Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Al_The_Strange Anybody who's familiar with the Watchmen graphic novel will recognize the significance of the Tales of the Black Freighter. This was originally the comic-within-the-comic, having nothing much to do with the events of Watchmen, but offering a stark thematic parallel.This animated feature translates that segment of the comic to accompany the Watchmen film (and if you watch the film's Ultimate Cut, this cartoon will be spliced into the main feature). On its own, the cartoon is short, bleak, and pretty gnarly. It runs pretty fast and it tells a heck of a story.Following the Watchmen comic closely, this feature tells a very dark and violent story full of hideously ironic twists. The story is simple, but highly effective. It offers the bare minimum characterizations, but it digs deeply into the main character's psyche and madness to dig up strong themes of humanity's savagery; themes that are effectively echoed in the Watchmen film.This feature uses pretty decent animation quality: movements are a little stiff and cheap, but it looks sharp, clean, and well-rendered. Voice-acting is not bad, and the writing is good. Designs for the characters and settings are good, and some scenes show good imagination. Music is alright.Recommended for anybody interested in the Watchmen film.4/5 (Entertainment: Good | Story: Good | Film: Good)

Neil Welch I am glad that this short film exists. I am also glad that it was not crosscut into Watchmen - it would have further fragmented a narrative already suffering from flashback fatigue. What worked on the page, where you got go back and re-read, does not necessarily work on screen.Taken on its own merits, Tales Of The Black Freighter works well as a macabre horror pirate story. The story, though slight, is solid, the animation is fine, and the voicework - primarily Gerard (SPARTAAAAA!!!!) Butler - is very good.However, I can't conceive of a 25 minute animated pirate horror movie ever being commissioned if it wasn't for the Watchmen connection.Does this matter? I don't think so.

bob the moo It was a while after I watched Watchmen that I got around to getting this companion film – essentially put together from the reading of the comic of the same name within the comic of Watchmen. Not being a massive defender of the comic, I am not petty about it nor do I wish to debate for hours about how the film works without it, how the changes in the film affect this film, how you must be an idiot if you think this, or how you must be an idiot if you don't think that – and so on. No, instead I came to the short film knowing its parallels with the main story/film and yet also keen to see how it works as a film full stop.The answer is that it works very well because it produces a really gaudy depiction of the story with a much clearer link to the mental journey of Ozymandias and/or Rorschach – again I cannot be bothered to debate it on the message boards, for my money it works for both. The film is really well animated but not to the point that it is stylised to the point where it doesn't feel real. Instead, the gore and horror is made to feel very real and very horrible – not "owh gross" horrible in the way teen slasher films are, but it is really quite tangible how awful events are from start to finish. The story is quite simple but, because the horror is so well captured, it doesn't really matter if you watch this with Watchmen in mind or not – although of course it is meant for you to do so as well. The delivery is generally strong as well thanks mainly to the impressive delivery from Butler as the captain in narration. His haunted and nuanced voice is a great fit with the graphics – in particular the captain showing on his face what we are hearing.It is ironic because, while I thought that the full film of Watchmen struggled because of how it stuck to the events in the book to the detriment of the heart of the book, the Black Freighter appears to have captured both. I'll let others argue it out but for me it was best to strip this out of the film and, while it works well in the comic spread out over the telling of the main story, it works equally as well here as a companion short film.

ThurstonHunger ...as this pretty much proves the essential nature of comic books. Not having the pieces integrated puts the movie(s) at a decided disadvantage . This DVD also included an excruciatingly overlong Culpepper Minute...although I do like the irony of it being called a minute and lasting an eternity, perhaps it was named the same in Moore's Watchmen. I don't recall...I will say Stephen McHattie as Hollis Mason was outstanding in this.Anyways, to me the Black Freighter story here ends up coming across hackneyed, and hack-kneed (and twisted-head, snapped-off-arm, etc...). The shocking gore piles up, and the story in my opinion is just not strong enough to stand on its own. While I'm at it, the Watchmen movie was alright, but reading the whole piece, in episodic installments, truly was a better way to enjoy it.So Moore is right in that his art-form was superior, despite the clearly loving attempt at a cinematic treatment. And yet, many folks will just not pick up anything that is book like (even if candy bars came with pages and a spine, I sense people would flee), so having the Watchmen and related items released is not such a heinous crime. Better than writing greeting cards to supplement one's creative pursuits.Anyways, if you watched the movie, and have not read the book, I'd only seek this out if you truly dig the graphic dark side of human behavior, but you'd be better served by exploring the graphic novel side that holds it all together.Thurston Hunger 3/10