Jellyfish can’t Swim in the Night is an original animated production made by Doga Kobo to celebrate their 50th year anniversary. It features a group of young high school girls, each with their own dreams and problems, who band up together to produce music and animated videos. The series partially explores the difficulties that arise…
The farthest station of the Orient Express
The 2024 movie-of-the-month column began with an animation piece, and so it shall end, one that in fact just hit its 20th year anniversary (since this has been a bit of a leitmotiv as well). Polar Express is a 2004 animation movie directed by Robert Zemeckis (the same one that directed the Back to the…
City of Sin (no, not Vegas)
Since for the movie-of-the-month column in October I discussed The Crow – and how its style eventually influenced other similar graphic novel adaptations – I thought it would be opportune this time to discuss one such case. Without further ado, let me introduce a noir or neo-noir piece that had quite a unique style: Sin…
Quoth the crow, Nevermore
This is not necessarily what one might expect when hearing the words ‘Halloween movie’; I am however willing to bend the rules of categorization given how well this film sets the unnerving tone for its plot. Furthermore, this is yet another movie that this year to its thirtieth anniversary, so a little appreciation is a…
MHA – A silent ending to an explosive series
A couple of months ago a long-lasting manga series reached its climax and conclusion, and having finally gotten a moment to finish it myself, I decided to share some thoughts. My Hero Academia, although having had an overwhelming beginning that caught a big part of the anime community in its fervour, even being indicated as…
Helsing van Belmont
A bit of a strange one for the movie of the month column, but it is the 20th year anniversary of Van Helsing and it is an adequate way to ease in to the upcoming Spooktober. Van Helsing is a 2004 action horror(-ish) movie directed by Stephen Sommers, starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale and Richard…
Czech it out
So recently I was in Prague for a wonderful conference on comic books and film studies where I had the pleasure to geek out about the liminal encounters between words and pictures; I presented a couple of ideas about Firefly, a wholesome TV series that unfortunately was cancelled (mostly because of corporate interests) but that…
George of the (Jungle) Dragon
George and the Dragon is a 2004 movie directed by Tom Reeve, starring James Purefoy, Piper Perabo and Patrick Swayze with the guest appearance of Michael Clarke Duncan and Val Kilmer (which awkwardly is uncredited). At its core, it is a light-hearted adventure: a princess that is taught to have been kidnapped by a dragon,…
Around the meme in 80 worlds
From your ‘bobr kurwas’ to your ‘hawk tuahs’ and now to your “it was staged”, more and more the global information and news, trivial or significant, are being conveyed through memes. We are truly living in the Harambe timeline, or as I would say to a normal human being in a casual conversation, “we are…
The last of the samurai
From west to east – or from east to west depending on your location – we have covered cowboys, now it is high time to cover the samurai. And what better movie than Seven Samurai? It is an immortal classic from the Japanese cinematographic industry, directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1954 and starring Toshiro Mifune…