Movies - Last Seen

Gandahar, France (1988)

Strange and surreal animated film, stuffed with philosophical themes and discussions. It takes time, when watching the film, to fully understand the greatness of what you see, only when the film is over you can truly appreciate it.
I think the brilliance of it is undeniable, but since it's very quiet and calm, the effect is not immediately overwhelming, but something that gathered with time.
Beautiful story shows reach and deep reality that stretches far over what you actually see, Gandahar is very imaginative, smart and interesting. The outdated animation technique and very unique retro feeling is really a strength, and turn this film into something very special.
Created by French animator René Laloux, who was also responsible for even more brilliant La Planète Sauvage.

9+/10


Tokyo Gore Police, Japan (2008)

Absolutely sick and psychotic. The levels of gore are truly beyond any reason, and as result the movie is absurdly funny. Gallons of blood sprayed all over, piles of mutilated bodies, humans transformed into grotesque amputee creatures crawling around and whatnot.
The movie is using body horror in very clever way, the violence is so over the top it's almost comical. The movie is not silly and has some really great moments, overall it's quite enjoyable but only for people that know what to expect.
Tokyo Gore Police is another example of Japanese fascination with extreme gore and limitless distortion of human body.

8/10


Punisher: War Zone, USA/Canada/Germany (2008)

Really not bad as it may seem, but also with many problems. The main flaw of this decent action flick is complete lack of consistency, whether it's character depiction, or story development.

On one hand the film is brutal and violent, the main character shows no signs of mercy or shadow of morality. He is a man with one purpose - to kill, and as such cruel machine of executions he is great and unique character in the world of politically correct pussies. Yes, Mr. Nolan, this is how real dark vigilante, fighting against crime, should be like - selfish and cold murderer with no doubts of conscience.

But on the other hand, the film fails to hold on that level of complexity by being way too sentimental, almost in melodramatic sense. How is this tough and hungry for blood person can be such wuss when you show him a widow with a child - it's beyond me.
This extreme fluctuation in Punisher's character is the main reason I can't buy it. It's just psychologically not possible for a killer to see so clearly the line between bad and good, and from one side to show very sadistic approach toward criminals, and on the other side to show sentimental emotions and sorrow when it's about innocent people.
Thomas Jane in the first Punisher handled it much better, closed in the hard shell he showed no emotions for others.

Besides this very important flaw, the main villain Billy Russoti, the Jigsaw, is not that good character either, and unpleasantly reminds Paulie from Sopranos. The film itself is mostly stupid and pointless, but kinda watchable and has its moments, especially when the Punisher is on his dark side. Overall mildly entertaining and has real potential, and with better script and director it could've been a real treat.

6+/10


The Baader Meinhof Complex, Germany/France/Czech Republic (2008)

Political movie about real life extreme left wing terrorist group Red Army Faction (RAF) and their violent wave of terrorist actions across Europe in '70s.

The film is interesting to watch, the production is big and expensive, but as any pretentious movie that trying to dramatize real life controversial story into fiction, it has also many problems.
It's hard to review cinematic values of such film, there are not many of them. The storytelling is not linear, the movie is mostly fragments and pieces of events, many characters are introduced without proper treatment, the movie jumps between places and times, all in order to cover the whole story. The movie is also too long.
The only proper review is from political standpoint, analyzing the content rather than anything else.

This is not something I want to do here, but I have to say this - all that RAF group were kind of douchebags, and the only reason they started all their ideological bullshit is because it was the only way for them to become rock stars, get attention and get laid. And all their sympathizers and imitators are just bored kids that had no reality shows on TV, no video games to play and no BlackBerry to text all their friends.

Truly, all technological achievements in last decades and emphasized mass entertainment took the revolutionary gene away from bored young people, that after first visit in political science class and reading first chapter of Marxist theory suddenly develop political conscience and think they are new Mao Zedong or something.
Now, when the only purpose in life is to tweet and blog, or to go to college parties with free spirited girls, no one has any urge to make any revolutions. The nihilism and conformity have finally won.

7/10