Tag Archives: Film

Summer 2026 – Week 1 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. The summer anime season appears to be an absolute deluge of quality cartoons, but in characteristic fashion, I have so far not sampled any of them. Look, I spent most of a decade writing for ANN’s preview guide, I feel like I can be forgiven for my temporal obstinance when it comes to new shows. Nonetheless, even I feel tempted to check out such enticing propositions as a new Naoko Yamada show or fresh Kyoto Animation adaptation, so I’ll likely be diving in myself in short order, presumably when enough episodes have been released to make a proper meal of any of them. In the meantime, my house has been knocking off film viewings and supplementary series with uninhibited abandon, so let’s see what treasures await in the Week in Review!

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Spring 2026 – Week 13 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. With the summer anime season already commencing, we’ve got an absurd bounty of promising new productions to look into, from Naoko Yamada’s A Witch in Mongolia to the new Ghost in the Shell, dazzling aesthetic throwback Goodbye Lara, and even a brand new adaptation from Kyoto Animation. Sometimes I have to scramble to fill out my year in review posts, but between this season’s contenders, Witch Hat Atelier, and Journal With Witch (it’s clearly a particularly witchy year), 2026 is looking to be one of the strongest years in anime for quite some time. Meanwhile, my own house just finished up the original Bubblegum Crisis, leaving me wavering between Magic Knight Rayearth and Galaxy Express 999 as our next legacy viewing. I’ll let you all know how that shakes out soon enough, but in the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!

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In the Realm of Spirits: Kwaidan

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An impoverished samurai abandons his loving wife, only to discover a horrible truth upon his return home. A young woodcutter marries a beautiful stranger, and breaks a promise that spells his doom. A blind musician plays for a spectral audience, learning the cost of beauty in the bargain. A martial retainer makes an unlikely enemy, setting him on a path towards an uncertain fate. So proceed the strange tales of Kwaidan, a masterpiece of folk horror cinema directed by Masaki Kobayashi, and adapted from the collections of Japanese folklore transcribed by writer and translator Lafcadio Hearn.

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Spring 2026 – Week 12 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I finished my run-through of Final Fantasy VIII this week, offering welcome closure to a lingering adolescent quest, in spite of the game’s third act being exceedingly underdeveloped. I suppose it’s a credit to the game’s character writing that I felt annoyed by how swiftly everything wraps up; this is definitely one of the best overall parties within the Final Fantasy lineage, and I’ll absolutely miss them. With that concluded, I’ve also been continuing a Blue Lions run of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which has led me to the amusing revelation that there’s no real justification for house leader Dimitri’s behavior, he’s just Like That. Sorta figured his route would offer similar revelations of intent to Black Eagles and Golden Deer, but nope, Dimitri’s just some kind of feral, vengeance-driven creature. I’ll hopefully be wrapping that adventure up shortly, but in the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!

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Spring 2026 – Week 11 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has been defined by an extremely nostalgic journey for me, as I’ve been hacking my way through Final Fantasy VIII for the first time since junior high. Though it’s always been overshadowed by the apparently immortal FFVII, I’ve always been fond of FFVIII’s unique aesthetic style and highly personal story, and have been enjoying seeing my fond memories rewarded with a cast of characters that’s just as endearing as I remembered. The whole junction-refining magic system also scratches the Persona fusion center of my brain just right; I can see why many players would prefer a more traditional approach to spellcasting, but I really appreciate how Squaresoft followed up the titanic FFVII with such a bold swing, particularly considering their fearful, self-cannibalizing recent development choices. I actually got stuck somewhere in Ultimecia’s castle as a teenager, so I’ll also be enjoying actually beating the game for the first time sometime next week – but in the meantime, let’s run down the week in films!

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Spring 2026 – Week 10 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a productive week on my end, as I’ve been keeping up my jogging routine, hacking away at the new book, and sampling a variety of new productions courtesy of you generous readers. My only scribing struggle at the moment seems to be balancing my own fiction with a return to writing DnD quests for my friends; I’d sorta been using DnD as a springboard back to traditional fiction, so I’m both out of practice and somewhat loathe to divide my already-limited writing time. That said, “my friends are clamoring to play through more of my adventures” is an extremely good problem to have, and in the meantime, I’m quite enjoying the ongoing theatrics of my housemate-DMed new campaign. And of course, the movie screenings have maintained their place of pride within my weekly endeavors, so let’s quit with the rambling and get to some films!

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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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