Product description

Appleseed - Ex Machina [2007]

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Average customer rating: 3.5

Binding : DVD
EAN : 7321902200675
Label : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Release date : 2008-06-02
Title : Appleseed - Ex Machina [2007]
Audience rating : Suitable for 12 years and over
Format : PAL
Number of items : 2
Original release date : 2007-01-01
Region code : 2
Running time : 100
Studio : Warner Home Video
Theatrical releaseDate : 2007

Customer reviews

review by: M.A.D date: 2008-11-07 rating:

Awesome production
Ex-Machina is a sequel for the CGI production of the Appleseed from Masamune Shirow's acclaimed manga. Japanese anime artists believe CGI to be a layer or a tool for anime, but my opion is that Hollywood giants in CGI can learn much from this production.
Excellent direction, excellent model acting, excellent use of technology, excellent artistry and excellent dubbing. Even the details grab you and force you to watch it over and over again. Facial expressions were also motion captured which immerse the audience even more in to the story. Fans of John Woo will also find trademarks of him in this production although he is just the producer.
All in all, must have for your collection.

review by: ihateajs date: 2008-10-24 rating:

Lacking many qualities of the 1st Appleseed
For the generation X like me that like the political thriller genre that is Ghost in the Shell and to an extent the first Appleseed will be sorely disappointed by Exmachina. The anime, although good, lacks the human likeness of the first movie, especially the lead character Deunan. Human models were clearly not used in this film and it is a step back in animation - the characters in this film are wooden like a video game. The plot is terrible - certainly not comparable to the GITS series. I couldn't finish the end of the film before writing this review - Exmachina is for my kids.

review by: date: 2008-09-10 rating:

Interesting
I'm not sure that I like the direction that Appleseed Ex Machina is demonstrating in the world of anime. The CG graphics are too blatant, occasionally making the film look like the starting sequence from a computer game as opposed to an animated film. Most off-putting for me, however, was that the DVD I purchased has no Japanese audio - you're limited to English or German. This is a personal bug-bear of mine: If I buy a foreign language film, I really want to watch it in the language it was originally written in! As much as anything else, dubbed lip-synching is terribly distracting!

So for me, it's not a terribly compelling film. It's over-polished looks were sometimes great, sometimes awful (character interaction in particular was - in places - downright dreadful), and no Japanese audio. Enjoyable, but could have been so much more.

review by: faraway_pictures date: 2008-08-21 rating:

Not quite superb.
Watched this last night.
Well, it's John Woo directing so I was waiting for 2 things to crop up sooner or later:
1: A shot of doves flying, probably in slow motion.
2: Ridiculous gunplay where no account of wounds or bullets fired has any meaning.

So, the first few minutes we have doves flying and a ridiculous firefight :roll: I did wonder if this was going to be a turkey of a film. You wonder if Deunan, the main character, can actually shoot straight unless she's stuck slap bang in the middle of a room (cover, what's that?) and doing cartwheels. Fortunatley, this scene did'nt seem to be repeated, though, as you find with Woo, there was a lot more gunplay but it was so frenetic you did'nt really care that there guns would have run out in the first 3 secs.

The story is very good, involving a sort of 'brain jack', though you wonder why these clever people take so long to figure out the "how" when you figured it out straight away.
The 'love triangle' between Deunan, Briareos and Tereus never really amounts to anything and you kind of think they'll just all end up as friends in the end.

Quality wise, it's superb on BluRay, though I have to say the previous Appleseed on DVD was of such quality I dont know if the BluRay was actually an improvement.

Summary: A rewatchable film, plenty of Woo action (thank goodness they did'nt go down the Ghost In The Shell route and substitute action for lengthy scenes of boring meaningless dialogue), superb quality. Rated 4 out of 5. Would have been 5 but it's just not so original now after the first film.

review by: date: 2008-08-01 rating:

It just gets better
It's no secret that one of the most impressive, and one of the most sellable, features of the Appleseed movie series is it's revolution in the artwork of Anime. For the record: this is a beautiful spectacle and the first time you watch it you may well completely ignore the plot and just take in the sheer beauty of the imagery. And not just 'ooh that's pretty, look at that explosion' but beautiful moments of emotion fuelled by an intriguing and powerful plot. In this, the second film, the animation reduces the 'anime' in favour of a more filled out 3D style. And it's better too. Characters move with more of a realistic likeness that the previous film, and the overall design of characters, environments and props is significantly improved to feel more futuristic and easy too look at.
Even if you don't like the idea of a less thought provoking plot over a more action based film (this is NOT Ghost in the Shell), then you should at least be able appreciate the sheer beauty of the films visual accomplishment.
The first film was all about the idea of the Bioroids, and how this new race of mankind fit into society (ideas of race hate for both man and Bioroids). This film touches on similar ideas, the folly of man etc, however uses the Bioroid example as a background idea to more successfully make the main story less one-dimensional with emotions you have to think about to understand. How would you feel meeting a clone of your lover before he had his near fatal, life changing accident?
My main complaint with the first Appleseed was the sloppy and heavy-handed way it went about the sentimentality of Deunan and her background. The whole 'my father!' thing wasn't very well established, and the plot just kind of stumbled along from one uninspiring idea to the next. None of this here in Ex machina (except one little bit at the end which I'm going to ignore - 'I'm just a bioroid' urgh) and every sentimental issue is believable and bounces very well.
This movie is excellent, very well rounded, much better than the first, and a must buy for any fan of Anime, animation in general, and action.

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