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A Bittersweet Traipse Through Storybooks

A beautiful and simple film wherein we get a brief intro to the Sumikko Gurashi characters and then go through a number of fairy tales with them. Some of the stories visited include: Momotaro, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Little Match Girl (without the tragic ending). The animation is rather simple with a nice pastel palette but there is some good usage of 3D CGI and some aspects of collage (one segment with lace trees is particularly striking). If you just want to watch something sweet and kind there are few better ways to fill an hour.

I really wanted to like Umayon!, Pretty Derby was one of my favourite shows in the last few years and I was looking forward to spending more time with the horse girls. Sadly Umayon's biggest failing is that it introduces too many new characters (without having the time to learn about them or their personalities) and almost entirely ignores the main cast from the original show. With only 3 minutes to spare why not use the characters the audience is already familiar with or just focus on adding in a few different horses as recurring characters? It's too short and too busy which is a ... real shame because this show had a lot of potential.

A few preliminary items:
If you are unfamiliar with the Resident Evil franchise and its characters this film will not clarify anything for you.
If you are hoping for a horror film, this is not that film. It is a pure action thriller with mild horror elements most of which are in the first 20 minutes of the film.
If you want to see something that has mindless enjoyable action and lots of stuff blowing up, this film is for you.

Vendetta is a perfect popcorn movie. Its well paced, well acted, and there's a solid mix of action and plot setting. If you were able to see ... it in a theatre with Dolby Atmos sound all the better because the sound design was really stellar.

That said there are a few major issues with the film. The story is very weak, there is little depth and I often found myself stifling laughter during scenes which were meant to be dramatic but came off as high camp. The uncanny valley is very much at play here and while the models look good for the most part the textures are eerily off especially glass objects and wood (which shines so brightly it seems like a thousand maids had polished it for a thousand years). The level of animation is not as good as something like Gantz: O but it still (mostly) visually pleasing and well done.

An enjoyable experience if you want to sit back, relax, and turn your brain off for a couple hours.

A sweet Christmas special that riffs off O. Henry's The Gift of The Magi. The Milky Holmes girls are at their zaniest and the feel of the episode is very comparable to the first season, where broad gag humour is the main course. The episode mostly focuses on the relationship between the detectives and phantom thieves celebrating the holidays together and of course G4 shows up and Kokoro spouts some adorable nonsense. A gift for longtime fans who want to see more of the characters they know and love but this is not an accessible starting off point for those unfamiliar with the series. ... I'd give the episode a 7 but it gets a bonus point because I don't think The Feathers show up at all.