New contender in the Stephen King adaptation ilk. Gerald's Game (2017) I might go as high as an 8/10 on this as it really creeped me out but the ending seemed hurried and somewhat tacked on. It may evoke some comparisons to Misery as well.
I took the family to see it and walked around town as I didn't feel able to sit through an entire movie. After I picked them up their perception of the movie made me want see it. Probably the music is what did it for me?
Saw this on TV in 1970 when I was 8, blew my mind at the time. Little did I know I would love much of what Corman and AI would do over the years. Seeing it again in UHD was a treat. Many years later I found out Les Baxter did the music (What)?...........though not really THAT surprising as Baxter did a bunch of stuff for AI ( Pit and the Pendulum)( another Corman-Baxter and AI afair)......................He happens to be my favorite soundtrack hack of all time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_writer
The good. Visually stunning and consistent with Scott's original look, reasonably plotted within the limits that a sequel to the original allows. The bad, Villeneuve has developed Nolanitis in a big way. Overly long and dragging in spots where it need not it suffers from overexposition almost from the start. That is what keeps it from being Dickian and pushes into Nolan's ballywick. That and the you guessed it, overbearing Zimmer soundtrack just go too far in a direction that will cripple this film at the box office by alienating the cult following of the original in the same way as Fords voice over did back in the first film. If you really hate Nolan, stay away from this one. I really wonder at the minds that took this project and gave it a mega budget. Like GITS, it has no chance of making box office simply due to the fanbase being so small. Bigger and better does not count worth beans in a scenario like that and I suspect that a cleaned up version will find it's eventual market in the BluRay medium.
It's just not a film a non fan of Dicks work or the original film would want to see.
The good. Visually stunning and consistent with Scott's original look, reasonably plotted within the limits that a sequel to the original allows. The bad, Villeneuve has developed Nolanitis in a big way. Overly long and dragging in spots where it need not it suffers from overexposition almost from the start. That is what keeps it from being Dickian and pushes into Nolan's ballywick. That and the you guessed it, overbearing Zimmer soundtrack just go too far in a direction that will cripple this film at the box office by alienating the cult following of the original in the same way as Fords voice over did back in the first film. If you really hate Nolan, stay away from this one. I really wonder at the minds that took this project and gave it a mega budget. Like GITS, it has no chance of making box office simply due to the fanbase being so small. Bigger and better does not count worth beans in a scenario like that and I suspect that a cleaned up version will find it's eventual market in the BluRay medium.
It's just not a film a non fan of Dicks work or the original film would want to see.
Seems like quite a high rating, given how critical you are of it... it sounded like the bad outweighed the good in your review. I'll have to go and see this (peer pressure!) but if what you say is true, it doesn't bode well!
I had a friend demo his 40K home cinema system with this years ago. Fair to say the movie still holds up even today. If anything looking even better than when it came out?
The good. Visually stunning and consistent with Scott's original look, reasonably plotted within the limits that a sequel to the original allows. The bad, Villeneuve has developed Nolanitis in a big way. Overly long and dragging in spots where it need not it suffers from overexposition almost from the start. That is what keeps it from being Dickian and pushes into Nolan's ballywick. That and the you guessed it, overbearing Zimmer soundtrack just go too far in a direction that will cripple this film at the box office by alienating the cult following of the original in the same way as Fords voice over did back in the first film. If you really hate Nolan, stay away from this one. I really wonder at the minds that took this project and gave it a mega budget. Like GITS, it has no chance of making box office simply due to the fanbase being so small. Bigger and better does not count worth beans in a scenario like that and I suspect that a cleaned up version will find it's eventual market in the BluRay medium.
It's just not a film a non fan of Dicks work or the original film would want to see.
Seems like quite a high rating, given how critical you are of it... it sounded like the bad outweighed the good in your review. I'll have to go and see this (peer pressure!) but if what you say is true, it doesn't bode well!
The first film I saw at this year's London Film Festival and it was a bit of a cracker! Miike's 100th film, and it was an honour to have the great man there in person - with translator in tow! - for a Q&A. Blade of the Immortal is a samurai film based on a manga of the same name starring Takuya Kimura as Manji, an immortal samurai and blade for hire who Rin enlists as a bodyguard to avenge her father's death at the hands of master swordsman Anotsu Kageisha. The film is set in the Edo Period, mid-way through the Tokugawa shogunate and the fued between the shogun and Kageisha's Itto-Ryu ("One-Sword School") forms a political backdrop to the action. It is primarily an action movie, but sub-plots like this and a very human element in the developing relationship between Manji and Rin (a strange master-student relationship where the student never really learns anything) prevent it from feeling like a constant onslaught. The fight scene choreography is spectacular though, and the cinematography and sound design masterful. If the opening scene doesn't bring a smile to your face, I'd have to say you're just not really into samurai or fantasy films!
It has more of a comic book sensibility than 13 Assassins, as you might expect given that the source material is manga, but it holds its own with Miike's other great period piece. There isn't a lot of depth here, but it's solidly written, well-acted (if I were being uber-critical, I'd say Hana Sugisaki's performance might have been dialled down a notch) and the pacing is just about right, so that it never drags despite the fairly long run time. I wasn't really aware of him before but apparently Takuya Kimura is a well-known Idol actor in Japan so Miike casts him against type here and really goes for the full comic book anti-hero, laying waste to his Idol image with scars across his face and a defective right eye. There's something of Toshiro Mifune in his performance and it's a safe bet that the film owes a lot of its visual style to samurai films of the 60s and 70s but as ever, Miike dials everything up to 11 - the violence, the characterizations and surreal touches - to deliver something broadly familiar yet joyously bizarre in the finer details.
I quite liked the manga, it had a little of everything and was cool despite being one of those really long stories. curious about how much they could put into one movie.
I have to admit I was afraid we'd get yet another garbage adaptation like we got with Rurouni Kenshin (close historical period, same long rich story with a lot of action). your post reassures me a little. ^_^
I quite liked the manga, it had a little of everything and was cool despite being one of those really long stories. curious about how much they could put into one movie.
I have to admit I was afraid we'd get yet another garbage adaptation like we got with Rurouni Kenshin (close historical period, same long rich story with a lot of action). your post reassures me a little. ^_^
Miike talked a little in the Q&A about the difficulty of condensing that amount of material into a feature length film - inevitably a lot of the nuances will be lost but he said when doing adaptations he always tries to retain the spirit of the original, even if he changes details of the plot or characterization to suit the medium. Some other manga he's adapted were Ichi the Killer, Crows Zero and As the Gods Will, so if you've seen any of those it might give you an idea of how he generally treats the source material.
I'd also add that the Miike Takashi factor is there too - he's a proper auteur IMO, along with the likes of Sion Sono and Kitano Takeshi. I don't know the guy who directed the other adaptation you mention, Rurouni Kenshin, but maybe he's more of a director for hire without a distinctive vision of his own.
Seems like quite a high rating, given how critical you are of it... it sounded like the bad outweighed the good in your review. I'll have to go and see this (peer pressure!) but if what you say is true, it doesn't bode well!
I rate it highly as conceptually the story is quite good. The execution, a little lacking. With tightened editing and a sound remix it could be almost spectacular. The alarming point really for me is the blatant set up for a whole franchise of films.
Best sci-fi movie since "Interstellar" and second best movie of this year so far.
I saw this on Friday and liked it so much that I went and saw it in Imax on Sunday.
It was even better the second time around.
Only negative is ALL of the scenes with Wallace, mostly the dialogue.
Miike talked a little in the Q&A about the difficulty of condensing that amount of material into a feature length film - inevitably a lot of the nuances will be lost but he said when doing adaptations he always tries to retain the spirit of the original, even if he changes details of the plot or characterization to suit the medium. Some other manga he's adapted were Ichi the Killer, Crows Zero and As the Gods Will, so if you've seen any of those it might give you an idea of how he generally treats the source material.
I'd also add that the Miike Takashi factor is there too - he's a proper auteur IMO, along with the likes of Sion Sono and Kitano Takeshi. I don't know the guy who directed the other adaptation you mention, Rurouni Kenshin, but maybe he's more of a director for hire without a distinctive vision of his own.
oh I sure had/have hopes, and as an otaku ascendant wapanese, there are few good mangas and movie adaptations I didn't see. ^_^ but such movies are always difficult moments for me. as a fanboy, the anticipation is huge. and as a fanboy, disappointment also hits me harder than anything else. I'm fairly emotional about those stuff somehow despite my cyborg brain and ears I need to be a fine soulless objectivist.
oh well I'll see it when I can, if I had been a true fanboy I would have tried to see it at the Cannes festival when it was projected. I live 40mn away in earth time, or 6hours in festival time. trying to get there and back while the festival is ON is like real life Gravity. you can't tell when you'll see your family again . I wasn't brave enough this year.
Kenshin was an extreme example of how bad it can turn out. the movie is a cheap soap opera (drama but in the Japanese sense). I wouldn't give it 1/10.
Great soundtrack, basic plot and a lot of action. Overall entertaining with some incredibly cliche moments. Still not sure why Jamie Foxx has all his fingers in this movie.
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. I wasn't brave enough this year. 
