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Film Review: Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye

By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation Led by phenomenally creative animation and a wildly creative – if raunchy – setup, Dan Da Dan was the anime to beat in 2024. Coming at a time of seeming stagnation in the shonen sphere, it was a breath of fresh air whose B-movie influences mixed in with wacky, surrealist…
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Film Review: Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing

By Matthew Moorcroft Weak Recommendation Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing is, just like it’s long-winded title implies, a movie. It has three acts, it has characters with some semblance of personality, a clear thesis statement about it’s themes and ideas, and it even has something of a character arc for it’s…
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Film Review: Thunderbolts*

By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation At this point, it’s becoming more common to view each MCU installment as a self-reflexive, meta-textual comment on it’s own existence rather then a standalone picture in it’s own right. As frustrating as it is that these can’t just be their own right, Thunderbolts* (yes the asterisk is part of…
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Film Review: Sinners

By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Laced with immediate texture in it’s 65mm frames and gorgeous southern locales, Sinners – the first non-franchise film from Ryan Coogler since his stellar debut in 2013 – is the rare film that makes it’s first impressions strong and stays strong throughout it’s entire runtime. Just like the blues that…
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Anime Review: To Be Hero X, Episode 1

By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation All images are courtesy of Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures. Won’t mince words here, I’ve been heavily anticipating To Be Hero X for some time, mainly thanks to it’s widely impressive trailers that have come out for over a year before it’s release. Chinese animation in general has seen a massive…
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Anime Review: Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers, Episode 1

By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation All images of courtesy of Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures. My knowledge on Guilty Gear is, admittedly, very casual. Anybody who knows me knows that fighting games, while I enjoy them, are not my personal area of expertise. I could tell you the ins and outs of something like Starcraft II…
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Anime Review: The Beginning After the End, Episode 1

By Matthew Moorcroft No Recommendation All images are courtesy of Crunchyroll. Fantasy anime has a dire problem. For every Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End or Delicious in Dungeon, fantasy anime for the past decade have seemingly been made on autopilot, existing for the sole purpose of filling out a seasonal block or some kind of adaptation…
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Film Review: Mickey 17

By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation Finally arriving after several lengthy delays, Mickey 17 could not have been more timely. I don’t know how much it predicted much of the current political climate – likely none of intentionally, as it was written and shot long before the 2024 US elections as well as much of the…
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Film Review: Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: Beginning

By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR GQUUUUUUX INVOLVING PLOT POINTS THAT ARE NOT PRESENT IN THE ORIGINAL MARKETING. PLEASE READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL. We are going into the tail end of Gundam‘s 4th decade of being one of the biggest pop culture juggernauts out of Japan, and in the…
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Film Review: The Monkey

By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation There are two kinds of horror films. This statement is hyperbole, obviously, but for the sake of the argument, there are two; your Rube Goldberg machines and your simple calculators. The latter are ones that focus in on a singular idea through either complicated means or slow builds that are…