Film Reviews by Other Worlds

You might , like me, have fun recognising some of the references to other movies. I spotted "Jason and the Argonauts" , "Forbidden Planet", "2010", "The Invisible Man" (the Claude Rains version), "Psycho" , "King Kong", "Badlands" and possibly "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (the Richard Stanley version) and maybe even "Toy Story" but for me that was about as much fun as I had.

If I had gone into it with the understanding that this was a movie where the journey was more important than the destination I might have had a better time. As it was I ended up with only one question pre-eminent in my mind, namely, "What the heck was that all about ??"

Some interesting stuff in here. But lets be honest it is far too long and the points being made by the interviewees often repetative.

Far better to assess your subject and have a realistic view of the tolerances of your audience and make a movie they can actually sustain their concentration for . If that means ( at worst) leaving some subjects out or ( at best ) releasing two movies instead then so be it. As it is you will be pummeled into indifference long before the movie finally finds its ending.

The aerial photography , both historical and contemporary , is amazing. It alone is worth watching this movie for. Unfortunately that is really the only reason to watch the movie.

It is structured as two different stories with each tale being told alternately with the other. The stories don't really reinforce each other , however, and each time you leave one story to join the other the experience is about as seamless as a manual gear change without benefit of the clutch. If the filmmaker had constructed the movie as a two stories each told without interruption it might have worked. As it is it does feel overly long, which is a pity because the photography is fantastic.

This movie feels like the perfect dessert for someone on a diet. It has volume and colour , it looks really interesting and from a distance suggests it is really going to be fantastic but then you spoil the illusion by taking up a spoonful and realise that it is actually nothing but air whipped up with a bit of colouring and nothing else at all. Resulting in something completely calorie free.

And what in earth was Bill Murray even doing in this movie ? I'm wondering if he won a bet during some earlier movie where the forfeit was that he got to appear in the next Wes Anderson movie whether or not there is a part for him. I honestly can't think of any other reason for his appearance.

The whole thing feels like a collosal waste of time , effort and talent.

There are two versions of World at War that are available on Blu-ray. One that has been converted from the original 4:3 ratio to the now more common 16:9 ratio this has been done by a combination of clipping the original and/or panning and scanning. Whether you like this or not is a personal choice , personally I feel that if a TV series as old as this is still considered significant enough to be transferred to more modern media it should be respected enough to be left alone. This is the version that has been converted to 16:9.

My biggest problem though is with the audio , there are clearly elements to this new 5.1 soundtrack that has been added in the studio and would not have been on the video it accompanies.

The overwhelming majority of the footage taken in the field , or in the street, during WW2 would have been silent. Instead they have added the sounds of horses hooves on roads or truck engines , as appropriate, or most distractingly for me the sounds of peoples voices or snatches of song ( this during the street footage taken during the VE day celebrations in London ). This I do have a problem with.

The other Blu-Ray restoration ( known I believe as the 'Complete' version , rather than this the 'Ultimate' version ) includes the original soundtrack and the "restored 5.1" and retains I believe the original 4:3 picture (this picture has seen some digital restoration). It's a pity this isn't the version that is available here.

The series deserves more than 3 stars , but that audio really bothers me. Also the 'Ultimate' version is supposed to have 9 discs , CP's description says it has 9 discs but they only send out 8 ? Don't know why.

Akira is a movie who's reputation defends it from honest assessment. While it is undoubtedly true that its influence on many movies that followed it has been substantial, its also got a plot that is practically unintelligible and the animation is a little bit crude by Studio Ghibli standards.

While worth watching to put it in context from a historical / cultural perspective. It is in truth a bit of a slog.

Also its claim to be the antecedent of the Matrix seems dubious to me, to my eyes it has taken far more from movies like Blade Runner and Aliens than it ever passed on to the Matrix.

It has been a while since a Godzilla movie pretended to have much of a plot and in this case it has dropped even pretending.

Fun , when the CGI is front and centre , a waste of time otherwise.

A whip smart movie and a lot of fun. Only spoiled by a truly awful video transfer. I know restoring these movies can be expensive but if they could have spent more time finding a better quality source the results would have been so much better. The movie deserved better than this.

Not one of Client Eastwood's best or Don Siegal. Other than a couple of exterior shots in Arizona ( maybe ) and New York it's all filmed indoors on sets that look like they might have been borrowed from a TV cop show of the time. Lots of casual stereotypes around and while we may like to remember the music of the sixties with justified affection it also produced a lot of rubbish , like the stuff here. Surely a song called 'Pigeon Toed Orange Peel' could only have been conceived and enjoyed while high as a kite.

There have been several attempts to tell this story fom "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (1970) ,then "Midway" (1976) to this one . They all have been a case of diminishing returns if you ask me. This one does at least try to rescue the contribution of the pilots and give them at least as much weight in the story as the navy , but that's about as positive as I can be about it. Otherwise this is war in pastel colours and soft focus as only the most average CGI can give you ( thats not to say it isn't good but such is our standards with CGI these days this does feel a little off ).

In truth I still think we are waiting for this story to be told well , but I'm not sure it ever will be - Midway was a huge battle and most of the ships were never in sight of each other ( despite what this movie suggests ) and the respective fleet commanders were left to make nuanced decisions from incomplete and inaccurate information. In truth the battle really turned , against the overall balance on the day, from a lucky piece of timing for the Americans (10 minutes or so ) in a battle that lasted all day. I'm not sure that's a story cinema can tell well , you might be better off trying to find a good book about it .

If historical accuracy is irrelevant to you and you are just out for an adventure movie this might suit but it's not really more than that.

The barriers a film has to hurdle these days just to get made let alone distributed in theatres or on DVD are high, far higher than they used to be. As a result, we have kind of lost touch, I think, with low budget releases and as a result we tend to assume all movies should stand comparison with the big budget epics that come along.

This is a low budget movie that has to fill in the CGI gaps with either dark shadows or off-screen action. So, set your expectations accordingly and give the movie a chance. What you will then watch is a rather slow fantasy flic but with some real imaginative flair on display; with a bigger budget behind him this director might well end up being someone to watch.

I'm a a big fan of Star Trek (in all its guises ) and I'm also sympathetic to the kind of fan-fiction that a series like that can engender so I came to this with more than an open mind , I really wanted to like it. The simple fact is that it is just is not that funny. So sorry but it has to be a thumbs down from me .

One of the extras on the DVD for 'Ronin' is an interview with the director John Frankenheimer in which he talks very straightforwardly about how he , as a director, puts a movie together and why he makes the choices he does i.e. why did he choose this lens , why that soundtrack , why are the people in the scene situated as they are , how to convince an audience of the passage of a significant amount of time using just a few seconds of screen time. I mention this because I was really hoping for something of the same from QT in this retrospective of his work, imagine my surprise and disappointment then that he does not even appear in it! What we have instead are a revolving group of actors and associates offering some anecdotes, reminiscences, toasts to the great man. It's interesting for a while but honestly not for the length of the whole film. The only person in the entire movie whose actions are critiqued and whose motives are speculated upon is Harvey Weinstein. Now given that all of QT's movies , that fall within the scope of this documentary, are produced by HW ( and others ) it’s perfectly fair that the people involved should have some insights on the man but I can't help feeling that they should have been collected and presented as an extra on the Blu-Ray instead rather than included here and given how quickly ( although belatedly ) QT has tried to distance himself from being associated with Weinstein I'm sure he would have appreciated it too.

Sasha Luss is undoubtedly a very beautiful woman , and this is important as it makes it easy to keep watching what is otherwise a completely preposterous and bonkers movie.

An actress who looks like she would have to work up a level of anger to find the strength to break a breadstick is somehow able to massacre (no other word is appropriate) a horde of opponents and not just not once but time and time again. It is perhaps just as well the story has a fragmented timeline as otherwise the holes in the over complicated script would be all the more obvious .

Watch it, have fun, but don’t whatever you do expect anything anything other than a live action cartoon.

Having heard all the fanboi feedback on the final series I had pretty low expectations of this one.So consider me surprised but I enjoyed it. Maybe it helped that I binge watched it so some of the momentum of the mid-series episodes was still being carried forward into the conclusion , I don't know. Maybe people took against it because the series makers decided against the more predictable fairytale and consequently denied the fans what they they craved for. Although I can't, for the life of me , undersand how anyone who has been following the series should be surprised by a storyline with abrupt changes in the story arc of major characters.

Anyhow , whatever the issues you might have read about , give this series a chance ; there were a lot of story threads together and it did a pretty good job of it