ultrevor

I know this sounds literally insane but this film is exactly like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is not a joke, it's not intended as a meme. Both films are insane fever dreams that don't feel real. Both films leave you feeling trapped in another world where scenes blend together in ways that technically work but are unsettling and don't always make sense. The dark crystal is one of the most shrill, high-pitched films I've ever watched, every character screeches for some reason except the two main gelflings or whatever they're called. Some of the most frustrating sound design and voice acting I've ever heard, the voice acting, effects, and music don't blend together at all, you have to strain to hear and understand dialogue. If you want to see a movie where you truly feel how bad the sound design is, watch this. In Texas chainsaw massacre, that unsettling feeling is intentional. In dark crystal it's almost certainly an accident. This film, just like Texas chainsaw massacre, is a movie that happens to you. You can't escape it. It's a blurry, colorful, runaway truck of noise and mesmerizing visuals that mostly make up a story. Unlike Texas chainsaw massacre, the dark crystal does not have deep underlying subtext, nor a broader point to make about the world. Dark Crystal is a very simple good vs evil adventure story...except it's not?? I found the ending very disappointing in this regard, which I will not spoil. The highlight of the film is the character and set design, which are incredible - it's all puppets. No humans at all, no people on screen. As a result the movement of everything in the film is unlike anything you've ever seen. And the visuals of the film are unlike anything you've ever seen. For that reason alone this one is worth watching. But I would not expect "great cinematic storytelling". It's a run-of-the-mill action/adventure fantasy narrative with bizarre pacing (never too fast, never too slow) and even more bizarre character and set design. The story is at least clear and has a clear beginning middle and end and for that reason I can't give it lower than a 6/10. Recommend watching while stoned.

If you've ever wondered "are IMDB reviews and ratings totally BS" well here's your answer. This is literally the perfect movie. I don't care what anyone else has to say. The idea that this film isn't a 9 or a 10 out of 10 is absurd. This is one of the greatest films ever made. This is the first film Hayao Miyazaki ever directed, and you can very much see how it sets the stage for all the movies he makes later in his career with Studio Ghibli. I actually don't love every single movie that Miyazaki has directed, hot take, he's made some bad movies (sorry Porco Rosso and Ponyo, I didn't like you). This isn't one of them, this is incredible - Lupin the 3rd and the castle of cagliostro will take you off on a classic fantasy-style adventure that only Miyazaki could take you on. Romance, humor, drama, action, adventure. Intense pacing and thrilling moment to moment action. The one thing holding it back is actually quite ironic to me - the film is tied to the Lupin the 3rd universe, and that universe just isn't very good or very interesting. Miyazaki does his best with the characters he has, and while you don't need an explanation of the world you're in, and who all the characters are, you certainly feel like you're missing out on a few of the inside jokes, or that there'd be more to enjoy if you were more familiar with Lupin the 3rd. That's the only thing that prevents this film from being a 10/10 to me. But this wasn't a big enough issue to ruin my enjoyment of the film, in fact it made me want to look more in to Lupin the 3rd, and it made me come back to this film again with a renewed and deepened perspective. This is absolutely a movie you will want to watch more than once.

This is absolutely one of the worst shows I've ever seen, not even in a so-bad-its good way. Which is sad because the show starts off so strong, and then it all falls apart, to a point where you are wondering why you're still watching. It all starts with a strong plot hook: A family with deep, emotionally-close relationships, grounded in a realistic setting. A real-world tragedy of epic proportions effects all of them. The tone of the show is very clear - this is a tragedy in a world of real, hard compromise, where nothing ends up perfect. But over time, not just the relationships, but the writing and directing itself falls apart. The show becomes more and more abstract in ways that don't really make sense, nor does the more abstract writing seem to even have a symbolic point, or even an end-point. It just gets messier and messier, without any rhyme nor reason. Where the show REALLY falls apart is toward the end of the season, on the raft. I won't say more as I don't want to spoil in the event you do actually watch, but the show goes from a tragic disaster scenario, grounded in realism, to a completely unbelievable scenario that 1) doesn't make any sense and 2) doesn't have a clear artistic point to make. Thoroughly a bad experience not worth watching past episode 5 or 6. This show could have greatly benefited from better writing, a better director, and perhaps a better producer - whoever was at the helm of this project and tried to "make this all make sense" did a really bad job. The saving grace of this show (if any)? The voice acting and the animation quality are actually quite good, it's clear this show had a budget, and that budget was used to great effect - which is why its such a tragedy that the story is so bad, and the moment-to-moment action of the plot makes such little sense, to a point where the show becomes almost impossible to enjoy (at times, scenes don't seem to connect, and you are left wondering how things possibly could have happened the way they did, the moment-to-moment action is so poorly portrayed and written/explained). I want to congratulate the animation team for creating beautiful, fluid and believable animation, particularly with such bad writing and directing to work with. The voice direction is fantastic. The animation direction/storyboarding is quite bad, and errors show up consistently throughout - an inconsistent story and messy writing doesn't help either.