First Impressions Review Diary 5-Feb-2022

__Hello.🙂 How's your year going so far? I've been keeping my head down and sticking with my daily routine of going through all my unplayed video games (sorted by year) and, in the evening, watching a few episodes of TV shows I'm crossing off my watchlist. Welcome to my latest batch of brief Twitter-length reviews of what I've played/seen for the first time over the past month. (TV shows are exempt because I'm not quite sure how to review them.)

__Before we get into today's list of video games, let's start off with a movie. Among the shows I watched recently was Animaniacs, which did have a direct-to-video movie spin-off called Wakko's Wish. I remember seeing ads for it on Cartoon Network when I was young, but never saw the film itself until now.

Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish (1999)

It's kind of an animated version of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, with the whole cast racing to the wishing star. It feels a tad unfocused juggling all the characters, but I like how they're a chorus on almost every song.

My rating: 75%.

__I also watched the Flash Gordon serials for my latest evening viewing. Now, I group my DVDs by category – movies, TV shows and miscellaneous – but I wasn't sure where to place those serials. They are episodic, and I guess they were sort of the TV shows of their day, but IMDb and all other sources categorise them as movies. I've now decided to swap them from TV shows to miscellaneous. In the meantime, if you're curious, here's my brief thoughts on them:

First Impressions Review Diary 1-Jan-2022

__Happy New Year, everyone!😀

__I always put up my "first impressions" posts on the first Saturday of the month. But, by an amazing coincidence, this time that happens to be the first day of the month, and of the entire year as well! What a perfect way to ring in the new year!😀

__This is my recap of all the movies and video games I watched throughout the month of December. (If you're new here, that's how it is with games. I'm going through all the not-yet-played ones in my collection, sorted by year. I'll usually play them for a while, but if it becomes clear that I can't progress quickly, I'll start watching a longplay to see the rest.) Now, I already covered some of the movies in my "top ten favourites of the year" list, sometimes in slightly more detail, but everything deserves equal treatment here.

__Section one: cinema releases.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

It's kind of a live-action version of Into the Spider-Verse.🙂 It acknowledges the character's core philosophy, while also giving the other two Spider-Man film series one last hurrah. It has its faults, but still very enjoyable.

My rating: 85%.

The King's Man (2021)

Both the humour and creative camerawork of the original Kingsman are almost completely absent. This one takes itself entirely seriously, resulting in a lacklustre story rooted in an all-too-familiar overprotective father scenario.

My rating: 50%.

My Top 10 Favourite Movies of 2021

__Happy New Year's Eve. We've come to the end of 2021, so you know what that means.🙂 It's time for me to look back on the year and pick out my ten favourite movies.

__So how was the year overall? Well, I got my vaccine and, among the year's movies, saw at least one that I rated five stars; that alone makes it a huge improvement on 2020!😀 Unfortunately, the virus shows no sign of slowing down, so not only will many people's stories be a lot sadder, but it'll probably be a long time before our everyday life returns to what it was two years ago, if at all. For better or worse, this year did at least take a few steps in that direction. Most relevant here is the reopening of cinemas on a more permanent basis – though still under heavy restrictions, obviously.

__If this is your first time reading one of my year-end lists (or if you just need a reminder), let me briefly go over the criteria I set for what qualifies as a 2021 movie. It simply has to have been released for public consumption within the year, be it in cinemas or on a streaming platform. Movies that haven't been seen outside of film festivals don't count, and neither do movies that were released in another country in an earlier year. This year was especially problematic in that regard, because the release schedule towards the end of 2020 was very messy indeed! Several awards contenders weren't released publicly until the early months of the following year, including Nomadland, which may have won Best Picture for 2020, but its earliest non-festival release date makes it a 2021 movie in my book.

__Now, before we get into the list itself, this would normally be the point where I pick out the year's most disappointing movie. But it was unusually hard to pick a winner this year because, while there were quite a few movies that fell short of my expectations, there were none that fell so miserably short that they stood out as an especially crushing letdown.

First Impressions Review Diary 4-Dec-2021

__Hello again.

__Well, December has arrived. 2021 is almost over. I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday season.

__This may or may not be my last "first impressions" post of the year. There are a few upcoming movies I want to see, like West Side Story, Spider-Man: No Way Home and The King's Man, but I'm still pondering whether to deviate from my usual schedule for these posts (the first Saturday of the month) and share my thoughts on them before the end of the year.

__In the meantime, enjoy my Twitter-length comments on everything I've watched and played since my last post on November 6th.🙂

__Section one: cinema releases. The good news is that, unlike the last two months, I won't be seeing anything later today that'll just miss its chance, so I won't leave you hanging.🙂

Eternals (2021)

There are some good ideas in there, but they're undermined by haphazard pacing and at times awkward acting. The random, extended flashbacks break the flow of both the narrative and character development. Easily the worst MCU movie to date.

My rating: 50%.

Last Night in Soho (2021)

The horrific imagery mirrors the emerging cutthroat nature of the fashion (and entertainment) industry, and the scenes where Eloise and Sandie switch back and forth are most impressive. It's a good movie, but not without its flaws.

My rating: 70%.

First Impressions Review Diary 6-Nov-2021

__I hope everyone had a good Halloween.🙂 As per tradition, I celebrated it by watching a couple of horror movies I hadn't seen before, but we'll get to those later.

__Today's list of Twitter-length reviews is going to be a long one, because I've been extremely busy with both movies and video games. Last month's entry was posted right in the middle of a rather lengthy set of this year's movies that I was going through, and I've seen a few more since. And as I mentioned last time, I started watching longplays of the games I own (either legitimately or as emulator ROMs) that I'd skipped over and left without a rating on my list. There are quite a lot because most of them are very short.

__Plus, I've started going to the cinema more often. My last post went up mere hours before I went to see No Time to Die, so that movie's been waiting to have its turn on this blog for a whole month!😀 Well, finally the wait is over.

__Section one: cinema releases.

No Time to Die (2021)

A solid swan song for Daniel Craig's Bond, as well as one of the best films in the franchise. Its runtime may seem excessive, but you barely notice it. The highlight is a car chase that turns into a suspenseful hunt in a misty wood.

My rating: 80%.

Dune (2021)

As you'd expect of Denis Villeneuve, it's visually stunning and very slow-paced – maybe too much so. The story is easy enough to follow, but it's vague on many details that are probably explained better in the book, and the ending is far too abrupt.

My rating: 65%.

The Last Duel (2021)

Much of it is a tad illegible for the uninitiated, not helped by the sporadic pacing, but even the movie knows Marguerite's is the most important story, and it's fascinating to see certain events unfold from different people's perspectives.

My rating: 65%.

__Believe it or not, the same thing is happening again with today's post!😀 I'll be going to see Eternals later today, but I must stick to my schedule.

First Impressions Review Diary 2-Oct-2021

__Welcome to my next compilation of Twitter-length reviews of what I've been watching/playing over the past month. And in this case, it's been quite a busy month for me!🙂

__As well as continuing with my list of unplayed games (I'm currently going through titles from the year 2001), I've once again started watching movies more frequently. I saw two movies at the cinema in September, and I've started another marathon at home consisting of a pair of movies per day. They're mostly other movies from 2021, but I kicked it off with two miscellaneous pairs: the two Inbetweeners movies because I'd just recently watched the show, and a rewatch of the first two Conjuring movies in preparation for the third one. (For the time being, I'm still avoiding the spin-off movies like Annabelle and The Nun.)

__Also, after I started said batch of movies, I decided to start watching a few other game walkthroughs in between. As I've been going through my list, there've been quite a few games that I've skipped over and left unrated. There are a couple of new additions that I've just recently decided to download, but most of the others are fighting games and Square RPGs. With the fighting games, watching longplays is my only option because I just flat-out suck at them; every time I try to play them, I just get clobbered! And as for the Square RPGs, I've said before that I think it'd be best to watch blind Let's Plays of them first, because they're so long and rambling that I quickly lose interest when I try to play them myself, and longplays without commentary don't help much.

__So, with all that said, let's get started.

First Impressions Review Diary 4-Sep-2021

__Hello, and welcome to another list of my thoughts on the games I've been playing over the past month. In other years, my mini reviews on Twitter have focused on movies (and it'll soon be time for me to catch up on some movies from this year), but it's mostly been video games that have occupied my time lately. There are a lot of titles in my collection that I haven't played and therefore rated yet, so I'm going through them all in a list arranged by year. I never claimed to be a good player, so, with some exceptions, I'll usually give the game a try and then, if it becomes clear that I can't progress quickly and easily, continue via watching a longplay on YouTube.

__This time, I have fewer games to talk about than in other months, partly because they're starting to get longer (particularly Majora's Mask). But, to compensate, I got so passionate about one of them that it inspired me to write a full review – a rarity these days – which I'll save until the end. The game in question is Conker's Bad Fur Day. I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but it is by far the worst game I've played yet! Bear in mind, I have no intention of playing infamously bad ones like Superman 64, Sonic '06 or Ride to Hell: Retribution.

__But before I explain why it had such an adverse effect on me, let's run through my brief thoughts on the others, some of which were pretty damn good.🙂 As I mentioned last time, they're covering the years 2000 and 2001, so here we go: the first few games from the new millennium.🙂