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justin-myslajek
Reviews
Good Night World (2023)
If you didnt finish the series you shouldn't review this anime
Episodes 1-5 were good but typical in many ways. Episodes 6-12 were brilliant and emotional. The series had wonderful music, voice acting, storyboards, and animation. Great plot with a beautiful culmination at the end. I feel a lot of people watched the first few episodes and made assumptions about the series. I thought it was wonderful.
The part of the series I found most touching was the father son dynamic. It showed understanding and healing between Tashiro and his father in a gorgeous climax with fantastic music. The characters really started to develop in episode 6 and the series was very compelling from that point on. Frankly I thought it was well made and very original. It is fair to say it takes a while to get going but the ending is so good I still give it a 9.
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024)
Great production value, super dry, bad directing
Ok, I'd like to start of giving this series credit where it deserves credit. The special effects are excellent. The bending looks really fantastic. The animals are designed beautifully! So are the villages and landscapes.
Ok, now to the meat of it. The whole thing was a drag. They basically dried up all the flavor of the Anime. The dialogue was super unnatural and came off more like a high school stage play or soap opera. To me, I blame this on the director.
The plot was changed and wrecked some important elements of the original storyline. They basically did nothing at all to advance Aang's skills. They didn't really properly do Katara either. She basically went from no skills to instantly pulling off a million gallon water wall in a minute.
They still made a lot of the same mistakes these creators make- don't change the parts we love! Keep the overall plot and characters the same. What I would approve of is making situations, emotions, reactions either more extreme of more visceral. The only advantage making a live action would bring is in these elements. Anger, surprise, grief, pain, stress, struggle- you have an opportunity to show these things in ways the anime can't. They actually went the opposite direction and made it so dry I was honestly very bored and had to force myself to finish it.
I respect that some people involved in the project really tried and it's because of those elements I gave it 6 stars. It was a failure of writing and directing though. Overall it's better than the M Night Shamalan movie, but slightly less entertaining. A snoozer extraordinaire.
The Invitation (2022)
Great movie spoiled by a safe and cliché ending.
Thomas Doherty was astoundingly good in this role! He slayed it! I honestly loved the movie until the ending. The development of the characters was excellent and the cinematography and makeup was excellent too. I honestly haven't been as disappointed by an ending since the I Am Legend (theatrical release) ending. I wouldn't be surprised if it was originally written as a different ending and someone in the studio said "no we can't make that, it'll be offensive. We will get canceled." So they rewrote a really great script into 2022 politically safe garbage script. I'd recommend watching the first 90 minutes then turning it off and imagining your own ending. They destroyed what could've been a very good movie on the level of Bram Stoker's Dracula. So sad.