I don’t think that was it either. As I read the scene, he absolutely knew it was Mariko. He was taken aback when she claimed otherwise, but understood that she didn’t want to (or wasn’t in a position to) openly acknowledge what happened.

“English cuisine is crap.” — Absolutely.

I took the knives thing to be a case of not wanting their cooking implements to be infected by rotting pheasant meat. But as he apparently didn’t use the pheasant, was never aging a rabbit (or anything else), and I don’t recall any suggestion of him having the inclination to hunt or forage for himself, then logically…

Yes, as others have confirmed, he was aging it.

If he made it about specific politics it might work for people who agreed with him, but the other side would refuse to engage with it on any level. If he has a broader message to make, the only way to get the people who need to hear it to listen, is to make it a non-partisan allegory.

If you tell a story that’s explicitly about those rifts, you immediately limit the audience to people who are already fully aware of the problem. Whereas, if you make it more of an allegory, then maybe, just maybe, the message will get through to some of the people who really need to hear it.

Theaters do not get “half” the money

In Alan Wake 1, Saga Anderson was White but in 2 she was race-swapped to being Black

The Walking Dead ended when they booted out Frank Darabont.

If “time is a flat circle” is the go-to example, did he ever deserve that mantle?

Spending 10 minutes building to a reveal when the movie had clearly explained how the portal device thing worked was certainly an interesting approach. It’s one thing for Miles to forget in the heat of the moment, but why the hell didn’t anyone in the Spider-Society immediately clock where he’d really ended up (or,…

There are cliffhangers, and there’s Across the Spider-Verse’s decision to just stop mid-story. When the next one is out and we can watch them back-to-back, it’ll probably be great, but that was a bad way to end an otherwise very good film.

I don’t think it’s about leaving out context. By all means, include an aside about what a miserable bigot Cleese is. But it should perhaps be an aside, not a diatribe — save those for when he’s done some new miserabilist bigotry that warrants the commentary.

I’m seemingly in the minority, but I would strongly argue that the John Wick films, while very well choreographed, are chock full of gratuitous action that doesn’t add anything. How many times do we really need to see John take out a roomful of goons only for a second wave to arrive and he has to do it all over again?

Ellie did let go, both literally and figuratively. And her story pointedly ends on the sentiment of “But I’d like to try”. It’s bittersweet, but it’s clearly hopeful, and I don’t see how anyone with a modicum of media literacy could read it any other way in good faith.

Superficially it’s all like “Revenge bad! Don’t do revenge!”. Yet Abby gets her revenge, finds peace.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s primary goal is to let audiences know John and Jane aren’t a version of James Bond; they’re regular folks. They could be anybody—so much so that, while running around New York City after an assignment goes awry, they complain about blisters and keep stopping to catch their breaths.

No one suggested that she looks the same, only that there’s no evidence of surgery. It turns out that heavy makeup (not to mention 10 years of aging) can significantly change the way a person looks without surgical intervention.

Yeah. I’m sure there’s a little more to it, but a 24% drop in scripted output when there was no one to script it for 40% of the year (and that’s not even considering the effect of the SAG strike lingering on for another 6 weeks), sounds like a real terms increase.

Ah, okay then. I do think Bosworth was miscast, but then it’s been so long since I saw the movie that it might be unfair on her performance.