Kuweba ni Dragonrower

Film Review : Salt

2010-07-31T23:09:00.001+08:00

This high-octane spy thriller may be preposterous but it's also preposterously entertaining.

Salt, the propulsive new thriller from Phillip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games), has been dubbed “Bourne with boobs,” but that label isn’t entirely accurate. In the role of Evelyn Salt, a CIA staffer hunted by her own agency after a Russian defector fingers her in a plot to murder Russia’s president, Angelina Jolie keeps her two most potent weapons holstered, hidden under pantsuits and trenchcoats and the various other components of a super-spy wardrobe that proudly emphasizes function over flash.
But flash is one thing Salt never lacks for. Its breathless cat-and-mouse game hits full-throttle almost from the outset, when a former KGB officer named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) stumbles into a CIA interrogation room and begins spilling details of a vast conspiracy. Back in the ‘70s, hardline elements of the Soviet regime launched an ambitious new front in the Cold War, flooding the western world with orphans trained to infiltrate the security complexes of their adopted homelands and wait patiently for the order to initiate a series of assassinations intended to trigger a devastating nuclear clash between the superpowers, from which the treacherous Reds would emerge triumphant.

Noyce keeps all the plates spinning marvelously, executing hair-raising action sequences, brutal fight scenes and walk-and-talk politics with equal confidence. He tosses in a little of the Greengrass-inspired shaky cam during some fight sequences, but unlike nearly everyone else who mimics that style, Noyce can actually pull it off. Jolie has brought on board her longtime stunt coordinator Simon Crane, and she's never looked more convincing as both a badass and a human being. Noyce's confidence in his leading lady (the two collaborated ten years ago on The Bone Collector), combined with Robert Elswit's fluid cinematography and Crane's fearless stunt choreography, invent Salt as a believably female Bourne or even Bond. At 35 Jolie is a little older than the typical female action hero, but that makes Salt all the more compelling as she repeatedly pulls off the impossible in her battle against the world.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Liev Schreiber are perfectly tense and well-used in their supporting roles, but Salt is Jolie's vehicle, and she owns every frame. Salt was famously rewritten to star a male protagonist, and it was Jolie's influence that kept the character from ever abusing her sex appeal, and allowed her to become increasingly dirty and disheveled as the movie reaches its action climax. We're a long way from Tomb Raider, and its encouraging to see Jolie use her immense starpower to create a female heroine who successfully exists apart from the male-dominated world she must struggle against. Salt the movie is refreshing in its old-school familiarity, but Salt the character is remarkable and new. It's a powerful combination that makes for some pretty ideal entertainment. It’s well-known that Jolie wasn’t the first choice to star in Salt, joining the project only after Tom Cruise dropped out, citing the story’s growing similarities to the Mission: Impossible films. But she’s more than just a capable replacement; she’s a welcome upgrade over Cruise, not least because she’s over a decade younger (and a few inches taller), than her predecessor. Should Brad Bird require a pinch-hitter for Ethan Hunt, he knows where to look.

Spy thrillers, by definition, trade in the preposterous, and the principal function of the blockbuster is to entertain. In that regard, Salt more than fulfills its charge. Noyce wisely keeps the story moving at pace that allows little time for asking uncomfortable questions or poking holes in the film’s frail plot. And he has an able partner in the infinitely versatile Jolie, who, having already exhibited formidable action-hero chops in Wanted and the Tomb Raider films, proves remarkably adept at the spy game as well.

Film Review : Knight and Day

2010-06-26T03:01:00.000+08:00

If there’s one thing that has significantly changed the landscape of escapist filmmaking, it’s the move away from star-driven vehicles to franchise driven ones. Special effects, easily branded imagery and familiar rhythms are the elements that sell an audience on a franchise. Often there is a lack of energy and unpredictability that comes as a result of this trade-off. Filmmakers aren’t eager to break that contract with the viewer that promises what they are going to get is what they paid to see. Unfortunately, for the movie going audience, what we often get are pictures where the leads could be interchangeable.

Knight and Day looks to be a promising film, with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz leading the way. Also, there's just something about action-comedies that tickle us down to the bone (although we cannot say that the majority are genuinely great films). The pairing of Tom and Cameron seems to be perfect for this kind of film. Both are honed action stars with Cruise having countless action films to boot while Diaz having experience most prominently from the "Charlie's Angels" films. You also cannot discount the fact that both these stars featured successful comedy films. Can this dynamic duo bring life to a genre that is more miss than hit?

Knight and Day is the pinnacle of studio laziness: two pretty people forcefully crammed into an empty vessel in the hopes that their celebrity will dupe more than a few rubes into buying a ticket. This movie is lifeless; it has no pulse from beginning to end. I’m not naive. I know why movies like this exist and I know that I am not the target audience. But what really burns me about Knight and Day is that it fails to deliver on the one note on which movies like this typically bank: cheap romance.

Most of the absence of heat between them is a product of two veteran movie stars who obviously could not care less about the film they are making. If you are a fan of either Tom Cruise or Cameron Diaz, I would highly suggest taking a trip to Madame Tussauds and staring at their wax likenesses because they will offer more skilled performances cast in wax than they did on screen. If Cruise’s performance were any more phoned in, AT&T would’ve sponsored the film. To counterbalance that, Diaz is a complete doorknob. Her “fish out of water” routine more often than not devolves into completely inauthentic stupidity and emotionless non-reactions. And I’m sorry, Tom, but even you have to exert yourself just an iota to be charming.

All of the action scenes have a kind of gee-whiz, tongue-in-cheek quality to them. We aren’t supposed to take them seriously or have them jar the back of our skull loose. They have been so skillfully constructed to reveal the seams, that we can only conclude following the smirking lead of Cruise that we are meant to be amused by them, and to laugh at the over-the-top nature of it all. Either way, it doesn’t matter much. Unlike the crunch and munch of Michael Bay’s insanely loud and depressingly stupid blockbusters, James Mangold’s movie pops, snaps and zings it’s way to the finish line, like a pinball machine with real human beings at the center.

Knight and Day is just deathly afraid of breaking out of the blockbuster mode, of providing anything risky or strange or out of the ordinary. Being ordinary is probably not the worst thing in the world, but it’s pretty difficult to build up any real enthusiasm for such a project. The most one can say about the film is that it’s competently constructed, that it does indeed fulfill the checklist of things that one must expect from a big summer blockbuster. That makes the movie a middling entertainment at best, doomed to be watched and immediately forgotten.

Film Review : The A-Team

2010-06-12T02:52:00.000+08:00

In the final days of the Iraq War, members of an elite commando unit were sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from four maximum security prisons to take revenge on the man who framed them. If you are having a boring summer at the movies, you need to see The A-Team

Instead of assaulting us with nonstop action and then having the audacity to mask itself as being high art, The A-Team embraces just how ludicrous the action sequences are and makes absolutely no apologies for it. That’s not to say, though, the movie has nothing to offer beyond the explosions and midair collisions. In fact, what makes The A-Team such a damn good film is the clever underscore that complements every moment of mesmerizing destruction. Joe Carnahan, along with the other writers, gives us moments that subtly poke fun at the outlandishness of what we’re seeing that not only makes the absurd action forgivable but immediately elevates the material above the typical summer fodder.

Carnahan recognized that, given the tone of both the series and his last film (Smokin' Aces), the action scenes needed to flow uninterrupted, and here it's very streamlined, only pausing briefly to give us hilarious interactions between the larger-than-life characters before diving head-first back into the explosive fray. Until the very end of the film, each plan is carried out before our eyes as it is being hashed out to neutralize any lacking in the pace. It would be easy to then accuse The A-Team of being front-loaded, given the slow build to the final sequence, but I would argue that is merely a nod to the evolution of Face’s character as a leader and that it never really loses steam.

What really sells this film, however, is its cast. Like the original quartet of chaos, each actor brings something fantastic to the table. Bradley Cooper, as Face, has that inescapably charming swagger and confidence we’ve come to expect from him; Liam Neeson, unsurprisingly, is the perfect blend of in-the-trenches badass and cool-as-ice leader. Even Rampage Jackson, in the role made famous by a guy donning the entire payload of Ft. Knox around his neck (that'd be Mr. T), turns in a respectably tough performance with a few moments of decent hubris. But it’s Sharlto Copley who really steals the show as Howlin’ Mad Murdock. True to his character's moniker, Copley cranks up the lunacy and plays Murdock with a hilariously reckless abandon that mirrors the tone of the entire film.

A balls-out actioner that's far better than it has any right to be.

Film Review : The Karate Kid

2010-06-12T02:47:00.000+08:00

Much has changed in the update. Daniel Larusso is now Dre Parker; California’s San Fernando Valley is now Beijing, China; Mr. Miyagi is now Mr. Han; and karate is now kung fu. Most of the story beats and thematic elements, however, are essentially the same. After his single mother (Taraji P. Henson) gets a job transfer, 12-year-old Dre (Jaden Smith) is forced to move from his native Detroit to the unfamiliar climes of Beijing, where he’s besieged by a local group of pubescent fascists after being caught innocently flirting with a pretty schoolmate.

The case for nepotism in this new Karate Kid is not without merit. Though allegedly 11 years old, Smith doesn’t look a day over 10, and appears jarringly undersized for a 12-year-old. Seeing the baby-faced lad (he definitely takes after his mom in the looks department) get repeatedly brutalized by adolescent thugs twice his size gets uncomfortable, as do later scenes of him training shirtless, his torso the size of Chan’s forearm.

But it’s a minor quibble. In truth, Smith surpasses his predecessor Ralph Macchio in both acting ability and martial arts proficiency. Whereas Daniel-San’s fighting scenes in the original Karate Kid require a suspension of disbelief that diminishes his eventual triumph at the All-Valley Karate Championships. Smith’s moves are both more authentic and more athletic. Moreover, he has the good sense not to collapse hysterically into a wailing heap at the slightest touch from an opponent, as Macchio so famously did.

The Karate Kid is every bit an unabashed crowd-pleaser, which isn’t necessarily such a bad thing in a summer movie season that has thus far given audiences precious little to cheer for. At two-and-a-half hours, it takes far too long to get going and would have benefited from a more assured hand behind the camera. Director Harald Zwart’s overemphasis on the bullying and fish-out-of-water elements becomes redundant, and the dialogue and culture-clash jokes border on embarrassing at times. But the meat of the story, the bond that forms between an unlikely kung fu teacher and his equally unlikely student, is undeniably affecting.

Film Review : Iron Man 2

2010-04-30T14:17:00.000+08:00

In his second turn as Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr. recasts the billionaire inventor as the Dean Martin of industrialists, strutting from one star-studded event to another on a bacchanalian victory tour, dishing out choice one-liners and stirring up minor controversies for his exasperated babysitters, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and James "Rhodey" Rhodes (Don Cheadle), to quell. Whether gloating about his achievements at a defense industry expo, upbraiding Senators during a congressional hearing, or getting wasted and donning his armored powersuit to play DJ at his birthday party, there's no telling what kind of madcap mischief Tony Stark will get himself into next!

The Tony Stark Comedy Tour, for what it’s worth, is a supremely entertaining ride (credit screenwriter Justin Theroux at the very least with crafting the genre’s most quotable film of all time), but I’m fairly certain Iron Man 2 is supposed to be an action film, not the Marvel Follies Variety Show. Surely there must be a supervillain lurking in the shadows, a frighteningly powerful menace preparing to unleash its destructive might upon the world?

There is well, kind of. The primary antagonist of Iron Man 2, Mickey Rourke's hulking Ivan Vanko (aka Whiplash), is certainly a fearsome beast, baring his blinged-out grill and electrified tentacles, but he gets all of five minutes of meaningful screen time in the sequel hardly enough to establish him as a worthy foe for the great Iron Man. Perhaps producers found Rourke’s chosen dialect, learned from John Malkovich's Rounders School of Exaggerated Russian Accents to be less compelling in post-production.

More likely they became enamored with Sam Rockwell in the role of Justin Hammer, Stark’s resentful business rival and Whiplash’s principal financial backer. The only problem is, Rockwell’s Hammer is a venture capitalist, not a comic book supervillain, and every second he spends on the screen, as enjoyable as it is, is a second that could have been devoted to dimensionalizing Rourke’s character or crafting a badly-needed action sequence to enliven the talky second act. Thankfully, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. arrive at his compound to stage a kind of intervention, bearing a powerful dual-pronged Deus Ex Machina device that instantly wrests our hero from his para-suicidal stupor.

Given that Iron Man 2’s director and writer have both spent the bulk of their movie careers employed as actors, it comes as little surprise that they chose to focus the action on Downey and Rockwell, as the two rank head and shoulders above the rest of the cast. I just wish they found room in between the one-liners for a few more explosions.

Film Review : The Losers

2010-04-30T14:14:00.000+08:00

On paper, Sylvain White’s ensemble thriller The Losers doesn’t display much promise. Its budget (around $25 million) is miniscule by action-movie standards; its cast, apart from female lead Zoe Saldana, is unexceptional; and its plot, about a group of disgraced Special Forces operatives who seek revenge against the shady arms dealer (Jason Patric) who had them framed, is hardly original. And yet The Losers makes for a surprisingly entertaining ride, an apt prelude to the summer blockbuster season. Call it The B-Team.

Though based on a graphic novel, The Losers boasts no superheroes, just a quintet of mercenaries with complementary skills and catchy names like Cougar and Pooch. Presumed dead after being double-crossed during a black ops mission in the Bolivian jungle, they languish in a third-world limbo until a mysterious woman named Aisha (Saldana) approaches their leader, Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), with an enticing opportunity.

The Losers establishes a lively pace from the outset, and with the exception of one appallingly disjointed planning scene, director White adroitly handles the challenges of a plus-size cast. Save for a few extraneous twists that mar the film’s second half, screenwriters James Vanderbilt and Peter Berg maintain a straightforward storyline, keeping the tone determinedly light (always best when dealing with the constraints of a PG-13 rating) but never too cartoonish.

Morgan, who previously underwhelmed in Zack Snyder’s doomed Watchmen adaptation, isn’t the ideal choice to headline the film’s male cast, and he appears hopelessly overmatched by Saldana. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if The Losers didn’t try to sell us on a hastily-hatched romantic subplot between the two, which serves only to provide us with a few scantily-clad glimpses of the sultry Avatar star. Needless to say, there are worse sins a filmmaker can commit.

The only aspect of The Losers that truly vexed us was the performance of one of its castmembers. I doubt that Joe Johnston, director of the upcoming Captain America adaptation, caught a screening of this film before he chose to award Chris Evans the coveted starring role in the big-budget comic-book flick. Because if he had, I’m certain he’d have chosen differently. Evans’ clownish wiseass routine is instantly and perpetually grating. Even when delivering the most innocuous of line readings, he radiates a natural douchiness that no Super Serum can fix.

Film Review : Clash of the Titans

2010-04-01T11:03:00.000+08:00

Young boys will like it, but the rest of us will be frustrated by the storytelling, the shaky camerawork and the dubiously effective 3D presentation, which distracts more than it offers.

The new Clash of the Titans mimics the original film’s epic ethos and preference for spectacle over all else, but its storyline differs dramatically. Perseus is still the half-breed product of a one-night stand between the god Zeus (Liam Neeson) and a human hottie, and he still must to defeat the monstrous Kraken in order to save the lovely Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos). Almost everything in between, however, has been altered, and not necessarily for the better. Strong-willed Perseus (Sam Worthington) braves an obstacle course of giant scorpions, gorgons, and other freak of nature laid out for him by the whispery fiend Hades (Ralph Fiennes), but it’s never quite clear why he bothers with it at all, since what’s at stake is a princess he isn’t particularly interested in and a community of people he doesn’t really know and who, frankly, don’t seem all that worth saving.

Fans of the original 1981 version of Clash of the Titans may or may not enjoy this remake, that said, though, you don't have to be a fan of the original to come on board because this is simply blockbuster entertainment in its purest form. If you leave your brain at the door and just fancy scenes of mythical creatures and testosterone fuelled fight scenes, then you're in for a good time because it's disposable fun. An effort to relive one of the greatest mythologies in modern filmmaking to compensate for the new generation ahead with high adventure fun.

The CGI in the film isn't too bad either , director Louis Leterrier (Unleashed, The Transporter 2, The Incredible Hulk) does a good job of bringing some of the mythical creatures to life, and some are given a nightmarish touch which may frighten some of the younger end of the audience.

But the biggest misfire on this film is to release it in 3D, it's a completely pointless decision. The decision was made retroactively after the film was made so it doesn't actually bring anything to the table by being converted to 3D, it's not been filmed with this in mind, it adds nothing to the stunning recreation of the Greek world they've created and it's a real let down. Big tip: watch it on regular 2D instead.

Digsby Blog » Build 77 – Taste the Rainbow!

2010-03-26T05:54:00.001+08:00

Digsby Blog » Build 77 – Taste the Rainbow!

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Film Review : Kick-Ass

2010-03-20T23:24:00.001+08:00

Parodies are a dying art. But over the last few years, the unrelenting hacks known as Friedberg and Seltzer have systematically killed the art form with their brainless pop culture-stroking disguised as commentary. I remember the good ole’ days of Abrams and Zucker (prior to their Scary Movie entanglements) when parodies where funny precisely because they established their own voice, and didn’t use the material they were lampooning as a crutch. Airplane! mercilessly mocked the bizarre run of airport disaster movies in the '70s, but it also transcended easy jokes and script aping. Today, thanks to inexplicable box office validation, an entire generation now thinks that the “Random celebrity, what are you doing here?” gag is the appropriate formula for parody.

Kick-Ass is going to put a giant boot in the face of that mentality. It is a pitch-perfect send-up of everything that is characteristic of superhero films. It is versed enough to cite convention, but clever enough to find the humor in the genre’s absurdity. And the biggest advantage Kick-Ass has in the parody department is that it is unrelentingly entertaining. It seems that in the last few years, terrible parodies have made undeserved fortunes at the box office while better-crafted entries have gone largely unseen. Kick-Ass, on the other hand, has all the necessary components to clean up at the box office and be well deserving of its success.

Kick-Ass is pure, high-speed action at its best, with a lot of wild laughs thrown in for good measure, and most everything good about it comes by way of turning its own genre inside out. Not simply a story of a superhero who isn’t, which probably wouldn’t amount to much, in the end it’s the story of a superhero who really rather is. Let’s face it, when you have the superpowers, being a superhero isn’t actually a real tough job. Kick-Ass quips at one point, “With no power comes no responsibility,” but he goes on to live up to a different standard.

The script plays its role in delivering that tension, and the uniquely outlandish action theory, but Aaron Johnson cannot be given too much credit in giving us a Kick-Ass that fits the effort. A kind of everykid goof who ultimately is just trying to figure out a way to jar the status quo… aren’t we all… his is clearly an overly ambitious avenue of self-discovery, but one that, somehow, manages only to diverge from everyday life in extreme, and in commitment to execution. Crazy as it might sound before you see the film, this could actually happen and Johnson delivers the kid who might actually do it.

In terms of the treatment of the teenaged characters in the film, this script is tantamount to something written by the late, great John Hughes in so much as the teens are allowed to speak honestly and in their own limited vocabulary without the pretense of wit. I think teen comedies are improving dramatically of late, but the obsession with making teens pithy wordsmiths baffles me to no end and I’m glad they were allowed to just be vulgar. And my God this thing is vulgar…and violent to boot. We get to watch an 11 year-old drop f-bombs and stab thugs in the forebrain. I mean come on, the movie is called Kick-Ass for a reason and while it is a comedy, the action sequences are unstoppably exhilarating.

A smart, somewhat genre subversive parody, Kick-Ass is also action-packed and entertaining enough to stand on its own two legs as a film and not just a lampoon. The costumes, the music, the fight choreography all work in harmony to bring us a blockbuster superhero film that is legitimately humorous in both its homages and honest characterizations. Do not miss this film.

Film Review : Shutter Island

2010-03-20T22:46:00.000+08:00

The latest chapter in Martin Scorsese’s fruitful DiCaprio phase is the haunting psychological thriller Shutter Island. Based on the bestselling novel by Mystic River author Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island casts Leo as U.S. Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels, a World War II veteran and recent widower assigned with investigating the escape of a female inmate from Ashecliffe Hospital, a facility for the criminally insane housed on an ominous island outside Boston Harbor

The proprietor of this madhouse is Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), an effete, probing psychiatrist whose bowtie alone suggests a near-infinite capacity for evil. He’s flanked by the German-born Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow), a vision of clinical Teutonic malevolence wrapped in a labcoat and wire-rimmed glasses. Needless to say, Marshal Daniels is immediately suspicious of both.

The case of the missing inmate proves to be something of a red herring, and Shutter Island an abrupt conspiratorial turn when Daniels reveals to his partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), his true motive for coming to Ashecliffe: Housed somewhere within its walls, he believes, is the arsonist responsible for the apartment fire that killed his wife, Dolores (Michelle Williams), just a few years prior. What’s more, Ashecliffe appears to be no mere hospital, but rather a secret government facility wherein gruesome, Nazi-inspired mind-control experiments are conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the hopes of gaining an edge on the Commies.

Martin Scorsese knows something about surprise endings which twist meisters like M. Night Shyamalan seem to have forgotten. The twist doesn’t matter if you haven’t already told a good story. By the time Shutter Island gets to its twist, it has already told such a tale. You’re invested in these characters and no matter how it turns out you’re going to walk away happy. The twist, when it happens, only serves to make a deeper connection. It makes sense of the madness, brings order to the chaos, and then rips your heart out right through your chest. The movie exists not in service of the twist, rather the twist exists in service of the movie. And when I rewatch Shutter Island, as I plan to do almost immediately, it’ll be like watching an entirely new movie. The story I was watching was not the one I thought it was, but in the end either story is equally compelling.

Shutter Island is a fiercely twisted, complex film built on a foundation of character-driven emotion. Those who think of Scorsese only as that guy who makes gangster movies will undoubtedly be disappointed, but if you’re interested in more than seeing how many guns can fit inside a violin case, then Shutter Island delivers

Film Review : Book of Eli

2010-03-20T22:24:00.000+08:00

The ambitious, thought-provoking new thriller from brothers Albert and Allen Hughes (From Hell, Dead Presidents), is in many ways an anomaly in modern Hollywood. It’s a post-apocalyptic story that’s neither a remake nor an adaptation; its dystopian future is entirely devoid of zombies or vampires; and its core message, spiked with heavy amounts of faith and religion, borders on evangelical. Oh, and it’s absurdly violent, too. How this movie got made, I’ll never know.

The film is set approximately thirty years after a catastrophic war has decimated the planet, leaving its surface charred and inhospitable to the lucky few who managed to survive. A handful of dirty, decrepit, debauched cities host the last remnants of civilization; in between them, gangs of crazed cannibals, distinguishable by traits similar to those of meth addicts (shaky hands, bad skin, missing teeth, bizarre fashion sense, etc.), roam the bleak, unforgiving landscape, preying upon those foolish enough to travel alone. We all know where this is going, though Denzel wanders the town for a bit. The gadgeteer shop owner is the Gyrocopter pilot from The Road Warrior, which the movie pulls from constantly in the last half. He meets sidekick Solara (Mila Kunis) and her mom (blinded in the war), and beats up all kinds of grungy people at the bar. Soon, Eli will talk with Solara about the rampant materialism of the world before, a nice subtext to the inevitable mayhem, which is well on its way. Before long, it’s high noon in town, and the great action starts in earnest. The shoot-outs are near flawless, the action is all top-notch production stuff. This is all good; the action sets are well thought out, and the vehicle mayhem is real Mad Max stuff.

The Book of Eli is dishonest about it’s true motives. That’s what really makes the whole thing so egregious. There are plenty of ways to effectively tell stories about Christianity and faith, it’s been done before, even in a post-apocalyptic setting. Stephen King’s The Stand does it, but it never pretends to be something it’s not. Book of Eli plays coy with its religious motives by attempting to cloak them in a gritty, miracle-free reality, but is so clumsy about it that it’s not going to fool anyone. It’s just annoying.

Shooting in high-definition digital (with the Red camera) and working with the cinematographer Don Burgess (a frequent shooter for Robert Zemeckis), with New Mexico standing in for America, the Hugheses have created a plausible post-apocalyptic world, one that draws from the western (Hollywood, Sergio Leone) and the tradition of science-fiction dystopia. As George Miller proved in his brilliant “Mad Max” cycle one of the Hughes brothers’ more overt cinematic touchstones here and as Quentin Tarantino reaffirmed with his two “Kill Bill” films, the western can be reconfigured to suit any number of contexts, themes and warriors. (In one scene, when Eli settles into a room, a poster for the 1975 cult film “A Boy and His Dog,” another post-apocalyptic fairy tale, hangs on the wall behind him.)

But even a miracle worker like Denzel can’t prevent the wreckage wrought by Mila Kunis, a likable enough actress who is disastrously miscast in the role of Solara, a rough-hewn hooker-slave who eventually becomes Eli’s disciple. With her perfect complexion, shrill intonation and Valley Girl cadence, Kunis feels glaringly out of place in Book of Eli's coarse, brutal futureworld, and she can't hope to measure up to the likes of titans Washington and Gary Oldman.

Film Review : Green Zone

2010-03-20T22:00:00.000+08:00

Green Zone is a story we’ve already heard, shot in a manner we’ve already seen, and starring Matt Damon in a role he’s already played. Remember those WMDs that were never found in Iraq and later exposed to be the invention of a dubious and poorly-vetted informant? Remember the misguided and hideously botched attempt at establishing democracy after the fall of Saddam and the violent, prolonged insurgency that ensued? If you’ve been away from the television for the past hour and somehow managed to forget any of these details, Green Zone is here to remind you.

The story that follows is a labyrinthine track through the turbulent world of Iraq after the liberation a jaunt through all kinds of political skullduggery with Damon’s Roy Miller at the very heart of it, plunging in to discover, if he can, where the truth actually lies. Eventually Miller finds himself being shot at by his own men, and when he goes on the run, things heat up. Paul Greengrass has visually designed The Green Zone as less in-your-face and aggressive than his previous two Bourne movies, but it fails to really capture the structure and reality of United 93, his compelling look at the occupants of that fateful flight on 9/11. The camera moves less, but there’s still the shaky, agitated cam movements that are starting to lose any interest or impact they might have had these days. What he does get right is the pacing.

The trouble that this movie gets itself into is that it wants the war to be black and white. The story paints a picture so that there is absolutely no doubt who is evil, Greg Kinnear and the good, Damon. It creates an environment that leaves absolutely no room for ambiguity. The film is also filled with small speeches by Iraqis that are so on the nose and so overly melodramatic that the movie can’t help but come to screeching halt. The movie drowns in it’s own crystal clear hindsight.

What ultimately strands me though is the shifting focus of the film. While it’s approached as a direct indictment of the administration of the time, and as a kind of ‘real life’ conspiracy theory, Greengrass and his screenwriter Brian Helgeland don’t allow the movie to exist as a plausible drama for very long. It devolves quickly into the kinds of action tropes and lazy storytelling short hand you see all the time in would-be adrenaline rush, popcorn thrillers. It just isn’t the right choice for the material. There are two movies here. One is sharp and provocative, although lacking in conviction, and the other is straight forward and boisterous, handing out the action it thinks moviegoers are looking for. It may sound like the protests of a Philistine, but just give me the action movie next time.

Film Review : Alice in Wonderland

2010-03-11T22:12:00.000+08:00

Nearly a century and a half after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland first acquainted readers with the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, and the rest of the peculiar inhabitants of author Lewis Carroll’s fertile imagination, filmmaking technology has finally developed the tools capable of properly rendering Carroll's exquisitely twisted world on the big screen. And who better to oversee the translation than Tim Burton, Hollywood’s foremost mass-market purveyor of dark, quirky fantasy? If there’s any director working today who can lay claim to Carroll’s creative inheritance, surely it is him.

The characters may be familiar but the plot deviates insanely from the original. Down the rabbit hole, Alice still finds the “Drink Me” potion, varies from 6in to 20ft tall, attends the Mad Hatter’s tea party and confronts the Red Queen, but Burton brings Alice’s dream closer to his more favoured nightmares. If only she were more interesting. Burton’s Alice isn’t so much a character as she is a tour guide, leading us through the director’s $150 million museum of digital delights. Each scene offers a British luvvie in phantasmagorical disguise. Alan Rickman voices the caterpillar, and perhaps inevitably the Cheshire Cat speaks with the smug voice of Stephen Fry. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are a digitally manipulated Matt Lucas, and Paul Whitehouse is the disturbed March Hare, prone to throwing crockery. The squeaky dormouse, who pokes out the Bandersnatch’s eyeball with a needle, is our very own Barbara Windsor. Virtually everything on display in the film, from the giant mushrooms of the Underland forest to the bulging eyes of Johnny Depp’s mercurial Hatter, was either created or enhanced inside a computer, presumably one with a direct connection to Burton’s cerebral cortex. Interestingly, the enhanced Depp bears a more than passing resemblance to Elijah Wood, who the producers could have gotten for a lot less money. Much like Alice herself, it’s gorgeous to look at but never particularly engaging. Instead of actors chewing the scenery, the scenery devours the actors. A notable exception is Helena Bonham Carter, the cast’s lone standout as the screeching, acerbic Red Queen.

Carroll probably never saw Alice as an action-adventure movie with huge battle scenes between red and white armies. Yet John Tenniel’s original illustrations percolate through the film, and the Jabberwock is a near facsimile. Carroll himself would no doubt marvel at the visual grandeur of Alice in Wonderland, its CGI world as detailed and immersive as the most vivid of his migraine-induced hallucinations. But he might frown at the short thrift given to his characters.

Filled with moments of fleeting exhilaration and empty whimsy, Alice in Wonderland never really grabs the viewer in any meaningful way, its overall experience more akin to that of a theme park ride than a movie. Which I half suspect was Disney’s intention all along.

Film Review : Sherlock Holmes

2009-12-27T01:02:00.000+08:00

Masterfully crafted by Guy Ritchie, this refreshing take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sleuth is a great vehicle for Downey to create another distinctively eccentric character.

Last year, super-producer Joel Silver mounted an abortive attempt to revive the blockbuster Lethal Weapon franchise, and though the project quickly fell apart after star Mel Gibson passed on the idea, Silver’s yen for a new Buddy Cop franchise persisted. His dream has been realized, albeit in a slightly modified form, by Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, a propulsive, thoroughly modern action movie. In the hands of Ritchie and his able stars, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic crime-solving duo has been recast as a Victorian Riggs and Murtaugh. Downey’s Holmes is a brash, brilliant rogue, prone to fits of both inspiration and crippling melancholy; Law’s Watson is his steady and cautious counterpart, disgusted by his partner’s self-destructive tendencies but fiercely loyal to him nonetheless. Both wield fists as sharp as their wits, trading verbal jabs with each other as often as they dispense beatdowns to London’s colorful collection of brawny, toothless goons.

Sherlock Holmes is not only a great detective but he his also a marvelous martial-arts expert. And this take on Holmes is actually respecting the orignal source material. Indeed, it is Arthur Conan Doyle who described Holmes as an expert in Bartitsu, an eclectic martial art and self-defense method originally developed in England during the years 1898-1902.

Contrary to the advertising, "Sherlock Holmes" isn't a straight-ahead modern action comedy in Victorian clothing, as it successfully institutes Doyle's literary storytelling, not to adapt one of Holmes' famous cases but to create a new story involving dark sorcery, secret societies and world politics that builds out of a series of complex murders. This intricate storyline is the perfect backdrop for Downey to experiment with his take on the character. It's important to know right off the bat that Sherlock Holmes isn't Tony Stark, but more of a strange quirk-filled character like Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow or Downey's own personality. Because Holmes is so different from everyone else around him, it takes some time to adjust to his rapid-fire delivery of patter and suitable quips for every situation. It's the type of eccentric character who rarely does what's expected, which is the type of character Downey excels at playing, harking back to Downey's Chaplin or the character he played in Shane Black's excellent and sadly underrated "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" (also produced by Joel Silver). Even so, this Holmes is by no means a comedic buffoon, as he takes fighting and stopping crime as seriously as the police.

Playing with these characters in this setting has allowed Ritchie to achieve a level as a filmmaker similar to when Christopher Nolan made "Batman Begins," his attention to detail in creating the gothic mood of Victoria-era London allowing for some spectacular visuals, including one of the Thames River during the building London Bridge, which itself becomes the backdrop for the final fight. The production design is impeccable, making it hard to determine how much of old London has been built or recreated in a computer. Ritchie has also figured out a brilliant way to get into Holmes' mind to show us how it works as he deduces any problems he faces as he tries to solve the overall case. It's a simple technique that shows in slow motion as he analyzes the problem and figures a way to best it. We see this method used as Holmes assesses combatants or decodes the tiniest clues while solving a case, and it's exactly the type of thinking one would expect from the world's smartest detective.

As rich in storytelling as it is character and as entertaining as it is unconventional, "Sherlock Holmes" is a brilliant introduction to another great Downey character, one that hopefully can sustain some sort of franchise. (The movie ends in a place where true Holmes fans will be itching to see more.) It's also one of Ritchie's best films since his early years, not just playing up to his strengths as a filmmaker but challenging his usual sensibilities to go against the norm. Ultimately, the movie effectively mixes genres to create something different without necessarily losing sight of what makes the individual genres work.

Film Review : Avatar

2009-12-27T00:47:00.001+08:00

James Cameron's long-awaited sci-fi epic is every bit as wondrous and imaginative as promised. Prepare to be amazed.

It takes a special film to transform an audience of movie critics, highly-trained skeptics who can dismiss the most painstakingly crafted work with a mere smirk and roll of the eyes, into a bunch of glowing, giddy teenagers, but that's precisely what happened earlier this week when Avatar, James Cameron's extraordinary new sci-fi epic, screened for the first time. Avatar is a truly astounding piece of filmmaking, a leap forward in visual effects artistry that sets a lofty new standard by which future event films will be judged.

Paraplegic war veteran, Jake Sully is brought to another planet called Pandora in place of his brother with the promise of getting his legs back if he helps the company mining a precious mineral on a mission. Pandora is inhabited by a primitive race called the Na'vi and Jake is sent in to learn their ways so that he can help relocate them and the humans can take over. In a way, the story is no different from what locals may feel in any part of the world when outsiders make an attempt to make inroads into their land to gain hold of their resources. This is what happens to Na'vis as well when their peaceful existence is challenged with American troops entering their world to gain hold of precious minerals worth billions. Occasionally, Avatar's technical triumph is betrayed by its maddeningly derivative storyline, which borrows elements wholesale from Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai and countless similar films about oppressors switching sides and going native.

If nothing else this is a visual masterpiece and is meant to be seen in IMAX 3-D theaters. It will take you on a ride and blow you away. If you want to avoid some of the problems with it, just make sure to turn your brain off upon arrival and let your senses lead you. In short, Avatar is not a film to be seen and then talked about. It's one to be experienced.

Film Review : Fantastic Mr. Fox

2009-11-14T21:52:00.001+08:00

Director Wes Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums) was the subject of a minor controversy a few months ago when an L.A. Times profile alleged that the idiosyncratic auteur rarely visited the London set of Fantastic Mr. Fox, his stop-motion adaptation of the Road Dahl children's tale, preferring instead to issue orders to his crew via email. If the report is indeed true, Anderson’s poor attendance record certainly didn’t detract from the final result. Fantastic Mr. Fox is an utter delight: a lively, endearing comic caper that will appeal equally to both young and old, hipster and non-hipster alike.

Having too often overdosed on self-conscious quirk in the past, Anderson shows admirable restraint with Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the result is undoubtedly his most entertaining and accessible film yet. Admittedly, the film’s old school, retro-style animation does take some getting get used to; younger audience members, raised on a steady diet of cutting-edge Pixar flicks, might even suspect that they’re watching some relic produced before they were born. But their skepticism will quickly fade as soon they’re drawn into the first of several increasingly audacious farm heists mounted by the clever Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) and his rag-tag crew of woodland critter pals.

For a movie that starts out so crazily plotted and energetic, Mr. Fox does flag a bit once the animals have dug into their underground city and the farmers are essentially waiting for Fox's next move. But it's not just the densely packed frames, something funny or important stuffed into every corner and inventive filmmaking taking place in every scene, that will keep viewers of all ages interested. Anderson takes Dahl's gift for names and jokes and turns it into a whole new kind of absurdism, in which all possible swear words are replaced with "cuss" and Ash constantly insists, to no one in particular, that he truly wants to be considered an athlete. The voice cast, which also includes Bill Murray and a wonderfully laconic Willem Dafoe as a treacherous rat, is fully invested; whether or not it's due to Anderson's gambit of having them all together acting out the scene, the actors jive perfectly with the movie's deadpan silly style.

Is this a good movie for kids? I honestly have no idea. You know how the Shrek movies always have a bunch of pop culture references that kids won't get but will make their parents laugh? Fantastic Mr. Fox does that, except instead of pop culture references, it's about real estate markets. Seriously. But it's funny. It might be a little over kids heads, but I still think the energy and the fresh design would be enough to hold their interest. One thing I don't know, though, is if they'll enjoy it nearly as much as I did.

Film Review : The Men Who Stare at Goats

2009-11-13T23:13:00.001+08:00

Although I haven't read the book that inspired Grant Heslov's fictionalized tale of the U.S. Army's real-life "psychic spy" program, but the movie's irreverent sense of humor and colorful cast of characters make it a more than worthwhile viewing.

In a nutshell, Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), assigned to interview Gus Lacey (Stephen Root), an apparent wacko who claims he has special psychic powers, stumbles across an even crazier story: Back in the '80s, the government had a top-secret unit of "psychic spies" who were trained to kill animals by staring at them. The most gifted of the group, says Lacey, was a certain Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). Wilton heads for the Middle East in spring 2003, looking for a good war story. Stuck in Kuwait City, he bumps into "Skip" (Clooney), who initially claims to be an Arkansas trashcan salesman but is actually Cassady, who's been reactivated and is on a super-secret black-op mission to Iraq. As the two bond, and Wilton persuades Cassady to take him along, it's clear Cassady's elevator stops well short of the top floor. Claiming to be a "remote viewer," "Jedi warrior" and several other things in between, Cassady fills Wilton in on the formation 20 years earlier of the New Earth Army, brainchild of a Vietnam vet-turned-New Age hippie, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). The movie floats by on the oddball actions of its characters, from Cassady's complete belief in his abilities, to Hooper (Kevin Spacey) despising him for it, to Django and his desire to further the program, to Wilton's perpetual amazement at what he is experiencing. Unfortunately, the film never really takes off. It is like they put the story on repeat where something weird happens to amaze Wilton, then goes through the motions over and over again.

Thankfully, Heslov kept intact two greatest strengths: its lively, irreverent tone and its fascinating array of colorful characters. The latter is no doubt what attracted the film’s star-studded cast, led by George Clooney. What salvages the film from its shortcomings is primarily the performance of Clooney. It is another one of the idiots he's played so well in comedies over the years and when there really are no rules to how far you can take the influences and get away with it, that character has plenty of room to graze. Clooney works much better with McGregor than someone would have immediately thought.

And while it veers off the road from being true at some hard to define point, it's much easier to pin down where the movie itself drives into a ditch. And that's a shame, because Stare at Goats really does feel like it's heading somewhere. There are a few very memorable moments scattered among fewer great scenes, but The Men Who Stare at Goats never fully delivers on its unique promise.

Film Review : 2012

2009-11-13T01:52:00.000+08:00

Director Roland Emmerich mounts an all-out assault on the conventions of quality filmmaking with this bloated disaster flick.

The ancient Mayan calender, with its supposed prediction of a December 21, 2012 apocalypse, has long fascinated assorted fringe scholars, doomsday fetishists and George Noory acolytes. In 2012, the audacious new disaster epic from director Roland Emmerich (10,000 B.C., The Day After Tomorrow), it provides the inspiration for a $250 million orgy of destruction, the likes of which has never been seen on the big screen.

People who view screenwriting as an art and don't particularly care about audience reaction to their films bristle at the thought of screenplay classes, in which Plot Element A and Plot Element B can be put together in such a way that, voila! A hit is born. But Roland Emmerich has taken that very kind of formula writing and made a veritable empire out of it, returning every few years to destroy some corner of the earth and invent a handful of earnest heroes, wisecracking sidekicks and solemn old men to survive his newest take on the apocalypse.

With 2012, as you probably could have guessed from the poster art of tidal waves crashing over the Himalayas, Emmerich is letting go of whatever restraint he might have had before. Clocking in at nearly three hours, boasting about a dozen major characters and at least half a dozen emotional death scenes, 2012 operates on the assumption that, if we liked seeing New York destroyed in The Day After Tomorrow and Washington D.C. zapped in Independence Day, we'll really love witnessing the wholesale destruction of the globe.

But that was then and this is now.

These days, audiences are sophisticated and un-shockable, well beyond that CGI gee whiz phase. A mobile phone can do everything but wash the dishes, so blowing up the California coastline or flooding China doesn’t really amount to much.

The disaster epic genre hasn’t been in its grave long enough to be of nostalgic interest, and yet, someone spent $265M to get 2012 made. Even the stars are from the mid-nineties. The effects are exciting for the first hour or so, but they begin to grate on the nerves too much, too many, and too little relief. The storylines are formulaic and predictable, everything that happens you know will happen, every cliché in the book is here. The audience’ intelligence is severely underestimated. But maybe audiences that weren’t around to see movies in the disaster era may take a shine to this slick, weather gone wild porn.

Beyond the awe-inspiring carnage, however, there’s precious little to distinguish 2012. John Cusack leads a bloated cast that largely phones in a succession of forgettable roles. The conspiracy-themed script is painfully trite, rife with cliches and devoid of any and all subtlety. Its heavy-handed message, urging unity across class and cultural lines, feels superficial and soulless. Even the film’s visual effects occasionally come off as distractingly fake. The film even feigns a gallingly faux subversiveness, toppling Christian landmarks like the Vatican and the Christ the Redeemer statue in spectacular fashion, while avoiding Islamic monuments entirely.

Film Review : Pirate Radio

2009-11-13T01:15:00.000+08:00

A brisk, buoyant ode to the renegade deejays who defied authorities to bring rock radio to the UK in the 1960s.

Pirate Radio is far from perfect, but it’s an undeniably fun film. Considering nearly my entire synopsis is character description, it’s clear there’s an abundance of players in need of development, and Pirate Radio provides just enough for each of them. On the other hand, when it comes to plot development, the film lacks significantly. It’s extremely difficult to figure out where to focus your attention. Okay, this kid Carl hops on a boat packed with sex-crazed radio DJs. Then there’s the feud between The Count and Gavin (Rhys Ifans). Oh, and Simon’s marriage issues. And how can I forget the unusually epic ending? It’s not that there’s so much going on at once, it’s that it’s all happening in an extremely rapid succession. Once you’ve focused on one subplot, the film.

The British Invasion stormed American airwaves in the mid-'60s, its conquest of its native land took the shape of a sea-based guerrilla offensive. Broadcasting from ships anchored just outside British territorial waters, a handful of so-called “pirate radio” stations defied the BBC’s strict limits on popular music by blasting the isles with around-the-clock rock 'n' roll. Writer/director Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually) pays tribute to that vibrant era with Pirate Radio, a sentimental, lighthearted ode to the renegade DJs who helped British rock find its sea legs.

Pirate Radio may strike some as reminiscent of another nostalgic paean to the wonders of rock 'n' roll, Almost Famous not least because star Philip Seymour Hoffman essentially resuscitates his Lester Bangs performance in this film. But Pirate Radio is far less ambitious than Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film. It should be noted that a significantly longer version of the film, titled The Boat That Rocked, debuted in the UK over six months ago. Narrative gaps are evident throughout Pirate Radio, but director Curtis’ decision to pare nearly 20 minutes off the film’s running time for its American release looks like a wise one, as the shortened length still tests the limits of one’s patience. Rock 'n' roll can be many things, but it must never, ever be boring.

The key to enjoying Pirate Radio is letting your mind idle. Sit back, relax and enjoy the film’s highlights, the music and the cast. I could go through the spectacular Pirate Radio roster and tell you why each actor delivers, but it’s the group collaboration that makes the ensemble especially effective. The Radio Rock crewmembers are the coolest guys on the waves, and there's no way you'll walk out of this film without wanting to join their party.

Regardless of its title, Pirate Radio remains a film so eager to please it stops just short of serving tea and crumpets to its audience.

Film Review : The Fourth Kind

2009-11-13T01:07:00.000+08:00

Despite its claims of authenticity, this alien-abduction thriller lacks a lot of thrill.

Milla Jovovich begins the film by breaking the fourth wall and addressing the camera directly. In a lengthy monologue, she introduces herself as “actress Milla Jovovich,” explains that she’ll be portraying real-life psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler, and declares that the documentary footage scattered throughout The Fourth Kind is authentic, recorded during a sleep-disorder study conducted in Nome, Alaska set in October of 2000, features the video-taped sessions between psychologist, Dr. Abigail Tyler and a number of traumatized patients who all share strikingly similar accounts of alien visitations. The story exposes some of the most disturbing evidence of “alien abduction” ever documented, as never-before-seen footage is integrated into the film.

What really sells this film is the interview footage with Dr Tyler that plays over top of or next to the scene being discussed. Her pallid, slender face and large weary eyes sit behind her defeated monotone voice that almost echoes in her own emptiness. She has the look and demeanor of someone who has traveled to the edge of the world and returned lacking some vital part of herself. All the while, the visual border between the footage of Dr Tyler and the footage of the actors wanders from side to side. If you aren’t already a believer in this sort of thing, then right now you’re probably asking this question: If this supposedly “real” archival footage is so compelling then why do we need Milla Jovovich at all? Answer: The archival footage is actually pretty boring. Still, that archival footage is sure to be the focus of most moviegoer’s interest after seeing it. The question on everyone’s mind is and will continue to be: Is this footage real? Universal insists that it is, but this could easily be a marketing gimmick akin to warning moviegoers to wear diapers to a horror film because it’s so terrifying; or alternatively the studio itself could have been duped.

Assuming that the archive and interview footage that we’re shown is real, director Olatunde Osunsanmi appears to do his due diligence in exploring both sides of the debate. Dr Tyler is shown to be an unreliable narrator, and we’re given an easy psychological trail of breadcrumbs to follow. However, this bait-and-switch technique is perhaps the most powerful tool Osunsanmi uses to sway his viewers towards believing her story. By giving us legitimate reason to doubt, he allows us to feel like skeptics. He places us in an analytical viewpoint and then reminds us, “these are facts, the tape doesn’t lie,” and the tape, as it is shown to us, is too hard to dismiss.

For those willing to buy into The Fourth Kind’s claims of authenticity, the experience is at times genuinely terrifying. But after a while it becomes increasingly obvious that the film’s documentary sequences are staged. Director Osunsanmi brought a clever idea to the table, but he didn't quite have the skills to pull it off, and the result feels like an elaborate cinematic con job.

Film Review : Inglourious Basterds

2009-11-04T00:45:00.000+08:00

Quentin Tarantino returns to form with this audacious World War II epic, his most entertaining work since 'Pulp Fiction.' Set in occupied France during the waning days of World War II, Inglourious Basterds jumps back and forth between different storylines over the course of several chapters before bringing them together for one intense, utterly preposterous climax.

The film is by no means terrible, its two hours and 32 minutes running time races by but those things we think of as being Tarantino-esque, the long stretches of wickedly funny dialogue, the humor in the violence and outsized characters strutting across the screen, are largely missing. The film borrows its title but little else from Enzo Castellari's 1978 WWII film. In Tarantino's version, a small group of Jewish-American soldiers under the command of Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine terrorizes Nazi soldiers in Occupied France, performing shocking acts of savagery and corpse mutilations. How close they come to war crimes is unclear because, in a very un-Tarantino manner, he shows little more than a few scalpings that earn Aldo the nickname "Apache" from the Germans and one execution by a baseball bat.

Always known for his unconventional approach to casting, Inglourious Basterds director Quentin Tarantino assembled a characteristically eclectic group of actors for his latest effort, mixing veterans with newcomers, Americans with Europeans and superstars with virtual unknowns. Sporting a ridiculous mustache and an even more ridiculous Southern accent, Brad Pitt leads the pack in the role of Aldo Raine, while horror director Eli Roth (Hostel I and II) makes his acting debut as Raine’s sadistic right-hand man, Sgt. Donny Donowitz. Other notable Basterds include B.J. Novak (The Office), Samm Levine (Freaks and Geeks), Paul Rust (I Love You, Beth Cooper) and Omar Doom (Grindhouse).

It’s the cast’s European players who really distinguish Inglourious Basterds. German-born National Treasure star Diane Kruger makes the perfect 1940s matinee idol as the turncoat von Hammersmark, while Irish-bred Michael Fassbender (Jonah Hex) oozes with old-school English haughtiness as her charming British co-conspirator, Lt. Archie Hicox. Making an impressive English-language debut in Basterds as the quietly seething Shosanna is the luminous French star Melanie Laurent.

There are a few moments of classic Tarantino tension in the farmhouse when Colonel Landa interrogates the French farmer hiding a Jewish family, in the bistro where an SS officer grows suspicious of a Basterd's German accent and at the premiere, where Landa appears to uncover one of the plots. Otherwise the film lacks not only tension but those juicy sequences where actors deliver lines loaded with subtext and characters drip menace with icy wit. Tarantino never finds a way to introduce his vivid sense of pulp fiction within the context of a war movie. He is not kidding B movies as he was with "Grindhouse" nor riffing on cinema as with "Pulp Fiction" and the "Kill Bill" films. As is his preference, Tarantino builds his movie as a collage of interlocking set piece cinematically dazzling, to be sure,   enhanced by an meticulously chosen retro soundtrack rather than a linear progression. As a result, it's easy enough to tune out the Basterds while they scalp up a storm, and drop in instead on other colorful players

While Tarantino fans will undoubtedly enjoy Inglourious Basterds, the film leaves the audience wanting. Overdramatic Holocaust films may win Oscars, but Inglourious Basterds seems to crave none of that: it feels like a dual effort between Tarantino and Pitt to have a good time. The action sequences are well done, the performances are cartoonish, and the film is overly long. It’s the last hurrah of 2009’s summer blockbusters, a fun movie made by a director whose notoriety nearly outweighs his talent.

Nobody executes dramatic shifts in tone more effectively and powerfully than Tarantino, and Inglourious Basterds transitions breathlessly between moments of high tension and high comedy, brutal carnage and lighthearted whimsy all of which are peppered with the director’s distinctive dialogue and trademark wit. The film is easily his best work since 1994's Pulp Fiction. At over two-and-a-half hours, there are moments when the pacing of Inglourious Basterds seriously drags. Tarantino is above all else an actor’s director, and there are times that he becomes so enamored with a performance that he’ll allow a scene to extend well beyond the point that its resolution has become a foregone conclusion. How such an obviously ADD-addled guy like Tarantino can exhibit such disdain for brevity is beyond my comprehension.

Click here to watch the trailer

Film Review : Law Abiding Citizen

2009-11-04T00:43:00.001+08:00

Charles Bronson may have passed away, but the spirit of his Death Wish films lives on, albeit in an absurdly twisted fashion gleefully over-the-top revenge thriller. Law Abiding Citizen asks you to not question its leaps in logic in order to get into its violent tale of revenge. And if you're willing to not analyze the plot, to not shake your head in wonder at the series of twists and turns the story takes, then Law Abiding Citizen's not a bad action thriller. But it takes a lot of sacrifice on the viewer's part to allow it to be so.

When D.A. Jamie Foxx allows one of the assailants who murdered Gerard Butler's wife and daughter go free in exchange for testifying against the other, Butler takes revenge on the perpetrators and, subsequently, the entire system. While the film combines serial revenge killing with social commentary about the justice system, many critics are deriding 'Law Biding Citizen' as a weaker version of 'Saw' with little intelligent insight.

From a convicted killer's fast-track to the lethal injection chamber, to the intricate, time-consuming maneuverings of a man out for revenge, Law Abiding Citizen isn't going to win any honors for the most coherent, logical plot ever written. However, as action films go, the pacing's fast, the basic premise is fine, and Gerard Butler gives it his all in a darker role than usual. Strangely enough, Law Abiding Citizen's a fun ride, though it feels a bit bizarre to call a film loaded with violence and murder "fun."

Gerard Butler was originally interested in playing the part of the Assistant DA, but opted instead for the role of the widower out for blood. That's a good choice on Butler's part as he's played so many romantic leads and good guys in the past, mixing things up shows audiences he does have a completely different set of skills. Yes, he does get to show off his fabulous body, but there's so much more meat to the role than just what's revealed in that brief but memorable scene. Butler's nasty and ruthless as Clyde, and you root for him despite what he's doing to - in some cases - basically innocent people. Clyde's this puppet-master manipulating an entire city, and Butler pulls off the part so well, it appears he relished the opportunity to get down and dirty with this ruthless and driven character. On the flip side, there's Jamie Foxx who portrays Nick Rice as a smug, self-centered prosecutor completely obliviously to how his actions affect the citizens he deals with. We're not meant to support Rice at the beginning of the film, but Foxx tries to at least make him semi-human and not completely loathsome. Still, Butler's characterization of the wronged father makes him the one we pull for throughout the film, despite the attempts by Foxx, screenwriter Kurt Wimmer, and director F Gary Gray (The Italian Job, The Negotiator, Friday) to woo us to Nick Rice's side later in the game.

Law Abiding Citizen is not the slickest thriller ever put together. It's not the most intelligent indictment of the judicial system ever put forth in a feature film. However, director F Gary Gray said he's not trying to preach to the audience, he's just trying to entertain. Gray wanted Law Abiding Citizen to be a wild ride, and that it is. You root for the guy who's killing people long after you really should, it's that kind of movie. For all its faults, Law Abiding Citizen is a ride worth taking.

The violence is intense, the action is over-the-top, and the big plot twist late in the film will likely take you completely by surprise. Law Abiding Citizen isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if you like your films gritty and raw, it's one you'll find fairly entertaining.

Click here to watch the trailer

Film Review : Astro Boy

2009-11-04T00:39:00.001+08:00

Likely destined to follow in the footsteps of its animated, robotic predecessor The Iron Giant, Astro Boy is in every respect a stronger, more worthwhile film than most everything that actually aims at kids that has come along in decades. Perhaps a statement that is startlingly bold, but among the recent competition.

Nothing really against a solid effort of simplest terms, by the way. There is certainly something to be said for a movie for kids that is upfront about delivering an excuse for a good many gags, because kids are going to have a good time. On the other hand, Astro Boy, like The Iron Giant, is built solidly on the foundational idea that kids, ultimately, are just really brilliant.

If the concept sounds a tad bizarre, it might help to know that Astro Boy’s roots stretch back to the world of Japanese manga comics, where the idea of a boy dying and being reborn as a super-powered robot isn’t considered remotely unusual. Thankfully, helping to make Astro Boy’s robot Lazarus more palatable to American audiences is Freddie Highmore, who lends his considerable voice talents to both the titular robot and his human forebear, Toby.

Little Toby absolutely worships his father, Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage), a gifted scientist famous for his innovations in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. Tenma serves as the lead science advisor for Metro City, a high-tech utopia that floats high above Earth, safely removed from the environmental wreckage on the surface below . He’s a busy man, so busy, in fact, that he doesn’t notice when his son wanders into a weapons testing area and perishes during one of his experiments.

Events at this point transpire much as you might imagine from a plot arc perspective, but the relevant score here is not what happens, but how it happens. While only occasionally funny, Astro Boy is more fun by miles than anything all year. Your child will not burst out laughing every few minutes, but will instead inch forward in their seat, eyes bulging. Even the slower bits of exposition manage that perfect balance of talking to children, without talking down to them, and work the necessary plot steps like a book they just can’t put down.

Director/co-writer David Bowers has worked on several of the more interesting animated films since 1990, and he has apparently learned his lessons well. In some way involved with – Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Balto, The Prince of Egypt, Chicken Run, Flushed Away, he has taken the stronger abilities of all those films with him into this one, and it is impressive to see the progression of his own work.

With its simple message, charming story and gorgeous, retro-futuristic animation, Astro Boy packs more than enough firepower to overcome the awkwardness of its premise, the lulls in its storyline and the overall creepiness of Nicolas Cage.

Initially, Astro Boy takes a little too long trying to establish the father-son and father-robot dynamics, when it should be fast-forwarding to the action. When the action does get going, however, the movie is consistently engrossing.

Click here to watch the trailer

Film Review : Jennifer's Body

2009-11-04T00:36:00.000+08:00

Jennifer's Body comes loaded with a pretty big freight of expectation: it's Diablo Cody's first script since her Oscar winning Juno, for one thing, and for another, it's pneumatic robot-bait starlet Megan Fox's first high-profile role outside the Transformers films which demanded of her only the ability to look sweaty, hit her mark, and have really impressive bone structure.

Diablo Cody's script is smart, funny and infinitely more interesting than the typical teen slasher swill. The movie revels in its gory moments without being gratuitous and employs a healthy amount of sex without coming off like it's pandering to horny teens. Rather, Jennifer's Body is the perfect template for the incomparably hot Megan Fox to use her looks as a plot-forwarding mechanism. This is a professionally signficant departure from her eye candy turns in the Transformers movies and lets Fox prove that she can actually act. But at no time during Jennifer's Body do you ever forget this is Megan Fox and believe she's a real high school student who just happens to have been taken over by a demon. Pouting and posing your way through scenes is not acting, and Karyn Kusama's direction requires little more of Fox than just that. We get it - she's hot. But come on now...adding a little umph to scenes by relying on something other than looks would have gone a long way in making Jennifer's Body at least sufferable. The contrast between what Fox does with a scene and what her 'ugly duckling' co-star Amanda Seyfried is able to do with the same material is like night and day. Seyfried's dialogue and storyline is no better written or fleshed out than Fox's, yet Seyfried brings her best to the game, elevating the acting from junior high talent show level.

At their most daring, Cody and Kusama take the ambiguous intensity of teen same-sex friendships to extremes; they also dare to suggest that shared grief over mass disasters can numb hearts and minds instead of soothe them. But the film lacks any driving force. By the end, Needy becomes a tragic horror figure, like Carrie, thrust by destiny and circumstance into a homicidal vortex. But Jennifer is the movie's fulcrum, and she is just the butt - well, maybe the butt and torso - of a bad cosmic joke. Fox brings some self-knowing humor to her teen-sexpot status, and Seyfried can be touchingly confused.

Director Karyn Kusama's film has as much or more cinematic meta-interest as a significant milestone early in the careers of women like Cody and Fox, who seem possibly preordained, blessed and golden, to have enormous impacts on Hollywood filmmaking as it does interest for a dude who like scary movie, you know, with the demons and junk.

Too forced, too trite, too everything, Jennifer's Body doesn't have a clue what it wants to be. Or, wait, maybe there was a goal in place at the beginning, but it was lost somewhere between the initial concept and hiring on the cast and director. What's this movie supposed to be? Whatever it was aiming for, it fell far short of its target. There's hardly any scares, very few laughs, and a gratuitous kissing scene between Fox and Seyfried that's not as hot as you'd imagine and feels like it was forced into the story just to make some fanboys happy. Jennifer's Body is pretty to look at, but there's nothing of substance there. Other than Fox's good looks (and no, she doesn't get naked), there's nothing to see in Jennifer's Body.

Click here to watch the trailer

Film Review : (500) Days of Summer

2009-10-22T23:33:00.000+08:00

The omniscient narrator who intermittently comments on the action cautions that the movie is “not a love story.” The print advertisements qualify his words, describing this slight, charming and refreshingly candid little picture as “a story about love.” Which it is: a story about how love can be confusing, contingent and asymmetrical, and about how love can fail. Given all this, it’s somewhat remarkable that “(500) Days...,” the feature directing debut of the music video auteur Marc Webb, is neither depressing nor French.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Tom, a greeting card copywriter who believes in love, fate and destiny, and Zooey Deschanel as Summer, the girl he falls in love with, who doesn’t believe in such fantastical concepts. The film begins with a warning that “This is the story of boy meets girl, but this is not a love story”, which is partly a lie. The film takes place during the 500 days of their “relationship”, but is told out of order using an in-genius fragmented framing device. The film begins not with how Tom and Summer met, but their break-up. A break-up which totally devastates Tom and throws him into a deep depression. He keeps thinking back to their 500 days “together” to try to figure out where things went wrong.

Director Marc Webb, working from Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber's witty script, stages each scene as a vivid snapshot memory, and his sense of play is boundless. The film leaps in a heartbeat from the furtive glances (and shared   fixation on the Smiths) that ignite an office love affair to a rooftop-party reconciliation that plays out, via split screen, in two   simultaneous versions to   a morning-after-the-first-sex saunter that evolves, with joyful hilarity, into a musical number scored to ''You Make My Dreams.'' This has to be the first movie ever to give equal props to Morrissey and Hall & Oates.

The film is structured with sporadic fairy tale like narration and animated title card clips when inform you of what day out of the 500 Days of Summer you are about to witness. The film features the funniest laugh out loud Star Wars reference ever to be projected on the big screen. The film also features an incredibly hip soundtrack, which has the potential to be 2009’s Juno without the folk indie overload.

(500) Days is like a mood ring cued to the ups, downs, and confusions of modern love. It's a Gen-Y Annie Hall made by a new-style Wes Anderson who uses his cleverness for humanity instead of postmodern superiority. None of it would work, though, without such lived-in performances. A romantic comedy that everyone can relate to, because everyone has been through this type of relationship.

Film Review : The Hurt Locker

2009-10-22T22:59:00.000+08:00

This is not one of the best action movie of the year, but it is viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense and surprise, full of explosions and hectic scenes of combat.

A three-man crew whose specialty is EOD, or Explosive Ordinance Disposal. For those of us not in the military, they’re the bomb squad. Their daily routine is much like that of a firefighter, extremely dangerous situations are going to call, and it’s a question of when, not if. Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) is the team leader, who seems to insist on doing things the hard way. It so happens that The Hurt Locker takes place in Iraq. But geography is almost beside the point. What makes the film so essential is its pinpoint accuracy in mapping the disorienting roads a man can walk down when  his job keeps him so close to death, working for what sometimes feels like a distant principle. Is Sgt. James the reckless hothead he appears to be? Or is he really that good? Whenever he shares details of his personal life, Sgt. James doesn’t appear to be the perfect soldier, much less the perfect person. But he continues to dive head-first into the worst situations imaginable, and gets the job done while his crew swears they’ve dodged another bullet.

Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow have made a unique film about war. Other movies have looked and felt the way this one does - hot, suspenseful, as if something could go wrong at any moment. But The Hurt Locker' suppresses the politics of war, particularly this war where the politics always seem to hover, unstable, in the ether. It focuses, instead, on men who exist in combat’s shadow. The bomb squad arrives on the scene in the grace period before daily calm becomes deadly chaos. Troops hang back. Iraqi civilians hide. The bomb squad waxes poetic. Director Bigelow, whose body of work including 'Point Break', 'Blue Steel', 'Strange Days' and 'K-19: The Widowmaker', has been uneven but never uninteresting, has an almost uncanny understanding of the circuitry that connects eyes, ears, nerves and brain. She is one of the few directors for whom action-movie-making and the cinema of ideas are synonymous. You may emerge from 'The Hurt Locker' shaken, exhilarated and drained, but you will also be thinking.

The movie finds unexpected ways to express empathy and sensitivity. Rather than trace the path a bullet takes to its human target, it manages not to glorify war. It even implies that James is addicted to the role he plays in this one. The result is an intense, action-driven war pic, a muscular, efficient standout that   simultaneously conveys the feeling of combat from within as well as what it looks like on the ground. This ain't no war videogame, no flashy, cinematic art piece; there's nothing virtual about this reality.

Film Review : Gamer

2009-09-12T22:59:00.000+08:00

When you first saw the trailers, you would think that this is a very interesting movie as we all love computer games, especially first-person shooter games, this we can relate. But this is a movie that you really hope to like because you can tell that Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor (Crank, Crank 2) have a lot of interesting and innovative ideas, and their first foray into science fiction plays like a cross between a prison movie and a war movie before ultimately revealing itself as a revenge thriller. As much as Gamer tries to declare itself as a post-modern high concept movie, the premise never seems completely thought through. For example the reasoning for people taking part in the game ”they like to have someone else in control” makes no sense whatsoever when you see what the avatars go through. On top of that, the premise is played out in such post-modern film idea, it is so derivative of so many other films from Running Man to Rollerball to The Condemned.

If you’ve caught either of the hyperactive “Crank’’ movies, the last thing you’d expect from the filmmaking team of Neveldine/Taylor is a boring ride. Yet for long stretches of the PlayStation-minded “Gamer,’’ the action does drag. The duo goes lighter on the anything-goes screwiness that’s really their creative redemption, and instead focuses on the sort of “legit’’ grittiness that didn’t do much for Terminator Salvation either.

Gerard Butler lacks the inspiration of bringing the character Kable to life. He means well on how he became a prisoner of ala beta version of Death Race. But putting more emotional conclusion would definitely give a positive point in the plot as Neveldine/Taylor already added the sacrificing wife to make ends meet. John Leguizamo is wasted here in a pointless cameo as a fellow con, so did Kyra Sedgwick as a TV personality and Kable groupie. although I commend Sedgwick for playing a role as an over-the-top character as she seems haven't done anything outlandish as this movie, but this may also be a role that she accepted just to receive a paycheck. Michael C. Hall would be a great bill gates-esque villain role as we see he can project this in his own TV series Dexter & I love him for that role. But as a villain in this movie of a one-note performance is full of lackeys getting their bones crunched. Alison Lohman & Ludacris is also in the mix, but nothing worth mentioning as well.

Overall a great idea for a movie, but in the end it is all a fragmented-malware infected-system crash of a film.

Movie Review : District 9

2009-08-28T23:19:00.001+08:00

One of the most original SciFi movie you will see this year. Period.

20 years ago a UFO arrived on Johannesburg, South Africa, marooned floating up there & was discovered to have malnourished aliens or 'Prawns' as they call it. After efforts to assimilate them into South African society failed, were herded into District 9, a massive, refugee camp on the edge of the city that quickly devolved into a shantytown rife with violence, prostitution and substance abuse. The fed-up humans are asking help now from a government contractor to relocate these Prawns. But the Multi-National United, or MNU grabbed the opportunity to engage their real plan.

Leading the way is newcomer Sharlto Copley, lending wit and pathos to the role of overwhelmed corporate whipping boy Wikus van de Merwe. Reminiscent of both The Office’s Michael Scott. Director Neill Blomkamp casted all of his actors locally, thus you wont recognize any of them, but they did play their cards right, so you get to have a good relationship with their characters. With Wikus van de Merwe's odd character, he becomes one of the reasons why the film is such an unexpected delight.

Watching this film in the beginning, quickly reminded me the late 1980's TV series 'Alien Nation' in which aliens are living along humans creating an alternative peaceful society, with a twist. As the film progress it reminds you of 'Starship Troopers' as the conflict & climax begins to unfold. With the help of producer Peter Jackson and the many visual effects at his disposal, director Blomkamp packs the modestly-budgeted movie with an impressive mix of CGI and creature effects.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra costs $175 million to make, District 9 costs around $30 million to make. With both movies released almost the same date, & both movies are doing well on box office ticket sales, we have a clear winner who profited well.

Movie Review : Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-11T11:46:00.001+08:00

The Hogwarts students on their most horrific coming-of-age adventure is tested from their famous enemy Voldemort & from their raging hormones.

After one year from their last adventure in '...Order of the Phoenix', Voldemort dispatches some of his minions & these baddies to wreak havoc on both worlds, the muggle world & the wizard world. This time around, Harry is not treated as a star among the pack who know him, or even before he could catch his celebrity status from his friends, Dumbledore already pulled him out to give some urgent news that what is to become of their world if they cannot stop Voldemort. This introduces us to a new character called Horace Slughorn. A retired potions teacher from Hogwarts is residing in the muggle world hiding from the nasty prophecy is to what is happening currently to Potter. It is now his responsibility, as Dumbledore asked of Harry, to search for Slughorn as they believe he holds the knowledge about the Dark Lord that can be used to defeat him.

While inside Hogwarts, unamused by the romantic proceedings between the adolescent students & his envy/hatred towards Potter, Draco Malfoy needs to realize that he should be nicer to everyone, so he too can get a nice young prim & get laid. But no, Draco’s rage and resentment make him a perfect pawn for Voldemort, who recruits the angry young lad to aid in the Death Eaters’ attempts to infiltrate Hogwarts and exact revenge upon Dumbledore. But when Harry's concerns of Draco's long time association with the Dark Lord are dismissed by the Hogwarts hierarchy, Harry mounts his own investigation and makes a disturbing suspicion. Is Draco has been receiving help from someone on the inside?

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Bonnie Wright, Evanna Lynch, Tom Felton, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes should be comfortable enough on their roles, as by God, this is already one of the longest running franchise film in less than 10 years! And it shows. We do not get the quirky emotions anymore from the younger stars as they already developed what they should expect. Time flies for these former child stars now realizing they will become serious teen actors next once the entire Rowling-Myth is already finished adapted on screen. We already know Radcliffe made numerous films outside the Potter series on screen & on stage. But the most impressive turn around performance for me is Rupert Grint. If you've seen his wild coming-of-age indie 'Cherrybomb' this year, you will see that Grint took his acting more methodical than Radcliffe's naked acting on stage in the past, figuratively & literally. And it shows on '...Half-Blood Prince' as well. Eventhough early characters like Helena Bonham Carter & Ralph Fiennes came in the middle of the entire chaos, but we already know that these veteran actors can blend well on their first take, so we're not worried. We are however introduced to a new great brit actor Jim Broadbent playing Horace Slughorn, And newcomer Hero Fiennes-Tiffin as Tom Riddle at age 11 (as we know turns into the Voldermort when he becomes older) is actually a real life nephew of actor Ralph Fiennes. Cast-wise, this is one of those rides of a lifetime!

Being the most challenging Potter film to date, Davis Yates comes in for the second time. With his management on keeping the story intact, the thrilling expectation of the story development, while simultaneously tackling the potentially thorny issue of adolescent hormonal urges with warmth, subtlety and a good dose of humor. With the movie running over 2 & a half hours, Yates was able to transition emotionally dense dialogue exchanges, action-packed set pieces and comic relief. Following Harry on his travails with the gravity of his situation this time around, the story line doesn't follow suite. Which is a good thing because it doesn't go darker in an already dark plot line of the story. Just enough to be thrilled but not scaring the kids away.The CG effects also made a big leap forward for the franchise. Few days ago I was watching the '...The Sorcerer's Stone' on DVD, looking at their grandeur CG effects that time, now revisiting it, it feels like cheap early 90's CG effects. Special kudos go to cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, whose stunningly muted visuals bring the look of this series to a whole new artistic level. With Yates, Writer Steve Kloves and the rest of the crew now filming the two part finale; 'Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows', this is one franchise in great shape and looks like it’s going to go out in high style.

I mentioned before that "...Prisoner of Azkaban" is the best Potter flick to date because it escapes the usual Chris Columbus direction ('...The Sorcerer's Stone' & '...The Chamber of Secrets') of happy-go-lucky template introduction theme & "...Prisoner of Azkaban" is the start of the new dark adventure for Harry. But forget about that, because this is the new best Potter flick to date.

Movie Review : Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

2009-07-11T11:41:00.000+08:00

Who would thought that a crazy weasel would make this third installment more enjoyable than the entire franchise?

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs can be seen as a breakthrough from the usual dull plot & flat out storyline compared to the past two Ice Age animations. This time around Manny & Ellie is going to have a baby, preparing themselves to become urban parents, of some sort, until Sid screws everything else up that made a new adventure in their so-called family of unusual characters into a Land of the Lost themed development. All the while Diego is feeling the heat of getting older but still have enough punch to be appreciated by his fellow herd-mates. The savvy choice to balance all the action and silliness that the kids will be absorbing, and if they learn a bit of empathy for their families, so much the better. Scrat is introduced to a new love interest called Scratte to pave the way from the usual mishap he usually gets being associated with an a-corn fetish rodent.

The same voice actors & characters that you know from the beginning of their meet is still here. Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo. Along with Josh Peck & Seann William Scott as the twin possums Eddie & Crash, we also get some famous actors on the line with the likes of Bill Hader as the Gazelle & Jane Lynch, famous for being the store manager in Judd Apatow's 'The 40 year old Virgin' as the Diatryma Mom. Simon Pegg as the Weasel Buck, steals every scene once he got introduced in the story until the end. Clearly this is a rip-off from Shrek's 'Puss in Boots', only funnier.

Director Carlos Saldanha who co-directed the first Ice Age alongside Chris Wedge - who also voices Scrat - takes a back seat in executive producing the franchise since Ice Age : The Meltdown. Blue Sky Production's CG effects has noticeably improved their effects & it is worth the money seeing it in theaters. Saldanha definitely pitched in some new inventive ways to tell the story technically for this movie, fast pacing action editing with camera-like work on animation, it doesn't spoil the fun making it a good balance of humor & adventure.

With a same old story telling that is very linear, but with its characters being engaged all the time, & like I said in the beginning, this is the most enjoyable among the three Ice Age movies that came across from Blue Sky Productions. This would bring the audience relive their hunger for Ice Age & probably ask for number 4. But if it's just me, this is also the best way to end the franchise. Halting themselves while they are on top.

Movie Review : The Proposal

2009-07-04T21:37:00.001+08:00

Sandra Bullock & Ryan Reynolds are put in a movie genre in which they do best.

When a fierce business woman is told that she would be deported back to Canada, she shotgunned her personal assistant in an engagement of a lifetime. The plan gets complicated when the mismatched twosome must go to Alaska & meet the guy's family. From there, it's now a ride to be told.

The movie play a lot of situation that brings their leads Bullock & Reynolds to it's great use. Bullock is appealing as the 'tough boss' playing a hilarious picture of an attractive and surprisingly vulnerable person caught in a situation which is out of control. Reynolds goes along with the proposal or he would risk losing his job. And i would say that this is Reynolds' best romantic comedy role yet. But most noticeable performance is by Betty White, who plays Reynolds’ grand nanny. Once again, the 'Golden Girls' 86 year old comedienne still got what it takes.

Director Anne Fletcher (Step Up, 27 Dresses), makes the laugh out loud moments flow naturally than forcing it to the audiences. She understood that today's comedy slice won't just cut it. First time writer Pete Chiarelli may not be original in the theme that the film is based on, but it does show some highlights that are both laughable & does work with the cast.

No matter how inventive the script, it's pretty obvious where things are going to wind up in any romantic comedy. But The Proposal, despite following the standard blueprint, still manages to keep us guessing until the very end and that accounts for most of the fun.

Movie Review : Public Enemies

2009-07-04T21:25:00.000+08:00

With a great cast, perfect script, visionary filmmaker & a great topic to be told. It shortly lives up to it's great potential.

John Dillinger, a robber, a criminal & some say a modern day Robin Hood. A legendary Chicago gangster epitomized in a book by Bryan Burrough & in the film by Michael Mann, well known for his action drama films such as 'Heat', 'Collateral' & 'Miami Vice'. A figure that already caused more financial ruin during its already depression-era country. Bureau of Investigation J. Edgar Hoover, looking at Dillinger’s capture as an opportunity to boost his agency’s profile, Hoover tasks elite agent Melvin Purvis with bringing the elusive gangster to justice.

Johnny Depp plays a less profiled acting in a high profiled character in a man clearly amused by his celebrity status but never consumed by it. Dillinger’s audacity and fearlessness extend beyond the criminal realm. Christian Bale once again provides a nice foil for Depp. Sad thing is that Bale didn't have much screen time to develop his character to be told. So we kept on wondering as what was going on in Melvin Purvis' mind. Billy Crudup plays Bureau boss Edgar Hoover could've been more motivated if he had some more of again, screen time as his character was on its way. But I guess Michael Mann concentrated more on the love affair between Dillinger and his love interest Billie Frechette played by Marion Cotillard. Initially appalled by Dillinger’s aggressive advances, Frechette ultimately surrenders, becoming his loyal companion during his final days on the run.

If you are a fan or familiar with the work of Michael Mann, he always brings drama first balanced with a short strong staged gunfight in between. But if it's outside of that, it is only intermittently interesting. Depp and Bale both excel in their respective roles, but neither is allowed much room to venture beyond the tight constraints imposed by Michael Mann. Since 'Ali' Mann chooses to shoot all of his movies using Hi-Def cameras. It may work beautifully with 'Collateral', in 'Miami Vice' it's acceptable, but in 'Public Enemies' it sure is not! As seeing how glossy the surroundings can be, you are more than taken aback from its character development, it seems that everything is so-documentary.

For an almost 2 hour and a half run of the film, you'd expect characters to brighten the understanding of their motives, but in this case, it's quite flat.

welcome to kuweba ni dragonrower!

2009-07-01T16:25:00.000+08:00

This page is still under construction. I haven't thought of any shit that i will put into this boring layout. Film reviews? naah, maybe some of them. The latest film review i wrote was the movie 'Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen' but that is sooo last week & it even appeared on the local papers 2 weeks prior the opening premiere to the mass coño public. you can read them here over at my multiply page or you can even read them at my flixter page in facebook! just search me there, or you can also read that in my co-founded eCommunity website at www.pc-experts.org, but to short cut it, click here.

So what else should i put in here? music? naaah search over in my multiply page, accept me in your network & you will have thousands of music that most of it cannot be heard on local radio sations. PC elated & technology stuff? like i said, register in www.pc-experts.org & you will find a lot of things there.

So for the meantime, this is what you get until i can find something to fill ths fucking page!