James Cameron has created a film that has bested his own Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and brought the fight to influential sci-fi masterworks Alien (1979) and Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980). And that's saying something.
History tends to repeat itself. In the past, sailing ships embarked on intercontinental travel first out of curiosity then out of greed when it was discovered that money could be made, and lots of it. Flags were planted, territory claimed, and Pandora's Box got sprung. Today, sailing ships have been replaced by corporate flagships and though less blatant, the principles of territoriality and making money, and lots of it, remain.
Avatar takes place in 2154 AD, a time when humankind has unravelled the secrets of outer space travelling and has embarked upon interstellar exploration in spaceships. In fact, all of that is old news and technological advances have been made to serve the more mundane and immediate aspects of life, like making money, and lots of it.
Cameron, as director and co-writer, deployed a Chrichtonian storyline where the idealistic scientific world finds itself in strife against the evil corporate world. But he did so with a twist. The science is never explained properly. And how could it be? Or more importantly: why should it be? The film isn't about the science. In fact, it has nothing to do with it. The science is a mere vehicle for Cameron to introduce you to the world of Pandora.
Pandora is an Earth-like moon of a Jupiter-like planet. It's a place pristine and virgin, breathing with life, throbbing with vitality. It's a phantasmagoria bathed in hues of blues, purples, violets, whites, and greens. It's Paradise; it's the stuff of myth. And, indeed, in creating Pandora, Cameron must've had borrowed freely from mythological lore.
For starters, as in many a myth, trees play an important role in the lives of the Na'vi, the native people of Pandora. On Pandora grows the sacred Tree of Voices, which to the Na'vi forms an important part of the "soul" of the rainforest. It's where the Na'vi comes to pray and connect with their ancestors.
Which is akin to Australia's Aborigines mythology, which tells of a force that is left latent within the earth by ancestors and that is accessible to their descendants in the form of djang, stored-up primal power which collects in sacred places (e.g. a tree or rock). Djang allows the Aborigines to tap into their people's whole spiritual resource at an instant's notice. It can also be evoked by the rituals and dances which reunite the people with the ancestors. The Na'vi has something akin called Eywa and they can literally and physically tap into this power.
The ancients saw nature as full of divinity and the Na'vi too reveres the natural world. When the Hometree of the Omaticaya (the Na'vi clan central to the movie) got felt by human forces, you sense that tribe members are deeply grieved and that they have been wronged. Hometrees are these massive, massive trees that house the many Na'vi clans. It is where the clan members sleep, eat, work, and learn. Each Hometree is located above a rich deposit of unobtanium, an extremely valuable mineral (with a rather tacky name: unobtanium, unobtainable?), that will become the root cause of the strife between the human mining outfit RDA (the Resources Development Administration) and the Na'vi.
Linkages are made to the Maya and Norse mythologies, both of which recognized the existence of a World Tree (which, according to the Maya, held together the cosmos and, according to the Norse, linked the worlds of the gods, mankind, the giants, and the dead). The Na'vi have instead the Tree of Souls, a giant willow that, moon-wide, contains the highest concentration of Eywa, and which forms Pandora's heart and brain that controls the global biological network -- each being on Pandora is a synapse of a global nervous system, making the moon a living breathing entity in its own right. Which bears resemblance to what the Aborigines believe with their creation mythology Alcheringa or "Dreamtime", in that the land is as much part of the spiritual plane as the physical. A land, or so the Dreamtime stories go, where at the age at the world's dawn a giant ancestor race had walked the land.
The Na'vi people, a sentient hominoid species, are ten feet tall. They are fair and sensual, elfin and feline, bright blue of skin, and evoke resemblance to the Masai in their elegance and warrior culture. Cameron brings the Na'vi to life through ground-breaking photorealistic motion capture animation technology, and he's gone so far as to give them a unique language, much like JRR Tolkien did for his elves.
A key Na'vi character is Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), princess of the Omaticaya clan, who befriends Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and through whom we will get to know the Omaticaya. Sully is an ex-marine, and paraplegic, and who has taken up the offer of high pay to replace his slain scientist twin brother on Pandora as an avatar controller in the Avatar Program. He's offered the job as he has a genetically-compatible human's mind to his late sibling, a prerequisite for the expensive avatar technology to work.
The Avatar Program is a creation of the RDA, the largest single non-governmental organization in human space, which has identified a method to mix Na'vi DNA with human DNA to create hybrid bodies called avatars. Humans can control these avatars through a telepathic link. This allows humans to explore the alien inhospitable world and to blend in.
With their avatars, botanist Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, yes of course Sigourney Weaver) and biologist Norm Spellman (Joel Moore) are going to the wall in their effort of identifying what makes the Omaticaya tick, until Sully arrives. In avatar mode, Sully is physically transformed. To his delight, he can walk again. But after the first tentative steps into the alien world, he's also mentally transformed, and as he gathers intelligence he becomes more and more attracted to the Na'vi and their way of life, while the corporation, represented by fierce Chief of Security Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and ruthless SecFor administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), are growing more and more impatient.
Humans are portrayed as the bad guys, and the Na'vi as more humane than the humans themselves. Which is by design. Cameron portrays the Na'vi as humans should be ideally, who are then juxtaposed against humans as is. And this is what underpins the movie, and it's powerful, what in the context of today's world where everything seems to go down the drain. The dreamscape imagery only amplifies this visceral emotion. And seen in this light, Avatar is not only a sci-fi actioner, it's also a fable.
When I took in Avatar (in 2D, but I may see it again in 3D), sitting in the row directly behind me was a bunch of boys, kids really, with voices barely broken, heckling and being a general nuisance. They weren't bored or anything, but, and it takes one to know one -- boys being boys -- it really is just their defence mechanism against strong emotions springing into action.
Avatar is rumoured to have been fourteen years and $350 million in the making. They were well spent indeed.
(Running time: 162 minutes)
Monday 21 December 2009
Wednesday 16 December 2009
So I saw 'The Waterboy'
On local station RCTI. Bobby Boucher Jr. (Adam Sandler) is a 31 year-old good-meaning dumb-ass water boy for a loser backwater college football team still living with his mom, 'Mama' Boucher (Kathy Bates as a Pippi Longstocking gone hillbilly), who, after having opened "a can of whoop-ass" on one of the team's football players during training, is promoted to join the team by Coach Klein (Henry Winkler), who has discovered a way to harness Bobby's talent for carnage. To funny results, I must say.
Sandler has three built-in slider controls labelled "idiocy", "rudeness", and "sappiness" which he twiddles with to channel himself in all of his films. In The Waterboy (1998) the three are kept in check.
(Running time: 90 minutes)
Sandler has three built-in slider controls labelled "idiocy", "rudeness", and "sappiness" which he twiddles with to channel himself in all of his films. In The Waterboy (1998) the three are kept in check.
(Running time: 90 minutes)
Monday 14 December 2009
So I saw 'Do or Die'
On local station Trans TV. And I'd like to congratulate the genius that picked and aired Do or Die (1991) at the late, late night slot. I mean it. This movie isn't bad, it's stupid. But it's so stupid, it's good.
Kane Kaneshiro (Pat Morita playing the bad guy) has a beef with longhaired buxom secret agent Donna Hamilton (Dona Speir) and longhaired buxom secret agent Nicole Justin (Roberta Vasquez) and so, to satisfy his sense of humour, he's going to kill them in a game where he will deploy six teams of assassins one at a time. Donna and Nicole make a phone call to HQ and their boss assigns Rico Estevez (Erik Estrada of eternal CHiPs fame) to lead a counter-attack team made up of an equal number of hunks and more longhaired buxom babes. Kane monitors the progress of each of his six teams on a 64 KB computer from his bedroom in the company of an oriental longhaired buxom babe, but Rico and friends manage to thwart each assassination effort in an acting job where the only emotion that permeates through is the hunks' horniness for their longhaired buxom colleagues.
And who can blame them? Longhaired buxomness is after all, like, the highest level of hotness there is.
(Running time: 97 minutes)
Kane Kaneshiro (Pat Morita playing the bad guy) has a beef with longhaired buxom secret agent Donna Hamilton (Dona Speir) and longhaired buxom secret agent Nicole Justin (Roberta Vasquez) and so, to satisfy his sense of humour, he's going to kill them in a game where he will deploy six teams of assassins one at a time. Donna and Nicole make a phone call to HQ and their boss assigns Rico Estevez (Erik Estrada of eternal CHiPs fame) to lead a counter-attack team made up of an equal number of hunks and more longhaired buxom babes. Kane monitors the progress of each of his six teams on a 64 KB computer from his bedroom in the company of an oriental longhaired buxom babe, but Rico and friends manage to thwart each assassination effort in an acting job where the only emotion that permeates through is the hunks' horniness for their longhaired buxom colleagues.
And who can blame them? Longhaired buxomness is after all, like, the highest level of hotness there is.
(Running time: 97 minutes)
Wednesday 9 December 2009
So I saw 'Ninja Assassin'
The first time I saw a ninja movie – really walked my ass to some establishment and parked my ass down to see a ninja movie – was more than twenty-three years ago. In between then and now I did see American Ninja (1985) (but never saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [1990] because of a complete lack of interest on my part), but that was on the telly from the comfort of my living room when I had nothing better to do.
This establishment I walked my ass to was the local yellow-painted community centre located behind my parental home and which stood on the far end of the local playground, which in turn stood adjacent a small field of grass bookended by net-less goals. Writing this down I now see what the planners had in mind: a place for parents to take the kids to for some wholesome romping and for some wholesome refreshments afterwards, available at the yellow-painted community centre.
As far as wholesomeness is concerned, I don't think that learning how to blow smoke from your nose behind the bushes that lined one side of the field is particularly wholesome. And as far as parents taking their kids are concerned, there were none. It was pretty much Lord of the Flies. The only adult I remember to have had graced the grounds was an elderly man who would sit on one of the wooden benches that lined one side of the field and watch me and my buddies play football and give the occasional commentary. I think he watched us once, maybe twice, to never be seen again (I like to fancy him to be a football scout of sorts).
If we weren't playing football, we would hang out at the yellow-painted community centre – i.e. during the rare occasion it would open its door. It had no set business hours, which probably was because it hadn't any business to speak of. A local cover band of sorts would occasionally rent the place to practice, and we would watch. And it had a bar, and grown-ups would smoke and drink beer.
It was during one of those rare occasions that it opened its door that I saw the ninja movie. In a rare instance of doing something resembling a community centre, it screened the ninja movie, though I'm not sure it even was for the entertainment of anybody other than the proprietor and his patrons; forget flyers, news was passed by word of mouth. When we got there, someone took out some extra chairs and planted these in front of the grown-ups that were already sitting in front of the TV and VCR. I was a bit apprehensive; the patrons were foreign, i.e. not from the immediate neighbourhood –they never were– and a funky smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke hung in the air, which all added to the experience, but I sensed that we were welcome.
I don't remember much of the movie other than that it involved a sacred samurai sword hidden somewhere in a cave and that while we were watching, grown-ups sitting at the bar behind us were chatting, smoking, and drinking beer. I didn't know any of the Western actors and actresses that were in it, but they don't matter. It was all about the ninjas and their ways of the mysterious. Don't even try to understand the ninjas: they're from the Far East, that's how they do things over there. The video's graininess added to the movie's somewhat forbidding quality. But the medium of video would do that to all kinds of movies, not just ninja movies. Stick a videotape into a VCR and you would enter a world of magic. This was all before the invasion of the Internet, cellphones, and email. It was the age of the Pager. Movie stars were still movie stars.
And so Ninja Assassin is the second ninja movie I saw and, yes, it was like at the yellow-painted community centre, but without the graininess it has lost some of its mystique, even if the fight scenes are dazzling and the bloodletting would put any slasher film to shame.
But here is some word of mouth: go see it.
(Running time: 99 minutes)
This establishment I walked my ass to was the local yellow-painted community centre located behind my parental home and which stood on the far end of the local playground, which in turn stood adjacent a small field of grass bookended by net-less goals. Writing this down I now see what the planners had in mind: a place for parents to take the kids to for some wholesome romping and for some wholesome refreshments afterwards, available at the yellow-painted community centre.
As far as wholesomeness is concerned, I don't think that learning how to blow smoke from your nose behind the bushes that lined one side of the field is particularly wholesome. And as far as parents taking their kids are concerned, there were none. It was pretty much Lord of the Flies. The only adult I remember to have had graced the grounds was an elderly man who would sit on one of the wooden benches that lined one side of the field and watch me and my buddies play football and give the occasional commentary. I think he watched us once, maybe twice, to never be seen again (I like to fancy him to be a football scout of sorts).
If we weren't playing football, we would hang out at the yellow-painted community centre – i.e. during the rare occasion it would open its door. It had no set business hours, which probably was because it hadn't any business to speak of. A local cover band of sorts would occasionally rent the place to practice, and we would watch. And it had a bar, and grown-ups would smoke and drink beer.
It was during one of those rare occasions that it opened its door that I saw the ninja movie. In a rare instance of doing something resembling a community centre, it screened the ninja movie, though I'm not sure it even was for the entertainment of anybody other than the proprietor and his patrons; forget flyers, news was passed by word of mouth. When we got there, someone took out some extra chairs and planted these in front of the grown-ups that were already sitting in front of the TV and VCR. I was a bit apprehensive; the patrons were foreign, i.e. not from the immediate neighbourhood –they never were– and a funky smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke hung in the air, which all added to the experience, but I sensed that we were welcome.
I don't remember much of the movie other than that it involved a sacred samurai sword hidden somewhere in a cave and that while we were watching, grown-ups sitting at the bar behind us were chatting, smoking, and drinking beer. I didn't know any of the Western actors and actresses that were in it, but they don't matter. It was all about the ninjas and their ways of the mysterious. Don't even try to understand the ninjas: they're from the Far East, that's how they do things over there. The video's graininess added to the movie's somewhat forbidding quality. But the medium of video would do that to all kinds of movies, not just ninja movies. Stick a videotape into a VCR and you would enter a world of magic. This was all before the invasion of the Internet, cellphones, and email. It was the age of the Pager. Movie stars were still movie stars.
And so Ninja Assassin is the second ninja movie I saw and, yes, it was like at the yellow-painted community centre, but without the graininess it has lost some of its mystique, even if the fight scenes are dazzling and the bloodletting would put any slasher film to shame.
But here is some word of mouth: go see it.
(Running time: 99 minutes)
Saturday 5 December 2009
So I saw 'The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift'
On local station Trans TV. And though it's bollocks, it's very good bollocks.
When Tokyo Drift (2006) did the rounds in movie houses here I gave it the cold shoulder. Space, cyborgs, organized crime and that sort of things are more up my street. Not cars. And so I thought, how exciting could a movie, a second sequel to a movie, about cars and street racing be, that is set in Tokyo to boot? Not that I have anything against Tokyo, but if a Hollywood movie isn't even set in the States, isn't that saying something? Or so I thought.
Not that I have anything against cars either. I like to watch them, preferably on the telly (Top Gear, top-notch), but should they all disappear by tomorrow, fine with me. Let's take up bicycling. But, anyway, to give you an idea where I'm coming from, this is me and cars: Mercedes boring, Volvo boring, BMW gooood. And I like my cars to have personality: so classic cars gooood.
Having said that, in Tokyo Drift the cars and the racing (drifting, to be precise) --the main attractions here-- deliver. And on top of that, the movie works on other levels as well.
The movie had already started when I tuned in and I landed slap bang in a scene of Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) walking up to a residence somewhere in Tokyo. He rings the bell, twice, and an older man in a bathrobe opens the door. It turns out that he isn't expected for another day and caught on the hop the older man asks for a moment, closes the door, and when he opens the door again, fully dressed this time, he lets out a woman who I assume to be a call girl (in any case, she's never seen again). Sean is invited in and the residence turns out to be a claustrophobic pigsty. At this point I expect the two to engage into some bullshit banter about this, that or the other, but they don't. Turns out the older man isn't some buddy of his; it's his old man (Brian Goodman as Major Boswell). The awkwardness is palpable. It's a son and his dad being dysfunctional. I'm hooked, now reel me in.
While this isn't Lost in Translation (2003), you feel for Sean on his first day in Tokyo. Director Justin Lin, who shot this picture in Tokyo and LA, captures the local colour as we follow Sean on his commute from home to school. Lin spreads out some story real estate here to make you care for the main character, who speaks with a rich twang, which only serves to accentuate his "gaijin"-ness. I would be intimidated on my first day in Tokyo, yes sir.
But Sean's a big boy. He can handle himself. And before you know it, he's found himself in company of street racers that hold drift competitions at a parking building. Drift (n), as defined by my dictionary, is a motor racing term meaning "a controlled skid, used in taking bends at high speeds". And that's exactly what these peeps do, they take bends at high speeds, and burn rubber like it's nobody's business.
They have a D.K. and everything too; D.K. standing for Drift King (played by Brian Tee). And D.K. has a girlfriend: Neela (Nathalie Kelley). Sean makes the mistake of hitting on Neela and unbeknownst to Sean, D.K. (a dabbling yakuza) and his right-hand man Han (Sung Kang) are watching from afar. This can't be good. This has been done. Or so I thought. The scene takes a left-field turn as Han takes Sean under his wings. Han munches on munchies; Han's suave; Han's a rogue; Han runs a business. Han's friggin cool, and before you know it every time his name pops up in dialogue I mentally add "Solo" to it. Yes, he's that cool.
The story is set up and it's time for the main attraction: cars and drifting, and in Tokyo Drift, Lin has put together some of the most beautiful eye candy sequences of cars in motion. Glistening, tricked up, beefed up Japanese cars give chase to each other in a way that makes you think: How come this director was overlooked for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)?
The most amazing shot is that of a bird's-eye view of a line of cars drifting in sync, as if they were performing a ballet, on a road snaking down a moon-lit mountain slope. You would almost expect a couple of dwarves and Tinker Bell peeking out from somewhere up, it's that surreal.
In that scene Neela is behind the wheel and Sean's riding shotgun. You know she's not really driving, stunt-peeps are, but the effect doesn't disappoint: she looks cool and sexy. Mr Michael Bay, if you want to make women cool and sexy, this is the way to go. You put them in charge.
Tokyo Drift ends on the right note as Vin Diesel (The Fast and the Furious [2001]) makes a cameo as Dominic Toretto who challenges the new D.K., Sean, to drift against him. It's The Karate Kid on wheels with a mean handbrake.
(Running time: 104 minutes)
When Tokyo Drift (2006) did the rounds in movie houses here I gave it the cold shoulder. Space, cyborgs, organized crime and that sort of things are more up my street. Not cars. And so I thought, how exciting could a movie, a second sequel to a movie, about cars and street racing be, that is set in Tokyo to boot? Not that I have anything against Tokyo, but if a Hollywood movie isn't even set in the States, isn't that saying something? Or so I thought.
Not that I have anything against cars either. I like to watch them, preferably on the telly (Top Gear, top-notch), but should they all disappear by tomorrow, fine with me. Let's take up bicycling. But, anyway, to give you an idea where I'm coming from, this is me and cars: Mercedes boring, Volvo boring, BMW gooood. And I like my cars to have personality: so classic cars gooood.
Having said that, in Tokyo Drift the cars and the racing (drifting, to be precise) --the main attractions here-- deliver. And on top of that, the movie works on other levels as well.
The movie had already started when I tuned in and I landed slap bang in a scene of Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) walking up to a residence somewhere in Tokyo. He rings the bell, twice, and an older man in a bathrobe opens the door. It turns out that he isn't expected for another day and caught on the hop the older man asks for a moment, closes the door, and when he opens the door again, fully dressed this time, he lets out a woman who I assume to be a call girl (in any case, she's never seen again). Sean is invited in and the residence turns out to be a claustrophobic pigsty. At this point I expect the two to engage into some bullshit banter about this, that or the other, but they don't. Turns out the older man isn't some buddy of his; it's his old man (Brian Goodman as Major Boswell). The awkwardness is palpable. It's a son and his dad being dysfunctional. I'm hooked, now reel me in.
While this isn't Lost in Translation (2003), you feel for Sean on his first day in Tokyo. Director Justin Lin, who shot this picture in Tokyo and LA, captures the local colour as we follow Sean on his commute from home to school. Lin spreads out some story real estate here to make you care for the main character, who speaks with a rich twang, which only serves to accentuate his "gaijin"-ness. I would be intimidated on my first day in Tokyo, yes sir.
But Sean's a big boy. He can handle himself. And before you know it, he's found himself in company of street racers that hold drift competitions at a parking building. Drift (n), as defined by my dictionary, is a motor racing term meaning "a controlled skid, used in taking bends at high speeds". And that's exactly what these peeps do, they take bends at high speeds, and burn rubber like it's nobody's business.
They have a D.K. and everything too; D.K. standing for Drift King (played by Brian Tee). And D.K. has a girlfriend: Neela (Nathalie Kelley). Sean makes the mistake of hitting on Neela and unbeknownst to Sean, D.K. (a dabbling yakuza) and his right-hand man Han (Sung Kang) are watching from afar. This can't be good. This has been done. Or so I thought. The scene takes a left-field turn as Han takes Sean under his wings. Han munches on munchies; Han's suave; Han's a rogue; Han runs a business. Han's friggin cool, and before you know it every time his name pops up in dialogue I mentally add "Solo" to it. Yes, he's that cool.
The story is set up and it's time for the main attraction: cars and drifting, and in Tokyo Drift, Lin has put together some of the most beautiful eye candy sequences of cars in motion. Glistening, tricked up, beefed up Japanese cars give chase to each other in a way that makes you think: How come this director was overlooked for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)?
The most amazing shot is that of a bird's-eye view of a line of cars drifting in sync, as if they were performing a ballet, on a road snaking down a moon-lit mountain slope. You would almost expect a couple of dwarves and Tinker Bell peeking out from somewhere up, it's that surreal.
In that scene Neela is behind the wheel and Sean's riding shotgun. You know she's not really driving, stunt-peeps are, but the effect doesn't disappoint: she looks cool and sexy. Mr Michael Bay, if you want to make women cool and sexy, this is the way to go. You put them in charge.
Tokyo Drift ends on the right note as Vin Diesel (The Fast and the Furious [2001]) makes a cameo as Dominic Toretto who challenges the new D.K., Sean, to drift against him. It's The Karate Kid on wheels with a mean handbrake.
(Running time: 104 minutes)
Sunday 29 November 2009
So I saw 'Face/Off'
On AXN. And I can't believe that it actually came out in 1997. That's like a lifetime ago.
Nicolas Cage (considering the movie's release year, fresh off The Rock [1996]) and John Travolta (milking the fame from Pulp Fiction [1994] for all it's worth) star in this action flick under the direction of John Woo. I never went to see it at the movie theatre, even if the thought must've had entertained me, and I think I know why.
First of all, Cage and Travolta, combined even, don't nearly command the amount of box office appeal that does it for me. Also, I wouldn't readily peg them as action movie stars, try as they may. Cage is more of a character actor (he was moving in Moonstruck [1987]), and Travolta will probably forever be remembered as the king of disco (and as the Blues Brothers-suit-wearing hit-man Vincent "our man in Amsterdam" Vega). And secondly, I have yet to warm to Mandarin/ Cantonese movies, which I think are often too flashy for their own good, and therefore annoying, and therefore Woo's name as director came as an added disincentive.
The flashiness literally starts from the get-go when the movie opens with a bright, fuzzy, bubbly image that fades out into a scene where we find Cage's ultimate villain Castor Troy on a hit mission targeting Travolta's ultimate good guy cop-chief Sean Archer, who we see on a merry-go-round with his kid son. Troy misses and the bullet accidentally kills Archer's son instead. Now that's enough drama right there to fuel you to the moon and back, let me tell you that.
Next we see Troy driving in a convertible on a tarmac where a private jet and a welcoming party consisting of his minions are awaiting him. The convertible breaks to a halt and as Troy steps out the movie breaks into slow motion and we see Troy's black overcoat flutter in slow motion like a desperado's in a western would at a climactic face-off. Except, here things have barely taken off, you haven't properly invested yourself emotionally in Troy (and you never will), and in effect it's as if the button on the slo-mo gizmo was hit almost at random (almost, the fluttering does look cool, sorta).
Troy walks to his minions and one of them hands him a wooden box, which apparently contains Troy's indispensable effects: some bric-a-brac, a half-empty pack of Chiclets, and two golden handguns. With all the fuss that's put into the scene you'd think that the Chiclets and the golden handguns will tie the story together nicely somewhere along the line, but Woo is having none of that.
Troy steps into the private jet but before it can take off along comes Archer with the cavalry to intercept. Archer does a lot of grimacing to show that he means business, but he fails of course and he has to watch Troy --who himself does a lot of laughing to show that he's indeed the baddy baddy we think him to be-- fly off into the friendly skies.
In the second act the movie recognizes itself for the silly caper it is as somehow Archer becomes Troy and vice versa through plastic surgery. From there it builds itself up to not one but two face-offs between the two and, yes, a happy ending, but certainly not before Troy (i.e. Archer) manages to escape from a prison taken straight out of a B-movie sci-fi.
This movie has an identity crisis.
(Running time: 138 minutes)
Nicolas Cage (considering the movie's release year, fresh off The Rock [1996]) and John Travolta (milking the fame from Pulp Fiction [1994] for all it's worth) star in this action flick under the direction of John Woo. I never went to see it at the movie theatre, even if the thought must've had entertained me, and I think I know why.
First of all, Cage and Travolta, combined even, don't nearly command the amount of box office appeal that does it for me. Also, I wouldn't readily peg them as action movie stars, try as they may. Cage is more of a character actor (he was moving in Moonstruck [1987]), and Travolta will probably forever be remembered as the king of disco (and as the Blues Brothers-suit-wearing hit-man Vincent "our man in Amsterdam" Vega). And secondly, I have yet to warm to Mandarin/ Cantonese movies, which I think are often too flashy for their own good, and therefore annoying, and therefore Woo's name as director came as an added disincentive.
The flashiness literally starts from the get-go when the movie opens with a bright, fuzzy, bubbly image that fades out into a scene where we find Cage's ultimate villain Castor Troy on a hit mission targeting Travolta's ultimate good guy cop-chief Sean Archer, who we see on a merry-go-round with his kid son. Troy misses and the bullet accidentally kills Archer's son instead. Now that's enough drama right there to fuel you to the moon and back, let me tell you that.
Next we see Troy driving in a convertible on a tarmac where a private jet and a welcoming party consisting of his minions are awaiting him. The convertible breaks to a halt and as Troy steps out the movie breaks into slow motion and we see Troy's black overcoat flutter in slow motion like a desperado's in a western would at a climactic face-off. Except, here things have barely taken off, you haven't properly invested yourself emotionally in Troy (and you never will), and in effect it's as if the button on the slo-mo gizmo was hit almost at random (almost, the fluttering does look cool, sorta).
Troy walks to his minions and one of them hands him a wooden box, which apparently contains Troy's indispensable effects: some bric-a-brac, a half-empty pack of Chiclets, and two golden handguns. With all the fuss that's put into the scene you'd think that the Chiclets and the golden handguns will tie the story together nicely somewhere along the line, but Woo is having none of that.
Troy steps into the private jet but before it can take off along comes Archer with the cavalry to intercept. Archer does a lot of grimacing to show that he means business, but he fails of course and he has to watch Troy --who himself does a lot of laughing to show that he's indeed the baddy baddy we think him to be-- fly off into the friendly skies.
In the second act the movie recognizes itself for the silly caper it is as somehow Archer becomes Troy and vice versa through plastic surgery. From there it builds itself up to not one but two face-offs between the two and, yes, a happy ending, but certainly not before Troy (i.e. Archer) manages to escape from a prison taken straight out of a B-movie sci-fi.
This movie has an identity crisis.
(Running time: 138 minutes)
Tuesday 17 November 2009
So I saw '2012'
After having written and directed such films as (the excellent) Independence Day (1996) and (the not-so-excellent) The Day After Tomorrow (2004), disaster-meister Roland Emmerich has really outdone himself this time with 2012 for what we've got here is the The Exorcist of disaster movies. I kid you not.
John Cusack stars in a leading role as struggling novelist Jackson Curtis, and I've come to know that it's always a good sign if Cusack's name is on the marquee. Chiwetel Ejiofor turns in an understated performance in a key role as scientist Adrian Helmsley, underrated screen-stealer Oliver Platt is hard-boiled technocrat Carl Anheuser while Woody Harrelson --always a welcome face on the screen-- as oddball radio ham Charlie Frost and Danny Glover, of Lethal Weapon fame and now with a pronounced (and rather sinister) lisp, as widowed US President Thomas Wilson round off a cast that in my book is a stroke of genius.
It doesn't matter though.
With 2012, Emmerich directs a movie that plays on the doomsday prophesy as foretold by (among others, I understand) the ancient Mayan civilization and that is supposed to take place on 21 December 2012, the day of the Great Alignment. It foretells a period of great change. What kind of change, nobody knows.
Emmerich uses the room that's created by this unknownness to move around creatively and do what he does best: visiting worst-case doom scenarios upon humanity by mixing scientific fact with popular myth. Normally his films are to be taken with a grain of salt and tongue planted in cheek. It's escapism he offers you, so you treat it accordingly.
Not so this time around. Like I said, Emmerich has outdone himself. It doesn't matter whether it's by chance or design, but 2012 tugged a raw chord with yours truly. Admittedly, I went and took in the movie a half-believer and, with the recent disaster events in Indonesia tucked away in the back of my mind, that's all it takes really.
2012 starts in present-day 2009 as we find Helmsley on a scientific mission in India where he discovers that unprecedented violent solar flares are reacting with and heating up the earth's insides. He reports his findings to Anheuser, who sets in motion a top-secret protocol and as time ticks away towards the dreaded point in time in 2012, we witness rich folk making mysterious deals with faceless folk against a backdrop of foreboding natural events. In a separate storyline we find Curtis taking his kids on a camping trip to Yellowstone but only to find their usual spot fenced off by the army. He then chances upon Frost, a gung-ho conspiracist, who fills him in on what's really going on, which he shrugs off but, back in the city, a chain of events of increasing magnitude makes him doubt his own scepticism.
Watching buildings tumbling over and streets splitting open as a result of massive earthquakes is unnerving. So is the sight of places of religious significance, e.g. the Vatican, crumbling to pieces. It lends 2012 a biblical quality, if you will, which makes it eerie.
Emmerich may or may not be aware of this. He slips in his trademark humour and his trademark save-the-dog scene, but that can be interpreted either as him showing pity with a "there, there" on the shoulder, or him being unaware and thinking this to be just another of his disaster movies.
Well, it isn't.
(Running time: 158 minutes)
John Cusack stars in a leading role as struggling novelist Jackson Curtis, and I've come to know that it's always a good sign if Cusack's name is on the marquee. Chiwetel Ejiofor turns in an understated performance in a key role as scientist Adrian Helmsley, underrated screen-stealer Oliver Platt is hard-boiled technocrat Carl Anheuser while Woody Harrelson --always a welcome face on the screen-- as oddball radio ham Charlie Frost and Danny Glover, of Lethal Weapon fame and now with a pronounced (and rather sinister) lisp, as widowed US President Thomas Wilson round off a cast that in my book is a stroke of genius.
It doesn't matter though.
With 2012, Emmerich directs a movie that plays on the doomsday prophesy as foretold by (among others, I understand) the ancient Mayan civilization and that is supposed to take place on 21 December 2012, the day of the Great Alignment. It foretells a period of great change. What kind of change, nobody knows.
Emmerich uses the room that's created by this unknownness to move around creatively and do what he does best: visiting worst-case doom scenarios upon humanity by mixing scientific fact with popular myth. Normally his films are to be taken with a grain of salt and tongue planted in cheek. It's escapism he offers you, so you treat it accordingly.
Not so this time around. Like I said, Emmerich has outdone himself. It doesn't matter whether it's by chance or design, but 2012 tugged a raw chord with yours truly. Admittedly, I went and took in the movie a half-believer and, with the recent disaster events in Indonesia tucked away in the back of my mind, that's all it takes really.
2012 starts in present-day 2009 as we find Helmsley on a scientific mission in India where he discovers that unprecedented violent solar flares are reacting with and heating up the earth's insides. He reports his findings to Anheuser, who sets in motion a top-secret protocol and as time ticks away towards the dreaded point in time in 2012, we witness rich folk making mysterious deals with faceless folk against a backdrop of foreboding natural events. In a separate storyline we find Curtis taking his kids on a camping trip to Yellowstone but only to find their usual spot fenced off by the army. He then chances upon Frost, a gung-ho conspiracist, who fills him in on what's really going on, which he shrugs off but, back in the city, a chain of events of increasing magnitude makes him doubt his own scepticism.
Watching buildings tumbling over and streets splitting open as a result of massive earthquakes is unnerving. So is the sight of places of religious significance, e.g. the Vatican, crumbling to pieces. It lends 2012 a biblical quality, if you will, which makes it eerie.
Emmerich may or may not be aware of this. He slips in his trademark humour and his trademark save-the-dog scene, but that can be interpreted either as him showing pity with a "there, there" on the shoulder, or him being unaware and thinking this to be just another of his disaster movies.
Well, it isn't.
(Running time: 158 minutes)
Saturday 14 November 2009
So I read 'Me Talk Pretty One Day'
It takes guts and a degree of honesty bordering on masochism to open your cupboard and expose your skeletons for everyone to see, and it takes something special to translate these into prose. Like David Sedaris has done in Me Talk Pretty One Day, a collection of autobiographical vignettes that recount his formative years in North Carolina up to his days as an American expat in France.
Sedaris has a keen eye for the absurd and these little things in every day life that, if dismissed and allowed to pass by and float away, are mundane, but if captured and preserved on paper, will reveal kernels of truth of whatever subject you happen to take in. Through well picked accounts, we get to know Sedaris, his mom and dad, and some of his siblings, intimately. These complete strangers become individuals you'd have the feeling you know or at least recognize the type of by the time you've read the book through. You'd grin and give a knowing nod should you chance upon Sedaris in the street.
Everybody has a scrape with fear of being left behind and made an outcast like what Sedaris as a fifth-grader experienced when he had to enrol in his school's speech therapy program to cure his lisp, unsuccessfully though, which made him worry that other students in the program might succeed, "turn their lives around, and leave me stranded." Most of us, as a kid, has probably dealt with dad trying to push his unrealized dream upon you. It's his dream, not yours, but he's dad, after all, and so you give in and give it a go. Sedaris did. Against his will he took guitar lessons, only to freak out his midget guitar teacher.
David Sedaris's dad, Lou, to whom he dedicates his book to, is a (now retired) IBM engineer, a jazz aficionado, a closet painter, and, like in most families, at a loss when it comes to communicating with his offspring. As offspring, you're probably just as stumped. Unless you're a last born and refers to him as "b**ch" and "motherf**ker". It worked for Paul, "my father's best ally and worst nightmare" Sedaris writes about his youngest sibling. Lou is as upright as they come and I can only imagine his prudish embarrassment when being around Paul. But then, unlike his older brother and sisters whom have all moved away and maintain contact by telephone, Paul is always there for Lou, come hell or high water, either to offer a F**k-It Bucket (a bucket filled with candy) or just some words of consolation ("B**ch, I'm here to tell you that it's going to be all right."). Paul was there for his dad when their mother died, a free spirit who would trick her Great Dane into falsely thinking that she was being attacked by Sedaris and then take pictures of him lying on the floor with the dog ripping holes in his sweater. She would also organize the family's annual Miss Emollient Pageant, in which Sedaris would participate in earnest.
Before moving to France, Sedaris lived in New York and got by as a personal assistant to a rich Colombian woman who likes to feign poverty before moving on as part of a moving outfit run by Patrick, an Irish "card-carrying communist", and trucking furniture around with Richie, a six-foot-four convicted murderer, and Ivan, a Russian diagnosed with residual schizophrenia. Through Bonnie, Sedaris, and you and I the reader, get to experience New York as a tourist. An American tourist. "I expect to be treated like an American," Bonnie, a first-timer in the Big Apple and convinced that everyone is out to get her and her hard earned money, proclaims. And experience Americans outside America. In a train in Paris, to be precise, and involving a couple, Martin and Carol, who are convinced that Sedaris is a pickpocket. Sedaris, who moved to France after having made Hugh, a successful fellow New Yorker who owns a house in Normandy, his own ("You will be mine" writes Sedaris) describes Americans as a "loud" people.
David Sedaris is the real deal, hoss, just you see.
Sedaris has a keen eye for the absurd and these little things in every day life that, if dismissed and allowed to pass by and float away, are mundane, but if captured and preserved on paper, will reveal kernels of truth of whatever subject you happen to take in. Through well picked accounts, we get to know Sedaris, his mom and dad, and some of his siblings, intimately. These complete strangers become individuals you'd have the feeling you know or at least recognize the type of by the time you've read the book through. You'd grin and give a knowing nod should you chance upon Sedaris in the street.
Everybody has a scrape with fear of being left behind and made an outcast like what Sedaris as a fifth-grader experienced when he had to enrol in his school's speech therapy program to cure his lisp, unsuccessfully though, which made him worry that other students in the program might succeed, "turn their lives around, and leave me stranded." Most of us, as a kid, has probably dealt with dad trying to push his unrealized dream upon you. It's his dream, not yours, but he's dad, after all, and so you give in and give it a go. Sedaris did. Against his will he took guitar lessons, only to freak out his midget guitar teacher.
David Sedaris's dad, Lou, to whom he dedicates his book to, is a (now retired) IBM engineer, a jazz aficionado, a closet painter, and, like in most families, at a loss when it comes to communicating with his offspring. As offspring, you're probably just as stumped. Unless you're a last born and refers to him as "b**ch" and "motherf**ker". It worked for Paul, "my father's best ally and worst nightmare" Sedaris writes about his youngest sibling. Lou is as upright as they come and I can only imagine his prudish embarrassment when being around Paul. But then, unlike his older brother and sisters whom have all moved away and maintain contact by telephone, Paul is always there for Lou, come hell or high water, either to offer a F**k-It Bucket (a bucket filled with candy) or just some words of consolation ("B**ch, I'm here to tell you that it's going to be all right."). Paul was there for his dad when their mother died, a free spirit who would trick her Great Dane into falsely thinking that she was being attacked by Sedaris and then take pictures of him lying on the floor with the dog ripping holes in his sweater. She would also organize the family's annual Miss Emollient Pageant, in which Sedaris would participate in earnest.
Before moving to France, Sedaris lived in New York and got by as a personal assistant to a rich Colombian woman who likes to feign poverty before moving on as part of a moving outfit run by Patrick, an Irish "card-carrying communist", and trucking furniture around with Richie, a six-foot-four convicted murderer, and Ivan, a Russian diagnosed with residual schizophrenia. Through Bonnie, Sedaris, and you and I the reader, get to experience New York as a tourist. An American tourist. "I expect to be treated like an American," Bonnie, a first-timer in the Big Apple and convinced that everyone is out to get her and her hard earned money, proclaims. And experience Americans outside America. In a train in Paris, to be precise, and involving a couple, Martin and Carol, who are convinced that Sedaris is a pickpocket. Sedaris, who moved to France after having made Hugh, a successful fellow New Yorker who owns a house in Normandy, his own ("You will be mine" writes Sedaris) describes Americans as a "loud" people.
David Sedaris is the real deal, hoss, just you see.
Thursday 5 November 2009
So I saw '9'
Like the Greek muses of yore, the characters in 9 count nine as well. The movie's title might refer to the fact that there are nine of them, or it might refer to the central character who's simply called 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood).
9 is a living jute doll who wears his name on his back not unlike a football jersey. As he opens his eyes for the first time, he finds himself all alone in a room that lies in tatters. He tries to get his bearings and from the relative proportions to other objects we can tell that he's small. He ventures to the window, pushes open the blind, and what is revealed to him leaves him wide-eyed.
Him and me both.
The film has a way of sucking you into the tale, partly because of the sounds and visuals, and partly because you don't know what to expect or what to make of things. When 9 opens his eyes, so do we. Every time he learns something new, we learn something new. We're riding along on his trip on the learning curve. He makes quick progress, though, once he makes acquaintance with 2 (Martin Landau) and later with the rest of the nonet (including Christopher Plummer as 1, John C. Reilly as 5, and Jennifer Connelly as 7).
Along the way, 9 and his new friends have to deal with ferocious creatures, and eventually with the truth behind their existence.
9 is storytelling pure and simple and a small gem to behold.
(Running time: 79 minutes)
9 is a living jute doll who wears his name on his back not unlike a football jersey. As he opens his eyes for the first time, he finds himself all alone in a room that lies in tatters. He tries to get his bearings and from the relative proportions to other objects we can tell that he's small. He ventures to the window, pushes open the blind, and what is revealed to him leaves him wide-eyed.
Him and me both.
The film has a way of sucking you into the tale, partly because of the sounds and visuals, and partly because you don't know what to expect or what to make of things. When 9 opens his eyes, so do we. Every time he learns something new, we learn something new. We're riding along on his trip on the learning curve. He makes quick progress, though, once he makes acquaintance with 2 (Martin Landau) and later with the rest of the nonet (including Christopher Plummer as 1, John C. Reilly as 5, and Jennifer Connelly as 7).
Along the way, 9 and his new friends have to deal with ferocious creatures, and eventually with the truth behind their existence.
9 is storytelling pure and simple and a small gem to behold.
(Running time: 79 minutes)
Monday 19 October 2009
So I saw 'Inglourious Basterds'
Okay, you heard it here first: Quentin Tarantino is a movie-maker's movie-maker. When Hollywood threatens to collapse under its own weight, it's peeps like Tarantino who keep things afloat with bold originality and brash wittiness. It's peeps like him who bring freshness and interestingness amidst all the staleness. He and others of his ilk are in a league of their own, where he rules as top dog hands down.
You have to be if you can pull off something like Inglourious Basterds by sidestepping any and all of the proverbial landmines of which movies depicting Nazis and Jews in the same frame are fraught with. You have to be if you can make a dollop of cream look larger than life, a glass of milk like the tastiest drink in the world, the noise of the prosaic act of eating a strudel pregnant with possibilities, violence explode violently. Dialogue purl like a cool stream in the mountains on a pleasant summer day. It's cinema as cinema was meant to be made.
Tarantino is, after all, all about being cinematic. He knows what a movie can and can't do, what a movie does best, what each movie element brings to the table. All while keeping a finger on the audience's pulse: whatever it is you go through during a specific scene, it's because he wants you to; if you find yourself filling in blanks in between scenes, it's also because he wants you to.
In Inglourious Basterds we follow three parallel storylines, all set in the early 1940s of Nazi-occupied France: the first one follows the exploits of SS Col. Hans "The Jew Hunter" Landa (Christoph Waltz), the second one the fate of French-Jewish country girl Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), and the third one the mission of Lt. Aldo "The Apache" Raine (Brad Pitt) and his eight basterds (including Eli Roth as Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz, Til Schweiger as Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz, and B.J. Novak as Pfc. Smithson "The Little Man" Utivich). The second and third storylines intertwine with the first one, but never with each other. The overall storyline of betrayal and retribution then climaxes in an inferno that would do Carrie White proud.
A masterpiece. *sheathes bowie knife*
(Running time: 153 minutes)
You have to be if you can pull off something like Inglourious Basterds by sidestepping any and all of the proverbial landmines of which movies depicting Nazis and Jews in the same frame are fraught with. You have to be if you can make a dollop of cream look larger than life, a glass of milk like the tastiest drink in the world, the noise of the prosaic act of eating a strudel pregnant with possibilities, violence explode violently. Dialogue purl like a cool stream in the mountains on a pleasant summer day. It's cinema as cinema was meant to be made.
Tarantino is, after all, all about being cinematic. He knows what a movie can and can't do, what a movie does best, what each movie element brings to the table. All while keeping a finger on the audience's pulse: whatever it is you go through during a specific scene, it's because he wants you to; if you find yourself filling in blanks in between scenes, it's also because he wants you to.
In Inglourious Basterds we follow three parallel storylines, all set in the early 1940s of Nazi-occupied France: the first one follows the exploits of SS Col. Hans "The Jew Hunter" Landa (Christoph Waltz), the second one the fate of French-Jewish country girl Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), and the third one the mission of Lt. Aldo "The Apache" Raine (Brad Pitt) and his eight basterds (including Eli Roth as Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz, Til Schweiger as Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz, and B.J. Novak as Pfc. Smithson "The Little Man" Utivich). The second and third storylines intertwine with the first one, but never with each other. The overall storyline of betrayal and retribution then climaxes in an inferno that would do Carrie White proud.
A masterpiece. *sheathes bowie knife*
(Running time: 153 minutes)
Saturday 10 October 2009
So I saw 'Surrogates'
What if you take virtual reality a step or two further? What if you could have a life-size, lifelike representation of yourself --a 'surrogate'-- walking and talking irl?
It would be the ultimate dream of perverts, and for everybody else it would mean saying goodbye to wrinkles and creases. Crime and disease rates would plunge to record lows, but so would quality of life, or so The Prophet (Ving Rhames) would have you believe. "A lie" is what he calls the lives of people whom are living their lives through surrogates. He and other like-minded souls, who like to keep it real and old-school, have gathered in small pockets of surrogate-free zones. Outside these pockets, surrogates walk and talk like the living dead in The Polar Express (2004).
Until operators --the peeps operating the surrogates-- start ending up dead along with their surrogates. Detective Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is assigned to investigate and, whilst on the job, Greer (Willis) finds an excuse to go gritty and roam the streets in the flesh.
A reflection of life in the information age disguised as a who-dunnit murder mystery.
(Running time: 88 minutes)
It would be the ultimate dream of perverts, and for everybody else it would mean saying goodbye to wrinkles and creases. Crime and disease rates would plunge to record lows, but so would quality of life, or so The Prophet (Ving Rhames) would have you believe. "A lie" is what he calls the lives of people whom are living their lives through surrogates. He and other like-minded souls, who like to keep it real and old-school, have gathered in small pockets of surrogate-free zones. Outside these pockets, surrogates walk and talk like the living dead in The Polar Express (2004).
Until operators --the peeps operating the surrogates-- start ending up dead along with their surrogates. Detective Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is assigned to investigate and, whilst on the job, Greer (Willis) finds an excuse to go gritty and roam the streets in the flesh.
A reflection of life in the information age disguised as a who-dunnit murder mystery.
(Running time: 88 minutes)
Thursday 1 October 2009
So I saw 'The Last Legion'
It's a movie for kids, what with the protagonist being a kid (Thomas Sangster as Romulus Augustus, the last Caesar of a crumbling Roman empire). And it's a movie about Excalibur, the sword, and therefore it falls, of course, under the category of fantasy.
It also falls under the category of adventure, as Aurelius (a not-so-beefy Colin Firth), a commander of the Roman army on security detail for said last emperor, gets more than he bargained for as the very life of his young charge becomes threatened when the Goths, being Goths, launch a treacherous attack on the home of Rome's first family; kill the emperor's parents; and ship the boy to a prison island. The boy is not alone though, as he has the company of guru Ambrosinus aka Merlin (Ben Kingsley), a mysterious personality with a knack for showmanship and wise words.
The adventure begins as Aurelius, with the help of his trusty band of comrades and a mysterious but deadly beauty (Aishwarya Rai as Mira), sets out to spring the emperor. The emperor and his guru are sprung and, somehow, they chance upon a mysterious sword, which by posterity would be known by the name of Excalibur.
What's a mystery to me, though, is what purpose the sword side-story serves in the movie; leave it out and no one would be the wiser.
Back from the prison island they learn that they had been had by Rome's politicians, who apparently have cut a deal with the Goths. Aurelius is not impressed and he decides to go to Britannia in search of the Ninth Legion to have them march to Rome and confront the Goths (if I'm not mistaken --the storyline is hard to follow at times; my mind kept on wandering trying to figure out what the deal was with the sword side-story).
They locate the Ninth Legion but only to be confronted by local baddy Vortgyn (Harry Van Gorkum), who apparently has a history with Ambrosinus (something to do with the sword). The movie climaxes in a battle pitching the Ninth Legion against Vortgyn's army and ends with our young emperor denouncing war by throwing the sword into the air, which then lands on and gets stuck in a boulder.
And so the legend begins.
The Last Legion is riddled with clichés and the production has the quality of a play instead of a movie. It would've been a spectacle indeed if the movie was made with extravagant production and grown-ups in mind.
(Running time: 102 minutes)
It also falls under the category of adventure, as Aurelius (a not-so-beefy Colin Firth), a commander of the Roman army on security detail for said last emperor, gets more than he bargained for as the very life of his young charge becomes threatened when the Goths, being Goths, launch a treacherous attack on the home of Rome's first family; kill the emperor's parents; and ship the boy to a prison island. The boy is not alone though, as he has the company of guru Ambrosinus aka Merlin (Ben Kingsley), a mysterious personality with a knack for showmanship and wise words.
The adventure begins as Aurelius, with the help of his trusty band of comrades and a mysterious but deadly beauty (Aishwarya Rai as Mira), sets out to spring the emperor. The emperor and his guru are sprung and, somehow, they chance upon a mysterious sword, which by posterity would be known by the name of Excalibur.
What's a mystery to me, though, is what purpose the sword side-story serves in the movie; leave it out and no one would be the wiser.
Back from the prison island they learn that they had been had by Rome's politicians, who apparently have cut a deal with the Goths. Aurelius is not impressed and he decides to go to Britannia in search of the Ninth Legion to have them march to Rome and confront the Goths (if I'm not mistaken --the storyline is hard to follow at times; my mind kept on wandering trying to figure out what the deal was with the sword side-story).
They locate the Ninth Legion but only to be confronted by local baddy Vortgyn (Harry Van Gorkum), who apparently has a history with Ambrosinus (something to do with the sword). The movie climaxes in a battle pitching the Ninth Legion against Vortgyn's army and ends with our young emperor denouncing war by throwing the sword into the air, which then lands on and gets stuck in a boulder.
And so the legend begins.
The Last Legion is riddled with clichés and the production has the quality of a play instead of a movie. It would've been a spectacle indeed if the movie was made with extravagant production and grown-ups in mind.
(Running time: 102 minutes)
Wednesday 23 September 2009
So I saw 'Hancock'
On HBO. I meant to see it on the big screen when it was doing the rounds in movie houses here, but somehow I never got to it.
I always thought Hancock (2008) to be a comedy, or a movie about a comical action hero. After all, it stars Will Smith as the titular, burnt out, bottle tipping superhero. The movie's first third indeed starts out as per expectations as PR man Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) sets out to change the public's opinion of Hancock, who is generally seen as an asshole, under the wary eyes of his too-hot-to-be-true wife Mary Embrey (Charlize Theron), who hates to see hubby getting hurt. But then the movie sidetracks and becomes less of a comedy than a drama. Funny man Smith becomes melancholy reincarnate Smith.
Darn sidetracking.
(Running time: 92 minutes)
I always thought Hancock (2008) to be a comedy, or a movie about a comical action hero. After all, it stars Will Smith as the titular, burnt out, bottle tipping superhero. The movie's first third indeed starts out as per expectations as PR man Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) sets out to change the public's opinion of Hancock, who is generally seen as an asshole, under the wary eyes of his too-hot-to-be-true wife Mary Embrey (Charlize Theron), who hates to see hubby getting hurt. But then the movie sidetracks and becomes less of a comedy than a drama. Funny man Smith becomes melancholy reincarnate Smith.
Darn sidetracking.
(Running time: 92 minutes)
Thursday 17 September 2009
So I saw 'The Grudge 3'
And it's an incoherent mess that should've gone straight to VCD or even not been made in the first place.
(Running time: 90 minutes)
(Running time: 90 minutes)
Wednesday 9 September 2009
So I saw 'The Final Destination' (not in 3D)
You know how it goes in the Final Destination series. In this fourth instalment, the Grim Reaper messes up again and has to find ever more creative ways to fix things and keep to schedule. Along the way he proves to have a sense of humour too, as shown in one sketch involving a racist redneck, a tow truck, a wooden cross, gasoline, and the song Why Can't We Be Friends. The movie runs a bit too short though at 82 minutes.
(Running time: 82 minutes)
(Running time: 82 minutes)
Friday 21 August 2009
So I saw 'District 9'
An alien mother ship has been hovering above Johannesburg for two decades. As it turned out, the ETs on it weren't the badasses we humans thought them to be. In fact, despite their hideous prawny exterior, they're rather docile. And in need of relief.
So what do we, humans, do? We put them in camps. We subject them to all kinds of oppressive rules, regulations, and red tape --under the critical eye of the rest of the world of course. And we try to steal their technology and conduct experiments on them. Why? Because we can.
Besides, the "prawns" have been here for more than twenty years now. The whole novelty of it has worn off. We've learned their language, they've learned ours. An entire new generation of humans has been born and is used to the idea that we're not alone.
The movie is shot in such a matter-of-fact way you'd think that would be indeed our reaction in that specific setting.
(Running time: 112 minutes)
So what do we, humans, do? We put them in camps. We subject them to all kinds of oppressive rules, regulations, and red tape --under the critical eye of the rest of the world of course. And we try to steal their technology and conduct experiments on them. Why? Because we can.
Besides, the "prawns" have been here for more than twenty years now. The whole novelty of it has worn off. We've learned their language, they've learned ours. An entire new generation of humans has been born and is used to the idea that we're not alone.
The movie is shot in such a matter-of-fact way you'd think that would be indeed our reaction in that specific setting.
(Running time: 112 minutes)
Wednesday 29 July 2009
So I saw 'Public Enemies'
Johnny Depp serves his John Dillinger character straight up in this recount of the public enemy's life which, as can be expected from a Depp character, is just what is needed.
Depp's Dillinger is brawny and smart, and has a major chip on his shoulder (as a result of a lengthy stint in jail and, possibly, an abusive dad while growing up in Indiana). He's explosive, the kind of childhood friend you'd be wary of hanging around with as a kid because all kinds of shit could happen when he's around.
Director Michael Mann brings, as can be expected from a Mann piece, cool soundtracks and realistic gunfights to the table. He's also cast Christian Bale as G-man Melvin Purvis, who returns everything Dillinger has to offer but with detached professionalism. Which overall makes for a cool cerebral flick.
(Running time: 140 minutes)
Depp's Dillinger is brawny and smart, and has a major chip on his shoulder (as a result of a lengthy stint in jail and, possibly, an abusive dad while growing up in Indiana). He's explosive, the kind of childhood friend you'd be wary of hanging around with as a kid because all kinds of shit could happen when he's around.
Director Michael Mann brings, as can be expected from a Mann piece, cool soundtracks and realistic gunfights to the table. He's also cast Christian Bale as G-man Melvin Purvis, who returns everything Dillinger has to offer but with detached professionalism. Which overall makes for a cool cerebral flick.
(Running time: 140 minutes)
Wednesday 8 July 2009
So I saw 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'
I've got a little theory: the longer you look forward to a movie, the smaller the pay-off will be. For instance, this is true for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005), which I looked forward to for almost a year but when it finally came out my expectations had got build up so high, it didn't stand a chance.
The same is also true for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Which was bound to happen following yours truly partaking for more than a year in the online buzz surrounding this follow-up to Transformers (2007).
Transformers hit me like a train because the hype preceding it largely escaped me, and when it hit theatres my enthusiasm was very much intact; I had after all no expectations, I went in with a clean sheet. With ROTF I left crumbs of my enthusiasm with every post I made online, so when the movie hit theatres it was pretty much chipped away at.
ROTF picks up where Transformers left two years after. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is off to college, he's in love with high school sweetheart Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox), and everything is peaches and cream until he lays hands on and touches a stray fragment of the Cube and starts to see strange symbols projected inside his head. Separately, a special combat unit which, with the help of the Autobots, has been searching and destroying stray Decepticons on planet Earth, learns about the presence of the Fallen (Megatron's superior). The two subplots intertwine when it is identified that the symbols are key to identifying the location of an ancient energy-generating machine which the Fallen yearns to posses for his schemes and which, if activated, would use up our Sun as fuel.
The movie's tonal feel has a Saturday-morning-cartoon quality to it, which I assume is the only quality you want to strive for in a movie that is based on a Saturday morning cartoon. On a critical note: there's too much stuff going on. The action scenes, the explosions are rather numbing and take away from the funny and the magic that made Transformers Transformers. Considering that even Two-Face in The Dark Knight (2008) felt excessive, ROTF could certainly do with less.
Bigger is not always better.
(Running time: 150 minutes)
The same is also true for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Which was bound to happen following yours truly partaking for more than a year in the online buzz surrounding this follow-up to Transformers (2007).
Transformers hit me like a train because the hype preceding it largely escaped me, and when it hit theatres my enthusiasm was very much intact; I had after all no expectations, I went in with a clean sheet. With ROTF I left crumbs of my enthusiasm with every post I made online, so when the movie hit theatres it was pretty much chipped away at.
ROTF picks up where Transformers left two years after. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is off to college, he's in love with high school sweetheart Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox), and everything is peaches and cream until he lays hands on and touches a stray fragment of the Cube and starts to see strange symbols projected inside his head. Separately, a special combat unit which, with the help of the Autobots, has been searching and destroying stray Decepticons on planet Earth, learns about the presence of the Fallen (Megatron's superior). The two subplots intertwine when it is identified that the symbols are key to identifying the location of an ancient energy-generating machine which the Fallen yearns to posses for his schemes and which, if activated, would use up our Sun as fuel.
The movie's tonal feel has a Saturday-morning-cartoon quality to it, which I assume is the only quality you want to strive for in a movie that is based on a Saturday morning cartoon. On a critical note: there's too much stuff going on. The action scenes, the explosions are rather numbing and take away from the funny and the magic that made Transformers Transformers. Considering that even Two-Face in The Dark Knight (2008) felt excessive, ROTF could certainly do with less.
Bigger is not always better.
(Running time: 150 minutes)
Friday 19 June 2009
So I saw 'Star Trek'
This is a prime example of Hollywood's métier: movie magic that transports you to a fantastical world. In this case: 24th century earth. In this reboot of the legendary Star Trek franchise, a Romulan warlord is bent on destroying the home planets of both the Vulcans and humans in retaliation of the annihilation of his home planet. In a parallel storyline we get to witness the early days of leading protagonists James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto), and, as the movie progresses, also the assembling of the classic crew of the USS Enterprise.
Kirk is brash with a knack for getting into trouble --fast-- while Spock is his mirror image, and because of that they're continually at loggerheads. Both, however, are exceptionally gifted. And this is the part of the movie I like most, the part that holds my interest, i.e. when the movie relates about Kirk and Spock, when we are given a glimpse of their world. You get to know them. When the two finally see past their differences and team up to save the day, you'd have the feeling that they're the Keith/ Jagger of the USS Enterprise: they get things done and make things work.
And therefore it is a bit unfortunate that this aspect of the story was not fleshed out some more. We do get a picture of the main characters and the world they live in, but we could have been given a fuller and richer impression if only less screen time was dedicated to action scenes. What we have instead is a tonal feel that is more akin to Starship Troopers (1997) than Alien (1979). Instead of a reboot, Star Trek would've perhaps benefited more from a redefinition.
(Running time: 127 minutes)
Kirk is brash with a knack for getting into trouble --fast-- while Spock is his mirror image, and because of that they're continually at loggerheads. Both, however, are exceptionally gifted. And this is the part of the movie I like most, the part that holds my interest, i.e. when the movie relates about Kirk and Spock, when we are given a glimpse of their world. You get to know them. When the two finally see past their differences and team up to save the day, you'd have the feeling that they're the Keith/ Jagger of the USS Enterprise: they get things done and make things work.
And therefore it is a bit unfortunate that this aspect of the story was not fleshed out some more. We do get a picture of the main characters and the world they live in, but we could have been given a fuller and richer impression if only less screen time was dedicated to action scenes. What we have instead is a tonal feel that is more akin to Starship Troopers (1997) than Alien (1979). Instead of a reboot, Star Trek would've perhaps benefited more from a redefinition.
(Running time: 127 minutes)
Thursday 11 June 2009
So I saw 'Drag Me To Hell'
Director Sam Raimi uses every trick in the book, old and proven (the what's-behind-the-closed-door gimmick) and original and yucky (involving amongst others a set of false teeth), to induce fright and several intentional guffaws as we follow the protagonist's plight as she tries to fight off a diabolical gypsy curse.
Now there are two kinds of people: those who believe in ghosts and those who won't admit it, but rest assured that both will get a kick out of this scare fare.
(Running time: 99 minutes)
Now there are two kinds of people: those who believe in ghosts and those who won't admit it, but rest assured that both will get a kick out of this scare fare.
(Running time: 99 minutes)
Thursday 4 June 2009
So I saw 'Terminator Salvation'
The Terminator movies are one of the most brilliant and enduring series ever committed on celluloid and you can't help but getting excited whenever a new instalment comes to your local cinema.
In this fourth instalment, Terminator Salvation, which assumes some familiarity with the Terminator saga, we leap into the future where the war against the machines has begun and is raging full-on. The messianic John Connor (Christian Bale) has taken on his role as rebel leader of the Resistance, which comprises a core body of trained militiamen that report to a roving HQ, and pockets of rebels scattered around the world --a post-apocalypse world depicted as war-torn, bleak, and where humans are no longer top dog on the food chain.
John Connor's world is violent, harsh and quiet, with the silence disrupted only by explosive sounds of warfare. Survival is the only thing on the minds of survivors and everything is geared towards that end. There's no laughter, and conversation is sparse at best. Survivors battle the machines, though they also prey amongst themselves.
Unlike in the three preceding Terminator movies, here the machines have the upper hand, however the mood and tone of the earlier movies are much preserved in Terminator Salvation.
Such is the brilliance of the series; it's foolproof. Any director worth his or her salt can pick up the story where it was left, mesh it with James Cameron's template, and make a decent film. McG, the director of this movie, has apparently opted to turn Terminator Salvation into an action-packed war movie. The pace is frantic and there are no breathers to establish a larger degree of intimacy with key characters and the environment. In a perfect world it'd be James Cameron back at the helm, but that is not to be.
(Running time: 115 minutes)
In this fourth instalment, Terminator Salvation, which assumes some familiarity with the Terminator saga, we leap into the future where the war against the machines has begun and is raging full-on. The messianic John Connor (Christian Bale) has taken on his role as rebel leader of the Resistance, which comprises a core body of trained militiamen that report to a roving HQ, and pockets of rebels scattered around the world --a post-apocalypse world depicted as war-torn, bleak, and where humans are no longer top dog on the food chain.
John Connor's world is violent, harsh and quiet, with the silence disrupted only by explosive sounds of warfare. Survival is the only thing on the minds of survivors and everything is geared towards that end. There's no laughter, and conversation is sparse at best. Survivors battle the machines, though they also prey amongst themselves.
Unlike in the three preceding Terminator movies, here the machines have the upper hand, however the mood and tone of the earlier movies are much preserved in Terminator Salvation.
Such is the brilliance of the series; it's foolproof. Any director worth his or her salt can pick up the story where it was left, mesh it with James Cameron's template, and make a decent film. McG, the director of this movie, has apparently opted to turn Terminator Salvation into an action-packed war movie. The pace is frantic and there are no breathers to establish a larger degree of intimacy with key characters and the environment. In a perfect world it'd be James Cameron back at the helm, but that is not to be.
(Running time: 115 minutes)
Saturday 23 May 2009
So I saw 'Night at the Museum 2'
Night guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) offers more of the same in this follow-up to Night at the Museum (2006) while upping the ante as he takes the action from the Museum of Natural History to the Smithsonian Institute. The living, breathing exhibits of the original movie are brought back to establish a sense of continuity, though largely given a back seat to a new batch of historical characters.
It is intended as a family adventure/ comedy movie and has a benign, old-school quality to it. It even manages to slip in a piece of wisdom: do what you love to do.
(Running time: 105 minutes)
It is intended as a family adventure/ comedy movie and has a benign, old-school quality to it. It even manages to slip in a piece of wisdom: do what you love to do.
(Running time: 105 minutes)
Monday 18 May 2009
So I saw 'Angels & Demons'
As a kid I was invited to a classmate's birthday bash that turned out to be quite memorable as the main event involved a treasure hunt in the local park organized by his older brother and sister. So off we went scooting here and there based on clues nailed on trees or hidden under and behind other park objects. I don't recall what the treasure was only that the hunt was positively exciting.
In Angels & Demons, symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) does more or less the same in Rome as he races against time to locate a canister with antimatter, which is apparently highly dangerous stuff, hidden somewhere in the Vatican while trying to stay one step ahead of the sinister Illuminati.
Now, a treasure hunt is all about the hunt, and the movie's thrills and frills should've come from the hunt. Everything else is a moot point. The hunt here, however, feels rushed and therefore unsatisfying.
(Running time: 138 minutes)
In Angels & Demons, symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) does more or less the same in Rome as he races against time to locate a canister with antimatter, which is apparently highly dangerous stuff, hidden somewhere in the Vatican while trying to stay one step ahead of the sinister Illuminati.
Now, a treasure hunt is all about the hunt, and the movie's thrills and frills should've come from the hunt. Everything else is a moot point. The hunt here, however, feels rushed and therefore unsatisfying.
(Running time: 138 minutes)
Sunday 10 May 2009
So moi saw 'Monsters vs Aliens' in 3D
Susan Murphy, aka Ginormica (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), finds her inner strength when she and her monster friends battle an alien, Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson), who is out to destroy planet earth. The visuals are for the kids, the jokes for mom 'n pop.
(Running time: 94 minutes)
(Running time: 94 minutes)
Wednesday 29 April 2009
So I saw 'Watchmen'
I've got a little theory: if a movie has a strong opening scene, chances are you'll be in for a treat. A case in point being Watchmen. Speaking of a cinematic experience. Set in a stylized alternate universe in the 1980s and with the cold war getting up steam, lives of an older and newer generation of anti-superheroes, so-called Watchmen, whom by then have been declared unlawful, become entangled as the murder of one of the former prompts the latter to look into the matter only to come upon a sinister plot that aims to hasten The Doomsday Clock to strike noon as the world's two superpowers teeter on the brink of a nuclear showdown. As our heroes dust off their costumes questions are posed but left unanswered on humanity, morality, and religion. You've got to see it to believe it.
(Running time: 162 minutes)
(Running time: 162 minutes)
Monday 23 March 2009
So moi saw 'Seven Pounds'
In his movies, not unlike Adam Sandler, Will Smith plays either funny man or melancholy reincarnate; in Seven Pounds, throughout Seven Pounds, he's the latter. For reasons the story reveals in layers. Not too bad, but let's just say that I prefer the funny man Smith.
(Running time: 123 minutes)
(Running time: 123 minutes)
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