Change Your Image
bryankodo
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Strange Magic (2015)
Well done, except for the music
And unfortunately the music is all pervasive.
They had a good cast, made good characters, and had a solid plot.
And then they ruied it with their musical score.
None of the songs fit the mood of the movie and rarely even fit the scene they are sung in. It is a square peg in a round hole. The renditions are campy renditions of 70s and 80s songs in the public domain.
They would have been much better off without the musical singing in the first place. Take the pixar route just use background music when necessary (and they do at some points, and it works).
If they absolutely had to they should have made their own musical scores, at least then it would have fit the scenes better, but I maintain that this movie would have been much better without music entirely.
Cutting down, parsing, and/or eliminating those scenes would have cut the movie time but that's not a bad thing with this being an hour and 40 minutes (that's on the long side for an animated kids movie).
Dragons: Fire & Ice (2004)
Bare bones, but actually quite good
The animation is obviously early 2000s, but all the story elements are there and used quite well. Not too flashy or long, but there is a good twist with several hints and forshadowing for it. Two heroes come together and fight off the villan and bring peace to their nations. The two have a decent chemistry and their characters personalities pair well with each other, in a cute and funny sort of way.
I recommend this film as a short but well made and fun story to watch
I would not recommend the sequel as it follows none of the good story and character development of the original. And the romance in the sequel is a direct contradiction to this film, makes no sense, and is slightly racist
Dragons II: The Metal Ages (2005)
Bad by itself, and terrible when compared to the original
This watches like a badly written fanfiction. Entirely new creatures and magics pop up randomly with no real explanation or sense. Dev's berserker problem makes no sense whatsoever. And why would you introduce a new romance for Kyra? There's no poetry, forshadowing, or sense to it. Near as I can figure this was just a terrible movie made to sell their new weird line of childrens toys and no real thought was put into it.
(plus pairing the two minority characters together, asian and arab, so you don't have the white guy with a minority, smacks of the racism in the early 2000s, it happens alot more often than you'd think)
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
This was Awful
The only reason to watch this is for the visuals, both the CG and the strategically placed women in skimpy outfits.
The two main characters had no chemistry whatsoever. Their dialog and interaction came off as forced and awkward at best.
Dane DeHaan as Valerian makes no sense whatsoever; He looks like he's 16 (I don't care what his actual age is) and trying to "romance" a 20-something Cara Delevingne. He comically tries to lower his voice (there is no way that is natural) and it makes him seem even younger and more out of character. It's like watching a 10 year old pretend to be an even less attractive version of Captain Kirk; complete with fake voice.
What 70 year old decrepit man though we needed more Captain Kirk in our lives. The same casual sexism is pervasive in Valerian's character (the one we are supposed to be rooting for). He treats women like tissues and tries his best to get into everyone's pants regardless of the lies he has to tell or the interest he has to fake. Who was in charge of translating this work into the 21st century, because they failed horribly.
The audience wanted Captain Picard or First Officer Riker, instead we got a 16 year old Captain Kirk desperately trying to act.
The world building is ok, but is given to us mostly in exposition to characters that would already know the information. The technology is interesting but often makes no sense even based on their own explanations. For example why would a jellyfish that shows you where it's been let you see something in someone else's memories and a completely different part of the station if it's never been there? Why does their electronic map not orient numbers to the person reading it? If his combat suit gives him the strength to bust through thick metal walls wouldn't it allow her to easily overpower the ugly grey thugs. If Alpha is a human controlled station (or really just has any government whatsoever) why are the primitive grey thugs even allowed to squat there, especially if they kidnap people? but really it's fine to kill lots of them, 'cause that's what they do.
And from a storytelling perspective many of the scenes here don't need to be. They bloat the film and do nothing to advance the story or build the characters.
The ending is less than spectacular; the solution is a Holodeck, which really makes even less sense.
Cries of the Unborn (2017)
Blatant and false propaganda
A truly disgusting display of prejudice and ignorance. When conservative thinkers dismiss the notion that those like them want to force women to be nothing more than baby making machines forced to give birth, a slave in their own bodies, the handmaiden's tale come to life, it's movies like these that show their platitudes to be false.
A Fetus Is Not A Baby. regardless of how often you lie about it. It doesn't make it true.
Something being alive does not make it murder to kill it. Cows are alive, spiders are alive, trees are alive, tumors are alive. Being "life" means nothing, it's whether or not you are sentient, and a tumor growing in your body with the barest minimum (or none at all depending on it's stage of development) of brain activity isn't. If you'd actaully care to look at an evidence of when it becomes sentinet it would be well after birth, but legally it's much easier to just set it as birth.
It isn't "saving" a life if you do nothing for it after it's born. Women get abortons for a number of reasons and it's never a decision taken lightly. A poor household or young mother is unlikely to adequately raise a child. And forcing them to bear children (A violation of their basic human rights to have control over their own bodies) when you're against any form of financial help to raise the child (including if it were to be given up to foster care or adoption), and any form of birth control to help prevent unwanted children, is hypocrisy at it's finest. And adoption is not the answer either. There are far more unwanted children than there are people willing to adopt, most get left out in the cold (figuratively speaking for those of you too dumb to get metaphors). And our foster system is an underfunded overstraigned nightmare for most children.
The premise of this movie is an abortion of any form of intelligent thought or reason. An appeal to emotion (namely fear and disgust) to take away the rights of others