Breaking my anime streak for Valentine's Day — a live-action movie that's not only American but from this year! I'm as shocked as you.

Watchability. 4/5. A trailer ahead of Nosferatu introduced me to this movie without giving away its primary twist. Then I checked out another trailer (yes, unforced error, I know) on YouTube, and that one did give the twist away. (As does a close look at most of the posters, and indeed a New York Times newsletter's…

Originality. 1/5. Asking myself over the months what I might write about Look Back, I kept wanting to call it "sweet". Except it's not sweet, or at least the second half isn't. The first half, in which Fujino and Kyomoto evolve a one-sided rivalry as cartoonists, then twist the rivalry into a deepening bond and an artistic partnership, yeah, OK, that's sweet. Then there's the decidedly non-sweet mid-movie rupture that announces Look Back's shift to a wistful mode.

That's faintly…

Things weren't supposed to happen like this. I was having fun in the comments under Darren Carver-Balsiger's Weathering with You and Suzume reviews, ribbing Makoto Shinkai and his cartoons, and eventually I decided that if I was gonna spend so long thinking about Shinkai's work then I oughta watch more than 7 minutes of it.

In my mind I settled on a trim, chronological watch order: start with Shinkai's 1999 shorts Other Worlds and She and Her Cat, then go…

I watched this in the wake of Perfect Blue to get some insight into the actual idol industry.

Originality. 1/5. The documentary's form is formulaic, a mix of on-the-ground observations of Japanese idols practicing, performing, traveling, and live-streaming, and interviews with idols, their fans, their parents, and assorted academics and pundits. One point for the topic, which documentary features don't, to my knowledge, cover often.

Adequacy. 4/5. It's hard to screw up a straightforward observation-plus-interviews documentary. I'm shaving off a…