Reviews

Ergo Proxy is an oddity among it's own genre. It seems, at first glance, like a typical dystopian/cyberpunk series. But the heart of the series is even darker than it's Blade Runner-esquire early episodes suggest. The series focuses on Re-L Mayer, the beautiful, spoiled granddaughter of the head of the city of Romdo. Romdo is a self-sufficient domed city, one of human-kind's last remaining safe havens after a cataclysm makes the outside world unlivable. Re-L is investigating a series of bizarre occurrences, and becomes entangled with Vincent Law, an immigrant who is working to stamp out a virus that causes the normally agreeable android companions of Romdo's citizens to bug out and act on their own free will. Re-L and Vincent both have terrifying encounters with monstrous and mysterious creatures we will come to know as "Proxies".

Vincent runs afoul of the legal system and is falsely accused of murdering his android companion (or "entourage" as they are referred to). Because he is an immigrant he faces grim consequences. With the help of an infected little-girl android named Pino, Vincent escapes the dome, and finds the outside world is not as unsurvivable as he had been led to believe. Re-L eventually sets out to find Vincent and subsequently begins to discover the dark secrets behind Romdo, the Proxies, the androids and even Vincent himself.

The series transitions from a fairly standard detective/noir story into a grim and melancholy take on epic fantasy, enveloping those viewers who are willing and patient deep into a world of existential angst. Despite it's intellectual bent, the series finale has a reasonably satisfying emotional payoff.

Ergo Proxy's animation is atypical for anime. The characters are rendered in a much more subdued and realistic style and there is beautiful use of rich backgrounds and digital color grading, elevating the series near to the quality of feature length anime. However, there are a few episodes early in the series which are wildly inconsistent in terms of animation quality.

The series is mostly leisurely and meditative. There are not many big action set pieces. There is violence and gore, but it's used sparingly and often to greater effect. There is very little humor, and what's there is very dry and quite bleak. There is somewhat of a love story underneath all this, but sex and romance take a backseat, although some episodes play up Re-L's sex appeal.

There is a sense of experimentation with several episodes and occasionally the plot thread gets lost when an episode focuses more specifically on the existential angst I mentioned earlier. Sometimes, the series feels overreaching and a little pretentious but it has it's heart in the right place.

If you are willing to take the time and invest in this series, Ergo Proxy will reward you. It will challenge you intellectually and occasionally flabbergast you. But it's worth it for the viewer who pays close attention and has some working knowledge of Renee Descartes, Greek myths and progressive rock (trust me, it helps).

Two very unexpected things happened to me while viewing "Up." First, I cried. I actually found myself misty-eyed over an opening set piece in which our hero meets, marries and loses his wife to old age. There is no dialogue in this sequence. The entire story is told in images and music. I had no expectation of being so moved by a "kid's movie." The second unexpected thing that happened to me? I grinned with delight. As our hero lifted off into the sky in his floating house, held aloft by thousands of balloons, I had to resist the urge to squeal like a small child. The scene was so well animated, and the idea seemed so inspired, it was as if every shred of cynicism I had about movies was vaporized. "That's right, movies CAN be magical!" I thought. "Up" will dare you to enjoy the movies the way you did as a child. It will also remind you that kid's movies can have substance and still entertain young, easily distracted minds. Pixar has somehow managed to produce nothing but quality films over the past decade, despite being powered by a multi-billion dollar corporation most associate with overzealous commercialism.

I'll be honest. I initially wrote off Gossip Girl as a tired, derivative kidde soap opera. Then I actually watched it. It took me a while to get up the nerve, but I did it. And surprisingly I was quite entertained. Watching these spoiled, gorgeous teenagers and their various sexcapades quickly became a guilty pleasure for me. The thing I think most people missed about this show is that it's very tongue-in-cheek. The characters aren't really supposed to be likable. The entertainment value is gleaned from watching them destroy each other,and themselves. It's what makes reality TV appealing. (Though in this case, it lacks that off-putting air of desperation.) That and the show is just damn sexy. It makes you wish you were young, rich and shallow too, just so you could enjoy the sort of erotic adventures these "teenagers" do. But then, Gossip Girl has been pretty good about showing the ugly side of this glamorous lifestyle. Nobody fully trusts anyone. Even the show's "BFFs", Blair and Serena seem suspicious of each other. This is as good as trashy TV gets. It's all utterly ridiculous and that seems to be the point. Nevertheless, the fact that this show is marketed to the under 21 crowd is a bit alarming, considering that it could cause some copycat behavior among anyone who doesn't see the ironic nature of the show.

Alien 3 is by far the bleakest, dullest, most brutal chapter of the "Alien" saga. The film establishes it's despairing tone in it's first scene. Newt, Ripley's cute little sidekick from "Aliens" is killed off before the "directed by" credit appears. As if killing off a 12 year old because she isn't conducive to your plot wasn't enough, the film goes on to have little Newt brutally sliced open in a grim autopsy scene. Sadly, it's the only scene in which Sigourney Weaver emotes at all. I'm guessing she checked out when she realized how bad this film was going to be.

The remainder of the film is spent talking about events in the other films, or the back- stories of characters who serve no ultimate purpose. The Alien is loose in the ship all this time (it comes out of a dog this time. This scene is pretty brutal and depressing too.) but doesn't do much until the film has already run out of gas.

That brings me to another problem: The Alien itself. It's the same basic xenomorph, but it walks around on four legs like a dog. OOOH scary! Early CGI effects are used to the detriment of the creature. CGI was limited at this time, but the real problem is that it strips the creature of all menace. The original alien was frightening because of how slowly it moved, giving the impression of some kind of intelligence. This alien is all bark and no bite. Maybe they shouldn't have had a dog for the host body. duh.

David Fincher has gone on to direct some great films. You can feel him trying to make things work, but either the studio interfered too much, or the script was just that bad, or maybe Fincher just hadn't found his footing yet. Whatever it was, this monster should've been killed before it spawned and gave us Alien:Resurrection, and two AVP movies.

Something I've always admired about Ridley Scott, is that he never gives you an easy answer. His films never allow the audience to make simple distinctions between the "good" guys and the "bad" guys. Body of Lies continues this tradition of challenging the audience. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris, a CIA operative who attempts to flush out a big-name terrorist by creating a fake terrorist group, while working with Jordanian Intelligence. His "boss", Ed Hoffman, played by a comically out of shape Russell Crowe, continually undermines him by double dealing behind his back. By the end of this film, the web of deception created by Ferris and Hoffman costs an innocent man his life and lands Ferris in mortal peril at the hand of Islamic extremists. What sets "Body of Lies" apart from so many other politically minded thrillers, is that it never preaches to the audience. Hoffman, while an arrogant, borderline racist boor, is never portrayed as evil or as a scheming villain, he's just a guy trying to do his job who is disconnected from the realities of war. Similarly, the terrorists aren't reduced to one-note psychopaths. They are portrayed as intelligent, cunning enemies who understand us better than we understand them. We don't get the typical "The US is screwing everything up" angle that is typical of other political thrillers. But this film is far from a flag-waving patriotic blow job. It shows that there are horrors and atrocities committed on both sides of the fight. "Body of Lies" shows us that the war on terror is not as simple as the politicians, pundits or even the terrorists make it out to be.

Honestly I didn't realize this was about vampires until the final 40 minutes of the film. I guess I was just too distracted by the crappiness of this movie. I suppose that it was a big plot point in the comic (which I've never heard of). The visuals in this film are fun, like a decent-budgeted music video. The use of color was really engaging. However, a lot of the CG shots just look ludicrous. The problem is once the visual ecstasy wears off, you're left with a convoluted story and a heroine you don't really like or care about. Violet just comes off as an apathetic bitch, not some kind of bitter anti-hero. What Hollywood keeps missing when it tries to create a female action heroine, is that she should still be a woman. I mean, Violet lost her baby(from what I could tell)! She should still have emotions, she should still be vulnerable sometimes. She doesn't have to be exploited for pointless T&A. She should be complicated. Like a real woman, or a real person in general. Maybe they should have taken a page from James Cameron. Ripley, Sarah Connor, Max from Dark Angel? He actually has some ideas about sci-fi heroines that connect emotionally.

Conquerer of Shamballa shows what happens when creators of an Anime fail to understand what their fans want. I as a fan did not want a 1920's Evil Nazi movie. What I would have liked to see is a real final showdown between Ed and Dante, as we don't REALLY know what became of her. I also would have liked to get Ed back to his world much sooner and have him stay there, to finally get a chance to be normal. You know, raise a family with a certain blonde mechanic, that sort of thing. No, instead I got a convoluted plot involving Nazi mystics, Fritz Lang and about ten minutes of Al, a joke of a Cameo by Roy Mustang and only one Armstrong joke, one short joke and no Winry hitting Ed with a wrench. Above all, it just didn't feel like Fullmetal Alchemist to me.

Akira, is not only a great example of what good Anime can be, but is also a great film. I would stack it against live action sci-fi epics like Star Wars and Blade Runner. While I personally think Ghost in the Shell was better animated, Akira's fury and brutality make it a film which you cannot simply watch on a superficial level. I read a review which said Akira was "ugly.' Yeah, it is ugly. It's meant to be ugly. The beauty of the animation is how gritty it is. How it takes the Utopian vision of the future depicted by numerous bad sci-fi movies and sprays graffiti on it's pristine walls. The essence of Akira is the ugly side of teen culture and supposedly "enlightned" social philosophy.

Akira is not the first or last film to make us squirm for a reason. A Clockwork Orange used violent and sexually charged images to show the possible future of suburban youth. Schindler's List made us cringe at the graphic depictions of Auschwitz, so that we would remember what happened there.

Akira's plot centers around young Tetsuo, a street punk who plays second banana to his bike gang's leader, childhood friend Kaneda. Tetsuo is subjected to military experiments which unleash his dormant psionic abilities, and also cause him to grow increasingly paranoid and angry. Tetsuo becomes determined to discover who "Akira" is and why some of the other test subjects seem to believe Tetsuo is Akira reincarnated. As Tetsuo's power grows he becomes increasingly powerful, leading him to a violent confrontation with both Kaneda and the military.

In the end, the message of Akira is that humankind must be aware of the dark side of progress. The power of Akira is within everyone but is dangerous when misused. Much like the atom bomb, which the film makes reference to, this power can destroy cities and end millions of lives if it ends up in the wrong hands. Considering what our nuclear weapons did to Japan in the 1940's, and considering Japan's commitment to not manufacture weapons of war, the anti-nuke statement of the film is apparent and is one which it begs us not to ignore.

I will warn you. "A Clockwork Orange" makes no apologies. Its violence is brutal, its nudity graphic. But even more provocative is the fact that the film makes you care about a character who is essentially the villain of the story. Alex DeLarge, played with aplomb by Malcom MacDonald, is a spoiled, heartless, immoral bastard. Alex enjoys making other people suffer. He shows no remorse as he beats and old drunk, rapes a writer's wife or violently bludgeons a woman to death with a ceramic phallus. He seems disappointed in being sent to prison, but never sorry. When Alex undergoes behavioral conditioning is when we really begin to feel sorry for him. He's forced to watch scenes of sex and violence which, thanks to drugs, make him feel sick. He develops a physical aversion to both of his favorite pastimes, but there is no inner change. Alex is released from prison following his treatment and finds that he is no longer welcome. his parents have rented his room to a stranger, his old gang have become police officers who beat and nearly drown him and he is plagued by suicidal thoughts. Eventually, Alex attempts suicide. He lives. To avoid embarrassment, the government undoes his conditioning and bargains with him to keep his mouth shut. In the end, we're left to wonder who the real villain is; Alex, or the system which has spawned him. The film offers no pontification of this question. The viewer must decide; is "badness" a choice or an inborn quality? And ultimately the question becomes: Is man basically good or basically evil?

If you take Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element" at face value, you will be disappointed. This is not a sci-fi epic or a summer action blockbuster. One one level the film has more in common with Noir than sci-fi. Yes, it may be set in the far future but it has Noir sensibilities. The grizzled, chain-smoking Korbbin Dallas is the archetypal Noir protagonist. He gets roped into the whole "save the world" thing by other forces. He has no great ambitions at the onset of the film. On another level, the film is a parody of overly pompous sci-fi flicks like "Star Wars." Besson is one of few directors to understand that sci-fi can and should have humor. Part of the cult status of "Firefly" was due to it's sense of humor and irony. On a third level, it is a romance. The real arc of the story is Korbbin finding "the perfect girl." In the end, Korbbin can't save the world without the woman he loves. Despite all his knowledge of weapons and spacecraft, only love can vanquish evil. That's a beautiful sentiment I fear is lost on cynical American audiences and critics. The film was huge in Europe, which solidifies my theory that Europeans just have better taste. If you've watched this once, I'd recommend a second viewing. Repeated viewings of this film reveal a brilliant artistic visual style, a poignant anti-war statement, a sentimental love story and a biting satire. It's sad this film has been so maligned by critics and ignored by audiences.