eplanti Reviews

Gantz (2010)

Great Adaptation of the Anime

[9/10 · 18 February 2011]

I actually don't like film adaptations of anime, there's something crazy about trying to follow a series that's roughly 12 hours in length down to a suitable movie format of 1.5 to 3 hrs. What surprised me about the film adaptation of Gantz, is how well they adapted the idea of getting transported to a room relentlessly by a alien sphere to fight aliens shortly after your own death, instead of simply trying trying to mash the plot into a shorter format. They kept most of the aliens, but changed a lot to the series which is pretty refreshing after it had been out for five years. Also, the film is just as brutal and violent as it is in the anime, maybe even more so with the film's added realism.

The Expendables (2010)

Were any actors expendable?

[5/10 · 21 September 2010]

Well, when I saw the cast I initially went AWESOME, then I remembered what happens when you only have two hours to tell a story and everyone wants just five minutes of dialog... Disaster. It was just a headache seeing how close they came in the first 15 minutes to hooking me, but it just didn't happen, here's what I saw, the first shootout brief negotiation, then all the bad guys get shot, do the good guys do anything totally bad ass? No, they simply go, I'll shoot really unrealistically fast and accurately, that's boring, and how is it gritty if the bad guys don't get a chance to be tormented by the good guys, are the good guys merciful? They could be smart and throw a flash-bang or have the case explode, disappear, bad guys start laughing, then start sniping while something important plays called a SOUNDTRACK, they take cover and get flanked, and it appears more and more dire for the hostage takers, etc, I mean, if the action sequences were intentionally, yet unintentionally (yes, I know that's a contradiction) torturous towards the bad guys, that's the film I want to see irregardless of some plot holes.

The even if you take out the action sequences which are pretty sloppily put together, you have to notice that the dialog actually sets nothing up, Bruce Willis wants the dictator or the guy behind him dead, but I was confused at why Sly and Statham didn't try the first time, Jet Li gets his three minutes explaining everything is harder for him, Couture gets to explain his ears which is pointless, Statham has a girlfriend and beats up some guy. Anyway, all the high profile actors got their screen time, and at that point you have 5-7 protagonists? I lost count at two protagonists. I barely made it through the final action scene, just boring watching all the actors AGAIN, each getting 3 minutes each of fight scenes, they could have at least combined the action so it was team effort, one guy assists the other but so it makes sense, you know, war machine? The bomb planting... did we even need to see the same actor plant 10 bombs each? Could we do one each, and faster so we can see things blow up sooner? To add to that, nobody dies at the end but the bad guys, I don't mean to say that was unrealistic, movies aren't, but I didn't feel that the expendables were quite that bad-ass at the end.

I dunno, I guess the movie's at least OK since it found an audience, maybe the sequel will be better, if there is one, and it's not as passive.

Earth 2100 (2009 TV Movie)

Grossly inaccurate

[4/10 · 30 March 2010]

Apparently someone wrote this to capitalize on the ever present environmentalism groups both nationally and internationally, in the hopes they would buy the DVD's show them at conventions, people's houses and try to force their friends to watch (actually pretty good plan).

However, 2100 makes us think that technology won't even progress beyond gasoline, which is a great fuel at 44,000 KJ/gallon but expensive rather than it's alternatives, coal and electricity. Most likely Li-ion batteries combined with either carbon nanotubes or silicon nanowires will be it's successor within the next decade (not kidding, google them please), Nuclear plants produce no Co2, but the film never mentions them, instead solar panels and wind for all, which i must mention are horribly inefficient at $.15/kwh vs coal's $.04 or nuclear's $.05.

The film takes us on an "emotional" story of how the earth got ruined by man apparently, and can be solved by signing a treaty which fixes everything. Rather than prove any point or focusing on a single issue as noted before, watchers are thrust into heartbroken character after heartbreaking character and forced to watch as poor framework and lackluster performances crawl agonizingly by. Again, a lot of the circumstances just won't happen with overpopulation in the countries noted due to drought, Aids etc. As you can see you get caught between the film's gross inaccuracy and the constant barrage of garbage that is the sidestories.

Additionally, the film never explores any other explanation of why some of the events happen, it simply claims "humans did it", there are very good reasons why quite a few people disagree with some of the proposals, see the topics "turbulent flow" "salt fingering" "shockwaves in a flow" "cloud formation" as all these are necessary to compute a successful climate model. No, I won't explain any of these.

Anyway as a film it's lackluster propaganda, I give it an E for effort.

Generation Kill (2008)

His head just exploded

[9/10 · 20 December 2008]

Amazing show, captured the group mentality and individual aggressiveness of the marines. It doesn't ever choose sides which is a good thing as there's quite a bit of hard lined emotions on both sides. The battle tactics... well they never made much sense, looked like they never expected a lot of resistance in their battles, but it was amazing how they pulled their attacks off without working equipment in some cases. The ending was kind of more open than some of us would hope, with marines walking in on a bad situation and being given orders too late to do night patrols without having to dodge bullets being fired at random, that was a huge problem with toppling a overarmed dictatorship that was assumed we could easily handle.

War, Inc. (2008)

Wohoo, more stale material

[6/10 · 23 September 2008]

I have to admit, this movie does have some funny moments. I actually didn't know Hillary Duff was in it until i read the profile of the movie here at IMDb. Anyway, the movie starts off saying a lot of stuff we know currently goes on in our invasion of iraq, corporations profiteering off of military assets, evil vice president, pointless war that only costs lives with no real benefit we all have heard/know/disagree depending on your knowledge or political orientation. That aside, this movie feels exactly like grosse point blank, just constant alienation for the viewer. A lot of things in the movie could have been done better as well, they could've made jokes about the war simulator room but no, they simply put the characters IN the room, and after that do absolutely no development on such a genius idea. Then, we have Cusack constantly throwing up and explaining things calmly to Tomei and Duff, but not to the viewer, like he should, showing the user exactly what he's planning and why is very important for scenes/jokes to be funny, a lot of the time it felt like it was punchline after punchline without any setup. As for the political satire, it's old, it was funny three years ago when it was scandal after scandal on the iraq war, but now it's more of a bleeding sore, everyone knows about it hates it and doesn't want to be reminded of it. 6 out of 10 because some of the stuff was creative but, it turned into a really boring movie for at least 40% of the movie.

Rise of the Footsoldier (2007)

Rise of the Thug

[6/10 · 22 September 2008]

Basically, the plot goes like this; ordinary thug becomes a paid thug. That's about it, as far as he goes. Honestly i was a bit mislead by the title "RISE OF THE FOOTSOLDIER" i mean i was like wtf, this guy isn't a crime boss, leader, ANYTHING. It reminded me a bit of some crap that some mob guy writes going blah blah blah, killed this dude, then killed this dude brutally, then bought my kids dresses and ur like, dude ur just a punk, someone tell you to do stuff and you do it.

Bleh, but i digress, this movie leaves out a lot of important details which would've added to the story line. Instead of sticking to a single story, they change without any sort of transition to say 2 years down the line, i.e. going from i'm a paid thug who watches drug deals to roid rage(why?), to suddenly you're not a roid rager and now am defending some dude, to oh wait suddenly my friend got arrested and the crisis is over. And every time they transition, they never seem to mention why it's so important for each of these characters to actually DO what they're doing. You can have facts but they need to have detail to them for the audience to logically follow.

Overall, i liked the action of the movie and watching ppl run around like thugs but i was disappointed in the lack of transition between everything.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Outdated

[5/10 · 10 May 2008]

Well, Al Gore definitely landed on his feet, losing the presidential election gaining 30 pounds and growing a beard, or you could say he broke and the environmentalist crowd picked him up.

So, about the movie, I'd say it was informational, I'm not discarding it. But by the time this documentary hit the theatres it was outdated and didn't present enough to convince many climate scientists of it's findings... Quite a bit about the climate is still unknown, so much so that anytime someone says they found "something that could be devastating", another person says, "well, it's actually quite mild", and if i write anything about sunspots, extremely slow ocean currents or how the eddy current viscosity isn't accounted for in the navier stokes equation resulting in a systematic error for every climate model, it would be out of date by the time it's read.

Anyway, a lot of the stuff that's being said here isn't up for debate, because debate won't prove or disprove it.

The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1984)

amazing

[10/10 · 10 May 2008]

First of all, to the people that think that martial arts movies need a spectacular plot that doesn't quite add up, and spectacular visuals like omg the entire scene is RED or no wait now it's GREEN, that's a huge misconception. In a martial arts movie its essential to have amazing fights between characters.

Anyway, this movie is originally called 7 brothers in china, and if you remember Pai Mei, or "really good fighter of the crazy 88" from "Kill Bill" that, is Gordan Liu. The plot is actually pretty good for a action movie, he's ambushed and how to defeat his family is given away before they begin to fight, so his martial arts are now worthless. So with Gordan Liu minus his brothers he goes to find an improved method of fighting, but the shaolin monks he seeks don't take him in since he'll inevitably kill again once he learns the martial art. He actually has to change his mentality to be accepted and learn the art of pole fighting.

Fights are great in this movie, Gordan liu is amazing when he's not fighting anyone, i.e. moving his pole around at the pond, try moving with that kind of power and precision on your own and see how good Mr. Liu is. Also, I really enjoyed the final fight scene, very fluid and well choreographed, most martial arts movies now have maybe one good fight sequence at the beginning and then... well... CGI plays a larger and larger role throughout the movie and the "martial" part of "martial arts" disappears and you're left with an art show.

Cloverfield (2008)

Wow

[9/10 · 3 February 2008]

Well, i was going to give the movie a 5 out of 10 for the ending, however after reading the other reviews i changed my mind. Very creative style of directing, they switch the style of the movie around from a third person perspective back to a first person perspective, but, unlike in Doom or the unheard of and wildly unpopular "a day in the life of.." star trek series they take it up a notch and put it in a familiar handicam tone, so the moviegoer can relate to the action( no sense in bringing a huge moviecamera with you when running right?). Anyway, i liked how the entire movie after the party was a continuous ride through constant obstacles and loss, they try to run, but they lose people, they try going back, more die, they try running again.

The monster too, I loved that it wasn't just a 1 dimensional thing like Godzilla, go in, smash city (rawr!), leave. Instead, it looked a bit more advanced dropping off drones in it's wake, apparently for recon and attack. The monster's movements also, not random at all, I was just sitting there going "omg what tank does this thing not step on?" and jeez, it even took advantage of a cloud of smoke at one point, you'd never see Godzilla do that.

Overall, i'd say it's a pretty good movie, though they could've done better on the ending, I think maybe they would've been better off with the cameraman doing the "outro" than the hero, though if that had happened they would've had the "hero" getting chewed apart pushing the cameraman out of the way, bleh, they should do that for the director's cut. I just say that cuz it's out of character for the guy in question to suddenly turn around and grab the camera and do a confessional when the guy who's main priority it was is gone.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

great movie

[10/10 · 31 January 2008]

This movie was great, I actually saw it in theatres, ordinarily I absolutely hate musicals, especially in movies since once it turns into a musical it's extremely misleading to the tone of the movie. I think that works for Sweeney Todd since whenever they start singing, it's in a horribly ironic way, i.e. we're going to kill everyone, the duet in "joanna" where the sailor is singing for heroics and depp's singing is directed towards revenge. The ending to the movie was very straightforward i felt, it showed exactly how blinded by rage Sweeney Todd was, his wife and daughter were quite literally in front of him the whole time and he didn't notice i.e. he didn't bother to look for them. Overall, i thought that this movie was an incredible interpretation of the play, though it's not for kids, too much blood.

Superman/Doomsday (2007 Video)

worth watching

[9/10 · 9 January 2008]

As mentioned before, a lot of death in the movie not gruesome, but just as an example, if justice league actually killed people, this is what it would look like. Really, it explores the world superman lives in and why he simply doesn't go around actually killing "bad guys" though it was funny to see "replicant superman" wise up to lex luthor and others and start going around killing people, this is just another extension of the death of superman, his body, then his ideals. The movie does present an important point about superman though, if he simply went around eliminating all our potential threats and imposing himself everywhere, however, instead of simply keeping judgement to himself, he leaves it to us(i.e. he doesn't suppress our ideals), so superman helps us in two ways. Overall, i liked the message that the movie presented.

The Great Global Warming Swindle (2007 TV Movie)

Don't discard data because you don't like it

[7/10 · 24 December 2007]

I don't understand why people claim they know something about climate science when they don't understand the complexity of it. The documentary doesn't necessarily say that the climate doesn't change, just the complexities of predicting such a change are largely incomplete and points out many variables that the environmental movement shys away from like decomposing tree leaves giving off more CO2 than any other source. Also, the documentary makes a nice point of saying you can't just blindly discard data because it doesn't say what you like i.e. climate is affected by more than CO2, the data's right in front of you showing an 800 year lag between temperature and CO2. Also, i found the cosmic wind vs solar wind very fascinating, I've done some looking and it's a pretty hot topic in climate science w/ cloud formation... kind of odd that a lot of earth nuts don't mention it cuz it'd disprove the whole CO2 theory.

BTW, i already gave up on the theory of man made climate change when i did a bunch of research on ocean currents and i found it was nowhere to be found in any environmental writing(not that they didn't mention it but instead that they didn't say the inaccuracy of ocean currents since we don't know how to predict them).