Martyn_B Reviews

Shôrin shôjo (2008)

This film is not what it seems!

[10/10 · 29 March 2011]

I really enjoyed this film. It's rare that I come across films that effectively explore spiritual concepts in a way that is accurate, humorous and ambient.

This is a hard film to explain, but I will try.

The film is a light hearted analysis of vedic dharma. In this film, the seemly unlikely application of dharma, is martial arts. This dramatic irony, sets the basis for some at times slapstick humour. Without this, the spiritual message of the film would would have been bleached out by intense and heavy vibes.

The heroine spends the majority of the film battling her subtly understated self doubts. These manifest themselves in her actions as bizaar clumsiness. Eventually, she is cornered into a situation and she bas no choice but to reluctantly act. Stripped of choice, her self doubts disappear, by serendipity all of her dharmic clumsiness focuses into an apex of enlightenment. Now, armed with good intention, integrity, action and her prior training, there is no weapon in the world that can prevent her obtaining her goals!

I would definitely recommend this film.

Skyline (2010)

CGI Alone does not make a film!

[1/10 · 18 December 2010]

I watched this film last night, and I was stunned by how bad it was. I registered just to warn people! Yes it is true that the visually the CGI was fantastic, I thought that the cast, the dialog, the acting and the story was atrocious.

Hollywood need to stop churning out films based on pure CGI. CGI is the icing on the cake of a good film, you cannot make cake out of pure icing. There needs to be a basis there. Taking the CGI away from this film, this film has nothing at all. The plot could be summarised in one sentence: aliens invade, abduct people and steal their brains for a questionable reason. There's also so many things about this movie that has no credibility or does not make sense.

If I wanted to see fantastic special effect I would get a good graphics card and play Crysis or something.

Hollywood keeps producing this rubbish and expecting people to lap it up. When people don't they lobby governments to clamp down on piracy. I felt insulted by this film, and it's a couple of hours of my life I will never get back.