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Kentvaroy
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The Hunger Games (2012)
Calling this movie average would be a compliment
A friend told me that a movie just like battle royale was on cinema, where a bunch of kids have to fight to the death. He also told me that reviewers had said the movie was macabre and shocking. So I thought "This movie cant fail". I was horribly wrong...
You start with a great buildup, showing the people that are to fight and their lives. There are 12 districts and each district selects 1 male and 1 female for the fight. This buildup lasts for like half the movie, where the kids fighting needs sponsors and to train for the battle. Woody Harrelson does a great job being the main characters mentor teaching them how to survive.
After a really long buildup before the battle, the movie has raised a lot of expectation. This is where the audience is supposed to be rewarded for their patience I thought.
Well, here is what happens.
The contestants run for a pile of supplies, and a lot of kids die the first minutes. The death scenes were boring and unimaginative. The main character flees into the woods with the supply pack she managed to grab and climbs up in some trees to sleep. Turns out some of the contestants teamed up - along with them, the main characters male district member telling the team "Ill help you find her" as she is good with a bow and considered dangerous. One big fail I can mention already here, is that she IS good with a bow and half the movie buildup focuses on how good she is with it - but she only uses it once or twice. That she is reluctant to fight just further make you lose interest in her.
The problem with the movie from here is that she teams up with a girl, which happens to die. A girl the audience has NO EMOTIONAL CONNECTION to , and she uses like 10 minutes mourning, crying and whining. At this point me and my friends at the cinema was facepalming, sighing and almost had to look away it was so bad. When that finally was over, we thought "Hey, now she is mad - this is when the action starts".
Wrong, she finds her male district friend (That earlier decleared his love for her) and the rest of the movie is a bad Hollywood love story, so bad in fact that I felt so awkward I could die in my chair. This was the second time I just wanted to leave the cinema, as these 2 poorly written and excruciatingly boring scenes took up tonns of screen time.
In the end the love couple makes it, yay. As if anyone cares.
The premise of the film is kids forced into a battle royale type death match. WOW! HOW CAN ANYONE SCREW SOMETHING LIKE THIS UP?
Here is how:
1: Create a superlong intro with characters that are boring and uninteresting, yet build anticipation. 2: Have the death scenes be boring, unimaginative and just straight out bad. (Shocking and macabre? Who said that a 109 year old church priest?) 3: Focus on drama and character building when you already feel nothing for the characters and the director/acting fails to change this. Actually hoping the main character dies says a lot about how bad the movie is. 4: Have a kid die and make the main character cry and hold a funeral for days. Yawn... Can you move along to the action? We already have no sympathy for the characters and don't care. At this point the only thing that can redeem the film is a huge gory fight. 5: ... which instead is replaced by a love story. Ultimate fail.
This movie pretty much failed in every possible aspect. Woody harrelson saved it some, and the buildup part of the movie was actually good. But having the concept of kids in a deathmatch and ruin it by almost no fighting or cool deaths, have the main character cry for a day over a kid we - the audience - don't care about, and add a FRIGGIN LOVE STORY that is so poorly written id rather use the book as toilet paper if i had it? No thanks.
This movie gets a 4, and that is being nice. Seeing this movie average at an 8.0 makes me lose hope in humanity. Clearly peoples standards has fallen so low that they can criticize failure when they see it.
Hagane no renkinjutsushi (2009)
Pretty much the best show made in the history of mankind
Ill explain why this is the best series ever made and why i feel worthy of judging that.
*Note that English isn't my native tongue* I've been addicted to series for like... forever. I could probably list at least 50 full series I've seen from all kinds.
If i told myself 10 years ago or so that the best series i would ever see was an Anime i wouldn't have believed it.
This series made me laugh out loud, cry and bring up pretty much every part of human emotion possible. The characters and story are pretty much flawless and there is little to none loose ends. There isn't a "stormy" story curve as many series suffer from - where the intro - mid part or ending is to short , to long or rushed. The pace through the entire anime is good.
The series does not suffer either from things like to slow riddles-to-answers rate (Lost *cough*) or to fast story.
All characters are developed in a brilliant way through the series.
Of all movies and shows I've seen in my lifetime - if i would have to recommend one single series to someone it would be this one without hesitation.
If i had an enemy i hated in real life more than anything - even i wouldn't be so cruel as to deny that person to see this show. I could deny them food instead and it would be merciful. Thats how good this show is.
One thing that was a major concern early on was that this show would be to childish and silly. Don't be deceived, it is very mature and some elements are even horrifying.
This is one of the only shows I've ever seen, where i haven't been able to personally come up with better ideas on how to make it.
Perfection.
See it.
I also recommend original Japanese voices with English text for best experience.
V (2009)
Smartly written series filled with psychological warfare
When i first heard about this show from a friend i thought "Great, another lame sci-fi series where the aliens looks like and are played by humans to make it easy" But i saw the pilot and man was i wrong.
This show does not have tons of action sequences (though they have some, and they are good when they DO appear) and other "empty headed" time fillers and I'm sure most people that are "Simpletons" wont enjoy the show at all. The Alien Antagonists in this show are cold, clever and wages wars of mind games (Atleast as far as I've seen which is episode 5 so far)and when it comes to their true form the term "Cold" makes sense in more than just one term. This show does an excellent job of picturing how powerful the mind and wills of intelligent life can be, and invading a world with manipulation and trickery as in this show is brilliant compared to old alien invasion sci-fi's.
When it comes to the characters of the show people have complained about them being to simple. Guess what, realism alert - most humans don't have 1 million layers of super advanced personalities. The people on this show are just regular humans in a very special situation trying to protect what they love, which makes it interesting.
I have also never seen an alien species in a show that has intrigued me as much as the one here. So unless the writers REALLY messes it up i might end up hoping that these sociopath reptiles win. They say what Americans love are tragic stories with happy endings, lets hope a tragic story with tragic ending will break the streak of predictability that haunts the movie industry.
I personally advise you to see at least the first 2 or 3 episodes before deciding whether you like the show or not.