Tag Archives: Film

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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A Home For No One: Vive L’Amour

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We open with a shot of an apartment door, its key hanging expectantly in profile, forgotten by an inattentive real estate agent. An unintended invitation, a false offer of cohabitation – but in such a world as this, we take whatever intimacy we can get. A man briefly cradles, inspects the keychain, before loping down the hall at the call of another speaker. Neither are in focus; only the key is truly present. The man returns, his eye wandering back to the key, tempted time and again. He claims it, and the title drops: Vive L’Amour. Is the implication that this act, this thievery in service of curiosity or hoped-for connection, is the essence of love itself? Where does love reside?

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Winter 2026 – Week 13 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. The weather has finally shifted at this point, allowing me to drag my decrepit body into motion and actually get a few jogs in over the last week. To the surprise of no one, this has led to generally higher energy and better spirits, which have been further bolstered by my dramatic progress running through my outstanding reader projects. I’m currently down to just two articles I need to send to drafts, and have already hammered out a pile of notes for the first, leaving me potentially days away from being current for the first time in over a year. Granted, that list will soon be supplemented by all the incoming April bounties, but goddamnit, I’m taking my victories where I can find them. In the meantime, let’s see what treasures we uncovered in this week’s film excursions!

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