The story goes all sorts of directions, from weird to creepy to funny to heartbreaking, and watching it for the first time was a bit of an adventure in itself. It’s a bit hard to describe, but the basic plot of Over The Garden Wall is that two young brothers find themselves lost in an unknown forest and encounter all sorts strange creatures and mysteries as they try to make their way home. Since the show depicts the horrifying events during and after the Chernobyl explosion it was sometimes very hard to watch (I viewed a large portion of episode 4 through my fingers), but I found it gripping and memorable. I heard that Chernobyl was intense so I had planned on spacing out my viewings, but ended up binging the whole series in two nights.

Be prepared for quiet, weighty conversations, long walks across windy French bluffs, and intense gazing from across the room. It’s a beautifully filmed, feminist romance about a young woman with an arranged marriage in her future and the painter who is commissioned to secretly paint her portrait. Portrait of a Lady on Fire was the last film I saw in a theater in 2020 (back in March). There are laggy bits in the middle and some story lines are stronger than others, but you basically forget all of that by the time you get to the ridiculously entertaining finale. This candy-coated romp through Gotham City’s very messed-up underworld is probably my favorite DC extended universe movie so far. I was a blubbering mess during the finale. Characters grew, changed, and everyone got a happy ending. This show got better with every season and the final 14 episodes were a wonderful high to go out on. I did watch a lot of YouTube though, with Eurogamer, Platform 32, Outside Xbox, Outside Xtra, and Drawfee being on pretty constant rotation. Almost all of my recommendations are from January, February, and March. While almost everyone I know spent the long pandemic months binging shows and movies, I watched very few new things in 2020.

Prince of Death by Sam Burns