Watched IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE for the foist time today ! Bert and Ernie were in it, but not the Bert and Ernie we know and love
That was pretty cool. Took a while to get to the interesting part near the end: the dystopian Georgeless city, which brought the Evil Biff City from Back to the Future 2 to mind. I kind of liked librarian Mary because she had glasses; but she was happier in the canon….situation. <3 He married her because her name is Mary
One of my favorite Simpsons episodes is “When Flanders Failed” so I recognized that the ending is based on this ! Possibly other references too
I got gifted the 20th anniversary collection of the Matrix comics for my birthday, which has been the trigger for me finally going through the Wachowskis filmography… not in any specific order, just the order the movies jump out at me. I love the first Matrix and Speed Racer is one of my favourite movies ever, but this is the extent of their films I’ve seen until now (oh I also played a lot of Enter the Matrix lol). I’ve got a lot to catch up on!
As always, rating my viewing on the classic Jace Scale of Like It , Love It or GOTTA HAVE IT!
The Matrix is such a perfect time and place movie. I really can’t imagine this specific movie existing in any other context except the immediate pre-Y2K one it is in. I love it so much. GOTTA HAVE IT!
I’ve somehow avoided seeing The Animatrix my entire life, but it’s one of those things where I saw it and was like yeah, of course I would love this! I thought all of the features were great except one which I thought was really, really, really bad (Final Flight of the Osiris). My favourite short was World Record. I had no idea Peter Chung did one of the features in this and it’s the most Peter Chung shit I’ve ever seen. Probably should be a Love It but I am irrational. GOTTA HAVE IT!
Took a Matrix break to watch Cloud Atlas. Based on how I’ve heard people talk about this movie I felt like I was quickly gonna lose the thread and be really confused, which I think is why I put it off so long, but honestly I found it easy to follow with how its constructed once I spent enough time with all the different threads. I had a great time with it. I think the only true sore spot I had with it was with the white actors in prosthetic makeup to appear Asian, which, even if we can assume it’s well-intentioned, just looked bad and was a poor choice. I’ll probably end up watching this again after I read its source material, but for the first viewing I LOVED IT!
Next up the Matrix break is over and I will be watching all the sequels for the first time. Will I like them, or will I loathe them? Oh wait, my rating system doesn’t go below like. I didn’t think about this
Oh also I saw Bugonia and after doing so rewatched Save the Green Planet! I LOVE BOTH!
Sort of reminds me of a comic I did way back in the day, wherein Santa is going around punishing the naughty kids. I don’t think I’d even heard of Krampus at that point
Jack asks if there’s like a substitute Santa if anything happens to him, which is kind of funny because we also re-watched “How Murray Saved Christmas”, which is a story about this happening
You might enjoy a movie called “Arthur Christmas,” which is all about answering the whole “How does Santa do it?” question, and especially how Santa and co attempt to deal with unexpected situations. It’s Studio Aardman, but oddly it’s CG instead of stop-motion… but still mimicking their look? Pretty funny, at any rate.
We actually have Arthur Christmas, but have never watched it !
One year, my mother requested it for whatever reason [?] so I must’ve ordered it. I just mentioned this, and she doesn’t remember doing this. Maybe something to do on the weekend
Not to be confused with “Arthur’s Perfect Christmas”, I imagine ! [Arthur the Aardvark, from PBS]
Finally got around to watching Arthur Christmas today ! Arthur was in it, and Santa was in it, and another Santa was in it, and another Santa. Pretty cool !
Yes, it’s totally realistic now ! Well, hopefully Arthur learns to speed up the process a bit by next year. Possibly the first time I’ve seen Africa mentioned in a Santa movie [?]
One I haven’t seen in forever is the Santa Clause–what if he dies on the trip and no one puts on his clothes ?! Maybe the kids’ parents would fill in, but that would just be ridiculous
Year’s over. Here’s a Letterboxd list of what I watched.
Another thing to note is that to start off the new year, I watched the next Satoshi Kon movie on my list, Millennium Actress. Beautiful antithesis to Perfect Blue and another masterpiece from the man himself. What a movie to start off the year. I was crying at the climax and ending. “Tomorrow means hope.”
I love Millennium Actress. It’s been a while since I last saw it, but I’m in the mood to revisit it because I rewatched Tokyo Godfathers recently (it’s a Christmas & New Year’s movie). Excellent stuff. I’m a bit mixed on Paprika and Perfect Blue in comparison, but regardless I’ll forever be sad we couldn’t get more Satoshi Kon films. Nobody else did anime movies like him, before or since.
Rewatching Joe Dante’ Matinee this evening (which is a great film for anyone interested) and it turns out Cory Barlog is one of the group of teen kids that is friends with Omari Katz’s character, Stan. Before this screening I had no idea Barlog was a kid actor.
I’m watching a podcast while I work and they just said that Nightmare Before Christmas is a parable for cultural appropriation and wow I never connected that. Also they said Tim Burton hardly did anything for that movie and some lady did most of it but haven’t fact checked that one.
We actually happened to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas yesterday [with niece and nephew]; that was nice. Even though it’s OUT OF SEASON now. I have seen it read as a cultural appropriation thing !
Tim Burton wrote the original poem/book; I have it now. It’s like the movie, but just condensed into the Jack/Santa parts. No Sally or Oogie Boogie, but the 3 kids are there at least
I watched it with a maiden 2 years ago [her favorite movie] that was pretty cool but unfortunately we had to grow apart. Seems to be popular with some of the gentlewomen–the movie, I mean
Thinking of putting up a little list of favorite scenes from movies released in 2025 (in no particular order). Just because I kept thinking of the pool scene today. Can’t get that track out of my head. There were a ton of standout scenes for me anyway.
Car Chase in One Battle After Another
What time is it? in One Battle After Another
Pool Scene in Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc
The first target in No Other Choice
I Lied to You from Sinners
The Amazon product placement in War of the Worlds (2025) (it was really funny when they bribed someome with Amazon gift cards)
The transformation scene including the rawest dap up in fiction in Ne Zha 2
, Love It 
or GOTTA HAVE IT! 
