One Piece Film: Gold, Kimi no Na wa, Death Note: Light Up the New World and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Movie Reviews

Well, well, I watched quite a few movies so I thought I'd review them since I had some time. Maybe I'm in a movie phase right now since I went to the cinemas more times in the past few weeks than the whole of last year lmao. Nevertheless, these are my opinions, even though they may not be the most positive. Well, I sound rather negative about them but I enjoyed them to an extent. I think the underlying reason still remains with the fact that movies are not my preferred medium but I do want to watch them more to see the magic people can create in the time of around 2 hours.

One Piece Film: Gold
Rating: 6/10

I think the easiest way to describe this would be that it's a standard typical OP movie. It has all the elements you would expect in a OP and does it quite well in fact. It follows a simple storyline of our Straw Hat Crew going to a gigantic casino island but the top guy is a villain oppressing the poor and stripping them of their rights as he does with the people who come to this island. He maintains his power and control through his ability with gold and money and no one is able to defy him until the Straw Hats come of course.

Nevertheless it was rather enjoyable because it's always great to see the Straw Hats kick some ass and make some friends in the new place and motivating them into saving themselves from the oppression and to fight for themselves. Gotta say, not enough Zoro screen time though hahaha. I did get a free Nami casino chip for watching this though, it's so cute hehe! Overall, it's a classic OP movie, not good, not bad.

Kimi no Na wa (Your Name)
Rating: 7/10

With the hype going on in Japan with this movie right now considering it has passed Princess Mononoke in how much the movie has earned, it was hard to pass up watching this. My score for it may seem low but I did enjoy it. Most of all, I'd say the visuals were absolutely amazing in the colour and detail that it was hard to take your eyes away from it and focus on the characters because they were so much more captivating LOL. There was a scene with raindrops on a cobweb and omg that was so detailed and beautiful. It's hard to watch this movie without being in awe of the beauty of it. Songs and music were great as well.

Basically, the story follows our two main characters Taki and Mitsuha with the guy living in Tokyo and Mitsuha living in a rural area deep in the mountains. Suddenly, every now and then when they fall asleep, they swap bodies and live the life of the other's until they go back to sleep again and so they keep up a diary on each other's phones after realising this weird phenomenon until something bigger happens that causes Taki to have to find out the mystery of this whole thing.

Personally, I'd say I wasn't too into the plot or the romance. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. The story telling was done quite nicely with how cute the two were since they would do funny things in each other's bodies and this helped their relative situations. But yeah, I wasn't really into the whole string thing and converging timelines etc but I did enjoy their little adventure and quest into trying their best efforts into doing what they can to change their lives but I couldn't feel the romance I guess.

Like, I know about the red string of fate that twists, tangles but never breaks is a central element since the red string is always either with Mitsuha or Taki meaning that they'd eventually be together no matter what, even if there is a disparity in time, place and circumstance but maybe I'm just not a romance person hahaha. I'm more of a realistic person rather than a red string of fate kinda person. I like the idea since it is deeply entrenched in culture and I have seen the red string of fate appear many times through my years of reading manga etc but yeah. I did think it was cute when he was supposed to write his name on her hand so that she would remember him but he instead wrote I love you haha, that was sweet.

I'm not saying it was bad though, I really enjoyed the movie, just not as much as other people did I guess. I would still recommend people to watch it because it is good but just don't expect it to blow your mind away. Also, not sure how they're going to English dub this without losing some focal points of this movie but oh well~ I mean, the boku, watakushi etc joke was funny :')

Death Note: Light up the New World
Rating: 5.5/10

This one for me was a disappointment, although I guess I should have expected it. The movie is a sequel to the other two previous movies and it follows (mostly) two people who have received the DNA of Light and L. To be honest, I don't know why that DNA thing was necessary but whatever, I wouldn't have minded randoms going on a rampage with death notes but I guess they wanted to hit some notes on nostalgia. Have to say, I didn't really like the guy with L's DNA, I felt like he was a rather dodgy version of L hahaha, sorry, didn't like him.

I guess the biggest disappointment was that I heard the story was going to revolve around the rule that only six death notes can exist in the human world at one time and so I was anticipating this full on battle royale with the 6 of them but instead, it was really one of them collecting four of them in like the first 10-20 minutes of the film and then the rest is just the three of them doing whatever they need to do to find each other. Gotta say that female white Shinigami was really pretty~

But yeah anyway, maybe like my friend said, the story was there but the execution was bad. I'd say they were pretty bad on both ends because they built up 3/4 of the whole movie to this sort of big reveal that wasn't very mind-breaking enough for me to have enjoyed the other 3/4 of the movie. I was also disappointed that Misa didn't have much of a role considering they brought her back.

The characters weren't something I could really connect with either so it was hard to feel emotional for any of them. Overall, didn't like it.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Rating: 6/10

Hmmm, I'm still unsure how I feel about this movie but I guess it was okay. Music was nice and the beasts were amusing and fun especially the Niffler since it was adorable haha but I think that's all there is to it. It basically revolves around Newt Scamander in New York finding his beasts again because some of them got let out of his briefcase because of a series of events with the people he encounters. I guess that is the point of the movie so it is good but I still think the movie was lacking with the amount of connection between the characters and the viewer. A lot of people may disagree with that haha but the only ones I like would be Kowalski and maybe Queenie but that's really only because they were entertaining to a certain extent.

Tina was definitely not a character I liked. I understood what kind of character she was supposed to be but nah, don't like her. Newt I have mixed feelings for, not sure if I like him or not, might have to see how it goes but if I can't like him in the first movie, there's not much motivation to watch the next. To say the least, movie was enjoyable I guess but I'd say the main focus for the film (in my opinion) landed on seeing the different beasts, a bit more background on how the wizarding world was like in those days and the appearance of Grindelwald for like one scene haha. Oh and I guess adults using magic instead of kids haha.