Musicianmagic

You need not have watched the first.

Zebraman is back (in the film) 15 years later. Unfortunately, they spent much of the first half explaining how this came to be, introducing the new characters and a little of the first film. There's a few good laughs near the very beginning but otherwise often it is slow moving trying to explain everything until the second half. The second half was exciting, good action & story.

I absolutely loved the first Zebraman. The main character as both Zebraman & as a teacher had a lot more dimension. That movie also moved well throughout except the short time they introduced the characters. The interesting teacher & loser husband/father side was basically gone here.

Not among director Takashi Miike's best films but still enjoyable after getting thru the slow parts.

This is just about some photo shoots done in Amsterdam by photographer Andres Serrano famous for his controversial Piss Christ photo of a christ figurine in a tank of urine. The photos he shoots in this documentary are far less "creative" and less interesting than the piss Christ one.

Mostly we overhear pieces of discussions about setting up or on their way to shoots in Amsterdam. Only pieces. We never really get much context about what is being said. We get to see a few photo shoots but again only pieces & never see from the photographer's viewpoint. We don't see the most extreme photo shoots at all. There are several explicit scenes totally unrelated to the documentary taken inside a sex & fetish club although they are almost too dark to recognize anything. Some images & video shown are hardcore sex, fetish or morbid/death.

Whatever video camera they used has too small a sensor as there's almost never enough light for a good image so there's a lot of dark and/or snowy scenes. Very amateurish.

Occasionally are people talking about his past photos or looking at a book of his pictures. I guess he hadn't done anything of value in 15 years, 1987. At least one person looking at his past photos says they're not impressed. I wasn't impressed either.

One interview with a man but because of poor audio quality, his accent & poor English I couldn't understand half of what he said. There are other scenes where even when Serrano or others are speaking to the camera the audio quality is so poor (plus music almost as loud as him) I can't understand them. Again, very amateurish. Most of what is said in this documentary isn't worth listening to anyway.

Neither the photographer or this documentary impressed me at all. A lot of his photos are no different than fetish or porn photos that have been done by others for decades. Nothing new. I recommend skipping this pathetic documentary.

First half is interesting, a couple of (only 2) laughs & some decent drama. Plus a few erotic softcore sex scenes.

Second half the story gets more dramatic which is okay but no laughs & the sex scenes are not very erotic but quite the opposite. Plus three occasions a scene will jump forward without letting us see how it went from what was previously on screen to the current thing.

The biggest problem is during the latter part of this movie the characters don't act like a real-world person would. I find that very annoying. The story completely stops making sense.

I should also point out the most erotic sex scene cuts short abruptly. In fact a few of the sex scenes just stop abruptly.

The first half was a solid 7 out of 10 rating. The second half was a 0/10. My 4/10 for the entire movie is probably too generous. I would not recommend this movie at all.