Susan Lu

This is my favourite movie of 2022. It does what Multiverse of Madness failed to do, which is to present an interesting multiverse tale, but never losing sight of the emotional core of the movie while exploring some deep philosophical ideas. Everyone on the cast and crew of this film brought their A game. It made me ugly cry at rocks. There are certain scenes that will stay with me forever. Please go watch this movie!

Having finished both seasons 1 and 2, I must say I am extremely conflicted when it comes to recommending this series. There are some mild spoilers for this review, but I will try to keep most of it vague. The two stars are for season 1, which had great physical and mind games that the characters needed to survive in order to move onto the next level as they try to figure out what's going on. If you enjoy Battle Royale/Liar Game/Hunger Games/Squid Game etc, season 1 is a pretty safe bet as long as you are okay with some of the usual manga tropes. However, unless you have a lot of spare time on your hands, I would not recommend continuing with the second season. Season 2 is so ridiculous and badly paced that it drained a lot of the goodwill that I had for this series. There's only one prison game that was satisfying to watch (IIRC episodes 3-4 if you want to catch that one). The rest of the time it felt like a bad action movie where the main characters should have been killed in multiple instances but by some miracle live. (For example, people being in horrible car accidents without seat belts on and getting away unscathed, or being stabbed and shot multiple times in what should have been fatal wounds, but then most of them don't die from their injuries.) As a result, I was bored by everything that had to do with the King of Spades since the setup for that game is just so stupid, and I fast forwarded most of the scenes with Arisu and Usagi because the romance felt very stilted while the scenes dragged on forever. The final answer as to why they are in Borderlands and what actually happened on that day is meh, and it drives me crazy that they broke their own internal rule for how Borderlands is supposed to function by bringing back a character who died there. Taking both S1 and S2 together, this series was pretty disappointing. At times it also reminded me of the weakness of manga adaptations, because characters and scenes that work in manga don't necessarily work in the live action format. Overall I would say watch season 1, then catch episodes 3-4 in season 2. The rest can be skipped.

This is the best Star Wars show that Disney has put out, and it's not even close. The first few episodes are a little slow, but once it gets going, the show never stops. Excellent writing, story, and acting all around, and you don't need to know a lot about the SW universe in order to watch this show. Highly recommended for all SW fans, or just fans of good sci-fi in general.

I came in with low expectations, and honestly this ended up way better than I expected. It's a pretty faithful adaptation of the novel, and the things they did change at least aren't lore breaking. I think the modifications are mostly on par or improves upon the source material (such as giving Harwin Strong some personality and making him feel like a real person), and all of the actors do a great job. Definitely the best of the fantasy shows airing right now. Overall I'm very excited to see where this leads!

I recently watched Rings of Power, Andor, and House of the Dragon, and honestly I found Rings of Power to be the worst of the bunch by a wide margin, I'd give it a 3/10. It's a huge bummer since Middle Earth and Tolkien is my favourite setting out of the three, but RoP is poorly written and really just a random fantasy show with Tolkien skin on top. The overhead shots of the cities look beautiful, but that's the best thing about RoP. It's not as bad as the Wheel of Time TV show, but it's really not much better either given its huge budget. There may be spoilers up to episode 6 of RoP, so if you haven't watched that far, maybe skip this review. I think if you are a book reader or you enjoy Tolkien's lore, this show will probably be a skip for you. I am quite open to adaptations of original works (such as what PJ did with LotR or the first couple of seasons of GoT), but the changes made should be enjoyable to watch. For almost all of the modifications the show runners made in RoP, I found myself baffled or rolling my eyes at the direction they took. It feels like they dislike Tolkien's Elven characters, because Galadriel, Gil-galad, Elrond, and Celebrimbor are all completely unrecognizable. Not just in styling (if you are a fan of PJ's movies), but also in terms of characterization. The only thing they share with their book counterparts is their names. There's also moments where the characters behave like idiots, such as them spending what feels like 2 episodes trying to get an important item back, but once they grabbed a wrapped package from the bad guy, none of them actually check if it contains the thing they've been looking for?? Instead they just move right on to celebrating??? Like you can't have me believe these battle hardened warriors, some of whom have lived at least hundreds of years, would make amateur mistakes like this. There's also a major plot point where they changed mithril to some combination of the silmarils + the source of the Elves' life force, so that the Elves must get help from the Dwarves to access the precious metal or else they will...die???? It goes in direct contradiction with Tolkien's setting for the Elves, who are immortal and can only die from 1) being physically slain, 2) grief or weariness, or 3) living so long that they start to fade. The change makes absolutely no sense and is frustrating to say the least. Last of all, I am just not fond of most of the costume design and character styling for this show. Aesthetics is mostly a personal preference though, so this might not be as big of a deal to you, but I miss my long-haired Elves, and I wanted to see some lady-Dwarves with big beards! The first time I watched this show, I legit thought that the Elves were humans, and my dad even asked me if they were Hobbits. It's definitely a downgrade from what PJ did with his movies.