Wolff rating: FAIR
Plot summary: There are these ghosts, and this post-apocalyptic er...and there's Phoenix, AZ, and then there are eight spirits, and this chick, and then there's a, like, a big space gun and stuff, and this angry general with James Woods' voice, and, oh, crap, I don't know.
Biased, pithy comments: Gorgeous. The opening sequence is gorgeous. There are details that took my breath away, down to the cracking of the brittle pavement as the ship set down on its clearly pneumatic tires. I found myself fascinated by Aki's eyes, complete with glistening reflections and quick, darting movements. Every few minutes throughout the film I'd find myself forgetting that it was computer generated before something would be just the tiniest big wrong---someone's head seemed too big, or their shoulder joints didn't quite fit together at the right angles, or smething. The clothes, too, are great---I've never been more fascinated by watching cotton ribbed fabric wrinkle before. But that leads me to my main point---the plot is so baffling, overloaded, and stupid that I had more fun watching clothes fold than the movie. Someone's going to make a great movie with this technology, but this is just a two hour intro clip to some video game I'm not going to play. Combining turgid cliche (gee, will the trustworthy, solid black trooper get axed? Will the hard-edged chick find the wisecracking sidekick endearing eventually? Are giant nuclear weapons morally wrong?) with incomprehensibility (how the hell do they spot these spirits from space? If they can find the magic wave that allows them to track these spirits, why can't they just synthesize it? What are ghosts made of? Why haven't we seen ghosts up until the apocalypse? What the hell is happening in this last five minutes of the film?) with leaden pacing and iffy dialog. One can't blame the voice actors or the artists (except they used a style of motion capture now and then that makes the character's eyes seem irrelevant to their neck motion), but one can clearly blame whatever screwed up Japanese film industry that can let these utterly dumb stories out the door without someone requiring it to make sense and be fun. It's a lovely tech demo, but it sure as hell ain't a good movie.
Other Notes: Sutherland is the hardest to buy---his voice is too familiar for me to buy him voicing that skinny old guy in the film. Gilpin is good, and Rhames could read the phone book with convincing inflection. Ming-Na is saddled with so many dorky lines I couldn't believe in her. This movie seems to grab people both ways---either they fell in love with the look and followed the daffy plot, or else they were so confused by the plot they lost interest in the movie.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Ming-Na (Wen), Alex Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, James Woods, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin.
Directed by: Hinronobu Skaguchi