Death Note (Live Action)(2006)
Oh great, I bet you were all expecting me to pick something anime based, weren't you? Nonetheless, something currently very POPULAR and anime based. I even consider this choice to be rather stereotypical, but I ask you, dear readers, to hear me out for a second.
I happened upon this film while chatting it up with Kurt in the lab back in May. I'd never seen the anime or read the manga before seeing it, so I was watching this purely as a film and not as a Death Note fan, so I thoroughly enjoyed it (though now after seeing like 25 episodes of the anime, I probably would go back and start picking it apart, but I've loaned it back to Kurt, so I'll do that later when I get my own, non-illegal, badly transrated copy of it).
Death Note, in a nutshell, is about Light Yagami, a cop's son who turns into an impromptu vigilante executioner after attaining a notebook (mistakenly dropped into the human world by the death god Ryuk) that allows the user to kill anyone they want just by writing down their name. It's set in regular old Japan and sort of tastes like Boondock Saints...without the irish-ness. The thing about the Live Action Death Note movie's CG element that sets it apart from other movies I've seen is the way Ryuk is presented.
I'm fairly sure we've all seen Lord of the Rings by now. Or Star Wars: Episode I. Or at least Harry Potter. Or The Matrix (and even though I love the Matrix), all of those films exhibit very dramatically presented digital characters that always fall short of being believable due to this rubbery quality that comes out of trying to make them perfect. Sure, you can see the shinies in Dobby's eyes, but he has no weight to him, and he's made out of the same floppy digital latex that Neo has fighting the gaggle of Agent Smiths in The Matrix: Reloaded. A lot of people seem to be always putting SO much effort into making things SO perfect because it costs SO much to do these things, but a lot of the time, it just ends up looking incredibly overworked.
The thing that sets Ryuk apart from Gollum is the fact that he's not polished to a shine. They don't have to go to great lengths to PROVE that he can interact with his environment, because we already know that it's just Japan, and Ryuk's just a death god following this kid around. There are no big dramatic scenes dedicated to showing off how much work they put into every feather in his collar, and whenever Ryuk does interact with his environment, he has a weight to him instead of just the wet flappiness that seems to prevail with a lot of other CGI movie characters. He's understated, we're not forced to like him, and just not in the spotlight at all, which I think makes this presentation very tasteful.
Now, unless I manage to smuggle something in from Korea, your best chance of seeing this movie is looking it up on YouTube, and it probably won't be very good quality, but I srsly recommend it.
