Sprig-Can!

I remember the Spriggan movie. I liked it, really good. This was way back in the day when you actually had a good chance of keeping on top of Americanised Japanese Anime Movies. There weren't many, so it was good.

I picked up the Spriggan manga, because I wanted to enjoy more. There were 6 stories in 3 volumes, with lots of different stories, but all about Spriggan trying to do something good while beating up back guys (at least, presented as bad guys). Decent manga.

And so when I heard that Spriggan was on Netflix... I just figured it was the movie finally come to Netflix. Yeah, I might get around to watching that. And then I pressed Go...

And it's the full season of anime of all the stories of Spriggan! As far as I can tell/faintly remember, this is all the six stories as what was in the manga, in 45 minute chunks (so the 90 minute movie is compressed into half the time, no bad thing really).

Go, enjoy... and let's see if they can squeeze out another season and I can return to this world again.

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Dam Dog

Hey, want a surreal movie around 30 years in the making?

We open with an excerpt from Leviticus, about god making a city a ruin... is this that city? We have an assassin going down into a place of cheap death and short nasty lifes, and attempting to do something about it. But not a lot. And he's not the only one as we see some other attempts, but the baby inside him is useful for creating monoliths and...

No, I have no idea what's going on. At least, in a metaphorical sense. I can see what's happening on screen, with various creatures moving about, but what it ultimately means, I can't really say.

This is a stop motion movie from Phil Tippert that was started a long time ago, put on hold, then brought back and successfully Kickstartered (and yes, there are Kickstarter backers). This took a long time, but... it's still very cohesive in style and story (such as one can follow it).

It's on Shudder, so you could also check out other horror movies, but yes, note that this movie does go into the gross and gory often and hard.

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Operation Mincedmeet

I was expecting a hilarious Weekend at Bernie's style romp with using a corpse to fool Hitler, not this.

The Allied Forces need to take Sicily, so the Germans had to be distracted. One option was Operation Trojan Horse, to use a dead body washed up to leak faked papers to make the Germans believe the attack was on Greece instead. This is the story of that body and the operation behind it.

Which has a bit more romance and intrigue that you might normally expect, and not just on the side of trying to fool the Germans (indeed, that part is nearly rushed through). The personal story gives the movie more personal stakes, but either the movie gets limited by what actually happens or you go on entire flights of fancy that just end up taking over everything. I suspect they err more on the former than the latter.

And quite the cast to carry it all off. Colin Firth. Matthew Macfayden. Penelope Wilton. And a rather surprising performance from Mark Gatiss, in that I was surprised to see him in a non Doctor Who / non Steven Moffat production.

Decent movie, which can easily be seen on Netflix... if possibly not New Zealand's Netflix...

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They're Bad Guys, but are they bad guys?

The latest animated feature, with an art style that seems to weirdly mix 2D and 3D,

They are the bad guys of the animal world, wolf, shark, snake, etc. But are they all bad? Can they be good? And what if they really were?

There are a lot of familiar elements here and nothing will really surprise you, but I will give that the elements are mixed together in a way I can't immediately placed as copying elsewhere, so there is that.

Sam Rockwell has the lead voice, and kinda disappointing that we don't get him dancing. There are other good vocal performances too, so much so that it doesn't feel like DreamWorks hired them because of their name, but actually because they can vocally act.

Not terrible, but I doubt anyone will remember this in a month or so.

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Dominionionion

I can barely remember any of the previous movies, so that's the best state to go into this one which wraps them all up!

There are dinosaurs all over the world, and Biosyn volunteers to gather them all up. And yet, for some reason, EVERYONE is shocked by the fact that they turn out to be evil. The cast of the first three movies get involved to find evidence, the cast of the second lot of movies get involved to get the girl back, and when they meet... that is a moment in the movie.

I'll be honest... this was just a bunch of scenes that happened on screen. Especially when there are action sequences involving Claire and Owen. You know how great scenes have people moving about and the camera establishes the geography so you know where everyone is in relation to everywhere else, and where they are going etc... I had no idea at all how one bit connected with the others. I assume people got from one place to another in a way that made sense, but... I am just assuming that.

It is good to see Sam Neill and Laura Dern again, and the others are decent too.

But I just wasn't that into it. It didn't help that people were constantly popping out and in of the theatre, so possibly others were also not into it (let alone a few people left partway through and I never saw them again). So, only really see this if you are really invested in what's going on.

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Rememory

This is not a family feel good movie. Shocking, considering this features Liam Neeson.

Liam is playing an assassin, but he doesn't want to do his job. And so becomes a target. Which sounds fairly generic, and that is, but there is another aspect in that that is just one of the plots, the other is a group of three FBI peoples who end up after the same people that want Liam dead. And this all involves child sex-trafficking, so yeah, not actually fun.

Decent enough. There's the gimmick that Liam is having the Alzheimer's, but this just leads to a small side point that doesn't really matter. (This really comes about because this movie is based on De zaak Alzheimer, or The Memory of a Killer.)

Guy Pierce is the other main lead here and.. he is quite good. I can't recall all his other roles, but right now I'm thinking I like most of his roles... We also got not much more than a cameo from Monica Belluci, but also decent performances from Taj Atwal and Harold Torres.

Not going to blow you away with how wonderful this is, but a solid enough film.

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Decrets of Sumblesore

I've finally bothered to watch the latest movie and... I can't say that I hated it.

There is definitely some problems with it. From the hamfisted attempt at a political story to some rather pointless plots about brothers being captured, but... It was fine. There's some stuff that doesn't work well, but that isn't to say this is actively bad.

Although I will question the entire point of Clarence.

But the performances are all right. The effects are fine. While I don't think you need some of the story points, I could follow what was going on (which is more than many people could say for the second movie).

Overall it's a Meh. But the Wizarding World was never something I was actively involved in. And certainly I won't be bothered if there are no more movies (which I know is a preferred treatment, or at least take it away from that problematic author). The movie in and of itself is fine.

The circumstances around some of the actors and the producer are the real problems.

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La panthère des neiges

Despite the original name, this is called The Velvet Queen, which is not a translation of the title. This movie was put on with the Wellington Zoo as they are building a new Snow Leopard enclosure.

This movie is about a couple of French men who go hunting in the mountains of Tibet. Where "hunting" means with cameras and binoculars. While they do see many animals, don't go expecting a lot of snow leopard footage. But do except long monologues about the silence...

Yes, I do acknowledge that there is some irony in a documentary about going and see animals in the wild which is fundraising for keeping animals in captivity. But I'm not going to get into the politics of zoos, but I will say... I love leopards, and if the snow leopards have a Close Encounter opportunity, I will be there!

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Man Sandwich!

This was a big mod that Logan made and ran a lot of people on. The Blue Mage was a bad guy in this game that we completely didn't interact with at all. So Logan took the step for us to do something about it. A lot of people ran on it... and had no idea what was going on for a lot of it.

Whereas, twenty minutes into the second episode, I grok what is going on. It helped that Legends of Tomorrow did an arc with them, so I completely dialed in on what the essence was. It also helped that I was in "don't care about the decoration, just get on with it" mode which made me ignore a lot of rubbish that others got caught up with. (And us three missed a lot of references.)

Fortunately although we were quick, we were the last group (Logan says we were the quickest group, but I think Matt's group was also quick, they just did stuff afterwards to pad the time out). If they had all been this quick he probably would have had to change it.

Normally these games are five parts, but we were quick and had no abilities to go other stuff, so three episodes it is.

The title is obvious once you listen to the first part. It was just one of those silly moments that you go with 'cos why the hell not?

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