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What I Watched This Week #167 (Mar 10-16) Toy Story 3 dir. Lee Unkrich/2010/1h43m Over a decade since the last entry in the series, we have aged in real time with these films so that Andy (John Morris) is now heading off to college, having to leave his childhood toys behind. A misunderstanding leads to them being sent as donations to a day-care centre where a huggable stuffed bear who smells like strawberries, Lotso (Ned Beatty), rules the roost. It's remarkable how watching this film feels like going home, back to your own childhood (if you were a child when the first two came out, as I was, this feeling is even stronger), with Pixar not forgetting how to write these characters over ten years later. Catching up with Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen) and the gang feels like meeting up with an old friend and picking up right where you left off, the intervening years melting away with ease. There are also some memorable new characters alongside Lotso, with my favourite being the Ken doll, played perfectly by Michael Keaton. Then there is the pitch perfect ending where Andy hands his toys over to the new generation where new stories can be told. Because that's what toys are, tools for children to create stories and try to make some sense of a strange world. And when it comes to Toy Stories, nobody does it like Pixar. 9/10 Total Balalaika Show dir. Aki Kaurismaki/1994/57m Total Balalaika Show is a concert film shot in Helsinki featuring the cult band Leningrad Cowboys performing with the Alexandrov Red Army Choir a mixture of American songs and traditional Russian numbers. Like The Monkees and Spinal Tap, the Leningrad Cowboys started life as a fictional band created by the director Aki Kaurismaki for his 1989 film Leningrad Cowboys Go America. Like those other bands, they soon became bigger than the film, especially in their home country of Finland, and actually became a real band, performing concerts in their trademark oversized pompadour hairstyles and long, pointy shoes (it reminds me of something Vic Reeves would have dressed up like in the early 90's). The real kicker is that, also like those other bands, they're actually really f*cking good. They have a real punk energy to them, the lead singer growling out the lyrics to classic rock songs like the surreal offspring of Johnny Rotten while the band plays at max tempo. This works really well in juxtaposition with the very formal Choir, all kitted out in military uniform. Maybe I'm biased because I'm a fan of Kaurismaki, so I'd like to get the opinion of someone unfamiliar with his work, but I think this is a blast. I just wish it were a bit longer. 8.5/10 The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep dir. Kang Hei Chul/2025/1h32m Sirens of the Deep is the second Netflix anime film set in the world of The Witcher, this time focusing on the lead character of the books and game series, Geralt of Rivia (Doug Cockle, who also voices him in the games), a monster hunter for hire in a dark and gritty magical medieval world. This more familiar character makes it easier to step into this world over the previous film, which focused on a character who has only a supporting role in the games. This is also a simpler storyline than that film, though there is still plenty of political intrigue. That comes in the fact that a prince has fallen in love with a mermaid when his father wants him to marry a human and continue the royal bloodline. But The Little Mermaid this is not. This is a bloody and brutal film with some excellent fight scenes, particularly the climactic battle against a giant kraken (is there any other kind?). Geralt is a brilliant character, both in the games and here (I can't speak on the books), morally grey, he says he only cares about coin, but you know he'll always do the right thing and then complain about it. Cockle's voice is the perfect match for this character, gravelly and rough but with a warmth to it. The animation is a bit too clean, and it does feel cheap at times with very little movement at times, but it does capture the atmosphere of the world well enough. 7/10 His Musical Career dir. Charlie Chaplin/1914/13m This early Keystone film from Charlie Chaplin sees him play an inept removal man who, along with his partner Mack Swain - also a big star at the time - is tasked with repossessing a piano from a poor man and delivering one to a rich man. You can probably see where this is going. Every conceivable gag you can think of involving a piano is pulled off here with Chaplin's perfect sense of comedic timing and physicality. There are a few scenes with a donkey that pulls his delivery cart that you couldn't get away with now, and I didn't find them particularly funny, but apart from that this is a strong early film for Chaplin, though we'd have to wait a few more years to see him develop his character into something more enduring and three dimensional like in The Immigrant from 1917. 6/10 Moana 2 dir. David D. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller/2024/1h39m The latest Disney Animation Studios film returns to ancient Polynesia where Moana (Auli'i Cravalho) gets a vision that tells her to go on a quest to find the legendary island of Motufetu, which was sunk by storm god Nalo (Tofiga Fepulea'i), and connect all the people scattered around the islands. Meanwhile, demi god Maui (The Rock) is searching for Motufetu for his own reasons. This started life as a now cancelled TV series, and that is obvious in the underwritten side characters like Moana's crew when she goes out sailing. They're just there in the film, where I'm sure that in the series they would have been introduced properly. I did enjoy the grumpy farmer Kele (David Fane), bought along to handle the food supplies, but he's literally the only supporting character that I remember. I'm pretty over The Rock as an actor at this point, but here he's actually having some fun and not trying to be a cool badass all the time, which is nice because he's actually really good at comedy and more light-hearted roles. The music is as forgettable as the side characters, with them sounding like a cheap copy of Lin-Manuel Miranda's style, who did the songs for the first film but was busy working on a different film so couldn't return here. Visually it's gorgeous, with some beautiful oceanic seascapes, but that's to be expected at this point. 7/10 Mustang dir. Deniz Gamze Erguven/2015/1h37m This Turkish coming of age drama focuses on five orphaned sisters living with their grandmother and uncle. When they play an innocent game with some boys from their school it is misinterpreted as something s*xual and they are then removed from school and basically put under house arrest, their uncle barring up all the doors and windows while their grandmother prepares them for marriage. Told from the perspective of the youngest sister Lale (Gunes Nezihe Sensoy) this is a beautiful story of defiance against a harsh patriarchy that they don't even understand, because they are never even told what they're supposed to have done wrong. This is an understated yet powerful film that doesn't need to resort to melodramatics or shock tactics to show us how repressive and abusive this world is for these young girls, with most of the adults being hypocrites or worse. The performances of the five sisters are naturalistic and feel so real that I could believe they are actually sisters. Their bond is what gives them strength and it's in full force in scenes like the one where they sneak out to a football game, only women being allowed to attend after men were banned for rioting (something that actually happened in Turky). This gives them a glimpse of what life could be like under different circumstances, making the harsh light of reality even more stark. Thankfully, this film ends on a note of hope for our young protagonist which, like the rest of the film, is understated but powerful. 9/10 Lime's Film of the Week! Rebel Ridge dir. Jeremy Saulnier/2024/2h12m From the director of brilliantly taut thrillers Blue Ruin and Green Room, Rebel Ridge stars Aaron Pierre as Terry Richmond, a former Marine who is in a small town to post bail for his cousin. However, he soon runs into the local police force, led by Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson), which is riddled with corruption and institutional racism. But Chief Burnne soon finds out that Terry is a man you can push only so far. This is my first time seeing Pierre and he is incredible. There's a real quiet intensity to him that builds up as he faces injustice after injustice. At first he's compliant, just wanting to make things easy, but his frustration is palpable, as is the feeling that this is a man capable of real damage. In many ways this is a modern version of First Blood, with Pierre in the Stallone role of a vet who just wants a quiet life coming up against a police force full of *ssholes. Johnson is also great as a real sh*theel of a police chief. The initial encounters between him and Pierre are some of the best in the film, the two playing off each other perfectly. Where this film falls short for me is that it's somewhat bloated and overlong. Saulnier's other films are much tighter, giving the situations more intensity. Not that this film isn't intense, but at times it's left to stew for a beat too long. That said, this is a great film that's worth watching for the lead performance alone. 8.5/10

Maybe a simple treasure hunt instead. Place AA-trailers and Ron-gas-tank-trailers on the map as capture objects. And spawn everyone in a fast helicopter och unarmed Jet. Have everyone fly around looking for NPC-vehicles that can tow the capture trailers. Might include a occational kamikaze move as well. …funny how this now feels like the greatest idea ever. 😂

Changed this to even teams after playing it last night. I also added some jumps that will make it easier to land on your roof. I found that rather hard *n the loop-jumps.

Frida (2002) dir Julie Taymor Biopic of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, played by Salma Hayek. Alfred Molina plays her husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera. This is a film that I could easily have gone to see at the cinema when it was released but just never got round to and then never thought about much since. But I saw it was on Netflix at the moment so decided to finally watch it. I knew virtually nothing about Kahlo prior to watching this. It's a good film, but did not quite have as much drama and tension as I thought it would have – which I assume is simply being true to the facts. It could easily have had far more of those things. Kahlo agreed to an open marriage with Rivera, and they both slept with numerous other people. Rivera's ex wife Lupe (Valeria Golino) lived in the apartment above them to begin with. Later they had a home built with completely separate sections for husband and wife. Rivera was a prominent member of Mexico's Communist party and his friend Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush) stays with them when he flees Stalin's purges in the 1930s. Rivera was quite a pragmatist and happy to take a commission from Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norten) to paint a mural in the lobby of his New York HQ. There are few other famous faces in small roles, most noticeably Antonio Banderas just in a single scene – and he was well established when this made, so I guess he just really wanted to be in a film about Frida Kahlo. All the acting was good and Hayek got an Oscar nomination. It also had some technical nominations. The one it was maybe most unlucky to miss out on the win for was Art Direction. I really liked the way her art was incorporated into some scenes, with some of her paintings coming to life or her subjects morphing into their portraits. Some of her work was quiet surreal and they have some scenes from her vivid imagination too, including one in which Rivera becomes King Kong climbing the Empire State building. The one weak point for me was it lacked a proper sense of time. It starts in the 1920s and ends in the 1950s. But Hayek barely seems to age. Molina does but only with quite a big jump in appearance where he goes from looking pretty much the same as he did from the start to being an old grey haired man. 7 / 10

You can not get back to get a new one without the big airplane. So if any of the steps fail you have to restart from the last available vehicle, in this case the plane. I also noticed it was hard to hook the truck, and maybe the whole idea is not suited as a casual easy going fun job in a playlist.