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Bing-ui (2019)
Pointless
To be fair, the acting is excellent, the premise is interesting, and the first several episodes look like a story worth watching, thus I give the series an overall mediocre rating. However, about halfway through the series it turns out that the plot is just not worth the viewer's time. The main characters are basically "fighting" against a god that plays with them however it wants. After that the story is dragged out over another ten or so episodes during which nothing worthwhile happens. The god isn't doing anything at all, and the characters are scheming to stop it in various ways but whatever they think of is completely pointless, since they are unable to do anything against a god that is always many steps ahead of them. We see friendships, love relationships, comic relief scenes, etc., but none of this contributes to the story in a meaningful way, since literally every character is eventually brutally killed off, and nobody except for the two main characters knows that it's the evil god's doing. The problem with the series is not that it's dark or that it's essentially psychological torture porn dragged out over about 20 hours, but that everything that happens is completely meaningless. It becomes very evident very soon that some sort of divine intervention would be the only thing that could stop the evil murderous god, but why should we then watch 10 more episodes of mortals doing pointless things that have ultimately no bearing on the outcome of the story at all? In addition, we never learn how a small-time criminal that had a miserable childhood but is unremarkable otherwise manages to turn into an omnipotent and omniscient god after his death, and why this hasn't happened many times before in the course of history.
To sum it up, I found this about as entertaining as watching people trying to fight against climate change and for sustainability while being fully aware that all is already lost anyway.
Tokyo Ghoul (2014)
Very uneven
Season 1 was great, I'd give it an 8. Season 2 was still okay, but not nearly as captivating as the first, still a solid 6 or 7. Season 3 was completely unwatchable, I had no idea anymore who was who, who was fighting against whom, and what it was all about, so I gave up thoroughly frustrated after three or four parts. It was a confusing, pointless mess. Life's too short to waste your time on disappointing experiences like this.
Since the three seasons hardly have anything to do with each other, my recommendation is that you watch season 1, which is worth it, and pretend that the rest doesn't exist. You'll be doing yourself a favor. Actually there are precious few long anime series for which this doesn't hold true.
Seoulyeok (2016)
A lot of grim social commentary, but the story is often not plausible
K-drama usually paints a very idealized picture of Korean society, where even the relatively poor people have a more or less decent place to live, friends and people who look out for them, and the bad guys tend to be people with power, like mayors, politicians, CEOs and their lackeys. In this animation, almost everybody is either basically evil, or helpless, or both. And then there are the zombies, but they're just being zombies, so it's hard to blame them for tearing people apart. All of this would be a good premise for a run-of-the-mill Walking Dead-style zombie movie, but Seoul Station unfortunately falls short because what happens in the story often makes no sense (even apart from the whole zombie apocalypse thing). People running around the city looking for each other, but only calling each other on their cell phones about once in an hour? No cell phone reception in subway tunnels? An ambulance tipping over because a patient climbs forward and grabs the steering wheel, while the driver doesn't brake and nobody else tries to stop the patient? Soldiers shooting peaceful humans who barricaded themselves away from the zombies and only want to escape, instead of either letting the people leave or going around the barricade and shooting the actual zombies? I found all of this irritatingly implausible. Surprisingly, Train to Busan, which was written and directed by the same person as Seoul Station, had a much better screenplay and was overall a far better film in part because of this. It is also interesting that the two films differ fundamentally in what they ultimately tell us about human nature. In Seoul Station, everybody dies in the end. In Train to Busan, everybody dies except the two most vulnerable characters, who survive because the other characters sacrifice their lives to save them.
Liza, a rókatündér (2015)
Funny but not much else
When this movie was released 5 years ago, it was celebrated in Hungarian media as a world-class movie that revolutionised Hungarian cinema, or something like that. So there was definitely a huge hype around it, but I didn't see it back then, only now, after it appeared on Netflix. I was expecting a movie with an original, maybe even deep story that is loosely connected to Japanese myhology. What I got instead was a plain, although admittedly stylish and funny comedy. It was very much riding the retro wave, as the setting is a version of 1970s Budapest, although in an alternate reality where it is a city in a capitalist country, a colorful place with Porsches, teleshops, Cosmopolitan magazine (a rather blunt product placement that's made part of the comedy, like the Tupperware coffin in the German 7 Dwarfs movie), an invented fast food chain, and silly clothes and hairstyles. Another part of the stylishness of the movie was the crazy music: one of the main characters of the movie is the ghost of an invented Japanese pop star who sings a typical Japanese-English language mix with a pretty authentic-sounding odd J-pop style music, although actually composed and sung by a Hungarian musician; and there's also some real Finnish western music by Marko Haavisto, who is strangely not credited; and Ievan polkka, which I haven't heard for like ten years.
This being a comedy, the essence of the movie are the gags. While there are all sorts of silly jokes (e.g. Liza prepares some idiotically disgusting dishes, like melon soup sprinkled with onions, for one of his "suitors" from a cookbook, wrapped in pink fur, which belonged to the deceased wife of the guy, and the guy calls Liza if he can call her by the name of the former wife), and in this respect this movie is in fact kind of similar to Jeunet's films, most of the jokes are the accidents themselves (not murders, like one of the reviewers claims) which afflict the men who desire Liza. This is a bit like the Final Destination movies, with the huge difference that the accidents there are really cleverly constructed and surprising, while those in this movie are very simple. Overall I'd say that the comedy is effective, I laughed out loud many times while watching the movie.
So having said all of these basically positive things, why am I giving Liza just 6 stars? Well, okay, it's funny and stylish, the acting is generally good enough, the story isn't too bad, but none of this is really astonishingly good either. All of it is just slightly better than average, which is by definition exactly a 6. It's a lame comedy like basically all the other successful Hungarian films of the past 30 years (the Koltai and the Üvegtigris movies, etc.). Watchable, but entirely unremarkable. Sorry about that.
Teoneol (2017)
A really good supernatural thriller series not just for fans of Korean shows
This series has an unusually smart plot. The main character travels through time unintentionally, as it eventually turns out, to solve crimes that have been committed by a serial killer. What makes the story unusual (even original) is that unlike in most time-travel plots he travels to the future, not to the past. Surprisingly this works out pretty well. What is also unusual for a thriller is that the suffering of the families of the victims is much more central to the story than usual. This is in line with the main idea of the show, according to which police detectives are not simply supposed to catch criminals but rather to make sure that they cannot perpetrate further crimes. While I think that this aspect was exaggerated in Tunnel for the emotional effect, I think the concept as such is certainly commendable and still worked reasonably well in the plot.
The writers handled the obligatory plot twists very well. The viewer is led down several garden paths (most importantly concerning the identity of the main character's child and the identity of the serial killer in the future) and starts wondering about apparent consistency mistakes that the writers of the story made, but then everything falls nicely into place.
There were some things I didn't like. For one, it was too long and sometimes became slightly boring and slow, especially toward the end. The same story could have been told in about half as many episodes without omitting anything important and would have been more effective that way. Many unreasonable setbacks in the investigation could have been avoided if the main characters had communicated with each other, especially if they had told each other about their hunches and what they are planning to do next. This was at times very annoying. Another annoying thing was that the main character was constantly and needlessly saying and doing things that were giving away that he came from the past. While I suspect that this was supposed to function as comic relief, I didn't think it was funny but simply unrealistic.
While there were similar annoyances, I think this was a particularly good and intelligent thriller series. The plot twists were unexpected but believable, the story was unpredictable but not overly complicated. The acting was rather good not only by the main but also by the side characters. Finally, what I liked best was that the teenagers from the past who grew up to be the bad guys in the future were cast so that they resemble their grown-up self remarkably. This was done almost as well as in Looper and shows the effort that went into making this series.
Aquaman (2018)
All eye candy, no sense
I can usually tolerate and sometimes even enjoy modern super hero (Wonder Woman etc.) and action movies (Transformers and the like), but this one was really painful to watch. The premise of the story (several HUGE nations of humans and various kinds of humanoids having Star Wars-like technology, hidden away at the bottom of the ocean, co-existing with present-day human civilisation without them ever having noticed) is just incredibly stupid. The whole plot is rubbish, very predictable and not even worth summarising. The aesthetics of the movie is quite similar to that of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, which some evidently like; personally I think it is too much. In addition to the premise of Atlantis being what it is, there are lots of other elements in the movie that made zero sense. For example, Aquaman and his girlfriend jump out of a flying airplane, because why not, and are unhurt when they reach the ground. Sure, they are super heroes, but this doesn't explain how their clothes survive the fall without any damage. Then in a later scene the same Aquaman is terrified of falling 5 meters from the roof of a house. Sure, makes sense. The Atlantean commandos or whatever that chase Aquaman constantly keep crashing through walls and closed doors, probably because they are as dumb as the creators of this movie and can't figure out how to open a damned door and go through it like a normal person. These are just a few examples, the whole movie is like this. You can try to suspend disbelief, but it gets tiring very fast.
To summarise, if you are a very simple person with low standards and at the intellectual level of a ten-year-old, you might want to watch this film. Also if you are a computer / console gamer who can't wait to play the newest games coming out because of the graphics. If this description fits you, you might enjoy Aquaman, it's actually a rather similar experience. For all others, stay away, it is a really, really awful film, and you will be sorry you wasted your time on it. Plus it's got Amber Heard in it.
Sky Bandits (1986)
I think I would have loved this as a kid
Not sure why nobody seems to like this movie. The acting is completely okay, the special effects are very 80s but not bad at all, and the story is that of a family-friendly adventure movie about two criminal but basically good-hearted rascals getting from one mess into the next. There's plenty of action as some more or less realistic WWI era aircraft (probably replicas) and several completely crazy, steampunk-like designs, for example an early 20th century car rebuilt as a double-decker airplane, shoot it out with an insanely huge German bomber airship that can launch rockets. Although one of the good guys dies in a bomb attack, which is presented as tragic, and it is implied, although not really shown, that others are shot down in their planes and probably die as well, there is nothing graphic or frightening being shown. It's basically about as violent and as scary as a Star Wars movie (which means not at all really), and much less so than Indiana Jones, for example. I didn't think it was particularly funny, although there were still a couple of scenes that made me laugh out. Which is about what you would expect considering that this isn't supposed to be a comedy but a light action-adventure movie.
There's a whole lot of shooting and big explosions throughout the film. Movies like this (and Star Wars) were the reason why I had the misconception as a kid that wars were cool and exciting. I still grew up to become an utter pacifist, so I guess that's alright. I never saw Sky Bandits as a kid though and now is the first time I saw it or even heard of it, in my mid-fourties. Which is a shame really. I liked it now, but I really would have loved it when I was about 10.
Children of Dune (2003)
Surprisingly good for a low-budget TV movie
I started to watch this long TV movie (or miniseries if you prefer to look at it that way) with very low expectations since it was obvious from the beginning that this was a low-budget production. I can't agree with the reviews that consider the special effects good, I think they are poor even for their time, but at the very least they haven't aged well at all. The effects are computer-generated and look similar to those from the really awful sub-B-movies like the 2-headed shark series. To put it another way, they look very clearly fake, especially when compared to modern TV series like those produced by Netflix, not to mention Hollywood movies.
By contrast, the cast, the acting and the story are all excellent. All actors play their roles beautifully. It is highly unusual that such a cast of excellent character actors is assembled for a TV movie. The main female protagonists are all stunning, and the costumes in general are very well done. The main character, Leto Atreides II is played excellently by a young James McAvoy. Unfortunately I found his costume (the sandworm "skin" toward the end of the movie) underwhelming. The movie does a great job adapting Herbert's novels (Messiah and Children of Dune) which have a rather complex, but very intelligent and superbly developed plot to film. It's been 10 years or so since I last read the Dune cycle, but this movie made me want to re-read it.
Apart from the visuals I would rate this movie 8/10. I generally reserve 10 for movies that blow me away, my absolute favorites, and 9 for an essentially perfect movie. Children of Dune misses the latter because while the adaptation is very good, the plot is still too difficult to follow despite the relatively long playing time. Maybe the story just requires a full-fledged one-season series format to be told perfectly. I also have to subtract one further point for the not quite convincing visual production. But a 7 is still a very good movie for my standards, well worth watching if you are a sci-fi fan.
Tajemství Ocelového mesta (1979)
Good espionage thriller movie
Reading the summary of the movie I thought this was a sci-fi / dystopia movie, but watching it I realised halfway that this is in fact an adventure espionage thriller like the James Bond movies, although without the gadgets and with a teenage boy (it's a Czechoslovak movie alright) instead of an assortment of hot women being the contact of the spy who infiltrates the base of the evil genius.
The setting is a late 19th / early 20th century alternate reality, and the army in the evil tyrant's city looks like German soldiers in WWI. There are also no advanced technologies. Messages are exchanged by mail pigeons, and people use horse carriages for transport. There is a single automobile in the movie, which is so unusual that a guy must be running ahead of it all the time to warn people to make way for it on the road. So this is clearly not science-fiction in the current sense, although it was obviously written as story from the not too distant future by Jules Verne. The only real element of science fiction in this story from his vantage point was the idea of a weapon of mass destruction, more specifically a chemical weapon, which the story is essentially about, but these have also been unfortunately very real for the past 100 years.
The utopia / dystopia theme is not really explored in the movie at all (I don't know if this is different in the original literary work). The opposing states in the movie are basically no more than a peaceful, wealthy democratic city state and one that is an impoverished militaristic dictatorship that oppresses its citizens and is obsessed with industry. Now since the latter is, and was also for someone living in the Eastern Bloc, quintessentially recognisable as the Soviet Union, I really doubt that this movie was really meant as a propaganda effort directed at the United States, or if it was, it surely didn't work well as such at all. So this should be watched as an adventure movie rather than science-fiction.
The acting is very convincing and the story exciting. The tone of the movie is serious as it deals with a weapon of mass destruction. In spite of the young boy playing an important role this clearly isn't meant to be children's movie, although it should be perfectly safe and exciting to watch for children above, say, age 10. I'm sure I would have liked it at that age.
There are hardly any special effects, but given the topic none were really necessary either. The only really weak part of the movie for me was the fight between the main character and an important bad guy. The two men wrestle and punch each other, but this is quite poorly choreographed. What is much more irritating though is the fact that during this fight the little boy manages to disarm the bad guy three times while the main character, a grown man, just keeps getting beaten up (and almost shot) by him.
Doktor Mladen (1975)
Fairly uninspiring war movie about Yugoslav partisans
This film is about a group of Yugoslav partisans led by a doctor who fight against the occupying Nazi German army and their fascist ustasha Croat allies during 1941 and 1942. Most of the plot revolves around Doctor Mladen's relationship with the people in the villages (all very simple, poor and uneducated people), and how he recruits and arms his troops among them. An important point of the plot is that Mladen is a communist partisan who is not only opposed by the Nazis and their allies but also by Serb chetniks. The latter fight the ustashas themselves but support the Yugoslav kingdom and hate Tito's communists even more than they hate the invaders and the ustashas who slaughter civilians, mostly old men and women. No reason is given where this hatred comes from and consequently this is not presented plausibly. Similarly the movie gives no proper explanation why the chetniks decide to collaborate with the German occupants. Thus an important part of the plot remains unconvincing. In reality these relationships probably had much to do with conflicts between the different ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, but the movie essentially ignores this aspect completely. Instead it apparently tries to claim that the conflict between the groups is due political/ideological differences (royalist versus communist), but this isn't developed either.
Overall the characterisations are rather one-dimensional and shallow. There's the partisans who are the good guys. The Nazis and the ustashas are the bad guys. The chetniks are even more despicable than they are since they betray their own people apparently just because they oppose communism. Finally the peasants in the villages are passive bystanders who are terrorised by the bad guys. Nobody really exhibits any personality beyond this.
The story is very simple and predictable. The doctor takes up arms against the invaders, recruits and arms his partisan group, fights against the fascists, and falls at the end not because he is defeated by the Germans but because he is ambushed by traitors. All in all, not a story that absolutely had to be told.
The acting is okay. Not awful but nothing special. The normal peasants in the movie are clearly not played by actors but by simple rural people, which is one aspect of the film that I liked.
The action scenes are odd, very different from Hollywood action movies. There is a lot of shooting from pistols, rifles and machine guns and throwing of hand granades, as well as a scene with an air attack with bombs being dropped on peasants and their cows and the partisans in between. However, there is no blood or gore at all. Those who are shot or otherwise injured just fall over theatrically, often clutching their invisible wounds. So while there is a lot of fighting and plenty of pyrotechnics, it is all fairly unspectacular even for the time.
To sum it up, a typical socialist propaganda war movie with few interesting qualities. It isn't awful but neither is it excellent in any respect. A really average movie which I rate as a strong 5. I would recommend watching it if you are interested in old war movies, just for its historical value.