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keith_n_fawn
Reviews
Tenten (2007)
Quirky comedy similar to "Amelie"; could use some refinement
Watched this movie, a comedy, with my wife on AsianCrush last night. We both really enjoyed it! The film's premise is quite odd -- a loanshark named Fukuhara offers to forgive the debt of a young man (named Fumira), if Fumira simply walks across Tokyo with him. Why is Fumira in debt, in the first place? It's never explained, and it doesn't matter. A lot in this movie is never quite explained, it just sort of happens. Just when you think you have a bead on where the story might be going (for example, did Fukuhara REALLY kill his wife, as he says?) -- a bizarre character or plot twist appears. You get the sense that maybe the director was trying to make a Japanese version of "Amelie", and it almost works. There are some items in the movie that don't quite fit, or miss their mark (Fukuhara has ominous coughing fits in the first half of the movie, but they disappear completely in the second half).... but overall, the movie is never boring or slow, and the main characters seem to have genuine chemistry between them.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Great visuals, true to the original, but pacing is far too slow
#1. This movie stays true to the original in look and feel, in some ways it feels like an extension, not a sequel made 35 years later. The directors keep the BladeRunner world intact, with only a few embellishments, which all work well.
#2. The visuals are fantastic, especially the holograms. The holograms are so well done (including when they "glitch"), that the viewer immediately accepts them as real, not gimmicky. You will leave the theater wishing you could run to the store and buy an Emanator by Wallace Corporation! I especially loved the scenes in the holo-dome where the dream creator assembles the memories that get implanted into replicants.
#3. The plot twists are well-done, I am glad that I didn't know them before I saw the movie. Unlike the hack-job twists Ridley Scott has forced upon his Alien franchise, the BladeRunner 2049 twists fit well into the BladeRunner mythology and perfectly set up a 3rd movie, should they decide to do one.
#4. The pacing of the movie is far too slow. The director, understandably, wants the viewer to soak in the ambiance of the world he created... but too many shots linger. 30 seconds here, 60 seconds there, and it all adds up to a movie that is about 45 minutes too long.
#5. Jared Leto's character, unfortunately, is kind of a mess. Wallace obviously has a God complex, but his dialogue is barely intelligible, and his motivations are not expressed well. Plus, the senseless violence perpetrated by him and his assistant "Luv" appears to have no point, other than to paint the characters as "evil". The original BladeRunner did not draw such paint-by-numbers lines between good and evil, and I consider the Wallace and Luv characters to be the weakest part of the movie.
Looper (2012)
3 stories in one movie, none are very gripping
Saw this movie for the first time over the weekend. I came to IMDb to see what other people thought, and was surprised to see the 7.4 average user rating -- this movie is not that good! Movie bounces around between subplots, and never sufficiently resolves any of them. The primary subplot is about a mob hit-man, rubbing out people sent back in time by the Future Mob - in other words, a crime/mob movie with a time-travel twist; but the movie takes a detour with the subplot about the hit-man becoming emotionally involved with a woman and her telekinetic kid. Also mixed in there is a 3rd subplot about the future version of the hit-man (Bruce Willis) trying to hold on to his memories from the future, as every thing the present hit-man does becomes part of his current memory (overwriting his old memories). I thought the 3rd subplot was the most interesting, and had the most potential to mindf*ck the audience... but after a scene with Bruce Willis sleeping in a gutter, trying desperately to remember how he met his wife... the subplot is completely forgotten, you never see it again.
All in all, a very disappointing movie for me. Bruce Willis is in a much similar, but vastly superior, time-travel movie called "Twelve Monkeys", go see that instead.