dctcool
Joined Jan 2004
Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Reviews10
dctcool's rating
I'm pretty fond of Japanese Otaku hero shows, I've followed Super Sentai, Kamen Rider and after seeing how well the standard could be set with Gantz a few years ago I had high expectations for this.
I saw this as part of Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal and suffice to say it sure did know how to draw me into the film.
Its a really interesting plot buildup: An invading force known as the Galactor has laid siege to countries all over the world with the worst affected area being in Europe, Japan is one of the few safe havens left on the planet but is still under threat from constant attack, with Galactors personal energy shields rendering human weapons useless they instead turn their attention to powerful crystals which select their owners to become the superheroes the Gatchaman.
The film starts out really strong with a fantastic opening action sequence rivaling that of many Hollywood action films with great fight scenes some decent effects (to a degree) and it really left you with some great on your seat action for the first 15 minutes.
After that, it all falls apart.
The next hour of the film almost becomes an annoying slog with so much exposition and back story being tried to get cramped into the film, with most plot point revealed to be rather uninteresting or just flat out silly, not to mention one rather obvious plot hole towards the end of the film where it almost felt like the director said "screw it"
In fact what it actually feels like is that the movie blew its budget way on the opening scene that they had to go all melodramatic to fill in the rest of the film.
The climax of the film isn't any better either whilst we do see a return to action the fights are in to close corridors making it hard to make out whats going on and one ridiculously stupid over dramatic death scene that is almost laughable had it not been for the fact that by this stage I was pretty much bored out of my mind.
Comparable to say Pacific Rim which knew what it was, it knew it was a silly setup which compensated with awesome fight scenes. But in Gatchaman while the setup was strong what was holding it together was silly, yet they tried to make a silly plot serious and sadly it just doesn't work.
Not helped are some of the Japanese actors bad attempts at speaking English, And while I can forgive some actors who have to learn what to say on a whim some of the spoken English dialog from one character doesn't even match the subtitles for whats being said on screen.
In the end Gatchaman could have been a great film to introduce Western Audience to Japanese Super Hero films but unfortunately its incredible boring and silly 2nd act renders the whole film almost unwatchable. I would recommend finding the opening action scene on the Internet for some good entertainment while killing time but thats about it.
I saw this as part of Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal and suffice to say it sure did know how to draw me into the film.
Its a really interesting plot buildup: An invading force known as the Galactor has laid siege to countries all over the world with the worst affected area being in Europe, Japan is one of the few safe havens left on the planet but is still under threat from constant attack, with Galactors personal energy shields rendering human weapons useless they instead turn their attention to powerful crystals which select their owners to become the superheroes the Gatchaman.
The film starts out really strong with a fantastic opening action sequence rivaling that of many Hollywood action films with great fight scenes some decent effects (to a degree) and it really left you with some great on your seat action for the first 15 minutes.
After that, it all falls apart.
The next hour of the film almost becomes an annoying slog with so much exposition and back story being tried to get cramped into the film, with most plot point revealed to be rather uninteresting or just flat out silly, not to mention one rather obvious plot hole towards the end of the film where it almost felt like the director said "screw it"
In fact what it actually feels like is that the movie blew its budget way on the opening scene that they had to go all melodramatic to fill in the rest of the film.
The climax of the film isn't any better either whilst we do see a return to action the fights are in to close corridors making it hard to make out whats going on and one ridiculously stupid over dramatic death scene that is almost laughable had it not been for the fact that by this stage I was pretty much bored out of my mind.
Comparable to say Pacific Rim which knew what it was, it knew it was a silly setup which compensated with awesome fight scenes. But in Gatchaman while the setup was strong what was holding it together was silly, yet they tried to make a silly plot serious and sadly it just doesn't work.
Not helped are some of the Japanese actors bad attempts at speaking English, And while I can forgive some actors who have to learn what to say on a whim some of the spoken English dialog from one character doesn't even match the subtitles for whats being said on screen.
In the end Gatchaman could have been a great film to introduce Western Audience to Japanese Super Hero films but unfortunately its incredible boring and silly 2nd act renders the whole film almost unwatchable. I would recommend finding the opening action scene on the Internet for some good entertainment while killing time but thats about it.
Based off the best selling Australian Teen novel of the same name Tomorrow When The War Began is the first in a series of books by John Marsden about a group of high school students who take a camping trip before school starts and return to find that the country has been invaded by an unknown force, and they make a stand to fight the enemy using guerilla tactics The cinematography and action in this film is fantastic, from the second the first gunshot is fired the adrenaline really picks up and boy does it deliver big time, the explosions in this film are great, and what makes them great is not their size but the debris and characters they send flying, I mean there were pieces of debris that missed characters by cm's and it really ads extra dimension with close calls if this film had been shot in 3D it would have been incredible to see the film just for that.
Unfortunately what drags the film is its script, the dialogue is extremely corny and clichéd, and the bulk of the characters are blatant stereotypes and this is apparent with the way the characters are introduced, in fact I can go though each of them right now, Ellie - Farmer's Daughter, Corrie - the lead's best friend, Kevin - The coward, Homer - The rebellious bad boy, Fiona - the pampered city girl, Robyn - The upstanding religious girl, Chris - The stoner, and the biggest stereotype of them all Lee - The Asian, don't believe me about the Asian? let me give you his character background: He's an expert piano player, his parents own a Chinese restaurant, he moves swiftly like a ninja as evident when he's climbing down a mountain, he stops a fast moving snake with a stick in one strike, he speaks one or two proverbs I mean I was half expecting him to bust out some Kung Fu with the way the filmmakers were treating his character thank god they didn't go that far.
On the topic of the characters the one that really stood out for me performance wise was the character of Homer, Actor Deniz Akdeniz handles his character really well being as charismatic and witty and probably has the second most character development out of all the characters next to Ellie.
To be fair though this is the first in a series of books so there is defiantly room for improvement if the next movie comes out. Notice I said "if" not "when" that's because being an Australian film it has to do really well domestically if it has even a chance of getting made, if it doesn't do well bye bye The Dead of The Night (the next movie in the series) Overall the film is enjoyable despite the poor dialogue, it defiantly needs a better script writer for the next film, though leave him doing the action, Stuart Beattie did that well and pretty good for a directing debut.
7/10
Unfortunately what drags the film is its script, the dialogue is extremely corny and clichéd, and the bulk of the characters are blatant stereotypes and this is apparent with the way the characters are introduced, in fact I can go though each of them right now, Ellie - Farmer's Daughter, Corrie - the lead's best friend, Kevin - The coward, Homer - The rebellious bad boy, Fiona - the pampered city girl, Robyn - The upstanding religious girl, Chris - The stoner, and the biggest stereotype of them all Lee - The Asian, don't believe me about the Asian? let me give you his character background: He's an expert piano player, his parents own a Chinese restaurant, he moves swiftly like a ninja as evident when he's climbing down a mountain, he stops a fast moving snake with a stick in one strike, he speaks one or two proverbs I mean I was half expecting him to bust out some Kung Fu with the way the filmmakers were treating his character thank god they didn't go that far.
On the topic of the characters the one that really stood out for me performance wise was the character of Homer, Actor Deniz Akdeniz handles his character really well being as charismatic and witty and probably has the second most character development out of all the characters next to Ellie.
To be fair though this is the first in a series of books so there is defiantly room for improvement if the next movie comes out. Notice I said "if" not "when" that's because being an Australian film it has to do really well domestically if it has even a chance of getting made, if it doesn't do well bye bye The Dead of The Night (the next movie in the series) Overall the film is enjoyable despite the poor dialogue, it defiantly needs a better script writer for the next film, though leave him doing the action, Stuart Beattie did that well and pretty good for a directing debut.
7/10
OK first of all yes I know its supposed to be a summer blockbuster action film and yes I know its not meant to be considered a serious film, but come on there's only so many explosions and fighting robots I can take before I get board
Lets put the fan-cruft aside for a minute and I'll focus on the film as if it were intended for a general audience, First off keep in mind that this is a sequel so if you haven't seen the first film yet I suggest you go watch that first, speaking of which the first film was fantastic, so well paced great action scenes and great character development that'll make you love some of the characters in the film,
Lets start with the biggest problem of the film's storyline, and thats the balance between being serious and silly, the film has a few serious characters in it but they are way too overshadowed by characters that are in there just for comic relief, it's fine to just have one or two in there problem is this film goes for about 5 and most of them are the main characters. There's a few military scenes that take themselves seriously but the problem here is that you don't know if this film really is taking itself seriously with an over saturation of comedic relief.
The introduction for some of the new characters most notably Skids and Mudflap are rather painful to watch at times, whilst they have their moments their personality seems way too troublemaker stereotypical. The Fallen who is portrayed as the big baddie over Megatron (of all things) in this film has very little to no character development and barely any screen time.
The Deceptacons especially the ones that were given no name are problematic because I feel like most of their basic designs were recycled with some of the characters, their biggest problem is the fact that most of them have the same paint job especially Megatron and Starscream, at times it can be difficult to tell them apart especially during the climatic battles. This is quite a problem cause there are times where you think a certain Deceptacon has been killed only to realize that it was a no named one.
Now onto the Fancruft stuff
First of all the fact that Megatron is a servant for a bigger bad is a kick in the nuts, its well known in the Transformers universe that Megatron is loyal to no one but himself. It also sucks that most of the new Autobots got little to no screen time or lines for that matter, you'd have to actually be a fan to know who some of these characters are and what they can do but for non fans ... Oh and remember the classic transformation sound and the tie in of "More than meets the eye" from the first film? yeah no real fan throwbacks here during this 2 1/2 hour long film
Bottom line see the film you you are both a transformers fan AND an action movie fan. If you're not both I'd suggest giving this one a miss or at least wait till the DVD comes out.
Lets put the fan-cruft aside for a minute and I'll focus on the film as if it were intended for a general audience, First off keep in mind that this is a sequel so if you haven't seen the first film yet I suggest you go watch that first, speaking of which the first film was fantastic, so well paced great action scenes and great character development that'll make you love some of the characters in the film,
Lets start with the biggest problem of the film's storyline, and thats the balance between being serious and silly, the film has a few serious characters in it but they are way too overshadowed by characters that are in there just for comic relief, it's fine to just have one or two in there problem is this film goes for about 5 and most of them are the main characters. There's a few military scenes that take themselves seriously but the problem here is that you don't know if this film really is taking itself seriously with an over saturation of comedic relief.
The introduction for some of the new characters most notably Skids and Mudflap are rather painful to watch at times, whilst they have their moments their personality seems way too troublemaker stereotypical. The Fallen who is portrayed as the big baddie over Megatron (of all things) in this film has very little to no character development and barely any screen time.
The Deceptacons especially the ones that were given no name are problematic because I feel like most of their basic designs were recycled with some of the characters, their biggest problem is the fact that most of them have the same paint job especially Megatron and Starscream, at times it can be difficult to tell them apart especially during the climatic battles. This is quite a problem cause there are times where you think a certain Deceptacon has been killed only to realize that it was a no named one.
Now onto the Fancruft stuff
First of all the fact that Megatron is a servant for a bigger bad is a kick in the nuts, its well known in the Transformers universe that Megatron is loyal to no one but himself. It also sucks that most of the new Autobots got little to no screen time or lines for that matter, you'd have to actually be a fan to know who some of these characters are and what they can do but for non fans ... Oh and remember the classic transformation sound and the tie in of "More than meets the eye" from the first film? yeah no real fan throwbacks here during this 2 1/2 hour long film
Bottom line see the film you you are both a transformers fan AND an action movie fan. If you're not both I'd suggest giving this one a miss or at least wait till the DVD comes out.