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Reviews
Gekijôban Urutoraman X: Kita zo! Warera no Urutoraman (2016)
A wonderfully fun, but insane movie.
The Ultraman television series and movies have been a staple of Japanese TV since the 1960s. The Ultraman X movie is based upon the Ultraman X series; in fact, I recommend watching the Ultraman X Series Episode 8 - Ultraman X Recap - Encounters and Friends as the movie assumes we know who everyone is and how they relate to each other. I watched the movie first and hand to assume some of the elements. Ultraman grew out of the Godzilla movies and in the first series, many of the costumes used were monsters from the movies. The plot follows the Xio organization as they fight a series of monsters.
Reality TV host Carlos Kurozaki takes an item from an underground pyramid during a show. The gem was the key to keep the monster, Zaigorg, locked away. Zaigorg wants to gain the gem and uses kaiju to Try to gain its powers. Ultraman X, Ultraman Tiga, and the Original Ultraman from 1966 win the day.
Los ilusionautas (2012)
An oddly interesting movie is a Creature Feature sort of way
Freedom Force is a Peruvian animated (also known as Fantastic Force, Fantastic 4orce, The Illusionauts, and Los ilusionautas.) The lip movement was originally designed for the Spanish language version, naturally, and the voices are off in the English dub. There are a number of differences between the Spanish cut and the English cuts and there are differences between the Fantastic 4orce cut and the Freedom Force cut with scenes being added, deleted, moved, reused (in the English versions), and the dialog is different in places. The entire opening section of both English versions are not in the Spanish version I watched. My Spanish is not good enough to say either English dub is more accurate to the original dialog, but they both seem to cover the story adequately with Fantastic 4orce being closer in one section to the original.
The story is rather complex, someone has fiddled with the works of Jules Verne to ruin the stories and a group of 12-year old children (also a dog) are sent into the stories to find and activate a reset switch to restore the stories. Aside from the literary value, the French President's Wife is supposed to host an event to celebrate Verne's stories.
The children all represent an aspect of Verne's personality at the age he started writing: Genius and love of technology; Literature; a descendant of Verne's first love, and Flatulence (which Verne is said to have suffered.) Their suits transform to fit the situations they encounter.
The movie is not the worst I've seen, there are structural problems, and the plot is a bit of a mess, but it is strangely interesting for people who enjoy Creature Feature movies.
The books used in the movie are:
Five Weeks in a Balloon
Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
From the Earth to the Moon
Hamlet - an altered quote to show the program works, "TV or not TV that is the question?"
Around the World in 80 Days - referenced only
There is also a scene that references the Jules Verne Time Train (Back to the Future Reference)
A running gag that involves a bug flying into a mouth is a reference to Kung Pow Enter the Fist from 2002.
Ghost Goggles (2016)
Not a great movie, but not horrible.
I bought a copy of the movie in the cheap bin at a chain store that is closing; in effect, it is a discounted cheap bin movie. There is nothing original, the acting is awkward, the script is forced, the music is unmemorable, the ghosts' makeup is poorly executed (pun intended), and the filming is cheaply done. Having said all of that, one can get a bit of ironic enjoyment out of the movie. Compared to the movie, Ghost Trap also known as Little Ghost Grabbers (2012), Ghost Goggles is several steps above. The cover of the DVD has a photograph that shows googles on a kid, but the googles in the movie are more Harry Potter style round rim glasses, not goggles; in addition, the kid on the cover does not look like the kid in the movie. There is a kitten in the movie as on the cover. The story is one that might play as a made for TV kids network show. I have seen some say it has inappropriate elements, but I did not see any.
Daphne & Velma (2018)
Bad writing, a bad plot, and bad effects make for a bad movie.
The movie is not good, but I will give it credit that it improves a bit in the last half, but never to the point where it is really good. Daphne is suddenly half white and half black in this movie and has either a bad dye job, or a bad wig, because the hair does not look close to real. The Velma in the Cartoon Network live action movies is part Japanese, so a mixed-race cast member can work, but it feels forced in this movie. It was as if someone said, "Let us make it more diverse by shoving a mixed-race character into the script with a hammer." The dialog seems to have been written by an old fogey who put down what they think high school kids would say. The plot, especially at the start of the movie, is bad; now, Scooby-Doo is not known for great plots, but this is makes the others seem like Shakespeare. The special effects were really cheap sitcom quality. The action is set in High School, but is supposed to be before they meet Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo; however, the show should have been set earlier. If one includes A Pup Named Scooby-Doo the movie becomes impossible, but ignoring that show, it should have been set in Junior High School to fit with the rest of the series. The actors seem to be trying to work with the script's limitations. The plot is predictable, I had all but one element figured out in the first few minutes. There is a scene dealing with Daphne and Velma which actually got a laugh out of me, not from them, but from another character. The idea had potential, the plot could have worked, and the acting could have worked if the script had been better.