Website logo: Xennialist, Est. 2026

Thoughts on Things

  • I did not watch the latest Trump speech

    I did not watch the latest Trump speech

    Feeling political, won’t delete later.

    Xen

    I don’t feel any particular need to keep active tabs on the day-to-day Trump-spewing from the White House. I’ve included this image of the White House from Getty because it looks kind of foreboding and captures a bit of how I feel about the whole thing.

    A war with Iran was never going to be a good thing, nor was it a smart move. We’ve imperiled ourselves as a nation, and more specifically, our troops, for seemingly no coherent reason. No rationale or Wednesday night quarterbacking on April Fools’ Day will bring any sanity to the situation.

    Labeling this current effort as a “distraction” from more significant issues facing our nation is accurate; however, it downplays the reality that we have several urgent matters to address.

    So the Strait of Hormuz isn't going to just open itself, and the US isn't going to just walk away, and a lot more damage will be done to energy infrastructure all around the Gulf, and the chatter of the past 48 hours was just that… talking down the markets. Buckle up! www.cnbc.com/2026/04/02/o…

    — Chris Nelder (@chrisnelder.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T03:10:19.720Z

    Gas prices continue to rise. The current military assault on Iran will drive them higher.

    I choose to eat a peanut butter egg and hope for saner minds to steer us in a better direction. It is not giving up so much as it is hoping for more, and the better that we all deserve in this moment.

  • Mercy on Trial: Flimsy Future Court and a Failed Format

    The clock starts; the film’s timer is set. At least we know how long we have before we can get dinner.

    Rotten Tomatoes

    Overview

    The face-on interview camera shot set the tone for a lot of the action to take place in one room and for the main actors to carry most of the film, perhaps a hallmark of director Timur Bekmambetov. The “screenlife format” puts a lot of pressure on the actor to deliver each individual plot point with maximum impact.

    The legal ramifications are kind of tricky and play for a weak case for an AI court. It’s rather flimsy for the court to conduct its business over a series of phone calls. This assumes that everyone will answer if they see a call from the Mercy Court.

    Acting

    Chris Pratt does a surprisingly decent job hacking it for this film. We, the viewing audience, are left to guess at the level of technological progression in the short hop into the future in which this film is set. Chris seems quite adept at using this future tech during his dystopian trial. Rebecca Ferguson, as the face of Mercy Court, navigates the script with skill. But the narrative choices written on the page and executed through digital glitching were choppy and disjointed. It must have been a chore for Ferguson to bring this performance to a place that would have been standout.

    “Writing, of course, is writing, acting comes from the theater, and cinematography comes from photography. Editing is unique to film. You can see something from different points of view almost simultaneously, and it creates a new experience.”

    Stanley Kubrick

    Production, Writing, and Filmmaking

    Ugh. The action scenes that happened outside the Mercy Court were as relevant as expected. When screenlife is used in filmmaking, we are often dialogue-splained through all of the major exposition with dreadfully few non-screen camera shots.

    Final Rating: 4/10

    I found the screenlife format overly cumbersome and lacking; the acting was unconvincing, and the script needed improvement.

    Spoilers

    Click to reveal thoughts on the ending …

    The partnership between Chris and the AI in the buddy cop scenario was quite predictable. Another thought I had was that Chris might lie to prolong the trial, or that the building’s emergency power would ultimately be insufficient to eliminate him, leading to a not-guilty verdict.

    I argue that we did not really get to see an AI court in action. There were choices made by the AI that felt overtly human, and the digital glitching left us to assume that even in the future, we won’t have hallucination-free AI.

  • Why “For Sale” Ultimately Isn’t Worth Buying

    Movie poster of "For Sale" starring Andrew Roth

    I couldn’t with this one.
    Xen

    Rotten Tomatoes

    The Overview

    The slow, awkward pacing, poor acting, and odd visual aesthetic choices made this film unwatchable. Oh, and the cheap props. The corny mask in the second jump scare was all the foreshadowing needed to realize the producers would never deliver Oscar-ready makeup effects.

    The Acting

    Andrew Roth tried to connect with the audience, but even on my silver screen, this writing was strained from start to finish, and his performance couldn’t carry us into believing the horror being.

    As Alison, Rachael Lubarsky delivers stiff, predictable dialogue with little spark. The lines were admittedly difficult to bring to life, but her intonation still falls short, leaving the performance flat.

    “Every actor has to make terrible films… the trick is never to be terrible in them.” — Christopher Lee

    Arguably the best acting in the film. Those pearly whites and that accent, the lighthouse, and those glasses.

    Corinne Britti as Claire does a good job of pulling us back into the fold of how we should be feeling. A medium in a haunted house is the obvious vehicle to take us to the exposition of the paranormal life inhabiting the house. Claire holds up a mirror to Roth’s Mason and pushes him toward the realization that the salesman must atone for his self-centered strut through life.

    The Writing and Production

    Gravitas Ventures films can be hit or miss when it comes to character dialogue, and that inconsistency carries over into the sometimes shaky performances delivering those lines. Some characters are clearly meant to come across as awkward and foreboding, but the acting from a few of the house viewers—particularly the second couple—is especially lackluster.

    The screenplay team of Jordan Friedberg and Christopher Schrack does not have a sizeable number of credits to draw from. Their streaming delivery of this film isn’t an impressive notch on the belt.

    Take a look at the trailer on YouTube

  • Nietzsche Had a Point About Clavicular

    Henry Grey Earls talks about the recent Manosphere splash guy — Clavicular (Youtube)

    Earls argues that the influencer Clavicular (Braden Peters) represents more than just a self-help creator; he embodies Friedrich Nietzsche’s warnings about nihilism in the modern age.

    That makes sense to me. Earls’ comments about the absence of a higher meaning suggest that Clavvicular focuses solely on obsessive self-optimization (looksmaxxing) rather than on internal transformation. When people start to become disposable in the pursuit of maximum self-indulgence, it creates a harsh and unpleasant society overall. In this context, empathy is seen as a critical weakness, regarded as the least attractive trait to possess, and is therefore avoided at all costs.

    “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
    Friedrich Nietzsche