Zíza

Pure comedy. Pure Japanese comedy. At the beginning especially it references a lot of pop culture stuff, so for someone who has no experience with Japan, it won't be very understandable or funny. Those who are familiar with it will enjoy it. But Tsuchiya and Mamiya were absolutely divine – they had great chemistry! They definitely didn't disappoint as a comedy duo. Time passed beautifully with them and I wasn't bored. A bit of a loud buddy movie, truly apt by Japanese standards, and damn, those two were really working it on that bike. My only major disappointment was at the end, with the line "You're not my type!" and how nothing came after that. On the other hand, that keeps the guessing game going, and I do really enjoy those. Nicely done transitions. A weaker 4 stars.

I was expecting something terrible because of the reviews, but it ended up being pretty good. A movie about a ninja portrayed by Satoshi Ono? You could never have expected it to be a fully serious affair. The fighting and dramatic scenes are interspersed with slapstick and lightheartedness, but they aren’t hurting anything. The only drawback is the unnecessarily long running time. It could easily have been even fifteen or twenty minutes shorter and we wouldn’t have missed anything. I wasn't really interested in the film at the beginning, I felt like I’d been tossed in among so many characters and their many goals and desires. Of course, as time went on things got clearer, we got rid of some of the characters and started to focus more on fewer of them. We get it all in this film: vicious fights, cruelty, lightheartedness, love, misunderstanding, and hard knocks, and it's pretty nicely mixed together. In essence, this is no historical film, it has nothing to do with it – above all in how it is shot, how the story flows, and how the characters express themselves. A similar story set in the streets of contemporary Tokyo would work the same way. Essentially a modern battle over nothing with everything set during the Warring States period. A cool movie. A weaker 4 stars.

Set design great, nicely shot, a beautiful creature... and then there’s the rest of it. Messy and flaccid, of questionable artistic value, quietly loud, stereotypical – like it's all set in some artificial town full of robots playing humans. And yet they are all completely horny. I don't understand the Oscars (except for the sets), but neither do a lot of other people, so it's okay. 50%.

It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that the main character is really an asshole. On the other hand, the premise was interesting, so I persevered. I don't regret it because the story was interesting and definitely showed a lot of interesting character development. I was a little doubtful that Yamazaki could pull off a series like this on his own, but in the end he managed to convince me that he wouldn't be a bad actor if he worked hard enough. Suda's occasional and especially final performances had a completely different dimension, and especially at the end it was very easy to see how much of a difference there is between them in their acting skills. I also have to mention Mackenyu because I knew him more from high school roles, but he pulled it off here. He put on a new visage and added a whole new dimension to it – his character underwent the biggest transformation and he was able to deliver it very well. Plus he’s also blessed with a beautiful face, so there was something to watch. Lastly, among the distinctive characters we have Kadowaki, the mysterious woman with the killer kiss. I also consider her to be a very capable young actress and I really think she’s going somewhere, as she was able to play both the strange creature and the curvaceous fragile girl very convincingly. That being said, it certainly wasn't the highlight of the season. Interestingly written, well acted for sure, but I couldn't quite connect with the characters so I wasn't exactly jumping out of my seat. It might be an obstacle for some people that the rather serious series are occasionally interspersed with humorous Japanese-type scenes, but it's definitely worth a watch.

A great cast, but it gets sort of bogged down in rather uninteresting ballast about revenge and how journalism should be done properly and how people should behave. A classic revenge story where nobody saves the day. I feel like Kamenashi hasn't really been able to find a decent role in the last few years that would allow him to shine on screen. He does some great jumping and screaming and fighting for justice, and of course he's good at it, but it's terribly boring to watch. I guess it's partly because I've never taken to the writer and her work.

If I had to describe the flow of watching the series: let's see what comes out of this -> hmmm, why not -> boy, this is a bit boring -> has it been this illogical this whole time? -> the penultimate episode is pretty good -> why did the last one totally kill it? That's how it would have ended up. Basically, this show doesn't have much to offer besides your favorite actors and the interactions between the Monkey and Devil King. If glitz is enough for you, take it. If you want an interesting story, my advice is to try the next house down. I was honestly looking forward to it, but in the end... unfortunately the main character was completely useless and overall her character was portrayed so inconsistently that I didn't really know what to think of her anymore. Apart from morsels of lighter moments, you wanted to murder her, and you actually wondered what was supposed to be appealing about her to fall in love with... And then the whole priestess/shaman from back in the day story... when you think about it, it doesn't make that much sense, it just feels like the Hong sisters needed something to move the plot along a bit at times, but they didn't want to kill it, which is one of those things that didn't make much sense. It was all kind of half-baked, half-assed, but so be it. For a while I thought it would have been rated higher, but then it totally dropped off towards the end. That last episode was worth getting smacked over, basically tossing away the little bit that had been building up for the whole 19 episodes! I'm really walking away from this with a bad taste in my mouth and hope to discover something better on Netflix. P.S.: The music was bad. P.S. 2: Big takeaway: makes me want to read the original legend.

Asadoras based on the real life of someone interesting always have something going for them, because even though they're embellished, you know you're peeking into someone's life and it basically contains their entire life (at least in this case). To be honest, it took me a long time to get used to Ono Machiko, I don't know why, but she just didn't fit the part. I didn't like her. Plus, I'm not really into fashion design either, so this was a bit of a tough one. But in the end it was fun, it had its strong moments – whether you were crying or laughing. Anyway, Koshino Ayako was really incredible. It also took me a while to get hooked at first, because there was an okay episode every once in a while and then nothing much that caught my attention for a long time; I still think it's definitely an interesting piece and if anyone is interested in this particular designer, then be my guest. A weaker 4 stars.

Such a disappointment. It’s got such a great story, the anime/manga are suspenseful, full of epic moments and powerful scenes. The movie tried to implement them too, but nothing came of it. It's just a very long, very very well cast (except for Honda Tsubasa, who played Winry), rather visually interesting spectacle, but it doesn't really keep you in the saddle. The actors try their best, the costumes are great, the effects are above average by Japanese standards, you can see that the Japanese did what they could. But unfortunately, it's all rather bland and flavorless, leaving the door open for the next installment. They can come up with one, but they should get rid of the writer, because he obviously messed it up quite a bit. Definitely a film worth seeing, at least for fans of the prequel, but you better not have any expectations. You’re better off buying the manga coming out now from Crew, you're better off buying any anime series. Still, if you want to have at least some idea of what all the memes are actually referring to, where the talking hairy dog is begging Ed to go play with him... why not. That's a pretty good reason to watch it too.

I confess to being a big fan of Agatha Christie and David Suchet's Poirot, so as hard as I tried, I couldn't get past this modern take, where Poirot runs, fights, gets shot at (and hit), steps in dung and then steps in it on purpose again, investigating in a truly un-Poirot-like way. And so on and so forth. This is simply not Hercule Poirot. If they'd just taken inspiration from the prequel and called the detective, say, Jarda Vomáčka, it would have been fine and it would probably have been easier to digest this new Poirot, but nope. Besides, even though it had such a beautiful cast, the acting came across so stilted that I didn't really have anyone to focus on and I was bored for most of the film (except for the scenes where Poirot was deviating from his Poirotness, because I was getting angry and the classic fan in me was fighting it). I admit the visuals were beautiful, but that was the end of it. Definitely a full-on disappointment for me.

The kind of production that plays after midnight when people don't need anything exceptionally interesting, high quality, or suspenseful. Just such a below average affair where it's nice that one episode doesn't last more than half an hour. It's ideal for bedtime, it doesn't make you particularly excited to watch the next episode. The quality of the episodes varies widely. More on the side of garbage. The episode about the first-class cook was also the best in terms of technique.