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Reviews
Pluto (2023)
Absolute masterpice!
I have literally nothing bad to say about this series. The pacing is amazing, the several parallel stories are deep and moving, the action is fantastic, the detective mystery is compelling and engaging, animation is cinema quality, soundtrack, likewise. BUT it's a very complex narrative with even more complex themes, and nothing is spoonfed to the viewer, so it's a series that requires several viewings. But, like Evangelion and others of the same caliber, all those viewings are worth it, was you always discover new jewels with each one. A total must watch!
Perhaps the most moving sub-story is the relationship between North No. 2 and Duncan, but also the growth of Atom as a character, the reveal of how Dr. Tenma built him as a replacement for his dead son, how Epsilon goes from a radical pacifist to someone who fights to protect those he loves, and finally, how the themes of what it means to be human, and for both humans and AI to be perfect, they need to be imperfect, how hatred only results in more hatred, and violence generates more violence were masterfully done.
Ghost Hound (2007)
Intriguing, mature and sophisticated. Not for your usual Boruto fan.
Ghost Hound is one of the best anime I've ever watched. People say the story is all over the place, but that's only if you have a very short attention span. It's sophisticated, mixing horror, political thriller, medical thriller, folklore and mythology, and quantum mechanics with a very healthy dose of interpersonal relationships and their problems. The character design is original and interesting, again, not for those who only like the current kawaii trend, but all very expressive. They are deep and well-developed, they all grow during the series, including several of the side characters. The soundtrack is amazing, music used more to create mood than as a background to the action. The opening and ending songs are great, too.
If you like thought-provoking series and can connect the dots along several storylines that take their time converging into a cohesive whole, you will certainly like this series.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Paint by the numbers
Good action, good special effects, and a terrible stupid and predictable plot. You know a movie is not good storywise when you keep looking at your watch to know how much time is left before it ends. And that's what I did when watching Infinity War, because the movie was so absolutely predictable that it got tedious. Also, it had not one, but TWO instances of one of the cliches I hate the most, the "save a loved one, let the world die" cliche. And both are announced from miles away. When Vision makes the correct decision of committing suicide by having the mind stone destroyed and everyone is stupidly against it and when Dr. Strange says he will let Tony or Peter die rather than surrender the time stone. Sure, let half the universe die (including many of your loved ones) so you don't have to see THIS ONE PERSON die or kill them. And no, there's no circumstance when this will ever be right. In the case of Dr. Strange, just to make the NEXT movie even more predictable, it's clear that giving up his stone was part of a plan to make the one future where Thanos is defeated come true. That means I already know in broad terms what's going to happen in the next movie, especially with Fury calling in Captain Marvell in the post-credit scene.
Added to that is how terrible the fight scenes were. Not in that they were badly choreographed or executed, but in how stupid they were. I'll just mention two instances, so keep from being repetitive.
1. Dr. Strange or Wong could have beaten Thanos and his minions instantly. Just materialize a teleport opening around their necks and close it. Problem solved. This is as stupid as not using the luck potion or the time-travel amulet in Harry Potter to defeat Voldemort.
2. Why the hell is Thanos wasting time punching people after he got the reality stone? Just do what he did to Drax and Mantis to everyone. Turn all of them at once to confetti or cotton candy. Wish the mind stones off Vision's head and into his hand. And so on and so forth. This, in its turn, is as stupid as Green Lanterns making those constructs of theirs because writers think they look cool, when they should just disintegrate their enemies using their allegedly omnipotent rings of power. Only limited to your willpower and imagination still gives you a lot of leeway to use the best possible option: death rays.
In short, as I expected, Marvel people have ran out of ideas. Now I see clearly why Thor: Ragnarok was a comedy. If they had tried to make a serious dramatic movie, it would ended up being as boring as Infinity War.
Solaris (2002)
Terrible view of a good book
I don't know why people compare Tarkowsky's Solaris to 2001. Sure, that's what Tarkowsky intended. But while 2001 is the best sci-fi movie of all time, Solaris not even sci-fi. It distorts Stanislaw Lem's view of the universe and actually changes it around. Of course, many people think it's a work of genius by the way it throws philosophy around, but that's for those who like philosophy. I think philosophy is silly and overblown all around. Science (the daughter of Greek thinking - which I don't really consider philosophy in the modern, especially German, sense, but as a way to try to understand the universe) is the only form of thinking that's valid. So, I think that, although entertaining, both the 1972 Solaris and the book are rather silly in their opposite ways of considering the impossibility of humanity ever understanding the universe (which is obviously false by all accounts). That said, both are a zillion times better than this movie. Of course the decision of focusing on Kelvin's love life robs the film of all depth, but it goes beyond that. In trying to "modernize" the story by having Nasa selling the Solaris project to some corporation, you get the old and trite left-wing Hollywood trope of evil Capitalism trying to exploit nature as represented by Solaris. You don't get the actual core of the novel, which is the futile attempt of Solaristics to understand Solaris - and by extension the universe as a whole - but rather, as one of the Company (what a rip-off from Alien) agents say, "the possibility of exploiting Solaris economically". And the casting if abominable. Corey Feldman is, of course, the most ridiculous of them all, with his crazy gestures - and no, he doesn't use them here because his character is emotionally disturbed, he acts like that all the time, and I supposed he acts like that in real life too. But all the other actors are badly cast. Some have mentioned that Kelvin's wife - if forget her name now - is beautiful and renders a better performance that the others. But one of the key points of the book regarding her is her youth and innocence, in flagrant contrast to Kelvin, who is much older and cynical, which renders his shock at her return far more poignant. In that regard, Tarkowksy's casting is infinitely superior (also all the other points of this movie, silly as it is). In short, this is an awful movie. I tried to see it again today but found it almost unbearably embarrassing and boring. Stay away from it.
Earthsea (2004)
Disgusting attempt to focus on young adult public
I was compelled to add this after reading several reviews: I think the scriptwriter knows about Ged's name inversion. He or the producers just thought that Sparrowhawk was not catchy enough or was too long. So they decided to reverse the order. Considering the writer had the gall to say that his adaptation reflected LeGuin's TRUE intentions (prompting her to write her reply - by the way, isn't the book's copyright hers? And so, shouldn't she have been able to veto anything based on it? I don't know how international copyright laws work on this. Now, on to my review. Well, I think that an adaptation of a book to film medium should follow the book. Actually, I'd like it to slavishly follow the book insofar as the medium allows. But I don't judge the adaptation for not doing that. I like the Lord of the Rings movies and they deviate from the books in several essential points, not the least of which is ignoring the fact that Tolkien creates his characters to be Aristotelian examples of superior men, even though LOTR is not a tragedy, but a comedy (technically speaking). In terms of adaptation of the books, this miniseries is awful, totally disgusting. The Godking of Awabath is changed into a warlord that wants to conquer the Archipelago, Kossil is his mistress, quite the young and attractive woman, who wants to gain the power to summon the nameless ones (who are a sort of black gremlins with bat wings ??), Tenar is chosen by the last high priestess of the tombs to take her place as keeper of the key to hold the nameless ones prisoners. By the way, it's one of them that is after Ged. The Iskyorh gebbeth becomes the archfiend of the whole trilogy and has a showdown with Ged at the Tombs of Atuan, where Ged incomprehensibly decides to release the nameless batgremlins and their evil upon the world. Nemerle does not die, but remain the leader of the resistance against the Kargs, who have conquered Roke with the help of Jasper ??? Also, poor Nemerle looks suspiciously like a Dumbledore... Should I go on? However, that's not the reason I'm rating it so low. What I really hated was the fact that not only were the actors terrible, even poor Isabella Rossellini and Danny Glover, because their roles were so bad, but the series is only a long series of clichés strung together. The whole Karg invasion plot is there so the film doesn't have to deal with the true issues of the first book, which is Ged's search for his own identity. The central issues of the other two books, namely, how once can gain freedom through trust and by looking beyond the bars of one's cage and acceptance of mortality as essential to life, are thoroughly ignored. The Archmage and the other wizards of Roke are reduced to a position of almost comic relief to the series (even worse, poor Vetch IS in fact treated as a comic relief character). So, we are down to a soppy, ridiculous adventure crafted for the so-called young adult public. By the way, I'm 50, but if I were a young adult I would feel very insulted by how imbecilic current day scriptwriters (especially Hollywood) think young adults are.
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Quite the disappointment
Thor the Dark World was quite the disappointment. Sure, it was fun to watch, but that was all, and the clichés were quite annoying. Frigga's death was perhaps the most glaring of them. And she dies for the only reason (if you can call that a reason) that they need Odin to loose control and prepare to go after Malekith like an enraged bull (which he never seems to get around to do, leaving everything to Thor once he and Loki get to leave Asgard. Also, Asgard's defenses and army were pathetic. Being caught unawares makes no sense, as Bor was supposed to know that Malekith was alive, and thus so should Odin. And even caught at unawares would not provide for such a ridiculously easy victory by the Dark Elves over Asgardian forces and such a horribly silly idea that Frigga could take care of herself (I mean, seriously, what is the good of having an army in the palace if they can't even guard the queen?). And all that so Thor could be shown as the only one that could fight the Dark Elves. And Odin only gets to kill one with Gungnir!! Of course the cliffhanger at the end was just silly. I believe we are to assume that Loki was disguised as the guard that came to announce the arrival of his "corpse" to Odin (considering the sidelong look the guard gave Odin), and thus managed to overpower him somehow (which should be very difficult indeed, but, hey, the movie is way less coherent than the comics, so...). Another thing that annoys me (that was somewhat present in the first movie, but not to this extent) is Odin's and Thor's insistence that Asgardians are not gods. They are! They are the Norse gods. Seriously, I can only think they were afraid of offending the sensibilities of Christians watching the movie, but, come one! Odin is called the All- Father because the is supposed to have created the Nine Worlds. And so on and so forth. Just boring. Ah, by the way, if Asgardians are mortal and not gods at all, why does Odin refer to Jane as "mortal"? He should have used a term like "short-lived" or something like that. Of course the magical day-saving device Erik and Jane put together is not a problem: Marvel does that all the time, like when Dr. Doom manages to create a device that steals the powers of the Beyonder, a being so powerful and alien he should be beyond the understanding of any human without centuries of studies and scientific progress. But Doom, like Reed Richards, is supposed to be a genius, which apparently means, in comic book parlance, he is wiser, more knowledgeable and more intelligent than anyone (except Reed Richards, of course. :) As a final comment, no, the film did not have the promised wider scope: the 9 reals are barely shown, Hogun's village is just as bad as any cheap Conan-like under financed TV production, Svartalfheim is just a desert filmed through darkened lenses, we just get to see enough of Asgard to, as I said, see how badly organized they are, and then we come back to Earth... again! My perfect Thor film would be if they compressed the old Colonizers of Rigel Saga into a movie. No saving the Universe (which is also a boring cliché, like, Thor will only show up on the big screen when he is saving the world), but just fighting an alien race waaaay away from Earth.
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Nice action with terrible plot, as usual nowadays
I can't really say I'm disappointed by Star Trek Into Darkness. I already expected the story to be weak. I just didn't expect it so be so bad. I get the impression most scriptwriters nowadays have never read a book in their lives, and all they can do is copy ideas from other similar movies and patch them together to make their own. There are TONS of good science fiction stories out there they could adapt to the big screen, but I'm afraid they have never read them or even heard about their authors, so they keep serving us the same reheated bad dishes over and over again. Take the opening sequence: in a good story, they would have sent a probe down there, made at least of the same material Spock's suit is made of, with the cold fusion (forgive me for repeating this absolutely nonsensical name for what is obviously a freezing device. Apparently just because "cold fusion" has the adjective "cold" in its name, the writers believe it to be something that freezes things, and not a hypothetical nuclear reactor that would operate at room temperature (which is what the term actually means - if you're going to invent a futuristic device, don't give it a name that already exists! Learn from the Original Series: that's why they came up with "phaser", instead of "laser". Then we have Star Fleet command meeting in a top staff meeting room that is on top of a building, all enclosed in glass windows. Anyone who knows what the actual meeting room of the chiefs of staff in the Pentagon or NORAD look like will know this is complete imbecility. Also, the city that is the headquarters of Star Fleet has no security whatsoever. And let's not bring up the idea that they have gone complacent: even the most peaceful society would need urban police, not to mention city and planetary defenses, since the Federation has enemies, and not just the Klingons. These are all plot devices made to create the situations that move the story forward. But they are all absurd and nonsensical. Apparently, no one can think of a reasonable and acceptable way of moving the story forward anymore. Like, Kahn could easily have teleported himself to the middle of the conference room and, considering his abilities, killed most people there before they could react, and then beaming out to Q'ono'oS when Kirk found a way to put him in a jam. Of course, Khan saying that Admiral Marcus wanted him because of his savagery, since "wars are not won by logic" (actually, they are - if you are a better strategist and has better equipment, you will win a war), they needed him because he "can kill". Of course humans are 100% peaceful: the brutality of the cadets that beat up Kirk in the first movie and the fact that the Enterprise and other Federation exporation starships are loaded with photon torpedoes and phasers prove that! Come on! All Admiral Marcus had to do was to get people to improve the weapons they already had. He had no need for Khan. He had no problems finding people to help him build the weapons designed for Kahn, so he should be able to find engineers to help him design them. And the list goes on: Kahn needs them to lower the shields so he could beam his people off the Enterprise, but Admiral Marcus had no problem beaming his daughter off with the shields up. They only needed Khan's blood to save Kirk. That could as easily have been gotten out of his corpse. You don't leave superdangerous and superpowerful insane mass murderers alive. And they had already been condemned as war criminals, as the Admiral points out. Dozens of Klingons and 3 birds of pray can't get one single shot on a man? Also, J. J. Adams said that, and I quote, "the time travel-alternate reality concept used in the previous film was a deliberate ploy to enable a reboot for new sagas/films: 'The idea, now that we are in an independent timeline, allows us to use any of the ingredients from the past - or come up with brand-new ones - to make potential stories.' " And all they can come up is a ripoff of The Wrath of Khan?? I'm really afraid that, unless a new generation of scriptwriters comes along, TV is going to take away all good stories and just leave bad plots like this one to Cinema. And that is something that saddens me very much.
Prometheus (2012)
Stunning visuals and idiotic plot - a Riddley Scott Hallmark after Blade Runner
Well, that's it: wonderful visuals with stupid story and stupider characters. That's a Riddley Scott film for you. So, i'll just focus on the character's behavior. Oh my, where to begin? - A team of misfits with severe behavioral problems chosen to be crew members on a trillion-dollar expedition. - a geologist that looks like a street mugger and smokes pot inside a space suit, panics at the first sight of a dead alien and then, being, of course, the person who maps the caves, gets instantly lost. - A retarded biologist that tries to pet a snake-like alien creature that is displaying blatantly obvious aggressive behavior. - Another retarded paleontologist that has no right to the name of scientist and comes up with the "engineer" theory based only on her personal feelings and religious beliefs. - Another retarded paleontologist that sees tentacles coming out of his eyes and hides the fact from everybody else for no reason at all. - An emotionless robot that displays sarcasm and a varied set of other emotions. - THE WORST SURGERY SCENE EVER SHOWN ON SCREEN OR OFF IT (by the way, displaying amazing lack of imagination and incredible ignorance; if the machine was programmed for males (supposedly, it's Wayland's), it should make a top-to-bottom incision, but it made a lateral incision, which is the one used in cesarean anyway. Also, no anesthetics from the supposedly standalone medical module (spray on skin does not count. And cauterizing and stapling to close the incision. Really, folks, that's just lack of imagination: they copied standard cesarean procedure, and made it a thousand times worse. If that's future medicine, I want none of it!!!) - Also, Shawn's inhuman resistance after the operation (the rest of the movie) is ridiculous. - They open the door of the ship to something that's obviously not human, from its posture (impossible to a human), just because it's wearing Fifield's suit?! - And then, the Engineers, the crowning imbeciles of all. Why did the engineer in the prologue have to sacrifice himself before the ship posturing as a sky god? Wouldn't just his blood with the black slime (which seems to create all kinds of life) work the same? - I don't care why they wanted to destroy humanity. That's one of the films' mysteries and it's OK. But why make a monster vector that implants other monsters inside people? That's stupid. A virus would work a lot better and be much more energy-saving to engineer (pardon the pun). - Why does the awakened engineer charges blindly at the humans? He only succeeds because they had no weapons with them (oh, yes, another thing we have to thank Shawn's imbecility for). And then, after his ship has been crashed by the tiny humans, he goes charging after Shawn blindly and with his bare hands, again!!!! The problem is that the characters are irrational and idiotic, when they should not be. They should be the cream of earth's scholars and scientists - remember, it's a trillion dollar mission to save Weyland's life. Why would he bet his life on imbeciles? And this never happens in good science fiction. but then again, I'm afraid those who think this is a good movie (aka good story, not good visuals, that you can get from a screen saver) have never read good science fiction, like Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, or Howard Philips Lovecraft (who mixes sci-fi and horror very well in his stories), and so many others that were REAL writers, not just people who put words together. However, I haven't read the movie's original script yet. After I do, I'll find out whether the rumors that Scott messed with it are true, and discover that he has really embraced religious idiocy and bad Hollywood clichés. But after Blade Runner he hasn't made a really good movie - except visually, they are all stunning. 1492 is so bad that he didn't even research history. People had known the Earth wasn't flat since the Middle Ages, and, in some cases, before that! This is just current-day cliché from the historically-illiterate. So, I'm afraid Alien and Blade Runner are fortunate accidents and the rest of his opus just shows that the Congress should approve an act forbidding Riddley Scott from messing with film scripts or even choosing them. Just direct them they way they are, and everything will be fine. That law should also apply to James Cameron, with an addendum forbidding him to write his own scripts. Same case as Scott, only worse.
Sucker Punch (2011)
A complete waste of a good idea
The fact that somebody is a director doesn't mean they know how to write a film script. Even the fact they are great writers doesn't mean that, Sartre's script for the Freud movie being a case in point. Zack Snider's latest attempt at movie-making, "Sucker Punch" is a punch indeed... to the viewer's patience. The storyline is almost nonexistent, the CGI battle sequences are mostly boring, the plot premises are weak (to say the least), and the bet on the bet on Emilie Browning's (Baby Doll) beauty to enthrall the viewer fails miserably: she looks SO artificial that I couldn't even find her mildly pretty. Perhaps that was intentional, but then, the movie would require a modicum of storyline to keep going. And there is none. From the start, when the girl is incomprehensibly shoved into an asylum instead of answering an inquiry (where the attempted rape by the stepfather would - inconveniently to Zack's bad plot - have come up, she is put into an Arkham-like asylum. Add to it the fact that the whorehouse fantasy with the game character fantasy inside it simply do not carry on a convincing story, because there is no background to them. The move just does not connect the dots. And Baby Doll's character is supposed NOT to be insane (and her being 20 years old makes it even more unconvincing - if she were 5, the badly connected senseless fantasies would be make more sense). To top it up, the video game sequences are just plain boring. Just special effects with 300-imitation CGI visual are not enough to carry long sequences of senseless battles with no real plot to support them. Compare this with Hero, a great movie, with stupendous actions sequences, a stunning visual (way better - because poetical and plot-helping, instead of merely technological - than Zack can ever hope to achieve) and a wonderfully deep, complex and simple plot to boot! Profoundly disappointing. A great idea for a plot just plain wasted.