Casshern

[TheCrow]

Plot: In a world with an alternate history, a great war finally comes to an end leaving the earth diseased and polluted. The geneticist Dr. Azuma vies for support from the government for his neo-cell treatment that he claims can rejuvenate the body and regenerate humankind. The government leaders, guarding their own deeply entrenched powers, turn down the professor. Driven to complete his work, Dr. Azuma accepts a secret offer from a sinister faction of the powerful military. After an incident occurs in Dr. Azuma's lab, a race of mutant humans known as the Neoroids are unleashed upon the world. Now only the warrior known as Casshern, Dr. Azuma's son, reincarnated with an invincible body, stands between the Neoroids and a world on the brink of annihilation.

The main Neoroid

The Neoroids robot army

[TheCrow]

Dramatic, cool fight scenes, has endless scenes of beautiful and imaginative CGI, and some wonderful music. It features an array of stunning, retro-futuristic buildings and vehicles and has a feel similat to Lord of the Rings and Nazi propaganda films. It's not an action movie per-se, but like X-Men, the characters do fight. There are guns, swords, martial arts, superpowers, giant robots and giant giant robots.

Visually stunning this movie was shot almost entirely against a green screen, with the backgrounds and some of the action put in later with CGI. The effects/CGI is pretty good to say it's Japanese and reportedly only had a 5mil budget (less than most American Indy films) The CGI has a certain charm to it... It's not ultra realistic like you would expect from a hollywood blockbuster but neither is it too cartoony. In some places it does look a bit like a videogame but for the most part it kinda looks more like a traditional hand drawn anime rather than normal CGI.

The style of story telling is typically Japanese (I say typical, I've only seen one other Japanese film but it was similar) going from a fast scene to a slow scene and whatnot but all the story is there and I didn't find myself getting lost in it or anything. The story itself, well you obviously can't expect much from it but it is pretty good and is actually quite dramatic with a moral and point.

The editing of the fight scenes is good and there are some cool visuals, the director seems to have tried to bring the style of an anime to a live action fight sequence. There is one fight in particular that I keep watching over and over. It's the second fight of the movie and just with the tension built up and the music and cool visuals, it's just as good if not better than the stuff from The Matrix.

Some critics have said this is style over substance. But the theme overpowers the style. The pictures tell the story. But the point of Casshern is not simply that war is bad; it's that maybe war is unavoidable, and so what can one man do? It's going for about £20.00 in the UK which is a bit much when you might not like it but it's definately worth a rental, especially if your a fan of Japanese/anime/comic book style films.

[AncientMyste]

I am a VERY BIG fan of anime. I watch it and draw it. I am very interested in this movie. I enjoy Japanese film. They are so different that 'western' type films. Very interesting culture. I am going to look for this movie!

[Super Pancake]

What I love about this film its all CG except for the actors, amazing film even though I never watched the series once. I did not think the stlye overshadowed the story, it was good a must by if you like action films and anime.

"2046" by Wong Kar-Wai is another movie that uses the same technique as Casshern but has a better story in my opinion.

[AncientMyste]

What I love about this film its all CG except for the actors, amazing film even though I never watched the series once. I did not think the stlye overshadowed the story, it was good a must by if you like action films and anime.

"2046" by Wong Kar-Wai is another movie that uses the same technique as Casshern but has a better story in my opinion.

608603[/snapback]

I'll have to put "2046" on my list. Japanese films are, especially fantasy and horror, are so much more sophisticated than western films.

[Super Pancake]

I'll have to put "2046" on my list. Japanese films are, especially fantasy and horror, are so much more sophisticated than western films.

609040[/snapback]

Yes its a great film a love story dont know if your into that, what I like about it, its not a linear story like all most every western film but non linear like "pulp fiction" and "21 grams," plus it got that great anime style meshed with real actors like Casshern. And one more thing its not really a japanese film, but its a Hong Kong film. I hope that did not stop you from buying it, the Hong kong movies have the some what similar aura as Japanese films, here is a website you can ckeck out for great Hong kong and Japanes films lovehkfilm.com. I hope you can find the dvd because this movie has been sold out and is out of stock months ago well from the last time I checked some of my favorite foreign film sites! if i can find a place that got it I will pm you. Here is a small review I pulled from yesasia.com.

Possibly the most highly anticipated film from Hong Kong this year is undoubtedly the brand new piece from Wong Kar Wai, one of the world's most acclaimed directors. Five years in the making and starring some of the biggest stars in Asia, 2046 is not merely a film, it is a cultural event of 2004.

With a cast featuring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, Carina Lau, Faye Wong and Kimura Takuya one cannot deny the star power in this project, but the spotlight is really on Wong. His usual production collaborators such as production designer and editor William Cheng and cinematographer Christopher Doyle are back on board for this ride into the world that only Wong Kar Wai can conjure. Is 2046 a hotel room number? A train to the future? A memory? The year before China’s fifty-year of self-governing promise for Hong Kong expires? In many ways, it is all of the above, but also none of the above. Like all previous Wong films, it is the journey, and not the destination that matters, and all these inhabitants in his film are haunted not by the fear of the future but by the pain of the past.

Loosely a sequel to Wong's previous film, In the Mood for Love, Tony Leung once again plays writer Chow Mo Wan, but he is nothing like the Chow Mo Wan from the previous film. Now Chow has become a womanizer who writes soft pornographic stories to sustain his boozing habits. In the film we see his various relationships with a group of women: Black Spider (Gong Li) in Singapore, whose real name, Su Li Zhen, is the same as slz 1960 (Maggie Cheung), his lover in In The Mood for Love. His friendship with Mimi (Carina Lau reprising a previous WKW role), Wang Jing Wen (Faye Wong), the daughter of the motel owner who is in love with a Japanese man (Kimura Takuya) and his illicit affair with callgirl Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi), a resident in room 2046. Is Chow Mo Wan really a completely different character, existing in a parallel world to In the Mood for Love, or is he really the same character but is now completely destroyed by a failed romance?

With Cheng's luscious art direction, Doyle's stunning cinematography, a hypnotic soundtrack by Peer Raben and Shigeru Umebayashi, as well as stunning performances from the cast, 2046, is the latest masterpiece from writer/producer/director Wong Kar Wai. The story is presented to you, and it's up to you to find its own meaning.