Fall 2023 – Week 2 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. With the fall season now fully underway, it seems the community has already settled on Frieren as the current must-watch production, earning such praise that I’m already feeling inclined to see what all the fuss is about. In the meantime, I’m currently catching up on Vinland Saga, and have already screened and thoroughly enjoyed the preposterous first episode of The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You. Along with a great sense of genre-savvy humor, 100 Girlfriends understands the secret underlying the most powerful of harems: that it is the protagonist who must seem most lovable of all, not any of his/her prospective paramours. Anyway, I’ll have more on 100 Girlfriends when my post arrives, but for now, let’s chow down on a fresh selection of films!

Continue reading

Fall 2023 – Week 1 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. With my viewing party’s ambitious project to watch our adolescent Big Three now successfully topped off with a viewing of the OG Dragon Ball saga, our schedules have been dramatically freed up, leaving me inclined to finally catch up on all of the year’s outstanding key anime. I’m already watching MyGO and Skip and Loafer with you folks, so our next group projects will likely be Vinland Saga and Witch from Mercury, and perhaps finally getting around to Cyberpunk. After burning down a series of three hundred plus-episode series in eight to twelve episode chunks, screening a one or two-season show just doesn’t seem quite so imposing as it once did. Plus the movies are flowing freely! We watched quite the varied assembly this week, so let’s not waste more time nattering about future plans, and break down the films of the week.

Continue reading

Summer 2023 – Week 13 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I’ve returned to full apartment hunting mode, having emerged from a variety of familial obligations to find myself still lacking a goddamn home. Nonetheless, I’ve also found time to at last get back into regular movie screenings, which my diminishing buffer of older reviews must surely appreciate. Frankly, I was nearing the point of being forced to admit to my house’s collective reality television addiction, and break down the finer points of concocting a winning America’s Got Talent audition. That may still come one of these days, but for now I’m happy to be regaining another sliver of normalcy via movie screenings, while also playing as much Baldur’s Gate 3 as I can possibly slot in. I’m not sure I could ever abandon the narrative opportunities provided by a charisma-centric character, but hewing enemies in two with Karlach’s giant ax seems to have awakened something in me, and I’m seriously considering having my next character prioritize breaking stuff real good. I’ll have more Baldur’s Gate reflections once I’m deeper in, but for now, let’s break down a fresh collection of films!

Continue reading

Summer 2023 – Week 12 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week a project my housemates idly began years ago neared its conclusion, as we approached the very last episodes of Dragon Ball Super. Having burned through One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, Boruto, and the variable Dragon Ball sagas over the last thirty-some months, I can affirm that basically all of them are worthy second-screen entertainment, with portions of each rising to the level of appointment viewing. The shonen titans are eminently munchable comfort food, and it’s been particularly rewarding to gain a better understanding of the standout animators and directors who helped elevate the highlights of each. Let’s start with Super then, as we ramble through a fresh Week in Review!

Continue reading

Summer 2023 – Week 11 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. This has been a hectic week on my end, with a family wedding consuming my general film-screening time, but I’m fortunately sitting on a massive buffer of reviews to ensure you all receive your regularly scheduled ramblings. And frankly, I really can’t blame the wedding for my negligence – the genuine fact of it is that I’ve been splitting my evenings between thrilling Armored Core battles and binge watches of Dragon Ball Super, which has risen from a rough start to prove itself altogether superior to Z. Super has fully revived the mix of comedy, character drama, and action that made the original Dragon Ball so engaging, and I’ll be sure to have a full report for you all as soon as we munch through its pan-universal martial arts tournament. But in the meantime, lemme just rummage around in my sack of movie reviews for a moment, so we can break down a fresh collection of films!

Continue reading

Summer 2023 – Week 9 in Review

Hello friends, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I am sorry to report that this has been another tough week on the home front, as our core “family” of four onetime tenants has been reduced to two, with our other companions choosing new horizons over continuing the apartment hunt. What this means for our D&D campaign I shudder to imagine, but I’m doing my best to take the changing tides with grace. Life continues, you know? It can’t all be good times, and a shakeup like this is also an opportunity to unshackle myself from routine, and see what else is out there for me. Though I enjoy my comfortable, predictable days, it’d also be nice to travel more and meet new people, and so I’m channeling my Rilakkuma & Kaoru zen as fiercely as possible through these turbulent times. In the meantime, a little constancy is always appreciated, so let’s run through some of our regularly scheduled movie reviews. Onward!

Continue reading

Summer 2023 – Week 6 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you from the midst of a furious thunderstorm, which I’m hoping will at some point calm down enough for me to get on with some apartment hunting. But whether I am swept away by the torrential rains of August or not, I will at least have left you all with another collection of ramshackle film reviews. This week our cinematic journey carried us from a heartbreaking classic to the latest One Piece film, with a couple unexpected detours along the way. We’ve also been churning our way through Dragon Ball Z Kai, and in the process discovering that if you pare down the original Z’s interminable pacing, the show’s actually pretty darn fun. I’ll likely have more coherent words on that next week, but for now, let’s check out some films!

Continue reading

Summer 2023 – Week 5 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week we took part in what has unexpectedly become the cinematic event of the summer, taking in both Oppenheimer and Barbie in a rush of cinematic splendor. There have been few reasons to feel hopeful about the future of cinema lately, and even fewer regarding the fate of theaters specifically, so I was happy to indulge in this bucking of the downward trend. Even though it’s already clear that the lesson our asinine media overseers are taking is “more films based on toys” rather than anything genuinely relevant to Barbie’s excellence, these twin successes nonetheless demonstrate a hunger for genuinely interesting new films, and (god willing) a fatigue regarding endless franchises. Let’s munch through those two and more besides in the latest Week in Review!

Continue reading

Summer 2023 – Week 4 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Things are still pretty hectic on my end, as my housemates and I are still cooped up in temporary lodgings in the wake of the house fire two weeks ago. Not only has this made sneaking in film viewings more difficult, but it has also, unforgivably, delayed our progress in running my D&D campaign. As such, my Bridge Over The River Kwai-themed quest has been delayed until god knows when, but I can at least say I’ve been keeping up to date with my weekly articles, with my buffer now actually containing more big sturdy essays than episodic notes. I’m eager to share all my findings with you, but for now, let’s sift through the films I did manage to watch in the Week in Review!

Continue reading

Summer 2023 – Week 3 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I didn’t really plan on it, but based on what we watched, it turns out this week features a particularly dubious film theme: movie adaptations of video game franchises. Though we’re long beyond the days of Uwe Boll acquiring rights for pennies and exploiting well-intentioned art grants to make garbage, movie adaptations of games still possess a fairly dubious reputation, a predictable byproduct of games generally interactivity over narrative. Aside from the surprisingly endearing Sonic the Hedgehog, cinematic game adaptations generally just tend to emphasize the narrative paucity of their source material – and while this week’s viewings didn’t exactly circumvent that obstacle, they at least left me with plenty to say regarding their attempts. Let’s run down some would-be films in the Week in Review!

Continue reading