Change Your Image
giuseppelentini-42197
Reviews
Baburugamu kuraishisu (1987)
Don't believe the hype
In spite of the over enthusiatic reactions of the fan base on this anime, I have to say that not only it is very dated, but it's not very good even compared to other scifi animes of his time. The plot shows promise in the first episode, but by the third it actually devolves in a formulaic, repetitive and mundane story that gets nowhere. It's full of deus ex machina moments and illogical coincidences too, to the extent that it actually reminded me of the saturday morning cartoons of yore. The characters are very stereotypical, one dimensional, and heavily inspired by Cat's Eye. The great music and nicely animated action scenes are the only elements that can be saved from the general mediocrity, but those are not reasons enough to recommend this time curio to anybody.
Meiô Project Zeorymer (1988)
It's actually pretty good
This has to be the swan song of the classic mecha vs mecha genre, and as such it ends up paying homage to the classics, while at the same time breaks the mold from them and evolves in a very original and interesting direction. The story is very intriguing from the start, even if a bit confusing in his exposition at the beginning, but it gets better. A lot better. In fact it has to be one of the best written screenplays in the whole genre. The animation style is also very solid, and every character has a motive, a backstory, and some of them even have dramatic developments during the 4 episodes. If you'll watch it, you'll wonder by the 3rd episode how on earth they'll manage to end this overarching story in one episode only. Don't worry, it actually escalates quickly to a very satisfying and gritty finale. I recommend this anime to all fan of 80s animation done right, I frankly consider it to be quite underrated.
Shôjo kakumei Utena: Adolescence mokushiroku (1999)
Beautiful Nonsense
Taking ispiration from Escher's paintings, we enter the weird dimension of a school where no one has memories of the past and insane duels goes on to win the hand of a misterious girl. Is she a sexual object or the magician that grants this strange world his existence? The premises are intriguing, and the surreal style stays consistent for the entire movie, but the story does not. We are teased with a lot of plot points that don't get developed further after a buildup (the rings are the worst offenders), get introduced abruptly and then immediately forgotten (some characters just disappear too), or simply don't make any sense at all, with the promise that they'll eventually do. But they don't, leading to an ending that resolve nothing, explains nothing and even goes completely berserk, after a scene that actually could have explained everything, had the movie endend there (minor spoiler: involves an elvator filled with water). Also, the prince metaphor is presented in so many angles it loses any meaning in the end. The lesbians undertones are interesting, and the utter madness of it all is mesmerizing. Still I think it's a very beautiful piece of animation (minus the character design), with no meaning at all: deep as a pond, empty as a black hole. As an allegorical exercise, Angel's Eggs is a far more accomplished effort, in my opinion.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
The force slept on this one
Let's face it, this movie exists solely for the purpose of selling Disney toys: it was designed to please everyone (people that like the series, people that don't like the series, men, women, children, animals, pacifists, warmongers, idealists, cinics, etc...).
As is often the case, they ended up with a product that can't satisfy anyone, except for those who want to be dumbly entertained because they, like the filmakers of this empty movie, don't care. At all. You can compare this movie to Thor Ragnarok: if you don't care about the characters, the plot, the derivative moments, the lack of believable storytelling, any adherence to the main themes of the saga and the forced unfunny humor then you will like it. If not, you will see what is essentially a boring, slow, predictable movie.
I give it one star for some of the special effects and a couple of scenes that were cool (but even them were ruined by the silly scenes that came before and by the hollow characters that carried them).