2024 Film #02: NIMONA

“Nimona”, voiced by Chloe Grace Moretz, is a frenetic animated sci-fi fantasy centered around the titular teenage shapeshifter and a disillusioned knight, Ballister Boldheart. The film struggles to effectively convey its suggested emotions and themes, often feeling like a mishmash of stylistic elements borrowed from other animation studios. While the animation itself is fluid and visually appealing, the characters’ facial expressions lack genuine emotion, feeling more like imitations than authentic portrayals.

2024 Series #01: Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Disney+ created an 8-episode series (as it should be) of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians. This adaptation is brimming with action and the poignant discoveries of adolescence, reminiscent of the captivating allure that made “Harry Potter” films a phenomenon. Unlike the films, which aged its characters, the series cleverly starts with younger actors, highlighting a unique period in their lives while providing a sturdy foundation for the story’s growth alongside the leading trio.

Dust and Drizzle

Something I can never understand whenever my mind wanders back to Marco is why he left the way he did. I often imagined that when whatever that we had was going to end, there would be lots of crying, of explaining why it hadn’t worked out, of whispering assurances between sobs that everything was going to be okay. But when he left, no words were spoken. I just woke up one morning alone in the bed that still bore the creases of his shape—arms spread as if they were welcoming my arrival, as if letting myself fall on the bed meant that he would hold me and never let go.

Choke

I didn’t actually quite get what Marco meant when he said that some words are too hard to speak out they tangle themselves in your throat in an almost choking manner. It’s probably him exaggerating things again as he often did. He loved taking things up a few notches than what they actually are. Like how one time, when we were huddled in our favorite spot in a corner table at Starbucks, he insisted that it was my new hair color— ash gray— that was giving him a headache. I thought he meant it figuratively. But he then proceeded to explaining how the color hurts his eyes, that the pain travels through some nerves and manifested on his head. I mean, how can a mere hair color give someone a headache?

How can words choke you?

Stars in the Ceiling

              He turned out the light and a hundred or so glow-in-the-dark stars in the ceiling subtly lit his room, emanating a soft, greenish light. In the darkness, I smiled, because I know he wanted me to see this. I scanned the sky— the ceiling— looking for the meteor shower he’d promised me earlier that we’d watch together. We lied there side by side in the dark, silent, as if waiting for the shooting stars, those fleeting flash amid the myriad of dots. But of course, they never came.

              “There’s one!” I said, pointlessly pointing to a certain patch in our artificial night sky. “There’s another one!” He laughed. For a moment, I wanted to believe it’s true. I wanted to believe that nothing went wrong between us. But I knew better now. We were no longer those same people from the past. We broke and we fell apart, our night sky exploding.

                “I made this for you.” He said.

               I did not say anything. We just laid there in the darkness, holding each other until he fell asleep, and I once again allowed myself to cry silently, for the chances I didn’t take, the choices I didn’t make, for the love that I lost.

              “I’ve missed you,” I said in a broken whisper, and when I thought that he’s already asleep, he stirred. He searched for my face in the darkness, and planted a kiss on my forehead, on my nose. I snuggled closer to him, pretending that in that moment, the stars in the ceiling weren’t tearing me apart, that I wasn’t breaking apart, that I wasn’t aching with the thought that I cannot have him again.