The Night Clerk (2020) - Movie Review

This is something I’m likely going to get into more detail with a review I can already see approaching early next year, but just to get it out in the open: I don’t have an inherent problem with non-autistic people playing those on the spectrum. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Asa Butterfield, and Ben Affleck aren’t on the spectrum (far as I know, at least), and yet their respective depictions in Mary & Max, X+Y, and The Accountant still resonated with me.

Being able to depict something that close to my heart in a truly empathetic way means the world to me, regardless of the status of the actor doing it, and while I get the problem with the lack of IRL autistic representation in these movies (it’s been happening for so long, it’s become the norm to the detriment of working autistic actors), that on its own isn’t the issue. It just adds salt to the wound when the film’s understanding of the condition is already as fucked as it is in films like The Night Clerk.

Ready Player One (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: In the year 2045, most of the world has been become desolate and most of the population spends their time inside the OASIS, a virtual reality containing pretty much anything a person could want. However, with the death of OASIS co-creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance), a new game has been established. Before his death, Halliday placed hidden items within the OASIS. Whoever finds all of the items first not only gets major bragging rights, but also becomes the official owner of the OASIS itself. As adventurous teen Wade 'Parzival' Watts (Tye Sheridan) tries to hunt down the items, and corporate CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) sets out to seize the OASIS for himself, the race is on to find Halliday's Easter Egg and both the virtual world and the real world hang in the balance.

Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse (2015) - Movie Review

No matter how menacing, influential or popular a creature is, there will always come a time when they will officially stop being scary. We’ve seen it happen with vampires and werewolves and now, with how obnoxiously prevalent they are, zombies have joined them. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they can’t be used in stories anymore; just that the method has to be tweaked ever so slightly. Where vampires and werewolves used to be monstrous creatures of the night, they have now become more humanised and treated with the character in mind more than previously. Zombies, on the other hand, are pretty much reduced to being scenery. They are nameless, faceless cannon fodder that the audience can feel guiltless for seeing killed off in bloody fashion, all the while mainly contributing the setting for a story. Hell, the most popular zombie-related media right now, The Walking Dead, is far less about the zombies themselves and more about their presence and prevalence affects the few human survivors and how they interact and conflict with each other. What I’m getting at with all this is, even with my own still-lingering affinity for the genre, I’m not expecting too much from today’s film.