Armored

Armored is pretty standard Hollywood action fare. It doesn't try and do anything spectacularly different or new, but it manages to be a relatively pleasing film if you want some decent action with a fairly good narrative and a cast that performs reasonably well. It’s a somewhat typical heist-gone-wrong film with a tiny twist to the traditional tale, but one which has been seen before.
Early in the game there was a refreshing performance from Laurence Fishburne, rather than the usual broody and somewhat dark characters I seem to see him playing, he actually laughs!

Cop Out

Even though this blog has only been up and running for a couple days, you may notice that I have a tendency to watch animated works over live action film, and that pattern will most likely follow far into the future, however I came across a movie today that gave me no reason not to see it.

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From director Kevin Smith, and starring my man, John Mcl-excuse me, Bruce Willis, and my second favorite black comedian of all time, Tracy Morgan, comes the 2010 comedy film, Cop Out.

Oppai Volleyball

I approached Oppai Volleyball with a degree of apprehension. The title seems pretty clear cut, but the movie itself turned out to not meet my preconceptions (thank you DoA: Extreme Beach Volleyball). It started off slightly cheesy and somewhat reminiscent of Green Green (a particularly lewd anime), replete with nosebleed scene and dirty jokes thanks to the flexibility of the Japanese language, but possibly, somewhat fortunately, that didn’t entirely set the tone for the rest of the film.Not having any knowledge beforehand of a majority of the actors in the film, nor the crew who put it together, I was rather disappointed in the palette and quality of the production. While it somewhat fits the feeling of the setting, 70s Japan, the overall picture seemed rather bland and uninteresting. There was a very restricted palette when it could have been a much more vibrant and exciting film. The title suggested something which would titillate (pardon the pun), but what it ended up being something that matched the look of the film, somewhat flat and lifeless, but not without its quirks and value.

Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise

This movie is like a time portal, bringing you back to the days of Gainax before Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann , Before FLCL, and even before Neon Genesis Evangelion, back to 1987, when Gainax was still a fledgling corporation still struggling to make it in the emerging days of anime. After their first major debut work, "Otaku no Video" in 1985 and its sequel in 1986, comes the first full length movie to come out of the studio in 1987. Wings of Honneamise is a beautifully animated, 2 hour long movie that was and is hailed as a classic in the world of anime. Despite this, it is still largely unknown due to the more popular series that came out soon after such as "Gunbuster" and "The Secret of the Blue Water", which both experienced a great deal more of success.

Summer Wars

Summer Wars was last years summer blockbuster for the ever-growing Japanese Blu-Ray market selling over 50,000 copies and topping even the much anticipated re-release of Evangelion that came out not long before it.

The movie is set in the beautifully realized countryside of the Japanese city Ueda, located in the prefecture of Nagano.

The story is simple enough; a girl, Natsuki Shinohara, recruits another boy from her school, Kenji Koiso, to come on vacation with her to her families house in the country to serve unknowingly as her fiancee before her historically prominent family, the Shinohara clan.

Now, this is where the movie takes a turn for the better. Where most shows would have taken this situation and exploited the typical wacky hi jinks and over-played love story, Summer Wars introduces a refreshing plot to the tired scenario.