One thing Acker has going for him is the animation. I haven’t seen a movie filled with such fluid motion and sheer detail outside of a Pixar film, and Acker seems to challenge “Wall-E’s” apocalyptic wasteland with his own that sparks on facets like steam punk and whimsical quite often. The burlap dolls are magnificent and make for some appealing heroes and heroines because their designs are so fantastic. From their glass eyes, right down to their wooden hands, these pint sized heroes are such a sight upon their introduction. Beyond their personalities, it’s easy to know which character is which and what they’re meant for as bits of their master’s soul. The wonderful technology keeps the terrain and lands looking like steaming piles of rubble where artifacts are left behind and humans have been all but decimated at the claws of their war machines.
2009 saw an unusual change in the status quo. What were once edgy indie filmmakers soon turned to directors aiming for children’s entertainment that was raucous and quite unusual. First Wes Anderson and then Spike Jonze. That’s no caveat though as Jonze takes his knack for the surreal and the unusual and makes a family film that’s quite edgy. Never shying away from mild violence and scary images, Jonze adapts a famous children’s book in to one of the most fantastic piece of family filmmaking ever made. Displaying hints of danger, Jonze’s film is about unbridled childhood fun and the innocence that’s lost once confronted with the prospect of growing up. Do we all have to lose our imagination from a world that demands even children to leave childish things behind?
Trust me, if I were asked to watch McG’s treatment of the Terminator franchise I wouldn’t turn it down. Is it one of the best the franchise has ever offered? No. In fact it’s one of the lamest simply because it takes every advantage to flex its PG-13 rating and make sure that everyone but the humans suffer a wicked death. In this version every human is given a bloodless death by robots we’re assured are vicious, merciless, and willing to make their victims suffer a long and painful death. All ounce of suffering we’ve seen at the hands of the machines in previous films is bypassed in exchange for interchangeable special effects and ho-hum action sequences.
Though marketed as “The Complete Series,” the Justice League complete sets provides fifteen DVD’s that actually boasts two highly different television series’. I say that because the creators eventually reached a limit to what they could do with one version of their show and eventually provided a second series that was obviously an extension of the show but approached the source material with a different tone altogether. So while reviewing the show I had to take in to consideration that I was reviewing two series based on a single idea stuffed in to a very beautiful boxed set that is protected by a dazzling tin display case.
I’m one of the many people in the film community who has had nothing but contempt for the practices Rob Zombie has exorcised since his venturing in to filmmaking. Beside “Devil’s Rejects,” Zombie is a man who is nothing but a studio tool who injects his own brand of trailer trash chic in everything he does, even polluting the origin of Michael Myers with it. Zombie is 100 percent Grade A hack and a complete studio stooge who knows how to be a horror fan but doesn’t know what horror fans want, nor will he ever try to find out.