Cant stop is an awesome gambling board game
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This does look like fun, tho anytime I get some dice in hand, I just want to play Liarâs Dice.
Terraforming Mars, imho, is the greatest boardgame Iâve played and we play a ton of them. We have a group of 4 who normally get together to play games every other Saturday evening. Three out of four sessions we play Terraforming. Just a great game.
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Light to medium complexity games like Catan and Ticket to Ride:
Dominion
7 Wonders
Istanbul
Century Spice Road
Kingdomino
Splendor
Wingspan
Sheriff of Nottingham
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Terraforming Mars is great, but more of an abrupt jump in complexity from Catan and TTR than the ones I posted.
I think Risky is more than capable of handling it, but just want to be clear that itâs not the type of game you can pick up in 10 minutes like those other ones.
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We always look for games that incorporate more strategy than luck. Boardgame Geek is a great resource for finding games you might enoy. These are the main ones in our rotation.
Longer games (2+ hours)
Terraforming Mars
Scythe
Shorter Games (under an hour)
Seasons
Carcassone
Castles of Burgundy
Ticket to Ride
Race for the Galaxy
Pandemic
Everdell
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Iâm envious of your group if you can finish Castles of Burgundy in under 1 hour.
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You are correct about Terraforming, eyebooger. There is a strong learning curve.
However we played the game so often and became so efficient with it we had to modify a few rules to make it more challenging. We love the game and we didnât want to shelve it so we made a few tweaks.
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Boardgame Geek has the time for Burgundy listed at 30-90 minutes. 30 minutes is a little silly but we can definitely get a game in around an hour - maybe a touch more but not by much. Iâm sure we were closer to 2 hours in our first few playthroughs.
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An abundance of board game riches. Thanks yâall. I havenât actually played board games since before the accident/TBI. Time to find out if that part is still within reach 
30 minutes is absurd. I donât think Iâve ever seen a playing time listing on BGG that was that detached from reality.
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Best of luck.
One I forgot to add: Suburbia
There arenât really many games like Terraforming Mars, but if I had to pick one game to say is a âsimpler Terraforming Marsâ that would be the one.
Assuming you can handle it, itâs definitely worth getting to Terraforming Mars. I wouldnât put it #1 like wiper did, but it probably would make my top 10.
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Killers of the Flower Moon
9/10
A great movie, probably the best of the year. I did have some complaints about it though
For those who havenât read the book, but have seen the movie.
Itâs odd to say this because itâs based on a history book, and history books usually present its information straightforwardly, but the book had a much more impactful narrative structure. The book starts out with the Feds showing up and investigating Mollyâs sisterâs murder. The other murders are mentioned but in a kind of this is the wild west these things happen kind of way. The suspects get revealed but then they pull back the curtain and reveal that all the deaths were intentional. It shifts the perspective from âthis was an unfortunate case of white man plans to kill Native American for moneyâ to âOMG itâs Rosemaryâs Baby of murder.â especially with the King of Osage being revealed to be a serial killer in multicultural liberal clothing.
They then do a post script to the story where the author goes back to the reservation and meets with some descendants of the victims and does an analysis of the excess murder rate of the Osage and it was something like 10 times the national average which at this point turns it from Rosemaryâs Baby of murder to something systematic. Stories like Osage murders were happening everywhere all the time to all the Osage. Itâs one of the few history books where I felt like the narrative story really upped the impact what it was trying to say
I get why they didnât do that for the movie. The book pushes the Osage to the periphery, with the Feds and the local whites taking up the story, so you need something different if you want to center the Osage more. One critique and I think itâs a pretty valid one was that they didnât center the Osage enough. Audiences would have empathized with the the Osage family and nation instead of having de Caprio as a protagonist. A story told from Mollyâs perspective would have been interesting. As such
Thereâs not a lot of punch to the charactersâ journey. De Caprio starts off as a greedy dumb guy who will do anything for money and ends that way. Especially when you know that
Ernest was paroled in 1937. However, in 1940, he and a woman named Clara Mae Goad robbed the Osage home of Lillie Morrell Burkhart, his former sister-in-law, stealing $7,000 in valuables (equivalent to $150,000 in 2022).[26] In 1941, Ernest and Clara were both found guilty of federal burglary charges.
De Neroâs character is interesting because as someone said here he never changes. They never try to pull the wool over your eyes that heâs straight up evil while also cozying up to the Osage.
Scorsese loves his montages of people getting murdered though. Theyâre really good. All the above critiques aside, Itâs a good movie. It never sags. Iâm surprised they burned though so much plot points so fast I was worried they were going to run out of material in the book, but nope Scorsese does a great job of keeping it interesting the whole time.
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You couldnt really do Mollieâs perspective because she is bedridden for half the movie.
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I raved about Killers of the Flower Moon via text to my mom, and she mentioned that the local Lummi tribe up in Washington state actually had signs up at their local gas station to encourage people to see that movie, which surprised her. Thought that was probably a positive sign that members of another Native American tribe would take that actively positive of a view on it.
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An investor in a VR startup discovers that the reality the company provides isnât virtual.
I felt confident this would be good when the trailer made me audibly gasp.
Havenât seen a low-budget black and white indie flick this impressive since The Following, Pi, and Primer. This one is well worth your time if you enjoyed any of those movies. I promise itâs not as hard to follow as Primer, but it will play with what you think you know is happening the same way.
Variety described the movie as âa clever indie suspense that draws on fantasy-tinged notions of virtual reality and identity exchange to create an ingenious tale more in the realm of an intimately-scaled thriller than sci-fi.â
Pleased to tell you itâs free on Tubi or FreeVee.
All strategy and no luck (Scythe) isnât that much fun to me, at least not playing vs. computer or solo challenge on Steam. I like to try to get high scores, and I need some random element.
My favorites on Steam:
Through the Ages (High score doesnât really matter because itâs hard to just win vs. the computer. I think I run about 65% now.)
Terraforming Mars (high score: 86 reputation on solo 63 mode)
Lords of Waterdeep (high score: 502 vs. two hard bots)
Wingspan (high score: 126 or something crazy, next closes high score is like 108)
The mixing scene in Modern Romance is great. It was based on the real life crew that ran a room with the old grumpy lead mixer guy being a knock off of Glen Glenn/Todd-AO Re-Recording Mixer/President Buzz Knudson. Iâm also pretty sure I did the sound editorial workshop for a week in the room that scene was filmed in back in 1996.
My favorite part of that scene is when they call back to the machine room op (probably the sound recordist in that era) and ask for the Hulk running footsteps and the guy says, âoh Godâ or something to that effect through the talkback and the guys open their newspapers knowing itâs going to be a while (in that era that would have been a massive pain and not nearly as easy as they pulled it off in the sceneâŚthough today that whole fix could be done in a couple of minutes like they did in the movie). âThat wonât workâ and âletâs try it anywayâ is a very realistic portrayal of the industry.
I grunched so I donât know if Lost in America was mentioned but that was my favorite of the Albert Brooks comedies of that era. I watched from Modern Romance to Defending Your Life, which I also really enjoyed, and then Muse which wasnât really that great. I think from a style standpoint, his closest allegory is David Mamet. If youâre into the David Mamet thing, youâd probably like Albert Brooks movies a lot. If youâre not, youâll probably not like anything but maybe Defending Your Life and Lost in America which are really his only truly accessible movies of ones he directed for people who arenât into his style, in my opinion.
Another perspective could have also made a good movie but I donât really see anything wrong with the way itâs done.
The fact that they first show that a nefarious force is committing a series of murders, then a while later reveal that in fact Di Caprio (i.e. âweâ) is not simply turning a blind eye but in fact has been an active perpetrator in this all along, I found very powerful.
(and personally I didnât know the plot in advance / wasnât expecting this at all so this worked very well on me)
(For a similar reason I think that even though for ârealismâ sake, Di Caprio is at least 10 years too old for the part heâs playing, having the (2nd) most famous actor in the world playing it is very effective).
No Hard Feelings is getting great reviews, but I turned it off after a few minutes. I just canât bring myself to enjoy a barely-legal romance. It is barely better than Licorice Pizzaâs not-legal romance between an adult and a minor. Pass.
Please stop making movies that rely on violations of minors and barely-legal adults.
The director doesnât deny the grooming but says the whole movie is supposed to be cringe (while endorsing our need for love and connection), which absolutely misses the point of the criticism.
In less than three minutes, the trailer goes through every step of the sexual grooming model!
Grooming, which is the deceptive process used by sexual predators to facilitate trust and sexual conduct, is no less disgusting when done to boys than when it is done to girls â even if heâs one year older than the legal age of 18. This played-out male âfantasyâ only makes it harder for young men to identify sexual harassment, and certainly harder for them to come forward with it.
Thereâs no doubt that Lawrenceâs comedic chops are strong, she has some great one-liners (Oh, Princeton, Iâve heard of it) and some solid physical comedy gags (reacting to getting maced and getting punched in the throat) we only wish that she would take her skills to a plot thatâs actually funny, and not predatorial.