Movie Reviews

I finished up The Assassin (special edition) and Planetes, Disc 1.

The Assassin was pretty good, with some minor wushu effects and a good cast; it's a normal 'assassin who kills because he has no reason to live finds a reason, turns his back on his profession and is hunted by his former employers' storyline, but done competently well and, ususual for the genre, has a happy ending. The evil cheif eunuch is great; you think he's some old pampered idiot until a group of assassins tries to kill him and he destroys them with casual ease by ripping their hearts out with his bare hands. B.

Planetes is a fantastic anime. I have seen the manga and I was very impressed by it; I might actually have to pick it up now. This is one of the few shows that I've thought would do very well as a live action show. Set in 2075, it has plausible technology (no giant robots or psychics, physics is real and dangerous, space is silent) and nicely done characters though Tanabe's idealistic viewpoint and sometimes obscure reasoning make you want to put her over your knee until you finally realize what her motives in a scene really are.

From the review: ...Over the course of the century that humanity has expanded into space in near orbit, an immense amount of junk has been left up there from repair kits to satellites and other craft. All of these objects, from the biggest piece to the tiniest screw, pose a threat to everything else out there as they on average have a traveling speed of eight kilometers a second. One accident happened back in the 2060's where a tiny screw traveling along hit a suborbital jet and destroyed it completely. In the interim, ships like that beefed up in their armor and other protective measures but all of the main satellites out there in low earth orbit had to start bringing new programs into place that would handle all of the debris. And like any department, they're just as underfunded and often thought of as second class to everyone else. A+