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QUEST FOR CAMELOT REVIEW

Um... I can explain.

The reason I haven't been posting any reviews the past few weeks or so is the fact that it's finals season at my college, and I need to lock the fuck in, as the kids say. With all that said, this movie wouldn't stop leaving my mind, so I had to find it on some dogshit streaming service and watch it.

I actually have a bit of history with this movie: when I was a child, I was a part of the Boy Scouts of America as an attempt by my parents to turn me into a manly masculine man who likes manly things. It didn't work, but I wouldn't have gone camping for the first time if not for them. The only thing I remember about that camping trip is the fact that there was a movie night where they played Quest for Camelot, despite everyone's complaints. The only other reason I even think about this movie at all is because the GameBoy Color tie-in game is available on the Switch for some reason. I'd like to think this movie is better than the game, but that is a horrifying thought.

This movie's biggest problem is that it's a "shut the fuck up kid" movie, or a movie where its only purpose is so that kids will shut up for an hour and a half. These movies have their place in society, but I don't think watching them over the age of 10 is meaningful in any way whatsoever. Why did I watch it? I don't know, I think I was possessed, but it looks like this movie got a cult following from people who watched this movie as a kid. There's plenty of people who genuinely love this movie. I am not one of those people. This movie is mid.

This is a very generic fantasy story; King Arthur's sword Excalibur has been stolen and it's lost in the eerie magical forest and it's up to a tomboyish female lead, a snarky lone wolf warrior, the comic relief two-headed dragon and some animal sidekicks to save the day and sing songs along the way. It's very obvious that this movie was just trying to ape the style of Disney movies, namely the more fantastical ones like Sword in the Stone and The Black Cauldron, and nowhere is that more evident than the animation style itself. Now, I'm not saying this movie looks ugly, far from it. The animation is very vibrant, smooth, and there are some great shots in this movie, but the character design I have some issues with. I do like how some of the creatures look, but I don't think the humans were well designed. It feels like they were made in order to imitate how humans in Disney movies looked, but without any sort of expressiveness. Compare this to how humans looked in other movies that year, namely Mulan and The Prince of Egypt, and it's clear how little effort went into making these characters emote. There's also the issue of the CGI elements not looking that great. Sometimes it doesn't matter, like background details that aren't on screen for that long, but when the awful looking CGI ogre starts moving like a PS2 character, I physically wince.

A generic story and subpar animation can be saved if the characters are well-written, which is a shame because these characters aren't well-written. Kayley has no character traits besides a dead father and spunkiness, the only thing Ruber has going for him is a top-tier performance from Gary Oldman, and there's Bladebeak, Devon and Cornwall, who are just annoying characters that only exist to make pop culture references and keep kids entertained. Devon and Cornwall could've been great characters, since they have an arch throughout the movie where they're supposed to learn how to get along in order to be able to fly and breath fire, but the movie never builds this up in any meaningful way. They just get along now because reasons, and we're not supposed to think about that. The only interesting character in the movie is Garrett, who's the lone wolf warrior hermit who was a stable boy in Camelot before he was blinded in an accident, convinced that there's no room for him in Camelot now. That's a pretty interesting arch, and he's the one part of the movie that piqued my interest. He does have a generic love subplot with Kayley, but that's just a product of the time.

What is another product of the time is all the pop culture references. You can have pop culture references in a fantasy movie, especially an animated one, and make it work (easy example being the Genie from Aladdin), but they just don't work in this movie. They don't tie into anything that's happening in the story itself, so when Bladebeak quotes Taxi Driver or when Cornwall and Devon sing like Elvis, I'm not amused because they're not telling any jokes with the references, just saying them just to say them, which is a problem because these jokes were made for adults in the audience. A child isn't going to know what Taxi Driver is unless they have cool parents.

The only other thing I haven't mentioned at this point is the songs themselves, and they're a mostly mixed bag. By far the best songs in the entire movie are the opening and ending song "United We Stand," which has such a grand feeling fitting of a story like this. The rest are either wholly mediocre and forgettable like "Looking Through Your Eyes" or just straight up bad like "If I Didn't Have You." I also love the fact that Garrett's singing voice sounds nothing like his normal voice. Whoopsie.

According to Wikipedia, this movie went through a development hell, with the original draft of the script was a lot darker, not being a musical and centering around the Holy Grail. That was scrapped by the executives since they wanted to make a movie reminiscent of what Disney was putting out during their Renaissance, with one of the lead animators, Chrystal Klabunde, stating that "All the executives were happily running around and playing executive, getting corner offices—but very few of them had any concept about animation at all, about doing an animated film." This is what I mean when I said this movie just seemed to be aping what other, better movies were doing, and in the process, forgot to make a good animated movie. We've seen this kind of practice time after time, coming from Disney, Dreamworks, Sony, Warner Bros (whose animation department made the movie); crunching the animators and chasing trends to optimize the hell out of their movies and not try to make a good movie, but try to make a successful movie. Those Disney movies they copied weren't a success because they chased trends and tried to be successful, they were just great movies that people loved and were advertised well. Quest for Camelot was not good and it wasn't successful.

4/10 -- wait did Cornwall call Devon the r slur what the fuck

[howsitduud]

SINNERS REVIEW

NOTE: I WILL BE SPOILING THE ENTIRE MOVIE. PLEASE DON'T READ THIS REVIEW UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE FIRST. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU DO SO.

I don't watch trailers all that often. Unless it's for a movie I really don't want to watch, I prefer to remain completely blind when it comes to a movie's release. Sinners was no exception; I hadn't even heard of this movie until it came out a few days ago and everyone was talking about it. All I knew was that there were vampires in it. I am so glad I went into this movie completely blind because it floored me with both its content and just how damn good it was.

The easiest comparison I can make with this movie is to compare it to something like From Dusk Till Dawn: both are movies where the first hour of the movie leaves you in a false sense of security where it's devoid of any supernatural elements, setting up every character and getting them into a single location, where the movies shift into being creature features where vampires slowly pick off every single named character until a final battle where the 2 main leads survive and kill off every single vampire. Even though it's easy to make comparisons, it's where Sinners differs from From Dusk Till Dawn where the former starts to shine.

For one thing, I actually cared about all the characters in this movie. A fear I had going into this movie was that I wasn't going to like the parts of the movie without vampires, but the quality of the writing helps draw you into the movie and gets you to know every single character and their history with one another. One thing Ryan Coogler excels at is making it feel like all the characters in his movies feel more than just characters in a film, they feel like they're actual people with whole lives and histories before the events of the movie. You want to find out what happened with Smoke and Stack in Chicago that they seem to be running from. You want to find out why Sammie wants to be a blues musician and how hanging around criminals with affect him. You want to see why Remmick is targeting this group specifically.

Another pitfall this movie avoids is having the vampire portions of the movie feel like it comes right out of nowhere, but the two halves of the movie are integrated so seamlessly that it never feels that way. The prologue of the movie has some explanation of how vampires are drawn to musicians as well as a flash-forward to Sammie coming home after getting attacked. There's also the scene of Smoke seeing Annie and discussing her interest in the occult, which is why she knows all about vampires and hates later on in the movie. The lore in this movie is also so simple, yet so fleshed out. There's some typical vampire movie hallmarks, like vampires being affected by sunlight, garlic, and silver, and needing to be invited into somewhere, but there's also the bit where Sammie summons souls of past and future musicians and dancers with his music and how that ties into the core motif of music being a source of power, or how the vampires are unaffected by Sammie praying because Remmick was abused by priests and takes that experience with him.

I also love how the people who turn still have their normal emotions and memories and don't just turn into mindless monsters. When Annie and Remmick get staked, the other vampires mourn their losses, which honestly makes them scarier because they feel more real. The scariest parts of the movie aren't when people are getting turned, it's when the vampires are trying to manipulate people into letting them into the bar, using Smoke's fear of the mob or the Klan or speaking Chinese to Grace and threatening to turn her daughter. These scenes had my entire theater on edge, I swear.

There are so many other amazing elements of the movie, like the acting. I've always held onto the belief that Michael B. Jordan is a great actor, and this is easily his best role. He plays these 2 characters so convincingly and makes them each look and act so much differently from each other. Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O' Connell, Delroy Lindo, Wunmi Mosaku, they all bring their A-game to this movie, so it's more surprising that my favorite actor in the entire movie is Miles Caton, an actor who has never been in a single movie before this. I also adore the music in this movie, being a perfect mix of folksy blues music sung diegetically and a classic horror movie score, complete with electric guitars and synths.

Going into this movie, I had a lot of questions: Is this movie a musical? Is it a creature feature? Is it about racism? Is the length justified? Is the acting good? Is the music good? Is it campy? Is it scary? Is it good?

The answer to all of those questions is a resounding yes. It's also the best movie of the year so far.

9/10, I wouldn't mind being bitten by Hailee Steinfeld,,,

[howsitduud]

DOG MAN REVIEW

So, I watched a couple of movies that came out this year that I never got a chance to see in theaters, and I wanted to put them both in one review. They don't have anything to do with each other other than being 2025 releases, but I barely watched any 2025 releases so far, so I guess that's special.

The first movie I watched was Dog Man, an adaptation of the comic series of the same name. Despite being a huge fan of the Captain Underpants comics as a kid, I never got into Dog Man, and that's for a few reasons. First, by the time those comics released, I was already older, and I was moving away from childish things and picking up comics that big girls liked, like the My Little Pony/Transformers crossover comics. Secondly, my mom hated Captain Underpants. She pretty much blamed my academic struggles on those books in particular, so I was never allowed to read any of them at home. Didn't mean I couldn't sneak them into school. I saw the Captain Underpants movie when it came out as well, and that movie was nostalgia in a can. The art style, the jokes, the writing, the voice acting, all of it was spot-on to what I remembered from the comics. I was familiar with Dog Man at the time, and I wondered if Dreamworks was ever going to make a spin-off movie adapting those comics. It's been 8 years, and they finally answered that question I had in high school.

Immediately what's most striking about this movie is the animation. I thank God everyday that Spider-Verse came out when it did because it spurred every single other animated movie since to experiment with cool, experimental styles that have rarely been done before. In this case, the 3D animation in this movie is mimicking the art style of the comics, being focused on strong posing, quick movements, and even some comic book-esque onomatopoeia showing up with certain actions. The characters even move on 2's in order to make them feel more like drawings on paper.

This movie also has an incredibly strong sense of humor to it. Because Dog Man in canon is a comic series created by elementary schoolers, this movie has a very childish sense of humor. Not in the way that there's a bunch of fart jokes and low-brow humor (though there's plenty of that), but there's plenty of jokes that are just cute, like you're actually seeing children make comics and putting what they find funny in it. The jokes that don't work are groan-worthy, but cute, and the jokes that do work fucking slayed me. That "Life's Not Fair" hotline is so funny, as are the names of all the stores and buildings in the movie, as is the bit where Dog Man's house looks like a small dog house, but is actually a fully-furnished, two story house on the inside.

The humor also carries over to the characters. I am so glad that they made Dog Man a silent character, because he wouldn't be nearly as good of a character otherwise. You really feel everything that he's feeling because of how expressive he is. I also like how the Chief acts like that person who doesn't want a dog, but eventually grows to like him as the movie goes on. Sarah Hatoff is a nice supporting character for Dog Man, I wasn't into her relationship with the Chief, Flippy was voiced by Ricky Gervais which is cringe, I was so sure I was going to sick of Lil' Petey, but he's actually an adorable kid who I never wanted to see get hurt. My favorite character in the entire movie is Petey, though. He's just a consistently funny character who had a great emotional core, and part of that charm has to do with Pete Davidson's performance. I am not at all familiar with Pete as a performer, so it shocked me to find out he can actually voice act. This is seriously the hardest I've seen him act since The King of Staten Island, and I enjoyed his performance.

Being unfamiliar with the Dog Man books, I had no expectations for what the plot was gonna be going into this, and I certainly wasn't expecting a movie about daddy issues, co-parenting, and atoning for the sins of the father in my funny dog superhero movie. While I don't think any of the themes and messages in this movie are that well executed, I thought they were done pretty well. All the daddy issue subplot stuff is about as subtle as a brick, but I thought it was cute how the ending to that bit was Dogman and Petey essentially becoming co-parents.

Really, you're not going into this movie for the plot or emotional moments, you're going in for a cute, fun movie about a dog cop, and this movie excels at being that. The emotional moments are just that cherry on top to make this movie that much better. This isn't high art or anything like that, but it is fun as hell.

8/10, I saw a review on IMDB comparing this movie to Robocop, and like, yeah. Name another movie with a main character who's a police officer in a hyper-stylized and exxagerated version of a major American town who dies and comes back to life through experimental means. When's the Dog Man vs Robocop Death Battle happening?

The next movie I watched was Novocaine, which I wanted to watch because it seemed to have a really interesting premise behind it. It's an action movie about some random guy with no fighting experience taking on criminals, but he's able to keep up with them because he physically can't feel pain. This leads to some great, inventive action choreography, since Nathan can power through some serious punishment while still being a goofy guy who's bumbling his way through every single encounter. I especially love how they work his unique ability into fight scenes, like having him reach into a deep fryer to get a gun without any problem, slam his fists against broken glass so that he deals more damage, and stabbing someone who's between his legs by slamming an arrow through them. This also adds to the general humor of the movie, because it's funny to see Nathan accrue so many injuries over the course of the movie, and other moments add to the humor of this situation, like Nathan doing impromptu surgery on himself or Nathan pretending that he's getting hurt when he's being tortured.

Though those scenes were pretty funny, I can't say the same about the writing. There are so many attempts at humor in this movie that just fall completely flat for me, and that's because of an annoying trend for modern action movies to try and do horrible attempts at MCU-esque humor. I was originally happy that Jacob Batalon was in this movie because I like him as an actor, but they don't give him anything good to work with. He just keeps talking and nothing he's saying is ever funny and I just wanted him to stop.

It's a shame because I do think the acting in this movie is genuinely great. Jack Quaid is a great choice to play Nate, since his more awkward line deliveries fit his character to a T. Amber Midthunder plays Sherry pretty well, giving her a lot of subtleties that I liked, and Ray Nicolson is absolutely psychotic and it's so funny. Surprisingly, one of my favorite actors in the movie is Conrad Kemp as Andre. I like how you can see his sorrow, contempt, and rage in his face during his scene with Nate. The story also had some nice twist that I wasn't expecting from a movie like this, like how it's revealed a good way through that Sherry was actually a plant working for the burglars in order to gain access to its vault. I like how it was revealed to us instead of Nate, so we could get all the tension out of this twist as we could. This also results in the "liar revealed" sort of scene that you'd expect, but Nate gets over it pretty quickly. Though it is hard to get invested in a relationship that's only had a day to blossom.

Honestly, I don't know what else to say about this movie. It is a pretty good action movie and has an interesting premise. If that is something you're looking for, then this is perfect.

7/10, it would've been really funny if Nate bit his tongue off at the end of the movie.

[howsitduud]

AGGRETSUKO SEASON 5 REVIEW

Picture this: It's a gloomy Saturday, April 11th. I had plans later on in the day, so I wanted to kill some time by getting around to watching Dan da Dan on Netflix. I open the app, and I see Aggretsuko. I was familiar with this show; I watched the first season when it came out, loved it, and kept up with every season as they came out. At least, I thought I did, because I come to find out that not only was there a 5th season, but it was the final season of the entire show. So, I knuckled down and finished the season and I have some thoughts about it.

But first, why did I drop the show at season 4 to begin with? The main reason was that there was a significant dip in quality in season 4 that turned me off of the show. For the unaware, Aggretsuko is an anime about the Sanrio character, Retsuko, an office worker who is tired of her dead-end job, so she vents by singing death metal at a karaoke bar. Over the course of the show, she gets multiple boyfriends, becomes part of a pop idol, almost dies from a stalker, and pushes back against her superiors, including the new CEO of the company. Seasons 1-3 are genuinely fantastic, focusing on the day-to-day life of Retsuko, who is an incredibly sympathetic and relatable character.

However, like I said, season 4 dropped the ball hard and moved the show in a new, worse direction. The show was now less focused on Retsuko and her struggles and more on side characters, particularly Ton and Haida. Ton, Retsuko's boss, has an entire subplot about him being transferred to the middle of nowhere where he does nothing, and I while I like this subplot, I don't think it added much to the story that Retsuko didn't. Haida, Retsuko's friend, takes over the main plot of the season when he gets a promotion and starts doing shady shit, so she and the other side characters have to stop him and it doesn't feel like this is the same show anymore. I like both of these characters, but they were great supporting characters, not the sole hooks for the entire season. Retsuko barely had much to do in this season, and she didn't get many opportunities for character growth. It was apparent that the show was going in an unnatural direction, so I kinda just stopped watching. This show escaped my mind, save for when the Hello Kitty: Island Adventure trailer dropped and I saw her in video game form.

But, now that I've watched season 5, did the show end on a high note? Kinda? This season is pretty weird, so let's start off with the first half. The first half of this season is dedicated to Haida and resolving his character arc -- he no longer has a job, and his rich politician dad is no longer financially supporting him, so he has to get gig jobs in construction while sleeping at a 24/7 internet cafe. I was so worried because it seemed like the writers took the wrong lessons from the previous season and went all in on having Haida take over. The thing is, I honestly enjoyed this arc quite a bit. Haida getting addicted to an MMO and spending all his money on vbucks is something plenty of people in the real world suffer from, and it's an aspect of life that this show never really touched upon, so I was really interested seeing it. Especially since it has a great character as a symbol of this sort of unambition and complacency, Shikabane. She's a young person who gave up on life and coasts in an MMO, everything that Haida fears he'll become. She's an excellent character in an excellent part of the show, however, I don't think any of this helped further the show in any way. It felt like the writers wanted to dedicate all their effort into developing what's essentially a B-Plot. What hurts even more is that the Retsuko's plot, the main plot of the season, is really good.

After Haida starts living with Retsuko, a galago with an anger problem shows up and asks her to run for a political office with her immense OTM fanbase. You'd think this coming right the hell out of nowhere is a bad thing, but I like the suddenness of it. A lot of the best arcs in this show are about Retsuko stumbling ass-backwards into a weird-ass scenario, like dating an uber-wealthy entrepreneur or being an internet celebrity, and seeing how she deals with it and how she starts to find herself in the process, and that's no different in this arc. Running with her idol group, boyfriend, and coworkers by her side against Haida's nepo baby brother was the spark she needed at this point in her life, and she fully embraces her more aggressive persona, something she tried to hide most of her life. It's also not like it came completely out of nowhere, the political aspect of the world is constantly mentioned and the OTM crew get more publicity if they're involved in a political campaign, so it makes sense within the world of the story. I just wish that this was what the whole season was about so that we can get all we can out of this concept.

The rest of the season as a whole was perfectly fine. The other side characters I haven't mentioned yet are fine; the only thing of note is that Ton gets a nice moment in the finale where he helps Retsuko's confidence by revealing that he fully remembers the drunk rage all the way back in season 1. A nice bit of continuity, wish we got more of it. The show is also still pretty funny, with my favorite bits being everyone's reactions to Retsuko going into politics and how both her and Haida have their moments where they lay down on the floor, motionless while the other tries to feed them a banana. I also liked the montage at the end where even though Retsuko didn't win the election, she's perfectly content with where she is, marrying Haida and getting back to work.

But something I can't help but mention now is that this season was not that special in regards to it being the final season. This does not seem like a final season at all, since the entire hook for the finale hinged on a plot that was underbaked, especially because the focus shifted way too hard towards a side character. I don't mind that normally, but since the show doesn't attempt to weave these two plotlines together in a natural way, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. When Retsuko and Shikabane meet up and sing karaoke in the finale, I don't get much out of it because I was just thinking, "what if?"

This is still a show I enjoyed watching for most of it's run, and there are even some parts of seasons 4 and 5, the weakest seasons in the show, that I really enjoyed. Aggretsuko is, as a whole, a great show with an underwhelming ending.

7/10, why Jiro kinda fine tho...

[howsitduud]

ONE OF THEM DAYS REVIEW

I won't be as in-depth as I was with the last few reviews, partly because school is kicking my ass, partly because I don't really have much to say about this movie. It's a fun, albeit very predictable buddy comedy with some exceptional acting and great writing. It's all about Dreux and Alyssa, two best friends and roommates played by Keke Palmer and SZA, trying to make $1500 by the end of the day or else they'll be kicked out of their home. Much like a lot of comedies of this ilk, the plot doesn't really matter here; the movie is instead focuses on the dynamic between Dreux and Alyssa and what lengths they'll go to get some extra cash quickly in some really funny bits. Dreux donates 4 pints of blood before they go flying everywhere when Alyssa gets worried about her, Alyssa climbs a pole to get some Jordans from some phone lines only to get electrocuted and in trouble with a gang, and they try to get a loan from a shady business, but Alyssa can't get one because she doesn't have an income, and Dreux can't get one because her credit score is so comically low that she gets laughed out of the building. I was dying for the entire Payday Loan scene, it was so fucking funny.

This movie would definitely not be as funny as it is without our two leads, who do a great job in these roles. Keke Palmer is Keke Palmer, I've loved her ever since I saw her in Nope, but surprisingly, SZA was great in this movie. Add her to the list of singers I didn't know could act because I'm unfamiliar with her work. The rest of the cast was incredible, too. Both the villains were great in their own ways: Berniece has some fun moments where she acts genuinely insane, like when she runs over the biscuit bandit and when she beats the shit out of Dreux and Alyssa by twerking. King Lolo was also pretty good as this intimidating threat that's seemingly impossible to beat. When the graphic changed from "0 hours until eviction" to "4 hours until certain death," that got a good laugh out of me. Lucky was fun as this weird-ass guy who can't catch a break, Keshawn got on my nerves when he was first introduced, but I liked how bitched out he gets by the end, Maniac was a likeable love interest, the Janelle James cameo was awesome, and Kathy was so funny as this incredibly mean loan shark. Fuck, I needed more of her in this movie.

The writing was also surprisingly decent to prop this cast up. Yeah, there are some cliches to be expected, like the ambitious person getting their big shot at a promotion undone by something their friend did, the third act breakup, the main character having a love interest who's into her despite her awkward tendencies, none of this is nothing you haven't seen before. But there are some moments of great setups and payoffs. The Jordans Alyssa gets belong to a gangster, but she's not afraid of him because of a one-off gag where he's on the list of bounties in the Payday loans building, and they always getcha. Alyssa's art gets noticed when all their stuff is out in the street, both of which were set up at the beginning of the movie. The white lady who moved into the building who Dreux and Alyssa both wrote off was instrumental in helping them get money since she was able to get hipsters to buy Alyssa's art for high prices. It's all so well put together and I loved the ending because of it.

This movie obviously isn't perfect, like I said there are a lot of cliche scenes, the third act breakup is especially groan-worthy, and I also didn't care for the blatant Church's Chicken ad in the middle of the movie. I get that the food is hitting the spot because Dreux was on the verge of death, but come the fuck on. Despite the issues, this is still a great comedy that I recommend. To all the people on Twitter complaining that "there are no great comedies anymore like in the 2000s," widen your horizons. Watch more movies than just stuff by Judd Apatow.

7/10, comedy movies are dead, my ass.

[howsitduud]

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE REVIEW

Thought I might as well get one of the movies off of my watchlist, and since this one was a brisk 80 minutes, it was chosen. I first found out about this movie like most people I assume did, in Johnny2Cellos' video ranking every single movie nominated for Best Animated Feature. Since this movie was nominated alongside Brother Bear and Finding Nemo in 2003, it was talked about. After watching it, while I did generally enjoy it and I would say it deserved the nomination (more than Brother Bear did), I honestly don't know what to make of this movie. There's a lot to love about it, but there's about an equal amount of strange elements that I wasn't a fan of, leaving a movie I think I enjoyed? Let's just talk about The Triplets of Belleville.

Immediately the thing that's most striking about this movie is the animation. The movie is absolutely gorgeous with the 2D-animated style it goes for. I love all the backgrounds, like the serene setting of Souza's homeland and the winding mountains of the Tour de France, and I also love how impossibly grand and tall the skyscrapers in Belleville look. I also love how Belleville is a parody of American culture, with tall skyscrapers, overweight people, lots of hamburgers, and the thicc statue of liberty holding a hamburger. I wonder how many people got a feeder kink off of this movie. I wasn't too big of a fan of the character designs given how *shaped* they were, but I got used to it and I appreciated just how expressive everyone in the movie was. I also really loved the music in this movie, especially both renditions of "Belleville Rendezvous." The one that plays over the credits is going directly in my playlist.

Despite all of these positive elements, the movie still failed to capture me as much as I'd like to. The plot is very minimal and simple: Madame Souza and her grandson, Champion, train in order to join the Tour de France, but Champion gets kidnapped by the mafia and it's up to Souza, her dog Bruno, and elderly singer triplets to save him. A simplistic plot isn't nessecarily a bad thing; for instance, one of the best Studio Ghibli movies is just about a girl rewriting Country Roads, but a simple plot needs great characters in order to prop it up, and I don't think this movie has good enough characters to do so. Souza is fun, I like that she's simultaneously a sweet old lady who cares for the people she meets and also a massive asshole when she wants to be, and the triplets are fun, seeing them go about their lives, playing music with household appliances and fishing for frogs by using grenades to fish for them was enjoyable, but I wanted to see more of them. There is a surprising lack of The Triplets of Belleville for a movie called The Triplets of Belleville, hell, Bruno gets more screentime than them, and his scenes aren't that much more interesting. I liked Bruno, but I didn't care for his dream sequences despite how trippy they got.

The biggest culprit in the "not much characterization" crowd is Champion himself. He's melancholic and wants to succeed in the Tour de France despite the fact that he sucks at it, but other than that, I don't get much out of his scenes. I wanted to see him break out of the mafia biking gambling ring, but that's moreso because I wanted to see how Souza and the Triplets were going to rescue him. Champion is nothing more than a maguffin, and that's disappointing to me. What's also disappointing is how little of the movie is dedicated to rescuing Champion. Once Souza leaves for Belleville in pursuit of Champion, she kinda just fucks around for a while and that makes the movie lose a lot of its urgency. I don't feel like Champion was that important to Souza if she's not going to try to find him once they get to Belleville. That makes it all the more jarring in the final 15 minutes or so when Souza and the Triplets actually do break him free from the Mafia, and I was just wishing that more of the movie was focused on the plot.

The movie does end on a high point with the incredibly slow, but still really funny chase with the mafia. It's so hilarious not only how slow they're going, but also the fact that multiple gunmen can't seem to catch up to or shoot the old ladies and a malnourished man on bicycles. It gets more hilarious when the gunmen get taken out by their own incompetance, like when they try to drive up a massive hill and start tumbling down. I do also love the final scene of the film, when the camera zooms out and we see that the movie is being watched by an older Champion, who looks over to where Souza was sitting at the beginning of the movie and says, "It's over Grandma," answering her question at the beginning of the movie.

The Triplets of Belleville has evidently clicked with many people. A lot of people herald it as one of the best foreign animated films and say it should've won the Oscar over Finding Nemo. I don't agree with this, but I do get where people are coming from. Having such a unique, anti-Disney foreign film nominated for 2 Oscars is huge, especially during the time when Disney and Pixar were winning the majority of awards.

6/10, I can't wait to watch Chomet's next movie, The Illusionist, that looks so much better.

[howsitduud]

IT GETS BETTER

This is the greatest day of my life

[howsitduud]

This is the greatest day of my life

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MARIO PARTY 4 REVIEW

Back on the Mario Party grind. I think I'm gonna go in order from now on, since playing all the 3DS games back to back was not the greatest idea. The only Mario Party games I haven't played at this point are the Gamecube games, Advance, 9, 10, and Superstars, so I'm starting this leg of the journey with the very first Gamecube Mario Party, Mario Party 4.

This game is, in my opinion, the dictionary definition of a mixed-bag of a game. It doesn't do anything too bad, but it doesn't do anything too good either. There's quite a bit to talk about with this game, so I think I'm gonna compliment sandwich this bitch. I'll start by talking about the general gameplay and format of this game, which I think is really solid. Since I've just gotten used to the pace and flow of the newer Mario Parties, I've forgotten how quickly the Hudsonsoft entries go. I'm not going to be that person who says "90 minutes for 10 turns? What's the deal with that" because I expect to have to dedicate a long time to Mario Party games, but I will give credit that turns do go by a lot quicker here because Toad isn't there explaining every single thing. I will also say that some of the boards are really fun, the standouts being Shy Guy's Jungle Jam, Goomba's Greedy Gala, and Bowser's Gnarly Party. I especially love Goomba's Greedy Gala, since the casino theme is so strong, especially in the part where a roulette wheel decides which part of the map you have to go, but you can bribe the Goomba operating it so that it guarantees a certain path. I never do that though, because I LOVE GAMBLING.

The problem here is that the boards I didn't mention are utter trash, all for the same reason! A common problem I ran into was that there were long stretches of the game where nobody could get the star because nobody could get to the star space. There are big chunks of these boards that need you to have extremely good luck or have some very specific circumstances happen in order for you to access them. Take Koopa's Seaside Soiree, where if you want to get past the cabana, you have to go past these monkeys that have a 50/50 chance of sending you down one of two paths, so if you're unlucky enough, you'll go around in circles for a couple of turns, never getting a chance to participate in the game. The solution here is to just stockpile on Genie Lamps, but the lamps are rare enough and expensive enough to the point where that is not a viable option in a lot of cases. I get that Mario Party prides itself on being luck-based, but I like a mix between luck and skill in my boards, and these are way too luck-based for my tastes.

The item balancing is similarly off. The entire game centralizes around Mini Mushrooms and Mega Mushrooms, and while it's novel to see them floating around before New Super Mario Bros. finalized their designs, these two aren't nearly useful enough to justify how often you get them. Mini Mushrooms let you access mini-gates, but since the dice block is half the normal one, you'll never get through those gates unless you're standing right next to the gate, and Mega Mushrooms lets you roll 2 dice blocks and steal the coins of every player you cross, but you miss out on every single event on each board, including Star Spaces. Way to go, guys, now this item is only useful for traversing the board and not much else. The other items aren't too special, the only exceptions being the Magic Lamp, Crystal Ball, which summons Boo to steal shit, and the Bowser suit, which steals 30 coins from people, except for when you pass Bowser on his board, where he gives you 50 coins because you look just like him. That's actually hilarious.

I have not even mentioned what is by far my favorite aspect to this game, which is the minigames. I think this might have one of the most consistently great selection of minigames in the series because there are so many amazing ones here. Booksquirm, Dungeon Duos, Trace Race, Reverse-a-Bomb, Panels of Panic, The Final Battle, all of these are great games that have become classics in their own rights. There are some bad ones here, this game has shown me that you can never make a game like Blame it on the Crane good in any way, but the great minigames more than make up for them. Beach Volley Folly is also here, and it's the only way you can play characters like Toad and Shy Guy in this game for some reason.

After playing through this game, the word "mixed" is the perfect encapsulation of all my feelings here. This is leagues better than nay game on the 3DS, no doubt about that, but I hesitate to say whether or not it's as good as other ones I've played. It's clear that Hudsonsoft was struggling to create new games on this shiny new Gamecube, as nobody really knew how to create games on the console in the first year of it being out. This is commonly seen as the weak link of the Gamecube Mario Party titles, but if what people have said about the other games are to be believed, I am in for a treat with them.

6/10, better than the first Mario Party.

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WIP but it was fitting

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BALATRO REVIEW

From what I've observed of myself and other people online who play Balatro, there are 5 critical stages to playing this game:

Exposure: Either you see it doing well on Steam, Switch, or Mobile, or you see it won many awards, including being up for Game of the Year and you want to see what it's all about.

First Run: You get a lay of how the game works, and since this game is based on Poker, you're either familiar enough to not need that much of a tutorial or skilled enough to be able to do well despite the game's quirks.

Dopamine High: If you haven't dropped the game yet, you start to get better and better at the game, seeing what Joker, Tarot, and Planet cards you like playing and developing your playstyle around that. Getting high amounts of chip totals and winning rounds, maybe even runs. You feel unstoppable, as you're finally starting to figure the game out.

Chasing the Dragon: You're desperately trying to chase that high you felt in Stage 3. Even if you could stop thinking about the game, you don't want to stop. Your life is subsumed by one loop: discard cards, play hand, get chips, buy cards, lose run, start over. Your existence is meaningless unless you win the run.

Review: Going on steam and saying: "yeah this game's good."

I will be the first to admit that I don't play Poker that much, if even at all. I do think that it's a good game, but I'm don't like gambling at all. I can meme all day about how 90% of gamblers quit before hitting it big, but I just don't like that casinos and the institution of gambling itself has rooted itself in our culture. That barrier of scumminess that gambling puts on the game Poker was the main reason I didn't want to play any real version of it.

And then I found out about Balatro, Poker but it's a roguelike video game with no microtransactions, no in-game purchases, no distractions, just you and the game. I absolutely love roguelikes, they make games genres I'm otherwise lukewarm about so much better because I can get exponentially better at them, so this game intrigued me a lot. I picke dit up during the Steam Spring Sale and that's how my life changed forever.

It's a very simple game on the surface, you play different blinds where you have to play different poker hands in order to get the required amount of chips in order to beat the blind. Simple stuff, but where it gets crazy is when you introduce the game's 150 different Jokers, all of them impacting the amount of chips you get from each card, the multiplier for each hand, and the amount of money you get each round, as well as the different tarot cards, planet cards, and spectral cards you get from packs or jokers, and those multiply your chip total even more, and multiple cards can even be augmented with foil or holographs, and the joker cards can even be made negative, which gives you a free slot for more jokers, and you see how someone can get addicted to this loop.

What's truly fascinating is how the roguelike nature of the game is such a perfect fit for a game like poker, so every time you play a round and lose, it's random enough to wear you can feel like you got fucked over by the randomness embedded in the game by its nature, but it requires enough skill and knowledge to know where you went wrong and what you need to do for your next run to be successful. Like a wise man once said, "you got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, and know when to buy that expensive-ass holographic legendary Joker."

Speaking of, some of the jokers in this game are insanely well-balanced. The common jokers that constantly show up all have good attributes, but don't really excel in any special way, but the higher quality jokers either don't show up often enough for you to account for their existence, or aren't the type of card you need in that instance, so you have to balance the opportunity cost of buying that card and having it take up a Joker slot. This sense of balance doesn't just extend to the Jokers, they also extend to the tarot, planet, spectral and voucher cards. The spectral and voucher cards can be insane run-savers, but they're both balanced by the extreme rarity of spectral cards and the fact that you can only buy one voucher until you beat the boss blind. This rarity makes unlocking and discovering each and every card type and seeing them in your collection so much fun.

What a phenomenal game. I honestly don't have a single problem with this game. This is easily the best card game I've ever played, which I know isn't saying much since the only ones I've played are Uno and PvZ Heroes, but it's a compliment nonetheless.

9/10, the fact that this game that the developers made as a side project, never anticipating it getting over a few thousands downloads, now has a Switch and PS5 port, and multiple awards, including a GOTY nomination is insane.

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obligations, guilt, and the inherent catharsis of saying fuck

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man, 2024 was a great year for ‘films that feel like they’d be fake trailers at the start of a comedy but turn out to be actual real films that they somehow released’, like just look at this lineup

these are all real films that somehow actually came out this year, like none of these feel real in any way, and yet they all 100% are

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MARIO KART TOUR REVIEW

I've played most Mario Karts in the series. Wii and DS were childhood classics for me, 8 and 8 Deluxe are some of my most played games on their respective consoles, I played Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, and Super Circuit when they came to NSO, and I played Double Dash and 7 in *very legal ways.* The only Mario Kart games I don't have as much experience with are the arcade games, Live Home Circuit, and the subject of this review: Mario Kart Tour.

This wasn't the first mobile game Nintendo made, but this is by far one of the biggest, with the 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass specifically being made to port a lot of the new courses from this game onto a home console (and to stave off our desire for a new Mario Kart for a while). This is one of the biggest mobile games in recent memory, and I had not played it before this year. I played it a little bit when it came out, but I was straying more and more away from mobile games at the time, since I was fed up with predatory mobile game practices, which Tour does have in spades. We'll get to that. Years later, I wanted to at least give this game another shot because now that I've experienced some tracks from this game in the BCP, I wanted to get the full experience on an actual copy of Tour. And I'm having a pretty good time with it.

Like I said, this is a mobile game, and that comes with a bunch of shitty mobile game archetypes. It's free-to-play, so the way Nintendo makes money off of this game is by stuffing it fit to burst with costumes and karts and characters that you can buy with in-game currency, but you'd not only have to grind for rubies and pipes, you'd also have to be lucky enough that you'll be able to get the things you want from the shop or the pipes, which go off of gacha mechanics. The easiest way to get the things you want in game is to spend real money. There are only a few games in the world that have gotten me to spend more money on in-game purchases, and Tour will not be one of them.

But all this just comes with the territory of being a free mobile game, what else is wrong with this game? For starters, the controls are bad. You can either tilt your phone to control your kart, or pan your finger across the screen. Both of these are functional, but when you're drifting, making hair-pin turns, or using items, this can mess up your movement and flow and force you to take a turn too early or too late. They make up for this by having mandatory auto-acceleration and smart steering, which are options I never feel good using in MK8 because they can force me off of shortcuts I'd normally use without them. This isn't the worst-controlling game in the series (everyone say thank you to Super Mario Kart), but it still doesn't feel that good to play.

In spite of all these issues, I still think that this is one of the good Mario Kart games in the series, and that's down to the track selection. This has the biggest track selection in all of Mario Kart, with 103 different tracks, most of which having Reverse, Trick, and R/T variants of each course. Reverse variants have you playing the track backwards, Trick variants have you play the track with added trick ramps, and R/T combines the two. This is an ingenious way to add so much replay value to the game, because now tracks I've already played so many times in this game or in previous games now have a new coat of paint over them. I can't go into detail about every single track in the game because I don't have 30 years to do so, but what I will say is that I love how this game gives massive glow-ups to most Super Circuit tracks they have. With the exception of Sky Garden, every single GBA track got some incredible enhancements to the layout or general aesthetic, with plenty of them getting new music remixes. The sun still sets in Sunset Wilds; that's something that even the BCP fucked up!

The main selling point of this game, though are the new tracks, some of which are based on real-world cities. They are perfectly fine, most of them looking and playing the exact same way. The other new tracks are much more interesting to talk about, with some of them having really cool aesthetics and layouts. Hell, my favorite track in all of Mario Kart, Squeaky Clean Sprint, was made to premiere in both this game and the BCP. There is one track that never got a BCP release, though, that being Piranha Plant Pipeline. After playing it, I can safely say that I like it and I can't wait for it to be on the next Mario Kart. It's definitely coming to Mario Kart 9, right Nintendo? Right?

I can honestly go on about this game because there's so much to it. I haven't even mentioned how this game is easily one of the best looking mobile games I've seen. I haven't mentioned that, even though the gacha mechanics stop me from unlocking everything I want, the character roster includes new characters that I've wanted in a Mario Kart game forever, like King Bob-Omb, Captain Toad, Pauline, Dixie Kong, and the greatest character in video game history, Chargin' Chuck. I haven't mentioned how the costume selection is so cool and expansive, with my favorites being Meowser, Luigi's Mansion King Boo, Fire Rosalina, and SNES Mario and Donkey Kong Jr., who are both animated with sprites, which is something they did not need to do for what are effectively reskins. I haven't even talked about how massive the item selection is, with some items that haven't been seen since Double Dash. I haven't even mentioned how this game makes some SNES tracks playable, which I previously thought was impossible.

Even though I don't think Tour comes close in quality to other modern Mario Kart titles, it is still a great, fun, addicting game that I can see myself playing plenty of times after I post this review. At the end of the day, the best thing I can say about this game is that it's a Mario Kart game.

6/10, what was Nintendo smoking thinking they could release this game without multiplayer for a solid year?

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NATHAN FOR YOU REVIEW

I hate reality shows. Most of them are exactly the same, where it's either a bunch of rich people screaming at each other for no reason, having a bunch of lower-class people go through physical and/or psychological torment in order to get money, or it's some guy being a nuisance to random people for ratings. I've held this belief that most reality shows are trash for years, every since I first watched one of the Real Housewives shows with my mom for the first time.

There are, of course, exceptions to this belief. I'm only human, and I can enjoy a piece of slop reality tv every once in a while. Cutthroat Kitchen is a perfect example, taking the "cooking competition" formula and daring to do creative new things with it while having a charismatic host that clearly loves the show he's on. I can also enjoy a few episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race, Impractical Jokers, or The Great British Baking Show every now and again. And a few weeks ago, I finally found another great reality show: Nathan For You.

For those of you who've never heard of this show, the show follows a formula for most of its episodes: the host, Nathan Fielder, goes to a local business, proposes a solution to one of their problems, and spends the rest of the episode attempting to pull the solution off. The only thing is that the solutions he comes up with are batshit insane, like putting a shit-flavored frozen yogurt in a fro-yo place so that people will talk about the fro-yo place and give them free press, or having a liquor store sell alcohol to minors under the stipulation that they can't take the alcohol home until they turn of age. It's these weird solutions to basic problems that really make the show what it is. In a show like Bar Rescue, the business itself is set up to be the weird one who doesn't have their shit together so that John Taffer can come in like a right-wing angel and show them how a business is run. In Nathan For You, Nathan is the weird one who doesn't have his shit together and that contrast makes the show all the funnier because the business owners sometimes have no idea how to react to his ideas. Sometimes they like it and fully embrace the idea, sometimes they're skeptical, and sometimes they just fucking hate Nathan and aren't afraid to get it on national TV. Either way, the joke is always on Nathan, which is integral to any sketch show involving real people.

I also love Nathan as a host. A lot of hosts in reality shows, even the good ones, feel so artificial and like they're putting on a persona for the cameras and only the cameras, but that's not the case with Nathan. In a lot of interviews, he seems to be exactly what he is on the show: a socially awkward guy who's looking for a genuine connection with the people around him, still aware that he's not that good at talking to people. It adds an authenticity to the show, especially since not that many aspects of the show are scripted, and a lot of the business owners are unaware that this is being shot for a comedy show. I also really like that certain people come back in other episodes, like Brian Wolfe, the P.I. who hates Nathan's guts and got his own reality show, or retired Judge Anthony Filosa, who Nathan comes to in order to get advice on how to do things in ways that can be considered legal.

Now the million dollar question is this: is the show funny? For me, it absolutely is. With how far and how much time, money, and effort is put into every single scheme. It's absurd how far Nathan in all the episodes, hiring so many people, spending thousands of dollars, all so that he can convince people that a normal crowded bar is some piece of avant-garde theater. There are even special episode and segments that aren't about helping businesses at all, just fun little bonuses about Nathan having weird ideas to do on the show, like spending $350,000 and months of work to have an interesting story to tell on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

That's all without mentioning the 90 minute elephant in the room, the series finale, Finding Frances. One of the recurring people to be on the show is a professional Bill Gates impersonator named Bill Heath, who has mentioned to Nathan time and time again that he had a long-lost love 50 years ago who got married to some other guy, and he never got over it since. So, Nathan helps him find this mystery woman and, in the process, gets to know Bill a whole lot more. This episode is not a funny as any other episode of the show, and that's a good thing. Even though there are comedic moments, like Bill singing "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas," this episode plays everything pretty straight, with the major theme being about regret and how you conduct yourself in front of others. This episode also gives us the series-long payoff to Nathan feeling inadequate about his ability to talk to people and get a romantic partner when he starts hiring an escort to hang out with him. The final 20 minutes or so are some of the most emotional and heartfelt scenes I've ever seen from any show, reality or otherwise. So heartfelt that I'm not gonna spoil it. You're just gonna have to watch it for yourself.

And I highly reccomend you do! Nathan For You is an incredibly special show, somehow feeling incredibly authentic and real despite being both a reality show and a sketch comedy show, two genres notorious for being painfully scripted. It's one of my favorite reality shows for sure and you'll like it if you'll give it a chance.

8/10, YMS was right, Nathan Fielder should've played the Flash.

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INVINCIBLE SEASON 3 REVIEW

SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SEASON. I WILL BE SPOILING MAJOR EVENTS THAT HAPPEN. IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED THEN STOP READING HERE.

Ok, so I have some fucking beef here. I usually want to watch episodes of this show when they release, because I really like this show, and I want to be eagerly anticipating the new season. Except, for some godforsaken reason, the episodes release at 3:00 IN THE MORNING in my time zone. Why? Doing some math, I found out that the episodes would be coming out at midnight in Seattle, Washington, where Amazon headquarters are. WHY MUST YOU GATEKEEP ME LIKE THIS JEFFERY BEZOS?

Anyway, this season was good.

Like I said, I really like the Invincible show thus far, so I was really looking forward to the new season. So much so, that I read ahead in the comics up until the final arc, which is something that not many fans of Invincible have done. I really like the comics, and I'd say that the show is on a similar level of quality. There are some moments from the comics that I think were translated pretty well onscreen. I'm not gonna refer to the comics too much, though, since there are a few changes made to the show that cement it as its own thing, like Rae being alive after being eaten.

This season mainly focuses on the relationship between Mark and Cecil, where Mark is frustrated with Cecil for trying to rehabilitate criminals who did unspeakable things so that they can get another shot helping out the good guys. I have seen so many posts by people who have the reading comprehension of a fourth grader saying things like, "What's Mark's problem? Why is he tring to fight Cecil on rehabilitating criminals? Is he stupid?" Yes. That's his arc throughout the season. Mark is tested time and time again throughout this season with his identity as a now-independent superhero, and he comes face-to-face with the consequences of the actions of him, like in episode 2 and episode 6, or the actions of other versions of himself, like in episode 4 and episode 7.

Speaking of episode 7, I was really looking forward to the Invincible war and it was so fucking good. This entire season was bleak, with Mark forced to kill a future version of The Immortal and with Mark's new brother killing the Maulers in cold blood, but episode 7 really upped the dark elements of this show. Omni-Man destroying Chicago for no reason was bad enough, but Angstrom Levy getting an army of evil Invincibles to cause what is essentially the apocalypse for no reason is just another level of dismal. So much so that when Conquest showed up for the final episode and destroyed more of the city, my brain just got numb to it.

Yeah, my biggest issue with this season happens in the episode that currently has a 9.9 on IMDB. Maybe I'm the problem, but oh well. I'm not big on some of what happens in Mark's fight with Conquest because it feels like it's retreading on stuff we've already seen. Cities getting destroyed like in the last episode, Conquest uses Mark to splatter innocent civilians just like Omni-Man did in season 1, and Mark beats him to near-death just like he did to Angstrom Levy. It also doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of Conquest. He feels like a C-tier redo of Battle Beast and the thing where he explains his entire backstory and motivation to Mark just before Eve comes in with the clutch of a lifetime was especially stupid. And his characterization in the comics doesn't leave me especially excited for him in the future.

You may have noticed that I haven't talked about a lot of the side characters, and they were good in this season, but nothing could compare to Mark's storyline. Rae surviving the Lizard League fight was pretty cool, since it gives her time to spend dating Rex. Normally, I absolutely despise Rex as a character, but this season made him tolerable. I even liked him when he sacrificed himself to kill one of the Invincibles. All he had to do was die. Kate, Immortal, Debbie all have their moments, but they were fine here. Amanda and Rudy (or Rex) are the most adorable couple in the show, and Oliver is a great addition to the cast since he doesn't have the same contempt for Nolan that the other characters do. Powerplex, though, is my favorite new addition to the cast, and he's the focus of my favorite episode in the show. Aaron Paul stays winning.

Nolan and Allen also get half of episode 4 all to themselves, which was great to see. Their jailbreak was some of the best action in the entire show thus far, and it keeps up the great animation that's a consistent highlight of the show for me. I especially love how the animators lock the fuck in for the Mark vs Conquest fight, it was so beautiful to watch. Absolute Cinema.

Even though I loved a lot of what this season offered, I don't feel it hit the insane highs that season 1 did, which is still not a bad thing in the slightest. This season is on a similar level of quality to the last season, so I am giving it the same score I gave season 2, an 8/10.