A Tale of Two Movies

Went to see two original movies this weekend: Elektra and Appleseed. In something of a surprise, Elektra is the more watchable movie. It fully met my comic book movie needs. It's not great cinema but it has the always awesome Terrence Stamp and that Garner woman is decent too. I was expecting Appleseed to be a bit better since the original manga is by Masamune Shirow, who is responsible for Ghost in the Shell, one of my all time favorite anime/manga series. The animation in Appleseed appears to be strictly 3D, which I have concluded is just not a good idea for anime. It's really weird watching the characters' clothes shimmer as they move and their faces have virtually no emotion. And the compositing is frequently not good (why don't any of the people standing in the rain for 10-15 minutes get wet?). The fight scenes were pretty awesome though. Oh, well Elektra has at least broken my streak of disappointing movies.