Christopher Larson

[No Spoiler Review] Subservience has an interesting premise, and the narrative does an excellent job at making the viewer uncomfortable with its complex and dark plot... At least, until about 1/3 of the way through the movie, where everything starts falling apart. The dialogue is cliche and the characters are fairly one-dimensional. The characters do a poor job at creating believable conflict, and no one is particularly likable. Subservience is a movie that can't decide whether it wants to be Sci-Fi or Horror and ends up doing both poorly. It's an interesting watch, I'd say it's worth seeing if you enjoyed "Her", the 2013 film starring Joaqin Phoenix, but you won't leave this film with the same eerie and hollow feeling. Rather, Subservience draws you in and then leaves you hanging - and your eyes will get sore from rolling so much.

Valorant is a very complex and multi-layered team goal shooter. At first glance, it feels very familiar to Counter-Strike Global Offensive. Where it differentiates itself is in the individual characters' abilities, which create a robust range of outcomes, and in my opinion, make the game more interesting through an additional layer of unpredictability. Valorant has 5 free characters and 5 that can be unlocked simply by playing through the game. Real-life currency can only impact appearances of weapons and animations. Riot tries very hard to ensure there is no paying for advantages. The first round I played of Valorant, I hated it. The second, I was interested but still disliked it. Give it a fair chance. It took probably 5-7 games before I decided I liked it. It feels a lot like what CS:GO felt like in the earlier days, before it got super toxic. The community in Valorant has been generally positive and teamwork-oriented -- many are very patient when my 10-year-old son plays with us too. Great game; I hope the updates to come don't change that.