The Weekly TV, Movie, & Games Discussion Post For Week Of February 23rd, 2025

We’re moving through the much colder days of February 2025 and it’s definitely not a place where a lot of people thought we’d be. The primetime fall season has largely wrapped up at this point, there aren’t a lot of big films to make their streaming debut at the moment, and I’m falling into the black hole of Christmas romance movies. We’ve had a number of things we’ve checked out but a lot of what I’ve been doing is rewatching older stuff. There’s a good mix of things as we gear up to get back into our Nordic Noir and some Brit crime.

I’ve been on a bit of a Taiwan kick in a couple of areas recently and having a new original series land on Netflix with I am Married… But! was the right kind of timing. The twelve-episode series is one that plays well to the comical meet-cute of I-ling running over Zeng with her scooter and realizing she’s drawn to him only to shift it forward several years where they’re now married and she’s trying to decide between killing him or divorce. They’re still in his childhood home living with his mother and Zeng is still pretty much acting like a son and not a husband, resulting in the usual kind of problematic situation where there are no boundaries. I only started it so I haven’t gotten far but it’s pretty charming in general, Ko Chia-yen is great as I-ling, and episodes clocking between 30-45 minutes keeps it brisk when it needs to be. The themes are universal but it has some great flights of fancy along the way and just getting to see dashes of normal life in the city is a lot of fun.

The third season of Reacher kicked off on Prime Video and it dropped with the first three episodes. I’ve only taken in the first two so far but it’s delivering exactly what I want from it. The opening episode is almost a bit tough since it does the big action sequence then backtracks to explain it all and it just feels like a little too much in a way so it can move forward from there. I’m wondering if it would have worked better in a linear form. The show is just starting to tease the real villain and scope of the story so there’s not a lot to say just yet with it but it’s putting all the right pieces into play. The big win so far is British actress Sonya Cassiday playing the very Bostonian DEA agent Susan Duffy. She gets to bring Reacher in on an off-the-books job to fix what went wrong on their last job and she’s got some great New England to her. The accent is fun and the “fuck that traitor Tom Brady” moment was just perfect as an encapsulation of how a lot of folks in the area feel but get drowned out by the adoration. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how she factors into it as it progresses and just the story itself since Reacher has a great presence and Alan Ritchson just delivers a kind of 80s-style leading action guy confidence you don’t see often.

My BritBox dive this week had me dropping in on the first season of Irvine Welsh’s Crime that landed in the fall of 2021. It’s a solid largely single-season story that has plenty of room to go in the second season and it runs with the fantastic Dougary Scott in the lad where he just gets to be as Scottish as he wants to be. The show doesn’t hold back on language and dialect which can make it a minor challenge at times but it’s fantastic to get something that doesn’t try to “normalize” things in a way but rather embrace how people do talk and interact with each other. It’s a rough story in terms of what the killings are about, the age of the characters, and the brutality of it but it also digs into how that impacts the detectives and why some of them got into the work as well. Joanna Vanderham does well as his new partner in all of this and Angela Griffin handles playing against such a problematic character as the girlfriend while having a significant separate storyline of her own with a lot of resonance. The reveal of the villain was great as well as I had just watched four seasons of them as the copper themselves, so it was great to see that shaken up a bit.

Movie reviews:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim Review
2. Make a Girl Review
3. The Boy and the Heron Review
4. Perfect Days Review
5. Wicked Little Letters Review
6. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
7. The Marvels 4K UHD Review
8. HAIKYU!! The Dumpster Battle Anime Movie Review
9. The Crow Steelbook 4K Ultra HD Review
10. The Idea of You Review
11. SPY x FAMILY CODE: White’ Review
12. Sometimes I Think About Dying Review
13. Rascal Does Not Dream Double Feature Review
14. The Marvels Review
15. The Zone of Interest Review
16. GREAT PRETENDER razbliuto Anime Movie Review
17. Night of the Comet Collector’s Edition 4K Ultra HD Review
18. Hayao Miyazaki Says ‘Farewell’ with “The Boy and the Heron”
19. The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes Review
20. The Canterville Ghost
21. Animation Is Film 2023: The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story
22. Animation Is Film 2023: Phoenix: Reminiscence of Flower
23. Animation Is Film 2023: The Concierge Review
24. Animation Is Film 2023: The Boy and the Heron
25. The Inventor
26. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Review
27. Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead Film Review
28. Shazam! Fury of the Gods Review
29. Justice League: Warworld Blu-ray Review
30. The Little Mermaid
31. The Boxtrolls Review
32. Kubo and the Two-Strings Review
33. Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania Review
34. Kaguya-sama: Love Is War – The First Kiss That Never Ends Anime Movie Review
35. Sword Art Online The Movie – Progressive- Scherzo of Deep Night Movie Review
36. Mobile Suit Gundam Cucuruz Doan’s Island
37. Missing Review
38. The Whale Review
39. Point of No Return Review
40. Blonde Review
41. Wendell & Wild
42. Clerks III Review
43. Luck Review
44. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
45. Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko
46. Hustle Review
47. Top Gun: Maverick Review
48. The Bob’s Burgers Movie Review
49. Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers Review
50. Stu’s Show Review
51. Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director’s Edition Review
52. Bubble Anime Review
53. Ryoma! The Prince of Tennis Anime Review
54. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Review
55. Turning Red Review
56. The Batman Review
57. Belle Review
58. Drive My Car Review
59. The Power of the Dog Review
60. Robin Robin Review
61. BoxBallet Review
62. Bestia Review
63. Eternals Review
64. Encanto Review
65. 8-Bit Christmas Review
66. Music Box: Jagged Review
67. Ghostbusters: Afterlife Review
68. Tick, Tick…BOOM! Review
69. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Review
70. Free Guy Review
71. My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission Review
72. Dune (2021) Review
73. Black Widow
74. Jungle Cruise Review
75. As the Village Sleeps Review
76. Space Jam: A New Legacy Review
77. A Quiet Place Part II Review
78. Knots: A Forced Marriage Story Review
79. School-Live! The Movie Blu-ray Review
80. In the Heights Review
81. Over the Moon Review
82. Feeling Through Review
83. Two Distant Strangers review
84. Yes-People Review
85. A Love Song for Latasha Review
86. If Anything Happens I Love You Review
87. Burrow Review
88. Godzilla vs Kong
89. Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story Review
90. Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years Preview
91. Raya and the Last Dragon Review
92. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run Review
93. The Little Things Review
94. In Other Words Review
95. Earwig and the Witch Review

What did you watch this past week?

Chris Beveridge

http://www.fandompost.com

Chris has been writing about anime, manga, movies and comics for well on twenty years now. He began AnimeOnDVD.com back in 1998 and has covered nearly every anime release that’s come out in the US ever since.

He likes to write a lot, as you can see.

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