SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Kind of conflicted on this one. Parts of it were excellent, parts of it tolerable, and parts just plain boring. The art was fantastic, and while I liked the cartoon-y style of the characters, something I found a bit odd and disconcerting was that they just didn't stick to one drawing style. Some of the characters had the big shoujo-style eyes, and some had little dots for eyes … same sort of thing with the hair, clothing and body shapes. Contrast with the super-realism animation style of the backgrounds (which I will admit, were beautifully done) made it all a little odd. The plot was good, but dragged a little … characterization, again, half and half, some characters (particularly the character of Rock) were excellent, and fascinating. Others were just odd and came off as stupid overly gullible (the leader of the underground resistance, for instance, seemed to be very intelligent, and world-weary, but in other ways was very child-like and gullible.) Other characters acted oddly, and didn't seem to have human-like reactions to things, etc. It seems to me that the villains of the story were much better drawn-up than the protagonists.One of the big make-or-break things for me in a movie is the soundtrack, and this one definitely fell short. I've seen this done before, and I never think it's a good idea to cut out a good emotional score and replace it with a popular song. In this case it was horribly jarring, the placement of a jaunty fifties style swing song over the most dramatic and tear-wrenching moments of the movie all but destroyed the emotion of the moments. So, final verdict is an odd split. About half of this movie was excellent, brilliant, a masterpiece, the other half barely tolerable b- grade anime. I think with some key rewrites, a better score and a little more polishing, it might have gotten the place as a classic that it deserves.

I really wished this movie to succeed - its retro cyber punk world is really interesting and backgrounds do look amazing. Seriously, the retro future titanistic look of the buildings and subterran spaces is really great. On the other hand the characters do look childish and really outdated in style. Think of Tintin characters for example - very naive looking characters with primitive animation in 1920s style. The General himself looks like Mario - seriously. He is just laughable. These characters just do not fit to these great looking buildings.The story is absurd and seems to drift without any direction. The characters are not believable at all, they are not just flat, but they do behave in a simply absurd manner. Twists and kills are sudden and hard to follow - you just have no idea why something happened and motivation of characters is totally unclear. The most bizarre is the ten year old hit-man (or whatever he is) who is supposed to work for the Baron but not only ignores his interests but he is basically willing to kill everyone in his way like there is no law applying to him at all. The Baron seems not to have any connection with politics yet he simply builds super weapon and has no problem to test it live on his own without consent of Army or state. More or less it is just a roller-coaster of random yet beautiful scenes.In the end I'm not sure if the authors meant the movie to be full fledged serious cyber punk or just simple movie for the kids. It does not seem to be suitable for neither group. It is just too stupid to be serious scifi fan and too messy and hard to follow for the kids. Lots of empty speech, nonsense scenes, useless characters and even more pointless deaths. You might to try to compare this movie with Steamboy or Castle in the Sky but it is just way inferior to them.

Despite sharing it's name with the 1927 Fritz Lang film, Metropolis is a whole different animal. It's about a boy who runs across a girl named Tima while investigating a factory with his uncle, and tries to find out who she really is while evading an assassin named Rock and looking for his uncle. Apparently, the director got the idea for this after seeing a poster for the 1927 film, and wrote a manga series about it which eventually turned into a movie.To start my full review, let's talk about the animation. It's incredibly smooth and stylish, and reminded me simultaneously of Mega Man and Ponyo. Every scene is drawn with such attention to detail that there are almost no holes to pick at, and it actually tops most of the Hiyao Miyazaki films in that respect. Besides the traditional animation, there is also a large amount of CGI work. I generally hate it when CGI is used in an otherwise 2D film (especially in Lilo and Stitch), but it combines with the hand-drawn stuff so well that it compliments it rather than clashing with it.Beyond looks, Metropolis also has very solid writing. There are no corny lines, embarrassing moments, or slow scenes. Everything is there for a reason, and none of it feels like it could have been done better. The voice work is wonderfully done as well. Even though all of it is in Japanese, I could tell that it was acted very competently, and succeeds in making it feel like we're hearing the characters talking rather than actors at a microphone.In the end, Metropolis is simply one of the finest pieces of work I've ever seen. It has amazing animation, charging music, convincing voice work, and the most important thing of all: heart. If you have any way of seeing this, do it. You won't be sorry.

This was quite possibly one of the most important Anime Classics of all time. A beautiful rendition of the 1920's Classic Metropolis. This film held breath taking scenes of high technology mixed with the old ways of how people lived in a city called Metropolis, a city full of wonder, crime, robots, and a girl who did not even know she was an android. Yet one boy Kenichi, who is the nephew of a Detective which is in the city to find a corrupt and sinister inventor by the name of Dr. Laughton. and to bring him back to Japan to face charges. Kenichi on the other hand befriends this girl named Tima (android) and together try to outrun a power hungry young man named rock. An orphan who was taken in by the figure head who had the Ziggarat built to keep Tima running things for humans forever. Instead by happenstance, a simple gunshot causes Tima to activate a self defence mechanism which nearly destroys the earth altogether. Through faith and determination, Kenichi tries to get her to remember on when they first met so the inevitable can be ceased. This film held magic in all forms, I loved the way they used old style Jazz music to mix with the confusing high technological world that needs to wake up from itself. Rintaro was brilliant using Ray Charles's song (I Can't Stop Loving You) for the last scene of the Ziggarat coming down like the tower of babel. Beautiful sequences of explosions, grand scale buildings, and just all round clean up of something the world could do without. I am very surprised this film did not get any academy awards for best foreign film, which contained many ingredients that people could actually relate to. A marvel in film making. Especially when it is hand drawn.