tethered to a burning sphere

Two things watched last week:

Redline (2009), dir. Takeshi Koike. We watched this as a chaser to Ford v Ferrari and it was AMAZING; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every film I’ve seen from Takeshi Koike so I knew this would probably rule, but I was not prepared for just how much cooler it was than his three Lupin III features! (Of which I am also very fond, Daisuke Jigen’s Gravestone is still so good.) Redline was apparently his debut full-length film, and not only is it every inch in his signature style but also absolutely BURSTING with visual creativity, every single scene was so much fun to look at, just wall-to-wall OTT sci-fi design. Weird aliens! Weird planets! Weird spaceships and cars! I’m sure I could watch this three more times and still be noticing new things to appreciate on the fourth round, there’s just SO much going on. The concept of the plot is also terrific, it’s about a no-holds-barred intergalactic race being held on a planet of [totally not Nazis] who are NOT onboard with racing and have declared open season on any racers who dare to land in their territory, which a) doesn’t faze the race organizers At All and b) ultimately results in the racers doing so much incidental damage to the planet’s military and infrastructure that they accidentally facilitate the revolution, lol. Basically this movie feels like Takeshi Koike watched the pod race in Phantom Menace and went “I need two more hours of this immediately,” it’s GREAT.

Also, all this despite the film actually having some glaring flaws, to wit: 1) the usual problem of anime artists overflowing with creativity right up until they have to draw a woman, whereupon my guy Koike rolls up his sleeves, slaps down Standard Sameface Stock Anime Woman #1, and calls it a day; and 2) a whole bunch of dropped subplots at the end, which feels so rushed that one gets the distinct impression they either ran out of time, money, or runtime allowance, lol. Which sounds dire, but the thing is that even taking these things into account this movie was STILL 10/10 incredible, loved every stupid bombastic space drama minute, WHAT a delight. Would watch again!

The Old Guard (2020). The ratings for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes are 80% from critics and 70% from audiences and that pretty much sums up how I felt about it, because objectively it’s pretty solid but subjectively I found it too bleak to really enjoy. (Also it’s a Netflix production rather than a theatrical release, which means it’s not really visually up to par for the action genre; this isn’t a complaint, them’s just the breaks when you’re not being bankrolled by Paramount or whatever, but this doubtless did factor into how I felt about it.) The plot concerns a group of people from different time periods who, for reasons unknown, at some point in their life became unable to die; two of them get captured by a ~mad CEO who hopes to use them to develop and market eternal life, and the rest of the team has to arrange a rescue, ft. newbie immortal whom they’ve just picked up. The writing really leans into every single “immortality is depressing” trope in the book, but the still bleaker part is ( spoilers )

And really the story and the character beats are quite good, but it’s all such a downer that I, personally, cannot. I don’t regret watching it, Charlize Theron was good, but wouldn’t watch it again. (Also: slightly croggled by mad CEO’s resident voice of reason being a CIA guy!)