About Wise Film Choices

Wisey, The Wise Film Choices Mascot

I created this review website back in 2016. And I worked on it diligently for two years.

I didn’t expect it to be a blockbuster hit. But the site was getting only a handful of Twitter followers (back before it was X), and few people were reading my reviews. The only page that was getting a lot of hits was the one that explained the scatterbrained ending of the 2014 Norwegian movie “In Order of Disappearance.”

As time progressed, creating reviews started to become a chore, a discipline, something I had to do every time I saw a movie or finished a series.

I was not only creating a review for each movie or series I experienced, but I was also digitally inserting the web site mascot, the owl Wisey, into a picture from the movie if I gave the movie a positive review. And I wasn’t just rubber-stamping the image. Each time, I would figure out where and how to place Wisey so it would look organically natural in the picture. It was a lot of fun, but it was also taking a significant amount of time with photo-editing tools.

I then stopped adding content for a few years but kept the web site up. I thought it would remain as a good example of my writing and web design skills, in case anybody would be interested professionally.

I eventually restarted it, this time deciding to forgo adding the owl to images to save time and energy. I enjoyed doing more reviews but then stopped as well; life intervenes. My last review (and my favorite) was my 2023 review for Casablanca.

Since then, I have left the web site as is. The existing Wisey “cameos” are intact, the reviews as well. The only thing I’ve added is a GPT to provide some essential facts about a movie or series that can help you decide whether you want to watch it. But movie criticism is an art, just like movies are. And although artificial intelligence may be able to serve enough data to figure out whether something might be worth trying out, only a human can see a movie, judge it, and write about it.

I may return to writing reviews, but I have been and will always be enjoying good movies and TV programs with my life partner, Mi Amor.

Enjoy the reviews, because a good movie will always stand through the years and its reviews will stay relevant.

And if you’d like, you can enjoy the AI: Wise Film Choices Critic on ChatGPT

Most of all, enjoy life and every day of it with those you most care about. There may be difficult days when joy is impossible and sadness may reign for a time, so take advantage of what you have today. And enjoy a good movie with the one(s) you love.

And now for a little bit of nostalgia, my favorite Wisey cameos: 

Wisey’s #1 Cameo. Can’t beat standing next to Rod Serling. (The Twilight Zone, 98%)

This one wins the Best Integration Into the Photo Cameo award. (Snowpiercer, 2013)

Try to find Wisey. He’s in the picture somewhere! (Flash, Season 1, 90%)

Most Colorful Cameo (Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, 80%)

Most Evocative Cameo (Erased, 95%)

Coolest Cameo, next to Toshiro Mifune no less (The Seven Samurai, 98%)

And finally, Wisey in the Danse Macabre (The Seventh Seal, 85%)