Movies – Robot Claw

Another Year At The Films

October 24, 2024

Kristin and I saw 30 movies this year, some more than once, and all but one at the drive-in. As with previous years we wrote five-word reviews after each of them, and here they are. Since I couldn’t sometimes pick only one, some films have multiple ‘reviews’ 🙂

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – Best film of the year!
Ghostbusters Frozen Empire – Time to retire this franchise.
Abigail – Original and fun vampire movie.

The Mummy – A decent bootleg Indy film.
The Mummy – The hero murders many people.
Jumanji – Children imperiled by jungle animals.
Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace – Meesa do lika dis film.

Challengers – It’s not really about tennis.
If – Deadpool as an imaginary friend.
Furiosa – Oh what a lovely film!
Furiosa – We didn’t need another hero.

Inside Out 2 – The sequel to Inside Out.
Kingdom of The Planet Of The Apes – What’s with these ape movies?
Kingdom of The Planet Of The Apes – The best character isn’t simian.
Despicable Me 4 – Prequel to Despicable Me 5.

Maxxxine – Mia Goth is a star!
Twisters – Pretty people doing stupid things.
Close Encounters of The Third Kind – Re mi do do sol.

Deadpool & Wolverine – Proof that plot is irrelevant.
It Ends With Us – Unbelievable people living unbelievable lives.
It Ends With Us – It didn’t end fast enough.
Alien Romulus – ‘Goonies with aliens’ doesn’t work.

Grease – The lyrics are so suggestive!
Grease – Sadly it doesn’t include Xanadu.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – What the hell was that?
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – Worst film of the year.
Trap – Just another dumb Shyamalan film.
Trap – Appropriately the title rhymes with…

Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter – What happened to the mum?
The Beyond – Far more style than substance.
Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives– He should have stayed dead.
Evil Dead 2 – A well deserving horror classic.

Transformers One – More than meets the eye.
Joker: Folie A Deux – Should never have been made.
The Wild Robot – Robot Jesus saves furry animals.

The Wolf Man – Spoiler: Lon Chaney’s a werewolf!
Dracula – The bats have left the bell tower
Dracula – The victims have been bled
Dracula – Red velvet lines the black box
Dracula – Bela Lugosi’s dead

(Ok, so I broke my 5 word limit for that last one. I’m sure you forgive me!)

With winter fast approaching the drive-ins are once again closed for the season. It was the end of our 15th year going to our closest local drive-in, and we will again buy a season pass for 2025. I hope they’ll have a lot of good films for us to watch next year!

Bikkuriman Star Wars Complete!

July 15, 2024

Last year in Japan, this happened. This year I succeeded in finding more.

The above is the full set of the second Bikkuriman Star Wars stickers, this time themed around the prequels. I bought this as a set, rather than a box of wafers, and it wasn’t cheap at ¥4500! As with the original set, the stickers are vibrant, cute and very sparkly:

The backs of the stickers are very similar to the first set including the ‘rumours’:

I dearly wish I had more of these since they’d be wonderful to actually use! Wouldn’t you love this on a postcard:

But my success didn’t stop there, since I also found this lone sealed wafer:

This is a from the third (and final) series of Bikkuriman Star Wars, called ‘Special Edition’. Although the wafer expired 8 years ago, I purchased it (for ¥800, or about $5) just for the sticker. And which one did I get…

Nothing! The pack didn’t have a sticker on it! I’ve opened many dozens of these in the past and this is the first time this has happened. I would have been raging if it wasn’t for the fact that I had also found…

The full set of series three as well! As you can see there’s a lot of variety in this third series, including lots of stickers showing character pairs, vehicles and battles. The set also contains four embossed stickers with a gold foil effect:

As with the previous sets these are all very metallic and sparkly and I would have loved to have extras to put on postcards. In fact I was looking forward to using the one that should have been in the empty wafer!

So now I have the full set of 72 Star Wars Bikkuriman stickers. They’re all sleeved and safe in a special chocolate sticker binder 🙂

But the search is not yet over, since there’s certain other sets of stickers I would still like to complete…

“Oh What A Lovely Day”

May 24, 2024

Saw Furiosa with Sue yesterday, on the giant ‘Vmax’ screen at Kotara. The seats were comfortable but the cinema was cold; probably the coldest I’ve felt yet this trip! I smuggled in a Chokito and a Wolverine coke can, although I use the term lightly since no one was checking anything and I probably could have lugged in a haunch of roasted meat.

The film was wonderful, and makes me want to rewatch all five Mad Max films again in order. I fear this may be the last Mad Max film, which will be a shame since it does a lot of weird worldbuilding that I’d like to see more of. Let’s hope Wasteland – the rumoured sixth film based around Max himself – is made.

I want to see Furiosa again actually. Maybe I’ll soon get a chance…