Reviews

Eyewitness is another one of your typical murder mysteries. It's nothing groundbreaking, but keeps up a consistently entertaining (if sometimes confusing) story line. A lot of the focus is on the characters. The relationships between them are developed realistically and shy away from many of the stereotypes you will see nowadays.

Eyewitness does a good job of representing women and minority groups, which is something to be appreciated. Julianne Nicholson's character in particular, Helen Torrance, is one of the more well written female characters I've seen.

My only problem with the show is the color tone: it's way too monochrome and gives off an awfully dreary atmosphere at times.

Overall, the show is a fun, light watch, if not entirely memorable.

For a shonen anime, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood really goes above and beyond. There's a lot of typical shonen anime clichés and tropes in this show, to be sure. One of the things that makes FMAB so appealing is that it balances this with adult themes and an intelligent, well-written story to make these clichés something to enjoy, not be annoyed by.

It's got all the makings of a great anime: Superb art and animation (With surprising attention to detail: You could actually see Edward's physical appearance change as time passed in the story, and little things like the scars of the transmutation circle carved into Mustang's hand were drawn in episodes later), talented voice actors and a memorable (if not quite mind-blowing) soundtrack, well-developed characters and a plot lacking the lose-train-win formula of every shonen anime nowadays. The villains were also commendable, although not the best I've ever seen.

The ending had me on the verge of tears, which is saying a lot, but I felt satisfied and fulfilled when it was over, like (and this is gonna sound cheesy) I had really gone on a journey with the Elric Brothers. It was nigh-on cathartic.

To conclude: go watch it. This review doesn't do it justice. You'll never understand how amazing this show really is unless you experience it yourself.

Maybe my expectations were too high (I watched this right after coming off Interstellar, which I rather enjoyed) but this movie was completely forgettable. The plot is a standard "save the stranded guy" story reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan but not executed nearly as well. I could see everything coming from a mile away. Predicting what would happen next was more enjoyable than watching the film itself.

Matt Damon plays one of Hollywood's favorite tropes, a tough guy who, when placed in a life-threatening situation, would rather crack jokes and make fun of disco music than portray any kind of emotion a person in the same situation would conceivably show. He's unrealistically knowledgeable about stuff outside of his field and shows no real depth. There are no psychological consequences of being abandoned on a completely different planet to him.

The rest of his crew are a dull group that I can't even remember for anything other than their unlikely decision to spend a ridiculous amount of time in space away from their families just to save the main character because he is, well, the main character.

The science behind the film was also quite unbelievable. Directors stretching things a little for convenience is no problem with me (and a sci-fi film shouldn't be judged solely by its scientific accuracy) but this film had some errors that my nine-year old cousin even noticed.

The only thing I have nothing bad to say about are the visuals. The CGI was some real high-quality stuff, and the visuals of Mars were stunning. Like most movies nowadays, it's a piece of mind-numbing eye candy, all surface and no substance. Overall, it's just one more piece of Hollywood media that will be consumed by the masses and be forgotten as soon at the next space flick comes out.