Review Mix: Sucker Punch, Let The Bullets Fly, Space Battleship Yamato

Sucker Punch
Score: 5,5/10

Zack Snyder is a filmmaker who never goes low-priced when it comes to the visualization of a film. I’ll even come clean to giving him a pass on story because he gets premium marks for a great looking work, but there aren’t adequate bonus points in the universe to excuse all of the malfunctions, of which there are scores of, in this particular picture. The film indeed doesn’t start off badly. It shows the main character, Babydoll, driven from her home to a house for the insane in a brilliantly revealed title on the rain-splashed window of the 1960s car that’s transporting her to her new nightmare. Later, as its 109 minutes tick away, the film plunging us into Babydoll’s imagination as it echoes the idea popularized by “Inception” that dreams exist within dreams, showcases with Snyder’s evident love of digitally enhanced, over-the-top ultra-violence in super slo-mo style. Yes, there’s arresting imagination and visuals sprinkled throughout this one, like a video game within a video game, but unlike “Inception” that clearly seem like the influence, “Sucker” never employed the guiding intelligence behind the stunning style of that far superior movie. The story was the weakest part of things, it really doesn’t care at making you care about the characters or get involved with the emotional aspect of their journey. Snyder placed too much weight on the action aspects and not enough on making us concern about the persons who involved in it. There isn’t a performance that worth mentioning either. It’s as if the cast members were merely employed as props. The actresses are all flat and they just go around blowing stuffs while the costume departments stuffing them into set of clothes that make them look like either innocent little girls or hookers. By now, Snyder has given away that he is a specialist when it comes to illustrating flashy visuals, but it'll only be when he hitches those to a likewise beguiling plot that he'll actually turn into a visionary filmmaker.

Let The Bullets Fly
Score: 7.5/10A new film and latest box office hit from one of the bad boys of Chinese cinema, Jiang Wen, follows the carnage surrounding a bloody battle of wits between a bandit and a gangster in a remote town set in 1920s China. The fast-paced movie, which also stars Hong Kong star Chow Yun-Fat and local favorite Ge You, has won acclaim from critics for its satirical treatment of the corruption and graft plaguing contemporary China.
At its most essential, the narrative is a Chinese version of the evergreen Robin Hood legend, but this entertaining Oriental Western is crafted out of the ordinary by the admirable little elements – smart script balanced with striking photography, architecture, interior décor and 1920s fashion. The writing, in particular, is pleasurable, it has intelligent and manages to throw in a lot of humor. The brilliantly scripted combat tactics and humorous chat among the loquacious characters is an enchantment to the ears that resembles freestyle rap encounters. Alas, the intricacy of the banter will be mostly lost in translation to viewers reliant on subtitles. The three leading men are all at the top of their game as they shares acting masterclass and magnificent onscreen chemistry. One of the best scenes in the movie is absolutely the negotiation that ensues between these three, Chow as the rogue warlord of Goose Town, Huang; Ge as the weasel of a swindler/advisor, Tang and Jiang as the Robin Hood-like bandit, Pockmarked Zhang. Anyway, the filmmaker should improvise on the special effect cause obviously it was the weakness point in this movie.

Space Battleship Yamato
Score: 6/10The "Space Battleship Yamato" franchise, known abroad under such titles as "Star Blazers" and "Space Cruiser Yamato," embarked on its journey in 1974 as a TV cartoon space opera, then spawned a hit animated film in 1977. Two more TV series and four more films followed, concluding the saga with the 1983 feature "Final Yamato." Hype over Takashi Yamazaki's modern live-action film "Space Battleship Yamato" has been building in Japan and abroad since it was announced in the summer of 2009. Reasons were the ¥2 billion budget, a huge amount for a Japanese film that has been lavished on effects, and a mega-star at its helm.
As one nostalgic guilty pleasure, space-warping from anime to live action “Yamato” certainly has engaging action with plenty of gadgets, rockets, and spacecraft dogfights to please most sci-fi fans out there. With an excuse for some dodgy CG particularly in third-act, the special effects are all meticulously and intricately crafted. Though, the battle scenes show some exclusive feels, but it told with the common visual language of Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters; dogfighting spaceships zooming around the flaming carcasses of huge interstellar warships, lens flares and fancy explosions in abundance. Some of the film’s shortcomings range from cheesy overwrought storytelling, the lack of a proper introduction on characters and their development to hazy direction and some superficial acting. “Yamato” is also plotted like its Hollywood buddies, as big action scenes cut short the dramatics with conventional regularity. The culmination, on the other hand, is rather Japanese in sentiment, if Hollywood in degree.