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philip-baxter
Reviews
Gedo senki (2006)
Could have been a contender
This film has been critically mauled ever since its release, and with Goro's career hardly setting the world on fire since it would be easy to write him off as sadly lacking any of the talent of his Father. Revisiting this now all these years later I think it's an interesting failure.
On a purely technical level this is big budget Ghibli, so you get fantasitcally well animated set pieces, beautiful background art, and a lavish score (not by Joe Hisaishi, but nevertheless well done). And despite some small differences in character designs this really looks very Ghibli, it could be a loose sequel to Nausicaa or Princess Mononoke.
I think it's pretty well directed too, for the most part. Sure there are some slow parts where it drags, but from a nuts and bolts technical level Goro does good work here.
But the film was lambasted for good reason, and that reason is the script. Simply put, it doesn't make much sense. Things happen without explanation, character motivations are wafer thin, and there isn't even much of a story arc. Things just happen for no real reason. I don't think this was unsalvagable, had there been a Nausicaa style backstory section filling in the world that could have helped enormously. It wouldn't have fixed all of the problems, but it would at least have made the world feel less baffling.
This film remains an interesting, but ultimately failed outing. It looks and sounds great and if you're a Ghibli fan you should absolutely watch it. But don't expect it to come close to the works of Miyazaki Snr.
Masters of the Air (2024)
Masters of the Ground
I love Band of Brothers, I genuinely believe it's a masterpiece. Memorable characters, incredible viceral battle sequences, great score, and there's a real arc to it. You follow mostly the same group of men from training to the end of the war.
Years later we got Paciffic, which is fine but never really reached the heights of Band of Brothers. The cast was much less likeable, the setting less interesting, the story arc less captivating, the music less stiring.
And now many, many years later we get this final part of the trilogy, and as much as I was looking forward to it, it's a bit of a miss-fire.
It starts off pretty well, the battle sequences are spectacular for the most part and I was settled in to follow these men through the war. Sadly the show had other ideas, and as cast members started dropping like flies they were replaced by new faces again and again. Not the fault of the show necessarily, a lot of men died during WW2, but it certainly makes forming any sort of attachment to the cast more difficult.
Then there are the battles, and the lack of them. By about the 1/3 point the show really starts trimming the battles down considerably to the point where by the half way point they barely exist. It reaches peack silliness when characters leave to go on a mission, only for the show to cut to the aftermath without showing us so much as a single second of them in the air. Even D-Day falls foul to this with barely 10 seconds of the battle shown.
Perhaps to compensate for this there is plenty of ground based things to watch. There are some prisoner of war camps, a rather pointless romantic side plot, and lots of chit chat in the barracks, but this is supposed to be telling the story of WW2 from the air.
The cast is a mixed bag too. Austin Butler I can only imagine has it written into his contract to never have so much as a scratch on him or a single hair out of place which looks increasingly ridiculous as the war goes on, and he's also still acting as if he's playing Elvis. The rest of the cast is better if unmemorable. Even the score feels a little phoned in.
This isn't a bad show, it's just not what it should have been. It clearly lacks the budget required, which is odd given the pedigree and Apple's deep pockets, and perhaps it also it lacks ambition and talent. It's the worst of the Hanks/Spielberg WW2 trilogy by some margin, but is nevertheless still worth a watch if you're interested in the time period.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Subspace Rhapsody (2023)
Quite possibly the best episode of Star Trek ever made
Strange New Worlds harks back to the Original Series in so many ways, embracing its silliness, its sense of fun and adventure, and it's willingness to surprise the audience.
With Subspace Rhapsody they have this taken to its conclusion, and it is glorious. The cast are completely game and are clearly having the time of their lives belting out the songs, and there's even a little bit of plot in there to tie it all together.
Ignore the po-faced sour old men grumbling that this is too fun and not "serious sci-fi" (clearly they've never seen TOS). This is just an hour of pure entertainment and if unless you're one of those sour old men you'll be grinning from ear to ear. Top marks Paramount, this will go down as classic.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Fan fiction with a giant budget
There are many flaws with 2049, but none bigger than its fan fiction level plotting. What if Deckard and Rachel somehow had open ended lifespans and they had a baby! It's amateur hour stuff. It treads all over the world created in the masterpiece original. You'd have thought Tyrell might have at least dropped a hint that as well as planting experimental memories in Rachel, he also gave her the ability to have children.
The cast is bored throughout. Gosling is flat as ever and mumbles every line. Ford does his usual grumpy old man act. Robin Wright is good for the brief handful of scenes she's in. Sylvia Hoeks is serviceable as a female Terminator. Ana De Armas is one note and her thick accent makes her dialogue difficult to understand. Jared Leto appears to be stoned throughout and is barely audible as his James Bond comedy villain.
Visually 2049 has its moments, but they're sandwiched inbetween a lot of daytime sequences which are flat, grey, and foggy. Even the nighttime sequences lack the detail and scale of the original, and the interiors frankly look like they belong in 2001 rather than Blade Runner. The original is a much, much better looking movie.
The score is a stand out as it may well be the worst score in motion picture history. Hans Zimmer has taken his war on melody to new levels with this cacophonous wall of random noise. It's painful stuff. He steals a classic Vangelis melody at the end, which only compounds his failure. The day Zimmer retires from film scoring will be a happy day.
The film is not entirely without merit. It's nice to see spinners again and some of the nighttime city shots are nice, but that's about it. The original remains a perfect movie. This is anything but. And why does Deckard's daughter have a French accent? Just one of the many baffling decisions in this cinematic mess.
Pacific Rim (2013)
Del Toro has fallen very, very far
"From the director of Pan's Labyrinth"! Apparently. Not that you would know after watching this utterly derivative and mind numbingly awful film.
It's essentially Godzilla meets Evangelion, but with none of the fun of the first, and none of the character development and drama of the second. Instead we get characters which are either bland and generic, or just hateful and moronic. The only exception is Rinko Kikuchi's character, but she can't save this mess of a movie. There are several comic relief characters too, who are all immensely annoying.
The CG is nice enough, as is standard now, although the sets look like they've fallen out of a mid 1990s Godzilla film, which is to say, they look incredibly cheap and tacky. Maybe that's the idea, who knows.
Del Toro is a director who has proved he can make hugely imaginative, original, and beautiful works. Sadly Pacific Rim also proves that he's equally capable of making utter dross. Please Guillermo, go back to Spain and start making movies again, instead of intros to Sega Saturn games.
Prometheus (2012)
A pointless prequel
The story in Prometheus simply makes no sense, is full of plot holes, and is the type of anti-science rubbish one would expect from a hack like Lindelof. All it really manages to do, is take a nice little mystery from the first film, - the space jockey - and turn it into something absurd, ridiculous, and unimaginative. The characters are also uninteresting in the extreme, with only Michael Fassbender, playing the same role as Ian Holm and Lance Henricksen did in the first two movies, managing to stand out. Particularly disappointing is Noomi Rapace who sadly isn't shining now she's away from her native Sweden.
Prometheus, if nothing else, proves that prequels are pointless and tell stories which need not be told. It doesn't reach Phantom Menace level of awfulness, but it's alarmingly close at times. Ridley, it's time to retire, before you trample over Blade Runner too.
The Thing (2011)
A pointless rehash of the Carpenter version
John Carpenter's The Thing was that rarest of things, a remake which completely surpassed the original. It didn't just surpass it, it demolished it, and stands today as one of the greatest horror films of all time. It was a perfect mix of atmosphere, a feeling of total isolation, a great cast, an original premise, and outstanding effects. Oh, and a fantastic soundtrack and a great ending.
The sequel has no atmosphere, no feeling of isolation, a mixed cast (some of the beardy Nords are great, the rest are absolutely hopeless), a premise copied wholesale from Carpenter's version (so much so it's a shot for shot remake at times), typical over the top, frenetic, forgettable, generic CGI effects, a bland soundtrack, and a terrible ending.
It's a failure on every level and has no reason to exist. Just watch the amazing Carpenter version again instead, you'll enjoy it far more than this generic Hollywood action movie trash. The only part of this remake/prequel I enjoyed was the nod to the Carpenter version at the end, but only because it reminded me how superb that version is.
Suzumiya Haruhi no shôshitsu (2010)
A beautifully animated but overly long movie
Having liked the original series of Haruhi, but hated the second (thanks to the truly dreadful 'Endless Eight' storyline) I came to the movie not knowing what to expect.
The storyline, what little of it there is, is basically summed up in the movie's title. Haruhi disappears, and it's up to Kyon to figure out what has happened. It feels like an episode of the TV series but stretched. Very stretched. The movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, surely some sort of anime record, and it's incredibly slow from start to finish. It would have been trivial to have cut a good hour out and lost nothing from the story.
Cutting out an hour however, would have removed so much of the beautiful animation. Perhaps the absurd amount of frame and background re-use Kyoto Animation got away with in Haruhi Series 2 gave them cash to burn, as this is a wonderful looking production. Animation is great throughout, and while many of the backgrounds are very obviously re- touched photos, they still often look very nice.
Bizarrely for a movie about Haruhi Suzumiya, she's hardly in it, as the story revolves entirely around Kyon. Nagato shows up though, and is as dull and boring as ever. Quite how such a tedious character could ever been green lit continues to amaze me.
Once it was all over I left still unsure about the whole Haruhi thing. This movie must have cost a fortune but had a weak storyline told at a snail's pace, but it had it's moments all the same.
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Not even 10% of the original's genius
The original Back to the Future is a perfect movie. Brilliantly written, paced, acted, directed, and edited. There's never a dull moment, the story is great from start to finish, and the fantastical elements are never so far fetched as to break the suspension of disbelief.
Not so with the sequel.
Taken as a stand alone film, it's complex, very silly, but still entertaining. However, taken as a sequel to such a masterpiece, it's a borderline mess. The story is all over the place, needlessly complex, and incredibly silly. Michael J Fox plays himself and his kids in multiple ways, rendering several scenes as little more than ridiculous farce. The lack of the brilliant Crispin Glover as George McFly is obvious throughout too, with the various out of focus stand ins looking just awful. The movie also fails to build to any sort of climax, with it feeling throughout like a collection of random, often bizarre and unrelated sequences which seem to exist purely to show off prosthetic or split camera effects. Compared to the perfect storytelling and character arcs of the original, it's truly staggering that this script ever got approved.
If for some reason you've never seen the Back to the Future films, just see the first and skip the awful sequels.