Month: January 2025

A Christian knight named “Dante”, freshly returned from the Crusades, journeys through Hell looking for the soul of his lover Beatrice after she dies in his arms, the last of his family to be slaughtered by someone unknown. Her soul is snatched away from him by the devil as she screams that he must have betrayed her; he denies this. But at the gates of Hell, his torso is embroidered with a red ribbon cross depicting, like film slides, his sins. He meets Virgil and travels through the circles of Hell, attacking monsters, protesting his innocence, and calling out to Beatrice, whom the devil intends to wed. Can he stop the marriage? And is he worthy of Beatrice’s love? (Or God’s?)

This movie is based on a game that is based on the actual Inferno. The episodes in this Japanese/Korean/American production are animated in slightly different styles, but the plot all hangs together. It’s a clever fantasy/action/horror adaptation.

See below for more details about the plot. SPOILERS.

Continue reading Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)

This historic movie was controversial because it featured two cross-dressing male characters; they pose as female musicians because they need to escape the mafia. I didn’t find it entertaining, just awkward and silly.

Your mileage may vary! According to Wikipedia, it “opened to critical and commercial success and is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time.” That’s why it keeps cropping up on lists of “must-watch movies,” and that’s why I watched it.

In this movie, Anne Hathaway plays Gloria, whose boyfriend kicks her out because she’s unemployed, broke, and out drinking with friends all the time. She leaves NYC, moves into the empty house her family owns in her hometown, and gets a job with the grade-school classmate who runs the local bar, which means she gets to keep drinking. Here’s the thing, though: she discovers that whenever she steps into the local playground, Seoul, South Korea gets attacked by a giant monster whose movements exactly match her own.

That’s the premise.

I think they mismarketed this movie as comedy. It’s really dark, actually. Okay, fine, it’s black comedy. I thinnnk I’m glad I watched it… but I wouldn’t watch it again. Yeah, she’s under the spell of alcohol addiction, but it’s actually a lot worse than that. You can shake addiction. What you can’t do is reason with a psychopath who has some sort of hold over you. That’s scary, man.

Anyway, the movie is a clever metaphor, and there are flashbacks that ultimately “explain” (not that it’s really explicable) the origin of the monster. So if you’re not afraid to see Gloria cornered by a violent psychopath in the second half of the movie, and you like black comedy, give Colossal a try, I guess.

Rotten Tomatoes currently says 82%; IMDB says 6.2/10; Google says 53%.

The show is about John, the extremely smart but hermit-like identical twin brother of a police investigator. John makes a living inventing puzzles under the pen-name Ludwig. John must assume the identity of his brother James in order to figure out why James has disappeared. (Don’t expect Season 1 to answer that question, though!)

The episodes, as you would expect, are a mixture of fish-out-of-water comedy, displays of intellectual brilliance that address some specific police investigation that “James” becomes involved in, and delicate attempts to pursue the dark secret of the disappearance of the real James. And is there a love triangle? Maybe so…

See below for a few more thoughts (no spoilers).

Continue reading Ludwig: Season 1 (2024)