Let's Go to the Movies!

In a world where everything is either peak, mid, cringe, cinema, kino, raw, dark, cooked, GOATed, or any other word I’ve forgotten comes the worst kind of person there is: a person who doesn’t give things numerical evaluations and instead writes out long term notes like they’ve got a paper due! These notes are not getting grades! Unfortunately I also have like, chronic memory issues and inattentiveness that has never been fully addressed so hard the time I’m going to be pointing out incredibly blatant things for movies. I am not much of a movie goer. Like most of my movie rate is like maybe 4 times a year. Anyways, here's my notes.

2024

Transformers One (11.15) an origin story o-fryin pax!
Spoiler Notes under the Cut! transformers the energy crisis ohhh d-16 and pax friendship
the rebellious orion and the rule guy d16, i know this is going to be like starting off as a little journey because they want to solve the energy crisis and then it's going to turn into a tragedy
i can vaguely recognize some of the cogless miners based on their g1 iterations which is how I know my brain is cooked
i like elita one being like "ugh" which is a lot different from her g1 iteration where she was just optimus's best gf MINERS.
this is so sad, they're pre defined but not even by their choice because of circumstances wildly out of their control "i did this for us"
sentinel prime really is a theatric man which makes his downfall worth it is that arcee
hot rod spotted in the list?! Drift? Jetfire?!
do you think that one robot who basically was like "YEAH I WON SCREW THE MINERS" has regrets in his life post movie
spider woman.
HRRRGHHH MINERS B-127, Bumblebee my friend, they sent him to the garbage chute and he has been stuck ever since he's yapping because they're gonna remove his voice later on For transformers two.
i like how d-16 was like "actually never mind let's go on the world adventure because of the yapper" robo deer and robo nature
d-16 just wants to follow the rules and orion is the rebel which makes the entirety of the later iteration more sad like you can see them develop into their roles as their voices change and develop to be more like their roles in later materials
sad robots be hitting different idk what to say When the children’s movie explores classism and the systematic oppression through exploiting the lower working class through the allegory of “cool robot” and it’s the reaction of the two who were in the same position to find this out and how they react to it causes the conflict because there's zero time to properly think about it because you either go full anger or "we can do better than this" and you can pinpoint the exact moment during that flashback exposition where the gears start turning and the one oppressed his entire life goes "I'm going to start oppressing" and you can see his eye colors gradually change and see the way he learns how violence will solve his answers
Like most of his life was based around being subservient and learning that violence got responses and why put your head down when you can rise up and it's not enough for just the one thing, there's like multiple bad things IN A ROW where it's like "yeah I completely get it and that reaction"
"does transforming count as a magical girl sequence" forum closed with 121 posters banned
the transforming fight sequences are crazy good
i think the high guard went nuts in the isolation, completely lost in the sauce shockwave immediately hating bee's yapping
scanning brainrot he's cooked
soundwave stopping shockwave like hold up, let him cook
Starscream hit the overhead i like how even though it's a kid's movie they do not pull the punches with the violence such as visibly hearing starscream's throat getting crunched d-16 got so into the violence he got a cannon out of it that one guy nodding when d-16 is like "I'm no longer showing mercy"
go my b-127, attack i like how Elita one's speech was like "you suck and I'm better than you but you have optimism which we need" Wrong, we need nutjobs.
HE SAID THE THING is that thundercracker
hey, he stole his little sticker. that's not nice. Kill him. It's jazz! Hi jazz!
Is that ironhide? Is that prowl? It could be bluestreak. They are literally the same helmets. I mean, in that case it could also be Ratchet unless he’s a design from a later version like Prime or something The pink one in front is definitely Arcee.
Orion's speech is so different from D-16's because he's like "we need the power of our own hope to stop injustice and fight together" vs D-16 "I AM THE ONLY ONE " Is that one of the aerialbots Was that nova storm or skywarp since there's purple recolors
Lost in the cameo sauce HE HIT THE POSE Goddamn, Starscream is cooking, he got the null rays and the jet boosters and he's putting in work
BADASSATRON They made it work they made the joke work Bro's got knife hands He's so illy I can't believe he's a comic relief that isn't annoying to me
what if they sent the wrong footage the movie would be entirely different
This is the worst day of D-16's life because literally the last time orion pax was alive he dropped him off a cliff it's all in parallel to the race and the various times d-16 was pretty much forced into pax's goofs
is it kind of nuts some of them don't have names or not like d-16
let him get up let him get up don't let him get up.
the matrix of eatership! The high guard was immediately ride or die for this guy they met a few hours ago
they're both dead by the way orion pax and d-16 both died that day through ego death
It was a sick fight though Dang, since that was a part of his arm that would've been painful
I like how he used the restorative power to save the day and you can see the cogless miners getting their restored forms (I like jazz's little door things) and is that wheeljack and you think that's a happy ending but then you see the decepticons firing off in the post credits
that's their origin stories
Summary
+fight scenes pretty good + origin story that is mix of various canons and isn't like convoluted + comedy that isn't out of place unlike what trailers made people think + easter eggs for people who have been into transformers longer than me
Good movie, I can see why people were like “go see the movie”
that one is probably going to win movie of the year but this whole year's big thing was me getting fixated on transformers
Fern Gully (11.2)

It’s kinda crazy for like 40+ years we’ve been having shows and movies with environmentalist messages but old guys in charge are still like “light up the environment for profit we need more oil lmao” This entire movie is so largely vaguely Disney looking that I was like “huh” because I think I saw it once in elementary but didn’t know it was a different studio because studios would just make things that looked like other things for trend following. Watching with my sibling and they were like “the fairy’s gonna fall in love with the boy” and I was like “she probably won’t” and then seeing he’s the only like non cartoonish looking guy so far was like “oh yeah, that’s pretty obvious.” I like how there’s just an evil tree and an evil ass mountain and like the ancient old woman and it’s basically just a classic kind of scenario movie setup Anyways this is how I learned the pizza tower taunt sound is a stock effect The magical whimsy of the forest vs the horrors of industrialization with the subtlety of a hammer I like the blend of 2D and 3D animation but I’m also not sure how effective the message is going to be when the main villain hams up with his song and is likely the thing people remember the most about the movie aside from the bat which is kinda wild they just casually had an experimented bat with a probe. They gotta put up a sign or something saying “DO NOT CUT THIS TREE.”

Sailor Moon Cosmos (8/28)

Sailor moon is one of my top influential things of all time so I'm breaking my image rule just this once
Damn, i didn’t even realize this came out The way I haven’t watched the OG 200 episode anime for years and the only thing I’ve seen recently was Crystal stuff Watching the trajectory of crystal within those few months and now it basically just looks like a very shiny version of the 90s art style or like Precure Where have I heard this dub Usagi before because I’ve definitely heard it in not sailor moon and very recently Oh crap it’s Hinata

THEY DIDNT RECREATE SAILOR STARS OPENING with MAKENAI! AcrapA E SAILOR YELL!! ZETTAI! TSUKAMAERU! SAILOR STAR! 0/10 its just moonlight densetsu again When’s the last time moon pride even played like was it just season 1 Now they’re recreating the opening scenes from various openings of the 90s show You know for a project that was supposed to not be exactly the same they kind of made it look nearly identical
I’ve seen that haircut on every single MapleStory character thief ever on the white haired one Usagi i don’t feel so good Why they doing the Naruto run Putting a funny little hand on his face She had a face where she said “DNI. Do not ask me how it went.” Meanwhile chibi USA was like “bye losers im leaving the plot” Haruka was definitely like top 1 intros to girls who were not traditionally feminine for me and thinking now on it I am like “yeah that explains a lot about me”

It’s sailor iron mouse, oh she’s competent now I forgot She shooting lasers and crap No there will not be a scene where she begs for mercy from a phone booth while the funeral dirge plays, stop that



Do these feel less like movies and more just supercuts of the hypothetical episodes this would get in the run time if it was an actual season just glued together. Yeah pretty much.

Can you imagine being asked to dub chibi chibi where it’s like “ya wanna voice this thing” and all she says is “chibi chibi” Oh yeah i forgot chibiusa brainwashed Usagi’s mom into thinking they had another kid and then chibi chibi also does it She no longer says just Chibi Chibi I like how Usagi’s kid has pink hair and she was supposed to have like silver or pink hair idk

The 90s canon was bizarre for what it was in comparison to the manga plot at the time but now it’s finally accurate Why’d she knock Usagi out with the pot Usagi keeps waking up and I’m starting to think she might be trapped in a time loop There’s a lot more uh goofy animated scenes like that one scene with the frame in season 2 where I was like “huh?” Tv tropes called that a BLAM but like who uses tv tropes these days. The girls are fighting They said “we’re not dubbing the song” and you know, good for them

Side note (What’s up with Mamoru anyways) :

Now that he’s dead I’m gonna go poke the relationship of sailor moon that has been a contentious fandom point. Takeuchi herself decided originally that Mamoru was 17-18 on an art book and then aged him down to 16 at the start but that did not make it to the 90s anime. Very confusing. It’s kind of more or less I think the intention (manga) was “he’s super smart and competent (and an orphan) so he went to college early despite only being so and so age” but it did not translate well to anywhere else and for good reason. Why did they make it like this inexplainable kudzu mess for ages with this guy, it’s borderline weird to think about from a lens of like years later instead of like the semi borderline wish fulfillment fairy tale romantic fantasy reincarnation drama that it was like portrayed as, the miracle romance that the show sings about. But you know. Yeah. It’s aged noticeably these days akin to spoiled milk. She married the Yuyu hakusho and Hunter X hunter writer (yoshihiro togashi) but like he fumbled it so many times so IRL she’s the girlboss and he’s the cringe fail guy and apparently that is like… consistent? With her writing men? Like Usagi is clearly the ultimate girl goddess of cosmic destiny fulfilling the mandate of good and evil as dictated by the laws of the universe and she ascends with the silver crystal power and in comparison mamoru is some guy. Idk. The energy of “Takeuchi changed her mind but it still made it into the development process anyways” can be found throughout most of early sailor moon like how Ami was supposed to be a cyborg and all the girls were supposed to die (made it onto season 1) and how the development process of the anime to manga wasn’t 1 to 1 like how it is these days which is why OG sailor moon has so many filler episodes anyways. I mean it could be worse honestly, Yes Precure 5 was right there and I'm pretty sure they doubled down on that one...

BACK TO THE PLOT:
What’s the point of this whole sailor vs sailor thing anyways. “Nuh uh, we didn’t do it” like yeah it’s obvious How much of this plot could be solved if they talked instead of just assuming things Sailor guardians? Yeah they’re named after everything in the solar system
No sailor earth ever Not Naru Not an OC. Nuh uh.
I forgot the birds were sailors The sailor crystal means that you’re a sailor guardian but you can just steal the crystals Dang that’s crazy
Is this like 1 to 1 manga dialogue Drama CD vibes are coming back
Usagi straight up has psychic and teleportation magic now Galaxia doesn’t even have her image song She didn’t even have “IM THE GOLDEN QUEEN” Why would she have that though Idk She’s like Frieza but for women to me
Sailor moon I don’t feel so good Hey get up What is the sailor moon time travel logic anyways There’s only 1 timeline in sailor moon no multiverse or alt timeline stuff so the time travel is all the same pretty sure thats wrong and it fluctuates between past future and present
You ever think about how Chibi USA is like 912 years old or some absurd number If you question it all you get “wait it’s kinda bizzare Usagi became the ultimate ruler of the entire galaxy” but that is not the point There’s a tiny Pluto here There’s a lot happening. I’m watching sailor moon fight a cat and her cats just died Nvm they didnt The power of Usagi transcended beyond time and space and the plot too Are there alternate timelines? Well, yeah, there’s the chibi chibi and non chibi chibi timeline That means there might be MORE chibiusas in the world
The Warrior of Destruction A Sailor V OVA would be super cool I think Like no more retreads Bring her to the world Galaxia is blowing up the planet and crap Go girl Chaos. Evil. Kill chaos.

Sailor Moon Cosmos 2!! Ahhh, I’ve been hit! JK lmao.
MAKENAI AcrapA E SAILOR YELL!! ZETTAI! TSUKAMAERU! SAILOR STAR! YEEEAGHHHHHH

That’s what I wanted baby That’s what I wanted the whole time Why are they in the desert of water
All of her friends keep dying What are they like More like what were they like Ohhh the river Lethe like in Greece Hey Myosotis mention That’s the forget me not flower
Symbolism!
I think sailor moon works on dynamic timeline rules since you know there’s clearly an effect in the future with the past but clearly everything has to work out because Neo queen serenity has to exist for chibiusa to be born
Think about the future trunks timelines This means that somewhere out there there is sailor moon xenoverse That’s the another story RPG games Nuh uh Yuh huh
Will sailor moon create a world where fighting doesn’t exist She’s bad because… she is. No shes good actually Oh no they are dead
Yep, 1 to 1 with the manga
Her name is heavy metal… “They’re dead but not really” is a thing that would make this feel flatter but tbh in nearly every manga arc the sailor guardians lose and almost die anyways so this does not bother me
Sorry was that an X like twitter X Starting to hear the word “sailor” too much and it’s not registering as a word anymore
So do people who don’t have sailor crystals just not get to reincarnate
Did mamoru get the evil drip bracelet too Goro akechi? I know who tuxedo mask’s VA is now Has he always been him and I just never noticed but the minute he started being sinister I was like “hey I recognize that voice”
I like how their stock attacks look evil now 😈 and they’re putting in Galactica now That is not a surprise that is a whole scythe blast
Does mamoru get a stock attack No. why did he do all that This feels slightly different from what her story was in the manga or whatever Idk It’s been years I do not remember her suffering like that “Why does it have to be sailor moon” What is the title of the show
she think she’s palpatine
Darkness Light Darkness Light Balance? Wrong light
chibi chibi speaking full sentences now Even Galaxia turned around like “why is the child talking like that” Galaxia: wow the moon is truly beautiful Dies
Me nodding my head: power of friendship together strong Sailor moon the most powerful ever
I forgot about cosmos Okay so time travel can do whatever No no, it’s about the power of hope and love and like being naive and strong and not complacent , because Usagi the best and not like a battle hardened warrior who gave up
The cat just talked in front of the parents and no one’s asking a single question because the credits are rolling now
Pacing is… nonexistent, it’s 1 to 1 with the manga If you like the manga, good. If you liked characterization and filler from the 90s, well, go watch that instead but come back for the dream and cosmos arc unless you really liked watching the final arc of stars for some reason but like it completely falls apart in the final part. Personally I just like sailor moon minus the parts I disliked so it was alright for me. AUGH. Post credits relationship jumpscare.
Thoughts on crystal as a whole:

The first season’s really rough but it gets better later on but not having proper pacing whatsoever for later arcs kills it, but I guess having it spread out as multiple episodes would also not help if they were just gonna be 1 to 1 with the manga scenes. I’m glad there’s finally a manga adapted version of this show and like even with my gripes there’s a thank you letter from the author penned at the very end of it all and like how am I supposed to hate that.
Sometimes I think about that Fanmade sailor moon show where they used random cels from the show and sailor moon gained the silence glaive. What a random thing to remember. I wanna go find that again.

The Lego movie (watched 8/9)
All of this true because it rhymes He is a silly man made of lego I like how you can tell the twist is that it’s all being made by a child if you’ve watched it a second time because of how the dialogue is in the prologue My touys… Emmet is the kind of guy who follows the rules but no one knows a thing about him because he’s too confirmed. He masked too hard. Watching a movie on streaming is a lot different than in a theatre because you can just… idk. I feel like you pay less attention to streaming movies. They gave a Lego curve marks. It’s a movie about uh. Prophecies and uh, stuff. BIONICLE REAL The multiverse of Lego real This is just a guy getting mad about a kid playing with his toys They just erased a guys face off and killed his personality like permanently They break apart into pieces like the lego games Cloudcuckoo land is an anarchist state Lloyd cameo Hi lloyd Lego’s are funny. No clue what’s going on with the lego Ninjago movie. Haven’t watched that. I did recently watch Ninjago so the cameo was pretty cool. I should get back to watching dragons rising I heard it’s nuts. Let him build a spaceship None of them have ever followed rules Freedom Friday Tuesday Frursday SPACESHIP HE DID IT What if that kid stepped on a Lego It’s like Toy Story Ages 8 to 14 That’s like some exorcism crap We are all the special
The union (8/16) It's a lot different watching movies on streaming and with people too, right? How do I describe this... well, from the get go a lot of movies that tend to focus on spies and FBI and CIA and cops basically run the same course of propoganda, let's get that out of the way Trope of "average guy somehow outskills everyone else involved" is there too alongside "wooing the cool coworker girl" It was an alright action movie, plenty of scenes and fights but the last minute car chase took forever It's a movie that exists made up of tropes to make this fake made up US spy network look good and every other country look bad especially the ones who want all of the US information. I wouldn't be able to recognize any of these actors because I don't watch live action movies that often and more or less I got shoved into it because the cowatcher is the kind of person who scoffs and spits at anything that looks remotely colorful. The whole time I was comparing tropes with my cowatcher and going "well, someone has to be the spy and it's the boss!" which was true, but the guy coming back from the dead was not an expected bit Ahhh, I see, netflix specifically recced this to me the day it came out.... algorithm at work there.
JJK0 JJK 0
Yuta I like him It’s always neat seeing like character prototypes become their own characters in their own right This movie has extreme budget for it also Rika kinda crazy strong It’s kinda like a long extended episode Was this really supposed to be like the main cast of Maki and Panda and Toge? With his whole rice ball gimmick? I wonder if that would’ve worked. This is like glimpsing into an alternate world.
Now that I’ve watched ghost hunter Mikami the fact that this segment is about ghost real estate makes me think “would mikami be able to sweep JJK… she might have had some trouble.”
Oh no his throat medicine is gone… It’s Geto the racist. Is there a significant reason for all these huge invasions happening during holidays or is it just the significance of the date itself
They have teleportation runes in this world Stop staring at me with them big old eyes Ohhh wait is panda a stuffed panda I wish they had translations for the text going across the screen like that should be a bit obvious eh?
Yo Yuta is locked in I’m starting to understand why he isn’t the protagonist because he’s him Gojo did not need to do all of that You know, the mark of a good movie is when you put it on in the BG and then you get so engaged you go to sit down and fully watch it because you’re invested HE HIT THE BLACK FLASH Misa has a nice design but her thing feels like super underutilized
JJK could’ve used some filler with other schools but you know the plot is clearly plotting
What is Todo doing His best Two hospital kids and he can’t even get married and she’s gonna be a ghost forever The power of love Maybe Idk Why is love a death ray laser beam That’s love baby!!
The school’s budget is GONE they’re gonna need to rebuild all of that Oh woah Geto got his arm cut off like Toni Geto and Gojo is like Doomed romance and brotherness or something What ever happened to that brown haired girl anyways Ohhh that was Shoko Okay
So he was enjoying food in Africa during Shibuya I wouldn’t blame him I blocked out all my memories of when I visited Africa when I was 13 but the food was pretty good
HTTYD HTTYD

No clue if I mentioned this one or not in the last rounds but it pretty much cemented that I should watch things by myself instead of other people if they’re going to refuse to watch the movie and instead get mad at made up versions of the main characters. Ruined my enjoyment. So naturally, I'll just watch things alone like I usually did. They tended to get pissy when that happened but like, they're totally incorrigible.
There’s a pretty big difference between movies and shows… With a show, you can watch whenever. In fact, binge watching and multitasking is pretty much a default way to watch a show these days… With a movie, it’s about like, time, atmosphere, the mood, and especially who you watch it with. When you watch a movie, you want to focus.
HTTYD was less on the movie and more of a lesson on “don’t watch movies with people who are going to be annoying the entire time.” It’s difficult to enjoy a movie when there’s a person making crap commentary. It was a fun movie but the experience was soured.
Mean Girls I’m not much of a moviegoer and I barely go to see movies in theatre. That being said, after watching the original mean girls, I went to see the musical one in an actual IRL movie theatre. Regina was kind of the only worthwhile part of the musical that I’d likely listen to in a Spotify playlist, the other songs were forgettable at best and the lead actress couldn’t sing. I also watched how to train your dragon. It was good, I’ll probably add the extended cartoon to my watchlist.
Madam Web Madame Web: Watching madame web the same way I did with morbius and I'm convinced Sony is attempting to make some kind of crappost off brand Spider-Man cinematic universe. The main villain is like “I need to kill these teenage girls before they become a problem” and is stopped by a single adult who has no superpowers minus the power to run him over. I think this is the opposite of marvel having people be hyped over it for years, it has like, anti hype. The Morb Effect. I was texting my friend live commentary and at one point said “This feels like a CW pilot”
Misc Movies: TTG to the movies. I’m not sure why this show still exists tbh. The Flintstones. I didn’t pay attention to this at all. I’m not a movie person and mostly use it as background noise. My attention span has been shot for years. On average maybe I’ll watch like, one movie in theatres for the entire year.

Previous Years (2023, 2022)

Across the Spiderverse Watched spiderverse (the new one) with my friend, and it’ll probably be my movie of the year since I barely watch movies. I do wish there weren’t so many effects like all the time though, it’s probably impossible to watch for anyone with sensory issues and even I had to close my eyes at one point of the movie.
Scott Pilgrim, Pitch Perfect Scott the movie: I liked it, it was pretty funny seeing a life action version of everything. Even if the sound choices were very limited in what game noises they could use (they were pretty happy with the sonic ring sound…) wasn’t really great that they kinda shoved Scott’s development of not being an ass about the two timing into a single scene but the swerve with Nega Scott was also funny. I watched this after take off.

Pitch perfect: My sibling loves this movie so I’ll check it out it’s about the acapella band or something… Tbh I can’t care for these movies about relationship college drama and they love it alongside mean girls and idgaf. It’s slightly more than that but School drama is boring to me. It’s second hand embarrassment I don’t like all.
Watched: The Bad Guys (Dreamworks): I’d like to thank spiderman into the spiderverse for allowing animators to flex in movies forever now, also whoever at dreamworks keeps making wolf characters the way they do, plot was based on a book or something and the morals i think were like, be a good person genuinely instead of being performative, like that little hamster man.
The phantom menace. I’ll probably post more in depth about Star Wars (the first six) and then the sequel trilogy later but right now it’s sitting with the classic being the top because I’ve bounced off the phantom menace twice now because this really could’ve been cut. A lot of line reads were stilted and it sort of leaves a weird first impression of the big guy anakin being a child. My watch order was literally 4-5-1-2-3-6 in order to get it out of the way and I can see why they put it like that.
No clue when I watched. Watched a Low budget movie involving two kings and a question of morality between picking a friend or king when the king killed the rightful heir but obviously the protag picked the king because there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise. Wizard battles with PowerPoint transitions. A movie I missed last year outside of the unfinished Disney movie marathon was Pompo the Cinephile, which is pretty much the epitome of the statement that art is suffering and making extensive cuts but my main takeaway is that a movie needs to be 90 minutes long because I’m terrible at retaining information. A movie watched with the extended family was National Security, which was. I don’t recall much of it outside of it being a buddy cop movie and the antagonist being killed in a looney tunes styled execution where he gets launched off a rock. Lots of explosions. Immediately dated by the usage of video camera, otherwise it would’ve been on phones.