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Reviews
Audacity (2015)
Awful, heavy-handed film designed to gratify the ideological vanity of fundamentalists
Before Ray Comfort tweeted his fundamentalist base to flood this IMDb page with positive reviews, "Audacity" was getting consistent 1-star ratings.
As someone without an agenda, I'm going to have to double down on the 1-star rating. The writing and plot is god-awful, with an obnoxiously shrill ideological ax being ground all throughout. The film is cluttered with self-righteous preaching, and the characters are one-dimensional caricatures designed to reinforce one chauvinistic idea: Christian are good, and gays go to hell. Nuance does not exist in Mr. Comfort's black-and-white world. Christians will always be good and noble by virtue of their faith alone; and gays will only ever exist as Angry Gay Caricatures awaiting salvation from their Christian benefactors, without any deeper character traits beyond their Anger and their Gayness.
To add insult to this injuriously terrible film, Ray Comfort couldn't help but use it as a vehicle to gratify his own ego: a large chunk of Audacity's run-time consists of poorly-edited street footage of Comfort "witnessing" to hapless passers-by - which the main character cites as Christian wisdom to show the Angry Gay Caricatures the error of their ways.
There is no doubt that Audacity was made for the ideological gratification of a very specific, fundamentalist base - a base that will sing its praises regardless of actual cinematic merit. But for those who are not already part of that chest-thumping choir, this film will fill you with equal parts sickness and sadness, before being forgotten as insignificant tripe after a good night's sleep.
Hellsing Ultimate (2006)
All style, no substance
Let me begin with this: Hellsing is cool. It is stylish. Its breakneck action sequences and over-the-top gore is violence aestheticized, and one can't help but be in awe of the animated eye-candy and the twisted, brutal stylishness of its character designs.
So in the style department, Hellsing comes out unmatched.
That being said, however, Hellsing isn't much else. Once you get past the cool-factor (which begins to wear thin a few episodes in), you'll find that there's not much depth to the series. The plot, like the rest of the anime, is stylishly conceived, yet badly paced, constantly being advanced by tedious, spoken exposition. Plot points and villains often appear at will, with no buildup or suspense, or any subtlety in how they are presented. Characters are one-dimensional caricatures built solely around their cool-factor, and might as well be scarecrows decked out in flashy costumes and acrobatic combat tricks. And character development? Please. You'd see more development after staring at a rock for an hour.
To top it off, the voice-actors in the English dub sound like a group of high-school drama students practicing their foreign accents, making it impossible to take the already campy dialogue seriously. The writers pad the series with long-winded, cringe-worthy monologues and the most pointless pretense at being literary - even fans of the action will be forced to skip through certain parts of the show, simply for its pointless, endless, and tedious writing.
In all, Hellsing is a beautifully stylish but ultimately hollow romp through the twisted world of Alucard & co. Opinions on this adaptation will naturally be divided along two audiences: those who watch an anime for its art, style and visceral beauty; and those who watch it for its story, content, and strong, believable characters.
For me, as a firm believer that both these things are necessary to make a cohesive piece of cinema, Hellsing is at best a half-finished work of art – at worst, a string of flimsy excuses tied together to show off several (admittedly breathtaking) scenes of sexy, aestheticized violence.