Space Battleship Yamato (2010)

Space Battleship Yamato: things explode, people yell a lot (WOULD YOU LIKE A COFFEE! YES PLEASE, WITH MILK AND SUGAR. OKAAAAAAAAAAAAY!) and sake appears to be the staple diet.

It's the year 'sometime in the future' and the earth is being bombarded with asteroids by the evil Gamilas. These inundations of space rock have left the planet decimated - a radioactive wasteland of yellows and grays that has forced the remaining population underground. It's a population waiting for death, bereft of hope, lacking direction. We begin the story with two separate threads that quickly come together: one follows the protagonist Susumu as he scavenges the wastes of the earth for scrap and the other shows the humans being handed their arse in a space battle then one of the few remaining crews limping home just in time to be given command of a new super ship. The plans for this new ship, the Yamato, were found by Susumu on one of his scavenging trips, apparently sent from space by a benevolent race keen to save humanity. This space message also contains a promise of technology that will cleanse the earth of radiation and a map to the planet Iskandar.

A number of the characters are bound together already: Susumu's brother was captain of a ship destroyed in the opening battle, Susumu himself was once an ace pilot in the fleet, the captain of the Yamato fled the opening battle when Susumu's brother sacrificed himself. For all these reasons, plus some more that make little sense, Susumu re-joins the fleet and is immediately put in command of the Yamato's biggest weapon - the wave motion gun. One moment he is a civilian threatening to kill the captain, the next he's back in the fold - and later on he's even installed as Acting Captain.

I'll leave the commentary at this point and delve into the review itself. Space Battleship is an enjoyable but hard to swallow movie. The effects are excellent for the reported budget of about $24 million, though there are a couple of dodgy shots that should have been left out. The two themes of hope and the burden leadership are kind of patchy and never really grab you or make you think. A lot of what drives the characters is a fabrication designed to give them and the population left at home some hope that there is a solution, though in the end this fabrication turns out to be literal (though slightly twisted) truth.

Some of the cast: Hot girl (top left), serious guy (top right), pilot guy (bottom left) and Captain Beard (obvious).

All in all the story, backgrounds and plot are lightly treated and only there to support the mostly excellent action scenes and alcohol consumption. Alcohol consumption you say? Well, yes. You see this movie was hard to follow and the motivations of the characters muddied and erratic, until you pay attention to what's happening in several of the quieter scenes on board the Yamato. At all times, even when in the brig or on duty, the characters - military men and women - are drinking sake. Lots of sake. After coming to this realisation I found that the actions of the characters made more sense. They yelled a lot because they were drunk, they looked confused and made spur of the moment decisions because they were pickled, they rushed into the breach with excess bravado because they were tanked, they suddenly fell in love and fell into each others arms because...well you get the picture. The penultimate scene makes a lot of sense if you consider the character has been drinking non-stop for several months. There were several other solutions to the problem, but naturally he chose the most obvious one - probably assuming everything would be OK in the end and he'd be back home in time for tea and strumpets at 6.

Cast from the cartoon: main guy, hot girl and Captain Beard. Plus some others, they're not important right now. The Yamato is far more interesting but they shoved it right up the back there for some reason.

Putting all the failings aside, I enjoyed Space Battleship Yamato and would recommend it to anyone who remembers sneaking out of bed early as a kid to watch the original cartoon (Star Blazers as it was known in Australia) on morning television. I think younger sci-fi fans who don't know the original material would still enjoy the simple mix of light themes and good action scenes. Now to practice my roll and shoot move from the original series opening credits. How that used to amaze and confuse my friends in primary school...

7/10 - Simple story, drunken decision making, pretty explosions. Bonus: Lot's of yelling.

Centurion (2010)

I'm not sure how to review Centurion: on the one hand it's a basic action/travel tale movie with gratuitous violence from the 300 mould and little to no plot, direction, ending or character development.  On the other hand it's all of the above things. You can view those points as negatives if you're looking for the next Mulholland Drive, or positives if you want to kill a couple of hours watching grown men in costumes chop each other arms off. Personally I took a bit of a positive view, and it paid off. I had never heard of Centurion until after watching The Expendables and reading reviews with comparisons between the two i.e. no plot, no characterisation, lots of loud noises and death. Ever the fan of Romans (especially after the epic Spartacus) I was sold on the idea and signed up.

It doesn't matter what's going on here, you only need to know that gratuitous killing is but moments away.

Centurion is a movie of many disjointed parts. Characters come and go, the story has no direction and we're never quite sure what this is all about. It's kind of good in that a few cliches are avoided, such as a big battle of retribution at the end or portraying either side as the real bad guys. It's kind of bad in that the movie ends and you wonder what is was all about. The answer is sword porn. Centurion is really only an excuse to take swords waved at people and lots of limbs sliced off. The methods of slaughter depicted are many and varied: decapitation, lots of throat cutting, disembowelment, stabbed, stabbed with a spear, clubbed, burned and so on. It's done quite well except for that overwrought blood thing from 300.

Quintus, just moments away from gutting another faceless extra

None of the actors excel and none of the chicks are especially hot. We have Michael Fassbender as the titular good guy Centurion Quintus Dias, Liam Cunningham from Dog Soldiers as a guy called Brick, Olga Kurylenko as the main bad guy...or girl as it is here, Noel Clarke from Dr Who as token black guy with very non-period accent, and Imogen Poots from 28 Weeks Later as some girl who lives in the woods.


Ultimately, Centurion is a drinks night movie or something best enjoyed while a little un-sober. It doesn't matter in the end whether the story made sense (or even existed), because I don't think it was supposed to. As an exercise in simple entertainment, Centurion has achieved it's objective.

6/10

Summary: An action winner with no substance past the opening credits. Leave brain at the door but bring in your 6-pack.

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

That's right, a cartoon. I mean an animated feature. A little detour from the horror, porn-like gore fests and adult comedies we normally deal with. So, why? What am I doing reviewing a kids movie? Does it have adult undertones, no. Does it have adult humor, not really. Does it have some cool animation, yes. Did it make me laugh a lot, yes. And that's why this movie is being reviewed - I often lament to myself that movies just don't make me laugh anymore. Quite often I see the humor and I'm amused, but not much makes me laugh out loud.  This did, several times.

Mustache...

Meatballs (as I will call it from now on) is a weird little movie carrying several little themes - friendship, family, achieving your dreams, being yourself. But mostly it's just funny. In a nutshell, the key character, Flint, invents a machine that can make food from water. While trying to draw electricity directly from the power station to make it work properly, the machine flies off into the sky and stays there like a little satellite. Soon after it rains hamburgers. To the people of the town, stuck eating sardines for years, this is mana from heaven - twice as tasty but just as farcical. Flint is ordered to make it rain food every day, for every meal, so the town can promote themselves as the new tourist mecca of gastronomy. Naturally it goes butt up and the machine begins making bigger and bigger food. So it's up to Flint and his friends to fly into a food storm and save the world.

I have the voice of Mr T. Game over.

It's a movie of two distinct halves. The very amusing and entertaining first half, and the more action oriented second half. The first half is by far the more entertaining, which isn't to say the conclusion was bad...it just lost a little steam and went down the traditional 'man vs mutated foods' path. Of particular note in the humor department are the monkey (who loves mustaches), Flint, and his father - for whom everything is a fishing metaphor.

Flint and father...testing a new invention. Hair un-balder I think it was.

So that's my review. I watched this with my 2 year old and it made for a delightful distraction from disembowelments, gun shot wounds and bare breasts. We had a great time and I wager you will too.

8.5/10

A spaghetti twister. Tasty and deadly all at once.

ps. It has the voice talents of Bruce Campbell AND Mr T. That's right. So go watch it.

pps I also watched Up recently. It was good, but not as good as this movie.

A tasty serve of movie with entertainment sauce