Pisang Movie Reviews

Ah Boys to Men 4 (2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 02:56:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): The quirky and lovable gang of everyman national serviceman, led by Alex (Tosh Zhang), are now veteran reservists, and are magically reborn as armoured infantrymen. They have to deal with conflicts with civilian life, and a new strict by-the-book female platoon commander Lieutenant Zhang (Apple Chan).

***

(Full disclosure: I have never been in any military unit and am an armchair general.)

The fourth in the fabulously successful (at least in Singapore) Ah Boys to Men franchise, ABTM 4 is surprisingly good considering the quality of the previous movies. (I watched ABTM 1 and 3. I skipped ABTM 2 because the first was so bad.)

The first few movies suffered from preachy "social commentary", overt military propaganda, overlong scenes, a skit-based approach to story structure, and heavy-handed melodrama. Oh, and annoying in-your-face product placement. These weaknesses still exist in ABTM 4 but are greatly reduced. The movie is actually watchable and rarely cringe inducing.

The social commentary arises naturally and believably - foreign employees being favoured over locals because the foreigners don't disrupt corporate operations by having to go back to camp for mobilisation or training. Also covered is the awkward situation of your boss in civilian life suddenly becoming your subordinate in the military.

The military propaganda is balanced, not shrinking from showing the limitations of Singapore's Bionix infantry fighting vehicles, and the officially sanctioned relaxation of requirements for reservists.

Pacing is improved. Only a few scenes - such as the first scene in the canteen - felt draggy. Even the product placement is improved. I counted maybe 50 sponsors at the end credits but noticed only about 10 in the movie.

Unfortunately the verisimilitude-busting retconning of the Ah Boys into a different military unit, continues. They were basic infantry in ABTM 1 and 2, elite naval divers in ABTM 3, and now armoured infantry in ABTM 4. The only reason being to showcase different branches of the military, story logic be damned.

At least they are now veterans and no longer new conscripts (they were new conscripts in ABTM 1, and then again in ABTM 3).

When the first movie came out, I heard a few parents saying that they wanted to watch to see what national service would be like for their sons who would be conscripted soon. Which was strange because the Singapore Armed Forces has a short documentary series on YouTube called Every Singapore Son, that covers the national service experience well.

I guess the movies do give a more behind-the-scenes look at life in the Singapore military, albeit fictionalised and sensationalised yet sanitised. On the other hand, you're not going to learn much about Singapore military doctrine.

Standard American (and presumably Singaporean too) armoured doctrine is for infantry and armour to support each other. Tankers are very much blind and lack situational awareness, buttoned up inside their vehicle.

Armoured infantry act as eyes and ears, dismounting to be an advance guard to warn against enemy infantry and keep them away from the tanks. The tanks can then use their superior firepower to fend off enemy tanks and infantry.

None of this is shown in the movie. Instead, the infantry are shown independently traipsing off to their own objective during an exercise. The only communication shown is between them and their vehicle commander. The tanks (Leopard MBTs) are never shown communicating with the Bionix infantry fighting vehicles.

But this is a concern only to military nuts. For the average Singaporean, what matters are the more daily life aspects of military service. In this ABTM 4 does succeed. Good use is made of army lingo and procedures. Enough is sprinkled around to be authentic and interesting, without being over explained.

The movie's character development is however, lacking. Alex's moral failure and sudden redemption at the end, come out of nowhere. Ah Long had a promising start but his character arc halts in mid air and fizzles out.The whole conflict between Alex and Lieutenant Zhang also fizzles out and amounts to nothing in the end.

ABTM 4 is still a loose collection of unrelated vignettes and comedy skits. For example, the mass Lamborghini convoy at the end is kinda pointless (and actually sucks the air from the real ending), its awesomeness way out of proportion to the minor character point it makes.

While flawed, ABTM does entertain. And Jack Neo's usual dose of sly social commentary doesn't grate so much this time.

Ajin: Demi-Human (2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 14:07:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Kei Nagai (Takeru Satoh) finds out that he is an Ajin, an immortal, after coming back alive from a fatal traffic accident. The Japanese government imprisons him and uses him for medical experiments, cutting off a limb every day and observing how it grows back. Fellow ajin Sato (Gou Ayano) rescues Nagai but Nagai refuses to join the homicidal Sato. Sato threatens to release nerve gas over Tokyo if the government doesn't give Tokyo to ajins. Nagai joins the government to thwart Sato's evil plan.

***

The good news is that Ajin's pacing is fast and they do explore the idea of ajins and their immortality. The bad news is that there is little character development and the exploration of immortality is taken to its logical ridiculousness.

(This is a review of the 2017 movie. I have not seen the TV series and will not draw any comparisons with it.)

Production I.G, who animated most of Mamoru Oshii's movies, is involved somehow. I assume in animating the black ghosts. It's decent work but unfortunately the swirling particles seem ripped off from X Men.

The plot is inventive but somehow failed to grab my interest. The whole subplot with Nagai's sister doesn't go anywhere or reveal anything and can be cut from the movie with no impact on the story. The same goes for the black fighting ghosts that the ajins can summon, and the undercover ajin who works as a government bodyguard. Take them out and the story still works.

The characters are flat. In conventional storywriting terms, Nagai has no character arc. He doesn't learn anything or is changed at the end. He doesn't even have any flaw or personal issue to overcome. Call it Hollywood formula if you want to, it works.

Hard science fiction fans are going to have issues with the ajin. Not only do they regenerate limbs without seeming to need to sacrifice any existing muscle to do so, they can actually regenerate an entire body starting from a single limb. So where does all that new body tissue come from?

They can also blow their brain out with a bullet, and then regenerate their brain without losing any memories. The only way to account for all this is to have some kind of supernatural explanation, which the movie doesn't even hint at. Death Note was believable because it was supernatural in nature. Ajin is just ridiculous. It's actually comparable to Tokyo Ghoul - weak but with different flaws.

Sky Hunter (2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 15:46:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Chinese pilots from the elite Sky Hunter air base must rescue Chinese military and civilians who are taken hostage by terrorists in the (fictional) central European republic of Mahbu.

***

So is Sky Hunter more Top Gun or Iron Eagle? Well, it's both but that's not the problem. The problem is that there is no character development or character arc, and the military tactics are nonsensical.

It looks like the filmmakers wanted to have an action movie glorifying the Chinese air force but didn't want the complexity of filming a full scale war. So they chose a terrorist takeover of an air base. The problem is that jet fighters don't have much to do with rescuing hostages in such a situation, it's more about special forces infantry.

So the plot gets twisted to highlight the air force instead of the soldiers. For example, in order to have an "exciting" showdown between the terrorist leader and Wu Di, the terrorist leader is made to be an ace pilot. Come on guys, what the hell? The terrorists also take control of an ICBM silo (yes, little Mahbu has ICBMs) so that Wu Di can bomb the hell out of it.

Sure, Top Gun was a recruitment poster for the US Navy but Tony Scott still put the story before anything else. And Top Gun really was about the fighter pilot school. Sky Hunter has some training scenes but these are not core to the story and act more as filler.

Character arc? There are none. There's some half hearted attempt at a love triangle between fighter pilot Wu Di (Chen Li) and rescue helicopter pilot Zhao Yali (the gorgeous Fan Bing Bing), and either fighter pilots Gao Yuan (Leon Lee) or Ba Tu (Guo Mingyu). I was confused.

Now for a list of the movie's military sins (warning - I'm a military nut/armchair general):

American 4 engined propeller plane thinks it can outfly Chinese jet fighters?
Rescue helicopter pilot has to exit the helicopter to rescue people? There should be dedicated crew for that.
Why initially send 2 jet fighters without any special forces or rescue helicopter?
Then for the second attempt, okay, you have special forces and a rescue helicopter. But why send only 2 fighters and 1 helicopter?
Jet fighters need air-to-air refueling but helicopter doesn't? Jet fighters way outrange any helicopter.
Sky Hunter base happens to be within helicopter range of the air base under attack?
Wu Di uses his jet fighter to strafe a terrorist machine gunner. How does he know the machine gunner is not a friendly? Aircraft, especially fast moving jet fighters, are notoriously blind to what is going on on the ground and need to be directed by friendlies on the ground or a slow moving Forward Air Controller aircraft.
A jet fighter is hunting the rescue helicopter at night. Why not land the helicopter to hide?
It is ridiculous to have two jet fighters flying head on at each other and firing their cannon. Their closing speed is so high that they will be within cannon range for less than a second.
If you have a crippled aircraft coming in to land, you don't block the runway with fire engines.

P.S. Soundtrack is produced by Hans Zimmer whatever that means, but was written by someone else. The final result does not impress.

The Adventurers (2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 12:37:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Master thief Zhang Dan (Andy Lau) is released from a French prison after serving a 5-year sentence. Pierre (Jean Reno), the French cop who put Zhang Dan away, keeps an eye on him, confident that he will be back to his thieving ways. Zhang Dan teams up with his loyal sidekick/young hunk Xiao Po (Tony Yang), together with new recruit Red Ye (Shu Qi), to go after some unfinished jewellery business. Pierre persuades Zhang Dan's former fiancee Amber (Zhang Jing Chu) to help him locate Zhang Dan.

***

The problem with The Adventurers is that it had no story reason to exist. It's as if some producer said, Let's make an action movie with Andy Lau and Shu Qi. And the writers just filled up the run time with Mission Impossible cliches and tropes.

There's no overall organizing principle behind the story, just random bits of action, unconvincing character backstory, fake camaraderie, and characters double-crossing each other for the sake of cheap plot twists. This has been a problem with Hong Kong and mainland China movies, for decades.

The romance between Zhang Dan and Amber is not convincing (no matter how prettily and pensively Zhang Jing Chu pouts). This is made worse by how Shu Qi, cast in the role of comedic sidekick (together with Tony Yang), totally steals the show away from Zhang Jing Chu. Red Ye's role was custom written to fit Shu Qi's perky personality, making her more the female lead than Zhang Jing Chu, which unbalances the characters' dynamic.

Poor Director of Photography Shane Hurlbut (Terminator Salvation, Crazy/Beautiful, Act of Valor, Need for Speed), was even pulled down to director Stephen Fung's level - I'm guessing forced by Stephen Fung to move his camera for no reason. A jib move when the characters are just sitting around and talking? Maybe 8 different camera angles when Pierre is talking to Zhang Dan in the police interrogation room - for what? It's a really bad performance for someone of Hurlbut's caliber. I don't think he will be putting The Adventurers in his showreel.

At least Jean Reno emerges with his dignity intact, but barely.

What else is wrong? Let me count the ways:

Pierre desperately wants to catch Zhang Dan because, of all things, Zhang Dan saved Pierre's life.
Pierre unilaterally releases Zhang Dan from police custody, near the end, and suffers no penalty for doing so. Especially when Zhang Dan doesn't come back after tracking down the other bad guys.
Bomb complication at the end is copied from Magnum Force.
French cops speak English to each other. That might be ok if the whole movie was in English, but the Chinese speak Mandarin to each other.
Pierre is confident of not killing Zhang Dan, only wounding him, while shooting at a motorcycle-borne Zhang Dan from a speeding car. Nobody is that good.
Rich Chinese guy in the Czech Republic, has a force of paramilitary guards with submachine guns.

Shock Wave (2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 08:45:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Hong Kong policeman Cheung (Andy Lau) worked undercover and put away some of the members of a bank robbery gang. Bank robber Hung (Jiang Wu) managed to escape but his brother ended up in jail. A few years later, Hung returns to Hong Kong with a band of mercenaries. He takes control of one of Hong Kong's undersea traffic tunnels, together with hundreds of trapped motorists as hostages, and threatens to blow up the tunnel unless his brother is released and ransom is paid.

***

Shock Wave is an above-average Hong Kong action thriller. Too many Hong Kong movies have cliched and unbelievable plots, and unnatural forced character development.

Some thought has gone into each of Shock Wave's many action sequences, so it's not just bland by-the-numbers action tropes. There are interesting details. Pacing and editing are especially good, almost Roland Emmerich slick. The scenes don't feel too drawn out or full of filler.

The first third or so of the movie establishes the characters and their backgrounds, before the long tunnel siege starts. We see Cheung fall in love with Carmen (Song Jia), and defuse an old war bomb. Hung also toys with Cheung with a small bomb.

The whole tunnel setting (I'm guessing they used a real location) looks large and feels authentic, giving the movie a blockbuster feel (on a US$23 million budget). But the siege itself isn't 100 percent believable. If you're the mastermind, you don't need to place yourself in danger, in the middle of the siege. You can run the operation remotely. Anyway, it is believable enough.

The movie was made with the cooperation of Hong Kong's bomb squad, so the technicalities are detailed and convincing. For example, Cheung drills into the fuse of the old war bomb and neutralizes it with some liquid chemical (could be made up but it looks real). Cheung declines to wear a bomb suit for this operation as the bomb is so large that a bomb suit wouldn't offer any protection - nicely foreshadowing the power and danger of the bombs in the tunnel.

However some liberties were taken for dramatic purposes (splitting the explosives into two bombs reduces the blast damage to the tunnel, it doesn't increase the damage) but most viewers won't notice. Carmen and the grenade? You could wrap tape around the grenade's spoon (lever) without wrapping it round her hand, allowing her to safely drop the grenade.

Less convincing but still effective is Hung's relationship with Carmen. Their breakup in the kitchen seems to come out of nowhere. However the two characters are well established and believable, lending emotional weight when Cheung is in danger.

Overall, the movie works. Pacing is good, characters are sympathetic, plot is mainly believable. Too few Hong Kong movies pass this bar.

Side note: Cheung uses a Leatherman OHT multitool a few times, not the Leatherman EOD MUT which is designed for bomb squad use.

Pop Aye (2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 03:38:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Middle-aged architect Thana (Thaneth Warakulnukroh) is experiencing a mid-life crisis. He is being sidelined at his architecture firm by younger architects and his signature project, a large shopping centre, is scheduled for demolition. His sex life with his wife Bo (Penpak Sirikul) isn't going well either. One day he stumbles across Pop Aye, an elephant from his childhood, and decides to buy him. Together they embark on a road trip through rural Thailand.

***

Pop Aye is the first Singaporean film to be screened at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. It didn't just screen, it also won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Screenwriting. Sundance implies indie/arthouse and Pop Aye certainly lives up to that. It's definitely not a commercial film.

Though writer/director Kirsten Tan is Singaporean, Pop Aye is set in Thailand and features Thai lead actors and mainly Thai dialog. So be prepared to read subtitles if you are not Thai, but hey, that's part of the arthouse experience.

The Thai locations are the best part of the movie. You really feel the authenticity of the locations and get to see a Thailand that you don't see in tourist promos. The rural settings are especially striking in a gritty way.

However, the first two-thirds of the movie is a bit slow and disjointed. Kirsten Tan is following Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special style of withholding information to create audience interest. Unfortunately it doesn't work well in this case.

For half of the movie, we don't even know where Thana is going, or that he even has a destination. But instead of creating interest, it gives the movie the feeling of a lack of purpose. Why the elephant is named Pop Aye, and his earlier relationship with Thana, is later revealed. The problem is that no hints were given that any of this was a mystery, so any opportunity for suspense is wasted.

Befitting an arthouse movie, the ending is hauntingly open ended. Some issues are resolved, and some are not. If only the first half of the movie was this good.

Time Raiders (2016)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 13:08:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Young Wu Xie (pretty boy Lu Han) comes from a family of treasure hunters. However his Third Uncle is reluctant to let him join their dangerous missions. On their next mission to raid the tomb of the Snake Empress (Mallika Sherawai), Third Uncle finally allows him to follow. They are joined by the mysterious and super skilled Zhang Kylin (Boran Jing). Once in the treasure tomb, they are attacked by mercenaries led by the pretty but deadly Ning A (Ma Sichun), who are employed by the eccentric Hendrix (Vanni Corbellini) who is looking for the fountain of youth.

***

Time Raiders is a copy of The Mummy and of course Tomb Raider. Which were themselves inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark. Less auspiciously, Time Raiders also resembles Michelle Yeo's 2002 flop The Touch.

It might be entertaining to younger audiences but for the rest of us, we've seen it before. The story is derivative and has no new ideas. Its slow pacing doesn't help matters either. The first half hour of buildup is unnecessary and doesn't help much with character development.

Things seem to improve when they finally reach the Snake Empress's tomb. Unfortunately, after a fun shootout with the mercenaries, the pacing bogs down again. The evil puppet room scene is fun but too long. As is the Mummy-derivative flesh-eating spiders sequence.

Running a gauntlet of murder machines? Come on guys, can't you do anything original? They even copied the mapping drones and 3D video map from Prometheus.

The final showdown with the Snake Empress? Too long and drawn out. So yeah, the movie is a slow theme park ride of booby traps and killer bad guys, with not much story. The male-bonding between Wu Xie and Zhang Kylin feels forced and is unconvincing.

The Mummy had fun characters, and good pacing. It was also funny. Director Daniel Lee and writer Uncle Three have no clue as to what made The Mummy so much fun.

On the plus side, the visuals are good. The many mechanical gadgets are intriguing. The lighting is beautiful but also distracting. All the underground rooms in the tomb have pretty light shooting in from windows. So where is the light coming from?

In the end, Time Raiders is an excuse for special effects eye candy, with a flimsy plot and cardboard characters tacked on as an excuse to justify the action. What a disappointment.

Godzilla Resurgence / Shin Gojira (2016)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 13:34:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): A large sea monster suddenly attacks Tokyo. The Japanese government's bureaucracy swings into action to deal with the unprecedented threat.

***

I had high hopes for this movie. We've seen what the Americans do with Godzilla. Now let's see the Japanese, the guys who created Godzilla, do it right. Will they go all philosophical and meta? Or all cheesy fun? The answer is, neither.

Godzilla Resurgence is one helluva mess. Most of the movie is about bureaucratic wrangling inside the Japanese government. We are treated to endless meetings and dozens of government officials. Yup, it's all about the bureaucrats. Not the military, not some plucky civilian. No cute kids or dogs either. Bureaucrats. And the pacing and sensibility feels distinctly 1970s.

SPOILERS WARNING

I usually try to avoid going too much into plot details, preferring to look at movies from a higher level of abstraction. But there's nothing much to analyze here except for the plot.

Of course, there's a mad scientist subplot, but it doesn't really develop into anything much. Except origami molecular biology and a plan to coagulate Godzilla's blood with thousands of gallons of chemicals.

There's also another subplot with a half-Japanese American lady diplomat (who can barely speak English) which made no sense to me so I won't try to explain it.

It is only after about an hour that the action really starts, with the Japanese military blasting away with helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery. All to no effect, of course. I mean, a tank's armor-piercing round can penetrate over a meter of steel so of course it can't harm anything organic, right?

After the brief battle, it's back to the bureaucrats. The American military also gets into the act and bombs Godzilla using B2 stealth bombers. But surprise! Godzilla has built-in phased-array radar that can detect stealth aircraft and shoots down a B2 with its laser. Oh, and he shoots down the Prime Minister's helicopter too, killing him.

Godzilla then goes into hibernation right in the middle of Tokyo, for a couple of days. He's a sitting duck. Hit him again. But nope, everyone is so freaked out that all they can think of now is nukes.

The UN Security Council passes a resolution to nuke Godzilla with a US-led coalition of countries. But the gutsy Japanese manage to outsmart the stupid, evil Americans. They use cement pump trucks to pump the blood coagulant into Godzilla's mouth, causing him to turn into stone.

Don't judge me but my favorite Godzilla is still the Roland Emmerich version.

Call of Heroes (2016)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 06:27:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): China, 1914. The Chinese army has withdrawn from Pucheng village to chase after troublesome warlord Cao Ying, leaving the town's sheriff Yang Kenan (Lau Ching Wan) and his men to defend the village. The warlord's murderous sociopathic son Cao Shaolun (Louis Koo) rides alone into town and kills a few people for fun. Sheriff Yang arrests him and after a quick trial, Shaulun is scheduled for execution the next day. However the warlord's colonel, Zhang Yi (Wu Jing), appears and warns that the entire town will be slaughtered if they harm Shaolun. Observing all this and trying to stay neutral, is wandering martial arts expert Ma Feng (Eddie Peng).

***

Call of Heroes is a Chinese cowboy movie. It's a mix of High Noon (principled sheriff betrayed by the cowardly town folk that he protects) and Shane (gun slinging reluctant-hero drifter rides into town).

There is some melodrama, but also some surprisingly effective drama and character development. Performances by the leads are good, with Eddie Peng coming across effectively like a laconic Hugh Jackman. Louis Koo is fun to watch as the manipulative batshit crazy Shaolun. Lau Ching Wan is believable as the brave and honorable sheriff. Most impressive of all is Wu Jing as the confident colonel Zhang Yi. That guy has presence.

Fight choreography by Sammo Hung is good. Stylish but realistic. The only wire work seems to be when people are kicked and go flying. The fight on a small hill of wine casks is spectacular and a good example of acrobatic kung fu.

The village set is lavish and looks real. The $32 million budget is small by Hollywood standards but this is no small movie. It's no blockbuster but it's no budget indie either.

There are some false notes. The subplot about the mercenaries seems superfluous, and some plot points aren't believable. Why don't the villagers just run away?

Ultimately, it's an entertaining but forgettable movie. We've seen it before. It doesn't break any new ground or have any original ideas. It should do good box office but I doubt anyone will remember it in twenty years. It's no Chinese Ghost Story (1987) or Swordsman (1990).

Gods of Egypt (2016)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 16:12:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Egyptian god Osiris (Bryan Brown - F/X, Cocktail) hands over the throne to his son Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau - Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones). However Osiris's brother Set (Gerard Butler - 300) kills Osiris and seizes the throne, blinding Horus in the process and sending Horus off into exile.

Petty thief Bek (Brenton Thwaites - Maleficent) steals back one of Horus's eyes from Set, restoring some of Horus's powers. Horus promises to bring Zaya (Courtney Eaton - Mad Max Fury Road) back from the dead in exchange. God and mortal team up to defeat Set.

***

Gods of Egypt is an entertaining movie. With Alex Proyas (Dark City, I Robot, The Crow, Knowing) directing, it does not disappoint. It's definitely a commercial movie, more I Robot than Dark City. In any case, Alex Proyas's storytelling still works. Yes, I'm an Alex Proyas fan.

(Script is by Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama, both of whom worked on Dracula Untold and The Last Witch Hunter. The mythology in both of those movies was decent, but the characters didn't really work. So I'm seeing Alex Proyas's fingerprints all over God of Egypt.)

Gods of Egypt is a strange mix of Thor (young prince's character is tested), Whatever Dreams May Come (trying to save a dead loved one from the underworld) and Clash/Wrath of the Titans. It ends up with the good-natured, family-friendly, action-adventure/comedy vibe of The Scorpion King.

It's definitely better than Percy Jones, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Clash/Wrath of the Titan's, the Conan remake, John Carter, etc. There's a certain spark, a sense of fun, a love of fake mythology, in Gods of Egypt that is missing in too many by-the-numbers Hollywood Fantasy movies.

The movie is a fast-paced visual treat with engaging characters. The $140 million budget is all up on the screen. The coronation scene at the start brings back memories of Hollywood's "cast of thousands" spectaculars from decades ago. Undoubtedly with the crowd size enhanced with computer trickey, but impressive to look at nonetheless.

The flying gods are a bit jerky, looking like a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion tribute. The giant battle snakes (seen in a trailer) and other creatures are much better. And the rest of the special effects and sets, work very well.

Lighting by Peter Menzies Jr. (Hard Rain, The 13th Warrior, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) is suitably epic and pretty.

The cast and the characters work too. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau comes across as a refined Snake Plissken. While Brenton Thwaites is effective as the brash comic sidekick, like Matthew Broderick in Ladyhawke. Gerard Butler is a bit out of place, with his Set having a Scottish accent (the rest of the cast have English accents, hmmm, wait a minute, this might be on purpose). But my main complaint is that the doe-eyed Courtney Eaton doesn't get enough screen time.

3688 (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:19:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Xia Fei Fei (singer Joi Chua in her movie debut) is a 38-year-old meter maid who lives with her aged father (Michael Tan). Her father worked as a Rediffusion salesman and is now beginning to show signs of dementia. He regularly wanders off on his own, trying to sell subscriptions of the defunct wired radio system.

At work, Fei Fei doesn't get along with her team leader Jenny (Rahimah Rahim). But their rivalry is overshadowed by the arrival of an automatic car park payment system which threatens their jobs.

Fei Fei has loved to sing since she was in school, especially the songs of Taiwanese singer Fong Fei Fei. She stumbles across a local singing contest and decides to join.

***

3688 is an enjoyable, sentimental comedy. While the trailer plays up the singing competition in the movie, the competition only appears in the last third of the movie. It's actually the least effective part of the movie.

The two main threads are Fei Fei's mini adventures as a meter maid (saman auntie in local slang) and her father's gradual mental deterioration.

Both work because writer/director Royston Tan (881, 15: The Movie) and rookie writer Fong Wei Lim spend the time to develop these subplots. The situations and characters feel natural unlike with some other local filmmakers (coughjackneocough).

The meter maid shenanigans plays out with a kampong-style feel, where everyone in the neighbourhood knows everybody. It's an Amelie-style parochial fairy-tale that works.

Equally compelling is Fei Fei's father's descent into dementia. It is played out over multiple small scenes, each slowly worming its way into your sympathies. Jack Neo's heavy hand of a few over-the-top dramatic scenes couldn't be further away in terms of style.

The ending of the movie is also done in a tasteful low-key style (stay behind for the post-credits scene).

The use of old Rediffusion radio sets is beautifully nostalgic. It's an example of effective and unobtrusive product placement (the Rediffusion name lives on as an Internet broadcaster). Again unlike Jack Neo.

I'm sorry to keep on comparing with Jack Neo, but the differences are glaring. Another example? Liu Ling Ling as Seafood Auntie is charmingly brash without being annoying. Unlike Irene Ang in Jack Neo's Ah Boys to Men.

There is some singing, especially covers of Fong Fei Fei's classic hits. There's a lone song-and-dance number at the start with the meter maids but strangely enough, this is the only dance number in the movie. So the tone of the movie is a bit uneven.

Another uneven bit of filmmaking is the inclusion of Fei Fei's old school friend, recently returned from New York. He doesn't seem to serve any purpose.

There are a few local details such as a mention of Stomp - the local online citizen-journalism website. There's also a recreation of a real-life local publicity stunt involving two female sunbathers in a car park. Local rapper Shiga Shay makes an appearance and spouts off some delightfully fast raps.

3688 is a way better movie than most other local offerings. Let's see if the public gives it their support. To paraphrase a local opposition politician, The public gets the movies they deserve, so I don't want to hear any more complaints.

The Assassin (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 02:23:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): It is China during the Tang Dynasty. Young assassin Yinniang (Shu Qi) doesn't have the heart to kill a target in front of his son. To teach her a lesson, she is sent back to her home province of Weibo to assassinate her cousin Tian Ji'an (Chen Chang) who is now the Lord of Weibo.

Tian Ji-an's court is already in turmoil. There is disagreement over how to handle their relationship with the distant Tang Dynasty. There is also some political intrigue within the court.

***

The Assassin is an arthouse movie. Don't expect anything like Hero or House of Flying Daggers. It won the Best Director prize at Cannes for director Hsiao-hsien Hou.

There's lots of show-don't-tell, so the pace will be slow for some audiences. Fights are few, fast, short, and realistic. Shu Qi isn't made into some kind of superhero, just a skilled fighter.

There are long takes and few close-ups. Many scenes are shot with a single wide-angle take. This is Kurosawa style.

Standard editing advice is to enter the scene late and get out early. Keep scenes short, don't bore the audience. The Assassin does the opposite. Combined with the wide-angle long takes, this gives an effective voyeuristic feel to the movie. You feel like an observer watching from a distance, not some omniscient god floating everywhere like in conventional movies with their close-ups, quick cuts and dolly moves.

The director's voyeuristic intention is confirmed in some indoor scenes. The camera is positioned behind thin veil-like curtains, so the audience feels like they are hiding from the people in the scene.

So this movie is not for everyone. There are reports of some audience members walking out during the screenings at Cannes and at the Toronto International Film Festival.

While the unconventional camerawork is effective to a certain extent, it's also distracting. We are used to today's camerawork and done well, it is invisible to the audience. The Assassin's minimalist camerawork calls attention to itself, throwing the audience out of the movie.

There is high contrast in some scenes - bits of sunlight in a dim interior. This would be considered a mistake in an amateur movie.

Another quirk: the movie is shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, the old PAL and NTSC analog TV format. The decision to not use 16:9, 2.4:1 or some other widescreen format is especially perverse considering the gorgeous scenery in some of the shots.

Perennially youthful Shu Qi plays the twenty-something Yinniang well. But we don't see much of Shu Qi. She's on screen maybe 25% to 50% of the time, and usually not in close-up.

The plot is interesting enough but there are too many characters and the various subplots are difficult to follow (who is the lady who tried to hide her pregnancy? I had to look her up after I watched the movie). The thing with the lady in the gold mask? Very Pink Pantherish - Clouseau versus Cato.

The Assassin gets an A for effort but overall it could have been better.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 00:57:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) and his pals have been rescued from the glade/maze by men in helicopters, led by Janson (Aidan Gillen - Little Finger in Game of Thrones).

They are taken to Janson's headquarters with promises of a better life. But Thomas discovers a sinister secret about Janson. He and his friends break out into a hostile world where they face scorching heat and zombies, with Janson hot on their trail.

***

Scorch Trials is the second movie in the Maze Runner series. It's a repetitive mix of people running and getting into gunfights. There are maybe 5 separate incidents such as this.

We've seen it before. Zombies (three percent of the movies released in the past decade), ruthless scientists experimenting on an immune hero to find a cure for an epidemic (Resident Evil), a collapsed skyscraper leaning over (Transformers, Cloverfield), teenagers being drugged to stop them from their quest (Labyrinth), people crawling in air ducts (twelve percent of all thrillers), teens sleeping together in barracks (Divergent, Kingsman), a captive population being fooled that they will be chosen to go to a better place (The Island).

But the fundamental problem with the Maze Runner series is that we don't care about the characters. There are too many secondary characters. So much so that we don't care if any of them get killed.

There is no sense of danger or urgency. But it's not just the supporting cast. We don't even care about Thomas. We know that he's the hero and therefore in no physical danger. The Hunger Games gets around this problem by putting Katniss in psychological danger. There is no equivalent for Thomas.

Its basic scenario also sucks. Like Resident Evil, the movie naively assumes that the ruined and depopulated world can maintain its fancy equipment - helicopters, computers, medical equipment, long distance video links.

The time and resources poured into building the massive movable maze. All for what? How does that help them find a cure for the virus?

This lack of realism extends to the details of the plot. Instead of creatively extrapolating a believable plot from its basic premise (no matter how dumb it might be), action cliches are dreamed up and a plot is made to accommodate the cliches.

The pacing is fast though. There's never a dull moment. If only we had something worth cheering for.

Wild City (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 13:27:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis):

T-Man (Louis Koo) is an ex-cop turned bartender, forced to resign from the force for protecting his step-brother Chung (Shawn Yue). Chung is now a taxi driver. They cross paths with Yan (Tong Liya), a pretty young woman with a briefcase full of dirty money.

Yan is on the run from her ex-boyfriend George (Michael Tse), a crooked lawyer who unleashes a 5-man gang of ruthless Taiwanese killers on her. Yan, T-Man and Chung have to run for their lives, as they argue over what to do with the money.

***

Wild City is a rather low-key actioneer that manages to work. While there are the normal fights and chases, in the end it's the characters that stay in your mind.

Its rather meandering plot moves the three leads from place to place and succeeds in getting us to know them better. Through their arguments and interactions, the characters come alive. So despite what it looks like, Wild City is actually a character movie. At least it's the closest that a Hong Kong action movie can get.

Even the bad guys are more developed than in your standard Hong Kong cops and robbers flick. When one of the Taiwanese killers gets killed by a boat's propellers, there's an uncommon gravity to his death. Part of the reason is that writer/director Ringo Lam eases up on the melodrama, so the audience doesn't feel manipulated (though it's still a Hong Kong movie, so some melodrama is unavoidable).

Some scenes don't ring true. T-Man's ex boss camps out at the gun range with 10 other cops, waiting for T-Man to collect his gun (he arrived on the scene within a minute of T-Man being apprehended)? And sliding a gun to a bad guy is probably a criminal action.

There's also a confusingly unnecessary flashback to a scene that just happened, where the five killers attack the three heroes in a car park. Another gripe - the police seem to position themselves on opposite sides instead of at 90 degrees, so they are shooting past the bad guys at each other (but of course they never hit each other).

But Ringo Lam has done his work and had already made us voluntarily suspend our disbelief. So these imperfections aren't fatal flaws but do chip away at our enjoyment.

Missing is the thematic richness of Heat or Miami Vice, not to mention Michael Mann's attention to detail. But for a Hong Kong crime movie, this is good stuff.

Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 12:42:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis):

Katia (Hannah Ware) is looking for her long lost father (Ciaran Hinds). Genetically-engineered hitman Agent 47 (Rupert Friend) is on her trail, under orders from Diana (Angelababy). John Smith (Zachary Quinto - Spock in the new Star Trek) saves her from Agent 47, but he isn't what he seems to be.

The cat-and-mouse game between Agent 47 and John Smith moves from Germany to Singapore, where Katia tracks down her father.

***

Hitman is a strangely cold-blooded action adventure. There's lots of gunplay, stunts, car crashes, and explosions. But you're left unmoved by all the sound and fury. John Wick this is not.

The plot has a few interesting twists but overall feels generic and contrived. Rupert Friend and Hannah Ware lack charisma. Zachary Quinto, looking like a young Peter Gallagher, definitely outshines them both. Unfortunately, he's in a supporting role. Rookie director Aleksander Bach (Hitman is his first credit) even manages to make Ciaran Hinds look unremarkable.

Based on a video game, Hitman doesn't come close to the slickness of Resident Evil. I'm not even sure that it's better than Battleship. There's a pervasive B-movie feel to everything - plot, acting, action. Unfortunately I can't put my finger on why.

I wish I could analyze it further but there's just not much there to analyze.

For Singaporeans, the novelty will be about watching a relatively major Hollywood action movie, being shot in Singapore. As you might expect, there are some incongruities that would bother locals but not anyone else. Why on Earth is Diana driving a car inside the Marina Barrage?

More disappointingly, Hitman uses cliched tourist spots such as Marina Bay and Gardens by the Bay, and only as exotic backdrop. Like the rest of the movie, Singapore comes across as generic. No local flavor or quirkiness comes across. Heck, there is barely any interaction with the local people. (I don't think Diana is supposed to be local. Angelababy is a mainland China/Hong Kong actress, who is obviously there only to draw in the mainland audience. Besides, she has a small role and just talks to Agent 47 over the phone.)

To the Fore (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 11:32:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis):

Ming (Eddie Peng) and Tian (Shawn Dou) are rookie professional race cyclists. They join the Radiant team where Ji-won (Si Won Choi) is the lead racer. Ming and Tian fall for the same girl - fellow cyclist Shiyao (Wang Luodan). Shiyao chooses Ming but Ming is unfaithful to her and Tian steps in to pick up the slack. But Tian has problems of his own.

After various successes and defeats, Ming and Tian end up as rivals on different teams and suffer career setbacks. Finally, Ming and Tian team up again and race against Ji-won.

***

To the Fore is a crowd-pleaser. Following the Simpson-Bruckheimer blockbuster formula of action (racing) for the guys and romance for the girls, To the Fore delivers as a date movie. It is 70 percent hardcore cycling pseudo-documentary and 30 percent drama/love triangle.

Writer/director Dante Lam (with co-writers Silver Hau and Fung Lam) shows good judgment by starting off the movie with a quick series of exciting bicycle races, slowly easing in the relationship drama later on. The beautifully-filmed races grab our attention within the first few minutes and helps to establish the authenticity of the movie's world and its characters.

The races aren't just fancy camerawork either. The tactics, training and equipment are shown in detail, lending interest and believability to the proceedings. The race settings are stunning - mountain roads, desert, city streets, indoor and outdoor velodromes. This is the kind of movie you can rewatch in the background on your second PC monitor with the sound turned down low, while you work on your main monitor.

Even when the drama gets started, the scenes are kept short and are inserted in between even more bicycle races, so the movie never bogs down. An example of good storytelling judgment - there's a cute scene where Ming and Tian compete by balancing on bicycles without moving. They bet dinner over who falls first, then the movie cuts away to the next scene and doesn't bother to show who won. Quick and to the point - the point is their friendly but still real rivalry, not who won.

There's also some good-natured (not mean) slapstick humor, which works. The crowd in my theater was happily chuckling along.

I almost gave this movie a miss but was persuaded by the cycling scenes in the movie trailer. The trailer doesn't lie. The movie really does look this good. Given today's improved camera mounts, it actually looks better than director Peter Yates's (Bullitt) classic Breaking Away from 1979. To the Fore's script is more formulaic than Steve Tesich's quirky coming-of-age script for Breaking Away, but it still entertains.

Monk Comes Down the Mountain (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 12:17:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): It is early 20th century China. A time when primitive motorcars and guns coexist with kung fu. Apprentice monk He Anxia's (Baoqiang Wang) mountain monastery falls upon hard times and is unable to support so many monks. He is asked to leave and fend for himself in the big city.

Luckily for him, the sheltered and innocent Anxia ends up as assistant to kindly doctor Cui Daoning (Fan Wei). However his happy new life doesn't last long. The doctor's wife Yuzhen (Lin Chiling) is having an affair with his brother Daorong (Vanness Wu). Daorong poisons the doctor and Anxia kills the two illicit lovers to avenge his master.

He then apprentices himself to kung fu master Zhou Xiyu (Aaron Kwok) who is an enemy of the evil father-son team of Peng Qianwu (Yuen Wah) and Qizi (Jaycee Chan, Jackie's son). Qizi shoots and kills Zhou. Anxia now finds himself paired with Zhou's old friend Boss Zha (Chang Chen) against Peng, Qizi and a mobster (Lam Suet).

***

I'll have to admit that I haven't seen many Chen Kaige movies, but Monk seems rather crude story-wise for a director of his reputation.

Monk is an odd kung fu movie that against all odds, ends up working. It seems haphazard at first, Anxia getting a new master every 30 minutes. But the characters and individual stories work, probably thanks to Xu Haofeng’s source novel. At the end of the movie it's all nicely summed up - Anxia needed to experience human follies in order to become a better monk. So it's not about the plot, but the richness and bitterness of human experience.

The beautiful period sets (especially the doctor's house) and generally good acting help to support the movie.

Baoqiang's Anxia is an unrelatable simpleton with an annoying laugh. But Aaron Kwok and Chang Chen are convincing and sympathetic as serious, mature kung fu masters. Aaron Kwok is detached and enlightened, Chang Chen is passionate and vengeful. As a bonus, Lin Chiling looks absolutely stunning as the doctor's wife. Yuen Wah and Jaycee Chan are deliciously hateful.

Cinematography by Geoffrey Simpson is unremarkable. The fights are many, as is the wirework for the flying kung fu. I'm not a fan of wire fu but in certain cases such as in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon it works as a Fantasy element. It kind of works here. The problem with flying kung fu is that it is so removed from real fighting, that it's closer to dancing than martial arts. So it's all fluff, with no meaning or reality behind each move, nothing you can sink your teeth into.

Speaking of Crouching Tiger, Monk seems to be consciously trying to create a similar epic mythology. It fails because come on, Crouching Tiger is a unique one-off masterpiece. Monk succeeds as decent entertainment, and that's not too shabby.

Our Sister Mambo (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 21:45:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Cinema executive Mr. Wong (Moses Lim) is a mild-mannered father of 4 daughters, and husband to a loud-voiced property agent (Audrey Luo).

We follow their misadventures such as Wong coming to terms with the public not caring about Singapore's movie past, Mrs. Wong not getting along with a colleague, Mambo (Michelle Chong) quitting her job as a lawyer and becoming an apprentice chef, Grace (Ethel Yap) dealing with a divorced suitor from China, Rose (Oon Shun An) dating a series of jerks, June (Joey Leong) dating an Indian.

***

Our Sister Mambo is one of the best Singapore films I've seen. Everything works.

The script by Michael Chiang (Army Daze) is tight, flows well and never devolves into melodrama. We get a light-hearted, good-natured peek into the life of the Wong family through the details of their daily life, family squabbles, love life, and professional struggles. Marketed as a rom-com, it's more a comedy/drama. And despite its title, it's not really about Mambo. Equal emphasis is placed on all family members.

There are no boring dead spots. The scenes are short, smart and full of energy. Its all done in Ilo Ilo's show-don't-tell style, but in a more fun and accessible way. However the general public might have the same complaint as they did with Ilo Ilo - But nothing happens!

Cathay's 80th anniversary celebrations (Cathay produced the film) are nicely integrated into the storyline and don't come across as forced or crass (Jack Neo could learn something from this). The same goes for corporate supporters such as DWG (where Mrs. Wong works) and chef Willin Low (Mambo's boss).

Cameos by celebrity blogger Xiaxue, black-and-white movie stars Grace Chang and Dato Maria Manado Abdullah, and the obligatory muhibbah multi-racial supporting characters (Siti Khalijah, Rani Singam), also fit together naturally.

Michelle Chong puts in a nicely restrained performance and doesn't try to steal the show. (Everyone knows that she could have if she had wanted to.) Ethel Yap, Oon Shun An and Joey Leong handle themselves well. Coming across as distinct, realistic, likable personalities.

Moses Lim also gives a nicely toned-down performance compared to his Under One Roof days. Audrey Luo expertly balances her character's brash persona, pushing her to the edge of being unlikable but never quite going over the line.

Lighting by cinematographer Yoke Weng Ho (supported by top-notch color grading) is stunning, better than most Hong Kong and even Hollywood films. It's even more impressive considering that OSM is an urban comedy/drama that has everyday locations for its scenes.

It's almost too pretty. I found myself being distracted by how well each scene was lit.

Outdoors, high-rise office backlit against window, bedroom, kitchen, home garden at night, lift (elevator), moving car interior, indoor car park, night club. It doesn't matter. Yoke Weng Ho exercises total control over each environment.

There's lots of soft light. Everything is clearly seen. There are no blown highlights or muddy shadows. Skin tones are good and light sources look natural (not obviously from off-camera studio light).

There's no ugly greenish tint from fluorescent bulbs, and it looks better than a color grading fix - the colors are rich. Makes me wonder whether they replaced the ceiling lights with high CRI lights. (Even for a short scene in an indoor car park? That's a high level of perfectionism.). All this was shot on an Arri Alexa - the camera that a lot of the big Hollywood movies use.

Camera movements are kept minimal and don't call attention to themselves. One rare miss-step being an extended Steadicam shot at the end. It was unnecessary and distracting.

If there's one weak spot in the movie, it's the use of the classic song Jajambo. It's one of those annoyingly brash songs that gets stuck in your head.

For everything else, director Wi Ding Ho and the rest of the crew and cast, should take a bow.

SPL 2: A Time for Consequences (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Jul 2015 16:08:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Undercover Hong Kong cop Kit (Jacky Wu Jing) has his cover blown and is illegally held at a Thai prison in retribution.

The prison is run by crooked warden Ko (Max Zhang Jin) who is beholden to bad guy Hung (Louis Koo). Coincidentally, honest prison guard Chai (Tony Jaa) has a sick daughter Sa (Unda Kunteera Thordchanng) whose only hope is a bone marrow transplant from Kit. Chai tries and fails to contact Kit, not realizing that Kit is right under his nose.

Hung has a weak heart and his only possible donor is his own brother Bill (Jun Hung). Hung kidnaps Bill to forcibly get a heart transplant.

Meanwhile, Kit briefly manages to telephone his uncle and fellow cop Wah (Simon Yam). Wah goes alone to Thailand to rescue Kit.

***

SPL 2 is your stereotypical melodramatic Hong Kong kung fu movie. Its plot is more complicated than normal but its melodrama is standard Hong Kong industrial strength.

Thankfully, the fight choreography by Li Chung-Chi is excellent and saves the movie. The fights are in classic Hong Kong style - way drawn out. But this is one of the rare movies where the long action sequences don't become boring. The fights are also never repetitive. There's speed and skill to the moves, not just simple punches and blocks. Tony Jaa fans will be pleased to see him fight more in SPL 2 than he did in Dolph Lundgren's Skin Trade.

And it's not just hand-to-hand. There's also a thrilling shootout at Hong Kong's cruise terminal. It takes some imagination to work out an exciting shootout scene and Li Chung-Chi manages to do it. Movie gunfights are as common as car chases so you can't just have some perfunctory bang bang action and expect to impress the audience. Another standout action scene is a large-scale prison riot, where it's not just the stars but also the dozens of extras that are fighting their hearts out.

However my favorite is a smaller scale duel between Kit and a nameless assassin (Zhang Chi) who is a knife expert. (An earlier scene where nameless assassin takes out a staircase full of cops is also excellent). Kit uses a tonfa (one of my favorite weapons, and one that is too rarely seen on screen) against the nameless assassin, but unfortunately only in reverse grip and like a club. Okay, maybe reverse grip makes sense against a knife because you want to increase your reach, but at least use the handle fork for some blocks or hooks.

Less forgivably, after dispatching the nameless assassin, he leaves his tonfa on the floor and goes on to fight the other bad guys. Not only are we deprived of more tonfa action, why would he leave such an effective weapon behind and proceed bare-handed? This is a symptom of the pervasive lack of smoothness in the storytelling.

The coincidence of Kit landing in a jail where the guard's daughter just happens to need his bone marrow transplant, is laughable. And not just the coincidence. Why would Kit even have himself tested to be a donor, especially when he is a drug-addict undercover cop?

And of course, the biggest kung fu movie trope of all - why so many skilled kung fu fighters? Especially Chai. He's just a prison guard. The movie doesn't even try to justify this.

So it's another wasted opportunity. With a more believable plot, SPL 2 could have been a great action movie. Instead, what we have is a bunch of cool fight scenes that are emotionally empty, because we don't really care for the characters, because we know that we are being manipulated by the movie and therefore refuse to suspend our disbelief. You want to do melodrama? Do it like John Wick. Keep it simple.

PS Another plus is the Thailand locations, which look beautifully gritty and authentic, especially the prison.

Terminator Genisys (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 10:46:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney - A Good Day to Die Hard) is sent back to 1984 by resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke) to save John's mother Sarah (Emilia Clarke - Daenerys in Game of Thrones) from a T-800 Terminator. Kyle arrives in 1984 and finds that it is not the 1984 that John told him to expect. Sarah knows that he is coming, and has an aging T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) that she calls Pops, protecting her. The three of them have to fight off a T-1000 liquid metal Terminator (Byung-hun Lee) but that's just the start of their problems.

***

It's instructive to compare Genisys (T5) with Jurassic World (JP4). Both are blockbuster sequels, with a good number of years since the last movie in the franchise. TLDR version - Genisys is the better sequel.

Jurassic World succeeded by evoking the nostalgia of the first movie. There were references to the first movie (the cartoon DNA character, the motorized binocular helmets, the field of flocking dinosaurs) as well as franchise-specific tropes (such as a dinosaur trying to eat people in a car, the T-Rex saving the day). Adding to the nostalgia was the fact that 14 years had passed since the last Jurassic Park movie (JP3).

Unfortunately there was little continuity with the characters. The main or only repeat was a minor character - chief scientist Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong). Even worse, the plot was a repeat. Perhaps there's only so much that you can do with a franchise about a dinosaur theme park. Jurassic Park's storytelling DNA is an evolutionary dead end. Jurassic World is a fun movie, a heckuva ride, but not much more. I'm guessing that it was the nostalgia factor that pushed Jurassic World's box office gross to over $1 billion.

In contrast, Genisys ticks off all the items on the sequel checklist, and then some.

On the nostalgia front, the last Terminator movie (T4 - the awful Terminator Salvation) was 6 years ago but Arnold wasn't really in it. For a real Arnold Terminator movie, you have to go back 12 years to T3 (Rise of the Machines), close to the 14 years between JP3 and Jurassic World. If you want to look at the first movie in the franchise, JP1 was 22 years ago, T1 was 31 years ago. So going in, Genisys has a slight edge in nostalgia.

But wait, there's more. Like Back to the Future II, in Genisys we get to see some events of the first movie, but from an alternate viewpoint. (In Back to the Future II, the events are the same. In Genisys, the events are slightly altered.) So that ups Genisys's nostalgia factor.

Add to that Schwarzenegger providing a sense of continuity that Jurassic World lacked (as mentioned earlier, only BD Wong), and it's easily hello $1 billion dollars too.

Schwarzenegger plays the aging Terminator with slightly more expressiveness and humanity, than in the previous movies. For example when an exasperated Sarah tells him to "bite me," he doesn't take it literally. He understands that it is a figure of speech and chides her for being immature.

It makes sense because in the Genisys timeline, the Terminator has been protecting Sarah since she was 9 years-old, giving her years to humanize him (compared to John having days in T2 and T3). Adding to the emotional punch is our realization that Schwarzenegger now really is that old. It's like watching Stallone grow old in the Rocky series, Bruce Willis in the Die Hard series.

Thematically, the Terminator movies are richer than the Jurassic Parks. T1, the first movie asked, Can the future be changed? T2, the second movie said, Yes it can. The third movie said, You can change some things but other things - such as Judgment Day - are inevitable. T5, Genisys says, You can change things, and it's even possible for one person to remember two different timelines.

T4, the fourth movie? It didn't say anything except that John doesn't grow up to be a great military leader. He becomes a selfish, arrogant glory-hound. It's a horrible aberration that Genisys has thankfully ignored. Genisys treats T3 with more reverence. The ICBM launches of Judgment Day, the scene of the future John making a speech to his soldiers, look the same in Genisys as they did in T3. The scars on John's face? That's from T3.

There's even something for fans of the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series. The scene where a naked Kyle and Sarah appear at night in the middle of a busy highway, is an obvious nod to it.

But it is with T2 that Genisys's heart really lies. The details of the liquid metal T-1000 are lovingly recreated (the bullet hole through the eye, the blob dropping off and then being reabsorbed, the transformation of arms into metal spikes, walking out unscathed from a fire, hiding as part of a room).

In Genisys, Sarah's relationship with the Terminator is a mirror image of John's relationship with the Terminator in T2. Genisys has an interesting development of Sarah and Kyle's relationship. They are realistically awkward about their predestined fate as the parents of John (and like in T3 with John and Kate, the Terminator makes funny boneheaded remarks about it), even though they have just met. But Sarah's father-daughter relationship with the Terminator is the emotional core of Genisys.

In terms of character development, T1 was about Sarah coming to terms with the unbelievable idea that her unborn son was going to be the savior of the human race. T2 had the most interesting extrapolation - the pressure turns Sarah into a psycho bitch, and John realizes that his mother wasn't totally crazy after all. T3 was about John refusing his destiny because the path to his heroic destiny was paved with billions of dead bodies. T5 doesn't have as strong a take on Sarah or Kyle's character but does show Sarah as accepting her fate, and convincing Kyle to accept his.

Plot-wise, there's enough going on in Genisys to keep you interested. You can't always guess what is going to happen next. After T1, copycat time travel movies explored all kinds of scenarios and paradoxes, until time travel became a cliche. Genisys still manages to keep it fresh (even if it means stealing from 12 Monkeys).

So in this box-office battle of the blockbuster sequels, of dinosaurs versus Terminators, I see it as special effects versus storytelling. Sure, there are special effects in Genisys too, but they are there to support the story. In Jurassic World, the special effects - the dinosaurs - are the main attraction.

I hope the robots win.

Good Kill (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 08:53:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): It is 2010. Major Thomas Egan (Ethan Hawke) is an experienced F-16 fighter pilot. He has finished multiple overseas combat tours of duty in America's war on terror. He is now a drone pilot, surrealistically killing Taliban halfway across the globe from the safety of his control station in Nevada, then going home at the end of the day to his suburban home and his wife Molly (January Jones) and kids.

He misses the joy and danger of flying for real and begins to feel guilty over the civilian casualties his missile strikes create. He drinks and his marriage begins to suffer even more than when he was overseas, away from his family for months, flying an F-16.

His boss Lieutenant Colonel Jack Jones (Bruce Greenwood, doing the wise and compassionate leader shtick he did in Star Trek) has no such qualms and handles Egan's drone team with a steady hand. The team includes Zimmer (the hunky Jake Abel) and new pilot Suarez (Zoe Kravitz - Lenny's daughter, who has been getting a lot of plum supporting roles recently - Divergent, Mad Max).

Things become worse when the team works with the CIA to kill suspected Taliban, working based on the CIA's new and looser Rules of Engagement. Their only CIA contact is the mysterious Langley (voiced by Peter Coyote, who sounds deliciously like the late John Forsythe as Charlie) who they only hear over the speaker phone. Morale plummets as the team is forced by Langley to carry out what Suarez considers to be illegal, war crime, strikes.

***

Writer/director Andrew Niccol does mainly SF (Gattaca, In Time, The Host - underrated movie based on Stephenie Meyer's novel with a beautiful performance by Saoirse Ronan) and military (Lord of War) movies, though not military SF. He also wrote but did not direct The Terminal (Tom Hanks is a stateless man stuck in an airport), S1mOne (Pacino in a comedy is a fail) and The Truman Show. Whatever the subject material, he's good at pushing your buttons.

Good Kill is similar to Lord of War (Nicolas Cage is a freelance arms dealer after the collapse of the Soviet Union). Andrew Niccol did a lot of research for Lord of War and wrote a technically accurate and dramatic script (with some over-the-top visuals that work).

He does the same for Good Kill, this time on the US drone war. In Time showed him to be an economics-illiterate bleeding-heart liberal, probably because he didn't feel the need to research economics and just went with his gut. From what little I know about real drone warfare, he has painted a relatively accurate picture (super accurate by Hollywood standards) in Good Kill.

He has obviously researched drone warfare and like Lord of War, Good Kill is technically believable and has a good storyline. Unlike In Time, his handling of the issues is quite balanced, though still left of center.

I do have some complaints. For one thing, no lawyers are shown. I'm pretty sure lawyers are heavily involved in drone operations, and the movie does address legal issues (which the soldiers amateurishly try to figure out on their own).

But overall Andrew Niccol succeeds in pushing his agenda because he plays it cool and almost neutral, not overtly propagandistic. Which is how effective propaganda works. And is probably why the media hasn't made a big fuss over the movie. It's too neutral for them. Both sides of the argument are shown (though I feel there are strong arguments for drone warfare that were not presented).

And like with Lord of War, Andrew Niccol definitely has an agenda. Unfortunately for him, Good Kill has been overtaken by events. Specifically ISIS. After ISIS, you can't convincingly argue that drone strikes are a significant cause of militant Islam (cycle-of-violence theory).

Andrew Niccol uses music well, almost as well as Michael Mann. Gattaca and The Host had effective, evocative and memorable soundtracks. Good Kill is mainly soundtrackless, and that works too. It's an interesting choice.

And like Michael Mann, he also has a strong visual style. Halfway through The Host (I went in not knowing who the director was), I thought, Hey this looks like an Andrew Niccol movie! Like the soundtrack, he has also dialed back the visuals on Good Kill.

He lets the strong New Mexico (standing in for Nevada) desert sunlight dictate most of the look. No fancy Lord of War time-lapses here. Again, it works. A few strong images do stand out. In The Host it was the aliens' mirror-skinned vehicles and elegant white clothes, in Gattaca it was the Art Deco architecture.

In Good Kill, it is the geometric rows of wheeled shipping containers that serve as drone control stations. It's a simple but strangely powerful image that you will not forget.

It's good to see Ethan Hawke in an Andrew Niccol movie again. Bruce Greenwood does his Star Trek fatherly shtick well. January Jones and Zoe Kravitz also handle their roles well, and look pretty while doing so. Jake Abel (who to my surprise has less of a following than Channing Tatum, but then I'm not a teen girl) has a small role as a callous, racist, gung-ho member of Egan's team and is suitably hateful.

The acting is good but it is Andrew Niccol's script that makes the characters come alive.

Langley is the silver-tongued devil with his polished justifications for his morally questionable orders, Suarez is the team's conscience (superego), Zimmer is the ugly American who delights in killing (id), Jones is the adult (ego). Egan is all three - ego, superego, id - rolled into one, the classic Ethan Hawke sensitive new-age hero.

Pay attention to the ending. On the surface it's a feel-good ending. I found it very disturbing. I wonder if Andrew Niccol meant it to be. Other Hollywood directors, I would have assumed that they missed the implications. Not this guy.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 May 2015 07:37:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Mad Max (Tom Hardy) is kidnapped by Immortan Joe's (Hugh Keays-Byrne) band of crazy war boys. He is taken back to their rock fortress in the middle of the desert and used as a living blood bag to provide nourishment to their warriors.

Immortan Joe's trusted lieutenant Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads a routine raid to steal petrol but has other plans. Hidden in her empty tanker are Immortan Joe's slave wives. Furiosa plans to save them, and their unborn children from becoming Immortan Joe's future war boys.

Immortan Joe goes all out to catch Furiosa, leading the chase vehicles himself. Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the war boys, aims to catch Furiosa and claim glory and immortal life from Immortan Joe.

Nux takes Max as his blood bag and chains him to the front of his car. The ridiculous convoy of scrap-yard Frankenstein vehicles chases Furiosa down Fury Road.

***

Fury Road looks like a shallow action movie but it's much more than that. The schoolboy-glee with which writer/director George Miller lovingly plays with the crazy souped-up vehicles, their medieval contraptions, and the crazy action stunts, hides a more serious intent.

Fury road is a millieu movie, not a plot or character movie. The star is its post-apocalyptic world, the various quirky bands of people (and their quirkier vehicles) living out in the desert in a fallen world. Especially Immortan Joe's militarized dictatorship and the religion he created around the old Norse legend of Valhalla, to keep his war boys loyal to him.

After the second Mad Max movie (the first wasn't a big hit, the one with Tina Turner is the third movie), the term Mad Max (or Road Warrior) was used to describe a specific type of post-apocalyptic scenario, so much did the movies define our vision of violent gangs taking over after civilizational collapse.

And what a millieu it is. The wacky warriors and their vehicles are fleshed out in loving detail. And they don't just look good, they work well too. The movie is maybe 60 percent running battles between the war boys and Furiosa and Max. We see how their medieval punk weaponry works in glorious state-of-the-art stunt live-action.

We do get numb to all the flat-out action after a while. The action sequences should have been edited down more ruthlessly. But overall they are a raging success.

Hidden amongst all the action is a subtle show-don't-tell exploration of Immortan Joe's Valhalla religion through the exploits of Nux. The movie is more about him than about Max or Furiosa. Though he looks like a comedic sidekick, he actually has the best character arc in the whole movie.

Furiosa and Max are the heroes but they don't change much. They are only there to drive the action. Max's flashbacks about not saving the kids, are an obviously contrived device to give his character some depth.

Max disappears at the end of the movie. In victory, he leaves Furiosa and goes on alone to his next adventure in the next episode of the Mad Max franchise. He is the enigmatic reluctant hero, the faceless man. The Mad Max movies are not about Mad Max. As explained earlier, the term Mad Max in popular culture refers to Max's post-apocalyptic world, not Max. This is world-building at its finest.

Witness!

Skin Trade (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 12:32:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): American cop Nick Cassidy (Dolph Lundgren) kills the son of Serbian human-trafficker Viktor Dragovic (Ron Perlman), in a shoot-out. Viktor kills Nick's wife and daughter in revenge. A badly-injured Nick goes on a rampage, killing Viktor's colleagues.

With the police on his trail, Nick follows Viktor to Thailand but is framed for killing a Thai policeman by crooked American cop Reed (Michael Jai White). Thai policeman Tony Vitayakul (Tony Jaa) is now after Viktor, even as Viktor tracks down Viktor and singe-handedly dismantles his human-smuggling business.

***

Skin Trade is a decent but unremarkable revenge B-movie. It's better than your average B-movie but with Dolph Lundgren starring in it, I was hoping for more. Fans of Tony Jaa who expect to see a lot of their hero will be disappointed. He has more of a supporting role here.

I'm a fan of Dolph Lundgren, who deserves more success than he has achieved. Like Jason Patric, he chooses good scripts that unfortunately don't become successful movies. I thought Joshua Tree/Army of One was good. I totally loved Silent Trigger (directed by Russell Mulcahy), a criminally-underrated action thriller.

Unfortunately, like Jason Patric, he also has his duds. Jason Patric has The Prince, Lundgren has The Minion.

Skin Trade isn't a dud, but I won't be buying the DVD. There is an interesting angle which makes it different from your normal buddy-buddy cop movie - Nick and Tony are on opposite sides for most of the movie. But there's nothing new here, nothing surprising (the motorcycle chase seems tired, cliched, obligatory), and quite a few leaps in logic.

The framing of Nick by Reed seems unnecessary. And how did Nick even know that the Thai police thought that he had killed the Thai cop? The police couldn't count the number of dead bodies in the fire? If the ship's captain knew that the container on his ship carried sex slaves, why didn't he do anything to make sure that they were kept alive? You keep people locked up in containers when the captain doesn't know what is going on. And you can't hear a conversation through a door, when your side of the door happens to be a noisy night club.

All of this chips at your voluntary suspension of disbelief, and soon you just want to see Tony Jaa and Lundgren fight each other. They do, and guess what? Tony Jaa doesn't whip Lundgren's ass. It's more of an equal fight. That's right. In this movie, Tony Jaa is not some martial arts superhero, just a cop with above-average fighting skills.

He does have some spectacular moves but most of the time he keeps things simple and believable. It's a good choice. I'm not a fan of too-fancy martial arts but I'm thinking that his fans will be disappointed.

Run All Night (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 06:18:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) is a drunk has-been mob killer who is estranged from his son Mike (Joel Kinnaman). Mob boss Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris) is Jimmy's boss and childhood friend.

Shawn's no-good son Danny (Boyd Holbrook) gets into trouble and Mike witnesses him killing a man. Danny tries to kill Mike, and Jimmy kills Danny to protect his son.

Shawn swears revenge on Jimmy and Mike. He sets his whole gang on them, including ace hired gun Price (rapper Common), and frames them for multiple murders. The entire New York police force is now after them, including Jimmy's old nemesis, detective Harding (Vincent D'Onofrio, looking more and more like Brian Dennehy).

***

Run All Night is a mix of Road to Perdition, John Wick, and 16 Blocks (underrated Bruce Willis movie). However it's an old-fashioned, macho crime thriller that lacks the stylishness of John Wick or the quotable quotes of Taken.

Story-telling is conventional and effective. You get the character build-ups and arcs (Jimmy begs Danny for money at the start of the movie), with interlocking plot points (for example - the crooked cops are nicely foreshadowed at the start) all neatly tied-up in the end (Jimmy's confession list of his past kills, Mike keeping out of his father's world).

This makes for an engrossing but not enthralling experience. It's no blockbuster but it's certainly worth your time. It doesn't break any new ground (the characters are cliches) but its basics are good. It's as much a character movie as it is an action movie. Jimmy's relationships with Shawn and with his son are believable and don't degenerate into melodrama.

Ed Harris is, as expected, solid as the kind friend and honorable mob boss but vengeful father. Liam Neeson is just as good as the washed-up-and-underestimated-but-still-tough killer with a conscience. Liam Neeson is probably one of today's premier movie tough guys, surpassing even Bruce Willis. Run All Night will add to, but not greatly enhance, his studly superstar image.

On a technical note I found the image quality to be poor. The shadow detail was murky, which is annoying considering that most of the movie takes place at night. Guys, it's 2015. You have no excuse for this.

Ridley Scott fans will want to look out for Bruce McGill as Pat Mullen, Shawn's right-hand man.

Tracers (2015)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 08:56:00 +0000

Plot summary (story synopsis): New York bicycle messenger Cam (Taylor Lautner - Jacob in the Twilight Saga) can't pay back his loan from Chinese gangsters. He bumps into pretty young parkour exponent Nikki (Marie Avgeropoulos) and is attracted to her, and to parkour.

He pursues her and is eventually accepted into her parkour gang which includes her brother Dylan (Rafi Gavron) and their adult leader Miller (Adam Rayner). Desperate for money, he joins the gang in various criminal activities, who make use of their parkour skills to enter buildings and escape.

The gang's crimes escalate to armed robbery, and Cam finds himself in over his head.

***

Tracers is an entertaining action-adventure/romance that will please Team Jacob fans. The plot is serviceable and the acting is good, with believable chemistry between Lautner and Avgeropoulos. Rayner is almost as fun to watch as the ruthless gang leader.

However the main reason to watch would be the parkour. Tracers gets it right. The parkour (sometimes computer enhanced) looks believable and thrilling. The gang runs across rooftops, leap cars and jump between buildings. Good use is made of the seedier side of New York City - abandoned ships and buildings, alleyways.

The action is beautifully covered by cinematographer Nelson Cragg's (he worked on the Claire Danes TV series Homeland) moving camera. The color grading is less impressive, looking like cheap video. Probably a deliberate artistic choice, but one that I did not enjoy.

Tracers is a solid movie from director Daniel Benmayor and writers Leslie Bohem, Matt Johnson, Kevin Lund and T.J. Scott. It's like a better version of the first Fast and Furious movie, and with parkour!