Chatter Of The Squirrel

Bulk movie review

July 3, 2008 on 10:57 pm | In Movies |

Futurama: Beast of a thousand backs

Bender created a rift in space-time at the end of the last movie. The rift leads into another universe, and a world devouring being, like something out of Hellboy or Lovecraft, crosses over, tentacles and all.

Fry becomes the new pope. And the rest of the story devolves into something like a Seinfeld episode: a nothing-idea stretched to the point of breaking. But this idea broke in such a big way, the writer failed to realise it.

Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead

What a piece of CRAP! Two brothers in a deep financial hole, tried to pull a heist on their parents’ jewellery store. The heist goes wrong. People get killed.

The story might be better, if you could love any of the characters. But you don’t. They’re all losers. So it’s just one big nothing story. Happily, I was multi-tasking something more productive while half watching this film. Like paining a miniature of Shaggy.

Mulholland Drive

David Lynch’s little hallucination on film. Supposedly, the blonde is hallucinating the brunette. But it finally turns out, the blonde itself is also another hallucination of another blonde, whose life sucked worse than the hallucination blonde.

This was the key to making sense of this film. Otherwise the last half hour makes no sense.

Or… you can just watch it for the lesbian sex scene between the two hallucinations, and be treated to Naomi Watts’ full frontal.

My Mother’s New Boyfriend

Meg Ryan. Trying to find her groove back, and abandoning her desperate-to-be-taken-seriously movies like Against The Ropes, or In The Cut (full frontal by the way).

This time, she’s a MILF, her son is FBI, and her new boyfriend is Antonio Banderas, an international art thief.

Much lame-ness and very little comedy ensues.

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan

Adam Sandler is The Zohan, an Israeli version of Captain America.

But he wants to fulfill his dreams of being a hair-dresser. So he stages his death, and ‘migrate’ to the US.

Not funny. Unless you like seeing Adam Sandler catch fish & frankfurters with his butt-cheeks.

The Happening

Plants release neuro-toxins that make people commit suicide.

Great idea. But not really well executed. Something like The Signs, an event of epic magnitude, but the camera keeps focusing on the least interesting aspect of the story.

Better than Lady In The Water though, I’ll give this movie that much…

Many of the scenes were very chilling. Seeing people calmly, and consciously take their own life. It’s more than seeing zombies walking off a cliff. There is just something terribly wrong in seeing a person intellectually reasoning out the quickest and most expeditious way to die, and executing it.

I think it plays on one’s fear of losing one’s free will, which is a fate worse than death.

But M.Night isn’t the first who came up with this idea. I still remember a scene from one of the Omen sequels, where a guy booby-trapped his gun to fire when someone opens the door to his office. Then sat in front of the barrel.

Or even more recently, The Suicide Club. It’s a Japanese film that started with 54 school girls, cheerfully chattering away, standing in front of a train platform all in a row, then suddenly and inexplicably hurled themselves in front of an oncoming train. The scene that ensued expended several drums of tomato sauce. It’s a scene that YouTube moderators will remove. This cult film was a commentary of the young generation’s dissociation with reality, with modern society, and their susceptibility to targeted marketing. In such a world, suicide makes as much sense as everything else. So why not?

Get Smart

Free tix at Cineleisure. Note to all: those free tix vouchers that you can redeem for Free List movies… You can redeem those at Cineleisure before the movie goes on Free List. Third time I’ve done this now.

Funny show. Steve Carell is wonderful as Maxwell Smart.

Watched a lot of the old Get Smart series when I was young. I love seeing the old portable Cone Of Silence and the shoe-phone again, after so many years.

And Hiro Nakamura is in the movie too. BONUS!!

Most memorable line. Alan Arkin as Chief:  “It’s nü-klÄ“-É™r !”

Everybody loves Bush-bashing.

Neverwas

A man returns to the town of his birth, to the sanatorium that once housed his dad, a renowned author of the fantasy world of Neverwas. There he meets Gandalf, who proclaims himself to be the imprisoned king of Neverwas, and the boy of prophecy has finally come to release him from his dungeon.

Further investigations reveal that Magneto’s delusions predated his father’s book. And he comes to believe that Neverwas is real after all. He busts out the Grey Wizard, who leads him to the castle of Neverwas, and a climatic stand-off versus the usurping Minions.

Nice.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

A short and fun fantasy of faeries, goblins and ogres. It is far from epic. But tales of fantasy need not have epic battles to make it enjoyable. A well-shaped tale matters more than size alone. Do you hear that, Prince Caspian?

Hellraiser

A famouse cult horror. Heard much about it, but never saw it. Out of boredom, and a surfeit of internet bandwidth, I downloaded it and gave it a go.

Meh. 20yrs ago, it might have scared me.

Shutter

Saw the original Thai version. Also the recent US remake.

Both good. Preferred the Thai version.

A couple drove over a girl. The body was never found. But ghostly images begin to appear in the photos they take. Chilling ending. If you are watching it for the first time.

Chocolate

The best movie for last…

If you’re a martial arts fan, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by this latest offering from Thailand.

Mob parents make autistic child. Autism girl has preternatural ability to mimic martial arts. Lives next door to a Muay Thai school and learnt everything she sees. Mom gets cancer. She goes out kicking arse to collect debts due to her mom.

Newcomer Yanin Vismistananda, is filling a void in today’s film industry: the female martial artist.

There really isn’t a proper female fighter today. Zhang Ziyi is more accurately a dancer. Michelle Yeoh is just over-ripe and her moves barely cut it for the 80’s. And the new breed of HK actresses are just wire-fu artists. I would sooner watch a Sumo tournament.

Discovered and nurtured by the director that gave us Ong Bak, this is Yanin’s first film, and already the quality of her fights are of the same level as your above-average Jackie Chan movie. Her moves aren’t so fluid yet, after each arse she kicks, she would move back into a ready stance before moving on to the next arse to kick. But that’s just a minor nit-pick. The fights are real enough, and incredibly exciting. During credits, you’ll see all the NG scenes, and watch the quantity of ice-packs consumed on the set. Yanin even took a kick to the face that tore her eye-lid. That, on top of various sprains and pains.

Yanin doesn’t have the sex appeal of Zhang Ziyi. She can’t act as well as Haley Joel Osment as the autistic child. But I’ve never seen so much kick-assery, pound for pound, concentrated into a 43kg frame. Will be tracking her career with great eagerness.

Many of the scenes were choreographed to amaze. They may not make sense some of the time. But they are amazing to watch. And the fight in a butcher house, all the henchmen are bare-chested so they can’t wear hidden chest-armour. Yet the kicks are connecting with equal vigour. Watching the near complete disregard to personal injury is…. ~painful~.