acid reflects

Murphy’s LOLs

July 9, 2018

Part of my journey into filmmaking was seeing Jurassic Park several times over (27 in fact, my all-time record) in the cinemas for 40 bucks a pop – in part because I was coping with my father’s death months before, and in part due to that Spielberg magic that made audiences scream their shit out in every screening.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find Fallen Kingdom paying homage to the darker, suspenseful aspects of the original Jurassic Park (1993) – in a way similar to how Trevorrow’s Jurassic World (2015) paid homage to the magic and awe of Spielberg’s JP.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Directed by JA Bayona
Based on the Jurassic Park book and franchise

Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas-Howard) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) are recruited to lead the rescue of dinosaurs on Isla Nublar, three years after it was closed down due to the events of Jurassic World. The island’s dormant volcano is erupting violently, and the dinosaurs are at risk of another extinction.

Claire, who leads a dinosaur protection group, is recruited by Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), lawyer of the estate of Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) John Hammond’s co-creator of the dinosaur cloning technology of the former InGen.

Claire and Owen form a team that joins Mill’s heavily-armed operatives on the island – but it would not take long for the good guys to realize that their rescue mission is but a ruse. Mills has other plans with the retrieved dinosaurs plus a menacing new dino developed from the dark labs of – who else – Dr. Wu (BD Wong.) As with everything Jurassic Park, Murphy’s Law applies.

Photos from Universal Pictures

Director JA Bayona’s facility with the horror genre is quite obvious right off the beginning of the film. A team of suspicious-looking men tries to retrieve bones of the dead Indominus Rex off the bottom of the mosasaur lagoon. There is darkness, there is a storm – it is obviously building up to something that will go wrong – and it does, quite differently from the happy family opening scene in Trevorrow’s JW. Bayona’s opening scene sets the bloody tone of this edition of the franchise, while at the same time lays the backbone to the story’s conflict.

The film then delves deeper into a few ethical issues raised by previous editions. In a Senate hearing asking whether the dinosaurs should be even allowed to survive and at whose cost, Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) reiterates the vanity of human ambition against nature’s powers. What he says rings true even in the real world. It is a brief appearance from Goldblum, and despite the ashen hair and bearded face, manages to look serious and suave at the same time. The very reason he became Malcolm in the first place.

Bayona takes these issues even further: towards the film’s climax, the “rescued” dinosaurs are auctioned off to dubious nationalities explicitly to be modified as bioweapons. Thus the film detracts from, “man creates dinosaurs” from the first movie, into “genetics nightmare.” The auction room is dark, lit from the floor as if the dinosaurs appearing are spotlit on stage. The scene feels like we’re in a mad circus.

And then, the surprise: possibly the reason for making the film. The identity of Maisy Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) – the senior’s granddaughter – juxtaposed against the survival of the dinosaurs is another point to ponder. Fallen Kingdom crossed the line and presented us with a cloned child. At first I thought the inclusion of the character is just a way to bring the classification ratings down and keep the franchise within child-friendly territory. I was glad to be wrong.

The film is peppered with first-rate images worthy of the Jurassic Park legacy – from the CGI-intense volcano eruption and cliff-diving dinos to a drugged T-Rex in a van almost chomping on Owen to the wrenching scene where a giant sauropod wails at the pier against the backdrop of a burning island as the escape tanker sails away without it. Could it have been the brachiosaurus in the first movie? I don’t know. I also like that we see a lot more dinosaurs.

There are also tons of horrific scenarios that pay homage to Spielberg’s genius in Jurassic Park, sight gags and similarities like the dumb waiter scene, the scramble on the spiral staircase, the door-opening, Lockwood’s cane, Mill’s end, the scramble through the shaft and kicking the ladder – all parts of the suspense in the first movie but so few of the cute ones.

We do see flashbacks of how Owen raised Blue and the other velociraptors. It gives a glimpse on how deep a relationship Owen has had with these laboratory-created animals, but also, cute baby dino merchandise for the young viewers. I mean, the film has significant body count but not too much gore.

The first thing that threw me off though was Michael Giacchino’s operatic scoring. Giacchino is one of the more recognized film composers around and I thought that seeing his name in the credits was a good sign. But the more I listened to the music against the scenes, the more I thought that it contributed to taking the film over the top. Suspiria intro level. Or Insidious. With dinosaurs.

I did enjoy the chemistry between Pratt and Dallas-Howard, because it feels like something they have progressed on since JW. That entire sequence jumping off the cliff until the reference to From Here To Eternity is fantastic both on a grand scale and on an intimate scale. Except that, second installment in, Owen and Claire’s romance is still stuck on second gear. “Are they or aren’t they?” might be a recurring joke from a gag show but I don’t know how much longer they can stretch this especially since Fallen Kingdom has taken serious steps towards the scary. Be a couple already, because it works. Maybe in the next episode.

The last gripe I have is that some events do not make sense logically, which then make me pause and momentarily take me away from the magical viewing experience. The mechanics of key scenes feel like quick solutions to set up eventualities. Bringing Claire to Isla Nublar for… her handprint? Alpha female paleo-veterinarian Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) speaks borderline SJW and kicks mercenary ass? Mercenaries simply leave Owen tranqued in the field after taking Blue (for what, the marionette scene)? Bringing all dinos together into the Lockwood estate? Showing the dinos in front of a non-secure live human audience? Tension and suspense are there. WHY things are happening WHERE they are happening sometimes baffle me.

It’s a good successor to the 2015 movie and Bayona can say that he did make the legacy of Jurassic Park proud. The last third of the film may be outright horror territory but logically confuses me a good deal. Could have been much, much better.
Side order

May 22, 2018

Solo: A Star Wars Story
Directed by Ron Howard
Rated G

Possible spoilers.

Here lies what is possibly the least memorable and least complicated among the Star Wars films. Solo: A Star Wars Story is more of a side bar to the main plot involving the Rebellion against the Empire in that galaxy far, far away. Kinetic enough to keep everyone from hitting the boredom button, charming just enough to believe that’s how Han and Chewie started.

Thief and smuggler Han (Alden Ehrenreich) narrowly escapes the police at the shipyards of Corellia by enlisting into the Imperial Army, leaving behind partner in crime and lover Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke.)

Some time passes by. At the trenches, he meets the merc band led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and tries to join the group. Before this, Han is thrown into a den where he meets and frees Chewbacca (Joonas Sutomo) from chains. This done, Han and Chewie fly off with Beckett’s group to steal a big cargo of precious hyperdrive fuel called coaxium for mafia boss Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany,) leader of the syndicate Crimson Dawn. The heist is foiled by the intrusion of the Marauders led by the fierce-looking Enfys Nest (could not find out which actor this was.)

The group reports to Dryden empty-handed. Turns out Qu’ra is now working as Dryden’s right hand. Han proposes to smuggle raw coaxium off the planet Kessel. But due to the fuel’s volatility, they would need a very fast ship that can take them from Kessel to another planet where the raw coaxium can be refined. Qi’ra just happens to know a particular suave person who owns a particularly fast new ship.

Around an hour into the film we meet the young Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) cheating everyone at a poker game. At which point, every observant fan can surmise what happens afterwards.

Clearly, the film doesn’t have a particularly compelling narrative apart from ticking off a grocery list of what needs to be established 1.How Han met Chewie and became buddies with him 2.How Han met Lando and won the Falcon from him and, 3.What the frakking Kessel Run was truly about.

Right off the bat, the film presents a light adventure that tries to lay the foundations on Han’s criminal background. I would have loved to see had there been more of this, as I think the setup in Solo is insufficient to make the “scoundrel” and “smooth talker” that he is in ANH. It would have been nice to see at least one “Harrison Ford” Han expression done similarly by Ehrenreich. Once would have been enough I think.

This is different Han onscreen – a giddy, smiley Han who has a mild resemblance to the spunky, opinionated Han of the first trilogy. Ehrenreich visbly tries his best to fence his screen persona with the same screen presence of his more established costars. The suave, slick Lando is visibly the much cooler character here, gamely played by Glover, so it was a little difficult latching onto Han because he still feels like an incomplete character despite everything that’s happened here.

Joonas Suotamo is Chewbacca in SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY.

Photos from Lucasfilm.

I do not claim expertise on Star Wars canon, and this version Solo either adds to established canon or retcons previous ones. Whatever the case, this is the 20-year old Han that audiences are supposed to connect to the Han of the original trilogy. Also, I’m wondering how the Han-Qi’ra thing affects the Han-Leia thing which I think is slightly diminished as this somehow makes Leia NOT Han’s true love? Should I care about Qi’ra? As a story that paints a background for one of the pillars of the Star Wars saga, this picture may look dark even if the paint is muddy and thin.

Did not like the music, did not like that the subplot about the Marauders having to do with the emerging Rebellion thrown in like that as if it were something on second thought, did not find whoever that was that played Enfys Nest convincing.

No closure with khaleesi Qi’ra and no Jabba means hints at a sequel, I guess.

Fun, but not too fun. Not impressive.
Goodbye Lois

May 14, 2018

I am heartbroken. RIP Margot Kidder, Please say hi to Christophet for all of us. #loislane
Across the universe

May 13, 2018

Avengers: Infinity War
Directed by Anthony Russo, James Russo
Based on the Marvel comic books
Rated PG

It’s been a few weeks since the release but nevertheless, HERE BE SPOLERS.

There was an idea to bring together a group of famous characters for a gigantic mashup movie. That idea built up for more than ten years, and after 18 movies, we have finally reached peak Marvel – the culmination of more than a decade of universe-building, plotting, cameos, staggering promotions and relentless marketing. And it still is not over yet.

In Infinity War, an all-powerful Thanos is gathering six Infinity stones that will give him ultimate power to alter the state of the universe. The separated Avengers, the Guardians and their allies must give all that they can to prevent the destruction of life.

Thanos is consumed by the idea that balance can only be restored in the universe is by ridding it of half of its life population (an intriguing point) – and combining all Infinity gems with a magical gauntlet will enable him to do so with literally a snap of his fingers (never mind if the gauntlet makes the giant Titan’s already stubby fingers so thick that makes me doubt that actual snapping is possible.)

The story begins with the decimation of the Asgardians (a continuation of the ending of Thor: Ragnarok.) Hulk (aka Bruce Banner, Mark Ruffalo) escapes death through Heimdall’s (Idris Elba) final use of the Bifrost. Thanos (Josh Brolin) obtains the Tesseract from Loki (Tom Hiddleston), merges the stone with the Power stone already on the Gauntlet, then sends his children to find the other stones hidden on Earth (how Thanos got the Power Stone from Xandar may be the subject of another movie, who knows? Anything goes at this point.)

Banner crashes into Dr. Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) Sanctorum and they wormhole to find Tony (Robert Downey, Jr.) just in time to explain Thanos’s plan before Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and Cull Obsidian (Terry Notary) arrive and wreak havok on New York. Spider-Man (Tom Holland) joins the fray but Strange is captured. Iron Man and Spider-Man manage to stow away on Maw’s ship.

Meanwhile, the Guardians intercept a distress call from the Asgardian refugee ship, rescuing Thor (Chris Hemsworth) in the process. Some comic relief is done while Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) refuses to be out-machoed by the God of Thunder. Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel) join Thor in a quest for a new weapon in Nidavellir that can defeat Thanos, while Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Quill, Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) journey to Knowhere hoping to intercept the Reality Stone from The Collector (Benicio Del Toro) before Thanos can get it. Nope.

We’re then left with the last group of Avengers. Vision (Paul Bettany) and Wanda Maximoff (Elisabeth Olsen) are hiding away in Edinburgh (really?) when Corvus Glaive (Michael James Shaw) and Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon) surpise them with an attack. The Mind Stone is almost taken, but Captain America (Chris Evans) and his merry bunch surprise Thanos’s Black Order and save Vision. The group decides to take the mortally wounded Vision to the one place that the stone can be removed – Wakanda. It doesn’t take them forever to get there, but so do Thanos’s army.

Thus in separate subplots do the disassembled Avengers and allies fight in multiple fronts to prevent Thanos from fulfilling his depopulation of the universe.

At which point in this lengthy set-up do we pause and ask, isn’t anybody going to call this superhero porn?

Not cool. Any depiction (in any film, especially from a popular blockbuster) that glamorizes the use of automatic hand weapons gets less recommendation from me. I made the same complaint against Skurge’s machine guns in Ragnarok. It’s just in bad taste, in the era of every day mass shootings. There is a particular scene in the battle at Wakanda that I’m referring to, and no, it’s not the bad guys doing the acknowledgment.

Infinity War is also the sum of years and millions of dollars worth of Disney branding and hype. It’s was already a “big” “spectacular” “action-packed” motion picture event long before the film came out (with someone who may or may not have been part of marketing calling it the biggest crossover event in history) – all that was needed was to know by how much its first weekend was going to make. Such is its persuation that as of this writing, a slate of candidates for the coming local barangay elections in Manila has all of the candidates’ faces photoshopped onto the bodies of Avengers superheros, their names in Avengers typeface. Kids will be named Gamora and Drax and Peter (okay, maybe not Drax.) Maybe Thanos. It’s hard to read aomebody else’s post-release review that doesn’t read like a pre-release publicity. It’s here, it’s done, it accomplishes what it has been built for, everything including the kitchen sink. Consider it the Empire Strikes Back of the MCU, with slightly fewer WTF moments.

At some point in the many battles, I tell myself that it all doesn’t matter. The big CGI battles don’t matter. There will be another another film where the Jedis come back and defeat the Emperor (yeah different Disney movie, but you get the analogy, right?) Midway into Infinity War, I already wanted to skip to the end, knowing that it is inevitable for Thanos to obtain all the stones before part two of this war. It’s not that it’s how it runs in the comics (slighlty different) – but half of it is because it’s yet another build up for yet another massively multi-superhero clash movie aimed at another boxoffice milestone. And so on, and so forth. Once you’ve seen Spidey swinging through a 360◦ shot, you’ve seen it all – it’s just a matter of whether he has a new set of jazzed-up suit and webshooters like Iron Man does each installment.

But the best part of Infinity War isn’t the Avengers themselves (despite the effort to show many of them in dramatic moments) but with the MCU’s current ultimate villain, Thanos. There’s an online discussion on the way Thanos is portrayed in the movie. It’s actually a great move on the part of the filmmakers and Marvel to present the Mad Titan’s insane motivations in very human terms. Where it slightly deviates from the comics where Thanos pursues the decimation of life to obtain pogi points for the Mistress of Death, in the movie Thanos is a benevolent dictator who believes that he’s ultimately doing the right thing. Plus he really truly loves his daughters Gamora and Nebula (Karen Gillian.) His scene where he decides Gamora’s fate is this movie’s version of Luke, I am your Father. It is presented as a heartbreaking scene – never mind if Thanos is in all aspects a mass murderer who is about to halve the cosmos. Not surprised that so many want to have their own Gauntlet toy in their hands, but I’m more surprised that so many viewers sympathize with Thanos. He is now the Darth Vader of MCU – he’s bad but he’s so cool. These days it is, after all, the age of strongmen.

RDJ was spot on as Tony Stark, reminding me why I never liked the asshole billionaire as a superhero in the first place. Music and massive battle scenes forgettable. Fate of the universe depending on Star-Lord’s temperament may be on-point character-wise, but at that juncture the inevitable already made me not care. Gamora is a device for Thanos’ character and the plot (it’s a yay and nay, relegating the character to the trivial as Thanos’ daughter and Keeper of The Secret and maybe Quill’s girlfriend. Would not have been a problem if she had been a one-off, one-time appearance, but it just happened that I love Zoe Saldana in the series. Sorry Gamora, you’re not Ms Marvel.)

I have no strong feelings towards Infinity War good or bad, except maybe a constant annoyance over Marvel’s compulsion/ urge to cut to punchline. In the MCU’s 18-movie outing, almost every character has thrown a punchline or two, but this is bordering if not outright contrived.

Despite the ten-year set-up, there are still a few plot holes left (and the missing Adam Warlock) and somehow it gives the impression that it’s a series that will never end. Winter has come and the following season will decide what happens to the Iron Throne, but there are signals that suggest everybody becomes the undying whitewalkers who will probably fight against the astrolab in a spinoff. There’s no point who to root for since the stakes are CGI rendered and everybody has their own spinoff anyway. Infinity War has got a great character in Thanos – maybe a little too great that made me question what Earth’s Mightiest can achieve, anyway.

The answer could lie in some person’s fan theory. Out of the millions floating about, I propose my own theory on how Thanos will eventually be defeated: Ms Marvel gets the Soul Stone through Dr. Strange, releasing everyone who was taken after Thanos snapped his fingers.

On a side note, can the Guardians be called Avengers, since they never as a group formally join Stark, the way Cap’s faction did before Civil War? Because Stark bothers to declare Spidey as one.

Affiant further sayeth naught. Peace out.
Smashing pumpkins

April 19, 2018

Rampage
Directed by Brad Payton
Loosely based on the video game by Midway Games

This should be short, it’s critic-proof anyway. While the concept and trailer promised nonsensical fun, I didn’t find this fun at all. Rampage is relentlessly monstrous and ginormously dumb.

The most interesting sequence happens at the beginning of the movie and sets up the proceedings. Torn out of the pages of a decent sci-fi novel, a secret gene experiment conducted in a laboratory in space goes mortally awry – but not before a scientist saves the samples in several capsules. The capsules hurtle back into earth in three different locations in the US.

One of the capsules lands in the San Diego wildlife sancturay, near the enclosure of George – an amiable, smart and personable albino gorilla in the care of our action man Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who plays former Special Forces soldier Davis Okoye turned Dian Fossey-primatologist. George gets exposed to whatever it is in the canister, and he begins to grow exponentially and becomes uncontrollably agressive.

The same thing happens to two other animals that are exposed to the canister. Soon, three giant monsters are on the loose, rampaging across the states, heading towards the city of Chicago. An armed government agency led by Agent Harvey Russel (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) arrives to contain the situation, but the animals have grown so large that they seem to be unstoppable.

Meanwhile, the company behind the gene research is bent on getting to the monsters first, dead or alive. Malin Ackerman plays Claire Wyden, the greedy CEO of Energyne, and Naomi Harris plays Kate Caldwell, the geneticist who developed the pathogen, now helping Okoye to find a cure for George.

The blurb on the video game runs thus: “Take control of gigantic monsters trying to survive against onslaughts of military forces. Each round is completed when a particular city is completely reduced to rubble.”

While the blurb sounds simplistically cheesy fun, the movie is outright an action film from the moment George breaks out of his enclosure and at the same time the giant wolf wipes out the elite strike force sent by Energyne.

While this could easily, lazily written off as another “Big, Brainless, Fun” movie, the last is the questionable descriptive – mostly due to the carnage. And I just don’t mean body count – we see mauling, mangling, torn body parts and people getting eaten. Lots of it.

Would I make a different reaction had this been an R-rated film – just a bit, the story is still hokey and the R-rating would have lessened the pretense to show a pro-animals film. The monsters rampage through the city, reducing it to rubble, and the national guard makes a magical sudden appearance to shoot the monsters down with as many rounds as Neo’s rescue of Morpheus. This makes Independence Day: Resurgence look smart (not really, no.)

Yes I did find Ackerman’s character funny. Morgan as the constantly smug Agent Russel oozes with charisma. But the carnage! The body count. I came in ready for this ride, but the set pieces (the opening scene in the space station, Manganiello’s short-lived (!) encounter with the giant wolf).. those were in horror territory. I could hardly call Okoye’s and George’s sign language banter funny. Amusing? Maybe a bit.

This is not even kaiju category – not silly rubber-suit-guy Godzilla by way of Toho nor are there any multicolored jaegers piloted by teenagers with an attitude appearing to save the day – no.

At the same time, this is far, far from terrible territory where one finds the likes of Atlantic Rim, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, and the gazillion horror and sci-fi curiosities from the 1950s like Creature From the Haunted Sea or Fankenstein Meets the Space Monster.

Rampage goes to the B-section, not far from the Underworlds and the “Untraviolets” and the Resident Evils. But at the very least, Rampage has an adorable gorilla who gamely gives the audience the finger – twice, plus, there’s The Rock, whom many people admire (hey I like the Rock too, as himself.)
The voice on the edge

April 11, 2018

A Quiet Place
Directed by John Krasinski
Rated PG

Solid direction, good performances, a unique concept, and mostly clever filmmaking make A Quiet Place a rush of cold air on a hot summer night: refreshing, invigorating, but also momentary and at times baffling. Krasisnki is a revelation as a total filmmaker.

In the film, Earth has been invaded and decimated by monsters that hunt things that make any sound. The Abbot family is one of the few that has struggled to survive each day without making much sound. Lee (John Krasinski) has made a home in a rural farm where the pregnant Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and their children (played bt Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) can quietly live in peace. That is, until Murphy’s Law happens.

Left to right: Millicent Simmonds plays Regan Abbott and John Krasinski plays Lee Abbott in A QUIET PLACE, from Paramount Pictures.

Left to right: Director/Writer/Executive Producer John Krasinski, Emily Blunt and Noah Jupe on the set of A QUIET PLACE, from Paramount Pictures.

Left to right: Noah Jupe plays Marcus Abbott and Millicent Simmonds plays Regan Abbott in A QUIET PLACE, from Paramount Pictures.

Left to right: John Krasinski plays Lee Abbott and Noah Jupe plays Marcus Abbott in A QUIET PLACE, from Paramount Pictures.

Emily Blunt plays Evelyn Abbott in A QUIET PLACE, from Paramount Pictures.

Left to right: Noah Jupe plays Marcus Abbott, Millicent Simmonds plays Regan Abbott and John Krasinski plays Lee Abbott in A QUIET PLACE, from Paramount Pictures.

Left to right: Millicent Simmonds plays Regan Abbott and Noah Jupe plays Marcus Abbott in A QUIET PLACE, from Paramount Pictures.

Photos courtesy if United International Pictures

Of the few lines spoken in the film, one line stands out as being the crux of the story: “If we can’t protect them, what are we?”

Indeed, A Quiet Place is Krasisnki’s ruminations as a parent, done at the time he and wife Blunt are carrying their second child. Krasnski communicates this rumination in the film clearly (apart from the overt spoken line) as Lee is depicted as literally doing everything he can to keep his family alive. We’re not sure what Lee’s background is, but he’s managed to plan out a system for alarms, radio communication, farming, fishing, a panic room and an oxygen tank for the yet-to-be-born baby – all in the event of an attack.

Lee’s struggles are both physical and emotional – that he has to ensure the safety and security of his family while struggling to manage a pregnant wife, a strongly-opinionated teen daughter and a sickly adolescent son.

Simmonds stands out with a fierce portrayal of Regan, who, apart from a natural physical inability to hear, is just dying to hear words of comfort and affection from her father. Simmonds is so effective that her Regan’s stubbornness becomes terribly annoying at times.

Such is the strength of this narrative, that apart from proposing an uncommon apocalyptic scenario that the proceedings are anchored on the Abbots’ family dynamics. However I can’t say so much about Blunt’s Evelyn as the loving mother and pregnant wife. Her character isn’t threshed out well, but Blunt makes most of her scenes effective anyway, terrorized pregnant parent and all.

For a film about silences, there are a few quiet moments that I particularly enjoyed. Lighting up torches in the dark to check on the other survivors around the titular quiet place. The silent dinner where an “amen” can’t be even uttered after saying grace, and silverware are absent. But these “everyday” scenes in the farm are too few, as the rest of the film uses the silences as build-up to the suspense.

Which brings me to a point that I can’t seem to wrap my head around. That the Abbots’ “quiet place” of a farm is surrounded by things that make noise. I accept that it is post-apocalyptic – that the Abbots may not have had the leisure of looking for a more “sound-proof” abode, that there are some things that people cannot let go of just to stay sane. Sakuma’s tin can of candy drops in Graveyard for Fireflies (RIP Isao Takahata.) Newt’s ragdoll (Aliens.) Sure.

That the irony of the film is, for all their reliance on silence to survive, Lee’s tinkering with sound would prove instrumental to the family’s survival. I get that.

What I can’t get are the material items – the oil lamps and Regan’s trinkets and the gazillion thingamabobs on shelves that are just waiting to drop and make noise. If they were Sakuma’s drops or Newt’s ragdoll, I won’t be pointing out this part. But I find the production’s design of the Abbots’ daily survival (painting the creaking parts of the wooden floor) inconsistent with having way too many things around. I’m talking shelves and shelves of things. But maybe there were just too few everyday scenes to show how these characters are human that would make my rant moot. I’ll watch (or re-read) The Road again,

In a post apocalyptic world where silence is key to survival, shouldn’t sound engineers have figured out a way to do things to combat the aliens? Yes I’m overthinking it again. Because for all its craftsmanship, AQP is a great thriller that makes us more conscious of the sounds we make – and not much underneath that. The parental part, Krasinski gets down pat, no question.

If anything, the actors may have had a field day exploring the many ways of communicating without words, as the performances are like textbook acting exercises that serve to narrate the story. Adding Krasinski’s uncomplicated setups, the film is a great example of “show, don’t tell” – a skill that many filmmakers have forgotten for a medium that is mostly visual.

Overall we get a pretty solid horror movie that reminds me of Shyamalan craftiness and understanding of the build-up. It’s a rather satisfying watch, given the plot holes that kept gnawing at me until the end. And still a satisfying watch, despite the thematically inconsistent last ten minutes. I mean, the film could not completely keep silent. At the end of the day, it’s a creature feature for the family. The silo scene is straight out of Jurassic Park, while the cornrow scenes remind me of Signs.

The best part of watching A Quiet Place is realizing that the theater has gone hushed for most of the experience (apart from the occasional shrieks of course.) And that is such a rarity these days.

*The Voice on the Edge is a reference to the series of audiobooks by American author Harlan Ellison, in which the first part is the Hugo-award winning I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.
Game and watch

April 4, 2018

Ready Player One
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Based on the novel by Ernest Cline

Slight spoilers, beware!

You could care so much about this film – or – you could care less.
Ready Player One is classic Spielbergian screen magic – minus a truly riveting story.

At the SXSW Festival special screening last March, director Steven Spielberg was quoted as saying, “Just remember one thing: The side windows are for cultural references, the windshield is for a story. If you look straight ahead, you can always follow the story.” Indeed, because all the hype and some reviews that heap all the hyperbole they could dump on RP1 largely center on its spellbinding spectacle. And those aren’t wrong at all.

To say that Ready Player One has stunning visuals and a staggering profusion of 1980s pop-cultural references is an understatement. Repeated screenings on the largest screens possible are necessary just to point out the layer upon layer upon layer of 1980s pop-culture costume, background, character, sound, design and easter eggs that Stranger Things has yet to scratch the surface of. Spielberg knows what he has made. He said in the same screening, “This is not a film that we’ve made, this is — I promise you — a movie.” It’s a popcorn flick.

The movie centers around the Oasis – a virtual world where people in the year 2045 can do everything in from pole dancing, to playing music to defeating bad guys in a virtual distant planet – in order to win cryptocurrency which can be used in the real world. Except in their world, their cryptocurrency isn’t clouded in controversies. Back to the story.

So the recently-deceased inventor of the Oasis, James Halliday (Mark Rylance) hid easter eggs in the virtual world, and the first person to crack the code and the keys inherits the half-trillion-dollar game. In the months since this message appeared, no one has won any of the keys yet, until Wade Watts.

Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) is an 18 year old gamer from the slums of Ohio who spends his days playing the virtual open game. Thank goodness for his obsession with Halliday and an impressive fanboying of everything 80s pop culture, he gets to crack the first code and finishes a canon-ball run type of street race where those who fail lose all their crypto and their (game) life.

Wade, who in the Oasis is known as Parzival, meets and sort of establishes an alliance with several other gamers including Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and his game BFF Aech (Lena Waithe.) Also known as the First Five who found the first key, their group develops an understanding to help each other out in order to win the game.

However in the real world, hundreds of gamers have been recruited by the largest virtual company Innovative Online Industries to win the game for its CEO Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn.) Sorrento is so keen to win the game for himself that he has hired goons to physically harm Wade and his family. And so, a battle for the real and virtual worlds take place, with those against Sorrento and IOI as the revolutionaries. Or the resistance. Sure. Guess which side wins.

I’m sounding so cynical towards a movie that doesn’t promise to change the world. But let’s not forget two things here: that for each film, the story (whether text, subtext or documentary) takes primary consideration, and, that RP1 is directed by Spielberg. Which brings us back to the director’s own caveat at the SXSW screening.

Wade’s heroic quest is the story. Without prior knowledge of the novel, I naturally assumed that the pop cultural references in the movie would serve as clues to solve Halliday’s (or Anorak’s) puzzle. Yes and no. Yes only towards the end, but mostly as eye-candy to geek out on.

(Photos from Warner Bros Pictures)

I repeat Spielberg’s caveat because that is what RP1 is: a movie – a middling narrative with superlative visuals. A fun ride, but not the transcendent stuff that the devout would tend to ascribe to the master.

I mean we’re talking about the filmmaker responsible for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Schindler’s List, E.T., Minority Report and Empire of the Sun, to name a few. I saw Jurassic Park in the theaters 27 times (granted, I was processing the passing of my father months before that) and seeing different kinds of people responding to what was onscreen was personally an epiphany.

But Spielberg was not responsible for the source material (the novel), which may have read better than it was cramped onscreen.

RP1 reminded me of James Cameron’s digital colossus Avatar from 2009, in which the hero is shown to gradually prefer staying in his avatar form in the “alternate world” rather than his reality. The similarities are few, but just like Avatar, the audience is immersed into a lush alternate world visually distinct from our (or the character’s) reality.

The thing is, I didn’t care so much for Wade, nor for anyone else on screen. Again, these characters and their relationships may have been fleshed out more in the novel, I just didn’t find anyone interesting much less care each time anyone unlocks a key. Casting is interesting, on the other hand, especially the multiracial motley crew of the First Five. If only the humans outside their avatar form had more screen time. We all know Spielberg does magic with onscreen children, so adding to my very short list of disappointments is the short screen time of Philip Zhao who plays the eleven year-old Sho.

As everyone who has seen the film has already said, RP1 is bursting to the seams with visual flair – 80s references or not. The entire show is a definitive crowd pleaser – from the thrilling street race at the beginning of the movie to the over-the-top mass battle at the end. It’s full of Spielberg kinetic flair, such as suspending the player on wires without realizing that it would result in complicating the characters’ escape. There’s a lot of those witty details onscreen. Anyone who has had Massively Multiplayer Online RPG experience would get the same feel of seeing hundreds of players simultaneously doing their own thing in the game. Achievement unlocked – if the movie’s aim is to entertain, entertain it does.

Spielberg also makes many references to the works of his fellow filmmakers – most often of whom is Robert Zemeckis who helmed Back To The Future, and he gets a plot device named after him in RP1.

But the scene I enjoyed most and was the best rendered apparently isn’t in the novel. Stanley Kubrick’s horrific The Shining gets a full sequence reference when the First Five find out that they must survive Overlook Hotel in order to obtain the second key. This entire sequece not only is cleverly played out, but is actually quite horrific – true to the nature of the horror classic.

Alas, Ready Player One can only be summed up as a visually stunning adventure. It’s far from the master’s least remarkable outings (definitely not the abominable Mel Brooksian 1941) but the lack of meat in its narrative just doesn’t make it as closely memorable as the director’s best works.
Jaeger accoutre

April 1, 2018

Pacific Rim: Uprising
Directed by Steven S. DeKinight
Based on characters by Travis Beacham

SEMI-SPOLERISH, BEWARE!

The battle between Jaegers and Kaijus continues – Disneyfied. And I don’t meant it in a terrible way. It’s not bad per se, just targetting a different demographic. The story is corny, derivative and borderline contrived (Mecha-Power Ranger teens save the world) but the Jaeger-Kaiju slam-bang action pieces are impressively mounted. Watching this on a large screen like IMAX greatly adds to the Jaegers’ imposing scale.

Ten years after the Breach was closed, the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps has reestablished its defenses around the world, with new Jaegers in the works and pilots in training – in preparation for anticipated re-invasion from the same alien threat.

Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), former Jaeger cadet pilot and now Han Solo-type smuggler, son of Stacker Pentecost (remember Idris “cancelling the Apocalypse” Elba? Him) narrates the beginning and tells everyone how effed up everything has become despite the defeat of the invaders. A botched deal (hah, very Solo) leads him to orphan whiz-mechanic Amara (Cailee Spaeny) who tries to run using a scrap mini Jaeger while being chased by an actual Jaeger.

Their stunt lands them on the Hong Kong Shatterdome as Jaeger cadets courtesy of now Pan Pacific Defense Secretary Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi.) Jake’s ex-co-trainee/ Gypsy Avenger co-pilot Nate (Scott Eastwood) is now his and Amara’s training lieutenant. See where we’re going here?

Anyways, a Chinese mega-tech company Shao Corporation led by its female Elon Musk Liwan Shao (Jing Tian) and its head of research Newt Geiszler (Charlie Day) has developed remote-activated Jaegers, eliminating the need for multiple pilots. They convince Pan Pacific Defense to adopt the tech.

In a ceremony in Sydney, a rogue Jaeger attacks, with Gypsy Avenger (and an emotionally baggaged Jake) failing to defend the PPDC HQ. (SPOILER ALERT) An accident kills Mori, devastating Jake (they’re half siblings, by way of the father.)

The loss points the team to investigate, revealing a sinister plot involving the Shao Jaegers, Newt and the opening of new breaches for a new kaiju invasion. With only a few Jaegers left, Jake, Nate, Amara and their ragtag team of teen pilots try to do what they can to save the planet.

The story may be hokey, but it is well within kaiju-tokusatsu realm of monsters destroying the planet-specifically-Japan using forced perspective. It’s not a remake of the story arch, just a weak sequel – quite a weak one, for as long as the Jaegers and Kaijus duke it out. New Jaegers mean new weapons. If these had references, I wouldn’t know of them. In another nod to Japanese shows, the final kaiju is a combiner – a super-kaiju volt-in of three minor kaijus that managed to come out of the breach that the Shao Jaegers briefly opened.

The most annoying part? John Boyega as the lead. He has no screen charisma at all and I don’t know how or why he was chosen to lead this production. As a result, I have little or no care for his, Amara’s or anyone outside Mori’s fate, let alone the heroics of saving the earth.

What passes off as character development generically in these quest stories goes something like:

self doubt => no motivation : crisis : motivation => heroic conquest.

Jake and Amara share some of that self-doubt and angst as “rejects.” But while Spaeny carries her Amara with just enough spunk to make her somewhat believable as a human in that universe, I can’t say that I can see the same thing from Boyega. Maybe in a few more years and more acting workshops. And no, Jake’s motivational speech only reminds us what a shade he just is of his “cancelling the Apocalype” dad. It may not be Boyega’s fault that his character isn’t fleshed out on paper, but it is his job to make the audience like the character.

I really like the multi-racial cast, but it’s almost a signal as to how the proceedings will work out when they kill off Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori early in the film. Traditionally by tokusatsu design and by, well, politicial intent perhaps, Japan bears the brunt of the metropilitan destruction – a curiosity in this cinematic universe where skyscrapers are still the norm, given the continuing threat of kaijus. Shouldn’t cities be more underground at this point? I’m overthinking it.

(Photos from United International Pictures)

The visuals are superb, especially when seen in a very large screen. Like I asid, this adds to the Jaegers’ (and kaijus’) imposing scale, especially during the battle scenes. The CGI is sharp but still gives a nod to forced perspective ala Godzilla of yore. Anyone making miniature dioramas would be pleased with the detailing here.

Did I forget to mention that China saves the world? Japan is the geographical target of the Kaijus here, conveniently, even though one can surmise that my home country the Philippines strategically is at the midpoint of the Ring of Fire. Manila makes a brief visual presence as letters on a screen, despite the several references in the first Pacific Rim as well as in Gareth Edward’s Godzilla in 2014 as part of Legendary’s Kaijuverse. I can’t wait to see King Ghidorah.

Does this mean the next Pacific Rim installment will be on a Chinese Nickelodeon? Oh, Hollywood.
More than words

March 7, 2018

As I watched this, I saw my mom and my sister on the screen. Actually, no. I told my seatmate that the McPhersons are more emotionally articulate than my family. Such is life.

Lady Bird
Written and Directed by Greta Gerwig

I’m not familiar with what Sacramento is particularly famous for, and maybe that’s just part of (or contributed to) the reason why Lady Bird AKA Christine (Saoirse Ronan) is bored to death of her lifeless high school teen life there.

Lady Bird is about to finish high school and wants to venture out into the creative world, like New York, but she’s neither talented (as her very eager high school musical audition yielded a chorus line spot,) smart (she wants to be in a math club, contrary to her adviser’s opinion,) rich (her father Larry (Tracy Letts) just lost his job) nor supported (in particular by her passive-agressive mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf.)

For much of the film, Lady Bird struggles to just be a normal high school teenager who isn’t really popular, flunks at math and has a likewise unpopular best friend, but dreams of doing something right for herself one day after high school. She does get a boyfriend in the story but that also doesn’t play out well. The crux of the movie Lady Bird is the very awkward, often stormy exchange between mother and daughter that is either deadpan hilarious or bitingly savage.

One can almost say that that is the DNA of the dialogue in the film – how every character says one thing when it shows that they would want to mean another. On the surface, both Lady Bird and Marion have tones of defeat (“What if this is the best it can be?”) – but in demonstration show that they struggle to win each day.

This is not a particularly visual film in the sense that it’s not visually stylized nor lensed with a certain lighting – I’m trying not to say it’s not cinematic, although it is – it’s strength is its larger-than-life characters who complete the film in each frame. It’s quirky, but never absurd nor nonsensical.

Ronan is tone-perfect as a teen struggling to find a purpose as her adulthood nears, while Metcalf should’ve received the Oscar for Support as a mother who can’t say what she truly means. Odds and ends, the rest of the cast are memorable too, including Lady Bird’s best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein,) her boyfriend/ex Lucas (Danny O’Neil,) her adoptive brother Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues) and his girlfriend Shelly (Marielle Scott), and the douche musician Kyle (Timotheé Chalamet.) Lady Bird is easily my other favorite Ensemble of the Year, after Three Billboards.

#LadyBird is funny, tumultuous and heartwrenching – fantastically written into one glorious piece.

Depending on which side of the tracks you were on passing through youth, it can make you long for friends gone quickly by, or, it can wring you for all the words unspoken in your family. I straddled on both.

(Photos courtesy of United International Pictures)
No bull

January 11, 2018

Back from a self-imposed hiatus after a somewhat tumultuous last quarter of 2017, I’m restarting the blog with a quick rundown of the retelling of a classic Disney animation, Ferdinand. And boy, is this bull against all kinds of bull(crap.)

Curiously, 20th Century Fox produced the animation, and we know by now that a mega deal is tucking all the Fox titles under the vast Disney universe. Back to the bull pen, Ferdinand.

Anyway, the story is about a peaceable bull Ferdinand (John Cena) which refuses to fight and avoids any notion of violence, opting instead to spend his happy days playing with his owner Nina (Lily Day) or smelling the flowers under his favorite tree on the hill.

His idyllic life takes a rough turn when he rampages though town after sitting on a bumblebee. Ferdinand is caught and sent to the bull keep to be trained to fight, where all other bulls bully at him for not choosing to fight. But he does meet new friends, and with their help, Ferdinand hatches a plan to escape the bull farm and return to Nina, if only it would not involve facing the matador in Madrid.

It’s a safe, somewhat unremarkable but often entertaining adaptation of the classic Disney animation which was adapted from the childrens book The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, published in 1936. The book was such a popular hit, its story would take on vatious political meanings during the Second World War and was expectedly banned during the regime of Franco in Spain.

I barely have a beef against the movie (haha, the pun) except that manic chase in the last act that just reverts the entire film back to current pedestrian animated feature territory. It was doing well as an animated family feature that shared ideas about loving oneself and not giving in to peer pressure or outright braving up against bullying – but then it still went through that manic chase to the finish that’s pretty much standard fare in many US animated films.

For the first hour, Ferdinand fascinates with its pacifism and deliberate pace quite against Hollywood tropes of heroism, forging into battle and saving the day. There are no forced adult elements like embezzlement, psychotropic drugs or racism (hello, Zootopia) – altough the spectre of death looms over the bulls’ heads quite repeatedly. The film also dodges the ethics of Spanish bullfighting – a tricky subject, although the source material did come from the US.

And then the inevitable action-packed ending happens, where the furry posse manages to drive a vehicle from their farm to the city, whizzing through Madrid’s narrow alleys before landing in the ring. I mean, c’mon.

The animation is so-so – but I do like the colorful pallette. No eye-popping realistic fur or complex cloth textures. For a film set in Spain, the movie has just a few Spanish elements – perhaps to make the story more univerally appealing? That doesn’t make sense in a Google Map world. John Cena’s voice sounds appropriately robust for Ferdinand’s mighty form, but Kate McKinnon steals the show by giving the rough and asthmatic goat Lupe an excitable throat. Music is okay.

Overall, Ferdinand is a safe, pet-friendly though very pedestrian animation from Fox. IF they make a sequel, I may not mind for as long as they keep it pure and simple – just like Ferdinand.

You can watch the 1938 animated classic here: