Change Your Image
squilla
Reviews
Life on Our Planet (2023)
Loved it!
Well I have just spent the whole day binging this series and I loved it! I found it hard to put the remote down, it was an rollercoaster of emotions for the life that has come before now.
I loved everything about it, I thought the special effects were great, I've no idea what the other reveiwers are talking about, the special effects were amazing. Morgan Freemans voice was wonderful and it made it for me knowing that he is a beekeeper and lover of animals, it had to be someone like this. As much as I love David Attenborough I found it a refreshing change to hear someone else narrate the story of a life on earth.
The score was great, it did have an orchestral, dramatic Steven Speilsberg feel to it. What made the whole thing for me was how the story of the start of life, to where we are now came together, well done to the script writers and producers here. I think going through the episodes as they did and featuring animals relevant to that era for that episode was great, the timeline I found a very useful visual to visualise the time involved, otherwise to me it is just a number and doesn't represent the immense scale that this series covered. The story writing was full and a lot to take in, I'm going to have to watch it again to really absorb all the information. You can really see how this series has been over 6 years in the making.
As usual with Silverback Films the camera work was just incredible, every single frame in the series could have been a National geographic photograph, utterly breathtaking scenes.
Well done too all of the production team and everyone involved in the making of this, you have done it proud.
The Grudge (2004)
Taking the original and remaking it for a western audience.
This is my first comment on a film on IMDb as I saw this last night and thought it was that dreadful that I had to comment.
***POSSIBLE SPOILERS***
This film was directed by the same director as all the original Ju-on films, Takashi Shimizu also wrote the first Ju-ons as well as the remake, so why could he not come up with an original idea? This film takes every single 'shes behind you' scare tactic of the original films and adds some SFX which makes the film lose the atmosphere, the slow build up to the jumpy bits and also the make up and movement of the characters which is what makes that genre of Japanese films, it seems to just rush through the film in order to squeeze all the scares in. There was nothing that belonged to this film alone, it even used the same house, same plot, same scares, it was shot in Japan, the only difference to the Ju-ons was this film had westerners in it and no subs all the way through and a bit of CG. If they had completely changed it and Americanised it as they did with The Ring, remake of Ringu, they could have made a great film, maybe by just taking some elements relocating the country, the style and changing the story a bit.
I have heard that producer Sam Raimi has confessed that the only reason for making the film was to lose the subtitles and take it to a wider audience. This film was definitely made for a western audience.
So to sum this up then, if you have seen the original Ju-ons and liked them you will be terribly disappointed in this sold out effort, but if you like horror and couldn't care less about the originals then its a fairly decent horror film. I would definitely recommend seeing the originals though but if you have not seen much or any Japanese horror then you may find this quite scary.