Look Back

While the mangaka Tatsuki Fujimoto is perhaps best known for his series Chainsaw Man and Fire Punch, he has also had a number of one-shots under his belt. One such one-shot is Look Back from 2021, which explores the passion behind the art process and creating manga. After reading the manga, I learned that there was an anime film adaptation in 2024 released through Amazon Prime Video, and so decided to watch it while the story was still fresh in my mind. The film not only does an excellent job of adapting the manga’s story, it even has its own small touches that add to it in an effective way.

Moana 2

Note: This review contains spoilers for Moana and Moana 2.

The success of Moana in 2016 meant an inevitable follow-up. In 2020, Disney originally announced such a follow-up as Moana: The Series, a five-episode long-form musical comedy series meant for Disney+ in 2023. During development, however, the team kept getting asked about putting it on the big screen to the point that in January 2024, the project had officially pivoted to a theatrical sequel with the original cast reprising their roles. Although the final film, Moana 2, released in November 2024 to mixed reviews, it still made over $1 billion against its budget of $150 million (a massive profit unless Disney’s accountants somehow believe otherwise). Based on word of mouth, I (fittingly) waited for the eventual Disney+ release so I could see the finished product for myself without potentially wasting good money watching it in a theater. As it turns out, Moana 2 really feels like five episodes of a TV series stapled together, making it the modern equivalent to the likes of Atlantis: Milo’s Return.

Project Shoreline

While the “Simulator” genre is not new, one of the more successful takes in recent years has undoubtedly been the Square Enix-published Powerwash Simulator from 2022, which has inspired similar titles based around different occupations with similar core gameplay. This brings us to an indie platformer from 2024 called Project Shoreline, which was brought to my attention through my Steam recommendations. Due to physical health circumstances after playing PIO (as well as a particularly difficult stage in Astro Bot), I wasn’t sure about playing it at first since it was a platformer, but later decided to give it a try upon making a connection with the gameplay of Powerwash Simulator (and also the fact it was free). After managing to 100% the game while playing with a much more comfortable DualSense controller, I came away wanting more from its surprisingly fun and relaxing combination of elements.

Stubs - The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024) voices by Eric Bauza, Candi Milo, Peter MacNicol, Wayne Knight, Laraine Newman Directed by Pete Browngardt. Screenplay by Darrick Bachman, Pete Browngardt, Kevin Costello, Amdrew Dickman, David Gemmill, Alex Kirwan, Ryan Kramer, Jason Reicher, Michael Ruocco, Johnny Ryan, Eddie Trigueros. Produced by Michael Baum. Run time: 91 minutes. Color. USA. Animated, Comedy

Porky Pig and Daffy Duck are back on the big screen in The Day the Earth Blew Up, a Warner Bros., animation film released by Ketchup Entertainment. If you’re expecting the old Looney Tunes from your childhood, this is a good facsimile but doesn’t quite live up to expectations. Some of that may have to do with the fact that there are 11 writers on the film and while the style is reminiscent of the past, the humor is a little cruder.

Stubs - Conclave

Conclave (2024) starring: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini Directed by Edward Berger. Screenplay by Peter Straughan. Based on Conclave by Robert Harris. Produced by Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell, Michael Jackman, Alice Dawson, Robert Harris. Run time: 120 minutes. Color US/UK Political Thriller

While art is not always a reflection of real life, sometimes a movie comes at a time when, even though it might be fiction, gives insight into current and future events. With the current Pope seriously ill, the process through which he would be replaced is examined in Conclave, a film from director Edward Berger, based on the novel of the same name by Robert Harris.

Stubs - Anora

Anora (2024) starring Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Aleksei Serebryakov. Directed by Sean Baker. Screenplay by Sean Baker. Produced by Alex Coco, Samantha Quan, Sean Baker. Run time: 239 minutes. Color. USA Comedy, Drama

Sometimes the hype hits the road and it’s not a pretty sight. You hear over and over again how good a film is and how many awards its won and you think you need to watch it to keep up. A few years ago, it was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and this year it’s Anora. But after watching, you wonder why it’s being hailed as a possible Academy Award Best Picture winner.

Flow (2024)

One animated film from last year that flew under many people’s radars was Flow (Latvian: Straume), which I first heard about through Animation Magazine. The visual style and basic premise were enough to intrigue me, but I had a hard time finding a theater in my area that was showing it, let alone at a more convenient time, when I remembered to look for tickets. The movie winning the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature increased my interest further, though I opted to wait until it became available to rent through Amazon Prime Video to finally watch it. I will admit, however, that I was mildly distracted by the ongoing SoCal fires at the time of my initial viewing due to living within the vicinity, but I still did my due diligence to give the film as much of my attention as possible. With that said, although I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, I still think the Golden Globe should have gone to fellow contender The Wild Robot.

Stubs - A Complete Unknown

A Complete Unknown (2024) starring Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz, Scoot McNairy Directed by James Mangold. Screenplay by James Mangold, Jay Cocks Based on Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald. Produced by Fred Berger, James Mangold, Alex Heineman, Bob Bookman, Peter Jaysen, Alan Gasmer, Jeff Rosen, Timothée Chalamet Run time: 141 minutes. Color. USA. Biographical, Musical, Drama

Hollywood has been on a roll making film biographies of musicians of late. The current subject is Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. This is the second Dylan fictional biography; he was also the subject of I’m Not There (2007), an experimental biopic, which included Cate Blanchett representing one aspect of Dylan’s life.

The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland

 

Although I am enough of a fan of Alice in Wonderland to be curious about other takes on the story and characters, it’s more often the more unique takes that grab my interest the most. The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland is one such take, being an adaptation of a book by Carys Bexington and Kate Hindley that combines Lewis Carroll’s story with the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas in an interesting way with its own unique premise. Although I have not read the book, the title and visual style were enticing enough to me when I stumbled upon the movie’s existence through an issue of Animation Magazine and seeing that it had already been out for a month as of this writing. After making the time to watch it for free through Amazon Prime Video, I liked it a lot more than I expected, enough to make me want to read the book.

Stubs - Red One

Red One (2024) starring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, J. K. Simmons. Directed by Jake Kasdan. Screenplay by Chris Morgan. Produced by Hiram Garcia, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Chris Morgan, Jake Kasdan, Melvin Mar. Run time: 123 minutes. Color. USA Christmas, Action, Mystery, Comedy, Adventure

Have you ever watched a movie and wondered who the intended target audience was? That was my reaction while watching Red One, an attempt at making Dwayne Johnson into a holiday tradition, when I watched it recently on Amazon Prime. Good thing it was free to watch.

Awaria

Back in 2020, Łukasz “vanripper” Piskorz released Helltaker, a game that grabbed the internet’s attention and stole my heart (enough that I bought every official Nendoroid to show my support). Although Helltaker did receive an additional free chapter in celebration of its first anniversary, nothing else had come of it apart from a series of official webcomic pages. After a while, I wondered about the future of Helltaker and vanripper’s game dev career when I saw at random that he had released a brand-new free game, Awaria, three years in the making. Naturally, I downloaded it on Steam as fast as possible and, although different from his previous work and about less than an hour long, I enjoyed myself all the way through.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Film)

Note: This review contains spoilers for Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

It’s amazing how much of a difference one change can make. Where I once felt disgusted by the earliest trailer for the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie, thanks entirely to “Ugly Sonic”, I later felt hyped for a third film based entirely on the mid-credits scene from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Based on how the film series had turned out so far, I felt confident that they could pull a hat trick with a third film, especially after learning that director Jeff Fowler had an early connection with one of the new characters, Shadow the Hedgehog, having worked on the pre-rendered cutscenes for the Shadow the Hedgehog game. I even went through the effort of playing Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 for the first time in anticipation of how the film would adapt the latter. After about two years of waiting, and watching the film on opening day, to an unthinkable Rotten Tomatoes score in the high 80s no less, I found it worth the wait and more.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Ever since the release of A Matter of Loaf and Death in 2008, the Wallace & Gromit franchise has been all but dormant outside the UK, not helped by Peter Sallis’ retirement in 2010 and passing in 2017, with the Shaun the Sheep spin-off series helping to keep it alive in the interim. To this end, I was surprised and excited when not only was a new feature film, Vengeance Most Fowl, announced to be in the works, but that it was also a follow-up to the 1993 short film The Wrong Trousers, which happens to be my favorite entry. The announcement of Netflix being the distributor was a bit of a spirit breaker, as I do not have a Netflix account, however as the film got closer to release, a series of limited US theatrical screenings came up, with the only local option I had being a one-day showing at an IPIC theater (the same one where I first watched Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions under similar circumstances). After leaping at the chance, I found the wait and effort to have been well worth it, even if it doesn’t quite live up to the original.

Stubs - Beatles ' 64

Beatles ’64 (2024) starring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr. Directed by David Tedeschi, Produced by Martin Scorsese, Margaret Bodde Run time: 106 minutes. Black and White. U.S./United Kingdom. Documentary.

Every Beatles anniversary gets some sort of celebration, whether it’s the 50^th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper getting a box set and a remix, or as with 2024, the 60^th anniversary of The Beatles arrival in the U.S. To celebrate this occasion, there have been several releases during the year, including a Mega block set that re-enacted their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, two separate Record Store Day releases, including 3-inch singles of all the songs they sang on that first show, a collection of vinyl mono releases from 1964, and now Beatles ’64, a “new” documentary that premiered on November 29, 2024 on the Disney+ streaming platform.

Doronko Wanko

Doronko Wanko (lit. "Muddy Dog") is a game I had seen pop up a few times in my Steam Recommended, but didn’t really explore any further because I wasn’t sure what to expect. After actually exploring the page recently, I thought it actually sounded interesting enough to try, especially after learning Bandai Namco developed it and helped by the fact it was free. While the game itself isn’t very long, I found myself having a great time with it and wanting more like it.

Please, Touch The Artwork 2

With hidden object games being a fairly saturated genre, it can take a lot to try and stand out. One such game that I had recently come across is Please, Touch The Artwork 2, a game by former Hitman dev Thomas Waterzooi made around the art of Belgian artist James Ensor. While I had not played the original Please, Touch The Artwork game, the presentation and it being free led me to download and play it, which proved to be a short, yet worthwhile experience.

Sheepy: A Short Adventure

While I don’t actively seek out modern games with pixelated art styles, I am still willing to give them a chance if the art and gameplay styles appeal to me. One such game is Sheepy: A Short Adventure, which I came across in my Steam recommendations and decided to download since it was free. After going through the short experience for myself, I found myself wondering how a game of such quality could possibly have been free.

Epic Mickey: Rebrushed (PS5)

After Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two and its companion game, Power of Illusion, failed to meets sales expectations in 2012, the Epic Mickey franchise was shelved, cancelling the in-development Epic Donald along with it. This development also led to the character of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who was reacquired from Universal just for this series and reintroduced to a new generation of fans, to be relegated mostly to cameos in other Disney works, including a cancelled Disney+ series, until the company suddenly started paying more attention to him around his entry into the public domain. 12 years later, both the Epic Mickey franchise and Oswald were given a second chance with the announcement of a remake of the original game for modern platforms, dubbed Epic Mickey: Rebrushed (Rebrushed). As someone who enjoyed the original, this announcement got me excited, and I had faith in Purple Lamp as the developer due to their work on SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated. As someone who became an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit fan as a result of the original game, I was further surprised when I noticed that, according to the back of the box, Rebrushed is an official Oswald the Lucky Rabbit product.

 

A small, but interesting bit of branding.

Due to the proximity of its release to my birthday, I received the PS5 version of Rebrushed as a gift, at which point I felt hyped enough to play it as soon as possible, and found it to meet my expectations and more.

Silent Hill 2 (2024)

Note: This review contains spoilers for Silent Hill 2.

In the decades since its release in 2001, Silent Hill 2 (SH2) has earned and maintained a reputation as one of the greatest survival horror games ever made thanks to its powerful storyline that tackled taboo subjects in a mature way. Fast forward to today and ten years after the 2012 release of Silent Hill: Downpour, Konami announced a full series revival, which included two SH2 projects: a remake also called Silent Hill 2 (SH2R), developed by Bloober Team, and a film adaptation, Return to Silent Hill, directed by Christophe Gans, who had previously directed the original Silent Hill film adaptation. Despite involving former Team Silent members Masahiro Ito and Akira Yamaoka throughout development, SH2R fought an uphill battle. Although Bloober Team had experience with horror titles like Layers of Fear, Observer, Blair Witch and The Medium, these titles usually had a mixed reception at best. Add to that the lack of pre-order bonuses for physical copies and the negative reception to early trailers, which included some differences in presentation and character models. Fortunately, confidence grew as the October 8, 2024 release date grew closer and the game released on PS5 and Steam to positive reception, as well as selling 1 million copies within the first three days.

Personally, I had faith in SH2R from the moment of its announcement, as I could sense the team’s passion behind the project, though I followed the development with more cautious optimism. When it released, I also had a hard time finding a physical copy on day one, but I fortunately found a store that still had a number of them left. Throughout the following playthrough, I felt impressed by what Bloober Team had accomplished and, when it ended, I took a little time to process my full opinion before writing this review. As of this post, I can confidently say that while SH2R isn’t a flawless masterpiece, and neither is the original, I think Bloober Team knocked it out of the park and made me even more excited about the series' future.

My Hero Academia: You're Next

Note: This review contains spoilers for My Hero Academia and My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission.

Although the My Hero Academia manga has ended (arguably on an unsatisfying note), the anime isn’t yet finished, with a recently concluded seventh season and final upcoming eighth season to wrap everything up. In the meantime, animation studio Bones got to squeeze out one final film, You’re Next, which debuted during the seventh anime season. Since the film only just received an international theatrical release, we watched the dub and found that even though it’s not the best of the four films, it’s certainly an entertaining one and an improvement over World Heroes’ Mission.

Before I continue, I’d like to note that although the film is non-canon, it takes place between the Paranormal Liberation War and Final War arcs of the story, which translates to right between Season 6 and 7 for anime-only viewers.