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Reviews
Mononoke-hime (1997)
Overrated
This is one of the most overrated anime movies of all time. I think most of the high ratings comes from people who were either stunned by the animation or give it a 10 just because it's anime. If you don't believe me about the second part, just type in the name of any generic shallow shonen anime and I can almost guarantee it will have at least a 7/10 rating. *cue 1000 "No this review was not helpful" clicks*
To get this out of the way: The animation is great and overall it's not a bad movie. It's worth a watch.
However it's also really slow and dull in many parts plot wise. There are several times where I just wished it would get to the climax so the movie would end.
The main characters are pretty 2 dimensional(San and Ashitaka) and I found myself wishing that the movie would spend time on the side characters who are more interesting. San is the heroine who was raised by wolves and hates humans. If you've seen any anime with a generic tsundere(Wikipedia if you don't know what I mean) girl then you basically know her character and everything she'll do right away. Ashitaka is the hero who really has no back story and has a painfully dull "PLEASE EVERYONE STOP FIGHTING" personality.
The point of the movie, like a few of Miyazaki's other movies is that the environment is cool and we shouldn't burn plastic in our full size SUVs while spraying aerosol cans out the window. While that's not a bad message for a movie to tell, Princess Mononoke does it really heavy handedly and seems like it wants to make you feel bad for human progress.
Anyway, most of this ranting is to offset the hundreds of "THIS MOVIE IS THE BEST THING EVER" reviews and I honestly don't dislike the movie THAT much. I just think it could be a lot better for what the hype surrounding it promises.
Transmorphers (2007)
There is so much wrong with this movie.
Transmorphers is basically about a bunch of alien robots coming to earth, taking over and forcing people to live underground.
I rented this movie after seeing it at Blockbuster, I laughed at the title/box art. It's an obvious attempt to cash in on Transformers, The Asylum(the production company) has done this kind of thing several times. Being a marketing rip off isn't why this movie fails.
The giant robots were done by a CGI effects team who were either too lazy or too inept to animate or texture them properly. They look like they came out of a Playstation 1 cutscene. They had a physical robot that looked pretty good; unfortunately it was never used in motion. They knew the budget they had to work with, so why not make a few puppets/miniatures?
The sound is really terrible on the DVDs. The audio will go off-sync really badly. It almost looks like it was dubbed. There really aren't many sound effects, only like 2 laser blasts and a couple explosions. There are many times where sound effects are absent entirely. I can recall a few scenes where a robot gets blown up but there's no sound accompanying it. I was afraid I was going deaf!
The acting is bad, it's either wooden or overdone. It never seems natural.
The movie is shot really wonky in action scenes, so you can't really tell what's going on. During a few fight scenes I thought the cameraman had a seizure.
The movie's biggest non-technical problem is probably the pacing. There's a little action in the beginning, some at the end. In between the action there's a painful amount of dialog. I don't mind story based action/sci-fi, that's a good thing. However it's done so uninterestingly that it drags the movie to a crawl.
This movie isn't even bad in a fun way, it's just bad.
Slaughter Party (2006)
This movie is amazing...
It's like watching a train wreck. You know you shouldn't watch but you continue to. I can't even sum up the plot for this movie because I don't think the creators know what that word means. This movie has: *A killer midget *A mad doctor who has some vague plan to take over the world *A midget killing and raping women(in that order) *A midget being raped *Several porn stars including... *Ron Jeremy with a plan to rob and violate some guys. I honestly don't know what they were thinking when they made this. I'm assuming it's a bunch of friends with $500 saying "let's go hire some porn stars so people might actually see this". Awful special effects, knife attacks are all off camera and look like the knife was swung about 2 feet away from the "victim". It seems like 90% of the entire movie was made up on the spot.
Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)
Hellraiser: World of boredom
I've only saw Hellraiser 1-3 before this. Before I just saw it on SciFi, I didn't know they made any past 5. Anyway this movie starts off self referencing to the rest of the franchise. That's right, it's one of those self referencing movies. When a franchise goes into self referencing that's not a good sign. Anyway, this movie basically has no real relation to the rest of the series except for some throw away part at the end. There were a couple of good deaths, but they were so far between that it didn't make them as enjoyable. This movie is roughly 1 1/2 hours long but seems like about 2. None of the characters are likable and I cant even remember their names but they consist of: Lead girl-There to be attractive and live. Black guy-There to be black. He acts okay through most of the film, then apparently the director remembered he was black so he had to give him a line like "DAAAYUM YOU ARE FIIINE" English girl: There to be cute and have an English accent. Actually one of the more enjoyable characters, so of course she gets killed off right away. Some guy-There to party and drink, so you know he'll die right away. Emo guy- He whines a lot, lives till the end. Dead guy- Dead friend of all those above. Dead guy's dad- Out to get revenge and act sinister but reminds me too much of the killer from Saw.
Anyway, I honestly think this started off as another movie. Then the screenwriter handed the script into the studio and they needed a new Hellraiser movie so the script was re-written(roughly 10 paragraphs added) and BAM! Hellraiser 8.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
Meh....
This movie has good acting and good action scenes but there's something it is missing... An actual plot. It ends very quickly and feels unfinished. Most good action movies have a central villain, sometimes several. This really had none at all. Just a bunch of guys in ski masks. None of them have any lines at all, so it's not like you can take them as a character... Just an extra to get shot or blown up. The movie ends very abruptly, it basically consists of about a dozen of the generic "ski mask guys" getting shot, then cuts to them talking to the marriage counselor. Another movie falls fate to the "we've taken too much time so let's finish this off right now". It's fine to watch as something to pay partial attention to and see some explosions, just don't expect to be on the edge of your seat.
House of Wax (2005)
Like watching 2 different movies
The first part of "House of Wax" is like a generic teen slasher, except nothing happens and the characters are horrible. None of them can act worth a damn except the brother and sister, but you won't really get to see them get good for a while. A good movie will make you really feel for the characters and them dying off will make you a little sad. But almost all of the ones in here you HOPE die.
The second part is great. It's like you're watching a good fantasy horror movie. This is the part where you get to see the brother and sister characters actually act. They become the center of attention, and all the characters I didn't like get killed off brutally!(Paris dying is the most rewarding thing I've seen in ages) Yaaaay! The concept is very interesting and I think could have been pulled off well for a great movie.
Unfortunately it was ruined by really awful editing and casting. It's worth it to rent for the latter half. It's also full of unanswered plot holes like: Where did they get all the wax from? If you'd really like to you can skip like the first 1/2 hour to 45 minutes without missing much. You would most likely be doing yourself a favor, actually.
Ying xiong (2002)
Am I the only one who DIDN'T like this movie?
I'm going to keep this short since it's been a while since I've seen the movie but I honestly can say I didn't like it. Is it beautiful? Yes. Is it good at telling a story? No. Not in the least. This entire movie is flash back upon flash back, so you'd probably have to watch it at least 3 times to understand what in the hell was actually going on. After seeing the same woman, wearing different colored outfits dying and spinning(Yes, she spins every time she gets "killed") it gets very old. The moves were great, but whenever someone finally got hit it was incredibly lame. All that you get is a poke that appears to go into them about an inch if that. By the end of the movie the only person that I was pretty sure actually died was the Nameless guy. He was SO anonymous and mysterious. Beautiful presentation, horribly put together. If you enjoy great cinematography with a bland and confusing story, you'll love this movie.