Made in Abyss (Seasons 1-2 + Deep Soul)

Beautiful and messed up at the same time.

On a distant island is a giant cursed pit known as the Abyss, so deep that no one knows how far it actually goes. Riko, the protagonist, is inspired to find out. This anime has some really beautiful scenery, excellent music, decent animation and crazy ideas. With colors usually on the brighter side of the palette and a very "kids theme" art style and the majority of the heroes being kids themselves, you would be forgiven if you thought this was a kids show. It is not.

Let's jump down this giant hole!

Adult themes are dealt with constantly along with violence and other pretty horrible stuff that litters the excellent narrative. Expect to be hit in the feels a lot as death and fates worse than death abound. I'm greatly looking forward to season 3!

Apparently you can either watch season 1 (which I did) OR the first two movies which cover the same content (can't comment I haven't seen those), followed by movie 3: Dawn of the Deep Soul before moving onto season 2. They're all of excellent viewing. Highly recommended!

Morbius and The Tomorrow War

Where science is magic!

Morbius

A brilliant doctor (played by Jared Leto) suffering from a blood disease uses the magic of science on some vampire bats which cures his condition, but in exchange he also becomes a blood thirsty vampire! While there aren't any surprises in the story, the scary segments are decent but in a surprise fail it's actually the CGI that lets this superhero (*cough* villain *cough*) movie down. They really need to end CGI brawl fests altogether. All up an average movie that my wife enjoyed a lot.

The Tomorrow War

In this sci-fi movie that stars Chris Pratt, time travelers from the future convince world governments to help them by sending people from the present into a future war (that they are losing badly) against alien beasties. The critters look really great and menacing, the action scenes are good, and the pacing is quite quick (except for one bit in the last part where someone thought another "walking through a dark interior lit only by flashlights" would be a good idea, even though there's no more suspense by that point).

Still a very enjoyable watch, even though the plot itself must have been mangled by one of the aliens due to all the logic holes in it, and not just from the timey wimey stuff. There are many points I thought "why didn't x do y?" And the answer was always: because that would make the movie too short. Lol.

Wednesday and Chainsaw Man

Snap twice and pull the cord.

Wednesday (Season 1)

Antisocial student Wednesday Addams (played by Jenna Ortega) has a wide array of murderous skills, but the one she is best at is getting people hurt and getting targeted by a murderer at her new school is just what she needs to put on her detective hat to drive most of season 1's predictable story - but the acting, writing, cinematography and music make this very entertaining. Recommended even for people who have never heard of the Addams Family before, and I'm looking forward to season 2!

Chainsaw Man (Season 1)

This VERY well animated series might use a lot of bright colors but it is much darker, gorier and more adult in content than Wednesday. Our protagonist Denji spends half the time killing devils as he's fused with a devil himself that lets him become the titular "Chainsaw Man", and the other half of the time trying to get laid. Finally, an anime that gets a teenagers priorities right! The only downside is that some of these devils are freaking weird design wise, but that makes it unique I suppose. Again recommended, and another one I'll be waiting for season 2 on.

Uncharted (movie) and The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Visiting dangerous places.

Uncharted

Nathan Drake (played by Tom Holland), a pickpocket with Spiderman levels of agility is recruited to help find an ancient lost treasure before the competition does. While there's lots of action scenes you can tell the plot is taken from a game because most of it is utterly ridiculous. I especially laugh at the notion that the original guys who hid the treasure didn't trust each other so they cooperatively built a humongous death trap maze that somehow survived through the decades. It's a silly movie.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Layabout alcoholic Chickie Donohue (portrayed by Zac Efron) decides to help his buddies who are fighting in Vietnam by bringing them beer from their local pub. While he is a bit of an airhead which puts him in humorous and dangerous situations, he's also very personable (and very lucky) which makes his story quite interesting to watch. While his quest is meant to be ridiculous, the journey through it is actually a decent one. Recommended!

Warframe: Voruna

The wolf pack.

Obtained through conjunction missions on Lua, which is basically a fancy survival mission that gives you a chance at a "piece" every 20 minutes, expect to do more than a few runs to not only collect blueprints but also Thrax plasms which are used both in construction of Voruna AND buying the blueprints from Archimedean Yonta on the Zariman if you just had lousy luck grinding. Which I did.

Once built this she-wolf has four passives that can be triggered one at a time: increased parkour, stat resistance, heavy attack efficiency or a bonus life (60 second cool down on that last one). On top of that she also can turn invisible for a short while, go feral with a five strike pounce, gain health through melee attacks or energy via head shots and lastly spread negative statuses on enemies.

Pretty cool, but she seems to very much lean into status application and skill spamming as opposed to my preferred crit builds. I suppose it's just one of those things where, yes - she's pretty cool, but can she fill a purpose better than the others? She's very much a "killing things" frame (over say a sneak, defense or tank frame), but her killing is kinda slow - and there's a lot of competition in the "killing things" category. That probably means my helminth is going to taste wolf.

As an aside, yay! At least until Citrine is released that means I have now "mastered" all the non prime frames! :)

Puss in Boots and the Last Wish

"Fear me, if you dare!"

After being introduced in the Shrek series, the back story of this swash buckling cat (voiced by Antonio Banderas) who is both hero and wanted criminal is explored in Puss in Boots when he gets a chance at getting his childhood score of magic beans - while the Last Wish is set much later when he's *spoiler* running out of lives.

While both are fun, entertaining and well animated, Puss in Boots is definitely more aimed for kiddies while the Last Wish adds a bit of shadow to the plot which makes it significantly better. It's also structured in such a way that you don't need to have watched any previous Puss In Boots content prior, so if you are only going to give one of these a try I highly recommend Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Two thumbs up.

Knives Out and Glass Onion

In these mystery movies, world famous detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) investigates the sudden suspicious suicide of a wealthy and famous mystery writer (in Knives Out) and is invited to participate in a murder mystery game by a tech billionaire (in Glass Onion), which turns out to be more realistic than intended. Both cases have numerous motivated and well acted suspects and both are very well shot cinematography wise. While Glass Onion has a nicer setting, Knives Out has a better story.

Juris identified something that turned him off these though - where an Agatha Christie mystery you are given clues as it goes along and at the end can "compare notes" with the on screen detective, these movies give you the answers before our detective works it out. Still an entertaining watch, definitely at least give Knives Out a try.