Tuesday, December 13, 2016

"Shin Gojira/Godzilla Resurgence" (2016)

a film review by CatsMando

    Monster films, as they closely tie with horror movies, works best when they mainly work being a commentary to something. Dracula works best when it focuses on being the representation of the threatening form of ambiguous, emasculating, masculinity. The Wolf Man is essentially the fear of man losing his control with his base urges. The Mummy and King Kong is the peril of adventure, Frankenstein and Jurrassic Park is punishment to man's arrogance towards science and nature, zombies are a violent, satiric take on the human collective, Xenomorph Aliens are layers upon layers of analogy about rape and violence against women, The Predator is the ultimate unknown enemy, the cyborg/android motif(think Terminator/Westworld) are based around the fear of man-made technology turning against them.


    It's often strongly about the commentary. Everything else, like Frankenstein's iconic look, King Kong's scale, zombie genre's strong ties with body horror; are secondary. A complementary feature, never the main.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

"Kubo and the Two Strings" (2016)

a film review by CatsMando

 


    If I were asked what would be my top three companies-not in terms of my personal fave, but in terms of honest-to-goodness craftsmanship-levels in animated feature films-easy, it's Studio Ghibli, Pixar, and Laika. These are the big name studios that actually puts out real art-forms. A combination of fresh perspective as evidenced through their stories, and years of technical masterwork as shown through the quality of execution. It's not an always case, mind you, all three of them have their  pieces of passing works. But more often they get to deliver works that are just visually draw-dropping, emotionally resonant, thematically solid, and overall inspiring.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

"Hell or High Water" (2016)

a film review by CatsMando


     The thing about small-scoped, focused-concept films is that it has to be very mindful of the details
it place. Without any real flash or bombast, every dialogue stands out, every long scene well observed, every actions, no matter how small, is noticed. And everything about those has to have a place in the movie or else it'll be a lingering distraction that could easily ruin these type of film.