#technology literally is becoming worse and as someone who loves playing with technology I'm literally crying about it

[cryptic-rainfall]

everytime I get news it’s bad news. steam isn’t gonna be supporting windows 8.1 in a few months. I get that microsoft isn’t supporting older versions of windows, but like, can things not immediately become incompatible if it’s just 10 years old? especially something like steam that literally works with windows 8.1 currently. incredibly dumb. literally setting me into a fit of despair. again. the problem with loving technology and being slow is that you get detrimental news every time something “progresses.” yes I understand the linear progress of time, I still think it’s dumb and frustrating that things become incompatible after only a few years. between this and whatever the fuck tumblr is doing I am truly feeling despair.

[cantsayidont]

More bad movies:

LATENCY (2024): What's duller than watching someone else play video games? This tedious sci-fi horror story about an agoraphobic gamer named Hana (Sasha Luss), whose only real human contact is her friend Jen (Alexis Ren), going off the deep end after getting the opportunity to try a new AI-powered headset that she can use to operate game controls and other technology with her thoughts alone. Soon, of course, she's having disturbing hallucinations suggesting that she's being haunted, or even possessed. Luss is not nearly a good enough actor to carry what's almost a one-woman show — particularly one so thinly plotted — and the attempts at spooky reality-bending are rendered completely pointless by the idiotic premise, which recalls terrible pre-MATRIX movies of the '90s about virtual reality. Critics have praised the visual effects, but on home video, even with the brightness turned way up, the film is so underlit that I couldn't discern about half of it. About the only vaguely interesting point is a brief attempt to visualize the experience of having the game TETRIS seep into one's dreams; the finale also has some very weak echoes of MULHOLLAND DRIVE that only serve to remove the story's one remaining vestige of emotional reality. CONTAINS LESBIANS? At one point Jen teases Hana for inviting her into her bedroom without offering her anything interesting to do. VERDICT: Conceptually bankrupt and weakly executed; if there's an intelligent movie to be made about gaming as a phenomenon, this certainly isn't it.

THE OUTRUN (2024): Extremely dreary recovery drama, based on a memoir by Amy Liptrot (who co-scripted), about a young biologist, here called Rona (Saoirse Ronan), who retreats to Orkney after blowing up her academic career due to her struggles with alcohol while living in London. Paapa Essiedu costars as her former boyfriend Daynin. There's a scene about a half-hour in where the protagonist checks herself into an abstinence-only rehab program whose organizer declares, with appalling misplaced pride, that only 10 percent of participants will make it; I started feeling similarly about this movie, which is much like being caught in a heavy rain while on foot far from home, wearing sneakers with cracked soles. Ronan is quite good, but while Liptrot has praised the film as "fresh and authentic," every scene is a miserable slog — not even the scenery is pleasant, and its paean to 12-step programs (which substantial research now demonstrates are statistically worse than useless) made me itch. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: I'm glad Liptrot got something worthwhile out of this, but you won't. Photosensitive viewers should be aware that there are some flashing light sequences in nightclub flashbacks (the worst starting around 40 minutes in).

THE SUBSTANCE (2024): Unsubtle, frequently disgusting sci-fi horror story from French writer-director Coralie Fargeat, about an aging TV fitness star, Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), using a mysterious new bio-engineering kit that allows her to create a younger, hotter version of herself, "Sue" (Margaret Qualley) — vapid, selfish, hypersexual, and irresistible to every man she meets — whom she can become for seven days at a time. It doesn't take long, however, before she violates the stringent rules that governs the process, and soon her two selves are at war, with horrific results. The first half is a deliberately paced, unsettling, and potent (if obvious and heavy-handed) statement about gender, beauty, and aging, overlapping somewhat with the gayer but more muddled LOVE LIES BLEEDING, albeit with more, and ickier, body horror. Unfortunately, about halfway through, Fargeat loses interest in trying to be creepy or thought-provoking in favor of escalating grossness, which culminates in an absurdly icky finale drenched in literal geysers of blood. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No, and it's curiously disinterested in the erotic implications of the premise, handcuffed by its own very conservative sexual politics. VERDICT: Visceral and visually striking, but ultimately not as audacious as it would like to be, and very, very gross. Be warned: The squeamish need not apply, and if you struggle with eating disorder, you should approach this film with extreme caution, if at all.

SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY (1971): Critically acclaimed but unrewarding and very gloomy British drama about a 30-something divorced mother (Glenda Jackson) and a 50-something gay Jewish doctor (Peter Finch) carrying on separate but parallel affairs with the same younger man (Murray Head), who's ultimately not willing to give either of his lovers the kind of time or energy they want from him. A downbeat, thinly plotted slice of life, its basic thesis is that youthful notions of love and freedom are fundamentally incompatible with the weight of middle-aged responsibility, a point hammered home by Finch in the fourth-wall-breaking final scene. It's (otherwise) realistically rendered, with the basic premise treated with a refreshing lack of nervous tittering, but it's so glum that it's always kind of a drag, and the Head character is never allowed even half the dimensionality of his older partners. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: Put me off for various personal reasons from the very first shot, and its sexual politics are as cheerless and inflexible as Margaret Atwood's, which is not a compliment.