The Legend of Hei 2 (2025)

 

The Legend of Hei 2 (2025)

7/10

 Starring the voices of

 Shan Xin

Liu Mingyue

Zhu Jing

 

Directed by: MTJJ (Ping Zhang)

 

The Legend of Hei 2, to me, is just as good as the first one, and as I said in the previous review, both movies beat Ne Zha 1 and 2 when it comes to pure fun and excitement.

That said, the first half of this second part can drag a bit, and I felt the motivation behind the growing conflict between the spirits and the humans was not explained clearly enough. It takes its time setting things up, sometimes too much time, and you can feel the pacing slow down as the movie focuses on discussions instead of movement.

But once it picks up, my my, the fights and battles are memorable.

The animation artwork makes every action scene look slick and fluid, and when this movie decides to go all out, it really goes all out. The depiction of Naza, a clear parody of Ne Zha, is far far better here than the version we get in the Ne Zha movies themselves, and his fight with Wuxian was genuinely cool to watch. Also, the moment when Wuxian takes on multiple spirits to stop them from going into full war with humans is a must see.

Still, the best fight in the movie is when Hei and Luye take on the elder, and Hei removes his restrictions. That moment alone made the whole build up worth it. Class.

I watched this in the original Chinese language with subtitles, and I have to say the voice acting carries this movie emotionally and dramatically, especially during the quieter moments between fights.

Story wise, this continues directly after the first movie. Hei has been training under Wuxian when he suddenly gets summoned to the guild. It is there we learn that several spirits have been killed using a special kind of wood that carries spiritual power, and surveillance footage shows the person responsible appears to be Wuxian. Of course, we all know this is a setup, because he is clearly the good guy, so the real mystery becomes who framed him and why.

We are also introduced properly to Luye, the last disciple of Wuxian before Hei. She has a deep hatred for humans, and her distant nature clashes heavily with Hei’s more hopeful, can we all get along outlook.

By the end, I did not feel like I wasted my time at all, and honestly, I walked away feeling like this story needs a part 3.

So this is a fine animation to see.

The Legend of Hei (2019)

The Legend of Hei (2019)

7/10

Starring the voices of

 Emi Lo

Aleks Le

Howard Wang

 

Directed by: MTJJ (Ping Zhang)

One thing I can tell you is this, the first few minutes of this animation are very captivating. This Chinese animated film has a wonderful English voice cast that captures every moment, and the animation art style fits the feel of the story perfectly. It was only after seeing this movie that I realized it is actually a prequel to the Chinese animated series, The Legend of Luo Xiaohei.

The fight animation is very well crafted, and the movie keeps you at arm’s length when it comes to what is really happening, allowing curiosity to slowly get the best of you. The film does not play around when it comes to excitement from the very beginning, and because of that, there is a slight point of letdown later on.

After the introduction, we move into a chase centered around rescuing Hei, a spirit cat who is captured by Infinity, a human with spirit-like powers. During this capture, Hei begins bonding with Infinity, and we reach a point where the movie wants us to question which side is good and which side is bad. This is where the pacing starts to drop, as there is a lot of dialogue about Stormend, his goals, and the goals of the guild.

To put all this into a clearer narrative, here is the plot. Set in a modern world where humans and spirits secretly coexist, this Chinese animated fantasy follows Hei, a young cat spirit whose forest home is destroyed by human expansion, forcing him into the human world. He is lost, alone, and angry over his loss when he encounters Stormend, another spirit who takes him in and introduces him to a group of spirits living together.

Their home is later attacked by Infinity, which leads to Hei being captured and placed at the center of a much larger conflict involving territory, balance, and coexistence. Hei meets other spirits who belong to Infinity’s guild, a group that believes strict rules are necessary to maintain peace between humans and spirits. This belief clashes directly with Stormend’s views, which lean in the opposite direction.

The film blends gentle slice-of-life moments with bursts of fluid action, which works well with its soft visual style. However, during the calmer sections, the pacing can slow to a crawl before the action pulls it back up again. And then, the lack of full knowledge of everyone’s intent, even when you are more than an hour in, can be a disappointment, as the curiosity withers.

Overall, the movie explores themes of displacement, moral complexity, and finding where you belong. It is a good film and worth watching if you have not seen it already, especially with part two released in mid 2025, which makes it easy to continue the story right after.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025)

 

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025)

8/10

 

Starring          

Daniel Craig

Josh O'Connor

Glenn Close

Josh Brolin

Mila Kunis

 

Directed by: Rian Johnson

 

I like this movie a lot for one main reason, the details.

This movie is packed with details that make it very easy to follow and at the same time very easy to trick you. The level of misdirection here is classy, you really will not guess who the culprit is, and the way information is planted feels intentional rather than loud. Those same details also make it easy to see this movie exactly as it is meant to be, a standalone mystery that you can enjoy without needing to have seen the two films before it.

The cast gave it their all, because the performances alone in the first five minutes are enough to make you sit back and settle in, as the movie slowly pulls you into this world of mystery and invites you to solve the case alongside Benoit Blanc. It is the third film in the Knives Out series on Netflix, written and directed by Rian Johnson, and you can feel that confidence in how controlled everything is.

One thing that really stood out to me is the way the movie handles loyalty and power. I have experienced something similar recently at a job I had, where loyalty to a cruel leader kept everyone in line, and watching that dynamic play out here can either snap you out of the movie or bring back uncomfortable memories if you have been in that kind of situation. The way Jud is slowly boxed in felt very real to me.

That said, some characters felt like they were there just for the sake of it. I could not fully sink my teeth into the lives of characters like Geraldine Scott or Dr. Nathaniel Sharp. I understood their issues and their purpose in the story, but there was a disconnect that kept me from fully caring about them, and that is the only real issue I had with the movie.

I will be honest, unlike the first two films, this one did not have that tiring first hour feeling, even with a runtime of two hours and twenty six minutes. You are not sitting around waiting for the crime to happen so the investigation can start. A lot is happening early on, and it slowly strengthens the one thing you can guess, that the death to be solved will be that of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. The way the movie builds the tension between him and the young pastor Rev. Jud Duplenticy in the first forty minutes is engaging, and it becomes very clear that Jud is facing an uphill battle from the start.

So what is the plot. Rev. Jud Duplenticy, played by Josh O’Connor, is posted to a small church run by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, played by Josh Brolin, after Jud punches another pastor. It is framed as a redemption posting, but this church is ruled by Jefferson with an iron fist. He does whatever it takes to keep new people away and maintain control over the old ones, exploiting their money, loyalty, and respect. Jud sees through this quickly and tries to push back, hoping to save the small town from Jefferson’s grip, but the two constantly clash as Jefferson quietly and publicly works to make Jud uncomfortable.

After a day at mass, Jefferson walks off and collapses, stabbed in the back. Everyone introduced to us, including Jud, appears to have been nowhere near him, and that is where the mystery truly begins for Benoit Blanc.

I highly recommend this movie. It is worth every minute, and the ending brings everything full circle, showing how pride, secrets, and greed sit at the root of every evil in this story.

 

Zootopia 2 (2025)

 

Zootopia 2 (2025)

8/10

 

Starring the voices of

Ginnifer Goodwin

Jason Bateman

Ke Huy Quan

Fortune Feimster

 

Directed by: Jared Bush and Byron Howard

 

Zootopia 2 is fun, it has a lot of mushy mushy touchy feelings in the end which kinda dragged for way too long, but it was fun and it was so amazing to see Flash the sloth again. It is not as good as part 1, but it is good enough that I will watch a part 3 if it drops.

So the Hopps energy is back. This Disney animated sequel does not play around, right from the start the jokes start flying in with many references to old films for the adults to laugh at and enough color and action to keep the kids entertained. There are no words to describe how it feels to see these two working together again in this wonderful animated return to the world of Zootopia, and you can see that Disney kept the animation just as fluid as the first while introducing new characters with new voice actors to keep the juice fresh, so it was like I never left.

It was nice to have Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman back as Hopps and Nick, both give fantastic voice acting performances that make you forget you are watching an animation and they pull you into this world of anthropomorphic animals until you feel like you are witnessing everything from the passenger’s seat.

This is Zootopia 2, a sequel to the 2016 classic in my books, and we have the return of the buddy cop duo Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde. As you would expect the two do not start the movie sitting down, no, we have already done that in the first part and their story continues from where the first one stops.

Zootopia 2 sees former con-artist and rabbit-cop duo Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde working together in the ZPD, but their partnership is on rocky ground as they are sent to a partner training program, and of course they do not finish the training before they jump on their next case. The case revolves around the arrival of a mysterious reptile, Gary De'Snake, who is the first snake seen in Zootopia in over a century.

Judy puts together that the arrival of the snake has something to do with a priceless old journal belonging to the founding Lynxley family, so she convinces Nick to join her undercover at the event, and sure enough Gary appears and steals the journal. But the two are not praised or celebrated for uncovering this because during their encounter with Gary the chief gets injured, and they end up as the prime suspects.

Now the two must unravel a dangerous conspiracy involving family secrets, a secret reptile community, and clear their name while learning to trust each other again. The character dynamics and how they play off each other still give off that predictable rookie cop duo and angry chief vibe we all know, and how they get on the reptile case lines up with the same detective duo stories we have seen before, but the fun here is how these characters handle these predictable situations.

So fair warning, some aspects are predictable, and do I recommend you see this, yes because I will be doing a rewatch as well.

 

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (2018)

  

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (2018)

4/10

Starring the voices of

Mahiro Takasugi

Lynn

Yukiyo Fujii

Yuma Uchida

 

Directed by: Shinichiro Ushijima

 

 

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is manufactured emotion pretending to be profound and I did not feel any of it.
The animation is decent, clean, bright and soft with no headaches like the movie Mind Game which I saw before it, but I feel the voice casting did an average job and there is this failure on their part to capture my attention and make me want to drop everything I am doing to sit and listen. Like Mind Game and a lot of other anime movies, I saw this in Japanese with subtitles so I can watch and not be tempted to skip ahead, but this still failed to capture me.

The movie plot is too straightforward and it does not give me a reason to have a second take, no wait what moment, just me sitting in manufactured chaos and emotions. It is about a quiet boy who reads a girl’s diary and finds out she has a terminal pancreatic illness and they become friends and she teaches him how to live, the formula we have all seen like a thousand times before now.

And because the film starts by showing her funeral, there is no tension and we already know she will die, this is not a spoiler, so with a lack of mystery or emotional bait you know exactly where it is heading.

The one thing I will give this movie is the twist of Sakura getting murdered instead of dying from the illness and I did not see that coming, but I felt they wasted that twist because it could have been a sharp cut that should have caused everything to change and force a new direction. Instead, the movie does not use it that way, it uses that twist to drag the grieving process even longer.

Now we must meet her family and her friend and discover her special gift, and the whole thing turns into grief tourism, structured sadness like the makers are holding a board saying cry here everyone.

Some films use emotion to make you look inward, an example is A Silent Voice which hits you because Shoko’s suicide attempt forces you to question the signs you missed, and Your Name hits you because the timeline twist makes you re-examine everything you thought you were watching, and Look Back hits you because the murder happens fast and sharp and only ten minutes and the film refuses to drown you in grief because it trusts you to feel without being dragged.

This film does the opposite and every emotion is stretched and every moment is designed to instruct you to react.

This movie is wasted potential wrapped in manipulation and that is the biggest problem with it and why I do not recommend you seeing it.

Mind Game (2004)

 

Mind Game (2004)

4/10

Starring the voices of

Koji Imada

Sayaka Maeda

Takashi Fujii

 

Directed by: Masaaki Yuasa

I saw Mind Game and honestly felt like… hmmm.

One good thing about this movie is, I prefer this to Masaaki Yuasa’s other work Devil Man Cry Baby.

There is a lot happening in this movie, and it is saying everything so loudly, that I kept wondering why it needed over 100 minutes to do it. The message is simple, and you must be blind to miss it. It is saying, you are going to die someday, so act now, live the best life and don’t waste moment.

But here is my question, isn’t every guru saying that?

Almost every blog post or TikTok video has such if you scroll for like 30 minutes, I did not think I needed a whole movie, with a swallowed by a whale thingy to get the same message splashed at me.

Now, the animation, and the psychedelic style I did not like, I know it is intentional, but for me, it was distracting. Same with the voice acting, instead of it pulling me into the story, it pushed me out of it.

The movie follows Nishi, a 20-year-old manga artist who reconnects with his childhood crush Myon. They go to her family’s yakitori shop to hangout when two Yakuza show up, one of them starts to lose it and tries to rape Myon and Nishi freezes in fear and balls up.

This panic action got the attention of the rage maniac, who then shoots Nishi in the backside, and he dies.

It is from here, the movie went on a serious psychedelic visual chaos, when the God character continued to morph and change voices, telling Nishi all is done, head of and be nothing, as you are now dead.

Nishi refuses to be nothing and heads back to earth, escaping God and decided to this time seize the moment. And from here, the movie jumps into absolute chaos, he rescues Myon and together with her sister the three of them get swallowed by a whale and are trapped inside trying to escape. It is Jonah, it is Disney’s Pinocchio, all wrapped in one long stream of madness.

I understand the craft and ambition Masaaki Yuasa is trying to do, but I found myself constantly aware of how strange everything looked and sounded. It felt more like someone tapping my shoulder every five minutes saying, “Hey, look at how artistic I am,” instead of letting me sink into the moment.

This film felt like one message over too much visual noise, or like Bilbo Baggins said, like butter scraped over too much bread.

I think people like to praise Mind Game because it makes them sound niche, made by the same guy who made the nonsense Devil Man Cry Baby.

For me, Mind Game works as a technical showcase and not a film that is supposed to reshape your view of life. I do not recommend it.

 

Predator: Badlands (2025)

 

Predator: Badlands (2025)

7/10

Starring

Elle Fanning

Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi

 

Directed by: Dan Trachtenberg

 

I liked Predator: Badlands, this movie changes the perspective of this franchise. Usually, we have seen it from the prey’s view, as they are being hunted by these alien predators, now we are seeing it from the alien predator view.

This movie has some good fight scenes, and the main character is not a human, but a synthetic being, played by Elle Fanning.

The movie shows us that the Predator clan is very focused on strength, and we see there are some emotional arcs to them, it is not just hunting. Elle Fanning in this movie is amazing in her dual roles as Thia and Tessa, making up for the lack of humans in the movie with her performance.

The way she balances her emotions with the pure focus of this Predator alien is what drives this movie. I will let you know, this movie does drag in places, especially when Thia tries to connect with the Predator whose name is Dek. All that talk about the wolf pack and trying to make him form a family unit made me tired sometimes.

The plot starts on the planet Yautja, where we see Dek, a runt Predator, trying to best his brother Kwei. Since he is smaller than all the other Predators in his clan, he is considered weak. Kwei was sent by their father, the leader of the clan, to kill Dek. But Kwei did not want to, so he told Dek to go hunting to prove himself. Dek then chose to hunt the Kalisk, an unkillable apex predator on the lethal planet Genna.

Before he went on his hunt, their father showed up and killed Kwei for his disobedience, with Dek heading off to the planet hoping to kill the creature and gain respect.

On the planet is where he meets Thia, a synthetic who lost her legs to the Kalisk and is separated from her friend and companion, Tessa, another synthetic.

In the end, this was a good ride for a movie, looking at things from another perspective. You can also see where it crosses paths with the Alien franchise, when we discover the Weyland-Yutani team arriving to capture what they believe is theirs to experiment on.

It was a nice time at the cinemas with this movie, and I recommend you take the time to go see it, it is fun. You can see where this movie is heading, probably a crossover later on in the future, but the short runtime makes it an easy watch in the cinema.