The Substatic Monthly: September
I've been eating well this month, both literally AND metaphorically
Autumn rears it’s cosy head once more and we sing from what was admittedly a rather disappointing summer directly into spooky season.
September is an intermission, a time to reap what you have sown, and this has been a bumper month for things I’ve demolished in pursuit of keeping myself distracted enough from my many pressing concerns (multiple very expensive dental surgeries, an extremely unrealistic workplace crush). Here’s what I engulfed, and what I thought about it:
GAMES
Final Fantasy XVI
A frustrating game to think about, when the dust has settled. All that money, all that expertise and talent wasted on an overly long not-very-good character action game with *tenuous* RPG elements; a shallow, nasty surprisingly conservative story that is extremely at odds with it’s central themes of fate and emancipation; and a host to a rogues gallery of perhaps the worst villains in the series history.
What’s more frustrating is that when it does decide to let you play it like an RPG, there are loads of really great moments, mostly revolving around an excellent supporting cast who I genuinely fell in love with, backed up by some seriously good voice acting and the occasional flourish of good writing, a shining beacon of hope for an otherwise middling to bad experience.
Gris
A really charming, gorgeously animated puzzle platformer that didn’t outstay its welcome. Gris is one of those games that I really couldn’t tell you what it’s about, although it positively drowns you in fertility imagery, but I think because it looks, sounds and plays so well, it doesn’t really matter all that much.
Its also way more involved a game than I was expecting, there are some really clever manipulations of physics and the environment as well as an intrinsic feeling of being lost without actually being difficult to navigate, which in itself is a smart bit of world design. Good game, they should make another one.
Sea of Stars
A very cute, extremely engaging homage to SNES era JRPGs that gives the player a constant feedback loop of great experiences. A tactile game, combat is snappy and reactive a la the mario RPG series, and it has an impressively deep world to explore, you’ll spend your time clambering around, batting away projectiles, charging up fireballs, it even has a really good fishing minigame!
Where it falls short, unfortunately, is in the writing, which does little to engage you with its well designed but not particularly interesting cast, and by the end I found my enthusiasm for the game waning somewhat. I think when you’re the long awaited follow up to The Messenger, there’s an expectation for a similar kind of rugpull and outside of one particularly stunning moment, this never really happens.
Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster
An interesting experience returning to this for the first time in a good 15 years and finally completing it. Holds on to FFI's adventure game leanings while adding this weird player-driven progression system that offers more customisation options, held up by a far greater range of equipment options (FFI was awful for anyone other than the warrior). Kind of bulshitty final boss but overall a solid experience made infinitely less annoying by virtue of the booster options and encounter toggle in the remaster.
Haiku the Robot
Ok I finally get Metroidvanias now. Initially bounced off this game but allergic as I am to buyers remorse I persevered with and quickly fell in love with this cute, kinetic little adventure game. Really lovely art style, with some great animation work on the enemies and a memorable world to explore full of sneaky secrets. Big recommendation from me.
FILMS
The Favourite
Yorgos Lanthimos is one horny motherfucker! This is an incredibly strange, funny and wonderfully queer dark comedy about conflict in the court of Queen Anne. I’ve always been fascinated by the way Lanthimos portrays the simulacrum of life, and there are some great, chewy camera flourishes in this film that give it an eerie, voyeuristic lilt. He’s definitely putting the fish eye lens manufacturer’s children through college, that’s for sure!
How to Blow up a Pipeline
Time will tell if this becomes a cult classic but I found myself entranced by the relationships and politics of what is a surprisingly bold and spicy film about industrial sabotage. There's no ambiguity as to who the villains are in this piece, no hand wringing about the morality of the titular act. A great film.
Free Fire
Ben Wheatley is a director that on paper I really should like. He makes interesting, acerbic films that sadly in practice do very little for me. This is one of his weaker efforts. Sort of like Reservoir Dogs without Tarantino's wit or pacing. Starts of strong, the cast are really good and the character writing is strong but it just sort of dribbles away into nothing by the end. Disappointing.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage
The gayest comic book movie I've ever seen. A tight 90 action flick whose themes and subtext are fired at you out of a cannon. A great, silly pair of villains and a compelling double act that riffs off this inherent queerness that permeated the first film, only less subtle and all the better for it. A class film.
Death on the Nile
I spent years just quietly not really liking Kenneth Branagh, finding him a bit up his own arse in a lot of his work on camera and off, and although I enjoyed his version of Murder on the Orient Express, I really did not like his version of Poirot.
Come time to watch this follow up, a film critically panned and with perhaps the most cursed cast of all time, I have to say I had a great time watching it. Feel like Branagh has found his feet with the character here a lot more, and there’s some great little flourishes that took me off guard. It’s not great, and honestly given it features an alleged rapist, a cheerleader for war criminals, a suspected cannibal, an anti-vaxxer AND a tory, I can’t give it too much credit. Still enjoyed it somewhat.
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Stupid fucking film. Dumb dumb dumb. I loved it.
MUSIC
The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We - Mitski
A really chewy album, not as immediately appealing as Laurel Hell was, but the more I listen to it the more I appreciate just how much it is a distillation of everything Mitski has been building towards. It's hard to continue having the same relationship with an artists work when you're forever chasing how you felt when you first fell in love, but relationships take work, and this is inarguably some of her best work.
Unreal Unearth -Hozier
A great songwriter, but ultimately not for me. Hozier really excels at this almost evangelical level of horniness, the right kind that sells his work as deeply, sincerely romantic. The musician equivalent of Mr Darcy diving into the lake.
Jet Set Radio Future OST - Hideki Naganuma
The advent of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk coming out and having a banger of a soundtrack has had me revisiting Naganuma’s previous work, and hoo boy is this on near constant repeat during my commutes. Some excellent, funky, drum n’ bass tunes throughout. A cool, cool album. It’s also made me appreciate more how good 2 Mello’s Tokyo To albums are at capturing the spirit of these games.
Operator - GRRL
See above, but in this case it’s the audio equivalent of being attacked. Fast, angry, thumping tunes, really good when you’re in a specific kind of mood and want to unleash some monstrous energy.
BOOKS
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Stardust Crusaders - Hirohiko Araki
Having now finished this dense slog of a manga after already watching the anime, I have come to appreciate more the things it does really well and not dwell too much on how oddly paced it is.
There’s an undeniable amount of good slapstick humour in this volume, some howlingly funny character work and although it is essentially just another Shonen manga at heart, the cast, the presentation and the satisfaction of it’s brilliant conclusion more than make up for this. Very excited to move on to Part 4, as this is where things start to get *really* bizarre.
That’s it for this month. Got a fairly hefty video in the works, which I’m hoping to have finished in the next week or two, and a host of fun, seasonal posts to go up on here in the next month. Stay tuned for more inane ramblings from a man who’s brain simply will not switch off.