Hawk, the Slayer
I don’t know how this got greenlighted, and I don’t know how Jack Palance fell into getting involved. He probably owed someone a favor. A few funny moments here and there, but a stock, poorly-executed, sword and sorcery plot with the most non-reactive protagonist since Dar from The Beastmaster. You can watch the entire movie here. There’s not much investment needed; you’ll know if you want to finish it within the first few minutes, but you might miss the silly string scene near the end if you don’t stick with it.
NiNoKuni
Almost a Miyazaki movie, but not quite. Two high school students try to save a mutual friend in a parallel fantasy universe. I thought it was fine but it requires a second viewing to absorb it all. This franchise is primarily a gaming series, so I think movie-only viewers like me would be missing some of the lore than makes the narrative a little deeper.
Mary and the Witch’s Flower
Spirited Away meets Harry Potter, minus the annoying Potter fandom. More like this, please—it’s not perfect but it’s miles above the glut of fantasy movies that try to stick out by being too graphic, and miles above kid-friendly fantasy movies from Western studios. Another “almost Miyazaki” movie: a producer who used to work under Miyakaki at Studio Ghibli moved over to Studio Ponoc and knocked this out. Considering this is Ponoc’s first film, it’s a good sign of things to come.
Blade Runner
Probably the greatest sci-fi detective film in existence, with special effects that don’t look out of place compared to modern takes. Some of the setting is minimalist, due to its…minimalist…scenery and the noir lighting. Ridley Scott lets you breathe it in with extended shots and synthy sonic backdrops. Doesn’t give you answers but makes you fight to figure it out.
Color Out of Space
I get using “color” instead of the British spelling, but I really dislike the omitted “The” that is begging to be included in the title…and it’s there in the source material. Pretty good take on Lovecraft horror, and sticks fairly close to the text but with some embellishments, naturally.
Dragon Quest: Your Story
Not an unusual fantasy story but it has some unexpected and unusual narrative beats, especially the marriage thing in the middle…and also the huge 4th wall breaking at the conclusion. The richly-detailed animation style made me curious and apprehensive: the designs and anatomy were slightly exaggerated but the textures were realistic. Normal brains can’t process that visual combination without a bit of discomfort.
Last Hope
Discount bin Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was okay, just too much mumbo-jumbo about dark energy drives and parallel dimensions and whatnot. I liked the character development given to deuteragonist Doug Horvat, the sniper fellow. I sometimes feel like deuteragonists can often have better treatment than the protagonist; in the latter, a writer can see them as mere tools to move the narrative forward, and they can easily lack the kind of introspection that make separate great characters from standard ones. My like of Horvat, though, is offset by my dislike the protagonist’s bitchy, controlling younger sister, Chloe. This series, like a lot of anime, suffer from the “allowing little kids influence in unbelievably dangerous situations” angle of storytelling. Sometimes it can make sense, but it doesn’t in this case.
Fireworks
High school kids debate whether or not fireworks look flat or round when viewed from the side, with Seinfeld-esque minutia. I don’t know how a flat-side-firework model could be supported rationally, but (spoiler alert), it exists in one of the universes these kids find themselves in. Really awkwardly-placed singing on a train. Weird story.
Sonic the Hedgehog
Paint-by-numbers kids’ movie with corny dialogue. The bar scene was genuinely fun to watch, though the best “fast-motion slowed to normal speed” scene is hands down the mansion rescue scene from X-Men: Apocalypse.
The Core
Squeezy-buttfaced ridiculous premise about drilling into the center of the earth and detonating nuclear devices to reverse the flow of whatever so the world doesn’t end. I can’t find the right combination of words to express how silly this viewing experience was, which is why you have a new adjective to use, in “squeezy-buttfaced ridiculous.”
5 Comments
Blade Runner I saw — mostly. The rest of your list? Nah. I’ll pass. Thanks for the review.
You are heard to please, Ed. 🙂 I understand why. I am too; most are just passable to me. It’s hard to find a movie/series I can really dig into but I try to include one in each post. In this case it’s Mary and the Witch’s Flower.
The longer I dig into Biblical storytelling, the less tolerant I am of typical movies. Some of the plot devices in even the so-called classics often seem tiresome to me. Yeah, I’m a tough audience.
I have not seen any of those movies and hope I never have to. I saw the Heavy Metal DVD in the $5 bin and got it. I wanted to see it since 1981. I liked the traditional animation. They used to draw everything by hand which is appealing to me. You can’t pay me to watch Pixar and those types of movies.
Pixar is a decent movie–I’m calling all their movies one movie because they’re nearly all the same 7 point story structure. Their movies stick to them too hard to be interesting. I guess in that sense Toy Story might be the only good Pixar movie because that was the first one, or at least the first one to gain traction with audiences.
I do prefer hand-drawn as well, but I think the line is blurring to where a lot of hand-drawn animations have so much digital support without being the obvious 3D aesthetic you get with Pixar.