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movie review - Avalon

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is a bizarre Japanese/Polish collaboration directed by the fellow who directed Ghost in the Shell. But it's not animated. Instead, it's a luridly shot flick with heavy doses of CGI. It's sort of a live-action, post-Communist Matrix, with lots of Cold-War era wargaming and heaps of sentimentality. In fact, there could hardly be more sentimentality in this. Well, maybe an Irishman or two could have upped the ante ever so slightly, but the Japanese and the assorted Slavs are no slouches in that department themselves, and it comes through in this piece.

What also comes through is that the editor must have been on qualuudes. Whew, what a long movie.

I'd recommend it if you're interested in seeing what happens when this particular mix of elements comes together in a movie, but otherwise I'd pass on it.

Not recommended.