Tag: reviews

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Akira

Akira is one of those classic animes. It is noteworthy because it was one of the first ones that featured detailed scenes and fluid-motion. I read about it before but haven’t had the chance to watch it until Bianca lent me her copy.

Akira is about a top secret government experiment gone wrong. A street gang gets tangled in the experiment and one of the gang members, Tetsuo, started manifesting unusual mental powers and destroying things. The gang leader, Kaneda, took it as his responsibility to set out and stop Tetsou. It culminates in an action-packed showdown that shifted towards the metaphysical.

I noticed that such shifts seems to recur in quite a few of the animes I’ve seen. I noticed it first in Robotech, then Evangelion, and now Akira. It somehow reminded me of Stanley Kubrick’s Space 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Rating: 3/5

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Neon Genesis Evangelion

I’ve heard about Neon Genesis Evangelion or Evangelion before. In fact I’ve seen an Evangelion movie (forgot which, see below) and Rei Ayanami is a favorite anime character. However, I haven’t seen the TV series. This is bad since Evangelion is supposedly one of the best as well as one of the most influential animes. This changed when I was able to borrow a copy of the TV series from Aby. I immediately and eagerly watched it over several days.

Evangelion is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth under attack by an enemy referred to as Angels. The Angels are invulnerable to conventional weapons because of their AT shields. The only weapon that can combat the angels are Evangelions or Evas. These are experimental highly-unstable mecha which also have AT shields. As the series progresses a lot of combat ensues and a conspiracy unfolds. This plus the focus on the characters makes for a quite compelling story.

Unfortunately, the ending– specifically episodes 25 and 26– was, to say the least, confusing. It was all a sequence of psychological and metaphysical meandering occurring purely in the characters’ heads. I did some research and found out a lot of fans were also confused and dissatisfied with the ending.

Thus, when the first Evangelion movie, Death and Rebirth, was released it included an alternate ending. It is composed of two parts: Death which is the merging of the truncated TV episodes and Rebirth which is the the alternate ending. Rebirth however is not the full ending as the movie was released before it can be completed.

So another movie called The End of Evangelion was released which is composed solely of the alternate ending episodes (episodes 25′ and 26′) to the TV series. After watching this, things become a bit clearer but also a bit more muddled. But heck, it rocks!

All these were finally brought together in Renewal of Evangelion which is composed of an edited Death part of Death and Rebirth plus End of Evangelion. This movie is considered the complete Neon Genesis Evangelion movie.

But wait! There’s more! A new movie called Rebuild of Evangelion with new scenes is coming out. And there’s even rumors of a live action movie.

Rating: 4/5

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Death Proof

Yesterday, my friends and I decided to check out the ongoing Cinemanila film festival and we decided to watch Death Proof, a film directed by the legendary Quentin Tarantino. The film is a parody of exploitation movies, the kind of movies shown in so-called grindhouses. In fact, this film is, along with Planet Terror (a film directed by Robert Rodriguez), is part of a two-movie set complete with trailers called Grindhouse.

As we settled in for the movie, in walks to applause none other than the man, Quentin Tarantino, himself! He gave a short introduction, punctuated with jokes and laughter, to the film. He then settled in with the audience, which is composed mainly of budding filmmakers (Quark Henares among them) and film buffs, to watch the film.

Death Proof is about a bunch of women from the show industry being offed serially (or should I say in sets?) by a deranged stuntman on his “deathproofed” muscle car. As expected, it’s full of action, including a longish car chase involving not one but two muscle cars. And, of course, there’s an exaggerated amount of blood and gore. In addition the film is full of intentional bad filmmaking. It’s an obviously synthesized crap movie. Which makes it quite enjoyable for what it is.

Rating: 3/5

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Wander Girl

As I mentioned in my High Fidelity movie review, I read Wander Girl by Tweet Sering, a passing acquaintance in college. It chronicles the journey of the lead character Hilda through her tumultuous twenties. Her changing relationship with her parents and sisters, her search for a job and a career, her search for the right guy, etc. It culminates in her finding her calling and the right guy. It’s pretty entertaining enough, even quite amusing in some parts. But I read it mainly because it was written by Tweet. So, no, I don’t think I’ll be reading any other book in the series.

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High Fidelity

“What came first? The music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns and watching violent videos, we’re scared that some sort of culture of violence is taking them over…. But nobody worries about kids listening to thousands — literally thousands — of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” this litany from High Fidelity‘s main character Rob (John Cusack) immediately struck a nerve and so I continued watching.

Why am I watching the equivalent of a guy’s chick flick? See, I was reading Wander Girl by Tweet Sering, a passing acquaintance back in college. At one point, I was amused by the book’s lead character Hilda’s (or is it also Tweet’s?) obsession with John Cusack. Later in the afternoon, as I was browsing my sister’s video collection, I saw High Fidelity. I remembered that it has John Cusack in it and so I decided to watch it. I’m glad I did. In fact, I wish I had discovered the movie earlier.

As I said, the movie is a guy equivalent of a chick flick. Not to say it’s bad, quite the contrary. In fact, it’s almost a revelation: a lesson on things I should have known and a reminder of things I have forgotten. Rob is going through his nth break up and he was wondering why this is so. So he goes talk to all his previous girlfriends to ask why. In the process revealing the stupid things we men do, the stupid things we say, the things we don’t do and should have done. How we analyze things too much. How we are concerned with the wrong things. And so much more. All this is done in a light, humorous, and quite entertaining manner by Rob.

I could see why the obsession with John Cusack.

Rating: 3/5