MovieWarfare

  The Boy and the Heron is wonderful! The animation is gorgeous and visually stunning! The colours are vibrant and the movement is energetic! Every scene feels like a painting. Hayao also returns to the magical and fantastical, which is awesome. The design of the supernatural creatures and the world itself is mesmerizing. It even has some dark visuals and themes which was icing on the cake. It does have some problems. It does take a while for it to start exploring the more whimsical, supernatural stuff. The world-building itself is a little convoluted and can be very confusing on first watch. The ending is also very sudden. He doesn’t let the movie slowly flow into the ending or let the audience breathe. It just ends with minimal fanfare. Nevertheless, it is great to see another beautiful 2D hand-drawn Ghibli movie. If this is his last one, then it was a great way to end his career.

  Thanksgiving has all the things you expect from a slasher film but it does it extremely well. Giving many suspicious characters to make it fun to guess who the murderer is. Over-the-top and gory kills that are entertaining to watch yet disgusting enough to make you look away. Many suspenseful and tense scenes to keep you on the edge of your seat. There is also a very crazy yet fun opening sequence that is one hell of a way to start the movie. It’s not perfect though. The characters are all very bland and not remotely likeable, making it hard to care for any of them to survive. This includes the main character herself who just isn’t that interesting. The 3rd act goes on for a bit too long and gets a bit silly too. Still, this is a great modern slasher film and I see potential in this being a new Scream-type franchise.

  The action is fine but it is nothing special. It has the same type of action we have seen from a lot of post-John Wick movies, but not as good as John Wick itself. It lacks the charm that we would normally see from John Woo movies. Where are the doves and cool slow-mo? After the action-packed opening scene, it then takes 50 minutes for the action to start occurring again. The set-up is too long! It just keeps hammering the motive of our character over our heads repeatedly. I give it praise for trying something new with the no-dialogue gimmick. However, it just isn’t done properly and actually comes at the detriment of the movie. Characters will just stare at each other and not say anything, leading to some really weird, awkward scenes. I wanted Hard Boiled but got Boring Night instead.

  Godzilla Minus One is a standalone Godzilla movie from Japan. It brings the franchise back to its roots where Godzilla is a monstrous force of nature, an allegory of war. While I do love the Western Monsterverse franchise, it is mostly for seeing Godzilla or Kong fight another giant monster. The writing and characters have never been a highlight in that universe. Does Godzilla Minus One deliver more than the Monsterverse? Firstly, Godzilla’s design is spectacularly frightening, his roar is menacing and his heat rays are some of the best and most impactful blasts I’ve seen from Godzilla. Every Godzilla action set piece is terrifying and tense. I love how these sequences are filmed from a human perspective, so we get to truly see the scale and how dangerous Godzilla is. The music score by Naoki Sato is phenomenal! His subtle orchestral score compliments the scene and illustrates the pain and struggles that Japanese people in WW2 went through. He then uses a strong pow...

  The first season of Loki was one of my most enjoyable Disney+ MCU shows. With Marvel releasing a lot of mediocrity and garbage lately, my hope was that season 2 did not end up falling into that category. Does season 2 live up to the first or is this another bummer from the MCU? Let’s get the obvious out of the way, Tom Hiddleston is still amazing. He continues to deliver a phenomenal performance as the titular character. In this season, we get to see Loki at what feels like his most vulnerable ever and Tom illustrates that well. Owen Wilson returns as Mobius and while he is still the funny one of the Loki and Mobius duo, he gets some great serious moments. There is a moment where Mobius is being questioned by another character and Owen does a great performance through body alone. Jonathan Majors also returns but this time as a Kang Variant called Victor Timely. I like how he made this character feel completely different from He Who Remains. In terms of newcomers: Ke...

  This is a typical boy meets girl story with a supernatural twist of a tunnel that can grant your wish but every 3 seconds in the tunnel equates to 2 hours outside. Just from this premise alone, you can guess exactly what is going to happen. The plot is incredibly predictable with tons of cliche tropes. However, what it lacks in plot, it makes up for it in everything else. The art style and characters are visually appealing. The interactions between our main leads are enjoyable to watch. The animation is gorgeous. The soundtrack is terrific. The theme and message are incredibly heartfelt. The ending does raise a lot of questions but the overall experience was enjoyable. It is not going to be for everyone but for anyone craving more of that sweet anime romance, this is a good one to watch.