popcar2

IMDb member since June 2015
    Lifetime Total
    5+
    IMDb Member
    8 years

Reviews

The Sandman
(2022)

Decent, but doesn't hold a candle to the original.
If you've never read the series and are a fan of fantasy, you'll probably enjoy this. As a fan of the source material, I was huffing a lot of copium whenever I saw how they adapted scenes from the book.

The Sandman is probably my favorite graphic novel of all time, so to see it getting adapted is pretty exciting. That said, it's not nearly as good. They made the story worse by making the Corinthian the big bad of the series. The direction is just bland. They take scenes from the book and make it worse, dumb down the dialogue, and talk a lot of exposition to make it more mainstream. It also tries to be a lot more EPIC but it falls flat in many moments.

It should've been animated. The visuals are nice and all but most of it is not convincing in live action and they had to sacrifice a lot to fit their budget. Hell in particular is so unbelievably bland and boring. If they're going to hit me with the "it's too expensive to make everything happen in CGI" excuse every few scenes, then it shouldn't have been live action in the first place.

Acting is so-so. Most of the main characters are good but some of them (like Lucifer) are too cheesy and unconvincing.

Omoide no Marnie
(2014)

When Marnie Was There is a charming movie that feels completely pointless
When Marnie Was There is a movie that deals with a very important message (depression, not really liking who you are as a person, and the lack of connection between other people), but sadly it's as deep as a puddle and most of the plot feels... Pointless?

We see the main character, Anna, having to travel to a small village for a while due to a health issue and her having to breathe fresh air. The whole plot revolves around her coming into contact with Marnie, which has a mysterious past and a rough childhood.

Most of the movie consists of fairly harmless scenes about their friendship, which is cool, but doesn't push the plot forwards at all. Near the end of the movie, we finally get the answer to who Marnie is, but it's some of the most underwhelming reveals I've ever seen.

The plot feels like it's leading up to something that's not really there, and the ending feels like a weird "and then everything everyone lived happily ever after" situation that doesn't feel earned at all.

That said, I did kind of enjoy this movie. The animation is gorgeous (VERY gorgeous!), and the scenes were good enough to keep me interested on what'll happen next. It's a decent family movie, but I sadly didn't connect with it as much as others did.

Steins;Gate 0
(2018)

Steins;Gate 0 is still a good sequel, if a little disappointing
Steins;Gate was an amazing anime that was full of twists and turns and a very heartwrenching story on sacrifice and moving on. Steins Gate 0 is more of that, but worse in many ways.

Most of the plot twists were really predictable especially since the anime beats you in the head with its 'hints' and assumes you wouldn't get it, but I knew where a lot of plot points were going just a few episodes in. A lot of the episodes feel disconnected and some of them are just repeating the exact same points: Okabe is depressed, Mayuri wants him to be happy, the other guys want to try and fix the timeline. It's the same few cliches done for a long time. The action scenes are also horrible, but thankfully they don't take much screen time.

That said, steins;gate 0 *is* a good sequel to the first, but keep your expectations low. Some scenes were really powerful, and in the end it feels like it wraps up the series in a fairly satisfying way. I'd give this a 6.5/10.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
(2019)

Don't listen to the reviews, this movie is a borefest that also managed to ruin the lore of the entire trilogy!
I won't go into any spoilers but since the movie isn't out yet in many places and there aren't many reviews at all because of that, I wanted to give a quick heads up to anyone wanting to watch it soon. Don't. It's a horrible sequel to two fantastic movies, and I'll get to why here:

It feels like a cheap knockoff of the first two. Most of the movie are just quick one-liners or jokes to keep children entertained, except, they forgot one thing: a goddamn plot.

The plot is very basic and the poor villain doesn't help. It doesn't really feel like anything is at stake because the villain is literally just one person that wants to hunt Toothless, and nothing else. He's constantly said to be very menacing and smart but he doesn't really do anything clever except for the first time he's revealed. After that, he just takes a seat back and become your run of the mill saturday morning cartoon villain.

The movie feels like it's more about toothless being in love than anything else. In fact, it feels like they completely ignore the threat at hand in many parts of the movie just to shoehorn some scenes where toothless tries to get with the female night fury. These scenes are 10 times longer than they should be, they're not funny when they repeat the same joke again and again, and they're just boring. One of these scenes are almost 10 minutes long, 10 minutes of literally nothing happening.

Which leads me to my biggest issue in the movie: it feels like 50% of runtime is just establishing shots and literally nothing happening. I'm not even kidding, the plot doesn't advance at all after a certain point until the very last 20 minutes of the movie. All of it is just a dragon flying through the air with whimsical music in the background. These scenes were used sparingly in the first 2 movies, but here they just act as filler between plot points.

Even the action sequences aren't very good. Hiccup is holding his flame sword almost every scene but he never uses it once in the entire movie. None of the people use any weapons they're holding in any of the fight scenes, none of the fights feel like actual fights, most of them are just the heroes bumbling around until the villains fall over or hit a wall or something. It almost feels like the hidden village fight in kung fu panda 3, it's just silly and was made with no effort.

The only redeemable thing about this movie is the heartwarming ending, but everything else was just... Bad. Not even a good kind of bad, a boring "I'm considering just leaving this movie because nothing is happening" kind of bad. Most of this could've been an episode in the cartoon network show, only with good CGI and stretched as a movie.

TL;DR: I went in this movie expecting something along the lines of the first two movies. I decided to watch it regardless of reviews, and oh boy I wish I'd gone to another movie. This might be a good movie for your kids, but if you're over 12 years old, prepare to spin in your seat because this movie is shockingly bad, and this is coming from a big fan of the first two.

Dororo
(2019)

4 episodes in, Dororo is shaping up to be one of the best anime this decade
Dororo is a great anime about a child that was born with a terrible curse and his journey to defeat the demons that cursed him. It's a great mix between realism and old japanese folktale, and a great mix between action, drama, and mystery.

Everything this anime does is shockingly well. The animation is smooth, the writing is great, and most importantly the atmosphere is unparalleled. The world is immersive and deep, and while the main character himself can't speak a word it's incredible how much you're able to feel for him and everything he's going through. There's a constant sense of mystery in the air that keeps every episode fresh and with good pacing, and the demons themselves are very creative and make for great fights.

Overall, a pretty damn amazing anime that's a breath of fresh air from your run of the mill action anime thanks to avoiding every cliche that's plagued the last two decades, which is ironic considering the source material was made half a century ago.

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