valiantvu Reviews

Oblivion (I) (2013)

Minimalist Perfection

[8/10 · 14 December 2013]

Firstly, I acknowledge that there were logical flaws throughout the movie. The largest flaw being that the main lie that Victoria and Jack are operating under is that the Scavs are aliens, so why didn't the Scavs just take off their damn helmets during one of Jack's routine drone fixes and say "Check it out, I'm human." Personally, it doesn't bother me too much if things don't 100% make sense.

Although I was anticipating a twist and knew that there were humans running around on Earth, I still enjoyed the reveal that the human race had almost entirely been wiped out and the Tech harbored aliens. I also appreciated that the film didn't linger on this fact too long to try to evoke more shock from the audience. The movie went on and dropped another surprise on you with a Jack clone. The plot thickened slowly, but steadily and kept me engaged through the end.

Even though there weren't a lot of components to the film (Jack, Victoria, Sally, Scavs, drones, the Tech, sea-harvesting machines), each component had weight and quality.

A couple funny things to think about after you're done watching: 1. Where did Julia get tomato seeds? 2. She got pregnant from one night? (so typical in movies :P) 3. What's going to happen when the 50 other Jack clones on Earth find that Julia is alive? No one wants poor Victoria.

Anyway, I loved Oblivion. The minimalist aesthetic, forward moving suspense, and great CG help make this a great sci-fi film.

Pacific Rim (2013)

Hilarious and Visually Stunning

[7/10 · 14 December 2013]

The overly dramatic acting and dialogue hits you right off the bat in Pacific Rim, but if you can laugh through this then you can enjoy the incredible CG that comprises the bulk of the film. Pure-action-crappy-everything-else films rarely entertain me all the way through, but my eyes couldn't help feasting on the fight scenes between the incredibly detailed Kaiju and the shiny, badass Jaegers.

Each fight takes it up a notch, progressing from the first "fist" fight intro to fights with a frickin awesome sword, cargo ships, flying Kaiju, and so on. One of my favorite scenes was when the Kaiju baby bursts out of its dead mother and then chokes itself on its umbilical cord. I really loved the design of all the Kaijus and how they were each very different. Serious kudos to the CG artists and animators - I especially liked the bioluminescence element they added.

As for the plot and characters, they were totally absurd. The one working defense system that the international community has pooled their resources into has two scientists - TWO - that no provides resources or listens to. Stacker, the commanding officer, only pauses once in a while to yell "SHUT UP!" at them. There was some pretty crappy acting by the two leads, but watching it in conjunction with the absurdity of all of the other characters, dialogue, and plot, just made everything funnier.

If I had watched this in theaters, I probably would've been groaning to myself through the whole film, but being able to joke and laugh through a lot of the scenes, I found myself thoroughly enjoying it and appreciating the aspects that were truly well done.