Forbidden (to make a movie that looks like horror but isn't scary)

Dilarang Masuk
My rating:




Our local filmmakers clearly have a problem with fresh and original ideas - namely, no one has any. Which isn't unique to Malaysia actually; Hollywood plays the bandwagon-jumping game aaaall the tiiiime, as does any reasonably-sized entertainment industry. The thing is, most countries' film industries are much bigger than ours, so they usually have several bandwagons to jump on. But here, there are only two: horror movies and horror-comedy movies. (Which isn't exactly two, more like one and a variant.) And whether serious-scary or funny-scary, they'll always have the same old same old: the long-haired jembalang with bad skin, the evil black magic practitioner, the wise old imam who busts ghosts with the Power of Islam, and the lesson for all good Muslims that this amalan syirik stuff is totally not cool. (But watching movies about it is. Keep watching!)

So along comes Dilarang Masuk, a movie that tries to be fresh and original - and unfortunately, turns out mediocre.

Fatia (Shiqin Kamal), Ronnie (Azma Aizal Yusoof), Juli (Isma Hanum Hussein) and Bad (Muniff Isa) are four friends who get lost on a hike, and find an old abandoned house in which they take shelter. But inside, they find some very foreboding things: a pair of long-dead bodies, a very large stash of money, and a still-loaded gun. It soon becomes clear that something very bad has taken place in this house, and its echoes are returning to haunt the four, whose friendships hide simmering tensions of their own.

Well, that's a very short synopsis. That's 'cos it's a very simple premise. And really, that's one of the good things about it; four characters, one spooky location, lots of interpersonal tension, throw it all in a pot and let it stew. It's also a much more universal horror story, involving the ghosts of those who have suffered and were wronged, and those wrongs coming home to roost. I say universal, because there's not a hint of Malay traditional black magic about it - no bomohs or pendatangs or sakas here. And I also say this is a good thing, because ghost stories of this sort are fundamentally moral stories; sinners pay the price for their sins, and victims find peace when justice is done. Your typical Malay horror movie, for all the lip service it pays to "ajaran agama", rarely has anything moral about it.

Unfortunately, it's not scary. I don't know what writer-director Jeffrey Chiang was thinking, because he made a movie with a spooky abandoned house and two gory dead bodies and it's not scary. It's not because he's a bad director, because he isn't; he knows how to shoot that house to maximum atmospheric effect, and his production designer knows how to dress the place up too. It's that there just aren't enough scary scenes in his script. There's plenty of exploring-the-spooky-house-in-the-dark scenes, but they rarely ever build up to anything horrifying. I'm not a big fan of jump-scares - heck, I'm very much a non-fan of jump-scares - but a few of them were exactly what this movie needed. Yet it seemed like Chiang very deliberately chose not to go to that well. The film is not scary by design.

Dude, that's totally gonna kill your box-office chances. The Malay viewers I watched this movie with were all restless and hooting with derision at every other scene. And honestly, if this were a genuinely good movie, I'd defend it to the ends of the earth - I do that, you know. But there's no excuse for making a dull movie - not even if you've got an Important Issue to talk about and a Message that you want People To Hear. I won't reveal what they are since it's a bit of a spoiler, but it is heavy-handed and po-faced and cheesy as hell. I appreciate that you have noble intentions, but... what was that philosophical discussion between Fatia and [mystery character played by Esma Daniel] all about? None of that dialogue meant anything. It was just a boring scene, and the audience's reaction? Hoots. Of derision.

Y'know what else they were hoots-of-derision-ing about? The characters. They start out as nothing more than stereotypes: The Jock (Ronnie is Fatiah's boyfriend, and an asshole), The Bimbo (Juli is Fatiah's BFF, but she's having an affair with Ronnie), The Nerd (Bad is in love with Fatiah) and The Good Girl (Fatiah is... a nice person). The fact that their characterizations are so shallow makes them all downright annoying; Fatiah is a moron for dating a jerk like Ronnie, Bad is creepy and pathetic in his affections for Fatiah, and Ronnie and Juli can barely keep their pants on long enough to hide it from Fatiah. Worst of all is that they engage in that most reviled of horror clichés: going off alone in the dark. Derision-filled hoots! Even Malaysians know this is stupid!

The sad part is that later on, some of these characters developed in unexpected ways. Because of that stash of ill-gotten cash, which of course presents a moral challenge to these four knuckleheads. This is neat, it's definitely something that Malay movies don't do enough of, and it's too bad the derisively-hooting audience didn't appreciate it - but really, it was too little too late. Even if the cast was generally up to the task; seriously, Azma Yusoof, Isma Hanum and Muniff Isa were all decent-to-good, and if they were annoying it was because of the way their characters were written. Except for Shiqin Kamal. Not that Fatiah is written any better (protip: having a character that doesn't do anything bad does not automatically make him/her admirable. Or even interesting), but Shiqin is decidedly not up to the task. She was a charisma-free block of wood in Lagenda Budak Setan, and she's no better here.

So that's this movie in a nutshell. It does a few things right: it has solid production values (including original music, hallelujah!), it makes a decent attempt at character-based drama, it has a functioning moral compass, it genuinely has something to say, and its story is downright innovative for a Malay horror film. But it gets one fundamental thing wrong, which is failing to give its audience what it promises. So I reckon 2-½ stars is right, although I seriously considered giving it just two. See, I don't want to be too harsh on Chiang and his crew, most of whom I'm guessing are fresh names in the local film industry (at least, I've never heard of them before). I'm guessing local audiences - who'd probably like it better if it had a long-haired jembalang with bad skin - are being harsh enough on them already.

NEXT REVIEW: Limitless
Expectations: well, the premise looks good...

In the shadow of the Moon

Source Code
My rating:




Duncan Jones is the man, in more ways than one. There's been any number of hot young directors who made big debuts with highly acclaimed, quirky indie genre films, only to have that initial splash fizzle out. Jones' Moon came out only in 2009, but since then he's been in talks to helm big-budget franchise entries like the Superman reboot and the Wolverine sequel, which means he's riding on a pretty big wave right now. Good for him; I really liked Moon. Then again, what really separates the genuine talents from the flashes-in-the-pan is usually the second film.

And Jones' is pretty good too - but not as good as his first.

Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up one morning on a commuter train bound for Chicago, disoriented and confused. A fellow passenger named Christina (Michelle Monaghan) calls him Sean, but his last memory is of flying helicopter missions in Afghanistan. Before he can figure out what's happening, the train explodes - and he wakes up in a capsule, speaking to a Captain Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) on a video screen. He is in fact part of a mission to prevent an imminent terrorist bombing of Chicago by living out the last 8 minutes of the life of Sean Fentress, a passenger on board the train whose bombing is the precursor to a larger and deadlier attack. Goodwin and her superior, Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), send Stevens back into the "source code", reliving the same 8 minutes over and over again, to try and discover the bomber's identity. But even as he starts to fall for Christina - knowing that she and everyone else on the train is already dead, and there's no way to save her - he begins to suspect that Goodwin and Rutledge aren't telling him everything they know.

I was quite pleased to see people talking animatedly about the movie as we left the cinema. The last time this happened was with Inception, and this film is a similarly smart, complex and mind-bending sci-fi thriller. Describing it as Groundhog Day meets Quantum Leap meets Deja Vu is right, and that's not pejorative; Ben Ripley's screenplay may have mixed and matched elements from all these, but the resulting concoction is pretty unique. So no carping about it being a ripoff! (Okay, I do a fair bit of "it's a ripoff!" accusation-throwing myself. But there's a difference between similar premises than can develop in wholly different directions, and similar plots that can only go through the same motions.)

There are two mysteries at work in this movie: one being who the bomber is, and the other being what's really going on with this super-secret military "quantum parabolic calculus" project. And for the most part, both are handled in exactly the way a good mystery should be - by keeping the audience curious, and slowly doling out answers to their questions whilst occasionally blindsiding them with a red herring or two. Since we return several times to the same 8-minute stretch on board the train, minor incidents take on greater significance, and it's fun to watch Stevens interrogate suspects with what he knows (or thinks he knows) about them from previous go-arounds.

I said "for the most part", because I do wish it was better in many ways. The plot isn't as tightly-scripted as you'd expect, and certain parts are left unexplained - for instance, the bit where Stevens' capsule appears damaged - and the impression you're left with is that they were simply arbitrary. A film like this leads you to think that everything is significant in some way, and while Ripley's script is clever, it's not quite as clever as it appears. For a thriller, it's somewhat lacking in good-old-fashioned nail-biting suspense; Jones' direction is smart and assured, but it isn't too far of a departure from the antiseptic tone of Moon. And then there's its ending, which several critics and viewers have decried. I didn't really mind it, but it was yet another instance of it trying to be cleverer than it was.

But a lot of its success had to do with its acting. Jake Gyllenhaal was perfectly competent, which sounds like damning with faint praise - but really, his role is pretty much to react to what's going on, and he succeeds in putting us in his bewildered shoes and getting us to root for him. Jeffrey Wright is doing something odd with his Dr. Rutledge that I can't really describe; all I can say is that its affectedness is a tad distracting. It's the women who do the heavy lifting here. Vera Farmiga's coolly professional Goodwin, whose humanity slowly thaws her icy demeanour, is a large part of what makes the "what's the Source Code really about" mystery work. And Michelle Monaghan is just adorable, which is crucial to giving a heart and soul to an otherwise cold sci-fi thriller. It's criminal that she isn't getting bigger roles.

I have to admit I was expecting more out of it than I got. I really like Duncan Jones, I hope he never stops getting showered with offers - but I also hope this movie isn't a sign that he's less comfortable with big-budget, fast-paced storytelling than he is with meditative, almost-arty films like Moon. And I have to say, what I like most about it more than anything due to the movie itself, is the fact that people seem to like it; people like talking and thinking about it, which hopefully means people like movies that make them think. So by all means, go watch it, especially if you liked Inception. It may not be as good, but intelligent sci-fi is exactly the kind of thing that needs mass support.

NEXT REVIEW: Dilarang Masuk
Expectations: well, the trailer looked good...

Penonton tempatan dalam tempurung

... Dalam Botol
My rating:




Saya pernah menggelar Sini Ada Hantu sebuah filem yang berani, tapi sepatutnya saya simpan pujian itu untuk filem ini. Saya ragu ianya filem tempatan bertemakan gay yang pertama - Bukak Api kan ada - tapi saya pasti ianya filem tempatan bertemakan gay yang pertama ditayangkan luas di panggung. Tapi keberaniannya bukan hanya pada temanya, malah juga pada pendekatannya yang jauh lebih sofistikated dari hampir kesemua filem tempatan yang pernah saya tonton sejak saya mula menonton filem tempatan. Malangnya, dari apa yang saya lihat keberaniannya tidak dihargai. Banyak rebiu yang ditulis di blog dan website hiburan yang mengecamnya bosan dan sukar difahami. (Googlelah sendiri, aku malas nak link kat diorang.) Yang paling teruknya, audiens dalam tayangan saya semuanya kuat merungut, berbual-bual, mendengar talipon dan berSMS.

... Dalam Botol adalah antara filem tempatan yang terbaik tahun ini. Diorang tak paham sebab diorang bodoh.

Rubidin (Arja Lee) ialah seorang lelaki gay yang menukar jantinanya - serta namanya menjadi Ruby - kerana ingin memuaskan nafsu kekasihnya Gaus (Wan Raja). Tetapi Gaus tidak setia dan menolak identiti Ruby yang baru; disamping itu, dia juga telah membolot wang dan harta Ruby sehingga Ruby kini menanggung hutang keliling perut. Kawannya Jem (Rosnan Rahman) cuba menolong, tetapi Ruby terpaksa juga pulang ke kampung halaman dan berhadapan dengan ibu (Normah Damanhuri) dan ayahnya (Jalil Hamid) yang mencela cara hidupnya. Di kampung, Ruby kembali menjadi lelaki - bernama Bidin - dan mengenali Dina (Diana Danielle), anak perempuan kawan ibunya Makcik Sherry (Fauziah Ahmad Daud). Dan apabila Dina mula jatuh cinta dengannya, Ruby/Bidin terpaksa berhadapan dengan soalan: siapa, dan apa, dirinya?

Sebenarnya saya dah tengok filem ini dua kali. Bukan sahaja kerana ia filem yang bagus, juga kerana tontonan pertama di Cineleisure Damansara amat menghampakan. Sound system koyak, sering diganggu bunyi bass dari tayangan World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles di panggung sebelah, serta penonton-penonton lain yang bangang. Jadi saya teringin nak menontonnya kali kedua, kerana ia filem yang mempunyai makna yang sungguh mendalam dan saya mahu menghayati maknanya. Sukar hendak dipercayai ini filem arahan Khir Rahman yang pertama; beliau lebih dikenali sebagai pelakon yang sering menyeri filem-filem yang dilakonkannya walaupun filem itu teruk. Jelaslah bahawa bakatnya tidak terhad kepada bidang lakonan. Ingat lagi basic filmmaking craft yang saya sebut dalam rebiu sebelum ini? Filem ini ada, malah jauh melangkaui tahap basic.

Ini bukan cerita rekaan semata-mata; ini adalah filem yang menyelami dunia sebenar, serta watak-watak yang rumit bahkan insan manusia yang sebenar. (Menurut penerbit Raja Azmi, ia berdasarkan kisah benar seorang kenalannya. Saya tak ambil kisah semua itu, saya hanya lihat filem ini sebagai filem.) Ruby/Bidin adalah seorang yang lemah, keliru dan bebal; tetapi kelemahan, kekeliruan dan kebebalannya realistik. Dia bukan watak yang senang disukai, tetapi filem ini menjadikannya watak yang boleh difahami. Kita faham bahawa, walaupun dirinya sebagai perempuan tidak menjadi, namun dia sudah tidak boleh menerima dirinya sebagai lelaki. Kita faham mengapa dia tak berani memberitahu Dina tentang operasi tukar jantinanya, sedangkan Dina sedia menghulurkan rahmat kemaafan kepadanya. Dan kita (sepatutnya) faham mengapa Arja Lee melakonkannya sebagai seorang yang tertutup emosinya semasa di kampung - bukan kayu, seperti yang dikecam rebiu-rebiu dari orang yang tak faham.

Seorang lagi watak yang menarik ialah Gaus - tapi dia menarik bukan dari ertikata "baik" orangnya. Malah dia seorang bastard gred tertinggi - penakut, pendusta, pencuri dan penganiaya. Dia seorang yang pandai cari alasan untuk segala perbuatan kejinya. Bila menolak kekasihnya, dia kata "I tak suruh you buat!"; bila ditangkap basah ketika curang, dia kata "dia macam goda I"; bila melari dari tanggungjawab, dia kata "I tau I salah" (macamlah mengaku salah itu sama ertinya dengan menebus dosa); bila berkhianat dengki, dia kata "I kena jujur". Sekali lagi, semua ini adalah sifat yang realistik. Tiada siapa yang menganggap diri mereka jahat, atau sengaja melakukan sesuatu dengan niat jahat; masing-masing ada rasional dan justifikasi sendiri. Yang buat aku hairan ialah mengapa semua rebiu yang saya baca tidak menyebut betapa laknatnya watak ini. Korang tak sedar ke? Korang ingat dia okey ke?

Satu perkara lagi yang disebut dalam rebiu-rebiu lain ialah bagaimana ironinya filem tentang lelaki gay menampakkan lakonan pelakon wanita yang lebih hebat dari pelakon lelaki. Ini bukannya tidak benar - Normah Damanhuri, Diana Danielle dan Ogy Ahmad Daud semua memang hebat - tetapi sekali lagi, kritikan ini menunjukkan kurang faham dengan cerita ini. Watak Ruby/Bidin dan Gaus rumit, berbanding watak Sal, Dina dan Sherry yang lurus. Fungsi mereka hanyalah untuk bereaksi dengan Bidin dan pilihan-pilihan yang dibuatnya. Namun mereka juga berjaya dihidupkan oleh pelakon-pelakon dan skrip, menjadi watak-watak yang amat menyayat hati. Bukan saya seorang pengulas yang memuji adegan dekat pengakhiran diantara Ogy dan Diana, dimana perbuatan mengelap muka membawa makna yang dahsyat. Pedih mata saya menonton babak itu walaupun buat kali kedua.

Tapi bintang sebenar filem ini ialah Khir. Sofistikasi pengarahannya terletak dengan betapa teliti dia membikin filem ini; skrip, lakonan, sinematografi, lokasi penggambaran, runut bunyi, semuanya membawa makna. Dalam pengarahannya, kita lihat bagaimana masyarakat kampung ini terasa asing bagi Bidin. Dalam pengarahannya, kita lihat selitan humor yang ringan, yang juga menunjukkan keasingan Bidin dengan dunia kampung. Dalam pengarahannya, kita boleh rasa keperitan Ruby/Bidin serta ayahnya dalam babak mereka bersama. Dalam pengarahannya, kita percaya perasaan cinta Dina buat Bidin yang memekar. (Cuma bukan Bidin yang cintakan Dina, seperti yang dinyatakan dalam sinopsis yang salah. Ini penting!) Dalam pengarahannya, kita boleh rasa saspens dalam babak perkahwinan di akhir, hasil dari muzik pilihannya. Sekali lagi, bagi pengulas dan blogger lain yang jahil: ini bukan muzik rock, bodoh, ini muzik ominous!

Jujur kata, ini bukan filem yang sempurna. Mungkin kerana potongan yang diarahkan dari Lembaga Penapisan Filem, ada beberapa suntingan yang tidak kemas dan mendadak. Bahagian awal semasa di kota juga tidak sesedap ditonton bahagian di kampung, kerana plotnya agak perlahan; juga semasa bahagian ini, raungan dan tangisan Ruby yang tak henti-henti adakala menjengkelkan. Ya, ini sebuah filem seni atau art film, dimana bila orang bercakap, kena berhenti sejenak selepas setiap ayat. Tapi saya rasa bukan kelemahan-kelemahan ini yang membuat penonton kurang menyukai filem ini. Saya rasa ia kerana filem ini mencabar segala praanggapan dan prejudis mereka sebagai penonton filem tempatan dan masyarakat Melayu Islam. Filem mengenai golongan gay dan transseks yang tidak menghakimi mereka; dimana watak utamanya bukan hero; dimana kampung bukan penyelamat dan penyuci bagi orang kota; dimana agama bukan penyelesaian bagi segala-gala; dimana ada watak lelaki yang tak minat Diana Danielle.

Inilah sebenarnya kuasa sebuah filem, bahkan mana-mana hasil seni, untuk mencabar pegangan kita dan mengemukakan pandangan lain kepada kita. Bukan hanya sebagai hiburan kosong - dan bagi mereka yang mengkritik filem ini kerana gagal memberikan hiburan kosong, lantaklah diorang. Ini bunga, dan diorang hanya kera. Syabas Khir atas karya anda yang benar-benar groundbreaking dalam industri filem kita, dan moga anda berpeluang membikin banyak lagi filem tanpa batasan dan cacimakian. (Kalau nak buat filem hiburan semata-mata pun boleh; teknik-teknik perfileman anda boleh digunakan dalam genre komedi, seram, thriller, dan banyak lagi. Dan hiburan itu tak semestinya kosong.) Pedulilah mereka yang tak faham dan tak reti. Kita yang tak hidup dibawah tempurung hargai apa yang anda ingin katakan.

NEXT REVIEW: The Eagle
Expectations: yay Kevin Macdonald

Update: Sigh, once again I have to reneg on a movie I promised to review. The Eagle has pretty much ended its run here, so apologies to Malaysian fans of Kevin Macdonald (all one of you).

NEXT REVIEW: Source Code
Expectations: yay Duncan Jones

Kedah cun, KL tak

Cun!
My rating:




Man, this did not look good. Judul yang tiada makna. Poster yang sewel. Trailer yang menggunakan typeface Comic Sans. Tagline yang tak senonoh. (Abende tu "try-test"? Apa maksudnya hero kampung "try-test" awek glamer? Aku "try-test" adik pompuan kau boleh tak?) Serta premis lelaki miskin/kampung/bawahan bercinta dengan perempuan kaya/kota/atasan yang dah kita tengok banyak kali giler, sampai saya tak tahu apa yang ada dalam psikologi lelaki Melayu yang gemar sangat cerita ini. About the only thing it had going for it was that director Osman Ali made Bukak Api 11 years ago. A local filmmaker willing to make a film about transvestite prostitutes ought to be cut from a different cloth from the Ahmad Idhams and Razak Mohaideens and Syamsul Yusofs of our industry.

Well, he is, in one important respect. But just one.

Luna Latisya (Maya Karin) is the host of gossip TV show Meletops, but she's grown tired of it all - especially when she catches her fiance Ryan Hidayat (Jehan Miskin) cheating on her, and her producer Candy (Ning Baizura) only thinks of it as more fodder for the show. Luna flees KL with her assistant Tom (Faezah Elai) and goes to Tom's hometown, Kampung Mata Ayer in Kedah. There, she meets Tom's grandmother Tok Chah (Kartini Aziz), her mentally-retarded cousin Manis (Nadia Nissa) - and Atan (Remy Ishak), Tom's other and hunkier cousin. As the city girl learns to love the country life - and weathers the jealousy of village gossips Bedah Tonggek (Mislina Mustaffa) and Eton Gebu (Siti Nor Faridah) - she also starts to fall for Atan, and him for her. But Ryan and Candy soon catch up with her, meaning to persuade her back to the life she left behind.

Kepada pembaca-pembaca saya yang berasal dari negeri Kedah, anda patut segera menonton filem ini. Ianya ibarat sepucuk surat cinta buat masyarakat kampung Kedah, dan ia berjaya memaparkan Kampung Mata Ayer sebagai sebuah tempat yang giler seronok, serta didiami watak-watak yang giler kelakar. The kampung scenes are a truckload of fun, and the actors in them seem to be having just as much fun with their hilarious Kedahan accents; jika ada diantara barisan pelakon yang memainkan watak orang Kedah sebenarnya bukan orang Kedah, maka tertipulah saya. Komedinya walaupun broad dan slapstick, namun cukup berkesan kerana ia tidak mempersendakan atau memperbodohkan sesiapa. There's a good-naturedness to it all, and a great deal of affection for the characters and their way of life, that's rare in Malay films and that I certainly wasn't expecting from this one. It works.

You know what doesn't work? The storyline. The plot. The ham-fisted dialogue whenever it tries to get emotional. Anything other than the comedy, frankly. Inilah masalahnya dengan industri filem kita, dimana pembikin-pembikin filem masih kekurangan basic filmmaking craft - dan malangnya, Osman juga tidak terkecuali. Hakikatnya, kisah cinta dua darjat ini adalah cerita yang usang dan formulaik, namun formulanya memerlukan prinsip penceritaan asas untuk disampaikan dengan berkesan. Perubahan dari benci kepada cinta antara Atan dan Luna tidak menjadi. Perwatakan kedua mereka tidak konsisten. Dilema Luna antara cinta dengan karier tidak terasa. Ini semua elemen yang crucial bagi keberkesanan filem ini. Usah nak mintak idea yang baru dan segar, sedangkan premis yang lapuk macam ni pun tak boleh bikin elok-elok.

Akibatnya, filem ini sering berayun dari adegan yang seronok ke adegan yang membosankan. Dan memang jelas bahawa kebanyakan adegan yang membosankan melibat watak-watak warga kota. Candy dan Ryan Hidayat adalah dua watak yang sama over-the-topnya dengan warga kampung, tetapi anehnya, dialog mereka jauh kurang lawak jenakanya dari dialog masa di kampung. Without any real humour to their scenes, Ning Baizura's and Jehan Miskin's schtick is just annoying. Satiranya mengenai media hiburan juga kurang tajam giginya; banyak lagi sasaran yang boleh awak tembak, En. Osman, kenapa cetek sangat? It's clear Osman has a lot more feeling for the kampung scenes than the kota ones; saat klimaktiknya di studio rakaman Meletops menampakkan klisye Slow Clap yang dah kita tengok sampai jelak dah. Audiens dalam tayangan saya ketawakan babak ni.

Namun bila filem ini seronok, ia memang seronok. And the acting has a lot do with this, because it's clear the entire cast is having the time of their lives. Nadia Nissa is amazingly natural as Manis, the girl with the mind of a 5-year-old; in many ways, she is the heart and soul of the kampung scenes. (Dan Osman tidak sesekali menjadikan kerencatan akalnya sebagai bahan ketawa.) Kartina Aziz rocks as the cigarillo-smoking Tok Chah, but she has one emotional scene near the end and she absolutely sells it; kenapa saya tak pernah tahu betapa hebat lakonannya? Even Faezah Elai, who has been typecast as perky and bubbly types, shows a glimpse of real dramatic ability. And finally, the stars of the show: Remy Ishak is better here than I've ever seen him, and he brings a real down-to-earthness to the kind of role that's often used as male wish fulfillment. (Wei Farid Kamil, belajar sket!) Maya Karin pula mempunyai karisma yang mampu menyerikan layar perak, tapi dia masih perlukan bimbingan seorang pengarah yang pandai mengarah pelakon; her approach to a couple of scenes is a little off.

The clear affection that Osman and his cast have for the story, the characters, and the movie they're making, is infectious. Dan inilah yang menjadikan Cun! istimewa diantara filem-filem tempatan yang sering bernada bengis. Kelemahannya jelas dari segi penceritaan (dan juga pengarahan; En. Osman, sila lihat semula adegan "minah rempit" tu, dimana sebuah motosikal jatuh ke dalam parit for no apparent reason), dan saya cukup kecewa kerana ia sudah hampir menjadi filem yang benar-benar bagus. Namun pada akhirnya, saya gembira dapat menghabiskan masa bersama penduduk-penduduk Kampung Mata Ayer. Inilah beza antara filem yang dibikin dengan penuh kasih sayang, berbanding sekeping taik macam Semerah Cinta Stiletto. Bezanya amat ketara.

NEXT REVIEW: ... Dalam Botol
Expectations: heard a lot of good things about it

It sure suckered me - but kinda in a good way

Sucker Punch
My rating:




I am not particularly a fan of Zack Snyder. He had a solid debut with the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, but with his next film 300 got pegged as The Guy Who Makes Comicbook Movies. His adaptation of Watchmen was eagerly anticipated by yours truly, but I found it wholly disappointing; in his obsession with capturing the style of the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons graphic novel, he completely lost the substance. Style over substance is pretty much Snyder's calling card nowadays (and his last film did nothing to change that), so I wasn't expecting much from his latest. Revoke my geek credentials, but it takes more than a trailer featuring sword-wielding fuku-clad hot chicks fighting samurai robots and dragons to get me excited.

Sucker Punch has all that and more - and less. But surprisingly, it does have substance.

A young girl (Emily Browning) is admitted to an insane asylum by her abusive stepfather (Gerard Plunkett), who then bribes an orderly named Blue (Oscar Isaac) to forge papers that will have her lobotomized in five days. She escapes from the misery of her surroundings into her own mind, creating a fantasy in which she is Babydoll, the newest addition to a bordello run by Blue, and in which Madam Gorsky (Carla Gugino) trains the girls in their burlesque dance routines. She discovers that when she dances, she enters yet another layer of fantasy in which she is a powerful warrior, charged by a Wise Man (Scott Glenn) to find five items that will earn her her freedom. Babydoll recruits four other fellow inmates/prostitutes - sisters Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and Rocket (Jena Malone), Amber (Jamie Chung) and Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) - in her plan to steal these items, both from the bordello and the war-torn fantasy world.

Let's get this out of the way first: the action scenes, inspired by anime/videogames/fantasy/sci-fi/dieselpunk/the kitchen sink, are exactly what you'd expect from the trailers. Yes, Babydoll wears a midriff-baring sailor suit and wields a katana. She fights giant robot samurai, then joins her fellow girl warriors in WWI-esque trenches to fight zombie Nazis (yes yes, it's WWI, but they might as well be Nazis) along with a mech that has a bunny painted on the front. Later there's orcs, and a dragon, and a futuristic train, and killer robots. If I sound less than utterly wowed, it's because I ain't quite down with Snyder's approach to action scenes, which is to shoot them in one gorgeously-composed, frame-worthy shot after another. He just wants it to look cool. I want choreography in my action scenes; I want to see tactics, reversals, moves and counter-moves. Fight choreographer Damon Caro did his job, but Snyder just wasn't interested in showing us all that.

Which is not to say I wasn't somewhat wowed. I was. They were fun. Especially since the non-action scenes were often not fun; as a matter of fact, they were pretty draggy. It takes its own sweet time establishing the brothel setting, which wouldn't be so bad if Snyder wasn't so deficient in basic storytelling craft. The characters were all flat, and even the ones we get to know the most - Babydoll, Rocket and Sweet Pea - have little personality. The other two were practically not in it at all (and not surprisingly, their actors were the two worst among the five). Babydoll's plan for escape consists of obtaining four items ("the fifth... is a mystery") but doesn't include how to use them, and the others never question this minor omission. The dialogue throughout is just dull. ("If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything"? Yeah, that's new.) And never showing what Babydoll's supposedly mesmerizing dances look like is never anything but a cop-out.

So, fun action scenes but fail everything else - why then did I rate this higher than World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles? Because of its ending. That is a pretty damn ballsy ending, and probably the last thing the trailers would've led you to expect. It's an ending that calls into question everything you've seen before, and ties into things established from the very beginning - and yes, the comparisons to Inception are apt, even beyond the multiple-layers-of-unreality thing. It's that rare ending that's unexpected yet appropriate, and I gotta hand it to Snyder and his co-writer Steve Shibuya for even attempting it. It almost justifies Snyder using it as a tissue-thin platform on which to hang all his nerdgasmic fetishes.

I said almost. Because this movie clearly wants to be all about the female empowerment, and not just with the kickass action heroines - both the brothel and asylum settings are clearly meant to emphasize the downtrodden girls rebelling against the evil males. And yet Snyder has them dress in bustiers and hot pants and fishnet stockings even in the fantasy action sequences, when they're supposed to be all empowered and emancipated and doin'-it-for-themselves. This isn't the biggest incongruity for me, honestly (I'm proudly feminist, but I don't happen to think that women in sexy outfits automatically equals sexual exploitation of women); what is is the fact that Snyder then piles on the mechs and Nazi zombies and dragons and robots and stuff that appeals to teenage boys. Who are you targeting your female empowerment message to, Zack? Did you honestly think those trailers show anything that could possibly appeal to young girls?

Well, they appeal to me. Both the wildly imaginative fantasy sequences as well as the female empowerment. It's terribly flawed in both execution and conception - and intent - and I didn't even like it all the way through, but I still liked it. And that ending had a lot to do with my liking it. I said this movie has substance, and that substance is in the message that that ending drives home: when things are at their bleakest and most hopeless, your only recourse is defiance. Even if it is futile. Even if it cannot save you. Even if you still lose in the end. Because even when all choices are taken away from you, you can still choose to defy. Because defiance is all you have. And sometimes, defiance can even make a difference. Mr. Snyder, I'll high-five you just for that.

NEXT REVIEW: Cun!, finally

Well, it sure ain't Dialogue Los Angeles or Character Development Los Angeles

World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles
My rating:




Parallel development strikes again! Just four months after the last alien invasion movie, we get another one. I hesitate to call this a trend, since with only two films it could just be a coincidence (unless you count outliers like District 9 and Monsters - a U.K.-produced indie that sadly never made it to our screens). (Although there is Cowboys & Aliens coming out later this year...) Pundits may speculate on what it is about the cultural zeitgeist that is giving rise to all these movies with evil extraterrestrials, but I don't think there's anything worth thinking about there yet. Skyline aimed to be nothing more than a dumb-as-rocks fun thrill ride with aliens, and Battle: Los Angeles (it's original title) looks to be just as profound and meaningful. Just look at that title. Seriously, it's a ridiculously unimaginative title.

And it's a ridiculously unimaginative movie. But at least it's decent fun.

Just days before U.S Marine Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is due to retire, several meteorites crash off the coast of the world's major cities. They are in fact heralds of an alien invasion, spearheaded by ground troops who kill every human being in their path. Nantz is recalled into a platoon led by Lt. William Martinez (Ramón Rodríguez), and tasked with evacuating citizens from a Los Angeles police station. Later joined by Air Force Tech Sergeant Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez), the marines will have to fight a running urban battle with the alien forces, find a group of civilians comprising two adults (Bridget Moynahan, Michael Peña) and three children, and get to safety before an Air Force bombing run levels the entire city. But Nantz will also have to live down a personal shame - several members of his former platoon were killed in action in Iraq. And the brother of one of them is now under his command.

This movie runs 116 minutes, but I reckon a good 90 of them are made up of constant action scenes. It's been described as "Black Hawk Down meets Independence Day", and watching it proves it was also conceived as just that. And the action scenes are pretty good. I was worried about the shaky-cam, which director Jonathan Liebesman employs even in the opening pre-invasion scenes of the marines on an ordinary, non-alien-battling day; but when the bullets (or whatever the aliens use) start flying, it didn't bother me. And considering how much time it spends on the battle scenes, it's a damn good thing that there's plot to all of them. It's not just a mindless cacophony of explosions (*coughMichaelBaycough*); the heroes' objectives and the threats they face were always clear, and I could always make out what was going on. (I feel sorry for Roger Ebert who couldn't.)

However, everything other than the action scenes were pretty much fail. The dialogue is terrible, the characters are blank slates, and the "emotional" moments are tired old clichés. Guess what, the Lt. is fresh out of officer training, whereas his sergeant is a grizzled old veteran! Oh em gee, I wonder how they'll fare in combat? Also, one character has a pregnant wife, and writes a letter to her after he finds out he's going into battle. It's oh so suspenseful wondering if he'll get to see her again! A scary noise turns out to be a dog, so of course there weren't really aliens behind that fog, oh no. And when some of the wounded marines are being airlifted away, surely they won't suddenly get shot out of the sky, riiiight? To be honest, even stuff like this could work if Liebesman and his screenwriter Chris Bertolini weren't so po-faced about it, as if they're unaware - or think us unaware - of how hackneyed it all is.

And they certainly didn't develop the characters enough to make it work; I didn't even bother mentioning the names of the rest of the platoon in my synopsis, because none of them have any personalities to speak of. Among the civilians they rescue are two little girls, and it's telling that we never even learn their names (In fact, Liebesman keeps cutting to teary close-ups of the younger and cuter one, and completely ignores her older sister.) People die, and the film wants you to think it's sad and tragic when it's just dull. There's a long bit in the midsection in which Nantz's subplot is dealt with, and it's supremely corny and slow. Did no one in Hollywood learn the lessons of Aliens, in which a similar troop of jarheads were given brief but effective characterizations that made it all the more effective when they started dropping like flies? This movie does all that wrong where James Cameron's sci-fi classic went right.

Also, it's dumb. Not just its dialogue, which even in basic tough-guys-trading-quips form is sorely lacking in any real wit, but also its science fiction aspects. At one point, we are presented with the hypothesis that the aliens are invading us for water, because it is so rare and precious in its liquid form. Quick science lesson: there's plenty of water right here in our solar system, albeit in frozen form, which you can convert into liquid by melting it, durr. There are bits in which the aliens seem blind as bats, letting the marines sneak by right under their noses unmolested, because apparently it wasn't quite time yet for another action scene. And finally, there's just no getting past this: it makes no goddamn sense for an extraterrestrial force bent on exterminating the local populace not to employ orbital bombardment. These morons achieved interstellar travel before we did??

Wow, that's a lot of carping for a 3-star movie. I did say the action scenes are fun, and that there are a lot of 'em. And Aaron Eckhart continues to be one of the most underrated leading men in Hollywood (but even he doesn't know what to do with that "I'm sorry your brother died" scene). But that alone is a pretty low standard to hold a movie to, even an action movie. I don't adhere to the "who needs plot and character in a movie like this?" school of thought; character development, dialogue, and basic respect for the audience's intelligence are the basis of all movies. And damn right an action movie can have those things, just look at the acknowledged classics of the genre like Die Hard, Terminator 2 and yeah, Aliens. World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles shouldn't get a pass for skimping on them, just because it delivered on the thrills.

NEXT REVIEW: Sucker Punch
Expectations: not much, frankly

Don't bring the kids

Rango
My rating:




This is an odd movie. It's not just the first animated film for director Gore Verbinski, he of Pirates of the Caribbean fame, but also for Industrial Light and Magic, which is better known as one of the great SFX houses. Its first teaser trailer was exceedingly weird; followed by a full-length trailer that was more conventional, but not exactly inspiring. Then came glowing reviews from Roger Ebert and James Berardinelli and even a positive one from AV Club, which finally tipped the scale to from "run-of-the-mill animated cartoon from a non-Pixar studio" to "interesting movie I should catch". Still, the fact that it's neither a Pixar nor a DreamWorks production, nor even one helmed by anyone with any experience in animated filmmaking, left me with no idea what to expect.

It's still an odd movie. But an original and entertaining one at that.

A pet chameleon (Johnny Depp) with identity issues gets accidentally stranded in the middle of the Nevada desert. After an encounter with a spiritual pilgrim armadillo (Alfred Molina) and a hungry hawk, he comes upon the run-down desert town of Dirt, populated by a cosmopolitan community of toads, rabbits, mice, and other critters. Thinking to reinvent himself as a Wild West hero, he adopts the name Rango and spins a tall tale that the gullible townsfolk fall for easily. And when he (accidentally) kills the hawk, he is hailed as a hero and appointed sheriff by the Major (Ned Beatty) - although the rancher's daughter Beans (Isla Fisher) remains skeptical. Because what Dirt needs isn't a sheriff, it's water; the town faces a severe water crisis, made worse when a clan of hillbilly moles led by Balthazar (Harry Dean Stanton) steals their last remaining water reserves. Rango sets out to save the town - but when the vicious gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) comes a'callin', he'll find his self-spun heroic reputation doesn't hold water. (And throughout the film, a band of mariachi owls foretell Rango's doom.)

Well, it's definitely not for kids, despite being a 3D-animated cartoon. The character design is your first clue; none of the characters are deliberately "cute", not even the little mouse girl voiced by Abigail Breslin, although they are all beautifully designed and characterized. Your second clue is that it's very much an homage to westerns, a genre that not a lot of kids are familiar with; it's packed with references to dozens of older films, not all of which are even westerns. (I'm told there's a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in-joke somewhere in there.) I fear for its commercial prospects - and the harried parents bringing their hyperactive kids to watch this - because I thought it was a lot of fun. For one thing, as I have previously mentioned, I like westerns.

For another, the movie is frequently hilarious. I laughed out loud a good three or four times in this; I don't know what it is about the "western" accent that makes funny dialogue funnier, but it just does. In fact, I'm pretty sure I missed a line or two, and I sorely wished it was in Digital 2D, which affords sharper picture and sound. The humour is often of a slightly more sophisticated sensibility than your average Pixar or DreamWorks effort, though there are still plenty of sight gags - and action scenes, at which Verbinski is an old hand. The standout bit is a canyon chase scene that pays homage to both the Star Wars Death Star trench run and old-fashioned western stagecoach robbery sequences. That one was a lot of fun.

It's just too bad that it's not fun all of the way. The AV Club review is right, its basic plot is terribly formulaic and predictable. And I suspect Verbinski, and his screenwriter John Logan, think their theme of identity is a lot more profound than it really is, which might explain the interminable late second act. This is most likely the point where anyone who still thinks this is a kids' cartoon would get turned off completely; it is surreal and dream-like and culminates in Rango achieving a spiritual epiphany via yet another movie reference that's gonna sail over the heads of anyone who isn't a fan of classic westerns. Oh, and there's a mystery plot (that's a takeoff on Roman Polanski's Chinatown - y'know, that children's classic) that also takes its own sweet time to unfold but doesn't turn out to be particularly clever.

Clearly, Verbinski didn't set out to make a typical family-friendly animated film. The director has rounded up a star-studded cast of character actors, and had them record their lines while acting out the scenes as if it were a live-action film, complete with props and costumes. It looks like they had a ball doing it, and it comes through in their performances. It also helps that the character design doesn't do the thing where they try to mimic the actors' features; thus folks like Isla Fisher and Bill Nighy are practically unrecognizable, and you can just focus on their voices. (And besides the ones I mentioned, there's also Ray Winstone, Stephen Root, Gil Birmingham, and a Timothy Olyphant cameo, and I'm betting you won't recognize any of 'em.)

I'm calling it now: Rango is a cult film in the making. It's too weird and idiosyncratic to make much box-office - especially if Nickelodeon Movies, of all studios, are trying to sell it to kids - but it's that same singular uniqueness that'll inspire the kind of rabid following a cult film gets. One might criticize Verbinski and Logan and co. for being self-indulgent, making what looks like a children's cartoon but most assuredly is not. And one could certainly criticize them for that slow midsection, and for taking their subtext a little too seriously. But one could also commend them for having a wildly original creative vision, sticking to it, and pulling off a movie that succeeds at entertaining just the right kind of audience. Which includes me, so that's what I'm gonna do.

NEXT REVIEW: World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles
Expectations: yes yes, the trailers were cool, but that title