Ugh, this movie. I loved the first one but this one had a thudding density about itself that undid all that stylistic magic like a sweater falling into yarn. The opening of the film nicely points to the problems here (and I haven't seen it recently and I'm not going to rewatch it, so if I got it wrong, I got it…

My second time ever!

I was made to be "2nd Tall Man" in whatever they've got for me.

1993, holy crap. Demolition Man, Last Action Hero, Tombstone, sheesh. I pretty much adore all three of those movies. I get why Demolition Man wasn't chosen for the year, but if the column was called Wondrous Outliers I'd love to have seen it there. And Tombstone: "I'm your huckleberry." Good times.

I thought it was an ugly display of a mob at its worst at the time, and that basic view hasn't changed. That said, hindsight only makes that moment seem stranger and stranger.

I loved W:TNO dearly, but I definitely found it to be more of an "experience" than a thought-provoker. I mean, from a certain perspective, it made the Nazis right: in-universe, there really was a Jewish conspiracy to develop advanced, world-changing technology and keep it away from the goyim all along. Obviously,…

Bonus points for a solid, non-loins-related use of the word "tumescent."

Or what about some of the stuff Trump was saying about the Obamas when they were first elected?

I went with a group of eight or so friends, and two of them started in like this, too. The whole movie, they were just yelling "Dude!" and "Sweet!' I was irked at first, but we were all doing it by the end.

Totally! Two adults are attracted to each other, they hook up, it's great. I loved that about it, too. They even gave the "love interest" quite the backstory, and ending.

It was awful! You could see it coming for like eight or ten episodes, and it was still a nasty slap in the face when it happened. That little brat…

Of course harness!

I thought Wolfenstein: New Order was the best possible collision of effective and ridiculous, and his standing up from being comatose for 14 years to start killing Nazis with his bare hands (they did Nazi that coming) is a great example. Plus, it actually replaced Crimson Skies as my mental go-to image to define…

"…so I did the scribe a favor and offered to re-set his nose. I am not trained in first aid, which is fine, because I didn't care about re-setting his nose. That part was fun."

Hee hee, it's great when you can legitimately surprise your players with an antagonist. Usually, everyone's so genre-savvy that all you can do is invest in the setup and payoff.

Saints Row 3 / 4 - Someone here reminded me last week how much I adored SR4, so I reinstalled it. On a replay, turns out the superpowers more or less negate the need for whole swaths of the game, like everything having to do with driving. So I reinstalled SR3 and I've been playing that instead. It doesn't go nearly…

At least they seem to get that their only hope was to go flat-out cartoon everything for this to stand an outside chance of working.

Actually, I really liked him in Spartacus. I don't know what happened to him, but for playing such a walking bullseye, he really fleshed out the role. Maybe the American accent tripped him up or something.

He gets "biz-zay!" Consistently and thoroughly.

I think that's actually from one of Seinfeld's very first bits. He had a whole thing about a guy who used to weigh 800 lbs but now only weighs 400 lbs, and what that journey must've been like.