Ignore the fact that GKids released this one. It definitely isn’t for kids. Although that would be a lot more obvious had it been released in the U.S. under its original name. A few years ago, Studio 4C, who have long been noted for their strange and unusual animated films, released Tekkonkinkreet: It got a […]
Read more "MFKZ [Mutafukaz] (2017)"[Spoilers Ahead!] Happy Feet…A science fiction film? Don’t be silly. However, it is an unacknowledged remake of a classic Science Fiction film from the Seventies. Or of one of many other, basically similar science fiction films about alien encounters. Okay, you’ve see animated films before so you know the sort of thing: a kid who […]
Read more "Happy Feet (2006)"Let’s see if we got this right: An Ultraman film debuted in American theaters back in 1987. It starred (among others) Adrienne Barbeau and actually ran on the big screen in Japan two years later as “Ultraman USA.” Oh, and it was made by… Hanna-Barbera. Right. Now, I will point out that Tsuburaya was heavily […]
Read more "Ultraman: The Adventure Begins (1987)"After Godzilla: Final Wars brought Toho’s Millennium series to an end, with no future Kaiju films in sight, a number of small, giant monster films came out. Most of these, like The Return of Monster X: Attack the G8 Conference or Gehara: the Dark & Long Hair Monster, are parodies. So it is a welcome […]
Read more "Wakusei daikaijû Negadon [Negadon: The Monster from Mars] (2005)"I like this one, even if it isn’t a great film. Like a lot of recent Anime films, I would describe this one as Miyazaki-lite: not only does it have a decidedly familiar color palette, and character designs which would easily fit into most of Miyazaki’s films, but it also features such trademark elements as […]
Read more "To aru hikuushi e no tsuioku [The Princess and the Pilot] (2011)"The biggest claim to fame of The Flying Ghost Ship is that Hayao Miyazaki served as one of the key animators and designed the giant, city-trampling robot. Its opening sequence reminds me a lot of the original Scooby Doo: Where Are You?: it starts with Hayato and his family out for a cruise in their […]
Read more "Sora tobu yûreisen [The Flying Ghost Ship] (1969)"As I’ve noted before, it is very hard to review a truly great film. Bad films? Why the review almost writes itself. You have so many things that really bugged you about them that the hardest thing is stopping. The average film isn’t much more difficult, as they provide lots of both good and bad […]
Read more "Summer Wars [Samâ uôzu] (2009)"The French Nouvelle Vague short film, La Jetee, occupies an interesting place in science fiction cinema. It is hailed as a great art film and formal experiment — and yet at the same time it is held to be a SF classic. There are only a few films you can say that about. It uses […]
Read more "Missing Pages (2006)"If you’ve read any of the books on SF film published before Star Wars came out, then you’ve heard of this film. As there hadn’t been too many SF films made by the mid-Seventies — not by today’s standards, at least — those books used to list just about every SF film made, including quite […]
Read more "La brûlure de mille soleils [The Heat of a Thousand Suns] (1965)"As I noted in my review for Steamboy, Katsuhiro Otomo has played an incredibly important role in the development of Japanese Anime. While he may only have directed two films (with a third, Orbital Era, in the works), he has been involved in dozens of films, providing scripts, storyboards, character designs, production help and who knows […]
Read more "Memories [Memorîzu] (1995)"