DEATH OF TRADITIONAL CINEMA

During the Q and A for the special screening at UP Diliman hosted by the Young Critics' Circle (YCC) Filmdesk, one member of the audience praised HARUO for portraying Manila in a beautiful light. Beautiful, as in the emphasis is not on the squalor. The setting is in Quiapo, Manila, and I don't mean the place became Paris all of a sudden, but rather the place exists only as a backdrop- to set the context. HARUO does not aim to comment on urban nightmare. Maybe filmmaker Adolfo Alix Jr's homage to Japanese Yakuza cinema, what's undeniable in HARUO is the strong charisma of its main actor Jacky Woo, playing the quintessential cinematic good Samaritan. He is an expat renting a room in Quiapo, selling noodles off a pushcart. He is kindhearted, humble, and somewhat utterly depressed. Flashes of his history intercuts every now and then, in fragmented details. The closest he has to a friend or a confidante is a prostitute (played by Rosanna Roces) working in a nigh...

You might best remember Henry Cavill from that other movie involving gold-plated gods and Mickey Rourke, and as the new Superman. Here, Cavill plays a man racing against time to save his family from unknown abductors. What do the abductors want in return? No, not money. They're not that rich, and this isn't RANSOM or MAN ON FIRE. What they do want is a briefcase containing sensitive intel. A rogue government agent has it, and poor old Henry is the pawn in this chess game.  Okay, I can take the spy stuff subplot, or Siguorney Weaver kicking ass and taking names, but what doesn't follow in THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY, is how Cavill's character, who isn't a cop, a soldier, or Jason Bourne, is able to leap several stories down, and still be able to keep on going. Yes there's some difficulty in walking, but the guy should have at least been in a wheelchair. Not shooting people. Not running like a madman. It is a popcorn flick, and although flawed, there ar...

In the spirit of fact marrying fiction on celluloid, such as Hitler getting slaughtered inside a cinema during the gala premiere of his propaganda film, or Abraham Lincoln being a vampire hunter, a most welcome addition to the pack is popular author of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe chasing after his tail- that is to say stopping a madman mimicking the murders depicted in his literary works.  Whereas Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS ventured into the absurd, and Timur Bekmambetov's ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER was more of an alternate reality, THE RAVEN- with John Cusack donning the shoes of the popular mysterious writer, takes a more serious approach to welding fact and fiction together, as if the plot of THE RAVEN is what really transpired in Poe's life.  The familiar elements are there- Poe's unexplained death, his repeated address of the name "Reynolds", and his rivalry with a fellow critic named Griswald, of which I may say that the film take...

BATTLESHIP is absolute popcorn flick from the surface right down to the core, never mind logic or story depth. Those familiar with Peter Berg's work knows he likes to keep the pace tight, and the action intense (THE RUNDOWN, THE KINGDOM, HANCOCK). In BATTLESHIP, the characters are thinly-drawn, Taylor Kitsch's Alex Hopper most especially. We never see how he turned from reckless teen to a team leader. But what BATTLESHIP lacks in character development it does make up for spectacle. Pure guilty pleasure level of spectacle. Somewhere in BATTLESHIP are Michael Bay moments (you know when there's a dramatic scene that injects heroism, leadership, and courage into one serving, to the tune of some dramatic background music), yet BATTLESHIP manages to be way better than the last two TRANSFORMERS films combined. The problem with Michael Bay and his TRANSFORMERS films is that he doesn't know when to stop, and when he does, he does so in an ill fashion that the film just ...

The onscreen presence of Josh Brolin is one of MEN IN BLACK 3's strongest reason for being. His inspired performance and throwback to Tommy Lee Jones as a younger Agent K keeps the pace entertaining, the story riveting.  Throw in a compelling back story to J's character and a race against time against a cunning foe worthy of our attention and we have a MEN IN BLACK movie that's even better than the original. Sonnenfeld and company have redeemed what horrid memory it was that goes by the name of MIB2.  By disregarding the second film's plot entirely and creating a new story all over, MIB3 becomes a rush of an experience. Not only do we want J to succeed in his mission to save K from being killed by Boris the Animal, but we want to be along for the ride. The plot twist in the end proves most exciting. Meanwhile Michael Stuhlbarg (A SERIOUS MAN) delivers giggly fun as a fast-talking alien named Griffin, who can see the future, yielding hilarious and often hear...

KATY PERRY: PART OF ME works better if you're a Katy Perry fan, or at least appreciates her brand of music. The concert film/biopic is presented by the same duo who produced Justin Bieber's NEVER SAY NEVER, and the reason I didn't see that one is that simply I was not a fan of Bieber's work (yet I may have been also infected by "Baby" at one point in time), though with PART OF ME, it is hard not to love the bubbly musician whose songs are undeniably infectious. PART OF ME centers on Perry's CALIFORNIA DREAMS Tour in 2011, her biggest tour yet that has her traveling from city to city, delivering two-hour shows a night- and we see her struggling against the physical rigors of the concert tour and finding personal time with her then-husband Russell Brand in between shows. An avid fan would have been singing along with the songs, and while the musical numbers are energetic, what is missing in the movie is the social expectations about Katy Perr...