Double Down Reviews

Phantom Thread is one of those films that you don't see every day. It defies expectations, and I had to think for a while to determine how I felt about the film. In other words, it's very much a Paul Thomas's Anderson film. This stylish and confused "love story" is the type of script that makes me wonder how it came to be. It is a bit difficult to discuss Phantom Thread without encroaching the magic and mystery that defines it. In short, the story follows a prestigious, eccentric dressmaker who charms a young woman. The film centers on these two characters, and that is the essence of the film. While this may seem to be an unremarkable premise, the nature of these characters drive the film. Unique, mysterious, and unexpected, the twists and turns of their sentiments and decisions keep the plot moving subtly along. Daniel Day-Lewis maintains complexity and depth that makes him one of my favourite actors, and his performance here does not fail to impress. Mean...

As a fan of both Star Wars and old first-person shooters, Star Wars: Dark Forces   has been on my bucket list for some time. My renewed interest in the Star Wars universe due to the release of The Last Jedi led me to finally taking on this 1995 classic. The gameplay was what I expected: fast-paced, straightforward running and gunning. The experience is akin to Doom (as most MS-DOS first-person shooters were after 1993). The charm is of course that instead of hell-spawn, the protagonist is tearing through wave after wave of Stormtrooper, Imperial Office and other hostile alien races seen in the original Star Wars trilogy. The levels can be lengthy and require exploration and the occasional puzzle without compromising the excitement with enemies lurking around every corner. Dark Forces also maintained a standard PC FPS setup, although there were keys which I remapped via DOSBox. The most important was finding a comfortable way to look up and down in the game, given that mouse con...

Between the World and Me , which is a long tell-all letter to the author's son, is an extremely powerful and delicate account of the black experience in the modern United States. Coates is brutally honest and frames his experiences in the context of the greater social forces shaping understandings of “race” in the United States. The affair is personal, as Coates is indeed writing to his son, but the lessons and experiences which he courageously shares are accessible and should be considered by all willing to read with an open mind and empathetic heart. Coates structures the struggles of black Americans in extremely in physical terms – in terms of keeping one's body alive. Coates analyzes how aspects of American society have been engineered to exclude and dehumanize black Americans physically, both implicit and explicit. Instead of focusing on black America as a single entity, Coates approaches each individual as a unique instance of life makes the atrocities of white Ameri...

Steven Spielberg's latest film, The Post , could not be more timely. The two major themes of the film, political journalism and feminine leadership, could not be more appropriate following a year-and-a-half period of sensationalized journalism and public outcry over sexism. Spielberg brings his decades-long career and exceptional casting with him to this production, and yet the film still fails to be as powerful or awe-inspiring as it could have potentially been. The production is phenomenal, with every shot convincing, appropriate for the 1971 setting. The costumes and designs felt very modern, and yet still entrenched in aristocracy and the 20th Century in a way that is a far cry from 2017/2018. The talented cast, including stars Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, put their age and experience into good use in portraying passionate and powerful figures central to the high-stakes game of journalism media in the murky waters of the Vietnam era. However, I felt most characters were static...

I took two Astronomy classes in college which places me with slightly more knowledge of the heavens than average. My interest in the subject has persisted, and I now engage the occasional YouTube podcast on the subject. Neil de Grasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry    caught my eye as a reigning bestseller highlighted in his January 2018 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert .   I decided to give it a try, being a fan of his accessible approach to the intimidating topic and enthusiastic personality. Astrophysics was not the introductory text I was expecting, but instead remained true to its title. The book launches into the major topics of modern astrophysics with an assumption that the reader is scientifically literate and able to comprehend complex topics. It took me a moment to readjust to the higher level of reading required, but once I did I found that Tyson found a good balance between simplistically accessible and intimidatingly complex....

Although I have been a fan of The Room since 2012 and had been anticipating the release of The Disaster Artist film, I was not planning on reading Greg Sestero's autobiographical The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made. It was not until I received it as a gift that I embarked on this surprisingly well-written and interesting story of following one's dreams and attempting to climb the Los Angeles acting scene. The style of book is multifaceted and curious. Given that the only reason anyone knows who Greg Sestero is because of Tommy Wisseau and The Room, the book is both a collection of memoirs for Sestero and a biography for Wisseau, as well as likely the most definitive account of the making of The Room which anyone is likely to give. The first role which the book takes on, in both style and scope, is to serve as a memoir not only of the making of '"the worst movie ever made,"  but also that of describing the challenges of ...