Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence (2004): This anime is perfect proof for the concept that a film can be terribly, annoyingly flawed and still blow many of its less flawed contemporaries away. Yes, half the time I don't know what the film is on about (and I'm not sure director Mamoru Oshii is). Yes, sometimes the digital looking parts of the animation and the hand-drawn looking parts don't seem to belong to the same picture. Yes, there's way too much self-important quoting of literary classics. Yes it is an unwieldy and slow film. But the moments that work and fit together or do not fit yet make the most beautiful friction are what define the quality of this one. Once Innocence really got moving, I felt myself sucked into something quite singular, a film which tries to take the question what "life" or "being human" means head on. As every good piece of SF should, Oshii's film works on the symbolic and the concrete level at once and is not afraid of some intense mindfuck moments.
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002): TV's John Barrowman and his patented slime trail fight a killer shark of rapidly varying size and species, all the while giggling and grinning through what the film thinks is dialogue. The minor characters all sound like they come from the American localization of a Japanese video game circa 1996, but those usually have better scripts.
In the right mood (drunk) this is probably so bad that it's kind of a hoot, at least that's what the Internet tells me. I watched it sober, and would very much like to forget the painful experience as soon as possible.
Apocalypse Zero (1996): Speaking of painful experiences, this two-part OVA incorporates everything bad about its form. It's shoddily animated, stupid, pervy, unoriginal and subtitled by people who have difficulty identifying someone with extremely large breasts as female.
It also has a post-apocalyptic schoolboy in a power armor fighting six-breasted bears, old geezers with a dragon for a penis, a giant clown woman with a spiked vagina and a living nurse fetish with a bearded killer vagina, so I can't say I didn't find it amusing. The mileage of sane viewers will vary.
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2 comments:
Bwa ha ha! Back when we had Tivo, my husband made a video of Shark Attack 3, rewinding the scene where people jump off the ship RIGHT INTO the shark's mouth (one of the most unconvincing special effects I have seen in an entire life of unconvincing special efects). It looks like they jump right in, jump back out, back in, back out. This never fails to reduce me to helpless laughter. Poor Captain Jack!
Yeah, jumping the shark has never been better aimed.
Serves the Captain right.
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