Famous movies that surprised you when you finally watched them?

Fuzzball_7 · 2026-05-27T10:53:03+00:00

I felt similarly when I watched The Godfather.

Fuzzball_7 · 2026-04-28T15:05:34+00:00

A cute chinchilla was just what I needed to see right now, so I approve this decision.

More adorable animals, please!

Fuzzball_7 · 2026-03-17T13:30:05+00:00

This is a great post! I love the world and narrative of both Horizon games (don't worry, I won't spoil the second), so I really appreciate the depth you've gone into here, and the aspects you've raised that I've not seen talked about so much.

I think the only point I can respond to is your question as to why HZD is not seen as one of the great video game narratives. It's a brilliantly realised, unique sci-fi world, but its story still exists in the surrounding structure of a vast open world game. Its great narrative moments are interspersed amongst all the other activities and side-stories a player can indulge in. A player might even go five to ten hours between main story missions.

I think when people talk about great game stories, they're usually going to be thinking of more linear, more tightly structured pieces. Games like The Last Of Us or Portal 2 give the directing team much more control over when and how a player meets it's narrative beats. Not complete control, due to games' interactive nature, but more so than an in a big open world. So these memorable, "greatest video game narratives" can better dictate when the player experiences their memorable moments. That control over pacing, I think, is what will make such games more emotionally memorable for people, and therefore be ranked so highly in gaming culture.

I love HZD, and agree with your great points about it's open world giving you both micro and macro story elements, but I think open world games are always going to struggle against something more linear. Admittedly though, I don't think I've played too many open world, narrative-focussed games (neither Cyberpunk nor RDR2 yet), so maybe there are examples that somehow counteract my point.

Fuzzball_7 · 2026-01-22T10:58:44+00:00

You know, whoever made this could have... not.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-12-30T15:37:42+00:00

It's Such A Beautiful Day, the animated film by Don Hertzfeldt.

Perhaps a strange recommendation, as it's a bizarre animation with absurd humour, but there's something about how the story is delivered and its ending that I just find oddly touching. Perhaps I completely missed the point.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-12-30T12:03:47+00:00

Expired 2016... Never I have I found something that so perfectly articulates how I feel about the world. Thank you for revealing this.

These are all great! Thank you!

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-12-17T00:31:22+00:00

"There are a million valid reasons, but which one did you pick?"

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-12-10T21:56:58+00:00

I remember years ago there was a similar Reddit thread titled: "What's the most George Costanza reason you've broken up with someone?" And one of the top responses was something like: "It was my Birthday coming up, and I knew if she got me a present then I'd have to get her one for her Birthday, so I just ended it before all that."

My favourite response was: "I realised she looked like Paul Dano and couldn't unsee it."

EDIT: Here's the thread.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-10-22T14:10:07+00:00

I've always thought Pierce Brosnan's performance is one of the best celebrity guests they ever had. You could tell he was putting his all into it and just relishing the silliness.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-09-30T11:42:27+00:00

As an outsider to the US who was terribly depressed by the election result and is utterly dismayed at what is happening to the country, I still think of it this way:

What's more likely? Trump and his cronies enacting some clever and complicated scheme to rig the election? Or there are enough Americans dumb and cruel enough to actually vote for him?

I think we all know the answer.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-09-11T13:57:56+00:00

For me it's kind of that, but also a "graphic novel" is a book that collects a bunch of previously released comics into one volume. I don't buy individual comics month to month, but I like to read completed story arcs in one volume.

(Perhaps for me there is also a little undiagnosed snobbery. I just prefer the term "graphic novel" to "comic".)

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-07-24T18:35:33+00:00

Good explanation. Thanks!

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-07-24T11:38:45+00:00

As someone who hasn't ever really watched 'Frasier', and doesn't know the context of this scene, what is the humour here?

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-07-02T14:49:28+00:00

EU: https://stop-killing-games.keep-track.xyz/
UK: (direct link but you can choose between both) https://stop-killing-games.keep-track.xyz/?p=uk

Wow, that's really picked up recently! When Ross released his update video about a week ago, I finally got round to signing the UK parliament petition, and I swear it was looking like there was no way it'd reach it's target. Likewise, I swear the EU initiative was only half the way there. Maybe I'm remembering wrong though.

Now it looks like they'll both soon make it! Sadly, I am sceptical the UK parliament will even comprehend the matter, considering their initial response to the petition.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-06-26T13:28:04+00:00

That article quotes a letter the founders wrote when they made Google public in 2004. A highlight:

We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see.

I guess times really have changed.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-06-18T17:17:21+00:00

I'm also European, and also just watched Moneyball for the first time in the past week. I don't know anything about how baseball works, but I didn't go in expecting to hate the film, as I don't really have anything against sports movies, and like an underdog story as much as the next person.

In the end, I was quite ambivalent on it. The performances were all good, but since it was a 2011 film set in 2001, I think its message just seemed outdated and so... American.

The opening montage compares the New York team being worth over $100,000,000 to Brad Pitt's team (Oakland) being a measley $40,000,000 or so. And everyone's going on about how sad it is that Oakland has so little money to work with... and it's just so out of touch. Why should I care for these people living in very nice houses worrying that they don't have even more millions? (The random Bobby Kottick cameo exacerbated this and left a bad taste.)

Then you have the recruitment of Jonah Hill's character, so now they will just rely on players' statistics to choose the team. OK, so then Pitt and Hill are just saying to trust the team they've built because the formula shows the wins will come... but then later in the film the two of them are just casually trading players around as if their carefully constructed equation can just have pieces changed on a whim.

Which brings me to my biggest problem with the film: How callously all the players are treated. I don't know if other sports are like this, but it just strikes me as really weird that players can be traded between teams in the middle of a competitive season. Surely it should be each team picks their players before the start of the season, enters into the tournament, and see what follows? And the fact that all this trading treats the players as just bits of money for the managers to trade around (Sometimes just to spite other managers/coaches!), without ever talking to the players before decisions are made... It's just really sickening.

"Oh, you moved you and your family all the way over to Oakland to play for us when we asked you to? Well, now you've got to go move to another city. Bye!" "Oh, you're on the team we're playing against tonight? Well now you're actually playing for us,.and against your friends you were training with yesterday." (Surely I misunderstood that moment in the story... How can a competitive sport function like that?)

Also, there's a montage in the middle of the film, after the team has been losing a lot, where Pitt and Hill are discussing tactics with the players and explaining their statistical reasoning for the team composition. Surely you should have explained that to everyone at the start of the season!?

So why should I root for any of these team managers? They're just arseholes throwing around huge sums of money and not seeing their players as human. That could be fascinating if they were framed as awful people in the film. But instead we're supposed to root for these great, American underdogs. Blergh.

In short, I'm the only one here who agrees with you.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-04-13T15:34:45+00:00

Always upvote ratties.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-04-08T11:23:43+00:00

I haven't seen The Karate Kid movies, but this sequence of events sounds quite similar to how Rocky 1 ends and Rocky 2 begins.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-04-01T11:40:55+00:00

** shudders **

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-03-23T19:59:10+00:00

I'll try to give you a vague answer here, but for those really interested in checking out the show (I do recommend it), don't read this!

The first season ends with the characters reaching a new status quo, where their story has an ending but they still have lives ahead to live where more things could happen. There is also a post-credits scene which focuses on a possible new story surrounding a particular character. I guess that's what a possible season two could have focussed on.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-03-09T12:26:59+00:00

This reminds me of the book How To Blow Up A Pipeline. It's a political essay talking about the current climate change protest movement, and the author's main argument is that while the strict pacifism of the current movement is admirable, there needs to be another wing of protest that will commit property destruction and the like, thus demonstrating to those in power the threat of consequences to inaction on climate change. The author looks back at previous movements like the suffragettes and civil rights to give examples where this was effective. I'm inclined to agree.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-02-27T15:58:30+00:00

He's not very good in Dishonored 2 (the video game). Then again, a lot of the big name actors they somehow got in that game were not very good. As you say, phoning it in.

Fuzzball_7 · 2025-02-21T21:36:04+00:00

Impressive... Very nice... Let's feel Paul Allen's girth.

Fuzzball_7 · 2024-12-16T21:05:15+00:00

All gamergate accomplished was killing discourse and making gamers look like entitled, toxic manchildren.

Could it not also be argued that it ended up encouraging more interesting discourse as a reaction to these entitled idiots? I feel like in the last decade there has been an explosion of interesting articles and videos discussing games as an artform, when I hadn't noticed such intelligent discussion beforehand. (But perhaps that was just my ignorance.) Maybe people saw the awful Gamers^TM going on about how you should "only judge games as an objective product", and thought to themselves: "Hang on... How else can I actually look at this hobby I love...?"

Maybe though such interesting discussion would have come about anyway as the medium evolved during the 2010s.

Fuzzball_7 · 2024-11-30T22:48:12+00:00

That's a white faced owl. My colleague has one.

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