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Sayonara no asa ni yakusoku no hana o kazarô (2018)
Too Much
First let me say that the visuals and animation by themselves are great. It's up there with the best in recent years. Also the music is well done, as you would expect from Kanji Hawaii.
But.
This movie has just too much of everything. It bombards you non-stop with plot twists and pathos delivered with bombastic music and grandiose visuals. There are way too many characters crying (or almost crying) way too much. Most of them are either so naive and innocent it hurts (mostly themselves), or just ruthless and one dimensional. 100 years or are compressed in to less than 2 hours. It has political intrigue, big scale wars, dragons, implied rape, magical (?) looms, attempted suicide and much more. There is just no time to breathe.
Most character development is off-screen, and in many cases that makes it hard to understand why a character acts the way they do. Most of the themes and concepts are interesting and have a lot of potential, but are barely explored. Instead, the movie hits you over the head with how inspiring and/or tragic everything is until you get numb to it.
They should have made this a tv show with at the very least 13 episodes, or omitted everything but the very core concept of a mother aging slower than her child.
I admit the ending got to me despite everything I'm complaining about, and the visuals, as mentioned, are amazing. So it still gets a 5/10.
The New Mutants (2020)
For Fans
This could have been a solid first entry in to a hypothetical New Mutants trilogy, as was planned by the director. Unfortunately Disney buying FOX stopped that from happening before the movie was even out. That is really a shame, because as a fan of the New Mutants I found this quite enjoyable, if somewhat overly grimdark. I especially liked that Magik was allowed to keep her magical abilities, even though the FOX X-Men universe never really had supernatural elements before. (However, they did have aliens out of nowhere in the last movie.) That said, if seeing these characters in live-action for the first time isn't a selling point for you this movie is definetly skippable. It's fine as a stand-alone mildy scary young-adult-novel-like flick to watch on when bored, but that's about it. No major flaws, but nothing impressive either.
Dear White People (2017)
Even if you hate SJWs, give it a chance
I have never been anywhere near an elite US college, so I can't say how realistic the show is - but it's certainly not one-sided. Yes, the title makes it sound like a 10-part lecture about white privilege. I assure you it's not. I think it's more of a political Rorschach test. Whatever your position on racial relations in the US is, it's probably brought up within the show. However, it will never be clearly endorsed or dismissed, just revealed as somewhat hypocritical.
Sure, SJWs can watch this and act like it supports all of their talking points, but they'd have to ignore more than a few subtle jabs at victim culture and student activism. In the last few episodes the entire escalating situation is depicted as something of a (tragic) farce, with almost no winners at all.
If anything, that's the message.
Dracula Untold (2014)
Good, but could have been great...
While this is unlikely to be anyones movie of the year, it's far better than some reviews suggest. Whether or not it disappoints depends, as always, on what you expect. From the trailer it looked like it could have been an epic, tragic fantasy-war-movie.
It turns out to be mostly an action flick.
Almost everything that's there is good, but it's mostly CGI-action. None of the relationships are really explored, the villains aren't very threatening and Dracula isn't that tragic or creepy. The action, music, acting, cinematography, effects, editing, etc are all good enough to entertain, but the movie is far too short to tell the story with any kind of gravity. An extended cut could easily fix all that, but I doubt a lot of material was left out.
This is an origin story,to there is room for a sequel (or midquel, since there is a time skip). I wouldn't say no to that.
Gnade (2012)
Mercy, not forgiveness
European (or at least German) cinema isn't exactly known for its genre blockbusters. Most of it are silly comedies or dead-serious dramas, often historical. These usually come across (to me) as pretentious and unauthentic, screaming to be taken seriously while mostly failing at visual storytelling.
This movie seemed to fit right into that category. Surprisingly, it doesn't. While there were some moments in the movie where I thought it was a bit constructed, it felt very honest overall. It takes itself serious, but also its audience and medium. It is real cinema, gripping and atmospheric, but also not over-styled. Desipite it's substance matter it's not a talking-heads movie, but knows when to let the visuals and music talk for themselves.
If you have seen the trailer, you probably already know a bit too much. On the other hand, the movie really isn't about any plot-twists or spectacular effects, and it thankfully avoids those and other clichés completely. It should be noted that it is rather slow-paced, and some plot-points are left open, but that's very likely all deliberate and very fitting. The only real complaint I have is the jarring Apple product placement. That was so out of place I wanted to throw up.
One more thing: Note that the title is "Mercy". Some critics talk about forgiveness in relation to the story, but without spoiling anything, that is precisely NOT what it is about.
Die Wand (2012)
Show, don't tell!
Aside from an interesting but ultimately wasted premise, this film consists of mainly three things: Beautiful landscapes, some nice classical music, and relentless, never-ending, annoying narration.
I wouldn't really have *liked* the movie without the narration, as think the story is pretentious nonsense, but i could have enjoyed it at least on a purely aesthetical level. However, as it is now, almost every minute is ruined by the female narrator telling us what we see, what we could see but are told instead, or musings we (or at least me) really didn't need to hear.
I don't care that it's based on a book, I haven't read it, and I certainly have no wish to do so after watching this. Movies are movies, not audio-books with pictures. I can't fathom who still thinks narrations, or text-screens, are a good way to tell a story in a predominantly visual medium. Either it was executive meddling, or someone was just too much in love with the book.
Also, the movie is way too long for the amount of story it's telling, we never find out anything about the characters life before the movie, and the end is (predictably) not very satisfying.