Category: Written Reviews

I loved Wreck-It Ralph. It was original, funny, and most importantly very sweet and genuine. It held up on repeat viewings back then, and I watched it again after watching Ralph Breaks The Internet to check that my memories weren’t wrong. They weren’t.

But the fact I had to check at all isn’t a great indicator of Ralph Breaks The Internet‘s quality. And before we go any further, I have to get out ahead of myself and say this is not going to be a negative review.

Continue reading “Ralph Breaks The Internet” →

I saw the above poster for Venom at my local theater months ago, and I thought, “oh, God, no.” I nudged my room mate and said, “look, there’s nothing on the poster because this thing is in production Hell, they have nothing to show.” He grunted.

Continue reading “Venom” →

I’ve wanted to see this film for at least twenty years. It’s horrible.

As I recounted in my review of the Ranma ½ Christmas special, Tendo Family Christmas Scramble, when I was little, our Blockbuster’s limited selection of anime was nearly all the anime I had access to, and among those, I could only take home the ones that didn’t warn my parents about explicit content. Ranma pushed the limits with occasional exposed breasts in the TV show and OVA, but I watched when my parents weren’t around.

Continue reading “Ranma ½, The Movie: Big Trouble in Nekonron, China” →

The Hate U Give drew tears out of me three times. It also startled me into flailing my hands in the air and jumping around in my seat twice. I don’t think I’ve ever hyperventilated, but the closest I may have come as an adult was during a scene in The Hate U Give when tears were spilling down my face because I was positive the movie was about to portray something horrifying.

And the reason I was breathing heavily through my mouth, tears gushing forth, feeling hot behind my ears (a sensation I can’t say I’ve ever felt before), was that the movie effectively convinces you that what may happen next is practically guaranteed to. It does this effectively because it is an honest reflection of reality. In reality, the thing I was afraid of seeing on-screen happens. It famously happened here in Ohio a few years ago. It will happen again. Maybe it happened somewhere in America today. I haven’t looked in the news.

Continue reading “The Hate U Give” →

I just watched The Fall, which seems to have released theatrically in 2008.

I went into this mostly blind. I’d seen it recommended on the Cinefix Top 10 list for best uses of color in movies, and based on shots like these…

…I decided to check it out.

Continue reading “The Fall” →

When I saw the first Pacific Rim, only a few months ago, I had heard that it was just a “live action anime”, and took that to mean “stupid and full of robots.” And while that turned out to be the case, what I hadn’t appreciated until around halfway through was that it really was aspiring to be everything that anime is: melodramatic, taking itself too seriously, full of insane characters and silly expositional dialog…

Once I realized all that, I was able to enjoy it more. It was stupid, and its characters didn’t know it, and its writer, director, and actors all seemed to. What fun!

Uprising, based on the trailer, looked like more of that.

Continue reading “Pacific Rim: Uprising Is Not Very Good” →