Touches all the important Peanuts mythology. Mildly amusing. Needed a few more frames of animation in parts, especially when characters handle props (apparently this was a creative choice—ill advised, IMO). Soundtrack is jarringly un-Peanuts in multiple scenes, and at the end.
What do you get when you combine stunning VFX with tracing paper–thin writing and a Kawai Kenji soundtrack? Garm Wars.
Acting: 2
Cinematography: 9
Editing: 7
Music: 10
Visual Effects: 8
Writing: 3
The opening sequence hints at a vast depth of lore that the film will explore over the next 80 minutes or so. It shows us gigantic fighting machines, a barren post-apocalyptic landscape, and a civilization so heavily networked and information-dependent that every member seems to be absolutely covered in wires and tubes.
It's great for getting your hopes up. But they'll be dragged down over the course of the film by:
1) Some shoddy VFX among the mostly well-crafted animations—especially one notably bad fire that's on screen for about ten times as long as the amount of effort put into it deserved.
2) Bad edits—worst of all, several jarringly bad continuity errors where a character's head ends up facing the precise opposite direction of the previous shot, or a hand instantly changes places.
3) The aforementioned bad writing. None of the characters seem to have believable motivations. It's basically impossible to care about anyone except maybe—just maybe—Khara-23 (and it's a stretch to even care about her).
If you want to be dazzled by some great-looking VFX set to an amazing (as usual) score by Kawai Kenji, go ahead and watch this.
If you want a story with depth, pass. The most you'll get out of this is some not-too-subtle Christ imagery (this is why I have to mark this as a spoiler).
As others (notably Simon Massey [1]) pointed out, the chemistry wasn't there. The two lead actors didn't click.
I'd go as far as to say that I didn't like Guy Ritchie's style. The chaotic sequences where 3, 4, or more camera views went sliding and gyrating all over the place to show simultaneous action were really hard to follow. Some of the edits were questionable, and a couple shots held for FAR too long (did we really need 20 seconds of slow zoom-out on Gaby sitting on her hotel bed?) dragged down the pace.
Yeah, something seemed off. I love watching the original TV series, and still want to finish it—but as for 2015 spy movies, between this and Spectre: I'll take Spectre, hands down. (Now I have to watch Mission Impossible and compare…)
I said in my review of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) that I'd have to watch and compare this with that and Spectre… Well, here we are.
The 2015 Mission: Impossible installment roundly beats out The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in writing, production, and on-screen chemistry. Rebecca Ferguson is no Alicia Vikander (LOVED her in Ex Machina), but the interactions between both leading men worked much, MUCH better in this film. It helps that Christopher McQuarrie let this film have a much calmer editing style—it's a hell of a lot easier to follow than Guy Ritchie's chaotic simul-action sequences with 2-5 camera views on screen at once.
I'm still undecided whether I like Spectre or M:I better for my top 2015 spy film, but I'm officially knocking U.N.C.L.E. out of the running. MI-6 and the IMF can duke it out.
(It's entirely possible that I'm being easier on this film because I lack a solid background with the franchise; I've seen very little M:I compared to U.N.C.L.E. But I don't think that's why I like this one so MUCH more.)
Are these characters humans or robots? The only acting worth watching came from Reg E. Cathey and maybe Michael B. Jordan.
45 minutes in, I still have almost no idea what's happening. But I've had my fill of bad foley, bad editing, obvious splices where part of a shot was replaced with a different take, poor dialogue sync, a scene where half the French dialogue wasn't even subtitled, poor dialogue replacement (including some places where characters continued talking even though their lips weren't moving)… This film might be brilliant, but I just see a lump of coal. The technical flaws could be excused if it had been made a few decades earlier, at least. But unless something drastically changes in the next 58 minutes I won't have anything to say but: "Don't bother."
Edit: It did not get better, except for about ten minutes just after the halfway mark. Oh well.
Feel-good, it is, but it's hard to overlook the slow pacing and predictability.
I think the actors did their level best to put believable characters on screen after being given very little to work with by a mediocre script. There's a lot of focus on the robot battles, but the characters seem underdeveloped.
The visual effects could be called impressive given the small budget this film had to work with, but visual effects are kind of the easy part of filmmaking these days—the software has already been written, you just have to use it.
Scriptwriting is the hard part, and this story could have said so much more. It started to develop characters in the first act, but once the action started all character work basically fell by the wayside. It's too bad, really—there's a kernel of good world-building in here that was never really utilized.
Pretty much everything I want to say has already been laid out quite eloquently by Abstractals (spoiler tagged): https://trakt.tv/comments/80896
But in summary: There is a lot of technically impressive work in this film, especially the long takes with tons of extras and action in the background. But dramatically, I don't think this film is there. The aspect ratio and narrow depth of field feel like gimmicks, like the screenplay was written entirely to enable their use, rather than making those choices based on a fleshed-out story. I was entirely done with Saul's head being constantly in frame within five minutes, only to be stuck with it for most of the rest of the film. Everything we see (with exceptions covered in Abstractals' review) is either around Saul or through his eyes, and that forced perspective dramatically limits the story. The blurred backgrounds detach the action, making it seem less real. I still have no idea what Saul's motive was. I'm not even sure I care, sadly.
Maybe showing the viewer a Holocaust story that they can't connect with emotionally was the whole point. But if it was, I would have been happy to pass on this.
Feels flawed, but it'll hold your attention even if you're thinking "That's not right!"
Almost worth watching just for Sean Connery's off-and-on Scottish accent. The effects are a bit dated, but it is almost 13 years old… and I've seen worse in blockbuster films from last year.
Great premise, great execution, great writing. There were a couple of bits that could have been done better, but if Trakt offered a 9.5 rating option I would use it.
I got about 25 minutes in and, though I was enjoying myself, had to stop. As yet I have not found any source for this documentary that includes subtitles for the non-English portions of the audio. There are several interviews and archival clips with dialogue in foreign languages, and I feel it would be unfair to myself and to the film to watch it without understanding these parts.
So, for now, I'll keep this on my watchlist knowing that as soon as I find complete subtitles, I will finish it.
This film is entirely worth watching, and I feel 110% justified in my excitement for watching it—but not for the reasons I thought I'd be. It's a lot more dramatic than I expected, based on the synopsis, to say the least.
I've seen a few Turkish viewers express dismay that this film isn't wholly culturally accurate, so I cannot give it a perfect 10 (and even 9 feels high, assuming the criticisms are accurate). But it is a well constructed movie, slow-paced but thoroughly engrossing. While the characters' dress and behavior may not be true to real life, the broad commentary on Turkey's society as a whole—the state of women's rights in the country, and the society's dominant patriarchy—hold true, even according to the reviews I've read from Turkish viewers.
Spent most of the movie disbelieving that it hadn't yet been 90 minutes. The format doesn't really work.
Available for free on Google Play (limited time offer, valid as of writing).
Trakt's rating system makes me round my 6.3, so 6 it is.
It's cheesy, and that's OK. There are enough subtle references and social commentaries to hold interest, and the animation style is quite interesting.
What ultimately ruined the film's tone was the reveal of the real Mr. Business (the kid's dad), and the fact that the entire plot was actually the little boy screwing around with his dad's models. That blew away any small amounts of emotional investment I had in the characters.
Wow. I don't think I realized just how affecting this would be.
When I first came across the film almost two years ago, I somewhat dismissed it as religious propaganda given the title. But it really is the precise opposite. If I'd thought about the title for a moment and read the metaphor there, the ending would have been evident.
The best part of this film is probably the camera work—or rather, the near-complete lack thereof. Every scene is done as a long take, and (with two exceptions) with a static camera. Because it occurs so infrequently, any camera movement at all is imbued with dramatic importance. The static shots compel the viewer to choose where to direct their attention, rather than having the director do so with cuts, pans, etc., which also forces the viewer to really pay attention to what is happening everywhere in a given shot. Sometimes that means missing a detail in one place as a result of watching elsewhere, but I don't think that's a flaw in the film—I think it's a strength. After all, in real life, no one tells us where to look, and we miss things. What matters is being able to fill in what we've missed, if needed, from context, and there's plenty of it on screen.
I have no doubt that this movie will remain on my short list of most thought-provoking films for many years.
What smartphone just up and turns off with no warning when it runs out of battery? It would display "Shutting down", at least.
It started as just a nitpicky observation, but I guess that detail is a good illustration of how the whole film is put together. The shape of the plot is all there, but the follow-through is half-baked. There are elements of character development, but it ultimately falls short.
Having come to the film with no expectations, I was pleasantly surprised by the parkour (which Chrome stubbornly refuses to acknowledge as a real word) sequences. As far as production value, the parkour scenes are pretty well done. It's too bad that the scenario is only half there.
I did enjoy seeing Marie Avgeropoulos in a role other than The 100's Octavia. It's hard to say which role had more depth, though. Octavia doesn't get a lot of time to grow independently from Clarke et al in The 100. But Nikki seems to have more depth than Cam in Tracers.
In the end, this film is an enjoyable watch, if a little mindless. If you turn your brain off and just enjoy the parkour, it's fun. Just don't try to make sense of the hokey, contrived scenario. The plot holes (like when did Cam quit his job as a bike courier, or make a deal to get his car back from the Chinese?) will make you crazy if you actually think.
Final rating decision: 6.1
Cute short. Really reminds me why stop-motion animation is so cool.
I heartily believe in the message of this documentary, but the tone is awfully childish. It's a combination of the reliance on animation, the fake doctor-character asking questions, and the general simplification of the subject matter. Maybe that's a good thing—the younger someone is, the more likely they can change the way they eat and completely avoid the consequences of poor diet. But if the film could cater to all ages, in the style of Pixar films, it would be an easier watch.
At just 74 minutes, Carb-Loaded is shorter than many children's films. But it's harder to sit through, even for an adult (young though I may be) interested in the subject. Getting a kid to sit through this would be difficult, even though kids appear to be the target audience (PG rating aside—incidentally, I didn't see any reason for this to get higher than a G). An updated version in the near future could probably be much improved, both by newer statistics and by tweaking the style to hold attention better. This is really important food for thought (pun slightly intended), and it would be great to make it as easy for kids to watch as possible.
Obviously, Lathe and Eric have a passion for this topic. I applaud them for putting this out, even as I point out ways in which it could have been done better.
Final rating: 5.9
This was such a mixed bag. Tom Hardy's performance was fine, and I enjoyed the overall atmosphere of the film. It certainly did evoke Soviet Russia.
But the pacing is just so off. The movie is slow where it should be moving along to get to the point, and rushes through the good parts. Combine that with underdeveloped characters whose motivations are more or less completely opaque, and you have a recipe for boredom in the midst of what should be an interesting story.
Some elements, like the homosexuality bit that other reviewers mentioned, were simply unnecessary. As a whole, the script could have been much tighter and leaner. And I'm unclear on what happened in several places due to the shaky, "realistic" camera work during action scenes.
I don't understand Raisa. She openly admits that she married Leo out of fear, but when given the chance to leave him and be with someone she does love, she doubles down and stays with Leo? For this character-related reason (and many others), I might have to seek out alternative versions of the story (the book, or the other film Citizen X) to understand it.
5.4 for me. Not quite boring enough to be "Meh", but too poorly paced to be truly "Fair".
I don't even know how I ended up watching this, because it showed up as The Flyboys (2008) until I realized halfway through that the plot so far didn't match up at all and I must have been watching a different movie. In fact, I was. Some filename confusion happened along the way somewhere…
Anyway, this isn't anything to write home about. The average rating already tells you that much, but since there are no other reviews here on Trakt I feel it's my duty to post one, since I've watched the movie anyway. (By the time I realized it wasn't The Flyboys, I'd seen almost half of it and didn't feel like switching films. I spent about 8 minutes more than Trakt thinks, too; the version I had was 1h50m, vs. the 1h42m displayed by Trakt, but I broke from my movie-watching traditions and skipped 4 minutes of end credits.)
Owen Wilson is amusing enough as Drillbit, whose character arc runs in a predictable, boring straight line. I enjoyed Alex Frost's work, too. Filkins might have been the most believable character in the film. Everyone else was super flat (and monogram, too… just kidding), boring, straight archetypal stuff. Actually, everyone was flat; it's just that someone remembered to paint some textures on Drillbit and Filkins.
Honestly I don't even know what else can be said. It's a mediocre comedy, a terrible love story, and a not quite passable coming-of-age tale. Meh/10. (I won't even bother fixing the filename; I'll just delete it.)
Non-stop action! Boobs! Explosions! So, it's a typical action flick.
Or perhaps not.
I've seen good action films… This isn't one. Don't get me wrong—the action is pretty well choreographed, and the fights are decent. There's just no glue holding the pieces together. What we have here is a film based solely on various iterations of "Wouldn't it be cool if ____?" Half the stuff that happens in the fight scenes has no strategic value. Characters make stupid choices every five seconds, in the service of making Cool-Looking Stuff happen.
Do we know why Reed suddenly started killing cops even though he is one? Nope.
Were we shown how Nick survived the helicopter explosion? Of course not.
Hell, the only explanation I could come up with for how Reed even beats Nick to Cambodia is… teleportation/magic/deus ex machina, because apparently he somehow finds out where Nick is going far enough in advance to warn the Thai police dudes that he's coming, show up, meet them, and head back to the airport to intercept Nick 20 minutes after landing. The whole thing is a giant plot hole.
Ugh… Action is great, but it's just meaningless eye candy if you don't tie it together with a somewhat reasonable story. This film didn't do that. This film didn't even tie all the action shots together without breaking continuity.
4.4/10
This is such an '80s movie. That description perfectly encapsulates both the good and the bad.
Is it believable? Hell, no. None of the space or rocket stuff is realistic at all (being that close to a rocket launch would at least mess up everyone's hearing), but whatever. This is the kind of comedy where the situation is what's funny, not the details.
It's not movie of the year or anything (remember, Back to the Future and The Breakfast Club came out in 1985 too), and it won't (didn't) win any awards for filmmaking excellence. Frankly I would have liked to see the original version with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, instead of Aykroyd and Chevy Chase (I have a soft spot for the Blues Brothers). But this is solidly in the "good bad movie" category.
6.8/10
Elsewhere I read a review of this that called out its use of a voice actor to read the closing narration, instead of using an existing recording of Carl Sagan himself reciting those words. Having watched and listened to enough recordings of Sagan speaking, I must agree that the film would have been improved by the use of Sagan's own voice. The voice actor hired simply sounds wooden.
Solid 6.5/10 (rounded to 7)
I probably wouldn't have cast Dev Patel in that role, but it's not as if I can name another Indian actor I'd rather see in it. There just aren't enough of them in Hollywood. It's frustrating.
The film's dramatic arc feels a little too formulaic, leading me to question the precise order of events in the final act, but overall it's a good watch. Just felt like the script could have gone a bit farther in depth on some areas.
*Yawn*
When does this get funny?
Hey, I think that might have been a silent-chuckle-worthy joke. Maybe.
Oh, it's over.
I can't shake the feeling that I watched this before a few years ago (before I joined Trakt) but forgot. Lots of déjà vu throughout.
But if I did watch it once before, it's not really surprising to me that I'd forget. Like most of the (admittedly few) French films I've seen, this one isn't particularly uplifting. It's actually becoming more and more depressing, the more I think about it.
The soundtrack is quite nice—probably my favorite part of the film, though a couple of places where the music switched mid-scene from non-diegetic to obviously diegetic (like at the club, when Marie and Floriane moved to the dance floor) broke the flow. I would award the cinematography a close second to the soundtrack, if not a tie for first place. There are some beautifully framed shots in this movie, balanced out by the scenes in drab back hallways of the swim center.
Oh, and I must give a shout-out to the metaphorical title. It just ties together so many of the film's elements.
If the film's point is that teenagers are assholes, it was made. I can't honestly say that any of the characters were likable. The two protagonists (Marie and Anne, for clarity) aren't actually assholes, but everyone around them is. From this stems the dispiriting tone of the film. Though I have to admit, how would one go about writing an uplifting film about teenage angst?
Saw a fair chunk of this at the Art Car Museum in Houston just now. They closed before the end of the movie (hell, I thought it was just a typical 15-minute museum piece), but this and the director's other art car film are both on Amazon Prime Video.
I honestly thought I'd written a review after seeing this during its limited American theatrical run last April (almost exactly 9 months ago), but apparently I did not.
To my past self: Why not?
Anyway. I remember being absolutely blown away by this film at the time. Despite not writing a review, I did give it a 10/10 rating. For now I'll leave that up, I guess, but as often happens upon rewatching films it appears that my rating needs revision.
Were I rating Your name. from scratch today, I would honestly probably give it a 7 or 8. Having just completed my third viewing of the film, I now realize that the script is nowhere near as tight as it should be. My grandmother (nearing age 94) might have said it best: "Well, that was interminable!" I actually can't disagree with her. At the theatrical showing there was such energy in the room from all the hype and excitement and anticipation we all felt that the time just flew by. Not so during a casual viewing. It does kinda drag.
If I had to point my finger at a single culprit for the script's lack of focus, it would be the genre shift. While I remember being blown away after the theatrical screening, I also distinctly remember being very irritated by the film's genre bait-and-switch. Now, with two more viewings under my belt, I can see that the exposition of the first two thirds (really) is too drawn out, and the really interesting part of the story—the race against the clock, I guess—is rushed to the point of becoming almost an afterthought. I actually want to know what Mitsuha did to finally save Itomori, after all of Taki's efforts fell apart. :/
It's still a beautiful, quirky piece of animation and any anime fan should definitely watch it—but objectively, it's nowhere near perfect.
