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Hells | Hells AngelsUmmm. Holy fuck.
This defies description in many ways. I left a semi-review in the comments, so
you can check on that, too.
I'm gonna go with a 9 out of 10. Yep. I think that's a pretty solid 9.
t3h Good:
• Animation & design: it's wild, borderline experimental. We have stuff like
Dead Leaves,
Panty & Stocking w/ Garterbelt,
Mind Game and
Aachi wa Ssipak (to name a few) to give you an idea, but I liked this better for several reasons. Quality improvement using modern techniques, but also quality improvement by using modern animation advances more effectively and less obtrusively. The set is very, very rich: I stopped a number of times just to admire the enormous detail flashing by.
• Story: it actually has one, fucked up as it is. Kinda of hard to be sure about that through a large portion of the movie, but bear with it. There is one, and it's pretty good. If the title & description haven't made it clear, it's pretty sacrilegious and brutal with biblical themes ... I consider that a plus, although some folks might not. Great balance of humor, drama & WTF. Sometimes I get pissed when a slapstick fart joke gets inserted into a dramatic theme & takes all the shine out of the moment. Never felt that way once throughout Hells.
Others:
• It does a bit of ass-pulling. I mean ... the whole story really is. But, some scenes just suddenly switch tracks so sharp & hard that it leaves you with a meh feeling. Takes away some of the character sympathy because suddenly there's lost connection in continuity from how they were developing and
nowbamsuddenly it's a new story from a different plot.
• Tough to follow. It's very full and chaotic and very fast-paced. So, especially with subs, prepare to have to stop & rewind occasionally. It's easy to get very saturated with detail and five layers of events happening all at once. The constant switch-up in plot twists gets tiring because there is so much of it ... but, that is also part of the point of this story: life changes every few seconds and predictability is both over-rated and a stagnant life.
• There's a bit of a Coming-of-Age/ Oh-Grow-the-Fuck-Up-Already and Walk-It-Off theme. Will Power
Über Alles, you-just-need-to-try-harder ... It gets a bit over-motivational and uses a heavy, lecturing hand to slap silly school children into being persevering Japanese Master Race types. It's good as far as it goes ... just a bit over-played, especially toward the end when you are mentally exhausted from trying to collate a lot of sensory overload. Point made, could we please get on with the story? 'K thx!
Also: if you've not seen this short yet, this a very entertaining & blasphemous 15 minutes of your life that will earn you an eternity in Hell:
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Judas & Jesus by Olaf Encke & Claudia RomeroI thought of this a lot while watching
Hells, just on general principal of bizarre retelling of biblical mythology.
