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The title of this review tells you pretty much all you need to know about this short film. I guess it is a traditional story of revenge in the samurai genre. There is a backstory hinted at but that's it. It is hinted at but what else can you do in six minutes? It is stop-motion animation and it is very animated; pretty much non-stop action. The artwork makes almost no attempt to be realistic. There is no setting in which the action takes place. If it were being presented in a theater it would be called "bare stage". The characters are so unrealistic as to be called grotesque. All that being said, it is a lot of fun.

This is a Japanese anime but they shot for an international audience by having all the printed material in Western alphabet. It is a slightly sad story about high school kids who are unhappy. What other kind is there? They want to make contact with a teenage ghost who was supposed to have died by suicide. They do make contact but her story is not as simple as they thought. The film is sweet and involving and I recommend it but it's not without flaws, especially towards the end where matters get a little chaotic. As I said, I recommend it, particularly for young people. It is aimed at that audience with a narrative revolving around the difficulties of making your way in a world filled with judgement, frustration and downright cruelty.

First of all, let me say I liked it although my comments below might seem as if I didn't. The IMDB Storyline describes it as "Celebrates a grandfather's passing and follows the journey of a budding artist from start to end." That's not accurate. It is the story of a boy who grows up next to a tree that supplies him with everything he needs at each stage in his life. Early on he develops an interest in painting as an art form. Easels and canvases and paints and brushes fall from the tree. Then he meets a girl and life happens to him and things change. It's not as if his life is destroyed, it's just that he goes in a different direction. Ultimately, he finds some degree of contentment. If you've ever read the poem or seen the film version of Shel Silverstein's work The Giving Tree, you will notice strong parallels. I don't know Mr. Oh's relationship to The Giving Tree but anyone with a familiarity with that earlier work will see what I mean. That said, as I said, I enjoyed this film.

This film is very old style; early days of the talkies. In the beginning of what we now think of as the film industry there was a good deal of holdover from stage work. D. W. Griffith had shown film makers what was possible but it hadn't really taken hold yet. MacArthur, Hecht and Coward were playwrights experimenting with film making. This film was essentially a platform for clever dialog, such as could be expected in one of their stage plays. You can't judge it by modern cinema narrative standards. You can only appreciate it for itself. The emotions are rather raw and the characterizations are somewhat simplistic but that's because it's all just backdrop for the dialog. Speaking of which, at one point Coward's character is speaking to the girl whom he has seduced and abandoned. She is sobbing her heart out and he says, "Tears always make me crueler than I really am." He then goes on to say, "I can't cry for my sins. If I could I would now. I don't particularly like myself." Truly cruel people are forever saying how much they dislike being cruel. Characters in Coward's plays always come off as being flip and shallow but somewhere down deep, they are sincere. I've read that in real life Coward was one of the nicest people you could know. Perhaps he was simply afraid of emotion, afraid of being hurt.

I'm one of those people who enjoys low level films, at least to some extent. I like the idea that there are people in show business who are doing their best despite the fact that they are not very talented. Some low budget films are very good indeed with high quality actors, clever writers and maybe marginally competent directors. You can hire writers and actors to do a job and do it well just for the exposure and a little money, but quality directors won't attach themselves to a piece of trash. This film is not high quality trash. It is barely adequate trash. The secondary characters are not bad. The male lead, who is also the director and helped work on the screenplay, is not very good. Look at his output on IMDB. It is a history of trash. He has worked a lot over the years but has never been attached to anything very good. The narrative has a certain coherence. The world is divided into good people and bad people. The bad prey on the good. The good have to learn to stand up for themselves. The high point of this movie is the appearance of Stuart Whitman. Whitman was always more than a character actor but less than a big star. He could always be depended upon to turn in a solid, professional job and that is what he does here but all too briefly. If, like me, you enjoy scrounging in Hollywood's weed patch for small but interesting pieces of junk, I applaud you. If you find this one however, throw it back.

Charles Laughton was a consummate actor whether he was in a role or just being himself. This, unfortunately, very short series gave him the opportunity to present himself through readings of great literature. He stood on a stage at a lectern and read poems, speeches from plays and a page or two from a great book. Actually, though, he wasn't reading. He had memorized all the pieces he presented and pretended to read them. That way he could give drama and vitality to them without relying on the physical necessity of looking at the page. Even when he was being himself, he was an actor, as all good actor are.

At this distance it's hard to know if The Ray Milland Show was an imitation of The Halls of Ivy or not. Halls of Ivy starred Ronald Colman as the president of a small college while Milland was a teacher at a small college. Milland's show came on television before The Halls of Ivy, but Halls had been a radio show before. The main differences were that Halls used gentle, intelligent humor while the Milland Show was more broad and goofy. Interestingly, in the second and final season the Milland Show became much more like The Halls of Ivy. Neither lasted.

Throughout the course of the narrative everything is mysterious. Why does Yawkey want to goad the Marshall into a gunfight? He doesn't explain himself until he lies dying. He lived as a fast gun and wanted to die as a fast gun, but since he was aging and slowing down, he didn't want to be killed by an unworthy hand. The man who killed Yawkey was going to become a target for ambitious gunslingers and he knew the Marshall could take care of himself. He wanted to give his death meaning. Richard Matheson was an iconic writer albeit with a certain reputation for schlock. Schlock, in case you're not familiar with the term is a Yiddish work denoting something of low quality. However, Matheson was well regarded by other, more famous writers as well as having a large following among mystery/fantasy/SF readers. His stories were easy to read, imaginative and he touched certain basic wellsprings of feeling. I believe that is what he has done in this story. He has touched a basic need for a person to give their life meaning. Yawkey has lived his life the best way he knew how and now he is facing the end. In Julius Caesar (Act V, Scene IV) Brutus says to his servant Strato, "Thou art a fellow of good respect; Thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it." The same could be said of Yawkey, despite the fact that he killed for a living. His final decision is not unlike that of Brutus. He does place Marshall Dan Troop in an unenviable position but he has enough respect for him to believe that Troop can deal with it. Matheson could be accused of sentimentality and that would be accurate. That characteristic is layered throughout his writing. But what's wrong with that? Westerns as a genre have always dealt with emotions that lend themselves to the catch in the throat and the flutter of the heartstrings. The man on horseback silhouetted against the setting sun is not supposed to leave you indifferent. People fighting for what they believe is right is supposed to stir your emotions and what is sentimentality but a somewhat obvious emotion. There is nothing wrong with that if it is in the cause of good entertainment.

This series seems to be about something, things, ideas, symbols. The question is, what is it actually about. There's a lot going on. There are a lot of characters. There is a lot of action. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell what it all means. The art work is good. The story is involving and engrossing and a good waste of time, but after it's over, you have to ask yourself what just happened? It seems to be that it is important to be a part of something and to be in meaningful relationships with others. OK, that's not a world-shaking insight, but it's not bad. The only thing is, as you progress from the first to the last episode, you keep asking yourself, what is going on? It's a little disorienting but that's OK.

An excellent series as long as you have a certain suspension of disbelief. There are a lot of impossible things to believe before breakfast. Survival of the fittest is obvious from the title. It reminded me of "The Game", that film from 1997 starring Michael Douglas. Of course, in that the confrontations were not deadly. They only made Douglas think they were. After all, this anime is supposed to be fun and exciting, not truly scary.

I like short films. If they are well done they are succinct and meaningful. This film has a good set up and interesting characters but turns into a meaningless piece of horror. By horror I don't mean it's a horrible film, I mean it ends on a note of ugly brutality. Maybe the film makers thought it was funny. I didn't.

OK, so it would be unfortunate to compare this with the Japanese whaling industry, but there it is. That aside, it is a very interesting idea to translate the whaling industry concept into a fantasy world where dragon hunting in airships is a thing. Yeah, sure, they say that dragons are a threat to humans and their numbers must be controlled. There again, that said, this seems like it might be worth watching. The animation is mediocre. There are quite a few personalities to track. There are conflicts, such as in the first episode the dragon hunters encounter hostility from the landlubbers they serve due to their nomadic, non-town based existence. All-in-all, as I said, it looks like it might be worth following.

An animated feature films based on Altered Carbon but set in between season one and season two. Kovacs is made to take on a dangerous mission by the yakuza boss Tanaseda. He gets involved with another yakuza gang while trying to protect a young girl. A beautiful CTAC agent gets stirred into the mix. Edgar Allan Poe isn't there but a very Poe-like character in the form of a Japanese hotel clerk is. The story is quite cliched but there is a lot of blood and gore action. If that is what you like, then it's a good movie. That brings us to the question of the animation. It's CG, but it's not good CG. However, it's good enough to make you think that maybe Altered Carbon should have been animation to begin with. It does make you think about the original Ghost in the Shell. If this film had been made as well as Ghost, it could have been something really worthwhile. There are a couple of narrative hints thrown in at the end that make an animated sequel possible. If so, maybe they'll get their act together a little better next time.

After Hollywood discovered that inclusion of martial arts could increased audience draw the results were often laughable. Zen master combat experts were frequently played as mystical supermen. Then combat forms themselves were overdone and stupid-looking. In this episode the villain is shown making an impossible arrow shot with what is purported to be a Japanese Zen bow, but isn't, using an overly elaborate, non-authentic draw technique. Aside from a typical Hollywood attempt to capitalize on something it doesn't understand, the episode, as drama, is OK. It's a simple story of revenge, love and betrayal. Jack Lord portrays the title character as rather stupid in his attempt to protect his rodeo friends. J. D. Cannon does an excellent job as the weapons expert brought in to catch the killer. There is a climactic fight sequence that should have been a showcase for Cannon's character to display his combat skills but is obscured in darkness and a lot of thrashing about. There again it's Hollywood trying to make you think you're seeing something wonderful, but it's all smoke and mirrors.

You know how in a lot of anime the main character is a boy somewhere around 12 to 15 years old, just hitting puberty. He's got a good heart but he's kind of a loser. He's socially clumsy. He gets bullied and he never really fights back but somehow, he always comes through in the clutch. That's how our hero is in this series in the first episode, except that he is 17. What follows is not a spoiler because it all happens in the first episode. By the way, the anime starts somewhere around the third chapter of the manga. The anime just sort of starts in the middle. There is no real explanation of what is going on other than a few hints. It's a fairly obvious plot. You've seen it plenty of times. A high school class is suddenly sucked into another world where they must fight monsters and demons. You don't really see that happen. It is sort of alluded to in flashes. The story really starts when the boy-hero falls into an abyss. There he manages to survive long enough to eat some monster meat. This gives him more powers. He then uses his newly acquired powers to kill more monsters and acquire more powers. In the meantime, he comes to believe that the world has always had it in for him and his only course of action is to become ruthless and to take what he wants without compunction. He becomes single-minded in his desire to win at any cost, and yet there remains a deeply buried sense of good. It's very unusual for an anime boy-hero to be this decisive and to put his decisions into action without hesitation, even if those actions contravene accepted norms of social behavior. The title word means mundane, ordinary. That's what the boy-hero is at the beginning but he certainly doesn't stay that way long.

Somebody gave a book to Abraham Lincoln and asked him to write a review. Lincoln read it and returned it with a note saying, "If this is the kind of book you like, you will like this book." I read through the IMDB user comments on this film and most were positive. However, I felt that most had watched it intending to like it. I like a taste of the unusual myself and that's probably why I chose to watch it. I found it interesting and slightly involving but not very enjoyable. It's not really a bad movie. It is rough-hewn and clumsy, but it obviously was meaningful to its creator and to most of the IMDB commenters. They seemed to get a lot of meaning out of it, or at least they put a lot of meaning into it.

It's about a young girl who was raised by her grandfather in a remote mountain area. All she knows about life is hunting. After her grandfather dies, her ne'er-do-well brother invites her to come to Edo to live with him. The story of the film is set in the latter part of the 19th century. That's when the novel by Kyokutei Bakin was written. The original novel was set around the year 1490. Anyway, the imagery of the film draws heavily on Tokugawa Period woodcuts and the Kabuki theater. The art work is very high quality. It is occasionally easy to get confused because there are a lot of references that are understandable only if you have a strong knowledge of Japanese culture of that period. When the girl comes to Edo she meets a young man who is a fuse. That's pronounced foo-say. A fuse is a sort of were-dog. The girl, named Hamaji, gets caught up in a conflict between caring about the young man and hunting him to collect the bounty. As I said, the art work is extraordinary and the backgrounds are jam-packed with slice-of-life images of the common life of that period.

I found this anime to be a pastiche of confusing unresolved narrative lines and poorly developed characters. Their motivations were sketchy at best and none of them were particularly engaging. The series didn't seem to be going anywhere until the final two episodes. At that point the creators must have felt they had to tie everything up in a neat climax. Unfortunately, all they accomplished was to produce two one-and-a-half hour each features that were almost nothing but talk, as they tried to explain all of the nonsense that went before. Those final three hours of blather did nothing but further waste the viewer's time.

This anime series is one of the most interesting I have encountered in a long time. It, of course, suffers from all the usual "failings" of the genre, i. e. overacting and a significant distance from reality, etc., etc., but those are in actuality a part of the charm. However, the artwork is superior. There are almost too many characters to count and each one is extraordinarily well thought out and very detailed. They have to be because they are quite bizarre. The cast of characters is made up of humans and puppets and others who appear to be somewhere in-between, sort of cyborgs but not exactly. The story basically revolves around a young boy who is suddenly thrust into this world and finds himself fighting for survival without knowing any of the rules or reasons for what is going on. It is also a story of his maturation. To further complicate the story, the narrative fragments a good deal. If you remember the film The Saragossa Manuscript, a Polish film from 1965, a man finds a manuscript that tells the adventures of the writer. Part way into that story another man begins relating another narrative. Part way into that story another man begins relating another narrative, and so-on and so-on, until at one point I think I was trying to follow six or seven different narratives. This anime does not get that complicated but suffice it to say, there are layers upon layers of story. Add to this confusion the twist that the different characters in the different narratives look alike and you will understand that watching this series is challenging. Challenging but worth it. The following is not a spoiler. At the very end the entire cast of charact6ers appear on-screen in a magnificent curtain call. Then in the final image there is an empty circus ring, and as the lights dim you hear the "click" of the lights being turned out. Clever!

A short, student film but nonetheless of very high quality. The actors are professionals and do a good job. The technical aspects are extremely good, especially when they were done at bargain rates. The writing, and this is the crux of the matter, is well thought out and was obviously hoped to be meaningful. Meaningfulness in this case has led the writers down the path of symbolism, metaphor and mysticism. There's nothing wrong with that. Some of very good movies have gone there but it is dangerous. It's easy to fall into claptrap. For all its trappings of foreboding, the film ends on a note of hope, as symbolized by a small flower. I've always liked short films. They have so little time to get the point across. They take a lot of skill to do right. Back in the early days of TV there were short films all over the place. There was not much original programming and time to fill. I guess that's where I developed a taste for them. This film had much the same feel as those. Sheol, by the way, is the name of the afterlife in Hebrew mythology. It was a place to which all souls went after death, regardless of whether or not you had been a good person. It was not a place of punishment but neither was it a place of reward. Still, it was better than the Babylonian afterlife. That was an infinite building consisting of corridors and room filled with nothing. Souls were transformed into large, ungainly, flightless birds that wandered from room to room forever. There were no beds or chairs to rest in. There was nothing to see but dust and nothing to eat but clay.

A number of people have expressed dissatisfaction with this animated film because it differs significantly from the graphic novel on which it was based. It's true that it quite different. The novel was two separate story-lines, one following the other within the same Victorian era setting. The writers of the film combined those stories and made important changes, additions and deletions as well. The novel was much richer in detail and had a deeper sense of the foreboding mood that squared with that usually associated with the dark, dismal world surrounding the Jack the Ripper story. All that being said, the film should be judged on its own merits. It is dark and spooky. It does have some interesting characterizations and surprising narrative twists. It moves right along with some good action sequences. Obviously, I would recommend both.

I had high hopes for this series. I very much like The Good Place and thought this might yeild some of the same gold. But where The Good Place is clever, thoughtful and original, Miracles Workers is clumsy, obvious and sophomoric. Radcliffe tries too hard with very little result. Buscemi is too talented for this part. It's sad to watch him wading in a shallow pool searching for nonexistent nuggets.

I originally saw this movie on TV back in the fifties. I was in my teens and up until then my primary interest in films was for Disney and big budget Hollywood musicals, lots of flash and flair. After seeing Guilty Bystander I soon began to turn on to films like The Maltese Falcon, Woman in the Window and Angel Face. These films did not give me that happy feeling but rather kept me leaning forward in my chair. When they were over I didn't feel gratified and satisfied; I felt unsettled but mentally stimulated. Noir films are about people in trouble. The hero, or rather the protagonist, is deeply flawed. He is not a nice guy. However, he is kind of admirable. He overcomes his flaws and sets things to right. In Guilty Bystander the hero is an ex-cop named Max Thursday. He is an alcoholic who could not stand up to the demands of being a police officer and quit to become a private eye but couldn't handle that either. When his ex-wife informs him that their son has apparently been kidnapped, he is forced to come to grips with some very unpleasant truths about himself and people he thought he knew. The film checks a lot of the boxes to qualify as noir but it also has a number of failings. There are plots holes and much of the acting is clumsy. Scott as Thursday occasionally embarrasses himself but mostly projects well as a man trying hard to play a bad hand while not fully understanding the game. The film is based on the first of six novels featuring Thursday. The author was Wade Miller, a pseudonym for two guys who wrote a lot of noir crime fiction beside those six. They were probably as good as Raymond Chandler and his Phillip Marlowe character but never were as big a name, nor as well known today. I don't know if this film had anything to do with their lack of success in Hollywood or not but it's a pity that we don't have as much of Thursday as we do of Marlowe.

First off, the art work is very nice, not spectacular, but very nice. The writing is intelligent. The story, or rather the sequence of story lines, is slice-of-life, quotidian except for the fantastic elements. It's high school kids striving to understand their adolescent conflicts. One of the big differences is, and one of the reasons I liked it is, the main boy character is not constantly struck dumb and impotent by social interactions, as is the usual case. He is cool and competent while at the same time aware that he is struggling for answers just like his peer group. He does his best without making a big deal out of it. He is not an agonized loner although he does tend to stand apart. Perhaps the sense of cool detachment is what induced boredom in some of the watchers.

This was a weekly obsession of mine. Sunday morning before anyone else was up I could huddle close to our 21-inch, black and white TV and get an infusion of arts, culture and literature. "Camera Three" did not discriminate. Anything from Tom & Jerry cartoons to high opera was fair game. One week might be an examination of torch songs, and the next would be Shakespeare, and the week after that would be Japanese films. Examples were given and experts were brought in. There were no ads. It was done as a service for people who felt ignored by by the television industry. Remember, this was at a time when TV was acknowledged to be a cultural wasteland. "Omnibus" was the only other program that served that portion of the viewing public that had free-range curiosity. Nowadays, CBS "Sunday Morning" attempts to address that niche, but, nice as it is, it doesn't reach the same noetic level.