donaldrussell-48193

I could go into detail about how great this show is, but it would not do justice to it. This show is an experience. The performances are uniformly stellar. Anna Sawai, Cosmo Jarvis, and Hiroyuki Sanada deserve all the praise they have received. Tadanobu Asano is phenomenal as Kashigi Yabushige. One of my all-time favorite television characters and performances. Also, Yuka Kouri as Kiku stole every scene she was in. I wish I could name all the actors and speak of their brilliance. The entire cast deserves Emmy awards. Hats off to Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks for bringing this story to life in the way that they did. Everyone who worked on this show created their own masterpiece within a masterpiece. Having not read the book, nothing went where I expected it to. By the end of the series, I felt changed as a person. I felt grateful to be alive in this time--when this show premiered. Give this show a watch. Great art makes you feel like you are part of something great, which this show certainly did for me.

I have seen better, but I have also seen worse. If you are looking for an entertaining couple of hours, this does the job. Personally, I found it refreshing to watch an action/adventure movie that didn't involve a superhero. Ruben Fleischer doesn't make movies for critics, but he gives audiences a fun time at the theater. The actors did a solid job. Condensing what a video game can give you in ten hours into just under two hours is not easy and I think everyone made the most of it. If this gets a sequel or sequels I can see them expanding on this one and going bigger. Sure, the movie is a little bland, but if it's on television or you're looking for an upbeat action/adventure flick you haven't seen, you won't regret putting it on.

Real stunts, real sets, real locations, characters you care about and characters you want to see defeated, and action involving people grounded in the real world. Sure, the dialogue wasn't the greatest ever written and John Lithgow's British accent was hokey and unconvincing (Although, his voice makes the film even more fun to watch and his performance is still epic despite it). There's no CGI to be found in this film, which makes the stakes feel all the more real and heightened. I wish they made more action movies like this these days, when mass produced comic book movies are churned out like cheap trinkets (despite their ridiculous production budgets). It's pure entertainment. I watch it every year around November (a personal tradition) and it never gets old. The opening scene of the movie is one of the greatest opening sequences in action cinema history, and I'd argue that the ending sequence is equally as great. If you haven't seen it, give this 1993 classic a watch.