Film Review: Way of the Dragon

When I was in Middle School, I discovered Hong Kong martial arts films through researching the wuxia genre on the Internet after watching Big Trouble in Little China, and the first I sought out was Bruce Lee’s The Big Boss. So, I’ve always known that Bruce was one of cinema’s greatest film performers, and I’d assumed he could do no wrong. That there was no such thing as a mediocre Bruce Lee film. It turns out there is, and it’s called Way of the Dragon.

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Film Review: Trog

Trog, as a film, is probably one of the more lazy and derivative horror films I’ve seen. However, it accomplishes this not by knocking off one genre of horror films, but several all at once, in an effort to turn it into some kind of horror cinema Dagwood. It doesn’t succeed, but it does manage to be entertaining in the attempt, but not in the ways they intended.

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Anime Review: Ruri Rocks

I’ve talked before on blog posts and on podcasts that I do the unspeakable act of watching anime with my parents. Now, I don’t watch everything – we get together a couple times a week, and I carefully pick the shows we watch, but sometimes we watch things that are fanservice adjacent. My Dress Up Darling was one of them. As my dad majored in Geology, I figured Ruri Rocks would be a good fit as well. I was correct.

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Anime Review: Anne Shirley

Anne of Green Gables was a part of my life for a significant chunk of my childhood without having read the book. The Anne of Green Gables TV series and its sequel, Avonlea, was ever present when I was growing up. So, when we got a new anime adaptation of some of the early novels, titled Anne Shirley, I had a real “Why not?” moment, and added the series to my watchlist.

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Anime Review: Nukitashi

Something which has a history in Japan that we don’t get as much in the US is political satire through adult film. We get some stuff in the US occasionally, but in post war Japan, it almost became an art form – when the film censors looking at adult films are more worried about whether you are properly hiding penises and vagina than whether you’re slipping messages about Japan signing on to the US mutual defense treaty puts them on the road to increased militarization and puts the country in Soviet nuclear crosshairs (or criticisms of the lack of equity in post-war reconstruction Japan, or just straight up Marxist themes) then you have the makings of a way to deliver political messages with a shovelful of smut to help the medicine go down. (Did the Right also know about this tactic and use it themselves? Absolutely!) So, when I read the premise of Nukitashi, I recognized pretty quickly what it was here for – like Shimoneta it’s doing social satire, in this case aimed squarely at the political messaging of Shinzo Abe (though the game it was based on was released before his assassination). Unlike Shimoneta, though, there’s fuckin’!

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Anime Review: DanDaDan Season 2

Season 2 of DanDaDan starts on a messy cliffhanger that, I will admit, makes for a rough start, with Momo Ayase facing assault (with sexual overtones, but not actually sexual) in a Hot Springs, while Okarun and Jin are facing physical assault from a bunch of incredibly powerful old grannies in the home that Jin and his parents are renting. The question because, how well does it handle the payoff?

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Anime Review: Call of the Night Season 2

While the first season of Call of the Night was a series that was heavy on vibes and less on horror, the second season of the series does delve a little more into Vampire society – and also is something that really gets that while our little low-fi Camarillia is generally very chill, vampires are monsters – and even if the group that Ko is around doesn’t act like monsters, other Vampires can be monstrous.

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Anime Review: My Dress-Up Darling Season 2

My Dress-Up Darling was one of the first shows we did for Anime Explorations, and it was a show we generally really enjoyed. Yes, it was a somewhat horny-on-main romantic comedy anime, but it was tonally light, and didn’t feel leering in the way that other fanservicey series did, combined with a romance between Gojo and Marin that was very sweet, so I’ve been looking forward to a second season, and was quite pleased when we finally got one this year. I already had some high expectations, but this season blew those right out of the water.

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Film Review: A Taxing Woman

When it comes to the Procedural genre of film, generally these works tend to put their focus on law enforcement – cops and robbers, literally. However, the cops the generally don’t cover are ones who deel with what are considered more “boring” crimes – white collar financial crimes. Smuggling is sexy, robbers are sexy, gangsters are sexy. Tax fraud is still sexy… except people stealing from workers by not properly paying taxes, people stealing from the community by not paying taxes to pay for the services the government provides that they use are still robbers. So, it’s up to a more financial cop to catch them – one like the protagonist of A Taxing Woman.

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Film Review: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

One of the things about having read Paperbacks From Hell is that Grady Hendrix does a really solid job of laying out that for all the ways that the horror genre can be progressive, it can also be tremendously conservative as well, drawing the root of the threat of the horror from societal prejudices. The same lies with the thriller and disaster genres – a place where The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) falls. When a screenwriter or author succumbs to the temptation to make bystanders and victims into archetypes as a shorthand, what archetypes are used matter.

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Film Review: Dune Parts 1 & 2

With Dune Parts 1 & 2, I wanted to hold off on seeing those movies until the story was complete. Dune was a complete novel after all, and getting half of it without the whole thing would have been frustrating. It’s the same reason why I haven’t watched part 1 of Wicked as of this writing. Part 2 isn’t out yet, so there’s only half the story. I wanted to watch the story – but I wanted to watch the full story. So, once Dune Parts 1 & 2 were released on 4K, I felt it was time to sit down and watch them both together.

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Anime Review: My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

I’ll admit, to my shame, that I’d dismissed My Hero Academia: Vigilantes as a manga originally as something of a nothingburger side story that wasn’t worth paying attention to. This was a mistake. Instead, MHA: Vigilantes serves as a well executed prologue to the core story, giving us a chance once again to see characters we haven’t seen for a while, plus meeting a new cast.

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Anime Review: Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty

It’s been a minute since the last music anime I’ve watched. There have been idol anime that have aired, but while I’ve enjoyed some idol music, I’ve never really been grabbed by series like the Idolmaster franchise. However, after watching Bocchi The Rock, I found myself looking for more rock band anime, so when Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty came up in the schedule, I decided to give it a watch. I found myself getting more than I bargained for, in a good way.

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Anime Explorations Episode 34: Ghost in the Shell (1995)

This month, we take a look at Mamoru Oshii’s Cyberpunk masterpiece, Ghost in the Shell (from 1995), along with giving some thoughts on the live-action adaptation from 2017, joined by Blaine Dowler.

Episode 34: Ghost in the Shell (1995)

This month, we take a look at Mamoru Oshii’s Cyberpunk masterpiece, Ghost in the Shell (from 1995), along with giving some thoughts on the live action adaptation from 2017, joined by Blaine Dowler. Next month, we take a look at Macross II.

Next month, we take a look at Macross II.

Blaine can be found on the Babylon 5 30 Years Later Podcast (https://shows.acast.com/babylon-5-30-years-later), and the 99 Years 100 Films Podcast (https://shows.acast.com/99-years-100-films)

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