vwinter
Headphoneus Supremus
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- Oct 6, 2010
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Psycho-Pass: The Movie - 7/10
Much easier to follow without having seen the preceding OVA series than GitS The New Movie, but then this is hardly an exercise in subtlety. It's more like a primer in how not to conduct international relations; colonialism is bad, intervening in the affairs of other countries is bad, engineering a coup and selling regime change as "self-determination" under the flag of democracy is bad. I don't know about the original series, but this film seemed far more concerned with terrestrial politics than with technology and the philosophical implications of AI. The Sibyl System is an ever-present and leads to questions about privacy, control and the limits of free will, but by and large, writer Urobuchi takes his cues more from Fanon and Foucault than Kurzweil.
It does owe a lot of its visual style to GitS though I think - the towering neon cityscapes recall those of GitS (which in turn riffs on Blade Runner's Neo Tokyo of course), as do some of the action scenes. If anything though, Psycho-Pass is more visceral, with quite a quantity of blood and guts exploding across the screen at regular intervals! It generally is more action-oriented, though doesn't skimp on story and characterization either. The one real gripe I have with it is that they appear to have used Japanese voice actors who clearly don't speak English to do voices in English for some of the non-Japanese characters, such as the mercenary crew. It really grates hearing them read the words phonetically off a script with all the feeling of Babel Fish. Would it really have hurt the budget that much to hire a couple of native speakers for the English dialogue (of which there is a fair amount)? That gripe aside, it was enjoyable enough to make me want to dive into the original series.
Need to watch this.
Totally with Hutnicks on season 1. Skipped season two on the advice of others. Sounds like that was a good call.
[rule]
Been a busy bee with catching up on movies in my scant spare time. Am gonna try to drop some updates in batches. Starting with the rainy Sunday sci-fi double feature. Though these movies were long enough to call this a bifecta.
2001: A Space Odyssey 8.5/10
So I'm a bit late on this one, but better late than never...
Score is purely for every 5/6 shots being art gallery worthy and iconic. Kubrick's experience as a photographer is on full display here. It's almost inherently difficult to rate this film and the above score reflects personal preference more than objective viewpoint. This film's impact on not even generations of cinema, but cinema itself is without question. In that sense, it's literally impossible at this point to view this film in anything even reminiscent of a vacuum.
The artistic liberties taken are bold, inspiring, and even infuriating. Some of the things Kubrick did here I feel absolutely no director, regardless of venerability or status would dare even attempt in this day for a wide release.
The film holds up incredibly well and the transfer is really excellent. There were a few very obvious continuity issues which were clearly for artistic purposes and it's almost difficult to decide if I respect those choices or should lambast them. Which really brings me to my question.
I'm not sure if this is an absolute masterwork or the biggest masturbatory exercise I've ever witnessed. Like... should we bow down to it all Wayne and Garth style or turn it into a permanent installation at the MoMa. That's the question in my mind more than any sort of explanation or meaning for the contents of the film.
Moon 8.2/10
When this began, I had pretty high hopes, like I do with most films that start with a corporate advertisement. Which pretty much sets up the evil-inherent double-cross. Those films usually end up pretty good so let's keep that hit percentage up was my mood at that point.
Then this film goes in some interesting directions. Most of which I didn't expect, another plus. But then in a way, it let me down. Now I give this film more than an 8/10, which represents clearly a great film, and it is. It does a lot of things amazingly to deserve that. But I had higher hopes I guess.
It's hard to outline this without spoilers so...
Basically, the key faults to me were:
1) Sam Rockwell wasn't incredibly believable as an astronaut. And the issue here is that it's even questionable what defines an "atronaut"' in this kind of a scenario. I mean realistically, at this point, we're looking at the equivalent of extraterrestrial warehouse manager. And that fit better, but then they kind of made him out to be an atronaut-esque hero. Which really didn't align with the setup. A sort of congruence issue.
2) The dialogue between the two Sam's was a bit shaky. It's hard to really put my finger on it, but a couple of clones talking to each other after they'd all but accepted their clone-ness wasn't really what I would expect. There were definitely elements of denial and the situation being so beyond the realm of current human understanding that it's a bit difficult to fault this, but it just seemed off.
3) Not sure that the big plan would actually have worked one he touched down on earth. But it seemed a bit presumptuous. Though he likely did know a lot about their processes and procedures, it's a bit hard to believe that a company that would probably be hiding this clone thing would leave such a gaping hole in security.
4) There was also a bit too much hand holding here. You could have taken 20 minutes off the film's runtime with little to marginal negative impact.
But bonus points for nega-HAL.
1) Sam Rockwell wasn't incredibly believable as an astronaut. And the issue here is that it's even questionable what defines an "atronaut"' in this kind of a scenario. I mean realistically, at this point, we're looking at the equivalent of extraterrestrial warehouse manager. And that fit better, but then they kind of made him out to be an atronaut-esque hero. Which really didn't align with the setup. A sort of congruence issue.
2) The dialogue between the two Sam's was a bit shaky. It's hard to really put my finger on it, but a couple of clones talking to each other after they'd all but accepted their clone-ness wasn't really what I would expect. There were definitely elements of denial and the situation being so beyond the realm of current human understanding that it's a bit difficult to fault this, but it just seemed off.
3) Not sure that the big plan would actually have worked one he touched down on earth. But it seemed a bit presumptuous. Though he likely did know a lot about their processes and procedures, it's a bit hard to believe that a company that would probably be hiding this clone thing would leave such a gaping hole in security.
4) There was also a bit too much hand holding here. You could have taken 20 minutes off the film's runtime with little to marginal negative impact.
But bonus points for nega-HAL.
Anywho, I liked the film, but felt almost robbed when it fell short of real greatness. Appreciated the unique setup though.
