Doragon heddo

Yes, the manga-inspired art direction is very fine. Too bad there's no plot, and it's paced slower than a Bergman film, and there's not a single actor in it who knows how to convey distress without shouting, whining and falling down. Literally, they spend most of the movie doing those three things, over and over and over, until you wonder why they don't all kill one another and drink one another's blood--not to survive, but just to shut everyone up. For a post- apocalyptic sci-fi type film, it's amazing how very little else happens in its very s- l-o-w two hours. And yet for all its ponderous and portentous stylings, it says nothing to us about survival or friendship or civilization or etc.--all the Big Issues this type of movie is supposed to have us ponder--that we don't get from airheaded Hollywood blockbusters like "Armageddon" and "War of the Worlds."

After sitting through predictable bore fests I finally get a disaster movie that is worth two hours of My life.

Dragon Head (based on a manga of the same name) starts off like Your run of the mill train wreck movie with two teenagers teaming up up to escape the carnage as well as a totally flipped out third teen only to discover the World that they knew has all but been wiped out by an horrific disaster leaving only an almost deserted waste land where even the Sun is blocked from view by volcanic ash actually raining down to Earth like thick snow.

Basically the movie centers around the two leads trying to make it back to Tokyo and their adventures along the way with a cast of unique and at times plain creepy characters showing up along the way, there are some flaws here and there but overall this is a great emotional, bleak, depressing yet in the end hopeful movie that I fully enjoyed and I personally thought the two lead actors did a superb job and at times the visuals and landscape were depressing yet stunning.

10/10

Well, if you're expecting a Hollywood blockbusting action style flick, you'll be sorely disappointed. It is based on a Japanese manga, but it's not one of the kill everything type of mangas. The vast majority of people are already dead.

The film loses something in its translation to English. It is based on a bleak view of how an apocalypse would affect Japan, or more particularly Tokyo. All I can say is that the characters reactions, psyches and the types of characters involved are typically Japanese in style. The extremities of some characters reactions seems unbelievable, but they are common extreme reactions found in Japanese mangas and other Japanese productions.

I had some reservations before borrowing this movie from the local library. I wasn't sure whether to expect a low-budget dragon movie or something with really bad set design. I couldn't have been more off. This movie may have some of the most spectacular sets I've ever seen. No details or expense was spared in creating the visually stunning and surreal backdrop. The plot has a nice forward momentum full of action and trepidation. But definitely go for the subtitles instead of the English overdub. Nothing can ruin a movie more than an awful dubbing in that ridiculous English voice with the accent. You have to hand it to the Japanese - they are much better at making these kinds of movies than Hollywood seems to be.

Having watched a huge panorama of movies already, i was pleased to see Dragonhead. It is an Easter-Asian movie, and i decided to watch quite a few others after this one.

The special effects are just good, sometimes really good. It is a good approach to such a movie too, because you start to think it's a nuclear disaster at the beginning, and then you find out it's actually something a bit worse than that, when the crust of the earth moves, the Earth's balance shifts. That's true, but especially when the magnetic field gets messed up, our apocalypse will come, or rather will rain down on us without holding back the tears of destruction.

When you have a volcano popping up not far from you, and throwing up huge magma bricks at you, that is not nice, i wasn't surprised the humans, well at least the Japanese lost the will to fight for life. But then again, some people have to believe in the future, because there is always a future, no matter how grim things look like.

I put 10/10 for Dragonhead, because of its realism, Apocalypse is not about happiness, it is boring, and everyone just needs to find the will to fight on, against all odds. If you like something a bit different than big blockbusters, then this movie is so for you, because in Asia they approach everything from an objective point of view, that is what makes their quality.