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Regular voltaire. Former reviewer for Inquirer Libre of the Phlippine Daily Inquirer. freelance multimedia director. listens to kpop. worships rafa.
  • Puberty challenge

    Puberty challenge

    Puberty challenge
    Review by Vives Anunciacion

    Spider Man: Homecoming
    Directed by Jon Watts
    Based on the Marvel Comics character by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
    Rated PG
    Published 7.6.2017 Inquirer Libre, PH

    Spider Man: Homecoming trailer

    A total of six writers spun the narrative of this nth edition of Peter Parker’s puberty challenge. The resulting almost-comedy may be entertaining enough, but it is also borderline messy.

    Columbia Pictures’s prized Marvel property gets a millennial update that’s strong on comedy and personality but weak on weaving a cohesive web of a story. It seems comedy is Marvel’s priority at the moment.

    Weeks after stealing Captain America’s shield in Captain America: Civil War (2016) Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is finding it increasingly difficult to stay in his New York high school’s decathlete quiz team while keeping the Queens neighborhood safe. His “Tony Stark internship” keeps him busy from attending school, which is also why he can’t get classmate Liz (Laura Harrier) to notice him.

    Meanwhile, former salvage company owner Toomes (Michael Keaton) is using alien technology derived from the wreck of the first Avengers movie to sell high tech weapons in the blackmarket. Spider Man variably manages to foil Toomes’ henchmen, until Toomes /The Vulture’s bigger plans are revealed.

    Homecoming isn’t exactly an origin movie – but in this Marvel Cinematic Universe edition, Peter does admit in one scene that he got his powers from a radioactive spider.

    There’s no big plot to save the world. Neither is there an overall theme like teenage angst (explored in the 2012-2014 Marc Webb duology starring Andrew Garfield) or great responsibility (captured as a quotable in the Sam Raimi trilogy starring Tobey Maguire.) No dramatic arch against bullying either – a longtime ingredient in the Peter Parker narrative.

    Instead, Tom Holland’s Peter is convincingly immaturely insecure. Pimples would have made this version perfect. While the film celebrates diversity and nerdism (for once not oppressing characters for being smart) it also basks in casual lightness – a YOLO-ist, can’t-bother-to-be-adult attitude that only gets emphasized each time Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) appears to Peter to deliver a mentor mantra with sass, while Aunt May’s (Marisa Tomei) scenes feel like they were afterthoughts.

    I liked that Homecoming explored Spider Man’s weaknesses as a young superhero. That without trees to swing from, he’ll just have to walk across the golf course to get to his destination; that without Iron Man spitting guru wisdom, Peter’s a lost boy. Holland captures this fine. I also liked Keaton as always (who was Batman in a previous life, as well as a Birdman in another) but his Toomes – despite six writers and the two-hour run time – is under-written as a villain. Maybe there’l be more to him in the sequel, as shown in the mid-credits scene.

    It’s the constant comedy that puts me off (which may or may not include Peter’s school sidekick Ned, played by Fil_am Jacob Batalon. Sometimes Batalon is funny, sometimes he looks unsure of the punchline.) For the most part it serves a purpose, I guess. It is when the punchlines are not connecting (and there are several dead moments) when it seems that “funny” was the production’s priority.

  • Family franchise

    Family franchise

    Family franchise
    Review by Vives Anunciacion

    Despicable Me 3
    Directed by Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin, Eric Guillon
    Part of the Despicable Me series
    Rated PG
    Published 6.16.2017 Inquirer Libre, PH

    Despicable Me 3 trailer

    Middle-of-the-road movies are hardest to review – there’s little to hate to rant against, and there’s not enough good stuff to praise at length. Despicable Me 3 is an entertaining, zippy, sometimes fun family movie that has closer ties with the first outing than the sequel. But really, I don’t think I need to still see another Gru movie around the time I retire, do I?

    After quitting villainy in part One and joining the Anti-Villain League (AVL) in part Two, Gru (Steve Carell) and partner Lucy (Kirsten Wiig) are fired after failing to capture AVL’s most-wanted supervillain Baltazar Bratt (Trey Parker) – a former child superstar who never moved on after he hit puberty, resulting in the cancellation of his show. He should learn from our 90s actors here, some of whom appear in soaps twice a day.

    Coincidentally, Gru and the entire family are invited to the palatial home of his long-lost brother Dru (also Steve Carell) who is bored from being a wealthy businessman and wants to learn super villainy from Gru. Gru agrees, with the intention of getting back at Balthazar and delivering him to the AVL. But before the brothers can succeed wth their plan. Balthazar kidnaps Gru’s young girls and begins his revenge on society using a giant robot of himself.

    It’s a whole lotta messy plotting that goes from Gru and Lucy to Lucy and the girls to Gru and Dru and Gru versus supervillain Balthazar – but the core story where Gru and Lucy discover parenting and family is resonant and easily digestible for the young audience. This is an improvement-of-sorts from the whole forgettable business of part Two, but a welcome return to the tenderness that made the first part especially memorable.

    I’m not sure if I like the idea to place Benjamin in a permanent 1980s pop soundtrack, these 80s jokes get tiring when most comedies these days refer to that wild and colorful decade. But as far as having a true 1980s pop soundtrack, DM3 is spot on with a Michael Jackson song in the beginning, and a Madonna song in the end. This movie better make money, because I’m sure those songs cost a lot in copyrights.

    However, there needs no mention that the yellow Minions are in the movie again in humorous and mostly amusing off-beat situations – especially the whole studio lot chase scene which had the kid sitting in front of me in complete stitches and couldn’t stop from laughing. That’s the main reason that the yellow creatures got their own movie two years ago. That’s also a good sign that Illumination still knows how to keep the kids entertained.

  • Walking dead

    Walking dead

    Walking dead
    Review by Vives Anunciacion
    Semi-spoilerish review
    Pulished 6.09.2017 Inquirer Libre, PH

    The Mummy
    Directed by Alex Kutrzman
    Based on the Universal Pictures horror franchise
    Rated R-13

    The Mummy trailer

    Tom Cruise needs a credible film to bring back his Oscar-caliber Magnolia (1999) days, but this tangled mess of The Mummy is definitely not it.

    Based on Universal Pictures’ long-running history of horror flicks since the 1932 original, The Mummy is a nonsensical narrative of elaborate set-ups with zero satisfying pay-offs. But the effects look grand and expensive, I have to grant that.

    In northern “rebel-infested” Iraq, a hidden chamber underground is revealed to contain a mysterious Egyptian sarcophagus after a military strike is provoked by US soldiers and treasure-hunters Nick (Tom Cruise) and comic sidekick Chris (Jake Johnson.) In swoops the US military and British archaeologist Annabelle Wallis (Jenny Halsey) who indicates with her generic accent that the find is of immense importance while also pointing out her annoyance with former flame Nick.

    The thing is brought to London, but the plane they ride on meets an accident. NIck amazingly wakes up wrapped up dead in a morgue, where the ghost of his now-dead partner Chris appears to him to explain that he has been “chosen” as an instrument of mummified Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sophia Boutella) to reclaim her powers to rule the world. Or something like that. Anyways, Nick meets Dr. Jeckyll (Russel Crowe) who explains what is happening. Annabelle explains how they can prevent Ahmanet from regaining her mortal form, Ahmanet explains to Nick why she chose him. Ahmanet emerges and wreaks havoc in London, etcetera. Nick saves the day – but with a price. Sort of.

    There’s a lot of explaining done in the film just to connect a cause and effect to all that transpires, the movie feels like it’s a long movie even if it’s under two hours. However, the most crucial explanation should come from studio execs why they greenlit this script in the first place. Sure, they need a vehicle to introduce the Dark Universe – Universal’s version of the cinematic universes of Disney/Marvel and Warner/DC by capitalizing on their horror-adventure brands that have also become staples in their theme park studios. This film introduces The Mummy, Dr, Jeckyll, and in one scene when Nick enters the shapeshifting doctor’s laboratory, we can see other members of Universal’s pantheon of monsters – possibly a werewolf’s skull, the hand of a swamp thing, and somewhere along the way, a vampire perhaps. Sure. Except that this movie does a horrible and forgettable job introducing this Dark Universe.

    I mean, what does it mean when the narrative skews to give the US military outright permission to ransack their military targets? The beginning of the film hints at Three Kings, a 1999 film starring George Clooney that shows four US soldiers looting Kuwait of its gold in the aftermath of the US invasion. And then, the Egyptian mummy-demon princess terrorizes good ol’ London. While connections are far-fetched, how else can one watch this film comfortably during these real-life troubled times, I wonder?

    It’s a strange concept, this story. And I would rather not make sense of it, because surely, this movie was not intended to tell a meaningful story but to introduce new products to Tom Cruise’s market.

  • More and less

    More and less

    More and Less
    Review by Vives Anunciacion
    Published 6.23.2017 Inquirer Libre, PH

    The first movie has an excess of everything but a proper storyline, the second movie doesn’t have enough of everything except a profusion of cuteness. Pick your poison.

    Transformers: The Last Knight
    Directed by Michael Bay
    Fifth in the Transformers series
    Based on the Hasbro toys
    Rated PG

    Transformers: The Last Knight trailer

    Michael Bay kicks off his fifth Transformers movie with a medieval mix of Arthurian legend and Cybertron, in a circle to defend the good from the evil. Anything can happen in a post-truth world.

    The Last Knight happens a year or so after the events in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) in which we saw Optimus Prime leave Earth to seek the Creators of Cybertron. Here, Prime reaches Cybertron and meets the goddess Quintessa (Gemma Chan) who corrupts and controls Prime in her bid to re-make Cybertron using a powerful item left on Earth, disguised as Merlin’s staff.

    Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and the remaining Autobots survive an attack by Megatron and his Decepticons, who have allied with the TRF – an intergovernmental military unit tasked to take down all remaining Transformers, regardless of faction.

    A robot butler Cogman (Jim Carter) appears, taking Cade and Bumblebee to England to meet Oxford history professor Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock) and Sir Edmund Burton (the venerable Anthony Hopkins), the last living protector of the Transformers-and-Knights secret. and Sir Edmund explains that Earth and Cybertron are on a collision-course unless they find Merlin’s staff. Naturally they don’t find it on time – otherwise, no action.

    To say that it is a bloated extravaganza is a sure understatement. Michael Bay takes the Transformers over land, air, under sea and outer space for a sensory overload of crashing metal, pyrotechnics, Wahlberg biceps and Optimus Prime’s baritone.

    I mean, I’ve consciously excluded in my synopsis the whole unnecessary subplot about this Mexican orphan girl Izabella (Isabela Moner) who hitches a ride on Cade’s adventures and even manages to survive the big action scene in the end. There’s an attempt at humor coming from Sir Edmund, a non-functioning comic sidekick, the return of former cast members Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Agent Simmons (John Turturro), baby Dinobots and everything including the kitchen sink. The effects are visually impressive, and Bay’s staple of luxury sports car chases are in full IMAX force.

    But for 300 pesos, too much of everything at two and a half hours sounds like a fair admission price, story be damned.

    Everything, Everything
    Directed by Stella Meghie
    Based on the novel by Nicola Yoon
    Rated PG

    Everything Everything trailer

    Based on a novel I haven’t heard of before (sorry, not a Young Adult fan here), this sweet tale of young romance separated by sickness is an exercise in cuteness.

    Diagnosed with an immune deficiency that makes her allergic to almost everything, Maddy (Amandla Stenberg) has spent most of her young life behind the sterilized confines of her home, spending her teen days reading and reviewing books. Her only physical interactions are with her doctor mother Pauline (Anika None Rose) and nurse Carla (Ana de la Reguera.) After her 18th birthday, things change when she meets her new neighbor Olly (Nick Robinson.) Cue sweet music soundtrack.

    Light and fluffy compared to its more popular (and depressing) cousin The Fault in our Stars (2014), Everything, Everything’s familiar and inert narrative benefits from good chemistry between Stenberg and Robinson, a commendable effort from Rose, as well as a hip and fresh soundtrack.

    One can sense a sensibility from the director to draw out Maddy’s struggle to be free from her virtual imprisonment. It’s The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976) in reverse, the ordinariness of its cute-boy-inspires-girl-to-break-free story that provokes an eye-roll, and the weird psycho-mother drama twist that throws the narrative into the sea.