At home for the movies

Steamboy
It was the opening film for the S’pore International Film Festival this year, and boy am I glad I didn’t shell out $25 to watch this. After hearing so much hype about this, I was expecting to be totally blown away by the story and the animation. Well here’s the deal: it sucked. My friend managed to buy the VCD at a shop and lent it to me. It took me two nights to watch, because I found it too boring to sit through in one sitting. The story was not compelling at all, and the characters terribly unattractive. Set in Victorian England, the plot was a clichéd boy-saves-world and war-is-bad theme, ending with the requisite huge amounts of machinery, 'bots and flying dirigibles.

Nothing made me want to continue watching, and the ending, which built up into a massive battle, just finished abruptly and pffted into an obligatory semi-happy ending. If this movie was meant to be a statement on the effects of industrialisation and the role of science and technology, it didn’t work. I didn’t care about the characters, even bland hero Ray Steam. Sure, the animation is good and incredibly detailed, but when there are so many animes out there which boast good storytelling and great animation, what’s the point of catching Steamboy?

What's Steamboy about?
Another review

Akira
I always see this mentioned along with other anime classics like Ghost in the Shell and Ninja Scroll, so I thought I should catch it to see what it’s all about. Normally I’m not that big a fan of sci-fi stories, but I thought Akira was really good. Miles away better than Steamboy, it had a strong, gripping story which hooked me in (mainly because I was rather confused as to what was going on, I suppose). Not sure if I’m stoopid or something, but I had quite a lot of ‘huh?’ moments while watching this. But I sort of got it at the end, although I still had some questions about who or what some characters were. I guess it’s hard to compress an entire manga series into a movie which is less than 2 hours.

As for the animation, for something that was made so long ago (I think this came out in 1988), it was truly stunning. Oh, and it had some really cool bikes in it too. Hehe.

What's Akira about?

The Motorcycle Diaries
First off, Gael Garcia Bernal is a HOTTIE. Whether he’s clean-shaven or sprouting a 6 o’clock shadow, clean and neat or dirty and scruffy in a shirt, it doesn’t matter. He is HOT. And when he smiles, those dimples…mmm. But anyway, notwithstanding the hotness that is Gael Garcia Bernal, I adored this movie. What made it really worth watching was the incredible beauty of the South American landscape. Watching this made me want to pack up, go on my own road trip and discover the world and myself. The world is small, and yet at the same time, it is such a large place. There are so many things that I don’t know about, insulated as I am in this little air-conditioned bubble of an island.

I’m not sure how accurate this movie is about painting the young Che Guevara’s life, but if taken as just a movie, I found it highly romantic and enjoyable.

What's The Motorcycle Diaries about?