ChikPapa Very disappointed :(

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Cissy Évelyne It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Edmund Bloxam Action movie, fine. Point the gun shoot it. 100 SPACE SHIPS ALL SHOOTING. They all miss! A person in the middle of a corridor, being shot at from either side. THEY ALL MISS. This is so we can see a person kill them with a sword in an age when the sword is a pointlessly outdated weapon.The plot? The 'twist', or dark secret that emerges at the end, at this point the movie is hinting at complex themes. Then all the plot lines converge in a complete mess. What is 'dark matter'? Sounds sci-fi, right? No, it does whatever the magician wielding it wants to do. Not to mention some kind of magical 'space clock' thing that doesn't make any sense. This required the characters to put things in places, thus enabling the ship to go different places. Then the Gaia council has a super space weapon FROM NOWHERE. Guess what. IT MISSES. Why? Well...erm...dark matter...So the ship crashes and everyone is pictured dead. One of the characters literally disintegrates in front of our eyes. Then everyone wakes up, the disintegrated person walks back into the room, and the ship just 'wakes up' and they fly off.I think there's incest in this story. There was a bizarre love triangle that barrels its way into the final act, alongside the other plot elements. Some of the characters may or may not be related. It is not clear. Nothing that happens makes any sense. Two characters point guns at each other so often, we forget who's on what side.If I am to watch this simply as an action movie, then guns that always, always miss don't make any visual sense. Everything in this movie is a complete and total mess. This was all CGIed, so such poor choreographing cannot be blamed on budgeting. You would literally have to plan out a digital image story board where over one hundred ships miss, (or seem to explode around the ship not doing it any damage), and you had to story board those corridor scenes. Unforgivably stupid movie on so many levels. Fails on every level.

battleshades WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEADEvery once and a while, I like to take a survey of films and television shows of a certain genre. I've done superheroes, vampires, vampire slayers and spies. My current survey is Anime, as it was the one genre of which I hadn't done much watching. I'm currently making my way through Death Note, K and Blue Exorcist. I've actually purchased Akira and frequently watch it on a regular basis. I've seen select episodes of Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, Sword Art Online, Black Butler and some others. I've finished watching Akame ga Kill, as well. Full Metal Alchemist and its following series are on deck. And, this weekend, I came across this one while looking for something shorter than a series. Glad to discover this one, as I have very little experience with 3D Anime, as well.As a Harlock virgin, I knew nothing about the menga (another entertainment genre I've not dabbled in) or the following anime, so the universe was shiny and new for me. And I enjoyed the presentation, for the most part. Despite needing to go back a few times to keep up with the subtitles if I looked away from my screen, as I enjoy foreign films and shows in their original language, I followed the story pretty well. Due to my slight understanding of Japanese culture, I was able to overlook most of what my fellow reviewers may complain about (i.e. the dramatics (over-the-top-weapons), the focus on the childish romance and the need to maintain balance by closing the circle.) For the con side of coin, the story needed some serious work. It needed to be clearer on who we were to follow: Yama or Harlock. Also, it needed to be clearer in what the endgame was, to present an origin story to "Captain Harlock" or if it was a resistance plot. Granted, it could be both but we needed clarity. Also, the antagonist wasn't real enough or constructed well enough to make the hero work for his title. Besides Isora being competently built as a character, he still was relatively flat. It is a must that we feel for both the hero and the villain. Both Yama and Harlock failed to earn their mantle as hero, despite each of them being built competently and Yama being the most dimensional character in the film, which isn't saying much. The others aren't built at all they seem to exist so that the dialogue doesn't sound monotone. We must care for these characters, the must make us empathize, but none of the characters made me do that, so the core of the film was hollow.On the positive side, the production value was excellent. Despite the re-use of some of the action cuts, the animation was top notch for my first outing. I enjoyed the Gothic cathedral design of the Legion ships and their technology, all the details, from the arch above the bridge to the insignia on the front of their ships spoke to their power and philosophy. My favorite ship, however, is not a surprise. I loved…LOVED…the design of the Arcadia!! It also spoke to volumes as to Harlock's mission and the attitude of his crew. I enjoyed its submarine-like design with its steam-punk flair, down to the old-school ship's wheel. It was rich in history and yet it still fit in the space theme. Its use of black smoke to conceal its arrival opposed the light used by the Legion ships. This juxtaposition highlights the conflict at the center of the universe. The music was well composed and the artistic value was well done. I enjoyed that the female characters were mostly not simply eye candy as most anime pieces tend to present women as. Granted they were not well utilized, but hardly anyone was anyways.As part of my survey of the anime genre, this was a good choice to study. But, due to the core being hollow, I can't say that the film was "well-done." If I needed to watch on a rainy afternoon, this one'll work as it takes you away from your living room and into a new world for a time. Just don't expect to remember it years later as the impression will most likely be fleeting.

Mark Wiseman WOW! This had some very eye-popping animation. Visually, this is stunning. Unfortunately, trying to appreciate the story-line presented here just caused the blood- vessels in my head to start bursting as well. What I'm left with is an overwhelming desire to fall down and experience an epileptic seizure - to help get rid of the headache.The only complaint I have about the animation is the fact that some of the space combat scenes were repeated more than twice, as so many animation movies are prone to do. Other than that, this is one of the most visually appealing animated movies I have ever seen.I don't know what it is about Japanese writers that doesn't seem to inform them of any other audience outside of their own culture, but their sappy-happy, juvenile themes of romance and social behavior is just plain annoying to me. Okay, "annoying" doesn't quite describe it. It's downright vomit-inducing.The worst part of this movie is the fact that no matter how many times the main space ship in this movie seems to be destroyed, it's engines out of energy, the crew worked-over, and the story-line played-out to the very end - no matter how stupid it gets, nothing is more important to the climax than to insist the ship and all of its' crew sail off into the proverbial sunset. The emphasis on continuing the romance trumps all else - no matter how implausible, and no matter how much damage that does to the overall enjoyment of the plot.It would have been so much more satisfying to see this come to an end about 25 minutes sooner than it did - with a little more blood and guts to go along with the epic battle scenes. Just when you think someone has reached their end - no, there's some stupid plot twist that brings them back to life. Forget the fact that they're no longer an essential part of telling a good story - it's so much more important that everybody stay around, feel good, and stay around for more adventures to come. We MUST have a happy ending - because isn't that how epic battles always end?

siderite I really like Japanese anime and I have come to expect good animation and deeply interesting stories, mixed with some Asian quirks. Harlock has almost none of that. The animation is 3D and even if pretty well done, in the end it is kind of repetitive and lazy. The story is a complete mess, combining classic pirate ideas with space opera kind of battles, only in - again - such a lazy way that it totally annoyed me.Let me give you a taste: there is a space ship that is kind of indestructible and has an immortal captain. It battles the horrible manipulators of the human race which hold the Earth hostage as a possible reward for the faithful, who would be allowed to return. And they have a zillion ships and planet buster weapons, but this pirate captain faces them head on and wins, because... he has an indestructible ship. Every character in there is a bumbling idiot, switching allegiances and going 180 on every decision they made, until you don't get anymore what the movie is about and what the characters are fighting for.Bottom line: a waste of time with nothing to teach except... flowers are pretty, I guess.