Metropolis/メトロポリス (Metoroporisu) (2001) - Rintaro's ambitious robo-anime a matter of taste

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Colorful cyberpunk sci-fi animation is promised on this poster for Rintaro's Metropolis

Complications arising concerned with the evolution of robots lead a future mega-city to a complete breakdown.

Metropolis is written by Katsihuro Ôtomo (Stink Bomb/Saishu Heiki (1995, short)), based on the same-titled 1949 manga by Osama Tezuka (Astro Boy (1952-68)), and directed by Rintaro (Galaxy Express 999/Ginga tetsudô Three-Nine (1979)).
The inspiration from Fritz Lang's eponymous 1927 masterpiece (Metropolis (1927)) is apparent, though this anime evolves into a radically different film, especially due to its visual ambition, which divides audiences: Some will find the detailed, staccato-moving, fast-edited style with obvious mixing of traditional animation and CGI highly attractive, but others like myself find it deeply stressful and at times almost intolerable to watch. It is a matter of taste.
The style overwhelms the experience for me. Metropolis certainly is a noisy and special, doom-romanticizing film.

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Reportedly 1 bil. ¥, approximately 15 mil. $
Box office: Uncertain, perhaps around 15.25 mil. $
= Uncertain, but looks like a huge flop (looks to have returned 1.01 times its cost)
[Metropolis premiered 26 May (Japan) and runs 113 minutes. Production reportedly lasted 5 years. The film opened #40 to an 84k $ first weekend in 9 theaters in North America, its peak weekend there, where it widened to 16 theaters and grossed 722k $. The world gross listed at Box Office Mojo is 4 mil. $. On Wikipedia the film is listed to have grossed 750 mil. ¥ in Japan, approximately 11.25 mil. $. Put together the gross comes to 15.25 mil. $. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to 4 notches higher than this one. Metropolis is certified fresh at 86 % with a 7.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Metropolis?

Man With a Movie Camera/Человек с киноаппаратом (1929) - Mechanical USSR fascination in technically astute experimental documentary

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A colorful original poster with English text over it for Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera

QUICK REVIEW:

Man With a Movie Camera is an experimental avant-garde silent B/W documentary of 68 minutes, a film without inter-titles, actors or a plot. Instead, it is an abstract work in cinema and a portrait of a Soviet city.

The film is a technical montage of fast-cut images and movement. It varies between depictions of sufferings in a modern metropolis, - perhaps an implicit criticism of the economical policies of the USSR? - with an intense fascination and excitement concerning everything new, (which rather annuls any inherent critique, I should think.) It was filmed in Odessa, Kharkiv and Kiev. Movie Camera features an endless display of Soviet industrial excellence and mechanical strength (through fire trucks, for instance.)
The film is made by Dziga Vertov (Kino Eye/Kinoglaz (1924)), born in Bialystok in what is Poland today but was part of the Russian empire then, and in his statement at the beginning of Movie Camera, he asserts that the film "is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theater and literature."
The radical idealism behind Vertov's endeavor here comes off to me as more of a nationally-motivated show, and I think it was the same brand of extreme idealism that led the Soviet Union to some of its most detrimental and humanly disastrous policies. - Which is one reason that I am not full of groveling admiration for the film, (as many other film scholars seem to be.)

Watch the entire film with English subtitles (for the opening titles) here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown
[The film had a difficult time upon release because of its radical structure and lack of formal content, but apart from this, I have not been able to ascertain whether or not it was a flop commercially. It took 3 years to make and bolsters a variety of advanced cinematic visual and editing techniques, which it remains notorious and respected for: The film was listed as the 8th best film ever by the 2012 critics' Sight & Sound poll and in 2014 was named best documentary ever (again by Sight & Sound). - Phew...!!]

What do you think of Man With a Movie Camera?
If you have insight into Dziga Vertov and/or any of his other films, please, enlighten us about him/them