C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 64

It Takes a Thief to Catch a Sunrise (It Takes a Thief 1#) review

   

    I'm a huge fan of Rob J. Hayes' writing. His The Ties That Bind and Best Laid Plans series are some of the best grimdark fantasy which has come out in the past few years. So, when I heard he was working on a steampunk series, I was intrigued and immediately picked up a copy.

    The setting of the novel was surprising as it's a fantasy version of Regency Europe. It avoids the usual Medieval fantasy setting as well as the Hyborian Age mish-m...

Bright (2017) review

    Screw the critics, Bright is awesome. It is also a terrible movie but it is a great terrible movie. I basically liken it one of my all time favorites in Johnny Mnemonic. Johnny Mnemonic is a terrible movie with horrible acting, huge plot holes, and an utterly silly script but I watch it continuously. I feel much the same way about Bright and have already watched it twice. This is a movie which I think is bound to be a cult classic unless it becomes an actual hit due to the...

The Punisher: Season One review

    There's an argument the genre of superheroes is inherently fascist. It's a line which is frequently trotted out when someone wants to look smarter and put down popular culture. The argument basically depends on the idea that individuals taking the law into their own hands and vigilantism are inherently reactionary Far Right attitudes. This is a very American attitude which ignores the fact uprisings of workers in coal mining towns and with unions are a part of our history.

&...

Blade Runner 2049 - The Importance of Not Being Special

    This essay contains spoilers for Blade Runner 2049.

    Blade Runner 2049 is a movie I very much enjoyed (you can read my review here) but it's an interesting film for me because I realized it nicely inverts a lot of what was inherent to the original movie. I disliked The Last Jedi for having what I felt was a message that didn't fit with the Star Wars universe that is somewhat reflected in this film but worked better in the last one. Specifically, it's the so...

Blade Runner 2049 review

    Famously, Ridley Scott and Phillip K. Dick disagreed on the role of androids in their versions of the same story. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, they represent imperfect copies of human beings. Soulless mockeries of people who resemble more Robert Chalmer's "philosophical zombie" than actual people. In Ridley Scott's version, they represent the dehumanization of minorities and people by the elite and upper class.

Ryan is a bit TOO handsome for the role.  &nbsp...

Life is Strange: Before the Storm review

    I am a huge fan of Life is Strange. It's basically the Twin Peaks of video games not just because it draws inspiration from that show but because it really is an incredibly different sort of game which has potentially changed the nature of the medium. Okay, perhaps that's premature but in a sea of first-person shooters and action, it's amazing there's a work about a time-traveling teenage girl and her relationship drama that's loved by both men as well as women. Hell, it ce...

13 Neo-Cyberpunk Novel Recommendations

   Cyberpunk, like all genres, has gone through a variety of stages in its life cycle. The Western, for example, went through a period which celebrated the Black and White morality of heroic cowboys against savage natives before revising itself to realize it was a time of murderous outlaws stealing the land of locals before becoming the home of many fantastical stories which paper over any semblance of history.

    In cyberpunk's case, it first started in the 1980s as...

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI review

    Yeah, it was okay. Actually, no, no it wasn't. I feel like this is going to be one of those movies where I'm either on the wrong side of history or ahead of my time. Basically, my opinion of the movie is a resounding "eh." This is probably my least favorite of the Star Wars films and that includes the Prequels and Rogue One. I didn't even like Rogue One that much so I may actually be on the verge of disliking this film actively. It's not a badly made film but the direction...

Future Noir Revised & Updated Edition: The Making of Blade Runner review

    Do you like Blade Runner? I mean, do you REALLY like Blade Runner? Well, I do REALLY-REALLY like Blade Runner. I've watched the movie dozens of times and it's really one of those films which exists up there in my head space with Alien and Star Wars that influence everything from my personal life to writing.

    As such, I was interested in what has been considered to be the definitive book on the movie. That's because not only was Paul M. Sammon on set with th...

Ex Machina (2014) review

This review contains spoilers for the ending of Ex Machina.

    Ex Machina is a movie which could make an excellent psychological experiment of itself. It's one I think that functions as something of a Rorshach test for its audience as virtually everyone comes away with a different interpretation of the movie based on what they think of the characters are trying to represent. If anything.

    The premise of the movie is minimalist and effective: Tech billionaire Na...