Reviews

I live in Japan and have been a huge fan of the series since it was made into an anime years and years ago. What the anime (and manga) can do that neither movie can is pace the story. The original Japanese Death Note film was rushed but this new America remake was contorted to fit it's just over 90-minute run time.

If you don't know, Death Note is about a young man who receives a "magic" book that will kill anyone's name written into it.

What the original manga and anime are able to do is explore the public's relationship with the person behind the killings and debate their morality. Neither movie could do that, the American movie much, much less so.

This new American retelling went for style over plot. There is a lot of work on the cinematography at the expense of what makes the Death Note so compelling. Worse still, they edited in mainstream music during key emotional scenes. The lyrics are meant to convey what the characters are feeling but they are distracting and clearly there to help abbreviate the narrative and punctuate a scene -- it's bad visual and sound editing.

The plus is that they departed from the main narrative, so even I was surprised at where the story was headed. They also give background information on the character L, something you don't get until the third stand-alone film in the Japanese franchise.

Because they chose an African-American L and a Caucasian Light, they could have nuanced the story with the racial tensions in the US to give it a reason to be told in America. They could have spent time exploring the theme of justice. They could have taken a lot of different threads to make this version of Death Note a story that needed to be told. Instead, the American Death Note is a cool lesson in cultural differences between Japanese and American storytelling.

Watch it but be sure to watch either the original Japanese movie or the original anime -- if you can read the manga, it's a truly wild ride.

The film takes a somber, serious tone as to what would happen if Japan were attacked -- in this case, by a seemingly unstoppable foe.

At present in Japan, there is an ongoing debate as to whether or not Japan should amend it's constitution to allow for an offensive military and this Godzilla film plays to exactly how powerless Japan would be in making it's own decisions during an attack of any kind. The reality is that the Japanese Prime Minister would have to ask for permission from the United States President before making an offensive move against a foreign threat and this film plays to that hard reality.

This new Godzilla starts out as an homage to its former man in a monster suit so that when you first see Godzilla, you'll disbelieve what you're seeing, but this Godzilla evolves into something majestic and utterly awe inspiring in its power.

What's more, this film makes it clear people die. In the Japanese release there's a lot of word play about how the government officials up high (on the fifth floor) make decisions that get passed down to people on lower floors that eventually hurt the people. I'm not sure how much will be translated, but the film is deliberately showing the disconnect between the political and day to day realities.

Overall, the performances are good. There is one character who they, for whatever reason, decided to make speak English in odd an inappropriate times.

This isn't a film for US audiences. The aesthetics will turn off a lot of non-Japanese young people accustomed to CG reality. But if you're open to learning about another culture, this is an excellent film, one of the best kaiju-films you'll ever see.

I read the book when I heard it was going to be made into a movie. As I was reading I wondered how they could film it. The answer is that they can't. Instead they took the concept and worked out a three act story line with hero and villains. I'm sure the dissatisfaction I've read here is partly due to trying to make something that is almost unfilmable a movie. It's well made. If you've read the book, it's worth seeing how they made it into a film.

I've shown this to my high school classes several times and they have loved it. It presents a simple idea that resonates. The characters might behave differently than you'd expect given their upbringing, but if you're going to watch a movie whose premise is that two people can collectively hold the memories of the world in their minds, roll with that discrepancy and enjoy what the movie has to say.

It's weakest point is the ending, not in the outcome but in the physical distances they cover. If you pay attention to the timing the film makers went too far in trying to be cinematic given the time frame they had to work with. Again, given the premise, it's forgivable -- and beautiful.

I really enjoyed this film.

I've seen the anime a few times, but I could never get into it. The film leads someone with no experience carefully into their world while (according to my friends who've seen it) pay a nod in all the right places to the original work.

I can see where a non-Japanese audience is going to have problems with the film:

How do you shoot a film with an international cast which live in a world where Japanese is the lingua franca? You dub it. I came close to leaving the theater to tell the staff the tracking was off but it quickly became obvious what they were doing. Honestly, it could be distracting but if you think about it, every animation works on the same principle.

(One benefit to the dubbing is that they could use actors with animation quality voices to fill the voice roles for many of the actors, or allow the principals to animate their voices in a way that would look unnatural in real life.)

Also, they shot the film in HDR (high dynamic range) which really animated the facial expressions and heighten the the boundary between real and imagined scenery -- a huge plus in this kind of film, and especially beautiful to watch on the big screen.

Oguri Shun's performance was top notch. He nailed the role. The other characters hit their character's tone, too. And when you see the situation the characters will find themselves in, you'll see they are not played as one dimensionally as the typical anime/cartoon to live action film. Their situations are complex and multifaceted.

I recommend this film. It's entertaining, beautiful to watch, presents the genre in a new way, and gives you a dose of Japanese-isms.

This movie is fantastic! It has a strong moral core about friendship, memorable characters, and does what animation should do, which is show the fantastical: Living food. The animation colour and design are extraordinary, fun, vivid. The food and the situations reference older films which adds something more adults can enjoy. Simply put, this film is fun -- and much better than the first one.

About the references, a lot of animation today makes quick cultural jabs that fall flat the next year. This film heavily references situations, for example, Steve Jobs' decision to pay the Chinese a pittance and reap a huge profit, but not in such a way that can date the film in the 20 or 40 years. It's there. It's easy to see, but the allusions blend into the landscape seamlessly. It's very well done.

I gave it a ten, not for the reason I gave ten for Monoke Hime but for showing me a fantastical bright world that I would love to visit and populating it with quirky characters that made me laugh and were just thoughtful enough to not be one dimensional.

Personally, I don't feel they needed to make this film. The law of sequels is that they have to explain, so the parts of the first film that existed in your imagination are going to be put to rest. That's the only real negative.

The acting was solid. They did a good job of taking disparate horror elements to create something new. And they paid homage to film like The Shinning. They also set up the sequel.

If you like haunted house films, you'll enjoy the first half. If you want to know the specifics of what happened in the first film you'll like the second half. If you like a complicated story line that pays off, you'll like the whole film.

It's a tight script for Touchstone, a comedy of errors where three plots and serial killer meet in a happy end.

I saw this during its original release and loved it. I still love it. It's nice to see a movie without a lot of toilet humour and f-bombs. The dialog is filled with memorable lines but the humour is in knowing what the characters don't and the on screen charisma of Di Vito and Middler.

Pay attention and you'll see the L.A. cityscape during the 80's along with all that was bad in 80's design along with Santa Monica Pier before the redesign in the 90's.

Great film for a rain day or a bad mood.

I read in the trivia section that John Hughs wrote Weird Science in two days. This I can believe.

Pluses: As a person in 2014 looking back on a film from the 80's I'm willing to give the film a lot of latitude. The fx, the clothing, the hairstyles, even the plot. This film will eventually be forgotten or used to showcase eighties film clichés. It's not well made for our time. It's retro, and those kinds of films are fun sometimes.

Minuses: The girl is created in the first few minutes of the film and there's no real surprise from anyone. It's just given that she's there. Lisa sets up situations to make the boys accept themselves and there is nothing that she does that would lead to that end, so the ending is frustrating to sit through. The effects they used weren't necessary and the characters they created were one dimensional.

The premise is interesting. Mankind created machines to combat global warming which backfired and triggered an ice age. And even if you can suspend you disbelief so that even a million of these machines to do that, you're left with one after the other impossibilities that grate on you as you watch.

It's acted well, especially by L. Fishborn, but the directing and cinematography don't fit. The first half plays like an art film, the second like a heavy metal music video.

The event that sets the plot in motion is to its inevitable end is ridiculous.

On the plus, this is an evolution of the zombie film. Watching from that point of view, you might enjoy it.

If you've seen enough movies you know exactly how this is going to end a few minutes in, so the fun is watching how they work the plot towards that conclusion.

It's an enjoyable movie with humor that sometimes made me cringe and other times laugh out loud. Jason S. is typecast in this role, but he has good screen chemistry with Jennifer A. The two kids play their roles well, the boy maybe too well.

If you like sexually charged humor, or want something to tune out with, I can recommend it. The biggest compliment I can give it is saying I hope they make a sequel.

I can not tell you how much I loathed this movie.

It wasn't funny. It was vile. The plot was obvious.

To be fair, the acting was good and the lines delivered as they should. There was nothing wrong with the cinematography, the editing, the sound. It was simply not my movie. It was boorish, vulgar, toilet (attempted) humor.

I had the displeasure of watching this in Japan where they do not speak English well enough to understand the jokes, have no hope of understanding the references, and imagine America is a land of hookers and stoners.

I just can't tell you too many times that I hated this movie.

You have to decide. You can chose to be someone better than who you are, or you can give up and be a walking corpse. You can either help, or stand in the way. These are the core ideas Warm Bodies is built around.

Personally, I love extended metaphors, all the better when they're written as a comedy/horror.

If you've read this far, you know what the movie is about. What I want to tell you is how good the performances are and tell you that when the zombies don't live up to the rules they laid out, that it ties back to that central theme.

If you watch this -- I hope you do -- remember that this is the first zombie film that isn't a statement about consumerism or retribution for everything humanity has gotten wrong, rather it's a film that says we have within us the ability to change the world even after the apocalypse.

The Percy Jackson (probable) franchise is a hint as to what Harry Potter might have looked like were it made in the Hollywood studio system.

The writing is terrible and the lines read, not acted. (Listen for how the writers try to punctuate every moment with an attempt at wit or humor only to fall flat and disrupt the pace of the film.) The special effects are ladled on without point and while the ideas for some of the creatures and scenes are well realized, I couldn't help wonder if they were a nod to or theft from better films.*

Still, if you're tween or just looking for a cinematic escape and nothing else is playing, it's not the worst film you could watch. They set up the ending for a sequel and, depending on the reviews, I might suffer through another if my date cancels or I am very bored.

I do not recommend Percy Jackson unless your either into bad fantasy, a junior high student or younger, or want to play Mystery Science Theater 3000.

*spoilerish -- I'm speaking of a cab scene and something they find at sea.

I don't want to give away anything.

This is one of those films you watch and think you could have made it better if you did X and Y in place of A and B. If you have friends with whom you can sit around later and talk about how you would have approached the subject, it's a great film. If you want something straight forward, you'll dislike it.

I watched it because I was mislead by the trailer and assumed the story would be good because Clive Owen signed onto it.

The performances are top notch, but the editing is weak and so the story telling drags in places. (Most people will complain about the priest's role in the film.) If you reflect after the twist is revealed, you should understand why certain scenes were not throw away but reveal something about the characters (for example, when a man at Clive Owen's character's workplace nearly falls).

I recommend Intruders for people who enjoy talking about or thinking about (different from picking apart) films. There's a strong message here and it's worth exploring.

I found this film by accident. A happy one? Montgomery Cliff, John Huston, Jean-Paul Sartre and an image of Marilyn Monroe are purposely put together though it comes across as accidental.

On the plus, it is educational to see how something mainstream presents material which should be avant guard. The dream sequences are interesting for that reason as the film would have been much better if they pushed the envelope. Instead, the film maintains a balance in the imaginings of what an Oedipal Complex were, of what dreams are like, and, I suppose, the images are as developed as they could be for 1960's America. For that reason I recommend it: The film is a bit of time capsule in how films were made.

Against the film, the pacing is unnecessarily slow and the acting is wooden or melodramatic for todays audience. The dialogue presents the Freud's ideas with ease but there 's no art in the language.

It's really rare for an American film to open in Japan before America, so I rushed to see it. Well, I might not have rushed had it not been for Juliana Moore who does deliver despite huge gaping plot holes littered throughout the film.

I won't give anything away about the story. There is a lot of development in the first half of the movie which might make the film seem s l o w for some viewers. When the mystery is revealed it is surprising but even given the careful buildup you might still have to make an effort to suspend your disbelief if only because of the plot holes (which I can not mention with out enumerating spoilers).

There are quite a few logical disconnects, too. In a age of cell phones when you're a busy psychiatrist why would you drive across town to do something which would take ten seconds by phone? Because it's a plot device.

Still, I enjoyed the film. I can not recommend it to my Japanese friends as there is a lot of talk about God and Faith which is lost on a truly secular country; but I can recommend it to people who like films like The Ring or The Exorcist. There are some interesting characters and a lot of good acting especially by the male lead who, well, you'll see.

Not the best film for it's time; I've not seen anything else from this director, so I can't comment on that aspect of the film....

I had to remind myself several times while watching that this film is almost fifty years old. Elements of the story remind of today, especially the "scams" and the gritty aspect of teenage relationships and sexuality; at the same time I could never suspend my disbelief over the age of the actors -- they in no way resembled a high school girl or a college boy. The editing is a mess; I'm guessing that the director was attempting something artistic. The story, however, is very good. (Unfortunately the translation I watched mistranslated several scenes and so took the punch out from the delivery.)

I could recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see some of the grime of post-war Japan. But if you watch this film leave your modern sensibilities at home: Joan Collins said that she was rapped by the man that later became her husband and that seemingly topsy turvy attitude about sex and relationships is a large part of this film: the definitions were different, sex was novel on the big screen and peoples perspectives were not the same as today and I see no point in complaining about the gaps; I feel it's better to acknowledge them, think about how they might have been viewed and then look past them to the story the director was trying to tell.

The movie is set in a Kendo club at university and has, as it's primary conflicts , the struggles between Kawaza and Kokubun, Kokubun and the world; there are two subplots involving a novice Kendo player and Kokubun; and a woman and Kokubun.

Kokubun represents Japans innocence, its virtue, its purity, its purpose (his name means "a part of the country). He is unknowingly engaged in a battle to be the leader of the kendo club with an equally talented rival, Kazawa, who lacks Kokubu's focus and self possession.

Kendo is the epitome of the traditional Japanese spirit; pay attention to how Western "things" are presented and juxtaposed to traditional values (I'm thinking of a gun, a café, and a dance scene) and compare how the characters are different in the city versus at the temple.

It's a subtle story. Kazawa is unable to discipline himself and Kokubun is unwilling to bend himself to the future or the "ways of the world". How will it play out? Watch it and see: it's a fine film where kendo is a metaphor and the story is chance to think on something more.