Gagamboy (2004), Harsh Times (2004), Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

Gagamboy (Spider-boy, Erik Matti, 2004)

Excerpt:

And here I was, thinking Pa-Siyam (Nine Days, 2004) was Erik Matti's best work--Matti, the director of such seminal works of Philippine Cinema as Ekis (Crossed, 1999), Dos Ekis (Double Cross, 2001), and Prosti (Prostitute, 2002)--one of I suppose you can say my favorite Filipino filmmakers, if only because he's given me endless opportunities for honing my critical blade.

Pa-Siyam showed what Matti was capable when he dropped his many affectations and concentrated on storytelling, reined in his self-indulgent style enough to serve the story more than itself; the result is pleasing, like De Palma doing a conventional action film (The Untouchables) or Cronenberg a neo-Western (A History of Violence) albeit on a lower, cruder level.

Harsh Times (David Ayer, 2005)

Excerpt:

Ayer's Harsh Times (2005) was reportedly based on his own experiences, and the language ("Whassup, dog?" "I wanna get fucked up") seems to reflect that (though Ayer's street profanity seems more mimetic than the kind of profane poetry that, say, David Mamet is capable of whipping up). He also manages to capture the boredom that exists between two men in a car (one of them simply weak, the other a developing psychopath), cruising around looking to get drunk, get laid, get high.

Beyond that--beyond the street realism, the surface texture and the sodium-arc street lighting (most of the picture, as with most noirs, takes place at night)--there's not much to be really said in favor of the movie. Ayer's self-admitted model was Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) but I'd say it's just as useful if not more so to look at Scorsese' earlier Mean Streets (1973)--you can see Ayer trying to capture the same kind of 'slice of life' quality, create the same meandering narrative, evoke the same anguished search for salvation (or damnation, you're not quite sure which).

Resident Evil: Extinction (Russell Mulcahy, 2007)

Excerpt:

Sitting through Paul W. S. Anderson's latest produced script for the big screen (helmed by Highlander and prolific music-video director Russell Mulcahy) the thought went through my head that I was tired; no, I was out-and-out sick of this sort of fare. The promotional copy of Resident Evil: Extinction promised this would be the last of a trilogy of movies based on the video game; I clutched at that promise like a man in the desert would his canteen of water. Ninety minutes of crap is easier to bear when it's supposed to be for the last time.

Meanwhile, I still had to sit through the movie. Alice (Milla Jovovich), The Umbrella Corporation's greatest creation, survived the nuking of Raccoon City (long story, see previous pic), but so, unfortunately, did the virus; it's broken out all over the world and brought the human population to the brink of extinction (Hence the title--get it? Get it?). Alice has been avoiding Umbrella's spy satellites by keeping to herself in the desert; meanwhile, a convoy of survivors lead by one Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) has been making their way across said arid landscape. Alice and Claire's paths converge on the nearest available Umbrella facility, where a fenced-off compound (surrounded by thousands of zombies, and you can be sure they aren't there out of sheer curiosity) encloses a wooden shack and a helicopter--one large enough to carry Clair's people to Alaska, where the virus appears to have failed to penetrate (don't ask me how, or why, or even if it's true).

Filipino remakes of two William Wyler films

William Wyler reloaded

Excerpt:

It's not as if Wyler intended it, I suppose, but for what seemed like the longest period--from the thirties (Wuthering Heights, Jezebel) through the war years (Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives) right up to the threshold of the socially turbulent sixties (Ben Hur) and late into it (Funny Girl) he was a force to be reckoned with. He was Hollywood, or at least that part of Hollywood that needed prestige pictures (preferably the kind that also made money); he wasn't half as prolific as Ford--around 70 films in 46 years, compared to Ford's 140 plus in 49 years--and his reputation today isn't as formidable, but to misquote yet another Hollywood icon "what's there is cherce."

Or, at the very least, entertaining. Melodramas like The Letter (with that great opening shot of Bette Davis stepping out of her bungalow, gun blazing) and Jezebel (which I much prefer to the more conventional Gone With the Wind) showcased Davis' inimitable brand of feminist perversity to wonderful effect; Wuthering Heights diminished the intense mysticism of Bronte's great novel (not to mention--this being an MGM production, where good taste is paramount--cleaning up much of the novel's blood and dirt and sadism) but did give us Laurence Olivier's huge hands, rising up to give the pretty (and rather vacant) Merle Oberon two full palms across the cheeks.

Gwoemul (Bong Joon-ho, 2006)

Gwoemul (The Host, Bong Joon-ho, 2006)

Excerpt:

Bong Joon-ho's Gwoemul (The Host, 2006) is terrific stuff, as much for being a family movie as for being a horror flick, but that's pretty much the secret appeal of almost any classic creature. James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) is really about parental responsibility and the neglect of the offspring; Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is about the abused child's development of an operating moral sense; Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong (1933) isn't so much a love story as it is a cautionary fable about a big brute's hopeless infatuation with (what else?) an airhead blonde (that's why the remake's so lame--it insists on being a love story); Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks' The Thing (1951) is about maintaining efficiency in the face of human weakness and overall chaos; Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) is about the impotence of human hubris (it's also about accepting a new and unlikely member into a rather ingrown family); Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) is about obsession and the comedy of male bonding. The creature (and the special effects used to create it) may be what draws the audience in, but it's always the human element--either suggested in the creature, or found among the victims or pursuers--that people savor and remember.

In Bong's case, it's about a dysfunctional family finding its priorities and learning how to operate as a unit. The slow-witted, blond-haired Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho) runs a food stand alongside the Han River with his father Park Hee-bong (Byeon Hee-bong) and daughter Park Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-seong) when a monster rears out of the river and starts chomping down on innocent bystanders. Seems that many years ago an American military pathologist ordered his lab technician to empty a hundred bottles of formaldehyde into the drain, which apparently has a mutating effect on the riparian marine life (why that would be I'm not sure--formaldehyde's been dumped in water before, and I have yet to hear any recent news of giant mutant lizard-frogs walking the planet). Hee-bong and Gang-du escape, but Hyun-seo is snatched at the last minute by the monster's wonderfully prehensile tail to be snatched away, presumably eaten.

Um Filme Falado (A Talking Picture, Manoel de Oliveira, 2003)

Um Filme Falado (A Talking Picture, Manoel de Oliveira, 2003)

Excerpt:

A confession: it's my first Oliveira (hang head in shame) and probably not an ideal introduction, but right off I can see that it's an unsettling work--at the very least brave, at the very most, radically great.

As far as initial impressions go, I think it's difficult to better my eleven-year-old nephew's capsule review: "It's so boring. Nothing's happening. This is the worst and ugliest movie ever made." I'd disagree with one comment outright--what with Emmanuel Machuel's capture of the harsh and brilliant Mediterranean sunlight (the very first image, of tiny figures with white handkerchiefs in hand like so many fluttering flower buds is stunning), the many magnificent structures paraded before the camera--there is in fact plenty of beauty for the eye. Too subtle a pleasure, I suppose, for my poor nephew to appreciate (Walt Disney World being his idea of a top travel destination).

 

Popeye (Robert Altman,1980)--a belated tribute 'n other films

Popeye (Robert Altman, 1980)--a belated tribute

Excerpt:

Robert Altman's Popeye opens with the tinny monophonic sound of The Sailor's Hornpipe, segueing into Sammy Lerner's theme song (I'm Popeye the Sailor Man). We see the cartoon image of a ship's rear cabin, doors sliding open, the classic opening of many a Max Fleischer cartoon short; Popeye pops up, chuckles, exclaims (in stereo, and in the voice of Jack Mercer, who played the sailor from 1935 to 1978):

"Hey what's this, one of Bluto's tricks?"

"I'm in the wrong movie!"

Crash and boom. Cut to thunderclouds piled high and visibly boiling. Camera pans down to a tiny orange sunset, all but overwhelmed by the oncoming storm; more lightning reveals Popeye's little rowboat, bobbing in a restless sea. Cut to a closer view of the boat--thanks to Altman's telephoto lenses the boat is surrounded, overwhelmed, engulfed by row after row of waves, in an endless march towards the camera (Popeye lost in an ocean of waves, the way Altman puts it onscreen, is about as lost as one can get). Cut to a bell tower--think of the church in Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1972)--shrouded in shadow; the bell chimes, the tower emerges in sunlight (filters, I suspect), and we hear horns blow the fanfare introduction to the song "Sweethaven." The entire opening is Altman's way of saying "this is not the Popeye you're familiar with--not the Fleischer cartoons, not Famous Studios, not Segar's strip. And not like any musical you've seen before, either."

Disturbia (DJ Caruso, 2007)

The Invasion (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2007)

Lino Brocka's Insiang and Tinimbang out on DVD September

Pa Siyam (Nine Days, Erik Matti, 2004)

Stardust (Matthew Vaughn 2007), Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog, 2007)

The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2007)

1941 (Steven Spielberg, 1979)

 

Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)

Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)

Quentin Tarantino's something of a strange case--he's an enthusiast without much discrimination, a director who cares more about framing his dialogue than his images, an auteur wannabe more interested in cramming allusions and homages into his works than actually fusing them into a unique voice. He's got so many references in his movies the frame operate more like hypertext (click on this hat and it's the same type hat used in so-and-so kung fu flick; click on that pack of cigarettes and it's the same brand used in one of the director's previous works)--that much he's up-to-date. To be fair, he does have a fondness for the classic and antiquated that may, when all is said and done, be his finest trait (though his uncritical passion for junk takes a bit of the gloss off that love).

 

In effect, he's not the greatest thing since apple pie, but he's not cow flop, either. In 1992 he took the plot of Ringo Lam's great "Lung fu fong wan" (City on Fire, 1987), shuffled the time scheme for variety, dumbed down the understated desperation, and presented it as "Reservoir Dogs;" two years later he took Godard's declaration that "every film has a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order," made "Pulp Fiction," and won a Palme d'Ir in Cannes (funny Godard never got credit for the idea, nor brought home his own Palme d'Or). The 1996 "From Dusk Till Dawn" might be my favorite Tarantino, if only because the man wrote a clever, genre-bending script for his more visually talented friend, Robert Rodriguez (Rodriguez's problem is in constructing a narrative that moves in reasonably smooth motion, and comes to a satisfying resolution; the two should do more projects together, preferably with Tarantino at the keyboard, Rodriguez behind the camera).

 

100 Best Filipino Films (& the Cinemanila Filmfest, Aug. 8 - 19, Gateway Mall)

100 Best Filipino Films (& Cinemanila Filmfest, Aug 8 - 19, Gateway Mall)

Excerpt:

This is a late (very late) reply to AFI's 100 Greatest American Films of All Times (not to mention my way of defying the sense of loss felt from all the recent deaths); instead of coming up with a hundred American movies, though, I'd thought (for the sake of not repeating the work of dozens of perfectly good film blogs) of coming up with a hundred Filipino films.

(A late response this may be but, as it turns out, timely enough for the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival, (Aug. 8 - 19 at the Gateway Mall Cineplex 10), which will hopefully include a sidebar featuring a few of these films)