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 My primary Writing.com blog. |
| To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish. Movies  Afterburn Bob Trevino Likes It Licorice Pizza The Old Guard 2 One Battle After AnotherIt was a mixed bag of movies this year. Afterburn was a pretty mediocre post-apocalyptic action movie, Bob Trevino Likes It was a pretty depressing movie about a lonely young woman desperate to turn a random stranger with the same name as her deadbeat dad into a father figure, and The Old Guard 2 was a decent sequel to the original, but also clearly one of those movies that was only made to set up another sequel later and thus kind of frustrating to watch. I hate investing two hours in a movie only to have it end by basically saying, "TO BE CONTINUED... come back and watch the next one in two years!" One Battle After Another was excellent. Paul Thomas Anderson continues to prove that he's an extremely talented filmmaker with a point of view, and this was his best movie in a long time. The performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, and Chase Infiniti were particularly memorable, and the storyline with the Christmas Adventurer's Club was bizarre and memorable. The runtime was two hours and forty-two minutes and I went to see an 11pm show on a week night, and it's a testament to the film's quality that I wasn't the least bit tired and didn't feel like it dragged on in the least. Watching it reminded me that there are a small number of Paul Thomas Anderson movies that I haven't seen, so I started going back through his back catalogue, starting with Licorice Pizza, which a lot of friends I know absolutely love. I thought it was just okay; the filmmaking was great and I appreciate that Anderson is always trying something new, but that one just didn't land with me as well as One Battle After Another. I am excited to continue to go through his prior films and watch or rewatch them. Television Daredevil: Born Again (Season 1) Eyes of Wakanda The Hunting Wives (Season 1) Ironheart (Season 1) The Summer I Turned Pretty (Season 3) Wild Cards (Season 1) — DNFThis month, I got caught up on watching a lot of the Marvel projects I worked on but haven't yet seen the final versions of. Daredevil: Born Again was the best of the bunch, in my opinion, although Eyes of Wakanda was definitely unique and fun for a four-episode limited series. Wild Cards was a forgettable procedural that I only watched a couple episodes of, and The Summer I Turned Pretty is a show my wife follows, so I wouldn't say that I so much "watched" it as "was in the same room while it was on."  And The Hunting Wives was a show that I really enjoyed for the first seven episodes, but it feels like they really ran out of steam on the eighth and final episode, which was a real bummer.Other Critical Role: The Age of UmbraThe team behind TTRPG live-play sensation Critical Role has run a number of small miniseries to keep the channel fresh while preparing for Campaign 4 (which just launched this past Thursday). They ran Exandria Unlimited: Divergence, an anthology series set in the same world as the first three campaigns, they ran Wildemount Wildlings, a play on sleep-away summer camp, and The Age of Umbra, a dark fantasy game in a new campaign setting, developed for Critical Role's proprietary TTRPG system, Daggerheart. I'm hoping to get around to watching all of the miniseries eventually — and keep pace with Campaign 4 — but I definitely wanted to check out The Age of Umbra to experience a new TTRPG world and see how Daggerheart is played in practice. From the latter aspect, I thought it was interesting to see how some of the new game mechanics work. I think it's a bit of a mixed bag; some of the pieces of the new system I really like, but others I think are overly complicated or unnecessary. And the campaign world itself was fine, if a little uninspired. Overall, it was a good watch, but I'm glad it was a miniseries and not a full campaign. Campaign 4 will return to D&D 5E (2024) rules, and take place in a completely brand-new world created by Brennan Lee Mulligan, the Dimension 20 Game Master. It'll be the first time that Matthew Mercer isn't GMing a main Critical Role campaign, which is going to be really interesting. TOP PICK: One Battle After Another |
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