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Sky High Streaming. Movie Title: Sky High Average customer review: Sky High is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Sky High

It’s no secret that I’m a huge admirer of Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura, the Asian equivalent of our Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. The man specializes in stylish, offbeat fantasy films that defy convention (American convention, anyways) while paying homage to the action films he idolizes. I would highly recommend each and every one of his films to anyone looking for a breath of fresh air. That said, this is my least favorite of his films. “Sky High” is filled with interesting ideas, beautiful actresses, supernaturally-powered swordfights, and all of the other things he usually excels at. The problem is, this time he just didn’t bring his “A” game.

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The story begins with a woman, Mina, murdered on her wedding day and sent stumbling down the aisle sans a heart. She wakes up at The Gate of Rage, where the spirits of the slain are given three choices by the Guardian of the Gate: to accept death and enter paradise to be reborn later, haunt the human world for eternity, or curse a living person to death and enter Hell. Each spirit is given 12 days to ponder their choice, during which they can enter and observe the world of the living or relive their past. Mina does a little of both, in order to try to stop her fiance from killing himself or another -which would condemn him to Hell- and also viewing her own death. It turns out she was the victim of a serial killer and his henchwoman (who possesses a sword inscribed with a spell that can slay spirits) who are out stealing women’s hearts for use in a demonic ritual. Mina’s fiance, a detective investigating her death, comes into contact with a photographer whose pictures seem to predict the subject’s impending death a’la “The Omen” (he even acknowledges this bit of stolen plot device). A picture of his charming coworker reveals a ghastly hand grabbing at her heart, and the race to save her and find the killers is on. Later, a psychic spiritualist who seems to have all of the answers joins the fray, completing the main cast.

After such a promising setup, the film loses focus. It never really fleshes out any one aspect, leaving the ideas and themes presented largely unfulfilled. Characters are introduced and expelled from the story with little or no development and the film just kind of meanders for a while. Then comes the action. If there is one thing Kitamura always gets right it’s the action; or so I thought. While the swordfights certainly have their moments, they are very obviously choreographed and the CG sparks look pretty cheesy. The major characters are not a particularly likeable or memorable bunch as we never really get to know much about them. Mina, in particular, tends to stand around and gape at the events unfolding in front of her. Not a good quality in a heroine. The characters all seem to be there just to drive the plot forward and not much more.

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I may be being a little harsh on this film; it is an entertaining little flick. I enjoyed the Buddhist principles of life and death simply being a force of nature and subject to laws that make it more akin to physics than to the idea of judgement by a deity. It’s just too bad that this aspect wasn’t more fully fleshed out. The battle between the spiritualist and the henchwoman has some pretty cool moments and the main villain delivers a few fantastic lines to liven up the proceedings, but the movie feels so rushed, like it could have used a few more months of polish and rehearsals. If you’ve seen Azumi you know what Ryuhei Kitamura is capable of doing with his talent and I, for one, want to see his films continue to improve. He can do great things on a shoestring budget, but his last two films have just been sloppy. I can overlook sloppiness in a giant monster flick like Godzilla - Final Wars (which preceded this one), but a film like “Sky High” needs that spit shine to really succeed.

Overall, this is an interesting and highly ambitious film, one that should appeal to a lot of people fed up with Hollywood’s same-ol’-same-ol’, but it just doesn’t live up to the cult classics that preceded it in this director’s filmography. Check it out if the concept appeals to you or if you’re looking for something a little different, but know that it doesn’t quite get to where it’s trying to go.

I found this movie on a shelf in Blockbuster, and being a fan of Sci-fi movies, as well as good Japanese imports, I rented the flick because the premise sounded promising: a girl is murdered and has to choose between going to Heaven, becoming a ghost, or cursing one person on Earth to death, and then going to Hell herself. Not a bad idea for a story at all. And it really isn’t what’s wrong with this movie. In fact, I loved the cleverness and originality of the story: the options of the murdered, the intriguing guardian of the gate of rage, an evil CEO set about completing a ritual to bring about an evil demon, all in order to resurrect his dead wife. The characters were interesting, and the villains had the potential for sympathy, something that is rare in sci-fi type movies. This has all the makings for a great movie.

And its downfall was the…actual movie. I watched the subtitled version, and while the acting from the main character, her fiancé, and the guardian Izuko was tolerable, the horribly over-acted villainy of the evil CEO and his lovely minion ruined it for me. Ruined! These were villains ripe with potential for sympathy–their actions, terrible as they were, were motivated by love, and thus understandable, if not justifiable. But they were played with such cartoon maliciousness, complete with evil laughs and generic one-liners, that the effectiveness of the characters was nullified. The action scenes also left a LOT to be desired. They were all fought in real-time, no stylish camera tricks here, and were very OBVIOUSLY choreographed. The actors moved slowly and with deliberate care, like amateur dancers trying to remember the steps to the tango. The action scenes were horribly contrived and staged so that you could just tell they were going for cool moves and one-shot “poses”, and didn’t care how the rest of the fight looked, as long as they got those cool moments, say where two of the sword fighting women were moving in unison, and locked blades in mirroring poses. The second-to-last fight scene between the evil minion and the priestess was by far the most natural looking one, but even that fell far short of “par” for most action movies.

This movie was very aesthetically beautiful, almost amusingly so (you apparently won’t find anything but stunningly beautiful 20-something women in Tokyo. Women over the age of thirty are apparently sent to different parts of the country ), but the driving force of the movie–it’s action scenes and cast–sadly fall short. I have since read the two manga series this movie is based on, and with the material at hand, I think they could have done a lot better. This was a disappointing film that I really wouldn’t recommend.
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