abstract_daddy's reviews

Jade Warrior is a new and excellent achievement for Finnish films. Not only is it a martial arts film that was made with a budget of a few million euros (which is still exceptionally high for a Finnish film), but it's also produced and directed as if it was made with a much higher budget by an experienced director. This is no embarrassing first attempt or prototype, but a genre film that's easily on par with modern standards, and also has an interesting, original and intelligent storyline. If you replaced Tommi Eronen with a Chinese actor and removed the parts taking place in Finland, people might conceivably think that Yimou Zhang has released a new movie. Since Jade Warrior is a martial arts film, a lot of attention will naturally be paid to the fight scenes, which are well choreographed and fluidly shot, without excessive closeups and quick cuts. I particularly like the use of flying leaves in fight scenes. While there are some impossible physics, they are used sparsely, and aren't too exaggerated.

The sets, costumes, effects and soundtrack are all outstanding, as are the actors. I think Markku Peltola's portrayal of the demon was especially interesting. Also, I don't mean to sound superficial, but Jingchu Zhang is stunningly and exceptionally beautiful. She's apparently a rising star in China, and is about to do a Hollywood film. I look forward to seeing her again.

Finnish cinema has almost entirely consisted of drama and comedy, with a few war films, so Jade Warrior is clearly a breath of fresh air. Certainly there are many good Finnish films, but they're either drama or comedy. I don't know why we're so reluctant to try something new. It's not just a budget issue, you don't necessarily need millions to do an action film, for instance. The fact that we've restricted ourselves to the aforementioned genres became apparent when I watched the film, because some of the dialogue made me cringe, since films like Jade Warrior are never done here, and the dialogue seems out of place. This isn't the film's fault, of course.

The limited international reaction seems to be very positive so far, and Finnish reviews have also been largely positive. Hopefully Jade Warrior will succeed to the point where we start doing more than low budget drama and comedy. Of course, this was a cooperative project with China, so credit must go to them as well.

Final Fantasy VII is one of my favorite games. Sadly, Advent Children bears little resemblance to the game, as it's more of an extended fight sequence with little or no plot. What little plot exists is very confusing and embarrassing, along with the dialogue that goes with it. Nearly all of the running time is devoted to fighting. Towards the end of the movie, there's a long, long fight against a giant dragon, and right afterwards there's a long chase/fight scene, and right after that there's the long, long, long final fight scene. No pauses or rest, just push on to the next big fight! The fighting isn't even exciting to watch, it's just mind numbing repetition with physics borrowed from Matrix and Crouching Tiger, which did not exist in the game. Eventually I just stopped paying attention to the constant action and drifted off.

The game had lots of fighting, but there were plenty of quiet moments where characters could interact and the story could progress. In fact, I'd say that these moments constituted the bulk of the game's content. The game had a long and expansive story (when you're finished with the "prologue" of the game, you already feel like you've gone through a big adventure), each character had his/her own story, and dialogue was abundant. It was character driven. There's none of that in Advent Children, it's like they just decided to make a film version of the fight scenes in the game (poorly), and ignore everything else. Yes, all the characters appear, but most of them just abruptly show up very late into the movie with no foreshadowing or introductions, and don't really do anything except briefly assist Cloud in a fight. It's like they're just minor sidekicks. Ironically enough, Reno and Rude actually were just minor characters in the original game, but in the movie they're far, far more prominent than the main characters of the game, such as Barret.

In a nutshell, the movie has so much action that all else is excluded, which also means that there's no emotion or drama, and obviously the final fight cannot be exciting or emotionally involving. You can't just have pure action, it has to be supported by a real story and real characters so that it means something. If you're a Final Fantasy VII fan, then you'll see this movie regardless of what any review tells you (just as I did), and there's actually nothing wrong with that, since it's very heart warming to see the old characters and locations, and hear a lot of melodies and music from the game. Watching Tifa walk through Aeris' church (a very, very emotional place in the game, for anyone who liked Aeris) with familiar music in the background is worth the effort of enduring the rest of the movie. If you've never played the game, this movie has absolutely nothing to offer you.

IMDb's 7.8 user score with over 10,000 votes only indicates how many rabid fans loved the movie because it was Final Fantasy VII , and not because it was a great movie by itself, or a great movie about FFVII. I mean, I'm a huge fan of the game too, but I know enough about movies to spot a really terrible one. Michael Bay movies are often mocked for being stupid Hollywood drivel, but at least they're competently made and entertaining, unlike this sad train wreck that's based on one of the best games ever made.

Looks like I'm the first person to review this. It seems odd that seemingly no one has seen this (no reviews anywhere, except a few in French), and there's no information about this movie on IMDb The movie is starred by Dida Diafat, A Thai boxing champion, and it's based on his autobiography, although his character is called Ryan. So he's playing himself, I suppose. Diafat's character gets thrown in jail in France, where he learns the basics of Thai boxing from another inmate. He then travels to Thailand to study more Thai boxing, in order to become a champion. That's basically the story, but there are a few subplots and background elements such as a romantic interest, which are likely fiction. The subplots, which seem to appear, disappear and reappear at irregular intervals, are mostly in the background and don't affect the straightforward storyline too much. However, the subplots seem a little out of place and don't quite fit the movie. It would have been better if the entire movie would have concentrated on just the Thai boxing.

Diafat's climb to the top doesn't seem unrealistic, and is presumably based on fact. There are few if any fight movie clichés. In fact, the movie could have used some, like the mandatory epic final battle where the protagonist almost loses but doesn't. The final fight is very short and ends abruptly which, again, could be factual. The fights are mostly shot well, and they alternate between close shots and fast cuts, and wider and longer takes. Considering Dida Diafat was a world champion eleven times (or so I read), the movie could have used much longer shots without fearing that it would look fake.

I couldn't see anything at fault with Diafat's acting, and generally there's really nothing wrong with the movie. I just wish it would have concentrated exclusively on the training and fighting, with more longer fighting scenes.

PTU is a movie that looks very good, but completely lacks content. The entire movie takes place at night in a deserted Hong Kong. I say "deserted" because the streets are almost completely void of people. A car may occasionally pass by and a person or two might be seen in the background, but that's about it. The city is illuminated only by the harsh glow of street lights, with everything else shrouded in darkness. These qualities give the movie a slightly surreal feel, as if it took place in some kind of parallel universe of its own. I guess you could say that the movie is minimalistic, in many ways. There's not much music, dialogue is sparse and the camera doesn't do any neat tricks.

The story: I have no idea. A police detective loses his sidearm, and the cops go looking for it. That's about all I can say, because I was unable to figure out what was going on. Lots of phone calls are made, meetings are arranged, and there's some kind of struggle between two gangs, and the police may or may not be somehow involved. There are some subplots (or something) that don't seem to be connected to anything. Maybe it's just my fault, but I didn't get it. The group of police officers that the movie follows seem to be corrupt. The detective who loses his weapon seems to be corrupt too. There's also another detective who is investigating something and is suspicious of the first detective for some reason, and she could be corrupt too, but who knows. She's the only interesting character in the movie.

PTU has some bad problems with pacing. At 40 minutes into the movie, it felt like the story was still being set up and the characters introduced. There are many slow scenes where nothing really happens, such as the one where the cops climb a staircase for 5 minutes. Maybe the director tried to do things like Takeshi Kitano, but failed. The ending wraps things up but holds no meaning since I had no idea what was going on.

At least it looks good. The only other Johnny To movie that I've seen is Fulltime Killer, and it didn't impress me either.

I thought this was rather enjoyable, despite some glaring issues with the script, which has problems with realism and plausibility. I'm not talking about the time travel aspects, but rather things like how the police conduct their business and how fire fights work (people have surprisingly poor accuracy). It's something that I'm always interested in, and I kept thinking "why aren't they using snipers?" or "isn't he wearing body armour?" and so on. If you don't notice such things or don't care about them then they aren't issues, except when characters make very implausible escapes because the police get their tactics from planet bizarro.

Obviously, the core idea of the movie is time travel, and I think it's executed well. In the first time rewind, the music starts playing backwards, which is a nice touch. The movie begins with an interesting monologue about time, including the fact that space is a giant time machine because light from distant galaxies takes so long to reach us that we're actually looking millions of years to the past. It doesn't seem to have much of a connection with the rest of the movie, though. Some real scientific concepts such as the superstring theory are mentioned, but it's safe to say that the "science" in the movie is strictly in the realm of nonsense, but the movie doesn't dwell on it.

Sean Astin's character is the typical geek that nervously blabbers all the time. I guess there's nothing wrong with his performance, but the character type is just tiresome to me. Ivana Milicevic, playing an FBI agent, works well. The character is competent and professional without any useless one-liners or flash. She just goes and does things without any drama. I can't really think of seeing a similar character before. One odd thing about her is that when her partner is killed, she seems to forget it in a few minutes. Vinnie Jones plays a rather humorous villain, though the character's behaviour seems a bit inconsistent.

One of the strongest aspects of Slipstream is the style. Slow motions are used frequently. I think every single action sequence in the film is slowed down. Not all people like slow motion, though. The soundtrack is very unusual, but it really makes the airplane sequence (near the end) memorable. The sequence pretty clearly shows that the director comes from music videos. The bulk of the soundtrack consists of electronic music, which also works well.

Oh, one other thing: Sean Astin's character has a pretty long semi-monologue near the beginning where he tries to hit on a clerk at a bank. I don't know what it's doing in the film but it doesn't work, and it's needlessly long. I fast-forwarded a lot of it.