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Film Review: 18×2 Beyond Youthful Days (2024) by Michihito Fujii

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Film Review: 18×2 Beyond Youthful Days (2024) by Michihito Fujii

A compelling romantic film, bathed in nostalgia, that will please immensely the fans of this genre.

A real viral travelogue blog by Jimmy Lai is the inspiration behind “18×2 Beyond Youthful Days”, a Japan-Taiwan co-production, directed and co-written by Michihito Fujii of “The Journalist” fame.

18×2 Beyond Youthful Days is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival

36-year-old Jimmy (Hsu Kuang-han) is back at home in Tainan, after leaving it 18 years prior. He is going through a difficult and delicate stage of his life, having been excluded by the successful game developing company he founded and developed. It is certainly time for a break and a reassessment of life priorities and Jimmy starts from his ancestral home, where it all started. Rummaging into his bits and pieces in his teenager bedroom, he finds a postcard from an old crush, a Japanese traveler called Ami he had met the summer before starting University. Remembering how she liked travelling and how important it was for her; Jimmy decides to use this moment between jobs/decisions to explore Japan and maybe head towards Ami’s hometown in the North of the country.

From this point on, the film alternates flashbacks from that summer of 18 years ago and the slow trip that Jimmy is making by train across North Japan. Radiant backpacker Ami (Kiyohara Kami) had showed up one summer day at the karaoke parlor where Jimmy was working his summer job, waiting to know the results of the university admission exams. She had lost her wallet and just needed to work for a short while in order to save enough money to carry on her journey. It had been love at first sight for clumsy and shy Jimmy and Amy had always been friendly with him but somehow distant. Memories of that bright summer until the moment they had parted, and Amy had left Taiwan, resurface while today-Jimmy travels and meets some friendly strangers on his way; It was a summer that had shaped heavily his life choices and his future.

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Michihito Fujii attempts an interesting experiment with an unusual mix of romantic teen drama, coming-of-age, travelogue, past and present, set in Taiwan and Japan, alternating both languages. The episodic structure of the film utilizes a series of flashbacks that gradually reveal the past events, some generated by conversations that Jimmy has with his occasional travel companions in his soul-searching itinerary that unfold at the same time. The two lines will eventually collide during the final act. It is an ambitious project as the fragmented nature of the narrative in these kind of flashback-rich films is often confusing and tedious too at times. However, in “18×2”, the pieces of the jigsaw fall in place rather effectively, completing nicely an elliptic arch of narrative.

The two 18-year-apart lines of narrative are kept well separated until the last act, by a series of stylistic choices. First of all, an almost opposite palette of colors, a bright, yellowish light imbues young Jimmy’s memories, giving it a luminous feeling of youth and cheerfulness. On the contrary, adult Jimmy is set against a muted gray/blue snowy landscape, a sobriety that reflects his moment in life. Camerawork follows this stylistic line too with a net distinction between a dynamic past and a more static present. Moreover, the acting complements these technicalities, with a virtuoso performance from Hsu Kuang-han, acting restless, messy and fidgety as a clumsy teenager and beautifully restrained as a 36-year-old man.

However, despite the clever storytelling, the film suffers a bit of a lack of “pizazz” in a plot the eventually feels slightly predictable and doesn’t add much to the plethora of similar stories. A good job at overcoming this lack is carried on by the good protagonists’ chemistry and the amiable characters that populate Jimmy’s youth, Ami, of course, and the whole gang of his co-workers at the Karaoke joint, run by a charming boss.

All in all, “18×2 Beyond Youthful Days” is a compelling romantic film, bathed in nostalgia, that will please immensely the fans of this genre.

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Movie Reviews

Super Duperr Movie Review: A wild ride filled with laughter and emotion

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Super Duperr Movie Review: A wild ride filled with laughter and emotion

The Times of India

Apr 07, 2026, 3:24 PM IST

3.0

Super Duperr is a riot in all senses of the word. A wild ride filled with laughter and emotion it presents an unusual matchup of traditional and modern values.Rohit (Lalit Prabhakar) and Isha (Vidula Chougule) are a young couple trying to make their mark in the entertainment industry. They take their relationship to the next level and purchase a flat in Mumbai with their savings. It is here that they realise that they have fallen for a scam when the same house is sold to and currently occupied by a rural family. What follows is a series of clashes and learning moments that test the morality of both parties. The story is a fun take on a series of real world scams and as such has a very interesting premise. The Sameer Asha Patil film however chooses to take a detour in favour of certain stretched out gags and slow motion shots. What could have been a deep exploration of the two worlds colliding, ends up being a formulaic checklist of a wedding song, an action sequence and a few slapstick gags. These are passable of course, but the ho-hum nature of the story’s progression feels under utilized. Super Duperr does offer impactful emotional sequences, notably the equation between the parents (Shashank Shende and Nirmiti Sawant) and his eldest son (Hrishikesh Joshi). The music and cinematography are well executed and add abundantly to the viewing experience. Super Duperr set a rich tapestry only to ultimately doodle in a corner. While it could have benefitted from adding more inter-family interactions, it remains a good watch for this weekend.

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Why Critics Despise The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (But Audiences Love It)

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Why Critics Despise The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (But Audiences Love It)

The verdict is in, and critics have widely panned The Super Mario Galaxy Movie while audiences have universally praised the family-friendly sequel. This follow-up to the fan-favorite The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been in theaters for about a week since its debut on April 1, and it has already had the best box office opening in 2026, earning more than $190 million over its 5-day domestic weekend. Worldwide, it has amassed $372 million, making it the fifth largest global opening ever for an animated film. Despite the movie being a massive box office hit, however, the review scores are terribly low for the video game adaptation, and there are several reasons why.

Fans vs. critics on The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

As of April 6, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has a mediocre 42% Tomatometer score from a total of 175 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes while holding a fantastic 89% Popcornmeter score from over 5,000 verified user ratings. That’s a stark 47-point difference between critics and users.

A similarly wide disparity can be found on Metacritic as well, where the sequel has a “generally unfavorable” Metascore of a 37 based on 45 reviews, despite it earning a “generally favorable” user score of a 7.9 (basically, a 42-point difference).

This gulf between professional reviews and user reviews for this sequel likely isn’t too surprising by fans of the original 2023 Super Mario Bros. movie. That film earned a 59% Tomatometer but a 95% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes, and it has “mixed or average” 46 Metascore but a “universal acclaim” user score of 8.1.

To be fair, the range of critic scores for the film is vast on Metacritic, with about seven reviews above a 60 and fifteen reviews below a 40. ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim give it a “Good” 7 out of 10 rating, noting that “it doesn’t necessarily deepen the emotional or narrative complexity of the franchise, but it refines what worked before amplifies it on a grander scale.” However, many other reviews are far less kind, particularly the 0 out of 5 rating from The Times that calls the film “ugly, overbranded, lifeless digital marketing vomit” and a review from Vulture that says it’s like being “asphyxiated in a ball pit filled with candy.”

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Meanwhile, multiple user reviews on Metacritic are shocked at the reviews. One called the low Metascore “absolutely ridiculous,” while another asked readers to ignore the critics altogether. A different user wrote, “It’s wild to see professional critics giving this a zero. It feels like they’ve never actually picked up a controller.” And to that person’s credit, we did find that a few critics who gave low scores admitting that the film wasn’t meant for them or that they had never played a Mario game before. Indeed, the movie is chock full of Nintendo references and easter eggs, something that Mario fans will appreciate far more than anyone who doesn’t know or care about the difference between a Super Mushroom and a Fire Flower.

More broadly speaking, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has more than several traits that critics tend to dislike but that audiences enjoy. The first is that it’s a quick-paced, action-packed film, which features a handful of battles with Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Princess Peach, Toad, Fox McCloud, Bowser, Bowser Jr., and Wart. Another is that it’s a comedic adventure with cartoonish gags that are age-appropriate for kids and humorous to Mario fans who are in on the joke. On top of that, the film is a family-friendly video game adaptation, a genre that doesn’t usually score well from critics. A Minecraft Movie, another box office smash that earned $960 million worldwide (and also starred Jack Black), was equally slammed by critics with a 47% Tomatometer but lauded by audiences with an 84% Popcornmeter.

Taken altogether, the movie was almost made in a lab for reviewers to despise and for audiences to praise as a nostalgic love letter to Nintendo. Regardless, despite how critics feel, they’ll need to brace themselves for more, since the Nintendo Cinematic Universe is looking like it will come sooner than later.

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Movie Reviews

I Know Exactly How You Die – Review | Indie Slasher | Heaven of Horror

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I Know Exactly How You Die – Review | Indie Slasher | Heaven of Horror

Watch I Know Exactly How I Die on VOD

The director of I Know Exactly How I Die is Alexandra Spieth, who ensures a tight pace and some gorgeous shots. She previously directed Stag and created and starred in the web-series [Blank] My Life. The screenplay comes from Mike Corey, and I do really like the plot and evolution of this story.

As already mentioned, the star Rushabh Patel is the executive producer. As a result, this movie is billed as “Rushabh Patel’s I Know Exactly How I Die“, which I am not a fan of. Unless Rushabh Patel is famous in ways I am not familiar with – nor is IMDb, as this is his first and so far only credit there.

This is like people wondering if Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is connected to Stranger Things, because the media keeps referring to it as a new show from The Duffer Brothers. Sure, they produced it, but Haley Z. Boston created the original story and wrote the screenplay. And she’s not even a newcomer.

Okay, rant over, but I just don’t understand the marketing and press decisions of it all.

Anyway, as already mentioned, the practical effects in I Know Exactly How I Die are gorgeous. Any slasher fan should enjoy the concept of the plot as well as those amazing practical effects. And yet, you will have to endure a little terrible CGI, but this is an indie production, so budget restraints come into play. Of course, so does choosing the best talent, and that did not happen for CGI here!

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I Know Exactly How You Die is out on VOD from April 7, 2026. You can rent it on Digital HD from your preferred platform, including Prime Video and Fandango at Home. The film will also be available on DVD.

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