Fish and Cherries Productions

The Maze Runner was certainly engaging, but that doesn’t necessarily make it good. There’s the general “been there, done that” vibe felt throughout the movie, but it would have at least been salvageable if the characters had any, well, character. None of them really have any personality except for the stock ones of the protagonist, the guy mired in tradition, and the tagalong kid. Everyone else feels really flat and most don’t have clear motivations at all. The sole girl in the film was a complete nonentity and had no purpose whatsoever. I’m not going to harp on about the failure of the Bechdel Test because I consider that a very weak application of feminism and not really telling of any real progressiveness, but the fact that there are no other women in the film (with no explanation for why that is) just makes me scratch my head.

In fact, a lot of stuff isn’t explained well. Things are just thrown at you and it’s a flip of the coin whether you’ll get answers in this film or the next. There’s one part where the main character stumbles upon a strange wooden totem deep in the forest with the name George on it that was surrounded by bones, human and possibly otherwise. The film offered no explanation what it was and the way it was presented made it feel like it was going to pay off later. As such, I assumed that George was a boy brought into this mysterious commune early on, but then became a mad cannibal and forced the others to worship him as a god before the current leader assembled a band to overthrow and possibly kill him. And I’m not convinced that it wouldn’t have made a better movie.

The visuals are good, the twist at the end is nifty (that is, before something completely pointless and head-scratching happens), and I appreciate that the movie tried to diversify the surviving cast, but it brings absolutely nothing new to the table and leaves me with a resounding feeling of “meh.” While they were able to make an engaging scenario, they unfortunately weren’t able to make me give a crap.

Title: Saga (volumes 1-3)
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Fiona Staples
Type: Comic Book
Genre: Space opera, Fantasy, Romance

Summary: They say love is a battlefield, but in this case, the battlefield was Cupid. In the midst of an everlasting war between the winged people of Landfall and the horned folk of Wreath, two warriors from opposing sides, Alana and Marko, fall in love, run away together, and conceive a child named Hazel. And neither side is happy about this. On top of both of them being deserters, their union and offspring are considered sacrilegious by the warring people and they worry that spread of this news could damage moral of the troops. To deal with this problem, each side hires an assassin to take them out. Landfall hires Prince Robot IV, a member of mechanical aristocracy whose wife is with child herself, while Wreath contacts The Will, a stoic assassin who travels with a lie-detecting cat. The couple is always on the run, dealing with assassins, in-laws, undead nannies, and even ex-lovers to find a place where their love can be safe.

Coming from the mind that gave us Y: The Last Man and Marvel’s Runaways, Saga is a stroke of pure brilliance. The concept is fairly fresh, the dialogue is natural and snappy, and the creature and character designs are so bizarre and outlandish that they’ll never leave your head. For crying out loud, the royal family of Robot has TVs for heads. That is so surreal, it just has to be memorable. The characters are also a nice bag of complexities, each having their own baggage that makes them very distinctive. My personal favorite is Izabel, a teenage ghost with half of her body missing who becomes Hazel’s babysitter. Her design is great and there’s an irreverence about her that I just find really endearing.

While the idea of star-crossed lovers from two feuding houses isn’t exactly a new story, the science fiction and fantasy elements make it feel very new. Some spaceships happen to be living trees, which I don’t think I’ve often seen juxtaposed against laser and hard chrome. Granted, the exact limits of the magic aren’t fully explained, but I get the feeling that a clearer picture will be drawn as the series continues. The universe itself just feels so alive and diverse. It’s not just the two warring factions, there are tons of interesting aliens with their own unique cultures. Even small touches like the type of entertainment that exists in the universe acts like that subtle spice that turns good food into a culinary masterpiece.

At the end of the day, what we have is a unique epic from a man who has come out with stellar work in the past. Time will tell if this ever surpasses the quality of Y: The Last Man, which I previously thought impossible, but now I’m not so sure. Until then, all we know is that Brian K. Vaughan’s transcendent writing and Fiona Staples’ beautiful artwork have come together to form a great child of their own.

Kill Bill Volume 2 kicked the simplicity right out of the plot near the end and delivered a satisfying and full circle conclusion. I want to keep this short because I don’t want to spoil anything, but suffice to say, the ending tied everything set up in this and the last movie together perfectly. By far, though, the standout moments came down to the crotchety old martial arts instructor played by Gordon Liu, Pai Mei. He owns every single scene he’s in. But really, this kicked the whole affair from being passable to a truly great experience. I really wish that I had waited until viewing this and then done both of them in one review because of that. But yeah, check it out, have a movie night, and bust out the popcorn.

Kill Bill Volume 1 is a movie that really wants to be remembered with its stylized action, vivid colors, and other odd quirks. It succeeds, but I don’t know if that’s the same as it being great. First and foremost, this film is a gender-flipped action movie as well as a straightforward revenge plot, so that will definitely contribute to whether you’ll enjoy it or not. I feel like a lot of people will get swept up in the action, but for me, my brain kept trying to analyze the visual quirks on screen, ranging from a very obvious castration metaphor to a very bizarre fountain juxtaposed with the final fight scene that I couldn’t decipher at all. The movie itself is structured like a comic book collection with the aforementioned vivid colors, the stylized gore, the breaking up of the story into five chapters that draw you in, and a huge cliffhanger at the end that will make you want to pick up the next volume, among other things. The characters are not complex by any means, though they’re not supposed to be. It’s just confusing when the movie is more complex than they are, shifting through genres and styles from action to drama to anime to exploitation, taking on a very different look with each one and I’m just sitting here, scratching my head and wondering what Tarantino was going for, other than to show off that he went to film school. Giving a recommendation is pointless because I’m the one late to the party here. Suffice to say, it’s probably something I’ll watch again for the experience alone and it does make me want to see the second volume. Speaking of…