Tag Archives: Film

Spring 2026 – Week 9 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’ve finally hit June, which in pretty classic Me fashion is naturally a call for a wave of “oh god, summer’s started, that means summer is on its way to being over” anxiety. My extremely bad brain aside, it’s actually been a fun week on the home front – we snuck in two D&D sessions taking us halfway through an ongoing tournament, got started on the admittedly inferior but still-pretty-fun Dirty Pair Flash, and began a replay of Final Fantasy VIII, which I hadn’t touched since high school. Alright, technically it’s just my housemate who’s made actual progress – I just spent three hours playing Triple Triad in the opening area, precisely like god intended. I’ll perhaps venture further than Balamb Garden in the week ahead, but for now, let’s run down the week in films!

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Spring 2026 – Week 8 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has seen us continuing our march through the Dirty Pair canon, as we finished the original series, screened their Project Eden film, and then continued onward into the tragically brief second season. It’s going to be tough to say goodbye to Kei and Yuri, but I’m also excited to embark on a new project, and am currently juggling a handful of outstanding anime possibilities. In other news, Critical Role’s fourth season has reached the convergence point of its three wayward tables, and proven anew that Brennan Lee Mulligan is some kind of genetically modified DnD machine. His ability to jump between tables, tones, and even genres is spectacular; it’s frankly hard at times to even draw lessons from his performance, since the prevailing takeaway seems to be “just be a genius, the rest will come naturally.” I’m nonetheless greatly enjoying the ride, and am awaiting the rest of this preposterously ambitious project with great anticipation. In the meantime, let’s run down some films!

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Wicked: For Good

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re journeying back into the fantastical land of Oz, as we explore the followup to 2024’s Wicked film adaptation. Yep, it’s time for Wicked: For Good, as Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba suffers the slander of our Wizard charlatan, and Ariana Grande’s Glinda assumes the mantle of magical inheritance. Having formed an unlikely bond during their days at Shiz Academy, the two have been torn apart by the Wizard’s machinations, and Elphaba now finds herself the scapegoat for all of Oz’s manifold problems.

The first film offered an intriguing stew of thematic variables, touching on notes of classism, discrimination, and the ways skillful propagandists can reshape society in their own preferred image. I’m generally a fan of narratives that frame magic as a fading whisper in the age of man, and the idea that the Wizard is intentionally provoking such an outcome through his attacks on education and rewriting of history is an exceedingly compelling twist on that convention. Additionally, Ariana Grande has proven herself absolutely fuckin’ hilarious, and though I expect this film will provide fewer opportunities for her to make a delightful fool of herself, I’m eager to see where Elphaba and Glinda go from here. Let us return to unrest in the land of Oz!

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Spring 2026 – Week 7 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a busy few weeks in our neck of the woods, as we’ve returned to regular weekly DnD sessions while maintaining our usual program of film and TV spectacles. Our new campaign’s party is now battling through a tournament in the pirate city of Westgate, while our previous party has just set off for another sojourn in the nine hells. We’re reaching the point of narrative ambition where we might consider some actual crossover drama, but for now, it’s just nice to be once again hanging out, rolling dice, and incinerating waves of enemies with the force of my mild-mannered goblin’s Spirit Guardians (man that spell is ridiculous). I’ll surely provide more updates on our adventures as they proceed, but for now, let’s run down the week in film!

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Spring 2026 – Week 6 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I completed my watch-through of the original Dirty Pair TV series, which has left me wallowing in those tragic post-series doldrums of just wanting to hang out with my animated buds again. Kei and Yuri are a delightful pair of rampaging rascals, and nearly every episode of the series offered a satisfying riff on spy, mystery, or space drama adventures. The series was simply top-notch popcorn entertainment, and though I’ve heard their further escapades offer somewhat diminishing returns, I’m at this point invested enough to run through the various other Dirty Pair adaptations and remakes. It’s frankly been a terrific year so far in terms of catching up on outstanding older productions; I’ve marched through Future Boy Conan, Moribito, Aura Battle Dunbine, and now Dirty Pair alongside my Turn A and Katanagatari rewatches, and have had a great time with all of them. I’ll have to figure out what older favorite is up next, but in the meantime, let’s burn down the week in film!

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Spring 2026 – Week 5 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I’ve been doing my service as a tertiary member of the Straw Hat Fleet, by inducting another friend into the cult of One Piece via the astonishingly well-executed live action series. It seems almost unfair to have such an easy on-ramp for engaging with One Piece; after grappling with low points like Captain Kuro’s Long Walk or Don Krieg in general, I can’t help but feel a tinge of battle-hardened pride relative to these newcomers’ easy stroll from Windmill Village right to Alabasta. Of course, that is always an instinct to be fought; more people getting to enjoy stories I love is an unquestionably good thing, and if that means I have to explain what’s up with Garth and Coby when they jump mediums, it is a duty I will embrace gladly. In the meantime, let’s burn down the week in films!

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Spring 2026 – Week 4 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I concluded my rewatch of Turn A Gundam, which proved just as inventive, character-rich, and generally charming as on my first watch. The show has a dynamite cast, a delightfully novel premise, and some of the best art design of any Gundam, all with a kinder, more thoughtful Tomino at the helm – it’s a well-deserved classic, and a show I’d recommend to basically anyone. With that behind us, my house has since checked out Bleach’s Thousand Year Blood War, which has proven to so far be an excellent adaptation of a shapeless and derivative story. Kubo just completely ran out of ideas after Soul Society, but I do appreciate how this production is leaning heavily into the impactful individual compositions that are his greatest strength; the man was aura farming when the term’s creators were in diapers, and he has not slowed down in the years since. That covers my current anime journeys, so let’s dive into the Week in Review!

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Spring 2026 – Week 3 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week it’s somehow returned to the forties again, so I’m huddled up under a blanket with Eevee while we wait for my housemate to return from his sensibly timed vacation. With the apartment to myself, I’ve been continuing my journey through the enduring anime of the ‘80s, by munching through the extremely watchable Dirty Pair. The show has so far offered precisely the charms I was hoping for: a fun duo bouncing between energetic and lovingly illustrated space adventures, pulling off their secret agent shenanigans with such effortless confidence that they mostly just bicker about crushes and vacation time. A strong genre riff is a laudable thing, and Dirty Pair is an altogether accomplished slice of old-fashioned scifi adventure. That aside, I’ve of course continued my endless film screenings, so let’s talk movies!

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Spring 2026 – Week 2 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a busy week for me, as I’ve been racing to maintain my lead on reader projects while also munching through films and some recent anime productions. Inspired by kViN’s fantastic breakdown of Souta Ueno’s adaptation of last season’s Shiboyugi, I ended up munching through the whole series in a couple of days, and was similarly impressed by Ueno’s economic yet distinctive, holistic approach to the material. In his hands, the series’ death games are rendered ethereal and elegiac, a perpetual synthesis of the freedom of a great leap and the solidity of the approaching ground. The actual source material seemed pretty mediocre, harboring pretensions of human insight that its character writing couldn’t really support, but this would be far from the first time an anime director spun straw into gold. Regardless, Ueno’s elevation of the material has me eager to check out whatever he directs next, and it’s always a thrill to be introduced to a distinctive, vital creative voice. That aside, we’ve got a fleet of movies to get through, so let’s bound right into the Week in Review!

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Spring 2026 – Week 1 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. This week we’ve been continuing our march through Turn A Gundam, which has proven just as delightful and idiosyncratic as on first viewing. It’s been an interesting experience seeing this as a culmination of Tomino’s Gundams, rather than an introduction to them – the man seems to have grown gentler in his later years, and more sympathetic to the idealism embodied by characters like Loran and Dianna. That aside, we’ve also screened most of Jujutsu Kaisen’s third season, which has proven to certainly be more Jujutsu Kaisen, and followed up the frustratingly unbalanced Monster Train with… Skyrim. Yep, it’s Back To The Ol’ Me again, but it’s just hard to play games that are not Skyrim when I could potentially be playing Skyrim. I’m sorry! I’m basic, I know it, but my comfort games are probably not shifting at this point in my life. We’ve got new movies, though! Yeah, let’s get to that.

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