Garm Wars: The Last Druid

I watched the Garm Wars, a movie nobody knows of, even when it's written and directed by Mamoru Oshii. Despite having English actors, it feels as if it's an anime movie that follows all the trademarks of Oshii. That dog he loves so much is there, and the characters simply exist to talk about existentialism.

It's pretty heavy on CGI and it feels like it's cut scenes from a PS3 video game. If you expect to see only super duper polished CGI, then you are not going to like it. If you manage to see past that, as far as setting and atmosphere goes, it is superb.

It's also a patchwork of a dozen cool sci-fi anime of the past. At times it's like Ghost in the Shell, at others it's like Sky Crawlers, or Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The nostalgic side of me was jumping from joy. The problem is the usual way Oshii writes plots and characters. Everything is dull and mechanical. You don't feel the characters are alive and thus whatever they say about the meaning of life feels dead.

The movie is also so concept based that the actual plot becomes an afterthought. Characters do stuff for the sake of progressing the story and not because it makes sense or feels natural. In fact half of it is exposition and couch philosophy, while the ending is open for a sequel. So, it's Cool concepts, thought provoking material, great atmosphere, but not entertaining or that appealing. Recommended only if you like something like Texnolyze.

In line with The Fifth Element and Forbidden Planet - another movie whose plot will bend your mind with something unusual...

Difficult to comment without writing a spoiler, I can say I would love to discuss this movie with someone - it has a lot going on in it... and it does begin and end making you wish there was a lot more 'known'. This movie could have been stretched a lot longer with more added - yet, by the end, I enjoyed the story and the feelings it left me with. More could ruin the 'what's next' feelings - and besides, wanting more leaves me with a really strong desire for both prequels and sequels? This film could be the start of a very successful series... The visual and sound impact of this movie was amazing - some totally different, stunning and fantastic visuals and sounds... I enjoyed it - and hope you do too.

The 2 star review is right, there's no beginning, there's no end, there's barely a story. It's more like a showpiece for the CGI studio than a movie. I finished watching it and really had no idea what just happened.

To be fair the effects, model creation, and scores are fantastic, unfortunately too much time is devoted to them instead of actual character/story development.

Apparently the story universe is created by the director/writer just for this movie, I have to say it has good potential, but this movie did not take advantage of it. Hopefully we will see a sequel to better develop it.

Hey, if you are bored on a Saturday night, why not, certainly not the worst movie out there.

This production is not for everyone, and I admit to not being particularly interested in the integrated video game / CGI type of fantasy sci-fi production myself, but this was interesting enough to warrant a watch, and I'm not regretting having done so.

Admittedly, the plot is rather clumsily constructed, which detracts somewhat from what this could have been.

Having said that though, the actual artistry committed to this creation is something to behold.

Having been confined to a relatively limited budget, this was an impressively ambitious effort, perhaps overly so, but it is visually a spectacular expression of the artform.

For me at least, Mélanie St-Pierre's character as Khara made the film. Without her, not sure how well this effort would have fared.

To be fair, this production starts out very strong, with Khara and her cadre of clonettes on board their warcraft, the inital scenes with the mysteroius Driud entity and it's wily cohort, prying their way into the AI core, the invasion battle scenes . . . but OK, no spoilers here.

But then, as the story begins to stretch out as a meandering journey through various travails, it just seems to lose steam along the way, with various action scenes tossed in as props to keep the excitement level artificially inflated.

By the ending scene (the film is divided into a series of acts), it just seems that the writing was getting tired, and just had to throw in the proverbial "to be continued" invading hordes of the whatevers as a sort of departing plot prop (no spoiler here, there are numerous other details not included in this description).

It's somewhat unfortunate, as there were several potential story threads and philosophical ponderings which could have been much more richly enabled and elaborated upon, but were left somewhat vacant.

Garm Wars is an interesting template which could be further developed, but definitely could benefit from more finely honed story crafting to match the remarkably rich visual motifs into which this template has been enmeshed.

I want to give its creators credit for a fascinating effort, and wouldn't be against seeing another, more well developed (and funded) effort in this direction.

I'm torn between a 6 and 7 rating . . . but am giving a benefit of a doubt, let's go with a 7.

The movie is a great watch for those who like anime such as ghost in the shell or last exile. The cinematics are amazing, and quite frankly some of the best 3d cgi i've seen period. They mix in real people and cgi in such a way that you can't tell them apart. In fact the humans seem like cgi sometimes.

The story takes a bit of patience to get into, but once you get into it, it will unravel really fast gripping you in. You'll pretty much be enjoying it up until it ends. It definitely needs a sequel as it left room for one.

The music soundtrack is quite emotional and epic, which is one of the most memorable parts about this movie. If you like sci-fi, anime, or just want an entertaining flick check it out.