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rimmas
Reviews
Dune: Part Two (2024)
Amazing visuals and sound, but incoherent storytelling
I went to watch Dune 2 with 5 other people, and I was the only one in our company who had read the books previously. I had some explaining to do after the movie, because the crew left a lot of things unexplained, but somehow chose to keep some scenes that seemed barely necessary to the main plot (like the beginning of the trial of Paul going on his first solo trip to the desert and back). I know the book is long and had to be condensed, but really, I couldn't help but notice continuity gaps and lack of proper explanation for some things while watching. Here are some questions that were unanswered or barely hinted at in this film:
- why/how is Paul's sister able to communicate with his mother from the womb?
- why didn't the Harkonnen army finish off the inhabitants of Sietch Tabr when raiding it? Why give them a window to escape just to reload ammo? Why even come with not enough ammo? Couldn't they afford a few extra battleships on site?
- why would the fremen leave one person behind when moving out of Sietch Tabr? This looked like a totally useless sacrifice.
- how did the Harkonnen army not notice tens of thousands of fremen gathering and cheering just outside their capital city walls before the final battle?
- how did part of the fremen combatants manage to hide in the sand seemingly within the city walls?
- did the fremen run through a nuclear explosion site right after the explosion?
- why was the emperor so powerless at the end? His army seemed to just stand there and watch their almighty boss being dethroned.
As esu Rozyte (2023)
Depressing and meaningless
Rozyte (Vida Gumbyte) was a Vilnius street icon, whom I met in person a couple times. She was a warm and friendly beggar, known to many visitors of our old town by her distinctive multi-layered and very colorful dressing style, and very genuine makeup.
I knew from some old articles that she lived in a village outside Vilnius, and would commute to the city and back by train pretty much every day, until she died a couple years ago.
I hoped that this film would be a proper tribute to her life. I hoped it would tell the viewers things like her backstory, what she did in her youth, how her typical beggar day would look, how people would interact with her, whether she had any memorable encounters she'd like to share, stuff like that. But there was none of that.
Instead, the film focuses on her final year(s), showing us a feeble old lady in her run-down ranch, who feeds her cats bread and can barely hold a conversation, possibly due to bad hearing, but also probably because she's getting senile. But oh well, at least you're shown that even these days she cared about her looks.
Extra credit goes to amateur-level animation. In fact, it works quite well when these intermissions are relevant and take a few seconds at a time (like the emergency van sequence). Where it hurts really bad is a few cringy couple-minutes-long intermissions, which add nothing to the story and only seem to be thrown in in order to make the film longer and feature songs by Vytautas Kernagis in full. I almost left the movie after one such intermission.
A friend of mine even had doubts about the legality of this film itself, because without proper reassurance, it seems rather reasonable to assume that Rozyte wasn't told she was being filmed, and only signed up for being photographed.
All in all, I found this film mostly boring, depressing and meaningless.
Kimi ni todoke (2009)
Watchable
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this anime.
On one hand, I can't deny that there is character growth throughout the series, and not just for the main characters, but also for the side ones as well, and that's nice to see.
On the other hand, I'm annoyed with how slow this anime is overall. Imagine having to watch a tree grow, but in real time. It's about that slow. Sawako and Shota are attracted to each other, but it takes them 35 or so episodes to communicate these feelings to each other clearly enough for them to be acknowledged as intended, instead of being seen in a completely different shade. There were moments where I was literally growling, watching the two MC's interact.
I watched both seasons till the end, but I guess it's because I knew that the end was near, wanted to see the eventual "happy ending" and because I came to like the side characters. If there were more episodes to this anime, I would have probably dropped it earlier.
Takt Op. Destiny (2021)
Superb animation, boring villains
From the animation standpoint, this anime is truly is solid, no corners were cut. However, I can't say that about the story and the way it was told after watching the first season.
The villains are just terrible. Very shallow clichés, who, it seems, can teleport themselves anywhere the plot needs them just to cause MCs trouble and annoy the viewers by putting their lack of any depth or original personality on display. Frankly, I just find them hardly plausible, if you know what I mean.
Next, the story. Aside from fighting aliens or having to tolerate the few villains, nothing much is going on. It's just uneventful and doesn't leave you invested enough.
The MC's are, well, okay, but easily forgettable.
All in all, I'd say animation is the only quality feature of this anime. My wife left me alone in the TV room midway, and even I rolled my eyes more often than I would've wanted to while watching this.
Tabineko ripôto (2018)
Average adaptation of a nice book
My wife bought this book during our vacation. She read it and liked it a lot. I read it later, really liked it too and went on to check if it had perhaps been turned into an anime already. But it hadn't. Instead, I discovered this live action film which we decided to watch together.
And let me tell you: watching it soon after reading the book isn't such a good idea. My expectations were let down, and my wife didn't even watch the movie to the end.
Let's start with the most obvious: in order to fit the story into the screen time, it had to be shortened. One of the big arcs in the book, as well as some minor scenes, just didn't make it into this film.
But more importantly, I found the storytelling just plain awkward: the main character meets his friends and they reminisce their past, but the way these past memories were brought up just didn't seem natural. Actually, most of the acting just seemed like... acting. As in, in theater. Maybe that's typical for Japanese live action films (this must have been the first one I watched, so I have nothing to compare it to), but I just couldn't buy the act, it was too theatrical. Like watching a school play or something.
Also, I just have to mention the cat, who's undoubtedly one of the two main characters in this story. I read that they actually trained a real cat for this film, and it's amazing, but I'm not sure that it was a good choice. in the end her (his?) inner dialog just didn't seem to match the acting. For example, there's a scene where Nana is supposed to be desperately trying to get out of a carrier box. The inner dialog sounded desperate. But the cat on the screen? Not so much: she just sniffed around, no sign of the stress or desperation she was supposedly going through.
All in all, while I really loved the original story, I don't believe this film is the best screen adaptation there could be. I still hope to see it adapted into an anime (mini)series one day.
Piano no Mori (2018)
An okay story, but really poorly animated
I watched Forest of Piano on Netflix soon after finishing Your Lie in April, which is another anime series with a focus on a teenage pianist. I must say these two animes are beyond compare, and that's not in favor of this one. So if you intend to watch both, I strongly suggest to watch Forest of Piano first and Your Lie in April second. Or, if you want to watch (or have already watched) the better one first, at least do yourself a favor and have a decent break between the two.
The story told in this anime is warm and positive, but it becomes quite dull by the second season, the entirety of which focuses on a single piano competition. Yes, there are occasional minor plot twists, but they're burried between characters just living their daily lives and enjoying (or not so much) each other's piano skills. By the time season 1 ended, I was already watching this series not because I liked it, but just because I wanted to clear my head in the evening and get to the eventual happy ending.
But what's probably worst in this series is the animation quality, especially in season 2. One word: cheap. Much of the time Forest of Piano looked almost like a screensaver: static images being panned around your TV, with a simplistic snow-like effect to hide the total lack of real animation. Actual character movement was very scarce. Even in peak moments, visual aesthetic hardly reached what you'd typically see in other animes. Did they accidentally miss a digit or two when allocating the budget for animation, or something?