Category: Films

The Superfriends

Fandango’s streaming site had the new Superman film on rental for fairly cheap last night so I decided to spend a couple of hours checking out the movie folks have been raving about for months now. There’s a lot to rave about, I’ll agree. With that said, there are also some things to rant about and my brain simply refuses to leave them alone. Like a dog worrying at a chewtoy, one might say.

Please note that I’m going to have to spoil some major parts of the movie to talk about my issues with it properly. Also note that I’m not lambasting the movie as a whole. In general, it’s a fun flight of fancy with a lot of good stuff going on and it has great heart. (Most of the time.) It’s certainly an improvement over the dour, grimdark efforts of the last set of Supes movie outings.

But.

Let’s get into it.
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25 September, 2025
A Measured Quantity of John Wick

The trick to inserting your established unstoppable badass into your spinoff film without weakening the lead character of said spinoff film is careful, deliberate measurement.

So, yes, I watched Ballerina last night. And to get into my thoughts here I’ll have to spoil certain things about it. I intend not to give away all the movie’s tricks, mind you, because if you’re into the Wick-verse movies at all then I also can easily recommend this installment, so you should get to enjoy as much of it as you can as a fresh experience.

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18 August, 2025
Hundreds of Beavers

Listening to an installment of the Xanadu Cinema Pleasure Dome podcast recently, I was intrigued enough by one host’s excitement about this movie to spend a couple of hours with it over the weekend.

I’m still not sure what exactly in the world I watched.

Hundreds of Beavers is an absolute fever dream of a comedy, I know that much.
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14 April, 2025
Rascal Does Not Dream of a Sister Venturing Out

Say you’re a high-school-aged boy, and for whatever reason you’ve turned out to be a kind of magnet for really weird stuff going on with various people around you. Like, pulling an example purely out of thin air, there’s a girl who wanders around in a bunny-girl outfit to prove that nobody can actually see her… except you, of course, or there’d be no plot to this story.

This is basically the core premise of the Rascal Does Not Dream light novel series that later became an anime series followed by a string of theatrical release movies. Most folks refer to it as the “bunny-girl senpai” show, since that’s the first novel installment from which the anime series takes its name.

Following on from the televised show that covers the events of the first handful of novel installments and an absolute tearjerker of a film dealing with the contents of the paired novel installments after that, Sister Venturing Out is… almost anticlimactic.

It’s still very good, though.

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21 December, 2024
Shiny Platter Capsule Reviews

For part of my vacation time I’m actually using that 4K Blu Ray player that sits almost entirely unused in the living room.

Yesterday I watched the Genesis documentary/interview piece, Sum Of The Parts. Which is a decent, if highly condensed, overview of Genesis’ discography and how it came to be. (With one glaring omission.) They also dabbled in covering the solo careers, showing the “highlights” of Gabriel’s and Collins’ output plus brief mentions of Hackett’s first solo record (before the split) and Rutherford’s Mechanics project and Banks’ various efforts. Mind you… near the end of the whole piece they got to “Collins left the band in 1996” and immediately cut to the preparation for the 2007 tour. Hmm. Poor Ray Wilson, left out of the story again.

Today I watched the second Miles Morales animated adventure series installment, Across the Spiderverse. And it’s… good, overall. Almost continually quippy, though it managed to dial that down at some of the more appropriate moments. But that’s Spider-Man (and Spider-Gwen, and Spider-Woman, and, and, and, and…) for you, being quippy is sewn into the costume. (With one notable exception.) Visually, the team at Sony’s animation studio continue to push the boundaries using the first Spiderverse flick as a jumping-off point. It’s a delight for the eyes. Story-wise… I don’t know. It’s not done yet, so I can’t “sit” with it and get a feel for how well they’ve pulled that off. I’ve seen half a movie, now I have to wait for the other half.

No more movies this week, but maybe I’ll start on a TV show next. I’ll decide on that… tomorrow.

22 May, 2024
The Marvels

I rolled out of bed after a rough night of bad dreams, threw myself together as usual, took my meds, and as I realized I’d put on one of the two Captain Marvel t-shirts in my closet then thought about things for a moment, a plan emerged for my day: I’d go see The Marvels.
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6 December, 2023