Backspin's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Oily Night]

will probably end up underrated.

I thought this was fantastic. the animation of the marching band could definitely use some work, but the combination of that song and the animation that you did do well was well and truly creepy. particularly (and as an apparent climax) the woman's oily face. it kind of reminded me of that old Jason Forrest music video, war photographer, it was called. only this had a more twisted style.
perhaps it was a bit generous but i gave it a four.

[Star Fox spoof]

a bit of a shame, really.

i felt like you had a lot more potential, here, but threw it away a bit. it almost seemed like an egoraptor "awesome fox" kind of thing, but got a bit silly.
definitely a good effort. with a bit of practice this could be a full on lulz affair.

[The Drunken Spartan]

oh sparta... how much have we learned?

this was great. at first i'm thinking, hm, another one of THESE, but no, no, you did a great job, to be sure. watching all the way through, i'm grinning, and grinning and then the "captain's daughter" is him too, and that was it, phivz all around, yo!

[Sabre Cat]

Stunning!

This is the best worst thing i've seen in a while.
remember that terrible mario cartoon that got front paged? this is definitely up there with it.
i actually lawl'd a little bit, particularly at "there's always tomorrow" "... [no], i've stolen your brain!"
that's priceless.
i don't know if you were going the random way on purpose or if it just ended up being fairly incoherent, but either way, it was at least reasonably entertaining.
suggestions for next time: faster pace, more intriguing voice acting (not that this was bad, it was just a bit lacking), and a better length of video to file size ratio.

aSHOEin responds:

Yeah, sorry about the file size, I recorded the voices with a crappy microphone and if I tried compressing it, it got too soft. Oh well.
Thanks for the tips anyhow. "Best worst" is a great way to describe it.

["Shooters"]

A bit dull, for my tastes.

I liked the music a whole bunch, but beyond that, I didn't think anything was terribly inspired.
The animation was par, the story has been done, so to speak, and frankly i didn't feel anything for any of the characters.
I'm not just trying to be a dick, either, i just thought it lacked any real motive, i mean, try watching it with your sound muted, right?
I think the most positive thing i can say is that it reminded me of that movie Elephant by Gus Van Sant.
Well, despite all my bashing i did still give it a 3, so i guess it was just one of those things where nothing really piqued my interest, but at the same time it didn't hurt to watch.

[Pepsi machine]

Hmm, so...

I gotta be honest, it wasn't too much of anything. I gave you a two because i'm a big fan of that royksopp song you used at the end.
other than that though, it wasn't very coherent, i wasn't even sure what was going.

*confused*

i agree that coke is the better product though, for what that's worth.

PivotDK responds:

ok, coke is good pepsi is not i just wanted to base the story on it :P

[Gravity's Just a Theory]

Wonderfully creative, also nice and peaceful.

You were building up towards a five, because i loved the creativity and the physics that were apparent, and then when i saw the night time cannon, i was like "what, a cannon that goes off at night?" but no, you'd already surpassed that simple line of thought and BAM. there was a five, hands down.
If you could make a game based on this concept/these concepts somehow, mmh, i can only imagine the potential. It would almost be like that old game flyguy, but possibly more incredible.
Great job.

[Boulevard of Broken Songs]

A very strong effort.

I see you're catching heat in the reviews for it being emo anyway, but i think the term, to be more accurate than emo, would be that it's cliche in its darkness. I liked a lot of the animation and obviously that's a great set of songs, but some of the visuals were just too standard. Nonetheless, considering that that's the way you guys decided to go with it, i thought it was a production well beyond the level of simple decency.
If you're wondering why i'm praising you in this review and yet only giving a 6 out of 10, it's because if you wanna go artsy and dark like that, i think you've got to be more innovative, which some of the bits were, but others were just, well, too emo. :D

[Freezepop's JEM!]

Not terrible, but definitely out of place.

It's definitely catchy enough, but newgrounds is really more about flash animation than live action stuff, as far as i'm concerned, so maybe it's not the right forum for this kind of production.
As it stands, it reminded me of a live action "Magical Trevor" which is good.
Nice job "censoring" the logo off of your sweater, by the way. That was the high point of the video for me, i think.
I guess as a future suggestion i would say you ought to actually animate stuff, as opposed to record it, if it's going to go on newgrounds. I feel like this kind of thing should be on like, facebook or myspace, even youtube; but maybe that's just me.

[fire cuming from monkey's]

A let down.

I was always hoping there would be a flash video of this song, but i was also hoping that that flash video would be a bit more... wholesome.
For a song with such strong visuals and themes already built in, i thought you might've capitalized a bit more on it.
Good effort nonetheless, 2/5.

AOD-Dillard responds:

Acctually there are other flash videos of this song that are quite good. In fact they are on newgrounds if you type in fire comming out of monkey's head.