20130804_b: Horror Movie Review--Future World

Future World: City of Mass Destruction

1. American live action theatrical film, rotoscoped to resemble animation, coupled with plenty of green screen for backgrounds and special effects.  Released in 2012, billed as a 'Thriller,' 120 minutes in length.
2. Set in the year 3000 after World War VI, the 'fourth apocalypse.'  The movie has some recognizable components.  I picked up their titles from the credits.
3. 'The Day Lady Killed': an impressively ugly woman fighter takes on the emperor's minions in the street and eventually loses.  She is forced to fight in an arena, defeats the meanest gladiator, then kills the emperor.  The number of violations of physical laws depicted runs into the dozens.
4. 'Here Comes the Fire': a seedy late middle-aged guy (Terrance) strolls through an even seedier part of town.  He picks up a job from his friend Jackson to aid in the next takeover of government.  Terrance switches sides (as if he had one), then betrays both factions.  Nice.  Fitting for the piece.
5. 'Race to the Balder': two idiots entertain themselves with future recreational substances.
6. 'Enter the Krennons': (about half the film's total time) the planet's atmosphere is going south, to reach the end of its ability to sustain human life in 3 years, 4 months, 29 days.  Operation Exodus VI ensues.  The digging involved awakens a powerful demon.  The DeVoz rulers seek aid from past defeated enemies, the Krennons, of which there are two left.  Right.  Two defeated enemy individuals can do what armies cannot?
7. Story arc 5: someone returns from death to retake the city.  The surviving Krennon prepares herself to battle this entity after it kills the DeVoz ruler.  Looks like an invite to a sequel.
8. From FlimFlam Films.  Clearly, these folks had no oversight from investment bankers.
9. What's missing?  Characters worth following.  Logic.  A single normal human face.  Anything that was in focus.
10. One star of five.  The +1 is for the credits, which contained the only humor in the film and the only good sound.  The rest of the movie was a zero.  20130927: four blackholes for cinematography, acting, screenplay, SFX.

Cinematography: 1/10
One of the worst jobs I've seen in years.  As per IMDB, 'A cutting edge rotoscoped feature in the style of Ralph Bakshi's Heavy Metal...' but without Bakshi's sense of style.  (That should be Heavy Traffic, by the way.)  Dark, dismal, out of focus, jumpy, beyond belief ugly/boring.  Continuity, depth of field, framing?  Forget those.

Sound: 5/10
Varies between annoying and really annoying.  During the credits, the music was rather nice, and there was relief from the dialog not matching facial movements.

Screenplay: 1/10
Looks like improvisation in front of green screen pasted together later in post.

Acting: 0/10
Seemed to be absent.  Costumes are absurd.  Body language is as muted and distorted as the rest of this mess.  The spoken word seems (at least) half a second or so out of synch with lip movement.

SFX: 1/10
Absurd and annoying, most of it on par with bad 1970's effects.  I think many pre-teens could do better at CGI.

20130804: Anime Series Review--Hakkenden

Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East

1. Japanese anime series, 24 minute format, premiered 20130105.  Hulu+ streamed this in 'High' quality.  The episodes are sub-titled; spoken language is Japanese.  Supernatural goings on are par for the course during the series, as are fighting and confrontations.  Church property and church personnel are prominent in the series; so are excessive wealth, entrenched poverty, and references to plague.  The historical era seems on the feudal side.  There is no wide use of electricity or modern medicine, but I did see a revolver and an old style automobile.  So there are some industrial era elements.  Horses are still ridden.
2. The first series ran 13 episodes.  A second arc is to premiere in the summer of 2013.
3. According to the IMDB stub initial report this is the beginning of a remake of 108 episodes of a series that started in 1993.  The writer of the stub was considerably unhappy about the remake.
4. The current review is about the first arc of the 2013 version.  I have not seen the 1993 epic.  Even so, I would say that the 2013 version has more than enough 'Beautiful Men waving their swords' for my taste.  If I can get access to it, I'll attempt the 108 episode version from 1993, since it sounds more interesting.  But 108 episodes?  Hope it's good.
5. The story concerns eight half brothers each of whom hold a special bead with a word written inside it, such as 'devotion,' 'duty,' and so on.  These are about the size of marbles, are clear, and have different colours.  The brothers have been scattered to the winds by events in the past.  In the first 13 episode arc, they start to come together again.   There seems to be some importance to reuniting the beads as well as the brothers.
6. Many of the principal characters have losses to deal with, such as memory loss, loss of the ability to age, loss of half of one's soul, the loss of one's parents and friends, and so on.
7. The first 13 episodes seem devoted to character introduction, drawing together the 8 brothers, and filling in back story.  Wikipedia does a reasonable job summarizing episodes.
8. Taking this context forward in the next 13 episodes is still reasonably interesting, and might resolve some of my objections to the writing so far.
9. I rate the series as three stars of five for the first arc of 13 episodes.

One line summary: First 13 episodes of the remake of the 1993 fantasy classic.

Art: 9/10 was often excellent, but was sometimes pedestrian.

Sound: 8/10 was a plus for the most part.

Subtitles: 7/10 may have been a little off, judging from actions versus words in English.

Characterization: 5/10 left me a bit cold.  What do the characters remember?  This changes from one moment to the next, and from one lie to the next.

Screenplay: 5/10 too many flashbacks, too many unexplained characters and situations.

20130802_c: Horror Film Review--Naked Fear

Naked Fear

1. American live action theatrical film, 108 minutes, rated R, released in 2007.
2. Stars Danielle DeLuca (Diana, the protagonist), Joe Montegna (the corrupt local sheriff).
3. IMDB gave it 5.3/10.0 from 1,191 users.
4. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 'no reviews yet', with 28% favourable audience ratings from 313 users.
5. Diana is a young (23), pretty, broke, exotic dancer from Texas who arrives in the small New Mexico town of Santa Paula already owing money.  She needs to get out from under her debt to the dirt bag who paid her way into town.
6. As a back story, there's a new deputy in town (Dwight) who got kicked out of his last job for investigating the mayor in his previous town.  He takes an interest in all the dancers at 'Cheeks' (strip bar on Indian land) who have gone missing.  One of the older dancers also shows an interest.  Joe Mantegna's character Tom is the sheriff around town, and he helps keep all the bad things in town going the way they are.
7. In order to get money to leave Cheeks, Diana tries performing in full nudity.  That gets her a bit of money, but also gets the club owner to inform her that it's illegal and to quit.  On Diana's first attempt at prostitution, she gets kidnapped.  She wakes up naked in the middle of nowhere.  That is the setting for most of the film.
8. The kidnapper/hunter (Colin) succeeds for a while, but Diana strikes back.  Soon she gets some assistance from a man and his too young sons.  Dwight found some weak evidence against Colin, but the Sheriff quashes Dwight's efforts.  Colin catches up with Diana, and things get much worse.
9. The cinematography is wonderful, and many of the shots of the scenery are gorgeous.
10. The sound is also excellent.
11. The screenplay was competent, and the direction good enough that the story moved right along.
12. Danielle DeLuca is a better actress than I expected, and was interested to find that she has a BA in Theatre and Dance from UT Austin.  However, the many minutes of well-lit full frontal nudity takes away from that, as did the salacious content of the film (stripping, drug use, prostitution, kidnapping, hunting of human quarry, murder).
13. Joe Mantegna has been in some cheesy movies in his career, and this is definitely one of them.  In the television series Criminal Minds, he almost always takes the higher moral ground.  This was a bit of a shock to see him return to his older form.
14. Most of the other actors were between competent and too bland.
15. In honor of the unexpected Hollywood ending, I give this one four of five stars.

20130802_b: Horror Film Review--Shutter (Thailand)

Shutter

1. Context
1. Hulu had the 2004 version, not the 2008 version with Joshua Jackson.
2. Produced in Thailand, live action theatrical film, 97 minutes, horror, mystery.
3. IMDB rated this one at  7.0/10.0 aggregate from ratings of 21,992 users.
4. Rotten Tomatoes rated it at 56%, 'no consensus yet.'
5. The spoken word is in Thai, with English subtitles.  Hulu streamed the film in 'high' quality.


2. Initial tableaux
1. Early in the film, Jane and Tun drive home from a drinking bout with some of his friends.  The road is mostly empty.  When Jane takes her eyes off the road for a few seconds, she runs over a woman.  When a truck approaches, Tun convinces Jane to drive off.
2. It would seem that was their first mistake.
3. Afterwards, Tun's photos tend to have light streaks in them.  Both of them start to have horrifying dreams.  They start to get more information.  They check where the accident occurred; apparently there was no accident.  They check the local expert on photography, who claims it's just double exposure, and shows Tun similar effects in his own photos.  They push on to a magazine that specialises in 'supernatural' ghost images.  The editor explains how most of the fakes are made.  Then he recommends that they try to check using a Polaroid camera, which might be harder to create fakes with.  As they continue to investigate, they keep picking up ghostly images, mirages, and dreams.


3. Conflicts, resolution
1. By half way through the film, three of the men who were at the initial drinking party have committed suicide.  The mystery deepens.  Jane finds a photo of Tun with an earlier lover, Natre.  Jane pries the details out of him.  The details are not pretty, involve the dead men and Natre, and provide a start for resolving the mystery.
2. They visit Natre's mother, who keeps Natre's corpse in her old bedroom.  They convince the mother to hold a formal funeral for her.  That was not enough to bring peace to the principal characters.
3. A new level of weirdness starts around 70 minutes into the film.  Tun's torment accelerates.  Natre is cremated, and that seems to end the problems.  Later, Jane gets back some new photo prints, including ghost images, and more old truths surface.
4. Tun does not escape the consequences of past actions after all.


4. I rate this one as 8/10.
1. The camera work was a bit fuzzy 7/10
2. sound was good 8/10
3. the acting fine 9/10
4. the screenplay was good: bringing the mystery home was well done. 10/10
5. One line summary: Ghost contacts guilty parties through photography.

20130802_a: Horror Film Review--Daylight Fades

Daylight Fades

1. Released in 2010, live action theatrical release; horror genre; 100 minutes.
2. Rotten Tomatoes said 'No Reviews Yet..', and 50% approval from 34 users.
3. IMDB gave it 3.8/10.0 for 127 users; imdb site
4. So, the film was not widely attended.  Hulu+ streamed the film in HD.
5. Screenplay was between awkward and useless.  The density of cliches is rather high.  The acting tends to be wooden.
6. Cinematography was better.  There is usually enough light.  Focus and framing are good even in low light, and periods of murkiness and jerky camera motion are few and far between.  As with many vampire films, the scenes were often dark.  That's not a plus for me.
7. Sound was OK.  The foley was not obnoxious, and the incidental music was suitable rather than discordant.  The sound was more of a nothing than an asset.
8. At 20 minutes into the movie, the setup is fairly complete.  A young man (Johnny) and a young woman (Elizabeth) get romantically involved.  He is more serious about it, while she is more casual.  They break up over this.  Immediately thereafter, he becomes the main victim in a car accident, and seems highly likely to die from internal bleeding.  Then she's heart broken.
9. This film needed ten times the budget on screenplay, and five times the budget on actors.  The motivations for the performances of the actors eludes me too often.
10. 'What do you mean, you changed me?'  Before dying, Johnny gets turned by the vampire Seth.
11. At 40 minutes in, the challenges of vampire life settle in for Johnny.  Eating mammals other than humans was not too much of a challenge, but dealing with one's old friends is more problematic.  Not surprisingly, there are human deaths and coverups.  Johnny does not immediately know what to do with his increased strength and speed.
12. An hour in, Johnny is disillusioned by Seth, and getting some tutelage from Raven, a vampire senior to Seth.  Eighty minutes in, Johnny's relationship with Raven has gone bad, and Seth's attempt at rapprochement with Elizabeth's mother has failed.
13. Johnny and Seth deal with (hm) Elizabeth wanting to be turned.
14. The count of 'I can't do this' is pretty high.  After a while, it just becomes repetitive whining.  Again, the main faults here are the sad writing, and the green state of the actors.
15. Were there any characters that I cared about?  No.  Was there anything unexpected?  Not really.  Were there many 'of course' moments?  Yes.  Would I recommend this to anyone?  I would recommend this one only to those who relish start to finish badness.
16. One star of five, in honor of the cinematography and the sound, even though those were lackluster.  20130927: two blackholes for acting and screenplay.

Scores:

1. Cinematography: 5/10 Good enough.


2. Sound: 5/10 The actors were adequately miked, but the sound levels still tended to be low.


3. Acting: 2/10 The actor who plays the protagonist was particularly bad, and none of the others were that interesting.


4. Screenplay: 1/10  Slow, non-engaging, disappointing ending.

20130730_b: five mini-reviews

A. Beautiful Girls

1. Released in 1996, 7.1/10.0 for 21,130 users on IMDB, 78% on Rotten Tomatoes.
2. American theatrical film, rated R, 110 minutes, live action, competent color cinematography.
3. Stars Timothy Hutton, Annabeth Gish, Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Noah Emmerich, Lauren Holly, Martha Plimpton, Natalie Portman, Mira Sorvino.
4. Yet another ten year reunion picture, with highlights on broken dreams, stunted careers, and failure to launch.  The men are snafu, and women seem not to be getting what they might get in a richer environment.
5. The sweet chemistry of the scenes between actors Timothy Hutton and Natalie Portman eclipse almost everything else in the film, which is wall-to-wall malaise.  Their age difference (28 for him, 13 for her) is just too great.  However, it did remind me of Parrish (1961), where she (Paige Raike) was 15, he (Parrish McLean) was 18.  He joined the Navy, she finished high school.  Then they got together.  In contrast, I could not figure out any way for the Natalie-Timothy thing to work out.
6. I liked the actors on the whole.  The script seemed a bit diffuse, and the direction weak.
7. Three stars of five.

B. Occult Academy.

1. Japanese anime, released in 2010, 7.0/10.0 on IMDB from 53 users, 24 minute episodes.
2. The first two episodes were enjoyable; I rated them four of five stars.
3. Episode three was two stars of five, next to useless, and I am now stalled on finishing the series.

C. Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East

1. Japanese anime, serial episodes, premiered January 5, 2013; first season ended March 30, 2013.  Subtitles; no dubbing.  No IMDB entry.  Wikipedia: hakkenden
2. Episode 1: Borders
3. Dysfunctional families.  Dark, magical forests.  Talking birds and toads.  Children who cannot age physically. 
4. Three stars of five.  I'll try the second episode.

D. Kimikiss: Pure Rouge

1. Japanese anime, serial episodes, premiered October 2007, ended March 2008.  Subtitles; no dubbing.  Wikipedia: Kimikiss
2. Pleasant.  Art is OK.  Mostly about high school relationships, not sci-fi, horror, or magic.  That's refreshing.
3. Might watch the second episode.
4. Four stars of five.

E. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

1. Japanese anime, feature length.   101 minutes, released 2005.  IMDB gave it 7.2/10.0 from 39,249 users.  Rotten Tomatoes gave it 33%.
2. It's ugly.  Very.  Enormous, incredibly stupidly designed motorcycles are involved.  This is always a bad sign.  The 3-d modelling was, well, 2005.  That is, about as realistic as a plastic doll.
3. Another huge bad sign was the extra long introduction where the narrator was a child.
4. The background music was ridiculously bad.
5. The base level of graphical detail varies (all too frequently) from photographic realism to third rate animation art that one might see in the seventies.  The ongoing jarring visual discontinuities were dismaying at best.
6. The primary battle with a giant monster was right out of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.  The monster's existence made no sense, its ability to function was laughable, and its defeat was even less believable than the other parts.  How could anyone ask for less?
7. In another similarity with MMPR, motorcycles just be stupid...the way they are portrayed here.  Compare that with expertise with real motorcycles, say Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.
8. The sword battles were beneath pitiful.
9. Some of the final music was so inappropriate that I'd have to say this is the worst anime I've ever seen.
10. One star of five.  It deserved much less.

20130730: Documentary Review--The Occult

The Occult: The truth behind the word (2010)

1. Released 2010, 75 minutes, poster-style illustrations, plus bad videos, plus voice-over paired with stock footage.
2. No rating yet on IMDB; on Rotten Tomatoes, 'no reviews yet' and 0% liked it.
3. So, almost no one has seen it.
4. The overbearing background music was almost too much by itself.  The blaring narration was no gift either.  Turning down my audio to its next to lowest setting almost fixed it.  Interviews with 'experts' were done in video that was low-lit, low contrast, soft focus, or out of focus.  The sound on the videos is terrible; words and lip movements lag badly.  In other words, the cinematic fundamentals are very weak.
5. The film certainly has its axes to grind.  Animism and shamans are good, as are pantheism and magicians.  Hallucinogens are illuminating and empowering.  All monotheism is 'selfish', particularly the invasive and dictatorial Roman Catholic Church.  The modern inheritors of RCC rule, namely large governments, corporations, and the advertising industry are just as bad as the RCC.  Modern accomplishments (computers, communications, relative wealth) are just tools for these groups.
6. The overview of all human history was as dreary as any I've watched.  The parallel visuals were loosely connected at best.
7. As for progression [animism ==> pantheism] and the rise of magicians and shamans, one might be better served by visits to the library, or to searches on the Internet.  The combat between pantheism/monotheism is better documented in the same places.
8. The 'parallels' presented between magicians and advertising agencies were amusing.
9. The music was terrible.
10. The worst part was that the screenplay for the movie could have been written by any university sophomore who had taken first year religion, first year psychology, and had read news on the Internet for a year or so in their late teen years.
11. One star of five for the discussion of magicians and modern advertisers, plus the often repeated refrain that the RCC has authored some of the world's worst dark magic tomes.  20130927: four blackholes for cinematography, screenplay, sound, and SFX.
12. This was a long 75 minutes.
13. I would not recommend this film to any one for any reason.
14. The music was terrible.

Cinematography: 2/10 Truly poor, especially the long interviews with the occult experts.

Sound: 0/10 Lots of variation.  The worst for the spoken word was in the interviews.  The use of music was off-putting at best.

20130729: Documentary review--Conquering the World

A. (hulu+) Richard Parks: Conquering the World

1. Former rugby player Richard Parks takes on the 7-3-7 challenge: climb the tallest peaks on the 7 continents, reach the 3 poles (south, north, highest) of the world, and do it in under 7 months.
2. This was an amazingly good documentary film.
3. There was a narrator whose script was not too much, not too little, and always to the point.  Bravo.  I usually do not like narration.
4. The camera work was exquisite, especially from the mighty peaks.  The footage of ascents and descents was better than I expected.
5. The sound was quite well done, particularly the interviews.  The incidental music was a plus.  I usually dislike incidental music, since it often distracts from the exposition.
6. The financing and impetus for taking the challenge was well explained.  All through the detailing of the six months, twelve days of meeting the challenge, the importance of the logistical support teams was made clear.
7. Taking care of injuries and travel obstacles was handled well.
8. The scripting of what Richard Parks had to say in studio concerning the different parts of the film was good in terms of exposition and emotional content for the long, hard effort.
9. I rated this film five stars of five on Hulu+.

Cinematography: 10/10 Beautiful.  Excellent framing, depth of field, sufficient lighting.

Sound: 10/10 Consistently good.

Screenplay: 10/10  Quite well-organized.

20130727

A. (hulu+) Lunopolis.

1. Boring beyond belief.  Bad camera work, incoherent plot, non-actors.  It is billed as a documentary, as in documentary style, but this horrid fiasco had zero basis in facts.
2. The titles of the 'professors' were laughable as were the lies the unskilled actors told.  The long duration of voice added over hand-scribbled poster art was cheap and uninspiring.  The occasional music was ridiculously inappropriate.
3. Released in 2009, 98 minutes.  Hulu claimed it was delivering HD, but the wretched camera work checkmated that.  IMDB gave it 6.4/10.0 based on 552 user ratings.  Rotten Tomatoes gave it 72% (audience), or 3.7/5.0.  These are high numbers.  Perhaps almost all viewers were true believers before hand.  This was indeed a very bad film.
4. I gave it one star of five on Hulu+.
5. I would recommend this mess to no one.

B. (hulu+)  Primeval: New World

1. (continuing) Have watched episodes through number 7.
2. Still like it quite a bit, usually four stars of five.

C.  (hulu+) Trailer for 47 Ronin

1. Movies can survive bad trailers, I suppose.
2. Judging from this trailer, I will not watch the movie.  A rag-tag group of 47 taking on a huge army with supernatural elements does not have much of a chance; less than the Greek side in the film 300.  I saw no one to root for.  Without engaging characters, what is left?  The effects were not all that good, and the plot absurd.
3. For the trailer, one star of five.

D. (hulu+) Naked States.

1. 74 minutes, released in 2000; IMDB gave it 6.0/10.0 based on input from 408 users.  Rotten Tomatoes gave it 45%, 3.2 of 5.0 from audiences.  There was not enough critical input for the usual percentage; was given 'no score yet.'
2. The film consistently delivered poor photography in terms of technique, both in video and in stills.  All his work is either blurred or smudged or badly lit.  The star's assertion that only ugly backgrounds should be used was pretentious at best.  The stills and videos seldom have any interesting background.  The film did not seem to document much at all, save for the photographer's whining about his subjects, the press, and anything that went wrong recently.
3. Hulu+ claimed it was delivering HD, but the small screen size and graininess belied this.  The sometimes jarring background music did not help; neither did the star's high nasal voice and whiny attitude.
4. The main person interviewed was the photographer, who was shallow and boring.  His attempts to get good press were painfully childish.  Insulting the editor you are talking to in order to get visibility seems beyond stupid.  Some of the subjects of his nude photography were more interesting, but their interviews were much shorter, typically less than one minute.
5. My favorite moment was when it seemed like the star might get the crap beaten out of him by the bikers in South Dakota.  He was that irritating.  May I never see another still of 'apocalyptic formation' again.  His level of pretense was huge.
6. One star of five.  Wished I had not seen it, and would recommend it to no one.

20130713: 5 mini reviews

A. (netflix) Crawlspace, 2011, 86 minutes, live action theatrical film

1. Amber Clayton, Ditch Davey, Peta Sergeant
2. Mystery, Science Fiction, conspiracy, horror, suspense, psychological tomfoolery.
3. Set in Australia; dangerous experimentation done at a secret laboratory.  Elite military unit is sent in to sort things out.
4. IMDB rated it 4.5/10.0; Rotten Tomatoes rated it 23%.
5. Rated it three stars of five.  Some parts were rather nice, others too murky.

B.  (hulu+) Darker Than Black, anime episodic series, science fiction, crime procedural.

1. Season 1, 26 episodes; Season 2, 12 episodes available on hulu; 2007, 2008
2. Rated 7.9/10.0 on IMDB for 2,990 reviews (almost three thousand).
3. After an unexplained astronomical event, the sky is changed over Japan, and some areas become off-limits for their effects on humans.  That is, some are changed into supernatural creatures, called contractors.  For some group of unexplained reasons, the contractors are all used by criminals for nefarious purposes.  I have yet to see the explanation for this.  Why would the contractors not just exterminate the bosses for high sport?  On the surface, there are the cops and robbers elements (visual themes, habits, speech), then there is also the randomizing effects of the contractors.
4. I've seen half a dozen episodes.  It's good enough to continue, but I have not decided whether my overall rating would be three or four stars of five.

C. (hulu+)  Hiiro no Kakera, anime episodic series, supernatural, coming of age.

1. Rated 8.1/10.0 on IMDB for 29 (one less than thirty)
2. Season 1, 13 episodes; season 2, 13 episodes; all in 2012.
3. Protagonist is teenaged Tamaki Kusaga.  Her parents went to Africa for some sort of noble purpose, or so they say.  Tamaki is abandoned, well, dispatched to her grandmother's estate in the sticks.  As soon as she sets foot on the property, she's attacked by local spirits.  A stranger helps her fight off the attackers, and escorts her to her new home.  The stranger is a member of a family allied to hers.  She soon meets four additional protectors, and starts the process of getting to know her challenges and how to deal with them.
4. I've seen two episodes of 26 total, so far.  I'm not yet convinced that it is worth finishing, but it's good enough to try a few more.

D. (hulu+) Primeval: New World

1. Season 1, episode 5; live action, science fiction, time travel.
2. Two reptilian predators (wolf-sized and wolfish; lycaenops) come through anomalies.  There seems to be no way to send them back, and the team ends up killing them.  The 'butterfly effect' is discussed but not invoked, making me wonder when it will be.
3. As usual, four stars out of five. 

E. (hulu+) Dark Metropolis

1. 86 minutes, live action film released in 2010.
2. IMDB rated it 2.3/10.0 from 226 users.
3. Wow.  Terrible describes the script, the acting, the lighting, the direction, and any sense of taste.
4. I gave this one star of five, since I might want to excoriate this on hulu later.  One star was too many.

20130712: Reviews--Ghost Hunter, ReGenesis

20130712, vendredi

A. (hulu+) Ghost Hunter

1. Episodic anime, first season 25 episodes, 24 minutes each; released 2007.
2. Supernatural meets detection.  The protagonist is a 15 year old Japanese girl who joins a spiritualist detective agency.  The agency uses mixed methods: pervasive cctv plus temperature recordings on the scientific side, as well as a Shinto monk, a 'shrine maiden', a Catholic exorcist, a celebrity medium, and a practitioner of wards and shikigami.
3. The episodes are grouped into 3 and 4-episode story arcs called 'files.'
4. Except for some annoying instances (two I can think of) where the lead character starts screaming to get her way, I found the storytelling competent and engaging.
5. Four stars of five.

B. (hulu+)  ReGenesis

1. Episodic live action Canadian television drama series, largely concerning the tracking down of epidemics, and the unraveling of how to find cures.
2. Wikipedia 
3. It's bit overblown; lots of the characters seem to live on the extreme edge of their skin.
4. The lead character is both engaging and too cliche.  His brilliant reasoning is nice, but the endless presentation of grunge is more than off-putting.
5. The lead's daughter, played by Ellen Paige, has similar characteristics.  She's bold, and can think on her feet.  Great, the apple does not fall too far from the tree.  On the other hand, she expresses teenage anger, rebellion, and storming off in ways that are all too familiar and not all that interesting.  I usually get the urge to index ahead in the stream's timeline when she comes on.
6. The rest of the cast consists of characters that advance the plot with snippets of information.  This is fine, if not memorable.
7. Still watching this, but I know I will end of rating it three stars of five.

20130705: Reviews--Amber Lake, Alien Hunter, .hack

20130707, dimanche

A. (hulu+) Amber Lake

1. Released 2011, live action, 5.5/10 on IMDB, 45% on Rotten Tomatoes.
2. Three half-sisters, all named Amber, meet their wayward psychiatrist father at a lake.
3. Two days later, he's dead (blunt force trauma to the head followed by drowning), and the local police get the sisters' accounts of the activities leading up to the murder. 
4. Liked the actors who played the father (Carmen Argenziano) and the lead cop (Timothy V Murphy), but did not care for the amateurish, over-the-top performances of the actresses who played the daughters. 
5. Useless ending.
6. Gave it one star of five on hulu.

B. (hulu+) Alien Hunter

1. Released 2003, live action, 4.9/10.0 on IMDB, 22% on Rotten Tomatoes.
2. James Spader, Keir Dullea, Roy Dotrice, and Carl Lewis.
3. Spader's character is a womanizer and brilliant code breaker whose career mostly crashed after the shutdown of SETI.
4. An artifact found under the Antarctic ice near an American research site is recovered after emitting a signal tracked by the US government.  The signal resembled remarkably a signal sent from near Roswell in 1947.  Spader wrangles passage to the site.
5. The usual perfect storm of instances of Murphy's Law culminates in the alien getting lose, research staff dying from alien disease vectors and from shooting each other.  The Russians bomb the site at the behest of Washington, obliterating evidence.
6. Similar to The Abyss, the aliens break into the proceedings with their superior technology.  Quite differently than The Abyss, no humans notice this, except the four who were saved.
7. Slow moving, neither compelling nor funny.  The ending was a bit novel, but not much.
8. This was probably my least favorite James Spader film.
9. One star of five.

C. (hulu+) .hack//Quantum

1. Released 2010, anime, 7.0/10.0 on IMDB.
2. A bit more lively (so far) than .hack//sign, judging from 2 episodes of the new one.
3. .hack//sign was produced by Bandai, .hack//quantum by Funimation.
4. I'm missing context on numerous other .hack efforts, but most of them seem to be sequels of .hack//sign.
5. (20130730) I subsequently finished this; there were 3 episodes total.  This was actually a good thing; the plot was wound up expeditiously.  I rated it four stars of five.

20130629, samedi--8 mini reviews

20130629, samedi

A. (hulu+)  Programming the Nation?

1. Documentary, 2011, 111 minutes
2. Concerns subliminal advertising and related advertising methods.
3. Main areas of interest are rock music, movies, television advertising, billboard advertising, and political ad campaigns via radio and television.
4. Lots of interesting historical clips and interviews plus discussions of techniques and their efficacy.
5. This is well worth watching, five stars of five.

B. (hulu+) Orgasm, Inc

1. Documentary, 2011, 78 minutes
2. Concerns 'female sexual disfunction' (FSD), a disease created by pharmaceutical marketers to drive the need for a 'female viagra' so that billions of dollars of pills can be sold.
3. This is a trenchant and funny look into the movers and shakers in advertising, marketing, FDA approvals, definitions of disease, and huge masses of misinformation.
4. Great film; five of five stars.

C.  (hulu+) Friends (with Benefits)

1. Movie, fiction, 2009, comedy, romance, 94 minutes.
2. This is much more about Sturm und Drang than about comedy.  Be prepared.
3. Compared to the the 2011 movie with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, or the 2011 television series, this work is dark and lifeless.  I found the characters to be either uninteresting or mildly repulsive.  The plot was next to non-existent.  What there was of plot was not engaging.
4. IMDB rates it at 5.5 of 10.0.
5. I gave it two stars of five.

D. (hulu+) Primeval: New World: Fear of Flying

1. Episodic television, season 1, episode 3; 44 minutes, science fiction.
2. As light entertainment, I like this series one quite a bit.
3. I rated this one four stars of five.

E. (hulu+) Jack Hunter and the Star of Heaven

1. Film, action and adventure,  98 minutes, third installment of a trilogy.
2. Jack Hunter is an archaeologist who does some of the bidding for the NSA to find objects of power.  The Star of Heaven is one of those.  The 'other side' is also searching for the Star, and so arises conflict and chases.  I saw the first of the trilogy on the Syfy channel, and have decided to skip the middle installment.
3. A bit predictable; could have used better writing.  I gave this one two of five stars.

F. (hulu+) Dead Space: Aftermath

1. Animation, 2011, 85 minutes, fiction, horror on spaceships.  Allied to the FPS video games, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, and Dead Space 3.
2. Sequel to Dead Space: Downfall (2008).  Aftermath makes more sense after viewing the first film.
3. There are too many flashbacks in this work.   I would have much preferred a straight timeline from after Downfall ended.  To make this worse, the flashbacks have varying styles and quality levels.  I found that discordant, and the mark of poor planning.
4. While less gory than the first, the art problems are worse, and the derivative nature of the story (Alien) is clearer.  I gave this one three stars of five.

G. (hulu+) Exit

1. Film, 90 minutes, fiction, 2011, shot in colour, but feels like black and white, for the dreariness, depression, and lack of optimism.  IMDB labels it 'psychological drama.'
2. Hulu says, 'A group of people believe the city is a maze and are obsessively searching for the lost exit.'
3. Hmph.  I watched the whole thing, unfortunately, but at least I found the end of the film.
4. That was good enough, since the plot was somewhere between Gordian knot and 'who cares?'
5. One star of five, and that was way too positive a rating.

H. (hulu+) Avalon

1. Live action, mostly.  Sepia, mostly.  Boring as hell, mostly.
2. VRMMORPG gone wrong.  Ah, who cares?
3. 106 minutes, released in 2001, from those who made the animated series Ghost in the Shell.
4. In retrospect, GITS seems positively open and clear and transparent compared to this work.
5. Dissipation, pointlessness, inaction, game-induced permanent illnesses, lack of direction, out-of-focus closeups of low-tech food preparation, such as potatoe-cabbage-rice stew.  People with eastern European accents checking out old books written in Japanese.  Who could ask for more?
6. Saw this through to the flat cluster-cliche of an ending.  Two stars of five.

20130626, mercredi

A. Added hulu+ for a while, perhaps 9 or 10 weeks.

B. Booth at the End

1. Hulu+
2. Season 1, five 23 minute episodes
3. Season 2, five 23 minute episodes.
4. Xander Berkeley and a good-sized cast.
5. Intriguing interconnected stories.  Excellent storytelling.
6. Five stars of five.

C.  The Secret of Kells.

1. Hulu+
2. Animation, flat style, which I do not care for in the least.
3. Non-engaging story telling.
4. 1 star of 5.  Would not recommend this to anyone.

D. Dead Leaves.

1. Hulu+
2. Anime.  In the direction of FLCL, but gone well off the deep end into an empty pool.
3. Zero stars; would not recommend this to anyone.

E. American Grindhouse.

1. Hulu+
2. Documentary about censorship and grindhouse films and culture.
3. Narrated by Robert Forster, commentary by many Hollywood insiders.
4. Nice historical piece concerning film, 1913 to about 1975.
5. Four stars of five.

F. Arrow.

1. Hulu+; series on the CW.
2. Watched the pilot episode.
3. Dramatically different than the Green Arrow on Smallville.
4. Two stars of five.  Could not finish the second episode, and will not watch another.

G. Primeval: New World

1. Hulu+
2. Episode 2; caught the pilot on the Syfy network.
3. Liked it, especially in HD.
4. Four stars of five.

H. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (with John Oliver for a while)

1. Wonderful job, hilarious and often dead-on in its attacks.
2. Four of five stars.
3. June 17, 19, 2013.

I. The Vampire Diaries: Growing Pains

1. Hulu+
2. This was episode 1, season 4.
3. Tried episode 2, season 4.  Did not finish, will not watch again.
4. One star of five.   Yawn.

20130617, lundi--3 mini reviews

20130617, lundi; continued through 20130620, jeudi

A. The Gift

1. Released in 2000, rated R, 111 minutes.
2. Sam Raimi director; Billy Bob Thornton was one of the writers.
3. Stars Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear, Hilary Swank, Gary Cole, J. K. Simmons, Giovanni Ribisi, Kim Dickens, Michael Jeter.
4. Thriller, mystery, supernatural elements.  Set in the fictitious town of Brixton, Georgia.
5. Slow start.  Long slow middle.  Deadly boring through to the disappointing end.
6. There were a number of unbelievable elements.  Katie Holmes and Greg Kinnear as a couple?  No; Greg's 15 years older than she is.  Hilary Swank as a punching bag?  No.  Cate Blanchett as a psychic?  Nope.  Cate Blanchett as an American, as a lower class single mother in Georgia?  No, no, no.  Giovanni Ribisi with a cast of real actors?  Dubious at best.  I like almost all of this group of actors, but in different kinds of roles.
7. Mild plus ratings for J.K. Simmons and Michael Jeter for injecting chunks of skepticism.
8. Suspend disbelief?  No, I'm gritting my teeth.
9. 111 minutes is too long; 30 would have been better.
10. One star of five.

B. Animals

1. Mark Blucas, Naveen Andrews, Nicki Aycox
2. 2008, 93 minutes, NR, horror, supernatural, werewolves
3. Mark Blucas' character gets dragged along through the film by his new werewolf girlfriend.  This passive role is is not one of my favorites for him.
4. Naveen Andrews' character in Animals varies among the following states: menacing, threatening, demanding, and ultraviolent.  I liked him better in Lost, and some of his other works, such as The English Patient and Kama Sutra, where he was able to show his range.
5. Nicki Aycox has been doing competent work for a number of years in a number of roles.  In this film, I liked her performance better than Blucas' for instance.
6. The film was dark, blurry, and murky; this describes the plot as well as the lighting.
7. Two stars of five.

C.  Kaze no Stigma

1. Anime series, 2007, TV-14, 24 episodes at 24 minutes each (well, perhaps 18 minutes of content)
2. Supernatural thriller with comedy and romance elements; set in contemporary Japan; use of fire, air, and earth magic
3. The main character, Kasuma was born into the fire magic clan, but cannot learn it.  He is cast out of his clan for this failure.  He returns as the 'contractor' for the Wind Spirit King; that is, one of the most trusted and powerful of all wind magic users.  He bears the stigma of the wind (Kaze no Stigma); that is, very blue eyes when resonating with the wind spirits. 
4. After a bad start, Kasuma and the fire clan try to come into harmony.  Along the way, they battle other potent families and some European magicians who use the Internet to disseminate bad mojo.
5. Finally finished it.  Great.  Wish there could be more, but I read the creator of the series passed on.
6. Five stars of five.

20130617: Action Film Review--Haywire

Haywire

1. American live action theatrical film, released 2011, rated R, 92 minutes; spy thriller, action and adventure, revenge film.  Steven Soderbergh directed.
2. IMDB rated it 5.9/10.0 for 54,711 users; blurb--'A black ops super soldier seeks payback after she is betrayed and set up during a mission.'
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 80% (seems way too high) from critics; 6.7/10 from 179 user reviews.  More tellingly, 40% rating from 40,262 ticket buying audience members.
4. Filmed in New Mexico US, Dublin IR, and Barcelona ES.
5. Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender--leads (in the billing, anyway)
6. Also, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum
7. ----------------------------------------------
8. Gina Carano is a 'top rated female MMA fighter' as one reviewer put it.  I think she should have stayed with 'reality' fighting.  She might be more convincing there.  The foley for the fights was usually off to the extent that I was certain that no blows were ever landed, just as in 'reality' fighting.  The foley defeated any chance of this being an engaging action film since everything was clearly faked.
9. Channing Tatum comes across as he usually does, as an irredeemable thug/uncivilized bully/blunt instrument/sociopath.  He shows a moment of thoughtfulness toward the end of the film, and is immediately shot for it, fatally, as it turned out.
10. Ewan MacGregor's character was flaccid and malevolent at the some time.  Perhaps that was what he was aiming for.
11. Antonio Banderas had very little screen time.  In the end, though, he was the one who pulled all the puppet strings.  I did not buy that one either.
12. Michael Fassbender gave a short performance as an ineffectual betrayer working for MI6.  Looks like he was an actor who 'fit the suit' for the role, and was not needed for anything else.
13. Michael Douglas was sleazy and smooth as a Gordon Gecko type.  He was hard to believe as the only source of possible official redemption for the protagonist.
14. Bill Paxton was the only actor I liked in this film. He played the straight arrow father of the protagonist who believed in his daughter and supported her, no matter what sequence of lies was fed to him.
15. ------------------------------------------------
16. The sound track was regularly annoying and anti-relevant.  Gunshots, for instance, should be a bit louder than conversation.  In some sequences, they were softer than footsteps, and nearly drowned out by the low-volume 'music.'  The techno-crap music was horrid.  It often served to convince me that what I was watching was of no importance, as well as of no emotional significance.  This was all a dreary intellectual exercise in fakery and treachery. The fakery--fake fighting, fake motives, fake stories--made the treachery a lot less believable.
17. The cinematography was also repugnant.  The over use of yellow (tungsten lights, yellow filtration) was rampant in the interior shots, as well as several exteriors.  There were dozens of fast cuts between the yellow palette and more natural scenes, such as Dublin on a cloudy day, or long shots of nature in New Mexico.  These jarring juxtapositions made me itch for the movie to be done.
18. -------------------------------------------------
19. This film deeply eroded my overall admiration of Soderbergh as a director.
20. I rated this film as two stars of five.

Cinematography: 4/10 This was a major detriment.  See above.

Sound: 4/10  Another major detriment.

Acting: 4/10 Some good, mostly indifferent or bad.

Screenplay: 2/10 Too many flashbacks, too many tricks.

20130616: Movies, short reviews

20130616, dimanche

A. Inhale

1. 2010, rated R, 83 minutes
2. Dermot Mulroney, Rosanna Arquette, Diane Kruger, Sam Shepard
3. Good cast.
4. Rotten script.
5. Boring.
6. Watch Traffic instead: an even better cast, excellent writing, more than one plot line, and a dominant driving sense of urgency and engagement.
7. Despite the subject matter, I could not connect with this one.
8. One star of five, and that is too generous.
9. I forgot irritating.  I kept wondering why all the resources were being wasted on a movie I did not care about.

B. Blood: the Last Vampire

1. Live action version of the Japanese anime series.
2. Script and the director moved the action right along from the beginning.
3. 2009, rated R, 88 minutes.
4. One version of the anime (Blood+) was 50 episodes at about 20 minutes a pop, so this was strongly abbreviated.
5. Not a movie for the squeamish; demon and human bloodletting abounds.
6. Rated it three of five stars.  Liked it much better than the discouraging Inhale.  After the first five or so minutes, the action moved right along.

C. Timer

1. The blending of science fiction, romantic comedy, and ongoing dysfunction is not my favorite mix.
2. 2009, 99 minutes, rated R, termed 'indie.'
3. Emma Caulfield, JoBeth Williams, and Muse Watson were fine.  The other actors were next to forgettable, as I don't remember seeing their work before, and hope I never see them again.
4. I rated this one three out of five stars; I must have been feeling generous.

20130615, samedi

A. The Fall

1. 2013, BBC, 5 episodes, series 1
2. Gillian Anderson
3. My wife and I rated this one five stars of five; excellent.
4. Looking forward to the second series in 2014
5. British TV crime series set in Belfast, Northern Ireland
6. Anderson plays Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, who pursues a serial killer of young single professional women.

B.  The Numbers Station

1. 2013, 88 minutes, theatrical film, in HD
2. John Cusack and Malin Akerman as the mismatched leads.
3. Way too long; about 15 minutes of content
4. Said some rather trenchant things about the CIA, but nothing particularly new.
5. Cusack plays a disgraced assassin who muffed an assignment to retire (kill) a former CIA asset who tried to retire in the usual sense of the word.  His remedial assignment is to protect a clandestine radio station that transmits instructions sent encoded in numbers.  If protection fails, he is to retire the operator who calculates and speaks the numbers.
6. Rated 3 stars of 5.

20130612: 4 mini Reviews

20130612, mercredi

A. House at the End of the Street

1. 2012, 100 minutes, horror, thriller, mystery
2. Jennifer Lawrence, Max Thieriot, Elisabeth Shue, Gil Bellows
3. I rated it three stars of five.
4. Jennifer Lawrence was the center, and did reasonably well.  Neither Elisabeth Shue nor Gil Bellows had many good lines.  Max Thieriot was OK but not great as the evil doer.

B. The Glades (TV series, CSI meets romantic comedy)

1. I finished the first three seasons this weekend.
2. Had a good time watching it: the visuals were nice, the actors congenial, the writing mostly fun and not too unlikely.
3. Three seasons was enough, though.  I will likely not watch any of the fourth season.

C. Soul Eater (TV series, anime, horror, the supernatural, comedy)

1. The anime series comes in 4 parts, for a total of 13 + 13 + 13 + 12 = 51 episodes.
2. The underlying manga has run from June 2004 to at least September 2013.
3. I'm about half way through the third part.
4. For writing, humor, and visuals, this is the best anime series I've ever seen.

D. Hemlock Grove (TV series, live action, Netflix original, 2013, horror and the supernatural)

1. I'm in the ninth episode.  Each episode runs about 43 minutes.
2. So far, good writing, good acting, good plots, and wonderful visuals. 
3. Dougray Scott and Famke Janssen are great as the adult leads.  In general, the acting is excellent.  Bill Skarsgard and Landon Liboiron were particularly engaging.
4. This series is not for the faint of heart.  There is more than enough butchery of the human form, self-mutilation, alcohol abuse, generalized anger and mistrust, nightmares, and horrid corporate goals.
5. I hope the conclusion of the series is as good as its progress to the ninth episode.

20130607: Horror Review--The Cabin in the Woods

The Cabin in the Woods

1. American live action theatrical film with some special effects, released 2012, rated R for violence and gore, 95 minutes.
2. IMDB: 7.1/10.0 from 163,264 viewers.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: tomatometer at 92%
4. Stars Kristen Connelly, Liam Hemsworth, Bradley Whitford, Sigourney Weaver, Amy Acker
5. Starts off as a standard looking young-adults-screwing up slasher-horror film, but has the extra layer of the Bradley Whitford-Amy Acker technical crew operating in parallel.
6. As those two layers come together, the real fun starts.
7. Producer Joss Whedon, Director Drew Goddard, the writer of Cloverfield
8. Rated five stars of five. 

Cinematography: 10/10 No complaints. There were dark passages, where horror films often fail, but the cameras and operators were up to the challenge.

Sound: 10/10 Good.

Screenplay: 10/10 Good pacing, wonderful buildup to surprise ending, which was the quintessence of horror.

Acting: 10/10 Good all around.

Special Effects: 10/10 Vary between competent and extremely good.