of them were hiding behind, killing them AND a third one that had mind melded with one of the exploded ones.

A grenade from Airhead and good shooting from the Viking eliminated two more then Panicman took care of the stragglers (point blank) and disarmed the bomb just as incoming x-rays appeared. No not fish, that's what they call the aliens. Thin men. A whole bunch of them. Overwatch fire injured two of them and Panicman, who deftly evaded being shot at through a skylight, took cover and finished one off, Big Mike shooting across the rooftops to slay the other.

Two more thin men showed up, one blasting Erik through the chest - killing him outright. The other exchanged fire and wounds with Mike, while Airhead tried to approach to capture it - but fell short on range, so I told her to switch to her autorifle. She then promptly missed every shot from 10 meters away. Good thing Panicman was on the ball, eliminating the thin man from the roof as he jumped down with overwatch fire and then lobbing a grenade at the last guy in a cold calculated fashion.

Mission complete and promotions all around! Ironically Airhead, who killed nothing this round with her gun and missed every shot was given the consignment of... SNIPER. I'm surprised the aliens haven't already won actually.