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TheDavyStar
Reviews
Love Is Fragile (2016)
*This Review Sponsored by Josh Lynas Films*
While not as good as the Alex Rider: Stormbreaker movie, this is still a perfectly executed film which doubles as a really good advert for the bestselling book Kintsugi: To Repair With Gold. It is truly a great book which doubles as a really good advert for Josh Lynas's debut short Love Is Fragile.
but like real talk its acc a p. awesome movie
Samâ uôzu (2009)
Amazing characters bastardized by illogical and generic action sequences
Summer Wars features LM, the most boring villain in anime thus far. Granted, its backstory is amazing, but, without spoiling anything, it is rendered dull by the fact that it does not have any true motivation behind its atrocities. If you have watched the film, you may understand why it doesn't have any motivation, but what good is a bad guy who's bad for the sake of being bad? And the moment the movie goes into detail as to how its characters fight LM, the movie loses its damn way. Here, the action of countering LM is represented visually, but that also means that the action on screen is all a loose interpretation of what the computer aficionados at home are actually doing. They dedicate so much time and effort into forcing viewers to watch Oz-related action sequences that it drags me away from what made me love the film initially - the awesome characters. I don't know if just 'general hacking' and 'better computers' are really what are needed to best an AI opponent in a fighting game, but yeah...as I said,
Uahan Geojinmal (2014)
A unique film that causes emotions to wildly fluctuate.
Thread of Lies is a weird one. After I finished watching it at the cinema, many people clapped, but afterwards it was apparent that not everyone liked it and some had only clapped out of peer pressure. Why was this? Well, the film begins with the suicide of high-school protagonist Man-ji's younger sister, Cheon-ji. Man-ji begins to wonder what brought her sister to kill herself, and sets out to find out why. Here is where the problem may lie for some: some of the audience thought they were going to watch a murder mystery, but in truth, Thread of Lies is anything but.
It's a heartfelt look at how Cheon-ji's death impacts and changes the people around her, even people who seem to have nothing to do with the actual plot. As Man-ji investigates her sister's death she meets the people whom Cheon-ji surrounded herself with. Despite her already being dead for the majority of the movie, there are numerous flashback scenes of conversations with her and the characters she meets. These flashback scenes subtly establish the personalities of each characters. Each line of dialogue tests how each character reacts to certain stimuli, and it all pulls violently at the heartstrings. The structure of the story is odd and slightly wonky; the titual "thread"" does not appear until the halfway mark, and the ending could be said to be a bit soft. Yet it brilliantly follows the various stages of grief. Surprisingly, not many films about loss actually do this.
There is another reviewer here who gave this film a 4/10, saying it was a complete and utter waste of time (if he is reading: wassup fellow Cinemagic attendee!). He called it a Japanese bootleg version of a movie based on 1000s of stories centering around loss, and that he was sure there was another movie like this in cinemas right now. Boy was I not happy to hear this. Firstly, the whole "Asain bootleg" term is racist and doesn't exemplify that you gave this film a fair review. Secondly, considering that you only guess that there is a film like Thread of Lies in cinemas right now, it is evident that you hadn't watched many, if any, films about loss, and as such this film is apparently similar to what you believe such a film would be like.
This film was also called out for apparently having quirkiness for the sake of it. The truth is, while there some sporadic events that were a bit silly, they never had an impact on the plot. For all you or I know, having not frequently watched Korean cinema, these could merely be tropes found in such films.
Overall, despite having slightly iffy pacing and a small amount of silly moments, Thread of lies is a wonderful reflection on how flawed characters react when having to face their actions. Almost all of the characters are impossible not to love due, because, as can be the way with humans, some are decent people who do bad things.