Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

sol- Addicted to a virtual reality war game, a Polish woman begins to question the game's origins and rumoured hidden levels after her dog mysteriously vanishes in this offbeat science fiction film. Shot in sepia tones and full of antiquated computer graphics and monitors like those in 'Brazil', the film is visually arresting from its very first frame and the protagonist makes for a curious character: a famous gamer, yet an introvert with so little in her life outside of gaming that she dedicates herself to tracking the game's secrets when her dog disappears. The film is, however, also full of cryptic conversations (about the game and gaming) that prove quite distancing and with many highly repetitive virtual reality gaming sequences, it is only in the final 25 minutes that the move really takes off with a mind-bending plot twist. It is such an intelligent and thought-provoking turn of events though that the final 25 minutes almost renders the film a masterwork, but it never makes sense why the movie takes over an hour to reach this point. One might argue that the project would have worked better as a swift short film, but an earlier revelation and more post-twist scenes would have been even better. Still, it is hard not to admire 'Avalon' for the way it so sublimely weaves the twist in, and the lateness of the revelation does admittedly make it all the more delightfully unexpected. Lead actress Malgorzata Foremniak is solid throughout, but it is her facial reactions that convey all in the final 25 minutes that render 'Avalon' a memorable experience despite its shortcomings.

nightcrawlercyp-311-219346 At first I found it amazing that a lot of people liked this movie so much. Then I remembered of the Forer effect and everything was clearer.The movie is very vague and all over the place and does not know that it wants. Also as someone that have both played games and worked for a brief time in the gaming industry I saw a lot of problems. But let's take things one of a time. Let's explain what happens in the movie. In more than 60% of the movie (the whole sepia thing) most things are not real. Is hard to tell if any part in the beginning is real. The class Real is the real world. The people in the hospitals that are in a coma are actually players that just logged out of the game and never returned. It is interesting to note that there are very few people in the first part of the game and that there appears not to be anyone in the hospital except the coma people. Also we do not see children animals (except for the one dog) blood (you would think sooner or later someone will cut his fingers with a knife).In the second part of the movie (Class Real) we see all the normal elements of real world. A lot of people said the colors were too bright, but if you spend a lot of time only seeing shades of gray and sepia when you get outside everything is brighter. The reason why the man disappears when she shots him is because she has mental break down. She cannot accept she really killed someone and here mind just rewrites everything.The dog in the car is irrelevant. She just noticed it because she likes that type of dog (maybe did not have one in real life). The reason the dog appears on some posters is because her mind creates hallucinations. How about the Bishop? This is the complicated part. I believe that originally the game was created to brainwash people into becoming assassins. Also the man at end probably tried to pull her off from the game even on the risk of his own life but failed. The message "welcome to Avalon" can mean either that she is a coma dreaming new levels, or that she just logged back on after killing the man.OK, now let me tell you what I find stupid and proof that the person directing this movie never played a game in his life:1. If they have technology for full VR then they will not have graphics this shitty.2. The random characters on the screens. It is the only thing copied directly from Matrix and in fact is one of the most stupid things about Matrix. Why would they be there? Making images from fonts has not been used for a long long long time. (if you did not have windows 95 on your computer you probably never seen such a game).3. The way object appear and disappear is stupid. Usually there are wreckage and dead bodies in the area for a while. They usually disappear either after a period of time or after you leave the area, never disappear instantly. 4. All the characters in the game are the same. In a real game like warcraft or whatever every character was significantly different and at high levels you would not be able to change your specialization so easy. Actually to change your specialization you would usually have to lose all your exp, and most of other stats.5.scenes repeated continuously and boring scenes like her cutting vegetables... really? was this interesting for anyone?6. No matter how realistic a virtual world is, usually the AI of the NPC is sacrificed. This means that doing something totally unexpected to a NPC (for instance kiss a waiter or punch it) will cause an strange and unrealistic response.I has high hopes for the movie. SAO-sword art online (at least the first part) was a great implementation of the virtual reality game idea.

wandereramor If nothing else, Avalon is a visually striking movie, precisely for its lack of visual appeal. Whether it's the desert hellscapes of the virtual reality game the film centres around or the muted colours of the "real world", everything seems oppressively drab. It's an interesting bit of cinematography that makes it easy to understand how a person living in this dire, vaguely post-apocalyptic but maybe just contemporary city could turn to outlandish and violent fantasy.The script is, unfortunately, a bit of a shambles. Characters have cryptic conversations about the past or vague philosophical ideas. Interesting concepts are introduced only to be tossed aside. The ending is a steady unfolding of Twilight Zone-esque twists. It's basically Oshii indulging in his worst habits, basset hound and all. But what really rankles is that, despite this being ostensibly a film about video games, Oshii doesn't seem to grasp the appeal of games or gamer culture at all.Maybe there's a lot of stuff here I didn't get, or maybe a lot of important context got left on the cutting room floor. It's certainly an ambitious project, and not an entirely unsuccessful one. If nothing else it's nice to see Oshii exploring new ground with a live action film. But in the end this film just leaves me feeling as cold as its ambivalent and ambiguous protagonist.(Also, apparently the English version -- dub and sub -- includes expository dialogue not in the original. Who does that?)

accountcrapper A typical Mamoru Oshii style film. Slow, heavy handed but often effective use of lens filters, dreary soundtrack, poor Foley work, cinema noir poses and some art-house meanderings. The story is so so, reasonably similar themes can be seen in a lot of work coming out of japan these days. Virtual reality or online identity cross merging with the real world. It is very anime in parts but I am not sure anime works for live action. In anime you can forgive some of the stiffness or the poor Foley but in live action it makes it feel a bit dead. A problem I have with all Oshii's film. The main actress is good. She does hold the film together. Not much is asked from her in terms of character development or script but she gives more than is on the written on the page and imbues the film with a feeling of lose, fading away, remorseful acceptance. I liked the film. I enjoy the theme. I thought the CGI was done well and there were some nice shots. The metaphors are a bit much but that is to be expected with Oshii. Boo to me but I wish he'd make GITS 3.SPOILER (NOT REALLY)I very much did not like the last scene. The is a scene where an orchestra perform the theme of the film Avalon with cuts going between a conversation outside and the orchestra inside. This for me was the worst scene. The filming of the orchestra was very standard TV style with no use of creative lighting to reflect the colour of the music, no close-ups of any of the instruments, no style at all just bad TV. Then it was clumsily cut with the conversation outside which were meant to reflect the lyrics of the opera. I thought it was very poor. And I thought the dog in the car was just stupid.