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From German Cavalry Officer to Reconnaissance Pilot: The World War I History, Memories, and Photographs of Leonhard Rempe, 1914-1921

Paul Rempe

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Book

Twentyoneyearold Leonhard Rempe volunteered to serve Germany in 1914. By the time World War One...

Hadrian's Wall: Archaeological Research by English Heritage 1976-2000

Tony Wilmott

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Book

From 1976 to 2000, English Heritage archaeologists undertook excavation and other research on...

LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) in Movies

Sep 20, 2020

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

2001 | Adventure, Animation, Sci-Fi

6.2

(22 Ratings)

Movie Rating

I have almost nothing new to add, everything you've heard is true: the animation is almost religiously astounding for the time and even now (in spite of some expected hiccups for the rudimentary motion capture of the time: i.e. speed being an issue - anything that moves above 0.1 MPH has an unsightly motion blur all over it and all the running looks like mall-jogging), CGI wouldn't look this good for years and years afterward but the thing moves at a snail's pace with an oddly apparent avoidance of any sort of fun. Certainly still weird and visually prepossessing enough to get a pass (if this didn't have its unforgettable photorealistic animation it would suck just as hard as any other generic sci-fi fodder, this is home to some truly bracing imagery) - but what the actual hell were they thinking with this writing? All the characters are nonentities in their own story (delivered with similarly boring voice acting by an all-star cast, which most animated films would later replicate directly) and whatever remnants of a story are left behind in the rubble *do* have the potential to be poignant and thought-provoking but are rather just passively mentioned a time or two by way of banal exposition into a mess of things that don't add up to anything more than a stupid story. Can't believe they thought this would work with... anyone (especially fans of the character-driven games given that they turned this into some odd but rather bland alien film for some confounding reason lol) considering all the massive amounts of money they shoveled into it - and minus a few more points for being another tech-heavy future fantasy set in a world that's entirely grey and decrepit. However, the last half hour is some squarely invigorating, enigmatic spectacle that finds an intense beauty in how mind-boggling and glamorous it all is - you'd think the whole thing is always one second away from collapsing into the best of non-western genre surreality. In fact It seems almost unreal in and of itself to be watching something so conventional yet so unrestrained and auteurish. Really needed like eight movies to fully explore these themes but I'm also kind of glad they didn't - half epic and half yawnsville but the epic is more epic than the yawnsville is yawnsville.

Kudos

My Daily Horoscopes - Free Horoscope of the Day, Love, Health, Career, Money Horoscope for Zodiac Signs in Astrology

Lifestyle and Reference

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App

Daily Horoscope is the Most advanced and best horoscope app for iPhone and iPad. Daily Horoscopes...

Sky MET - Aviation Meteo

Weather and Navigation

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App

Welcome to Sky MET, The ultimate weather app for pilots, by pilots. This visually stunning and...

Trainline UK

Travel and Navigation

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App

Plan your next journey with Trainline UK, the #1 most downloaded train travel app in Great Britain....

Jesters_folly (230 KP) rated Robo Vampire (1988) in Movies

Aug 11, 2020

Robo Vampire (1988)

1988 | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi

6.5

(2 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Contains spoilers, click to show

Drug baron Mr Young is fed up with Narcotics agent Tom Wilde interfering with his plans so he hires a Taoist monk to train a vampire to kill him. After his death Tom is rebuilt as an Android Robot and sent on a mission to help rescue a captured officer.
The cover/poster art would have us believe that this is a Robocop vs vampire movie and I suppose that it is in the looses possible sense. First off this is low budget Hong Kong Jiangshi (rotting corpse) movie with added cyborg (Sorry Android Robot) so the vampires are of the hopping type not the western 'gentleman'.
I've given this film a 6 on the basis that it's so bad it's good. Most of the vampires are ok and look like the standard hopping type but the lead vampire seems to be wearing a gorilla mask to make it look rotten. No one bleeds when shot and it's obvious when dummies are used instead of stun doubles . Even taking this into account I would have given Robo Vampire a higher rating but it gets hard to follow. There are two story-lines to follow, the rescue of Sophie, an undercover agent that has been kidnapped and the Tom-robot vs the vampire's and ghost. And this is the first confusing part of the plot. Tom's creators say that he is to be sent on the rescue mission but he is never with the rescue party. Instead he goes off to fight the vampire. So the film switches between the rescue and Tom vs the vampires. Even this wouldn't be a problem except that the story-lines seem to continue even when we're not watching. For example, the rescue party are heading towards the camp with baddies jumping out at them from all directions. The we switch to Robo and when we switch back to the rescue two of the party are swimming in a lake with no sign of any of the others and end up getting captured, then back to Robo, then back the rest of the rescue party who don't even acknowledged that two of their party are missing but aren't surprised when they see them as prisoners. This sort of thing happens a lot, it's almost as if some one just cut out random scenes. Characters also just seem to appear with no introduction and switch sides with no seeming reason.