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Reviews
Cinderella (1950)
Thoroughly enjoyable and enchanting
During animation class today, our teacher decided to inspire us by screening Cinderella. Needless to say it backfired, because we were so entranced by the movie we stopped animating to watch it... And what a movie it is! Perhaps people who haven't animated before wouldn't be able to fully appreciate what a masterpiece of animation this is. While other studios were stuck on lifeless in-betweening and line moving, Disney animators have already worked out what gave animations the illusion of life. Even by today's standards, this is superb animation, and the beautiful thing is that you hardly notice! That's the hallmark of great animation- it feels so natural you don't notice it.
I voted an 8 because, honestly, it's got a rather weak story, with little character development etc. But nevertheless, I can't say that it's a major flaw, the other aspects of the movie more than make up for this. The characters are charming, and the story felt as magical and timeless as I first saw it as a little kid all those years ago. The colors are perfect, the songs are very memorable and the voice actors fit their roles very very well.
Overall I love this film, and I'm damned sure that kids are still gonna be watching this in the generations to come.
Home on the Range (2004)
The animation is flawless. The story sucked.
Which made the animation look worse than it really is. I'm an animation student and when I watched it I was AMAZED. Fluid, organic, and full of life! So when I read in the reviews that, oh, "the animation sucked, it's like one of those Saturday morning cartoons", I'm like, oh my god were we watching the same movie?
But the story SUCKED. Big time. The characters were 2 dimensional. Maggie was annoying. The farm animals were annoying. The plot is really unbelievably stupid... I mean, what the hell, the villain is an idiot with an idiotic motive with 3 idiot henchmen. The horse is annoying and stupid. The script is stupid. Everything that happened was so absurd I threw up a little in my mouth.
It's sad that Disney decided that it was 2d animation's fault and not that of the story. Otherwise I'm sure they'd have made more masterpieces.
The only reason why I watched to the end was because the animation and art was so amazing. Everything else was bad.
The Coffin (2008)
Horrifyingly bad.
If only because of its sheer incompetence to terrify at all.
I'm not a horror fan. I never watch horror movies unless I'm forced to, because I know I'm going to be so scared I won't be able to sleep that night. Yes, I'm that easily scared. In this case, a friend was treating me to a movie, and she was a horror fan, so I went to watch this.
Critics never spoil great movies because they're just so great. But they spoil the bad ones because it's so bad.
The premise for the movie actually sounded good. It sounds like it's gonna be a hell of a horror movie. But the director failed to deliver. He only used the usual cheap screamers to try to "horrify" the audience. There was one good scene which actually made me hug myself, and that was when the main dude what's-his-name was in the coffin, and that girl was crawling up at him and he was having a panic attack. It's a real shame it took place at the front of the movie, because that set the standard for the rest of it... And the "rest of it" didn't match up at all. There was another scene when the main guy's girlfriend went into a cremation incinerator, and it shows the corpse inside hugging the girl while there was this sea of fire all around the coffin! You have to see the video to believe me when I say that the whole scene made me laugh outright in the (almost empty) theater.
I can spoil every single bit of the scary parts for you, but I'm just too lazy to type out everything, because almost all the "scary" scenes were bad. This movie has too many tame parts and too little really disturbing ones. 3/10, because it has good picture and the male lead's acting was good. I could tell that he was doing his best to save the movie, but you can blame the director for making such an interesting premise so tame.
Death Tunnel (2005)
It had its good points. But it was mostly bad.
I sat down one night, determined to watch a horror film, and I picked out Death Tunnel amongst many, many others.
It looked promising; a genuinely creepy setting and a creepy plot. The movie started out well. And then it slowly began a downward spiral.
Many others has commented about how confusing it was. I agree, although I did manage to piece the bits together before the end of the film.
The actors and actresses were good looking, and the graphics looked great. They had a good cameraman. However, I noticed the overuse of clichéd effects and traditional scream scares.
It failed to scare me.
The characters in the movie were really unrealistic, especially the blonde, bi***y one (I forgot her name). She was the most annoying. Even when the fact was established that it was not a game anymore, she was more worried about getting the attention of the boy than staying alive. At then, I was, what the heck? I was actually happy when she got electrocuted a few seconds later. And even then, I still prayed and prayed that a big twist will come and the movie will end up good. But nothing came. It's funny how the teenage kids think that they cannot outrun a freaky (He was the only character in the movie that was actually even slightly creepy) gas mask guy pushing a trolley who cannot even walk properly. The boy didn't even look scared when his grandfather's ghost was talking right in front of him.
Overall, it had potential, but it was ruined utterly by a bad script, two dimensional characters, and overused effects. 2/10, because it had a nice atmosphere. I want that 90 minutes of my life back.
Leroy & Stitch (2006)
No more creative juices? Yes for Disney.
I liked all the Lilo and Stitch movies. The TV series weren't that great, but I put my opinions of the series aside when I watched this movie. And I must say... It was bad.
One thing I found disappointing was the animation. Yes, you heard it. The animation. I found its quality greatly degraded since the first movie. Its quality was only as high as the TV series', something which I did not expect at all. If you're looking for eye candy, don't expect anything much here. Also, the animation failed to portray any serious moods. Even in the supposed sad scenes, I didn't feel anything for the character, another downgrade from the first movie.
The next, was the absolutely horrible voice acting. I found it very, very unconvincing, and wondered why, Disney, with all its riches and glory, couldn't afford voice actors with real talent. The voice actors' skill were just as annoying as the one in the series. I tolerated the one in the series because, hey, who wouldn't be tired out when made to voice act for so many episodes? Heck, I don't even know how many episodes there are (Theoretically, there are 624, but I just can't believe that). However, I thought that the voice acting would improve in the movie, and I was put down in the face by the truth, that what they could do in the series was already their best.
Next, was the horrible script. It was cheesy beyond redemption, and the writers just try too hard. They try to put some jokes in, but I just found them annoying. Maybe it wasn't the voice acting, but the cheesy dialogues that ruined the sound section. (On the upside, the soundtrack wasn't too bad, and matched the mood quite well.)
Fourthly was the problem with the storyline. I predicted everything, and the storyline was what made the characters so unoriginal and unlikeable all of a sudden. You have the aliens get new positions and responsibilities inouter space. After the initial hype, they realize that they actually didn't like it and miss their old life.
Meanwhile, the evil villain gets broken out of jail after a very 'action packed' action scene and breaks in to Jumbaa's lab to steal his experiment. The experiment was then cloned into 100 others and the hamster wants to conquer Earth. When the main characters find out, they try to stop the evil hamster but gets confronted in some cheesy final showdown against the experiment and owns him in an extremely lame excuse for trying to make the series to look cool. The characters then give up their new privileges and return to Earth to resume their life. Seriously, how many other movies has used that ending already? The that storyline was extremely short and formulaic, so don't expect too much from it.
So Disney has failed in sound, graphics and storyline. The only charm of the series was the original characters, and how they managed to retain the 'feel' of the characters, but even that wasn't able to save the movie. I tried to like it, I really did, but I give it a rating of 4/10. Another Disney failure.
Azumanga daiô (2002)
Crazy. Just crazy.
I love anime. I love comedy. I love cute little girls in high schools (Which is cliché and overused). Azumanga was one of the best high school comedy anime I have ever watched in my life!! The first minute into the first episode of the anime, I was already laughing like crazy!! Who would expect Yukari, a teacher, to (kind of) steal a bike from a student?? That first scene was just hilarious!!!! And then, I was officially hooked. The proceeding scenes were never dull and it got my stomach hurting and tears bursting out with laughter. It was late at night when I watched it on the internet, so my parents were quite annoyed, but maybe that's because I was yelling at the computer screen to "Stop!! You're killing me!!!".
You have six (seven if you count Sakaki's fan, Kaorin) main characters, quite a lot of names to remember... They're Chiyo, Sakaki, Kagura, Osaka, Tomo, and Yomi. But their appearances are quite different from each other, and they're usually individually featured in scenes, and their personalities are quite memorable, so you wouldn't have any problems ^^ With the cast introduced, let me delve into the storyline. There is virtually no storyline and it almost felt as if each episode was done on the spot by its producers without any planning. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, it was still crazily funny!!!!!! Who cares about storyline when you're making a sitcom?!!!! Just watch this anime, you wouldn't regret it, I promise you the best moments of laughing from watching this unless you're a person without a sense of humor!!!