Blood: The Last Vampire

I finally had a chance to watch the movie, a movie I had wanted to watch. It is not as bad as what others say if you know that this movie is meant for entertainment, a movie that is not to be taken seriously. The stunts and fighting are great, done by action director Corey Yuen. The thing disappointing is the much over-hype last battle, it is featured in every trailer and TV spot but in the end, it is not what I had expected.

The story: The simple adventure story. But since, it is a martial arts movie, I expected cool stunts obviously done with wires. The fight scenes expect the last one do not disappoint. The CGI of he monsters may not be that good but it is still bearable. The CGI blood is also bearable, but the slow-motion will get old. I am surprised that it has a rating of M-18. It is not that violent and most of the blood is CGI and solid.

Overall: Fans of the short animated will catch this out. Those looking for a cool martial arts movie will catch this too but don't expect it to be Asian martial arts movies. This is another adaptation of the animated following Dragonball evolution and Speed racer.

In 1970, the four hundred year-old skilled samurai Saya (Gianna Jun) is sent to the Kanto High School in an American military base in Tokyo by the Council, a secret society that has been hunting vampires for centuries. Saya has the appearance of a teenager but is the tormented half-breed creature with the soul of her human father and the powers and need of blood of her vampire mother. She is obsessed to face the powerful demon Onigen (Koyuki) that killed her father. In the base, Saya saves Alice McKee (Allison Miller), who is the daughter of General McKee (Larry Lamb) and commander of the base, from the attack of several vampires. When General McKee is killed by a member of the Council, Alice runs to the hotel where Saya is lodged. They join forces and go to the countryside to chase Onigen.

"Blood: The Last Vampire" is a highly entertaining adventure. The screenplay and the choreography of the fights blend many other movies and there is no originality. However, it works basically because of Gianna Jun and Allison Miller that perform very likable and charismatic characters. In the end, this film is not a masterpiece but I liked what I have seen. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Caçadores de Vampiros" ("Vampire Hunters")

Alright first off I will say I liked this movie and the style it is going for. If you are in to Directors who take a unique visual approach to their films then you will enjoy this film. The style here is very cool the way the characters are filmed and the surrounding are just beautiful. The fight scenes are good but not the best and at times the camera cuts too much during them. The special effects were very good and did not look cheap, yeah the blood floats but that seems to be more of a style choice. This movie is not really about Vampires and that is were this film falls short, is that its a lil different than the trailer I saw. The script on this one is barely there a lot of the time I felt confused as to the characters purpose of the story. This film reminded me of a film I saw earlier this year Suki Yaki Western Django, the style it used and also there seems to be some homages to the work of Quentin Tarantino done in a very nice way. Here they paid homage like he pays homage to other films and Directors.

I just got back from seeing this movie and was disappointed. I actually knew relatively little about the movie aside from the plot synopsis going in, and still I was disappointed.

The more I think about the movie, the lower I have been setting the ranking. The acting was for the most part okay or sub-par: the main character, Saya, had one look, the sulking schoolgirl. Alice, the white girl side-kick seemed to do well, but have terrible direction, as if her character was never quite in the right mood for the scene.

The action scenes were pretty weak. School girl swings her sword and a demon gets cut in half and super CGI ichor comes out. Whole bunch of demons attack, girl swings her sword and a couple demons fall spurting CGI ichor. I don't need an action scene to be believable, but I do expect it to have life. There was one action scene that reminded me of old school ninja movies (which is actually a good thing) but for the most part the action was dull and little more than a series of decent stills strung together.

The writing was campy and sub-par. A number of scenes caused the audience to laugh because the dialog and scene as a whole just came across as ridiculous.

I think the best way to describe the movie is a Frenchman making an American movie from a Japanese script.

The movie started out quite promisingly. But after the first 30-odd minutes, I could tell it was going to be a drag.

The stunts got old really fast, the slowmos got quite irritating (and there were *plenty* of them), the monsters that pop up do so in copious amounts for what seemed like a really small scene, the REAL monsters look like badly made puppets - and the finale was... hhmmmm. Quite a let down. Trite comes to mind. Oh, and a LOT of WTF moments.

Sorry, I'm quite prepared to leave my brains at the door for a good action flick, but this is really not it. I would have to leave my brains on the moon to find this an exciting weekend-type movie.

And I cannot for the life of me figure out how the hell this movie got an 8 rating at this point in time.