KaJin

After we decided to rent a horror movie and my buddy actually said he had heard of the movie quoting some IMDb hype we sat down, hopefully to enjoin a different experience (I hated "Saw" and anything alike). Well. The start at the road was so obvious that when the supposed shock should have come everyone, even the most frightened of us just burst out laughing, as was the case in the dream. Some of us even started joking, 'hopefully there aren't gollums or something underground' when they entered the caves, so there wasn't any fear left, we just kept blaming my buddy for disgracing our night. After I searched for something giving the movie substance or content (I had the time, there was nothing tense waiting for me), I just stumbled upon the extreme lack of ambitious screenwriters in the horror-genre. The story is every bit as constructed as the others flying around, with an unbelievable start-tragedy followed by a forced environment where there most likely everyone will fight for their lives with some bad guys entering the screen real scary. That's it. Just who - please!- will end this horror-disgrace with a satisfying movie?

After the intro with Amano and Yukari on Earth, with Van's arrival the series seems definitely kind of suspicious, and even after the first four episodes you don't get everything because all is mixed up with almost ordinary but still weird love-confusion of Hitomi. But the series has got 26 episodes. After the short uncommon introduction you can't get your eyes off it because the whole idea slowly becomes clear with the characters evolving and telling their tale. Every character, at first presented powerful and heroic, surprises with emotional weaknesses almost too well known, with their biographies told a bit further in every single episode. Therefore even the 'bad guys' soon turn out to be not just objects to fight against, but complex characters not just to be hated. Additionally, the soundtrack is just awesome, thanks to Yoko Kanno.

Gaia is more than just a fictional world just to show some Guymelefs, it binds dreams and tragic with the sense of destiny and how to change (or not?) the fates of destined friendships. Those of you who've watched Neon Genesis Evangelion while still having a romantic understanding of certain things may experience an even more inspiring anime.

Regarding the fact that most people don't know that much about the massacres in Rwanda, this movie was necessary to show the shocking things that happened and the rejection of help by the western countries. However, I don't think people bring the critical acclaim the motion picture - not the documentary - needs: Many actors and actresses did a rather poor job, especially Nick Nolte was really disappointing in my opinion. I appreciate the directors job for delivering a movie with tension and the information every viewer needed, but after the parts couldn't make me believe they really happened because of the in some scenes crappy performances by the UN-Guy and Paul's wife which just let me realize that even if these things happened, they don't seem as real as they could if the actors would do a better job. That sucked the special quality out of a masterpiece: Great shocking film with information everybody needs to get, some errors in the performance that this story does not deserve.