Movie Review: Four Christmases

Vince Vaughn must be getting desperate. He appeared in a Christmas movie last year and apparently couldn’t get enough. (Does Fred Claus ring a bell? No? Congratulations, your memory’s normal.) He plays Brad, a blunt enemy of festive holidays, and along with his girlfriend Kate (Reese Witherspoon), has planned a holiday abroad to avoid the season’s merrymaking. You and I can probably identify with the roguish lies he makes up to avoid the annual family visits, but this plan goes awry when a thick fog sets in, stranding them at the airport. No big deal right? They later become victims of a spontaneous interview by a LIVE TV crew, and…well, the cat’s out of the bag, if we are to assume the families of both parties have their TVs on 24/7.

As you can imagine, both are then confronted by their kins, and this is where we find out what gave the film its title: Kate and Brad are forced into visiting not one, but each of their parents. “But wait, why four? Shouldn’t it just be two?” Nope, the writers have to fill out the 82 minutes, so all four parents are divorced. Comedy is squeezed out of the awkward and exaggerated situations when they proceed with visiting all of them. 

Witty at some parts, naughty the other, Four Christmases scores a few points for its daring and honesty. Vaughn delivers his best when he’s given all the sexual lines to toy with, while Witherspoon does okay with everything else. But apart from snorting or smirking time to time at some of the cleverer lines (“You can’t spell ‘families’ without ‘lies’! “), there’s nothing else to do but watch events unfold with an indifference. Four Christmases may have poked cheeky fun at repetitive Christmas traditions at the beginning, but gives in to the festive goodness towards the end. It goes from “hard as nails” to “soft as marshmallows”, and while one can appreciate that if done properly, Four Christmases feels more like a sell-out.

(First published at InCinemas)

Movie Review: Quarantine

"OH MY GAWD IT'S PARIS HILTON!!!"

Good news people! This isn’t the worst U.S remake!

I’ve been wanting to watch Quarantine ever since I got to see the original (Spanish) hell-raiser [Rec], and having seen both, I think I’m in the best position to tell you which I preferred, and which you should probably pay to see. Ladies and gentlemen… once again, Awesome goes to the original!

That said, the U.S English remake wasn’t all that bad. And I’m not saying that just to be fair. (Okay, maybe a little.) If you can’t handle subtitles on the Spanish version, by all means, watch Quarantine. You know in Math they used to have stuff like “A is a subset of B but B isn’t the subset of A”? If you’ve seen [Rec], you’ve seen Quarantine, but I can’t say the same the other way round. U.S remakes have the annoying habit of dumbing things down and presenting you with foolproof shots lest you have a single-digit IQ, so there’s very little left for the imagination…or suspense, for that matter. The story of both films is shouldered by a reporter, her camera man, and a few supporting cast members, who get caught in an apartment lock-down to isolate a suspected and contagious strain of extreme rabies. Quarantine, like the nutty rabies strain, makes haste to present you with maximum terror appeal, while [Rec] takes it slow, allowing breathing spaces between scares for plot development, some imagination, and a general build-up for characters to interact. There’s nothing scarier than completely trusting someone and then getting the shit knocked out of you, than litter the place with red-herrings which later come true. Also, Quarantine openly states in its dialogue that what the characters are dealing with is nothing more than a rabies outbreak, whereas scenes in [Rec] suggest a melding of both scientific and demonic natures. Both will leave you with your heart stuck up your throat, but through very different means.

Jennifer Carpenter, who plays reporter Angela in the remake, is also distinctively different from the Angela played by Manuela Velasco. Carpenter’s Angela, a whole barrow wimpier than Velasco’s, easily fits within the all-terror-no-brain of the retelling, panicking at all the right parts. Hers is a better portrayal of a vulnerable reporter, unable to accept the terror of her surroundings, in shock and disbelief that a simple filming outing would turn into a nightmare. Velasco’s the other kind of reporter you see on TV – the kind bound to be accused of being invasive paparazzi. Hers is a character in shock as well, but illuminated with an undying will to survive the night. The ordeal, if possible. Again, to each his own. If you like squeamish folk, Quarantine’s your pick. Love watching brave souls fighting back tooth and nail (and brains)? [Rec].

Now for the camera work – don’t, for goodness’ sake, go in with a full stomach. Of the two shot using shaky cameras, [Rec] has no problem bagging this category. With better play on shadows, well framed shots through the viewfinder, and the ability to utilise silence and echos, [Rec] is overall a better-filmed piece than say, the messier in-camera editing and overuse of loud sound effects in Quarantine. This is not helped by the fact that a major scene (the climax, practically) is in the trailer for Quarantine. It’s one thing to market cheap thrills, it’s another to sell the entire climax and be a dead giveaway when it’s finally shown in the movie itself.

(First published at InCinemas)

Movie Review: City Of Ember

Above: "What do you mean we're living in a manhole."

Not reading the book must help, I guess, because if City Of Ember ever got something right, it was arousing my curiosity. If you’ve read the novel by Jeanne Duprau, then there’s a ninety percent chance you’ll go, “The book was so much better!” 

Like Michael Bay’s The Island, City Of Ember deals with a bunch of people living in some kind of a shut-in world, unaware of anything beyond its borders – in this case piles and piles of trash and sewage pipelines. Because that’s where they’re living in – an underground sewage. Oh, you may say it isn’t, but come on, no self-respecting designer would come up with a city embalm so like the circular tell-tale design of a street manhole. 

The movie begins with a back-to-the-past montage detailing what a group of Very Important Peoples did to lock everyone into the hellhole, but inadequately explains why. Whatever it is, the only thing that’s supporting life in the underground is a gigantic generator, which gives the city its much-needed power and source of light. You know, since there’s no sky for a sun to begin with. Things are not going well in Ember Land; generator failures are getting frequent and food is growing scarce. Like being on the Axiom in Wall-E, there is of course a way to get back to the surface of the Earth – a set of instructions hidden in a box handed down from the city’s line of mayors. Said box goes missing, and is accidentally re-discovered by the lead characters, who proceed to follow the instructions within to break free from the city in ways that will do Nicholas Cage proud in National Treasure. 

I’ll give the film a pat on the back for its set design though, maybe even its character design for the giant mole-like creature which terrorises the city’s dark alleyways, but here’s the problem: City Of Ember never peaks at any point. It’s not boring, but neither is it thrilling, and never fulfills the level of excitement such a story premise could - should - bring. When the characters discover what looks to be part of the er, pincers, of a rhino beetle the length of an arm, you begin to wonder if they’re a race of very tiny people, or whether they shrunk over time, or…I dunno. I’m assuming this has to do with either me not reading the novel, or a bad job at adapting it into a screenplay, but the muddled writing does the movie a disservice not even great set designs can hide. 

The casting of unfamiliar faces for the lead roles is an effort worth appreciating, but unfortunately does no good to the film. The acting is medicore at best; City Of Ember feels like a film the cast and crew could afford to have given more to. There’s a sort of coldness to it, and it reeks of a defeat at the box office even before trying.

(First published at InCinemas)

Movie Review: Kung Fu Panda

Above: I love Smarties!

Jack Black lends his voice again to this animation as the son of a noodle-seller, Po (previously starring in Shark Tale, another DreamWorks production), a gluttonous, lazy but well-meaning panda whose greatest dream is being a kung-fu master. Unlike the rest of us unfortunate souls, his fanboy worship of the legendary Furious Five – Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Money takes an unexpected spin when he is chosen to fulfill a prophecy. He is taken in by martial arts teacher, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) to learn kung-fu, a move (or a lost cause) to defeat an evil snow leopard, Tai Lung (Ian McShane). You know what this movie is going for instantly – fat jokes. 

The novelty of an unlikely hero isn’t the most original to date, but works like a charm every time, because everybody loves seeing the underdog showing his opponent who’s boss. Kung Fu Panda makes up for its overused recipe by its lesser-used kung fu choreography, and timely comedic moments. Watching kung fu as it is is quite different from watching it as an animated film, and Kung Fu Panda more than captures the art’s fluid moves, bringing to screen a kind of agility that is impressive as far as animated animals go. The interchangeable cuts between fast and slow motion is appropriate and perfect for comic relief, capturing facial expressions you may otherwise miss in real time. You simply can’t hate Po – this overweight Panda has an endearing quality both so admirable and vulnerable it’s impossible not to root for him.

(First published at InCinemas)

The Host getting a remake

Excuse me while I gloat over how predictable Hollywood has become. According to BeyondHollywood.com, “The Host” is getting a remake, which…hoho, was exactly what I predicted in the review of the original Korean monster flick. And despite the famous name Gore Verbinski having something to do with it (recall that he was the director behind the more than epic Pirates of the Caribbean movies)…well, all won’t be as rosy when you stop to read the fine print. Verbinski’s attached to be a producer, not director, and as far as I’m concerned to produce a movie means to fund it, or find a bunch of scouts to look for filming locations. Pardon my ignorance but I’m pretty sure he won’t be a big help in the creative department, and commercial director Fredrik Bond is going to direct “The Host” as his debut effort instead. I’m smelling a Godzilla catastrophe here, and I hope they prove me wrong.

As usual the universe has a weird way to have fun with us, because two of the people who wrote Godzilla are none other than Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio…a.k.a the Pirates of the Caribbean writers.

Movie Review: Attack On The Pin Up Boys

Attack On The Pin Up Boys is hard to hate primarily because it has the good sense to acknowledge its own silliness, which makes watching it a whole lot more bearable. More than bearable, actually. Sometime at the half mark, I began to appreciate it for its boldness. AOTPUB crossed the threshold of silly, it’s impossible not to giggle along with the infectious fun.

When a couple of popular – and pretty – boys become victims of a shit-throwing scandal (yes, in the literal sense), what starts off as an embarrassing affair takes on a whole new spin. Originally to teach the victims a lesson for their love of extreme popularity, being a target later meant that you were good enough to be a hit (and why not?). In the dull setting of a high school, the increasingly publicised attacks have also unintentionally brought extra fame to their already popular targets, even resulting in one’s recruitment to host a local TV programme.

Playing out like a game show, the directors have freely tossed aside their pride, packaging the movie no other self-respecting director would. Take for example the super-imposed smiling face of the sun, set as the backdrop to the school campus. Or the cartoonish drooling of the victims’ fangirls. The shit in question has also been pixillated like a vulgar statement. There’s a freedom in the film you will never see elsewhere. AOTPUB is best described “entertaining trash”.

(First published at InCinemas)

Movie Review: Fate

A bunch of gangsters, or what they like to call themselves – “brothers”, Woo Min, Cheol Jung, Do Wan and Young Hwan, have what it takes to rule the underworld: brutality, power, and all the daring in the world. Woo Min (Song Seung Heon) and Cheol Joong (Kwon Sang Woo) also look particularly good on screen, and so make the poster art for the film. But when one of them unexpectedly betrays everyone else, the gang crumbles, and everything from wooden beams to fruit knifes are swung left and right in the name of revenge and money.

I wish I could say more of the plot, but that is all it has going. It does not fit in the category of a crime thriller, or a drama, or an action movie, and has very little suspense or tension to hold it up. Fate is too obviously aimed at the fairer sex, and god forbid they should go ga-ga seeing leather-clad dudes raking things up in random street fights. At two hours long, Fate is incredibly unbearable, makes little sense and should have been put out of its own misery in the editing room.

(First published at InCinemas)

Movie Review: Missing

I always try my best to resist checking out a movie’s user rating on IMDB.com, but when you’re in a lousy mood with a steady stream of even lousier DVDs, a good rating can make all the difference.

No luck there. Missing got a 4.7/10 rating. So with this prejudice already in place and low expectations to go along (this is a good thing), I popped the DVD into the player. 

Missing kicked off to a slow start, but improved and actually reached a point that made me go, “I don’t get the rating, it’s not SO bad.” This was at the third-quarter, which means that if anything, Missing wasn’t terribly unwatchable as much as it was average.

Then things got really, really weird. Muddled, confusing, ambitious – I could use a whole array of descriptives here. The point is, it made me realise how every minute counts in a movie. Yes, I know this is a funny thing to say coming from a reviewer, but there are a lot of movies with mistakes in them that can be forgiven, particularly if said movie got off to an okay start. Missing is impossible to understand from the 80 minute mark, and this is ironic especially because director Tsui has his characters in a state of revelation around this time, when missing pieces are supposed to fall into place. With too many twist-within-a-twist to handle, the ending felt like a child just forcefully pieced together a jigsaw in an attempt to pass it off as a finished job. Missing wasn’t bad, it was disappointing. It meddled with time, got lost in it, and never got to tell the story it wanted to tell.

I’d go as far as say it was so confused by its own writing, it didn’t know how to summarise itself. They say an underwater archeologist mysteriously disappeared after trying to retrieve an engagement ring hidden in 10,000 year old ancient ruins to propose to his girlfriend, but the movie begins with his funeral. I can respect a non-chronological approach to narrating a movie, but being totally misleading surely isn’t the right way. Then there are the spirits, or ghosts, or whatever, during which I flipped the DVD cover back and forth thinking, “Is this supposed to be a horror flick? Or a romance thriller, like they said it was?”

A real pity and a huge waste, because its cast put on a pretty decent performance. It’s typical Tsui Hark, which directly translates to “garbage fantasy”. Watch until the 80 minute mark, then turn off the set and imagine an ending. It’s way too long for its own good anyway.

(First published at InCinemas)

Movie Review: Halloween

If the 1978 original had the tagline, “The Night HE Came Home!”, then this 2007 retelling of the horror movie ought to have something like “How HE Became Like This!”. Rob Zombie’s version, like I said and like they said in the extras, is a “re-imagination” rather than a remake, because they’ve added about half an hour detailing the childhood of madman-psychopath Michael Myers, which weren’t in the original. For starters I’d love to see Tommy Aged 13 from The Butterfly Effect going head to head with Michael Myers Aged 10. Imagine the number of animals/people they’ll mutilate! 

So yes, that is your plot on a platter. The rest goes to smashing, beating, slashing and a lot of spilling of fake blood. What begins as the sick hobby of torturing pets and stray animals turns into a tit-for-a-tat murder of a school bully, which in turn leads to the massacre of Myers’s entire family (save his mum). Being ten years old at the time, Myers is detained in some loony-bin-cum-prison, where he spends his life until managing to break out several years later. Also, this version has something to brag: its adult Michael Myers is the biggest Michael Myers film has seen. Why? The dude acting him is a wrestler, that’s why. And okay, he is pretty menacing and scary, considering how he goes around killing without a conscience. If you were kind to him once, just don’t expect the reciprocal.

Anyway, he breaks out of prison, and has one goal – to look for his baby sister (who is not as much a baby as a cliquey teenager now). So begins the killing spree, which goes easier than planned because of Halloween. The film takes a delight in murdering people while they’re jerking off with someone else too, so be prepared for crazy nudity. But what I do appreciate is one thing they managed to keep suspenseful – Myers’s motive for looking for his sister. A particular character asks why, and is told “I don’t know”. Is he coming after her to finish his job? Or is this seemingly hopeless man still not as far gone as to want to reunite with his sister?

Bloody, very cringe-worthy and even terrifying at parts, Halloween is an almost-classic horror movie.

(First published at InCinemas)

Movie Review: Brick Lane

Brick Lane is an adaptation of a novel of the same name written by Monica Ali. Sent to live in London at the tender age of 18 with her much older husband, Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) is the victim of a loveless pre-arranged marriage. She is one of the few lucky enough not to be abused in such a relationship, but there is nothing to be envious of in this cold, unfeeling and lopsided marriage. For all the many certificates her husband has, the poor fool has the worst combination of having too much pride and not enough common sense.

Enter two teenage daughters, one loud spoken and rebellious, the other obedient and a chip off the old block. Nazneen may have grown older throughout the years, but her mind, not exactly been put to good use with the never-ending household duties, does not seem mature enough to care for her daughters besides shielding them from their father’s quick temper. Any hope of a divorce to pluck her out of her miserable life is always bogged down by her responsibility as a wife and mother, not to mention such an event would not go unnoticed amongst neighbours.

…and who should appear in the picture next but the much younger errand boy with his flattering praises. Predictability here isn’t the question. Of course one should expect an affair! But what Brick Lane has is a touching performance to show off, not a story. The best metaphor to describe Brick Lane would be “a near-drowning of a runt who later becomes a well-loved family pet”. One walks down the all too grey path of hopelessness with Nazneen – from her shortened childhood to letters from her carefree sister back home – and then back as she discovers the many forms love can take; those that are explosive, and those that adds a little to itself each day. Brick Lane is the journey of a character from ’somewhere near the beginning’, to a ‘more to come’. You feel a sense of continuity when the film ends, that the character doesn’t end with it.

Beautiful while it lasts, but won’t be firmly lodged in your long term memory.

(First published at InCinemas)