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Gurochan
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7Seeds (2019)
If a 12 year old Wrote Fallout Badly
I liked the premise until I actually watched it. This is one of those animes that makes me wonder if I'm too old for anime, as you need a LOT of suspension of disbelief for this one. It's probably okay if you're 14 and not really paying attention, but if you're an adult it's hard to watch.
The characters come in 4 types: hero, psycho, just a jerk for no reason and shy. There's not much depth to them as the show jumps all over the place between groups of survivors so much that when you get back to the next group you're like 'oh yeah, these guys exist'.
There's also a LOT of plot holes and just stuff that makes no sense. Why did they make the decision to send literal children? Why did they train up one group (and also traumatize them into ineffectiveness) and then just not bother with the others? Why are three of them much younger? Why does a character from YuGiOh turn up and start murdering people? Why would a bunch of scientists believe that 35-odd kids is enough to kickstart a population? They clearly had the technology to freeze people, why did they use it in about the worst way they could? Why did they give them each a keepsake of whatever they used to do instead of a weapon?
Also, every human life is super important in a scenario where you're trying to re-seed the human race, but the trained guys are real into killing.
The dialogue is also bad enough to make you cringe through most conversations, there's a lot of speeches about feelings in the middle of moments of mortal peril. I know that's kind of a thing in anime but I sure would love to see one where they knock that off.
Finally, where were the cops when people were selling their kids to some scientist and he was putting a school full of children through a mincer?
Kingdom Come (2014)
Anti-abortion Christian Movie
I wish I'd known this film was such a cringe-inducing mess of religious nonsense before I watched it, but hindsight is 20/20. The scale of 'things that get you sent to hell' in this film makes absolutely NO sense. One of those things is abortion and it becomes pretty central. If you don't happen to agree that having an abortion is an instant ticket to hell, you're not going to enjoy this film.
Other than that the atmosphere was okay, the characters did the usual and all started fighting for no reason immediately, the bad guy wasn't very scary and the demons he hung out with looked like muppets. If you wanna get preached at whilst also being bored and a little bit irritated by the endless hallways, watch this film.
Beneath (2013)
Big Rubber Fish
Not a single one of the characters in this film is likeable enough to care if they die. The creature isn't scary - at one point one of the characters just shoves it out of the way with one of the oars.
The music is pretty loud and overbearing, it gets annoying quickly. There's a lot of teenagers yelling at each other as well and honestly it was a relief when it was over.
Aragne: Sign of Vermillion (2018)
What did I just watch...?
Even for anime this made no sense. It looks weird as heck too, the main character looks like a walking ball joint doll with cgi eyes and once it's over you'll have a /lot/ of questions.
It's like the film version of one of those computer generated pictures where nothing can be identified or makes sense. It's very slow as well, and half way through you'll just start not even caring what happens next because none of it makes sense anyway. The only thing I felt when I finished watching this mess was annoyed.
Greenland (2020)
Boring
I wanted to watch a disaster movie about a giant asteroid, not a slow family drama. If you wanna make that, market it as that. I think there were probably more flashback scenes of the kid as a toddler than there were scenes of the asteroid and the main family were super boring to watch. Having to sit through all their predictable drama was almost enough to make me switch it off - I had to go have a cup of tea in the middle and come back to it. Also, the 'kid with medical issues - oh no we forgot his meds' plotline is getting really old, Hollywood.
People who watch disaster movies don't watch them for the touching family moments, we watch them because we want to see stuff get destroyed in new and exciting ways. Fair enough, include some drama in there but don't spend 95 percent of the film on it.
This film is pretty much the disappointing child of 2012 and WWZ. It got all of the bad genes and none of the good ones. It's just about bearable if you're playing solitaire or something while you watch it, otherwise don't waste your time.
Mortal Engines (2018)
It's alright.
This is one of those films that's forgotten about pretty quickly. It has a cool premise and amazing effects, but that's about it. The only interesting character was Shrike, everyone else was average. Also, for a film that's supposed to be about big cities eating each other, that happens exactly one time at the beginning and then never again.
The female lead was probably the best of the main cast - her male counterpart spent a lot of the film looking pretty (lots of shots of his eyes). Also, the little red airship looks too much like a padded bra.
Take the humans out of it and it'd be a great film.
Into the Storm (2014)
Cool effects, terrible movie
The effects are great, the acting isn't too bad (Richard Armitage phones it in but he can get away with it), the plot/writing is terrible. Lots of cliche lines, you can always tell what's going to happen next and who's going to survive/die, etc.
Special mention for the flying cow from every tornado film and the shot of the American flag at the end that's also in pretty much every disaster film.
Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space (2002)
Got Boring Halfway Through
I went into this hoping for something weird and retro-looking. It has a fun, Felix the Cat vibe and for the first half hour it's pretty engaging. The animation can get a little annoying (you start to wish Tamala would close her mouth), but it's coherent at least.
After that it just loses the plot completely. Long, boring sequences of the same bad cgi robot cat going up an escalator, tunnels, etc. time skips/jumps, unexplained things (why were there two of the male cat? what was with the zombie version?). I like a little ambiguity in my movies - the same Hollywood plotlines get boring after a while. But there's a line between that and just not even trying to make any kind of sense and this one crosses it. It's just a drawn out, clumsy dig at corporations. If you want coherency and good animation, look elsewhere.
Gwoemul (2006)
Pretty Good!
First off, I have no idea how so many people can say they don't understand the humour in this film - it's simple, slapstick stuff. A lot of it was obviously to hammer home how dysfunctional the Park family are (such as the funeral scene), and it works well. The people who don't understand it seem to be overthinking it.
The film has good and bad points, like most.
Some of the good points:
The monster looks good, it moves in a really cool way and isn't something that's been done before. It looks like a huge, mutated mudskipper or newt.
The family at the centre of the film are quite likeable even with all their faults. That seems to be a problem with a lot of horror films nowadays, the characters tend to be so shallow and stereotypical that you have a hard time caring about them.
A lot of unexpected things happen in this film. The ending particularly. It was upsetting, but at the same time it was a refreshing change from the usual formula.
CGI, sound, lighting and the camera shots all seemed excellent to me, there was one slightly dodgy moment when the monster falls over at the end but other than that it was great.
The jokes/slapstick moments were funny. There wasn't some huge culture barrier, it probably just wasn't to everyone's taste. It's the sort of film that will have a character do something, and you'll find yourself laughing and facepalming at the same time.
It's pretty accessible for western audiences. I've seen a few Korean films that were sometimes hard to understand, but this one is easy. Everything is understandable to a western audience and the subtitles are very well done.
Bad points:
At no point is the film actually scary. It tries to be, but because of the comedy it doesn't quite ever feel frightening. It's more of a drama with a monster in it than a horror movie. It mixes comedy and tragedy, which you don't see often.
There's the odd plot hole or two - what the heck was with the fake virus (why?) and where were all the quarantine/police guys after the first half hour?
They did have a bit of a dig at the Americans. I thought it was pretty funny, not being one, but I imagine some of them would have been upset by it. Shin Godzilla did the same thing, maybe the Americans are replacing us Brits as the 2D movie bad guys now?
All in all, it's well worth watching. I've spent most of this week watching monster movies and this was definitely one of the better ones. It's pretty hard to get it right in this genre, but, although it has a few issues, this film is one of the better ones.
Resident Evil: Vendetta (2017)
Resident Matrix
I really liked this movie, I'd say it's the second best out of the three animated RE films (Damnation is by far the best, Degeneration's animation made everyone look like they've had Botox).
It has some really good points - the animation is amazing, facial expressions were superb although they haven't quite mastered men smiling yet without them looking a bit uncanny valley. Rebecca is a super-smart pixie, Chris is slowly turning into the hulk and is about a foot taller than Leon for some reason, and Leon has dyed his hair again and is continuing his transformation into a depressed alcoholic.
There isn't much character development, which is a shame for the first one of the CGI films where Chris and Leon work together. There are some daft fight scenes too, Leon can apparently do some Neo-level moves on his bike (he also gets quite a lot of people killed in the background during that scene and doesn't seem to care).
Luckily it all looks amazing and happily it continues the Resident Evil tradition of Leon not being able to get into a vehicle of any kind without crashing it. I don't agree with some of the other reviewers being surprised that Chris and Leon can go up against about twenty zombies and not get bitten or even scratched - they're both orbiting forty in this film so they've been at it for twenty years.
Some of the science does get a little confusing and the plot is basically the beginning of London Has Fallen with zombies. New York seems like a pretty boring setting for the film as well after all the interesting countries and crazy labs they've been to before. I still enjoyed watching it, though, and I hope they make more with these characters where they get a little more development and a little less superpowers.
Age of Ice (2014)
Hahaha....no.
This is one of those films you watch and honestly think 'I could do better.' There are lines and plot points in this film that seem like they were written by someone with half a brain, and the acting is so bad it stops being funny after the first hour.
I finished this film with a lot of questions. Some of them are: Why does the wife sound so much like Louis from Family Guy? How is the son still alive? Why was everyone so nice to the spoiled rich Americans when all they did was shout at everyone, demand things and generally be quite rude? Where did the father learn to act? How do you slide down the side of a pyramid without a scratch? How does some wind cut a guy in half? What the heck was even going on in this film? The special effects are terrible, but it's a B movie so I can usually overlook that. However, some parts (such as outside the hotel) were clearly shot in someone's back garden.
The acting was just horrible. The characters were awful, unlikeable people and their lines were drivel. The father was probably the worst actor, the only half decent ones in it were the guy from Jordan and the daughter.
Not one bit of the plot made sense - the timeline, the cause of the storm, the depth of the snow (apparently deep enough to bury a pyramid)...
The ending is literally: Camera goes shaky-cam first person in the dad's face, he can't find his son, he faints for no reason, his son comes running up, the end.
Just what.
Monsters: Dark Continent (2014)
Why?
It's probably OK, for a war movie. But it's not meant to be a war movie, it's meant to be about monsters, as is heavily implied by the title.
Why are the monsters even in this? You could take them out, replace them with terrorists or something and it would make zero difference to the film.
If you're looking for a film about monsters, don't watch this one. They're just kind of running about in the background, not really doing anything harmful to anyone and getting hit by a car occasionally. They're the sci-fi equivalent of deer, and they have about that much relevance to the plot.
Also at one point a dead monster releases some spores. Oh, cool, I think. Maybe someone will get infected or something interesting will happen now. Nope. The spores do nothing, they were just pretty.
This is a war film. You may as well save time and just go watch a better war film. That way you'll get a better movie and it won't be masquerading as sci-fi.
Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)
Wasted potential
This film started out great. It seemed like it was going to be a really interesting apocalyptic horror, and it had a few good names in there so I figured I'd give it a look. The beginning is great. The creatures/souls in the darkness are actually really well done and scary, and I was genuinely looking forward to finding out what was causing it all and how they were going to get away.
Fast forward to everyone meeting at the bar and it starts to go rapidly downhill. The characters are not particularly likable, and the only one I actually gave a damn about spent the entire movie having a concussion and being generally hysterical and useless, like all the other characters. There's a lot of pointless irrational fighting and shouting at each other, which always happens in these films and is always annoying. There's never any explanation for what the creatures are or if they're ever going away, which is the worst thing about the film. The rapture is hinted at briefly, as is the Croatoan mystery. That would have been a really interesting way to go with it but the writers seemed to think just having the word scrawled on a bridge is enough of an explanation.
All in all the film raised way more questions than it answered and left me feeling like I'd wasted my time. Here are a few of the questions it raises (not the 'why did the horse survive', because it's clearly shown at least three times in the film that it doesn't seem to affect animals).
1.What are the things killing everyone? 2.Are they actually killing them? 3.Why are they doing that? 4.Are the shortening days going to get to a point where they stop altogether? 5.Why did Luke get zapped in a church full of candles when he spent the majority of the movie running around in the dark like an idiot? 6.What did Croatoan even have to do with anything? They could just as well have said Marie Celeste and it would have made just as much sense. 7.Why was everyone saying 'I exist' to try and fend off the darkness, even after repeatedly watching it not work? 8.If they get you on the basis that when the lights go out you believe you cease to exist, what happens if you just close your eyes and never know if the lights are on or off? 9.Why did that particular car still work? 10.Why did the creatures keep those last few alive so long when they had the ability to stop lights working? What was the point in that?
Anyway, it had potential but due to the ending the film as a whole left me feeling more annoyed than anything else. It's probably worth watching the first half then switching it off and coming up with your own ending. The saddest thing about it is how awesome it could have been if they hadn't stopped giving a damn when it came time to answer all the mysteries.
Reel Evil (2012)
Not Very Good.
So, the basic premise of this almost plot-less found footage clusterf**k is that three awful, awful people get a job filming another film in an abandoned mental asylum and then proceed to stumble around in the dark for an hour and a half before getting murdered off camera.
I cannot remember their names, so I will call them Harry Potter (cameraman), Claire Bennett (grating blonde) and Thor (mildly retarded sound guy).
The beginning of the film is like some sort of terrible soap opera, maybe skins or hollyoaks or something, which is probably what the director should aim for because it was minutely better than the horror part (although the brief character development had the effect of making me hate all of the characters). Thor sleeps with everyone he sees and Claire Bennett lies to her minions to get them all a job they don't want with people who are even more terrible than they are.
After some bitching they arrive at the mental asylum, which actually looks more like a terrifying abandoned paper mill. Cue a long, long segment of them trying to find their way into the building, after which they proceed to meet every single member of the cast and production of the movie being filmed on site. Each one of the people they meet is more awful than the last.
The remainder of the film consists of the intrepid young documentary makers getting yelled at and running around in the dark yelling at each other, having mood swings and making inexplicably bad decisions, gradually making you side with the ghouls. Or, failing that, reach through the screen and finish the job yourself. By about halfway through I found myself watching the little battery symbol on their camera run down, as it was more interesting than the film.
All of the dialogue in the film consists of some variation on the lines: 'So weird.' 'Did you hear/see that?' 'We've been this way.' 'We just need to THINK!'
The Scooby Doo corridor scene was annoying, the effects were terrible, the acting made me want to kill myself, the flashlight/shakycam combo gave me an epileptic fit and all the characters were deeply unlikeable.
None of the murders were imaginative, or particularly gory. There was not a single scary moment in the entire thing, and the only emotions this film will muster in you will be irritation and boredom.
In conclusion, if you like endless shakycam shots of the same corridor over and over again and listening to horrid people arguing, this film is for you.
2012: Doomsday (2008)
Marginally better than being on fire.
This is among the worst movies I have ever seen, and I've seen some pretty bad movies. There should be some sort of horrifically painful punishment meted out to people who direct movies as agonising to watch as this one. Here are the first ten minutes of the movie, after which I became comatose:
Shaky camera angles of a river. Fake rain. People appear in the jungle. Busy man is unhappy with the arrival of silent woman. She seems not to notice. Apparently a volcanic eruption is imminent. This seems a great time to go underground, so Angry Man drags Woman into some sort of Mayan tomb, where they find a gold spray-painted wooden cross. Volcano erupts, they run. Random helper guy also runs, is flattened very comically by a giant paper mache boulder. Nobody cares.
A weather man says something. Perhaps it was important.
A paramedic woman fails to save a random man and has a hissy fit because god hates her. Or something.
At this point I had an aneurysm, and the rest of the movie is thankfully a blur of god-bothering rubbish.
If I had to describe this movie in one sentence it would be this: One giant facepalm, if you have the choice, shoot yourself in the face instead.
Give it a miss. Do something more constructive, like hunting down the director of this travesty and punching him repeatedly in the back of the head until his brain comes out.