Brief Words of Mouth - Carol

Carol (2015): Great looking film, strong performance by Blanchett. The film is from the point of view of Rooney Mara's Therese (and it's ridiculous that she got a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination when this is almost entirely her story) as she falls in love with Blanchett's Carol, a woman in the midst of a messy divorce.

In many ways it's structured like a very old school Hollywood romance while playing with gender roles; the strong and assertive Carol plays a role much akin to classical Handsome Suave Male roles while the star-struck Therese mostly stares at her in wonder while functioning in large part as a blank slate character. Her other love is photography, but the only person to show a great interest in this passion is a minor male character with which there's certainly no romantic bond.

The slow, leisurely pace of the film is another throwback, along with the fashion and soundtrack of the era in which the film's set.

It didn't deserve an R rating.

Year in Review and Best of 2015 Part 3 - Music

I wrote extensive pieces looking back on all of the 2015 movies I watched and games I played, which just leaves us with one more article to go: A look back at the new music I checked out. This is more of a bonus article than anything else, both because I didn't get a chance to check out a ton of new albums this year and because I lack the language to really write in depth about music. It's still fun to try, though!

Since this list is shorter, I'm just going to write a little bit about each album alphabetically, rather than setting up tiers. My favorites should be obvious either way.

Year in Review and Best of 2015 Part 2 - Games

Welcome to the video game section of the 2015 Year in Review! Click here for Part 1 - Movies. This year saw some solid games, including the long awaited release of Metal Gear Solid V and the much delayed English release of Yakuza 5. A few older games saw nice new re-releases and a milestone was met in gaming history, as Noby Noby Boy completed its six year mission. This summer also marked one of the saddest industry stories this year, as Nintendo's Satoru Iwata passed away from cancer at 55. Iwata served as both corporate president and as a creative force and his presence will be missed. Hideo Kojima finally departed from Konami following the release of MGS5 after years of conflict, and his Silent Hill reboot was quietly cancelled.

Rather than just list a few top picks, I'm going to do something different for this year's list and create tiered ranks for every film I watched and every video game I played. The top tier choices get a paragraph each, the rest get a sentence or two. Bear with me; this is a pretty long list.

As usual, this article is an evolving piece and will be updated if I see anything else from the past year that is good enough to warrant going back for. I'm listing the system I played each game on, but many of these are available elsewhere. I still haven't played, and want to play, Mad Max and Batman: Arkham Knight. I've been told I should play Undertale but haven't been in a rush to try it.

Year in Review and Best of 2015 Part 1 - Movies

2015 was the hardest year of my life. It was a year of loss and of mourning, as detailed here in a rare personal essay. I spent a lot of time this year engrossed in media, seeing more movies in theaters than I ever had before. Film is comforting to me, even when the content depicted is dark or hard to watch, and I enjoy reflecting on what I've seen this year.

While I didn't accomplish much creatively in 2015, I did release Ghost's Towns, a brief puzzle/story game that's free on PC/Mac/Linux/Android.

Rather than just list a few top picks, I'm going to do something different for this year's list and create tiered ranks for every film I watched and every video game I played. The top tier choices get a paragraph each, the rest get a sentence or two. Bear with me; this is a pretty long list.