Overview:

“Head First Java: A Brain-Friendly Guide” by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates is a comprehensive and innovative introduction to Java programming. This book stands out due to its unique teaching approach, which leverages engaging visuals, interactive content, and real-world analogies to help readers grasp complex concepts more effectively. Aimed primarily at beginners, it also serves as a valuable resource for intermediate programmers looking to solidify their understanding of Java.

Content and Structure:

The book is divided into well-structured chapters that progressively build on each other, ensuring a smooth learning curve. Starting with the basics, it covers essential Java concepts such as variables, loops, and arrays, before moving on to more advanced topics like object-oriented programming, inheritance, and polymorphism.

Chapter Highlights:

1. Breaking the Surface: A Quick Dip: The first chapter introduces the fundamentals of Java, including the basics of programming and the structure of a Java program. It sets the stage for the reader by explaining what Java is and why it is so widely used.
2. A Trip to Objectville: This chapter delves into object-oriented programming (OOP), a core concept in Java. Readers learn about objects, classes, methods, and how they interact within a program. The use of relatable analogies helps demystify these foundational elements.
3. Know Your Variables: Here, the focus is on variables and data types. The authors explain how to declare and use variables, the difference between primitive and reference types, and the importance of scope.
4. How Objects Behave: This chapter expands on the OOP concepts introduced earlier, explaining instance variables, methods, and how objects communicate. The interactive exercises and visual aids make these concepts more digestible.
5. Extra-Strength Methods: Readers learn about method overloading, return types, and the nuances of method arguments. The practical examples and exercises reinforce these concepts.
6. Using the Java Library: This section introduces the vast Java API, explaining how to utilize built-in classes and libraries to enhance programming efficiency. It covers essential classes like String, Math, and ArrayList.
7. Inheritance and Polymorphism: Advanced OOP topics are tackled here, with a focus on inheritance, polymorphism, and abstract classes. The real-world analogies used in this chapter help clarify these complex topics.
8. Serious Polymorphism: Building on the previous chapter, this section goes deeper into polymorphism and its applications in Java programming. It includes practical examples and exercises to solidify understanding.
9. Life and Death of an Object: This chapter covers object lifecycle, constructors, and garbage collection. The authors explain these topics in a way that is both engaging and easy to understand.

Teaching Approach:

What sets “Head First Java” apart from other programming books is its brain-friendly approach to learning. The authors utilize a variety of teaching techniques, including:

• Visual Aids: The book is filled with diagrams, cartoons, and illustrations that make abstract concepts more concrete.
• Interactive Content: Exercises, puzzles, and quizzes are interspersed throughout the chapters to reinforce learning and ensure retention.
• Real-World Analogies: By relating programming concepts to everyday scenarios, the authors make complex topics more relatable and easier to grasp.
• Conversational Tone: The informal, conversational writing style keeps the reader engaged and makes the material more accessible.

Pros:

• Engaging and Interactive: The book’s unique teaching style keeps readers engaged and facilitates better retention of concepts.
• Comprehensive Coverage: From basic to advanced topics, the book provides a thorough introduction to Java programming.
• Accessible for Beginners: The clear explanations and step-by-step approach make it ideal for those new to programming.
• Real-World Examples: Practical examples and exercises help readers apply what they’ve learned in real-world scenarios.

Cons:

• Pacing: Some readers may find the pace of the book a bit slow, especially if they have prior programming experience.
• Visual Style: The informal, visually-rich style may not appeal to everyone, particularly those who prefer a more traditional, text-heavy approach.

Conclusion:

“Head First Java: A Brain-Friendly Guide” is an excellent resource for anyone looking to learn Java programming. Its innovative teaching methods, engaging content, and comprehensive coverage make it a standout choice for beginners and intermediate learners alike. By making complex concepts more accessible and enjoyable to learn, Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates have created a book that not only educates but also inspires a passion for programming. Whether you’re new to Java or looking to deepen your understanding, “Head First Java” is a valuable addition to your programming library.

Launch line ups tend to be devoid of big hitters, and often have a habit of bringing gamers’ sky high expectations plummeting back down to earth. While Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is certainly a cross-gen game at heart, the PS5 manages to elevate the experience substantially thanks to its two display mode options, incredibly fast load times and crystal clear 4K visuals.

It’s a beautiful looking game, then, and a fitting sequel to 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man, but it’s more akin to a generous expansion than a full-blown successor – think Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and you’re on the right lines. That means it’s a more condensed experience overall, though no less entertaining. Expect spectacular, jaw-dropping set pieces, Hollywood-rivalling voice acting, and sensational HDR implementation throughout (if you have a capable display).

Harlem heroics

The star of the show is – perhaps unsurprisingly – young Miles Morales. The seventeen-year old New Yorker is instantly likeable and refreshingly… well… just nice. He loves his friends and family, cares about others, and is the type of good-hearted person we can all strive to emulate. In a world where too many loud voices are vying for attention and genuine acts of human kindness are few and far between, Miles’ wholesome personality really resonates. There’s no unnecessary bravado or sense of misplaced confidence.

It makes the character all the more believable for it, as Miles learns to juggle his new dual life. Acting as a normal teenage kid while helping save New York as Spider-Man is no easy task after all, even with an excellent mentor like Peter Parker. But Miles also has to cope with less heroic feats, such as adapting to a new environment after moving to Harlem with his mother. The end result is a story that feels engaging from the outset, and is delivered with exceptional presentation values from the very first moments through to the last.

Miles is entrusted with protecting a snow-enrobed New York after Peter heads on a well-deserved vacation, and the events that take place while Pete’s away ultimately help shape Miles into the hero the city needs. However, Miles will also uncover some secrets close to home that will force him to make some difficult, life-changing decisions.

The game begins in dramatic fashion as you team up with Peter to halt a rampaging Rhino, who’s careering through everything that’s within his path. It’s the perfect introduction to Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and an impressive teaser of what awaits during the game’s captivating story.

Steering Rhino through a packed mall while sat atop his giant shoulders is an arresting moment, and the seamless switch between gameplay, quick-time-events and cinematics is achieved with aplomb. It’s easy to forget how close video games are to mimicking the best Hollywood has to offer, and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales only helps drive home that the gap continues to diminish.

Come out swinging

Just like in Marvel’s Spider-Man, the moment you take control of Miles Morales as he takes his first swing through the bustling city is a spectacular thrill. The difference the PS5 makes is immediately apparent, too, with impressive draw distances, far more densely populated streets and ray-traced reflections all catching the eye.

In fact, you feel the benefit of Sony’s new hardware as soon as you start the game. Booting Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales takes mere seconds thanks to the PS5’s super-fast SSD, allowing you to jump into the game at breakneck speed. You can also bypass the main menu entirely and jump into specific challenges from the PS5’s home screen, which are displayed as Activity cards.

While it would be a stretch to say that Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is something that only the power of the PlayStation 5 could provide (remember, a version of the game is headed to PS4, too), this a gorgeous-looking title regardless of the extra graphical flourishes. The biggest benefit that the PS5 version brings is the aforementioned ray tracing, which brings realistic lighting and reflections to the game, instead of the usual smoke and mirrors that we’ve been used to. You’ll get to see Miles’ reflection in an office block as you swing past, for example, and while that might sound like a small addition, its impact is quite impressive.

Textures and material work are also worthy of praise. Everything from the glistening sheen of Miles’s Spider suit to the bobbly bits of wool visible on worn jumpers look extremely convincing, and it really adds an extra level of fidelity. Character models are a bit hit and miss, though, and a clear reminder that Spider-Man Miles Morales is essentially a super-charged PS4 game.

Venom extract

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales puts you in the figure-hugging suit of the younger web-slinging hero who, naturally, brings his own unique abilities to the table. His Venom moves are the obvious highlight, surging a yellow electrical current through certain attacks, but Miles also feels more nimble than his mentor Peter Parker.

Not only are Venom moves spectacular to look at on a HDR display, they’re also extremely enjoyable to pull off. You can smash through stubborn enemies and perform some shockingly effective crowd control techniques using Miles’s new found powers. Oh, and you can also turn invisible for a short period of time, making stealth sections far more forgiving. It’s enough to make the original Spider-Man’s abilities seem pretty generic by comparison.

While Miles is still learning what it takes to be Spider-Man, and the responsibility that entails, you’re not necessarily hampered by his rookie hero status. Your skills can be upgraded and improved over time of course, much like Miles’s array of Spidey gadgets, but the game re-treads many gameplay mechanics from 2018’s smash hit.

The free-flowing, combo-chasing combat system that was successfully pioneered by Batman: Arkham Asylum remains intact, complete with more calculated sections that see you pick off enemies one by one using various traps, distractions and, of course, sticky spider webs. While we still think Arkham Asylum and subsequent Batman games do a better job in representing how enemies react to their colleagues being neutralized one by one, it’s still incredibly satisfying when you bundle up a bad guy in a webbed cocoon or knock out a hapless foe with a well timed trap.

You’ll need to utilize all of Miles’s move set to overcome the various types of enemies in the game, of course. Some require that you lay the smack down aerially, while others will need softening up with a few Venom attacks. Each enemy type poses a different challenge, and learning how to approach each encounter is the key to success. Combat continues to be engaging, if a tad familiar, and can pose a stern challenge at higher difficulty levels, though we did find the camera to be problematic at times.

Traversal is arguably Spider-Man: Miles Morales most enjoyable gameplay mechanic, though. Diving off the edge of a vertigo-inducing building only to fire out a web just before you scrape across the asphalt is simply exhilarating. You can shoot yourself forward at a moment’s notice, perform aerial tricks as you freefall towards the ground and take in snowy New York in all it’s glory as you fly through the air. Fast travel is available, but swinging through the city is so engaging and perfectly captured that it honestly never gets old. There’s just so much joy to be had in simply being Spider-Man.

Marvellous modes

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is hopefully the first of many PS5 titles that give players the choice of how they want to play, and there are now three modes to choose from after the game received a new update: Fidelity, Performance and Performance RT.

Fidelity is the default setting and features graphical settings like ray-tracing, enhanced lighting and additional effects. It uses temporal techniques to provide the best image quality possible, but you’re locked at 30 frames per second. Performance mode, meanwhile, does without these graphical enhancements and upscales to 4K from a lower base resolution. Performance RT mode keeps ray tracing and 60fps, but reduces the resolution to around 1080p, lowers the reflection quality and reduces pedestrian density.

While ray-tracing is certainly an impressive graphical effect, offering realistic reflections and lighting that simply wouldn’t have been possible on the last generation of consoles, we found ourselves gravitating towards the game’s Performance or Performance RT modes thanks to its numerous benefits.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales is at its best when you’re leaping off skyscrapers and zipping over the bustling New York streets below – a higher framerate keeps the onscreen action looking silky-smooth and allows all the world’s detail to shine.

Input latency is also reduced when opting for 60fps, making combat feel more fluid and responsive when you’re beating up bad guys. We also found that animations appeared more life-like as a result of the higher framerate mode, even without the lack of graphical flourishes found in Fidelity mode. We didn’t experience any noticeable drops or hitches, either, which has often been the case with Performance modes on the last-gen PS4 Pro, that weren’t really worthy of the name.

Power in your hands

Though the game’s main story clocks in at around 10 to 12 hours or so, there’s plenty of content to enjoy after the credits roll. From traversal, combat, and stealth challenges to accepting side quests and preventing crimes using the game’s ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man App’, there’s enough content to justify the game’s slightly steep price tag

Side quests are thankfully more than just “travel from point to a to point Side quests are thankfully more than just “travel from point to a to point b” affairs, and you’ll be rewarded with tokens that can be used for upgrades upon their completion. There’s enough variation to keep things interesting, too: one mission sees you saving a store owner’s cat, while another will have you scanning an underground network of pipes to help restore a local food shelter’s water supply.

Collectibles are also scattered across the city and include things such as mementos from Miles’s childhood and mini-challenges that help flesh out the games backstory and characters. Most involve reaching a specific destination to seek them out, but again, because traversal is so satisfying, the journey there is part of the appeal.

Verdict

With so many superhero films being pushed back because of the pandemic, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is comfortably the best action blockbuster of this year. While we wouldn’t consider it a must-have game to show off the power of the PS5 – honestly, Astro’s Playroom does a far greater job of showcasing the potential of Sony’s new console and controller – it’s yet another excellent PlayStation exclusive that will have fans of other consoles eyeing Sony’s system with envy.

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2018’s Super Mario Party represented a “back to basics” shift for the series, and Mario Party Superstars has taken that idea several steps further by focusing in on the N64 and early GameCube days. There are no motion-controlled minigames, no item capsules, no character-specific custom dice blocks, no buddies to recruit, and of course, no party car. Just four players, each taking turns rolling dice, moving along a virtual game board, playing minigames to earn coins, and using those coins to buy stars. And maybe it’s because it has been a long while since we’ve had a Mario Party game without some sort of extra gimmick, but this simplicity is incredibly refreshing, and I certainly didn’t miss having something there to mix up the formula.

It helps that the five boards are some of the best-designed in Mario Party’s history. Yoshi’s Tropical Island is an excellent starter board with an easy-to-understand layout and a fun twist involving the star marker swapping between its two islands – it’s sure to lead to heartbreak and elation in equal measure among your friends. Space Land, meanwhile, is a go-to when I want to play without any game-changing board mechanics and just get that pure virtual board game experience; Peach’s Birthday Cake offers a completely different style of play by keeping the star in one position and sprinkling spots where you can plant coin or star-stealing piranha plants; Woody Woods forces you to think several moves ahead thanks to its constantly changing arrows that send you down different paths; and finally, Horror Land is a personal favorite of mine because of its fun day/night mechanic and a King Boo that can let you steal a star from every other player… if you get a skeleton key, 150 coins, and are able to reach him while it’s night. It’s an insane hail Mary win condition to shoot for, but if you are able to manage it, it’s sure to be a story you and your friends won’t soon forget.

Developer NdCube has done a fantastic job of bringing both the looks and sounds of these boards up to modern standards as well. Character models are pretty much identical to how they looked in Super Mario Party three years ago, but the remade boards are immaculately detailed, with Peach’s Birthday Cake being a clear standout thanks to the hyper-realistic and delicious-looking snacks decorating the linear path around the cake. It also can’t be understated that not only have all of the boards and nearly all of the 100 minigames undergone dramatic visual transformations, but they’ve also gained new instrumental arrangements for every song that accompanies them. You can even unlock the songs from the store and listen to both the classic and modern versions of each one in the Data House, which is great because while the N64 songs still hold up, their modernized versions are even better.

One more board from Mario Party 3 would have made the overall package feel more robust.

But while the boards are all impressive, the one bummer is that there are still only five of them. That is a step up over the dismal four that Super Mario Party offered, but still not on par with just about every single other numbered Mario Party game in the past, which have almost always included six. Even just adding one more board from Mario Party 3 would have gone a long way toward making the package feel more robust, and it would have evened out the balance of boards from the three N64 games at the same time

Minigame Madness

At the heart of any good Mario Party game is its minigames, and fortunately almost none of the 100 that were cherry picked from every numbered entry in the series disappoint. You’ve got your all-time classics like Bumper Balls, Shy Guy Says, Hot Rope Jump, Revers-A-Bomb, and Booksquirm, just to name a few favorites. What makes these games so great is their sheer simplicity, plus a small added twist. Bumper Balls, for instance, is literally just a game about bumpingyour rivals off a small circular platform while riding a bouncy ball. But the twist is that in order to knock an opponent off, you have to put yourself in a dangerous position by building up momentum and bumping them close to the edge, which puts you in prime position to get bumped off yourself.

And then you also have some picks that might not immediately come to mind, yet wind up being great selections because of the variety they bring to the table. Honeycomb Havoc, a game in which you just take turns picking one or two fruits at a time and try not to be the one who’s forced to grab a honeycomb, may not be the most exciting game in the world based on what’s happening on-screen, but the metagame that’s happening between you and your friends as you’re all able to see their loss or victory several moves ahead makes it one of my favorites out of the whole pack.

Very few, if any, are complete duds. That said, there are a couple of minigames that are so close to each other that including both of them feels like a waste of space. Leaf Leap and What Goes Up both have you racing upwards by hopping up platforms as fast as you can; Pokey Pummel and Mecha Marathon both have you pressing a button (or buttons) really fast; and Roll Call and Goomba Spotting both have you counting the number of things that appear on screen. All are fun games, and none are completely identical, but when you consider that classic minigames such as Platform Peril, Locked Out, and Running of the Bulb didn’t make the final cut, it’s hard not to feel a bit disappointed at these handful of double-ups.

Very few minigames, if any, are complete duds.

My only other gripe with the minigame selection is that many of the 1v3 minigames are so skewed to favor either the single-player or the group of three that it really doesn’t make it much fun for either. In Piranha’s Pursuit, for instance, it doesn’t even feel like you’re part of the minigame when you’re on the team of three, Archer-ival feels actively terrible when you’re not the archer, and Tidal Toss feels nearly impossible to win as a solo player if even one of the team of three is any good. Oh, and there’s the iconic, N64 controller-destroying Tug o’ War, which actually requires an in-game warning to advise you not to use your palm to rotate the control stick in order to avoid damaging either your Joy-Con or your hand.

That said, there are a couple of genuinely great 1v3 minigames, like Tackle Takedown, which is a football minigame that has the team of three attempting to tackle the single-player who is able to use three bursts of speed to try and juke them out of their boots. But the majority are underwhelming and I always groaned when I saw one was coming up.

Bringin’ It All Back

Mario Party Superstars doesn’t do much that’s completely new for the series, which is completely fine with me considering it brings back so many things that I love and missed from recent Mario Party games. Like for example, stars that cost 20 coins instead of 10, which was a big issue I had with Super Mario Party. It was just far too easy for everyone to afford stars in that game, which really hindered the actual board game strategy and placed too much importance on recruiting buddies to bolster your dice rolls. In addition, Duel Minigames are back and help make the final five turns way more exciting by giving you and your adversaries the opportunity to challenge each other to high-stakes, 1-on-1 minigames with wagered coins up for grabs. And of course, Chance Time is back as well, which introduces all sorts of chaos into the mix..

Bonus stars can also be turned on, off, and even set to the classic style of always going out to the ones who collect the most coins, win the most minigames, and/or land on the most event spaces – but the one truth of Mario Party is that even despite all of those options, luck will always be a factor. Try as you might, you’ll never be able to completely remove its hold over every game, and that’s part of the magic. There will absolutely be times when the person who won the least amount of minigames will end up the overall victor, stealing a win from the person who held the lead for the majority of the match in the final seconds. And yeah, that may feel bad for some people at the moment, but the joy I get from Mario Party Superstars doesn’t come from winning or losing. It comes from the hilarious interactions it pulls out of me and my friends, which it does with a reliability that few other games are able to match.

Mario Party Superstars pulls hilarious interactions from me and my friends like few others.

Playing locally in the same room is obviously ideal, but Mario Party Superstars also has a pretty solid suite of online options. The standard Party Mode has both matchmakings with random players as well as private lobbies that let you invite specific friends, and if someone drops out their character will be controlled by a bot until they are able to reconnect – an amusing selection of emoting stickers can even let your rivals know exactly how you feel about Boo stealing your hard-earned stars. There’s also Mt. Minigames, which offers a variety of modes that let you play minigames a la carte. In the limited amount of testing, I was able to do before launch, lag certainly played a noticeable factor in one of my sessions, especially in the more reflex intensive games like Hot Rope Jump and Bill Blasters, but online play was generally fun and serviceable overall.

Verdict

Mario Party Superstars is more than just a collection of excellent boards and minigames from the series’ past: It’s a complete return to form for the Mario Party series. There’s a really great mix of classic and more modern minigames, the overall quality of which is top-notch, even if some of them are a bit redundant. It really could have used one more board, and the balance of the 1v3 minigames isn’t the greatest, but with solid online play-acting as the icing on the proverbial Peach’s Birthday Cake, it’s easy to say that this is the best Mario Party has been in at least a decade.

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Visually the game is impressive, with a major cosmetic update from its predecessor. However, this change is not as obvious for the PS4 version as it is for the PS5 game, which is a true shame, as the game offers impressive renditions of famous NBA players. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said by the public during matches, as they, as they often tend to be, are just copy-pasted models with slight changes in appearance. On the other hand, music is still as good as always. 2K Beats, as the soundtrack is called, consists of a very impressive musical selection, with an emphasis on independent artists, which is noteworthy as not only does it give a major platform to these emerging musicians, but it also adds freshness to the game’s ambient. A win-win-win scenario.

Now for the elephant in the room, the city mode vs the neighborhood mode. In NBA 2K21 we got to take a first look at the City, a new model that fell flat the first time around. Now, the City has become the focal point of the career mode. The main story of the career mode takes place in its entirety within the limits of the City, and as your character progresses, so will your house and your mingling with the worlds of music and fashion. This transforms NBA 2K22 into an open-world sandbox that can only be described as a proper NBA simulator or NBA: the game if you will. That is if you own the PS5/PC/Xbox Series X version. If you, instead, have the PS4 version, your experience will be vastly different, as the career mode is deeply intertwined with the City mode, which is absent from this version of the game.

Instead, last-gen players get to play a revamped version of the Neighborhood but this time, the neighborhood is not on firm land but aboard a basketball-themed cruise ship and most of the gameplay takes place on the high seas. It may sound weird, but it is pretty refreshing that games like these, so obviously most of the time, take risks and offer a refreshing experience. This basketball luxurious yacht has 5 levels, which can be navigated guided by Heather, an NPC that will offer insights and tutorials on how the ship works. Deck 4 houses the lobby; deck 8 houses MyCourt, your home base which you will be able to customize and decorate with different murals, redesigning the court or even changing the scoreboard. Here you will also find the Pro-am matches and the training facilities for the team.

Deck 14 is interesting as it entertains in the form of restaurants and, well, gambling. Because no cruise ship is free of gambling, and it wouldn’t be an EA game without rewards and incentives for microtransactions. But we will get to that. Aside from daily rewards, restaurants will also offer bonuses and boosters, which is a nice addition to immersion. Now for Deck 15, here you will find courts for 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 games, as well as the Gatorade gym, with everything you need to keep yourself in shape.

Now for the seasonal content, this will come in the shape of in-land tours. The ship will reach different ports, and each offers famous tropical locations throughout the year. Rewards, events, and everything you need to keep yourself coming back to check the new content available. This in turn is also an interesting take on seasonal content but feels a bit out of place for a sports game.

Back to other games modes, it is worth noting MyTeam, a card collection mode in which players will be able to create their dream team, with current players as well as from past eras. NBA’s take on FIFA’s Ultimate Team.  There is also a sub-mode called MyTeam Draft, in which we receive 7 booster packs from which we must select 13 players, an interesting take in which luck and strategy intermingle. This game mode can be a blast for those with a collector mindset or a total nightmare for those who dread FOMO.

Finally, we get MyNBA, the game mode in which we get to see the big picture and manage not only a custom team but the whole league. This game mode is created with every single detail in mind, from the configuration of the conferences to the selection of our team’s uniform, its governor, MyStaff, where we can select every single person in charge of the training and general wellbeing of our athletes, with intricate skills, options, and subsystems that will quench the thirst of the most dedicated and controlling players.

NBA 2K22 is a nice addition to the franchise and, while PlayStation 4 players get the shorter straw in terms of content, it is still a good opportunity to test the improved mechanics of this long-lasting staple of sports games.

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The game comes with a deck of 110 cards with 440 questions in a sturdy box. The questions range from general knowledge to the things around you. The interesting questions of this game will have you on the edge of your seat. The hilarity of the questions is what makes this game, so fun to play. It requires a person to really rack their brain. This trivia game will be loved by a 21-year-old and a 50-year-old alike.

Here is the trick of the creators that will have players hooked to the game. Every time a player gives an incorrect answer, they lose a point. I personally found this part to be the best feature of this game, as it makes the entire game even more interesting.

Pros
Easy to understand
Multiple players
Easy questions
Inexpensive price tag
Games goes on for many hours

Cons
Answers are written on the card’s back
Does not come with a board

Get your hands on this trivia game if you are a trivia buff who is looking to have loads of fun with your friends and family. In addition to being highly entertaining, the game is relatively easy to understand even for beginners, and the best part is that it comes at an affordable price!

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The story sees Superman (son of Zod), Batman (a vampire), and Wonder Woman (now a New God instead of an Amazon) policing the world as the Justice League, but this version of the team is feared by the public and heavily criticized by the media. And not without good reason.

An early scene shows Superman incinerating “terrorists” with his heat vision while Wonder Woman impales them with her sword and Batman drinks their blood until they stop squirming. DC’s movies of late have a bad record when it comes to depicting bloody violence — usually they overdo it in an attempt to seem edgy — but here they give it an important purpose. It’s there to show what the world would be like if Superman didn’t pull any punches — and it isn’t pretty.

From there, the plot pivots as the League is framed for a series of murders (that no one has trouble believing given how we’ve seen them take care of business) and we are taken on a journey to explore the rest of this strange new world. Supporting characters are given new roles that are sure to tickle both casual DC fans (a Stephen Hawking-esque Lex Luthor) and longtime comic readers (a sublime new take on the Metal Men). A great strength of Gods and Monsters is how it provides a purpose for every twist so that everything fits together instead of being a gimmick.

If you were itching for a story where Wonder Woman and Superman are more compelling than Batman, then you’ve found it. Batman’s story is just fine, mind you, but a Superman with the mindset (and goatee) of Zod and a Wonder Woman who has ties to Darkseid and Highfather are just so fascinating that they take the cake. Wonder Woman’s thrilling and tragic “Game of Thrones” origin is the best of the bunch, to the point where we wouldn’t mind if that were retconned to be her origin in the comics, too. The only letdown with her character is the costume. We love the Jack Kirby-inspired design, but her breastacular top is laughably revealing for a modern female superhero costume.

The voice-acting is top-notch, with Michael C. Hall giving Batman an eerie, undead monotone, Benjamin Bratt capturing the boldness of Superman with a hard Zod edge, and Tamara Taylor absolutely crushing it by spectacularly switching from powerful to vulnerable to outraged on a dime.

By now all of us are used to strange villain plots to take over the world, but this film’s climactic scheme is so out of left field and impractical that it ruins the story’s flawless pacing. Making things worse, the resolution comes without the proper consequences for the trio. We’ll just say that regardless of their decisions in the end, the trio are responsible for so many deaths that they are overdue for some jail time.

Verdict

Bruce Timm and Alan Burnett have successfully delivered a fresh and exciting take on the Justice League by turning them into dark and violent mirrors of the heroic icons we know so well. But they do so much more than add (a lot) of blood to the proceedings — they conjure up compelling new origins for Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman that, as they are revealed, show that Gods and Monsters is much more than just a story about “What if the Justice League were evil?” The ending is a bit of a letdown, but that doesn’t take away how excellent the story was up until that point, making this an animated feature where it’s more about the journey than the destination.

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But Jimmy does not triumph over Gillian. Sally, using blood magic and calling upon their family line, presses her bleeding palm against Gillian’s and blasts the abuser right out of her sister. It’s a pure and exhilarating moment — a blast of light exploding from the both of them, the breath reentering Gillian’s body, a wide smile spreading across her face. Practical Magic is a well-crafted movie from top to bottom, but this is the moment that makes it great. It’s also the moment, 20 years after the film’s release, that is the starkest reminder of how timely the film remains.

Practical Magic blew into theaters on Oct. 16, 1998. Adapted from Alice Hoffman’s 1995 novel of the same name, it was directed by Griffin Dunne with a screenplay by Robin Swicord, Akiva Goldsman, and Adam Brooks. It’s a tender, airy movie, exploring themes of love and loss, family, trauma, and survival. Critics at the time did not like it. Many of them didn’t understand the tone of a film that smirked and made jokes and leaned into love even as it took on a story about abuse and the hurt that comes from it. Roger Ebert called it “too scary for children and too childish for adults,” accusing the film of “veering uncertainly from horror to laughs to romance.” Angie Errigo wrote for Empire that “Practical Magic is a chick movie with multiple personality disorder” while also calling it “a run-of-the-mill rom-com with magic bells on.”

Practical Magic works to breathe life back into both its characters and its audience.

Luckily for us all, movies can amount to more than their initial reception. Practical Magic embedded itself in a lot of childhoods, and 20 years later, it remains beloved by the adults those children became. It also holds up — and even gets better — the longer it marinates. It seems, in hindsight, that critics didn’t know what to do with a movie that mixed genres so brazenly, and that — though the story happened to be about witches — reflected both the dark and the light that often sit side by side in real life. Practical Magic’s blend of tones is not its downfall: It is the film’s biggest strength.

Any film can have violence, and the catharsis that comes with defeating the bad guy. Any film can have romance, and lines that make you laugh. Part of what makes Practical Magic such a rare gem is that it portrays pain, grief, and emotional exhaustion at the same time as it works to breathe life back into both its characters and its audience. It’s why the film has built a loyal audience over the years, the kind that finds the film infinitely rewatchable. You can watch these women confront their demons — and maybe even confront your own in the process — without feeling too bogged down in darkness. The movie acknowledges that abuse and trauma are things that happen. But it puts a love story side by side with that hurt, a reminder that life does go on even after it tries to tear you apart.

Practical Magic opens with an old Owens family legend — that of a curse cast by an ancestor. As the story goes, every man who loves an Owens woman dies an untimely death, heralded by the sounds of a death watch beetle. The young sisters react to the legend in very different ways. Sally vows to never fall in love; Gillian can’t wait to, and runs away with a random boy in their town when she’s a teenager. The aunts eventually cast a love spell on Sally to get her to open herself up to romance. It works, and — ethics of love spells aside — she falls for a man (Mark Feuerstein) and marries him. They have two beautiful little girls (Evan Rachel Wood’s Kylie and Alexandra Artrip’s Antonia). Then Sally’s husband dies. Widowed, she moves back in with her aunts, devastated and vowing never to do magic again.

That vow doesn’t last long: Gillian calls her in the middle of the night, having been beaten by her boyfriend, Jimmy. As Sally tries to help Gillian leave him, Jimmy kidnaps the two of them. Sally ends up killing him, then using magic to bring him back, only to kill him again when he won’t stop attacking Gillian. The second half of the film is largely them trying to cover up their actions, with the added complication of an officer — Aidan Quinn’s Gary Hallet — who is investigating Jimmy’s disappearance, and whom Sally finds herself rapidly falling in love with.

Practical Magic still manages to be a movie you want to crawl through the screen and live in.

Practical Magic’s duality isn’t just in its narrative. It’s embedded in every part of the movie. Production designer Robin Standefer went above and beyond in creating Practical Magic’s visual language. The house is absolutely the most famous aspect of the film’s look: It stands big, white, and Victorian on a cliffside, high above the ocean and surrounded by greenery. Inside, it’s the kind of home that you can tell feels especially cold in the winter, with its vast spaces, big, tiled hearth, and old black wood. It just makes the cable-knit sweaters all the more alluring.

The house is the perfect place for Frances (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Wiest) to embody the middle-aged Owens aunts, brewing potions of love and revenge in their turn-of-the-19th-century dresses and wide-brimmed hats. It’s also an ideal setting for audiences to glom onto Bullock and Kidman as Sally and Gillian. They wear the very best of the ’90s, rich-patterned maxi skirts and dresses that make you understand on a deep level how those styles were meant to look. They have the thickest, most lush movie hair I’ve ever seen in my life, and it makes you feel the film’s ethereal nature in your bones.

Though its story is relatively dark, Practical Magic still manages to be a movie you want to crawl through the screen and live in. There’s no mention of what season the film’s events take place in, but the air in the movie feels perpetually autumnal: cozy, crisp, soft-eyed. Practical Magic evokes the feeling that you, like Sally, are standing on the edge of a bluff at dusk, releasing a leaf onto the wind, trusting it to work some magic and draw the person you love back to you. The film’s score, by the legendary Alan Silvestri, is all strings and horns. It makes you feel like you’re following that leaf on its waltz through the air.

The movie also knows when to have fun. One of the scenes that likely confused critics concerned with the tone involves the Owens women waking in the middle of the night to make margaritas and dance around their kitchen to “Coconut” by Harry Nilsson. It is raucous and euphoric, the camera spinning around the women and their overwhelmingly gorgeous kitchen as they let loose and give themselves fully to joy. But the scene is not weakened because it takes place in the middle of a murder investigation and stars a grieving widow and a woman recovering from abuse. Instead, it’s strengthened by that context. These are women calling a timeout on their stress and damage, giving themselves a moment to rejoice in each other’s company and in the simple fact that they are still alive.

The scene ends with the intrusion of Jimmy’s spirit. That could be a tonal mismatch to some, but it’s more than that — it’s a reminder that he is pulling Gillian’s strings even after death, and that the path to healing is not a smooth one.

Practical Magic is not interested in showing us the pain without also showing us that, complicated as the journey may be, there is still life left to be lived on the other side of that hurt.

Practical Magic is about a lot of things. It’s about family, sisterhood, and community. It’s about loss. It’s about beautiful antique houses. But if it’s about one thing most of all, it’s about the very real danger that comes with loving someone. Practical Magic knows the potential consequences intimately: You could lose them, like Sally lost her husband, or lose yourself, like Sally and Gillian’s mother did. Or they could hurt you, in small increments or in the very, very big ways that Jimmy hurt Gillian.

Practical Magic weaves a story about domestic abuse and the labyrinthian road that often comes with extricating yourself from a bad situation. It’s beautiful that the film also gets to be — at the same damn time — a full-hearted, earnest romance. As Sally and Gary keep finding themselves drawn to each other in spite of their star-crossed circumstances, the film gets back the breath Jimmy tried to steal from it. Both sides of the movie are treated as important, as worthy, because they are. Practical Magic is not interested in showing us the pain without also showing us that, complicated as the journey may be, there is still life left to be lived on the other side of that hurt. There is still love to be felt

The image of a woman suffering because of a man’s violence is, unfortunately, a timeless one. In real life these days, the concept of “witch hunts” is often attached to that of men who’ve been accused of wrongdoing. But in pop culture, that narrative remains the domain of women, and witch tales are often intertwined with stories of oppressive men. It’s a way for writers to weave in a perceived (if temporary) solution, a built-in resource through which to fight and heal. Audiences don’t have access to the magical powers that help these women onscreen. But if the art is built with enough love and craft, a movie can act as a balm for a weathered soul watching it.

Twenty years out, I still want to crawl through my screen and live in the world of Practical Magic. It could do with more people of color, but I can forgive that for the feeling that it still gives me and so many other people who continue to return to it. It gives us hope that the pain is exorcisable, and that curses on generations of women can be conquered. That Stevie Nicks’s discography and a little Faith Hill can help the healing along. I want to curl up inside the moment where Sally, who often resists her magical abilities, lights a candle with just her breath. Her daughters watch as she does this and immediately jump into the frame to mimic her, trying desperately to access their own powers.

When Sally and Gillian finally defeat Jimmy, it’s with the help of the women of their community, women who’d felt versions of this kind of pain before. They are crushed for her, but when Sally blasts the evil spirit out of her sister, he explodes into dust, and the women burst into relieved laughter. They sweep him out of there, banishing him for good. Gillian’s body and her spirit are free.

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“The Greatest Showman,” directed with verve and panache by Michael Gracey, is an unabashed piece of pure entertainment, punctuated by 11 memorable songs composed by Oscar- and Tony-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who composed the songs for “La La Land,” as well as the current Broadway hit Dear Evan Hansen. The film is made for the whole family to enjoy, and so it leaves out many of the darker elements (explored in the 1980 Broadway musical Barnum, music by Cy Coleman). This is a difficult tightrope to walk, but credit is due to Gracey, a perfectly cast Hugh Jackman, and the entire cast, who play this story in the spirit in which it was written (by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon). “The Greatest Showman” positions itself as a story celebrating diversity, and the importance of embracing all kinds.

There are those who will see this as a rose-colored-glasses view of what was a pretty exploitive situation. But in a 19th and early 20th century context, the circus and then vaudeville were welcoming places where those who had skills or who were rejected by society could find a home. Barnum put “misfit toys” onstage, saying, in essence, “Aren’t they amazing?” (all while filling his pockets. For more thoughts on P.T. Barnum’s barely acknowledged influence on American culture author Trav S.D.’s 2005 lecture at the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, CT is a good place to start.) Cary Grant, who had a harsh poor childhood, got his start as a tumbler in a vaudeville troupe. Years later he described his revelatory first visit to the Bristol Hippodrome:

“The Saturday matinee was in full swing when I arrived backstage; and there I suddenly found my inarticulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that’s when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor? They happily traveled and toured. They were classless, cheerful, and carefree. They gaily laughed, lived, and loved.”

That’s what “The Greatest Showman” captures.

The film starts with the title song “The Greatest Show,” a show-stopper with repetitive thumping percussion (reminiscent of Queen’s ferocious “We Will Rock You”). Hugh Jackman—in red impresario’s coat and top hat—takes us on a dazzling tour, with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey keeping the movements fluid, and all the actions connected, plunging you into the center ring. The whole number comes from the brazen heart of showbiz: Make it interesting! Give ’em something to look at! Make sure you reach the cheap seats! Barnum croons seductively, “Just surrender cuz you feel the feeling taking over!” I obeyed without reservation.

During the next number, “A Million Dreams” the young and poor Barnum (Ellis Rubin) befriends a well-bred little girl named Charity Hallett (Skylar Dunn), and they dream of creating their own destiny. This is the first time in “The Greatest Showman” where a character stops speaking and starts to sing instead; the segue is gracefully handled, setting up the artificial device early on. If you don’t set up that trope with confidence, it makes it look like you’re embarrassed to be doing a musical. By the end of the song, the little boy has become Hugh Jackman and the little girl has become Michelle Williams, leaping and twirling across the rooftop of their tenement, bed sheets on the line billowing to the beat.

After struggling to establish himself, Barnum launches out on his own, creating a theatre in the heart of New York City. He gathers together people with special talents as well as those with physical abnormalities (a giant, a bearded lady, Siamese twins, a dwarf—who would eventually be known as General Tom Thumb, Barnum’s first “breakout star”). The “audition” sequence is extremely tricky, but the tone is set by Jackman’s inclusive delight at the parade of humanity before him. It’s a moment when ignored people are for the first time really seen.

Lettie Lutz, the “bearded lady,” played by Tony-nominee Keala Settle, with a powerhouse voice, is one of the first to come on board. Settle’s performance—her first major role onscreen—is one of the many keys to why “The Greatest Showman” is so effective. She understands the spirit of the project, and you watch her transformation from cringing shame to fearless Diva. Her anthemic “This Is Me” is one of the emotional centers of the film. Barnum’s business partner is playwright and society boy Phillip Carlyle (Zac Efron), with snobby parents who are not only horrified at his “slumming,” but also at his romance with an African-American trapeze artist (Zendaya) who sports a pompadour of cotton-candy pink hair. Their love story, as presented, is tender, pained, and sweet.

Rebecca Ferguson plays Jenny Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale,” whom Barnum took on a whirlwind concert tour through America It was his entryw ay into “polite” society. Jenny Lind’s power ballad “Never Enough” makes you understand why Barnum, backstage, falls in love with her instantly, throwing his marriage into crisis. Ferguson may be lip-synching to Loren Allred’s breathtaking vocals, but it is her performance that carries.

Ashley Wallen choreographed the numbers and there are many innovative moments, where she uses the outer environment to inform the movements of the characters. In “The Other Side,” Barnum convinces a reticent Carlyle to join the circus, and as he sings, the bartender puts down shot glasses, swipes the bar with a cloth, all as accents to the beat. The real standout, however, is “Rewrite the Stars,” the love song between Efron and Zendaya,taking place in the empty circus tent, when she flies on the trapeze far above him, and he tries to climb up the ropes to meet her. Up, down, they both go, sometimes coming together, dangling above the ground, or sweeping in a wide circle together around the periphery of the tent. It is a moment when the film—every element onscreen—merges and transforms into pure emotion. This is what a musical can do like no other artform.

One of the deep pleasures of “The Greatest Showman” is you don’t have to grade the singing and dancing on a curve, as was necessary with “La La Land” (or, further back, to “Chicago,” where quick cuts hid Richard Gere’s lack of tap dancing skills.) Hugh Jackman, with his powerful high baritone, got his start in musicals, performing in productions in Melbourne, and then in a hugely acclaimed revival of Oklahoma! in the West End. He won a Tony Award for his performance as Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz and has hosted the Tony Awards three times. He is an old-fashioned triple-threat. Film fans may know him mainly as “Wolverine,” and there’s nothing wrong with that, but once upon a time a song-and-dance man like Hugh Jackman’s could sing and dance his way through mainstream Hollywood. He’s unleashed here.

So, too, is Zac Efron, who also got his start because he could sing and dance in the phenom that was “High School Musical.” His career has morphed into something rather unique, with titles like “Hairspray,” “Neighbors,” and a hilarious small part in this year’s “The Disaster Artist.” He has something that cannot be manufactured, although many try, and that is old-school movie star charisma. Add to that a beautiful voice, plus dancing skills, plus a surprisingly ironic sense of humor, and he’s got the full package. It’s thrilling to see him in a big splashy musical. He’s very much at home.

Michelle Williams, with anachronistically long blonde hair, has a strong clear voice, and there’s something exhilarating about how she tosses herself into thin air, knowing Jackman will catch her. In what could be a thankless “wet blanket wife” part, Williams adds a spunky sense of adventure, showing us the kind of woman who would say “No” to a ladylike society-wife life, and fling herself into the unknown with her man.

The timing of this release is interesting. On May 21, 2017, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus folded up its tent for good, after 146 years of uninterrupted operation. Rocked by controversy due to criticisms of exploitation and animal abuse, they retired the elephant acts in 2016, but it was too late. Barnum was dogged by criticisms from the beginning. Many of the “acts” were fakes. Barnum actually didn’t say the quote most associated with him (“There’s a sucker born every minute”) but he might as well have said it and his critics despised him for the assumption about popular entertainment and the regular folk who enjoy it. But in the film, Barnum, with a dazzling smile, explains to a skeptical journalist, “People come to my show for the pleasure of being hoodwinked.”

I was hoodwinked by “The Greatest Showman.” And it was indeed a pleasure. Ringling Brothers may have closed up shop, but Barnum lives on.

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Story: Army of One starts when Brenner (Hollman) and her husband Dillion (Passmore) head away for a camping vacation to get over Dillion recent injury on the job, the pair stumble upon a Cartel run by Mama (Singer) whose redneck crew kill Dillion and leave Brenner for dead.

Brenner a special forces soldier isn’t going to let the rednecks get away with murdering her husband and sets out on a bloody rampage against them to bring down their enterprise.

Thoughts on Army of One:

Characters – Brenner is a special forces soldier who is on a vacation with her husband, when he is murdered she goes out for revenge, which will see her using all her skills to take on the people responsible, bringing them down with her military training. Dillion is Brenner’s husband, who has been through a traumatic experience, leaving him injured, using his time to recover still caught with nightmares of what happened. Mama runs the organisation that she covers with her friendly diner chef, while behind the scenes she is ruthless leader. We have countless number of redneck figures, each one will see Brenner showing off a different skill to defeat.

Performances – Ellen Hollman in the leading role is great to watch, being the action heroine that makes the film stand out, with the physical performance needed during the fights. Matt Passmore along with the support cast all give us strong performance, even if some of the redneck figures might not have the strongest death reactions.

Story – The story here follows a special forces soldier that is left for dead that looks for revenge against the people who killer her husband and she won’t stop until everyone pays. This might well be a story we have seen many times before, which works keeping everything simple in the strategic attacks planned by Brenner. The one weaker side to the story does come from the cartel group, it is late before we learn what they are involved in, and when it comes to the locals, it leaves little to the imagination to who to trust.

Action – The action is the highlight in the film, with fights Brenner gets involved in trying to get her own revenge. Each fight will put her through a different experience and set of fighting skills, with a wonderful one-shot moment too.

Settings – The film is set mostly in an off-the-grid compound where the operations take place, you can see how secure the people think it will be until they come under attack.

Scene of the Movie – The escape one-shot fight.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The randomness of seeing Dillion’s flashbacks.
Final Thoughts – Army of One is an all-out action assault where Ellen Hollman shines as the action star.

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