Movie Review

Redline – Anime Review

November 27, 2019 by hpholo 1 Comment

While watching Promare’s spectacular animation, I was reminded quite a bit of Redline, and then when writing my Promare review, I realized I’d never actually reviewed Redline. So I’m here to remedy that.

Redline is a 2009 anime that follows the gloriously pompadoured Sweet JP as he and his Trans Am compete to win the titular race. Trouble is, he’s racing against a horde of drivers with wildly tricked-out vehicles that frequently include missiles and other ridiculousness as standard gear. And they’re all racing against the government of Roboworld, which doesn’t want them on its planet and won’t hesitate to unleash its full arsenal to stop them.

https://youtu.be/rRLPdgcGPRg

For viewer purposes, though, the plot is “VROOM VROOM DRIVE FAST” because this isn’t a movie you watch for plot. This is a movie you watch for its achievement – a completely hand-drawn animated feature film by a first time director who, through it, has already made his masterpiece. Redline took seven years to complete, and every second of it shows.

These days, with our glut of committee-produced CG animation franchises, it’s easy to forget that animation is indeed an art form capable of depicting motion and emotion in ways live action or even photorealistic CG can’t even approach. It’s hard not to look at the work of, say, Richard Williams, once you’ve picked your jaw up off the floor, and say “GOD. An actual human hand-drew all the pictures necessary to create that.” In Japan, Masaaki Yuasa’s work attains the same level of sheer detailed, exuberant weirdness, and Redline’s Takeshi Koike is also in that boat.

Redline’s basic design is a joy to behold. It’s bursting with so many unusual characters, cars, and background details that I find new things to stare at every time I watch, and they’re all delightfully nuts. The racers themselves are clearly the product of animators who were told to design whatever they wanted and not only ran with it, but jumped in a car and punched the Nos (or, in Redline’s world, steamlight) before they even landed in the seat.

But as delightful as they are to look at while static, they are simply amazing to watch in motion. While literally every scene is bursting with clever art direction and brilliant color, the racing scenes are (of course) where it’s at. The animation is so fluid that one might be tempted to think it’s CG, until you realize that the squash and stretch distortions necessary to create that kind of on-screen motion are just barely possible with today’s CG, and certainly weren’t in 2009. And then there are the moments when the film foregoes “realistic” motion altogether, as when JP uses his steamlight booster, where it stretches the character to impossible but no less energetic dimensions. That’s the word to describe Redline’s animation – energetic, and often downright exhilarating. The animators give attention to even the smallest details of their characters’ racing – the flapping of steamlight tubes, the incessant shaking of the car (and different parts of the car) as they barrel toward the finish line (or away from enemy bombs, lasers, biological weapons, what have you). Even individual missile shots have their own unique animations. It’s undeniably gratuitous, but it’s also essential to the heart-poundingly bonkers fun of the whole thing.

On that note, James Shimoji’s soundtrack also deserves a mention; it’s as quirky and energetic as the movie that it scores, even if many of its tracks are too short to be fully enjoyed independently of their role in the movie. (Most of the tracks on the album end just as they feel like they’re getting started.) However, the opening score in particular – “Yellow Line” – is a lengthy, thumping track that’ll have you wanting to hop in your own car and just speed everywhere. “Redline” is a fun medley of that and the main themes of the final racers, and “Kare No Shift Wa BunBunBun” is worth a listen just to hear the SuperBoins try to say “We are sexy girls” in English (as if you somehow missed that they are The Sexy Girls of the movie).

Admittedly, Redline isn’t a movie for everyone. Non-anime fans may find themselves distracted by its sheer, unbridled craziness, and the plot and characterization is so meager that it feels like it’s literally only there to be the vehicle by which the characters’ cars race. As much as I fangirl over this movie, I have to admit that it took me two or three watches to really get into it, so if you’re unimpressed by spectacle, Redline will never be your thing.

But if you have even the slightest appreciation for the art of animation and the energy of well-done anime, you’ll find a real treasure in this movie.
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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

Promare – Anime Review

November 27, 2019 by hpholo Leave a Comment

Pssh. Right, like a Trigger movie would come to our local theatre and it NOT be a Mandatory Date Night.

Promare starts with a literal bang, as half the world’s population spontaneously bursts into flames, thus marking the Great World Blaze and the appearance of the Burnish – people with fire-manipulating powers who set the world aflame not because they want to, but because they must. And when fire can literally attack – well, suddenly firefighters have a whole new job.

New to the Burnish-fighting/rescue operation Burning Rescue, Galo Thymos is a rookie firefighter with a burning soul and a city to save – but when he apprehends the leader of the terrorist organization Mad Burnish, he discovers a challenge far darker and more complex than he could have ever imagined.

Okay, first off – watch this movie. Just watch it. If you have ever been a fan of anything Trigger or Trigger-adjacent, it is a gift to your eyeballs.

Studio Trigger at its best has always been known for its spectacular, frenetic animation and design. Even the self-consciously low-budget Kill la Kill rocked every single frame of animation that ever touched a screen and Promare, with all the advantages of a movie budget, is so beautiful that I would have cried – had I not been occupied by fits of uncontrollable grinning.

See, Trigger knows what its fans want – namely bold, bombastic heroes, high tech robots hecking stuff up, and outright ridiculous action – and Promare dumps all that onto the screen as soon as it starts. It takes a break a little bit afterward for plot, but then goes right back to what we love with a third act full of so many mecha transformations and WTF moments that it’s hard not to leave the theatre in a state of sheer vibrating nerd bliss.

The plot, unfortunately, is not as strong as its execution. Not that it’s bad – it moves along at an engaging pace and there’s never a dull moment – but given what I’ve seen from other Trigger productions of its type, I expected more. Trigger at its best has a talent for taking a visual motif and weaving it through the entire theme of the work. In Gurren Lagann (not technically Trigger, but still its spiritual predecessor), the visual concept of a spiral connected the protagonist’s defining drill to the spiral of human DNA and eventually to the resilient, overcoming power of humanity itself. In Kill la Kill, the concept of threads and clothing…well. It’s complicated and clever and absolutely nuts, and quite frankly, it’s easier to just go watch Kill la Kill.

Thus, given that Promare starts with a bunch of angry people bursting into flame and the centrality of fire to all human life (After all, it was one of our first tools), I expected a commentary on the all-consuming and all-empowering natures of both anger and fire – especially relevant in today’s angry society – or perhaps some twist relating the thematic concept of fire to humanity as a whole. Instead the movie takes a far more simplistic direction, and though one of its major themes centers upon how humans treat each other, it’s handled in such a predictable way that it became the one truly disappointing part of the movie. But then, I fully concede that it was mainly disappointing in comparison to my expectations.

At the same time, though, half the fun of going into a Trigger work for me is imagining the ridiculous ways in which its visuals and design might tie into its theme, and while most works since Kill la Kill have let me down in that respect, the thought process is still so fun that I don’t plan to give it up.

The only other disappointing element was that Galo was, in fact, not actually a resurrected Kamina (from Gurren Lagann), despite having his same basic character design and personality, and I’m still perplexed by the studio’s choice to make Promare’s protagonist essentially identical to one of its most iconic characters. Though, given how much fan chat leading up to the movie centered around the mystery of “Is it Kamina or not?” perhaps it was merely a clever marketing move.

After all, Trigger has time and again shown itself to be clever with design, and Promare is no exception. The film absolutely gleams with style, from the simplicity of its cityscapes to its unusual color choices (The fire is pink and yellow) to its imaginative character designs to its aesthetic attention to even the most minute background details (There’s a polygonal visual motif that extends even to the movie’s lens flares).

Also, Hiroyuki Sawano’s (always) explosive musical score and Superfly’s fist-pumping pop themes are a pile of cherries on top of an already huge movie sundae – though let’s be real, Sawano could write a score to a blank screen and it would be the most exciting blank screen you’d ever watched or would ever watch again.

Overall, Promare was spectacularly worth the cost of a Fathom Events ticket, and it already has a designated space on my Blu-Ray shelf (whenever it finally releases). Viewers who are unfamiliar with Trigger may not appreciate all its stylistic tropes, but even new fans will recognize it for what it is – a bombastic love letter to us and everything we love about Trigger’s anime.

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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

Detective Pikachu – Movie Review

May 21, 2019 by hpholo Leave a Comment

I showed up to an early preview of Detective Pikachu in my full-body Pikachu jammies, fueled by 20 years of Pokemon nostalgia and an insatiable love of bad movies, so there was no way I wasn’t going to like this thing.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxQ1BhlnE6e/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Even so, you can imagine my delight when it proved to be not a so-bad-it’s-good travesty of Pokemon fandom, but legitimately good, entirely worthy of my Pikajams, and perhaps the only recent piece of entertainment (other than Avengers: Endgame) that has actually respected the dedication of its fans.

Based upon the 3DS game, Detective Pikachu follows once-aspiring Pokemon trainer-turned-insurance drone Tim Goodman as be begrudgingly teams up with a talking Pikachu to investigate the death of his detective father. Given what I’ve read of the game (I haven’t played it), it actually seems to be a pretty fair adaptation, but let’s be real, no one is seeing this movie for adaptive accuracy. We’re seeing it so we can squeal at the absurd miracle of getting 1) a big-budget Pokemon movie in which 2) Pikachu is voiced by Ryan FREAKING Reynolds and 3) the fan artist responsible for the “creepy realistic Pokemon” series was tapped to help design the Pokemon for the big screen. It’s not a perfect movie (I’ll get to that in a bit), but for our particular audience, Detective Pikachu is a treasure.

It’s unabashedly a fanservice movie, but it’s a fanservice movie done right. It watches as if the filmmakers somehow delved into all our Pokefan heads, found what we most wanted to see on screen, and then crafted a plot that allowed us to see it in a way that (mostly) made narrative sense. We get to see many of our favorite Pokemon, and we get to see Pikachu battle both a Charizard and a Mewtwo, all set up in a world that we would willfully inhabit if we could: a world that combines both the childlike wonder of the regions we remember exploring with the adult perspective of the world we grew up to live in.
Tim himself is very much a stand-in for adult fans, who wanted to be Pokemon trainers as kids but now find themselves in significantly less magical adult jobs. And though it’s a movie based on a children’s property, it’s not really a movie for children. Kids can watch it, of course (as long as parents are okay with them hearing Pikachu drop some mild cusses), but ultimately it’s designed for those of us who grew up with the franchise.
Which is why my inner 12-year-old was screaming the whole time, and my adult face literally hurt from grinning so much.

Half the people in my theatre squealed Pokemon names with delight every time they popped up on screen—perhaps the only time anyone has ever been excited to see Pidgey or Magikarp—and though I usually hate it when people talk during movies, this time I was squealing right along with them. Detective Pikachu’s filmmakers earned my trust the moment Tim comments about a cubone wearing the skill of its dead parent, and kept it right though the ridiculous end.
Make no mistake, this movie is an absolute love letter to Pokemon fans.
Its mileage with non-fans, though, will vary. While the Pokemon fan in me gives Detective Pikachu infinite stars, the analytical writer has to acknowledge that outside that context, it’s close to a 3.5-star movie. The opening act is solid, but near the middle and end, the plot undertakes some seriously complicated gymnastics to make itself make sense, and they don’t always land gracefully. Many plot twists are revealed through barely-earned flashback-style exposition dumps, and the device used to make these dumps—advanced holographic imaging tech that can piece together complex environments from video footage—introduces plot holes through its very existence.
Characters often lack information at the convenience of the plot, even though they should logically have that information because of the way the device gathers it. Never mind that some was gathered from police cameras that can apparently travel through time. Given that the source of its most essential information was police footage, Lieutenant Yoshida (Ken Watanabe ❤!) in particular should have had significant plot-affecting information that he conveniently didn’t, purely at the whim of the writers.

Unexpectedly, some of the plot gymnastics became less egregious upon a second viewing (Of course I saw it twice), but even then those come down to the cheap writing trick of cutting off important information the mere second before characters can actually receive it. Granted, it works to keep the structure of the film intact—and the film is tightly paced—but such devices also make the tension feel artificial and frustrating.
The film’s emotional beats also fall flat. It’s hard to take seriously as anything but a comedy, which means that its attempts at genuinely sad scenes don’t really work, especially when Tim is mourning his dad to a talking Pikachu of all things (despite a convincing performance by Justice Smith). When it combines its emotions with comedy, though, it excels—as when a devastated, lonely Detective Pikachu sobs the iconic Pokemon theme in a truly inspired gem of a scene.
Finally, though she’s essential to moving the plot along, Kathryn Newton’s unpaid intern-slash-aspiring reporter Lucy Stevens fills her role with every spunky reporter stereotype ever and as a result is, frankly, grating to watch. The way the movie uses her Psyduck partner, however, is hilarious.

Psyduck itself raises pesky world building questions—Why the heck would a person in a high-stress environment in the middle of a densely populated city want a Pokemon whose stress headaches can literally trigger apocalyptic geography-leveling energy pulses?—but then, those kinds of questions are ultimately irrelevant to Pokemon fans, given the absurd characteristics we’re accustomed to seeing in Pokemon lore (see again: cubone wearing its mother’s skull. And that’s not even the most WTF of them).
Pokemon’s is a world that functions best when you don’t think about it too much except in terms of how it’s awesome, which is something the filmmakers did quite well—even for Pokemon that didn’t necessarily merit it, and this is yet another great success of this movie.

I’ve never given two thoughts to Mr. Mime or Ditto except to be pissed at how hard it was to find them and how lame they were once I did. Detective Pikachu took two of the lamest Pokemon, used them brilliantly, and instantly turned them into two of my new favorites.
More than being mere fanservice, this movie contributed something new and wholly unexpected to the Pokemon universe—first by simply existing, and then by giving fans a movie that loves its world as much as they do.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to don my Pikajams and see it again.

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EXTRA: Also, because they’re fun, the other promos, including the brilliant and adorable release day “full film leak.”

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Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

Mary Poppins Returns – Movie Review

January 21, 2019 by hpholo 1 Comment

In Mary Poppins Returns, there’s a song titled “A Cover is not the Book.” It’s about various whimsical figures who are not what they seem on the surface, but it might as well be about the movie itself:
What looks to be an expensive, nostalgia-reliant cash grab is…well, still an expensive, nostalgia-reliant cash grab, but it’s also a delightful, deserving follow-up to a timeless classic.
In this sequel to 1964’s Mary Poppins, the Banks children are all grown up and facing grown-up problems—namely, the death of Michael’s wife, which has brought his sister Jane back into the fold of 17 Cherry Tree Lane to help take care of his three children, Annabel, John, and Georgie. A year without their mother has forced these children to grow up fast, but even the help they offer can’t stave off the most recent threat to their family—the potential loss of 17 Cherry Tree Lane and all the memories contained therein. Financially strapped, the only way the family can save their beloved home is to find the shares in Fidelity Fiduciary Bank that their father left to them, but in the disorganization of his grief, Michael has misplaced them. These are problems large enough to require the services of a magical nanny, and with all the foresight of such a nanny, Mary Poppins floats right in.

Mary Poppins Returns is a sequel that almost requires two viewings—one so you can roll your eyes at how often it leans on viewer memories of the original, a second so you can stop being a cynical modern moviegoer and fully enjoy how it not only pays homage to the original, but develops a complex theme all its own and does a practically perfect job of it. (Sorry not sorry.)
That said, the film definitely relies on the structure of the original, to the point where halfway through, I wondered if the film would have a single original plot point. The film opens with its own Bert, in this case a lamplighter named Jack, whose purpose is to carry on Bert Prime’s tradition of awful Cockney accents, introduce the audience to London, and remind everyone of how enigmatic and perfect Mary Poppins is. There’s the Making-a-Mundane-Task-Fun song (“Can You Imagine That?”), the Travel-to-a-Whimsical-Animated-World song (“The Royal Doulton Music Hall”), the jaunty “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” romp (“A Cover is Not the Book”), the Visit-to-the-Eccentric-Directionally-Challenged-Cousin song (“Turning Turtle”), the Song-and-Dance-with-Laborers (“Trip a Little Light Fantastic”), and the concluding Everything-is-Happy-and-Stuff-is-Flying song (“Nowhere to go But Up”). By the end, I was astonished that there wasn’t a Lullaby-About-Pigeon-Ladies (though there was a lullaby).
This said, it’s easy to write Mary Poppins Returns off as an unnecessary rip off of a classic. What keeps it from being so is how skillfully it handles its multitude of homages and how it builds upon elements introduced in the original to develop its own meaning.
This is a movie clearly made by fans of the original Mary Poppins. It’s obvious from the very opening song (“(Underneath the) Lovely London Sky”), to the painted-backdrop-and-overture credits to the unmistakably Sherman Brothers-inspired wordplay of the lyrics. (The soundtrack has been on repeat in my office and car since I first saw this movie.) Moreover, it fully understands the stern-yet-whimsical spirit of Mary Poppins as both a story and a character: the philosophy that sometimes even the dark, adult parts of life are best tempered with a little “stuff and nonsense.”
And that is even more key to this film than the last.
For though the movie is, on the surface, a nonsense storybook tale, it’s ultimately a story about grief—Michael coming to terms with the death of his wife (or not, as evidenced by the fact that he can’t run a functioning household without her, try as he might), and the children trying to do the same (but unable to because they have to take care of the household that their father can’t). Contrary to stereotype, when a nanny like Mary Poppins shows up, its because the adults need fixing, not the kids, and in this case, it’s two types of grown-up who need her help—one actual grown-up, three who have been forced to take on grown-up responsibilities tragically early in life.
Granted, the movie’s wildly lavish musical numbers often distract from that. Disney pulled out more stops than usual here, often to spectacular effect (“Trip a Little Light Fantastic” is a show-stopper), sometimes to CGI excess (“Can You Imagine That?” is a great song, but so conspicuously computer-generated that it barely feels like it belongs in the world of the movie). Still, ultimately the lyrics and themes of each individual song come together in a way that leads the Bankses to process their grief from a different perspective and, in effect, to reclaim the joys of innocence and happiness lost.

That this is accomplished through meaningful callbacks to the original Mary Poppins makes it that much better. Though several are admittedly pure window dressing for fans, many serve a relevant, indispensable purpose to the plot—namely the iconic kite from the “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” scene, which may as well have been a character in this film. Even references that don’t influence the plot are used in a charming, characterful way (Admiral Boom, Mr. Binnacle, and their punctual cannon make recurring appearances with a cute twist).
The cast performances are charming as well. With a character as distinct and iconic as Mary Poppins, the strength of the movie naturally rides on the depiction of said character, and Emily Blunt, from her precise language to her calculated slips of mischief, is spot-on in her role. Lin-Manuel Miranda, despite the accent, is as ebullient as the lamps his character lights. Ben Whislaw as Michael maintains a fine, likable balance between loving father and grieving husband, who comes across as emotionally incapacitated rather than completely incompetent, which is key for the appeal of his character (…even if the eventual reveal about the bank shares made the responsible adult in me want to scream at him). Despite not having a lot of screen time compared to the other characters, Emily Mortimer plays a sweet and assertive Jane, whose labor activism is a nice callback to the character’s suffragette mother. Finally, Pixie Davies, Nathaniel Saleh, and Joel Dawson as Annabel, John, and Georgie respectively also fill their roles well, balancing responsibility with playfulness and only coming across as precocious or whinging when children normally would.
The movie does have its flaws, but for me, most of them were nitpicks. There are moments when the film’s visuals become too overwhelming—as in the aforementioned “Can You Imagine That?” scene or in the animated “Royal Doulton Music Hall” sequence, where the backgrounds and costume design hearken back to the scratchy, sketchy Xerox era that produced Mary Poppins…but the animated animals all have clean, modern, digital lines. There’s also an actual antagonist in the form of William “Weatherall” Wilkins (Colin Firth), the new president of Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, who is determined to reclaim 17 Cherry Tree Lane for the very Hollywood reason of Profiting The Bank At All Costs. There’s a minor payoff for this conflict in the form of a fun character reveal at the end (Dick Van Dyke, revisiting a version of a role he played in the original), but in a story where the conflict is about characters overcoming personal problems, a concrete antagonist felt extraneous, and the entire climax could have worked even without the threat of Wilkins’ character. Fortunately, though, we don’t see enough of that character to really complain about, and the end itself is delightful enough to overshadow it.
The same can be said of the movie as a whole. The jaded adult in me might point out its flaws and repetitions, but the child in me delights in the way that it solves hard problems with childlike whimsy. While that seems like an unrealistic way to solve problems, hardships in my own life have taught me that often the best way to survive those periods (or at least ease oneself into a state where one is able to handle them) is to look at the darkness from a different, lighter perspective.
The wackiest song in the film, “Turning Turtle,” is actually the one that conveys the movie’s central message, and when Mary Poppins sings, “When you change the view from where you stood / The things you view will change for good,” it carries a deeper meaning far beyond her topsy-turvy situation. And, indeed, beyond the movie itself.
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Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi – Movie Review

December 17, 2017 by hpholo Leave a Comment

SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE! SPOILER SPACE!

SPOILERS AHEAD.

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

H.P. is a pretty casual Star Wars fan. Which is to say, she enjoyed the original three, tolerates the prequels, loves the porgs even if she wonders what they taste like, and her most pressing fan question is “WHYYYY hasn’t the Star Wars Christmas Special been re-released yet?”
Jacob is not. Which is to say, his first pieces of writing were Star Wars fanfic. He has a level of reverence for the Empire that would give Kylo Ren goosebumps. He decorated the Holo dining room with Imperial Fleet propaganda. The Holo dining room table is frequently covered with not dinner, but Imperial Star Wars Armada miniatures, their cards all arranged in the plotting of his next devastating fleet. His most pressing fan question is “WHYYYY does the First Order even exist?”
All this to say, we covered both target audiences that The Last Jedi aimed to please.
Which is to say, when a fan who wants to see a Christmas Special release is disappointed by your movie, you’ve done something wrong.
Which is to say, when a fan whose dining room is a mini Star Wars shrine erupts into an angry rant that ends in impassioned manly fanboy tears at your movie, you’ve done something wrong.
(Seriously, guys, you missed out on some potential Internet gold last week.
Jacob’s still so angry at the movie that H.P. had to write this review.
Also seriously, f*** the First Order.)
To be fair, The Last Jedi is not a bad sci-fi movie. It’s not even a disappointing sci-fi movie. It is, however, an intensely disappointing Star Wars movie. Star Wars is as looming a behemoth in the fandom world as Disney is in the moviemaking world, and both are at their height right now. Given this situation, and its great if derivative trailer, one would expect The Last Jedi to be a perfect marriage of everything fans love about Star Wars and the massive resources Disney can devote to a project of that scale.
Of the considerable resources Disney did fling at this movie, none of them were in the writing department, which is where every single piece of this movie fails.
There are plenty of good moments in The Last Jedi – most of its humor is laugh-out-loud (even if it approaches being too goofy), and the art direction is stellar, especially in the climax – but a movie needs more than a string of unconnected moments to pull it together.
The plot, simply put, is terrible. Its most glaring flaw is the pacing. Most of the film comes down to the Resistance fleet, low on fuel and unable to jump to hyperspace, slowly puttering just out of reach of the pursuing First Order’s cannons. This is literally the opposite of the exciting space battles one expects of Star Wars. Switch to Rey in her quest to recruit Luke Skywalker to the Resistance cause, and we have more waiting – first for Luke to be something other than a crotchety old man who has no time for Rey, then for him to decide to train Rey, then take it back when her power scares him. Switch to the First Order, where Kylo Ren has fallen from grace and struggles with his own deep internal conflict – which could be interesting, but is only expressed through strange Force conversations that he’s able to hold with Rey (any advancements made in which are completely negated by a late-movie twist).
I honestly do not understand how anyone could read this slow-paced mess and decide to throw millions of dollars of funding behind it.
Even worse, though, is the way the movie handles its characters. For all its flaws, The Force Awakens at least set up some interesting characters and relationships – Finn and Poe and their frequent Need of Pilot, Rey and her mysterious backstory, Kylo Ren and all his issues. The Last Jedi explores none of that. In fact, it separates Finn from Poe, reducing Finn to a coward who starts the movie by trying to desert (despite being able to go toe-to-toe with Kylo Ren in the previous movie) and ends up roped into an off-ship side quest trying to hide that he was deserting. Poe, meanwhile, is back on the Resistance cruiser being a loose cannon and generally not being a pilot (except for the movie’s opening scene). Rey spends so much time trying to win Luke that when he finally starts training her, it’s a relief, not a joy, and we don’t learn any more about her than we’d already guessed, even if we do get some neat, weird metaphysical scenes out of it. Of the new trilogy characters, Kylo Ren’s arc had the most potential for development—and did have several exciting “Ooo!” moments—but his considerable internal conflict doesn’t lead him anywhere new or interesting by the end.
Supreme Leader Snoke and Captain Phasma get the worst of it, though. Captain Phasma, at least among fan expectations, has been built up to be an imposing antagonist as cool as her armor. I forgave The Force Awakens for not cashing in on that because, after all, there were two more movies coming at that point, but in The Last Jedi, all Captain Phasma does is botch an execution, fight once, and then fall into a flame pit. Snoke’s identity and ultimate plan was another such highly-anticipated reveal, only to be revealed as…nothing. The only things we learn about him are that he is, in fact, not as giant as his holograms suggest and that he has really snappy taste in bathrobes. He dies without any meaningful bits of his mystery being solved, in the most obnoxious tease-without-a-payoff of the entire movie.

I feel you, Rey.
Again, I simply cannot understand why someone greenlit a script that solved none of the mysteries fans were clamoring to see solved. (We do learn the secret of who Rey’s parents are, and it is unexpected, but it also comes from an untrustworthy source, so who knows if that’s the actual truth?)
Now—ONLY NOW—do we come to the flaws that drove Jacob to absolute nerdrage on the way home from the theatre.

As an avid Armada nerd, Jacob knows his Star Wars military strategy. Whoever created the military circumstances of The Last Jedi does not, and does it hard. The First Order and Resistance are two complete disasters of military planning, and it’s evident from the very first scene.
In it, the First Order hypers in to take out a Resistance base, armed with several star destroyers and a dreadnought, which is basically a bigger, angrier star destroyer with nice guns…and apparently no shields. And no combat space patrol to escort it. Only after Poe—just Poe—flies in on his sassy X-wing and starts taking out cannons does the leadership think it prudent to sent out some TIE fighters to maybe wreck him. But oops, they’re too late; he’s done his job, which is apparently to distract the entire First Order fleet so that five big-ass bombers can appear out of nowhere and advance with excruciatingly slow speed toward the unshielded dreadnought.
Logical problems run rampant here: If the bombers are that slow, how could the First Order not notice them coming in the first place? And if they hypered in, why not hyper in on top of the dreadnought and drop their load there? But wait, you might say! “Drop their load? They’re in space! What gravity are they expecting to pull these bombs into free fall?” Well, The Last Jedi hears your question and answers…actually nope. It doesn’t. But the scene at least gives us some fun Poe being Poe and a touching self-sacrifice (not Poe), so there’s that.
Proceed to the main plot, during which the Resistance fleet is forced to slowly motor away from the ever-patient First Order, and you encounter the frustrating problem of “THE RESISTANCE IS TRAVELING IN A SLOW, STRAIGHT LINE, AND THE FIRST ORDER HAS HYPERSPACE CAPABILITIES. WHY NOT HYPER SOME STAR DESTROYERS OUT IN FRONT OF THE RESISTANCE FLEET AND WIPE THEM OUT IN A SECOND OR JUST SWARM THEM WITH TIE FIGHTERS instead of following them slowly and politely through space I swear is General Hux in the back playing Angry Porgs when he’s not on screen?
It’s not like he’s a competent general, anyway; otherwise he might have realized that the First Order—which nearly controls the entire galaxy—vs. the last 400 Resistance fighters is not a war. It’s an itch, a skirmish at most. A single star destroyer carries more personnel than remains in the entire Resistance (70,000 to be precise)! The scale of this conflict is so unbelievably one-sided that I can’t even fathom how these 400 fighters have managed to evade the First Order in the first place, especially as easily as they’re picked off in this movie, and especially since they’re traveling together in one convenient package. The only explanation I can come up with is that they’re protected by the sheer badassery of Carrie Fisher, which given the logic of this movie, is as reasonable as anything else.

Proceed to the next phase of the plot, where a forgotten, uncharted Rebel base randomly shows up to give the Resistance a big ol’ dose of Hope, and the Resistance decides to evacuate its doomed cruiser to make for the base. In transports that don’t have hyperdrives, even though EVERY Resistance ship has hyperdrives. (On that point, why all head to the base to begin with? Why not scatter and force the First Order to chase more than one target?) That’s another disaster of strategy, but worse is what the movie could have done with this scene, compared to what the movie actually did.
Early in the movie, Princess Leia is knocked out of commission, the rest of the leadership is blown to bits, and so a new character whom I’ve never heard of but is presumably a great leader steps in to take her place. I can’t remember her name, so I’m going to call her Effie Trinket, because she looks like her and has about as much substance…but still gets a heroic death when she decides to stay with the cruiser and provide a distraction…in the form of turning the cruiser toward the First Order and hypering through the whole fleet (more on that later. UGH SO MUCH MORE). Effie isn’t developed. We’re supposed to feel sad at her sacrifice, but we don’t, because we as viewers don’t know her. You know who could have gotten a deservingly heroic death out of that scene? PRINCESS F*****G LEIA. Or even Admiral Ackbar, going down on his iconic Mon Calamari ship. Not some invented one-shot who does nothing more than be a pretty purple piece of cardboard with the apparent ability to break the laws of even Star Wars physics.
Which brings up another great, frustrating flaw. In the very first Star Wars movie (okay, fourth by modern chronology), it’s clearly established that if a hyperdrive detects any obstacles in its path, it sits down like a finicky two-year-old and goes NOPE until its path looks perfect again. It doesn’t have any safeties to be deactivated. It just DOESN’T. And it certainly doesn’t hyper through an entire space fleet.
At least, it didn’t. But here, what makes for a superficially badass scene and sacrifice ultimately rips the world of Star Wars physics apart (and there wasn’t much to begin with). If it’s now possible to hyper through things, why not make hyperdrive-equipped missiles? In fact, why not just strap hyperdrives to anvils if that’s all it takes to wreck a star destroyer? That small suggestion alone completely changes the face of warfare in the Star Wars universe and brings up the all-encompassing flaw in The Last Jedi:
If the movie isn’t going to care about its own lore, why should I?
That is ultimately what sucks the magic out of The Last Jedi.
I can enjoy even a mediocre plot if the world sets and respects its own rules. Once a world breaks its rules for the convenience of its plot, I’m done, and unfortunately, The Last Jedi is a thorough world-breaker.
The film doesn’t even do its fan-service well. In the climax on the Rebel base, it misses a perfect opportunity to send the heroes out in classic X-wings and Y-wings, but instead sends them out in rickety space jalopies that don’t even have a particularly interesting design.
Mercifully, The Last Jedi does have one redeeming quality.

About the only thing it handled well was Luke Skywalker’s personal arc, which sees him through a hard, emotional transformation and drags him through a spiritual gauntlet before launching him out to a truly fitting end. The final battle of the movie has some logical flaws (in terms of military strategy, because of course), but beyond those it’s the stuff Star Wars dreams are made of. Visually, it’s damn beautiful, and emotionally it hits all the notes that the rest of the movie should have hit.

In retrospect, I probably should have cried at the end, and am actually tearing up a bit right now thinking about how well-done it was. But when it happened in the theater, I was so pissed at the rest of the movie that I was just ready for it to be over, which is something neither I, nor Jacob, ever thought we’d say about a Star Wars movie.
Except for its isolated high points, The Last Jedi is an expensive, flashy, unmitigated disaster that might even be on par with Episode III.
But hey, at least it gave us the porgs.

***
Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

What to Watch When You’ve Finished The Seraphim Revival (or, a Holiday Gift Guide for Mecha Nerds)

November 19, 2017 by hpholo Leave a Comment

The Seraphim Revival may be complete, but if you’re anything like the guy who wrote it, you’ve got a fever and the only prescription is more…giant robots. Well, never fear, ‘cause Dr. Holo’s got you covered.
The titles listed below are movies or anime series that either 1) influenced the writing of the Seraphim Revival trilogy, or 2) were discovered afterward but are still hecka fun for mecha fans.
We enjoyed all these, so we hope you will, too! 😀 (And of course, if you happened upon this page and have no idea what the Seraphim Revival is, we invite you to check it out! The first book in the series, Bane of the Dead, will be only $.99 through 12/30/17, so this is the perfect time!)

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

You can’t be a mecha fan without also being a Gundam fan. It’s the rules. There will be a lot of Gundam on this list. Jacob’s first foray into the world of Gundam came in the Toonami golden age’s airing of Gundam Wing, and we may have squeed a little too loudly when we realized it was finally getting a collector’s edition Blu-Ray release this year. If that so expensive but UGH SO PRETTY collector’s edition makes your wallet scream, there are some Blu-Ray only options, too: Collection 1, Collection 2, and Endless Waltz. The main series and Endless Waltz are also streaming on CrunchyRoll.

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn Re:0096

Gundam Wing may be the most pivotal Gundam for us, but Gundam Unicorn is hands-down our favorite. Set early in the Universal Century arc, it includes a lot of fan service references to classic Gundam, but it’s far from a fan service series*. Its plot is solid, and the animation is the most spectacular any Gundam series has ever seen. The series’ Blu-Ray/DVD release is a little wack, though (2 episodes per disc? What is this? 2001?), so if you don’t want to take the physical media plunge, it’s available for streaming on CrunchyRoll.
*I should specify that the fan service refers to mecha and character appearances, not boobs. If you want boob fanservice there’s, like, three seconds of boob in The 08th MS Team.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack

Char’s Counterattack is a Gundam classic – perhaps the Gundam classic – and it got a fantastic Blu-Ray release late last year. It won’t make a whole lot of sense if you’re not familiar with the original Mobile Suit Gundam series (or Unicorn), but it’s still worth it for the awesome mecha/military drama (and if you enjoy watching annoying characters get their just, fiery desserts). >D

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team

The 08th MS Team is unique in Gundam for being a small, down-to-earth story of a quartet of Gundam fighters, rather than an epic, sweeping space opera. The shifted focus from space battles opens up room for characters with very human, relatable problems, and the cast is charming in its authenticity. It’s not a must-watch, but it is a good watch for Gundam fans who are looking for something a little different.

Mobile Fighter G Gundam

Jacob scoffs at this entry, but H.P. loves it, so it stays. G Gundam is, admittedly, the black sheep of the Gundam family in that it is…well, terrible (especially in comparison to masterpieces like Char’s Counterattack and Unicorn).
However, it is also a whole lot of fun, if only because of its plethora of questionable choices that somehow earned the approval of a production committee. It’s like the anime equivalent of Miley Cyrus at the 2014 Grammys. A unified world where the governing country is determined by mecha fights every 4 years? Check. Hilariously stereotyped Gundam designs and pilots? Check. A Gundam so evil it’s called the Devil Gundam? Check. Participating in Gundam fights to find one’s missing brother even though that is probably the most inefficient method of finding someone ever? Check. The main character has a dramatic backstory, so at least it shares that with other Gundam series.
In short, it’s a hot mess, but a hilarious mess, too. For a serious Gundam fan, it’s probably the least watchable of all the Gundam series. But for fans of sprawling mecha train wrecks, it’s a blast. It hasn’t gotten a Blu-Ray release (understandably so), but it is available in two collections on DVD and available for streaming on CrunchyRoll.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

There have been approximately 20,000 versions of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and all are entertaining (if you find entertainment in angsty teens, mecha drama, and relationships so twisted they’d make the Greek gods cringe), so take your pick. Classic series? The End of Evangelion movie? The Death and Rebirth movie? These all had a huge influence on the writing of the Seraphim Revival books.
Our preferred versions, though, are the recent Rebuild of Evangelion movies: 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance, and 3.33: You Can (Not) Redo. This is primarily because they update the low-budget original series with beautiful animation and mecha battles, and then go off the track (and off the rails) in 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, diverging from the plot of the original to deliver something new to fans.

Transformers: The Movie

Gundam Wing may have been the pivotal mecha series for Jacob, but Transformers was the gateway drug. Without this masterpiece of toy-inspired filmmaking, the Seraphim Revival series wouldn’t exist. The 1986 movie traumatized and enthralled Tiny Jacob and even today is a regular replay in House Holo.

Robot Jox

Robot Jox holds up better if you watched it as a kid before you had any real taste in movies, or if you just like bad movies. Jacob is the former and H.P. is the latter, which made this movie perfect for us. It’s G Gundam-like in that nations settle their disputes by pitting giant robots against each other, and there is drama! Deception! Hilariously bad stereotypes! But mostly 1980s robots wailing on each other. It’s a fun little watch if you want a laugh involving giant robots.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Jacob discovered Gurren Lagann too late for it to have any influence on the Seraphim Revival, but it’s H.P.’s favorite anime of all time, the anime recommendation that convinced Jacob she was marriage material, and a list of mecha recommendations would be incomplete without it.
This is a ridiculous show where the robots are powered by fighting spirit and manliness, where they combine and sprout new weapons with even less regard for physics than normal anime, and where the scale of battle becomes so extreme by the end that…you know what? It just has to be seen to be believed. However, beneath all its hyperactive action, there’s a story with an unexpected amount of heart, and by the end, it’ll leave you cheering for humanity. (And these days, how often can you say that about anything?)
If you don’t feel like forking out the insane cash for that (admittedly gorgeous) limited edition Blu-Ray box set, there’s a more wallet-friendly DVD edition. It’s also streaming on CrunchyRoll.

The Vision of Escaflowne

Escaflowne didn’t influence the Seraphim Revival as much as the aforementioned series, but it’s worth mentioning because 1) it’s unique for its fantasy setting (as opposed to a futuristic sci-fi setting), and 2) it just got a wholly unexpected Blu-Ray collector’s edition that is actually pretty slick. Outside a few dated technology references, the anime has aged surprisingly well. (It was 20 years old last year.) The story goes a little weak at the end, but the rest of the series makes up for it with dang cool Guymelef (mecha/armor/whatever) battles, a fascinating world, and, let’s face it, Allen because he’s super hot.
Jacob surprised H.P. with this edition for her birthday, and it’s been one of her favorite watches this year.

Pacific Rim

Pssh. Did you expect us to write a post of mecha recommendations and not include Pacific Rim? 😛
So ends our list of Seraphim Revival watch-alikes! Mecha fans, what would you add?
***
Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle – Movie Review

October 18, 2017 by hpholo Leave a Comment

Kingsman: The Secret Service is so beloved a movie in House Holo that when Kingsman: The Golden Circle was announced, it called for a Mandatory Date Night.

In The Golden Circle, Eggsy’s life as Galahad is good. He’s a new but accomplished agent of the Kingsman, and at the moment his biggest challenge is impressing his girlfriend’s parents. That all changes when a well-timed missile barrage obliterates every Kingsman agent except him and Merlin and every resource at the Kingsman’s disposal, which means they must follow their doomsday protocol: teaming up with the Kingsman’s American cousin, the Statesman, and figuring out what the heck happened.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nxc-3WpMbg&w=560&h=315]
The Golden Circle had one of the most fun trailers ever, and the movie almost lived up to that. It was ultimately a fun watch, as what it does right, it does very right. However, what it does wrong, it does very wrong, and for this reason, it falls short as a worthy successor to The Secret Service.
First, the good: The first Kingsman movie had some of the best action scenes in the history of spy films, and The Golden Circle keeps that tradition going. While frantic and heavily stylized, the action is easy to follow and over-the-top in the best way.
The opening scene, which sees Eggsy fighting a bionic-armed baddie in (and around) a Kingsman taxi as it’s being chased through the streets of London by cars armed with miniguns watches like this film’s answer to the backwards car chase scene from the first, as if to emphasize Eggsy’s progression as an agent. Now, when it comes to car combat, he can certainly do more than drive fast backward. Likewise, the climactic scene is wonderfully ridiculous, even if it goes a bit long, seeing Eggsy and Harry Hart (yes, the dead one) rampaging through the big bad’s retro-inspired headquarters while robots fight in the background and Elton John literally kicks bad guy butt in a marvelously sparkly feathered suit. Really you should see this movie for that alone. It is wondrous.
Next, the interactions between the core characters are as engaging as they were in the original and even improve upon relationships set up in the first movie. Any boyfriend would have reason to be nervous meeting his girl’s parents, but Eggsy’s girl? She’s Princess Tilde, having stuck with him from that infamous scene. Which means that the parents he’s meeting are the king and queen of Sweden. Talk about pressure. Likewise, Harry Hart’s return is both awesome and bittersweet – awesome because YESSS COLIN FIRTH IS BACK AND HE HAS AN EYEPATCH, bittersweet because being shot in the head does things to a person, even if the bullet only passed through the eye. In this case, it’s resulted in such incredible memory loss that he doesn’t remember being a Kingsman at all, much less the personal value he has to Eggsy and Merlin, and their attempts to get him to remember who he is are heartbreaking to watch. Even after one finally works, he’s not the Harry Hart he used to be; on a basic level, having one eye when he’s used to two throws his perception off, which complicates his combat abilities. On a deeper level, he struggles with phantoms that haunt his mind as a result of his injury, which leads Eggsy and Merlin to question his remaining abilities even if he’s still confident in them. There’s more depth in these characters than most other spy films have led me to expect of the genre.
The same cannot be said for the antagonists, which is where The Golden Circle’s flaws begin.
We learn early on that the titular Golden Circle refers to a drug cartel run by the bubbly but vicious Poppy, an accomplished businesswoman/drug dealer with such a flair for wholesome 1950s nostalgia that her secret lair in the jungle is a heavily-guarded re-creation of the fun parts of a retro town – diner, salon, bowling alley, all the essentials. This could have been a great template for an antagonist; after all, Valentine from the previous movie was similarly over-the-top, with his penchant for global murder despite his charming lisp and aversion to the sight of blood.
Poppy has none of that. When we first meet her, she tests the loyalty of an inductee to her drug ring by having him jam his still-living recruiter into a mincer and then forcing him to eat a burger made from the ground-up meat of the man. Which, admittedly, is wonderfully nuts, but also gives us as viewers nothing to like about her. I hate, hate, hate the trope of bad guys killing off minions to show How Evil They Are, because it makes one wonder how that bad guy manages to find loyal minions at all. Once Poppy states that she prefers robots to humans anyway – and apparently has access to such technology that advanced prosthetics and semi-sentient dogs and salon attendants are no big deal – it becomes clear that the only reason why Poppy even keeps human staff is for the writers to show How Evil She Is. Combine this with her actual plan, and she has no redeeming qualities, which makes her an uninteresting villain.
In her nefarious scheme, she’s poisoned the various drugs she sells with a disease that leads to a quick and miserable death. Her plot? Force the US to legalize the drug trade so that she can run her business legally, and do so by holding all the poisoned victims hostage (because possibly killing all your customers at once is a great business model). If all goes according to plan, the president signs an order legalizing the drugs, she sends the antidote out worldwide.
Except the president doesn’t, which is one of the film’s most obnoxious problems. I have never seen a man without a mustache twirl an evil mustache that hard, but this guy manages. When this president learns of the threat, his public plan is to gather the affected to field hospitals and treat them; his actual plan is to not sign Poppy’s order and just let the affected die, thereby winning the war on drugs in one fell swoop. After all, the users are just worthless druggies, right? As if we needed more emphasis on how despicable he is, the gathered victims are literally put in metal cages and stacked on top of each other. The president isn’t even a character by this point; he’s a caricature, and not a very good one at that. Like, even if a politician wanted to do that sort of thing, how could he even expect to get away with something that obvious? I mean, other possible complications aside, SOMEONE IS GOING TO NOTICE THE THOUSANDS OF CAGES BEING SENT TO FIELD HOSPITALS WITHIN THE SPACE OF A FEW DAYS AND BLOW A WHISTLE IN TWO SECONDS ON TWITTER 😐 😐 😐
*Update: …Um, 2018, when I wrote the above paragraph, I did not mean it as a challenge. 😐 😐 😐
Literally every scene with the president in it watches like an angry college student with minimal writing skills still had some election year steam to blow off and so farted their hot, wet angst all over what should have been one of my favorite movies of the year.
Those are the most egregious flaws, but they’re not the most disappointing ones. That dubious honor goes, regrettably, to the Statesman.
With the Statesman, the writers commit the biggest sin of the movie, taking one of the best and most promising parts of the trailer and criminally under-using it while reducing it to a series of caricatures (There’s a theme emerging here…). The setup for the Statesman is smart; it’s a bigger, better-equipped, bombastic organization ‘cause ‘Murica (also ‘cause sequel. Also ‘cause their cover business is whiskey, which brings in a whole lot more money than tailoring). However, the movie drops the ball almost as soon as the Statesman are introduced…which is by displaying an astonishing lack of knowledge about their role in the Kingsman’s doomsday protocol. Eggsy and Merlin almost end up set on fire by Channing Tatum (er, agent Tequila) before another agent pops in to say “oops, no, I looked in our files, they’re for real. lol sorry :P”
After that the Statesmen characters are introduced as a series of increasingly cowboyish dudes with alcohol-themed code names and so little characterization that they might have been named after whatever the writers were drinking when they created each one. The only exception is Ginger Ale, who is at least likable, but still not incredibly complex outside of a “I want to be a field agent but this one guy keeps voting me down” conflict. And she certainly doesn’t make up for the sin of introducing Channing Tatum’s nice muscles and then, no joke, PUTTING HIM IN CRYO BEFORE HE EVEN GETS TO BE AWESOME. 😐 😐 😐
If that’s not mismanagement of creative resources, I don’t know what is, but unfortunately that’s what a lot of this movie boils down to. Fortunately, that doesn’t stop it from being generally fun to experience. The most perfect example of how the film watches is a reprisal of the famous bar fight scene. The setup is absolutely stupid – a random Statesman antagonizes the Kingsman for literally no reason other than that they look prissy – and the violence that follows is wholly disproportionate to the offense given. Narratively, however, it’s brilliant, referencing Harry’s iconic scene from the first movie to show how his trauma has affected his abilities, and then transforming into a chance to show what an awesome badass new ally agent Whiskey is.
And that’s really what The Golden Circle is: a plethora of brilliant moments strung together by an equal plethora of terrible ones. The brilliant moments make it worth watching, but the others will make fans wonder why we didn’t get a movie that was as smart and tightly-plotted as The Secret Service.
***
Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Movie Review

February 11, 2016 by hpholo Leave a Comment

I consider myself a connoisseur of terrible movies, an Austenite, and mildly interested in zombies, so there was no film that I as more excited to see this year than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I wasn’t let down – it was a hot mess – but is it a hot mess worth watching? That will depend on how much you enjoy any of its definitive elements.
First, you have to love bad movies, Pride and Prejudice, and zombies. There’s no way around that. It’s not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination; the zombie designs are appropriately gross and their heads explode nicely, but the acting is only okay, some of the costume choices look like an anachronistic costume closet dump, the plot is so jankily handled that it reads like Pride and Prejudice Spark Notes with a few pages ripped out, and with two notable exceptions, nearly every role is horribly (and hilariously) miscast.
The casting is easily the most egregious flaw in (slash-greatest-strength-of) this movie. When Mr. Collins is the most interesting character in your P&P adaptation, you’re doing it wrong. When you see Mr. Darcy for the first time and wonder why Mr. Collins is showing up so early, you’re doing it APOCALYPTICALLY wrong.

mrdarcynope — Not that Sam Riley isn’t cute; he’s just not Colin Firth.

Jane was hard to pick out from the other Bennet sisters because all of them are generically pretty (except Mary, who was perfect). Bingley looked like an escapee from a boy band. Wickham looked like Gaston’s smarmy middle-aged cousin. Mrs. Bennet is the best-looking and least-annoying Mrs. Bennet ever (so, not Mrs. Bennet at all. More like a Real Housewife of Longbourn), and Mr. Bennet is Tywin Lannister (and Havelock Vetinari!) but spends the whole movie looking harried rather than doing anything remotely interesting. He doesn’t even have good sass. Honestly, the awfulness of the casting went to such depths that I wondered if it was intentional, but even if not, it becomes one of the funniest parts of the film.
That said, two bits of casting were perfect (if not entirely accurate): Matt Smith has the admirable distinction of being the only likable Mr. Collins in the history of P&P, managing to turn a truly cringe-worthy character into someone absolutely adorkable. For real, I’d tap that Mr. Collins.

mrcollinsyep — Matt Smith brings the added advantage of letting the viewer imagine the movie as a lost literary episode of *Doctor Who*.

Lena Headey as Catherine de Bourgh (LANNISTER FAM REPRESENT!) is a delight, though this may have more to do with the fact that this Catherine de Bourgh is a kickass, eyepatch-wearing, zombie-killing savior of the realm rather than an old arrogant fart.

catherinedebourghftw — Let’s be honest; that eyepatch is the best character in this movie.

But you have to know that Catherine de Bourgh is an old arrogant fart to begin with to even appreciate what she does, which highlights one of the film’s legitimate problems.
It’s not enough to have read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or even Pride and Prejudice itself. You almost have to be steeped in the teas of Pride and Prejudice fandom (miniseries, movies, and all) to get any true enjoyment out of this movie – either so you can appreciate the parody when it happens well (i.e. Catherine de Bourgh), or so you can appreciate when it goes wrong (i.e. in how not-Colin Firth Mr. Darcy is). Someone involved in production was obviously a P&P fan because they knew to include a scene of Mr. Darcy jumping into a lake. I don’t think enough people involved were fans, though. Otherwise Mr. Darcy would have been hot and Wickham would have at least been deceptively good-looking.
The film has some tonal issues, too. It can never decide whether it wants to be a tongue-in-cheek action movie, a straight-up parody of P&P and its fandom, or a clever piece of alternate universe fiction. This is a movie in which the opening scene clearly and expertly sets up the alternate circumstances of this universe (Mr. Darcy, a skilled zombie hunter in this fiction, crashes the hell out of a party where a zombie is present) and the first battle scene sets up the Bennet sisters as certified zombie-killing badasses. There’s also a lot of hinting at the possible intelligence exhibited by the zombies in question, but before any of that can be explored, the movie quickly shifts away from it, hurries through iconic P&P scenes, or leaps to a forced bit of humor (Did we really need to hear Charlotte Lucas snoring that long?).
Fortunately, not all of the humor is forced. The simple premise of combining Regency England with zombies naturally makes the film hilarious, and I have to admit I spent most of the film laughing entirely at small changes that were made to the Regency environment – estates surrounded by brutal-looking spikes, ladies of quality talking about martial arts they studied in China or Japan, Mr. Darcy himself being a prized zombie hunter rather than just rich, etc. The exaggerated extent to which some characters are played is brilliant, too. You know exactly who Charlotte Bingley is the moment you see her sour face at the Netherfield ball. Mr. Darcy’s sickly sister Georgiana communicates entirely through groans. When Mrs. Bennet embarrasses the family, she does it hardcore, sprawled all over a couch like a drunk socialite. And then there’s the iconic proposal scene, wherein Lizzie answers Mr. Darcy’s backhanded offer with a fistfight. And Catherine de Bourgh’s subsequent (and in this case, literal) attack on Lizzie, wherein Lizzie beats de Bourgh’s thug by dropping a ceiling on him.
Really, the film is at its absolute best when it’s parodying the novel of manners Austen fans have come to know and obsess over. It loses a lot of its entertainment value in its second half, where it diverges from both sets of source material to become a more drama- and action-oriented film. While some of its changes were admittedly cool (avoiding spoilers, St. Lazarus), they would have worked better in a film that viewed itself as serious alternate fiction from the get-go, rather than a comedy. And let’s face it, all of us are going to see this movie for the comedy. None of us are going to see it to watch Lizzie cry dramatically over Mr. Darcy’s unconscious body on an exploded bridge.
All this said, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is certainly not for everyone. But if you’re one of those readers who leapt with joy at the announcement of the book and then did an astonished happy dance at the announcement of the movie, you already know it’s for you. It’s not nearly as good as it could have been, but let’s face it, at the end of it all, we have both this and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which is more alternate history/classic movie weirdness than we ever thought we’d get. It’s not for everyone because it was made for us, and that makes it a special movie.
Still one that’s better watched on Netflix than on the end of a $15 movie ticket, though.
P.S. Here’s the perfect Mr. Darcy and the perfect Lake Scene because no way am I going to pass up an excuse to post this masterpiece.

Interstellar – Movie Review

November 10, 2014 by holojacob Leave a Comment

IN SHORT: The Earth’s blighted crops are dying off. Now a small group of astronauts must venture beyond our solar system in hopes of finding a new home for humanity.
WHAT IT IS: A fantastically imaginative film that explores several hard science theories while maintaining a heart wrenching father-daughter core to it. Black holes, wormholes, time dilation, and a few surprises find a home in this breathtaking film.
WHAT IT IS NOT: While Interstellar is built on a solid foundation of science, there were a few “science” moments that took me out of the movie. More nitpicks that anything else, really. Same with the human elements.
WHAT I THOUGHT: Go see this movie.
Seriously, just stop reading and go see it. It’s that good. I’m struggling to remember the last time I was this impressed with a movie. Also, it’s going to be hard for me to talk about it for fear of spoilers, but I’ll do my best.
At its core, Interstellar is about exploring the unknown set against a backdrop of desperation. Earth is dying, and people need a new home. It explores the edge of our understanding of physics, then dives off that edge. The movie takes its science seriously, and tries to be true to our current understanding of the universe. Don’t believe me? Some individual frames took 100 hours to render because they accurately modeled how light bends. Now that’s attention to detail!
The story comes with a powerful emotional core, enhanced with a healthy dose of space travel mucking up the passage of time. The tumultuous relationship between Cooper and his daughter can be heart wrenching at times. I actually got a little misty eyed over this one, and that doesn’t often happen to me at the movies.
The music deserves special note for effectively setting the mood. For example, there’s a scene around the movie’s middlish section that shows one of the Ranger space shuttles docking with the larger Endurance (the circular spaceship featured in the movie posters). All by itself, it’s a fairly standard docking sequence. Add in the music, and ohmygoshSTRESS!
And that’s another thing. This is not a relaxing movie to watch. It is STRESSFUL. The plight of humanity is communicated very effectively to the viewer. Wheat is gone. Okra is gone. Corn is basically the only crop left, and it’s starting to die. Things are GRIM, and this ratchets up the tension for all the space scenes that follow.
That being said, grounding a movie in science this firmly can be a double-edged sword. The smallest pebbles in the story can feel like boulders. For example …
START – MINOR SPOILERS

The agricultural blight breathes nitrogen instead of oxygen. It’s implied the blight will win against oxygen breathing life forms because the Earth’s atmosphere has so much nitrogen in it. This seemed a bit silly to me, given how inert nitrogen is under normal circumstances.
So, we’ve got this super-massive black hole called Gargantua with a bunch of planets orbiting around it. I kept wondering if the radiation from the accretion disc would make all the planets glow in the dark. Then again, given Gargantua’s size (100 million suns in mass), those planets are probably quite a distance away. Well, except for the one that’s so close its time is dilated like crazy, which brings me to my biggest complaint …
With three planets to choose from, the crew picks the absolute worst to try first. They clearly know that one hour on the planet equals seven Earth years, and at least some of them have a strong grasp of relativity. With the first expedition leaving about ten years before them, at best they have a little over an hour of data from the planet surface (which should be clear from the quantity of data and its timestamps). Never mind the problems of colonizing such a world in the first place. Any ship you send to the surface comes back years later.

END – MINOR SPOILERS
There were also a smattering of odd moments between the characters, but these complaints really amount to nitpicks and nothing more. In the end, Interstellar delivers and then some.
So check it out if you’re looking for a story with heart where the science behind the adventure really matters. Just synchronize your watches before stepping into the theater. You know. Just in case.
VERDICT: Strongly recommended.

Ender’s Game – Movie Review

November 11, 2013 by holojacob Leave a Comment

IN SHORT: Aliens invaded and kicked our butts. Now it’s our turn to show them who’s boss by unleashing our most terrifying weapon … children.
WHAT IT IS: A phenomenal sci-fi adventure with brains, beauty, and thrilling action.
WHAT IT IS NOT: This is not your typical YA movie. Ender’s story is not a cheerful one. Don’t expect much in the way of humor, romance, or people smiling. This movie is grim and down-to-business.
WHAT I THOUGHT: OMGLOLBBQ! I love this movie! As a huge fan of the book, I loved pretty much every minute of it. I even didn’t mind the changes and cuts they made. Well, at least not too much.
Ender’s Game has inherited the best from the novel and streamlined it into a truly spectacular package. Now, that’s not to say it’s perfect. It does feel rushed at times, as if the movie is straining to hold in as much book-awesome as possible. For example, Ender’s progression through Battle School is ridiculously fast, and I really wish we’d seen more of him in command of Dragon Army, but oh well. Cuts had to be made somewhere, and the end result is still thoroughly enjoyable.
Here’s the story of a boy being molded into the perfect weapon. Through one trial after another, Ender teeters on a knife’s edge between genius commander and psychopathic killer. Asa Butterfield’s performance really had me believing in the character. When you see Ender’s eyes during the Giant’s Drink, you know this isn’t a kid to mess around with.
Plus, there are the space battles. Oh man, there is some lush and vibrant eye candy saved for the movie’s climax. The battles are colorful and fun to watch, but they also give a sense of tactical depth. Instead of the chaotic melee of most movie space battles, these play out with precise formations. I love all the fighters zipping about, each so hazardously close to the next. They’re a delight to watch.
Overall, it’s hard for me to judge this movie impartially. I love the book, and that colors my views on the movie. I know for a fact I enjoyed this movie more because I’d read the book beforehand. However, that doesn’t change my opinion in the slightest.
VERDICT: Strongly recommended.

Dredd 3D – Movie Review

August 22, 2013 by holojacob 2 Comments

IN SHORT: In a dystopian future, a vicious gang leader locks down a skyscraper in order to kill two judges. Unfortunately for her, these “judges” come packing some serious heat.
WHAT IT IS: A tight, exciting action movie that entertains from start to finish. Dredd 3D is a great example of a compact, focused, well-executed story that knows what it wants to be and accomplishes it.
WHAT IT IS NOT: Well, it’s not kid friendly. That’s for sure. It’s not slasher gore, but it is a graphic movie that earns its R rating. The movie also lacks depth. The characters and the world they inhabit are interesting, don’t get me wrong, but they’re clearly not the focus. The action is.
WHAT I THOUGHT: Let’s just get this out of the way. Dredd 3D is a fantastic action movie. My first reaction after finishing it was to watch it again. It’s been a while since I saw a pure action movie that just hit all the right notes. Dredd 3D is that action movie.
The mood of the movie is well done. Here is a dystopian future where hundreds of millions live within one massive, unbroken city stretching across the eastern coast of North America. The city seethes with the energy of too many people crammed too tightly together. Its scattered law enforcement can barely hold the chaos at bay. Even though we only get glimpses of this future outside the main story arc, it still manages to feel believable.
The action is exciting, well paced, and very violent. It’s a fun movie to watch. However, all of that focus on action is going to take its toll elsewhere. Judge Dredd, the titular character, isn’t much of a character. He’s more an unstoppable, bullet-spewing force of nature than a human being. His emotional range includes: the scowl, the intense scowl, and the super extra scowly scowl.
There are some brief moments where the movie humanizes Dredd, such as when he stuns two kids holding him at gunpoint instead of shooting them dead (his normal response to problems), but these moments are few and far between.
His sidekick, the rookie judge Anderson, fairs much better. Her story arc is a predictable progression, but it is fun to watch her grow from an unsure newbie that Dredd views with contempt to a capable partner he respects. Her journey is the most interesting in the movie … probably because it’s the only character arc actually in the movie.
To sum it up, Dredd 3D doesn’t try to be a whole lot of things. It sticks to a few core ideas and gets them right. In the end, that’s why it succeeds and why it’s a blast to watch.
VERDICT: Strongly Recommended.

Pacific Rim – Movie Review

July 13, 2013 by holojacob 2 Comments

IN SHORT: Giant alien monstrosities invade Earth through an interdimensional portal deep in the Pacific Ocean. The solution to this problem? Giant frickin’ robots!
WHAT IT IS: Giant robot versus giant monster porn at its ABSOLUTE FINEST!
WHAT IT IS NOT: Anything that remotely makes sense. Seriously, just check your brain at the door and have a good time.
WHAT I THOUGHT: This is the most fun I’ve had at the movies all year. In fact, I’m hard pressed to recall a recent movie I enjoyed more than Pacific Rim. It’s an absolute blast that should not be missed.
This movie has an unabashed, unquenchable sense of fun. It never lingers on the non-fun for very long. For example, the main character’s brief emo I-don’t-want-to-be-a-pilot phase is beaten out of him by his commander in three sentences.
The movie sets out to entertain, and it achieves this objective marvelously. The fights are tense and exciting, full of delicious visual eye candy. The giant monsters, named Kaiju, are powerful, formidable foes with plenty of variety and dangerous tenacity. Despite the ridiculous premise, I felt the dread of impending human extinction and became emotionally invested in the struggles of our heroes.
The giant robots, called Jaegers, are cool and fun to watch in action. Each one has a distinct feel in terms of design and combat execution. My only complaint is they feel a little too generic. Unlike classic giant robots such as Evangelion, Battletech, or Gundam, there’s no real way to look at a Jaeger and say: Aha! That’s a Jaeger! Notice the [distinguishing feature]. But this is a minor quibble, and does not detract from the movie.
The characters are, almost without exception, likable and fun to follow. Heck, even the hothead jerk pilot ends up being likable. There’s even a small fart of a love story thrown in, but it’s so small it never detracts from the movie. The story stays firmly focused on what works best for a giant robot / giant monster beat ‘em up.
That’s not to say the movie is flawless. Far from it. The plot is absolute nonsense, even by the standards of other giant robot franchises. In most giant robot fiction, we get some sort of excuse for why we need the giant robots, such as how normal weapons bounce off Angel AT fields in Evangelion. Here, it’s just “to fight monsters we created monsters.” Seriously, how exactly is a giant robot better than, say, a thousand cruise missiles? And while we’re at it, how is building a giant wall around the ENTIRE PACIFIC OCEAN more cost effective than building more Jaegers? Seriously, if I start poking holes in this plot, we’ll be here all day.
Also, the way the Jaegers fight is just painfully stupid at times. The hero Jaeger, Gypsy Danger, has two huge plasma cannons and two very deadly swords (post upgrade). You’d think that the pilots would soften up their target at range with the plasma cannons and then close in with swords for the kill, right?
Um, yeah. The Kaiju don’t have guns, and we’ve got these plasma cannons. So let’s just wade in close and start punching them. Wait, that’s not working? I guess we should use this big Kaiju-slaying sword, then.

Seriously, why weren’t they using the sword from the beginning?
Oh, and did I mention the Jaegers need two pilots? Apparently, controlling a humanoid combat weapon is too much mental strain for a single human to handle. It takes two pilots doing a mind-meld sort of thing called a drift. For, you know, plot reasons I guess. Granted, from a story-telling perspective, drifting is very effective for revealing a pilot’s history. It’s also absolute nonsense.
So, yeah. Let’s just recognize the plot for what it is: an excuse to have giant robots brawling with giant monsters. And frankly, I’m perfectly fine with that.
VERDICT: Strongly Recommended.