And by " bad ", I don't mean - " No, I didn't like it. ", I mean it's a bad movie. Objectively. It's the embodiment of the concept " failure ".
Before anyone pulls out their dummy guns and accuse me of being a simpleton, let me say I like complicated movies. I like challenging movies. I like un-orthodox movies. In fact, I just came out of a screening of New York, Synecdoche and loved it.
This is not such a situation. Sky Crawlers is a movie which you will not understand anything unless, I'm guessing, you have read the novel which it is based on. It's as if Oshii shot the film as an action blockbuster and then found out the product is quite lame, so he cut out some scenes just to make the whole thing more incomprehensible in order to sell it to the festival crowd under the guise of an " art " film.
Oshii was never one to make a straight-forward film, but he always knew how to infuse humanity and emotion into the scenes, even if it got confusing there was always something true on the screen. It is not the case here.
As to how this film won anything and/or got nominated for anything is a testament to the utter confusion the artistic community faces when it is presented with something so void and empty.
Why am I not giving this one star? Because it had a nice soundtrack and the CGI sequences looked good.
Aside from that, avoid this film at all costs. And if you did not heed my advice and went into the cinema and watched the first ten minutes and said - oh boy, this is bad... but I'll stay, maybe it's gonna get better...
It doesn't.
Before anyone pulls out their dummy guns and accuse me of being a simpleton, let me say I like complicated movies. I like challenging movies. I like un-orthodox movies. In fact, I just came out of a screening of New York, Synecdoche and loved it.
This is not such a situation. Sky Crawlers is a movie which you will not understand anything unless, I'm guessing, you have read the novel which it is based on. It's as if Oshii shot the film as an action blockbuster and then found out the product is quite lame, so he cut out some scenes just to make the whole thing more incomprehensible in order to sell it to the festival crowd under the guise of an " art " film.
Oshii was never one to make a straight-forward film, but he always knew how to infuse humanity and emotion into the scenes, even if it got confusing there was always something true on the screen. It is not the case here.
As to how this film won anything and/or got nominated for anything is a testament to the utter confusion the artistic community faces when it is presented with something so void and empty.
Why am I not giving this one star? Because it had a nice soundtrack and the CGI sequences looked good.
Aside from that, avoid this film at all costs. And if you did not heed my advice and went into the cinema and watched the first ten minutes and said - oh boy, this is bad... but I'll stay, maybe it's gonna get better...
It doesn't.