# Archer Avenue

> Movies, Reviews, Games & Thoughts


## Posts

- [Movie Review – Avatar: Fire and Ash](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-avatar-fire-and-ash/): Director: James Cameron Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang Year: 2025 I have seen the most visually stunning movie of the year. Every frame is a painting. Every effect is seamless. The 3D is used in ways that make you forget you’re wearing glasses. I have also seen a movie where the story could be summarized on a napkin. Where the characters remain archetypes instead of people. Where the environmental message is delivered with the subtlety of a brick through a window. Welcome to Avatar: Fire and Ash. James Cameron takes us to a new biome this
- [Rewatch – Fight Club](https://archeravenue.net/rewatch-fight-club/): Director: David Fincher Starring: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf Year: 1999 Original Rating: ★★★★★ New Rating: ★★★★☆ We were all 19 once. When I first saw Fight Club — on DVD, in my college dorm, surrounded by other guys who thought Tyler Durden was saying something important — it felt revolutionary. Anti-consumerism as religion. Masculinity as violence. The whole “reject society and find yourself through destruction” thing. We quoted it constantly. We thought we understood. Twenty-five years later. Hmm. The movie is still brilliantly made. Fincher’s craft is undeniable. The editing. The visual tricks. The way
- [My 2025 Top 10](https://archeravenue.net/my-2025-top-10/): It’s December. Time for the list. Every year I swear I won’t make a list and every year I make a list. Here we are. These are MY top 10 of 2025. Not the objectively best. Not the most important. The movies that meant something to me personally in a year that I will remember for. Various reasons. 10. Mickey 17 Bong Joon-ho doing Bong Joon-ho things. Weird sci-fi with class commentary. Pattinson playing two versions of himself. Not his best work but “not Bong’s best” is still better than most people’s career highlights. 9. Materialists Celine Song’s follow-up to
- [Game Review – Ghost of Yōtei](https://archeravenue.net/game-review-ghost-of-yotei/): Developer: Sucker Punch Productions Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment Platforms: PS5 Year: 2025 I didn’t expect to love Ghost of Tsushima as much as I did. Another open world game. Another map full of question marks. But then I played it and the wind guided me and the leaves scattered and the katana duels felt like actual duels and somewhere around the third act I realized I was deeply invested in Jin Sakai’s journey. Ghost of Yōtei is set three hundred years later. Different era. Different protagonist. A woman named Atsu whose story I won’t spoil but whose journey is. Look.
- [Series Review – Daredevil: Born Again](https://archeravenue.net/series-review-daredevil-born-again/): Creator: Matt Corman, Chris Ord Starring: Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Bernthal Year: 2025 The Netflix Daredevil was the best thing to come out of the Marvel TV experiment. Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock. Vincent D’Onofrio as Kingpin. That hallway fight in episode two of the first season. It was genuinely adult. Dark. Violent. The kind of superhero content that took itself seriously without being pompous. Disney brought it back. Disney Plus. New showrunners. Same cast. And. Look. It’s fine. It’s FINE. Cox and D’Onofrio slip back into their roles like no time has passed. The chemistry — that push
- [Movie Review – Materialists](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-materialists/): Director: Celine Song Starring: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal Year: 2025 Past Lives was one of my favorite movies of 2023. Celine Song directing her own script about love and timing and the lives we don’t live. Quiet. Devastating. The kind of movie that sits with you. Materialists is. Different. Less quiet. More obviously a comedy. But that same intelligence is there. That same attention to how people actually talk to each other. That same willingness to let scenes breathe. Dakota Johnson plays a matchmaker. A high-end one. She finds partners for wealthy New Yorkers who are too busy
- [Trailer Reaction – Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery](https://archeravenue.net/trailer-reaction-wake-up-dead-man-a-knives-out-mystery/): Daniel Craig doing the Southern accent again. That’s it. That’s the tweet. That’s the whole trailer reaction. I’m kidding. Kind of. But also that accent remains genuinely delightful. Craig was stuck playing stoic British spy for so long that watching him cut loose as Benoit Blanc — theatrical, flamboyant, enjoying himself — feels like a gift. Wake Up Dead Man is the third Knives Out movie and the trailer suggests Rian Johnson is doing religion this time. The setting appears to be a Catholic retreat or compound of some kind. There’s talk of faith and doubt. Someone is dead and
- [Movie Review – Nosferatu](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-nosferatu/): Director: Robert Eggers Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe Year: 2024 Robert Eggers is a madman and I mean that as the highest compliment. The Witch. The Lighthouse. The Northman. Each one more obsessively detailed than the last. Each one absolutely committed to its period and its vision. The man researches 17th century goat husbandry for authenticity. He builds actual Viking longhouses. He’s insane. Nosferatu is Eggers tackling the vampire myth. The original story. F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film. The shadow on the wall. The fingers. The rat-faced horror that defined what movie monsters could be. And it’s.
- [Book Review – You Are Not a Gadget (Re-read)](https://archeravenue.net/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget-re-read/): Author: Jaron Lanier Publisher: Vintage Books Year: 2010 I first read this book in 2011. Thought it was interesting but maybe a bit alarmist. The internet was fine. Social media was fun. What was this guy so worried about? Reading it again in 2025 I want to go back in time and slap myself. Jaron Lanier — who helped invent virtual reality, who was there at the beginning of Silicon Valley, who knows these people and these systems from the inside — saw everything coming. Not the specifics but the trajectory. He understood that the decisions we were making about
- [Rewatch – Interstellar](https://archeravenue.net/rewatch-interstellar/): Director: Christopher Nolan Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain Year: 2014 Original Rating: ★★★★★ New Rating: ★★★★☆ I cried the first time I saw this movie. The “don’t let me leave Murph” scene broke me. McConaughey watching twenty-three years of messages from his kids while tears stream down his face broke me again. I walked out of the theater convinced I’d seen one of the great films. Ten years later. Hmm. The first two hours of Interstellar are still incredible. The setup on the dying Earth. The launch. Miller’s planet with the massive waves. The time dilation
- [Series Review – Squid Game Season 3](https://archeravenue.net/series-review-squid-game-season-3/): Creator: Hwang Dong-hyuk Starring: Lee Jung-jae, Lee Byung-hun, Wi Ha-jun, Park Gyu-young Year: 2025 Squid Game Season 1 was a phenomenon. Biggest Netflix show ever. Costumes everywhere for Halloween. Think pieces about capitalism from people who’d never thought about capitalism before. Season 2 was. Less. The return felt obligatory. Gi-hun going back into the game felt forced. The new characters were less memorable than the originals. The social commentary became text instead of subtext. Season 3 is the conclusion. And it’s. Look. It’s brutal. It’s bleak. It’s exactly what you’d expect from Hwang Dong-hyuk who has been very clear that
- [Movie Review – Wicked: For Good](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-wicked-for-good/): Director: Jon M. Chu Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum Year: 2025 Fine. FINE. I saw Wicked Part One last year and had. Thoughts. Big production, talented cast, too long, probably didn’t need to be two movies. Standard Hollywood “split the finale” nonsense we’ve been doing since Harry Potter. Part Two is. Well. It’s the second half of the story. Elphaba goes full wicked. Glinda goes full good witch. They have a falling out. There’s a dramatic confrontation. “For Good” happens and everyone in the theater cries. Did everyone in the theater cry? Yes. Did I cry?
- [Game Review – Fable](https://archeravenue.net/game-review-fable/): Developer: Playground Games Publisher: Xbox Game Studios Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PC Year: 2025 The original Fable was one of my favorite games on the original Xbox. That weird British humor. The morality system where you’d grow horns if you were evil. Peter Molyneux promising features that didn’t exist. Good times. This reboot from Playground Games — the Forza Horizon people, weirdly enough — captures some of that magic. Not all of it. But some. The new Albion is gorgeous. Say what you want about open world fatigue, when a studio knows how to build environments it shows. Rolling hills.
- [Trailer Reaction – Avatar: Fire and Ash](https://archeravenue.net/trailer-reaction-avatar-fire-and-ash/): James Cameron is back. Again. Still. Forever. The third Avatar movie has a trailer now. Fire and Ash. Because we did water in the second one and now we’re doing fire. There will presumably be an earth-themed one eventually because Cameron is going to keep making these until the heat death of the universe. What’s in the trailer. Let me tell you. Blue people. More blue people. Different blue people — these ones apparently live near volcanoes or something because they’re gray-ish and look vaguely menacing. Jake Sully looking worried. Neytiri looking fierce. The kids from the last movie looking
- [Book Review – Orbital](https://archeravenue.net/book-review-orbital/): Author: Samantha Harvey Publisher: Grove Press Year: 2023 This is a quiet book about astronauts on the International Space Station. That’s all it is. Six people in orbit watching Earth turn beneath them. Their thoughts. Their conversations. The routines of life in space. It won the Booker Prize. People were confused. Where’s the plot? Where’s the drama? Where’s the conflict? I loved it. Samantha Harvey is doing something different here. Orbital isn’t interested in narrative tension. There’s no disaster. No systems failing. No interpersonal drama. Just. Existence. The strangeness and beauty of existing in space. Looking down at a planet
- [In Defense of "Difficult" Movies](https://archeravenue.net/in-defense-of-difficult-movies/): Somebody on Twitter — I’m not calling it X, I refuse — posted that they watched The Brutalist at 2x speed because they didn’t have time for a 3.5 hour movie. And I. I don’t know. Something broke inside me. This isn’t a subtweet. This is a cultural observation. We’ve lost the ability to sit with things. To let art take the time it needs. Everything has to be content now. Everything has to be consumable. Efficient. If you can’t get through it on a treadmill while half-watching, it’s “too slow.” The Brutalist is 3 hours and 35 minutes because
- [Movie Review – The Fantastic Four: First Steps](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-the-fantastic-four-first-steps/): Director: Matt Shakman Starring: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach Year: 2025 Marvel fatigue is real and The Fantastic Four: First Steps is Exhibit A. This should work. The casting is great. Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards. Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm. Joseph Quinn as Johnny. Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm. These are talented people playing beloved characters. The director did WandaVision which was actually interesting and different. And yet. I felt nothing. The movie is set in an alternate 1960s where the Fantastic Four became celebrities after getting their powers. It’s retro-futuristic. Kennedy-era optimism meets Kirby cosmic.
- [Series Review – Stranger Things Season 5](https://archeravenue.net/series-review-stranger-things-season-5/): Creators: The Duffer Brothers Starring: Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Winona Ryder, David Harbour Year: 2025 It’s over. After nine years, Stranger Things has finally concluded. The Upside Down has been defeated. The kids are grown up. The story that launched a thousand 80s nostalgia think pieces has reached its end. And I’m. Relieved. Mostly. Look, Stranger Things was lightning in a bottle. Season 1 was near-perfect. That blend of Spielberg and Stephen King. The synth soundtrack. The mysterious girl with powers. The Demogorgon. It was fresh and exciting and felt like nothing else on television. But the show overstayed
- [Rewatch – The Matrix Reloaded](https://archeravenue.net/rewatch-the-matrix-reloaded/): Directors: The Wachowskis Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving Year: 2003 Original Rating: ★★☆☆☆ New Rating: ★★★☆☆ Look I’m not going to sit here and tell you The Matrix Reloaded is secretly a masterpiece. It isn’t. It has real problems. The Zion stuff is still boring. The rave scene is still silly. The ending is still a cliffhanger that doesn’t work as a standalone film. But I was too harsh in 2003. This movie has more going on than I gave it credit for. The Architect scene. The one everyone mocked for being pretentious. The old guy
- [Trailer Reaction – The Batman Part II](https://archeravenue.net/trailer-reaction-the-batman-part-ii/): Matt Reeves understands Batman. I’ve said this before. I’ll keep saying it. After decades of various interpretations — the Burton gothic, the Schumacher camp, the Nolan grounded realism, the Snyder brutalism — Reeves found something that felt true. His Batman is a detective. A damaged man working through trauma. A creature of obsession and shadow. The teaser for The Batman Part II suggests he’s not abandoning that approach. We don’t see much. That’s smart. It’s a teaser, not a trailer. But what we see is. Promising. The Court of Owls. We’re doing the Court of Owls. Those masked aristocrats who’ve
- [Movie Review – Superman](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-superman/): Director: James Gunn Starring: David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Isabela Merced Year: 2025 James Gunn played it safe. That’s. Not what I expected from James Gunn. Superman is the launch of DC’s new cinematic universe. After years of the Snyderverse and its aftermath, Gunn gets to start fresh. Clean slate. New cast. New continuity. He could have done anything with that freedom. What he did was make a very competent, very safe, very adequate Superman movie. David Corenswet is good as Clark. He’s got the physicality — the guy looks like he was drawn by Curt Swan — and
- [Series Review – The Bear Season 4](https://archeravenue.net/series-review-the-bear-season-4/): Creator: Christopher Storer Starring: Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Abby Elliott Year: 2025 The Bear has a problem. It’s too good at anxiety. Season 1 was electric. Tight, propulsive, a panic attack in television form. The kitchen chaos. Carmy’s perfectionism. The yelling. YES CHEF. NO CHEF. It was stressful and brilliant and unlike anything else on TV. Season 2 expanded the world while keeping the intensity. The episode “Fishes” — the holiday flashback — was maybe the best episode of television that year. Season 3 started to wobble. More characters. More subplots. The Carmy and Claire stuff that
- [Book Review – The Anxious Generation](https://archeravenue.net/book-review-the-anxious-generation/): Author: Jonathan Haidt Publisher: Penguin Press Year: 2024 Jonathan Haidt thinks smartphones broke kids. That’s the thesis. That’s the book. The rise of social media and smartphone ownership in the early 2010s correlates with a dramatic increase in anxiety, depression, and self-harm among young people, especially girls. He’s got charts. He’s got studies. He’s got proposed solutions. And I’m. Conflicted. Here’s what I think Haidt gets right. Something DID happen around 2012-2013. The mental health statistics are real. Kids are more anxious and depressed than they were a generation ago. The correlation with smartphone adoption is hard to dismiss entirely.
- [Game Review – Grand Theft Auto VI](https://archeravenue.net/game-review-grand-theft-auto-vi/): Developer: Rockstar Games Publisher: Rockstar Games Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S Year: 2025 It’s been eleven years since GTA V. Eleven years of waiting. Eleven years of Rockstar milking Online mode while we begged for a new single-player experience. And now it’s here and. Yeah. It was worth the wait. Grand Theft Auto VI takes place in Leonida — a fictionalized Florida that includes Vice City and the surrounding swamplands, suburbs, and rural areas. If GTA V‘s Los Santos was Rockstar’s love letter to Los Angeles, Leonida is their love letter to the beautiful disaster that is the American Southeast.
- [Movie Review – 28 Years Later](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-28-years-later/): Director: Danny Boyle Starring: Cillian Murphy, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes Year: 2025 Danny Boyle still has it. Twenty-three years after 28 Days Later changed horror movies forever, Danny Boyle returns to the infected wasteland of Britain and delivers something that feels both like a continuation and a rebuke of everything zombie movies have become in the interim. 28 Years Later takes place in an England that has been quarantined from the world. The infected still roam but they’re dying out. Humanity has adapted. There are communities now — walled settlements, trading posts, a society built in the ruins.
- [Why I'm Done with Marvel](https://archeravenue.net/why-im-done-with-marvel/): Let me be clear about something. I’m not angry at Marvel. I’m not one of those guys who thinks superhero movies ruined cinema or whatever. The MCU gave us some genuinely good films. Iron Man. The Winter Soldier. Guardians of the Galaxy. Black Panther. Endgame was a cultural event unlike anything I’d experienced in a theater since maybe Return of the King. But I’m done. Not rage-quit done. Just. Done. Here’s what happened. After Endgame I felt satisfied. The story that started in 2008 with Tony Stark in a cave reached its conclusion. The heroes won. The sacrifices meant something.
- [Rewatch – Avatar (2009)](https://archeravenue.net/rewatch-avatar-2009/): Director: James Cameron Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang Year: 2009 Original Rating: ★★★★☆ New Rating: ★★★☆☆ I need to confess something. When Avatar came out in 2009 I gave it four stars. I saw it in IMAX 3D and I was genuinely awestruck. The visuals. The immersion. Pandora felt like a real place. I walked out of that theater convinced I’d seen the future of cinema. Sixteen years later I watched it again at home on a 65-inch TV and. Hm. The visuals still hold up. Mostly. There are shots of Pandora that remain gorgeous —
- [Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-mission-impossible-the-final-reckoning/): Director: Christopher McQuarrie Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg Year: 2025 Tom Cruise is 62 years old and he did all his own stunts. Again. Still. Because Tom Cruise is not a human being, he’s a dedication engine in human form. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the conclusion to the story that started in Dead Reckoning. The AI threat. The Entity. Whatever you want to call the MacGuffin that justifies Tom Cruise throwing himself off things. This movie has him throwing himself off many things. A bridge. A helicopter. A cliff. At least two buildings.
- [Series Review – The Last of Us Season 2](https://archeravenue.net/series-review-the-last-of-us-season-2/): Creators: Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann Starring: Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced Year: 2025 Okay. Deep breath. Let’s talk about this. Season 1 of The Last of Us was remarkable. The best video game adaptation ever made. A near-perfect translation of an already great game into an even better television show. Episode three — “Long Long Time” with Nick Offerman — might be the best individual episode of television in the last decade. Season 2 covers the story of Part II. If you’ve played the game you know what that means. If you haven’t. Well. Buckle up. I’m
- [Movie Review – Thunderbolts*](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-thunderbolts/): Director: Jake Schreier Starring: Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Lewis Pullman Year: 2025 Better than expected. Which is maybe the best thing you can say about a Marvel movie in 2025. Thunderbolts* (yes that asterisk is part of the title, yes it’s annoying) assembles a team of B-list villains and morally compromised anti-heroes for a black ops mission. Yelena Belova. Red Guardian. Bucky Barnes. John Walker. Ghost. Taskmaster. And this new guy Bob who’s clearly going to be important. The pitch is basically “What if the Avengers but they’re all kind of terrible people.” And to the
- [Trailer Reaction – Jurassic World Rebirth](https://archeravenue.net/trailer-reaction-jurassic-world-rebirth/): Why do they keep making these. No really. Why. The original Jurassic Park is a masterpiece. Perfect blend of practical effects and CGI. Perfect Spielberg tension. Perfect Ian Malcolm. The sequels have ranged from “okay I guess” to “actively bad” and yet every few years they make another one and we all go see it because dinosaurs. Jurassic World Rebirth is the seventh movie in this franchise. SEVENTH. And the trailer suggests it’s doing that thing where they soft-reboot by making everything smaller scale. New cast. New location. Back to basics. “This time it’s different.” It’s never different. Scarlett Johansson
- [Game Review – Death Stranding 2: On The Beach](https://archeravenue.net/game-review-death-stranding-2-on-the-beach/): Developer: Kojima Productions Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment Platforms: PS5, PC Year: 2025 Hideo Kojima is pretentious. Let’s get that out of the way. The man names characters things like Die-Hardman and Deadman and Heartman with complete sincerity. He puts hours of cutscenes in his games. He makes you read fake interviews and documents and historical references. He thinks he’s making art with a capital A and he wants you to know it. He’s also a genius. And Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is his best work since Metal Gear Solid 3. The first Death Stranding was divisive. Walking simulator.
- [Movie Review – Sinners](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-sinners/): Director: Ryan Coogler Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell Year: 2025 Ryan Coogler made a vampire movie. Let me say that again. Ryan Coogler. The guy who made Fruitvale Station and Creed and Black Panther. Made a VAMPIRE MOVIE. Set in the Jim Crow South. About two Black brothers who come home after the Great Migration and open a juke joint and accidentally invite in something ancient and evil. And it’s one of the best movies of the year. I don’t know how Coogler keeps doing this. Every movie he makes is technically within a genre
- [Book Review – James](https://archeravenue.net/book-review-james/): Author: Percival Everett Publisher: Doubleday Year: 2024 This book destroyed me. James is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim. The enslaved man. The character Twain made into a noble sidekick for Huck’s adventure. Percival Everett takes that character and gives him a voice and an interior life and a rage that Twain couldn’t or wouldn’t show us. The premise is simple. Same story. Different point of view. But what Everett does with that point of view is extraordinary. James — he refuses to be called Jim, that’s the white folks’ name for him — is intelligent
- [Series Review – Andor Season 2](https://archeravenue.net/series-review-andor-season-2/): Creator: Tony Gilroy Starring: Diego Luna, Stellan Skarsgård, Genevieve O’Reilly, Forest Whitaker Year: 2025 I said after Season 1 that Andor was the best Star Wars content since Empire Strikes Back. That was controversial. People got mad. They said I was being hyperbolic. Season 2 proves I was right. Tony Gilroy has done something I didn’t think was possible. He made Star Wars about something again. Not just about good guys fighting bad guys. Not just about lightsabers and the Force and family reveals. About politics. About resistance. About what it costs to fight an empire — not just in
- [Movie Review – Black Bag](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-black-bag/): Director: Steven Soderbergh Starring: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Tomei, Tom Hardy Year: 2025 Soderbergh is incapable of being boring. The man makes like three movies a year and somehow they’re all at least interesting. Not always great. But always interesting. Black Bag is a spy thriller. Sort of. It’s set in the intelligence world but it’s really more of a paranoid chamber drama. Cate Blanchett plays an intelligence officer whose husband — also an intelligence officer, played by Michael Fassbender — might be a traitor. Or she might be. Or they both might be. Or neither. The movie keeps
- [Trailer Reaction – The Odyssey](https://archeravenue.net/trailer-reaction-the-odyssey/): Christopher Nolan is making THE ODYSSEY. The actual Odyssey. Homer. Odysseus. The cyclops. The sirens. The whole thing. And he’s shooting it on IMAX film. I need to sit down. Okay so the trailer dropped and I have. Feelings. Many of them. First let’s talk about what we actually see. Not much in terms of plot but that’s Nolan trailers for you. We see ocean. A LOT of ocean. We see a ship that looks practical — like they actually built a ship — getting tossed around in storms. We see Matt Damon looking weathered and haunted. We see Anne
- [Movie Review – Mickey 17](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-mickey-17/): Director: Bong Joon-ho Starring: Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Naomi Ackie Year: 2025 Bong Joon-ho made a movie about clones. Of course he did. After Parasite won everything he could have made literally any movie and the studios would have funded it. He chose to make weird sci-fi about a guy who gets killed repeatedly for the good of humanity. And it’s great. Obviously. Because Bong Joon-ho doesn’t know how to make bad movies. Mickey 17 is based on a book called Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. The premise: in the future, space colonization requires “expendables” — workers who take
- [Game Review – Civilization VII](https://archeravenue.net/game-review-civilization-vii/): Developer: Firaxis Games Publisher: 2K Games Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch Year: 2025 There goes my sleep schedule. Again. Civilization VII is here and it’s everything I wanted and feared. Wanted because Civ is one of the greatest strategy game franchises ever made and I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into every entry since Civ III. Feared because. Well. I know what this game does to me. One more turn becomes one more hour becomes “holy shit the sun is coming up.” Let me tell you what’s new. The big thing is ages. Your civilization now progresses through
- [Series Review – The White Lotus Season 3](https://archeravenue.net/series-review-the-white-lotus-season-3/): Creator: Mike White Starring: Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Aimee Lou Wood Year: 2025 Season one was Hawaii and death and class warfare and Jennifer Coolidge being iconic. Season two was Sicily and sex and infidelity and Jennifer Coolidge being even more iconic. Season three is Thailand and. Well. That’s where it gets complicated. Mike White’s formula is pretty clear by now. Rich people go to expensive resort. Rich people are terrible. Someone dies. Along the way we examine the grotesqueness of wealth and the ways privilege blinds people to their own monstrousness. It works. It’s worked
- [The Oscars Are Still Broken](https://archeravenue.net/the-oscars-are-still-broken/): It’s Oscar season again which means it’s time for my annual tradition of yelling into the void about how the Academy Awards don’t actually measure what they claim to measure. The nominations came out. The Brutalist got a bunch because it’s legitimately great. Anora got a bunch because Sean Baker is finally getting his due. Wicked got a bunch because it made a billion dollars and the Academy loves to reward money. Emilia Pérez got a bunch because. Actually I’m not sure why. I saw that movie and I still don’t understand what it was trying to do. Here’s my
- [Rewatch – The Shining](https://archeravenue.net/rewatch-the-shining/): Director: Stanley Kubrick Starring: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers Year: 1980 Original Rating: ★★★★☆ New Rating: ★★★★★ So I was wrong about The Shining. I’ve seen it probably six times over the years. Always appreciated it. The visuals. The Steadicam work. The twins. “Here’s Johnny.” Classic horror iconography. But I always had this nagging feeling that it was cold. Clinical. That Kubrick was so obsessed with technical perfection that he forgot to make me feel anything. I watched it again last week. On 4K. Alone. At night. And something clicked that hadn’t clicked before. Kubrick wasn’t failing
- [Movie Review – Paddington in Peru](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-paddington-in-peru/): Director: Dougal Wilson Starring: Ben Whishaw, Hugh Bonneville, Emily Mortimer, Olivia Colman, Antonio Banderas Year: 2024 I have said publicly and I will say again that Paddington 2 is a perfect film. Not a perfect kids’ film. Not a perfect family film. A perfect FILM. It’s funnier than most comedies, sweeter than most dramas, more visually inventive than most blockbusters. If you disagree with me on this we probably can’t be friends. So Paddington in Peru had an impossible task. Follow perfection. And you know what? It doesn’t quite get there. But it gets close enough that I’m not even
- [Trailer Reaction – 28 Years Later](https://archeravenue.net/trailer-reaction-28-years-later/): Holy. SHIT. Okay so the trailer for 28 Years Later dropped and I’ve watched it four times and I have thoughts. Many thoughts. Mostly good thoughts. First of all — Danny Boyle is back. That matters. 28 Days Later wasn’t just a great horror movie, it reinvented zombie movies entirely. That grainy digital video look. The running infected. The bleakness. It changed the genre. And then 28 Weeks Later was good but it was missing Boyle’s specific energy. Now he’s directing again and you can FEEL it in this trailer. The footage. Okay. England has become some kind of quarantine
- [Movie Review – A Complete Unknown](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-a-complete-unknown/): Director: James Mangold Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro Year: 2024 Okay so. Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan. That’s the pitch. That’s what the studio is selling. And look — I get it. Chalamet is the biggest young actor working right now and Dylan is maybe the most important American musician of the 20th century. Put them together and you’ve got yourself an Oscar campaign. The problem is. How do I say this. The movie is fine. It’s FINE. It’s a perfectly competent music biopic that hits all the expected beats and never once surprised me. James
- [Book Review – Holly](https://archeravenue.net/book-review-holly/): Author: Stephen King Publisher: Scribner Year: 2023 Look I’m a Stephen King guy. Have been since I was fourteen and found a copy of It at a garage sale and made the mistake of reading it alone in my room at night. That book broke something in me. Or fixed something. I’m still not sure which. So when King releases a new book I read it. That’s just what happens. And Holly — which centers on Holly Gibney, the character from Mr. Mercedes and The Outsider and various other King works — is. It’s good. It’s really good actually. Not
- [Series Review – Severance Season 2](https://archeravenue.net/series-review-severance-season-2/): Creator: Dan Erickson Starring: Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, Christopher Walken Year: 2025 Three years. THREE YEARS we waited for this. And you know what? Worth it. Every goddamn day of waiting was worth it. Severance Season 1 ended with one of the greatest cliffhangers in television history. I’m not being hyperbolic. Mark discovering that his wife is alive, Helly revealing herself at the Lumon gala, Irving finding the address — all of it happening simultaneously while the overtime contingency expires. I watched that finale twice in a row and then couldn’t sleep. That was 2022. I’ve
- [Movie Review – The Brutalist](https://archeravenue.net/movie-review-the-brutalist/): Director: Brady Corbet Starring: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn Year: 2024 Look. I’m just gonna say it. The Brutalist is the best movie I’ve seen in years. And I KNOW how that sounds. I know. Every year some three-hour prestige drama comes out and critics fall over themselves calling it a masterpiece and then six months later nobody remembers it. I’ve been burned before. We all have. But this one is different. This one actually earned those three and a half hours of my life and I’d give them again. Right now. Tonight. Pour me a whiskey
- [Game Review – Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii](https://archeravenue.net/game-review-like-a-dragon-pirate-yakuza-in-hawaii/): Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio Publisher: SEGA Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC Year: 2025 So you’re telling me there’s a game where Goro Majima — the Mad Dog of Shimano, the eye-patch wearing chaos agent, the guy who shows up in every Yakuza game like a violent jack-in-the-box — becomes a PIRATE? Yes. That is the game. And it’s exactly as unhinged as that sounds. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii picks up after the events of Infinite Wealth. Majima washes up on a beach with amnesia because of course he does. He gets recruited by a crew

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- [About](https://archeravenue.net/about/): Who Is This Guy My name is Nick Ochipinti. I go by ochippie online because that’s what my students called me and it stuck. I’m 42 years old. I live in Logan Square, Chicago. I grew up in Bridgeport, off Archer Avenue — hence the name of this thing you’re reading. I was a high school English teacher for twelve years. Then I wasn’t. Now I write copy for brands I don’t care about to pay rent on an apartment where I watch movies and think about movies and occasionally write about movies. This blog is the writing I actually
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