Details: Aired on HBO in 2017. Seven episode at around an hour each.
I’ve read and talked a lot about the new season since it aired. A lot of my opinions on the season are the same as many others. In short, I enjoyed the season, but the pacing was too fast and a lot of the elements of this show that made Game of Thrones unique were not present in this season. No spoilers ahead.
Continue reading “TV Show Review: Game of Thrones, Season 7”
Details: Aired in 2017. Twelve episodes at twenty-four minutes each in this first season. You can watch it on crunchyroll.com
Saga of Tanya the Evil is a fantasy war anime that centers on the character of Tanya von Degurechaff. It’s an entertaining concept that is animated well, paced well, and kept my attention.
Continue reading “Anime Review: Saga of Tanya the Evil (also known as Yojo Senki)”
Details: Released in 2016. Runs for about two hours and twenty minutes. Stars Andrew Garfield. Directed by Mel Gibson.
Gibson triumphantly returns with this World War II movie. The thing about WWII movies is that the best WWII scene has already been shot, and that is Spielberg’s Normandy beach scene in Saving Private Ryan. No other film has since come close and anyone who’s tried has come up short. In order to make another WWII movie that can hold a candle to Saving Private Ryan, a filmmaker would have to approach it an a new, unique perspective. That is exactly what Gibson does here.
The premise is this: Desmond Doss joins the army as a medic and a conscientious objector. Due to his religious beliefs, he will not hold a gun nor will he kill. Doss must overcome the disdain of his fellow soldiers as well as the horrors of war as he maintains his beliefs, no matter the danger.
It’s an incredible story made that much more incredible by the fact that it’s based off a true story. One thing I appreciated and which is lacking from many other films that are based off true stories is that at the end of the film, you get interviews from the people the characters were based off of and from Doss himself. The interviews compounded the emotional impact for me and gave me a greater appreciation of the film overall.
It’s just such a ridiculous tale that I think, without the real world scenes at the end of the movie, this story might just be too hard for the audience to buy into. Anyways, that’s enough about the real world aspects of this film.
The best performance here was obviously by Andrew Garfield, with Hugo Weaving in close second. They may have been able to find somebody better suited to be a drill sergeant, but Vince Vaughn does just fine.
The true star here is the directing. Gibson tells a great story that truly explores the key experiences that end up shaping a man like Desmond Doss. From childhood, to adulthood, Doss grows to become a man of faith and conviction. There are certainly the “horrors of war” scenes, as is necessary in a good war film. What sets this story apart is that it is told from the perspective of a pacifist, and yet Doss is a pacifist who recognizes the necessity of war. This is a story about a person who must reconcile his beliefs with the harshness of reality. It is about a person who decides that he will not back down or compromise, even if it costs him his life.
Part of my appreciation for this film comes from my own personal bias towards stories like this. I love stories where an underdog overcomes great tribulations, all in the pursuit of some ideal. This is exactly that kind of story. I certainly shed a tear at certain points when the opposition seemed strongest and Doss, even still, stuck to his convictions. I don’t cry for most kinds of tear jerking stories, but a person overcoming overwhelming odds in the name of his ideals, that just starts the waterworks.
Score: 8/10 A good movie that tells a decidedly different WWII story from Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Gibson has told a story which needed to be told and I’m very glad he did.
As you can see from the trailer above, Beasts of No Nation seeks to be a film that takes a hard look at child soldiers in Africa. Directed by Cary Fukunaga and produced by Netflix, my expectations were high considering their recent string of hits (Fukunaga directed True Detective season one and Netflix is behind Daredevil and Orange is the New Black).
The film centers on a boy orphaned by war and chronicles his transformation into a child soldier.
It’s a sobering tale. What’s also interesting is what this film attempts to achieve. On the one hand, it is a war movie in the vein of Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, but to a far lesser extant (no one’s charging Normandy beach here). It seeks to take a look at the horror and intensity of war in this part of Africa. Where it differs is that the protagonist soldier who fights this war is a child. And that is very jarring when compared to the old soldiers of World War II.
The actors are all fairly good. Sometimes during the film I felt like the portrayals were fake and superficial, full of overacted bravado. But after further thought, this may be exactly how the participants in this war act. I’ve met criminals in real life, and they weren’t criminal masterminds or heroes doing that last job before they quit their life of crime. They were just people doing things. Those things don’t need to make sense to everyone. The characters fighting in this film often times do horrendous things for seemingly no reason. Beasts of No Nation then, as a film that is based on real events, helps to show that real life is often stranger than fiction (even though this film is fictitious, it still helps show the pointlessness of real life events).
Also worth mentioning are the performances from the children, especially the protagonist played by Abraham Attah. Directing children to put out a performance like this is impressive in any kind of theatrical context and the children here, with this kind of subject matter, were amazing.
Score: 8.0/10 A cold, hard look at a shitty situation. Worth watching. It’s horrific that this happens in the real world and that it is probably more violent and grotesque than what was portrayed in this film.
Details: Directed by Clint Eastwood. A war film starring Bradley Cooper. Run time is over two hours.
This is Hurt Locker, except its about snipers instead of bomb disposal. And it’s directed by Clint Eastwood. Oh, it stars Bradley Cooper instead of Jeremy Renner. Otherwise, fairly similar tone, themes, plot progression.
I know there is some controversy around the film, but it feels artificial. Like a guy doing marketing for the film is trying to gather attention. No real controversy here. Just another war movie. Regardless, decent film with some emotion and a few good action scenes.
Score: 7/10 It’s Hurt Locker, with snipers. Sort of.
Edit: After thinking about it, there is a bigger difference in this film from Hurt Locker. In Hurt Locker, the protagonist is an adrenaline junky that likes going to war. Here, the protagonist suffers from regret and PTSD from the war. The two films have opposite themes.
Muse Bank 