It’s a new year and a new round of shows getting ready to come on as well as a lot of returning favorites in the broadcast realm. We’ve covered a lot of shows and movies in 2022 and have had a whole lot of fun with it. There were a lot of standouts with Star Wars: Andor being my top show of 2022. And that has me excited to see what 2023 will bring as there are a lot of properties I’m looking forward to, especially a new Teen Wolf movie and a spinoff series the same day.
This past couple of weeks was focused mostly on the holiday and the fact that there’s little new out there in general. I’ve not felt the Christmas rom-com thing much since I’m way too single at the moment and that sense of hope just isn’t there. So what did I end up watching?
Star Wars: The Bad Batch returned this month after a long gap and landed with two episodes at the start and now we’re onto the third. While a good chunk of this episode seems to focus more on Cody in a way, especially in the back half, it’s also very clear about where things stand with Crosshair. We had some hope that he would have changed some after the events of the first season with the others and Omega, but I really like that we’re continuing to see him go down the path of working for the Empire because it’s what he’s been born and bred to do. It’s an interesting contrast between him and Cody as both have seen and done so much and there are real complications here. Crosshair continuing to do as ordered, regardless of the dark deed that it may be, has him on a hard path of likely no redemption and I’m rather okay with that because we need all sides of the stories here. For Cody fans, this is a tough episode in a lot of ways but I’m hopeful we’ll start to see more of his path going forward.
Check out our full review.
I forgot to talk about this back at the end of December but Abdul slid in with a fun end-of-year review of River City Girls 2. The River City Girls are ready for round 2! When an old foe resurfaces, Misako, Kyoko, Kunio, and Riki – joined by newcomers Marian and Provie – hit the streets for an all-new beat-’em-up adventure packed with new abilities, enemies, environments, and more. Abdul was definitely on board for it, saying, “Overall, while River City Girls 2 has several lacking elements, I enjoyed it just as much as the first game and with some more updates, the game will provide players with an optimal experience that’s perhaps the best in the franchise.”
Check out the full review.
One new show that’s not new that I found this week was the Wisting series on Prime video. It’s listed as “the best Nord noir ever” and it came out in 2019 with 18 episodes across three-ish seasons. I’m only three episodes into it and it’s certainly decent with what it’s doing but it’s interesting in that it focuses on an American serial killer who has lived in hiding in Norway for two decades. And a murder brings in the FBI which is made of two agents, one of which is Carrie-Ann Moss. It’s very much a Nordic show and I like that it can shift between the languages well. The problem is with the subtitles though. The subtitles for the Norweigian dialogue is hard-subtitled while the English-speaking moments aren’t hard-subtitled. We do get closed captions that help out but a lot of it focuses on sounds and other elements that are on top of the English subtitles of the Norweigian dialogue, making it completely pointless. I’m definitely interested in the show and the angles it’s taking, but if you’re hard of hearing as some in my family are, it’ll be a struggle.
I’m trying to poke at my Netflix movie list some and finally took a look at Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I’ve never read the book and really only know it by reputation, though there’s been plenty of dialogue about it over the years. I’ve just never been drawn to it in whatever forms were available. The film is quite well done overall, though obviously I can’t speak to how well it adapts it, but it covers the idea of a problematic marriage that falls apart because of all sorts of reasons in the late 1910s after World War I. When you discover that your husband isn’t quite the good man you thought he was, as he struggles through being injured and losing the use of his legs from war, and then the problems that develop when he wants you to have a child with another man to continue the family legacy, it’s all sort of complicated. Emma Corrin captures the way she’s trying to grapple with all of this while Matthew Duckett as her husband is a bit more one-note but designed in that way. Jack O’Connell gets to provide for a bit more ranger as the gameskeeper she ends up really falling for in the long run but it’s still something where you have to put yourself in that time and place. I enjoyed seeing Faye Marsay in it after seeing her work as Vel in Andor as I hadn’t seen her in anything else before where I really remembered her.
In catching up on older things that I’ve got in my collection that I’ve revisited while working while trying to avoid streaming so as to not use up my data cap, it’s an odd mix this week. Over the course of the week, I’ve background watched:
- The backlist has been made up of revisiting How I Met Your Mother as we move through season five.
Movie reviews:
- Mobile Suit Gundam Cucuruz Doan’s Island
- Clerks III Review
- Luck Review
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
- Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko
- Hustle Review
- Top Gun: Maverick Review
- The Bob’s Burgers Movie Review
- Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers Review
- Stu’s Show Review
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director’s Edition Review
- Bubble Anime Review
- Ryoma! The Prince of Tennis Anime Review
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Review
- Turning Red Review
- The Batman Review
- Belle Review
- Drive My Car Review
- The Power of the Dog Review
- Robin Robin Review
- BoxBallet Review
- Bestia Review
- Eternals Review
- Encanto Review
- 8-Bit Christmas Review
- Music Box: Jagged Review
- Ghostbusters: Afterlife Review
- Tick, Tick…BOOM! Review
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Review
- Free Guy Review
- My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission Review
- Dune (2021) Review
- Black Widow
- Jungle Cruise Review
- As the Village Sleeps Review
- Space Jam: A New Legacy Review
- A Quiet Place Part II Review
- Knots: A Forced Marriage Story Review
- School-Live! The Movie Blu-ray Review
- In the Heights Review
- Over the Moon Review
- Feeling Through Review
- Two Distant Strangers review
- Yes-People Review
- A Love Song for Latasha Review
- If Anything Happens I Love You Review
- Burrow Review
- Godzilla vs Kong
- Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story Review
- Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years Preview
- Raya and the Last Dragon Review
- The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run Review
- The Little Things Review
- In Other Words Review
- Earwig and the Witch Review
What did you watch this past week?
