Spring 2022 – Week 3 in Review

Hello everyone, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Are you all enjoying the spring weather? It’s finally gotten warm enough to allow for regular weekly jogs, which is certainly helping to improve my day-to-day mood. It’s pretty fucked up that proper diet and exercise actually do work, and not only are you healthier, but you also genuinely feel better pretty much the moment you commit to them. Along with enjoying this miracle of human chemistry, I’ve also been munching through a variety of interesting films, and even considering checking out a weekly anime or something. I know, I shouldn’t get too crazy here, but what I’m hearing about Spy x Family seems like it might actually be my sort of thing. But before I do anything so hasty as that, we’ve got a pile of feature films to sort through. Let’s break down the latest bounty of the Week in Review!

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Spring 2022 – Week 2 in Review

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time! I’ll admit right from the start, today’s film selections are some kind of Frankensteinian abomination, the cobbled remnants of several weeks’ viewings. My inconsistent approach to building a review buffer has resulted in some odd temporal anomalies – for example, this week features the Texas Chainsaw revival film that inspired our “further research” from a few weeks ago. Fortunately, this also grants me the luxury of actual curation, allowing me to construct a sort of meta-reflection on the evolution of horror in film. Also, Texas Chainsaw aside, the rest of this week’s films are really good, so I’m eager to share them with you. Let’s get to it!

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Spring 2022 – Week 1 in Review

Hey everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a very Dungeons & Dragons-themed week at my house, as I continued to munch through episodes of Vox Machina, while my own campaign group convened for our first spring session. The confluence of these events had me in a focused game-design mode during our live session, as I sifted through the various motivations of our individual party members. D&D can be many things to many people, and it certainly is a variety of things for our group: one of our party members most delights in crunching their character’s numbers, while another mostly wants to express their character’s outrageous personality, while a third is largely concerned with our adventure’s fantasy worldbuilding. It’s not just “difficult” to balance these desires – it is, to some extent, impossible to satiate all of them without stepping on some toes. And that precise impossibility of “perfect form” is what makes the whole affair so interesting to me, as more a continuing thought exercise than a solvable equation.

Oh, and we also watched some movies this week! I’ve actually got quite the diverse selection for you all, so let’s not waste another moment, and charge on into the Week in Review!

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Winter 2022 – Week 13 in Review

Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I have at this point established perhaps a month worth of buffer in terms of film reflection pieces, and hot damn is today’s crop a good one. I don’t know what exactly inspired this week in past-Nick film screenings, but he was clearly on a roll, charging through psychosexual drama and epic Hollywood spectacle alike. In more recent news, I’ve been gobbling through my commissioned episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina, utterly seduced by the fun of tramping along with a well-balanced D&D crew. It’s been a satisfying week in film and television alike, and I look forward to sharing my future fiction-versus-game design ramblings with you all. But for now, let’s power through some films!

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Winter 2022 – Week 12 in Review

Hey folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. My housemates and I are pushing towards the endgame of Elden Ring at this point, which has opened up our schedule for a wide variety of film screenings. As a result, this week’s post will be something of a lightning round, as we roar through a wide variety of features at the greatest possible speed. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel at this point; I’ve beaten all but one of the game’s secret bosses, cleared out all the side quests I can, and conquered every dungeon except the road to the ending. The big question for next week will be how I readjust back to post-Elden Ring life, but for now, let’s power through some goddamn movies!

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Winter 2022 – Week 11 in Review

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. How are you all doing this week? Personally, I just got back from my first jog of the season, so I’m feeling genuinely physically healthy for the first time in about four or five months. My ability to will myself into exercising is tenuous at the best of times, and in the cold of winter, there’s basically no way you’ll convince me to go outside for anything. As a result, my body tends to mirror that of a hibernating bear, as I grow rotund and lethargic over the winter months. This admittedly imperfect cycle will likely continue until I finally stop saying I’m leaving New England and actually do it, but in the meantime, all those days indoors have left me with plenty of time for film screenings. Let’s run down a fresh grab bag of cinema selections!

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Winter 2022 – Week 10 in Review

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I come to you today directly from the Elden Ring mines, having been laboring on FromSoftware’s latest since literally the moment it was released. Elden Ring is the biggest Soulsborne yet, and with two other housemates also vying for playtime, it will surely be a while still before any of us return to civil society. Sixty hours in, the game still feels too good for this world; too perfect an articulation of the best virtues of open world and combat gameplay, too close to the “theoretical perfect game” I’d theorize by combining the greatest aspects of four masterpieces.

As a result of Elden Ring’s all-consuming perfection, our selection of films this week has largely been guided by the principle “can you follow this film over your shoulder during your turn on Elden Ring.” Light selections are the order of the day, but we still managed to scrape together an interesting collection of viewings. Let’s storm down the Week in Review!

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Winter 2022 – Week 8 in Review

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I think we’re over the hump now – February has nearly ended, the skies are clearing, and we’re even getting some occasional warm days to remind us that nature isn’t always a villain. Meanwhile, the COVID-delayed holiday release bounty is now in full swing, with Dying Light and Horizon already released, and Elden Ring looming in the near distance. So lush is this bounty that my house has actually decided to hold off Horizon, as there will likely be no time for anything but Elden Ring for the next month or so. Let me know if you’d all be interested in some game design thoughts for next week, but for now, let’s charge through some excellent films!

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Winter 2022 – Week 6 in Review

I have a confession to make: I have no idea what days or weeks are anymore. Initially, as a replacement for the original reflection on weekly anime episodes, it felt effortless to simply echo that pattern with the films of the week. But of course, as a nervous workaholic who uses art consumption to stem the terror of existence, I’ve ended up watching and writing well ahead of any reasonable or sustainable weekly output. As a result, I now have a “Week in Review buffer” of like fifteen films, and yet couldn’t begin to place any of these films in the theoretical weeks I ostensibly reviewed them. Time is an illusion, but content is forever, so I hope you’ll forgive me for the increasingly loose conceptual justification for this weekly article conceit. Let’s get to the films!

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Winter 2022 – Week 5 in Review

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. After the overwhelming sequence of complex and criticism-rich films from last week, I was more than ready to enjoy some straightforward comfort food. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in a whole bunch of horror screenings for this week’s post, but don’t worry, I also found time to check out a hidden gem of animation, along with whatever films I’ll hopefully add to this post between writing this paragraph and releasing it. In the meantime, it’s starting to feel like our house is actually running out of reliable horror selections, so if you’ve got any suggestions, please do your best to terrify us. Alright, let’s kick off the Week in Review!

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