Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve got plenty more thoughts on a variety of movies for you all today, opening with even more exploration of Hayao Miyazaki’s early films. I also continued to deeply wound myself through repeated exposure to the filmography of Hirokazu Kore-eda, and even watched through Greg Daniels’ much-maligned new Netflix production. There’s a lot of media to cover and I’m sure you all have busy Wednesdays to get back to, so let’s not waste any more time, as we run down more of film and television’s bounteous treasures in another Week in Review!
Category Archives: Week in Review
Spring 2020 – Week 9 in Review
Alright folks, pile in, pile in. The film screenings were plentiful and excellent this week, as I watched classic crime dramas by Scorsese and Coppola, two Miyazaki masterpieces I’d never experienced, and finally got to Ari Aster’s terrific Midsommar. I’m frankly feeling pretty crime drama’d out at the moment; when looking for classic films that also won’t bore my housemates, I’ve apparently returned to “well, this one has guns in it” a few too many times, and will have to find other ways to keep my overstimulated housemates happy. But for now, please enjoy the fruits of my labor, as I run down a fresh and rewarding set of films in the Week in Review!
Spring 2020 – Week 8 in Review
Alright folks, pile in, pile in. This week saw my household running through a gauntlet of classic films, ranging from neo-noir highlights to Kubrickian nightmares, with a bonus pair of recent favorites tossed in for seasoning. As quarantine stretches on and time continues to lose any sense of meaning, I’ve begun measuring my life more in films than in weeks, meaning a day without a film basically ceases to exist. This is probably not good for my sense of self or long-term health, but I think we’re all doing the best we can at the moment, and if my coping mechanisms can be turned into Content, I’m happy to indulge them. Let’s see how I survived the last few days, as we storm through another Week in Review!
Spring 2020 – Week 7 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week my house powered through a couple of esteemed series, including Avatar: The Last Airbender and a good chunk of Donald Glover’s Atlanta. I was frankly surprised by just how much I loved Avatar, and will be sure to return to the series at some point – it feels like one of those rare “lightning in a bottle” productions, doubly so in light of its disappointing followup. We’ve got plenty of rambling thoughts to get through, so let’s not waste any more time as we dive into another Week in Review!
Spring 2020 – Week 6 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time! I’ve got quite the grab bag of a Week in Review this week, as my house checked out some Bollywood action-dramas, examined Justin Roiland’s new comedy, and at last watched the anxiety-inducing Uncut Gems. At this point, perpetual lockdown has turned this entire spring into one unending and largely featureless day, and checking out new media has become one of the only things separating what I did this week from what I did seven weeks ago. So please enjoy my attempt to maintain some sense of time’s passage as we all endure this stressful era the best we can. Take care of yourselves out there, and please enjoy the new Week in Review!
Spring 2020 – Week 5 in Review
You folks ready to talk about some movies? I didn’t get to a huge number of new features this week, but the films I did watch left me with plenty to talk about, so hopefully we can spin a satisfying Week in Review out of my ramblings. Eraserhead in particular turned out to be one of the most unique films I’ve seen in… well, ever, I suppose, but I guess that’s what happens when you remove all of David Lynch’s power limiters. I’m frankly kinda lucky I got to see it; one of my housemates recommended it without really knowing how resolutely anti-narrative it was going to be, and while I actually did have an inkling of its structure, I am certainly not above abusing my housemates’ ignorance to trick them into watching unabashedly surrealist madness. Anyway, enough preamble, let’s get to the movies!
Spring 2020 – Week 4 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to the Week in Review. Today I’ve got a sprawling pile of movie reviews for you all, ranging from classics of horror and suspense to some poignant and beautiful modern dramas. The movies were fantastic this week, quite frankly, and I feel like as I dive further into the film canon, I’m only discovering new horizons of genres and directors I’m eager to explore. I’ve got plenty of movies to cover and far too many rambling thoughts about each of them, so let’s not waste any more time, and dive into this mountainous Week in Review!
Spring 2020 – Week 3 in Review
With the spring season at last in full swing, I can finally return to mostly ignoring spring’s airing anime, and instead gorging myself on a variety of other films and television shows. In this season’s case, there’s not really much choice, anyway; the coronavirus is delaying productions left and right, and with everyone stuck inside anyway, what better time to power through shows you missed the first time? Personally, I’ve been finally getting around to Avatar: The Last Airbender, and discovering I missed a goddamn treasure back when it first aired. All that and more as we return to the Week in Review!
Spring 2020 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective
Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you – this is looking to be a pretty light season in the land of anime. Even in the lead-up to this season, it was already clear that most of the larger hits would be long-running sequels, and series like Re:Zero and Food Wars lost my interest years ago. Then, of course, the coronavirus started sweeping the globe, leading to a number of entirely justified and frankly welcome delays for some of the season’s key properties. Between those extenuating factors and the season’s inherently limited number of high-profile productions, this is turning out to be a light season on the whole, and a fine time to dig into your backlog.
That said, most anime being crap hasn’t stopped me before, and it certainly didn’t stop me this time. I have successfully waded through this season’s mountain of garbage with my mouth wide open, and having sampled all of its sweetly molding flavors, I am now prepared to spit out the choicest morsels for your collective enjoyment. My list here will run from the season’s top contenders down to its worst offenders, with handy tiers and links to longer reviews over at ANN’s preview guide. Let’s review some cartoons!
Oh shit, right, I always do some gimmicky naming scheme for the quality tiers. Uh, let’s do… tiers based on… colors? I guess? Fuck it.
Spring 2020 First Impressions – Part One
The spring season has already begun unloading its cargo, and I’ve got a fresh pile of hot takes on everything that’s been screened so far! The season is actually looking pretty reasonable at the moment – there’s been nothing that’s truly surprised me, but Listeners’ premiere turned out to be just as good as I was hoping, and Kakushigoto’s aesthetic strengths really surprised me. You can check out the full list of reviews over at ANN, or scroll below for my scores and links to individual reviews. Let’s anime!