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Reviews
Ataque de Pánico (2009)
Incredible feat of independent film-making!
As a fan of the giant monster/robot genre, I was amazed when I saw this on YouTube! After only a month, this 5 minute short had nearly 5 million hits! This little film gives us aspiring film writers and directors something to shoot for. Federico Alvarez has set the bar high for spectacular final product on a shoe string budget. If you haven't seen this....you need to.
Rumor has it that he just recently signed a 30 million dollar deal with Sam Raimi's production company to make this thing into a full length movie. Hope to see this happen! I recommend the short "Negadon: The Monster from Mars" if you enjoyed "Panic Attack!
Ikki Tousen (2003)
Excel Saga meets Dragonball Z
Without giving any spoilers...if you can watch an anime about a retard with big breasts fighting in a tournament oriented series about feuding school districts, then this is the box set to buy! If Hanes or Fruit of the Loom needs a new spokesperson, then any female in this series will do...overdone panty shots every 30 seconds is a bit much. The animation is average, sound is average and the dub is pathetic. The series is barely watchable if you have absolutely nothing else to do, but the story is tired and has no direction. Even the intro and outro music is butt-awful....even for anime standards.
Honestly, my favorite part of the series was when the middle break for advertising shows the returning segment....if you time it just right, you can make a fart sound just as her skirt lifts to show the logo on her butt cheek.
Bottom line is, if you enjoyed this...you really need a girlfriend.
District 9 (2009)
Plays like a History Channel special if this really happened.
That's not a bad thing! You get the feel of watching a documentary, complete with news cam shakiness and television quality resolution and occasional surveillance cam shots mixed with standard Panaflex shots mixed quite well. You also get a few interviews of family and friends reflecting on the events that are about to unfold on the screen. This was just well done.
That's just the filming style, the story is engaging and you really sympathize with the characters. The only movie I can compare this to is Alien Nation, but the similarities are few. Excellent movie. Blows any summer action movie out of the water if you like substance over CGI. This film is pretty deep, if all you want to see in the theatre is stuff getting blowed up and nucalar kersplosions....stay home and rent a Uwe Boll film (feel free to look that up).
I doubt any intelligent movie goer will prefer Transformers over this.
Janghwa, Hongryeon (2003)
Scary as sleeping kittens.
As a rabid fan of Asian horror and sci-fi, this movie is a huge let-down. Check the message boards on this rhino turd of a film..IT IS NOT A HORROR FILM!!!! A Tale of Two Sisters is a beautifully filmed movie but it belongs in the drama genre. If you loved Ju-On..run from this film. There is no gore, and a good horror film can pull off a genuine creepiness without it, Cello and Koma are good examples of this. Bad thing is, there is no scares either.
You will need to watch this mess more than once to get the full effect, because the story is just unfulfilling. The pace is so slow you'd be better served watching old people text for 2 hours. Yes, this lasts 2 hours. This is just one of those artsy films that has a small misguided fanboy base on IMDb that wouldn't know horror if it cut off their feet with piano wire.
Chiisaki yûsha-tachi: Gamera (2005)
A review for the adult Kaiju fans.
RUN...do not walk away from this movie!!!!! Aimed at the very young kids, this movie will bore you to tears. If the Gamera trilogy of the 90's raised the bar, this film just lowered it. It's slow paced and the monster fighting is good, but seldom seen. This movie had me dry heaving in the cat box. Just a very poor offering after a phenomenal 90's series.
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT!!!!!!!!!!! Here are the top 10 reasons Gamera fans of the 90's series will HATE this film.
10. This movie is a drama that follows a kid trying to cope with the death of his mother and fears losing baby Gamera to a fight after knowing his father saw the adult Gamera die.
9. You see the adult Gamera for maybe a minute at the beginning of the film. He gets his butt kicked by a few Gyaos and self destructs??? He looks old and lethargic. Plus he looks nothing like any gamera you've ever seen. His suit looked cheap and rushed.
8. The young Gamera you see through the rest of the film looks like a Pokemon. Big-eyed and cute...it will remind you of the baby Godzilla from Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla 2. Gamera is now too cute.
7. This movie has the pace of watching a NASCAR race during a 3 hour rain delay. I watched this movie with 2 other Gamera fans and nobody was happy with how slowly this film moved along. I've seen an SUV full of fat people going up a mountain road move faster.
6. Like Godzilla:Final Wars, this movie had very little kaiju time on screen. Final Wars had much more, actually, and better fights although short.
5. Kids take the title role. The friend of all children theme and poor writing killed the original Gamera series in the 1970's and history repeats itself in the 2000's. The most successful Gamera films abandoned the Sesame Street feel and went to a darker place. Why go back to a failed formula? This was to be a new trilogy and poor ticket sales killed any hope for this story to continue (thank god).
4. Gamera lost his iconic roar. He now sounds like an Elephant with strep throat.
3. This movie may produce a new Olympic event.....Imagine a relay race that involves sending very young children into harm's way. You have to see the ending to understand this point. Where were the parents? Oh yea..right there sending their kids into a kaiju battle zone.
2. The special effects were good, but sub-par for a Gamera movie. Legion and Iris had better effects. The best effect was showing the apple sized baby Gamera fly. Not too impressive.
1. This movie is just not what adult kaiju fans come to expect. The director was involved in Power Rangers and it shows. It comes off like a cross between ET, Always: Sunset on Third Street and TMNT. Kudos if you know all 3 references.
Rental at best or watch once if you buy it to complete the DVD series.
Mezzo DSA (2003)
Watered down Mezzo Forte....Niagra Falls watered down.
Only very minor spoilers in this review.
Anyone who has viewed the 2 episode Mezzo Forte knows how awesome and utterly brutal the series was. That was quality animation, great action and if you saw the original version, very sexual as well. The series never got finished and it took about 5 years to get a chance to re-appear on TV. I doubt Yasuomi Umetsu had anything to do with Mezzo DSA except sell the rights, because this series sucks. The first episode is decent enough and starts with a great fight scene and introduces the characters well. The series is like a mix of Magyver and A-Team with some goofy comedy and supernatural tones as well. After the first episode, the series loses animation quality, most of the action and any sense of direction. And if ghosts and aliens for clients weren't bad enough, they take jobs transporting bio weapons and mummy's. They even have a very young girl for a groupie who hangs around the shop which turns out to be a bus parked on the roof of a barber shop.
The cast is led by Kurokawa, a balding ex-cop who is obsessed with eating noodles who drives around in a pink VW bug and has some ties with the acting police chief. Mikura is the girl with the pink hair and shoots at everything that moves and Harada is the cyborg building nerd who seems to be the smartest one in the group but is the low man in the pecking order in the DSA.
The series offers nothing but a cookie cutter anime with no real surprises and forgettable dialogue. Just watch Mezzo Forte instead. If you toss out the first episode of Mezzo DSA you have no action, a retarded plot and a total mess of a potentially great series. This one's a rental at best.
Flatland (2007)
This is why independent films are better than standard Hollywood fare.
If I had a dollar for every time I walked out of a movie theater griping about how Hollywood has run out of ideas, I'd be a rich man. Lately I have been on a spiritual search if you will, to find some truly unique movies and Indie films seem to be the grail. Flatland was an impulse buy for me and I must say that this was the most unique movie experience I ever had. Nothing I'm aware of is more thought provoking for people who like discussing UFO's and Inter-dimensional travel. I can't think of a genre this film fits into. This is a thinking person's film and since I've seen it, I've been trying to explain to my cat what a solid is. I've also named her "Pea Brain". You can bet this film will get some serious looks from the big movie houses.
Gwoemul (2006)
On par with the American Godzilla film....not a good thing.
I am a big Kaiju fan and decided to rent this movie to fill the void until the new Gamera movie hits DVD in the USA or 01-18-08. If you were looking for the cheese factor of a Godzilla flick, This movie has extra cheese. If you are looking for some great creature special effects, The Host definitely has it. If you thought this was anything like a kaiju movie from TOHO you will be somewhat disappointed, and horrified beyond belief at the bad acting and dubbing. The movie does have redeeming value such as a very dark tone when it takes itself seriously, and it becomes a very good movie! Then without warning it crawls into some long drawn out scene or painfully hard to watch acting/dubbing that really doesn't belong. This was the top grossing movie in Korea of all time and I can't for the life of me understand why. I'd hate to see the worst. This is a rental, don't buy it unless you are a hard core monster movie fan or have difficulty boring your friends when they come over. Just like the US Godzilla flick...good effects and bad acting and drawn out scenes make for a bad movie.