October 2020 - Media Binge

In October of 2020, I played the following:

One Night Ultimate Werewolf (9)	5-Minute Mystery (3)	That's Pretty Clever! (3)	Alhambra: Designers' Edition – Mega Box (1)	Calico (1)	Carpe Diem (1)
The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game (1)	Concept (1)	Flight from Hall Mano (1)	Fort (1)	Hojo Pojo (1)	In the Year of the Dragon: 10th Anniversary (1)
Legendary Encounters: The X-Files Deck Building Game (1)	Love Letter (1)	Macaron (1)	Nemesis (1)	Point Salad (1)	The Quacks of Quedlinburg (1)
Rialto (1)	Roland Wright: The Dice Game (1)	Saboteur: The Mother Lode Bonus Pack (1)	Sushi Go Party! (1)	Takenoko (1)	Wingspan (1)

This Month's Winners

Carpe Diem - Honorable Mention This is one the better Feld games I've seen him release in the last 5 years, beating out Merlin and The Revolution of 1828. This game features ever-popular mechanism combo of polyomino tile-placement! In my opinion, one of Feld's greatest strengths as a designer is his ability to create interesting mechanisms through which players get to select the action(s) they take. Whether it's rolling dice and deciding how to use the #'s rolled, dropping cubes into a tower and selecting an action from those colors that emerge, to this game's use of pawn movement between tile locations along a pentagram-shaped movement track. This game is one of his lighter designs as far as pre-planning is concerned. You have many goals to pursue with most turns giving you just enough options to feel like no turn is ever really wasted. This not his best design but it is one I'll be keeping for the foreseeable future!

5-Minute Mystery - 3rd Place My wife and I really enjoy the earlier games in the 5-Minute franchise (i.e. Dungeon and Marvel) so when 5-Minute Mystery promised a similar experience with an element of deduction, I couldn't resist! This game is an excellent combination of "I Spy" challenges, real-time cooperation, and deduction. The components are excellent, including a bulky codex tool that really helps to sell the experience. I wish that the art cards you art meant to inspect as a team were a bit larger but, overall, this game is awesome!

Fort - 2nd Place This game has some interesting mechanisms at play with a ton of different card abilities that fills every round with tough and interesting choices. The artwork and color scheme are fun and light, really complimenting the silly theme of building a forth, eating pizza, and collecting toys. This game is a reworking of an earlier version called SPQF that we found very problematic. However, with addition development and improved visual elements, this game really shines!

The Quacks of Quedlinburg - 1st Place Quacks is a excellent game that we don't play enough. In this game, you are brewing a potion, throwing unique ingredients into your bag that you collect along the way, drawing ingredients from your bag to add to your cauldron in an effort to make the best potion possible! However, you have to be careful not too draw too many explosive ingredients (i.e. cherry bombs) as these will cause your cauldron to explode, limiting you access to points, new ingredients, and additional bonuses. I love this "push your luck" style game and highly recommend it as an excellent "fall-themed" game. It even comes with pumpkin tokens!

In October of 2020, I watched the following:

Save Yourselves! This was a quirky little indie film that came to our local independent theater. Save Yourselves! is a film about a couple of 30-somethings who decide to take a week off from social media and technology, retreating to a cabin only to discover an alien invasion has begun once they arrive. The aliens are silly, critter-like creatures with sticky spear tongue things that they use to drain anything containing ethanol. The ending of this movie is ambiguous and abrupt which I always hate but I had a fun time watching this couple react to the chaos around them so I'll give the ending a pass. This is worth streaming but I can't recommend spending any money outright to see it.

Wentworth: Season 8 This show is an excellent blend of drama and comedy, succeeding where I feel that Orange is the New Black failed to strike a balance. I am often shocked at how this show continues to push forward without characters you view as central to the narrative. They do any excellent job of creating villains and then breaking them down, making them sympathetic in a way you wouldn't think would be possible! Last season crushed me, this season made me excited for another.

Schitt's Creek: Season 6 Schitt's Creek is a show we discovered late and I'm glad that we did. Being able to binge most of the seasons before the last season aired allowed us to grow attached to the characters without any significant gap in time between seasons. The characters created by this cast are excellent. Everyone has something unique to contribute and I just love how perfectly this story plays out. The last episode is a bit cliche and I was surprised at how abrupt it ended without allowing the audience to really celebrate. You have a big event that is immediately followed by a farewell scene that leaves you feeling like "Oh... I guess that was it..." I love this show and I can see us rewatching it very soon. A definite highlight during the 2020 pandemic!

The Boys: Season 2 This season didn't leave me as excited as the first season but I really have to give credit to the writers for crafting a completely new storyline that only borrows characters and major themes from the original comic series. I was kinda bummed by a choice made mid-season with Black Noir but I'm sure the showrunners knew that they couldn't use him in the same way they did for the comics. I love this show and I love the comic. I highly recommend both to anyone who isn't easily offended or shocked. Pure gold!

Yes, God, Yes As my wife and I watched this, I said that there's just something I love about watching someone's strong religious upbringing compromised by their conflicting biological impulses. This film follows a young girl who becomes preoccupied with sex and self-stimulation only after these topics are introduced by her religious school community. She starts to realize that the people around her are not as innocent as they appear and this results in a fairly mild tailspin into her own sexual urges. This film is a watered down, PG version of what Saved! did far better. I enjoyed seeing Natalia Dyer in a property other than Stranger Things but I can't recommend it.

The Witches Everything about this film could be potentially traumatizing to a younger audience from the abrupt and unnecessary death of the main character's parents to the horrifying witch and mouse transformations. This is a film my wife had never seen so I wanted her to see what I was talking about. She agreed pretty strongly that the visuals were awful and some of the scenes in which the boy pleads with his grandmother to save him are incredibly sad! I will say that the practical effects are excellent and still hold up 30 years later! I am planning to watch the 2020 remake of The Witches soon but I can't imagine it's going to come anywhere close to the horrifying visuals featured in this 1990's classic!

The Lie This film follows a young girl (played by hit or miss Joey King) who assumedly pushes her friend off of a bridge to her death who must now, with the help of her separated parents, cover the entire ordeal up. My wife turned this film on while I was cooking dinner so I was not 100% engaged at first. However, as the film progressed, became more interested in it because of the excellent performances of Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos. The ending to this film is very unexpected and, in some ways, not entirely earned. I told my wife that it felt very much "off" tonally, almost as if this was an adaptation of a foreign film where the big reveal would feel less awkward because of the audience's limited cultural contextual understanding. Sure enough, my wife pulled up the info and shared that this was actually based on a German film called We Monsters. I was pretty proud of myself for calling that one. Not a great film but worth a lazy Sunday watch!

Terminator: Dark Fate It took me a long time to get around to watching this one. I've enjoyed all of the films in the Terminator franchise and I think this one got a bad reputation when it was first released. There are some interesting ideas in this film from the augmented human sent to protect the main protagonist to the new hybrid terminator design that combines the tech used from the first two films. Linda Hamilton's return had its highs and lows. She came off a bit strong at times. I didn't really care about the new protagonist and she felt like the studio's attempt to draw in a new demographic. This 120-minute film felt like it dragged on for 3 hours. I have no idea where this film fits into the franchise given the big changes to the timeline that occurs. I won't recommend this film but I also won't discourage anyone from checking it out.

Hubie Halloween This was the best we could come up with for Halloween night and only because I was too tired to walk upstairs and pull out a DVD/Bluray from our horror collection. Adam Sandler's Hubie Halloween is a lot like Kevin Smith's Jay & Silent Bob Reboot; it serves as a self-referential, "greatest hits" of his previous films. I'm not going to spend too much time talking about this film. It's a fine watch for families. The humor is suitable for kids and often feels like it was written specifically for that kind of audience. It's forgettable in the most forgivable way...

In October of 2020, I read the following...

The Punisher: Volume 2 - Kitchen Irish This second volume follows Frank as he wages war on various Irish mobsters after suffering injuries during an accidentally bombing in a cafe. This volume introduced a few interesting characters: Finn Cooley (a man with his face falling off due to self-inflicted bomb-related injuries), Maginty (a ruthless black Irishman) and Napper French (an old man with a legendary reputation for dismembering bodies and making them disappear). This story seemed to focus more on the various mob bosses fighting over an inheritance than it did Frank Castle. In fact, Frank's motivation (i.e. the diner bombing) seemed kind of shallow as there was far less focus on the influence of his past trauma on his agenda with the Italians. I say this as if being bombed while eating in a diner isn't cause enough to wage war on anyone... I'm loving this series and can't wait to read the next volume, Mother Russia!