why wy?

Saw two movies last night - left before the third part of a anime marathon - and this is my, ahem, attempt at a review. Stop reading if you actually want to watch Casshern and Kaena. The former is based on a comic book and the latter on a game, so don't expect too much.

Casshern is the Japanese answer to Sky Captain and the others - almost everything was CGI, except the actors. The plot is Pet Sematary meets Blade Runner, and is better than it sounds. ""It walks the fine line between crap and not bad, although at times it teeters on the brink.'' - Johan

It is set in the future, not the streamlined clean future, but a grungy 1930's with robots future (it reminds me of Terry Gilliam's Brazil). Japan has attacked its neighbours in "self defense" - which has a whole different vibe cos Singapore was occupied by Japan in WWII - but the cities are ruined because of the high cost of war.

Enter misunderstood scientist who discovers that the original mountain people of Japan possess neo cells - like stem cells really, with the potential to build replacement body parts. The rest of the family is made up of sick and blind wife, headstrong son (who becomes the hero), his girlfriend and the father in law, an weapons researcher. Oh, and there is a military bad guy who looks like Dick Lee (local celeb, for aussie readers).

Son goes off to war, dies. At his funeral, a lightning bolt hits the lab, and suddenly, all these body parts floating in this soup start fusing and the replicants are born. Dad gets idea of dipping dead son in soup. That wouldn't have happened if dad was a boring accountant or lawyer.

Son comes back, but is too strong, which provides excuse for father in law to design a cool armoured suit for him. At the same time (try to keep up), the army kills all the replicants except for four who escape through snow, barefoot (johan was indignant). They find an abandoned castle, complete with a whole army of robot soldiers ready and waiting, and declare war on humans. By the way, they took the blind mum with them.

Lots of fighting, nice costumes - the replicants look like a glam rock band, and exploding robots. Exploding robots are always cool. The plot gets even more complicated and lots of people die.

But the CGI looks good, and they have an eye for billowing capes and great interiors. And exploding robots. On the downside, the actors spend a lot of time eyeballing each other before talking, a "let's look cool before we do anything'' freezeframe. Which explains why it was a 2 and half hour movie.

The second movie, Kaena, is the French attempt at Final Fantasy. Only the heroine has proper hair. Kaena and her people live in a giant tree branch, like the trabeculae of spongy bone magnified. They collect sap and pray to their gods, people made of sap. The fluid animation was pretty good. Kaena explores, because she wants to skip church, and discovers an old alien guy (not david bowie) who is the last of his kind.

His ship crashed (imagine earth's whole population piled onto the titanic). All of his civilisation's knowledge is stored in a glowing blue ball on the surface of the planet and he wants to retrieve it before flying off. Old alien guy has servants - who are giant worms with prosthetic suits that make them look like frogs. And Kaena's people eat worms, which is like if a cow came up to you and said, stop eating me, i have a superior intellect.

kaena agrees to help him, cos she's been dreaming about a blue ball of light but returns to an empty village. They've been kidnapped by the sap people! Note on the sap people - sap queen, sap male and female sap servants. Sap male is trying to get sap queen to fuse with him and she don't have much choice cos he's the only male left, but she wants more sap. Sap before sex. Talk about demanding girlfriends.

The sap male also illustrates the "i wouldn't sleep with him if he was the last male of the species'' syndrome, cos he was a major sleaze, coming on to his sap servants and even kaena. (Although her digital boobs seemed to get bigger throughout the movie.) But he did get sex eventually, merging with the queen when she was distracted, trying to destroy the blue glowing globe.

Anyhow, old alien guy dies, but the blue globe imparts its knowledge to kaena, who then leads her people to a new world where they don't need to harvest sap. The smart worms went with them, and nothing was said if kaena's people would stop eating worms.