Tár is one of my favorite movies from 2022, thanks to a herculean performance by Cate Blanchett alongside Todd Field’s bold direction. For Field, this is only his third feature as director and his first in sixteen years. With such sporadic output and little connective tissue to his past work, I find his contributions to Tár fascinating to dissect. The film is Kubrickian in its clinical detail, subtle yet purposeful, messy and enigmatic, with an open provocation for the audience to get on board with the film’s unique wavelength or head for the exits.
Nowhere is that challenge clearer than in Tár’s opening thirty or so minutes. Like the fictitious composer and conductor Lydia Tár (Blanchett), the opener is bold and uncompromising in a way that feels tailor made to rankle some audiences. On an otherwise sparsely attended weeknight screening, I saw several moviegoers visibly impatient, sighing and shifting audibly in their seats.
Before I dive into that opening, it’s essential to set the larger context: Tár is a nearly three hour movie for which most is a patient “slice of life” character study. We learn about Tár (Blanchett) as she works through her musical projects and interacts with her wife and colleagues. Except for a guest lecture at Juilliard where Tár criticizes a student, onscreen conflict is mostly muted for the opening half or so of the film.
My standout gaming experiences this year were exclusively made by small studios that took bold narrative and gameplay swings. Most had a core development team of under twenty. None fall neatly within mainstream game genres. I can attribute this unorthodox result partially to my evolving tastes and the lingering effects of the pandemic on big budget studios. The 2022 AAA gaming space was far lighter than average this year, with only Elden Ring, God of War: Ragnorok, and Horizon: Forbidden West standing out among critics.
While the five games below (unranked, in alphabetical order) won’t suit the tastes of everyone, I found them exciting experiences that should leave lasting influence beyond their small budgets.
We are in peak shopping season for dedicated streaming devices from Apple, Roku, Google, and Amazon. There are seasonal sales, they make for a relatively affordable gift, and streaming services tend to get many new subscribers, spurning streaming hardware buys.
My advice: if you’re buying a dedicated streaming box, most should buy an Apple TV. Alternatively, if you are happy with your streaming life but have a few quibbles (like a missing service app on your setup), spend the bare minimum necessary to make your streaming experience tolerable. That latter scenario may mean spending nothing, bypassing existing hurdles by watching select content on a different device or casting from a phone (via Airplay or Chromecast) to your TV.
All other streaming options from Amazon, Google, and Roku are generally a substandard compromise. Yes, you’ll save a solid $80 to $100 in the short run. But you’re also shortchanging the longevity of the device, app availability and quality, and a host of other benefits unique primarily to Apple’s streaming box:
Some of the most hyped console games aren’t friendly to newcomers. Games like God of War: Ragnorok, Elden Ring, and Apex Legends are sales and critical juggernauts, but they can be a steep climb for those with slower reflexes or less free time. Big studios would benefit from diversification – more genres, shorter playtimes, less twitchy action – yet remain as conservative as ever in their approach.
Big budget games tend to fall into two camps: open ended, multiplayer games as a service (Destiny 2, Apex Legends, FIFA 23) or long running action adventure narratives (God of War: Ragnorok, The Last of Us: Part II). The former demands practice and knowledge of the latest meta to stay competitive, and the latter often takes 25 or more hours to complete. Gamers with less time and attention have an either or proposition: we stick to AAA behemoths like Elden Ring for an extended period or take more comfortable, varied pacing with smaller indie games.
I’m a fan of my new Apple Watch Series 8, but it packs too much computer on the wrist. Thanks to WatchOS’s increasingly busy UI and burgeoning case size, it’s becoming a harder sell as a fashion accessory.
There was a time when Apple felt like they were making a genuine fashion play with the Watch; worn accessories project someone’s sense of style in a way a phone or tablet never could. The venerable tech company tried to market high-end “edition” watches from pricey materials, and the strategy flopped.
Since then, it feels like stereotypical Silicon Valley executives have overtaken Apple Watch’s design sensibility. These are decision makers drunk with the power of having everything a tap away and losing sight of what makes a watch distinctive and fashionable. They’ve copied the strategy for iPhone and iPad as they blew up in size: more icons, more widgets, more glanceable information. Complications overload the Apple Watch’s default watch face configurations. Symbols and text are everywhere, manifesting in more distraction than an aid.
Rumors suggest PlayStation has a Horizon: Zero Dawn remaster on the way. It’s a frustrating development, confirming Sony’s talented first party studios are laser focused on sequels and remakes. Seeing Jim Ryan shut the doors on anything that isn’t a $100 million IP safe hit, with such creative talent at the helm, is a head-scratcher.
Less risk taking at Sony’s AAA level narrows the field for original experiences and IP and limits the greater potential of the industry. Audiences not into first person shooters and mature action adventures stay on the sidelines. Even for “core” gamers, variety helps; a side project this generation can evolve into the next big thing years from now.
I have well founded pessimism. PlayStation Studios PS5 releases follow a predictable formula: follow ups for Spiderman, Horizon, God of War, and The Last of Us. Three of the four get remasters or “director’s cuts” of their original entries, naturally sold at a $70 price point. Only Returnal and Destruction All Stars would be considered original IP releases, with Insomniac’s Wolverine on the distant horizon.
Over Warner Discovery’s Q2 earnings call, the new media behemoth announced plans to merge HBO Max and Discovery Plus as a single service in 2023. While we’ve got a solid year to evaluate if CEO David Zaslav’s bet will be a financial hit, early signs are worrisome.
Sticking to safe, proven programming was always what I expected from the new, post-Netflix dip “content perspective” era. But early signs point to Zaslov and his team taking Warner Discovery into extreme, creatively bankrupt directions. Their actions risk driving away their existing subscriber base.
On the day of the earnings call, low performing TV series and movies disappeared off HBO Max to save residuals. Zaslav and friends also canceled a nearly finished $90 million superhero movie – Batgirl – as a tax write-off. A tone deaf presentation simplified HBO Max as “male skew” when some of the service’s biggest breakouts like Hacks and The Flight Attendant reach much broader audiences.
Most armchair analysts underestimate how instrumental small budget indie games are to Xbox Game Pass’s success. Most will fly by without a splashy marketing presence, buzz on social media, or even a high score on OpenCritic. But given a Game Pass title’s low barrier to entry (a download or through Cloud Gaming, a click), subscribers aren’t wedded to budget, popularity, and review scores. The right mix of under the radar titles isn’t just helpful to keep subscribers afloat between bigger drops, but I think they are increasingly critical to keeping subscribers happy.
I realize the argument runs counter to traditional gaming sales logic, where the same five to ten AAA games (e.g., Call of Duty, FIFA, GTA V) remain perpetual NPD best sellers. It also seems to contradict Microsoft’s first party consolidation. With the likes of AAA stalwarts like Bethesda Game Studios, Activision, and Blizzard under one roof, one could only assume Microsoft’s goals are to continue mega franchise hits like Fallout, Call of Duty, and Diablo as future staples of the Game Pass library.
After a decade of rapid growth, Netflix took a tumble over the past quarter, for the first time losing more subscribers than it signed up. Wall Street’s reaction has been swift, with the market slashing Netflix’s valuation to less than half of its value from a few weeks prior.
Many schadenfreude-fueled takes revel in watching the king of streaming take a hit, but Netflix’s downturn won’t improve film watching habits or shake up streaming’s ascendance. The availability and discoverability challenges on streaming – clunky user interfaces, ruthless algorithms – won’t improve. Mega budget streaming sites will survive. What will change are the type of shows and movies that streaming sites buy, produce, and green light going forward.
Another year, another opportunity for gaming discourse on the proper approach to open worlds. The typical argument puts Elden Ring and Zelda: Breath of the Wild on one side, Horizon: Forbidden West and Ubisoft franchises like Assassin’s Creed on the other. Elden Ring and BOTW have more emergent gameplay, with little hand holding, clearly laid out objectives, and access only gated through character leveling and player skill. Horizon and Assassin’s Creed are more prescriptive. There are icons and waypoints all over the map, with the game’s mechanics, stats, and side quests all laid bare to the player.
Modern critical consensus points to emergent open worlds as generally more satisfying. Prescriptive games drown the player in unfulfilled objectives, busy UIs, and too many icons on a map to follow and check off. The net result can feel like a game on autopilot or lead to “open world fatigue.”
Having played and completed Horizon, I find this argument unfair to Sony’s latest blockbuster, misclassifying its genre and intent. While critical discourse pits Elden Ring and Horizon as open world action RPGs first and foremost, in reality, I view Horizon as more of a linear adventure similar to a game like Uncharted or The Last of Us. Its open world elements are a secondary “hook” to string narrative segments of the game together.