"Earwig and the Witch" (2020), by Studio Ghibli in cooperation with NHK.

Let's see what we have here:
- a woman and a baby on a motorbike successfully flee from a yellow 2CV
- the woman abandons the baby (named: Earwig) at an orphanage
- the woman mentions 12 witches, which have to be defeated, before she can return (to, what we now know, is her baby)
- two sinister adoptive "parents" (one a witch, the other a demon) with a yellow 2CV in their garage
- a talking cat

With those ingredients, it should be doable, to create a good, if not even a great, animation movie.

Alas - they've failed. Massively.

10 years have passed and "Earwig" or "Erica Wigg" (as the little baby has been re-named by the matron of the orphanage) is running the show.

To put it in her own words: "everyone here is doing what I want!"

That alone makes our little protagonist unlikeable, already (btw: she is wearing her hair like little devil horns...so, the movie makers really wanted to drive that point home).

But at this point, the story still could have been saved.
If they had given the little girl some redeeming qualities.

Let her have some learning experiences, that help her grow into a better person - done! Good movie.
But they didn't.

Instead, she is angry half of the time and the other half of the time she is planning, on how to make the adoptive parents do whatever she wants - just like everyone did in the orphanage.

During the last third of the movie, we learn why the demon isn't as evil as he could be.
We also learn that the witch isn't quite as bad as she first appered to be.
And - honetly, don't ask me how - the little she-devil gets her wish and both, witch and demon, serve her completely.

And then the movie ends, when the long lost mother knocks at the door on x-mas eve.

Zero explanation as to the connection between the mother, the witch and the demon (and why they were chasing after her and her baby in the beginning of the movie), besides that they all played in a band together, zero explanation about "the 12 witches" that the mother apparently had to defeat...no explanation at all to anything.

It's really rare, that I sit stunned in front of my TV, wondering: "what the hell did I just watch?"

Yesterday was such a rare instance.

And to think that Studio Ghibli was involved in this...incredible. SMH

Sir Rodney of Dangerfiekd in "Back to School"(1986). As Thornton Melon, owner of the Tall and Fat stores, his machine-gun delivery of hilarious PC-incorrect one-liners is simply priceless!

Pound of Flesh, an action film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. The premise is simple: his kidney is stolen by organ traffickers. While it is not his best movie, I found it engaging enough and enjoyed it

Black Crab

With Noomi Rapace.

Creature, the one that only has worth if I pretend it's a Killer Croc origin story; holy shit this was stupid garbage. The big damn hero rolls up to crash Lockjaw's hillbilly rape-party and save his damsel in distress, but 99% of the fight is just getting beat down by a creature that quickly swiped parts off or out of everyone else. He's very lucky though, that a hole randomly opens in the mud and Lockjaw randomly steps backward into it. He pops back up to pull Damsel in, but BDH dives in after them...and resurfaces with the slightly over-sized jawbone, even holding onto it long enough that they throw it out the window while driving away. Isn't that just so exciting, that the monster is defeated completely off-screen? It actually mirrors Lockjaw's transformation, where he cornered an albino gator in a cave and "fought" it by limply laying his belly across the sloped gore underneath and lifted the gator's jaw open, as if their biting force isn't the strongest of all living animals. Supposedly, feasting on both the gator and his sister-bride transformed him into a mediocre Batman villain cosplayer.

Terminator: Dark Fate. It suffers from the expected fatigue associated with long running franchises and its veteran actors. While it features good action sequences, it ultimately lacks originality and suffers from poor character development. Despite these shortcomings, it manages to entertain

Just watched Jurassic World 1 and 2 (3rd is planned for this weekend) after each other for the 1st time, but so far:

"I LOVE DINOS BEST MOVIES EWA!" As someone else said, "you can check your brain at the door and pick it up on your way out" when watching this movie.

Most people can smell what's going to happen long before the movie says something, and it relies too much on scores and scene-mirroring from the original. The worst part is that they try soo hard to get the T-Rex being the king again that they must have it biting and stomping on everything that even remotely challenges it. This is literally a repeat offender!

And the goat is now a running joke. Also on repeat.

But I love the new tech they're showing in the new park (something I would like to see in a modern museum), and we also get to see aquatic and aviator dinos here compared to the original, and mr star lord is always great to see.

1st one is pretty entertaining and fun at times, this is where mostly the awe-factor is.
The 2nd is where things are falling fast. Gotta admit it was sad to watch the bracho standing there getting engulfed like that, but at least 4 thing stands out; the dumb scene where they try to take blood from the T-Rex and where Chris Pratt doesn't get seriously burned when nearly touching the lava, introduction of the girlboss, and the hysterical and insecure all-knowing "nerd".

EDIT:

Well, let's just say something is very off with the 3rd one. I mean it's like the characters have been turned upside down and 180 degrees, specifically those from the 2nd movie. There are much more but I won't bother with it. Crap movie.

I just watched The Gorge (2025). It's difficult to discuss the movie without spoilers, so you have been warned

[spoiler]
The movie begins with a very cursory introduction of the 3 main actors: Anya Taylor-Joy, Miles Teller and Sigourney Weaver. Miles is one of the best snipers in the world but is out of action due to psychiatric conditions from his over 300 kills. Suffers from nightmares. Anya is also a super sniper in the employ of Mother Russia, her cancer ridden father is ex-KGB and is her handler. She suffers from poor quality sleep. Sigourney is a spook... or is she?

Both snipers get sent to a year long rotation overseeing a fog-filled gorge which has "Hollow Men" climbing the walls often. They settle in and then in a heartbeat, break the rules (East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet) and talk to each other, meet and fall in love. This was the most unconvincing part for me, despite both being good actors, I couldn't feel any chemistry imho. And the long distance relationship scenes felt too long. Cues *eyeroll* Anya sends a hint that she wants some company and Miles doesn't respond. He just sleeps, wakes up and then read a quote "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." He then launches a zipline with a modified rocket launcher across the gorge for see her. The next day after a meet cute, Miles leaves for his tower but falls into the gorge. Anya jumps in to save him and they both fall into a fog filled nightmare realm where there are gigantic man-eating tree centipedes, trees with rib-like claws and skulls, three eyed humans merged with tree branches and animals like snakes, riding on horses merged with branches, and big skull headed spiders. I don't know how these two snipers managed to kill and survive multiple monster attacks with limited ammo when 3 battalions couldn't before.

They find their way into an abandoned multinational biological science facility which was established during WWII in the spirit of the Manhattan Project to fuse animal, plant and human DNA. Missiles filled with these biological weapons were breached during an earthquake and the scientists and later some soldiers all get infected and turn into long-lived plant-animal hybrids. Miles discovers that a large corporation named Blacklake is extracting DNA from the monsters to accelerate a super soldier program. The monsters look good but don't seem all that tough, some die to knives or to headshots. And their heads wouldn't ever fit into a regular helmet with all the branches growing out of it. It could be that the program is using the DNA from the monsters just create toughened arms and legs however, and Blacklake is hiring expendable soldiers to guard the source of their new DNA.

Both snipers escape by climbing up the walls of the gorge by attaching the winch of a jeep to the broken zipline à la The Gods Must Be Crazy. They resolve to run away together but first they must destroy the gorge.

Sigourney however finds out that they have accessed her company's database and sends in a strike team to take them out. Both snipers evade machine gun mounted quadcopters by running and standing behind a tree. Miles kills them with a pistol while on his back, and Anya kills 2 with a single sniper shot. Cues *eyeroll*

They both manage to initiate an Operation Straydog self-destruct protocol that has been sitting around and working after decades in a foggy environment. A nuclear explosion takes out the gorge and Sigourney's helicopter as well because the stupid pilot was trying to climb instead of flying farther. Cues *eyeroll*. Too bad the movie didn't have a similar ending as the original Predator, with Miles or Anya in ripped shirt waiting for an evac. Instead we get Miles missing a meetup and then reappearing and asking for some rabbit pie from Anya who's working as a waitress in a French cafe.

[/spoiler]

Thoghts: It's a serviceable movie to me. Good for a one time watch or just fast foward to the easter egg romance scenes (or just skip it altogether) and just watching the final third where they end up in the gorge. The monster designs are cool but not gory at all. Caution:

[spoiler]

spider jump scare.

[/spoiler]

I think there was more blood shown in an earlier scene where one the snipers was injured in the shoulder. I wouldn't recommend it but if you have access to it, i would say give it a go if you like the actors or a light horror movie similar to Resident Evil or Alien