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Ha! Mitch, he's got ya buddy lol 
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Now now, let's not have any dissing of Mr Barry.
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If Barry composed JAWS??? The horrors!!!! Instead of tense and dramatic it would’ve put the audience to sleep!
But at least the shark would have come across as a nicer chap.
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Posted: |
May 19, 2024 - 4:17 AM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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The Boy and the Heron (2023) 3-5
Let me say upfront I'm not a Hayao Miyazaki fanatic, then again I'm not a fanatic in general of anyone. I call balls and strikes as I see it.
That said I love his early works going way back to Future Boy Conan, Lupin the 3rd, Nausicaä, Laputa, Porco Rosso and to a lessor extent Kiki and Totoro. The last two simplistic fair saved by Joe Hisaishi's charming soundtracks.
But over the years I feel his animated films have become less spectacular from a visual standpoint and the characters are dull, lack motivation and character development. Instead we've gotten stories that seem directionless and very WEIRD characters that are hard to relate to.
This is the case with The Boy and the Heron. While the character animation is smooth and well done the characters themselves are underdeveloped and have no personalities. Much like his simpler films Kiki, Totoro and Spirited Away there isn't much motivation or story.
Unlike Kiki and Totoro in particular Heron lacks the charm of those films and more importantly doesn't have a great soundtrack to help carry us along on the journey. The music is very sparse here.
The animation also lacks "atmosphere" as most scenes regardless if they are daytime, night time, inside or outside all look like they were "filmed" in broad daylight. The backgrounds are pretty interesting but less detailed than his earlier works. Effects animation is minimal and (as Ive complained before) I hate the use of CGI enhanced effects in a primarily 2D animated film.
Really outside of the Heron (which could be a CGI character) there was no reason from a visual standpoint to make this into an animated film as its mostly human characters doing human things.
This is not a film for kids, they'd be bored to death and some of the scenes and themes might be to intense for them.
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Star Trek 11: The Wrath Of Khan (1982) Good cheesy fun.
After the slow motion mis-fire of The Motion Picture, this much lower budget sequel sort of saved the franchise. It does look cheap, but has a good story & fast pace, & the cast sell it (esp. Ricardo Montalban as the baddie Khan). Next up, The Search For Spock (of course).
I thought Ricardo Montalban was in Star Trek 2?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084726/?ref_=hm_rvi_tt_i_1
I know that, but you wrote Star Trek "Eleven".
That was JJ Abrams , wasn't it.
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Avatar - The Way of Water (James Cameron, 2022) 7/10
When AVATAR hit the screens in 2010, most people would agree that it was a technical milestone and singlehandedly responsible for the 3D-revival in the cinema, but that it’s story was basically just Pocahontas/Dances With Wolves with tall blue aliens. It wasn’t even subtle about it. Nevertheless, it became a huge hit and the most successful movie of all time.
In comes AVATAR - WAY OF WATER, 12 years later a sequel. And once again, it became a big box office hit. Why? It is certainly not because of the story, the cardboard villains or the predictable conflicts. The story is easily told and by the book:
Years after the events of the first film, humans from Earth (the “sky people”) come back to colonize Pandora, since it’s so much nicer there than on Earth. Jake Sully, now fully living live as a Na’vi, is the leader of a resistance fight. When Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who was killed in the first movie, returns as a “recombinant” (Avatars with implanted memories rather than remote controlled), Sully and his family have to flee, because Quartich is out to kill them.
Sully and his family find refuge by natives that are ocean rather than jungle dwellers
Quaritch eventually catches up with them. They fight.
It’s really by the numbers and doesn’t offer many surprises… but wow, was this nevertheless a “good” movie, it was good in that we enjoyed watching it. Not because of the story, not because of the battle scenes, not because of the clichéd characters… but because it had a real sense of awe, a sense of wonder. That’s what’s missing from so many movies these days. I would have loved to move to that ocean village. And just explored the seas and the animals and the plants and just… wow… the movie was over three hours long, but it didn’t feel long at all, because the best part – the middle part – of the movie is ironically when very little happens and we were just immersed in this wonderful ocean world. No doubt, this is a movie that lives from its visuals, from its atmosphere… we watched it on a big OLED screen on 4K Bluray, and it looked marvelous.
Interestingly, these ocean Na’vi people (turquoise instead of blue) reminded me very much of the Zora folk from Nintendo’s THE LEGEND OF ZELDA games… what’s next, Vulcano Na’vi like Zelda’s Gorons? Heck, apparently even yes, I think Cameron said something like this.
But no matter what, count me in for part III… forget the story, just take me to these wonderful places.
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Posted: |
May 19, 2024 - 10:34 AM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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Godzilla X Kong- 3-5
I was willing to accept a dumb popcorn movie if it was well made and entertaining. I found it to be like any of the Transformers movies, just a huge bore. Nothing of importance happens, never do I feel anyone is in danger or there’s anything at stake.
The movie just crawls along and stretches a 10 minute plot into a two hour movie. Most scenes felt redundant. Monster fight, searching the Hollow Earth, monster fight, searching the Hollow Earth, since and repeat.
The little deaf girl was key to everything and they made her out to be this spiritual princess, except she doesn't do anything.
The CGI was passable but it really looked like a cartoon or video game rather than a live action movie. I can’t think of a single scene or shot that really grabbed my attention. Most of the monster fight scenes are obscured by the elements, water, fire, fog, mist, sand, lens flairs.
The music was dull and uninspiring. Droning sound design with a few “wonder” like statements.
Since most of the film takes place in “Hollow Earth” we really don’t get the size of these monsters. There’s a whole new ape colony underground lead by a “mustache twirling" evil ape and a baby child ape who actually was the best character in the film. He was three dimensional and the only one with a story arc!
I didn’t like how they presented the apes. Probably for ease of motion capture they were very human like in movement, gestures and expressions. They were far more intelligently advanced than they should’ve been. They’re simply not monsters anymore.
They included a new monster for Godzilla and Kong to fight but he was really generic and dull. He shot ice instead of fire yet his “ice beam” glowed like it was white hot. I guess it was supposed to be frost? The CGI for that monster was awful.
The over all moral of the story makes no sense. Godzilla and Kong are supposedly the protectors of earth but they cause far more destruction and death ( to hundreds of thousands if not millions of humans!) in service of defeating the “evil” ape and the ice monster.
Finally, Godzilla was hardly in the film. They actually show him sleeping, at least twice! I never liked his design even though his proportions are better in this new film. This Godzilla is an awful design and there’s no good way to animate his body.
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