Perdita Durango. Dir by Alex De La Iglesia
What a fucking trip this film is. Just bat shit crazy from start to finish, high octane frantic energy is almost every scene. Rosie Perez is fantastic and Javier Bardem is great as well (that hair cut is stylish lol). I've always heard this one was good, in fact I've been recommended a lot of films from the director but I think I've only seen one or two of his. I'll probably remedy that now. There is a really nice HD version of it up on Shudder for those that want to check it out, highly recommended but definitely not a family film.
The Straight Story. Dir by David Lynch
This was a first time watch for me, I knew of it but not much about it. What a beautiful and heartfelt film. The entire time I kept waiting for something awful to happen (that's just where my brain goes) and it never does. An old man who want's to make amends with his brother who just had a stroke before they can't. He can't get a driver's license anymore due to his vision and legs so he decides to drive his lawn mower 300+ miles to see his brother. I loved it, it's both very un-Lynch and Lynchian at the same time. It has all the weird small town Americana characters but none of the insanity. Lovely movie.
Yasuke.
This was an anime that was on my radar for a few reasons, first it was a black samurai story, second giant mechs & magic, third Flying Lotus was doing the score. It also happened to be animated by MAPPA who are reponsible for a handful of really well animated action based anime lately (Fireforce & Jujitsu Kaisen to name a few). All of these elements combine to create a fantastic little series. The animation is generally great but they definitely cut corners on smaller background stuff with lesser characters to put the money into the big fights. The story is really good, a black man is taken in by a lord and he becomes a samurai, said lord is killed and samurai abandons his livelihood as his lord is gone. Fast forward many years, he's living in a small village and a team of mutants/super power/mecha come to find a girl with "ancient powers". I'll leave it at that, the story isn't anything new or ground breaking it's just entertaining. Voice acting is great, character designs are fantastic and again I'll reiterate how good most of the big action scenes are. The show's main drawback is that it's too short and they condensed 2 story arcs into 8 episodes with very little character growth. The show itself has character growth but it's not really believable as what would take place over 4-5 episodes is now 20 minutes. Really it's biggest drawback is that it just feels rushed, this show could have easily been two 10 episode seasons. I had a lot of fun with it and wished there was more. I can't imagine there will be though with how it concluded.
