Yojimbo

Yojimbo is an interesting film to me, primarily because it shows how hypocritical the people around me are. I watched the film with my father, who quickly dismissed the movie, saying that the story seemed pointless. Keep in mind that my father is a big fan of westerns. When I told him the movie influenced Fistful of dollars, he outright denied having ever said anything. As far as he was concerned it was just a Japanese attempt at a spaghetti western, to him.
The movie takes place in a town ruled by two warring factions. While each side is gathering their army, a wondering samurai walks in and offers his services to the highest bidder. From there on, the whole movie becomes a delightful guessing game as to who will stab who in the back next. Long story short, our hero retaliates against both factions, by pitting them up against each other, then promptly gets captured, beaten, then returns to slay the remainder of his enemies.
My favorite character had to be the wondering ronin, played by Toshiro Mifune, who I immediately liked due to being a fan of anime. Seeing the forerunner to all of my favorite heroes was quite a treat, and the character did not disappoint. It's worth noting that many of the actors in this movie seemed to have characters in anime today that mimic the characters in this movie. This is really fun for me, since I will be looking at anime in a new way from now on.

Mega Man - Fan Film

I’m usually a little hesitant to watch “indie” films, though I can’t really figure out why.  The low budget doesn’t really bother me, and the writing is sometimes shockingly superior to that of your average AAA movie. Top this with the fact that it’s a movie about a video game, a dark corner that has rarely been visited successfully, and you could have made a solid bet that I would never ever watch this movie. One night, however, I was feeling really adventurous and started it up.

The plot of Mega Man, the fan film, is what you’d expect. The ingenious Dr. Light has created a series of robots, in order to assist humanity. Dr. Wily, impressively portrayed by Dave Maulbeck, is here to do exactly the opposite, and reprogram the robots to enslave the world and do his bidding. Mega Man, Dr. Light’s latest creation steps up to stop the “evil” robots, and does so using a variety of abilities he gets from each enemy he defeats.

While it’s no surprise that Mega Man wins in the end, it is surprising how well all the characters worked out in a live action setting. Smalltime stars, Jun Naito and Edward X. Young, do impressive jobs as Mega Man and Dr. Light. Sung-Mo Cho even pulls off a convincing Proto Man. The only actor that falls off a bit is Jeanie Tse, who plays Roll…but it’s debatable whether it’s bad acting or the characters dopey demeanor.

It would be easy to say my favorite character was Mega Man, but that really isn’t the case. Dave Maulbeck is easily one of my favorite villains this year. Wily has always been a very stereotypically evil bad guy (angry at the world, wants to take it over, monologues excessively, ect.), yet he does it quite well. I really do think it takes true still to take a goofy guy like Wily, keep the goofiness, and still make him appear threatening.

            In short, it’s good stuff. It’s video game movies done right. Directors should take notes.

White Zombie

White Zombie

White zombie is an interesting movie to me because it marks the debut of a monster that is quite popular today. Though the zombies in the movie don’t act the way the ones in the movies do today, they are an important part of what made the creatures that we know today.

The movie starts off with a couple, set to be married, settling in to a large castle, where they will be staying the night before the wedding. Apparently the setting was supposed to be Haiti, which I think is kind of odd because there is a castle there. Perhaps there are castles in Haiti, but it’s not the first place I would imagine having one. Reguardless, on the way to the castle, the couple runs into a voodoo doctor who is using the zombies as servants for a sugar mill. When they arrive at the castle, the owner secretly disappears and speaks to “Murder,”(Bela Lugosi)  voodoo man. He gives the man a potion to transform her and he slips her the potion.

At this point her mind goes blank and the owner, Charles, begins to regret his decision. Neil, the girl’s soon to be husband, saves the day, breaks the curse, and kills both Murder and Charles, via a cliff near the ocean. My favorite character had to be Murder. Bela Lugosi brought a way of acting to the table that was spooky, intriguing, and sadly dismissed these days.

Most of the conflict was between Charles and his decision to transform Madeleine. This is a bit odd, since he is a villain, technically. You don’t normally see antagonists at the receiving end of conflict for the whole movie. Ultimately his decision leads to his death, when he realizes that he has to stop Murder from transforming more people.

Robin Hood (2010)

Holy snap, I love Robin Hood! When I heard about this movie a while back, I was pretty psyched to see some robbing…with hoods. So one could understand how shocked I was when I saw the previews for Ridley Scott’s 2010 version. Featuring no robbing, and very few hoods, are two big mistakes one can make when making a “Robin Hood” movie. I must also note that I’m really tired of that bland, generic, filter they’re putting over medieval movies to make them look darker. In fact, that’s this movie’s biggest issue. It’s very, very, generic.

As for the plot…the whole thing was painted so bland I really don’t remember too many details story wise. The best I can gather is that this all takes place before the events of the story that we know as Robin Hood. Several historical people, whose names I cannot remember do to poor pacing, are having themselves a war. Robin and friends are recruited to fight, and upon returning, tells the king what he thinks about him. The king breaks his promise not to persecute anyone for the opinions shared at that time, and Robin and his friends are taken captive. (Big surprise) Robin then spends the rest of the movie showing the people the king is a very bad guy, and that their political system is not all that hot.

There’s also some hints that Robin’s father designed the democratic system and some other random bits that all end when the higher ups (the king and his men) eventually decide that Robin has been a very bad man, and is labeled an outlaw.

Because of this declaration, during the last ten minutes of the movie, there is a fight, some arrows, and it finally started acting like a Robin Hood movie instead of a high budget history channel special.

The only character that was even remotely interesting was Marian, if not for the fact that she seemed just a bit more realistic then your typical “Maid Marian” character. She’s cold towards Robin for the first half of the movie, but warms up to him after he shows her how “politically impressive” he can be. Seems like a weird thing to get off on, but whatever. The whole movie was apparently rewritten several times. The first time as Robin and the sheriff in swapped good and evil roles, the second time, as Robin and the sheriff as the same person, then rewritten so that Robin becomes the sheriff…then they must have gotten tired of trying to be creative and opted for historical accuracy.