Reviews

Horrible person gets away with it because she's kind of cute and because everybody else is slightly more horrible than she is. It was entertaining to watch but I have no remorse for the character's suffering so the dramatic aspects are wasted on me.

Enjoy rewatching this movie every year or so. Great acting, great directing, great score, great characters, great cinematography, great settings, great storytelling. Should be reviewed higher. This movie is smarter than it looks (not smart per se, but smarter than it looks).

This movie is a solid 8, if you gave it a 1 you know you're wrong. And people who complain about it winning best director because they didn't like the story aren't getting 4 when they add 2 plus 2.

It would be a shame if you went through life not experiencing this story, especially if you've seen the original Naruto. This is the best storytelling I've ever witnessed. I can think of at least 5 characters, protagonists and antagonists, this series could have been named after. The plot and characters are masterfully interwoven, the rules of the universe are carefully and interestingly imagined, and the social context is the perfect backdrop for the telling of this most human of stories. Beneath the glossy exterior lies an unending series of heart-wrenching tragedies, conveyed by characters you can't help but care for. The plot justifies the hundreds of episodes it takes for the telling (though not nearly the full 500, more on that later). And the show is adequately punctuated with frequent stunning moments (some I can't imagine I will ever forget) such that this very long take never gets boring. Adding to that, the plot slowly, but surely, progresses to increasingly intense crescendos which further prevent monotony, where many other epic stories fail to do the same. And yet it doesn't feel contrived or forced, the story flows very organically and for the most you'll never want it stop watching. I can't recommend this show enough, it's probably the best I've ever seen.

As mentioned, there's one possible problem with the show, and that's with filler episodes. From what I've read online, the show frequently caught up to the manga such that they had to slow the show's production down by inserting a lot of filler episodes (something like 40+ percent in fact). Many of these episodes are phenomenal anyway, but many of them are filled with overly sentimental flashbacks and stories unrelated to the main plot and characters that you might or might not care about (and my recommendation is that you use the characters they concern to decide if you should watch them or not). There are easy-to-find online resources you can use to find out which episodes are filler (as opposed to canon, or those that were actually printed in the manga), as well as lists suggesting which filler episodes are worth watching. I haven't skipped very many, but there are a few I passed by.

If you have the time, do yourself a favor and watch this show, but start with the original Naruto for the best experience (and possibly skip all the filler there, which can be quite bad).

Jordan Klepper is a very smart and quick comedian. This show kind of comes off as a kitschy version of the Colbert Report but in the style of the Daily Show, but it works because the cast is very talented. Unfortunately it's not in the prime time slot and it's a less accessible than what precedes it so I'm not holding out much hope that it will stay on the air for very long, which would be a shame.

I saw the anime several years ago and it was just fine. I vaguely remember interesting characters an intriguing plot and some good cat and mouse. All of those are maintained to some degree (you can only do so much in less than two hours), the cinematography is very good, the casting is excellent, and it felt like watching an anime, which is commendable. Apparently all the more forgettable details from the original anime were changed, but it doesn't really matter given that they weren't all that important to understanding the story in the first place, and anyway why would you even want a carbon copy of the anime, the creative license served a good purpose here, and I my guess is that most of the reviews here are based on some subjective notion that there was something exceptionally remarkable about the original which apparently failed to strike me in ways that some other animes do, but so be it. I enjoyed almost every moment of this movie, it didn't blow me away but it was a good flick, kept my attention, wasn't too banal, was cast very well, was well produced, well-written and well-acted. 1 star reviews for this movie are ridiculous.

I just want to weigh in on a few issues...

Lots of people are giving 1 star because the movie, based on a true story, skipped some historical context. First of all, show me a "based on a true story" without spin; good luck finding one. But moreover, many commenters seemed to leap to the conclusion that due to its absence this film tacitly supported US actions and that US could do no wrong. That's a very different film than I saw which depicted a blundering general feigning sophistication. If you're of this mindset, I challenge you to consider what people would say if the Somali militias were made to be the heroes. Do you think the US was there for no reason at all? They just showed up and started bombing everyone? Of course not, there's a whole long chain of cause and effect, and the fact that the writers selected a particular point in time because they thought it would make the most compelling movie doesn't make them blameworthy for not cataloguing the totality of human history. Moreover, there's nothing particularly nationalistic about this movie. Everyone is acting based on necessity, not some kind of patriotic urge. The mission is about rescuing a downed pilot and the perils involved with that mission. There really isn't any flag-waving, very little back- patting (and what there is doesn't last long) and no discussion about the enemy being barbarians or whatever else other reviews would have you believe. The Somalis were very adamant about fighting off the American intruders, but they weren't depicted as fighting each other, looting, pillaging, raping or anything else like that. Nor was there ever a time where waves and waves of them were being mowed down, and if anything, given the resources depicted in the film, they acted quite cohesively and effectively for a poor militia against the greatest military in the world. You might want to check your own assumptions before saying they were like barbarians or savages or whatever.

I also don't agree with users who think the characters were shallow. The characters were not all cookie-cutter facsimiles of each other. Josh Hartnett was a green platoon leader, sympathetic to the locals in the face of jocular ridicule from most of his platoon. The Captain was a stubborn SOP junkie with ridiculous sports metaphors, the general, as mentioned feigned sophistication, cracked jokes in the TOC, and ultimately came to understand the consequences of his actions, Tom Sizemore was a fantastic gung-ho major (I think) with some of the my favorite one-liners ("Nothing takes 5 minutes!"), Orlando Bloom was a wet-behind the ears nervous, anxious newbie hoping to prove himself, Tom Hardy was just trying to make it through, Ewan McGregor was resentful of his lot in the army and then jumped on the opportunity to be all he could be, and on and on. Moreover, if you've actually served in the army, you'd know that most of these guys are basically kids and don't really have much character chiseled into them yet. As a veteran, it FELT like they were soldiers. When they were prepping for the mission, ribbing each other, and generally chewing the fat, THAT was where it was MOST real to me. I can't attest to the combat because we never had an engagement of this magnitude in Iraq (mostly chasing snipers and dodging rockets, mortars and IEDs), but the characterization of the soldiers was spot on. It also made a lot more sense that the general and the major had the most depth, the special forces guys (who were obviously older) had some gravitas to them, and the rangers were mostly nervous, youthful and similar.

So if you buy all that, then even the detractors admit that the acting, directing, production, sound, etc. were all amazing. I'm not a huge war buff, but I've seen a healthy share, and for me this tops them all. I prefer it over Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Heartbreak Ridge, American Sniper, Full Metal Jacket, Zero Dark Thirty, We Were Soldiers, Three Kings, and slightly but surely even over Hurt Locker and Glory. I think Jarhead is comparable in terms of realism, but that's not really a war movie. Hope this was useful!