The Suggestion Box #103: Rambo, and Taylor, and Cyberpunks, Oh My!

Posted on by Lauren

Wondering what to do with your upcoming free time? Good thing we have some suggestions for what you should be watching, playing, reading, listening to, etc.

Lauren’s Concert Film Pick: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour – I realize no one needs me to recommend The Eras Tour — either you’ve watched it already or you hate Taylor Swift for ruining football — but as opposed to pushing “The Suggestion Box” for the 84th week in a row because once again all other media has failed me, I looked to my generation’s greatest showwomen for the easy touchdown. And damn what an end zone celebration it is — I don’t know why I’m still talking in football terms, I haven’t cared about the sport since Kroenke ripped the Rams from St. Louis. Long story short, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to anything larger than a small venue concert (we’re talking not since Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys were at their peak), and no amount of clips taken by the shaky hands of screaming and crying fans could really prepare me for what I was in store for. It’s like the opening/closing ceremonies of the Olympics, except bigger and more world unifying. I could feel the thrum of the crowd even as I was watching snuggled up with my iPad on the couch, and it doesn’t really let up for the next 3+ hours of what I would call a greatest hits tour if it wasn’t for the fact that that would actually be closer to double (or even triple) the runtime. Am I a little bummed that she didn’t touch a lot of my favorite songs? Yes. But considering she’s already capable of creating earthquake like tremors with her infectious joy and energy hyping the crowd — props to her backup singers, band, and dancers as well — we don’t need to risk rising flood levels with her mopiest songs on top of that. The audiences would truly never recover. 

Ben’s Movie Pick: First Blood – Before John Rambo became the invincible killing machine he’s mostly known to be now, he was only a man; just a lost soul struggling to find his place in a world that didn’t know what to do with him because of how traumatized the horrors of war left him. First Blood certainly has action like the sequels, but what sets it so far above the rest of the series is how thoughtfully it approaches its veteran protagonist. John is a deeply damaged human being, and when he finds himself struggling with the combination of his emotional scars and unwarranted physical aggression from those in authority, he tragically and reflexively reverts to using the training that kept him alive in combat. The action is intense in a way that is just not present in any of the sequels. Instead of hoping for a gun-toting badass to kill all the bad guys in exciting ways, all First Blood makes you wish for is John’s survival. It’s genuinely harrowing stuff, and it all ends on a painfully powerful scene anchored by what is probably the greatest performance of Sylvester Stallone’s career.

Ben’s Video Game Pick: The Ascent – While I am recommending The Ascent, I’d be remiss if I did not bring attention to how buggy this game is first, even though its strengths outweigh this notable flaw. During my playthrough, The Ascent would crash if I got too far from my co-op partner, or if we were moving through the bigger maps too quickly, and sometimes just randomly every hour and a half to two hours on top of that. Fortunately, even with all that occurring, neither I nor my playthrough buddy ever lost any data to the crashes, allowing us to both thoroughly enjoy the overall experience, enough that we ended up purchasing (and also digging) the game’s one piece of story DLC. The Ascent is something I didn’t know how much I wanted until I had it: a cyberpunk version of Diablo that’s less – way, way less – grindy. The world-building is great, the loot/level/upgrade systems are intuitive (and offer tons of different options to suit your preferred playstyle), and the action is equal parts gnarly, intense, and fun. If indie developer Neon Giant ever patches the remaining glitches, The Ascent would become an easy 10/10 in my book. Even as it is now, I’m still giving it a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up.

So what do you think about these picks? What content did we miss over the past two weeks while we were spending time with these? Be sure to leave a comment below letting us know about everything (both current and simply new to you) you’ve been consuming lately!

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