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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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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…
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Film Review: Paddington in Peru

By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation It’s been over a decade since the release of the original Paddington film, and in that time both it and it’s sequel have become something of a sacred ground for modern children’s films. While so much of this is rightly attributed to director Paul King and his whimsical vision for…
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Film Review: Captain America: Brave New World

By Matthew Moorcroft Unsure It really feels like Captain America: Brave New World has come out like at least like five times already. The long gestating project, subject to numerous reshoots, a writers and actors strike, and story changes in the midst of an ever-evolving political landscape, feels like a movie that was always on…
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Film Review: Companion

By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation While it’s reputation as a dumping ground hasn’t been completely unfounded, in recent years January has slowly but surely also developed a reputation for putting stranger, more out there affairs for studios who may not be confident in their overall success. Just two years ago saw the release of M3GAN…