Film Review: Black Mirror Series Three (Part 2/3)

This episode we will be discussing is Playtest, and it's very gamer-centric. It's also different in the sense that there's none of that Zed-eyes type stuff that appeared during The Entire History Of You, White Christmas and Nosedive.

This does not, however, mean that we will be going low-tech. If anything, the tech in here arguably even more futuristic, dealing with uploads to the brain as opposed to "just" making copies and recordings.

The Premise

Cooper is paid to playtest a new gaming concept by gaming company Saito Geimu - an immersive horror virtual reality game. This being Black Mirror, something of course goes horribly and ironically wrong.

The Characters

Wyatt Russell is Cooper Redfield. The script paints him as a nice sensitive guy, if sometimes unethical. Personally, I think he did fine even though his very prominent chin got a bit distracting in the early stages. Thankfully that beard later on took care of that. And guess what - he plays U.S Agent in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier! Dude was definitely working out after this episode, because he looks kind of doughy here.

Hannah John-Kamen as Sonja, whom I last saw in Ant-Man and the Wasp and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. She's all right here. Seems like a poor man's Emily Blunt.

Wunmi Mosaku as Katie. Friendly and professional, sometimes dry and sarcastic. I enjoyed that performance.

Ken Yamamura as Shou Saito, the Japanese game designer. At first glance, he comes across as warm, friendly and enthusiastic about his craft. Near the end, when we see the real him, he's more sociopathic genius than anything. When the playtest fails and Cooper dies, he looks more bored than anything.

Elizabeth Moynihan appears near the end as Cooper's mother, who is suffering from dementia. She cuts a pretty tragic figure.

The Mood

Things start out bright, cheery, and dare I say, pedestrian. Midway through, it goes into clinically white, which seems to be a pattern with Black Mirror, and things soon become dark and sinister once Cooper begins his playtesting.

What I liked

The tech visuals are nice. The equipment, the interfaces and all, don't look over-the-top. It's smooth, minimalistic design.

Cooper and Sonja has this American-vs-Brit thing going. Cooper even has this line, which was cheesy, but elicited a chuckle. Wyatt Russell really sells it too.

All right. You are a top bird. I don't know what that means, but I heard somebody say it once, and you're it.

That Whack-a-Mole game is something else!

Since the system has scanned Cooper's head, everything he is experiencing from that point onwards contains little nods to stuff that went on earlier. For example, in the game, he is reading a book with this chapter. Earlier on, Cooper and Sonja met in a place called The Raven Inn. Man, talk about callbacks!

Hot damn, that twist at the end! That was a shocker, for sure.

What I didn't

The entire ten to twenty minute montage of Cooper leaving home, going through his travels, up to the point he finally begins playtesting, just feels like filler.

A Redfield in a haunted mansion? Seems to tread overly familiar ground here. What's more, Sonja's actress actually plays Jill Valentine in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City years later!

Conclusion

Great, great story. Started off a little lame and sad, but the last few minutes of it made it all worthwhile. Definitely a worthy entry in Black Mirror. Unlike many of the other tales, there's no overt moral to this tale and that's a little disappointing. The horror in this episode is more classic horror and jump scares, not the more cerebral kind Black Mirror usually gives us.

My Rating

9 / 10

Next

Shut Up and Dance

TeochewThunder: Year Six (Part 1/2)

2020 has been a turbulent year, not just for me, but for just about everyone on the planet. It will forever be known as the year COVID-19 ravaged the world, and the scary thing is, it's far from over. At least not if USA and India have anything to say about it. As befits such a world-shattering event, many of my blogposts this year revolved around COVID-19 as a subject. Not only did this unprecedented crisis give rise to much technical innovation, it also forced changes in the way many people do things, thus forcing even more innovation. The effects were far-reaching and felt even to this day.

Somewhat closer to home, the Singapore General Elections were held around this time. This also gave rise to a series of writings that sometimes coincided with views on COVID-19. This wasn't done on purpose, I swear. COVID-19 just got its hooks into everything.

As it stands, I've just lost my job last month. Long story. As of the first day of this month, I landed another job (though goodness knows how long that will last) and I'm scheduled for yet another stint in school starting this month. The yearly blogging break could not have come at a better time.

Here are some notes about content on this blog...

Web Tutorials

The web tutorials have mostly focused around a whole lot of JavaScript. What can I say; I'm a severely limited programmer and JavaScript happens to be an old friend. There's been new stuff, obviously - D3.js, ReactJS... yes, it's all still JavaScript, but it's different ways of applying the JavaScript ecosystem. You can be a good or bad programmer, but above all, have fun.

My love for learning new stuff has never been put to the test quite as severely as the past year. Everything I learned challenged my assumptions and showed me I know a lot less than I thought I did, and that I have a long way to go before considering myself even mildly accomplished. Which is fine by me; ego is overrated.

A long, long climb.

Despite writing about Ruby just two months ago, I've not actually had a chance to touch it much. It's the same with QBasic. This year has been almost exclusively JavaScript and PHP. All in all, my grasp on tech has evolved. Though, it has to be said, I'm still trying to keep the web tutorials at levels that are accessible to beginners such as myself back then. In many ways, I'm still that wide-eyed kid playing with stuff.

Reviews

Thankfully, unlike last year, I managed to tone down on the overwhelming number of reviews, and actually varied the kind of reviews on offer. There's a recent Reference Review I did on The Mythical Man-month: Essays on Software Engineering, for instance.

No time to play.

I've not had much time or inclination to play or review mobile games, which is a real pity. The mobile game makers seem to be getting more innovative by the day. I guess they have to, with all the competition that's out there, and the notoriously short attention span of their target audience.

Rants

As mentioned in the very first paragraph, there's been quite a few rants on this blog involving either the Singapore General Elections or COVID-19, or both. Regrettably, I've used more vulgarities than was absolutely necessary, and while I don't apologize for it, I acknowledge that things could have been worded a lot less offensively. Could.

Having things to say.

All in all, though, I've been way less of a windbag this year than I've been prone to being the past few years, even though COVID-19 has given me plenty to rant about. Maybe it's because I got most of it out of my system. No point repeating myself.

Or possibly, I'm just getting old.

Others

As mentioned, there's been considerably more diversity in feature blogposts - a good balance of reviews, listicles and what-not. I will strive to maintain that balance.

That tends to be hard because daily, there is tech-related breaking news and I need to decide if I care about it enough to include it in TeochewThunder. And if I do, I need to make hard decisions about what to post now, and what to post later.

Next

Examining what resonated with readers, and what didn't.

Film Review: Pixels

Pixels is a science fiction comedy revolving around arcade games in the 80s. Despite being a somewhat techie movie, it's loud, wacky and brain-dead.

Exactly how I like them. Well, OK, my tastes are a bit more varied than that. But varied enough to like what Pixels has on offer. The other arcade game-centric movie to have come out in recent times was Wreck-it Ralph in 2012, and it didn't entertain me half as much.

The Premise

The Earth is under threat from an extra-terrestrial force. The gimmick in play here is that these attacks are in the form of 80s arcade games! That's right - you get to see the heroes of the story go up against Pac-man and Centipede in full 3D pixellated glory as these critters go on a rampage in the city. The heroes, normal everyday nerds who are experts in these games, are called upon to save the planet.

Warning: It's an Adam Sandler Movie. 'Nuff said.

There's nothing to spoil. This movie is as shallow as it gets. Adam Sandler movies have very few redeemable artistic qualities about them, and this one is no exception. There's action, things get blown up, crass jokes are made and stereotypes perpetrated. All in a day's work for Mr Sandler.

The Characters

Adam Sandler as Sam Brenner, world champion of Pac-man. A soft-spoken man-child with little ambition (it's Sandler, no surprise there) who installs gaming systems for other people, has a deadpan sense of humor and really likes video games. This character was like 90% of all the characters he plays. No new ground broken, moving on.

Josh Gad hamming it up as Ludlow Lamonsoff, a conspiracy theory nut who also happens to be a whiz at Centipede. Creepy, ambiguously gay and lacking a heap of EQ. That whole geek stereotype in spades. Fun to watch sometimes, but wore on the nerves as the movie progressed.

Kevin James as the President of the United States, Will Cooper. I liked James in this role. Funny when he had to be, he actually played the straight man alongside Sandler and Gad. He's pretty good when he's not taking centerstage, like in the Paul Blart movies. The buddy dynamic between Cooper and Brenner was fun to watch.

Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones fame, playing Eddie Plant, world Donkey Kong champion. Smarmy, sleazy and brash. Also fun to watch, but what an utter waste of his talent.

Michelle Monaghan as Violet Van Patten, a divorcee and Brenner's love interest. Also just happens to be the weapons design specialist working for the military. Not much of a role here. The obligatory pretty face, as it were. So much so that her acrobatics in the later scenes seem really forced, like the makers of this movie added that in just to appease Girl Power, or something.

Jane Krakowski has a minor role as the First Lady. Man, I haven't seen her since Ally McBeal.

Brian Cox as Admiral Porter, playing a moronic version of the villainous badasses he played in the Bourne series.

Sean Bean as a tough-talking British military officer.

Cameos by ex-Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd (boy did I geek out there), Serena Williams (looking built and stacked like a brick wall), and numerous other celebrities, rounded up the cast nicely.

The Mood

Light-hearted, colorful, flashy in parts and action-driven. Heroes never seemed in any real danger. It was more of a "what if video games came to life?" scenario.

What I liked

Sometimes, people watch movies to have fun. When I turned off my brain, this flick delivered in spades. Sure, it's a Sandler film and that automatically means it's utterly devoid of artistic value and good taste. But what the hell, right? It's fun. The numerous shout-outs to different 80s arcade games brought the nostalgia out.

This movie doesn't pretend to be anything other than a shallow fun-fest. Worked for me. Though there was a moment where Sam Brenner reflected on a time when people would actually get out of the house to play games.

What I didn't

Michelle Monaghan. It's not her I don't like. It's not even her delivery. It's the character. What was her character doing, other than providing a romantic foil for Sandler's character? Lame.

Conclusion

Not for you if you like your movies deep, dark and with a moral. This is a popcorn flick. That's all it purports to be, and on that score, it doesn't disappoint.

My Rating

7 / 10

Pac-ed with laughs and action aplenty! Go watch!
T___T