It wasn’t actually awful… it wasn’t all that great though.

The final installment of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was, indeed, awesome. And yet… after watching the extended versions of Fellowship and Two Towers the last two Mondays in the theater, it was also just about what I expected, nothing more nothing less. Few surprises there are, but those are generally pleasant ones.

Let’s face it: You don’t need me to tell you that this is a movie worth seeing. All I can do here is offer my handful of thoughts about specific parts of the movie.

Regarding Faramir: The Two Towers’ extended-version inclusion of the Faramir/Boromir/Denethor flashback is absolutely vital to understanding the relationship between Denethor and Faramir that we see in Return of the King.

One of the things this movie did especially well was conveying a sense of bigness to things. The oliphaunts? Big. The seige weaponry and their projectiles? Way big. Minas Tirith? Awesome. Rocks are lobbed through the air, land, and generally do large-rock-like things to buildings and people in their path. Very, very cool stuff this is.

On a technical side note, Peter Jackson clearly had total faith in his team’s skill with compositing. Wow. Check out Gandalf’s arrival at Minas Tirith.

By the way, I hate spiders. Especially spiders that stand taller than a hobbit while on all eights. (I wouldn’t say “all fours,” now would I? Hmm?)

I’m pleased to say that “Gimli, Comic Relief Dwarf” is at least genuinely funny part of the time… mainly because the lines aren’t so badly written as to require a forced delivery, unlike many of the quips in the first two films.

Watch out for the pair (trio? did I lose count?) of false endings. The screen goes dark… for several seconds… and then it’s time for another scene! This happens more than once! Bleargh! It’s as if the filmmakers couldn’t decide where to end this thing, so they strung along a series of ending scenes for as far as the eye could see, then randomly picked a place and dropped the knife on it. Or something. Minor quibble, but it’s a sad way to leave the theater after such a great movie experience when your head’s reeling from the endings.

When you’ve just sat through and dissected the qualities of the two previous films’ extended versions, you’re naturally going to think about what bits were probably excised from this film that might reappear for its extended edition release. It’s almost certain that there’s more to see of Aragorn’s transition from the ranger who arrives with the Rohirrim and the King who knocks on the Black Gate. One suspects there’s more to see of the fight between orc and Uruk-hai at that guard tower. And so on, and so on.

One also suspects that Christopher Lee won’t be entirely appeased if his appearance in this film is restored when the DVD comes out. We could’ve done without the Smeagol flashback that started the movie, and seen Saruman’s last scenes instead. Ah well.

All told, this is a film… a set of films, to be more accurate… that will stand as the high water mark for genre moviemaking many years from now. It’s an outstanding movie experience, despite quibbles over what was and wasn’t included from the source material.

In a way, I’m glad it’s over. All the weight of years of anticipation is lifted, and the decades of nitpicking can begin at last…

There isn’t much I can say about this movie that hasn’t already been better said elsewhere, really. I’ll just touch on the key points:

• For a two-hour-plus movie, very little time is wasted. Not often did I have pause to wonder about the time.
  
• I’ll join my voice to the chorus of those who state that even out of an otherwise quite-good action adventure flick, the opening sequence is one of the coolest damned action bits ever filmed. Through the whole thing I was thinking, “Yes, yes, that is how he’d do it, that’s how that talent could be used.” Efficient, no, but if you wanted to make a powerful impression and that was your skillset… hell yes.
  
• A surprising amount of the movie was devoted to… building up for the next movie. We get foreshadowing in practically the second scene. They did it well, mind you, but every time the subject came up I was thinking, “Boy, they’re banking heavily on that next set of contracts, aren’t they?” I’m not saying they didn’t handle that plot thread well, but it was glaringly obvious.
  
• Related to that is the sad loss of impact of what should have been the climactic sequence of the film. We all know it was a soap-opera ending. Even folks who have no real background on popular X-Men comicbook storylines can tell that it was a gyp. It’s the script’s one glaring failure, dramatically.
  
• Does Wolverine once again own the movie? Yes. Does anyone mind for a second? Hell no. And that’s all that needs saying about that.
  
• Cameos, cameos, cameos. Spot Dr. Hank McCoy in a televised interview! See Colossus go metallic! See Shadowcat fleeing through walls! And so on, and so on. You know, in the third movie we’d better get to actually see Kitty’s face…
  
• I adored the way they used mutant powers in low-key, comedy-beat, every-day fashion. Among the coolest (pun intended) is the quiet moment where Logan hands Bobby his bottle of product placement for a quick chill treatment. Nicely done.
  
• You both like and loathe Magneto more in this movie, and that’s as it should be. Charming, clever, ruthless, manipulative, and always playing the game as deep as he can, he’s far more in this movie than just the megalomaniac from the first one.

And yes, I think that about covers it. Unless you’re allergic to effects-laden action movies with decent characterization and a touch of wry humor, you should see this film.
X2 movie website

Yes, the original title is “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” I’m using the Americanized title to denote the fact that what I saw was the dub release.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let me tell you about the movie release from one of the more celebrated anime TV series in the last, oh, whatever period of time you prefer.

The movie takes place between episodes late in the series timeline (for reasons obvious to anyone who’s seen the end of the series), and plays much like a (very) lengthy episode itself. All of the classic elements show up here, from hand-to-hand combat and aerial dogfights to windy philosophizing and bitch-and-moaning. Of course the talky bits are drawn out impossibly long, while the cool action bits are about the same length as they’d be in a regular episode. The talky bits are cheaper to animate, I suppose.

The plot? A wacky messed-up bad guy wants to do very bad things, and since there’s a bounty on his head the intrepid (and wildly ecclectic) Bebop crew go after him. As usual, the main story is Spike’s while the other characters bob and weave around him. Jet grumbles about how unappreciated he is, Faye staggers from disaster to disaster in that fanboy-baiting little outfit of hers, and Ed… is Ed. You know it’s a bunch of misfits when the genetically-engineered Welsh Corgi is the sane, well-adjusted one of the group.

Side note: Why did they change the song? Ed’s supposed to sing Pi, not… whatever that gibberish was. *sigh*

Another side note: I couldn’t help being amused at the teasing of the aforementioned fanboys. For an instant it seemed as if we’d get to see Faye-Faye’s ta-tas on proud display, and yet… denied. (And a vast groan rose up from the male members of the audience. Heh. Yeah, I said “members.”)

So how does the scoring go? You get ten points for it being Cowboy Bebop in all of its Beboppy glory. You lose one and a half points for philosophical mumbo-jumbo where real dialog and plot could have been. You lose another point for making a charicature of poor unappreciated Jet. Another one-point-five points are lost when Faye is used more as a damsel in distress than quirky femme fatale. One full point comes back for the clever use of those three old guys.

If you love Cowboy Bebop, or if you generally like action-oriented anime, you should see this movie. If you really love Bebop, you’ve probably already seen the movie and don’t need me to tell you what to do. If you’re sort of indifferent to Bebop or other forms of anime, find a way to see the series first and then, maybe, watch this movie. It’s good. It’s just not the greatness that we might have expected.
Cowboy Bebop Movie Site

Let me get right to the meat of the review: Spirited Away is an absolutely gorgeous piece of animation. It looks beautiful from start to finish. The action is fluid and dynamic. The design of scenery and characters is imaginative and detailed.

A coworker pointed out that she favored “Princess Mononoke” over this film. My reply was that “Mononoke” is to “Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind” as this film is to “My Neighbor Totoro.” This is a child’s film, albeit a wonderfully detailed and imaginative one.

The story is that of a young girl, Chihiro, trapped in a world of spirits and monsters. She starts out weak and afraid, but spurred by the desire to rescue her parents she finds an inner determination and generous nature that see her through an amazing series of challenges. Showing the value of determination, politeness and caring seems to be the driving principle of the movie.

Not everything is sweetness and light. Yu-Baaba, the matron of the bathhouse, is quite the intimidating and dangerous woman. Genuinely scary things happen to and around Chihiro. There’s even a rather disgusting sequence involving regurgitation. You’ve been warned.

I’ll briefly touch on the quality of the dub. Disney did right by this work, harnessing superb voices to a talented voice director and a quite decent script. Names were mostly unchanged, and the occasional instances of off-camera speaking used to explain certain cross-cultural elements weren’t jarring. I admit that I’m dub-agnostic when it comes to anime, so your mileage may vary. The zealots in the crowd will likely disagree with me, but the zealots probably aren’t reading this review.

So is the movie perfect? Perhaps not, but the downsides are subjective. Chihiro’s transformation from incapable to indomitable seems a bit sudden in some ways, though there are key events that spur this transformation. There are a couple of “huh?” moments in the movie, but those could be explained by an incomplete grasp of cultural cues. Maybe. Little things, subjective things, are all that keep this movie from being a perfect 10. Yes, it’s really that good.

“Spirited Away” is only in town through Thursday the 17th of October. As of this writing, that’s three more nights’ worth of chances to see this film in the theater. It is absolutely worth it. This is a splendid film.
Spirited Away at Nausicaa.net