Laputa Castle in the sky

Laputa Castke in the sky is a Studio Guilbli anime film about a girl called Sheeta (Keiko Yokozawa) and a boy called Pazu (Mayumi Tanaka) who possess a magical crystal and go in search for a floating castle, defeating Sheeta’s evil kidnapper Muska (Minori Terada) along the way.

I had the pleasure of watching this movie with my best guy friend, who loves anime films. Indeed, I have come to like anime a bit as well. I have watched a couple of Studio Ghibli films, including Ponyo and Grave of the fireflies, among others. The attention to detail in the movie is intriguing, as it was made in a time when all animated films were hand drawn. I admire the Japanease drawing style, it’s rather individual to their own film and art culture, and the guy friend and I ended up watching the film itself in Japanese, which meant that your attention was not focused on the movie itself, but also the ability to follow along with the subtitles along with the story as well.

At times, the movie did drag a little and if was hard to get into at first, but it was generally a good movie all the same. The little boy Pazu looked adorable, and the castle looked incredible. I think that you would be in some obvious danger if you lived in the floating castle and you were afraid of heights. The robot reminded me of iron giant and the villain guy reminded me of Agent Smith from the Matrix.

In the future, I would definitely look into watching more anime films.

Overall, a great movie with an interesting plot line and detailed animation that gives subtle hints to the culture at the time that the movie was made.

4/5

 

I, Robot

‘My responses are limited’

I, Robot is a movie set in 2035 and it is about a detective guy called Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) who investigates the suicide of a robotics creator called Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) and believes that a robot who actually killed the robotics creator goes by the name Sonny actually murdered him and investigates with a very smart robot expert called Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan).

I was allowed to borrow this movie from one of my guy friends, who is fascinated by motorbikes and humanity related stuff. I came to enjoy it despite the fact that I switched off for most of it. My brothers and older sister also watched alot of it when they were younger.

This movie differs from other dystopian movies. For starters, Will Smith’s character lives in a fairly nice apartment. The point is that robots are starting to take over humanity and we are already living against computers anyway, which will be programmed into robots which will eventually have human minds (I honestly think that I’ve been writing/watching too much robot and dystopian related stuff).Why should a human, for instance, have to do something that a robot could do faster can a human ever could? It was very much a human vs robot battle in the movie which will only end in robots taking over the world for good. Despite the fact that Sonny could kill people, he was oddly loveable as a robot.

As for the cast, they were very good. Bridget Moynahan was badass in some ways and the movie also starred the young Shia LaBeouf. The whole hologram idea is regular in all science fiction stuff nowadays.

Decent cast, cool film and it is one of those film that will eventually predict what is going to happen to humanity in twenty or thirty years. The only thing that concerned me; what happened to the cat in the boot of the car?

4/5

 

A.I: Artificial Intelligence

‘Is it a game?’

Steven Spielberg directs A.I, this sci-fi  movie about a robotic boy with proper human thoughts and emotions called David (Haley Joel Osment) who sets out to be a ‘real boy’ and find his human mother. It also stars Jude Law and some other major A-list actors.

I have a fairly big interest in these sorts of movies, but in this case, the visuals and the cast strike more than anything else in the film. I also like the connotations of water and being a toy, especially when it comes to what David is, as water can easily break a toy. He’s a robot and young children like playing around with robotic toys. In some way, the make up people must have spent ages trying to make Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment look like robots complete with alot of effective but slightly dated CGI. The use of blue is a major colour is the film and it definitely does jump on your fear of water as blue is usually associated with being a cold colour. After all, he did direct Jaws….

The colour scheme is actually really interesting. At one point, I did not care much for the film but it picked up in the middle, although it isn’t exactly the best film that I have ever seen but Spielberg is one of my favorite directors (aside from Tarantino and probably the Wasowskis). I think that one day, we will actually have robot children (not the ones who sit in front of the computer, I mean actual robot children) and more talking teddy bears. I like how the director combines darkness, light, hope and taking bits from popular fairytales such as Pinocchio to contribute to a fairly good film.

Overall, stunning visuals, interesting cast, excellent director. At least David got his wish in the end and it makes you appreciate your mother more.

3/5