Bounty Bundle (Burger King)

To celebrate the release of the new film in the Star Wars franchise (which, as an aside, I would have called my favorite fictional franchise ten years ago, have burned out in the years since, and now, probably won't even watch), Burger King has released a meal deal honoring the property. My preference, in reverse order to build suspense:

• Imperial Cheddar Ranch Tots – a little chewy for my taste, and could have used more cheddar flavor. I had them with honey mustard, and the sauce, mild as it is, still overpowered the tots.
• BBQ Bounty Whopper – a Whopper, so it’s already pretty good, but not a drastic improvement. Yes, there was bacon, and yes, there was barbecue sauce. These are nice additions to have, to be sure, but for the most part, it was a burger.
• Grogu's Garlic Chicken Fries – if the chicken fries were different than the usual recipe, you could have fooled me. I have no taste buds. But the paired garlic sauce was immaculate! In a normal order, I would be hard pressed to rank standard chicken fries over a standard Whopper, but the garlic sauce pushed these over the edge.
• Grogu's Blue Cookie Shake – this abhorrent mess of a dessert was also the most delicious. Even despite the blue cookie syrup dripping down the side, the shake itself was delightful. Overly sweet, of course, but the crunch of the cookies was a perfect textural separation.

The Delta (1996)

A quiet, contemplative, mostly mundane story about a queer young American, a Vietnamese immigrant, and the intersection of their lives. I don’t know if this was the appropriate read of the film, but I detected a sense of mysticism to the immigrant’s story. Was he real or merely a spiritual companion for the young person with bisexual desires and seemingly few other ambitions? This interpretation, correct or not, worked for my viewing. Regardless, “John” took on the status of the main focus of the film while the other boy assimilated back into his life. We are left to explore what happiness means with John, who seems perpetually adrift. Also, the word “shocking” gets thrown around too often, I’m guilty of it as well, but the ending here caught me completely off guard. Even hours after finishing, I’m still not sure what to make of the closing scene.

Stray Dog (1949)

An entry in the contemporary crime genre of the Kurosawa-Mifune output, as opposed to the classic samurai. Mifune is strikingly young in this film, and it didn’t occur to me until later that this was one of his earliest collaborations with Kurosawa, and in fact, one of his first roles ever. Audiences at the time would not yet have made the connection between the two. The character’s lack of experience and his naivety makes the film. The emotional connection with the tired veteran, who almost loses his life in the process due to Murakami’s carelessness, adds to the stakes. Nearly every single scene reminded the viewer how this particular summer in Japan is oppressively hot. Rather than become repetitive, however, it only served to increase the pressure felt by the main detective with each passing hour he did not recover his gun. All of that culminates in a brilliant and satisfying ending.

Poetic Justice (1993)

What an emotional departure from the first film in Singleton’s loosely connected trilogy. Whereas Boyz is bleak and tense, this film is a lighthearted and tender love story between two young people. Not without its tragedy—there is yet another murder in the climax of the film—the characters transcend this in a happy way. There is a sense of hope the first film never had. The real-life tragic irony is that Tupac would be murdered only a few years after this film. His acting is strong in this, and it’s terrible that we never were able to see his full range. In general, the acting is also consistent with the first film in that it features a cast of both actors who would go on to have enormous careers and musicians not known for acting but turn out to be quite good at it. Singleton and his casting team really knew how to build an ensemble.

Mad Dash Racing (Xbox)

This year, I’ve fallen into the 25th anniversary nostalgia of the original Xbox, and I’ve felt the desire to play some more games from that system. I picked up this game chiefly because it has the unique distinction of being, as far as I can tell, the only game released two weeks before the console itself. I don’t know if that’s true, but the novelty of it made it worth a try. This one turned out to be surprisingly fun! It’s a cart racer, even if the characters are technically on foot. The gameplay is not enough that anyone is going to give up Double Dash!! or Crash Team Racing (picturing college dorm rooms of that era), but it’s definitely good enough to hold your attention. I didn’t play any multiplayer, only the solo adventure mode which is actually quite deep. The levels are branching and intricate, and because they are only one lap, you are not redoing them constantly. But because there are multiple paths, it does inspire a want to go back and run some of the levels again. Speaking of replay-ability, there are medals to earn for finishing levels with each character, finding hidden medals (of which I found zero), and doing attacks and stunts, which gives plenty of satisfying reasons to want to go back. It’s also worth mentioning this game has insane rubber-banding, meaning no one is truly ever out of a race. There were plenty of times where I had a comfortable lead the entire race and lost at the end. Frustrating. But there were just as many times where I would get stuck in a wall for several seconds at a time (this is a launch game, after all), turn the wrong way after exiting, only to be in 1st place within a minute. Exhilarating. As such, there is not much reason to restart in the middle of a race. Fully competent racer, well worth playing again and again.