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Moon Child
Director: Takahisa Zeze
Number of Items: 1
Format: Color, Widescreen
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Running Time: 119 minutes
Studio: TLA Releasing
Product Group: DVD
Release Date: 2004-05-18

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"Strange. . "
"Moon Child" is certainly the strangest, weirdest, movie i have ever seen! I can use three words to descibe it: weird, bloody, and tragic. it is definately hyper-violent! the story could have been better. the only reason i bought it was because of HYDE. if you like weird, pretty, gangsters in future Taiwan, who go around shooting everybody, and a vampire who's the cutest vampire ever, HYDE, and a long story, with no purpose, where everyone ends up dead, and leaves you totaly confused about your emotions, than this movie is for you!




"Please ban these pop stars from ever acting again."
Spoilers follow, of course, so please be warned.

Moon Child peaks about twenty minutes in. The rest is a long, slow, drawn-out swan song of a train wreck that eventually spans about 50 confused and unneccessary years. These jumps in time are extremely sloppy and unnerving.

We are never given time to warm to this film--instead, we're yanked away from developing story time and again by the dreaded "a few years later..." subtitle. By the "Titanic"-level sinking ship that is the climax, this film will have alienated, tormented, bored and depressed the life out of all but the most die-hard of J-Pop fans. Although to be fair, I did get some joy from the final "Thelma and Louise"-style suicide of Gackt and Hyde's characters. But it was too little, too late.

This movie wanted to be a romance. It wanted to be a true crime flick. It wanted to be an Anne Rice romance. It wanted to be a gritty urban drama. And it occasionally really, really wanted to be the Matrix. And in struggling to go all these different directions simultaneously, it failed to be anything but mediocre.

One star, and that's just because I liked the first 20 minutes and the final 5. Everything else gets NO COOKIES.




""Moon Child" - A unique and melancholy story"
I think that "Moon Child" is a very unique moive in many ways. It is not an ordinary vampire movie where the theme is more or less on the lust for the flesh. Yet, it is neither an action gun firing movie where the hero defeats vallain. In fact, many themes coexist in "Moon Child" - the struggle between love and hate, friendship and rivalry; the pain of growing up and growing apart; the choice of eternal life and unexpected death upon all human beings; and so many more.

I think that I should state here that I often review movies based on the feelings they gave me rather than the technical things such as plot and character development. Because, after all, we watch movies to search for feelings that are hard to find in reality, not to criticize how the story is written. "Moon Child" gave me a very different and somewhat melancholy feeling which doesn't usually exist in the happy Amiercan moives.

I didn't know too much about the cast before I watched the movie, except for Lee Hom Wong who took the role of Ah-Sun. I didn't know anything about Hyde and Gackt, which I think made me less biased in judging the movie. It wasn't until afterwards that I found out that Hyde and Gackt were actually professional singers in Japan. By the way, I think Hyde looks way much better than Gackt who often looks more like a woman than man.

Nonetheless, I think Hyde and Gackt's actings were great. Lee Hom Wong, on the other hand, wasn't as good as the rest of the cast, especially when he was speaking his lines in Chinese. I don't know if it was because the most of the cast were Japanese, or something else, but Lee Hom Wong seemed to have a lot of difficulty in fluently spitting out his lines in Chinese. There always seemed to be a little awkwardness in his accent and tone, which made his acting weird.

I strongly recommend this movie. It's worth watching.




"moon child"
i liked the movie but no english version only sub
the back ground music was 5 star goro composser
acting was good. two of the stars looked kind of gay, tei & sho, to much makeup, toshi was good and son and shinji to.
i have a copy of the moive, so for personal use i got some
kids to help me translated in english were still working on it
and spanish it was difficalt to sinkronize lip movement





"Moon Child-big 5 stars!"
Incredibly, this was actually what got me into JRock! I'd always loved Japanese music, but I mostly stayed on the JPop and anime soundtrack side. I actually went into this disliking Gackt very much (the details of the Illuminati PV will do that to you) and knowing nothing of Hyde. After seeing Moon Child, I definitely decided that I needed to know more about Gackt and Hyde.

The movie is set in the future in the slummy city of Mallepa, but doesn't actually have many futuristic details (I was so relieved at this). Hyde plays Kei, an angsty vampire and Sho (Gackt) is his orphaned street-rat human friend. It starts out fairly happy with hyper shooting scenes with classic (but nonetheless funny) humor and the given Matrix fast/slow motion effect. The two meet up with Wang Leehom on his mission to get revenge for his sister. Kei and Sho both end up falling for the sister, which equals trouble, but luckily not too much (phew). The first half or so of the movie is happy fun but later it ends up getting pretty angsty. Any Hyde or Gackt fans will probably end up having a good cry at this movie.

Of course, with two of the biggest rock stars in Japan in the same movie, there has to be a song. And Orenji no Taiyou (Orange Sun), a duet between Hyde and Gackt, does not disappoint. The over 9 minute song is beautiful and Hyde and Gackt's voices blend so perfectly that at times it's hard to tell the difference between the two. Of course, it's already hard enough since they both have huge ranges in their voices. The genre of the duet (romance) will make Gackt/Hyde yaoi fans drool.

This movie has more than its share of doubters, what with the two main characters being completely newbie actors and Jrockers and the director having a pretty questionable background. But it turned out beyond expectations. It reminded me of Interview with a Vampire (also an awesome movie) but for some reason I liked Moon Child more. It gets a little melodramatic at times, but that's a given with Gackt playing such a big part in the movie and in the making of it. Hyde, on the other hand, captures his character's subtle nuances so much better than one would expect from a total amateur. His little monologues are beautiful and I'd have to say, as Lestat, he kicks Tom Cruise's (...). He's a vampire that you feel sorry for, because he has a conscience and you find yourself relating to his pain. It was really a wonderful acting job by my favorite jrocker. Besides, Hyde's a heck of a lot cuter than Tom Cruise! XD

Definitely recommend this for any fan of Hyde of Gackt. And if you're not into JRock or even if you don't even like Gackt or Hyde, well, watch it anyway; it'll go a long way in convincing you otherwise. If you don't judge a movie simply on its casting list, the plot is good enough to keep you interested to say the least. It's not Oscar material, but totally worth owning and repeated watching. Especially if you have a stubborn friend who refuses to see the light of JRock...it'll win them over. ^_^;







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