In Yspahan, you take on the role of a merchant, and you try to score the most points by trading goods. To start each round, the first player takes all of the dice (optionally buying extra dice that only he can use) and rolls them. After this, he groups them by number and puts them on the “tower board” from bottom to top. These dice determine which actions are available that round and how effective those actions are. Next, each player selects a group of dice and performs one of three actions. (We got this wrong the first time that I played.) You may perform the dice action, move the supervisor equal to the number of pips on the dice (allowing you to send goods to his caravan) or draw a card. The dice action depends on where the dice are on the tower board, but they consist of collecting camels or money or placing goods on various parts of the board. In each turn, you also have the option of buying a building. Play continues like this for seven turns (a “week”), and then players score points based on goods that they have placed on the board and they have shipped to the caravan. The board then clears, and you keep playing. After three weeks, whoever has the most points wins!

The first thing that I love about Yspahan is the tower board. I really enjoy how the tower board works, and the player who most efficiently takes advantage of the opportunities on it will probably win the game. It provides a nice, random element to the game, but it does so without giving the feeling of luck to the game. The first player rolls the dice, and then everyone selects from those choices. Yes, there is some luck involved. For example, if the first player really needs camels and happens to roll a lot of 1’s (the lowest number goes on the camel spot), then this will work to their advantage. Overall, it provides more of a feel of variance than luck. I think that it is a wonderful use of dice, and I haven’t seen any other games that use dice in quite this way.

The tower board is awesome!

The second pro that I have for Yspahan is that the player to win is probably the player who most effectively balances their strategy. I am familiar with the phrase “multiple paths to victory” in games, and I enjoy when players can take completely different strategies and still have a chance of winning. In my opinion, Yspahan isn’t quite like that. Instead, there are different ways of scoring points. However, if you specialize in only one area, I think that you will lose to a player that does very well at scoring in every area of the game. There are divergent strategic options, such as when to focus on the different areas, but ultimately, you need to score in every area to achieve the highest possible score. I like that the game forces you to pay attention to everything instead of being able to completely neglect certain elements.

My third pro for Yspahan is that it forces you to make tough choices. You can’t do everything that you want to do each turn, and in order to win, you have to skip an opportunity to make a “good” move in order to make a “better” one. (As an aside, we missed the rule that you get to do one of the three actions each turn the first time that we tried this game. We were doing all three. Every turn. The game is really horrible, long and broken if you do this. Just so you know…) For example, drawing a card is really useful; it might allow you to purchase a building, among other things. You could also move the supervisor, gaining extra points from the caravan. Ultimately, the right choice might be to place a few cubes on the board to complete an extra neighborhood. Yspahan just has a brilliant balance between different strategic choices and simplicity of game play.

The caravan can be worth a lot of points!

My only real con for Yspahan has to do with the cards. Whereas the dice add an element of randomness without adding luck, I feel the opposite about card drawing. Getting a “lucky” draw can really help you in Yspahan.  While drawing poorly won’t directly cost you the game, it can feel like a wasted turn. Drawing a card early that allows you to build a building without paying half of its cost is wonderful. Drawing a second copy of a scoring card that allows you to trade your coins or camels in for victory points is fairly useless, especially early. To be fair, a card is never “worthless” because you can choose to discard a card when you collect dice to add an additional die to the number you draw. Either way, there is a definite luck element in which cards you draw and when you draw them.

Overall, I think that Yspahan is a brilliant gaming experience that flows smoothly and only takes about an hour. All around, it’s a great experience, and I’d recommend that almost everybody try it if they have the opportunity.

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Much like the characters, the plot is simple on the surface and has so much more to discover on the levels beneath. Bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is traveling to Red Rock via stagecoach in the late Nineteenth Century to deliver wanted prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the hangman for the $10,000 price on her head. In the middle of a furious Wyoming blizzard, the two passengers and their coachman O.B. (James Parks) encounter first another bounty hunter named Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and then purported new Red Rock sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). Both men convince Ruth to save them and transport them to Red Rock, but the blizzard forces them to take refuge in an occupied haberdashery where they encounter four more men who help comprise the title. (O.B. really makes a ninth, but this is Tarantino’s eighth film, so he doesn’t count him in the title.)

Bob the Mexican (Demián Bichir) is a gruff man who doesn’t say too much. Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth) is an Englishman with a delightful way of speaking that makes him one of the most fun characters in the movie. Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) is a cowpoke who writes down everything that happens. Is he perhaps a stand-in for Tarantino himself? Finally, Civil War veteran General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern) is a nasty racist who bites back when provoked. Put all of these characters in a one-room cabin in a blizzard, add guns and slowly reveal multiple hidden agendas, and you have a powder keg that’s likely to explode at any minute. Like some of Alfred Hitchcock’s best dramas, The Hateful Eight plays out like a game of Clue. It’s no accident that the film bears many similarities to The Thing, one of Tarantino’s influences, as well as horror flicks like Alien and any number of Westerns. Tarantino’s broken narrative delivers punches to the gut with maximum effectiveness as secrets are revealed and the final act ramps up the horsepower.

The cast is a delight because it mixes familiar faces from previous Tarantino films like Jackson, Roth and Madsen with newcomers Russell and Leigh. Across the board, the cast is excellent, and that’s hard to pull off for most actors and directors. Even among these talented cast members, some stand out. Jackson earns every bit of his position as lead in this movie, and he fully inhabits Warren and makes you forget those Capital One commercials. Leigh takes a lot of abuse and still manages to hold her own against her costars with a singular bad attitude and a smile on her face among the muck and hard conditions. I last remember Dern in Nebraska as a crotchety old man, and he somehow increases his sneer and venom while almost never leaving his seat. Russell’s performance is transformative as he shifts from the nice guy and hero whom we’re used to seeing to a nasty gunslinger with a singular purpose who gives many slaps and punches to Daisy. Her perpetual black eye shows his impatience. Much was made of John Travolta’s work in Pulp Fiction. I’d put Russell’s efforts on that level, and I hope that Tarantino can draw him into a future production.

Two significant contributions are additive to Tarantino’s directing. With an opening on a snow-covered mountain and many vistas of blizzard conditions, cinematographer Robert Richardson captures both the beauty and the danger of all of that snow and a handful of people and locations as specks against it. Richardson has worked with Tarantino before as well as movies like The Aviator, Hugo and Shutter Island. I swear that I felt a chill throughout the entire screening, and the images have a lot to do with it. The Hateful Eight was shot in the Ultra Panavision 70 process (65mm film with lenses to bump up the aspect ratio to 2.76:1) and then printed on 70mm film as well as digital formats. The result is lush, beautiful scenery that puts you in the middle of the action. Music is essential to Tarantino’s productions, but in most cases, that music consists of pop songs on the soundtrack. Legendary composer Ennio Morricone wrote the original score for The Hateful Eight, and his music both cements the film’s position among a heritage of iconic Westerns and produces sounds that perfectly complement the action and even the quieter parts. Ear-splitting crescendos hit the hardest at key moments. Perhaps they’re overkill, but I really didn’t mind.

As great as The Hateful Eight is, there are some places where less would be more. Four-letter words are sprinkled throughout most of Tarantino’s movies; that’s just the way that his characters speak. Take it or leave it. Although it’s possibly historically accurate, I was instead surprised at the rampant usage of the word “nigger” throughout the film. Tarantino certainly has the writing skills to include fewer instances of this word for maximum impact. Perhaps he was trying to lure Spike Lee into a feud, but the liberal usage of the word in almost every conversation comes off as juvenile, showy and unnecessary. The Hateful Eight is also guilty of being too talky at times and a bit long in the early segments. Although I enjoy such scenes in his movies, others could easily get bored or disinterested in the plot as characters wander in different directions with their speeches. When done right — e.g., the conversation about burgers in France from Pulp Fiction — this technique is a fun bonus.

A few minor missteps keep me from elevating the movie even higher. It annoys me when actors mispronounce a word straight into another word, and “cavalry” is pronounced both properly and as “Calvary” a few times. Didn’t these actors do script readings and multiple takes? As much as I love Jackson’s performance, the hair and makeup folks took him back to the 1800s but left his teeth unbelievably white and perfect. I wouldn’t normally call that out; so many scenes with him laughing or yelling made it obvious. A number of surprises and reveals are part of the fun of The Hateful Eight. One of the cast members in the opening titles should really have not been listed until the credits for some extra oomph with his entrance. Instead, I kept waiting for him to show up, which is distracting as you’re mentally trying to follow and solve what’s going on.

For those of you lucky enough to be in select cities, The Hateful Eight was released in a Roadshow version that really takes the moviegoing experience back to the grand old days of cinema. All attendees get a snazzy program full of great images from the movie as well as a cast list and other info about the film. With a running time over three hours, Tarantino added a three-minute overture with Morricone’s music playing against a static background and an intermission about two-thirds through the film. The intermission is slightly too short at about 10 minutes, so rush quickly if you want to get more popcorn or make a bathroom run. More importantly, the producers spent a lot of money to retrofit the Roadshow theaters with projectors to play the 70mm print. This step back in time fits The Hateful Eight the best, but those who see the digital version in its wide release will still get a memorable experience.

The Hateful Eight is pure Tarantino from start to finish. There’s plenty of blood and gore for those who aren’t too squeamish. A lot of the violence elicits laughs as well as shock in a wonderful juxtaposition of emotion. There are thankfully fewer songs on the soundtrack, which emphasizes Morricone’s music even more. Humor is a strong component of Tarantino’s oeuvre, so expect to laugh both out loud and even a little nervously as some scenes are outright silly and others are just over the top for the circumstances. Much like the long stagecoach ride to Red Rock, The Hateful Eight is a slow-burning experience that delivers you to its final destination bumped, scraped and perhaps richer for the effort.

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A bounty hunter and his prisoner are forced to take shelter from a blizzard with several mysterious men in The Hateful Eight.

Across the snow-covered plains of Wyoming, a lone stagecoach makes its way. Its dedicated driver, O.B. Jackson (James Parks), transports his two passengers towards their eventual destination — the town of Red Rock. Inside the carriage rides an obsessively vigilant bounty hunter, John Ruth (Kurt Russell), with his dour detainee Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Ruth’s determined to deliver the outlaw to stand trial for a crime that will surely see the woman hang from the neck until dead. Of course, he will also be paid handsomely once the fugitive is delivered.

Ruth knows from experience to be on the lookout for anyone who might want to stake their own claim to the bountiful bounty. What he hadn’t planned on was an ominous blizzard. It means taking refuge in the only viable shelter along their path — a curiously named establishment known as Minnie’s Haberdashery. Once settled in, Ruth studies the occupants with whom he’ll be forced to wait out the storm.

The group includes just two men whom he knows aside from the stagecoach driver. Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) is a noteworthy northerner — a decorated officer of the Union army and quite a rarity given his African roots. Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) is the son of a well-known rebel soldier and, if he’s to be believed, on his way to Red Rock to become its next sheriff. The other four men are all unknown to him. They include Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), an Englishman also bound for Red Rock; General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), an aged Confederate; Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a simple cow hand; and a Mexican named Bob (Demián Bichir), who’s filling in for Minnie while she’s away visiting family. The tension builds as fast and furiously as the outside snowfall. Is everyone here just to escape the elements, or does someone have a secret agenda?

Writer/director Quentin Tarantino attempts to make his mark with a bold Western delivered in the style of the best of the genre. His well-practiced aim misses the heart but still hits the target. The film breaks for an intermission at the 100-minute mark, but the similarity between the two halves is as disparate as George Armstrong Custer‘s bold ride into the Little Bighorn and his slaughter once there. The meandering introduction gives way to magnificent mayhem in the second half.

The performances are as palpable as the cold that permeates the creaky cabin. Jackson has never been this good, and that’s no small bar to clear. There are two oddities worth mentioning. Roth’s role seems entirely conceived as a vehicle for perennial Tarantino stalwart Christoph Waltz. Russell takes the hardest hit; his Ruth is a one-dimensional character who grows annoying after the first 20 minutes. There’s also an unmistakable elephant in the room — most of the plot seems lifted almost entirely from Russell’s most famous turn in 1982’s The Thing. Did Tarantino hire him because of the similarities, or is his inclusion driving the comparison? I have no idea, and I’m not sure that it matters.

What’s most surprising for a film of this magnitude is the lack of attention to detail. For example, the language is often entirely wrong for the period. Even the simplest of elements seems glossed over. Shot after shot shows us a stagecoach traversing mysteriously plowed paths across what should be a wild prairie. One detail that isn’t overlooked is the ever-deepening mystery. It’s as elusive to pin down as a windblown flame.

The real fun begins post-intermission. The menu is rife with the red meat that Tarantino’s fans have come to expect — on the plate and everywhere else it can reach. I just don’t get the stark contrast shift. When Tarantino finished his last film, Django Unchained, he said that it introduced him to the Western genre and that experience showed him how to make a great one. I just think that he should have watched Unforgiven a few more times.

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Secret Ponchos is a multiplayer-centric, Western-styled shooter that’s all about quick reflexes and mastery of your character’s strengths. You can choose from ten different Outlaws, each possessing their own unique weapons and abilities. Typically, they come outfitted with a gun and a secondary, more utility-based weapon. Like you would with any twin-stick shooter, you move with the left stick, aim with the right stick and pump your foes full of lead. When the going gets tough, you can also roll or dash out of the way to evade fire. However, this uses limited stamina, so proper stamina management is key to surviving dangerous firefights.

The gunplay is fast, frantic and rewarding.

These are essentially the core mechanics of Secret Ponchos, and they all mesh very well together once you get the hang of the controls. You constantly dash around, get shots off and measure how to advance on the enemy. It plays out a bit like controlled chaos with each team waiting for the right opportunity to pounce. Outsmarting the enemy and using your character’s abilities to the fullest feels really damn good. When your whole team is also on the same point, it feels even better.

Each Outlaw you pick can have his stats customized to your liking, such as increased health or rate of fire. This small amount of customization is enough to tweak how you want your particular character to play out. I particularly fell in love with the Deserter’s brutal capabilities of rolling over enemies to stun them and following up with a couple of blasts of shotgun shells. While the design of some of the characters is interesting, Secret Ponchos is missing a certain flair to really give the overall game some charm.

Unfortunately, the crisp game play is hindered by the overall package in which it’s implemented. There are very few game modes between the 1-vs-1 and 3-vs-3 offerings.  Most of the time, you’ll either play Domination, in which your team has to get five more kills than your opponents, or Deathmatch, which is split into three rounds with no respawns. I’d be mostly fine with the limted number of modes, but the kicker is that there are also a small number of maps as well. In the current landscape of multiplayer gaming experiences, it’s getting harder and harder to justify this little amount of content, even if it’s only $15.

The Deserter packs a serious punch with his powerful buckshot.

The other inhibitor of fun in Secret Ponchos is the matchmaking system. It takes absurdly long to get into a game, with wait times up to five minutes sometimes. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that matches themselves are only around five minutes long. After each match, you can hit a button to regroup with the same people to shorten the wait time, but rarely do people pick it due to a poor user interface. It’s incredibly frustrating because the core of Secret Ponchos is playing quick, fast-paced matches, but it becomes slogged down by the poor matchmaking system.

There also seems to be missing some sort of progression system. That’s not to say that every multiplayer game needs some gimmicky leveling system to keep you arbitrarily hooked, but Secret Ponchos doesn’t have anything substantial to anticipate. If they really want me to get hooked, they should offer some cosmetic unlocks to customize my Outlaw or my weapons based on how high that Outlaw’s Bounty is. I could then feel some sort of attachment to my character. Instead, the developers dangle those cosmetic offerings behind a $9 paywall.

The total package of Secret Ponchos really pains me because the core game mechanics are rock solid. The fast-paced, skill-intensive shootouts mixed with unique and diverse Outlaws create intense and exciting moments. Unfortunately, it becomes bogged down by an overall lackluster multiplayer suite that had me spending more time in matchmaking menus instead of dodging gunfire in an old saloon. If Secret Ponchos had launched maybe a few years back or with a different pricing structure, we could be looking at a more healthy player base that would take care of some of these problems. As it stands, it’s caught in the classic catch-22 — nobody wants to play because of the low player count, and it has a low player count because nobody wants to get invested in a dying community. Unfortunate, indeed.

Secret Ponchos is available for Windows PC and PlayStation 4.

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Nearly everyone with a connection to the housing market found themselves living in a dream world of riches. Investors, bankers and mortgage lenders reveled in an environment of perpetual profit. Would-be homeowners could get into a home with little more than a driver’s license. No job? No problem. Everyone won until nearly everyone lost big when the bubble finally burst in the late 2000s. It was a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees or, in this case, the bottom line for the money. On the periphery, a few number-crunching nerds analyzed the data and tried to raise the alarm. No one wanted to hear it, so they decided to go ahead and literally bet against the house. The group includes Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a socially awkward hedge fund manager with an eye for data and one of the first to see the impending downfall. Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) is a Wall Street trader with a vulture’s instinct who smells a carcass just over the next hill. Two small-time private-equity players enlist the aid of privacy-paranoid trader Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt). Finally, manic money manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and team can’t believe that all of this is legal, but they certainly don’t want to be the only ones to miss out.

This is a film about an extremely serious subject matter. The specific details are involved and numerous. Here’s Academy Award-nominated actor Leonardo DiCaprio to explain my thoughts on the film: “I got attention by being funny at school, pretending to be retarded and jumping around with a deformed hand.” So what does that have to do with the film, you may be wondering? As it turns out, everything.

Director Adam McKay (Step Brothers and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) tries to tackle some meatier material, only to end up as inconspicuous as a clown at a funeral. It feels like Schindler’s List peppered with lewd jokes every 15 minutes or so. McKay’s misstep is that distracting. If the jokes weren’t strange enough, then consider the frenetic visuals that seem to spew forth randomly from the dreams of an amphetamine junkie on a cocaine blitz. Meanwhile, the plot seems to exist in an entirely different universe. It uses up half of the film, repeating the same refrain like a stuck turntable needle — “The sky is falling…,” “The sky is falling…,” “The sky is falling…” We get it already. The second half of the film does a reverse-Superman. It heads for the closest phone booth, sheds its non-human craziness and emerges as an upstanding, mild-mannered movie.

The message is obviously powerful and, at least for the last hour, interesting. Do yourself a favor and see Inside Job instead. It’s a much better effort without all of the crazy. What do I mean by crazy? Here’s famed American writer and illustrator Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel to explain it as simply as possible: “Being crazy isn’t enough.” [If you didn’t think those quotes fit in this review, then you can forget about liking this film.]

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I was 12 years old in 1977 when the sci-fi world was forever changed by a surprise film that dominated theaters unlike anything before it. I vividly remember sitting in my seat as that massive star destroyer lurched ominously overhead, transporting an entire audience to a new frontier. Sadly, my initial enthusiasm eroded as the years went by and the release of the plot-challenged prequels only served to solidify my distance. The news of a new installment of films struck me as interesting, but nothing I felt all that excited about.

So here we are, with Episode VII kicking off supposedly the last three chapters of an epic tale dating back nearly four decades. Disney pulled out all of the stops. They bought the franchise from its creator, George Lucas, and handed the reigns to action-loving director J.J. Abrams. Would the fans accept his new take on the story, or would this be the end?

The plot follows the trials of guilt-ridden stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) as he fights to break free of his First Order brainwashing. The troubled young warrior convinces his enemy, Resistance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), to help him escape the Order. In return, he agrees to join Poe in delivering highly secretive data back to the leaders of the Resistance. The First Order uncovers the plot and sets out to intercept them at all costs. The pair run into trouble while the sensitive documents inadvertently end up in the hands of a scrappy young scrounger named Rey (Daisy Ridley). Until this day, hers was a world dominated by a struggle to simply survive. Resistance fighters, Jedi warriors and The Force are all just legends of a distant past. It’s a past that suddenly bursts into the present, bringing with it an adventure that she could have never possibly conceived.

From its very first frames, this new entry gives ardent followers of the series everything that they hoped for and more. Countless scenes immediately transport the viewer back to the beginning with an attention to detail beyond every expectation. The visuals are just the beginning. They’re not just exceptional, but are also eerily familiar. Abrams somehow managed to re-create every angle, costume, character and conversation with an ease that would only seem possible with a time machine.

The narrative itself also borrows heavily on past story arcs — perhaps a tad too much for its own good. There’s an abundant dose of déjà vu beyond the return of past beloved characters that’s simply impossible to ignore. At times, it feels as if an efficiency expert with a bad case of OCD was put in charge of the script. Obligatory cantina scene? Check. Land speeder scene? Check. Thankfully, it amounts to only a minor distraction.

The necessary nostalgic nods all more or less work out with a few insignificant exceptions. The real power of the film comes from its boundless energy — not exactly a surprise with Abrams at the helm. His is a supersized Star Wars. Everything is bigger, including the laughs. This is a Star Wars equally adept at enticing the old fan and the new. The Force is strong with this one.

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Cowriter/director Abrams is joined by cowriters Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt. Kasdan notably wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark and cowrote two of the films in the original trilogy. He knows his way around this universe. Arndt wrote Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine, two releases full of laughs and emotion that are so evident here. After listening carefully to all of the tracks in the score by John Williams for the original Star Wars, I began to notice the themes of his music even more. With Williams on board for this project, he mixes in some of the themes from the past films with new music for a score that mirrors the overall mixture of old and new. Cinematographer Daniel Mindel captures some amazing shots of TIE Fighters against bright suns and the vast internal voids of the heir to the Death Star, so this film looks as good as and actually quite better than any of the others. With such top-notch filmmakers and artists on board, all that you need is a strong story to show off their work.

The crux of the plot is that a variety of forces, including the First Order (akin to the Empire of old) and the Resistance, are looking for a special map. Pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) hides the map on a sort of flash drive in his trusted droid BB-8 on the planet Jakku, and soon after, BB-8 is the droid that everyone’s looking for. New bad guy Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is the face of the First Order, and he drives his stormtroopers to find this map. One of those nameless, numbered stormtroopers breaks rank to avoid killing innocents and is dubbed Finn (John Boyega) by Poe. Finn and BB-8 run into a scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley), and the two unlikely heroes and fast friends escape Jakku to make their way to the Resistance with BB-8 and the map that he carries. Along the way, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) find the threesome and help them on their mission. Rey and Finn experience growth in unexpected ways as they are tested in their first taste of adventure.

Driver, Boyega and Ridley are all excellent here. These are dream roles for these young actors, and there’s nothing hokey in their work. They are all quite believable, and Ridley is especially impressive as a powerful woman with great inner strength and many abilities. You will now immediately see girls and women of all ages gravitate from dressing up as Katniss Everdeen to portraying Rey. Finn is never a villain despite literally wearing their clothes, and he progresses the most over the course of the film from deserter to hero. Boyega similarly gets stronger during the proceedings to the point where I could see him easily slide into other roles. Driver has the dream job of the movie’s bad guy who gets to use both The Force and a new kind of lightsaber with smaller beams sticking out of the handle. Lucas made a huge mistake by not focusing more on one of the best characters in the prequels — Darth Maul and his double-ended lightsaber. Driver plays Kylo Ren with a consistent menace, and there’s something very Darth Vader about him given his full head covering that features a mask with what looks like a breather. BB-8 is as fun, rambunctious and resourceful as R2-D2, and his expressions and reactions are clear despite never producing more than beeps and buzzes. As lovable as a puppy dog, every kid is going to want a BB-8 toy.

The film sits so firmly in the Star Wars universe that many scenes will bring back memories of the other movies. Star Wars fans will have no complaints. Do you want a lightsaber duel? It’s here. Space battles? Ditto. Creatures and droids of all shapes, sizes and purposes? You’d better not blink because even the background characters are interesting. A huge element of the film series is humor. There are lots of inside jokes, but there are also genuinely funny scenes that stand out and lighten the mood where it sometimes needs it most. Han Solo has so many great lines that it’s clear that the writers treated his character with great care and nostalgia. Indeed, this film is a fun ride despite some serious stuff that goes down.

Star Wars set the bar high for special effects, so it’s no surprise that the variety and quantity of special effects here are mind-boggling. Sometimes, the best effects are practical ones as opposed to digital creations, and the outdoor scenes on Jakku and in a snowy forest are made to feel more real with sand and trees responding to explosions and weapons. Sure, there are digital characters, too. It doesn’t bother me at all that they are sprinkled throughout the movie. The combination of digital imagery and characters with makeup or other attached hardware expands the palette and look of the movie. BB-8 is probably the best single creation. He sometimes rolls along the floor or sand right by characters, and in other cases, it’s obvious that they’ve reproduced him digitally. Similarly, the storied Millennium Falcon is a strong presence and survives a lot of abuse as it always does. There are versions of the ship for characters to walk inside, and the other instances are probably all digital models. At this point, it’s hard to tell what is real on set and added later, and I really didn’t think about it as the scenes flew by.

There are people who just don’t get the Star Wars films or any science fiction. Even for them, this new entry in the series is sure to entertain. It’s full of action, great characters, drama and elements that both delight and amaze you. Star Wars is in good hands with Abrams. Nuances throughout the film like a bloody mark on Finn’s helmet to make him stand out from other stormtroopers show Abrams’s skill with visual storytelling and attention to detail. There are so many things to see here that one or two more viewings are almost mandatory. Star Wars: The Force Awakens also reawakens the interest in Star Wars in all generations as it makes you feel like a kid all over again.

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All of the elements are there for what should have been a rollicking comedy instead of a jumbled mess. First, the movie is rated R, which gives a film a lot of leeway as far as the type of comedy and language that are possible. Second, director Jason Moore has experience on TV shows and one hit with Pitch Perfect. Third, Paula Pell is a veteran SNL writer who has worked with Fey and Poehler before. Fourth, the two leads are unstoppable when they get in synch and play off each other’s strengths. Put that all together, and you should have a hit film to keep you laughing from start to finish. Unfortunately, I mostly cringed at elements like the dialogue that makes fun of an Korean woman’s name and tired scenes like a room cleaning montage and a silly dance number. This may be a case where the twisted Sisters would have fared better in the costars’ control.

Kate Ellis (Fey) and Maura Ellis (Poehler) are sisters — not twins, thankfully! — in different lines of work and cities. Kate is a single mom struggling as a hairstylist of sorts who loses her job, and Maura is a nurse who at least has a decent job. They go to Orlando when their parents (Dianne Wiest and James Brolin) announce that they’re selling the family home. What the parents don’t tell them because they don’t want any arguments or stalling is that the house is getting sold in a few days. Kate and Maura mope around their house and bedroom that’s still adorned with their teenage interests and idols before they decide to throw the party of all parties to say goodbye to their old home. Of course, nothing goes as planned, from uninvited guests to disasters.

The cast is promising, so I blame the filmmakers for not making the most of their talents. Fey and Poehler have such a natural chemistry and ease with which they approach all of their projects that they make their characters believable within a few minutes. The problem with the film is that many of the scenes seem like skits or little movies strung together instead of a coherent plot or direction. Fey and Poehler make the most of the weak material, but they simply don’t carry the movie. Ike Barinholtz gets a lot of screen time as a neighbor named James. Maura makes googly eyes at him, but I just couldn’t get past the fact that he looks like he’s related to Mark Wahlberg.

As one of Kate and Maura’s weird friends, current SNL cast member Bobby Moynihan steals every scene, even when he’s in the background with Fey and/or Poehler in focus. His character is the only one who feels like he belongs in a comedy. Wiest and Brolin are fine in their limited screen time. There are small roles for other actors like wrestler John Cena and John Leguizamo, and other SNL players show up in what are essentially cameos. Whereas Moynihan saves the day many times, Maya Rudolph is dreadful as an old rival of the sisters. She overacts and makes lots of strange faces as she delivers her lines worse than a first-timer in a high school play. I winced every time that she appeared, and her scenes just took me right out of the movie.

Comedy is really tough to get right on the big screen. Once you make audiences laugh, you can’t let them stop or get bored. The script is too weak and forced to keep up that momentum. The party scenes are notably better than the first half of the film, but at that point, it is almost too late to bother. Moynihan kept me giggling or outright laughing, so maybe the movie should have really started with the party and gone on from there. Instead, two hours seems like an eternity when there’s nothing funny going on. Even worse, there are a few scenes about relationships between the sisters and their family members that needed to be cut. I can remember only one scene that is outright hilarious, and a great comedy would offer too many instances like that one for me to single it out.

I haven’t given up on Fey and Poehler. There’s a great film yet to come with them as the leads. Just like Melissa McCarthy has struggled with her character choices since her early success with Bridesmaids, Fey and Poehler have some other stops along their journey to a memorable comedy. The R rating introduces adult humor and language, but both Fey and Wiest dropping F-bombs is not funny just for the sake of saying them. Impactful cursing in comedies is almost as important as the timing and jokes, so it’s amateurish to have characters curse with no punch line beyond the language. There’s a big difference between movies with SNL origins like The Blues Brothers and Superstar. In the first, well-written, familiar characters are placed within a plot and allowed to grow. The second is a tired SNL bit stretched to fill a running time that it doesn’t deserve. Sisters is more like the latter. This comedy could have been a triumph for its leads. Instead, Sisters makes me wary of any future team-up.

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Lowglow is a puzzle game with a simple concept — draw lines to create bumpers to try to lead a ball to the goal, all engrossed by a soothing art style and soundtrack. You only get a certain number of lines per level, so the placement of them is the crux of the puzzle element. At first, I wasn’t really sold. The levels were far too easy to complete. Far too often, it felt like I didn’t really put the lines in the right places to make it to the goal, but I was rather just getting sort of lucky. It didn’t have that “Eureka!” moment for which great puzzle games are known.

The different colored shapes apply gravity modifiers to the ball.

As I progressed, Lowglow started throwing new mechanics in the way of the goals. Different colored obstacles can flip the gravity of the ball, and portals start showing up. They teleport the ball to another location. I really had to rack my brain on a few of these levels to figure out how to make proper use of all of the objects. I enjoyed the fact that almost every level could be beat in a multitude of different ways. Still, I would too often just get lucky with a ball’s crazy bounce putting it in the goal.

I was also disappointed with how the levels are structured. Most levels only allow you to use a few lines, which can then lead to levels ending fairly quickly. I hoped for more extravagant level designs to shoot and bounce the ball all over the place to victory. It all felt very small scale. Luckily, after beating the game, loads of more levels show up, and most of these have more interesting level designs than the bulk of the main story.

Actually, calling it a “story” would be giving it too much justice. Lowglow tries to shoehorn a story into an abstract puzzle game, and every bit of it feels unnecessary. The story comes in the form of floating disfigured faces spouting exposition about bringing light to the darkness. Weird jokes and informal lingo are wedged in as well, which clashes with the serious bits of exposition. In a game that is all about solving puzzles with bouncing balls, there is no reason for this mediocre story to be there.

Why is this even in the game?

After the three or so hours it takes to beat all of the levels, there is nothing left to do. There isn’t any longevity in replaying the levels unless you want to see how many different ways that you can beat them, but I didn’t have any desire for that. There is promise of a forthcoming level editor, which would be wonderful for giving some life to the game as well as making levels that would be even better than those in the main game.

I don’t really have any strong feelings —positive or negative — about Lowglow. It is simply a game that exists to provide a few hours of mild enjoyment and then be forgotten when another game comes along. While interesting in concept, the puzzle mechanics only reach their highest form in about a third of the levels, with the rest feeling unsatisfying. I will say that it was nice to relax and enjoy the serene atmosphere of Lowglow and piddle around with some puzzles, even if it wasn’t extraordinary. For me, that was worth the $7 that I spent on Lowglow.

Lowglow is available for Windows PC and Mac formats.

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From the first moment of self-awareness, you’re haunted by the realization that something is amiss. The image you see in the mirror reflects back a visage of some imposter who is claiming to be you, but clearly isn’t. The world you inhabit would never understand. The slightest glance in a direction away from the expected path breeds gossip and ridicule. Surely, you are to blame.

This is the reality in which Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) wakes up every day. It’s a reality that he’s somehow managed to bury through years of carefully crafted denial and guilt. His transformation is so complete that even his doting wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander) never suspects a problem. It’s not until a playful series of events turns serious that they both realize that things will never be the same.The events reawaken a long-smoldering fire that slowly burns away the last remnants of the façade that once was Einar. In its place emerges Lili Elbe — the person trapped beneath a lifetime of repudiation. She longs to be free of the lie of her own body.

Director Tom Hooper is clearly no stranger to epic drama with two recent master strokes of the genre on his resume — 2010’s The King’s Speech and 2012’s Les Misérables. He returns to the biopic format with this true-life story of a woman struggling to survive in the confines of her male body. It’s a worthy addition, but not up to the level of either of his two previous efforts. The acting is superb. Both lead performers have already garnered well-deserved Golden Globe nominations. Redmayne’s portrayal is the most transparent, but it’s Vikander’s performance that bears the heaviest burden. She carries it with an ease that is simply astounding.

Lili’s fascinating journey is, at times, squandered by a script that suffers from its own identity crisis. On one hand, we’re reminded continually that this is an era (the 1920s) where no one could even whisper words like “homosexual.” On the other hand, Gerda barely blinks at the notion of her beloved husband doing a 180 right in front of her. The two realities don’t seem capable of existing in the same world that this film constructs for us to inhabit. There’s also quite a bit of frustrating, ambiguous dialogue as well as a few scenes that feel like they fell victim to an editor with a train to catch. The disconnects are explained in part by a script that takes heavy liberties with the true story.

This is a beautifully shot film with some very poignant (but flawed) moments. See it for its dazzling performances, but don’t expect a tale with the impact of either of Hooper’s better efforts.

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