Rurouni Kenshin 2 & 3

I reviewed the first Rurouni Kenshin movie as a stand alone film. And it was at the time. It seems that it was successful enough to warrant sequels and the producers were smart enough to have signed up the cast for possible extensions.

When I watched part 2 I didn't realise that it was going to be a trilogy. So even though I enjoyed the film, it seemed to end a bit abruptly. At least there wasn't a long wait for part 3 as they were shot together.

Part 3 seemed a bit too long. There wasn't much to the story.

In all three parts the cast are great and the atmosphere created is wonderful. The action scenes are brilliant and spread cleverly through the movies.

What is missing though is a convincing story arc that holds it all together. Everything we need to know is already revealed in part 1. So the rest of the story feels tacked on... Because it is.

I think it would have been better to create a completely new separate story for part 2 and another for part 3.

Mythica: A Quest for Heroes

Give it a chance, I thought. Partly funded by a kickstarter campaign and with a name that shouts "first of a series". This was always unlikely to be mind blowingly good.

But it is OK.

I enjoyed watching it.

There are plenty of holes that I could pick in it. The only one that I will really mention here is that the blurb says " starring Kevin Sorbo" when actually he's only in a couple of scenes near the beginning.

Apart from the misleading advertising then, the rest of the film makes good use of the resources it has available. There is limited CGI but what there is has a big impact.

The cast are OK. None of them are going to win an Oscar for this, but they haven't hobbled their careers either.

The script avoids the worst kinds of clichés and doesn't try to over explain the plot. If anything we are left in the dark a bit too much... More world building would have helped strengthen the series.

I believe there is a sequel made. And I might well watch it one day. But I don't think the basic story is original enough to hang a significant run of movies on.

Addicted

Sometimes when I am not really enjoying a film on DVD / Blu-ray I just fast forward through the rest to find out what happens.

I'm not sure what it says about Addicted that I didn't do that... I just abandoned it about half way in instead.

Of course, I know what happens through the power of Wikipedia.

I don't even really understand why I didn't enjoy the half of the film I watched. On paper it is the sort of thing I like.

Maybe I was just in the wrong mood.

Maybe the poor video quality didn't help. In places it looked like a rapidly converted TV format.

Everything felt a bit rubbish... Who knows?

If this is a favorite film of yours then let me know if you think I should give it another chance sometime.

Still Life

This is a lovely little film. And by little I just mean low budget, low key, not small in any patronising way.

It is quite complex, building up slowly. It took me a while to spot that whenever Eddie Marsan's character went out onto the street there was never anyone else in shot. So subtly we get to see how totally alone this man is.

He represents the safety net that society offers. Die alone and there will at least be one person who notices. We employ him to care so that we don't have to.

I wondered if he did the job because he had always been alone himself, or if he became more alone over time because of his job. I don't remember there being many clues to that.

Towards the end, when he is working on his last case, he clearly starts to live himself (again?). And the contrasts are portrayed beautifully.

Just when I thought we were heading for a happy ending there is a surprise. I guess I should have seen it coming (looking back there were plenty of hints) but I didn't.

I thought it wasn't fair at first, but it just had to end like that. It moved me to tears.

And it made me think, not just about people who have died alone, but people who are living alone right now. How can we fix that? Why do we find it so easy to not care about our neighbors any more?

The Babadook

I wanted to like this, but didn't. The cast are good but the story isn't and the script isn't.

As things went on I just felt sorry for the poor single mother left to look after that bloody annoying child.

Jeez he was annoying. And just got more and more so. No wonder she went off the rails.

And so it wasn't scary, because I was just rattled by how annoying the boy was and how unfortunate his mother was to be stuck with him.

Leviathan

This is an award winning film about life in Russia. The cinematography is very good. The setting is bleak. The characters lead bleak lives.

I didn't enjoy watching it.

The Drop

I am a fan of Tom Hardy. I think he is a great actor. So I got this film because he is in it, despite the rather dull sounding summary.

There are other famous actors in it too. Apparently it was the late James Gandolfini's last role. And the rather lovely but hard to spell Noomi Rapace features too.

The story is quite good. Bob finds an injured dog in a trash can. I spent the rest of the film worrying that the dog would get hurt again by the previous evil owner.

Oh, and some people get beaten up and killed too.

SPOILERS

I'm not going to go over the whole plot. It is very clever though how everything seems to be going on around Bob with him helpless. And yet you always feel that he could do more if he wanted... Couldn't he?

Is he really going to give all that money to Deeds for the dog? No of course he isn't. What do you think the gun is for?

But then when Bob confesses to Deeds that he killed the man Deeds was notorious for killing... You don't even have time to take it in before Bob shoots Deeds.

Which captures Bob perfectly. He goes under the radar. Surprises everyone, including the viewer. He's got the drop on us.

So at the end you realise that the title isn't about the money, it's about Bob.