Ant-Man was the epilogue to Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase Two, and Spider-Man: Far From Home is the epilogue to its Phase Three. But while Ant-Man didn't really have much to do with the previous film, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Far From Home is a direct continuation of Avengers: Endgame. Tony Stark is dead. Long live the... new Tony Stark? Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and it's got to be especially heavy for a 16-year-old kid from Queens. Enough purple prose, let's wrap up MCU March!
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Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Once upon a time in the far away land of 1996, Marvel Entertainment was facing bankruptcy. One step of staying afloat was selling the movie rights to their most popular characters--Sony got Spider-Man, 20th Century Fox got the X-Men, and so on. Marvel kept the rights to the B-tier team the Avengers and against all odds successfully managed them into the most successful franchise ever. Over time film rights expired and went back to Marvel, or companies were just bought out. But Sony kept making Spider-Man movies so they kept the rights. Which is to say that Spider-Man: Homecoming is a weird and somewhat unique movie in terms of licensing the character. MCU March continues with the first film in the trilogy of the third incarnation of the live action Spider-Man!
When They Cry, Season 1 – Episodes 5-8
When we last left Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, AKA When They Cry, three of the five main characters were dead. Keiichi murdered Rena and Mion in self-defense, but the drug they injected him with made him rip out his own throat, eventually dying from blood loss. So... what now? Do we continue the story with the survivors, Rika and Satoko? Does detective Oishi take a main role in investigating the strange and possibly supernatural happenings at Hinamizawa? Nope! We're going to pretend the first arc never happened! Let's get weird and homicidal (again) as we look at the second story arc, Cotton Drifting.
When They Cry, Season 1 – Episodes 1-4
Let's try something a little different. Disney+'s release schedule for new shows is pretty tight, with episodes releasing weekly followed by a making-of documentary and kicking off with a new series the week after. For the time being I'm going to skip the Star Wars shows, but that still means that the majority of these Saturday posts will be tied up with the MCU, not leaving much time for anything else. Well, I'm instituting a new policy for the blog: when I'm in the middle of reviewing the latest MCU show on Saturdays, a completely different show's posts will go up as a bonus on Sundays. Does this mean that the last half of the month will have a post every single day thanks to MCU March? Yup! Will I regret this? Probably! But enough of that, let's talk about child murder.
The Craft: Legacy (2020)
Alright! A day late, but we're here! The long-awaited sequel to The Craft! I'm sure somebody wanted this, right? Anyway, 24 years later we have a... sequel? Soft reboot? An Evil Dead 2 of a movie. But how is it? Is this a movie that needed to be made? I'll get to that eventually.
The Craft (1996)
For a lot of people my age--Millennials that are very close to the Generation X divide--the 90's are a nostalgic time. Things were better back then, right? Or at least we didn't have the maturity and capacity to understand how things were not good, haven't been good for a long time, and that a lot of our current problems have roots back then. But, uh... at least the movies back then were good? Some of the movies. Okay, so this and a couple other movies that nostalgia goggles convince us were good. This intro is getting away from me... SO YEAH ANYWAY, HOW ABOUT THE CRAFT?
Triggered (2019)
When a friend told me about Triggered, I was confused why she was drawing my attention to a film about kids in the woods with bombs around their necks. But that's 2020's Triggered; 2019's Triggered is about a social justice warrior murdering people. That made a bit more sense given my tendency to watch the worst movies. But maybe this was a parody made in good faith? Maybe the message isn't just, "she's a deranged person who's doing all this for attention." But then I saw it, and unfortunately that's absolutely the message. Well fuck me, I guess.
A Whisker Away (2020)
People who know me in real life know that I am 100% a cat person. Up until the death of my previous cat, I couldn’t remember a time where I didn’t have at least one fuzzball in my life. In fact, as I am writing this sentence, I have one (Willow) in my lap wondering why I’m ignoring her while she’s being so cute, and another (Xander) is thankfully silent, sleeping on the floor and waiting for me to go to bed. So when I saw that Netflix was coming out with a cat-themed anime movie, I was excited. And it’s more wholesome than the harem anime Nyan Koi!
Mädchen in Uniform (1931)
And we’re back with the second film in the Pioneers of Queer Cinema bundle, Mädchen in Uniform, AKA Girls in Uniform. This is a very lady power movie: based on a play by a female writer, this has a female director and I’m pretty sure not a single man appears in the film. Very rare by today’s standards, but this was made in 1931 so I guess there’s another reason our current world sucks. Anyway…
The Half of It (2020)
Last time I talked about Cyrano de Bergerac, and as promised, today’s film is heavily inspired by it, albeit with a more modern skin. In The Half of It our Cyrano is an Asian, lesbian high school student named Ellie, our Roxanne is Aster, and our Christian is Paul. But in addition to the queer theme, I say this movie is better because the characters are more fleshed out and real, but also because Ellie doesn’t die in the throes of delirium.
Chwineka Watches 