Customer Rating: 
Summary: Worthy Sequel
Comment: I've enjoyed anime in the style of Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed. Appleseed Ex Machina is a worthy sequel to Appleseed. While the plot is not as intricate as one of the GITS movies, it's still engaging enoough to be enjoyable and a fun escape from reality. I recommend this movie.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Complex story, richly detailed animation
Comment: Only the action is over the top. But it's 'just' a cartoon, so that's OK, right?
Visually, "Appleseed Ex Machina" is overwhelming in detail, design, and in the illusion of camera movement. The city scapes are so detailed you'd think they were rendered from photos of real urban environments. Textures of fabric and surfaces are incredible, only a small step from photo realistic. Only human skin is visibly simplified, consistant with the animé aesthetic. The opening sequence was set in what appeared to be the cathedral in Koln, Germany, down to the gothic detailing in the buttresses and the stained-glass windows, except you'd never be able to film that kind of action there. The sci-fi gadgets were equally well done, mostly with a very plausible and appropriate feel. Pulling in Prada to design costumes for the animation was innovative, and added another layer of depth to the cartoon.
Yeah, the action was over the top. Noted. It was no more extreme than 'Matrix', despite having less limits than a photography type movie. Still, it was appropriate to the medium and plot.
The complexity of the story, the relationships, the character flaws, and depth of the characters pushes out of the Saturday morning league, and past the level of many conventional films. There is a mixture of flaws, tensions, caring, and bravado entirely fitting the story, but well done. In the story, there are several layers from a chaste romance between colleagues, questions of trust and loyalty at many levels, to international power games.
I don't normally hold animé in high esteem, but "Appleseed Ex Machina" exceeded all expectations.
E. M. Van Court
P.S. Nice analog watches.
V
Customer Rating:
Summary: amazing!
Comment: State of the art! Japanese animation at its full potential! Great Computer Art Work, with details that value a level up an already excelent screenplay. Two tumbs up!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lacking
Comment:
Visually it is great but that is the best thing about it. The story drags along at times....fight scenes are decent. Nothing new here...Vexille is a far better watch.
Customer Rating:
Summary: John Woo Needs To Be Stopped
Comment: I've never been a huge fan of John Woo. I think Hard Boiled (1992) is one of the greatest action films ever made, and I liked The Killer (1989), A Better Tomorrow (1986), and Bullet In the Head (1990), but we need to be honest with ourselves and recognize that this guy sold his soul to Hollywood in the mid-1990s and hasn't made a great film since 1992.
He has, however, completely destroyed a sequel to one of the best American movies of recent memory (Mission Impossible) by over-Hollywoodizing a uniquely non-Hollywood film made by Hollywood. That's quite an ironic feat that he should be particularly ashamed of. Now we have Appleseed: Ex Machina (2007) to add to the list of Woo-ish debacles over the past 16 years.
This sequel to the exceptional anime drops the ball in a number of respects, yet still proves to be a marginally entertaining movie. The most obvious fault is that numerous events are near copies of science fiction movies from the West, thus making this endeavor much too conventional for a Japanese anime. In addition, the storyline wasn't as well-conceived as the original. Luckily, this movie has just enough positives to earn a watch. The protagonists are very likable characters, the plot is engaging, and the visuals are very good. The action scenes don't reach the levels of exoticism or quality of the original, but they are still moderately entertaining. In the end this is a very flawed picture that will only satisfy anime action junkies that can look around some mediocre elements.
Now, there were some very specific Woo-ish aspects that really annoyed me. First and foremost are the doves. Yes, there are heaping amounts of flying doves in this Japanese anime film! Why the hell is John Woo so obsessed with doves? Yeah, they provide some ironic symbolism during action scenes, but using them to the degree that he does I have no doubts that he touches himself to pictures of doves when he's alone at night. And the fact that he uses these little birdies in almost every one of his movies proves to be almost as annoying as Rob Zombie's habitual use of white trash folk in his movies. Yes, it's that annoying.
But wait. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions regarding just how much influence Woo had in this watchable (yet severely disappointing) sequel. So I fired up the Special Features option on the DVD menu and watched the 16-minute "Making Of" featurette that focuses specifically on John Woo's influence as a producer. It provided some much needed information regarding just how far this has-been shell of a director has fallen. Let me run down some of the statements made by the Japanese director and producers of this film:
"This is the first time a big time Hollywood director has tried to tackle Japanese Anime."
So Woo isn't even recognized as a director of Chinese cinema anymore. How quaint. No one in this "Making Of" feature even mentioned his Chinese filmography.
"Japanese producers wanted to expand into the Western market and saw that working with John Woo would be a good match."
Nice. If your name is dropped by someone as the foremost expert in Hollywoodization, would you really take that as a compliment? Man, this guy has really hit rock bottom.
"John brought his years of experience in Hollywood to it."
Well, he certainly brought all of the negatives of Hollywood cinema to this production. That was obvious from watching the movie. How many times do you see a Japanese Anime film copy scenes from I Robot and The Matrix Revolutions? Yes, it's really, really pathetic.
The most enlightening statement was with regards to the preliminary Japanese storyboards.
"John took a look at it and came up with some really great notes."
What was particularly hilarious about this statement is that on-screen you see John Woo's head shaking in a disapproving, almost disgusted manner while watching the initial storyboards. It's almost like he's saying to himself, "This is way too Japanese for an American audience. We need more slow-mo shots and conventional elements to reach a wider audience and make more money." Nice job Johnny boy.
Director Shinji Aramaki apparently conceived Ex Machina to be nothing more than a tribute to Woo's work. He says:
"We devised the Cathedral scene before John showed up to pay homage to his work."
It's really too bad that Aramaki was so accommodating to implementing all of Woo's ideas into the film. It effectively crippled a movie that should have been as good as the original.
I hate to say it, but John Woo is a no-talent has-been who has only harmed the international film industry since making Hard Boiled in 1992. I have no problems with him making tripe in America. Heck, that's what American cinema is for. But don't you DARE to take your new-found money-grubbing mediocrity to Japanese anime - one of the most unconventional genres of cinema in the world today.
Someone needs to stop this guy before he attempts to wreck another Asian movie.
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