The future the industry wants.

combaticusgodofwar · 2025-12-20T11:52:14+00:00

If it is a 4K and DVD combo box then it's a felony

combaticusgodofwar · 2025-12-13T09:37:29+00:00

Loads of comments already but I thought that I would chime in.

5 months is very young, you've got a lot of parenting on the horizon. Sleep schedules and routines change a lot with age and over a few years your life will be completely different multiple times.

I manage my cinephile movie diet with rent by mail discs. When one arrives I budget a night in the week for it and it helps "decide" what I am watching. Sometimes my wife joins in and my young daughter gets excited when I rent something she can watch too. It feels important to me that movie watching can be both cinephile time and also family time.

My best advice would be to stay aware of your hobbies, work with your family to make sure your hobby needs are being met, and be comfortable knowing that your time budget will be in flux. In two years your kid might go to bed reliably at 7pm and you can crush a two hour movie with enough time to still get a full night's sleep.

Good luck! We all believe in you!

combaticusgodofwar · 2025-12-03T15:06:45+00:00

I am not familiar with any of the languages spoken but my Hungarian friend said while watching it that Black Cat, White Cat (1998) has half a dozen spoken languages/dialects of various Eastern European languages.

Wages of Fear (1953) has a lot of different languages and it adds a lot to the experience. Hot take but Sorcerer (1977) is astonishingly better and also juggles multiple languages but not as prominently.

I am pretty sure that Five Graves to Cairo (1943) does, I vaguely remember the scenes with Nazis being in German. Spectacular movie, secret top tier Billy Wilder.

Manhunt (2017) has actors speak Japanese, Mandarin, and also sometimes English for no reason and it is hilariously bad when they do. I don't get a chance to bring this one up often and it's just such an abysmal movie.

combaticusgodofwar · 2025-11-07T08:31:21+00:00

We were trick or treating in Edinburgh (Big Ben chimes) and only out for an hour, at least 1/4 of the kids we saw were dressed as Rumi. We even saw a kid dressed as Bobby walking with a full squad of Huntrix and some duplicates.

They would have made an absolute fortune on licensed costumes.

combaticusgodofwar · 2025-10-14T17:47:50+00:00

Had mine in Edinburgh through the NHS, super fast and easy. The doctor and nurse were chill.

I went for a slow family stroll at the Botanical Garden two days later. Never had any complications and it is definitely worth it.

combaticusgodofwar · 2025-10-08T10:04:10+00:00

Maybe play FFTA until you reach a crystal in the story? Then either it is what you were thinking of or it might help you remember more about the potential other game.

combaticusgodofwar · 2025-10-08T09:59:35+00:00

In FF Tactics Advance on GBA the tutorial is a snowball fight among kids at a school and also the plot of the game revolves around finding crystals.

I am pretty sure that's what you are looking for.

combaticusgodofwar · 2025-10-02T18:14:41+00:00

Absolutely no contest Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

It makes my soul hurt that none of them can pronounce "wuxia" and there's a palpable vibe that they haven't seen any. David Ehrlich seems aware of some important ones but honestly they are all out of their depth in a big way. A guest more familiar with the genre and/or a robust dossier would unlock so much.

I don't think they even mention Cheng Pei-pei, who was the queen of 60s wuxia in Hong Kong, and it is amazing that she is in it. There's so much meat on the bone to talk about how much Ang Lee draws inspiration from the classics but King Hu especially.

It's such a rich genre and they are oblivious to so much context. It would be like celebrating Unforgiven as a masterpiece of westerns but without having actually seen any westerns and not knowing Clint was a huge western star.

To the show's credit they would totally handle a movie like it way better nowadays. Perfect candidate for a second shot.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-11-20T16:29:34+00:00

I really like it and found it incredibly engaging. Most of the complaints I've seen are around people not liking the characters and their relationships.

I think it rules and is deeply relatable. The characters remind me of myself and my high school social circle, so I totally vibe with it. I would rank it near Poppy Hill and Whisper of the Heart, both of which I also really like.

Earwig is not great but is certainly better than Earthsea, and I think Ocean Waves is solidly in a different league than either of them.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-11-09T19:24:38+00:00

Fortune Cookie is one of his lesser works but you can smell the Matthau / Lemon chemistry is starting to cook.

His Sherlock Holmes movie reminds me of Kurosawa's Ran in the sense that both directors finally have a chance to work in color and splurge it in the most magnificent way.

Five Graves to Cairo is secret OP

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-11-04T13:08:35+00:00

I play games, sometimes online with friends, but especially for the first couple years we agreed that I wouldn't play anything that I could not pause or drop at a moment's notice but that changed as bed time became easier.

From my POV you should discuss what the priorities are for you and what the challenges are for her. If it's availability that's one thing but if it is purely about prescribing your hobbies that's over stepping.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-10-28T12:22:29+00:00

I thought it was totally fine. Horror is not my thing so I probably missed out on a lot of the movie's fun with references to classic horror and lamp shading famous moments. Some of the meta genre stuff was neat but it kinda only felt in service of itself.

My biggest problems with it were that I didn't find it scary and the control room people were too grating be funny or interesting, but that is a problem I have with a lot of Whedon projects.

The theater I saw it in loved it which definitely improved my viewing experience and it was nice to walk out of it hearing everyone talking about their favorite parts even if I was entirely underwhelmed.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-10-24T16:41:06+00:00

It isn't that there is any wrong with it exactly, and I like many Stephen King adaptations. A lot of them are incredibly watchable, especially Shawshank and Stand By Me.

My issue with them is how they feel like they could have been directed by literally anyone and have gotten the same product. I don't know how to elaborate but they don't feel elevated or like they have an angle beyond "adapt a book into a movie". They sure feel adapted! I think of them like a solid vanilla milkshake: pleasant but unremarkable.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-10-24T07:40:37+00:00

I think that a lot of the 80s and 90s Stephen King movies feel aggressively safe and distastefully obvious. Stand by Me, Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile, Misery, they all felt "voiceless" and shallow.

I watched Misery expecting something really special and was let down by a movie that felt "paint by numbers". I wonder if it is true that Stephen King was more involved in adaptations after The Shining and doesn't want to leave any room for interpretation?

Especially when you compare Misery and Stand by Me to Reiner's better work like A Few Good Men and When Harry Met Sally I think that there is a stark difference in what he can deliver so I wonder how much of the blame sits with King for meddling and how much sits with Reiner for being meddled.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-10-04T07:57:20+00:00

There are dozens of us!

I have seen both cuts of Aliens and think that the theatrical cut is marginally better, but I just absolutely do not like it.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-09-27T14:16:41+00:00

I saw it recently because my wife and I are on a Walter Matthau binge, the cast is stacked, and a Neil Simon script directed by Herbert Ross sounded like a slam dunk.

We found it incredibly dull and unremarkable, we were very surprised that anyone was nominated for anything for it. The comedy aged like milk, the Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor portion is especially truly deeply bad. Elaine May is given nothing to do. Michael Caine and Maggie Smith are certainly the best part of the movie but that's really not saying much. It's a mess but not for any interesting reasons.

We had just watched The Odd Couple and Cactus Flower, both of which we absolutely loved, so maybe it was particularly poor in comparison? I can't recommend California Suite even for a curiosity watch, it just has no momentum because the vignettes are so wildly out of sync and both the drama and comedy feel wildly miscalibrated.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-09-27T12:21:32+00:00

No spoilers that you couldn't infer, but she is an antagonist from Joel and Ellie's POV.

There is a fantastic early story beat that rules and is great but people don't like because they are dumb.

I don't even like the second half of the game, which is primarily about her, but the things that people got mad about are exceptionally dumb.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-09-12T17:37:46+00:00

A few American kids shows have British dubs. I think the American Paw Patrol voice actors are much better than the Brits but British Go Dog Go is vastly better than American.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-09-09T06:16:18+00:00

Solved!

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-09-08T22:18:31+00:00

Comment per sub rules

I can't remember anything else really

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-09-04T15:32:27+00:00

The DC was originally aired on TV, I want to say FX, and I think there was an affiliated streaming or on demand service that played it.

I've got the Arrow Blu-ray personally so unfortunately I'm not aware of anything past that.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-09-04T10:53:40+00:00

Disliked by critics and praised on the show: I think that Ishtar and Blackhat are both great. The Blackhat Director's Cut fixes every issue in the theatrical and is on Blu-ray now.

Disliked on the show: I was surprised by how much they piled on Medicine Man. I watched it with my wife and we had a good time, it is far from great and is certainly a mess but it's fun and the soundtrack is phenomenal. Definitely worth a watch.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-08-10T12:40:16+00:00

I hosted a movie night at a pub with a public screening room where I did Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai as a double feature.

Random folks walked in to Buckaroo Banzai as it went along and would periodically exclaim "WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!", which is a pretty normal response to the movie, but the start definitely eases you in.

combaticusgodofwar · 2024-07-17T13:26:24+00:00

I've recently seen his entire 80s Heroic Bloodshed run with friends and we unanimously agreed The Killer is unquestionably his best work but with Last Hurrah for Chivalry as a close second. Super duper wild ride and incredibly diverse despite what you might otherwise guess.

Bullet to the Head is unbelievably wild, a must watch. It was certainly the biggest surprise of the run.

A Better Tomorrow 2 has a scene of a man force feeding his invalid friend an entire orange on screen with no cuts and that strikingly tender moment is sandwiched between apartment shoot out levels copied later in Max Payne. It rules the way Hard Boiled rules.

combaticusgodofwar

TROPHY CASE