Finally came around to watch this movie, and while I felt sympathy with some of the side characters (Ash, Meena, Johnny and his father, Rosita), this movie failed to make me sympathize with the main character, who is - you can't make this up - actually introduced as a koala betraying his employees of their living wages(!) to further pursue his dream of running a theatre. Also, it mostly wasn't my kind of music (extra kudos for Ash for sharing my exact sentiment in-movie), and the story was clichéd beyond belief and - for me - all the jokes fell flat (esp. the one with the huge number of piglets that seemed to be a direct ripoff of Zootropolis/Zootopia/Zoomania. Overall, a waste of excellent animation skills on a mediocre movie that could have been so much better with a more diverse musical score and better story.
Reviews
6 Reviews
The Man in the High Castle
(2015–2019)
Dumbed down and cliché-laden, but has potential
18 January 2015
Warning: Spoilers
After watching the pilot, I am somewhat disappointed with what they changed in comparison to the book. in the book, Martin Bormann rules Germany as Hitler's successor, and the power struggle due to his death is not between two, but between several Nazi factions - most notably Heydrich, Goebbels and Göring - whose personalities are described and discussed to a great length, even to the point as to which successing Führer would be least threatening (von Schirach, if I remember correctly - it's been a while since I read it). Wegener/Baynes, IIRC, works for a faction that was (in our timeline) abolished in 1944 in favour of the SS (to be precise, the RSHA) - the Abwehr (military intelligence). The novel illustrates much more vividly that most of the Nazi factions did follow their own agenda and often were rivals or even enemies.
Several of the props are rather good (I can't judge the quality of the Japanese ones, but the German language ones seemed plausible), with one exception: Wegener's/Baynes' ID card is terrible: using a "B" as an upper-case "ß" (a letter that only exists as lower-case in German and would have been replaced with a doubled "S" in all-caps writing) and thus changing the word "groß" (great) into "grob" (rude/crude/rough), and using the colloquial contraction "Nazi" in an official German document.
Several of the props are rather good (I can't judge the quality of the Japanese ones, but the German language ones seemed plausible), with one exception: Wegener's/Baynes' ID card is terrible: using a "B" as an upper-case "ß" (a letter that only exists as lower-case in German and would have been replaced with a doubled "S" in all-caps writing) and thus changing the word "groß" (great) into "grob" (rude/crude/rough), and using the colloquial contraction "Nazi" in an official German document.
Conference of Animals
(2010)
Heavy-handed and inconsistent
27 January 2014
Despite trying with some cheap jokes, the overall tone of this movie is rather dark, but what really bothers me is the inconsistency of the story and the overabundance of factual errors and improbabilities, in this movie we have African buffaloes with fur, upper incisors and (in the German dub) a Spanish accent, saltwater fish in a large open-top tank in either Botswana, Namibia or Angola (evaporation apparently being a non-issue for these tanks), animals from all over the globe who arrive in these landlocked regions after leaving a bathtub they used to cross the oceans, a biplane with an ATGM launcher, etc.. The worst of all these factual errors, IMHO, are the vegetarian lion - the rest of the carnivorous protagonists don't seem to eat anything either - and the dam closing in all water (instead of letting through roughly the same amount as before since otherwise it would simply spill over), because these are obvious plot devices to indoctrinate children with the political messages of this movie (meat is bad, mankind is evil).
Hotel Transylvania
(2012)
So much wasted potential...
12 May 2013
Warning: Spoilers
This was among the animated movies I was most disappointed with after watching (I would rate it between the stinker "Cars" and the mediocre "ParaNorman"), and even more so due to the wasted potential.
The setting had everything necessary for a great comedy, they even had very funny moments (the lame "party" organized by Dracula, including the slowest game of Bingo I have ever seen, the mayhem caused by the werewolf cubs, Wayne's sleeplessness and of course Winnie the werewolf toddler's sniffing talents - in fact most of the good scenes involved the werewolves), but all was ruined to me by the totally out-of-place music, the unlikeable deadhead "hero" Johnny, the stomach-turning family drama (overprotective father, teenage daughter, argh!) and of course by that "bleh, bleh, bleh" running "gag".
What this movie does have - in it's favour - is a cutesy heroine (even in her bat form), some likable sidekicks (the mummy and Frankenstein's monster, e.g.), lots and lots of monsters (most of whom did not get enough screen time) and a snide joke on the "Twilight" movies.
The setting had everything necessary for a great comedy, they even had very funny moments (the lame "party" organized by Dracula, including the slowest game of Bingo I have ever seen, the mayhem caused by the werewolf cubs, Wayne's sleeplessness and of course Winnie the werewolf toddler's sniffing talents - in fact most of the good scenes involved the werewolves), but all was ruined to me by the totally out-of-place music, the unlikeable deadhead "hero" Johnny, the stomach-turning family drama (overprotective father, teenage daughter, argh!) and of course by that "bleh, bleh, bleh" running "gag".
What this movie does have - in it's favour - is a cutesy heroine (even in her bat form), some likable sidekicks (the mummy and Frankenstein's monster, e.g.), lots and lots of monsters (most of whom did not get enough screen time) and a snide joke on the "Twilight" movies.
The Cove
(2009)
The Western culture's sacred cows or: sharks' lacking smile
8 September 2010
I watched this movie some weeks ago on DVD and it took me some time to make up my mind on it, at it covers quite an important issue but is so seriously flawed that I doubt it will have any impact.
The first major flaw is mentioned in the movie itself: dolphins do not smile, in fact they lack any means of facial expression as much as cows or sharks - two species that repeatedly sprang to my mind while watching. Also, that bulbous thing on their foreheads is not their skull containing their brain, it's the melon, a part of their echolocation system. Yet throughout the movie and despite the fact that dolphins are as alien to us as cows and sharks, they were attributed human characteristics to a ridiculous extent, losing any objectivity in the process.
The second flaw is best unveiled by replacing the dolphins with cows and sharks, and have a thorough look on our own, Western culture. It may be that the numbers of dolphins killed in Taiji are as high as 23,000, but cows and sharks killed both account for hundred millions each and every year. Any film team visiting Europe and the Americas will easily be able to gain footage of similarly shocking atrocities against cattle and sharks as have been depicted against dolphins in this movie - where are the mass protests against these? Rodeos "only" take place in $STATE? Bullfights "only" in Spain and South America? "Sport" fishing "only" off $STATEs coasts? Guess what: none of these places is nearly as remote as Taiji, yet there is no Oscar winning movie to feature secretly filmed ranches and slaughterhouses in the USA or Europe (and even in my home area there have been incidents when escaped cattle was shot down by the police, most of the time the cops needing several minutes to kill, pumping dozens of bullets into the animals' bodies - now THAT would be great footage for - say - an Indian Ric O'Barry counterpart, wouldn't it?).
Yes, it is important to slow down the process of human-induced extinction, yes, dolphins are worth saving, yes, the mercury issue is important, but sorry, no, I don't consider dolphins to be more equal than other animals based on their presumed intelligence.
Thorsten
The first major flaw is mentioned in the movie itself: dolphins do not smile, in fact they lack any means of facial expression as much as cows or sharks - two species that repeatedly sprang to my mind while watching. Also, that bulbous thing on their foreheads is not their skull containing their brain, it's the melon, a part of their echolocation system. Yet throughout the movie and despite the fact that dolphins are as alien to us as cows and sharks, they were attributed human characteristics to a ridiculous extent, losing any objectivity in the process.
The second flaw is best unveiled by replacing the dolphins with cows and sharks, and have a thorough look on our own, Western culture. It may be that the numbers of dolphins killed in Taiji are as high as 23,000, but cows and sharks killed both account for hundred millions each and every year. Any film team visiting Europe and the Americas will easily be able to gain footage of similarly shocking atrocities against cattle and sharks as have been depicted against dolphins in this movie - where are the mass protests against these? Rodeos "only" take place in $STATE? Bullfights "only" in Spain and South America? "Sport" fishing "only" off $STATEs coasts? Guess what: none of these places is nearly as remote as Taiji, yet there is no Oscar winning movie to feature secretly filmed ranches and slaughterhouses in the USA or Europe (and even in my home area there have been incidents when escaped cattle was shot down by the police, most of the time the cops needing several minutes to kill, pumping dozens of bullets into the animals' bodies - now THAT would be great footage for - say - an Indian Ric O'Barry counterpart, wouldn't it?).
Yes, it is important to slow down the process of human-induced extinction, yes, dolphins are worth saving, yes, the mercury issue is important, but sorry, no, I don't consider dolphins to be more equal than other animals based on their presumed intelligence.
Thorsten
Sicko
(2007)
Hope I will never have to live in the U.S.
12 October 2007
This is one of the films after which people from all over the world - even from several developing countries - will be glad not to live in the United States. I, personally, would be dead by now, as I suffered a serious heart condition in 2003.
While all health care systems based on universal solidarity have their weaknesses and problems (and Germany's system is certainly not on par with that of France, historically speaking we were not at all times a well-governed country), the shown inhumanity and outright evilness of purely profit-oriented health insurance companies who literally have to be dragged to court in order to make them fulfill their contracts is something that will not happen in any other civilized country.
And to those who think that it is "socialist" or "communist" to have such a system: in Germany, health insurance was introduced in 1883 by Otto von Bismarck, who hardly falls under that category. Just because socialist countries have universal health care, this doesn't make it a socialist idea - Michael Moore did very right to point out that firefighters and police are also universally serving and don't ask for your insurance or money before giving you help.
Thorsten
While all health care systems based on universal solidarity have their weaknesses and problems (and Germany's system is certainly not on par with that of France, historically speaking we were not at all times a well-governed country), the shown inhumanity and outright evilness of purely profit-oriented health insurance companies who literally have to be dragged to court in order to make them fulfill their contracts is something that will not happen in any other civilized country.
And to those who think that it is "socialist" or "communist" to have such a system: in Germany, health insurance was introduced in 1883 by Otto von Bismarck, who hardly falls under that category. Just because socialist countries have universal health care, this doesn't make it a socialist idea - Michael Moore did very right to point out that firefighters and police are also universally serving and don't ask for your insurance or money before giving you help.
Thorsten
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