SuperBiasedGary

Topkapi

is a solid heist genre movie. It has a woman who just loves a good robbery assemble a squad of quirky specialists for a well organised job (and there's a goofy Brit who also gets roped in). It takes some very silly turns, and then the act of the actual heist just got pulled off so well it became one of my favourites for this year.

Last Year At Marienbad

is somewhat of a fever dream, a surrealist movie that cycles over and over on events in a hotel. It's the kind of movie that you can trick yourself into hating if you try to hard to crack what it 'really' means. I had a good time soaking in the imagery and marinading in the repetitive conversations, to drill into the subtext.

Synecdoche, New York

is a movie about a play within a movie, the self centred director of that play. But in a more interesting and comedic way than that probably sounds. Characters playing each other poke a lot of fun and parallels, and the different layers of reality get slippery as new ones get added on top. But it's also, quite honestly, just funny to hear how many ways people can pronounce "Synecdoche".

The Mystery of the Yellow Room

One Hundred Years of Solitude

A Desolation Called Peace

Ikoku Nikki

by Tomoko Yamashita is an ongoing story about a shut in author adopting her niece after a car accident leaves her an orphan. A lot of the drama comes from the struggles the two of them have communicating with each other and the others in their life, as well as the lingering unresolved tensions from the inciting incident. Both the loss of their death and what was left unsaid in life. It's quite low stakes drama, but I like how it explores the messiness of all these situations. The two characters are endearing, especially as they struggle with things. The panelling also does some very fun stuff, there's a lot of weaving through the past and future, lines that echo over other scenes, memories of past events. It all uses the page space very effectively to get into the characters' heads. The first chapter was a flash forward in time, and a recent chapter has caught up to retell the same events. The events are the same, but layout of the page and compositions of the panels differ as we revisit this same time and place.

Here (2014)

by Richard McGuire is a comic that's set entirely in one location, from a specific point of view in the corner of a house. Or at least, it's the corner of a house in a certain span of time. Each panel of the comic depicts a different point in time. The experimentation in itself is fun. But it also leads to fun narratives juxtaposing events of different times to show the differences and similarities across decades, centuries and epochs. It's a very clever use of comics, and really underlines a strength of comics and their timing.

The Rose of Versailles

Citizen Sleeper

is a game where you play a "Sleeper" escaping a corporate structure that owns and uses you as a body for other people. In a similar vein to Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper injects some tabletop gaming inspired storytelling into a fun space to explore. You enact things by rolling dice and spending them, but more more importantly it has a "fail forward" approach. Things may go badly as you work your way through the disparate threads of the game, struggling with limited resources and trying to scramble together enough to keep yourself running as you seek a way to live a stable life. It honestly may have been a little too easy for me by the end, as I managed to game out a stable life before even hitting one of the many endings this game has. But the tension early on is enough to carry the tone. The joy in Sleeper for me is having the sci fi concepts spun out with the delightful cast of characters who are each struggling in their own way on this little space station.

The House in Fata Morgana

is a gothic horror story about a formless person waking in a cursed house as a suspicious maid guides him through the house and the different horror stories the house has had a part in. A common conception of Visual Novels is that they're very long, very text heavy and somewhat slow. That is true of Fata Morgana, (some of my favourite characters only appear after the halfway point) but it does build over time. It lavishes in detail as it goes because it delights in the telling, and it's worth the time. It's not that there's a singular payoff in the end, more that the lavish prose is for a rich story that gets more layered onto it as time goes on. I have not even finished the DLC, I'm only just returning to it now to work my way through it, but I look forward to the new stories and angles it takes on the cast.

Butterfly Soup 2

is probably a game you've heard of about lesbians and baseball. Unlike Fata Morgana, it's very short and sweet! A story about a group of queer girls in school, their lives and their various relationships. It gives you just a taste of each one's point of view, and does a great job of alluding to their broader lives beneath the surface in the short vignettes shown. In many ways it is a straightforward follow up to the first game. But one big strength BS2 has is that it can follow up on the relationship that begins at the end of BS1. One thing I always like in stories is seeing a relationship in progress, being figured out and processed. The times after they first get together, and have to figure out what it's like living in parallel to that other person. One other thing is that Butterfly Soup is set in the early 2000s, and some of the real life connections to things just cuts to the core of my brain. Characters discuss Smack Jeeves, a webcomics site/forum which was one of my haunts in the olden internet, and is where I first used (a version of) my current username. Tieing things into real life has a surprisingly good effect of having me relate these things back to my world. Even if my exact situation is very different to these girls, there are real life things that tie us together.

Revolutionary Girl Utena

is an incredible show. With a fairytale approach, it tells the story of Utena, a girl who aspires to be a prince, and Anthy, simply a rose bride beholden to her owner. Over the course of the show, Utena ascends many ornately animated stairs and fights duels that resolve character tensions. I usually prefer to go into something not knowing what to expect, so I'm not burdening it with particular expectations. I started Utena expecting it to be a show I'd love, but it surpassed that. I didn't just love Utena, I devoured it much faster than I normally watch any show. It served as inspiration for a story idea I'm kicking around, giving me real direction on how I want it to go. Being an inspiration is the highest compliment I can give something. Utena is a long strange journey but at the very least, you need to watch it so you can learn about Nanami's Egg.

The Prisoner

Paranoia Agent

is a short series directed by Satoshi Kon about an urban myth, and whether or not it might be real. Kon's movies are also highlights by and large, but the secret sauce to Paranoia Agent is that despite the overall running thread, these are mostly a series of short movies. While the overall thread ties it together well, by favourite bits of this series are the more one off episodes that mostly hook in thematically. The episode that really hit close to home was one about an animation team crunching to make a hypocritically self care focused episode about a loveable mascot. This is well worth checking out, and the shortest one on this list too!

Andor

it's Andor! I'm not much of a Star Wars fun, yet this was a special show. It has a heist and prison break arcs, but neither of them is even the best arc! People have already said so much about it, especially A More Civilized Age a Star Wars podcast that I highly recommend (and you can support them on Patreon too). It's a good ride, and now I need to watch Gilroy's Michael Clayton.