If you haven’t watched Romantic Killer on Netflix, I strongly recommend you do so now. This series should at the very least be on your watch list, especially if you like anime. Romantic Killer is a cute anime with a lot of heart and exactly what you need if you are looking for comforting anime.
Anzu is a girl obsessed with video games with no intentions or time to find love. Unfortunately for her, a wizard appears and uses their powers to make her life into a dating sim. Anzu suddenly finds herself surrounded by hot guys and forced into situations that will decide her romantic future. Will this wizard succeed in their mission to help Anzu find love, or is she really as incapable of falling in love as she believes she is?
This series was originally intended as background noise as I built my gunpla kit. But my gunpla went unfinished as I quickly became absorbed into Romantic Killer’s silly and quirky plot. This series has a delightfully charming story with fun characters and a vibrant art style. I love how resistant Anzu is to the situation, but she is still willing to learn and grow from it. I love the awkward and hilarious situations the wizard puts her in. The only thing I don’t like about this series is that there isn’t an end yet, and I need to know what happens. I don’t want to get too detailed with this review because there is a bit of mystery to the plot that leads to its heartwarming resolution. The resolution and how all the pieces of the narrative connect is what makes this series special. I’ll admit that some of the plot points are a little forced, but it doesn’t matter when the result is this cute. I should go without saying that I love this anime.
Regardless of what you think of anime, you should watch Romantic Killer at least once. It is cute, dumb, and very entertaining. It can be slow, especially during setup, but it is worth the journey. If you have Netflix and need something fun and comforting to watch, this is your answer.
I couldn’t find the trailer in English, but there is English dubbing and it is solid.
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead is a fun but cheesy live action adaptation of a pretty cool concept that should at least be on your watch list
My first exposure to Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead is the live-action movie on Netflix, and absolutely love it. I understand the stigma behind live-action adaptations, but if you ignore the source material, it works. Zom 100:Bucket List of the Dead is a quirky and cute road trip comedy about a zombie apocalypse that should at least be on your watch list.
Akira believes he’s gotten his dream job after graduation but discovers he works for an exploitative company that has no problem working him to the bone. Akira spends the next year of his life as a zombie for his company, working tirelessly at a job he hates. Luckily for Akira, there is a zombie outbreak to free him from his misery. For the first time since he started his job, he is free to do whatever he wants, and he plans not to waste this new freedom. Akira makes a bucket list of the 100 things he wants to do before he turns into a zombie and sets off to complete it.
I love the contrast between the corporate life Akira had and the one he has in the apocalypse. Akira will often remember how miserable he was before the zombie outbreak and use that as motivation to live his life to the fullest. It is a very unique take on the genre because the story isn’t about a group of people simply surviving, but rather a quirky road trip comedy of people learning how to live.
The live-action movie is incredibly over the top and cheesy, but it gives the movie its charm. The tone is silly, the action is over the top, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the story is cute. I love the references to Super Sentai and how exaggerated the action scenes are. The music they choose for the action scenes made this movie for me. If you want to watch a fun cheesy movie and enjoy some cool JPop, watch this movie.
I love this movie and have already watched it a few times. I recommend you check it out in the original Japanese, but the English dubbing is a solid option for enjoying this movie. If you a cheesy road trip comedy with a solid story, this is a cute one with a lot of charm. I don’t know how it compares to the source material, but intend to soon. You can stream Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead on Netflix.
Peacock’s Twisted Metal series is campy, cheesy, and bad, but I liked it?
I will start by saying that if you are a fan of the Twisted Metal games, you will be disappointed by this series. This isn’t the dark and twisted narrative that is the main draw to the franchise. This is a cheap and cheesy action series with a Twisted Metal theme. This series is bad. The writing isn’t great, the acting is inconsistent, and the CGI is horrible. But it isn’t the worst video game adaptation I’ve seen. Despite its many flaws, I had a lot of fun with this series. I enjoyed the games, and won’t deny my disappointment that this series isn’t a true adaptation. But I am also a fan of cheesy campy movies, and that part of me adored the general ridiculousness this series carries.
The world has ended. In a post-apocalyptic America, major cities have walled themselves off from the desolate wasteland that surrounds them. But not everyone can live in the cities. The undesirables are cast out, forced to fight amongst themselves in the ruins of the old world. Cities use these outsiders to trade goods with each other. These people are called milkmen, and milkmen are expendable.
John Doe is a milkman hired for the most important run of his life. If he can complete the delivery on time, he can enjoy a peaceful life inside one of these cities. But this won’t be an easy delivery. The roads are unforgiving, full of death and mayhem. Does John have what it takes to make it back alive?
The series is a prequel to the twisted metal tournament. The tournament is run by a mysterious figure who pits the best drivers around in a fight to the death. The winner of the tournament gets their wish granted. The story is pretty cool until it isn’t, but I recommend you watch the cut scenes or summaries on YouTube if you want the real story. The series exists as its own narrative, and while it does have some fun Easter eggs, I am not counting it as canon. It’s best to watch this series disassociating the two narratives, or you will have a bad time.
I enjoyed the series, but it isn’t for everyone. This series is bad, but it’s the fun kind of bad. There is an attempt at a story. It isn’t great, but it’s fine for how cheap the show is. There is a bit of humor, both intentional and not, but don’t expect this to be the action-packed mayhem it promises to be. The CGI looks terrible, and they use a lot of it. All of the action is CGI, and it is hilarious. I recommend this series to people who enjoy watching bad campy movies for fun. Everyone else, it depends on how much cheesiness you can stomach.
You can stream Twisted Metal on Peacock.
The Beanie Bubble is a poor attempt at capturing a weird moment in history that you aren’t missing out on.
I have never enjoyed movies that are based on real people or events, and The Beanie Bubble is no exception. This movie is about the women responsible for creating the bubble and the man responsible for popping it. If you want to know the history around the Beanie Baby bubble, there are probably podcasts, YouTube videos, or articles that do a better job. This is a boring attempt to sensationalize an odd moment in history. It isn’t worth your time.
The acting and production are solid. The cast is fantastic, the colors and costumes are beautiful, and there is some cool editing. Unfortunately, the writing and the way this story is told is terrible. The movie jumps between three different women, jumbling the timeline and bringing it all together at the end. It’s an interesting idea, but the story isn’t interesting enough for it to work. The movie relies too heavily on narration, and the narration is overbearing. A lot of the plot is told through explanations of important events and internal monologues, essentially turning this into an expensive podcast. The tone of the narration becomes an issue because when it isn’t too quirky for its own good, it feels like the narrator is talking down to the audience. It also makes the movie boring to sit through.
The movie was intended to be an inspiring story of an empowered woman triumphing over a terrible man, but it was poorly executed. The monologues and dialogue are generic and lazy, Ty is too cartoonishly villainous to be taken seriously, and the sensationalized tone takes away from the woman’s accomplishments. When the pivotal moment comes when the woman breaks off from Ty, it doesn’t feel monumental because the women don’t feel real, and I had stopped caring a long time ago.
The biggest issue with this movie is that it tries to cash in on 90s nostalgia when people have moved on to something else. This movie throws up 90s nostalgia and will stop to show its audience how 90s it is. This slows down the movie and takes away from a story that isn’t good to begin with.
I wouldn’t bother with this movie. It may not be terrible, but it isn’t good either. If you lived through the craze, or are curious about it, there are better sources out there for this story. You can stream The Beanie Bubble on Apple TV, but I wouldn’t bother.
Apple’s The Crowded Room isn’t the psychological thriller it thinks it is
I almost didn’t finish watching this series, but I powered through for the review. The Crowded Room isn’t the worst show in Apple’s catalog, but it is boring. I’ll be honest. I didn’t have the highest hopes for this series going in. The trailer was boring, so I wasn’t surprised when the series was too. I am more disappointed by the fact that I wasted my time watching this than I am with the quality of the series. Do yourself a favor and go watch anything else.
Rya is an ambitious psychology professor who is asked to help Danny after he shoots up Rockefeller Center. Danny is a troubled kid who hears voices and needs help. Rya is the only person who understands Danny’s condition and can get him the help he needs. But with his trial moving ever closer, Rya is running out of time. Can she help Danny so that he can start healing before it’s too late? Can she convince the world that he needs help, or will he be sent to rot in prison for something that he has no control over? I feel like I have been saying this a lot lately, but this could have been a lot shorter. I believe it was meant to be shorter. This series has a lot of filler, and it took everything I had to not skip around. You can watch the first and last episodes and get the whole story, the rest of the episodes add nothing to the narrative. The Crowded Room spends so much on emotional speeches, psychology lectures, and showing the audience how diverse the cast is that it forgets to tell its story. It’s hilarious that the series is advertised as a thriller when it is missing everything that would make it one. The writing is worse than the pacing. Someone took everything they learned from their Intro to Psyc class, mixed it with some of the laziest emotional speeches, sprinkled in as many cliches they could think of, and threw it together to make this script. I can’t believe they wasted such a talented cast on something more fitting of a high school production. The Crowded Room is a slow build-up to one of the most boring and poorly written trials you will ever have to sit through, and then the series just ends abruptly. While I am happy that they didn’t sequel bait, they should at least have the decency to try to finish the story. The trial magically ends, and you get some meaningless epilogue and the empty feeling that you just wasted precious time you will never get back.
The longer I think about this series, the angrier I get about having sat through it. You can stream it on Apple TV if you have a subscription, but you have better things to do.
Happy Madison’s The Out-Laws is a bland comedy that will leave no impressions
The Out-Laws is one of those Adam Sandler movies you can skip because you are going to forget you watched it. It isn’t one the worst movies to come from his studio, but it doesn’t do enough to be worth your time. This movie feels like it was made to fill the quota Netflix set for Sander. The result is a lazy, poorly-written comedy that may get a couple of laughs, but not enough to earn its spot on your watchlist.
Adam Devine, who plays his goofy usual self, is marrying a girl who is clearly out of his league. Days before the wedding, his future in-laws make a sudden appearance and announce they will attend the wedding. But their checkered past catches up to them, and now Adam Devine needs to help them rob a bank to save his future fiance from a crazy gypsy mob queen. Can they rob enough banks before the wedding?
It should go without saying that this movie has no plot. It feels like a series of skits held together by the dumb heist movie and Adam Devine. Most of the gags are unfunny and go on for too long, but there will be the occasional joke that will make you laugh. Not enough to make this movie worth watching, but enough to make it tolerable. There is a lot of singing, lazy jokes, body humor, and Adam Davine being silly to pad out a movie that already feels too long for Netflix. I get the sense that this movie might be better under the influence of marijuana, but even then, there are better comedies you could be watching instead.
The Out-Laws isn’t the worst movie that has come out of Happy Madison Productions, but it isn’t entertaining either. My issue with a lot of original streaming content is that they only exist to pad out a library. The race to create original content comes at the cost of quality, and while they may have the time to make this garbage, we don’t have time to watch it. A lot of the stuff I’ve been watching lately gets forgotten, or it’s so bad I can’t bring myself to finish it. This is one of those movies I’ve already forgotten I watched. It isn’t funny enough to watch again, or good enough to recommend. This movie didn’t break me like others have, but it also didn’t leave much of an impression. You can stream it on Netflix, but your time is better spent elsewhere.
Silo: The fantastically suspenseful sci-fi mystery you should be watching, or at the very least reading.
Silo is a fantastic sci-fi mystery full of suspense, action, and conspiracy. If you have an Apple TV subscription or need a reason to start one, check out this series.
Earth has become a toxic and uninhabitable wasteland. The few remaining survivors live now live in an underground silo where life, for the most part, is peaceful. Everyone in the silo serves their purpose, settling into a routine that is decided for them. Most don’t questions the silo’s designs or the founders’ motives. Some get curious and ask the questions that peel at the veil of this carefully crafted façade, but they don’t last long. There is something wrong with the silo. A secret too big to keep hidden forever.
Juliet is a gifted mechanic who spends her days keeping the silo running. She does her job passionately and has never been curious about anything that isn’t mechanical. This all changes when she finds herself wrapped in the silo’s biggest conspiracy. Now Juliet finds herself searching for answers that will destabilize the peace in the silo. Will Juliet finally be the one to uncover the truth, or will she be silenced like all the rest?
Silo is a fantastic thriller with a well-crafted mystery, terrific acting, and a beautiful rustic aesthetic. Some actors aren’t great, and there is a bit of filler I would skip next time around, but the series left me wanting more. I started reading Wool, the book the series is based on, because I couldn’t wait a week for the answers. Once you binge this series in one sitting, I recommend you read the book or at least listen to it on Audible. It is a fantastic piece of science fiction. I’ll link some free copies of the audiobook below for those interested.
I enjoyed both versions almost equally. I loved the TV series because the actors did a great job portraying their characters, I enjoyed the attention to detail in the world and mannerisms, and I liked that the series felt more like a thriller. There are some suspenseful moments in the series that kept me at the edge of my seat even though I knew what was going to happen. I enjoyed the book because it felt more like a mystery. I felt like Juliet got more answers in the book. There are also details in the book that were left out that I felt were done better. I can’t tell you which version I enjoyed more, but I do recommend you dive into them both.
If you haven’t seen this series yet, it is a great time to start it. It is a fantastic mystery set in a fascinating world led by a great protagonist. My only complaint is that I’ll have to wait for season 2 for more answers, but I guess I can read the books in the mean time.
this version of the audiobook isn’t finished, but it does cover everything that happens in the series. It is also the better of the free version
This version isn’t as good, but you have both parts:
The Last Thing He Told Me: The slowest suspenseful thriller about unconditional motherly love
Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts: The quirkiest post-apocalyptic cartoon you should be watching on Netflix
I just finished binging Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts and loved every minute. It is the perfect coming-of-age story, full of adventure, action, and humor. If you are looking for a new cartoon to get into, or simply looking for something to watch with your kids, this is a great solution.
In a dystopian future, society as we know it collapses. Animals have mutated and become sentient and form warring factions that fight over control of what remnants of civilization. The few surviving humans live in underground burrows, hidden from the chaos. Kipo is a burrow girl with big dreams and a bigger heart. She gets separated from her home and ends up in a land full of wonder and danger. Kipo must find her way home, but her journey won’t be easy. Luckily, she finds friends who help her. What will Kipo discover along the way? What will she help others discover?
What I love most about this series are the characters. Kipo is quirky without being annoying, which many shows get wrong. She is a capable teenage girl who will win you over as she does many of her friends. She has her flaws, but the series does a fantastic job of showing her work through them. She is an excellent protagonist and one of the major reasons you should be watching this series.
Kipo’s friends are amazing. The cast is full of fun and memorable characters who also go through an incredible journey. I loved watching the characters grow as they learn from their experiences. I gushed hard at moments that lasted seconds because of how pivotal they were for a character’s development. The attention to detail in this narrative is phenomenal. The series also has some fantastic villains who have great motivations and help mold the story.
This series isn’t perfect, but it’s close. The voice acting is mostly great, but there are a few awkward lines reads. The writing is fantastic, although there is a general cheesiness throughout that is hard to ignore. That said, I believe the flaws give the series its charm.
Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeats is a rollercoaster of emotions that you need to experience once. I was so invested in the story, characters, and moments that I cried a few times. This series has a lot of laughs and some cool action, but when it needs to get serious, you better be ready. The story is fantastic, the art style is fun, and the soundtrack is phenomenal. If you are looking for a cartoon to watch, it needs to be this one.
You can stream Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts on Netflix.
Jury Duty: The wholesome mockumentary that will leave you smiling
If you are looking for a dumb and fun series to get into that doesn’t check out Jury Duty. This quirky and wholesome show is sure to put a smile on your face.
Ronald is summoned to jury duty where he will serve with a collection of quirky characters. What Ronald doesn’t know is that there is no trial, and everyone else there is an actor. Ronald will sit through one of the most ridiculous court experiences ever held, but he also makes some friends along the way.
Ronald thinks he is in a documentary, the series is cut like a very silly one. The actors all do a fantastic job of staying in character, although there are a few moments in the series that almost break them. The concept is interesting, and surprisingly, it works great. The characters are quirky and fun, the situations are awkward and hilarious, and Ronald is a wholesome guy that brings it all together. As good as the actors in this series are, this show wouldn’t have worked without Ronald. He is kind, easy going, and he rolled with whatever wacky scenario they threw at him. The show will throw some ridiculous curves at Ronald, but he rolls with them in the best possible way.
The unpredictability of Ronald gives this series its charm. In other shows, you can kind of guess the direction the jokes and plot will go. In Jury Duty, you never know what hook Ronald will take, how he is going to react to the situation, or if he will figure it out. I enjoyed this spontaneity because it created some hilariously dumb moments.
This series is dumb good fun in the best way. If you haven’t watched it yet, check it out on Prime Video if you have a membership.