Change Your Image
listorm43
Reviews
The Dark Crystal (1982)
One of the Great Achievements in Film
Known primarily for Kermit the Frog and the Muppets, Jim Hensen departed from his family friendly franchises to create this film. The film is incredible as the entire world is created from scratch. It's not as if they flew to New Zealand to make this. Every character was created and was a puppet, but also the sets, the landscapes, the ruins of an ancient society and the background creatures. Hensen never cheats the viewer and gives us a full image of the world. The nuances of each creature needs to be noted. The creatures twitched, had bad posture, had soul in their eyes and were better performed than most of today's actors. Some would say the weakness in the film is the story about a world that had two species split from one that ruled over the Crystal of Light, which was shattered through their ignorance. The focus of the story is the journey of Jen, a Gelfling who is the only race to able to heal the Crystal, and his experiences in this wonderful and dangerous world. The story gets a bad rap from some critics, but it more than holds it's own. The odd thing (perhaps because of Hensen's reputation via Sesame Street and the Muppets) is that this film is considered a family film. What makes that notion odd is the underlining themes in the film: genocide, murder, torture and slavery. However, that has never stopped people from recommending it for children. In live action cinema, I hold this as puppeteering's "Citizen Kane" and said that it will never be duplicated. This film was Jim Hensen's greatest work and amazing that you could always feel like you could live in the world. If Hensen proposed this film today, it would never be made unless it was made in CGI. Perhaps what truly makes Hensen's achievement live on, is that it always felt real.
Kaubôi bibappu: Cowboy Bebop (1998)
Possibly the best anime ever
Personally, my two favorite series is this and "The Guyver".
However, this evokes several emotions and happy to watch every episode in this series. Every story crafts it's characters and it's stories so well that most cinema (especially nowadays) can't compare. While rumors on the internet persist about who will be in a "Cowboy Bebop movie", I can't help but see the brilliance that was brought to us by Shinicharo Wantanabe. He blended the rhythm of jazz (and many other forms of music) into his actions and stories. He paints a mood so well that you are captivated to watch even if it's not his best story. Personally, I think the best episodes of the show are Session 5 (Ballad of Fallen Angels) and the Real Folk Blues (sessions 25 & 26), but several other session entertain and hit emotions you don't think in an anime series. Session 18 (Speak like a Child) can make the strongest man weep at the end. The pain felt by both Spike and Jet are awesome to the soul and all in all this series has more soul than most that have come before and after. It's not only worth your time, but also worth your energy. I doubt a film by Hollywood "A" listers will come close to duplicating this great series, but this is worth watching and enjoying. So go to Netflix and request it and plop it in your DVD player and enjoy! I don't care if the sentence is run-on, this series is worth a month. Better than everything you'll see.
Uncertainty (2008)
Original, which is commendable
I put this film because I got a crush on Lynn Collins and think Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a good budding star. I got my money's worth from their performances, in fact I think Collins is more than just looks, but the plot deflating in the family driven sense and the Manhattan sequence advances the tension which constantly stalls for the family sequence. Confused... yeah I was too. I looked up the film's synopsis and it made more sense.
Think of it like this, the 2010 season of Lost. Two story lines inter-cutting based on a slight change in life. I'm not wild about this film, but it deserves attention for the performances from the leads and for being original, which is a rarity nowadays.
Terminator Salvation (2009)
This is one of the worst franchise films EVER MADE
Spoiler Alert
As a die hard Terminator fan of the first two movies and a tremendous hater of the third, I figured I'd give this a chance. I went in to the theater with the lowest expectations and it failed to meet them. In fact as a fan of the series, I even felt insulted. This film isn't worth your time.
Terminator Salvation begins on Death Row where Marcus (Sam Worthington) repents that his brother and two cops are dead because of him. He is approached by a Cyberdyne Systems executive (Helena Bonham Carter) to donate his body to their company. He does and in ten minutes, he becomes a pawn in the future war between man and machines. Still with me?
The humans are not really human. NOT led by John Conner (Christian Bale) because he is considered by many to be a false prophet, they fight the war that never seems to end and never seems to have a point. Nevermind that Bale can't decide if he's John Conner or Batman at points and he yells repeatedly as if the everyone is a cinematographer, the writer miss the point on Conner, he is a man haunted by the future and the plot point of him being a "false prophet" is quickly dismissed when he pleads to the "survivors" to not listen to their military leadership.
But what's insulting is the storyline is the Marcus one. First, Marcus encounters Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), who will become the father of John Conner when he is sent to the past. Skynet (the machine supercomputer) targets Kyle Reese for that reason. Unfortunately, they say that the were no records of Conner's father in the first film, only what Conner knows. That is why the terminator is sent BACK THROUGH TIME to kill his mother, but the film decides to say that you can change the past IN THE FUTURE. Getting back to Marcus, who feels guilt for something that no one ever knows why? Tell us, please, but we never know. Marcus meets Conner when a magnetic landmine attaches to him. Conner finds out that Marcus is really a terminator with half a brain, but whole organs. Why would a robot need organs?
Eventually, Conner and Marcus team up to take out Skynet and rescue Reese. Thus is where we see for the first time in the series, Skynet. For twenty five years of build up, Skynet is no scarier than an iPod. Skynet breaks down it's plan to kill John Conner now... in the present. Wasn't the point of sending terminators into the past was to kill him BEFORE he can spark the Human Rebellion? And for that matter, the purpose for Marcus is infiltration. That's why he has organs... but wasn't Skynet sending terminators in for years? Why would she need one with a brain? And THEN MARCUS disobeys and rips out a circuit and becomes his own free person. Which is funny because Skynet made him and it blew up the world, but can't get one of it's own creations to obey? Still with me?
The "powerful" moment of Conner meeting his father was unemotional and the fight in the end are long enough to make me wish Skynet succeeded. Conner's quest to save his father from getting killed so he can go back in time to create him (uh... what?), is more selfish reasons because Conner doesn't want to be unborn (again... what?). Marcus' search for redemption is hallow because we don't know why he feels guilty. The writers told us to he feels remorse, so we must right? That's the insult from the filmmaker and screenwriter. And there was never a feeling of imminent danger and it dragged. How can an action scene drag? MacG found a way. This film could have taken a lesson from Star Trek on time space, but it contradicts itself over and over. Then was nothing new to the action, which the first two brought.
This film uses the classic Terminator lines "Come with me if you want to live," "I'll be back," and "No Fate but what we make for ourselves" with out much sense or drama. The "No Fate" comment concludes the film and it's in there solely because it was in the other films. Why not just add, "All you have to do is decide what to do with the time given to you"? That would fit just as much.
The end is formulaic and predictable, but I'm not sure if any of the actors had a chance. So they get a pass. I'm not sure if Mac G could have saved it, but at least he made a loud movie. This cries out to Alien: Resurrection for help, but even that film had credible moments in it. This one doesn't. Nothing original and nothing that stayed with you when you left the theater. (Resurrection at least had the "other clone attempts scene). It uses the ideas crammed from writers who didn't sit down to think out whether or not it was relevant to the series. It gets a 1 out of 10, only because it made to the screen. You can't just make a sequel because you want to. At least, pay attention to the series. There will be more and I ask again, "why?"