Written by: Kevin Berge

I watch way too many movies, and I still find myself struggling to keep up with the best of the best. Especially over the past few years where I've kept a list of all the movies I want to see only to end up getting to only half of them. That leaves me a massive backlog.

These next four films are all a part of that backlog. They are generally well regarded movies that intrigued me enough to give them a chance. I just wasn't immediately inclined to go out and see them when they first released.

The four movies I'll be covering here are the slow burn depressing drama Manchester By the Sea, the chess biopic Pawn Sacrifice, the midlife crisis drama Brad's Status, and the intense modern war film Lone Survivor.

None of the reviews will contain spoilers, focusing primarily on the quality of the films and their running themes.

Written by: Kevin Berge (All Images Courtesy of: WWE.com)

December is the worst month in WWE. The company just stops trying, and it is so obvious. TLC is basically just a thrown-together show where the talent always outshine the storylines. Beyond that, there's nothing. The Road to WrestleMania is over a month away, and no one really wants to try until then.

It's around this time we all come together with our families and celebrate the holidays, and I implore any wrestling fan to avoid pointing potential friends and family to the show at this point. They'll watch one of these weeks and think the entire year is like this.

Just tell them to watch the Royal Rumble at the end of January instead. They'll be so excited for what it could be like that, by the time it comes, you'll likely have done a better job hyping the show than WWE.

Written by: Kevin Berge

Anime is an inconsistent medium for expressing stories. It can be often misconstrues as being a lesser form of writing because so much content is creating in the medium. However, just like any form of storytelling, it has its good and its bad.

One way that anime has always been important to me is its refusal to shy away from emotion, occasionally to the point of melodrama. In an American entertainment industry, it is rare to see protagonists openly weeping while it is a common practice in anime.

Violet Evergarden was just a name when I first heard it referenced. It was making the rounds in America after its Netflix release in April 2018, heralded as beautifully animated. However, there's something far more impactful about this show than its art style.

This is a series about learning empathy that feels as relevant now as it could ever be, following the quiet attempt of one soldier to understand what there is beyond the death and pain of war.

Written by: Kevin Berge

Sometimes, reviewing movies is easy. You watch a great film, and you have a ton to say. Sometimes, reviewing movies is a complete mess. The film is so bad that you don't even want to give it recognition, but it is too popular not to at least discuss.

Recently, the latest movie in the Wizarding World franchise was released titled Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald. It is clearly the biggest movie in theaters right now. It is also a complete mess that everyone should avoid.

Therefore, I present this article not as much as a review for Crimes of Grindelwald but a showcase of potential alternatives you could be watching instead in theaters right now: the exciting thriller Widows, the intense drama Green Book, or the beautifully emotional biopic A Private War.

Written by: Kevin Berge (All Images Courtesy of: WWE.com)

It has been a chaotic few months of WWE action, and sometimes it is nice to slow down and reflect. It was completely unnecessary to have so many big WWE event so close to one another. With TLC not until mid-December, right now is the perfect time to look back at what makes WWE work and what doesn't.

The answers are pretty clear just from focusing on this past week. NXT is on a constant role. 205 Live has been similarly excellent. While frustrating in its purpose, NXT UK has also been a strong reason to pay attention to WWE with so much talent going all out.

All this is to say the company is good in shorter formats with a smaller team of writers at the helm because then there's Raw and SmackDown. While it's clear who's better between the two, the main roster shows still have a lot to learn from the secondary and developmental writers.