Big Hero 6 is an incredibly impressive film from Disney. It’s a film that, I’d argue, tells a better superhero story than The Incredibles, with a very interestingly beautiful world, with gorgeous animation and interesting characters. Continue reading
Category Archives: film
Movie Review: Inglorious Basterds
Inglorious Basterds is a film that is not, in spite of its marketing, its posters, and its trailers, an action film. It’s a thriller. It’s a film that moves from incredibly tense dialog scene to tense dialog scene the way that John Woo goes from gunfight to gunfight. Continue reading
This time we conclude “The Yakuza Papers” with Part 5 – “Final Episode” Continue reading
Movie Review: X-Men – First Class
X-Men: First Class is a film that is almost perfect, but has a few notes that just don’t quite work for me. It’s a combinations of factors Some characters are under-utilized, some characters feel mis-written, and there are some issues with tone, combined with some frustrating story choices. Continue reading
Movie Review: Damnation Alley
I’m a fan of the Fallout series. I love the world those games build, and consequently when I discover a work that is formulative to that universe, it tends to give that work a little extra appeal for me. It’s part of the reason why I like some of the later portions of The Martian Chronicles and why I enjoyed A Boy and his Dog, which is a review for another time. Damnation Alley is a little less known portion of the sub-genre, but is still a remarkably enjoyable film. Continue reading
Video Review: The Yakuza Papers Part 4 – Police Tactics
This time we continue with “The Yakuza Papers” with Part 4 – “Police Tactics” Continue reading
Film Review: Kingdom of Heaven – Director’s Cut
Ridley Scott is a director who is fantastic at building worlds. In Blade Runner it was the future of Los Angeles. In Gladiator it was Imperial Rome. In Kingdom of Heaven, it’s 14th century Jerusalem and Palestine. Continue reading
Movie Review – Edge of Sanity (1989)
Edge of Sanity is an interesting, but flawed film, taking the Jack the Ripper case, and combining it with Robert Lewis Stephenson’s classic work of Victorian horror – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Continue reading
Video Review: The Yakuza Papers Part 3 – Proxy War
This time we continue with “The Yakuza Papers” with Part 2 – “Proxy War” Continue reading
Video Review: The Yakuza Papers Part 2 – Deadly Fight in Hiroshima
This time we continue with “The Yakuza Papers” with Part 2 – “Deadly Fight in Hiroshima” Continue reading
Video Review: The Yakuza Papers – Part 1
After my written reviews of the Yakuza Papers series, I’ve adapted them into a series of video reviews. Continue reading
Film Review: Captain America – Civil War
Civil War, as a Comic Event, was something of a spectacular failure. I haven’t been good at doing video posts on my blog the past few weeks (something I’ll try to fix shortly), but this past week I did a video post on YouTube about Civil War, the comics, event, and how that could have been fixed.
The film version of Civil War has none of those problems. Instead, it’s one of the top films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. There will be some minor spoilers in this review (below the cut if you’re reading this on my blog). Continue reading
Anime Review: Megazone 23 – Part III
Megazone 23 – Part 3 is probably the most Cyberpunk part of the Megazone 23 series. The other installments had artificial intelligences and rebelling against the man. However, Part 3 has more hacking, human cybernetic augmentation, and dealing with human society’s relationship with the planet. It’s also the weakest part of the series. Continue reading
Movie Review: Megazone 23 – Part II (and a little Part I)
Megazone 23: Part II is a more violent film than its predecessor, but it does a good job of providing closure to the franchise – which is almost unfortunate because three years after this film came out we got part III.
Movie Review: When Eight Bells Toll
When 8 Bells Toll is a film that really feels like it desperately wants to be a Bond film, but doesn’t even remotely feel one – instead feeling a more conventional mystery thriller.
Film Review: Dark City (1998)
Dark City is a gloriously wonderful film, which pays homage to Film Noir from the ’40s and ’50s, German Expressionist film of the 1920s and ’30s, and (to a degree), psychic battle manga like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Domu, along with the series Locke the Superman (which in turn inspired the first two works). Continue reading
Film Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, suffers the same array of problems that the Michael Bay directed Transformers films have suffered. The film takes emphasis away from the title characters of the film to put an increased focus on the human characters. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t clutter up the film with the samedegree of human characters as the Transformers film did, but those elements of the film distract from the main thrust of the narrative. Further, the rest of the film’s action is so cluttered and chaotic that it can’t compensate for the rest of the film’s weak points. Continue reading
Movie Review: The Yakuza Papers – Final Episode
It’s odd how much polish a film series can undergo over the course of two years. The first installment in the Yakuza Papers series of films came out in 1973. This film, the final installment in the tetralogy came out in 1974. Kinji Fukasaku was already an accomplished director when he made the first film, but over the course of two years he quickly came up with a very definitive style to this series. Continue reading
Film Review – Deadpool
When I heard that a Deadpool movie was in production, as a fan of the comics I was pretty pumped. That said, a situation like that is almost a recipe for disappointment – Star Wars: The Phantom Menace really shows how much high expectations can lead to equally high disappointment. Fortunately, there was no disappointment to be found for me in this film. Continue reading
Film Review: The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 4: Police Tactics
The problem with getting into the later installments of the Yakuza Papers series of films is that by the later installments Kenji Fukasaku has gotten into a stylistic groove when it comes to what this series of films are – what they look like, what they sound like, and how their action is presented. Continue reading
Film Review – The Spy Who Loved Me
There is one Bond film that, before today, I had not seen: The Spy Who Loved Me. I refer to official Bond films, as opposed to parodies like the ’60s Casino Royale, or knockoffs like Never Say Never Again (which I have seen), and spiritual ripoffs like Operation Double 007 (as seen on MST3K). Continue reading
Anime Review – Angel’s Egg (1985)
This is a gorgeous, darkly beautiful work of film that’s probably the most surreal work that Oshii has made (helped by the fact that Yoshitaka Amano did much of the art for the film and co-wrote the story). It is the first film I’ve seen that I don’t feel qualified to analyze. Continue reading
Film Review – TMNT (2007)
TMNT is a film that has the heart that the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film had (and the other two sequels lacked), but it falls short in a few significant places. Continue reading
Film Review – The Short Life of Charles Beaumont
This time I’m taking a look at the documentary, Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man. I was provided with a copy of this documentary at no cost for purpose of review from the film’s director at OryCon 2014. Continue reading