rukaio101 Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 Attack on Titan Cybernetic 7 Well this should be fun. Wait, did I say fun? I meant AAAAAAAAAAAGGHH!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 22, 2014 Author Share Posted November 22, 2014 Ok. Busy this morning but I will start reading them in the afternoon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 22, 2014 Author Share Posted November 22, 2014 (edited) The Hateful Eight Redux I am legitimately unsure how I should receive this film. It's weird, messy, overambitious, ridiculous, goofy, and clumsy at times. And it's also very fun and incisive when it wants to be. The ginormous cast of characters standing in for famous Hollywood personas is generally pretty spot on, with lots of excellent mimicry and parody. The film's opening half is a complete tangled mess of exposition and setup and oddball digressions that keeps on going and going and going until suddenly we're in the action assault...and then the film still has about an hour to go. Blank had a unique and epic vision for the film and some places he hit the mark and other places it just ran away from him like a spaceship slingshotting around a black hole. So, Blank, the big takeaway from all this is that you need to keep doing what you're doing, just be more mindful of when your big ideas grow outside of the actual parameters and boundaries of what you want to do. Also there's a continuity error where Bristow is killed and thrown out a window, and then five minutes later he reappears to do stuff with Denton for a couple scenes. Edited November 22, 2014 by 4815162342 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 22, 2014 Author Share Posted November 22, 2014 Lord of the Flies After riczhang's wonderfully weird Macbeth/Lord of the Flies mashup set in space, this more traditional outing by Danny Boyle sets up for a nice comparison in how you adapt source material. In this case, Boyle does a very faithful, traditional style adaptation, though he adds a few minor touches here and there to provide some extra context for the events happening on and around the island where the boys have been deposited. The young adult cast for this is very well-rounded and handles their roles skillfully. My first criticism of note is that the role of Roger is pretty much downgraded into a cameo, even though in the novel he is almost as terrifying and present a force of evil as Jack. The other criticism I have is that I think the film could have stood to give a little more modern push to the story, which was written in the height of the Cold War war fears. The film needed some more framing with modern context as well as some extra characterization given beyond what the driving plot provides. B+/A- 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blankments Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 Kinda expected for Hateful Eight. Once I finished writing, I knew it wasn't great but I also had no idea how to fix it. It's uber ambitious, and now I'm thinking maybe I should've pulled a Jackson and split into three movies. But whatever, what's done is done. Also there's a continuity error where Bristow is killed and thrown out a window, and then five minutes later he reappears to do stuff with Denton for a couple scenes. Crap. See, that's thanks to a last minute edit where I combined Bristow with another character (Jim Carrey as a press secretary for Gawker). I eventually decided to just cut Carrey and give Bristow his death scene. I meant to cut out the later Bristow scenes but must've missed them D: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 22, 2014 Author Share Posted November 22, 2014 I think you should have toned down some of the sprawling director on director blobbing and one-liner parodies and focused a lot more on the pervasive spoiler culture in Hollywood. Instead it kinda just went all over the place with a lot of forced shoehorning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blankments Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 I think you should have toned down some of the sprawling director on director blobbing and one-liner parodies and focused a lot more on the pervasive spoiler culture in Hollywood. Instead it kinda just went all over the place with a lot of forced shoehorning. Good point. Spoiler culture parody would've been better than my main point I'm trying to make in the movie, which is that the MPAA is outdated (something that, after seeing it, I realize the South Park movie already does incredibly well) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 23, 2014 Author Share Posted November 23, 2014 Cybernetic 7 An anime remake of Seven Samurai set in space is definitely an interesting gambit and the film pulls it off quite well. Framing the story within the protagonist of a hardened teen girl gives the whole bout of proceedings a new spin as well as the focus on how combat changes people. The action is invigorating, a much more fluid Pacific Rim thanks to the limits of animation and the film also does a great job of getting to the heart of the main characters and giving each of them valuable moments to shine. My one fault of note with the film is that the transition from second to third act is a bit messy and drags on for a little while before the setup for the Final Battle begins. A- 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rukaio101 Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 *fist pumps* Yes! That's Numbers's second unambiguous A- minus of the year so far! Although I'm a little bit worried of what it means that you skipped AoT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 23, 2014 Author Share Posted November 23, 2014 *fist pumps* Yes! That's Numbers's second unambiguous A- minus of the year so far! Although I'm a little bit worried of what it means that you skipped AoT. I didn't skip it, I just scrolled down the page, saw Cybernetic 7 first and decided to read it first since morning laziness. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 23, 2014 Author Share Posted November 23, 2014 Attack on Titan Attack on Titan is a film that tries really really hard to be serious, but it can't get out of the way of all the inherent ridiculousness of the live action adaptation. Everything about the film and its Titan concept really just feels oddball goofy campy, something that can be worked with in anime form, but doesn't fit well played straight in an attempt to be a more highbrow Pacific Rim. For some people they may not mind or might see things differently, but for this reviewer, the concept of gigantic skinless Titans with serial killer clown smiles and people eating and weird steam emissions (not to mention the development of Eren being flesh-glued to the back of a Human-Titan and controlling it) just feels too off-the-wall for a film that tries to be so damn serious and mature and brooding in so much of its tone. It's a titanic clash of style and mood that just makes things pretty messy. The film also has way too many nesting flashbacks that take up far too much time for the point they try to get across, and the enormous action sequence that covers the middle third of the movie just feels a bit too relentless and discombobulated with timejumps and location skips and flashbacks all crammed into it. I'm wholly unfamilar with the source material so I can't offer suggestions on how it could have been fixed...except that with what I've read for the film, Rukaio either should have embraced the inherent B-movie ridiculous camp of the concept as a live-action proceeding, or he should have altered the source material to better fit the serious, dark adaptation he wanted. C 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rukaio101 Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 I'd blame it more on the difficulty of translating its seriousness into text-form. The anime/manga it's based on takes the concept extremely seriously and darkly and, thanks to much of the way it's visually shot and drawn, it really does work at making the Titans terrifying. But when you can't physically show that and have to boil it down to simple descriptions, it loses a lot in translation. And if the descriptions don't convince you of the terror of the Titans, then pretty much the rest of the movie folds like a house of cards. It was something I noted while I was writing it and I hoped I'd managed to pull it off, but obviously not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rorschach Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 I'd blame it more on the difficulty of translating its seriousness into text-form. The anime/manga it's based on takes the concept extremely seriously and darkly and, thanks to much of the way it's visually shot and drawn, it really does work at making the Titans terrifying. But when you can't physically show that and have to boil it down to simple descriptions, it loses a lot in translation. And if the descriptions don't convince you of the terror of the Titans, then pretty much the rest of the movie folds like a house of cards. It was something I noted while I was writing it and I hoped I'd managed to pull it off, but obviously not. I honestly liked it. If you look pass those really campy ideas, it's actually a fairly deep and emotional, at least for me. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rukaio101 Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 I honestly liked it. If you look pass those really campy ideas, it's actually a fairly deep and emotional, at least for me. Like I said, I think it comes down to whether you find the Titans threatening or not. If you do, I think it's a pretty good adaptation (hence why it's one of my favourites of the year). If you don't, most of the emotional effect and tone is lost and the whole film collapses as a result. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rorschach Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Like I said, I think it comes down to whether you find the Titans threatening or not. If you do, I think it's a pretty good adaptation (hence why it's one of my favourites of the year). If you don't, most of the emotional effect and tone is lost and the whole film collapses as a result. Like I said, I think it comes down to whether you find the Titans threatening or not. If you do, I think it's a pretty good adaptation (hence why it's one of my favourites of the year). If you don't, most of the emotional effect and tone is lost and the whole film collapses as a result. By the way, I did start watching the series last night on Netflix (Binge-Watching it) and now, I still stand by my grade. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 23, 2014 Author Share Posted November 23, 2014 Like I said, I think it comes down to whether you find the Titans threatening or not. If you do, I think it's a pretty good adaptation (hence why it's one of my favourites of the year). If you don't, most of the emotional effect and tone is lost and the whole film collapses as a result. From the description my mental image was a giant version of this guy in the back: Just couldn't make it work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rukaio101 Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 From the description my mental image was a giant version of this guy in the back: Just couldn't make it work. Yeah, I can understand your problems if that's what you were seeing. In the show, they're more like this. Vid's a bit NSFW by the way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ya4uyLgUvA In a way, they actually look goofier but it somehow makes them even more terrifying. (Although that clip isn't the best example around.) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 24, 2014 Author Share Posted November 24, 2014 Yeah, I can understand your problems if that's what you were seeing. In the show, they're more like this. Vid's a bit NSFW by the way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ya4uyLgUvA In a way, they actually look goofier but it somehow makes them even more terrifying. (Although that clip isn't the best example around.) That clip of goofy naked people giants walking around did not improve how I saw things. Allegiant The plot gets and tangled and messy and it spends so much time with its twists and shocks and ordering everything back after knotting everything up, it doesn't do much to give us any further character investment or stakes beyond vague notions of crypto-science and simmering one-note motives. C+ Forgotten Sound It's a pretty by-the-numbers character drama of emo ennui and love triangle FEELINGS that slowly grows into an odd mystery thriller. The acting and staging is all fine, but the film kinda just feels off and stale with everything else. C 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 26, 2014 Author Share Posted November 26, 2014 Cabin Fever Cage Level: A- Rest Level: D-An Odd Roadtrip Well that escalated quickly. It went from being an odd offbeat comedy about a sadsack restaurant worker into a very weird ridiculous experience. Some stuff hits but a lot misses. C-Silent Invasion 3D: The Final Chapter The finale is definitely a dark, nightmare-fueled visual trip of an experience. The first 2/3 is kind of just typical plodding genre fare, but damn the final 20 minutes or so really stand out for being an unrelenting onslaught of growing despair and visual destruction. It's worth wading through the slow mediocre first two acts. C+/B- 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted November 26, 2014 Author Share Posted November 26, 2014 Hellsing It has a lot of gothic flair and charm to it, though the protagonist is a bit weak. Plus the zombie action gets pretty stale after 43rd encounter, so it would have helped if the film mixed it up a bit more towards the end. B-/B Watch Dogs I'm pretty sure this is not how hacking works. The story is pretty convoluted and thin at the same time. The action is well-staged, though some sequences drag on a bit. There's some effective character drama in the beginning but it gets very sparse the rest of the way through. Renner does make for a relatable lead. C+ 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
