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)"(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)"(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)"Wow. Yet another movie I never thought I would ever see. It was a very good weekend. And I found yet another of my Wish List movies on Wednesday. But I will tell you about that one later. Now a few years ago, at the time the Pacific Rim sequel came out, I wrote an essay […]
Read more "Sentinel 2099 (1995)"(Literal Title: 28 1/2 Delusional Giant) I never thought I would see this film. I suppose I could blame Mamoru Oshii for this: after all, his rather strange career has gone in a lot of very odd directions since he made the films which are hailed as his big classics: The Ghost in the Shell […]
Read more "28 1/2 mousou no kyojin [28 1/2] (2010)"When any new form of media arrives, there are always a lot of inventive ways devised to make use of them. Mind you, a lot of them don’t last very long. One of the odder ones — and, curiously, one that outlived the media type that spawned it — was the OVA. OVA stands for […]
Read more "Dragon’s Heaven (1988)"(aka, GoShogun: The Time Stranger) There’s weird, then there’s Japanese Anime weird. And if you want proof you need look no further than GoShogun: The Time Étranger: here we have a children’s bright and colorful Giant robot television series, much in the vein of Voltron, which was adapted four years after the series ran into […]
Read more "Sengoku machine GoShogun: toki no ihôjin [GoShogun: The Time Étranger] (1985)"I love this film. I know, I know, a lot of you won’t agree with me. But it is a truly epic film, one which pushed the technological boundaries of its day, and gave the loving, “A” budget treatment to a film which was not merely a lowly member of a disregarded genre (science fiction) […]
Read more "The Black Hole (1979)"Now those of you familiar with Japanese mythology (or who are obsessive Toho monster fans) may have heard of Yamata no Orochi. This was the monstrous, eight-headed dragon god the legendary hero, Susano-o fought to save a girl who was about to be sacrificed to it. This story appears in the classic 1959 Toho epic, […]
Read more "Yamata no Orochi no Gyakushu [Eight-Headed Giant Serpent’s Counterattack] (1985)"Look, it’s a Hong Kong thing. Either you accept it for what it is, or you go off and watch something safe, like a Hallmark Christmas Movie or a SyFy network original “vs.” giant monster movie. Both of which are distinctively American in the same way that HK Chopsockey comedies are so very Hong Kong, […]
Read more "Zui jia pai dang 2: Da xian shen tong [Mad Mission Part 2: Aces Go Places] (1983)"
rivets on the poster 