I am a big fan of Ray Bradbury. Although I will admit that at times he does get a bit too poetic for my tastes. Yes, I love the wondrous flood of words he produces in some of his best stories, but the sheer rush of verbiage seemed to end up outweighing everything else as […]
Read more "Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1962)"It always saddens me just a bit when I discover something only a few people have even heard of, let alone seen but which deserves a bigger audience. I’ll admit that does happen to me quite a bit because I have put a bit of effort into finding little seen movies, but it seems particularly […]
Read more "Ginga tansa 2100-nen: Bôdâ puranetto [Galaxy Investigation 2100: Border Planet] (1986)"You learn what you are up against in the first few minutes of Mercano the Martian. Mercano — a little, green, squiggily-animated Martian — has just stolen a computer and run away from the police. They follow him down into the subway, only one of the cops — who is afraid of heights — slides […]
Read more "Mercano, el marciano [Mercano the Martian] (2002)"If there is one thing in this world which is guaranteed, it is that, if you watch enough Eighties Science Fiction films, you are going to see an Alien rip-off. And, apparently, this was also true when it comes to Japanese Anime. After all, we have this OVA from 1987, about a spaceship responding to […]
Read more "Hell Target [Heru Tageto] (1987)"Recently, I’ve reviewed two movies by one of my favorites of the younger generation of Japanese anime directors, Mamoru Hosada. So it seems inevitable that I would also catch up with a film by yet another talented young Anime director, one of the best of the group often referred to as “the next Miyazaki” — […]
Read more "Ai no utagoe o kikasete [Sing a Bit of Harmony] (2021)"Supervillains. It’s not exactly obvious to the uninitiated, but there are two distinct types of supervillain: The Bond villain and The Comic Book villain. It seemed a strange coincidence when two studios came out with movies with supervillains as heroes at the same time, but Despicable Me‘s Gru is clearly the Bond-iest of Bond Villains… […]
Read more "Megamind (2010)"(literal title: The Dragon and the Freckle Princess) Mamoru Hosada is perhaps the best of that generation of young anime directors who have all been called “the next Miyazaki.” Although, to be fair, I still prefer his early films, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars to anything he’s made since. He first started […]
Read more "Ryû to sobakasu no hime [Belle] (2021)"(aka, Journey to an Unknown World) Children’s films. Why are they always such a plague? You really have to wonder: it can’t be that hard to make a film that will appeal to younger audiences and at the same time not be utterly terrible. Now I suppose part of my reaction to this Brazilian children’s […]
Read more "Aventuras com Tio Maneco [Adventures with Uncle Manuelo] (1971)"You have to remember that Filmation was once one of the undisputed rulers of Saturday Morning. They produced a vast flood of animated cartoons, a few feature films, and even a handful of live action TV shows over their twenty-six year career, all but one of these productions proudly made in their entirety in the […]
Read more "Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All (1982)"(aka,Promare: Puromea, Promare 4D, Puromea 4D) I know, I know. I keep grumbling that all the animation out there looks like Pixar-lite. Unless it is anime, and then it looks like Miyazaki-lite. Yeah, yeah, there are quite a few animated films which break from these molds, but they are sadly rare. However, anime isn’t quite […]
Read more "Promare [Puromea] (2019)"
rivets on the poster 