hkstephen

It is a very challenging task to adapt a manga that had 100+ million copies sold, where lots of people have read and known all the plots and details of the story, and still bringing new materials and also fresh back lots of the classic moments into this movie for old and new audiences to watch and find all these excitements......and Takehiko Inoue really have done it at the perfect way EVEN this is his directorial debut.

I've been his long time fans since the beginning of the manga released, the passion of the sport and all these little moments in the stories really gave me such great memories of my childhood. However, hearing this movie released after 20+ years after the manga series ended, did give me little worries.

But after I watched it last night at a cinema, and nothing but want to give a salute to the creator/director Takehiko Inoue. He have done it perfectly, even this is his first directorial debut, but totally understood the concept of movie flow and storytelling, so he had to cut down lots of classic scenes and incidents from the manga.

Furthermore, while he knew and understood there are lot of fans who have read the manga, or even memories every single plot and scenes, while there may still some new audience attending, so he cleverly used a different narrator to bring a completely new and different perspective to look at this classic basketball story instead of the original narrator. It really gave us lots of new elements on the backstory and histories of the new narrator, but still bringing us back all these classic moments and scenes that gave us hooked. Takehiko really balanced these new and old materials in the films that even long time fans like me can still find new elements in the story and never get bored of it.

I also like to give a big respect to Takehiko is that he brings the whole story flow and atmosphere from the manga 100% into this movie version. All the intense moments and scenes, the flow of the stories and excitement of the whole environment, and funny moments and scenes from the manga, EVEN I have read all these scenes 1000 times from the manga, I KNEW what will happen after one to another, I could still feel those humour, those excitement, that passion of youth, and intensity that takes you out of breathe, all these can still feel in the cinema. This is just unbelievable.

Even you are a long time fans, or you never read this manga, you will still have really good time in this movie. ( even though for audience who never read this manga, you may find little confusing plots on some of the scenes, I recommend you watch the whole manga after finish this film, you will have a completely wide open perspective of this basketball story and why it becomes one of the classic in the Asia area for 20+ years even now )

This is sort of a drama series version of the film "Assault in Precinct 13". It has some interesting concept background to start off, and also because it's a drama series, there are plenty of time to build the foundation of different characters and their relationships, conflicts, and problems towards each other. There are lots of different level of complication with relationships to different characters, which are totally okay as far as it makes sense. Bringing the kids to the prison for a night, a prison where dangerous criminals and mental patients stay together in the prison...NOT making too much sense already but alright if this is where you go for; secret relationship with the doctor, sure I don't mind, or violent prison guard, and then group of terrorist came over, jam the signals and surrounded the whole prison for attempting to jailbreak the serial killer out to the prison, sure...I can buy all that.

But after building these foundation, the storyline just keeps falling apart, with plot holes after plot holes after plot holes, and it is just so frustrating how these main characters be surviving in this disaster and fighting back to these terrorists at one point with such bad skills, making every wrong decisions in the drama without any common sense. They are really acting like fools as children while they try to fool the audiences that they don't have a choice in this kind of extreme situations. At the meantime, they kept trying to say the main villain character Simón who is "SUPPOSED" to be very intelligent and knowing how to manipulate people, etc. But this whole series doesn't show anything about him being smart that match to the reputation. He just doesn't show any emotions in any situation and bring up things that everyone already know.

And being a suspense thriller series, the plot just kept expanding the complexity without limits, more new characters came in the series but never explain anything about them, more questions bring up to the plot but never answer at the end. I know that they are trying to build these for a second season ( if there would be any ), but again not explaining anything at all really don't make us to appreciated the series but only feeling with all kinds of question marks that were built from these broken plot holes......and how can this convince us to look forward a season 2??!

I was supposed to rate this 3/10, only +2 points because it has some good foundation concept.

I don't hate the movie, Taika Waititi really knows how to make a fun and entertaining film. This film is very entertaining, it's full of jokes and excitement, but the pace is little too rush, they could've described some more on the characters development, or little more details to explain some plot point. But instead it was just little rush to fly by some quick explanation while there are many new things introducing in this film.

The plot was losing little direction at the second act and the solution of defeating the villain is little too simple and weak...it makes me feeling like playing games of beating the final boss by getting a high level weapon, period.

HOWEVER, I'm very impressed to actors/actresses performance where they bring out outstanding performances in here. Christian Bale performance is so amazing even we all have seen many movies of him, but he could still bring out such expressions that you can't find any of his past films. I'm very VERY impressed. Natalie Portman can still bring her great act in here, she's never disappointed. Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson are doing alright, not bad acting, but doesn't bring out anything interesting. Chris has better performance on his last Thor film than this.

In the end, this is still a good entertaining film, but it's little waste not to develop something more complicated plots instead just too simple. I probably rate this film 7/10, but because of the impressive performance from Christian Bale, I would rate it 7.5/10.

There has been lots of sequels in the past where it made things worse from the original film, especially this original film has been released 36 years ago. But Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinski really understand and know what they want from the sequel...it's a really long waited for making a sequel, ( and also because of the pandemic for making this release date putting another year ) but they have done such incredible job for making it right.

For the whole visuals and cinematography, hands down the flight sequences are the next level from the original film ( or any flying sequences in any film ) the long wait to the technology for capturing the actors and actresses inside the fighter jet is breath taking experience. The whole experience brings much more intensity in those flight action sequences. ( MUST watch in IMAX )

The storyline is also quite convincing, even the story has been 36 years ago. This sequel really brings lots of connections in the story of the original film, such as Val Kilmer of Iceman, Miles Teller as Rooster who is the son of Goose ( Tom Cruise flight partner from the original film ), using few of the main original soundtrack of the first one, and some similar classic sequences from the first, etc ( you can probably see them from the trailer ) it brings lots of old memories back and they have done it right in this.

The only thing I may complain to this film is also the similarities, where there's really been little too much similarities from the original film, which may not bring me any freshness in terms of story wise. But other than that, the whole excitement watching this film in IMAX has been amazing. So I won't mind with those little tiny complain. Overall this film really brings practical flying visual sequences into the next level.

Being (probably) the last group of people watching this movie in theatre ( because of the COVID shutdown from my city, and finally open cinema again about a week ago ), I can finally enjoy this movie in IMAX ( and also today is the last day of showing this movie in IMAX as well )...this movie has been bringing the hype since the beginning, and also because of Matt Reeves ( since his debut of Cloverfield ), so I was looking forward to this. But because I expected this film little too high, this turns out to be little disappointing even though they have done pretty solid job in this.

Disclaimer: I'm also a Hugh fan of Christopher Nolan, and he did such awesome job to the dark knight trilogy, so it's impossible NOT to compare this film to the previous trilogy.

POSITIVE:

• The Cinematography, style and theme have done amazing job to bring an unique side of this superhero, even though you could see alot of similarities from previous classic such as Se7en ( with its style and plots, such as dark and raining theme, and also not showing any face of Riddler until the third act ), or Dark Knight trilogy ( where villains giving clues and riddles for batman to investigate and his big Armageddon 'big' plan at the end )

• The design of different characters such as Colin Farrell transformation as The Penguin is very impressive. Catwoman, batman and the Riddler designs and styles are very cool and looking such raw and realistic style that is more convincing than the dark knight trilogy.

• the performance of all the actors and actresses are top notch, everyone of them really nailed their parts perfectly. My personal favourite are Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Colin Farrell as Penguin and Paul Dano as Riddler.

NEGATIVE:

• First off, even Colin Farrell has such an amazing transformation to the character, but his role in the film is very minor, which doesn't feel like a main villain at all ( or whether this is developing for him to be the main villain in the next batman film )

• The main villain, the Riddler is trying to setup a big plan exposing everything to everyone in Gotham city, giving all the hints to batman and the cops for getting caught, while his end goal is only flooding the city with some water and TRIED to assassinate the new mayor from his followers???!! I can't help but compare it to the previous dark knight trilogy.....the plan isn't as well-developed as Joker in the Dark Knight, at least Joker has a reason to get caught - get the corrupted banker that was held in the cell and setup an escape plan beforehand ( whether the escape plan may not be too convincing, but at least he has purpose to get caught ), and end goal isn't as Armageddon as dark knight rise where Bane and Miranda were planning to blow up the whole Gotham City together...this one with flooding some water don't really as crazy enough but just showing some so-called "big ending" with some cool explosion and water flooding into the city...unless the water can sink the whole island, then it will be different case.

• but still, this ending scene doesn't really connect to the whole riddles that Riddler has been setup since the beginning, the exposure of all the corrupted cops and politicians don't convince me that the ending would assassinate the new mayor. Riddler got himself caught but never have any escape plan, where I don't see the point why would he need to be caught in the first place; If his plan for using all of his C4 to blow up the prisons and free all the prisoners out to the Gotham city, that would be more convincing to me instead of flooding some water into the city...it's a pretty weak ending from my perspective. Especially the previous trilogy where the plan was blowing up together with a nuclear warhead.

ANYWAY, it's still a pretty decent work as a reboot film. And I still enjoy it alot in IMAX. The only thing is the plot that if they can develop with something more connecting together, which would be great.

Yes, it's based on the memoir of the reporter Jake Adelstein with his reporting life in Japan, but then you can't always copy everything into drama series, not because it's not going to be authentic, but it still needs to bring certain entertainments and interesting contents for general audiences to get into the show, which it is successfully bringing that aspect.

And Ansel Elgort and other actors and actresses really brought up the game and learnt Japanese for the show, they put their efforts into the show without a doubt.

So in general, I really like how the show is going and I supposed to rate it 8/10.

HOWEVER, the thing I'm disappointing is that the show was originally promoting from the beginning that there are 10 episodes, UNTIL the episode 8 releases and THEN telling us that this is the SEASON FINALE?!?!! Are you kidding me?! This really hanged me to the throat.

And based on this episode 8 season finale, it's not JUST a cliff hanging me there because I was expecting 2 more episodes, but the storyline didn't bring any closure on anything except giving us little footage of a sub plot on Samantha best friend Polina to what happened to her...AND I'm more expecting the season finale would at least catch up to the same timeline of the opening of Episode 1 where Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe meeting up the Tozawa's #2 ranked man, but then it's not even close to that timeline in this season finale...so this season finale only left hanging with all kind of questions to almost every characters in the show to audiences.

Lastly, I feel that they could've given Tomohisa Yamashita a better character role instead of Polina's boyfriend in the Host Club...it's little bit of waste...

so yeah, with all that above, I'll take one star down to 7/10.