M is For Magic (Neil Gaiman, Kindle eBook)



It's a pleasant little collection of short stories. Some are silly like the old lady finding the Holy Grail at a thrift store, some are somber like the black cat fighting off Satan every night, some are just... baffling, like the gourmet food club. They may not all be total knockouts, like, I didn't care for "Troll Bridge." I didn't hate it, I just didn't get anything out of it. And as much as I like the idea of personifications of the months gathering around a campfire to tell stories, the story within the story was a bit of a nothingburger. And I was a little disappointed that the final story is one I already owned as an illustrated storybook. But there's sure to be something for everyone here.

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie (PG)



Depending on who you ask, this movie is either a colorful, nostalgic romp for fans of the series or will leave you wondering "What the hell did I just watch?" For me, it was a bit of both.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie tries to be a brotherly version of Frozen (Brozen?) but ends up being a few good scenes, usually involving Bowser, bookended with colorful nonsense. A lot of this comes from the movie not even trying to translate game mechanics into movie logic because we all know what happened the last time they tried that. Like, yeah, you know what powerups are, now shut up and enjoy your monkey battle.

It's ultimately cute and harmless, but I do want to call out (1) Cranky's voice being completely godawful, and (2) seeing Mario without his gloves causing me psychic damage on the level of seeing Spamton drawn with ears.

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