Reviewing a Classic: Seven Samurai (七人の侍)

Year: 1954
Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura
Written by: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni

This is a movie so great many of its plot elements have been recycled countless of times. Seven Samurai has spawned a lot of great movies of their own rights: Magnificent Seven and A Bug's Life to mention a couple. There's a slight problem with viewing a classic that has aged as well as Seven Samurai today - it feels formulaic. So many things can be predicted such as the romance between a young samurai and a village girl, many splastick incidents, the climactic battle and the ultimate sacrifice that comes after that.

Fortunately Seven Samurai is so fine a movie that even those slight problems don't deal too much blow on my enjoyment of the movie. Of all the plot borrowed by modern filmmakers, there's one essential element prominent in this film that is frequently missing in their movies: character development, which is actually helped by the film's lengthy running time. All the Seven, especially Mifune's Kikuchiyo and Shimura's Kambei, are fleshed out as breathing human beings with their own personalitites and motivations. As a result, we root and care for them in every skirmish they're in.

Seven Samurai is undisputably one of the best films ever made. The battle scenes are superbly directed and coreographed and we understand what each character's role is and what he is doing or planning to do. The acting is superb. After playing a lowly woodcutter in Rashomon (羅生門), Takashi Shimura skillfully brought some of his innate gravitas into his character: the wise and noble leader of the Seven, Kambei while Mifune had to bring his maniacal self to play the mercurial Kikuchiyo. This Kurosawian epic about an underappreciated valor is one of the earliest examples of artistic and blockbuster filmmaking seamlessly blended together.

Reviewing 'Eclipse' is a self-alienating deed

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Directed by: David Slade
Starring: Kirsten Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Bryce Dallas Howard, Dakota Fanning
Written by: Melissa Rosenberg (adapted from Stephanie Meyer's novel)

I have to alienate virtually all tween girls when writing a review for this movie. But when you're alienating that many people, you are actually alienating yourself, ain't it?

Anyway, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is a corny, poorly-acted exercise of a movie from which entertainment can only be derived from unintentional moments of comedy. Summit Entertainment knew it had a blockbuster in the making, and yet the studio was simply stingy, producing it with a measly $60-ish million production budget. The end result is a flick with bad CGI and bad direction which had succesfully drawn out some aforementioned chuckles from me and my friends. Consider a scene in which the Cullen Clan is chasing the villain through the woods, leaping from trees to trees. It was supposed to be a scene that could provide some cool moments, but in the end, bad CGI and action coreography got me laughing contemplatingly to the farce.

Enough with the technical issues. Aesthetically, the movie can only boast mundane dialogues and wooden expressions. Mundane dialogues... But then again they're just teenagers, so what do you expect? Right. But how about the romance? Even from the first movie I can't still figure out why Bella and Edward are so madly in love with each other; They have a generation gap between them, they don't seem to share the same sense of humor, and they are never engaged in either a lively or an interesting conversation. Everything seems forced and I'm inclined to favor Team Jacob. But ooh, Jacob. Taylor Lautner had spent months in the gym only to appear in unnecessary bare-chested scenes (obviously trying to draw out some 'oohs' and 'aahs' from the targeted tween crowd).

Finally, and inevitably (and also thankfully), comes the final showdown which is the most entertaining bit of the movie. It is an absolute far-cry from other battle scenes derived from fantasy novels, but at least the giant wolves were decently rendered and the whole thing simply didn't disappoint: the way the vampires turned into some kinds of potteries when they're killed was simply amusing to see.

I'm really sorry if I offend any of you girls with this review, but I'm just trying to represent all the guys in the world who had to sit through this. Cheers.

My Rating: 4/10