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reggieamadeo
Reviews
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Very mid
To be completely honest, the movie is good and enjoyable. The special effects were great, the fight scene between wenwu and li was a nice homage to older kungfu movies. The magical land of Ta Lo is a nice dimension for the MCU to tackle, a more family-friendly fantasy at which Disney has mastered. The story itself wasn't too hard to swallow and in my opinion, Tony Leung stole the show.
To the bad parts:
I feel as though most of the movie is an exposition dump, the story just has way too much aspects and the movie is barely capable to explain them. Whether it be about the secret map to Ta Lo, the Great Protector or just Shang Chi's mom. I also think acting and casting is a bit lacking.
Simu's character is lovable and all but does not evoke strong emotions. Awkwafina's character is just wacky and 9/10 times we can see her surprised with her mouth open, not to mention her being more than able to use a bow within idk? Less than a week? Zhang Meng'Er was great and fresh! I think she did really well in this film. Tony Leung was a great pick, no arguments on that. Michelle Yeoh is good sure but I feel like I always see her in roles like this (safe but not fresh).
All in all, I do respect the asian representation (I'm asian myself) but the movie does not empower. I hope Hollywood would bring on more and more asian actors/actresses.
Nihon Chinbotsu 2020 (2020)
Devastating setting, devastating animation
I think for the most part, we can agree that the story was great. It showed the horrors of natural disasters and how easy it was for people to die. What's also interesting is that unlike many doomsday movies, the humans here tend to help each other (safe for some individuals and later nazis). It gives a fresh new perspective, in a realistic manner to humanity when under a threat of being wiped out. Enough for the story now it is time to address the graphics and animation. Japan Sinks 2020 cannot be done without breathtaking landscapes and that's just the problem. The graphics look lazy with characters looking deformed sometimes. They also seem to not be able to draw up perspectives. The awkward sudden change to 3D (which they did horribly). Landscapes aren't amazing, let alone great. It really feels like they skipped animation school because it looks choppy and has a bad flow (like those cigarette scenes). Sometimes it feels like it's straight out of a flash game from dailygames dot com. The characters were great and had solid personalities and the only complaint for this part is that the little kid Go likes to blurt out english phrases randomly and to me it was just damn annoying. All in all, i gave this a 6/10 not because i didn't appreciate the story, it was because they tried to make a beautiful anime but minus the good drawing techniques and smooth animation. The trailer really gets you tricked in this part (I genuinely thought it was Makoto Shinkai's work). Tl;dr : so much creativity, so little technique, Go is annoying.