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Reviews
Innocence (2004)
Tragically boring
Some science fiction movies get it right. They mix interesting and novel science with fantastical-but-semi-plausible plots, and then round out the edges with a little philosophizing on the nature of man and machine and whatnot. Some science fiction movies get it wrong, and end up with uninteresting science, ridiculous plots, and way too much philosophizing. The latter Matrices gave us case-in-point examples of science fiction gone wrong. Ghost in the Shell was a good movie that got the formula right, and had good animation to boot. Ghost in the Shell 2 gets the formula wrong, badly, and the animation, which very good, is awkward for its combination of CGI, live action and hand-drawn animation. Basically, it's really boring.
Consider the following: 1) While Ghost in the Shell had interesting riffs on cyberspace and cybernetics, Ghost in the Shell 2 has a lot of Star Trekkish jargon about networks that adds little to the basic framework. There is actually a sequence of scenes that apparently consisted of human-shaped machines, hooked into other machines, talking about what was going on in their networks. I'm not sure who thought that long periods of still shots of blooping machinery with voiceovers would be equivalent to climactic action, but they were wrong.
2) Anime movies often have plots that make no sense. Like in Jin-Roh: Wolf Brigade, where everyone at some point is like, Oh well, I don't think there is a plot at all, but those drawings sure are darn nice to look at. You can't do this in Ghost in the Shell 2 because a) the pictures aren't that nice to look at, and b) the movie is trying so hard to maintain a cohesive plot that you want to try along with it. There are long periods where the writer clearly wanted the audience to be confused, so you would naturally assume that it would be explained. So you listen to what the characters say afterwards, but become frustrated at how reasons are hedged with made-up technology and a lot of talk about dolls.
3) The success of the first Ghost seems to have convinced the writer that he is now free to expound upon his topics of interest at length and the viewer will remain entertained. While there are interesting topics touched on here, albeit somewhat clichéd and overused ones, actual reflection has been passed over in favor of an astounding number of random quotes, ranging from the Bible, to John Milton, to some that may have been overheard on the street. I may be a philistine, but it seemed as if there was no greater plan tying these quotes together than the simple goal of having a lot of quotes, and the result borders on the inane. Especially because almost every character in the film is a complete and utter nihilist, delivering their lines as if they had long ago resigned themselves to death, the dialogue becomes intensely uninteresting. And I wouldn't hold my breath for badass action scenes to pick it up, eithermost of the time the only punctuation to these listless conversations is the whizzing of some random mechanical part.
This is all very sad because clearly there were high aspirations for this movie. The animation is very well intricate, and at times almost awe-inspiring. The movie keeps its own pace, and the characters stay true to form. It's possible that a lot of these complaints are the product of awful, awful subtitling, and it was pretty awful, since it was actually closed captioning, with lots of (noise) and (silence]). Still, I almost fell asleep.
Lumumba (2000)
Sadly ineffective
So I rented this movie hoping to learn about the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the beginnings of its independence from Belgian rule. I was excited to become familiar with the figures involved in its history, mainly Lumumba and Mobutu. I wanted to see how the new Congolese government attempted to bring together the various groups opposing colonial rule, the political motives behind each one, the reasons behind Belgium's decision to give the DRC its independence, and also how the United States and the former USSR were involved. Sadly, all of my questions went largely unanswered. My belief is that this movie was made by people who, through a passing familiarity with the story of the DRC's fight for freedom, saw a story filled with drama and emotion, and decided to exploit it. They then proceeded to try and stuff all the dramatic points into a storyline, briefly filled them out with dialogue, went to the set and shot it. I could be wrong, but if so it's all the sadder, because then the makers must have simply become too tied up in getting everything in, and ended up glossing over all details in an effort to create an encompassing history. Whatever the reason, the fact is that the movie could be a timeline of sentence-long statements and facts printed on the screen. The film goes through each major occurrence, and tells the viewer point-blank the main idea of what's going on, completely smoothing over the actual details in favor of getting across the big things. For instance, there is the scene when Lumumba is captured by the increasingly rebellious army controlled by Mobutu. In the situation the soldiers have three possible viewpoints: one that sympathizes with Lumumba, one that vilifies Lumumba, and one that stands in the middle, sympathizing and yet obeying orders. Correspondingly, there are three soldiers that speak in the scene, uttering lines that unadornedly show their points of view. Then, to avoid dealing with the actual tensions that these opposing viewpoints bring up, the scriptwriters simply inserted some random shooting, more army guys show up and they just end up beating everyone up. This is the extent of the reflectiveness of the movie. Most of the time, each character simply states their basic motives, the other characters respond with theirs, and that's that. There's little telling through actions; even the things they say are direct the point of painfulness. It's hard to believe that the people represented actually acted like that. Also, in the trend of this directness, things like political tension between factions is reduced to simple acknowledgement of the fact-- we never learn what these factions are, what they're fighting for, their power, basically anything except that they exist. The characters likewise are one-dimensional and flat; unfortunately I don't know whether Lumumba was actually a freedom fighter passionately devoted to ideals of Congolese unity, but after an hour or so of the movie I certainly didn't trust it to tell me so. The DRC, like many developing countries, has a complicated and important history, especially in the period leading up to and after independence. But the telling of these histories will not be useful unless there is recognition of the intricacy of the situations. Lumumba fails to give proper attention to these details, and ends up telling the viewer little except the most general of outlines.