Introduction mostly foregone, not included here are movies from my 2016 favorites list.
TV
Hadn’t seen before:
- Phineas and Ferb (season 4)
- Transporter: The Series (seasons 1-2)
I was so glad when Netflix finally added the last season of Phineas and Ferb. It’s one of my favorite cartoons ever. We first started watching it on Netflix in 2011 on the recommendation of my best friend, and not a single episode was a disappointment.
I love the first Transporter movie, like the second one, and watched the third one once and was unimpressed. My wife and I decided to give the TV series a go. The first season was pretty fun, and Inspector Tarconi is a character I never tire of. The second season wasn’t as enjoyable; it seemed there was less actual transporting going on.
Movies
Hadn’t seen before:
- Batman: Bad Blood
- Creed
- Daddy’s Home
- Get Hard
- Gravity
- Hail, Caesar!
- I Love You Phillip Morris
- The Iron Giant
- Justice League: Gods and Monsters
- Justice League vs. Teen Titans
- MacGruber
- The Nice Guys
- Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday
- The Usual Suspects
Had seen before:
- Ant-Man
- Batman vs. Robin
- Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
- Cinderella III: A Twist in Time
- Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
- Galaxy Quest
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Inside Out
- Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox
- Justice League: Throne of Atlantis
- Justice League: War
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
- Love Actually
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
- Robin Hood
- The Santa Clause
- Son of Batman
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
- Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
- Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
- Thor: The Dark World
- TMNT
There are a couple of movies that I’ve long heard were good and wanted to watch, and I finally got around to them. The Usual Suspects was, I think, Bryan Singer’s first feature film, and I’d heard it was good and liked his X-Men films and Superman Returns (even if I’m in the minority on Superman). It was pretty enjoyable, and I enjoyed the twist ending even though I saw it coming.
I Love You Phillip Morris was one I’d seen a trailer for a few years ago, and it looked interesting, but I just never watched it. After finally seeing it and learning it was based on a true story, and not very exaggerated from the truth, holy cow. To find out those events actually happened blew my mind, as the kids say. It is probably not for the PG-13 and under crowd.
Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday, well… I liked Pee-Wee’s Playhouse as a kid and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, though I never warmed to Big Top Pee-Wee. When Netflix produced a new movie after all these years I decided to give it a watch. It was enjoyable overall, but I think my favorite part was seeing Stephanie Beatriz in a very smiley role after watching her for 3 seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Video Games
First-time plays:
- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
- Mini-Mario and Friends: amiibo Challenge
Replays:
- Final Fantasy VII
- Final Fantasy IX
- Metroid
- Metroid: Other M
- Pikmin 2
- Pikmin 3
- Super Metroid
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Final Fantasy VII is my favorite in the series (I’ve played IV through X-2). It was the reason I bought a Playstation back in 1997, and it may end up being the reason I buy a PS4 when the remake comes out. A couple of years ago I started replaying it, but after a few sessions I got sidetracked by other things and never made it back. So a few months ago I decided to try again and it was just fun. I followed it up with Final Fantasy IX the next month, which is another of my favorites (I don’t really enjoy VIII; I played it through once for the story, which was good, but the gameplay was not my thing). This year I may replay FFX, another one of my favorites (basically my favorites are all of them except VIII).
Metroid: Other M gets a bad rep for its characterization of Samus, but it never really bothered me, and the gameplay is pretty good. I also replayed the original for the nostaliga factor.
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass was released for the Wii U Virtual Console, and since I don’t have a 3DS I downloaded it and gave it a whirl. The controls were a bit hard to translate to just using the WiiU game pad, but overall was a fun 2D Zelda title. Spirit Tracks was also released for Wii U VC and I think I’ll try to play that one in 2017. I also replayed Zelda II on an emulator, because even though I have it on GameCube, that game is ridiculously hard and I need save states and I’m not afraid to admit it. I had to do some Googling on editing the save file at one point because I missed getting the winged boots before completing the palace they were in, so it was that or start over, and let me tell you, I was not going after the hammer again.
I love the Pikmin games, especially Pikmin 3, so I replayed a couple of those. A year ago I mentioned that our family had about 30 Pikmin figures. We’re now up to about 110. If Pikmin 4 is announced for the Nintendo Switch, I will be helpless not to buy one.