Innocence (2004)

"The less one forgets, the less one can remember."

Innocence (イノセンス) (2004) which is called Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence in America, is a follow up (or maybe companion?) to Ghost in the Shell (1998). It's also loosely based on the chapter Robot Rondo in the manga Mobile Armored Riot Police (called Ghost in the Shell in America) written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow.

Like Ghost in the Shell, this film also focuses on Section 9's investigation of a case, however this film follows Batou, Major Motoko Kusanagi's partner from the former film. This film takes place a couple years after the events of the first one. No one knows Motoko's whereabouts but she is constantly on the mind of Batou. Section 9 is investigating a cyborg-producing company named LOCUS SOLUS that produces "gynoids," androids that look like young girls that are built for sex. Recently there has been a string of these gynoids going berserk and killing humans, Section 9 is investigating to see of someone has tampered with their programming.

The animation in this film is really nice. It's a lot higher quality than most Japanese anime films. The film is a CG/traditional animation hybrid where most all the backgrounds are computer animated and almost all the characters are traditionally drawn, this works for the most part and it's definitely better than most films that try this. More often than not the texture on the CG scenes is what sticks out to me as not fitting the rest of it. Where I think the traditional animation really shines is there's times where the computer generated camera is doing a slight move or change of angle and the traditionally drawn characters change with the camera in perfect perspective. This is no easy feat at all and it's really done well in this film. The film also takes advantage of this hybrid animation (rather than being held back by it) by doing lots of interesting angles you wouldn't expect in either a CG animated film or a traditionally animated one and even some strange fish-eye shots that I enjoyed.

While the art direction is quite a bit different than the previous film making the characters and world seem pretty different, I think the technology in this film is very fairly evolved and seems like it all logically belongs in the same world based on what we saw in the previous film.

Unfortunately I really don't think this film holds up on it's own. You're really not going to understand the climax or why everyone keeps constantly talking about "the Major" if you've never seen Ghost in the Shell. I think that Mamoru Oshii could have made a film in this world that wasn't a sequel, but this isn't it. This film almost is, it follows different characters and a unique plot but they ruin that by constantly referencing the previous film and even bringing in Motoko at one point to help the plot/characters.

This film is actually structured very similar to Ghost in the Shell. However while I really enjoy the mystery of The Puppet Master and the intrigue of the main character Major Motoko in that film, Innocence's plot is a whole lot less interesting to me and while the second half does get more interesting and the end does pay off quite well, I think this film takes a lot more time to get the viewer interested and invested in the story.

I think my favorite part of Innocence (and every other Oshii film I've seen) is the deep psychological questions it asks. I realize this is an trademark you can expect walking into a Mamoru Oshii film, but I think Innocence is the king of this. Also Innocence contains a LOT of references to other literary works also, from Asimov to The Bible to Richard Dawkins to Plato, Confucius and the Brothers Grimm. So much so that you can tell Mamoru Oshii put a lot of his own thoughts and meditations into this film, a lot of this though it works for the film, is not necessary to the film which in turn, makes it a very personal journey. This film really reminds me of The Red Spectacles (1987) because I felt that film was very similar in it's contemplations (and this film even has the cracked-out dream sequences that that film had too!), though I would say this film hands down, is a lot more successful due to years of more experience (and no weird tonal shifts!)

Though Innocence (2004) wont really work on it's own as well as it was inteded, it's still a masterful example of great animation and filmmaking and a very personal film for Mamoru Oshii. 4/5 Stars.

Happy watching!





Well that concludes my week reviewing the films of acclaimed Japanese director Mamoru Oshii. If you missed it be sure to go back and check out my review of The Red Spectacles (1987) and my review of it's sequel StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops (1991) and the amazing meta-film Talking Head (1992) and this film's predecessor Ghost in the Shell (1995). And check back this weekend as I've got one more related film (though not directed by Mamoru Oshii) for you as a special bonus.

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An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

DAY 13

"The injury on your leg, it was not from a dog. It was... from a werewolf."

I thought I'd continue my werewolf streak with one of the many less than good werewolf movies, but tried to keep it connected with a very less than fantastic sequel. An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) is a spiritual sequel to the classic, An American Werewolf in London (1981). Course it's about as loosely connected as a movie can be. An American Werewolf in Paris is about an American named Andy and his two friends, all daredevils and skirt chasers who are having the time of their lives traveling Europe together. All goes well until they get entangled with a pretty girl with a lot of problems.

Ummm... well it actually didn't have any giant gaping holes and followed through on everything it set up, which based on some movies I've seen that is something. I also applaud this film for not just being a rehash or exact copy of the original. It actually tries to improve on the original, even if it doesn't and the additions are kind of dumb (more on that bellow.)

And not that it hasn't been done before, but I liked the coven of werewolves' plan to lure American tourists into a free party then eat them.

The biggest flaw of this movie is how horribly written it is. It really seems like things are just thrown in, and barely anything in this movie connects to anything else. The dialogue is really bad, and all the characters are very one dimensional. Almost every scene in this film is so uninteresting! And the worst part? The film ditches the previous' beautiful blend of horror and comedy in favor of some of the worst comedy you've ever heard. They even slip in some slapstick for no apparent reason!

Pretty much everything about the werewolves in this movie is bad. Unlike the original they opted to switch to full CG for the wolves, which really doesn't hold up at all. I really didn't like the werewolf designs at all. First of all it's obvious they only had one model so all werewolves look exactly the same (confusing). Up close the wolves look like some kind of a strange hairy gargoyle, and from a distance they really look like gorillas. As I said before they tried to advance the wolves from the original, but unfortunately the changes are almost all bad. They make the wolves NEED to eat human hearts for some reason? They continued the illusions of the inflicted from the original but very poorly: they had one ultra-realistic nightmare that's really ineffective and for some reason the inflicted don't just see the people they killed they can see anyone who has been killed by a werewolf... which kinda misses the point. This was a lazy convenience for the script that doesn't help the mythology at all, it takes all the interesting parts of the inflicted seeing the dead and throws them out the window. One of the later plot points is a serum that can instantly transform an inflicted person into a werewolf. What is in it? Moon juice? Yay science!

And the worst addition of all, is they make the werewolf infliction reversible. This takes out all the suffering and pain and horrible parts of being a werewolf out and in the end what does it add? A happy ending? Really, really, really lame.

There's next to nothing magnificent about this film, but I thought the camerawork and cinematography was pretty good (for the most part).

An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) is about as good as a direct to video film. It really feels like they had a mediocre script about fighting werewolves (something somebody thought we needed more of) and then tried to link it to the most popular werewolf movie in recent history. So if you like bad CG werewolves battling, and not much else... this is your movie! 2/5 stars.

Happy watching!







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The Wolfman (2010)

DAY 12

"The past is a wilderness of horrors..."

The Wolfman (2010) is a remake of the original Wolf Man (1941). Changing the (then) contemporary setting to the Victorian era, Larry becomes Laurence and for every great change and good choice, there's something odd or poorly handled.
[This review will be primarily about the Director's Cut as I believe this to be the intended version, and having seen both multiple times I think this version is superior.]

The first half of The Wolfman follows the story of the original and completely enhances the original material. The setting (mentioned below) is very fitting, the entire set up is a lot better building the fact that Laurence left his home at a young age and the senior Talbot has a difficult personality, incorporating Laurence's brother's death into the plot works so well that it's surprising they didn't think of that with the original!

I liked how the characters have been changed. Gwen has also been incorporated closer to the plot. Gwen being Laurence's brother's former fiance adds a level of taboo to their relationship but also adds this interesting thing where because she asked Laurence to come home, she feels obligated to stay longer when Laurence is attacked. Also changing her to a Londoner is smart because it puts her on the side of the Talbots rather than the crazy ignorant villagers. Senior Talbot is interesting too, I really enjoy how they changed his character they added this whole back story of him being a world traveler previously (incorporating an origin to the werewolf infliction) and being really religious offers some interesting additions and parallels with the parable of the prodigal son and I especially liked the allusion to the story of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel. Lastly I really enjoyed how they made Laurence a Shakespearean actor, this offered some amazing parallels to Hamlet and other works by The Bard.

I also found it interesting that this film makes a lot of references to and is highly inspired by An American Werewolf in London (1981). They add in the theory from that film that a werewolf needs to be killed by one who loves him, there's a scene with the werewolf creating chaos on the streets of London complete with crashing cars and people being hit or run over just like the climax of that film, they played with the madness of the inflicted seeing terrifying illusions/dreams, they brought in Rick Baker the award winning makeup artist from that film and even the transformation sequence (though this time in CG... see below) are an obvious nod to Baker's work and that film. I don't have a problem with this, as that film was obviously inspired by the original, but An American Werewolf in London ADDS to the original instead of just doing references and homages, this film more often than not just references with very little added.

For all the good that's in this film, I found a whole lot of bad too. Some of the Dialogue is just plain poorly written. You have great actors and they scenes just flop because they're stuck to this ridged, poorly written dialogue. Some of the things are over done. You really don't need as many scenes as they showed of Laurence and Gwen to understand that they love each other. And one of their major bonding moments is over Laurence showing Gwen how to skip stones? This is like, "I don't know what people did before television and movies... let's just throw anything in there!" Also another OVER hinted thing that (I think it works better in the theatrical version but) they OVER hint that there's something up with the Senior Talbot in the director's cut version. You really just need one scene of him acting strange to make audiences go: "OOOOOOOHH that's why...!" later when you reveal it.

This movie's director apparently didn't learn anything from the movie's two previous inspirations though because he showed too much! This is what The Wolf Man does poorly and An American Werewolf In London does really well! Once again the temptation of CG has led another film astray. You hired a magnificent monster maker like Rick Baker who is old school and does everything with makeup and materials and then you shit all over him by doing the transformation scene (the thing that put him on the map) in CG! The CG effects and the makeup both work on their own but when you transition between them in the same scene it looks horrible! Showing a CG full-on Sir Anthony Hopkins' face while he gets all hairy may be tempting with your new technology but it looks really horrible!

Everything that's great about the first half of the movie is nearly non-existent in the second half. The movie literally degrades into an action movie with "crazy" werewolf fights, A werewolf loose in London who does next to nothing except run away and characters rushing back between London and Black Moor in the most poorly written way possible.

Oh I'm not done yet! I really hated the way Hugo Weaving's character Inspector Aberline was handled. I get it he's supposed to be the "big city cop," former Scotland yard who uses logic to solve his cases but it comes off so cliche and poorly done that I just rolled my eyes about every scene he's in. Hugo Weaving tries to do as much as he can with the character, and I actually don't mind his performance but he's just poorly written.

I applaud the attempt Universal made to try and bring back the flood of monster movies. They keep trying every few years and history has shown us that they'll get it right and it will come again someday, but The Wolfman is not the one that will do it. They do a smart thing where they hired a lot of great big actors for this movie. My personal theory about the classic universal movies was that they were spurred on by the great actors like Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff. So having a cast with Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, and Hugo Weaving was a really smart move. I appreciate the attempt to be truthful to the original for the most part: following the original story (sometimes), using a makeup monster (sometimes), keeping him as a literal "Wolf-man" on two legs (sometimes), and using very few jump scares and gore(sometimes). Maybe with better writing this movie wouldn't have flopped as badly (or if I didn't have to add a sometimes to all of those...)

I think one of the smartest things this film did was throw the time of the setting back to a Victorian one. This not only offers beautiful sets and costumes but more importantly (story-wise) puts the story in a place where science and technology is finally blooming but still a lot of the masses and people are superstitious and not willing to forget the stories of old.

The Wolfman (2010) is a decent remake that's actually more enjoyable if you've seen the original recently. But it works on its own and has some good things going on, it just wasn't enough to jump start another set of monster movies as Universal had hoped. 3.5/5 stars.

Happy watching!







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Hotel Transylvania (2012)

DAY 4

It's not going to be often that I can kill two birds with one stone and talk about a recent release AND count it under the 31 Days of Macabre Movies, but Hotel Transylvania is one such lucky case! Hotel Transylvania is a new computer animated children's film from Sony Pictures Animation, the same people who brought you Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and it's directed by Genndy Tartakovsky creator of Dexter's Lab and Samurai Jack two amazing cartoon series from the Cartoon Network. Hotel Transylvania tells the story of what happened to all the movie monster's in recent history: Dracula has built a hotel to keep his daughter and all the monsters of the world safe and give them a paradise to relax with out having to worry about those evil humans. Everything is going fine until one day a young hippie, world-traveling human finds his way to the doorstep of the hotel.

First thing I'm happy to report is the voices aren't horrible or too distracting. This was actually my first concern about this film when I found out who was voicing the leads. Adam Sandler as Dracula is definitely not as bad as you would imagine, in fact for a majority of the movie I actually couldn't tell, there's little moments or things he'll say that will remind you it's him but it's not horrible. I completely forgot it was Andy Samberg voicing Jonathan the human, well that is until he starts singing. And there's also lots of really interesting voice choices sprinkled throughout the secondary cast including Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, Molly Shannon, and CeeLo Green, which all add something cool and interesting to the roles. My only real problem with the voice cast was Disney television star Selina Gomez voices Dracula's daughter Mavis and it's very evident from the beginning even with just her voice that this girl can not act. And it's unfortunate because I liked the character but having her as the voice was definitely a distracting element. (I guess I should have put her voice specifically under 'The Bad.')

I'm also happy to report that the film is really quite funny! Hotel Transylvania benefits from having Genndy Tartakovsky at the helm with all of his television animation experience because this film has a lot of really quick humor. Jokes fly by very quickly and there's enough of them that even though they may not all make you laugh there's enough that hit the mark, and when they do you'll be busting up, (even though if you’ve watched a television at all in the last month or so you may have already had some good jokes spoiled already for you.) Also as an added bonus if you're a fan of monster movies or horror films there's a bunch of jokes that I felt like I was the only one laughing in the theater at, so this movie takes care of you! And even though there’s a lot of humor, the film doesn’t dwell on just that the entire time. This film knows when to stop and have a serious moment in the story, which I appreciated.

There’s some things that seemed a bit forced in this movie, but the one negative thing that stands out to me is the amount of “bodily” humor in this film. I get it, it’s for an audience much younger than I am. But there’s a very substantial amount of the jokes in this film dedicated to farts, pee and butts. Enough so that you would think this was an early Dreamworks animated film, like Shrek.

This film has all the really great “quick” style of animation that you may remember From Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and I was surprised that they didn’t try to go for a much closer visual style to Genndy Tartakovsky’s own style, but I can imagine that could be pretty hard to translate to a CG model. Regardless Tartakovsky’s style does still shine through in his great shape choices and even on certain expressions you’ll see from time to time. I found myself going, “hey that was a Dexter face she just made!”

And the thing I was most impressed with in Hotel Transylvania was the story! Boil it down and this film is about an overprotective father who is just trying to look after his daughter but is very stuck in his ways. He doesn’t realize the world has changed. I was amazed that they found such a relatable story to hang all these fantasy monsters and old movie references on. And even though this may be a pretty simple or unoriginal thing the movie constantly put its characters in situations you’ve never seen before (racing tables and monster conventions,) this is where a lot of the originality of this film comes through.

Hotel Transylvania is a film I wish existed when I was a kid. I guess I should just enjoy the fact that so many animated horror films for kids are coming out these days, at least my kids will have plenty to watch! I think there’s enough here for anyone to enjoy though, even if you weren’t a monster kid growing up. 4/5 stars.

Happy watching!







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