100 Meters (2025)

I continue my incidental pattern since April 2025 of watching at least one animated movie per month. This one's my first anime since October, and it continues another incidental pattern: animes that are neither fantasy nor sci-fi. Considering how I used to think that all anime was too weird, I can't complain.

The most focal character herein is Togashi, at three points in his life: sixth grade, high school, and ten years after. In each chapter, he's an excellent sprinter, but his attitude toward the sport isn't stable. Sometimes he thinks it'll solve all his problems, sometimes he loses interest, and sometimes he falls to pieces over an inability to stay on top.

Jurassic World (2015)

This is the first movie I ever watched after (OK, long after) checking out the Nostalgia Critic's synopsis thereof. He made it sound bad except for two great sequences, ultimately declining to recommend seeing or skipping it, but at least he put it ahead of The Lost World: Jurassic Park. What finally persuaded me? A warning that it would stop streaming on Netflix at the end of the month.

In Costa Rica, a successor to the failed zoo of revived dinosaurs has actually done rather well, but the novelty is wearing off, so the profits don't satisfy stockholders. Operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and CEO Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) give the go-ahead for the team of Dr. Henry Wu (returning BD Wong) to engineer a whole new multispecies specimen, the Indominus rex, projected to be fifty feet tall someday. I hardly need to tell you they've created a monster and not prepared adequately. The clever girl's escape kicks off a whole host of catastrophes, with other big reptiles chipping in.

The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

Yeah, it's been less than a month since my last talking animal cartoon review. This one, despite numerous award nominations and a few minor wins, gets a mostly middling reception. So why did I bother to see it, especially after a decade? Because I was in the mood for something short (86 minutes) and cute.

Max (Louis C.K.), a Jack Russell, basically enjoys life in Manhattan until owner Katie (Ellie Kemper) brings home a large rescue Newfie, Duke (Eric Stonestreet), prompting covetous competition. An outdoor kerfuffle results in both of them losing their collars and getting caught by dogcatchers. Before they can reach the pound, a gang of sewer-dwelling, human-hating abandoned pets busts a member out of the van, and Max and Duke persuade lead rabbit Snowball (Kevin Hart) to take them too. When their overture of rebellion proves false and they accidentally cause the demise of the biggest and nastiest ex-pet while escaping, Snowball becomes determined to hunt them down. As the two dogs seek a way home, Gidget (Jenny Slate as yet another small fluffy white critter), a neighboring Pom with a crush on Max, organizes a search squad of various pets.

Perhaps most useful to the search is antiheroic hawk Tiberius (Albert Brooks), tho he's not as acquainted with Max as most of the others. Chloe the cat (Lake Bell) stands out for pretending not to care as much as she does. Pops the basset (Dana Carvey) may be old and paraplegic, but he knows a few key points. Frequently present if less important are Buddy the dachshund (Hannibal Buress), Mel the pug (Bobby Moynihan), Sweetpea the budgie (Tara Strong), and Norman the lost guinea pig (Illumination Entertainment mainstay Chris Renaud). The gang members are too numerous to list, but I'll mention Tattoo (Michael Beattie), a highly inked pig.

Not exactly an epic tale; most events take place before Katie comes home for the day. It sure doesn't take long for a shared crisis to get Max and Duke to soften toward each other, with only a slight echo of their prior hostility around the start of Act 3. After all, the story tries to be heartwarming when it's not going pure comedy or adventure. Even Snowball is more redeemable than Lulu.

The comedy aspect gets priority. It usually takes the form of pets fulfilling stereotypes, pets defying stereotypes, slapstick, or vulgarity. On the last part, eh, it could be worse. Dont expect much of interest from the humans.

TSLoP is almost exactly what the ads led me to expect. Indeed, it borders on predictable, never trying for innovation. That's not altogether a bad thing when you choose a movie. I probably won't bother with the sequel, but I got what I came for.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Man, I'd last seen a Hobbit movie before I started this blog more than a decade ago. The threequel was reputed to be the weakest link in a pale imitation of The Lord of the Rings, hence my lack of hurry to see it. Nonetheless, it looked like the most promising DVD I hadn't watched in my local library, having better ratings from general audiences than from critics.

The Desolation of Smaug ends with halfling Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) accidentally inspiring the titular event. Not long into TBotFA, human archer Bard (Luke Evans) slays the rampaging Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), but that's not the end of the dragon's evil influence. One of Bilbo's dwarven companions, King Thorin (Richard Armitage), finds Smaug's trove almost as corruptive as the One Ring and refuses to share any of it with the humans of newly burned Lake-town, despite his prior oath and their obvious need. When elven King Thranduil (Lee Pace) comes with an army to claim a family treasure, Thorin is undaunted, and the other dwarves obediently prepare to fight. Perhaps fortunately, before the first casualty, the arrival of two armies of darkness induces the other three to team up.

20th Century Women (2016)

I felt I'd seen enough comedies or semi-comedies in a row. This movie looked suitably serious, not least with A24 distribution. Turns out it's a dramedy. Oh well, I hardly noticed.

Apart from brief flashbacks and flash-forwards, the setting is 1979 Santa Barbara. Dorothea (Annette Bening), 55, feels inadequate as the single mom of Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), 15, and doesn't count on middle-aged tenant and potential boyfriend William (Billy Crudup) to supplement her efforts. She asks her other unrelated tenant, 24-year-old Abbie (Greta Gerwig), and Jamie's closest female friend, 17-year-old Julie (Elle Fanning), to help him grow up healthily. But Jamie's not keen on this arrangement, and the ladies have conflicting ideas of how to go about it.

Deepwater Horizon (2016)

Wow, it's been that long already? ...Since the depicted incident, I mean. I don't recall the screen adaptation from an article being advertised when new, which may explain the poor box office performance despite rave reviews and award wins and nods. Regardless, I got curious to learn more.

In 2010, technician Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) says goodbye to wife Felicia (Kate Hudson) and starts work on the titular oil rig off the Louisiana coast. He and manager Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) soon discover lots of problems, such as a nonfunctional phone system, and persuade the visiting stingy BP managers, Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) and Robert Kaluza (Brad Leland), to approve more testing. The real trouble begins with a cement bond failure....

Ip Man 2 (2010)

Either I watched the first Ip Man before I launched this blog, or I was too unenthused to write a review. I certainly don't remember much of it. Just know that it's an action flick about an RL grandmaster of the Wing Chun style of kung fu, often called Yip rather than Ip even on screen, perhaps best known for teaching Bruce Lee. From what I can tell, the story bears little resemblance to his actual life, and I imagine that the sequels hew no closer.

In 1950, Ip (Donnie Yen) opens a Wing Chun school in Hong Kong. He has no students until young hoodlum Wong Shun Leung (Huang Xiaoming) challenges him and the word spreads of how awesome Ip is. Alas, they develop a fierce rivalry with thugs from the Hung Ga school under Hung Chun-nam (Sammo Hung), who runs a protection racket for martial arts trainers. By the second half, the main villain appears to be dirty Superintendent Wallace (Charles Mayer), who shakes down Hung, bullies journalists who print unflattering truths, and pulls strings for British boxer Taylor "Twister" Miller (Darren Shahlavi) to take on Chinese opponents and assert ethnic superiority. You can guess who the last one will be.

Pitch Perfect (2012)

Boy, it's been more than a decade since I saw the first sequel. I don't remember when I put the predecessor on my Netflix list; I may have ignored it many times. But I was finally in the mood for a flick with a lot of decent singing, regardless of any other virtues.

After a disastrous performance at the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella, the all-female Barden Bellas are down to Aubrey (Anna Camp) and Chloe (Brittany Snow). They can't be too picky, so the new recruits are a motley crew. Some get kicked out for intimacy with the Bellas' fiercest on-campus rivals, the all-male Treblemakers. The main internal conflict concerns Beca (Anna Kendrick), who has a habit of pushing people away but does great at mashups, which hidebound, bossy Aubrey rejects.

The Maze Runner (2014)

Yes, one more dystopia for the year. It stops streaming on Netflix January 8, and I didn't want to forget. Besides, there's some advantage to watching while my memory of a certain other is still pretty fresh.

Once a month, an initially unidentified organization sends a new amnesiac teen, along with a few supplies, to a walled-off Glade with other such teens. Part of the wall opens each dawn to reveal a mechanized labyrinth, and designated "Runners" will explore and map it, hoping to find an exit. They have to return before the wall closes at dusk, because no one has ever lasted a night in the maze without getting stung by a cyborg monster called a Griever. If it doesn't kill you outright, its venom makes you too aggressively insane to retain your welcome in the Glade.

Protagonist Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) is the latest arrival, about three years into the maze's existence, so the population is a couple dozen. Within a few days, his curiosity has him breaking the teen society's rules and succeeding where no one else has. Not everyone appreciates this, especially Gally (Will Poulter), one of the leaders, who fears how the maze will respond. Indeed, it does start doing things differently, upping the difficulty level....

The Hunger Games (2012)

After all the post-apocalyptic horror movies I watched in October, I thought it'd be a while before I tried another dystopia. But when YouTube suggested this one to me, I thought it was a pretty big hole in my cultural education. Besides, at least the dystopia is legalistic and orderly for a change.

In the future nation of Panem, an annual televised competition has two 12- to 18-year-olds from each of 12 districts live in a rigged woodland until only one survives, with an expectation that some deaths will be at each other's hands. They're usually drafted by lottery, having greater odds of being picked the more they accept government rations, but Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), 16, volunteers to replace her younger sister (Willow Shields). The other "tribute" from her district is her friend Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), who has wanted to be more than a friend to her, but the rules have erased his hope. Katniss, however, does not adopt a loner attitude....

I'm Still Here (2024)

Not to be confused with the 2010 Joaquin Phoenix flick of the same title. I've been dragging my heels about watching the latest Academy Best Picture nominees, because few of them look like my type. I finally decided to go ahead with another when it came up on Netflix, not knowing much about it.

In 1970, military-run Brazil faces a lot of unrest. The Paiva family in Rio de Janeiro gets a taste of it when officers thoroughly search motorists for suspects. More importantly, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) has been supporting expats, which his wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), and their five kids don't seem to know -- until plainclothesmen arrest him. Asking about him yields incomplete answers at best and follow-up punishment at worst.

Number 24 (2024)

I picked the first war epic I could find for Veterans Day. Not much has been written about it yet, because it's a Norwegian indie with limited screening, but it gets a warm reception among viewers.

In old age, Gunnar Sønsteby guest-lectures a class about his life from shortly before World War II to the end of it, during part of which he was Agent #24 of Britain's Special Operations Executive. In particular, he coordinated the Oslo Gang, which specialized in sabotaging German occupation projects, usually with explosives, but expanded to assassinations.

The Book of Eli (2010)

As I worried about not having enough creepy movies for the month, I happened to find this DVD on a giveaway shelf. Sure, the movie's not a horror or thriller, and even "sci-fi" would be a stretch despite the future setting, but it certainly depicts a world we would not prefer to the present.

Nobody says directly, but evidence suggests that the ruins across America are due to nuclear war. It must have been religious in nature, because people subsequently destroyed every Abrahamic tract they could find. After 31 years, some regret that decision, even if literacy has become as scarce as soap or fresh water. Loner Eli (Denzel Washington) has found the only copy of the KJV to his knowledge, and he believes that a voice has told him to take it westward, where it will be duly appreciated. Gang leader/de facto mayor Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman) will stop at nothing to get his hands on it, up to and including threatening his mistress's daughter, Solara (Mila Kunis), who wants to run away with Eli.

Train to Busan (2016)

This was one of the most popular recent horror movies I hadn't seen yet. I would have saved it for later in the month, but I was in something of a hurry to find a Halloween-appropriate movie, and this was the main one left on my Netflix list.

In Seoul, Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) has devoted more of himself as a fund manager than as a husband or father. He reluctantly agrees to take young daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) to Busan so she can spend her birthday with his ex-wife. But news reports of random riots turn out to have been an understatement: Everyone who gets bitten turns just as berserk, and one such victim boards their train....

Ne Zha (2019)

I had heard of this year's sequel only when looking up box office records, and then I saw that the original broke some too. I'm sure the vast majority of ticket sales for each were in their native land. Still, their ratings are strong, so I got curious how well they might appeal to an American animation fan. NZ1 is less popular, but I like to start at the beginning.

In old China, Taoist god Yuanshi Tianzun sees fit to split the Chaos Pearl, a powerful monster, into the Spirit Pearl and the Demon Orb, the latter of which he curses to celestial destruction in three years. He tells apprentice Taiyi Zhenren to infuse Ne Zha, the soon-to-be-born royal son of Li Jing and Lady Yin, with the Spirit Pearl. Jealous co-apprentice Shen Gongbao swipes that pearl for new dragon prince Ao Bing, leaving the Demon Orb for the other baby. Although Ne Zha is widely feared and apparently doomed to early death, his parents insist on raising him with Taiyi's training, albeit in isolation. They hope that shielding their son from the whole truth will make him better and happier, but lies rarely form an effective long-term solution, especially in the face of Shen's unorthodox approach to pursuing godhood....

Limitless (2011)

I didn't really know anything about this picture going in. Nor had I heard of its literary basis, Alan Glynn's The Dark Fields. I just thought it looked different enough from my recent viewings, possibly along the lines of Upgrade. OK, it's set in the present, but still a sci-fi thriller about enhancing oneself.

In New York, broke aspiring writer Eddie (Bradley Cooper) runs into his ex-brother-in-law, dealer Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who gifts him a tablet of an unregulated drug so new it has no name other than NZT-48. It vastly improves Eddie's mental faculties for a day. He comes for more and discovers that someone has murdered Vernon and ransacked the apartment, evidently in search of the NZT stash. Eddie finds it nonetheless, along with significant cash, and uses them to do phenomenally in the stock market, garnering the attention of finance bigwig Carl (Robert De Niro) and reconnecting with ex-wife Lindy (Abbie Cornish). Of course, he also gains the attention of people who would kill for NZT. What's more, withdrawal means progressively serious symptoms....

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019)

I wanted something different from my usual viewings, and I found it. It's rare enough to have movies set in Africa; it's rarer still that their protagonist is a Black African. This one doesn't even have any White characters to my recollection.

In the early 2000s, Wimbe, a Malawi village, is devastated by flood and then drought. The Kamkwamba family, headed by father Trywell (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who also wrote and directed for the first time), will have trouble farming enough food to get by, especially when neighbors resort to theft. They also can't afford the fee to keep 13-year-old William (Maxwell Simba) in school. But by sneaking into the school library, William learns enough to assemble a wind turbine, using a bicycle part among others, to meet both water and energy needs -- if only he can persuade Trywell and others to have faith and help him.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)

For some reason, it seems I've watched more comedy-dramas centered on girls or young women from 2018 or thereabout than from other periods. Here's one more. Only later did I learn that it launched a series.

The movie doesn't make the setting clear, but the Jenny Han novel specifies modern Virginia. Lara Jean Song-Covey (Lana Condor), 16, sometimes called LJ, has been largely keeping to herself. She used to write letters to multiple crushes and put them in addressed envelopes without sending them. To her mortification, the letters "somehow" get out, as she discovers when Peter (Noah Centineo) tells her he's not ready to date her. By this time, she's not that interested in him either. They nevertheless work out an agreement to fake a relationship, because he wants to make his ex, Gen (Emilija Baranac), jealous and LJ has almost the opposite goal: to dissuade Josh (Israel Broussard), recently dumped by her older sister, Margot (Janel Parrish), from pursuing LJ in the wake of the letter he received. Perhaps neither Peter nor LJ knows the phrase "Fake it till you make it."

LJ has had five crushes, but only two really matter for this story. Lucas (Trezzo Mahoro) turns out to be gay, so he serves only as a confidant for LJ. The other two don't go to the same school, and one doesn't even show up in the sequels. To me, this overcomplication was the main sign of a basis in a book.

I considered adding a "racial" tag, because a few moments call attention to the Korean half of LJ's heritage, but it doesn't affect the plot or even the humor much. Nobody alludes to Asian stereotypes, even when LJ drives poorly. Nor does anyone raise an eyebrow at the prospect of interracial romance. Only a conversation about the political incorrectness of Sixteen Candles stands out.

Cracked.com pointed out how many romantic comedies center on "monsters." I wouldn't go that far this time. In addition to the whole charade, LJ does wrong in effectively ghosting Margot and Josh, and she gets overly furious at her kid sister, Kitty (Anna Cathcart). I have some idea of why Josh sees Peter as a jerk jock. But neither member of the not-so-fake couple appalls me. Gen strikes me as meaner, and even she's not a caricature.

Things are so formulaic that I rarely came anywhere close to surprise. This might also explain why I rarely came anywhere close to chuckling. Fortunately, it works as a fairly credible love story. At any given time, it's hard to gauge how much LJ and Peter like each other unless they're being earnestly passionate. I did end up rooting for them to make it work.

TAtBILB earns its slightly above-average IMDb rating. None of it's likely to be new to you, but the 99 minutes won't drag.

Now You See Me (2013)

When I picked this out, I did not know that it had a threequel coming this year. I just wanted something rather different from what else I'd been watching lately. This one has been moderately popular among the general viewership, but critics are almost evenly split on it.

An anonymous, faceless source assembles four magicians -- famous card trickster Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), blackmailing mentalist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), escape artist Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), and pocket- and lock-picking prestidigitator Jack Wilder (Dave Wilder) -- to pull off a series of heists in exchange for membership in an elite society. They're actually quite open about parts of it, working robbery into their stage shows and winning mass approval as Robin Hood types by paying the live audience; the authorities can't easily prosecute them without insinuating a belief in real magic. FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is assigned to catch them somehow, with help from INTERPOL's Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent) and possibly from long-time debunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman).

Pete's Dragon (2016)

Amid all the hype for How to Train Your Dragon, I thought I'd watch a different live-action remake of a family flick about a boy and his nonverbal, flying, fire-breathing, reptilian secret friend. It's not the most popular Disney remake, but it may be the only one more popular than its predecessor.

When Pete is five years old (and played by Levi Alexander), he loses his parents in a car crash on a woodland road. He wanders and meets a curiously friendly dragon (grunt-voiced by John Kassir) who can turn invisible at will. For the next six years, Pete (now played by Oakes Fegley) lives with Elliot in the woods, healthy but only slightly more civilized than another feral boy from a Disney remake that year. Fellow preteen Natalie (Oona Laurence) discovers Pete, and her lumberjack father Jack (Wes Bentley) and his ranger girlfriend Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) try to give Pete a more normal life, by adopting him if necessary. They don't readily believe in Elliot, who doesn't take well to separation from Pete. And when Jack's unruly brother Gavin (Karl Urban) and coworkers see the long-rumored dragon of the area, they plan to capture Elliot for some means of profit.