Overview: OK, so you don’t have a huge budget or any orginal ideas but you still want to make a cool Scifi flick? Answer: Just merge together little bits from lots of popular scifi movies, and make sure you get good actors with nice chemistry. This is in essence what Yamazaki has done. He’s literally taken E.T., the Terminator futuristic dystopia time travel thing, only he substitued Independance Day Aliens (and their technology) that look like E.T. for the exterminators, and a cute asian chick for Reece. Add in an asian mafia group to mix things up, and to top it all off, Yamazaki stole matrix-like action and cinematography looks to bring this project all together.

Truly, this movie has grown on my since I first watched it. And looking at it from a cyberpunk lens, it truly fits well. While on the surface, this idea of merging every popular scifi movie together into one might appear to be a complete and utter mess, but it sorta works as an enjoyable, present day cyberpunk flick. Even wierder than the grand larceny of the various movies is the overt nods to many of the scenes from those movies. Yamazaki isn’t hiding anything here - he knows that we will know he has stolen all his key elements. So instead of shoving this under the “plot” table, a number of the scenes are literally duplicate nods from these movies. This more than anything rises Returner up from the run-of-the-mill copycats to something more interesting - almost Tarantino like, but far more overt.

The Story: Milly (Anne Suzuki) is an average foot soldier serving in the last gasp of mankind, 80 years in the future where alien invaders have all but wiped out humananity. As a last gasp effort to save the human race, a group of scientists have been trying to develop a time travel machine to send someone back to when the aliens first arrived - they believe it was the first alien that called the others to destroy the earth, so if they could just go back in time and kill it, maybe the rest would not have come. Through an odd twist of fate, Milly ends up being the one sent back to save Mankind.

Milly hooks up with this two-bit hoodlum named Miyamoto (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who has devoted his life to avenging his childhood friend’s death at the hands of the local mafia. Milly coerces Miyamoto into helping her find the alien who recently crash landed so she can kill it. The story gets convoluted when the mafia gets involved - they see power in the alien’s weapontry. From there, the chase is on to both avenge the mafia and find and deal with the alien.

The Acting: Again, while this wierd amalgomation of big production scifi films could turn out to be an utter mess, its the chemistry between Milly and Miyamoto which saves it. They are wonderful together. On second viewing, I found I liked their chemistry even more. Also, the evil mafia leader, Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitani) is pretty fun as an over-the-top bad guy. He does everything from blow away little kids, to engaging in gratuitous breast groping, to conducting repeated attempts at gangster coolness.

The FX: Even though they are low budget, they work. Even the matrix-like coolness effects work to some extent. The problem is getting around the obvious thefts that are put in, albeit in a different light. Its hard, for instance, to see E.T. as the bad guy. The surround sound FX are also pretty well done, with nice positional FX and good deep bass.
The Action: Again, think Matrix Rip-off here, complete with the various high kicks into people, along with your average asian gangster shootout movies. We also get some fun little ID4 alien technology fights, force field and all. While not original, it’s at least consistently well done. And while the story and action are well enough put together to keep you engaged, again, its really the interplay between Milly and Miyamoto that makes this movie work. Their performances make you care for these two characters far more than you should. I would almost liken it to a Jonny Depp-like saving of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Also, there’s a wonderful little time-travel twist at the end which is truly heartwarming.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!: By the way, if you get this movie, for Godsakes, whatever you do, DON’T use the english dubbing. We’re talking 70s chop-saki bad movie dubbing here!

The Bottom Line: Returner is one of those hard ones to judge in that it has some clear sucky elements (no original ideas, for instance). But just as clearly, the director both realizes this and plays off it. Moreso, the performances by the two leads make returner easily watchable. Again, fair warning, we’re not talkin masterpiece here, and had I not given it 6 stars, I probably would have dropped it down to 3 (meaning you either buy the director is doing the rip off in an intelligent way, or you decided this is just tacky in the extreme). But in the end I decided it is a decent low-budget movie that hits on enough cylinders to make it worthwhile.

Overview:Twelve Monkeys is yet another tour-de-force from film maker Terry Gilliam. Done as a remake to the very innovative experimental French film, La Jetée, Gilliam is able to take the same notions of time travel, dystopic futures and personal trauma and love, and wrap it into a truly riviting package.

Because of the similarities, I have reviewed this movie in-depth in combination with La Jetée (these two movies truly go together). Please check it out:

• The Acorn and the Oak Tree - a complimentary pairing…

Overview:La Jetée as a movie is one of the most interesting I’ve encountered. Virtually the whole movie involves narrating still shots. While this sounds like a glorified slideshow, its anything but. The pacing is magnificent. The mood created is truly immersive. In a truly astounding feat, Marker traps the viewer in this "slide show" mentality, and then, as the movie is discussing whether the character can decipher what’s real or not, he pulls the run out from under us.

I have reviewed this movie in-depth in combination with 12 Monkeys (these two movies truly go together). Please check it out:

• The Acorn and the Oak Tree - a complimentary pairing…

Overview: More often than not, most of the best scifi movies are coming from other countries. Anime is no exception. Wonderful Days (Called Sky Blue in some US locations) is a visual masterpiece of 2D/3D blended animation. While movies like Sinbad, with its wonderful background, but completely stuck on 2D characters shows us the low-end of this spectrum, Wonderful Days is a terrific example of the best in 2D/3D blended animation. This futuristic cyberpunk tale is not the most original, but is done more than well enough to allow to you be totally “wowed” by the visuals and incredible 3D positional sound.

Wonderful Days takes place in a dystopic future in the year 2140. The world has been decimated and ravaged by war, reckless exploitation of the earth and over-pollution. Clouds have all but blocked out the sun and human civilization is on the brink of elimination. In this chaos, a group of elites have developed a method of using the pollution to create an energy source, and have used this to build a magnificent city called Ecoban.

Thousands of Refugees have flocked to the Marr, the outskirt wasteland of this Ecoban in the hopes of gaining entrance, but unfortunately this has become a society of the elite and the masses. Instead, the citizens of Ecoban use the Marr as their personal slave labor to work the machines which keep Ecoban running. Life is cheap for the Marr, and the Ecoban elite care far more about their power generation than they do the welfare of the Marr. Unfortunately for the citizens of Ecoban, it appears as if the earth is starting to recover, and the level of pollution is dropping. The governing council has decided to use any means possible to maintain pollution levels to keep their hold on power.

On a more personal level, this story revolves around three people, who knew each other as children living in Ecoban, but are now adults.

• Jay - a cute female captain of the Ecoban guard, who has begun to
  doubt the system she supports.
• Shua - who was cast out of Ecoban as a child under dubious circumstances, only wants to show his adopted kid brother of the streets, Woody, what a blue sky looks like. He saw this once as a child with Jay, and has spent his life trying to overthrow Ecoban in order to see it again.
• Cade - the security commander of Ecoban, who is deeply in love
  with Jay.

Shua, with the help of a aging Ecoban Engineer-turned resistance leader named Dr. Noah, who was involved in the creation of Ecoban’s power source, has infiltrated Ecoban’s key computer, the Delos System. There he hopes to get information to learn how to destabilize and destroy Ecoban. Unfortunately, he sets off alarms, and is forced to escape, and ends up facing off against his former best friend Jay. After he escapes, Jay seeks him out in the Marr, and they eventually re-establish their friendship, and eventually their love for one another. Meanwhile, Cade, with the help of the Malevolent Commander Locke will stop at nothing to protect the city he loves. When he finds out that his former rival Shua is involved, and that he is re-established contact with Jay, he only has one course to pursue - the total destruction of Shua and the resistance.

The Cinematography:While the story is by no means original, the cinematography is simply stunning on every level. Wonderful Days uses real film-like effects to increase the “realness,” believability and engagement far more than any animation I’ve seen. We get everything from the use of out of focus backgrounds, changing focal points, lens flares, jerky camera movements, and incredibly interesting perspective shots. On top of this, we get wonderfully rendered raindrops, rendered under-water explosions intermixed with hand drawn fire, and the most incredible array of deep and vibrant color effects in virtually every scene.

And while all this is astounding, what truly blows you away is the quality of the intermixing of 2D and 3D animation. Its almost hard to explain how well the 2D animation is blended, especially if you’ve seen something like Sinbad, which almost just layers the 2D on top of a background like velcro puppets on a background. Here we get blended effects that truly serve to tie the 2D with the 3D animation. Wonderful Days is simply the best out there at this type of animation.

Sound Effects: While the cinematography is the real crown of this movie, the sound effects aren’t far behind. Truly, this is the best use of positional surround sound I’ve heard in an anime. We have wonderful “swoop” sounds by the motorcycles that are as good as live action racing movies, realistic explosions complete with pieces flying at you, detailed gunfire and wind sounds, and more importantly, a clear level of care throughout that rarely is equaled. As an interesting effect, the selections in the score are almost disconcerting in how different they are. We have everything from rock music to a wonderful use of opera at the end for emotional building.

Is this Cyberpunk? You bet it is. While we don’t have the traditional merging of man and technology, all the other elements are here in spades. We get a glorious depiction of a the seedy underground, the powerful elite, impressive hacking, a wonderfully rendered dystopia, flawed heroes, and most importantly - style in abundant quantities!

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The Bottom Line: If you’re interested in seeing the best in immersive scifi anime, Wonderful Days is a fine choice. While it doesn’t have close to the philosophical depth of Oshii’s movies, the story moves along and the immersive action is simply breathtaking. You truly do think you’re watching a continual piece of art go across the screen. And again, while the story is neither complex nor innovative, it is decently well done, especially if you dig cyberpunk-type themes. However, the quality of the cinematography and the intense care given to this film easily raises Wonderful Days up one of my favorite all-time cyberpunk movies.

Get this for the visuals and overall cyberpunk style. Wonderful Days truly deserves to be seen by all.

Overview: Johnny Mnemonic has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. Yes, this movie has problems, not the least of which is having a name that I can never remember how to spell, but overall, this movie is just pure cyberpunk fun! Johnny Mnemonic has a terrific mix of “punk” and “cyber” although it definitely strays to the “punk” side of things. He we have corporate domination, punk rebellion, modified humans (and dolphins!), dystopian societies and all the rest, all wrapped up in some wonderfully inspired William Gibson visuals.

Johnny (played by cyberpunk zen master, Keanu Reeves) is a data courier who deals in somewhat shady and dangerous clients in need of data getting discretely transferred to another location. He has gotten a large chunk of his long term memory removed in order to have enough space to put a massive hard drive inside his head. Unfortuantely, his space isn’t large enough for his newest high paying customer, but he still takes the assignment even though there’s danger of data seepege into the brain. During the “transfer,” all hell breaks loose, with guns and bullets flying everywhere. Johnny is forced to flee, and eventually hooks up with a damaged bodygaurd played by Dina Meyer. Together they attempt to deliver the data from China to New Jersey, but unfortunately, SERIOUS complications arise when they find out what Johnny is actually holding in his head. Ice Tea and Takeshi Kitano also have notable roles in this flick.

The Bottom Line: Johnny M., while mostly a scifi thriller, has some terrific lines. For anyone who’s seen this, you will remember the “I want room service” scene. I still love that! While I can’t argue that this is a great movie, I do really enjoy it. Still, it clearly could have been better. But at least this is contrasted with a few really fun scenes.

Overview: Many consider Akira to be the start of modern Japanese anime. In comparing Akira with Appleseed (also from 1988), I tend to agree. Appleseed represents high quality earlier anime, whereas Akira is truly something different both in tone and style. Akira definitely strays to the “punk” side of cyberpunk, but has full clashes with the corporate control element and technology run amok.

Akira’s story centers around Tetsuo, a member of a biker gang in the year 2019. Along come a group of military scientist types who look to stretch the boundaries of human capability by engaging tetsuo in experiments. Unfortunately for them, the experiments prove far too successful to the point that the develop an all-powerful monster that rages out of control.

The Bottom Line: Akira has terrific adult visuals and a great sound track. As a personal preference though, I wasn’t as thrilled with the later half of the movie. Some love it, I didn’t nearly as much. There seems to be a debate where people either love this or Ghost in the Shell (guess which one I love?). It almost seemed DragonballZ-like, but again, this is also personal preference. Regardless, Akira is a true giant of anime and should be considered required watching for anyone who wants to learn more about cyberpunk or anime.

Overview: Natural City is a high priced attempt by the Korean movie industry to break into the Scifi Genre. The quality of the effects in Natural City clearly shine, both in the absolutely terrific set pieces, the painted backgrounds and the very realistic future setting. This is a cyberpunk movie to its core, with every possible aspect of cyberpunkness oozing from every pore of this movie. We get cyborgs, genetically engineered and cybernetically enhanced people, dominating corporations, theft and greed, seedy underground people and scenes, information access issues, and MASSIVE cyberpunk style. But truly, the reason Natural City rates this high is the absolutely wonderful cyborg character study in exploring issues of humanity.

The Setting: Natural City as a title is 180 degrees from what you get in a setting - nothing is real here. In this dystopian setting, genetic engineering and cyborg development have become an accepted way of life. Pretty much everyone in this city lives a miserable existence, in fact, its expected that life is pain. Vacations are taken in the equivalent of a Star Trek Holodeck type machine. The ultimate dream of everyone in this city is to become rich enough to retire to a floating hotel called Muyoga (see the picture immediately below), which advertises that it can erase your current memory and place you in a "virtual" life of your own choosing. This is extremely interesting, especially when compared to Oshii’s Avalon, in which one view of the the "ultimate" life is one where you are in a simulated reality of your own mind even though your body is a slobbering mess in the "real" world.

In Natural City, Cyborgs perform a myriad of societal functions - everything from entertainment and dancing, to restaurant helpers to working on the police force. To perform all these functions effectively, Cyborgs have a degree of self-awareness. This causes significant complications when their expiration date nears, as they know what it means to "expire." While some of the characteristics seem vaguely familiar to another far more famous cyberpunk movie (cyborgs with expiration dates, for instance), the story itself is radically different.

The Story: Natural City centers on the internal struggles of a highly talented cop named "R." He is tasked with finding and capturing renegade cyborgs, but ends up falling in love with a cyborg dancer named Ria who’s expiration date is only 3 days off. The movie centers on R’s compromising his principles and dealing with the cyborg underworld in a vain attempt to find a way to save his Ria. He finds a shady cyborg doctor who promises that if he finds a person with the right genetic match, he can inject part of their brain cells into Ria, which will save her. The doctor finds such a match in a street girl named Cyon.

Complicating matters, R’s best friend Croy, who is also his boss and fellow police detective, has discovered his duplicity. During a raid to capture some renegade warrior cyborgs, Croy notices that R is not shooting them in the head (which kills them be wiping out their AI chip), but is instead going back later and collecting the AI chips to sell for money. Croy tracks R back to the shady doctor. Worse, one of the warrior cyborgs who escaped is also after Cyon for reasons that become all too apparent as the movie unwinds.

The Look: Natural City’s atmosphere is a grimy, lived-in futuristic environment. In some of the police scenes, Natural City comes across like a live-action Jin Roh movie (Jin Roh is definitely an influence for the action visuals). The high-quality and very original Scifi set pieces and occasional CG fits wonderfully, and along with the artistic backgrounds add up to a very immersive experience. The surround sound is not stunning, but is certainly decent and doesn’t detract from the experience. On top of this we get some wonderfully symbolic visuals, such as when Cyon sits atop a stone eagle statue, dreaming of life on the virtual hotel.

The Colors: Like most cyberpunk movies, Natural City uses one dominating color palette for the majority of the scenes. Blue is the color of choice, but varies from ultra-light to dark and dense blues. The lighter scenes usually depict high-tech human aspirations, whereas the darker scenes are left for massive action shots and for shots depicting the destruction of humanity, such as the gritty cyborg replacement lab. Every so often, we also get some really nice oranges and browns, but these colors are usually used more as chapter transitions.

The Action: Natural City is a character exploration first, but the action and effects are on display, and in high quality. The action involves both slo-mo and high speed camera shots, along with LOTS and LOTS of blood and gore. The ending especially is somewhat of a gorefest, which is weird to see in a movie that is mostly a drama in nature. Also, near the end of the movie, we get treated to an evil, but ultra-hot cyborg warrior chick in skin tight lycra who engages in some major ass-kicking (see above for a pic of HER ass while kicking someone!). Talk about a plus! While we’re on the subject, we also get treated to some cute asian cyborg boobies at the beginning of Natural City - definitely a nice way to start the pic! (although, when you understand what the beginning boobie scene signifies it sorta takes away the fun).

The Pacing: As I mentioned earlier, this IS a Korean movie. My wife is Korean, so I’m somewhat used to the pacing we see here. From reading a few reviews, Natural City has been panned for being way too slow and plodding in the middle. All I can say is, "Welcome to Korean Cinema." This is really a case where story telling is just different there. For a Korean, this movie is not at all slow, but has rather standard pacing, which means we get REAL in-depth and repeated scenes with the purpose of mood and detailed character study. Most important for Koreans is to be able to identify with the emotion and mood the characters are experiencing. Natural City takes the time to do this with all the main characters.

The characters really build in believability and engagement as the story progresses. At the beginning, R appears quite shallow, as does his friend and the street girl Cyon. By the end, all three, and especially Ria, his cyborg lover grow to be characters you really empathize with. The motivations for all become clear, including their virtues and flaws. The ending is also a rather "normal" Korean dramatic love story ending, which is to say, one very different from how an American film might end. Its not a feel-good movie, but then again, few Korean dramas are.

For me, the highlight of Natural City centered on Ria, the cyborg. To me, Ria captures the cyborg struggle for humanity better than any character in all cyberpunk movies save one scene (the Blade Runner’ sRoy Batty "I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe" soliloquy, of course). While I didn’t catch this the first time through, the very beginning of the movie is told from Ria’s perspective, and then really, the last third of the movie centers on Ria (minus the action sub-plots). There are a few scenes that make it clear she "knows" what’s happening to her. She is programmed to be a dancer, but as she reaches her expiration date, she no longer can do this well. In one scene, Cyon shows her the "1 day" notice that arrives in the "Fifth Element" style mail slot. As her "time" approaches, you really do get the feeling of the Rutger Hauer speech at the end of Blade Runner, although Ria conveys this sentiment more broadly over a number of scenes and images. I want to go into this further, but this starts coming off as a spoiler, so I’ve added a more elaborative discussion of Ria’s motivations (spoilers) after the screencaps on Page 2.

The Bottom Line: If you like cyberpunk films, the visuals alone make this a MUST SEE. If you like character studies in science fiction settings, you probably also want to see this. I truly LOVE Natural City, but be warned, the pacing is different from what you might expect. This is a Korean movie, and certainly plays like one. Also, be warned - like Wonderful Days, the ending has standard Korean Melodrama type stuff. While some might argue this doesn’t belong in the top 10, for me there’s no doubt that it does. The action and visuals are great, but Ria’s story clearly forces it there if nothing else.

Page 2: More Screen Caps and Ria’s Motivations Discussion (Spoiler)–>>

Filmed for only one million dollars, Hardware takes place in a truly bizarre dystopic future where a nomadic "parts" scavenger goes into a barren wasteland called the "zone" and finds a strange and seemingly valuable robot head and body parts. Through unfortuitous circumstances, this head finds its way back to a hot looking babe named Jill, an artsy-fartsy type (played wonderfully by Stacey Travis) who accepts it as a gift. She decorates the head with cool colors and stuff and sticks it on her shelf.

Unfortunately for her, it turns out this head and body parts make up the bulk of the government’s new prototype Mark-13 droid - a true killer designed to weed out excess population, that’s impervious to almost everything. Once this thing re-assembles itself, this thing begins its killing spree. On top of this, Hardware has some of the most eclectic collection of characters ever assembled. We have a totally slimy pervert that spends his time peeking in on Jill, especially when she’s in the nude; we have a completely shady parts dealer, we have a zen-like unknown nomad, we have a completely weird boyfriend’s sidekick, and some truly bizarre apartment tenants.

The Visuals: Like most cyberpunk films, there is one color that dominates the screen - in this case its orange. We get orange EVERYWHERE, along with a nice few accents of pale yellow. All the set pieces are totally futuristic and hip. We get fun advertisements on the radio, a totally hip atmosphere, and truly, one of the best soundtracks found in movies. Quite simply, Hardware ROCKS!

Now for the bad news - unless you’re in region 2, you’re screwed. I picked up a used VHS for about 17 bucks on ebay but still found it worth it. Unfortunately, this version is panned and scanned and cut. If I had obtained a "real" version of this movie, no doubt it would be sitting in my top 10.

The Bottom Line: Hardware is a terrific, low-budget cyberpunk flick - one of the best low budget cyberpunk movies ever. If you are looking for a great, futuristic terminator-style chase movie that takes place almost completely in a bizarre apartment building, this is your movie!