Month: July 2026 (Page 3 of 3)

#7 – “Turn It On Again”

07/02/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Hello again! It is officially the end of one week of “daily” blogs. Today I saw two movies in theaters, so this post will be a review of them. This is an interesting double feature, for sure, but I didn’t want to dripfeed blog content I write for myself. My thoughts on it are more “just get out what you have to say!,” so I have.

Supergirl

The first movie I saw was Supergirl, the next film in the James Gunn-led DC Universe. I have been a huge fan of Gunn’s work since Guardians of the Galaxy, and I have been excited to see his transition to more of a production role, building a saga instead of films. This film is particularly important to this transition as last year’s Superman was was written and directed by Gunn, so this would be the first film solely with him having a production role.

Technicially, the film is done very well. The CGI that tends to dominate a modern superhero film, and often looks very ugly looks quite nice here. That may be due to the length of time between releases in this new DC Universe as compared to the previous DCEU and Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it is a strength of the film nonetheless. The cinematography is another technical strong point of the film: I found a lot of the shots very creative, and also felt that they complimented the personality of Supergirl and Milly Alcock’s performance very well. One technical aspect I will criticize, however, is the music choice. I felt the licensed music clashed, rather than complimented the film, and didn’t really mesh with Kara’s (Supergirl’s) character either.

Alcock’s performance is easily the highlight in this film. She manages wonderfully both the more comedic scenes of Kara, making up a plan as she goes along, with the more dramatic flashbacks showing the destruction of Krypton and Argo. Jason Momoa also gives a very strong performance as Lobo in this film, although I do think that while I enjoyed his presence, he really didn’t feel necessary to this film, but this is more of a problem with the film’s script, which I think is the weakest link here.

There are parts of this script, like the aforementioned scenes on Argo, that reach the brilliance of Superman. But these great moments, and the performances with them, are contrasted by the main plot of the film, which I found at times dull. While I think Ruthye’s quest for revenge and her collaboration with Kara’s quest to save Krypto is a good hook, the way in which it is written makes for the least interesting part of the film. The script just doesn’t expand enough on the relationship between Ruthye and Kara to really make you care. I saw this film with my friends, and that is a sentiment that they both shared, with one of them even going as far to say “I don’t remember the name of the sword girl.” Lobo, while being done by an incredibly fun performance by Momoa, is moreso a character that repeatedly pops up in the story, rather than a significant element, which I think is another huge letdown of the script. It really is a shame, as I think the first and second acts of this film are genuinely great, and that there are even moments of greatness in the film’s third act, but that said third act is too inconsistent, due to the aforementioned lack of expansion on the film’s characters.

While I was largely critical in this last paragraph, I do not want to confuse you. This is still a very enjoyable film! My critiques come from a place of enjoyment whereas in my opinion if that extra bit were to be added, this film would be great, to the extent where I would call it as good as Superman, a film which I adored. Milly Alcock’s performance alone is so much fun that I’d say this one is worth a trip to the theater to see.

Overall: Would Recommend

Jackass: Best and Last

With this film, there is a huge strength and weakness to it: it is partially older content from the Jackass TV show and films of the past. This is a strength, as it’s hard to argue bits like the “Poo Cocktail Supreme” aren’t funny, even if you’ve seen them before. But, it is also a weakness, because you’ve seen it before. I would argue that a lot of the comedic value of the film comes from shock value, so knowing what will happen does partially spoil it.

Yet, even with that said, this is still a hilarious film. The older bits are not exactly the same, with extensions and changes to camera angles that I think do create for somewhat of a new experience. The best example of this is the “Magic Trick” bit, where you get to see both takes of Johnny Knoxville against a bull. To see him get demolished, and decide it just isn’t enough and do it again with a bigger bull, is funny, even if you may have already seen the bigger bull in Jackass Forever. The highlight of the extended old bits is Forever’s “Silence of the Lambs,” now featuring Bam Margera. Obviously, the bit was first designed for him, before later being used with other members of the crew, but Margera’s run-through of it was, in my opinion, the funniest of them all.

The new bits were also a very fun part of this film as well. Many of them play off of the fact that the guys are older now, and I think this led to some decent comedic potential. I will especially highlight the “Human Pretzel” stunt, which I thought was absolutely hilarious. I do think that the new cast members introduced in Forever really didn’t get much to do, and what they did get was rather one-note. There’s only so many times the joke can be about how fat Zackass’s ass is, and I think the film went one or two over that limit.

Regardless, when getting to the big ending of this film, I came to a realization. My chest had started to hurt from what had pretty much been 90 consecutive minutes of laughter. Bringing it all together with a callback to the first film’s opening, along with the credits montage, was, I think, a great ending to the film. It’s hard to say they could’ve had a much better ending, as even with the sidelining of the newer members, it is admittedly fun to see these idiots hurt themselves one last time.

Overall: Would Recommend

Thank you for reading today’s post. I hope you’re enjoying them as much as I like to write them! As an aside, I’ve used the same ending for these posts all week. Maybe I should, but I don’t think I’ll come up with a different ending for these posts. I like this. To me it just feels like a nice little peaceful end to my yapping. Regardless, have a fantastic rest of your day.

#6 – “Hold On”

07/01/2026 / Evan / 0 Comments

Hello again! I’m sort of noticing a pattern starting to form with these posts: long–short. One day will be long, the next short. And the ones in-between are kinda a mystery. So I guess it’s more apt to say long-short-who knows. I don’t have any major updates on stuff I’ve watched or read today. I expect those will have big days, meaning I’ll write a huge amount about something, but only after a few day gap. So today will be more a scattering of thoughts of unknown length as I haven’t written it yet! Let’s see what I think of.

Explanation for the Naming of My Blog Posts

with bonus yap on Call Me Maybe

First off, I’m going to explain how I name my blog posts, because it’s a short story I can use an excuse to explain how great of a song Call Me Maybe is. I just pick a song title from my summer playlist that I think fits well enough with what I’m yapping about.

Now onto yapping about how great Call Me Maybe is, have you even heard the part where she sings “Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad” because that bridge might be the best part of any pop song released in the 2010s. It’s either that, or the guitar outro of Daft Punk’s track Get Lucky. That bridge is just way too much fun, and I would say it’s really that simple, but there’s a tiny bit more to the track than that. That bridge has a subtle guitar in the background, and that along with the strings in the chorus really help the song build a little as it progresses. It all comes together for what is still one of my favorite pop songs 14 years on, the rare song I can like just as much at age 4 and age 104.

Thoughts on “modern” Call of Duty

Now for something completely different. Likely due to the impending re-release of 2010’s Black Ops and its 2012 sequel, I’ve been thinking on the Call of Duty franchise. When I was younger, I was big into it, playing mostly the Black Ops sub-series but also dabbling into the latest entries into the franchise, which at the time would’ve been Vanguard and Modern Warfare 2 (2022). It’s a bit of an argument in the Call of Duty fanbase on the franchise’s “golden age,” and of course everyone has their own answer. Was it the run of games from 2007 to 2012? Perhaps the “Advanced Movement” trilogy of Advanced Warfare, Black Ops III, and Infinite Warfare is the answer.

But there is also the modern era of Call of Duty, and its vague starting point. Some say this era is a “Warzone era” defined by the creation of the free-to-play battle royale mode of the same name, along with the integration of the games into it. This era is usually defined as starting with 2019’s Modern Warfare. My outlook of the eras is that the “Warzone era” is two eras in itself: one from 2019-2022 based on “Warzone 1,” and 2022-the present on “Warzone 2.” The difference is the game to which Warzone was based on, being Modern Warfare or its sequel, Modern Warfare 2. A huge difference of these two eras was a small creative limitation created with Warzone 2: the developers must use a unified game engine.

A game engine shouldn’t be significant to game development, but in this case it is, as in the past each developer would have their own fork of the same engine, with tweaks to create a different “feel” to each game. This helped differ Black Ops 4 from Infinite Warfare or World War II. This “feel” was both mechanical and graphical, and I think both are a huge reason why I just don’t click with modern Call of Duty. Whereas even in the “post-golden age” of 2013-2022, I still found the series very enjoyable, and in my opinion to the point I’d say those games aren’t much, if at all, worse than the era preceding, these new games just don’t work. Maybe it is my personal distaste for Modern Warfare 2 (2022), but every game since has just felt like a skin over that one. While there are iterations, like the expansion to movement in Black Ops 6 and 7, it still has that same feel, which feels much more weighted and less fluid, which I think to some extent ruin the games.

There’s also an argument for the “Warzone-ification” of the Call of Duty games. This argument, which I was against for Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard, I tend to agree with for the newer games. I understand one reason for the unification of engines was that when including content from the games in Warzone, things are now much less likely to break, as seen especially with the “Verdansk ’84” era of Warzone in 2021 from the differences between Modern Warfare (2019) and Black Ops Cold War. With the unified engine, the developers do not face this issue, but at the same time, it creates some new limitations. Things have to be done a way able to be easily ported to a battle royale, which is fundamentally very different from 6v6 multiplayer or the zombies horde-defense mode. And I think this change causes that same “feel” for every game, and as mentioned, it’s a “feel” I just don’t vibe with.

Not to mention, the unification of Call of Duty came with the unification of multiple games under one “Call of Duty” launcher, for the most recent few games and Warzone. That’s something I despise: it removes a difference from the game at a surface level for years. How is Black Ops 6 any different from Black Ops 7 when they’re on the same app on your Xbox? They’re different games! Why should they be together? Let each game have its own app and menu! You shouldn’t have to go through a centralized “Call of Duty” launcher to launch into a game. You should just be able to play it.

Unfortunately, I don’t see Activision going back on the “unified” Call of Duty. The death of that hope for me was 2023’s Black Ops 6. Seeing all of the uniqueness of the Treyarch games gone, it just felt like a certain fun to the series was gone, replaced by a focus on a battle royale I have no interest in powered by a game I didn’t like, which now will poison the games that I’d have a chance of liking.

That’s all I have for today. That’s a lie, actually. I always have more, but I don’t really want to create a 3000 word behemoth of a blog post. I usually write a bit and think “I should save some more for tomorrow.” Writing that made me think of the policy to not overdeliver by Bungie during Destiny 2, which was one of the many mistakes that game made. Maybe that’ll be blog post #12. I hope you enjoyed this one, even if it was very Call of Duty focused and you hate the series. Have a fantastic rest of your day.