Home :: DVD :: Animation  

Anime & Manga
Comedy
Computer Animation
General
International
Kids & Family
Science Fiction
Stop-Motion & Clay Animation
Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within (Single Disc Edition)

Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within (Single Disc Edition)

List Price: $19.94
Your Price: $17.95
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 .. 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 .. 66 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: FF is much better in DVD!
Review: Final Fantasy the Spirits Within SE is one of the best DVD's I ever bought. Even with the box office failure, I think you should give it a chance on DVD. The transfer from the silver screen to the DVD is flawless. No rainbows effects, colors are vibrant, the menus are one of the best I ever saw in a DVD and it is packaged with TONS of extras to make you watch this over and over. For a reasonable price, you get not one but two DVD's. One is packaged with the movie and not only one movie but two versions of the movie. Three commentaries audio tracks, theatrical trailers and the best of all...Dolby Digital with all the effects included. The other DVD has EXTRAS like a music video featuring Thriller. A documentary and profiles of the characters and vehicles, screensavers, more trailers, an editor for one of the scenes in the movie, and much more..
The movie itself is pretty cool and I dont understand why it didnt make it at the box office. I feel sorry for SQUARE PICTURES because they made a GREAT job with this movie and with this DVD and I hope they will make more projects like this, with better plots and more character development.
In conclusion,FF DVD is one of the best DVDs I bought and I am sure this one will be a perfect gem for your collection.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The best cgi can never beat an original story
Review: Was this one of the best looking films ever?! YES!
Were the effects & imagery mind boggling?! YES!
Were the voice overs of Alec Baldwin & Donald Sutherland cool? YES!

Was this story totally weak?! YES!
I guess you can't have it all. This movie was semi-fun. The first 15 minutes were full of beyond compare "eye-candy". After which I was pretty bored. I have to admit that despite the great look of the movie & the cool action sequences I actually fell asleep watching this one. And, yes I did see this in the theater!

This movie is great for the 13 to 16 year old crowd. Otherwise the rest of us semi and full blown grown ups will probabley walk away feeling more interested in one of the movies we saw a preview of before the film started.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Fantastic Flop
Review: Frankly, this movie was awful. It begins with a pretty cool premise - a war on an alien planet results in the destruction of said planet, and a chunk of this planet is launched through space, crashing into earth. This asteroid brings with it the ghosts of the planet's deceased denizens, which proceed to ravage humanity. Fast forward a generation or two, and the stage is set for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

At first, things looks promising enough - the visual effects are pretty amazing, although the people look a little too "realistic," to the point of eeriness. As soon as the first corny lines of narration are uttered, however, it all goes downhill. The entire movie seems utterly formulaic, from the dialogue and stereotypical characters, right on up to the plot and its thought-provoking themes, the latter of which quickly degenerates into a sort of new-age mysticism so completely lacking in any substance that even I, for all my pantheistic inclinations, was unable to salvage any benefit from it.

Perhaps the greatest insult is the inexplicable application of the Final Fantasy name to this film. The film in no way merits the Final Fantasy license - About the only recognizable homage to the Final Fantasy tradition is the inclusion of a Dr. "Sid," which will mean something to the fans. Frankly, I think Hironobu Sakaguchi made it a Final Fantasy film just to give it some extra credibility. Unfortunately, it has instead become a blight on the franchise's strong track record. I'd like to call particular attention to a most inexcusable offense - the film wasn't even scored by Nobuo Uematsu! Uematsu, of course, scored every major FF game under the sun, and his name is synonymous with the franchise, arguably moreso than Sakaguchi's.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is the type of movie that you might watch once to kill a couple hours, but its worth for repeat viewings is virtually nil. It's been compared to such contemporary films as The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, touted as a real thought provoker. If your brainpan is filled with anything of thicker consistency than tapioca pudding, however, the only thought on your mind is likely to be, "I wish this movie would end already, I gotta use the can."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Amazing
Review: excelent craftsmanship on Final Fantasy. All of the money they put in to digitaly analize the movie makes this a one of a kind movie.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Feels like the first time
Review: The Final Fantasy series started out as an 8-bit Nintendo game, evolved to later consoles, and eventually spawned several truly great games and began a revolution in the genre. That's the good news. The bad news is that, so far, Final Fantasy still has yet to leave the world of video games, and that includes this film.

Don't get me wrong--the film has plenty of wonderful elements. The visuals are obviously the best you'll find in a film of this style, the story hook is an engaging blend of traditionally Eastern and Western ideas, and several of the scenes are well written, with good dialogue. The problem is that all of these small triumphs aren't integrated together into an effective movie.

The biggest failure in this regard has to be seen in the absolutely terrible pacing of the film. The story takes tremendous jumps in time, spacing them with long, slow periods (the scene that comes to mind would be the two lead characters having their romantic encounter in outer space), ultimately making the story itself very difficult to connect with. The poor character development doesn't help much in this regard--all the way through the end of the movie, I never stopped thinking of the characters in terms of their voices (oh, look, Roz just died--and there goes Steve). The characters are never firmly established and no real effort is made to forge any connections between them and the audience, which ends up leaving me feeling disconnected from the movie.

Truth be told, a video game is exactly what this particular movie feels like. You can pick out spots that look exactly like cutscenes, as well as sequences that would seem to fit well for a game interlude (the initial search of the city by Aki, the mission into the crater, etc.). This would also explain the lacking character development--in a video game, you tend to get attached to the characters simply by way of the fact that you're constantly taking care of them and keeping them from being devoured by monsters. When you take out that degree of personal connection that the game provides, you end up with a distant, difficult to relate to cast of characters in a plot that seems to lurch from instant to instant.

So how much will you enjoy this film? Well, that probably depends on what you're looking for. If you want a story that's going to pick you up and help you forget what's going on around you for an hour and a half, you're probably in the wrong place. If you simply want to see some breathtaking visuals and play with some quality DVD extras, however, then this movie should do it for you. There's probably a substantial number of people who will be dissatisfied with the plot or the ending (which just screams video game), but overall, this film is probably still a good way to kill an evening.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It was almost a real movie
Review: This was almost a real movie, just like the characters in the film-almost real. Muddled with hype, and over-glorifying of the bestselling Sony Playstation video games, this film falls far from the mark of making a good impression. Starting with a fairly interesting beginning, the film slowly but surely begins to teeter off into literally nothing as it goes on. Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, and other greats make not so worthwhile voice over appearences, the characters strike the viewer as mostly incincere beings with no real emotions. For instance a scene in which the ship seems to be blowing up from the inside out, Sutherland's character, the doctor, calls out " No Aki, don't go, its too dangerous." Whereupon, he does absolutely nothing to stop her from going to the rear of the ship. So, in retrospect, the movie offers little that would differ from actually watching a video game being played before your eyes, with characters that have as much underdeveloped and boring script as appears in most video games. One plus, the movie does have excellent computer graphics, and the characters appear quite life-like in appearence, but does not make up for their overbearlingly boring drawl that seems to spill out of their mouth in every scene.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: You wanna know about the DVD right
Review: I'm not going to review the movie, because if your looking at the DVD its because you've either seen it already, or want to see it, right? And by the way, The title is the only thing really final fantasy about it.

For the price this DVD is perfect, you get two discs. If you really liked the movie you not only get to watch it, but find out everything and anything about it. I was really surprised how much stuff was in this packaged. The scene editor is cheesy, don't excpect something really great out of that bonus, but the many different commentaries and making off stuff makes this a DVD you can spend 5+ hours on.

The only bad thing about it is that in some peoples eyes this movie isn't very good. I'll admit there are some moments when the jokes are just to unnatural, or the people don't like quite right, but the story is there, the graphics are there, and with this DVD set you can see the amazing amount of detail that went into it, I appreciate the movie more now.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great Computer Graphics
Review: But a very mediocre film.

While the graphics were masterfully done and unparalleled by any other film, the plot is a mix of cliché scenes, uninteresting action and little transcendent meaning. If you want to see the future of film-making, buy it, otherwise save your money.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: How about negative 5 stars?
Review: I have almost never been as upset about paying for a movie as after this diaster of a film. I would have rather thrown my money out a window than to have sat through this non-event.
No story, no philosophy, no reason, no fun. It stinks.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very Nice Movie
Review: I haven't seen this DVD, but I loved the movie. The visuals, if you're the type that means allot to, are amazing. No shortage in this movie. The story, which all Final Fantasy games have shined for, is great and deep just as one would expect. Unfortunately the movie isn't long enough to bring it out in the color and beauty that the games do, but it still does a great job. All in all, you will enjoy this movie if you are either a Final Fantasy fan, or enjoy a great visual movie.


<< 1 .. 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 .. 66 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates