📺 ~ Witch Hat Atelier (Season 1)

rating: 8.95/10

who decided to end this season on a nasty cliffhanger like that T-T doing that was straight up evil. but this anime is cute bro. the animation and stylization is straight up beautiful. i ain't ever heard of Bug Films but they did such a magnificent job on this project. i'm curious to see where the plot takes us. qifrey is such an interesting character coz usually he's so chill and maternal but then there's moments where he feels menacing asf. i trust him as being on coco's side but he's got some dark secrets and hella skeletons in his closet i think. ep 5 is definitely the standout of this season because the animation on qifrey's spell was so awe-inspiring, i was literally leaning forward on the chair and my jaw was unhinged. it was such a pretty dragon. also the ending scene in ep 5 where the music cuts off and qifrey just glares at the stationery man... chills. very cool anime but i wish it was longer. 12-ep runs have become the norm these days and while ik that that format significantly upscales the quality, it also sucks a lil to wait so long for sequels to come out. ughhhh. i forgot that bearded dude's name, olly something- but lmfao his character design felt highkey funny at first coz why does this ikemen looking man have a heavy beard for no reason?? the beard looked so fake to me lol. anyways i don't got much more to say. I LIKE THAT COLORBLIND TARTAR SAUCE DUDE AND COCO THEY'RE SO CUTE I WISH WE GET MORE OF THEM. and agott is an interesting character too. never seen a fem sasuke in anime before lol.

📺 ~ Mashle: Magic and Muscles (Season 1 + 2)

rating: 6.5/10

usually don't combine ratings but i'll just do it here coz i don't have the energy to judge the two parts separately. i heard of this anime being a Harry Potter parody from instagram so i downloaded the first season on my phone. BUT. it took me three to four watches of the first episode to sit with it properly and watch in full. the overarching plot feels pretty generic, and the comedy is typical anime gags that feel clichéd and unoriginal in some instances. the true comedy always comes from mash's crazy stunts and dense but good-natured characterization. the real problem that mashle runs into is that it never really leans into its parody anime reputation completely. half the plot takes itself seriously, what with the threat of anime!voldemort and mash earnestly trying to become a divine visionary. if the story tried to be fully one or the other, it'd've been able to give it its all instead of toeing the line between genres and instead becoming a generic fantasy shounen. animation was actually pretty good in some parts, especially with some characters' abilities. rayne ames is probably my favourite character of the lot because he's such an aurafarmer and we ain't even seen his full power yet hehe. lance crown's siscon gag is ridiculous but i also like seeing him coz he's such pretty boy eyecandy. i do wish we got to see more of some characters' backstories like finn and rayne, because aside from what they do presently in the plot, there's not much explanation of their past. they don't even speak to each other in the entire show despite being siblings. another sibling duo, orter and wirth madl, is also absent. wirth basically disappeared off the face of the earth after his 5-mins of fame in s1. he's not mentioned a single time in reference to his older brother. margarette macaron is a non-binary baddie and i LOVE that they're voiced by toji's VA. i was so surprised when i first heard their voice in a lower register and went "wait a goddamn minute i know this voice-" and immediately googled lol. don't really got much more to say. it was an average anime.

📺 ~ Go For It Nakamura-kun!

rating: 9/10

MY SOOOOONNNNNNNNNNN. MY SON NAKAMURA AND MY SON-IN-LAW HIROSE AHHHHHHHHHHH. dude i felt such a range of emotions watching this 13-ep run like WOW. i loved the old-school artstyle and music of the show. and i was so in-tune with my adoration for my son that in ep-6 my heart was hurting seeing how alone he was and how hirose chooses to be around him, which i think is a first for nakamura. AND AND AND THE SHEER LOVE THAT NAKAMURA HAS FOR HIROSE AHHHHHHHHH i think we also see hirose sort of liking nakamura back too but it's very unrealised on his part coz i don't think hirose knows he likes guys yet (despite his boy crush on their homeroom teacher WHO IS SO HOT BTW AWOOOOOOO). also since much of the show is shown through nakamura's perspective, it also skews some of his perception of hirose's actual feelings towards him. i think it's cute that hirose ends up initiating their friendship and asking nakamura for his LINE ID and all. they're so cute ong they're my CHILDREN I WILL FIGHT EVERYONE FOR THEM UGHHHH. i'm so sad the season ended i wanted it to continue so bad. the only reason i bumped off a star btw is coz of that christmas ep lol it was kinda redundant and filler asf. also ep 12 was so painful like wdym my son had to suffer through unrequited love and heartbreak like that. his screams were so painful.

🎬 ~ The Amateur

rating: 4.5/10

is the amateur in the room with us? lol wtf was this movie tryna do highkey. before we get to that though, i just want to rave about how stellar the lighting was in this movie. i was really into how the colors and shadows were utilised in the cinematography. it was so alive. kudos to the crew for not making every scene washed out and knowing the importance of dynamic lighting !! anyways, the plot of this movie was so... meh. i thought it was going one way but literally nothing is properly explained except for focusing on charlie's lil boom boom revenge quest. this plot had sm potential to be fleshed out yet it wasn't utilised to its fullest degree. i really thought the gag at the end would be that the chief of the CIA was the one to order the hit on charlie's wife coz charlie found the kandahar files and told his colleague who SNITCHED ON HIM but turns out no, it wasn't that. sarah was just fridged on pure coincidence by the mercs. so fkin stupid. why was the CIA so reluctant to investigate sarah's death then? it's so damn stupid man. this is an idiot plot. jon bernthal's character was so violently underutilised i wonder why tf they casted him at all. and laurence fishburne has a fakeout death from which the protagonist runs away but fishburne turns up alive and well at the end and has zero hostility towards him. dude. at least punch him for leaving u to bleed out. HAAAAATTEEDDD this man. some scenes were pretty cool though. i knew abt the exploding pool scene from the trailer. and the bar bathroom explosion to distract hendo so that charlie could leave hehe aura move. anyways, mid asf overall but ig it was a nice low-stakes brain-off watch while being sick.

🎬 ~ Love Aaj Kal

rating: 3/10

okay lol another bad rating but i was just super harsh on it and it was cringe in some parts. i wanted to watch hindi movies that were set in delhi coz i will be off to college there in about two months insha allah and I chose this for last night. first of all, the soundtrack is SO ICONIC. like, i'm sure i've never watched this movie in full but i knew every single song—it was crazy. second of all, man was the acting cringe sometimes lol. i mean, typical 2000s romance type beat but other movies i've watched from that era weren't cringe-acted like this. i think it's mostly saif ali khan's fault lol. i'll only forgive deepika's line delivery here coz i think she was still pretty new to the industry and i know she improved by LEAPS and bounds. the conversations around modern love were pretty interesting and i liked how jai and meera's characters don't really acknowledge the love they have for each other until afterwards. it was like a reverse slowburn, second-chance romance with more angst. UGH i loved the tropes here but i wish it was written out more cohesively. the film was edited pretty choppily and i feel like while veer's backstory b-plot with harmeet was charming, it sort of messed with the main plot at times?? i recognise why the b-plot is important to the overall modern "love" vs LOVE theme of the story but there could've been more there. it wasn't developed properly and was very much insta-lovey. it's bevause of movies like this that the modern population have started thing it's okay to stalk the girls they like coz it's "romantic" like ew don't do that. not everything is reciprocated. AND HARMEET BARELY HAD ANY DIALOGUE LIKE SHE SPEAKS ALMOST NOTHING. and even in some monumental scenes between meera and jai, like her wedding and also their initial breakup, meera barely contributes to the conversation. she's silent while saif ali khan's cringe rant acting takes the spotlight. idk man i didn't fw that writing. imtiaz ali apparently made Jab We Met, which is absolutely one of the biggest cornerstones of indian pop culture and close to my heart, and while i haven't watched that movie in a bit i remember that kareena's character was written pretty well. but here in love aaj kal and even in rockstar (which i don't like for a lot of reasons), the female characters feel like ideas instead of actual people. they're not written and fleshed out as well as their male counterparts. ANYWAYSSSSSSS. idk if i have much more to say. that's the review ig. i remember thinking halfway through the movie that i wish this movie had a remake done better and imtiaz ali really does have a 2024 remake starring karthik aaryan and sara ali khan. might see it sometime idk.

🎬 ~ Obsession

rating: 10/10

i was basically hanging on to swetalina like a koala for half the movie and destroying her hand's blood circulation by how hard i was squeezing it. it was really good, man. i haven't ever watched a horror movie in a theatre (for good reason, i am a pussy and would absolutely shit my pants without someone to hold on to) so this was a nice first experience with good friends. it's shot really well and has standout performances from the two leads. i know there's a lot of conversation around the rape allegories in reviews but i ended up interpreting it in a different way on my first watch. all the time i was just sitting with the fact that bear was dating a completely different person coz that THING was not the niki he liked. it was just impersonating whatever bear wanted it to be coz it wanted bear to love it. i keep using "it" coz i perceive the entity obsessed with bear to be different than niki, which is true coz we are shown multiple instances of niki trying to communicate with bear and claw her way out of the thing by causing grevious harm to herself. hell, she was literally begging bear to kill her to end her torment. sarah's death was expected (there was a very prominent fakeout at the party where i was bracing myself for the thing to kill sarah but ofc i knew it was gonna happen through the car window) but still very jumpscarey lol. i accidentally hid my face in the scene coz i got scared by its suddenness and missed the thing initially grabbing sarah's head and smashing it. ian was a shitty friend btw. and poor sandy the cat. umm. holy shit the cat overdosing was foreshadowing for bear's death. also bear's fate was sad. it'd've been better for him to shoot himself in finality rather than his last memory being the horror of hearing the One Wish Willow's jingle in the thing's hands. stellar movie, really. it's beautifully horrifying. you never knew what the thing was gonna do. genuinely so unsettling. especially that one scene where she reverses back weirdly while kissing bear. like literally what the fuck that scared the daylights out of me. bravo bravo. this went into my 10/10 quintessential list on letterboxd coz this experience is gonna stay with me lol. haven't had an addition to the quintessential list in a long while.

🎬 ~ Eternity

rating: 4/10

would u rather spend eternity with your best friend or that one bombastic summer fling whose memory is gonna stay with you forever? the answer was obvious from the start (OF COURSE IT'S THE BEST FRIEND!!) but i still went along with the ride to see where it'd go. honestly i watched the first forty minutes of this movie WEEKS ago but didn't finish so i just decided to thug it out tonight to see if it'd be good. verdict: nah. the idea of the movie is great but it kinda fails in its execution in terms of writing. or ig it's all well and good and i just have absurdly standards (in my defense i compare every love triangle movie to challengers and past lives so uhh big shoes to fill). this movie might've felt more grounded if the leads were played by unknowns? idk man. i loved the easy chemistry between elizabeth olsen and miles teller. and mr. dua lipa is crazy good too lol. very attractive man indeed. congrats dua u got a treasure of a man. n e ways yeah this movie wasn't my speed. i predicted the entire plot and was bored. i'm usually more forgiving and generous with my ratings but i've simply not been in the mood for it recently. so two out of five stars it is.

📺 ~ The Punisher (Season 1)

rating: 6.75/10

well, i gotta say, not the tightest netflix-marvel entry i've watched as of yet (dd s1 still takes the cake), but it does explore its themes pretty well. we do expand a lot more on frank's enigmatic past, and get to crack open and peek into his personality past the outside perspective we were offered from matt's pov in dd s2. i really like frank, man. i wasn't expecting ebon moss-bachrach to be in this tho lol, much less for him to have such a large role in the show. richie and mikey's friendship do be transcending universes. i loved dinah madani, glad she lived tbh. i also didn't know BEN BARNES of all people was in this show, and that he was the antagonist of all things. i sorta clocked his evil ass. he was too good to be true. honestly had a deserved ending with frank destroying his pretty face, because he valued appearances sm and was proud of how he looked. billy russo is a reproachable character but he's also such an interesting villain. the need for control over his appearance and the way he uses it, his lying manipulative ass in general—the way it's all tied to being an abandoned child and having to grow up fighting for himself and building himself form the ground up: that's some hella good writing. i was a fan of the opening theme and accompanying visuals too. it's very Frank Castle. what else was i gonna say... oh yeah, while i see the merit of lewis wilson's ptsd to terrorist pipeline arc, i'm afraid i wasn't very interested in it. there's some odd jumps in the story that feel like there's missing puzzle pieces in between, like the hotel bombing/assassination episode with the non-linear plot. i liked how the episode was formatted but how tf did frank know that lewis was gonna try to assassinate senator ori?? we just jump right into the action. this season had quite a handful of flaws and loose screws. anyways, i should say that i LOVE LOVE LOVE frank and karen's relationship. they're so protective of each other (would do ANYYTHINGG for each other). genuinely the best rep for platonic soulmates i might've ever seen. usually m/f friendships with such a deep bond are made forcefully romantic by the writing and while it could've happened with frank and karen too, i'm glad they're just close like that and it's not more. i appreciate their lil queerplatonic bond. also karen's such a badass UGHHHH I LOVE FEMME CHARACTERS WHO ARE SO GOOD AND HAVE SM HEART BUT WILL ABSOLUTELY SHOOT U IN THE FACE GIVEN THE OCCASION (the scene where she shoots lewis' leg thru her handbag>>>>>>>). karen page walking around new york with her trusty .380 she's so cool. i want her and also want to be her. she has balls of STEEL. god she needs to put matt in his place. matthew murdock u don't deserve her. i'm hating on matt all of a sudden fjsksksk listen if i love you a lot i will also bully u and that's me with matt okay why am i talking about manwhore murdock in a punisher review i need to stop. don't really got much else to say. the scene with curtis baiting billy with coffee in his apartment while frank has him in his sniper's crosshairs was cool asf. uhh that's all i think.