Attack on Titan (aka Shingeki no Kyojin in romaji) has proven to be one of the rare shows that sparks the attention from people who don't regulary watch seasonal anime. I mean, just look at the numbers on trakt alone: Two of the other more popular shows that started at the same time, Maou-sama and Gargantia don't even come close (less than a 100 watchers on the last episode). But not only that - even in the anime community itself it gained immense popularity and currently is still in the Top 10 on Myanimelist (kind of the western Facebook of anime). What is to take away from this is certainly that it seems to make for a good entry-level show but it's not one without flaws and I can't frankly understand why it gets that much praise (oh hello SAO!).
I first came into contact with it's manga because it ranked extremly high on Mangaupdates with some of the genre tags I browse. After reading the first 15 or so chapters I deceided to put it on hold. It didn't impress me and the art was everything but pretty (given that it was the authors first series and he didn't draw much before this). So when the show came around I saw potential for improvement given that the art could only get better plus action never suffers from being animated. This also means I had certain expectations and some of the early tension had been lost on me due to knowing some twists.
Now the story itself has plenty of shortcomings but is still entertaining. It starts out like your grimdark show about the struggle of mankind (in this case versus the titans) but it falls into the usual shonen trappings further down the road. I also find most of it's characters kind of stagnant in terms of developments and it's everything but subtle. The source material is still being published and is probably not even at the midpoint of which thr first season maybe adapted half of. This also means there isn't an ending yet. There is plenty of padding going around in the show and they added some filler to end it before the start of a new arc. I don't think the filler was all that bad but the padding put it's toll on it. Some episodes are extremly tedious to the point that nothing at all happened.
One the shows biggest problem for me comes in terms of animation quality. There are good looking scenes and the 3D rendered high-speed slides through the city on their 3DMG always looked great... it's just that it was inconsistent to the max. Quite early you begin to notice copy pasta and the worst possible use of stillframes with narration or dialogue over it. This is done a lot in the industry and it isn't necessarily a bad thing but the way they do it in this is so in your face and frequent you just can't help it. There was some talk about them lacking animators and that they were apparently looking for more but that couldn't have been the only issue. Around the episodes that relied on it the most a new OP hit the show with plenty of quality animation so yeah... The level of detail also decreased towards the end whenever it wasn't a closeup or something in the focus.
I guess this sounds really negative but I still gave the show a 7... it is just frustrating to see this hyped to the heavens when it really is far from perfect. If you're looking for an action show, sure - give it a go. It's just nothing great. I'm sure there will be more coming down the road (there have been spin-off stories already) and I cannot wait to see the train-wreck the live action movie planned for 2014 will be.
R.I.P. Moe titan.
I did not expect to like this one as much as I did! While I would say that the bucket for vampire movies is getting too crowded, I will certainly not fault an entertaining one for this!
The characters are rather quirky and it's shot mockumentary style (like The Office) which might be off-putting for some but you have at least give them credit for going through a variety of jokes here! Oh, and let's not forget Stu! Everyone loves Stu!
I didn't realize this was a Predator movie the first time I saw the poster and thought this was some random horror movie but the positive buzz certainly didn't pass me by so here we are again. After watching it I'm certainly... shocked?
From the get go this did very little to pull me in, be it the CG animals, one-dimensional plot or the the selfish attitude of our heroine. Now obviously one can argue how much that all matters when the action is good but it didn't really scratch that itch for me either... the Predator fighting with the animals was certainly entertaining but random guys biting the bullet with mostly offcam/unclear CG gore not so much. Would have been nice if they showed some wits when they fought him at the camp but somehow him going invisible is enough reason to lower their weapons and start talking to each other. She saw how the camouflage works multiple times in action already..?!!
What all those scenes, and the movie poster for that matter, certainly established, is that our protagonist has little to worry and that a showdown was coming but I would never have predicted the amounts of bullshit that would contain:
- Somehow becomes a baller and expert in alien technology. Knows when the Predator is coming, takes her magic herbs to immediately lower her blood temperature (but is not shivering and still standing up) and is in the Predators path who obviously doesn't see a standing corpse right in front of it or notices her moving out of the way...
- Never used the gun but knows the right angle to shoot and remove his mask (betting on this being a weakness when this did little to stop it before).
- Gets to conveniently escape for the n-th time and has enough time to finish up some traps (which the Predator even hit on some random tree lol).
- Gets hit to the head twice from the shield that cut through the Predators limbs, spear and even stone but is unscathed.
- Can easily remove a fang attached to it's face to save herself just in time.
- GPS dog that always magically reappears is ready to bring her the tomahawk...
- Manages to sit on top of the Predator and even pull him into the bog with a tiny rope and a much much smaller statue.
- The Predator obviously submerges immediately, but little does it know of her the grand plan to have him placed at that exact LOS of the mask in anticipation that he is gonna fire from his gun (despite not having had his mask for the whole time) while he is already targeted by the laser the entire time... b r a v o. Obviously that one shot was also enough to kill it.
...
Honest to god - how does a movie with such a contrived finale get so much praise, or even leave the script writing phase??
This was a big miss as a sequel... as established early on in the movie the character of "Borat" is pretty much dead as he is part of pop culture now so he can't do the same stunts as before. To work around this issue we are instead introduced to his daughter who travels with him while Sacha is mostly going around in throw-away disguises akin to his recent "Who is America?" show (which was already plagued by similar issues). Unfortunately they did very little to help ground this in reality. Borat as a journalist had a reason to travel around and have a camera on where as in the sequel it feels quite unauthentic and often scripted. The "charm" Borat had is also mostly absent as he was mostly just in narritive driven scenes (making the Giuliani scene the "climax" AND releasing the movie with this deliberate timing only did it a big disservice imho). Did I chuckle in some scenes? Sure... but as a complete package it was just really disappointing and hollow.
"We have no idea how to write a coherent story so we just do another time-skip and be done with it." - Helix Writer's Room
With Wes Craven's recent passing this show can't be considered a honor to his work. Luckily he didn't do much else than let them use his name for the show.
You can't do a slasher movie as a TV series.
The above is an actual quote from a character in this show which certainly applies here. There is little "slasher" in this show! Instead they took some basic ideas from the genre and paired it with Pretty Little Liars whose fans also seem to be the target audience.
No one does a decent job acting, the dialogue is often cringey, the story sucks and they make absolute no use of the runtime to build the characters or go past the cliché. They even had the balls to go for a second season.
For anyone who liked the movies and thinks that the TV series is the logical continuation you have to watch: don't do it.
I think Mike Flanagan is quite competent in most of what he does, but nothing of his ever blew me away. This show is no different as he certainly is aware of today's tropes and crafts an unusually slow paced horror story more focused on the psychological impact of the haunting than scares, but after so many scene transitions between the story's timelines it gets quite tedious. It is really the later half of the series that tainted my enjoyment with more focus on melodramatic elements, monologues and a conclusion that had me feeling like I just wasted quite a lot of time...
The visuals and aesthetics were great in this as well as the kinetic animation style but the story massively leaves you hanging the twist is already hinted at from the get go anyways.
Wow... didn't expect this to be so bad. There are some beautiful backgrounds to look at here but that's about the praise this gets from me. Feels like Groening can't really progress as a writer. If maybe the leads had any chemistry then it would have been easier to get into it but as it stands I didn't even chuckle once and the jokes moreso were cringey given that fantasy setting this is supposed to takes place in.
I have never seen the old "Twilight Zone" but heard a lot about it so my expectations of a "modern" adaptation were quite high... and apparently way off. None of the episodes had a particularly interesting gimmick or explored that in any meaningful way. Instead the episodes end up being quite boring, sometimes goofy and just not very good... this also partly because in 2019 you have to include an important message in each episode, regardless of cost.
You have to admire Noé for the way he just fucks with conventions as he pleases and stages lengthy camera rides just for the fun of it. The film sets up a huge cast of dancers pulling off some crazy vogue shit and lets them slowly but surely decend into a feverish hell. I was not without doubts while watching this( and he does let his bad boy hang out) but I ended up just enjoy the hypnotic ride. It's definitly nothing substantial but a big step up from "LOVE".
Going to be the contrarian here but I was bored out of my mind. This is not why I am watching Black Mirror and with the way it was unfolding it didn't really connect with me at all. Mackenzie Davis was also a misscast for me as it's a bit too on the nose considering her role on "Halt and Catch Fire".
Always a good time with the reverend.
"pumpkin + tower"
This simple google search locating key players in the story tells you heaps about the thoughtful writing here.
Anyways, I saw this movie already when it was still called Seconds (http://trakt.tv/movies/seconds-1966)... Instead of exploring the theme like any good sci-fi thriller would do we get stuck with bland action scenes. It's all cookiecutter resulting in a boring and predictable movie. There are also a plethora of plotholes to nag at.
Those expecting at least vibrant direction by Tarsem will also be disappointed.
I might be a little blinded by it's presentation but Kaiba is creatively told sci-fi story with an unique visual flair and a good soundtrack. The direction should have been even more playful though (just like the first episode) and the finale wasn't the show's highlight but it's still good to see shows like this being made despite not being destinied to become popular.
Unlike some people I didn't see anything mindblowing in the movie... I figured that much from the first minute. Guess who did the score? Hans Zimmer. How can you tell? When the fucking Inception tune is horning. What further could you do to alienate me right away? Adjust the colors so that some of the people onscreen have orange skin!?
Well, the good thing is that it isn't riding too hard on the white guilt but still, even the "nice" slave-masters are inheretly immoral. Can't say much about the adaptation as I'm not familiar with the source material but we don't really get much from Solomon's character except for the odd nod that he is a superior slave or at least entitled given his background (as wrong as this sounds)... There was the lack of weight of the 12 years as we can't keep track of time except for the nature changing and but it's still rather episodic.
The acting is one of the better parts although the movie would have benefited from a lesser known cast. Brad Pitt was totally out of place (he was the Producer w/e) and for example Danno's little song was more a bad joke than anything thanks to his general persona.
Despite some good scenes I just never really got into it so the whole affair felt longer than it should have been. This is basicly my Lincoln of 2013.
For as many things the show did right, there are also some issues that plague it which took away from my overall enjoyment of the show. The biggest one for me were some of the later episodes. We take detours from the main story with the excuse that some proxy is causing it. These episodes hardly offer anything new to the story or are an excuse for some forgotten exposition. In addition to that there is no start or end to it. The following episodes are like these things never happend. The second big thing is it's sometime borderline pretentious philosophical dialogue. Some of these work as a oneliners but that's about it. It's in the same way like everyone on CSI is a smartass about something on demand. Not only that, most people and many locations have been given a name from mythology.
Still, the art is good and there are some fine episodes in there. And let's not forget the best token loli I've seen, Pino :). If you're looking for an action show with the anime Amy Lee shown on the fanart you might want to stay away from it.
Fun and slick movie but the second half wasn't the the kind of story progression I wanted to see. Also totally terrible fourth-wall speech there.
[Slightly Spoilerish] Without even having seen David Robert Mitchell previous movie "The Myth of the American Sleepover" I'm quite certain that both movies have some similarities despite the first one not being a horror movie at all. I also think that is one of the main factors when it comes to this film, it doesn't feel like your typical horror movie while still showing off it's influences.
The big bad here is just "It" - a being taking the form of someone known to the victim who is slowly but steadily walking toward it's target. The only way to get rid of it is to have sex with someone else but if whoever is on top of it's list dies it falls back in the chain. Simply put: If you can't deal with it, fuck someone else and better look for someone who can either handle it or has a high chance of passing it on too.
Unlike many teen horror movies the girl who "gets" it and her group of friends are written more realistically and go about it reasonably. Unfortunately it seems that no one in the curse chain was creative enough then despite it being not completely dumb there seem to exist more than enough methods to keep "It" in check.
Nonetheless, it's a solid movie relying more on atmosphere than a body count or jump scares.
Solid movie and pretty looking (+1 rating for that). Glad to see that Shinkai is moving forward and for once not doing "teenage romance" nostalgia. 5cm/s & the Place Promised in Our Early Days while pretty looking just didn't work storywise for me. Voices of a Distant Star was fine (only read the manga though). Props to keeping the story relatively short instead of bloating it.
I'm sorry: WHAAAAT? This was awful. Not that Supernatural ever was very coherent but this was a rushed, sloppy and frankly a very anticlimatic conclusion to their ordeal... they even had to pull a "and-here-is-how-we-dun-it" to "explain" this mess.
Sam & Dean can apparently take a massive beating from fists powered by such godly energy that when absorbed is enough to transfer the powers over to Jack (who needs build up when you can just give him more OP powers...). Most "powerlevels" were also disregarded for this like Chuck's omniscience and featuring Amara, Death/Lucifer etc.. . And no time for Cas? I know there is another one coming but this had a freaking montage at the end...
So, this "supposed hit" wasn't one after all (outside of JP anyways). Like many of it's Light Novel friends it's heavy with the self insert and exposition. About 80% of the show is rather uneventful and made up by technobabble and characters citing the gospel about the lord and savior Tatsuya Shiba (the main character). As seen by the exciting episode titles, the 26 episodes only cover three arcs with the middle one being pure filler and the last one having the most actual combat.
Now that sounds like a drop worthy show! It can however be quite fun due to the simple fact that hardly anyone is as overpowered as Tatsuya. He is literally void of any personality and hides a ruthless killer behind his innocent persona. Despite being placed in a lower and disrespected class of magicians, it doesn't take long for everyone wanting to suck his dick with his sister being first in line (there isn't a nice way of putting this). You could fill a book with lines of other characters praising him, really! While by the end of the show there is still not everything revealed about him we learn plenty: he is a superb magic engineer and math crack (he invents flying on the side, something others have been researching forever), can just cancel out other users magic on activation, has a wall hack with far sight (he can also no scope snipe), deals with a terrorist attack himself, can make a mad implosion at any distance and much, much more. Did I forget to mention his Jesus like features like descending from heaven to resurrect and heal his comrades? Praise Onii-sama or stay away is all I can say http://i.imgur.com/B2tqW3N.jpg.
I was reluctant to see this because of superpowers but did anyway... While I'm very aware of it's positive reception I don't really share that sentiment. It starts out somewhat OK but certainly works around it's budget in quite early on. Where it probably went really wrong for me is the reception of the little main girl as she struck me as an ungrateful little brat and had that annoying stare all the time. As the story went along it felt like TV tier clichés thrown together the ice cream truck was esp. cringe and it jumped all over the place from her being the key for liberation of the "Freaks" to just saving mommy. Thank god she is a Mary Sue so all works out fine and got daddy killed to get her mommy instead...
Not as terrible in execution as Arkangel but I couldn't help but burst out laughing in one of the key moments due to the stupidity of this where it should have been a moment of tension instead. I mean that this show is an anthology is a good thing but this was on par of British no-budget genre film... if you want me to invest in your setting at least bother to make things to have at least a little bit of sense. Turning it black & white is not enough.
- The dogs technical functions seemed to jump around all the time... This is sort of endless. / Can magically generate and store power forever apparently (since it can still charge from within the factory)... still goes on standby. / Instead of killing the target point blank it prefers to instill a tracking device before it kills the person. / It just hides in the factory.. because robots. / Abandons factory straight away and goes for the target not instilled with a tracking device. / Can at first only track people via tracking device (still kills the other guy and can drive a car just fine however), later on it can still employ a sort-off wallhack (it did the tracking by an endless stream of blood left behind LOL)... however once it was in the house it could not see behind the furniture she was located at. / Can apparently only kill with a weapon(knife here) after it lost it's weapon - scary. / They suddenly swarm the area so they can supposedly communicate with each other, but that isn't really seen in their behavior regardless.
- The reason for getting a teddy this far out can't be made up. If this really was a dangerous world people would have helped themselves differently (and not by leaving the dying kid there). This wasn't just something that happened a few days ago anyways.
- We are supposed to believe this is a world that exist. So obviously she first runs away when the first guy gets attacked, only to stand still to have him tell to run away again on which she still does this as she wouldn't have cared either way.
- These things get rekt by energy drain, paintjobs, trees and are only good in close range. Now this will wipe humanity out for certain...
I hope everyone that wanted a second season is happy with this shitfest they got. Dropped at 2x07.
Remember that edgy thing called "Elfen Lied"? Yup, this is by the same author and while I'm fuzzy on the details on that it certainly is similar in the way of inflicting violence to teenage girls. It is also probably the only 1-cour show that changed openings on the second last episode and then even to a terrible crunkcore-thingy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C__joUsxAPw).
Despite rating it just a "4" I want to stress that I got plenty of enjoyment out of it... just for all the wrong reasons - or maybe not! Going by the anime alone one has to either believe this is a work by hacks (which it kinda is) or well versed people intentionally taking the piss out of genre conventions.
Anyways, you should not watch this show if you expect any kind of logic or common sense. The story is ridiculous and badly paced. It also follows the same pattern up until the end where they just throw in an ending because they can. What made the show for me was it's schizophrenic tone, switching between comedy bits set to goofy music with some romance to heavily censored action - with a straight face. Really, it's amazing how much bullshit they managed to stuff in there. If you want to watch something so bad that it's good give it a go.
I was reluctant to see this movie because on paper it looks like an arthouse chore. Luckily it isn't at all.
We follow the cynic and self-proclaimed "it-man" of the high-class nightlife in Rome; Jep, through his episodic encounters in the city. Because of the death of his one true love (who married someone else) he starts to reflect on his life and what the Great Beauty in it is (or was).
The movie showcases beautiful cinematography, editing and score and has a diverse set of actors. There is also plenty of often subtle humor to be found in the scenes and dialogue making it everything but dry.
The mystery... 8ft(!!) below the surface...
Terrible acting, unnatural dialogue and a stupid story to boot. "100s" died in the lake and somehow it takes the ghost of their dead teenage son to get the father back to the lake when they had a vacation home there all along?:rolling_eyes:
Not for me definitely. The breakneck pacing has little regard for characters or a proper plot (so things must be convenient) and in this format more akin to something on SyFy or CBS rather than the ""HBO prime time slot""...
Underlying the FX sample pack with a Gil Scott-Heron song is just tone deaf and quite try hard imho (it didn't fit the scene nor the theme). George served his part as a plot device too apparently so let's commemorate it with killing him off...
A truely unique documentary. Not only does the director talk to some of the people responsible for mass murders of commies in Indonesia but he also enlists them in a project to make a movie about their experiences. They then go on and even mix together diffrent genres (musicals, ganster film, etc.) for their story. This gives it a rather surreal vibe but it underlines the thinking of the perpetrators. The way they openly - without regret - talk about their past actions is disturbing. Needless to say there is a climax to the movie and it's all captured with just the camera rolling. I now might also know how "sick to the stomach" sounds like. Well worth for some astonishing scenes and it only occasionally drags on.
As of now, there seem to be three different versions: a 115 minute cut for the festival release, a directors cut of 159 minutes (the one I watched and belive is really the real one (matches RT)) and another one that is unfinished and apperantly is shared in Indonesia (official screenings are not permitted there). The last one has some credits/scenes in it which were removed for the "proper" release for security reasons (many credits have been listed as anon).
