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Jon-Umber
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Beruseruku (2016)
An inept adaptation of strong source material
This in an awful, low-budget adaptation made by a team that I can only assume has no idea what it's doing. It all but makes a mockery of Miura's fantastic manga art. It also lacks the great soundtrack of the 1997 adaptation.
The animation is truly awful, with the human characters moving stiffly and awkwardly. The cinematography is atrocious. The camera is constantly, unnecessarily panning, the shot selection is puzzling, the rule of 180 is consistently ignored. Typical action scenes in Berserk feature the camera swooping through the scene and rapidly cutting and repositioning for no good reason while your eye struggles to follow the action. There are several shots in which it is literally impossible to discern what's taking place. In addition to this, the art is incredibly bland, featuring unfinished-looking CGI that looks like it belongs in a cutscene of a Final Fantasy game from the '90s.
I can only assume that such an adaptation was made by a team with a very low budget and very little experience in crafting a visual narrative. To top it off, the soundtrack is putridly stereotypical, featuring generic heavy metal that only goes further in proving this team was consistently shooting to make something that looks "cool" rather than putting any effort in telling a compelling story.
This is really only worth watching if you're a hardcore fan of the manga, otherwise it's not worth your time. Incredibly disappointing. Hopefully they find a different studio to continue this series rather than just completely canceling it, though after two seasons I'd honestly rather see it cancelled than continued in such a horrible fashion.
2 stars on the strength of the source material alone. If you're interested in Berserk, read the manga instead. This trash isn't worth the time it takes to watch.
You Were Never Really Here (2017)
A film nerd's thriller
It's easy to parrot the same rote phrases about gritty thrillers like "a visceral gut punch", but it's hard to describe You Were Never Really Here in any other way.
The various components that make up the whole are all fantastic individually. Phoenix's and Samsonov's performances are spellbinding, Greenwood continues his streak of stupendous scores, and the editing is so strong that the film probably wouldn't work with a lesser effort. The cinematography is excellent as well, providing several shots that work incredibly even just as stills.
The character writing is superb and, along with the violent set-pieces, form the meat of the film. If you enjoy Nicolas Winding-Refn, you'll like this film quite a bit. However where I find his screenwriting to be a bit lackluster at times, this film survives on the strength of its character writing.
This is a film nerd's thriller. Be prepared for slower pacing and gratuitous violence.
Castlevania (2017)
This is what Berserk (2016) should have been.
Really solid production from Netflix that knows its target audience and doesn't pull any punches. Make no mistake; this is animated fare strictly for adults. And that's perfectly fine.
The 2016 production of Berserk has sadly skimped on production values, leaving fans of the longtime manga series with a sour taste in their mouths. Castlevania, however, scratches much of that same itch. It's gratuitously violent, dark as pitch, and set in a medieval fantasy world. The writers go straight for the jugular and pull no punches, obviously inspired by Berserk and other series like it. It's refreshing considering that the original owners of the Castlevania IP, Konami, have taken an obvious downturn in the quality production of their various legendary properties recently in favor of instead developing pachinko and gambling machines and firing longtime creative leads such as Hideo Kojima. Fans of the series need not worry, plenty of the classic Castlevania feel is here, treated with proper reverence by the shows writers and directors.
The animation is very good, and the art in particular is superb. Animated features and series have been steadily improving since the dawn of the HD era, and Castlevania continue to represent them well. The English voice cast shines as well, with Armitage's performance standing out among the others. He does a fantastic job as Trevor Belmont.
My only complaint here is the brevity of the series. Four ~23 minute episodes is not that much content, and it makes me wonder whether Netflix wouldn't have been better served to put this "season" out as a feature-length prologue film instead in order to advertise a lengthier season 2. But all-in-all, it's worth the time, especially to those interested in the Castlevania series, but even to those unfamiliar with it and in search of a gritty, well-animated, well- acted piece of dark medieval fantasy.
Lost in Translation (2003)
A visual and aural film that conveys emotion with images and acting rather than plotting and characters
As is aptly covered in many of the other reviews on this website, Lost in Translation is very much a love-it or hate-it film. I know a lot of people find it boring and pointless and generally just a huge waste of time, but it's my favorite film of all-time. I catch my fair share of flak for gushing like a schoolgirl about how much I love the film, with people accusing me of being pretentious or a film hipster or whatever for liking it. Rather than retread ground already covered by the thousands of review on this website, I thought I'd cover why the film appeals so much to me in particular rather than trying to analyze it from a more objective perspective.
There was a blog entry (http://marc-mike- movies.tumblr.com/post/47911260711/a-moment-stretched-to-eternity- sofia-coppolas) I came across not too long ago that really describes why I love the movie so much:
"Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) is one of the great mood pieces of recent cinema, a wise, tender, and melancholy delineation and evocation of what it means to be 'stuck,' to be adrift both in a foreign land and in life. It depends not on narrative, but on feeling, on compositions that express more than a thousand words could. We see in certain scenes, and even certain glances, a range of emotional terrain effortlessly conveyed by the remarkably controlled acting given by a never better Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson.
Consider this scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsj9sMDgh-A), begun after a night away from marital issues, crisis, and existential ennui. To describe it would take away its magic. But what makes it so magical? It is a short sequence. Nothing really happens. And the scene doesn't call attention to itself in any self- consciously artistic way. Why then is it so effective? Perhaps it is simply Johansson's face that sells it so well. Perhaps it is for the evocative music of My Bloody Valentine. And perhaps it is for what the scene itself evokes: those respites from a life of uncertainty, basking in a moment that you wished could stretch to eternity, taking it all in before it's gone. Coppola captures those moments of bliss that we've all had, and we all cling to, as well as the knowledge that they can't possibly last forever."
And the film is packed full of scenes that affect exactly as the one listed above.
I've seen thousands of films in my life thus far and it's my absolute favorite of all-time. It's the only one I can watch repeatedly and never get tired of. Something about the way the movie makes me feel when I watch it is what attracts me to it. The dialogue, photography, lighting, and score all combine to give it this ethereal, relaxing, and slightly melancholy feeling that I can't get enough of.
I watched it literally dozens of times last year, so I specifically made a deal with myself not to watch it at all through 2014 in order to keep myself from potentially getting sick of it. If that's pretentious, then I guess I'm a pretentious man. But I'm not going to stop watching this movie several times per year... Beginning in just a few days.