Shingster wrote:
Aye, I thought Oshii's approach was a bit too dispassionate to fully drive the rather minimalist narrative for 2hrs, but still enjoyed it overall. Have you reviewed it yourself somewhere on these boards?
I just wrote a few words after the festival screening I attended. But you know me, when I'm on a film festival I watch 4 or 5 films every day so those reviews aren't always so great and the grammar is what it is...
"Sky Crawlers (Japan, 2008) – 3,5/5
Initially I saw this as a potential crowd pleasing effort by Mamoru Oshii. That is fortunately not the case. Sky Crawers doesn’t go overboard with philosophing, but it’s pure Oshii from themes of identity and soul to lack of comprehensive answers. It’s not Oshii at his most effective, and suffers from some over-length, but it’s a fascinating piece set in unidentified time and place in the future. The numerous air battles are well done, and the final touch is given by Kenji Kawai’s terrific score. "
After your review and a few other recent reviews I was about to say that impatient reviewers complain about the film's length for nothing, but now I see I even wrote so myself
EDIT: This reminded me of how scared I got in the screening when I first saw a US studio logo in the beginning of the film, and then the first lines of dialogue were in English... I thought it was a dubbed version
