Operation Endgame (aka Rogues Gallery): Truly a bizarre film, a bunch of actors best known for comedy play a team of assassins named after tarot cards that gather in the basement of some government agency building and proceed to violently kill each other after their boss is murdered. The building is locked down and rigged to explode and one of them is not who they appear to be. Thats basically as deep as the story gets, the rest is concerned with violence in the most hilarious way possible. Rob Corrdry from Hot Tub Time Machine is in it doing his manic frustration thing that he seems to have perfected but here with the added bonus of spraying tons of blood all over the place. Zach Galifianakis also pops up as some kind of ultimate assassin wandering around in a decontamination suit mumbling to himself. Ving Rhames is also in it along with Brandon T.Jackson from Tropic Thunder. Odette Yustman, Maggie Q, Ellen Barkin and Emilie De Ravin provide the eye candy. With a cast like this you would expect that there would be something in the script that would have attracted the talent but you would be wrong. There isn’t any great twist or anything special about this script so the pitch must have originally been for something that didn’t quite work in the final product. As a result its impossible to hate this movie because its just so damn unusual and truth be told its an entertaining 80 odd minutes of nonsense. This is produced by Richard Kelly’s Darko Entertainment, which along with Worlds Greatest Dad and I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, seems to be carving quite a nice little niche for itself with straight to DVD experiments. ***
Mirrors 2: I seem to be one of the few who actually enjoyed Alexandre Aja’s 2008 remake of Korean horror Into the Mirror. It was not perfect but it had some nasty moments, a surprise ending and Kiefer Sutherland on shouty growling Jack Bauer mode but in a horror setting. It didnt exactly set the world alight when released but must have done okay as there is now a straight to DVD sequel. Underrated actor Nick Stahl takes the lead as a young man recovering from a personal tragedy and subsequent addiction problems who takes a job at his rich father’s new shopping mall. We meet the usual stock characters who make up the staff of the mall, the stuck up but attractive PA, the sleazy assistant manager, the shy haunted former guard etc. Its not long before our hero is seeing things in the mirrors as his fellow staff members appear to die horribly and then are found dead in real life. Is our hero delusional? or is there something more sinister at work? You don’t need a masters degree in advance screenwriting to know where this story is going. Yes its the tried and tested ‘girl who was murdered is taking revenge from beyond the grave’. Apart from a couple of nasty death scenes which are almost worth the rental alone, this is formulaic stuff to be sure. I would have loved a direct sequel to the first movie exploring the nuts ending of that movie in more depth. Sadly we have to settle for less here which will only appeal to the most rabid of gorefiends **
Altitude: Just stop for a moment and look at that cover, just look at it…..still here? okay. Now if you are looking at that and thinking you want some of that tentacles-from-the-sky-lovecraftian-action, think again. Imagine Christopher Smith’s Triangle without the visual flair, great performances and wit and chuck in a random flying octopus and thats Altitude. At the start of the movie we meet our five douchebag protagonists. The young female pilot taking her first big trip, her creepy possessive semi-boyfriend, their jock asshole mate, his musician best friend and the jock’s slutty girlfriend. Never in a million years would these characters be friends but we must accept that for this type of film and move on. Anyway they are flying (!?) to a music festival in Canada and run into some kind of apocalyptic storm clouds. The plane suddenly keeps climbing and climbing but instead of getting into outer space they just stay in the clouds and some giant tentacled thing keeps popping out and then disappearing again, freaking everyone's shit out. Tensions mount, secrets are revealed and there is some kind of time paradox at play come the finale, except by that point you don’t care. Director Kaare Andrews deserves some credit for creating a unique scenario with some good ideas, he deserves scorn however for his inability to create likeable characters or give them credible motivations. For reasons unknown the heroic musician at one point ties himself into the inside of the plane and then goes outside to fix something or other, leaving himself hanging out the back of the plane like a poor mans Keanu Reeves under the bus in Speed. Not only is this unbelievably stupid even for a teenager but I’m pretty sure the physics of such an act would never work. The guy would be sucked right out into one of the engines for sure. Despite working with a low budget, the creature effects are impressive and there is never an obvious use of green screen. Maybe if Andrews can get a better class of writer to collaborate with he might create something decent next time out. **
The Loved Ones:This Australian movie is a real throwback to the ozploitation movies of old and is a tense and unnerving experience. It also could be labeled as ‘torture porn’ if you were into throwing out labels and such so if the Saw and Hostel movies didn’t float your boat then stay away. The Loved Ones is hardcore in a way I haven’t seen for a while and I found it far more shocking than anything in Eli Roth’s films. The premise is very simple, the tortured high school stud gets asked to the school prom by weird loner Lola, he turns her down, she kidnaps him and Lola and her weird father proceed to torture , humiliate and mock the poor boy so that Lola can have her perfect prom. There is a hilarious sub plot about high school stud’s inept best friend taking the hot goth chick to the prom whilst in the background the studs real girlfriend searches for him frantically. If Wolf Creek showed you the secret deadly side of the Australian outback then The Loved Ones exposes the seedy underbelly of the suburbs with hints of incest and secret dungeons full of previous victims, barely alive and living in filth ridden captivity. I was not expecting much from this movie but it was exciting, inventive and darkly funny. Writer and director Sean Byrne knows how to push all of the right buttons. None of the torture here feels gratuitous and all goes a long way to building the tension and progressing the plot. Its also very stylish,shot with a hazy summer evening feel by cinematographer Simon Chapman. Although the market is flooded with promising horror directors, Sean Byrne could be a name to watch. ****
Rubber: A film about a psychokinetic spare tyre that kills people is going to be a film that divides people. Even if you do not travel in the film geek website circles that I do, you probably have heard of Quentin Dupieux’s directorial debut. I’m still on the fence about it two weeks after watching it, its either genius or a pretentious piece of crap. Its very reminiscent of a lot of Alex Cox’s early work, particularly Repo Man and Straight To Hell in that as we are repeatedly told at the beginning by the sheriff ‘things happen for no reason’. Thats how the movie starts, Stephen Spinella’s Sheriff character drives up to the screen knocking over chairs and then addresses the audience to give them examples of random occurrences in many well known and loved movies. We then pull back to see that the Sheriff is actually addressing an audience of onlookers in the desert armed with binoculars who will watch the story unfold. We then see a rubber tyre shuffle out of the sand and roll along the desert, stopping every now and then to shake and explode a bottle or a rabbit. The tyre comes across a girl at a motel, decides it likes her and then follows her, all the while graphically exploding the heads of any humans that get in the way. During the action the audience in the desert comments on the absurdity of the whole thing until they are disposed of for asking too many questions as well. Rubber is probably a film you want to watch twice just to make sure that what you saw on screen actually happened and nobody has fed you some LSD. The film looks incredible, especially on blu-ray where the desert locations really pop out at you. Towards the end it may be takes a step too far into fancy music video territory but this is a minor complaint. The only other complaint I would have is there isn’t really anyone to root for in the movie, we never get to know the girl who is being stalked and the only other significant characters we spend time with are certifiably insane and do too many random things for us to identify with them. As a directorial debut Rubber does its job, Quentin Dupieux displays a Spike Jonze style love of the weird in the every day and surreal comedy and we could be talking about both of them as masters of cinema in the future. Rubber then, you may love it, you may hate it but you’ll never forget it. ***
Love Ranch: It seems strange that a film directed by Taylor Hackford starring his wife Helen Mirren and featuring the comeback of Joe Pesci should be relegated straight to DVD but so it is. Love Ranch is the based on real life story of a Nevada based ‘legal’ brothel run by sleazy wannabe Charlie Bontempo (Pesci) and his stricken wife Grace (Mirren). Grace dreams of a way out and a day where she won’t have to manage the bitchiness and ego’s of the hookers who make up the staff. Charlie carries on affairs with most of his staff at one time or another and dreams of expanding into property development as well as the world of Boxing. Charlie takes on former Argentine champion boxer Armando Bruza and lets him train at the ranch for apparently upcoming big title fights. Grace reluctantly agrees to become Bruza’s manager and becomes drawn to Bruza and he to her. Its not long before a love triangle is in play that threatens the future of the ranch. Truth be told you can see why this skipped cinema’s, its not very cinematic and wouldn’t be out of place as a Hallmark channel original movie. The problem is it doesn't go far enough in either direction. Its not sleazy or violent enough to be considered in the same league as something like Boogie Nights and its not campy enough to be a cult item, it just floats neither here nor there. Joe Pesci and Helen Mirren deserved better than the sub par film around them but its good to see Pesci on screen again doing his ball of volatile menace thing and Mirren is good value as a downtrodden woman finally coming into her own. Its just a shame that all the elements here couldn’t gel into something that was more than the sum of its parts. **
by Chris Holt
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Lets be honest, 2010’s crop of summer movies were pretty bad. Sure we had Inception and Scott Pilgrim but most things released between May and July were pretty sub par pieces of entertainment. Thank god then that 2011 looks to be back up to scratch with not just a whole bunch of comic book adaptations for us nerds to scream about but also promising looking sequels and some remakes. Super 8, 30 minutes or less and Larry Crowne are your two original pieces of film which are not based on previous properties. Hey it would be nice to have a whole raft of original product to watch this summer but thats not how the current system works. As it stands the adaptations and sequels this summer do actually look interesting or very good so all is not lost. You are probably wondering where Harry Potter is amongst this list, the answer is its not there! I've never really been in to Harry the way that every one else seems to be so I did not include it. I’m sure those who like it will love it though and it will make a squillion dollars…
Thor
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston and Anthony Hopkins. Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
I may be wrong here, but I think this will be a big disappointment. I don’t think there is any real interest in the Thor character outside of hardcore comic fans. This is a bigger gamble than Daredevil or Captain America or any other second tier character you care to mention. Having said that, despite its faults Clash of the Titans did make money so there may well be some interest in the realm of gods and immortals. Nothing about this that I have seen so far has got me excited in any way. The plot being what it is; ‘Norse god cast down to live amongst the humans’ sounds like some kind of bad TV show pilot from the late eighties, and I thought filmed comic adaptations had evolved beyond this. Its all very well bringing in a filmmaker on the level of Kenneth Branagh for your movie, he has made some fine movies in olde worlde language, lest ye forget he also made Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, which these days is borderline unwatchable. Is also post converted 3D too. A future camp classic or underrated blockbuster? We will see.
Released: 27th April
Priest
Starring: Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Maggie Q and Christopher Plummer. Directed by: Scott Smith
Director Scott Smith’s last movie was the woeful Legion which bungled an excellent premise to deliver a long boring sub straight to DVD snoozefest. Here he re-teams with that films star Paul Bettany, who plays the titular Priest who hunts down vampires in a world dominated by them, they kidnap his niece and off he goes to kick ass. This is based on a little known manga and admittedly does look visually impressive. Alas it is also a movie post converted into 3D so will likely give you a headache regardless of how good it looks. One for the DVD rental queue.
Released: 11th May
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Starring: Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Ian McShane and Geoffrey Rush. Directed by: Rob Marshall.
Its been nearly four years since the overblown third Pirates movie; At Worlds End. This looks like its back to basics with very little in the way of CGI sea monsters, instead it focuses on Jack Sparrow again played winningly by Johnny Depp as well as Penelope Cruz’s female pirate character and Ian McShane’s dastardly Blackbeard. The plot is lifted from a 1988 novel by Tom Powers called ‘On stranger tides’ and concerns the search for the fountain of youth. Disney want this to be the first part in another trilogy of films that will bring them all the way back up to part 6. The back to basics approach could be a good thing but could also disappoint your casual filmgoer wanting another Kraken or Davey Jones. And guess what? Its also in 3D!! The jury is out…
Released: 18th May
The Hangover part two
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis. Directed by: Todd Phillips.
Comedy sequel’s rarely excel past the first installment and mostly fall flat on their face. Although I would like to see it, I’m also slightly relieved that they have never made a follow up to Anchorman and the fact that Ghostbusters 3 has never got off the ground also allows me to sleep soundly at night. The Hangover was a massive success back in 2009 and became the highest grossing R rated comedy ever. So of course there was going to be a follow up and it comes out this summer. As of end of March there had yet to be a full length trailer and they are probably rushing to get this finished. This time the gang ends up in Thailand and gets involved in some shenanigans most likely with hallucinogens and drug dealing monkeys. Early word has it that this is even more ‘out there’ and hilarious than the first. Please note: first film on list not in 3D…
Released: 27th May
Kung Fu Panda 2
Starring: Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan and Seth Rogen. Directed by:Jennifer Yuh
Until How to train your dragon came along, Kung Fu Panda was the best animated film DreamWorks had done. In a world where there are four Shrek movies and two Madagascar films, it was inevitable that there would be a follow up to the first. Most of the voice cast from the first return for this which sees Po team up with some new kung fu masters to defeat an old enemy. The first film was popular with kids as well as adults and this could well be the animated film to beat this summer. I’m not including Cars 2 because I thought Cars was not that great…
Released: 10th June
X-Men – First Class
Starring: Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, January Jones, Jennifer Lawrence and Kevin Bacon. Directed by: Matthew Vaughan.
Of the summer films I am most anxious to see this year, this is probably third most anticipated. The reason for this is that it’s a superhero team film from the geniuses behind Stardust and Kick-Ass. Plus its set in the 1960’s which along with Captain America really tickles my retro comic book fetish issues. Little is know of the actual plot apart from it involves young professor x and Magneto and the early days of the school for gifted youngsters. Some characters we have not seen on film before show up as well as some new ones including villain Kevin Bacon and his Hellfire Club. The teaser trailer was a perfect tease, insinuating that the plot involved mutants involved in the Cuban missile crisis. One of the few this summer I will see opening day.
Released: 2nd June
Super 8
Starring: Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Noah Emmerich and Ron Eldard. Directed by: JJ Abrams.
So what is second on my most anticipated list? This new film from JJ Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg. Primarily because I like the way JJ does not reveal full details for the films that come out of his Bad Robot production company until the last minute. All too often you know everything about a blockbuster before you have seen it and this secrecy keeps things exciting. What we know is this: The film is set in the early 80’s, it involves kids, it involves ‘something’ escaping and causing carnage and the trailer is full of that Spielberg brand of wonder and amazement that has too long been absent from his films. Producers take note, this is the way you create a marketing campaign..
Released: 19th August
Green Lantern
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Mark Strong, Blake Lively and Peter Saarsgard. Directed by: Martin Campbell.
I hope I am wrong about Thor and I also hope I am wrong about Green Lantern. I have no real familiarity with the Green Lantern character outside of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and that superior New Frontier straight to DVD animated movie from a few years back. Green Lantern has always seemed a bit lame to me, his weakness being the color yellow and the fact that his power is to conjure anything he can think of (usually big green fists) through his power ring. Having said all that, I like what I have seen of the film so far and its sci-fi elements look suitably operatic. The four minutes that appeared online after wondercon last weekend looked suitably epic and wisely focus on the space opera elements. Martin Campbell has knocked it out of the park before with Casino Royale and the first Zorro movie. This could be Ryan Reynolds last chance to fulfill the ‘next big thing’ tag he has had for a while. I don’t know about you but I suspect something of a disappointment in the box office for this one, I hope I am wrong.
Released: 17th June
Transformers – The Dark of the Moon
Starring: Shia LeBouef, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson. Directed by: Michael Bay
The second Transformers was one of the worst big blockbusters in recent memory, rushed into production by the writers strike a few years back. It exhibited everything that was terrible about Michael Bay, bad acting, juvenile humor and a poor script. The first Transformers film was great fun, a touching story about a boy and his first car and giant robot carnage that you could follow. The third movie is apparently back to basics and is shot in 3D, not post converted. Now as long as they can keep the camera still long enough for your eye to actually register whats going on we should be spared a migraine. The recent trailers for this certainly make it look cool and hopefully this time they have a great screenplay to match the carnage.
Released: 1st July
Larry Crowne
Starring: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Bryan Cranston. Directed by: Tom Hanks
Its been a long time since Tom Hanks had a movie where he wasn’t chasing some kind of cryptic clue with a bad hairstyle. Larry Crowne is his second movie where he steps behind the camera and follows a middle aged man who loses his job and decides to reinvent himself by returning to college much like the Chevy Chase character in Community. He then strikes up a relationship with an unhappily married professor played by Julia Roberts. The script is co-written by Hanks and My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Nia Vardolos. If they can avoid the schmaltz and bring on the feel good and funny this could be a big hit. There certainly seems to be nothing else like it this summer, everything else seems to involve explosions and 3D.
Released: 1st July
Captain America
Starring: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci. Directed by: Joe Johnston
This is it! The big one for me personally this summer. If this is good, I may retire from online movie blogging. The reason for this is that Captain America is the last of the comic books I read as a kid to be adapted for the screen. As I got into this partly to moan or praise how my beloved comics were being treated by Hollywood, if this ends up being good I will feel that I have come full circle and have nothing left to say until they get The Punisher right. Joe Johnston previously made The Rocketeer, a film with some brilliantly retro Indiana esque thrills. He seems to have been the right choice to bring the big blue boyscout to the screen with a story apparently mainly taking place in world war 2. This also leads directly into The Avengers in summer 2012. As long as they treat the character right and not just as an introduction piece for Joss Whedon’s super hero team up then I can retire happy.
Released: 29th July
Cowboys and Aliens
Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde and Sam Rockwell. Directed by: Jon Favreau
Jon Favreau’s latest trip behind the camera has had a long development history, it was once slated to be Barry Sonnenfeld’s follow up to Men In Black. Its finally coming out with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in front of the camera as two rivals in the old west who face an alien threat bigger than any disagreement about horse ownership could ever be. It will be interesting to see what the tone of this is like, Daniel Craig is not your typical leading man and the early footage shows that they have taken the western elements quite seriously. Could be great, could be this years Jonah Hex.
Released: 12th August
Rise of the Planet of The Apes
Starring: James Franco, Frieda Pinto and Andy Serkis. Directed by: Rupert Wyatt
First its out in July, then it moves back to November, then its back to August and then it changes title and we have yet to see a trailer. The Planet of the Apes prequel should come out at some point this year so I thought it best to include it here should it actually come out in August as planned. The film stars James Franco as a scientist who befriends the first intelligent ape Caesar, who will eventually lead a rebellion to overthrow humanity. Rupert Wyatt is an untested director but The Escapist was brilliant, People could also be getting sick of Franco who is approaching over exposure. Of course all of this date changing and nervousness about the title could mean that its actually a masterpiece and they are confident and don’t want to short change a great movie. A short trailer has recently appeared and although basically a real tease, it looks creepy and action packed with some great ape effects work. The jury is out…
Released: August tbc
30 Minutes or Less
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride and Michael Pena. Directed by: Ruben Fleischer
There hasn’t been a good action comedy since Pineapple Express in 2008. Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer re—teams with Jesse Eisenberg to tell the story of a pizza delivery boy who is kidnapped and forced to carry out an armed robbery in 30 minutes. The premise should allow for lots of slapstick as well as hilarious dialogue and Danny McBride. This could be the late summer comedy hit that we seem to get every year.
Released: August tbc
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark
Starring: Guy Pearce, Katie Holmes, Alan Dale and Bailee Madison. Directed by: Troy Nixey.
The release date for this one has been constantly shuffled around by Miramax and it will now make its debut late summer instead of January as originally planned. Its probably a good fit too, there seems to be a major drought of viable horror product in Summer 11. This could be an after effect of Splice’s failure at the box office last summer or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Guillermo Del Toro co wrote this with Matthew Robbins and its based on the 73 original and tells the tale of a family that moves into a new home and discover a malevolent presence that haunts their daughter. The teaser trailer was wicked scary and early word has been positive. Lets hope those shuffling release dates don’t reflect the quality of the finished film.
Released: August tbc
Conan the Barbarian
Starring: Jason Momoa, Rachel Nichols, Rose Macgowan and Ron Perlman. Directed by: Marcus Nispel
I’ve only recently watched the original Conan The Barbarian from 1980 and I loved it. It was epic and bloody and wholly enjoyable. Obviously Arnold is too old to reprise the role now in his sixties and so they have recast with the unknown Jason Momoa, he certainly looks the part and its directed by Marcus Nispel who has a keen visual eye but also made the similar but terrible Pathfinder a few years back. The jury is out as to whether this will rock or suck, the budget is also 90 million or so, so they are keen to make it a franchise restarter. If nothing else it will have Rachel Nichols and Rose Macgowan in awesome warrior queen outfits.
Released: 19th August
by Chris Holt
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Increasingly as I get older, I am finding it harder and harder to care about anime. Its been 20 years since the boom of the early nineties where we were all amazed that there were cartoons that had 18 certificates and exploding heads and er tentacle rape. Since then the anime we have gotten in the west has mostly been series based and although people have tried, I just can’t get interested in Bleach, One Piece or Naruto. Apart from the work of the late Satoshi Kon and the occasional Studio Ghibli release there isn’t much else worth paying attention to. Now after The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and with Summer Wars under his belt, Mamoru Hosoda could be the natural successor to Hayao Miyazaki, a director whose work is stunning to look at but also engages the brain and heart. It may have been the fact that recent tragic events in Japan made me see the subject matter here in a whole new light which I wouldn’t have previously or that I recently have had tragic family related news but Summer Wars hit me hard and engrossed me in a way I did not expect. The nearest possible idea I can give you of how unique this film is, is to say its like The Royal Tennenbaums crossed with Tron with a sprinkling of Playstation game Little Big Planet.
Summer Wars takes place in a Japan which is dominated by the social network site Oz. People practically use it for everything, businesses do deals and hold meetings through it, customers shop through it and infrastructure manages the day to day dealings of running a country through its system. Of course there is also fun stuff like gaming and the social chat rooms and users are represented by often cute ,sometimes cool avatars. Oz is essentially the dominant media entity in the world.
At the beginning of the story we meet maths wiz and part time Oz code writer Kenji who is interrupted from programming by his secret crush Noriko because she needs somebody to pose as her fiancé for the weekend when she goes back home to see her large family ruled over by a no nonsense Grandma. Kenji agrees and off he goes to the large home of the Jinouchi clan in the countryside. Much embarrassment and awkwardness follows as Kenji is embarrassed or humiliated by Noriko’s aunts, uncles and siblings but Granny takes a shine to him. The first night Kenji is sent a text with a large code and a request to text back the answer. As he is unable to sleep and being a genius with numbers; Kenji sends back the answer. He awakes the next day to find news reports that Oz is suffering from some kind of virus and users are experiencing severe problems in the virtual world with several millions of user accounts being stolen. The news reports also claim that Kenji is responsible much to the disappointment of the Jinoushi clan who were just starting to warm to the boy. Kenji protests his innocence and the attempt to take him in is thwarted when the artificial intelligence program known only as Love Machine starts to jam traffic signals and other every day electronics that the country is dependent on causing floods and a disruption to essential services. Its up to Kenji and the members of the family to stop Love Machine from their house in the country and restore order to the country.
That’s as basic a summary of the plot as I can quote without spoiling it. There is a lot of stuff in there about familiar relations, estranged uncles with plot revelations and shy nephews coming into their own and kicking arse online. As well as the core love story between Kenji and Noriko which does not dominate the plot but plays out nicely. Somewhere around the halfway point in Summer Wars I found myself really invested in what was going on, the threat gets deeper and more serious as the story progresses and at one point it really does not look like any of the characters will make it to the end. Mamoru Hosoda wisely lets us get to know the characters and lets the situation settle instead of diving head long into the kaleidoscopic world of Oz and boring us with endless scenes of avatars fighting it out in a virtual world. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some cool scenes of arse kicking in a virtual world and they look as cool as you would expect, but the fact is they play out in a world that essentially is not real although they have real world implications. Wisely all the events that play out in Oz are shown to have an emotional impact in the real world which could have been silly but somehow works really well. Its something that the makers of Tron Legacy forgot; make the threat important. The key thing here is the animation , the scenes that take place in Oz are colorful and elaborate with no artist bound by the limitations that a real world setting would impose, by contrast the scenes in the real world are simple and unfussy creating a clear delineation between the two realms. It was a clever way of doing it to be sure and is never jarring or intrusive.
If you have written this off as just another anime, I would encourage you to give it a shot. Summer Wars is full of fun and pathos and a great example of what can be achieved by Anime when its not trying to titillate. Without doubt the recommendation of the week!
by Chris Holt
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