Kevin C. Wong

Spot Reviews 11/18/22

Movie - That's Amor (2022) [+] A cable tv level romantic movie. Sofia (Riley Dandy) loses her high-powered job and moves in with mom who in order to cheer her up signs them up for a cooking class where Sofia meets assistant chef Matias (Isaac Gonzalez Rossi) and sparks fly. Also has some really yummy looking foods. Even though I know what to expect the movie delivers and makes me feel good at the end.

Audio Book - Vicarious (2022) [/] About 100 years in the future Earth is flooded and only High Earth (a city) is left, where the inhabitants live idly served by robots and watch their VR tv shows. Asher (voiced by Wil Wheaton), a High Earth programming director for the most popular show Ignis: Live, and Mission (voiced by Katherine McNamara), one of the unsuspecting inhabitants of Ignis. The people on Ignis believe they're on an asteroid ship heading towards another star, leaving behind a dead Earth. Whilst they are on Ignis, it never launched, instead it was repurposed as a tv show filled with memory re-programmed volunteers and it's been 50 years with Ignites living and dying for a tv show. The story is about how Asher eventually realizes he loves Mission and tries to save her from the big prime time event: a manufactured disaster in her habitat that will kill hundreds...

It's an interesting self-contained story (in that I don't think it's set up for sequels). I feel Asher is more the main character since he's the one doing stuff and therefore Wheaton does most of the narration, I'd guess about 2/3rds. We switch to Mission as she lives her life but the way the story is set up she is more carried by events than doing stuff (I thought there was a possibility when Mission noticed one of the High Earth fixers disguised as her best friend but that came to nought). In the end, although it's nice hearing McNamara narrating, you can cut out almost all Mission's story (except towards the end) and the novel would have the same storytelling impact.

Apple Arcade - Kings of the Castle (2019) [/] An FPS-style kids game where you run around an island collecting coins and avoiding traps/enemies until you get to the end and free the prince. It's vaguely like Super Mario Bros. This being a kids game the gameplay seemed a bit boring to me and I quickly got motion sickness playing with a controller. Apparently it's multiplayer so would be more fun with multiple people running around on the map.