It took a long time, but Marvel has finally graced audiences with a Spider-Man movie that actually looks and feels like comic-accurate Spider-Man. This is by far the best-looking costume that's been put on film, beating out both Tobey Maquire's original and Andrew Garfield's from Amazing Spider-Man 2. It has the home-made fabric look, with a tiny bit of slack that allows some folds and wrinkles here and there. The colors are bright and vivid (compared to Amazing 2, which looked darker and more maroon than red). The webbing pattern is simple black lines and not some weird, textured, reflective plastic. The eyes are small, evoking classic 60's and 70's aesthetics, but with the motorized lenses that change size and allow a small degree of emotion.

The only complaints that I have are the lack of armpit webs, and the web shooters being on the outside. But there's story reasons for why the web shooters are outside, so I get it, and am willing to let it pass. I still think it's a tactical error for Spider-Man to mount his web shooters outside the suit, so as to give away the fact that they are technological and not an innate power. Knowing that they are technological allows opponents to use that against him, and puts Spider-Man at a disadvantage. But whatever, this costume is still leagues above all the other movie costumes to date.

It isn't just the costume that looks good though. The movie, as a whole, is a lot more visually interesting than the flatter, more evenly-lit composition of Marvel's previous Spider-Man movies. It's bright and colorful, but still has contrast and shadow. This gives a lot more depth and realism to the images on screen, helps Spidey's costume to really pop, and also creates some atmospheric moodiness when necessary.

The action is also a lot more kinetic and vertical. The whole movie takes place on Manhattan island this time around (not in the suburbs of Queens or in Europe), and so action scenes are constructed around the idea of Spider-Man swinging into action. In fact, there's even a car chase through the streets of New York that feels like it was pulled straight from the Insomniac video games. But even when an action scene happens indoors, fights happen on ceilings, along the outside sides of a tall office building, and even down an elevator shaft at one point.

Brand New Day gets top marks across the board for its visual style and action setpieces. The story is a little bit more of a mixed bag. There's a lot of things that I like. It is more grounded and down-to-earth than the previous movies, with the immediate stakes being more local and less "multi-versal". Its story is a critical parallel of parts of modern day politics, and its intended message is one of love and acceptance of people who are different, and of being willing to seek help when you find yourself in an emotionally dark and dangerous place. All good stuff.

But there's also a lot of things that rubbed me the wrong way right from the start. Most notably, I think the movie's handling of MJ and Ned was horribly clumsy, and I kind of wish that they just weren't in the movie at all. But Zendaya and Jacob Batalon have to have their contractually-required screen time. But I'll talk more about that in a spoiler section at the end of this review.

Image ©: Walt Disney, Marvel

The opening montage pays homage to multiple Spider-Man comic covers or panels.

I may have posted a written review of Return To Silent Hill, but there were still other things that I wanted to expound upon that I did not feel were appropriate (or in the scope of) a simple movie review. So I decided to adapt my extended thoughts into a video critique. I was planning on doing after having seen the movie in theaters and writing the review, but things kept coming up, and I kept pushing it back until eventually it got to the point that the movie was already available on DVD and streaming.

I decided to split the critique up into 2 separate videos. The first video is already available on YouTube. It is specifically about the sexist and chauvinistic attitudes and biases that I felt underlined many of the creative decisions that went into butchering Silent Hill 2's stories. More specifically, I compared and contrasted how Christophe Gans chose to adapt the characters of Harry Mason (from the first game) and James, and how these adaptation decisions seem to reveal those underlying sexist attitudes and biases. I used this video to vent some long-standing frustrations that I had with the first Silent Hill movie, and its gender-swap of single father Harry into married mother Rose.

Obviously, I don't have a problem with gender or race-swapping in adaptations of media. But, as I explain in the video, I felt that the character of Harry Mason presented a golden opportunity to present a competent single father character in a medium that is largely devoid of such examples. The gender-swap from male-to-female, in this particular case, and the reasons that director Christophe Gans cites for having made the casting decision, only serve to reinforce out-dated gender stereotypes, while also missing out on an opportunity to present a particular demographic that is under-represented in popular media.

The second video is about the other characters in the movie, with an emphasis on Mary -- considering that she is basically the only other character in the movie.

© Amazon/MGM

Project Hail Mary

As frequent readers probably know, I'm a fan of hard science fiction. I'll try to make a point of seeing new, high-concept sci-fi movies in theaters, especially if they are receiving positive word of mouth. Two of my favorite movies of the past decade or so have been The Martian and Arrival. Project Hail Mary is almost like a combination of those 2 movies, and its based on a book by the same author who rote the novel of The Martian, so it should be right up my alley.

I did still like it. But I also found myself disappointed that it was so "cutesy" and not quite as smart or thoughtful as I had hoped it would be.

Yeah, the rock alien is adorable. And the practical effects looked exceptional. The scenes of Grace and Rocky learning to communicate with each other, explaining concepts that are common to them, but alien to the other, and then solving problems together are the highlight of the movie to me.

And hey! Rocky is from 40 Eridani, which is the same star that Star Trek's Vulcan is supposed to orbit. So that was a fun little Easter Egg! Rocky is a Vulcan. He's a "Rock Spock"!

But Rocky is also a symbol of much of what annoyed me. For every moment in which the two are having slow, thoughtful conversations about the nature of existence, there is also a scene of Rocky running around like an excitable puppy for strictly comedic purposes. It just seems off for a character who is supposed to be a highly-intelligent engineer on an interstellar mission to save his species from extinction.

More generally speaking, this movie leans heavily on the trope of an in-experienced "regular guy" having to bumble his way through an incredibly technically-demanding mission. Yes, the guy is a PhD, so he is a very smart person. This doesn't quite fall into "Mary Sue" territory. But he's a biologist. He's not an engineer, or a pilot, or an astronaut. Yes, he does have months (or longer) to learn the spaceship's functions, but it's still not entirely believable that he would be able to single-handedly figure out how to operate a complicated spaceship. This is what separates Project Hail Mary from the much better movies of The Martian and Arrival. The characters in those movies are experts solving problems within their field of expertise and experience. They aren't middle school teachers thrown into a spaceship with no training at all.

©Amazon/MGM

Grace has to single-handedly figure out how to operate an advanced, experimental spaceship.

Alien: Earth on Hulu.

Boy, this show was a roller coaster of good ideas, bad ideas, and hit-or-miss execution. I absolutely hated the first 2 episodes, to the point that I really didn't want to watch any more of the show. But my partner was liking it (I guess?) and she wanted to keep watching, so I watched it with her. I'm not sure if I'm happy that I stuck it out, or not. It does get a little bit better -- for a little bit -- but then it completely shits the bed.

I wasn't keen on the show being about children's minds being implanted into android bodies. Going on to treat them like a super hero team was one of the cringiest things I've ever seen in this franchise (and that includes Alien: Resurrection and Prometheus).

But then the show starts to get into the ethics, morality, and metaphysics of putting someone's consciousness into an android body (and other questions regarding trans-humanism), and the mind-body dilemma that is inherent to such an idea. Here Alien: Earth starts to get genuinely good. Are the androids really the same people? Are the original people dead? Are the androids property of the company that manufactured them? Does that company have the right to control what that android does? Does that company have the right to wipe parts of that android's memory, or change the android's personality, in order to fix a "glitch"?

Of course, all of these questions can be adequately explored without having the gimmick of implanting children's minds into the androids. The writers could just as easily have written a story about regular androids becoming sentient, and pose the exact same questions about whether they are "property" or "people". It's been done a billion times before in science fiction, so even though these are all interesting questions, it's nothing particularly new or innovative. I think the use of children was done to make the audience more sympathetic and "human-like", because the people in charge don't have any respect for the intelligence of their audience. It could also have been a decision made in order to justify the characters doing stupid, illogical things, but I'll get to that later.

At the same time, there are completely new aliens that have never been seen in this franchise before, that get a lot of screen time. There's a creepy, parasitic eyeball alien thing that is probably the single best idea that this entire show has going for it. It's gross and disturbing on a visceral level, but also the idea of it tunneling into your brain and taking control of your body is terrifying on an existential level. Honestly, an entire show (without the Alien title and branding) about that eyeball parasite probably could have been worth watching on its own. But Hollywood is averse to new IPs and can't make anything that doesn't have a recognizable brand attached to it -- again, because executives have no respect for the intelligence of their audiences.

Alien: Earth season 1, episode 1 - © Walt Disney, Hulu

Treating these cyborg children like a superhero team was so stupid.

While the federal government continues to dive head-first into inept authoritarianism (which I will continue to say, while the government still allows me to say it), at least state governments are still occasionally doing what they are supposed to do. Earlier this week, the state of California passed a new law requiring streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube, and so forth to limit the volume of ads to be no louder than the volume of the actual content.

This may seem like a minor thing that shouldn't need legislation. Which is true. It really should not require legislation, as streaming services and advertisers should have known to self-regulate this to begin with -- especially considering that there is already a similar law for broadcast TV and radio! But then again, when does corporate self-regulation ever work? But even though this bit of self-regulation would seem like common sense, this has been a massive pet peeve of mine for years, and it still had to come down to a government regulating it.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets frustrated by having to turn the TV volume up almost as high as it will go, just to be able to hear and understand dialogue in a movie or TV show, only to have an ad come on and deafen me, almost blow out my speakers, shake the house, and wake up any family who are sleeping. I've been ranting and complaining about this privately, at home, for years (and have probably posted complaints about it online a few times). Now, it appears, that streaming services might finally have to address the problem.

The new California law doesn't go into effect until July of 2026, and I don't live in California, so I might still be waiting a long time to see this change in my own personal TV and movie streaming experience. In fact, it might never change at all. But I am hopeful that it will. It is quite common for corporations to implement state regulations in their products and services for all states or jurisdictions. This is because it's often simpler and cheaper to just apply the change everywhere, rather than have to have different versions for different jurisdictions. So if YouTube, Netflix, and so forth have to develop an algorithm to match the volume of ads to the volume of content, there's a good chance that new code will be applied to all their content everywhere; rather than having to specifically check and apply it only if the viewer is in California.

So there's a strong chance that, even though I don't live in California (and many of my readers probably don't either), we will all benefit from this new California law.

Thank goodness for California!