Hello everybody, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. My heart was stolen by a videogame again this week, so expect plenty of rambling about Slay the Spire at the end of this piece. But in the meantime, I also snuck in a couple more films, along with polishing off Katsuhiro Otomo’s phenomenal Memories collection. I’ve got harsh words for Hitchcock and effusive praise for killer robots, so hopefully the temperature of my takes can mitigate the relative lightness of this week’s schedule. Let’s get to it! Engine, go! It’s time for the Week in Review!
Category Archives: Week in Review
Fall 2020 – Week 9 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’m terrified to report that the Week in Review has grown into a wild and furious beast, and at this time I fear it’s too powerful to be contained. I mentioned last week how I’d watched too many dang movies, thus forcing me to shuffle some of my writeups over to this week – well, as it turned out, I kept watching movies this week, and now the situation’s even more out of control. I can’t just keep foisting extra reviews onto the next week’s article ad infinitum, so I’m declaring that the buck stops here, and I just keep writing until I’ve powered my way through every outstanding film. You with me? Let’s do this. It’s time for the Week in Review!
Fall 2020 – Week 8 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. You’ll be pleased to learn that I ran through an absurd collection of features this week, in both live-action and animated varieties, and even finished a full anime series in the bargain. I also checked out the first two Heaven’s Feel movies, along with the usual assortment of horror features ranging from compact new thrillers to an Italian classic. It was actually such a productive week that I’m saving a couple of this week’s films for next week, so if you’ve been following my twitter and are wondering why Magnetic Rose or Touch of Evil don’t show up here, don’t worry. More reviews are assuredly coming, but in the meantime, let’s break down a fresh stack of features in the Week in Review!
Fall 2020 – Week 7 in Review
Oh man, it has been a productive week this time, folks. I ran through live-action classics, horror standouts both cult and critical, and even continued my journey through Hayao Miyazaki’s remaining films. I also put in the ridiculous amount of work necessary to pull together a fresh Evangelion writeup, so you can look forward to that coming down the pipeline soon. I also re-stringed my guitar for the first time in longer than I’m comfortable admitting, so the echo of Mountain Goats songs has once again been haunting my housemates at all hours of the day. Getting a little off track here, so let’s loop back to the subject at hand – from Hollywood’s golden era to Canadian slashers to world cinema classics, it’s time to break down another Week in Review!
Fall 2020 – Week 6 in Review
Hey all, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve got a slew of new film impressions for all of you this week, and for once, they’re not even dominated by horror movies! Well, I did watch one horror movie, and one that’s theoretically horror-adjacent, but all in all this week featured a fairly diverse screening collection, including an animated film that I’ve been both personally and professionally meaning to get to for years. It’s been a lot easier to invest in movies now that I’m not half-expecting our president to blow up the moon at any given moment, and while Trump is still clawing to the office with all the infantile lawlessness we expected, it seems his party will not be following him into full-on coup territory. So hurray for my country just barely avoiding a coup, and let’s break down some intriguing new films!
Fall 2020 – Week 5 in Review
Hello all, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. I ran through a fresh bevy of films this week, with some fresh horror picks in keeping with the season, along with a classic that had been sitting on my list for months. There was some “how many horror classics have you seen” quiz going around on twitter a couple weeks ago, and when it turned out I’d only seen around fifty-five or so of the one hundred entries, I felt consumed by a deep shame, and determined to improve my ratio. So of course, I ended up watching a couple no-name horror flicks with no lasting cultural legacy whatsoever, but hey, one step at a time here. Incidentally, I also watched some actual goddamn anime this week, so you can look forward to at least a few words in that direction, too. All this and… well, yeah, pretty much exactly this, as we run down one more Week in Review!
Fall 2020 – Week 4 in Review
I’ve got episodic articles on both Oregairu and Adachi and Shimamura coming, so it was back to the film grind this week, as I explored a pair of intermittently effective comedies and one genuine horror classic. To be honest, this week was one of those “I watched what my housemates were watching” installments – I picked American Werewolf myself, but I watched both these comedies because someone put them on in the background while I was grinding Hades again. Did I mention I like Hades? I’ve beaten the game’s ostensible campaign over fifty times now (current best time: 18:23), but I’ve still got quests to complete, challenges to overcome, powers to unlock, and relationships I’m progressing purely because the game’s characters and dialogue are so dang good. So yeah, the specter of the Hades grind is still haunting my weekly productivity, but I did my best to fit in some media criticism in the margins. Without further ado, here’s the Week in Review!
Fall 2020 – Week 3 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. You’ll be pleased to hear I continued checking out some genuine new anime this week, tackling Adachi and Shimamura, Love Live! Nijigasaki, and whatever else I’ll have managed to sneak in before this article’s post date (editor’s note: it was nothing, he watched nothing else). At the same time, I was happy to chew through some more noteworthy live action films, and once again enjoy that weird sensation of watching something that you know must have been formative for the stuff that was formative for you. Our life experiences and personalities are intrinsically tethered to the media that has spoken to us over the years, so it’s always an odd sensation to meet the aunts and uncles of our childhood idols – but also thrilling, as we begin to understand the long lines of influence stretching across media, drawing us closer to meaningfully contributing to that chain. So yeah, the great astral tether of media inheritance, all today in the Week in Review!
Fall 2020 – Week 2 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. We’re a couple weeks into the fall anime season now, and as it turns out, I actually have some anime to talk about. Though I spent much of the last two weeks luxuriating in the fact that I was no longer professionally obligated to watch all of the season’s new productions, it turns out I kinda do like anime, and so I’ve been slowly working through the properties that seem worth considering on my own time. I’ve also been playing a shit ton more Hades, but since my thoughts on Hades are still pretty much just “oh my god this game is so good Chiron bow is busted why am I writing I should be plotting my next run,” I’ll be sticking with the anime this time, and offering some brief assessments of the season’s alleged stars!
Fall 2020 – Week 1 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s the end of an era this week, as for the first time in seven goddamn years, I haven’t actually watched all of this season’s new anime premieres. In fact, I’ve only watched one – Jujutsu Kaisen. It was pretty good! I might watch another episode.
Contributing to Anime News Network’s preview guide was certainly a rewarding experience, and it’s been interesting to see trends in the medium evolve over the last half-decade or so. But ultimately, saying “this wasn’t particularly good” has always been the least interesting part of criticism to me, and so I’m happy to be at a point where I can invest more in the shows I’m passionate about, and less in the shows that are an affront to any sense of taste or decency. So without further ado, let’s dive into a regular old Week in Review, and take a few swings at some interesting art!