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Reviews
Encanto (2021)
Honest thoughts
The beautiful visuals, animation and presentation fully deserve a 10 but if you factor in the story and pacing then it's really around 7. Encanto starts off well enough with brisk pacing and despite its large cast of characters, Disney does a good job of introducing the likeable protagonist Mirabel and her family through songs and humor.
The movie can be boiled down to this - The children of a Colombian mother and all her blood descendants are given unique super powers by a magical candle but seemingly the protagonist was never given hers and she's sad about it. This little mystery as to why is a good hook to keep you watching to the end.
But not even half way in, issues in the movie's pacing begins when Mirabel goes looking for answers to a terrible vision she sees of the family house crumbling. At this point, the direction of the movie becomes disjointed and it lead to inconsistency in the pacing. It was like the writers came up with a beginning and an ending but didn't really know what to do with the middle.
The ending is wonderful when you realize what Mirabel's true power is, even though it's pretty cliche and most of you will see it coming a mile away. It will still make people tear up.
So there is a lot of good to say about the movie...it's beautiful to look at, it's filled with whimsical jokes, the animals are cute and it's filled with a good cast of characters. Would recommend to others. If I can give this movie a score with decimals it would be more like 7.8 but I can't round up and give it an 8. The movie has a weak middle and a middling climax, and together this makes up a big part of the movie.
Shin Evangelion Gekijôban (2021)
The best out of the Evangelion Rebuild movies
First off, to the people new to Evangelion: you really should watch the previous three rebuild movies before this one to get a better grasp of what's happening. If you have patience, it's well worth watching the original episodic series and the original Evangelion movie from 1997 to get the best grasp possible, this take 2-3 days if you binge watch.
Truth be told, I didn't have high hopes after the last movie (3.0).
I thought the unexpected story from 3.0 had written itself into a corner, that there was no redeeming the Rebuild series as there were too many questions left unanswered that can't be explained with one final movie, but the story from 3.0+1.01 did as well as you can possibly hope for it to do--It tied up some loose ends, explained things that made sense of the last movie and added to the Evangelion lore in a meaningful way.
There are fighting scenes but as usual for the Evangalion franchise, some of the best scenes are the interactions between the characters Shinji, Rei, Asuka and the people around them. The most interesting of these is near the end of the movie when Shinji confronts his intimidating father who has been a mystery for so long. We learn he's not too different from his son, he just has a different way of coping.
Many themes about humanity are explored such as maturity, loneliness, compassion and the importance of responsibility and these themes are told in such a way that it didn't feel like it was hammering away at you to make the point like you're an idiot but it wasn't very obtuse either that no one gets it.
This movie easily contain some of the best drawn animations in current anime history, it's filled with fluid animation from unique angles, which helps with some of the fanservice (and there's heaps of it in this movie) Combined with the top notch shot composition, the movie is beautiful to watch. You can see the money being spent on screen.
It's not perfect. The first 15 minutes seemed like a drag even though it was an action sequence, the CGI can be quite jarring in contrast to the hand drawn stuff and certain parts of the story is not easy to follow (this is why i recommend you watch everything else first) but the movie is so great as a whole that it still gets a 9 from me. Evangelion has already cemented itself as one of the most esteemed anime of all time and the last movie elevates its status to something higher.
Green Room (2015)
Severely Overrated
The Green Room is not a horror movie. It's more of a drama thriller with blood and flashes of gore. I was told this movie was going to be intense but I never really felt it because the pacing was as slow as a M. Night Shyamalan movie and there is no build-up of suspense for each death as they all happen very quickly (and they happen in bunches) so you never have the time to process them. One thing that did not escape my attention was the lack of background music which would have help create suspense and a better sense of dread. While some of the characters do critical thinking in the movie, often times I'm puzzled by their decisions as well, like at the very end when the remaining survivors were traveling with a hostage who they then let go so he can look for cops--the same hostage who was before helping his fellow bad guys clean up and cover their tracks.
I don't know how this movie received such high scores on Rotten Tomatoes. I'm an Asian American and I'm the biggest advocate against racism so it was neat seeing skinheads get the tables turned on them but that is not enough to make a good movie.