I’m going to start trying to write again, so a regular blogging habit might help with that. Reviews won’t be all of it, but I’m fond of my old three-sentence review format. Let’s see if we can get some more mileage out of that.

The Surfer (2024 film, Lorcan Finnegan)

The Surfer is an Irish-Australian production from director Lorcan Finnegan that provides a vehicle for Nicolas Cage as a man who views buying his childhood home as a potential solution to a life falling apart at the seams, only to face hostility to an absurd degree from the locals. That’s an incomplete, if not to say entirely misleading, description of a film that has clever and interesting things to say about the pressures that men face and the maladapted ways that many choose to cope with them. However, for me at least, the film gets off to the wrong start by making Cage’s character completely unlikeable, rendering the first two thirds of the movie a depressing slog, no matter how well thought out it is.

Ithaya: Magic Studies (2025 PC game, Blue Turtle)

Ithaya: Magic Studies is less a game than it is a study or work aid, but it’s so well put together by blueturtle that it’s both entirely enchanting and well able to perform its chosen task. The “narrative” sees you, as Ithaya, arriving at an ancient city to study magic, and the systems of the game slowly unlock the world surrounding the city as you devote tasks and time to the underlying organiser. The lack of pressure from the mechanics and the appealing nature of the art and audio means that there’s plenty to appreciate and explore, and I’ve already devoted more work to it than I’ve managed in multiple months beforehand.

Andor (2025 TV show, Disney+)

Of the various spin-offs of Star Wars that have appeared in recent years, none have received the same acclaim as Andor, a two-series show from Tony Gilroy, which serves both as a prequel to his film Rogue One and as a deep dive into the mindset of people making the decision to resist an authoritarian state (hmm, wonder why that feels relevant). As someone who wasn’t a huge fan of Rogue One, I’ve enjoyed Andor to a much greater degree, with its longer format providing the chance to dig into its characters, their troubles, and the inevitable costs that raising a rebellion incurs. There can be few countries around the world that don’t have some revolutionary history of their own to speak of, and for all that it feels distant from the mainline Star Wars offerings, Andor speaks to a broader human experience and may well endure all the better for it.

Blue Prince (2025 PC game, Dogubomb)

I gave up on Blue Prince not long after starting it: Dogubomb’s puzzle game is structured in such a way that it requires an investment of effort and thought to get over the initial hurdle of bafflement. As someone who tends to solve puzzles by brute force (or ignoring them for extended periods of time), this isn’t a puzzle game exactly suited to me, no matter how much I might enjoy taking notes as I progress through an ever-changing mansion of rooms with multiple meanings, hidden treasures, and unguessed-at secrets. I don’t want to spoil too much, as this is one of the deepest games and the most carefully crafted titles that I’ve come across in many years, but if you have the patience (and an ability to think laterally), you might just have a lot of fun digging into the foundations of this mansion of madness.

A City on Mars (2023 book, Kelly & Zach Weinersmith)

Fans of Zach Weinersmith’s webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal will already know of his deep interest in science of various flavours, and A City on Mars stands as an excellent follow-up to his and his wife’s Soon-ish, a review of the reality or unreality of various upcoming technologies. In A City on Mars, the Weinersmiths pick apart the various arguments in favour of settling Mars (or space in general) and try to get to the reality of the new life that often gets hyped up by over-promising tech bros. The result is a highly entertaining and gently chastening book for anyone with the vaguest interest in space or the future of humanity, at the same time offering solid proof that humorous is not the opposite of serious.