Sci-Fi In July: Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2009)

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My daughter has gotten into Manga and Anime in a big way, so I try to watch some of that with her. We’d both heard of the Evangelion series, but neither of us really knew anything about it. It is a confusing franchise as there are numerous series and movies, with reboots and rebuilds thrown into the mix.

We more or less randomly decided to start with this film, which is essentially a retelling of the original Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series. That series isn’t available on our streaming services, but this film is on Crunchyroll, and since it basically retells the original story, we figured it was as good a place as any to start with.

Having now seen the film, I’m not so sure that was true. I found much of the story quite confusing, and it very much feels like I’m missing a large part of the lore.

The film drops you right into the middle of it, without explanation. Best I can figure is that sometime in the past, these giant Kaiju creatures known as Angels came to Earth, nearly destroying it. Humans have now built Mech-Warrior-type robots, called Evangelions, to fight back.

For reasons that are never really explained, the head leader dude taps his estranged 14-year-old son to pilot one of the Evangelion robot thingies. Though he is very young and has had zero training, they pop him into it and ask him to fight an incoming Angel.

He fumbles at first, nearly destroying the machine and killing himself, but miraculously, he recovers and destroys the angel. After some unspecified amount of time, another Angel arrives, and basically the same thing happens. Shinji is placed back into the Evangelion; he has no idea what he’s doing, but after taking some losses, he somehow finds a way to destroy the angel. Rinse, repeat.

In between these battles, he talks with his guardian Misato and becomes friends with Rei, another Evangelion pilot who was previously injured. Shinji only pilots his machine reluctantly, being essentially forced to do it, but Rei willingly takes it on with a sense of duty and honor.

It ends with a cliffhanger and some weirdness.

I seriously don’t know what to make of this film. I understood the basic plotlines, but so much of it was left unexplained. It felt very much like I was supposed to have watched the original series, even though this seems like it was designed as a straight retelling of it with updated animation.

There is a lot of mythology built into it that I simply don’t understand. I kind of hated it, but I also want to watch more. There is something about it that is truly interesting and I’d like to dig into that, but I’m not sure whether to watch the next movie or go back to the original series.

Now Watching: Wallace & Gromit:Vengence Most Fowl (2024)

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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)
Directed by Merlin Crossingham & Nick Park
Starring: Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith, and Diane Morgan

Synopsis: Top dog Gromit springs into action to save his master when Wallace’s high-tech invention goes rogue and he is framed for a series of suspicious crimes.

Rating: 8/10

We’re big fans of Wallace & Gromit here at The Midnight Cafe. They have this wonderful blend of nostalgic conservatism and modern progress. The claymation is all handmade, which makes it both not quite exactly perfect and absolutely beautiful.

The setting of all these films and short films is intentionally opaque, with much of it feeling like the 1960s but with plenty of modern technology. Wallace seems like an old-fashioned, traditional conservative, while Gromit, his dog, is much more modern. I’m making it sound like these are political films, and they are decidedly not. It’s more like an updating of a British Norman Rockwell, but with anthropomorphic animals, Rube Goldberg machines, and lots of cheese. Anyway, if you’ve never seen a Wallace & Gromit film, I highly recommend them.

This one finds Wallace inventing a robot gnome that can do your household chores. When one of them gets switched to “Evil” mode by a malevolent penguin, things get a little bit crazy.

It is wonderfully funny, boisterous, and filled with loads of action. I have a hard time ranking any of these films because I just lovely them so wholeheartedly.

The Prince’s Voyage (2019) Blu-ray Review

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I’m an amateur film reviewer. I don’t do this for money. The closest I get is landing some free Blu-rays from Cinema Sentries. I do this for fun. I like movies. I like talking about movies. I think I’m pretty good at it, but I’m not professional. I didn’t go to film school.

I follow a lot of professional film writers on social media. Sometimes they complain about amateur film writers like me. Sometimes they complain that bad reviews just talk about the plot of a movie. Good reviews should talk about a film’s themes, about the filmmaking, and style. Plot synopsis can be found on Wikipedia.

I get that to a degree. But I’d also argue that it depends on what type of review you are doing. Often a review exists simply to give an opinion on whether or not the film is worth watching. To do that you are going to need to talk about plot. At least a little bit. People want to know what a movie is about before they decide whether or not they want to watch it.

I think about these things when I’m writing a review. I think about them when I read old reviews. Because I’m an amateur, because I’ve never studied film in a formal way I don’t always have something meaningful to say about a film. When I don’t have much to say I revert to talking about the plot. I hope I do it in an entertaining, or at least interesting way. I try not to give too much away while still letting you know something about the film. I never think those reviews are my best, but sometimes that’s what you get.

That is a lot of words to say that my review of The Prince’s Voyage is mostly about the plot. That’s actually good for me because I remember very little about it. I wrote this review back in May of 2021. Now you can read it too.

31 Days of Horror: Perfect Blue (1997)

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It feels like such a treat to get an animated horror film. I’m a relatively big fan of animation and I realize that there are a lot of animated films being made that are not what you would call family-friendly. GKids has been putting out a lot of great stuff that deals with very mature themes and are meant for mature adults. Yet, in the USA animation seems primarily aimed and children. Even the great films Pixar have been putting out, many of which do deal with things like sadness and death, keep everything cheerful enough for the kiddos to watch.

So I say again, it feels like such a treat to get an animated horror film, even if this one did come out in 1997.

Perfect Blue is about Mima (voiced by Junko Iwao) a pop singer who is putting down her microphone in order to become a serious actress. In order to make that transition, she has to do things like pose nude in a magazine and perform in a brutal rape scene. All of which puts a bit of a crack in her psyche.

It doesn’t help that some crazed fan is stalking her, pretending to be her in online chat rooms, and murdering the people in her life.

The film blends reality and fiction in really interesting ways. There are lots of scenes that appear to be real only then to pull the curtain and make us realize it is a scene the actress is performing in or just a dream. I’m still not sure exactly what happened in it. But I rather loved watching every bit of it.