Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Look, I know last time that I mentioned I’d be watching some seasonal anime, and that is still absolutely going to happen, but today I nonetheless must admit I only bear gifts of movie reviews. But hey, some of those movies are anime! That still counts, right? We’ve got some Takahata, we’ve got some apocryphal Naruto adventures, and we’ve got the usual scattering of live-action productions, this time including a double feature of “what if fate was kind of an asshole” films. I’ll demand my housemates screen the requisite quantities of chainsaw men and mercurian witches shortly, but in the meantime, please enjoy this peace offering of random film thoughts. Let’s get to it!

First up this week was that aforementioned double feature, starring horror movies about fate catching up on its chosen victims. First up was Sole Survivor, which stars Anita Skinner as Denise, a TV producer. After improbably surviving an otherwise lethal plane crash without a scratch, Denise attempts to return to her daily life, only to find herself haunted by both an array of silent strangers and some kind of ominous force, which seems intent on collecting the soul that once escaped its grasp.

Though the obvious first point of connection is Final Destination, it feels like It Follows owes Sole Survivor a strong debt as well. Most of the film’s threats come in the form of strange silent figures, who march slowly after Denise, attempt to step in front of her car, or simply loom in the distance, piercing normality with their odd dress and inhuman affectation. It’s a supremely effective trick, and the film’s compelling spooks are further bolstered by an excellent script and strong lead performances. Sole Survivor initially hews close to the atmospheric model of a film like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death or Dead & Buried, crafting an overpowering sense of slowly being cornered by some unimaginable prey, before generously exploding in a final act that’s heavy on murder and mayhem. A generally excellent slice of horror that should be of particular interest to any fans of its conceptual inheritors.

Speaking of which, our followup viewing was Sole Survivor’s clearest narrative successor, Final Destination. I’d always sort of assumed this franchise’s deal was grotesque displays of senseless violence, and had resultantly steered clear of it, but my housemate’s assurance to the contrary led to an immediate screening. As always, I was happy to have my assumptions proven wrong: Final Destination is both an engaging horror feature, and a clear time capsule for a specific moment in horror history.

The film centers on a group of high schoolers who, due to one student’s strange and violent premonition, end up narrowly avoiding taking part in a fatal plane ride. Of course, fate abhors a loose end, so a variety of improbable deaths start to befall our hapless survivors, with the entire natural world seemingly conspiring to get them killed.

Released just four years after the original Scream, and in the same year as Scream 3, Final Destination feels as post-Scream of a film as you could possibly imagine. Rather than spending the majority of its runtime watching characters slowly realize they’re in a horror movie, Final Destination’s cast have figured out the game by around the second kill, and spend the rest of the film attempting to one-up fate through either careful preparation or manipulation of fate’s kill list. As a result, there’s none of that “why the fuck would someone get themselves killed like that” frustration that frequently accompanies lesser slashers; fate has to work hard to kill these kids, and seeing them attempt to outrun horror movie convention is a genuine delight.

Also like Scream, Final Destination spends the majority of its runtime with tongue firmly in cheek. Rather than feeling cruel or grotesque, the kills these writers come up with run closer to outright hilarity, as fate constructs increasingly convoluted Rube Goldberg death machines to finish off our luckless protagonists. You can practically feel the camera crew winking at the audience as our view lurches ominously over a shaving razor, then a pointy nose clipper, then a foolishly water-adjacent radio set, only for the victim in question to be dispatched in a far more improbable way than any of them. Propulsive, breezy, and gleefully in on the joke, Final Destination should serve as a light afternoon watch for anyone who loves yelling at slasher victims.

We then checked out Free Guy, a recent Ryan Reynolds feature about a non-player character in a persistent online game who suddenly achieves human consciousness. It’s a rock-solid concept, and the film has its share of reasonable jokes, but the ultimate result sadly felt more like Fortnite: The Movie than a full story in its own right.

Sequences of Reynolds’ character attempting to detangle his own personality from the biases of his creators: very good. Scenes of his character pulling out an actual lightsaber to do battle, complete with actual streamers going “that’s a motherfucking lightsaber!” to the camera: philosophically excruciating. Free Guy isn’t a terrible film on its face, but its payoffs often seem designed more for American database animals than enjoyers of stories, offering only the facile rush of “hey, I recognize that thing!” I had some laughs, but god help me if this is genuinely the direction culture is trending. 

I then screened one of my final unwatched Ghibli productions, Isao Takahata’s warm and wondrous My Neighbors the Yamadas. The film is unlike anything else in the Ghibli catalog in both form and content; it is presented as a series of lightly sketched comic drawings, and dispenses with any formal narrative in favor of a series of vignettes in the lives of its titular characters. Over a wide array of gags, adventures, and quiet personal moments, we come to know and love this goofy yet unerringly supportive family.

Takahata never really follows the same model twice, but Yamadas’ closest narrative companion would be Only Yesterday, whereas stylistically it predates his further advancements in Princess Kaguya. But like almost all of Takahata’s films, Yamadas is warm, whimsical, and quietly nostalgic, finding beauty not in elaborate expressions of fantasy drama, but in simple and universal moments like the Yamada father coming home a little too drunk, and slowly sinking into a comfortable silence while he and his wife watch television.

The film offers sequence after sequence of equally specific yet relatable encounters, presenting its family’s faults and triumphs without any sort of moral judgment. It is a stunning work of subtle humanism, spotlighting the tiny moments that inform and embody our communal bonds, and gesturing towards the universality and significance of these moments through its inclusion of relevant historic haikus. A figure receding in the mist might have been clad in different garb back in the 1600s, but that feeling of decreasing relevance in a changing era is universal; through connections like that, Takahata finds not just humanity, but genuine majesty in the procession of the Yamadas’ days. Through his careful and beautifully rendered depictions of these lives, Takahata subtly furthers theses that carry through all of his work: that there is nothing more magical than the fond moments we share, that everything beautiful is also ephemeral, and that the specific conditions of our lives shape us as much as we shape them.

Takahata’s films are consistently incredible, and yet I think I might appreciate Takahata’s philosophy even more than his wonderful movies. His works embody a vision of animation as a vector for greater human intimacy and mutual understanding; rather than busying himself with imagining what doesn’t currently exist, he hones in on what defines a human life with more acuity than live action can muster, using flourishes of fantasy mostly to illuminate life as we experience it, which is never quite one-to-one with unembellished reality. He is a student of Ozu as much as Otsuka, a true believer in the humanist cinema that we often downplay as “slice of life,” and a visionary with few parallels in his medium or otherwise. I feel so fortunate that the quirks of anime production allowed him such remarkable creative freedom; anime is richer for every film he gave us.

We then continued our journey through the extended Naruto catalog, screening the franchise’s second film Legend of the Stone of Gelel. Like the first film, this proved to be a solidly entertaining watch, as Naruto, Sakura, and Shikamaru fought off some new threats in a vaguely defined foreign kingdom. Though the film lacked a conceit as engaging as its predecessor’s “film within a film” concept, its efficient script nonetheless offered much of the same payoffs as the last: ninja battles unimpeded by Kishimoto’s uneven writing and tendency to play favorites, meaning Shikamaru and Sakura got to kick ass almost as much as our boy himself.

In fact, it was Sakura who earned the film’s clear visual highlight, a jaw-dropping sequence animated by Shinji Hashimoto, who has handled highlights of films ranging from Tokyo Godfathers to Princess Kaguya. One of the great strengths of these long-running shonens is that they tend to be less insistent on maintaining one consistent visual aesthetic across their run, meaning top shelf animators can essentially show up for a sequence, briefly remake the show in their own style, and then carry on their way. It’s thus a little sad to realize this model is being abandoned in favor of the seasonal and house style-enforcing production schedules of shows like My Hero and Demon Slayer; consistency is great and all, but I feel getting to appreciate the strengths and idiosyncrasies of individual animators is truly one of the things that makes anime special.