A few years ago, I reviewed the first film in Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy – Suspiria. This time I’m looking at the first film he worked on with Goblin – Deep Red. As this is an over 30-year-old-movie, there will be some spoilers below the cut.
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Film Review: The House That Dripped Blood
It’s not October without a review of an Amicus film, and this year I’ve got another Amicus Anthology here – the one with the title that grabbed my attention the most – The House That Dripped Blood. Unfortunately, it’s also probably the most disappointing I’ve seen to date.
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Film Review: Jigoku (1960)
We have our second horror review for the month, with the 1960 film Jigoku.
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Slaughterhouse Rock: Film Review
And now we move fully into the horror films with an ‘80s supernatural horror slasher film – Slaughterhouse Rock, with a bunch of college students being terrorized by a supernatural terror. Also, it’s scored by Mark Mothersbaugh and Devo, so it’s gotta be good – right? Right?
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Call of the Night: Anime Review
Moving belatedly into horror content for the month of October we have Call of the Night, the last of the anime series from the Summer 2022 season that I watched. Okay, frankly it’s not exactly horror – at least not until the back half of the series, but I would describe it as being somewhat horror adjacent. By which I mean, there are vampires.
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Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Anime Review
There are not a lot of anime series explicitly based off of tabletop RPGs – Record of Grancrest War, Record of Lodoss War, Rune Soldier Louie, and Night Wizard are some of the few that come directly to mind. None of those – I should mention, are particularly based heavily on Western tabletop RPGs (aside from Lodoss starting as a D&D campaign, before moving through Tunnels & Trolls and eventually becoming a Sword World campaign). So, it is impressive to see Cyberpunk: Edgerunners to be perhaps one of the first anime series to wear the western TRPG connection right on its sleeve. Yes, the show is tied in to CD Projekt Red’s video game – but right from the jump the series credits leads off with “Based on a world created by Mike Pondsmith” – showing how much of its influences it wears on its neon sleeve tattoo. Thankfully, Studio Trigger, who animated this, also does right by its source material far more Cyberpunk 2077 did from the jump.
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Anime Review: Lycoris Recoil
Lycoris Recoil is something of a modern retooling of a genre that we haven’t seen in a while – the Girls With Guns anime series. In particular, Lycoris Recoil in this case has a mix of “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” as a recurring B-plot, with the conspiracy thriller elements covering the series A-plots, with action informed now not by the John Woo films of years past, but the modern John Wick films. All of this works tremendously well.
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Film Review: Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
It’s time for the first of my two horror film reviews for this year, with a look at the 1959 version of Ghost of Yotsuya.
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Anime Review: Engage Kiss
Engage Kiss is one of the lighter fanservice series from the Summer 2022 season – there were much (*ahem*) harder shows (like Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World – which was borderline smut – and also leaned into some of the grosser elements of the isekai genre) – but Engage Kiss was more palatable about it. Even more, A-1 Pictures paired some of that fan-service with some gorgeously animated fight scenes, making for a series that, while flawed, was really enjoyable to watch. Some spoilers below the cut
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Anime Review: Tokyo Mew Mew New
Tokyo Mew Mew was an oversight in my anime viewing when I was growing up. When I was a kid and watched cartoons with any degree of regularity on Cartoon Network or on Saturday Mornings, the main Magical Girl Show was Sailor Moon. When I got older, 4Kids picked up Tokyo Mew Mew as Mew Mew Power – but by that point I was familiar enough with anime, but immature enough when it came to my opinion of my own taste to dismiss almost anything licensed by 4Kids by reflex. Switch to this year, when we get a remake of Tokyo Mew Mew, appropriately titled Tokyo Mew Mew New, released a little bit after the passing of the original manga’s creator – Reiko Yoshida – and I figured now’s as good a time as any to look into what I missed.
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Anime Review: Ranking of Kings
Ranking of Kings is a show that, frankly, I missed the boat on. It was a show that everyone on AniTwitter, everyone on the anime podcasts I listened to were praising to high heavens, but I pushed off watching it. Until now. Now I’ve finally watched it and it’s time to give the show the consideration it deserves.
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Anime Review: Barakamon
These have been a stressful few years, so certainly, now has been a great time for some nice healing anime, so among the ones I’ve been watching has been Barakamon – a very chill series about life in a rural Japanese town.
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Komi Can’t Communicate: Season 1 & 2 – Anime Review
It is to my great shock that I did not review the first season of Komi Can’t Communicate on this blog. Having now also seen the show’s second season, I think I’m way past due to give this show a review, so it’s time to review both of those seasons.
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Documentary Review: Eye of the Beholder – The Art of Dungeons & Dragons
Our third documentary review for this month is a look at a documentary on the history of the art of Dungeons & Dragons, with a focus on the TSR years of the game.
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Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie: Anime Review
Back in May, I gave my early thoughts on Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie – one of the rom-com anime series I’d decided to watch last season. It’s time to follow up on my early thoughts to discuss how the complete show fits with my earlier assessment.
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Documentary Review: Secrets of Blackmoor Part 1
I’m continuing with the tabletop RPG documentaries with a look at the kickstarted documentary “Secrets of Blackmoor”, about the formation of the Blackmoor campaign and Dave Arneson’s early life.
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Eye of the Beholder: Documentary Review
It’s time to review another of the RPG documentaries I’ve previously backed on Kickstarter, with Eye of the Beholder, covering the art of Dungeons & Dragons. For those who prefer video reviews of this, there will be a video review coming later this month.
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Secrets of Blackmoor Part 1: Documentary Review
Time to cover a the first of a couple documentaries about the history of tabletop RPGs that I’ve previously backed on Kickstarter, starting with Secrets of Blackmoor – Part 1. There will be a video review forthcoming later this month if you prefer that.
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Documentary (Video) Review: The Dwarvenaut
For the month of GenCon, it’s time to take a look at a documentary about Tabletop RPGs – or in this case dungeon terrain for Tabletop RPGs.
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Birdie Wing (Season 1): Anime Review
One of the genres of anime I’ve spent the least time with is sports anime – where the number of titles I’ve actually seen is far shorter than the shows I intend to watch – only Magical Girl anime and Music series are lower on the list. None of this is necessarily due to a lack of interest. I’ve found that the sports shows I’ve watched I’ve generally enjoyed (with a few exceptions like Battle Athletes). So, in the Spring 2022 season, when I saw Birdie Wing was airing, I decided to give it a watch.
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AMAIM: Warrior at the Borderline (Season 2): Anime Review
AMAIM is a show where the first half of the series had some questionable issues, but ended on a really strong note that left me coming back for the second season. The second cour of the series, while it does have some strong concepts, has some significant problems with the finale that makes it not quite work.
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Tokyo Olympiad: Film Review
This is a review that is over a year overdue. I had fully intended to watch this movie leading up to the Tokyo Olympics and, I admit, I forgot. However, after over a year of waiting, it’s time to rip the band-aid off, and take a look at the (currently) only Olympic documentary to make it into the Criterion Collection – Tokyo Olympiad.
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The Connection (2014): Film Review
When it comes to watching movies based on historical events, occasionally you happen, by varying degrees of coincidence, into a narrative between multiple films all based on historical events that all tie together. Sometimes it’s deliberate, with different filmmakers being in dialog with each other, and sometimes it’s happenstance, and sometimes it’s even a combination of the two. The Connection from 2014 (released in France as La French) is something of a combination of the two, being in dialog with the 1971 film The French Connection, but also referencing the events covered in Ridley Scott’s film American Gangster, and in turn making Hoodlum something of a prologue.
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Raining In The Mountain: Film Review
It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a King Hu movie, and since another of his Taiwanese films, Raining in the Mountain, has been available on the Criterion Channel, I figure it’s time to revisit this film – and it’s arguably a little more Buddhist than his other film of the same year (also shot in Korea), Legend of the Mountain.
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