Even in a future of body-swapping, we still need rubber tubes to breathe underwater.

Netflix’s Altered Carbon is an A+ sci-fi premise in the body of a B+ TV drama, but make no mistake, this is a compliment.

Yes, the performances occasionally feel stilted, the dialogue sometimes drifts into corny; a writing shortcut here or an egregious nude scene there hold it back from the Blade Runner heights it aspires to. But the show builds a fascinating world at such a high level of production, it’s hard to look away. And by setting a pulpy detective story in such a complex future — where identity is fluid and mortality is negotiable — the philosophical questions it raises are so much more mind-bending than the mystery it exposes.

In Carbon‘s vision of the future, each individual’s consciousness is stored in a “stack”, a mini-disc-sized data device embedded at the base of the brain; while bodies are referred to as “sleeves”, mere containers for the individuals who inhabit them. Some characters have inhabited a number of sleeves in their lifetimes. Some use other sleeves temporarily for subterfuge. The richest upper classes have their sleeves cloned and their stacks backed up to the cloud, so they can live for hundreds of years, cycling through body after rejuvenated body, in an uninterrupted aristocracy — with predictably dystopian results.

Throw in a few other weighty ideas like the humanity of AI (consciousnesses who never even get a sleeve), the potential for virtual manipulation (consciousnesses ripped out of their sleeves against their will), or the fragmentation of the individual (copying one consciousness to multiple sleeves) and the implications of this technology alone make the show a worthwhile speculation.

This only scratches the surface, as the show continues to find thought-provoking new implications to explore, amid a murder mystery filled with gun fights, flashbacks, grimy fantasies and brutal violence. It’s existential dilemma wrapped in guilty pleasure, but don’t let appearances fool you.

If you could transplant your consciousness into a new body instead of dying, would you?

Would you want a fresh copy of your own body, in peak condition, at whatever age you prefer? What would you choose?

Or would you experiment with living in totally different bodies? Which ones? Why?

The only legendary actor brave enough to let his final role involve serious bowel trauma.

Phantom Thread: didn’t love it. I’m sorry! Lots of people did, and that’s cool. It was certainly pretty.

Generally I’d rather not try to review a movie that didn’t do it for me. But okay, just a little.

Maybe because in a love story where the love feels unmotivated, it undercuts my investment in the whole story –like The Shape of Water, but from a darker perspective.

Maybe because the movie seemed to both celebrate and have contempt for its main character, portraying him as a foolish blowhard but also lovingly praising his brilliance, which left me confused and even a bit angry — much like Wolf of Wall Street. (Man, I do not like that movie.)

In fact, that made me think that in particular, I’m pretty well over movies about terrible men that we are supposed to be entertained by, and that the films seem to glamorize for the majority of their stories, but that, *wink*, all us smart viewers know in our hearts are awful, so it’s ok to spend hours laughing at their misdeeds. I’m not really buying that argument.

So instead of talking about the deep themes of a movie I didn’t like, a simpler question:

Who’s more over-rated, Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson?

You can answer this even if you love both! I personally like several of the movies by both of them. But… definitely not all, nor would I call either “The Best Living…” anything, based on my tastes.

Controversial!

Also, they could have made the fish guy way hotter.

Here’s the thing about this beautiful, fanciful, fairy tale about seeing beyond the surface of a person, misfits banding together against conformity and fascism, and accepting your weirdness as something that can be loved.

I totally wasn’t into it.

I realize on paper that it has those messages, all of which I’m for. Aesthetically, it did all sorts of things I tend to love. But The Shape of Water left me totally tepid.* And now it’s getting all this award season buzz up against movies that I absolutely understand why everyone loves.

*my best guess for why: the creature never intentionally does anything to make Elisa fall in love with him; it just happens because of what he is. so there’s no wooing, no courtship, no earning it, no “falling” in love, just a woman in love with an idea, which makes for an unsatisfying romance.

Some of my favorite critics loved this movie. I just don’t feel it. I almost feel guilty about not feeling it. It’s the kind of thing that makes me question how my own brain works.

What’s something lots of people love, that you just don’t get? What is it about that thing that keeps you from loving it?

What does not loving that thing say about you — or about why everyone else is wrong and you’re not?

Definitely unfair: judging images based on beauty per square inch.

Over the weekend, I played through a video game called Inside, which I am comfortable calling a masterpiece. Its moody visuals drew me in. Its haunting environments kept me constantly on edge. Its unsettling themes left a mark I won’t soon forget. Games of this high caliber give me hope for the artistic potential of the medium. It’s that good.

It’s especially easy to recommend because I played through the game in two sittings of a few hours each, making it convenient to absorb in its entirety.

This in contrast to another recent game I also loved, The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, a giant role-playing adventure that I spent roughly 80 hours to complete. As I joked on Twitter: “In the time it’s taking me to finish #Witcher3, I could have listened to the entire audiobooks of both Infinite Jest and A Game of Thrones. This is not an exaggeration. I checked.”

Which is not to say that a game becomes immediately less worthy by being longer, deeper, or more epic in scope. Merely that very very long works in any medium, whether a three-and-a-half hour film or a thousand page novel, come with certain baggage. And in the case of Inside, or the original The Office, or the short story collections of George Saunders, there is a sense that every minute, moment, or page were agonized over to distill a work down to their very essence.

The obvious counterargument is that different works have different aims, and a George RR Martin book or Godfather film would not be what they are or achieve what they set out to by slimming down. But if you were to invent a metric that measures Quality Per Minute of artistic works, those shorter works would rate extremely highly, where the longer ones by their very nature would rate lower.

With Inside, that rating would be off the charts. Every minute brings some new surprise, some newly disturbing tableau, some beautiful choice of artistic direction or thought-provoking inversion of expectations. By this measure, this may be one of the best games I’ve ever played.

The question is:

Should quality-per-minute factor in to judging any work of art?

Is that metric an unfair way to consider more ambitious works that aim for a bigger, deeper explorations of ideas?

Or, are those works being unfair to their audiences when a shorter work could achieve a similar resonance without requiring so much time?

**Do not be a coward and dismiss the question. Care enough about the limited time you have on this earth to value every minute and demand more of art.

There is no fire-fighting in this game. Only fire-watching. Respect the restraint.

As an adult male that begrudgingly accepts the label “gamer” — I play them regularly, I follow the latest releases — my favorite movement in games right now is toward shorter, more focused narrative games. Games that steer away from grand adventure and intense action and tell intimate interactive stories. Games that feel like they’re made by adults, and for an adult sensibility; games that don’t require lightning reflexes or hours of dedication to enjoy or excel in. Gone Home, Her Story, SOMA, and The Beginner’s Guide are some of my favorite recent examples, and now currently, Firewatch.

The setup: main character Henry flees a difficult relationship situation to work in a fire lookout tower for the park service in Wyoming. It’s beautiful, isolated, and lonely, but for his boss and eventual friend Delilah on the other end of the handheld radio.

Playing the game consists of exploring your patch of forest, dealing with minor problems (some which later become major ones), and getting to know the woman on the other end of the radio as you do your jobs. There’s some excitement, definitely some mystery and tension, but no fighting, racing, collecting, or puzzle-solving like other games you might play. You can’t die or lose. You can’t even jump.

But it’s moving, it’s human, it’s beautiful both visually (the scenery, lighting and color palettes are spectacular) and emotionally. It feels grown-up, which so few video games manage to do. And at least for me, it made me think about my life and my relationships, which almost no games do. So, based on the big-boy ideas dealt with in Firewatch, two topics for discussion*:

(*saving the others that might spoil surprises in the game)

Henry takes the job as a fire lookout to get away from a tough relationship, needing time to think and sort out his life.

Why do we associate going out into nature with figuring out our lives?
Aside from quiet and lack of distraction, what are we looking for when we “get away from it all”?
Aside from nice landscapes that make good photos, what is the emotional benefit of “natural beauty”?

Henry “meets” Delilah over the radio, and for the rest of the game she’s really your only other point of human contact.

Have you ever become friends with someone you’d never met in person?
How did they become your friend?
How was your friendship with them different than with people you have met?