Relaxer (2020) - Movie Review

This film doesn’t seem like much when explaining the plot as it is. Set in the final days of 1999, it’s the story of Abbie (Joshua Burge), who is given a challenge by his brother Cam (David Dastmalchian): Get past level 256 in Pac-Man. He is not allowed to leave his apartment, or even his couch, until it’s completed. For the entirety of the film’s run time, we never leave this apartment or Abbie’s side. I know that the prevalence of Twitch streamers nowadays somewhat makes the idea of watching someone else play video games for hours on end seem plausible, but does that make this watchable? Well, in the hands of writer/director/editor Joel Potrykus, more so than you’d think.

Pixels (2015) - Movie Review

I may not be as frequent a gamer as I used to be, but these square eyes aren’t something that have faded since then; I may suck when going against other players, but I still have a large piece of heart dedicated to the bit-bound medium. However, this is another one of those ideas where people actively attempt to create a Reese’s-style combination: People love video games and people love movies. Now, over the last several years, games have become increasingly cinematic thanks to the works of Hideo Kojima and the staff at Naughty Dog, among others, and have yielded some truly amazing results. Transferring the other way, not so much, as I’ve discussed before in great detail. So, with the idea of a video game-centric movie not exactly having the best pedigree to support itself, how do you think it’ll work when backed by the likes of Happy Friggin’ Madison