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Reviews
The Hyperions (2022)
Tries hard to have character. Poor editing.
Tries hard to be a quirky superhero film... joining the likes of Scott Pilgrim, but falls short.
Through a mind-numbing set of decisions, this would be children's film is Rated R, likely for its truly misplaced depictions of violence.
God, why?
The pacing is dismal... shots held for eons... in direct conflict with what one should expect from a quirky Indy film, perhaps it was running short, and they had to fill by any means necessary? Who knows.
Had it been livened up with a little PG style Deadpool or Tony Stark pacing and dialog, it would have been a much better, well-paced film.
The character of the Professor was simply laborious... ludicrous... the relationships unconvincing (and that's being generous).
A for effort... C- for execution.
Arcane: League of Legends (2021)
First Glance
First: Beautiful. A highly stylized rendering is stunning to behold, with Disney-like mastery of mass and inertia in this very kinetic environment.
With regard to story, the basic dynamic is very much overused... in cinema going back to Metropolis (1927).
Sadly, the headlong push to compel female characters to adopt hyper-masculine personas persists in this work... someone has apparently decided that the female is fundamentally wrong, and everyone should be a boy... which naturally comes from the same people that also paradoxically claim that such masculinity is toxic. This schizophrenic reshaping of society is without doubt driving the epidemic of anxiety and depression found in youth today. Constant messaging that girls ought to become warriors is pushing them where they literally do not want to go, and are not comfortable with, their true nature disregarded and sacrificed to a thoughtless utopian vision, oddly paralleling the failed utopia in Arcane.
This character criticism aside, the work is mature, well paced, and well written. It's an impressive achievement in animated story telling.
Cowboy Bebop: Binary Two-Step (2021)
Worst of the series
This episode: People sitting on beds talking to each other about their feelings.
FFS.
CB is a KINETIC story. Until now.
They manage to crash something to pretend there is action.
Cowboy Bebop (2021)
Does the Impossible
How to translate an Anime masterpiece into live action? Can't be done. No way.
The Netflix attempt is *STUNNING* in the effort.
First, Anime is limitless in its potential... drawn from a truly blank page, Anime is free to roam in terms of style, story, setting... the sky is the limit.
But in the real world with practical photography and practical elements like people, physics, props, and pyrotechnics, the physical becomes a limitation in and of itself... where Anime never needs to look real (it is automatically forgiven that it never is)... the IRL Bebop has the paradoxical requirement of capturing the essence of something that never looks real, while always looking real.
Those that rate it harshly aren't coming to grips with this requirement, and would only be satisfied if Netflix redid Bebop as anime... that was frame-by-frame identical.
The creators of this fine work obviously focused on being as true as possible to the original from the actual original score to reproducing the opening title sequence perfectly (while introducing photography of the cast).
The casting is amazing, with spectacular choices for the core team.
While character introduction and storyline are not followed verbatim, the changes are all quite intentional and thoughtful with the exception of Faye being introduced in the first episode... then dismissed entirely for the next 2... the point of which escapes me.
Dialog had to up it's game from the original.. hammy dialog from an anime character is accepted... but looks ridiculous coming from a human performer. The writers do a terrific job of this, driving then expanding the character development that feels true to the original.
What the creators faced was an impossible challenge... but they succeeded in bringing us much farther than I would have ever imagined.
The best Anime to Live Action translation ever achieved. Not to be missed.
Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space (2021)
An Inadequate Subject for a Documentary
This documentary is a study on PR symbology.
It focuses on a mission that takes "regular" people to space... a symbolic "turning point" in spaceflight... and while this may be so it is at the expense of the actual accomplishment.
Elon Musk and SpaceX have achieved the feat of turning a rocket into a passenger vehicle... and this is not intended as derision, for the accomplishment is significant. They have refined the process to such an extent that they can place any four human meat sacks into chairs, and send them into space for extended periods.
This documentary focuses on the meat sacks.
Sorry. Not important.
One of them is nearly a full-on racist... being exactly the kind of person who is NOT what Martin Luthor King Jr. Looked forward to... a woman of questionable character seeing everything through the lens of race.
It staggers the mind.
Fortunately, the other three seemed to represent the human race, but still, it's tragic that skin tone was apparently a prerequisite in the meat sack selection process.
What should have been a story primarily of engineering triumph, and redefining what is possible became something much smaller.
Away: Go (2020)
Writing Aborted
Annoying to the extreme. Thick with drama and emotion, which is exactly how people are NOT. Good writers (and actors) know that emotion is hidden. Many space titles have gotten this exactly right, and should have served to inform the writers of Away.
This is what romance novelists might get if they tried to write sci-fi.
The people Away has selected to go on the first mission to Mars are precisely NOT like the people that would be sent... and suffers from the same character errors that Prometheus had... namely, sending losers on a massive, important mission.
Real astronauts are cool as cucumbers. On ice. Floating in a liquid nitrogen bath. Absolutely unflappable. John Glenn said of Neil Armstrong that he was chosen to command the first mission to the moon based on one criteria... that he was the most able to toss the weight of the world off his shoulders and do the job. That he had faced death so many times, and came out on top that he was literally used to it.
These kind of people are fascinating... but Away writers gave us drama you might expect from reruns of Dallas.
And the direction... incompetent. Shows like this need expert technical advisors on set at all times... to prevent ridiculous things like having the actors half floating around the room on the moon. It's a distraction that competes with the story as you find yourself asking "what the hell are they doing?"
Perhaps the creative talent, like the astronauts on Away, are all chosen by what color their skin is, instead of ability.
This show feels like it was put together by committee.
Snowpiercer (2013)
Much worse than expected
Due to the reviews... I was eager to see something worth my time.
This film will probably appeal to those that like a little action, but don't want to think too hard.
The premise is simply ridiculous. It gets worse from there. Reasonably good acting, to build characters that are rather two dimensional is such a waste. A disaster/survival film with a little sci-fi window dressing doesn't even come close to telling a story. It's a good representative of the forgettable modern film, having few redeemable qualities.
Counter culture types and those that prefer "artsy" over substantive will applaud the film for not telling a story in a strictly traditional way, but frankly, there is nothing new about that. A lot of effort went into "atmosphere", and achieving a "look", and that's all well and good, but a real story has to be in there somewhere.
There is only the slightest feeling that anyone in the film is really human at all... and while the ending purposefully tries to leave the viewer without any final answers... this is just cheap and trite. We saw that in "The Road"... which delivered its non-ending with significantly more emotional force.
Honestly, this film will soon be forgotten, and for good reason.
Where are the Blade Runners of this generation?