The Film Father - Making an Offer You Can’t Review

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Benito Del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall et al. Directed by : Paul Thomas Anderson Where it’s Available : HBO MAX in the US and most territories, Crave in Canada. The first scene of PTA’s 2025 opus, ‘One Battle After Another’ literally involves a group of self-styled ‘revolutionaries’ breaking migrants out of an ICE internment camp. I texted a friend of mine, “Oh, so this film is POLITICAL political”. And it is. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Pat (later Bob), a bomb specialist of the ‘French 75’ revolutionary group. Their manifesto, while not explicitly stated on-screen, is clearly left-leaning (they protect immigrants and minorities, they threaten a senator’s campaign office because they voted for an abortion ban, etc). These are the film’s good guys. The primary antagonist is a white supremacist soldier with a fetish for powerful black women (played with sufficient malice and menace by Sean Penn). This is the playing field on which this film lives - which is why...

In the Year of Our Lord 2025, I rolled credits on 11 games (okay, 10.5 anyway - you’ll see what I mean). That’s three fewer than last year. I blame the fact that I am still wasting a disproportionate amount of time playing Balatro (#2 from last year) and Baldur’s Gate 3 (#1 from 2023 and a top-5 all-timer). This year was ‘very’ strong overall in terms of product (you’ll notice the top two - and six of 11 overall - on my list were from this calendar year), but the state of the industry overall seems like it’s hanging by a thread. Let’s hope 2026 continues the quality output and steadies itself in terms of industry foundation (give talented people money to make games, folks. Please). 11. Night Trap (Limited Run Games - Originally Released 1992, 2017 ‘25th Anniversary Re-Release’) - Available on everything, played on Nintendo Switch. As someone of my vintage, this was more so I could say “I did it” than any real want or need to experience the deep narrative nuance of this infamous Sega CD...