Miller’s Girl is many things. It’s a movie that I learnt about through a YouTube ad, and which came out in cinemas in early 2024. It stars Jenna Ortega, a.k.a. Wednesday from Wednesday, and Martin Freeman, a.k.a. Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit. They play an eighteen-year-old high-school senior improbably named Cairo Sweet, and a middle-aged creative writing teacher named Jonathan Miller. Just to be clear, Freeman plays the teacher and Ortega plays the student.

Look — no matter how you look at it, it’s hard to explain the musical Cats, even without addressing the 2019 movie version. Enough has been written about that version already, and I don’t feel that I should bash it without having seen it, even if it is bad. The version I want to talk about instead is the 1998 movie, which I have seen. Certainly, this is the first time where I think I should summarise the topic of the week in its entirety before attempting to say anything about it. I’ll have to give it a shot, so just bear with me. You’re going to have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit.

Lost in Translation is sad. I don’t know what else to say, so that’s all for this week.

When writing fiction, characters are always tricky. Even in non-fiction, characters are tricky if you’re going for a creative angle on a real person. Much has been said about writing characters that are more than one-dimensional, ie. having layers and motivations. Creating such layers and motivations means that those layers and motivations will bleed into the plot of a story, and that’s crucial for a reader’s or audience’s engagement with said plot. Even if that plot is very engaging, you want equally engaging characters to go along with it.

Bangkok Dog is a martial arts film. Martial arts films are not known for their writing. They’re known — good ones, anyway — for tightly-choreographed action scenes that are shot in dynamic, interesting ways. You’ve got the John Wick franchise with its wide shots to show off the performers’ talent, putting all the incredible technique and prowess on full display. You’ve got the Ip Man franchise, for that classic Hong-Kong-martial-arts-film-feel with a modern twist, with decades of experience behind each film. Franchises aside, Jackie Chan is known for insane high-spectacle stunts in most, if not all, of his martial arts films.

Hanna isn't a movie I've heard much about, but it’s about a little girl who’s trained to be an assassin. I’d first gotten interested in Hanna when I found out that it was directed by the same guy who did Darkest Hour in 2017, which I’d really enjoyed. I’ve also been interested in the John Wick franchise for a while, which is about assassins, if you didn’t know. I also discovered — when looking at the Wikipedia page for Hanna — that it starred Saoirse Ronan, and I’ve wanted to watch something she’s in for some time, mostly because I like the name Saoirse. After reading the description of the plot of Hanna, I expected a movie about assassins in which young Saoirse Ronan trains all her life for a mission, and the movie shows that mission. It turned out to be not quite that. It also turned out to be absolutely bloody horrifying.

Violet Evergarden is an anime series released in 2018, based on a light novel series. It depicts the eponymous Violet Evergarden, a young lady who loses her arms and a loved one while she’s a child, from fighting in a horrible war. After the war is over, and after she receives mechanical arms, she then trains to be a special kind of typist, known as Auto-Memory Dolls (the show doesn’t quite explain why). They function primarily as ghostwriters for clients who want letters written, or for whatever other clients who want things typed up.

You’re probably detecting some aggression through the title. Well, you’d be right to, so well done. I’ve written about Shōgun before, mostly praising it for its good writing and enjoying the character Usami Fuji. However, Shōgun continues to write characters well, in that the writers tried to create a character that I really could not muster any enthusiasm for, and they did that really well too. I really had no time for this man whatsoever. Not that they were writing this character for me.

First post of 2025, then. I finally got to writing a post that was seasonal and timely around Christmas, and you can see it here. So what now? A lot of good movies came out last year, some of which I’d definitely like to cover at some point. In a return-to-form, though, here’s an anime from 2018.

Hot Frosty is a 2024 Netflix Christmas movie starring Lacey Chabert and Dustin Milligan, where Milligan plays a sexy snowman come to life. We’re going to park that insane premise for now. Note that I haven’t called it a romcom like Wikipedia has, or labelled it with any other genre title, because I don’t know what to call it really, and that’s what this post is about. On the bright side, though, I’m finally on time with a topical, seasonally-appropriate piece of media! Hooray!

I was on a long plane flight once, not long after Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was released in theatres. As such, it was on the plane-TV thing, and so I thought what better time than now, while I needed to waste a few hours, to watch the whole rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy, from Rise to Dawn to War. And in the end I found it all weirdly compelling, and apparently I was engrossed enough that the guy next to me, who didn’t even speak much English, started watching Rise too, on his own TV thing. I hope he didn’t find it too unsettling because we happened to be flying into San Francisco, which also happens to be where the apes go rogue in the film. In my defence, I didn’t know that when I put it on. Anyway.

I’m a bit late to the Shōgun train. This isn’t a new thing; I’m late to media trains all the time because I’m the type to wait till a series finishes, and then watch it at my leisure (or more realistically, watch it when I can actually find the time, and then I can binge if I like). But now that I’ve gotten on the train, I am firmly staying on it to wave katanas around and/or sit around in fabulous regal robes. The show is really strong in so many areas that I’m dying to tackle at some point — where to begin? Probably the premise is a good place to start.