The Quite Nerdy Blog

So.. 2020, huh? What's that all about? Not that 2021 has been much better so far, but you know the rules, any reflection of the last year has to include some brief mention of the fact that we have just experienced the worst year almost all of us will have ever lived through. Cutting and accurate summations of what went wrong and where isn't my strength though, so that obviously isn't what I'm writing about today (though quickly, Fuck the Tories for dealing with this pandemic worse than anyone would have guessed ten months ago. Anyone who votes for you in the next election deserves help, as they're clearly suffering from Stockholm syndrome). No, obviously what I'm here for today is to talk to you about the best films I saw from this mess of a year! Though much of what we were looking forward to has been delayed from last year into this year, we still had plenty to enjoy and I want to celebrate those films we did actually get to watch, whether in a cinema or safel...

In a year defined by staying inside and binge watching Netflix, I feel like I didn't watch as much as everyone else. I wish I could have, a lot of it sounds great, but I spent most of the year so full of overwhelming anxiety that I couldn't focus on something non-interactive for more than a few hours and then the rest of the year I spent studying. Despite that, I made time for Normal People , a show that is so great it felt almost cruel to release it in the middle (or as we now call it, the start) of a pandemic. For those who are unaware, the show is the story of two young adults, Connell and Marianne. They meet at sixth form, where Connell's mum is a cleaner for Marianne's family. Coming from two different social worlds, they never expect to connect and yet, they do. They connect quite hard, actually. The show follows their relationship, falling in and out of love across their time at sixth form and then university, with plenty of heartbreak, touching and touching indu...

Sometimes, I play a game and I just think "oh, well this is unfair". Not in terms of it being unbalanced necessarily. That happens occasionally for me because I suck at playing games, but it's not what I'm referring to here. No, what I'm referring to is that sometimes it feels unfair how much a game is just tailor made for me. Hades  is such a game, the newest from beloved indie studio Supergiant Games. It is a hack and slash rogue-like (don't worry if none of those words mean anything to you, I'll explain in a minute) in which you play as Zagreus, the son of Hades. You are attempting to escape the Underworld for reasons that you will discover as you go, although the path to getting to the mortal realm will, ironically, involve being killed quite a lot. As someone who loves a little bit of Greek mythology, as well as a well crafted indie game, Hades was always going to go down well with me, but I wasn't expecting it to go down quite this well. Talking ...

Hey everyone, and welcome to my best of 2020 stuff! It has certainly been a year and I wanted to look for a way to talk about everything I loved without feeling terrible about notable omissions. There will still be a Top 7 for films, because I continue to consume them like it's going out of business (a poor simile perhaps, given the circumstances), but I wanted to talk about the video games, TV and albums I loved this past year despite having not experienced some of the biggest ones. For that problem, I settled on the solution of writing about my favourite example of each medium in depth, with some honourable mentions scattered at the bottom. Hopefully that makes sense, but I'm sure it'll become clear as I talk more, starting with my favourite album of 2020: Phoebe Bridgers' Punisher . I don't know how you've felt for the last ten months, but for me it's felt a little bit like everything is about to explode all the time. The phrase I keep returning to is ...

Wonder Woman 1984 is not, as the title implies, the 1,984th film in the Wonder Woman  franchise. Instead, it's the sequel to that film a few years ago everyone loved called Wonder Woman , except instead of being set during World War 1, this film is set in (get this) 1984. Diana, being the seemingly ageless being she is, has continued living since that war, doing her best to help humanity and currently working at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. However, this peace is disrupted when a mysterious magical mcguffin turns up, which has the power to grant the wish of whoever touches it. As you would expect, there are exactly no terrible consequences to it, but heroes and villains alike are using it to make their wildest dreams come true. It's hardly earth shaking stuff, but importantly, it doesn't have to be. This is a disposable blockbuster and in a year when disposable blockbusters have been so absent, I needed something as well plotted as this. Its plot is predictable, bu...

  Mank is David Fincher's first film since 2014, when he released his trash pulp masterpiece Gone Girl . He has been busy since with TV projects but as a feature director, it's a welcome return, though not into territory that feels familiar for the director. He's got a hell of a filmography, mainly covering serial killers but also veering into sci-fi, home invasion and whatever the hell The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was. The most important touchstone though is The Social Network , as that was Fincher's last attempt at a biopic and also widely regarded as a drop dead masterpiece by many, including yours truly. And so, into that waiting void, Fincher drops Mank , his return to biopics, though this time about a much less prominent figure: Herman Mankiewicz. I admit I didn't quite feel the emotional punch I was hoping to. Because you are likely unaware, Herman Mankiewicz was one of the screenwriters behind Citizen Kane , a film often regarded as one of the greates...

The new generation of consoles is here and currently, there are not many games for them. However, if you have the Xbox Series X or S, you have the benefit of Xbox Game Pass. Over the past few years, this has become the big selling point of having an Xbox and while I have complex feelings on the disappearance of game ownership, it's still a pretty incredible value prospect. Much like Netflix, you pay a monthly subscription fee and get unlimited access to a huge suite of games, for as long as you continue to pay your membership fees. Strangely, it also comes with a "Surprise Me" button which allows you to get randomly recommended a game. Seeing as there appears to be absolutely nothing else happening at the moment, I'm playing six random video games for your enjoyment! Let me quickly set out the rules. I picked six games using the "Surprise Me" button and played them all for at least 15 minutes. I don't have an Xbox Series X, I have a humble little Xbox On...