These woods are lovely, dark and deep

The Cabin in the Woods
My rating:




For a while there, it looked like this movie would never come out. It was originally meant to be released in 2010, then delayed because some genius thought of converting it to 3D (which thankfully never happened), then further delayed when its studio MGM filed for bankruptcy. Which I'm sure was really painful for fans of Joss Whedon, who wrote the screenplay along with director Drew Goddard and was the creative force behind the much-loved TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. I am none too familiar with the first two, but I loved Firefly and its follow-up movie Serenity; I can understand why he has such an extremely loyal fanbase. (Who tend to be pretty belligerent in defending him, as I have discovered when I criticised the dodgy Mandarin in Firefly.) So when the hype began to build among Whedonites for The Cabin in the Woods, which has finally gotten its theatrical release, I figured it would be worth a watch.

And... whoa.

Five college students - Dana (Kristen Connolly), Curt (Chris Hemsworth), Jules (Anna Hutchinson), Holden (Jesse Williams) and Marty (Fran Kranz) - go up to the mountains to spend the weekend at a deserted cabin by a lake. There, they encounter horrors that kill them off one by one - but little do they know that their every move is being observed and controlled by Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford), two dull-looking bureaucrats who are plotting their gruesome murders. And who are part of what looks like an entire secret facility dedicated to killing them according to a plan, right down to the creepy redneck (Tim de Zarn) they encounter on their way to the cabin. And all to what purpose... remains to be seen.

Whoa - this is one devilishly clever movie. It goes places I've never seen a movie go before, except for what I've read in horror novels and short stories. In fact, there's a specific subgenre of horror it delves into whose name I can't even reveal for fear of spoiling the effect. There's a lot I can't reveal about the storyline, because half the pleasure is the delicious realisation that there is much, much more going on under the surface - literally, as it so happens. Which makes this a hard review to write.

So let's talk about that surface. As you might have guessed from the synopsis, it starts off as the most clichéd kind of horror movie ever, in which a bunch of attractive, dumb and horny kids go to a secluded spot only to get themselves bloodily murdered. But right from the beginning, there is also a mysterious corporation not only watching their every move, but also unleashing murderous horrors on them, and even influencing their behaviour in insidious ways. Clearly there's more to this than your typical slasher flick, but before we find that out, we're treated to plenty of Whedon's trademark snarky humour from Sitterson and Hadley - as well as the vicious irony of a banal office environment juxtaposed with the pain and death being dealt to a group of innocent young people.

Because what we have here is a clever and devastating critique on the horror genre, in particular the ones in which the torture and mutilation of nubile young morons is the whole selling point. It wouldn't surprise me if that's exactly what Whedon is intending: a subtle judgment of the kind of horror fan who loves watching attractive people suffer, and for whom the gorier the mutilation, the better. But it's subtle, and not at all off-putting; in fact, horror fans are more likely to be delighted at a late-stage sequence that appears to pay homage to a dozen different horror subgenres and franchises. That part had me grinning like a 12-year-old, and is indicative of the movie as a whole; it is equal parts smart, scathing and fun, and juggles all three remarkably well.

What it isn't, however, is emotionally engaging. If it were, it would've earned 4-½ stars easily, but the principal five college kids in the cabin never become compelling characters, despite Whedon's valiant attempts to humanise them. It doesn't help that they're all played by unfamiliar faces whose credits are probably largely in TV, and whose bland good looks don't make up for the dullness of their performances. (On the other hand, Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford are terrific, likely because their characters are much more fun to watch.) Oh yeah, Chris Hemsworth is in this; yes, Thor himself, in a movie he clearly made before his star-making turn as Marvel's Norse god superhero. But here, all his considerable charm is absent. As clever as Whedon's simultaneous subversion and aversion of horror clichés are, he hasn't quite succeeded at creating protagonists actually worth caring about.

But the brilliantly twisty storyline makes this more than worth a watch - heck, it makes it required viewing for any horror fan, or even anyone with a vague interest in horror movies. It's criminal that this film sat gathering dust in MGM's vaults for so long; guess we have the combination of Hemsworth's newly-minted star status and Whedon's being tapped for the directorial gig on The Avengers to thank for finally getting to watch it. I totally get why Whedon has such a rabid fanbase - he's a really, really good storyteller, whether as director or screenwriter. (And even if he didn't pull it off here, he's long since proven his mettle at creating great characters in his other works.) If he keeps making more great movies - or if I ever get around to catching Buffy, Angel or Dollhouse on DVD - I might just join the ranks of the Whedonites myself.

NEXT REVIEW: Lockout
Expectations: Escape from New York in space! Woohoo!

A Peter Bay-I mean, Michael Berg-I mean, Peter Berg film

Battleship
My rating:




Yes, they finally did it: they finally made a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster movie based on a boardgame. Which is a thing we have been threatened with for a few years now, and if this one succeeds at the U.S. box-office, that long-dormant Ridley Scott-directed Monopoly movie might finally get off the ground. Apparently there are enough seemingly-sane people who see nothing silly about this anymore, so we might as well grin and bear it (and in my case, watch it and review it). Hasbro, the toy company that makes the boardgame, actually has a logo animation that played after Universal Pictures' in this movie, like they're an actual studio and everything now. This is a thing that has happened, and all that is left to us is to see what kind of movies they actually make.

What they've made here is a Michael Bay-wannabe that's actually somewhat better than most actual Michael Bay movies.

Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is a ne'er-do-well who somehow lucked into dating the extremely hot Sam (Brooklyn Decker) - who happens to be the daughter of U.S. Navy Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson), commander of the Pacific Fleet. After joining the Navy for a few years at the behest of his brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgård), Hopper has made Lieutenant, but his continually poor impulse control lead to him brawling with visiting Japanese Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) on the eve of RIMPAC, the world's biggest multi-national naval exercise. When the fleet sets out, he is serving on board the destroyer John Paul Jones while his brother commands the Sampson - both of which, along with Nagata's ship Myoko, is sent to investigate a UFO falling into the Pacific Ocean near the coast of Hawaii. The UFO is in fact an invading alien force that sets up a massive force field over the Hawaiian islands and proceeds to attack the city. Meanwhile, Sam and a disabled Army vet named Mick (Gregory D. Gadson) are hiking in the mountains when they discover the aliens have taken over a communications array in order to send a signal to their home planet. Along with Zapata (Hamish Linklater), a scientist at the array, they have to stop them, while Hopper battles the main alien fleet.

Remember when I asked how dumb this movie might be? Well guys, it is pretty dumb. It starts with an animated sequence demonstrating the term "Goldilocks planet", i.e. a planet that can support life due to its position within the habitable zone, by quick-panning to first a planet that's too hot, then too cold - because we wouldn't have understood the concept if we were just told about it. Then it trots out that old saw about how an encounter with aliens would be like the Spaniards meeting the Indians, only we are the Indians. (In those exact words, too.) It's weirdly xenophobic; there's really no reason why a species advanced enough to develop interstellar travel wouldn't also understand the value of peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with another sentient race, Hollywood. But what takes the cake is when it depicts ordinary radio transmissions as - I shit you not - a friggin' laser beam shooting into the sky.

Which is the kind of thing you expect to see in a Michael Bay movie. Which is exactly what Battleship wants to be - only it's directed by Peter Berg. Now, Berg is not a dumb filmmaker; he is actually capable of making an intelligent film, case in point, 2007's The Kingdom. Aping another director seems beneath him, yet this movie is definitely, definitely, Michael Bay lite. When it's not blowing things up in an orgy of pyrotechnics, it's being a shamelessly cheesy celebration of American military heroism. Never more so than when a group of WW2 naval veterans just happen to be picturesquely perched all over the deck of the titular battleship, just before they are asked - and agree, of course - to fight for their country one last time. But first another group of them walk towards the camera in slow motion, because of course. Even the soundtrack has Michael Bay all over it - or specifically, Steve Jablonsky, he who also did the Transformers movies and peppered this one with a bunch of classic rock songs (of course).

But it's fun. Seriously, it is. It doesn't reach the heights of dumb fun that Fast Five does, and there's a lot that'll make you roll your eyes, but there's also a lot of stuff asploding to enjoy. I don't recall seeing an action movie involving naval warships before, and their huge-ass (and very loud) guns provide something fresh in terms of good ol' fashioned action thrills. Turns out Michael Bay lite is actually more palatable than, um, concentrated Michael Bay - there are no annoying racist stereotypes, no tonal whiplash between serious drama and silly comedy, no self-indulgently long and tedious action sequences, and no palpable disdain for the audience. The expositional scenes tend to drag, but the action bits are coherently and effectively put together (and did I mention loud?). It holds together as a movie far better than anything in Bay's filmography since The Rock (his last good one).

Still, it's dumb. If you're wondering if it features any allusions to its boardgame; first of all, no, no one utters the line "You sunk my battleship!" There is however a sequence in which Hopper and crew track the enemy ships on a grid and fire on them by calling out grid coordinates. The movie plays this scene completely seriously, which'll only work on someone who's never played the boardgame. And of all the recent alien invasion movies, this one takes the cake for Dumbest Aliens. They don't seem to have a plan at all, other than that their communications ship crashed and burned and that's why they need to take over one of our radio arrays. And also, they'll wreak some cinematically spectacular destruction on an army base and an elevated freeway just for the hell of it.

You don't expect compelling characters from this, and you won't get it; Hopper's excuse for a character arc is pure cliché. Taylor Kitsch and Tadanobu Asano also don't seem to get the kind of broadly melodramatic performance that this movie needs (Asano in particular comes off as wooden, which he is most assuredly not if you've seen any of his Japanese films). Oh, and Rihanna is in this too, making her film debut as one of three sidekick sailors under Hopper's command - a role that tests her thespian talents not at all. To be honest, Bay is better at getting his actors to go as apeshit as his movies always are - but overall, Battleship is a case where the imitation beats the original. It's frankly quite blatant how closely this movie rides Bay's coattails, so much so that I wonder if Berg had his hands tied by some overzealous Hasbro execs. But there ain't a thing wrong with the Michael Bay brand of cheese 'n 'splosions, as long as it's not the Michael Bay brand of stupid.

NEXT REVIEW: The Cabin in the Woods
Expectations: horror yikes, but Joss Whedon yay

Such pretty pretty flowers

The Flowers of War
My rating:




I sometimes worry about my credibility as a film critic. Almost all the movies I review are multiplex blockbuster fare (or crappy local films); I hardly ever watch any more, um, substantial stuff. I have a pretty big pile of unwatched DVDs that include highly-acclaimed and award-winning titles from years ago. In my defense, the local cinema releases keep me busy enough, and I certainly catch any critically buzzed-about film that actually gets released here as much as I can. Which brings us to The Flowers of War, Zhang Yimou's magnum opus set during the Rape of Nanjing, and China's entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the last Academy Awards - although it didn't make the shortlist. But a Zhang Yimou film starring Christian Bale, making it the closest thing to a Hollywood Zhang Yimou film? I couldn't miss it.

Besides, most Chinese audiences will probably think it's a very important film. An oh so very very important film.

It is the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the city of Nanjing has just fallen to the invading Japanese army. An American mortician named John Miller (Christian Bale) heads through the ruined city towards the Winchester Cathedral, where he has been contracted to bury the head priest - but the church is only manned by a boy named George Chen (Huang Tianyuan) who tells him there is no money to pay him, as well as a group of Catholic convent girls hiding out from the Japanese. And shortly afterwards, they are joined by a gaggle of prostitutes from the city's red-light district - also, Major Li (Tong Dawei), a lone surviving Chinese soldier, holes up outside to prepare an almost-certainly-hopeless defense. At first, the drunken Miller wants nothing to do with the refugees, even though one student named Shu (Zhang Xinyi) has a crush on him, and the de facto leader of the prostitutes, Yu Mo (Ni Ni) attempts to seduce him into helping them flee the city. But when the Japanese break through and threaten the girls with brutal rape and murder, Miller is finally moved into heroism - even as an entire army bent on ravaging their city stands between them and safety.

In the aforementioned big pile of unwatched DVDs is City of Life and Death, which I had picked up on the strength of LoveHKFilm's and McGarmott's reviews. No, I still haven't watched it - but from both their reviews, I expect it's the better film about the Rape of Nanjing. A lot of what's been written about it sounds like it does a lot of things right where The Flowers of War went wrong. But first, let me reassure you that this is not a bad movie. Zhang Yimou does not make bad movies (even though he does not always achieve the greatness he aims for, as in this case). This is a beautifully mounted production, clearly costing lots of renminbi and looks like it was worth every yuan. Zhang is an exacting filmmaker, and gorgeous, precisely-composed shots clearly have the stamp of the man who directed Hero. The man clearly knows how to make an effectively manipulative melodrama; it is never not a compelling watch, and many scenes evoke the strong emotions Zhang is going for.

The problem is that this is a film about the Rape of Nanjing. One of the most horrifying atrocities in recent history, and still a highly emotionally-charged subject for every living Chinese. "Beautiful" and "gorgeous" are not exactly appropriate words for it - yet this is the approach Zhang took. I knew the film was suspect in the opening scenes, when we saw the last-ditch defense by the ragged remnants of the Chinese garrison against the invading Japanese. It was an effectively choreographed action scene, but I kept wondering why we were spending so much time on this when the movie's supposed to be about a group of refugees in a church. There's also a subplot involving the prostitutes who supposedly worked at a red light district with a thousand-year-old history, which the film wanted to romanticise while at the same time allowing the prostitutes to perform a heroic sacrifice that both affirms and redeems their ancient traditions. This we know because they say so, in just so many highly on-the-nose words - but more puzzling than that is a weird fantasy sequence in which they sashay down the church aisle in slow motion while a disco ball glitters above them.

It's a somewhat stylised film, is what I'm trying to say, and the stylisation tends to undercut the gravity of the real-life horrors that it means to depict. And even when it's not resorting to slow-mo or fantasy sequences or carefully-composed explosions of colours, it tends to play everything too broadly. The students all cry and scream hysterically, and although you can't quite expect 13-year-old girls to be stoic when facing gang-rape, their histrionics gets a bit much. On the other hand, the prostitutes (the ones not named Yu Mo, that is) bitch and whine constantly about their jewellery, their er hu strings, their pet cat, and other trivialities that they stupidly put themselves in danger for. This brings us to the rape scene - because you can't make a movie about this historical event without showing that - which is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen on the big screen. It's a grisly fate for a character whom the film allows us to get to know (I'm hiding her identity for fear of spoilers, but really, once she leaves the safety of the cathedral, there's a horrible inevitability to what awaits her).

The end result is that you're horrified at the movie, not at the actual historical Rape of Nanjing; instead of feeling the weight of the real-life tragedy that happened just 55 years ago, you walk out just feeling nonplussed about what you saw. Or rather, I did - perhaps the primarily Chinese audience with me was all "Every Chinese must watch this! We must never forget what happened to our people! Oh the inhumanity!" I'm guessing the film worked great with them, which is why I'm giving it 3-½ stars. Me, I think the subject matter warranted a more restrained approach. Zhang has been accused of propaganda, which I can see; you'll not find a more cackingly, demonically evil bunch of villains than the Japanese soldiers in this movie, and not even the appearance of the seemingly more honourable Colonel Hasegawa (Atsuro Watabe) will mitigate that portrayal. What I thought was more apparent is that Zhang is guilty of exploitation. Not for the purpose of titillation - that would've been unforgivable - but exploitation of the horrors of the events to manipulate our emotions.

Oh, and I haven't even mentioned Christian Bale. His performance is expectedly fine, but his very presence raises the question Roger Ebert brought up: why does this story need a white person to be our viewpoint character? The answer is that this is a China production intended to be China's entry to the Oscars; the powers-that-be want to sell Chinese culture to the West, and Zhang Yimou is their pitchman. And while a film about a recent historical atrocity ought to make for a worthwhile product, the ends appear to have unduly influenced the means. It's trying too hard. (And I could've told them the typically overblown Asian style of melodrama doesn't really fly with Western audiences.) Still, flaws and all, it's a worthwhile watch, if you can stomach a really unpleasant rape/murder scene. And Ni Ni's big screen debut is pretty amazing as Yu Mo, the most seductive of the prostitutes. (The rest of whom, like the schoolgirls not named Shu, get barely any characterisation aside from misplaced priorities in a time of war.) The white guy even gets to sleep with her, so there's that too.

NEXT REVIEW: Battleship
Expectations: big, loud and dumb - question is, how dumb?

Say TMBF, did you go to the Bersih 3.0 rally?

Of course I did.

A cartoon turned live-action, but still pretty flat

Mirror Mirror
My rating:




Due to my inexcusably long delay in writing my last review, I almost skipped this one; nowadays it seems like all I ever do is scramble to catch up with the newest releases. But seeing as there's another Snow White movie opening later this summer, I suppose it behooves me to catch the first of 2012's two competing modern takes on the classic fairytale, so I can compare them. (Hollywood parallel development always seems to happen in twos, e.g. two volcano movies, two big-space-rock disaster movies, two animated insect movies, etc.) Also because I'd missed out on Tarsem Singh's previous movie from earlier this year, The Immortals - and only because, again, I take so damn long to write these reviews. It was pretty damn tempting to just forego Mirror Mirror and pick Battleship, however.

But it would've been nice if the movie gave me a better reward for my choice.

Snow White (Lily Collins), the princess of her kingdom, lives with her stepmother the Queen (Julia Roberts), a cruel, petty and vain tyrant who has ruled the land since Snow White's father the King disappeared years ago. On Snow White's 18th birthday, she ventures for the first time in years outside the palace walls, and witnesses the suffering of her people - but this transgression turns the Queen's barely-tolerated irritation with her into outright enmity. The Queen orders her manservant Brighton (Nathan Lane) to take her into the forest and kill her, but she is found by a group of seven dwarf bandits - Grimm (Danny Woodburn), Butcher (Martin Klebba), Wolf (Sebastian Saraceno), Napoleon (Jordan Prentice), Half Pint (Mark Povinelli), Grub (Joe Gnoffo) and Chuckles (Ronald Lee Clark). Meanwhile, the visiting Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer) from a neighbouring kingdom has already met and fallen for Snow White - and has also met the bandits, under much less genial circumstances - but the Queen has her sights set on marrying him as the solution to her financial problems.

The only Tarsem film I've seen to date is The Cell, of which I remember little other than some spectacularly fantastical visual imagery that also has a pretty big streak of macabre. Mirror Mirror is also very pretty to look at, but Tarsem has also made a much more light-hearted and kid-friendly movie this time round. In fact, the shortest and sweetest description of it would be that it's a live-action cartoon - specifically, a DreamWorks-ish animated film in the vein of the Shrek series. The broad comic sensibility is there, as is the willful disregard of realism (this kingdom apparently consists of a palace and one village) and the snarky modern sensibility to a classic fairy tale. But frankly, to compare it to a DreamWorks production is both damning it with faint praise as well as overrating it.

Let's get into the specifics. The movie is almost entirely driven by its performances (certainly not by its plot, which is kinda messy), and there are two standouts. Julia Roberts always struck me as a curious choice to play fairy tale villain; the closest she came was arguably Charlie Wilson's War, which I enjoyed, but thought Roberts was terrible in it. She fares somewhat better here, in that she's clearly having fun in the role, a prerequisite for any actor playing a broadly comic scenery-chewing villain. Still, chewing scenery has never been her forte (and if I were to be honest in what I think of her, I'd say acting isn't her forte). I'd say pretty much any other female actor of her generation could've had just as much fun playing it and done a better job to boot. (When I said "standout", I didn't necessarily mean they were good; just that they made the biggest impression in the movie.)

The other is Armie Hammer, playing Prince Charming Alcott. There are hints of a role-reversal here, with Snow White coming to his rescue a couple of times and him being somewhat beleaguered throughout the movie (the bandits get the jump on him twice, leading to him showing up at the Queen's palace sans shirt - twice), but it never really commits to a girl-power interpretation of the tale; it doesn't help that in their one swordfight scene together, Alcott toys with the clearly ineffectual Snow White like a big bully. And then there's the part where he succumbs to a Love Puppy potion, which has him panting and licking other people and boo-hoo-hooing when he's away from his "master" like a literal puppy. What marks these two standout performances is that both performers really commit to them; Hammer certainly does in his puppy scenes. He's clearly enjoying himself, but turning him into a laughingstock is a curious - and dubious - choice.

And then there's Lily Collins, who was apparently chosen just because she looks the part. Snow White is dull, both due to Collins' performance as well as the writing. She has zero chemistry with Hammer, and their romance never stirs the heart. The seven dwarfs are fun to watch, but they're still a collection of caricatures rather than characters in their own right. There's also a late-third-act cameo by Sean Bean, and it'd be a spoiler to reveal who he plays (although it's also pretty predictable) - but the man looks positively embarrassed, tasked with injecting some gravitas into a movie that just spent 90 minutes having none. After all, this is a movie in which Nathan Lane is turned into a cockroach, then laments the fact that he had his modesty outraged by a grasshopper.

Okay, yes, it's entertaining. Yes, it's charming. Yes, its good-naturedly frothy fun is hard to resist. But it's all quite shallow; it's only funny enough to raise a chuckle but not hearty laughs, and only sweet enough to raise a genial smile but not genuine emotions. I couldn't shake the feeling that if this had been an animated film, it would've been better. It would've had more gags, prettier visuals, even better acting; it always seems as if it's being held back by the limitations of live-action productions. But even if it were animated, it would only prove that Shrek (at least the first one) did it better, and also had enough imagination to take on more than just one fairy tale. And even the Shrek series has been overshadowed recently by Disney, the grand master of modern animated fairy tale adaptations - with an assist from the Pixar brain trust. That's what I meant by damning with faint praise; it's reminiscent of DreamWorks, but not Pixar.

NEXT REVIEW: The Flowers of War
Expectations: White Hero saves Poor Pitiful Asians!

Ray Harryhausen would be disappointed (perhaps, even wrathful?)

Wrath of the Titans
My rating:




I do believe this is a rarity; a sequel to a remake of an older film that never had a sequel. Which is somewhat trickier to pull off than rebooting an older series of movies, e.g. horror franchise reboots such as 2003's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the Hollywood version of The Grudge. Of course, every major studio release these days hopes to be a franchise-starter, including remakes, but the only successful one in recent memory is Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven. (Is anyone still waiting for a sequel to the 2003 version of The Italian Job that's supposed to be titled The Brazilian Job?) So Wrath of the Titans joins that rarefied company, and in so doing presents an intriguing prospect - it's as if it were a sequel to the original 1981 Clash of the Titans, as well as its own 2010 predecessor.

Too bad it's not one that could do justice to either.

Ten years after defeating the Kraken, Perseus (Sam Worthington) is now a simple fisherman and widowed father to his son Helius (John Bell). The Greek gods, ruled by his father Zeus (Liam Neeson), have grown weaker due to fewer mortals worshiping them - and this in turn has weakened the walls of Tartarus, the underground prison where the Titan Kronos has been held for centuries. When Zeus' brother Hades (Ralph Fiennes), god of the underworld, and his son Ares (Édgar Ramírez), god of war, betray him to drain his power and free Kronos, Perseus is compelled to undertake the quest to save his father and prevent Kronos from destroying the world. He is aided by Andromeda (Rosamund Pike) the princess-turned-queen whom he once rescued, as well as Agenor (Toby Kebbell), another half-god-half-mortal son of Poseidon (Danny Huston). And he must seek the help of the "Fallen One" - Hephaestus (Bill Nighy), a former god himself and the divine craftsman who forged the weapons of the gods.

My 3-½ star review of Clash of the Titans 2010 is probably not one of my more popular opinions; the movie scored 29% on RottenTomatoes, and even the usual gang of idiots on Lowyat.net were disappointed. I know I liked it because I wrote so, and what I wrote was that it satisfied my sword-and-sorcery jones like no other movie in recent years. But two years later, I find that I can barely remember a thing about it. (Which should be just about right for a 3-½ star rating, i.e. good but not particularly memorably so.) Wrath of the Titans is disappointing enough that it reflects badly on its predecessor. Now I know there's a completely new director and team of screenwriters behind it, and if Louis Leterrier had come back for the sequel, we might've gotten a better movie. Still, after coming out of this one, I can't help thinking I had overrated the previous one.

I am unfamiliar with the works of screenwriters Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson, but the screenplay that's credited to them here features some of the most howlingly on-the-nose dialogue I'll probably hear all year. F'rinstance, Zeus, Hades and Ares pay a visit to Tartarus, the prison for Titans that they built to house Kronos, and when they arrive one of them says something like, "Tartarus, the great prison where the Titan Kronos is imprisoned." Wow, wasn't that helpful? I say this on a blog, short for "web log", which is published on the internet, the great information superhighway that everyone can access. The movie is full of dialogue like this, and it's never not funny each time. And by "funny" I mean embarrassingly bad.

In my review of Clash, I said I liked it because it was fun. I believe the lack of fun is the main flaw of this one; there's an all-too-sombre tone throughout that's just impossible to take seriously given the terrible dialogue. But frankly, it's not just the dialogue. Jonathan Liebesman's direction is terrible. Nothing that's not an action scene works in this movie - not the characters, not the plot, not the human emotions, not the pacing, and not even the acting. Sam Worthington is no better than before, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes look honestly embarrassed to be here, Toby Kebbell continues his streak of forgettable supporting roles in mediocre fantasy movies, Édgar Ramírez is downright terrible, and even Rosamund Pike - one of the hotter recent Bond girls - is bad in exactly the way a committed actor working under poor direction is bad. There are attempts at a subtext of family drama, what with Zeus and Hades being brothers, Kronos being their father, Ares and Perseus being half-brothers, and the former being jealous of the latter while betraying their father, all of which come across as muddled and laughably convoluted. Almost everything in this movie simply does not work.

The sole exception being the special effects, which earns it its half-star. It won't spoil anything to say that Kronos, when freed, turns out to be a thousand-foot-tall giant lava monster (because that's him in the poster, after all), and he's a pretty damn good-looking thousand-foot-tall giant lava monster. The climactic battle against him is the movie's biggest saving grace; he looks gloriously, spectacularly real, insomuch as a thousand-foot-tall giant lava monster can look "real". Oh, and the underground labyrinth leading to Tartarus, a maze of constantly-shifting giant stone block and walls that our heroes have to traverse, is also a neat bit of production design. On the whole, the SFX team are the only guys on the crew that earn their paychecks; the various CGI creatures look great. It's a pity that, with the exception of the thousand-foot-ta Kronos scene, every other monster fight is lackluster and unthrilling - and yes, unfun.

But what's perhaps most galling is that the original 1981 Clash was a labour of love for Ray Harryhausen, the special-effects pioneer who invented the stop-motion process. It was the last film he worked on, and each of the creatures in that film - from Calibos to the Kraken - bore the mark of a man who truly loved weird critters, designing them and bringing them to life onscreen. And now, this sequel to its remake treats them as obligatory CGI effects with none of the personality and charm of Harryhausen's creations; even if Wrath's visual effects team channeled some of Harryhausen's passion into their work, Liebesman's asinine direction undoes all of it. James Berardinelli had it right; this is what Lord of the Rings would look like if it were directed by Michael Bay. Which probably makes my 2-½-star rating consistent with what I think of Bay, but to be honest, I'm already wondering if I'm giving it too much credit.

NEXT REVIEW: Mirror Mirror
Expectations: round one in the Battle of the Snow Whites

Zizan Razak Buat Perangai Bodoh: The Movie

Jangan Pandang-Pandang
My rating:




Kembali semula TMBF mengulas filem Melayu tempatan! Dah lama saya tak menonton filem Melayu arus perdana, tidak termasuk Bunohan yang boleh dikatakan filem arthouse tahap antarabangsa, dan juga Cinta Kura-Kura dimana saya diundang ke tayangan perdananya. Sebenarnya saya cukup berasa serba salah, kerana adalah menjadi mission statement TMBF untuk mengulas semua filem tempatan yang ditayang di panggung. Melihat trafik blog ini yang pasti meningkat setiap kali saya terbitkan ulasan filem Melayu, jelas inilah catatan yang paling popular dikalangan pembaca. Ampun maaf diminta kerana banyak filem tempatan yang tak sempat saya tonton.

Jadi diharap anda puas hati dengan ulasan filem Jangan Pandang-Pandang ini. Sebab saya pula langsung tak puas hati ketika menontonnya.

Lima pelajar kolej, iaitu Ajis (Zizan Razak), Yaya (Sara Ali), Ben (Nas-T), Diana (Anith Aqilah) dan Marsha (Miera Liyana), diberi tugasan oleh pensyarah mereka (Jaafar Onn) untuk mengembara ke Gua Bewah dan mencari artifak-artifak bersejarah yang masih ada di situ. Ajis dan Yaya dulu berpasangan, tetapi telah putus hubungan kerana Ajis bodoh nak mampus main kayu tiga; manakala Ben pula jatuh hati dengan Marsha yang penuh misteri. Marsha diterima masuk kedalam kumpulan mereka kerana dia mempunyai sebuah peta lama tinggalan moyangnya yang menunjukkan jalan rahsia kedalam gua tersebut. Lima sekawan itu menyewa bot dari Abang Bob (Azhar Sulaiman) untuk merentasi tasik menuju ke gua itu, tapi gua dan hutan disekelilingnya rupanya berhantu - dan kelima-lima mereka pula rupanya langsung tidak berotak.

Apa kejadah dengan filem-filem arahan Ahmad Idham yang bertajuk Jangan Pandang ni? Yang pertama ialah Jangan Pandang Belakang dari tahun 2007, yang setahu saya ia filem seram yang serius. Diikuti pula dengan Jangan Pandang Belakang Congkak pada tahun 2009 serta sekuelnya setahun kemudian, kedua-dua merupakan filem seram komedi. Sekarang keluar pula Jangan Pandang-Pandang yang juga seram tapi lawak. Keempat-empatnya tiada kaitan antara satu sama lain, malah plot filem ini pun tiada kaitan dengan tajuknya. Satu-satunya faktor sepunya ialah kesemua diarah oleh Ahmad Idham. Apakah Ahmad Idham percaya dua patah perkataan itu ada tuah baginya, dan adakah ini kepercayaan syirik?

Kalau filem ini bertuah di pasaran pun bukan bermaksud ia filem yang baik. Ia sebuah lagi kenderaan bintang (star vehicle) bagi Zizan Razak, yang juga membawa kejayaan yang tidak wajar kepada filem Hantu Bonceng tahun lepas. Wataknya kali ini jauh lebih bangang dan menjengkelkan; si Ajis ni adalah moron paling agung dalam barisan watak yang tak kurang ke-moron-annya. Dahlah dungu, bongkak pulak tu, asyik memegahkan dirinya sebagai ketua kumpulan, dan setiap keputusan yang dibuatnya hanya menggagalkan tugasan mereka dan menyesatkan lagi kumpulan itu dalam hutan belantara. Yang paling sukar dipercayai ialah, cerita ini menampilkan watak Ajis sebagai hero.

Jadi yang paling dungu disini ialah, tak lain dan tak bukan Tuan Pengarah Ahmad Idham - oh ya, juga termasuk Tuan Penulis Skrip Meor Shariman (yang buat saya malu kerana memuji hasil kerjanya dalam filem Senjakala). Segala perbuatan watak-watak tidak masuk akal, sebab jalan ceritanya pun tak masuk akal; di pertengahan jalan, kumpulan pelajar ini terus givap nak menyiapkan tugasan mereka tanpa sebab yang munasabah. Kemudian semasa sesat di hutan, datanglah babak demi babak bertembung hantu yang tiada sebab atau makna. Entah mengapa, perasaan marah Yaya terhadap boiprennya yang curang mula reda, walaupun Ajis tak pernah kesal atau taubat kecurangannya. Yang paling membengangkan ialah plot twist di saat-saat akhir, yang sebenarnya dicanggah oleh adegan awal. Rupanya Ahmad Idham atau Meor Shariman sendiri lupa apa yang sudah ditulis/difilemkan.

Namun saya rasa mereka memang tak endah semua itu. Plot yang logik, cerita yang digarap dengan teliti, watak yang dibina dengan bernas dan berpembawaan, semua itu boleh buang asalkan ada cukup masa untuk Zizan membolot skrin. Malah jenaka yang sepatutnya ada dalam sebuah skrip komedi pun tiada, kerana memang ketara Zizan sedang meng-improv-kan segala dialognya. Tak kira dia Raja Lawak ke, Maharaja Lawak ke, bakatnya bukan dalam bidang komedi improv sebenarnya. Dialognya bangang, bukan lucu. Hanya bila beliau diberi skrip yang benar-benar kelakar, baru lakonannya berkesan - contohnya Cinta Kura-Kura. (Atau mungkin juga saudara Zizan ni ibarat Jack Black; kalau hanya suaranya yang kedengaran, boleh tahan, tapi bila mukanya muncul terus mengundang penumbuk.)

Tapi tak baik saya salahkan Zizan atas keburukan filem ini. Saya juga takkan salahkan Sara Ali yang telah membazirkan bakat hebatnya dalam filem buruk ini. (Jujur kata, wajahnya yang kiut gila babi sajalah yang saya suka dalam filem ini. Oh Cik Sara, you tau tak nafsu hati I milik you??) Yang salah memangnya Ahmad Idham dengan Meor Shariman - tetapi memandangkan penonton-penonton lain yang gelak tak henti-henti dengan telatah Zizan, salah perlu dikongsi juga dengan penonton. Sebab inilah TMBF dah malas nak ulas filem tempatan. Bukan hanya kerana hampir semua filem-filemnya teruk - juga kerana kalau tahap citarasa penonton tempatan begitu memalukan, hapuslah segala harapan untuk dunia filem kita maju. Malah filem macam ni yang menciplak muzik tema Indiana Jones pun boleh diterima.

NEXT REVIEW: Wrath of the Titans
Expectations: will it be as good as I like it as much as the first?