mstramba Reviews

Ratatouille (2007)

Pixar's best yet !

[10/10 · 17 June 2007]

Fantastic ! ... Can't wait to get the DVD ! The technical / animation / lighting ..etc aspects of the film are awesome. Pixar has raised the bar again.

The best thing about the movie, is that it showcases Pixar's "mantra" , that being story, story ...story. That along with having great characters/animation/dialog, which you just forget ... or never even consider are digital puppets.

The humor was great too, the gags / situations character acting all contributing to making situations that "kids of all ages " could "get".

There is on one level the entire story, of Remy and Linguini, but then there are 3 or 4 or more subplots and a number of dramatic scene changes which almost felt like separate chapters of the main story. That all contributed ..for me at least... to keeping the movie very interesting right to the end.

While I found a few things predictable, there were also quite a few twists and and unexpected events / scenes, that just kept giving me more new "stuff" to enjoy 10 / 10 Mike

Elephants Dream (2006 Video)

Visually stunning ..but ...

[3 June 2006]

The most common comment among those who have seen E.D. is "visually stunning ... but what did the story mean?".

Even the director's comments (Bassam Kurdali) on the commentary track of the DVD are somewhat vague on the exact meaning of the story. He goes only as far as saying that parts or all of "The Machine" are merely figments of Proog's imagination. If that is the case, there are inconsistencies with the story, when Emo (the second character in the story), can see some of the things that Proog can, but not others.

At only around 10 minutes in length, it is hard to tell a complete story anyway. It might be easier to consider this as more as a scene out of a complete film. The motivation for the film was also partly to be a technical demo of what the open source software Blender (in the right hands of course) is capable of. To that end, it is a definite success.

If you like CG "eye candy", and enjoy solving puzzles and like movies that you can truly interpret personally, you'll love this film. And it's a free download from the project Orange website.

Mike

Primer (2004)

Save your money ! A terrible waste of time !!!!!

[1/10 · 31 July 2005]

*** SPOILERS **** First, I *love* watching movies, it's one of my passions, I've seen hundreds of them. I love time travel movies, and was looking forward to see new twists what this one had to offer.

The answer was zero, nothing, nada, as far as I could tell. The first 30 or 40 minutes .. or at least it seemed that long, of the movie are spent with the two characters mumbling in mumbo jumbo about what the "device" might be capable of.

When they finally get to the point of saying that it will make time travel possible, they spend the rest of the movie wondering how it might be used / abused.

If the target audience was a bunch of professors at "MIT", then maybe the movie can be deemed a "success".

I was looking forward to seeing what kind of situations they might get into as per the movie synopsis on the cover of the DVD, which I would have to classify as outright bull****.

Second, I am a person who likes a movie that "makes me think", but I hesitate to use that phrase, because it seems to mean something different to me than some of the other reviewers here.

Both the positive and negative reviews of this film have admitted that the film is difficult to understand, there is lots of techno mumbo jumbo, and that the the film doesn't "neatly tie up the loose ends".

The difference seems to be that the people who love this film, think that the incomprehensible nature of this film is a *good* thing, while other reviewers, like me, are of the opinion that watching a movie (for ??? how many minutes was it again), that makes no sense or has no point, is a total waste of time and brain cells.

If you need something to put you to sleep, then this is probably just the thing. Otherwise, save your money for something useful, or donate it to charity .... or just throw it in the garbage, ... maybe a homeless person will find it.

M