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ariclemont
Reviews
Pâfekuto burû (1997)
I couldn't sleep after watching this. AMAZING!
Perfect blue is a (1997) animated film based on the book "Perfect Blue: A complete metamorphosis by Yoshikazu Takeuchi. It's directed by Satoshi Kon. It stars Junko Iwao as Mima Kirigoe, a former J-pop star becoming an actor.
Very soon she finds out. That she's being stalked by someone when she finds out that someone has made a website named after her and is claiming to be her, chronicling her daily life. Almost to a T. On top of that she begins to go through an identity crisis, believing she made the wrong decision. This crisis gets worse when she has to be in a rape scene for a movie in order to find more work and eventually does...I'll describe it as pictures you can't show to underage people. The fact that Gkids distributed the latest physical release baffles me.
At the beginning of the movie we are given clear distinctions between Mima's public life and her private life. Who she is as a celebrity and who she is as an ordinary person. That line slowly fades away and it becomes increasingly harder for us to distinguish one from the other. You won't be able to tell which it is until after each scene ends.
The animation is amazing btw. Just want to get that out of the way.
This film drops the traditional highly stylized look of most anime at the time for a realistic look. Most of the Japanese citizens don't look like someone who will show up on a fancy magazine about beauty. Instead they look like ordinary people. The exceptions are actors and pop stars. The perfect celebrities that we often forget have lives of their own as we have paparazzi stalking them at every waking moment. If any of this is sounding like a certain movie starring Natalie Portman about a balle dancer. That's because Darren Aronofsky bought the rights to make an American adaptation but all he's done with the rights is recreate an out-of-context shot in Requim for a Dream, and the concept of someone's personal and public lives merging as she struggles to distinguish fantasy and reality.
I highly. HIGHLY recommend you experience this movie. 10/10.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)
"Record this moment. It started here."
Watched this in 60fps.
Based on the book by Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's long halftime walk is a 2016 movie by director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Life of Pi, Hulk).
It stars...lots of actors I lost track of them. It's about a Army soldier Billy Lynn who after he gets caught on camera going against orders to save his Sergeant, he hand his squad are then given the honor returning to America for an appearance at a football game. During this game Lynn finds love, has frequent flashbacks to his time in Iraq, and considers faking an illness or injury so he can get an honorable discharge. The film touches on subject matter like PTSD, struggling to adjust to normal life after time overseas as a soldier, and Hollywood's lack of wanting to portray accuracy of military soldiers in favor of something more dramatic. Ironic.
This review might be biased since I come from a military family, but I think that's who the target audience is. People in the military and their families.
This is the first time I've seen a movie in HFR (high frame rate). After watching the movie I watched a trailer that was at 24fps. And I thought it looked better, then I asked myself why I thought it looked better. My reason was that it looked more cinematic, more...dramatic. If you want to watch this movie, I recommend watching it in 60fps rather than 24.
The King's Daughter (2022)
The French are English?
The girl is the daughter of the king, and it's supposed to be a secret, why? I dunno, I missed that part. Not a single scene lasts more than a minute, there's a love triangle (I think) that serves no purpose at all, there's a Mermaid in the movie because...I have no freaking clue! The slow motion shots in this movie look like they belong in a Hotel commercial. Every VFX shot of the Mermaid is 3 different shots that they re use for reasons I can't fathom because this movie costs $40mil. Every green screen in this movie looks worse than the CW. No, seriously. Half the characters are nothing more than plot devices. Two of the characters I thought were the same dude for a while. I couldn't tell who was the main character, the King, or his daughter. I also couldn't remember anyone's name because everything goes by so fast that my head hurts. Nothing sits for a moment. It's an hour and thirty minutes, but it feels like a twenty episode period drama sped up for a recap. There's a set in the movie that looks like it belongs in a stage play. It didn't look remotely real. There's a scene where two guys are trying to shoot eachother and I wasn't yawning, nor was I on the edge of my seat...I was laughing at how bad it looked. And somehow, even though the gun was at point blank, aiming at the guy who no longer had a gun. The guy who fired the gun...got hit with the bullet. That makes NO SENSE!!! THE MOVIE IS SET IN FRANCE, YET EVERYONE, AND I MEAN E V E R Y O N E HAS AN ENGLISH ACCENT!!! IT'S LIKE TELLING THE STORY OF JESUS AND EVERYONE HAS AN ENGLISH ACCENT!!! WHICH HAS ACTUALLY WHAT EVERYONE HAS BEEN DOING BEFORE DALLAS JENKINS CAME IN AND, sorry off topic. *exhales* This movie sucks.
Chôjikû Yôsai Macross: Ai Oboeteimasuka (1984)
Do You Remember Love?
Macross: DYRL is my favorite movie of all time. One thing I remember hearing about people's thoughts about anime is that Western animation is better because it's at 24 frames per second...like framer-rate automatically determines quality. I'd pick frames that all look good over cheap looking frames that move like a bouncing silly putty any day.
I've gone on to my friends how much they need to watch it and why. The best I could do to describe it is Top Gun in outer space with giant aliens and our best weapon is a Japanese pop star singing a cheesy love song. That description doesn't do this movie any justice. But I'm not good at describing other people's stuff. The characters are more engaging than whatever Disney had even pulled out at that time. And the animation I'd argue is better too. Because it wouldn't matter how the frames looked separated, because they all look good. It sometimes feels like it moves like a live-action blockbuster even though it's animated. The story is amazing the action is spectacular. I encourage everyone to recommend this to anyone and everyone.
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Cowboys, cowboys, and...cowboys. YEEHAW!!!
The Magnificent Seven (2016) Directed by Antoine Fuqua is an exciting fun thrill. Though the interior lighting can make it difficult to tell what's going on for a scene or two, most of this movie is beautifully shot and well acted. All you have to do is take it for what it is. A fun movie. ENJOY!!!