CZelden Reviews

Red State (2011)

Baffling character motivation, mediocre to badly shot, well acted

[3/10 · 11 December 2015]

This movie starts off OK. Three kids in a town that has within it a Westboro Baptist Church style sect go out to have sex. They go up to a trailer and meet an older woman and the awkwardness of this scene made it great. Then it all turns to hell.

As a viewer you can see the 'twist' here coming a mile away. I don't have a real problem with that. It's a way of creating suspense. What I have a problem with is that none of the decisions of anyone from this point on make any sense. I ended up yelling at the screen, because this level of stupidity is just unbelievable.

Now having seen it (thankfully it's not that long) I've come to these hypotheses about what went wrong. First, the script started of being a comedy, but it isn't anymore and they didn't change the script enough to make it work. Second, they didn't raise enough money to make the police effort in this movie make anything close to reasonable. Third, they wanted good actors and they got them, but probably out of financial reasons, they are not on screen for long. Fourth, because of the rewrites no one knew what the point was anymore and the story became pointless and almost offensive in it's stupidity.

In conclusion, this is an infuriatingly bad movie to see. It has no point, it makes no sense and the tone is all over the place. They could have taken the story in any number of places that would have created a satisfying story, but they didn't. It ends up being an awful movie with good actors whom I feel sorry for.

Just skip it, you won't enjoy it.

Iron Girl: Ultimate Weapon (2015)

Cheesy Japanese exploitation flick

[6/10 · 7 December 2015]

This is a pretty average Japanese exploitation flick. It contains violence, nudity and a loose the world has gone to hell sort of story. The main character is played by Kirara Asuka, who's more known for pornography than acting. Her character lost her memory and has to fight the bad guys to get it back.

The effects are sometimes OK, sometimes not. The action and nudity is acceptable. It's sort of humorous at times. And the theme of women controlling men with Vaginapower is kind of fun.

If you want nothing more than a pretty entertaining, stupid Japanese exploitation flick: here you go. Enjoy.

Tokyo Ghoul (2014)

Depressing, but good

[8/10 · 6 November 2015]

This is a story about a boy who is changed into something he fears. He then has to learn how to live on the border between what he is used to and what he fears.

The show is tremendously violent and gory, but not extraordinarily so in it's genre. It kind of falls into the Supersayan-problem of ever more powerful enemies that can only be defeated by the main character after becoming stronger, but it varies enough (more so in the second season than the first). Despite the characters feeling all over the place in the first few episodes, there is a point to that and after two seasons I actually quite like how the character arcs turned out.

What makes this story for me is it's underlying themes. It's about the big subjects of life and death and love and hate, but it does so in a different way than I am used to. The show seems to ask by showing murder after murder, battle after battle, slaughter after slaughter: isn't this pointless? Every time it sets a character up to be violently taken apart it makes a point to say that that character had value and now he or she is no more. It makes the point of the show, despite it's extreme violence one of pacifism.

It is a tremendously depressing watch, but definitely something I haven't seen before and something I don't know if I should recommend. Watch this if: a. you like violent anime and just want to see the pictures, because it is well made and not focus on the plot or b. you like feeling like crap after binging on short episode after short episode.

PS I don't like the title songs, but I am sure many people disagree.