What movies have you seen and anything about movies discussion

[westendboy]

A few quick musings of 4 we have seen at home and at the theatres.



By now everyone’s social media feed would have been swarmed by the endless discourse surrounding Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story and I doubt I can add anything new to it. This will be just my 2-cent’s take on the third installment in Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology series take on infamous killers.




Coming into the 3rd season of the show, my general knowledge of Ed Gein’s crime would be gleaned from how he had inspired cultural touchstone movies like Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs. So I know I will see chainsaws, harvesting of human skin and the sexualisation of the main character. Going in, I also know the creators will take a lot of creative liberties to make a show about an infamous killer entertaining.

Herein lies one of interesting dichotomy of human behaviour or taste if you prefer – we should all go up in arms against evil human behaviour of infamous killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Edward Gein, but yet we are fascinated by the macabre as long as evil doesn’t happen in our backyard. It’s sort of like looking at a bloody crime scene. We know nightmares will haunt us but we still want to drink in the ghastly sight with our eyes. The creators of the show definitely know this human impulse and they walk a tight rope to present the crimes and the deplorable human behaviour in a compelling manner without stepping on toes by celebrating the killers. They did it with the first 2 seasons but I am not so sure with this latest one.

Ed Gein’s schizophrenia is primed for maximum creative detours till a point there is always a tussle in my mind whether what is transpiring on screen is fact or fiction. After a while I hardly bothered anymore and just drank in everything, but I must say if you are a true crime buff you are going to be so pissed at the disrespect the creators did here. Some detours are pretty cool like seeing Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins talking at length why the former chose the latter as the lead. But this detour goes a full left turn making the story feel unfocused. Why do we need Anthony Perkins’ struggle with his sexuality taking so much screen time or having Hitchcock talking with his wife about what he plans to do next after Psycho. There are others like the one with Tobe Hooper that also impedes on the core narrative. But I must say the one on Silence of the Lambs is so cool. I just felt the creators want to do something different with the third season and they dipped their fingers in too many pies.

When I first heard Charlie Hunnam is cast as Ed Gein, I shook my head. How can Jax Teller of Sons of Anarchy even achieve this impossible and thankless role, but I take my words back and my full respect goes to him. He brought the killer to life in an all out performance.

All in all I enjoyed this latest season but I would rank it #2 with the Dahmer one in #1. At this rate Ryan Murphy is going can tackle Hitler, Hussein and Bin Laden and make us sympathetic towards them., God forbid. (3.5/5)

I am convinced the format you watch Tron: Ares will determine how much you will enjoy it. I saw this in IMAX 3D and it was absolutely mind blowing. Sure, I know the critic in me would ravage the story and plot and give kitsch lines like how it was as flimsy as a floppy disk or the storytelling is full of glitches, but hey I go into a Tron movie not expecting to see a Shakespearean tragedy, I just want to have fun and fun is what I got.

Come on, sentient AI being who develops empathy? We have seen the idea dozens of times. The writer took care in linking the Tron of the past to the future, and it opens new avenues to approach the franchise. The pulsating music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is stupendous. The visual effects with regard to the light chasing motorcycles is just wow. The 3D effects is just top class and I am guessing only 4DX can give the IMAX 3D a run for its money. So what if the villain is one-note or the female character is a little perfunctory or the plot machinations offer no surprises, it entertained me and for 2 hours I felt like a giddy little boy again in The Grid. (3.5/5)

I will clue you in on how I find out about good films. My FB feed always shows me those Criterion closet videos in which celebrities get invited into the Criterion closet and they get to talk about movies that hold a warm spot in their heart and they also get to take the movie home. Sometimes I get sweet dreams of me in the closet and I get to take many movies back home and in every dream it is always different movies. Anyway, these next two musings are films mentioned a few times in these videos and I seek them out for a watch.



Mikey and Nicky bombed at the box office in 1976 and I am not surprised. It is a gangster film like no other in that everything happens in the course of one night and it’s quite a talky film. It is written and directed by Elaine May who gives an interesting female take on a gangster genre film.

John Cassavetes and Peter Falk are cast together as small-time mobsters whose lifelong relationship has turned sour. Nicky (Cassavetes) is holed up in a hotel after the boss he stole money from puts a hit out on him. Terrified, he calls on Mikey (Falk) whom he thinks can save him.

The spit-fire dialogue is laced with satire and shades of comedy and always feels authentic. There is a kind of improv vibe to it. Over the course of a night we get to know Nicky and Mikey, and this doesn’t happen often – I loathe Nicky. He is one detestable man and I actually feel he deserves the hit put out on him. Yet, the last scene still puts a lump in my throat. (3.5/5)



Paper Moon gets mentioned in those Criterion closet videos a lot. You will notice in these videos the guests talked about Paper Moon with such passion and passion, as they say, is contagious.

When Moze (Ryan O’Neal) is unexpectedly saddled with getting the 9-year-old Addie (Tatum O’Neal) to relatives in Missouri after the death of her mother, his attempt to dupe her out of her money backfires, and he’s forced to take her on as a partner. Swindling their way through farm country, the pair is nearly done in by a burlesque dancer and an angry bootlegger.

Those people in those Criterion videos were absolutely right. This film crackles with an indelible energy and it is tied up to the Kansas dustbowl during the Depression. The B&W cinematography is the perfect setup for the story.

Tatum O’Neal at age 10 became the youngest Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner in 1974 and she absolutely deserved it. It didn’t hit me at first that her chemistry with Ryan O’Neal is so natural. A quick read up on IMDb made me realise they are father and daughter.

It’s hard not to fall in love with Paper Moon. It’s the perfect marriage of every cinematic element that makes a great movie a classic for the ages. I especially love the economical writing that is without long passages of exposition. Just like the movie still above, one look of stoicism on Addie’s mien, a stiletto focus on Moze’s face, coupled with the stark but gorgeous B&W cinematography is enough to convey how hard life is. I love watching how their relationship develops. One example would be a simple scene where Moze asks how much money they got. “$600!” comes the reply from Addie who has previously said she is just sticking around till she gets her $200 back. That is a brilliant moment in that you know they are in it for the long run without needless dialogue.

This is a classic and my heartfelt thanks goes out to all those celebrities who recommended this and how the movie made them want to be a part of the movie industry. I can’t recommend this enough. (5/5)

 

[westendboy]

Quickies: Wake in Fright, Barbarian, Stolen, Songs of Paradise, Three Sisters, The Perfect Neighbour

My aim in life is to watch all the best films of the world but sometimes there are films that totally escape my attention because they don’t get a lot of love. So my interest is piqued when random …

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[westendboy]

The first two are still showing at the theatres, the third is a recommendation and the last one just ended its run. I would say all of them deserve your attention.



No Other Choice received numerous rave reviews and I am not surprised because Park Chan-Wook seldom ever misses at this point of his career. His work reads like a Haruki Murakami novel – there are always digressions from the main plot-line and other-worldly submission to weird visions. This has become his signature and his blend of ultra-violence and dark comedy is a potent concoction. This, unfortunately is not top-tier Park Chan-Wook, but I dare you to find a better film this year that skewers the prescribed idea of the perfect family unit, the perceived masculinity, the corporate work hire culture and frankly, the state of the world itself.

The opening scene is one of a beautiful family: You Man-Su (Lee Byung-hun) is grilling eels while his wife Miri (Son Ye-jin), her son from a previous marriage and their daughter (a cello prodigy) look on. Completing the family are two Labradors. He will soon be made redundant by the paper company he works for and he will be desperate to land a job in the paper industry before his severance pay runs out. He soon hatches a cockamamie idea – what if he sets up a phoney job recruitment ad to see who are the competition he faces and then he eliminates the competition giving himself a beeline to the top job.

This is one man’s crazy journey to reclaim his manhood in the eyes of his family. It is also a clever critique of capitalism and how our self-worth is tied to our jobs, especially for men. Man-Su wouldn’t need to go through the extreme if he picks up another job but pride always has a way of stepping up and screams in your face that you are better than this. The story doesn’t just make Man-Su work through the chain of better men for the job the main focus, it also goes off-tangent in exploring how the family dynamics changes when Miri brings home the dole, side-plots with their son and daughter also come into play. The ending doesn’t feel like a cautionary warning but a statement that the future for mankind is a bleak one when AI starts to invade every facet of society.

Perhaps it is because of all these side-plots that I feel the satire is not biting and everything feels overly done when it should respect the audience’s intelligence to connect the dots. Still, this is almost a masterpiece in the same breath as Oldboy and The Handmaiden. I just felt a tighter edit would bring this into Park Chan-Wook’s top tier works of art. (4/5)



Good Boy is about a loyal dog who moves to a rural family home with his owner, only to discover supernatural forces lurking in the shadows. As dark entities threaten his human companion, the brave dog must fight to protect the one he loves most.

This is a cleverly made movie, the story is told from the dog Indy’s point of view and all the heavy lifting is done by him. The low angles, the play with shadows and eerie sound effects, all served up a wonderful smorgasbord. The star of the movie is Indy – every wag of its tail, twitch of his eyes, flapping of his ears, give the story much emotional heft and weight. All the human faces are conveniently kept in half shadows keeping your sole focus on Indy.

The movie is short but even at 80 over minutes I felt its runtime because the second act started to get repetitive with no pay-off. The story also feels a little too linear with little twists and turns, so other than the dog, none of the characters feel explored. There is also a couple of scenes that didn’t make sense like how the first scene, which is essentially the ending, doesn’t coalesce with the last scene in the movie. It gave me a narrative itch I couldn’t square away. That said this is still a superb exercise in creativity. (3/5)

10 minutes into The Stranger (2022), my mind told me this is an exercise in style over substance and the director has made the mistake of thinking atmosphere is the storytelling. Then 5 minutes later, a little narrative bomb exploded and I started to see the edges in every jigsaw piece and how they start to fit together.

If you want things with clarity and every element tied up in a neat bow, this movie isn’t it. The storyteller gives you nuggets but at the same time he withholds important elements. Clearly it is the work of a confident director with the upmost respect for the audience.

I like the casting of Sean Harris, an actor with a unique aura and his raspy half-whispery voice is a character in itself but I must stress that you will better appreciate the movie with subtitles. The movie has atmosphere to boot and doesn’t do the usual cliches. If it’s done by Hollywood you will know the studio heads will say “we need to a flashback scene of the crime”, but not here. Through mere effective dialogue we recreate the terrible crime in our head.

This is a superb slow-burn of a crime thriller but I wouldn’t say it’s for everyone. (3.5/5)


HBO’s Task just ended its run and the characters are swimming in my head, a testament that the writing is stellar. This isn’t surprising because the writer is one Brad Ingelsby who wrote Mare of Easttown.

A Philadelphia-based FBI agent and single dad (Mark Ruffalo), who is going through family drama, is put in charge of a task force to end a string of violent robberies undertaken by an unassuming family man whose wife left him with 2 kids (Tom Pelphrey).

The show didn’t suck me in with flashy dialogue, big twist or jaw-dropping set-pieces. It did it with an ensemble of actors caught in some Greek tragedy. Even the crime committed is illogical and downright amateurish. It’s like the antagonists don’t know the rule that one should never sh*t where one eats. The story is populated by damaged and hurt people and hurt people hurt people. The story doesn’t have any major twist and it builds towards the inevitable. By virtue of its lack of mystery to be solved I can’t say this betters Mare of Easttown but it doesn’t mean it’s not compelling. The climax is essentially the penultimate episode, but they reserved the best for the last episode which rounds up the themes of forgiveness and renewal in an emphatic way. I dare say Ruffalo and Pelphrey will earn Best Actor nods at the Emmy next year because they are so strong in their performances. It’s not top tier TV but it comes really close. (3.5/5)

 

[westendboy]

Since it was Halloween we saw a couple of horror movies. What do you think of my horror shrine?



Nothing like putting us in the mood for the nasty eh. My wifey is never in the mood for horror movies but when I go the full nine yards to set the stage, she is so touched she couldn’t say no. We started with Martyrs, the French original, that I have heard so much about and have never seen.

Martyrs (2008) is about a young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child leads her and a friend, who is also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.

This has got to be one of the most disturbing and harrowing movies I have seen and this isn’t for everyone. Even if you are a horror fan you might feel some of your buttons being pressed making you feel very uncomfortable; you might even find out you have buttons you never knew you have. I would even hazard that it will make you question your religious beliefs.

I will just give you a brief rundown so you can decide if you want to get tormented. For me it is simple – I want to watch all the great horror films and this is definitely a great one but your mileage might vary. It starts off with a young girl Lucie escaping from her unseen tormentors. The terror in her eyes and her entire being is palpable. She is soon institutionalised and befriends a girl Anna who is also a victim of physical abuse. Fast forward a few years and both girls have grown up. Lucie takes a shotgun to a family because she is sure they were the ones who had tortured her and proceeded to let them eat some lead. Anna then comes to help bury the bodies and then the story goes somewhere you will never expect. I need to tell you the next hour plus is all manner of torture and abuse, more than a human being can take. For the audience it will be the most sustained physical abuse and mental torture you will probably witness.

If you can get through this you will realise human beings are the worst. You don’t need ghosts and demons to show you all manner of monstrosity, throughout history human beings are the best exponents of cruelty. It is easy to say this movie is all splatter and gore, but I tend to feel this movie has a higher purpose. It makes you question your core beliefs and the idea of martyrs who have the ability to go beyond death and see what’s on the other side. The direction is splendid and doesn’t pull any punches, the acting is very committed, the writing is balls to the wall and the tone is so unapologetic. This is a horror movie that sets a standard that all other horror movies should aspire to. (4/5)




Wolf Creek (2005) is about three backpackers who travel into the Australian Outback only to find themselves stranded at Wolf Creek crater. Once there, they are encountered by a bushman, Mick Taylor, who offers them a ride back to his place. Little do the three know that their adventure into the Outback would be a complete nightmare.

The movie takes its own sweet time getting to the meaty and bloody part. I know the purpose – it is to make you empathise with the three backpackers before they are embroiled in a world of pain. But for me these scenes are so nondescript and uninteresting, they do not serve the story. That said, there is a realism to everything and friends do shoot the wind with random conversations like what they do. I do like how the outback was shot and you can feel the stark magnificence and also how fraught with danger it is.

When the world of pain comes it is relentlessly unapologetic. Those little triumphs, small reversals and bitter fails, all hit like a tidal wave. John Jarratt playing the psychotic killer is a revelation – he offers no quarter, no mercy and only a cynical smile as he immerses the victims in a sea of pain. Yet, he isn’t scary in the beginning and you start to feel sorry for him for being so lonely in the Outback. Of course, all of it is a ruse. The torture scenes are inventive and the vibe is excruciating. I really didn’t think Australia can come out with such a genuinely horrific movie and I meant it with the highest praise. (3.5/5)

Every year I will watch all the Best Picture Oscar nominees before the ceremony. This year I failed because the crop of films in this category is weak compared to other years. So few game changers, only one defiantly brave film and some entries felt like they are there to fulfil a LBGT quota. I would even say there are two I could barely finished and one I just plain gave up after a pretentious 15 minutes. Yes, Anora is a wildly entertaining movie but Best Picture, I don’t feel it, very 6-7 to me. Anyway, I was left with one movie that I have not seen, I’m Still Here, which I couldn’t get my hands on until now.

In 1971, in Rio de Janeiro, former congressman Rubens Paiva is a family man and engineer, who lives with his wife Eunice Paiva and their five children at Avenida Delfim Moreira, in front of the Leblon Beach. One afternoon, several men arrive at their home and ask him to go with them to a “deposition” to the authorities while three of them stay with his family. Then they take Eunice and her teenage daughter Eliana with hoods to give a statement at an unknown place. Eunice remains arrested for several days while listening to the torture of other people. She returns home, moves with her family to São Paulo and never sees her husband again.

I like this almost from the get-go. A profound sense of grace and honesty permeates the movie without resorting to high histrionics. It’s a story that is familiar to all and I am pretty sure every country in a certain trying historical time has a story like this to tell. Fernanda Torres disappears into her role and she is very compelling to behold. Her righteous sense of justice points true north but eventually it is how she holds the family together through the ordeal that is amazing.

The movie could have ended at the scene when the government gave her the death certificate of Rubens Paiva but it didn’t. The story goes forward many years later to show how the family continues to be a tightly knitted one and I find the falling action scene full of grace and quiet power. I also like the theme of how a photograph can capture a moment in time with everyone’s emotions at that point the photo was taken. This is not a photo taken with a phone but with a camera and with everyone posing for it. Somehow this made me think back to those good old days when my family would go to the photo shop to get our family photo taken to commemorate a great occasion. We go through the hassle of dressing up, posing and sometimes a rehearsal to get that photo taken. These days everyone takes photo-taking for granted because of our phones. (4/5)


We saw Predator: Badlands at the theatre last night and it is simply the best Predatormovie since the original. A friend was asking me if his 11 year-old kid can see this because he requested it. I texted him that there is not a single drop of blood and not one vulgar word being uttered. Come to think of it, isn’t it amazing a Predator movie doesn’t have any of these ingredients. Baffling isn’t it? But yet it worked. I was smiling like a 11 year-old kid all over again. This should be renamed Predator: Badass!

Prior going into the theatre I didn’t have high expectations. I like Prey and Killer of Killers, but the modus operandi seems to be putting a Predator in various historical times and see how it interacts with the human beings of that era. First time is pretty cool, second time still cool but if Dan Trachtenberg does it a third time I am not sure anymore. By this logic we can have Cowboy Predator, Gladiator Predator, Civil War Predator and the list goes on. Thankfully, Trachtenberg doesn’t tread the same path.

Surprise, surprise, this Predator has feelings and unlike all the other movies in the franchise, the protagonist is a young Predator named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi). The story is established from the get-go that Dek is the runt in the family and the dad wants him dead. He is saved by his brother and he vows he will earn his spurs by killing Kalisk, some monster on planet Genna, and earn his place in the clan. On the godforsaken planet he is joined by a half-bodied, synthetic (synth) Weyland-Yutani being named Thia (Elle Fanning).

This movie breaks its mold firmly established in the other movies by making it family friendly. If you are a purist you are going to hate it. The thing is I am a Predator purist and I thought Trachtenberg has managed to do the impossible – Disney-fying it but yet never stinge on the violence.

The movie has a rite of passage vibe, a coming-of-age theme and definitely adheres to the odd couple theme. Thia talks non-stop earning the irk of Dek and before you forget this is a Disney movie, along the way a cute creature drops in and Thia names it Buddy. This is when you know it’s a Disney movie.

Somehow Trachtenberg manages to sell the movie to me with some inventive action set-pieces and world-building with planet Genna. Some of the stuff are amazingly cool like the minefield with those cactus like plants. All in all, the movie expands the franchise to new possibilities and I can’t wait for the next installment. (4/5)

 

[westendboy]

My Favourite Albums, Movies and TV Shows of 2025

It’s that time of the year when I reflect on everything I have seen, listened and read throughout the year. But I am even more lazier this year than last year. I will just do a quick round-up. As u…

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I will just put this here. What’s your fave albums, movies and TV shows this year?

 

[westendboy]

It’s good to start writing about the thing I love the most again. I got so lazy but the moment I finished Hamnet I knew I have to start writing again.


Hamnet doesn’t rush out of the blocks with the storyline of the namesake. Going in, I knew it is the story of how the death of Will and Agnes’s son Hamnet inspired William Shakespeare to write one of his most iconic tragedies, Hamlet.

No, the story takes a while for the plot beats to hit and then it comes. Grief and the loss of a child takes on the gigantic shape of a tidal wave. Many couples don’t survive the death of child with blame piled on mountain high and love becomes so minuscule you can’t feel it anymore. This second act feels all the more painful and unbearable because we see how the love begin for Will and Agnes. We see how the couple goes through the same difficulties and struggles as most couples go through albeit in late 16th century in the Elizabethan era.

I like how writer-director Chloé Zhao doesn’t do the typical costumed drama. There is a whimsical way to how Agnes (a superb Jessie Buckley) is introduced, all coiled up in a little depression among the roots of a tree, like she is a mythical extension of the forest. The meet cute with Will (Paul Mescal) feels alive. By the same extension, one can also see how their son Hamnet has a mysterious bond with his twin sister and how the powers of the forest engulf the family. Exposition is cleverly handled by side characters, Agnes’ mother Mary (Emily Watson) and brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn).

When the third act rolls in, best have a tissue or two ready. A befuddled Agnes wanders into the Globe Theatre with her brother, feeling angry and confused that Will, The Bard, had the cheek and time to write a play entitled Hamlet. What travesty is this? This last act has to be one of the most visually arresting I have seen in any movie. As the play unfolds on stage, we witness Agnes finally able to let go of the grief and attain a kind of immortality.

Okay, I will admit that I lost it here. In my humble opinion, the message here, and it is something I have always believed in fervently, is that art heals, art connects and art can rekindle the dying embers in your heart. When I say art, I mean two ways – making it and appreciating it. I had no tissues in my hand at this point and I just let the rivers run. Choo, my wifey, was perplexed that the movie could affect me that much and she was dry-eyed throughout. I told her to make an appointment with her psychiatrist and we laughed about it. (4.5/5)



Once We Were Us is the Korean remake of Rene Liu’s Us and Them (2018). The good news is that this movie stands on its own and it is a timeless tale of first love and love lost.

Two former lovers cross paths on a flight to Korea, stirring memories of their chance meeting in 2008, when they found love amid Seoul’s chaos before the vagaries of life pulled them apart.

The story is immediately relatable and it will make your mind harken back to your first love. How many people land up with the person they first fall in love with in their early 20s or earlier? I am guessing not many because life has a way messing the relationship up.

Director Kim Do-Young (Kim-Ji-young, Born 1982, 2019) coaxes out superb performances from both Koo Hyo-kwan and Moon Ga-young as they transition from naive college-age adolescents to adults over the course of the film.

As love stories go, they start from a happy place, go through the hopeful phase till life starts to pull all their dreams apart. While watching Eun-ho and Jeong-won go through almost the entire spectrum of love, I started thinking of all the mistakes I had made with V and CT but I didn’t think of the “what ifs” anymore because I struck gold with Choo. Perhaps first loves are there to teach us lessons in love and no matter what I think back on those memories fondly. A movie that can make me reflect on my own experiences definitely got all the brass tacks right.

I love the inventive use of narrative structure and the creative use of black and white employ to tell the story. I could feel the flashbacks moving towards the inevitable and the present story moving back towards the same inevitability. It is the one point in time they can both find their closures and we, the audience, find our catharsis.

If ever there is a movie to showcase how love dies in slow motion, this is it. Not every love story has a happy after and perhaps that is what makes first love so precious. (4/5)


Choo and I are both big fans of the book by Freida McFadden. I will never forget the exact moment I turned the last page with a sudden urge to scream and launch the book across the room. I was warded in the hospital for observation and had the book for company. It was near lights off time when I finished it in a flurry. Holy cow! Then I started texting Choo back and forth before I had to sleep. What a read!

In the same breath, I also have to say WHAT A MOVIE! I first got wind of the casting and I thought Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney are exciting choices. But I had my doubts on the latter, whether her ample bosom would get in the way. From the get-go, Sweeney’s drab and pitiful doggie look sells her character and Seyfried practically steals every scene she is in.

The first and second acts, like the book, are deliberately humdrum. Only to go ape-shite crazy in the last act. Though a little bland, director Paul Feig is able to delve into themes of class. How wealth can be a facade to hide the monstrosity underneath it. How the poor like to put their noses right up to the glass to see the lifestyle of the rich. The screws turn ever so slightly with each out-of-character moment till it goes to eleven.

The twists and turns start to drop like confetti at a gig but you won’t fall out of the crazy story and just drink it all in. There are some changes from the book probably to make the wild proceedings fall better and I have to say it’s a helluva ride. The year just started but I already know this will be one of the really fun movies this year. (3.5/5)


Let’s start talking about numbers first. Writer-director Yoji Yamada is 94 years old and Tokyo Taxi is his 91st film. It also stars 84 year-old Chiellini Baishô. Let those numbers sink in for a while. I wonder what I will be doing at 94 and even if I still have my mental capacity to even write. Respect!

This is a remake of the French film Une Belle Course (2022) and Yamada has put a Japanese cultural spin on it. The story and plot are simple – Taxi driver Koji Usami (Takuya Kimura) lives frugally with wife Kaoru (Yuka) and daughter Nana (Runa Nakashima) in Tokyo. His cab is hired by 85-year-old Sumire Takano (Chieko Baisho) for a ride to a nursing home located at the outskirts of Yokohama, where she is to spend the rest of her life.

There are no surprises in the story. Don’t expect big twists and jaw-dropping revelations. What it does superbly is that we are not just taking a long taxi ride with both of them, we are taking a ride through Japan’s historical moments from the war to the women’s liberty movement that is seldom addressed.

Both of them start off as prickly and standoffish, but through the magic of telling stories and emphatic listening, the ice melts and the relationship thaws. Yamada’s direction is very assured and he knows how to lean in and how to hold back, but in the last act it does get sappy and melodramatic, but by then I practically allowed Yamada to unleash the great flood to my eyes. My tears were earned and I can tell you all around me grown men were crying softly away.

I love the movie and the gentle storytelling. Everything boils down to the chemistry between Kimura and Baishô, and they are amazing together. The movie is a great reminder that small kind acts can save a life. You will never understand the magnitude of that one small kind act until much later. It is also so life-affirming to know that every story in you, all that you have gone through, is worth telling. (3.5/5)

 

[westendboy]

The Oscars are coming, so I better start watching all nominated ones.



Marty Supreme is chaos cinema, albeit ordered chaos. Everything is moving at 100km/h and it only slows down to 80km/h at the end. It’s kinda like Josh Safdie’s Uncut Gemswhich has both Safdie brothers at the helm. You can think of Marty Supreme like Uncut Gems with ping pong but the comparison will feel like a disservice.

Like all stories whose titles are the namesake of the main character, this is the story of one Marty Mauser (a superb Timothée Chalamet, who already has one hand on the Oscar). The time is America in the 50s, the character study is reminiscent of the 70s and the soundtrack is lifted from the 80s, everything is thrown into a pressure cooker to unnerve and disorient the audience; it succeeds with flying colours.

Marty is a square peg trying to succeed in a world that only has round holes. The thing is he thinks the world should change all the shape of its establishments to accommodate him. His sheer self-confidence is a super power and when he sets his eye on something he will get it. He is resourceful, tenacious and he is not above breaking the rules because nothing can stop him from realising his dream of becoming the world’s best table tennis player. The whole thing feels like a warped version of the American Dream.

The pace is electric, words spew from the gap in his face like pellets. His moral compass only points to what his heart desires and he is quite unlikeable, but yet for me, I still hope he succeeds, a dichotomy that only works because Chalamet brought his A game. His wild character is brilliantly counterpoint by Gwyneth Paltrow and Odessa A’zion who play his female interests.

The movie has muscles and you will feel it during the table tennis scenes. I have no doubt a lot of the long table tennis rallies are CGI but Chalamet is so convincing you will believe he lives and breathes ping pong. This is a wildly entertaining movie that made me forget that all main characters in any narrative must experience a character arc. There is a semblance of one here but I am not so convinced a creature of habit will change. (4/5)


Sentimental Value is the critics’ darling and it’s almost critically bullet-proof all through award season, but to me it feels a lot like much-ado-about-nothing. This made me realise sometimes I am not on the same page as most critics but then again I am just an armchair “critic” who likes watching movies, probably not in the same league as the paid ones.

Stellan Skarsgård plays Gustav, a renowned semi-retired auteur who has penned a personal screenplay and wants his elder daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve) to take on the main role. But the thing is they have been estranged for a long time.

Then comes two women: Nora’s sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) who will be the bridge between the father and daughter; and Rachel (Elle Fanning), who will take on the role Nora does not want to play.

The screenplay is the olive branch here and you can see where the story and plot will eventually land up. What I like about it is how nuanced everything is, how quietly restraint it is. If it’s a Hollywood film there will be scenes of hue and cry. In that respect I find it emotionally resonant because the family dynamics feel awfully familiar.

I can see writer-director Joachim Trier working Ingmar Bergman-resque angles here with the characters. It is all very thoughtful, offering keen observation on frail family relationships and generational trauma, and interrogating how art can heal. This last point, I feel, is more powerfully portrayed in Hamnet. With Sentimental Value it seems to be saying that wounds can heal if we addressed the hurts through art obliquely? (3.5/5)


I had no idea what this is about except that it is Spain’s candidate for the Best Film in a Foreign Language category. The movie sucked me in with its atmospheric trance soundtrack, shocked me midway, made my mouth agape in shock a little later on and in the end damn well gave me a heart attack. That night I turned in right after the movie ended and in the middle of the night I woke up with a jolt and couldn’t sleep another wink after that. Trust me, go into this one blind like me.

The story is deceptively simple: a father (Sergi López) is accompanied by his son to look for his daughter at a rave party in North Africa. They soon fall in with a group of party-goers who are going to another rave party. Thinking his daughter may be in this rave party, the father and son go with them on a journey through purgatory.

I found out that the word “sirât” refers to a narrow and perilous bridge that every person must cross on the Day of Judgment to enter Paradise (Jannah) in Islamic belief. It is described as being thinner than a hair and sharper than a sword, with the faithful crossing it swiftly, while sinners may fall into Hell below. Writer-director Oliver Laxe wasn’t kidding about the hell part.

The narrative may feel barebones with little characterisations, but technically this one is up there with the best. The cinematography is beautiful, capturing the arid scenery in its brilliance and also how fraught with danger it is. The only professional actor is the guy playing the father and yet the acting by the ensemble is pitch-perfect. Their reaction at the sudden facing of danger feels authentic.

My wifey Choo wasn’t impressed even though her wits were all frail at the seams because she was unclear with the central message. I gave her my 2 cents’ take that us human beings all feel like kings and queens of the earth, sometimes earth and nature have a nasty way of telling us we are nothing. Perhaps you will have a different take home message after watching it, but no matter what, I think we can agree this is great cinema. Sometimes we get reminded that the language of cinema is not set in stone and Sirât is testament that cinema can evoke a tsunami of feels without doing the cliché. (4.5/5)

 

[westendboy]

Time to finish watching all the Best Picture nominees before the ceremony this weekend. I am only left with two.

First off, The title of The Secret Agent feels like bait because the story feels disconnected with the possibilities a title like that will entail. Once I got past that, the movie starts to take a hold of me.

Assuming the name of Marcelo (Wagner Moura), a former professor and widower, flees from a troubled past by escaping to Recife, where he reconnects with his in-laws and his son. Unbeknownst to him, the man whom he is escaping from has hired two hitmen to track him down.

The movie has a superb sense of place and time. The place is Brazil caught in the throes of corruption where anybody can be bought and the time is 1977. Writer-Director Kleber Mendonça Filho employs a rhythm and pace that run counter to what most audience are used to, which can be frustrating at times. But it does pay dividends in the end with an explosive last act that had me clutching the armrest for dear life.

There is a certain beguiling opacity to the movie in that it refuses to tie up all the loose ends and I can understand how it can be frustrating to some. It took me a while to come to terms with it – the movie never sets out wanting to tie up every narrative thread, preferring us to remember the major character beats. The ending sets this notion up beautifully in a scene in which Moura plays the adult son of Marcelo, it is a scene which cleverly interrogates the thin line between memory and the perceived knowledge of a mysterious man through listening to his voice. (4/5)



I have never missed a Yorgos Lanthimer movie and I won’t start now. Bugonia does a deep and funny dive into conspiracy theories, corporate greed and paranoia.

The story concerns two conspiracy-obsessed young men who kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.

I read that the movie is inspired by Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet (2009) which is now sitting in my cart. It will be nice to compare both movies but I am sure Lanthimer has put his own distinctive jet- black spin on it.

Early on, I love the dialogue between the captives and the captors. It was chockfull of corporate and negotiation speak, and both Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons play their roles with such delish relish. Unlike his other films, the plot moves with little surprises towards the answer to the ultimate question – Is the CEO an alien?

I can’t say I was surprised with the denouncement because if I were to write the ending this would be it, showcasing a world where us human beings are helping with its extinction. A friend told me that the movie is great right up until just before the ending. I enquired further on how he would end it and his reply was to keep it open, like the one in Inception. He has a point but I feel Lanthimer was going for a different trajectory. I wouldn’t change the ending, I mean changing it would mean I don’t get to see the couple who die in the middle of coitus. I laughed till my tears rolled in that scene. (4/5)



Blades of the Guardians was released during the Chinese New Year festive season which is typically inundated with rowdy comedies. Yuen Woo-Ping’s movie is no comedy although it does have some odd bouts of humour. In my humble opinion, this was the only movie worth watching during the holiday season.

Four generations of martial arts stars unite. Directed by Yuen Woo-Ping, icons like Wu Jing, Nicholas Tse, and Jet Li come together for an epic martial arts event. In the desert, many groups, including escorts, the government and merchants, are fighting for power. Dao Ma (Wu Jing), a famous bounty hunter, takes a job to protect a man on the long road to the city of Chang’an. However, he discovers the person he is protecting is the empire’s most wanted man, Zhi Shi Lang. Now, every greedy faction is hunting them and a deadly battle for the prize begins.

What a brilliant set-up and the Gobi Desert location is wonderfully used. Each fight sequence betters the previous in terms of ferocity and inventiveness. Watch out for one where the fight happens in the middle of a sandstorm. How the wind aids in the physics of the fight sequence is awesome. In fact, all the fights the physicality is emphasised and the camera is always optimally pulled back to allow audiences to ogle at the relentless action. There are no quick cuts to cheat audiences’ eyes. You are going to feel all the blue blacks on your body when the movie ends.

The occasional comedy feels out of place and the second act sags a little because it takes too long to draw characters’ motivations, but I am sure almost everyone in the theatre is just anticipating the next crazy fight sequence.

There’s no denying Yuen Woo-Ping’s massive contribution to the martial arts genre and how he has practically cemented how Hollywood approaches martial arts action in their movies. At 80, this might be his swan song that is full of bravura but with the way the movie ends, I won’t be surprised Yuen will be back with a sequel. If you are home theatre enthusiasts, the desert fight and the climatic fight are going to mouth-watering demo-worthy scenes. (3.5/5)



“If you want to steal, steal from the best,” said Woody Allen. In that respect, writer-director Brad Layton stole from the quintessential heist movie Heat (1995) and he stole it well.

Set against the sun-bleached grit of Los Angeles, Crime 101 weaves the tale of an elusive thief (Chris Hemsworth) whose high-stakes heists unfolding along the iconic 101 freeway have mystified police. When he eyes the score of a lifetime with hopes of this being his final job, his path collides with a disillusioned insurance broker (Halle Berry) who is facing her own crossroads, forcing the two to collaborate. Determined to crack the case, a relentless detective (Mark Ruffalo) closes in on the operation, raising the stakes even higher. As the multimillion-dollar heist approaches, the line between hunter and hunted begins to blur, and all three are forced to confront the cost of their choices – and the realization that there’s no turning back.

The movie has a sleek look and the neon-drenched lighting is gorgeous. The characters are economically drawn with just enough depth. The whole thing is a Heat pastiche complete with a love interest, an unhinged character who doesn’t follow the code, the dogged police detective and so on. I enjoyed it a lot for what it is with a final denouncement that feels a little fresh but I can’t say is particularly memorable.

They say crime doesn’t pay, maybe, just maybe, sometimes it does. For a chance to watch Thor, Hulk and Storm in a movie, why the hell not? (3.5/5)

 

[westendboy]

I have seen a lot more than this since my last post, but I will just choose these 6 to say something and one of them is a helluva beautiful clusterf$ck.


By now you would have been inundated by all the positive reviews of Project Hail Mary and I doubt I can add anything new to the discussion.

I read the book and I can’t say I enjoy it because all the sci-fi techno-jumbo orbited around my head. I tend to stay away from sci-fi novels but my love for Andy Weir’s The Martian compelled me to read it. In all my widest dreams I could never have imagined how all these mumbo jumbo could be translated onto the screen and the movie succeeded so many times over.

This is one crowning galactic piece of achievement. The story of one man’s effort to save the planet isn’t new but scientist-turned-high-school-Science-teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) isn’t your typical celluloid hero; he has to learn to be one. This isn’t just a one-man’s epic journey to save mankind, it is also an intimate story of an unlikely friendship.

Last year, when Sinners came out so early in the year I was sure come awards season it will be remembered. Project Hail Mary is this year’s Sinners. Mark my words, come Oscar season it will be counted for.

Two energetic thumbs up (4.5/5)


I enjoyed the first one which takes the dysfunctional family to a whole new level but I am not sure a sequel is even needed. But it does look like this one went into a pressure cooker to expand on the F word, “family”. There is care in expanding the world and this one follows the adage of “more is better”, but of course you know you can’t believe that. It’s still a fun and campy romp with awesome deaths and there are a couple of hilarious scenes but it is already running on tired legs. Really nice to see Sarah Michelle Gellar back in a meaty role. (3/5)




A friend messaged me about this made-for-TV Japanese movie named The Greatest Gift of Life (2021) and these are his words in verbatim: “This is one of those shows I cried throughout”. I appreciate it when people don’t hold back and are completely honest, laying out their heart bare. The conversation went on for a while and I had to tell him to stop overselling the movie and that I will watch it. How can I not watch this? So I waited for Choo to come home because I figured two people crying is better than one.

The story couldn’t be more simple – A widower (Takusô Kadano) makes a living as a translator in Tokyo after retiring as a college instructor. His only daughter (the iridescent Satomi Ishihara) has married and moved to a different part of the country, so he is surprised when his daughter shows up and lets him know that she is staying for a while. It is awkward, but the father and daughter must learn to communicate.

And communicate they did, through food, books and the everyday. The father senses the daughter has a reason for coming home and secretly goes to meet his son-in-law to find out why. He then elicits the reason and has to decide what to do with the secret. Before long the daughter asks her husband if he told her father the reason. From this point on, both of them know the other party knows the secret but they will continue to act as if they do not.

The above will sound like it’s a comedy, it’s not and it will probably baffle anyone not living in Asia. In this part of the world, love is seldom displayed in an ostentatious manner; people tend to show love in quiet actions. I say all this as a generalisation so don’t quote me. Watching this, I totally get it and was choking back my emotions but I totally lost it with the father and daughter’s final parting scene.

The movie doesn’t come with bells and whistles, and the production value pales in comparison to many movies, but it wears its huge heart on its sleeves with a pair of superb performances. Just watch the juxtaposition in a scene where both of them are watching a show. They will guffaw with the audience and then the emotions well up in them till they explode in tears. It is a beautiful scene and what a great movie this is. What is the greatest gift in life you can give to someone you love? Think about that. Is it money? Happiness? A sense of security? The movie suggests it’s something you always don’t seem to have enough of, time. (4.5/5)



My work isn’t hectic now and I can start to watch my stash of arthouse movies. La Jetée (1962) is one of them I will say something about.

In the aftermath of World War III, in the carcass of a devastated Paris, the few surviving humans find themselves living beneath the Palais de Chaillot. While struggling to eke out an existence in a labyrinthine network of dark underground galleries, a scientist, who’s been researching time travel, hopes to send test subjects back to different pre-war periods for food, supplies, and maybe a solution to their dire position. But, after travelling through time, one man, who’s been haunted by vague childhood memories of unclouded bygone times, becomes a catalyst of change. Somehow, the silent jetty at the Orly Airport defines a pivotal moment. Can the troubled time-traveller decipher the cryptic meaning of his visions?

This experimental short film blew my mind. The story is told through still images and voice-over narration. It is so compelling that I could fill in all the blanks between the black and white images, giving it vivid colours and intensity. The ending packs a helluva wallop which I will not share here. Thematically, this is strong suggesting that we can never escape our destiny and that memories can be a balm to the weary soul or a debilitating curse. Brilliant stuff, at a mere 28 minutes. (5/5)

The Criterion Blu-ray disc has another documentary, Sans Soleil (1983) but I should do well to not say anything since I slept through half of it.



I had no idea what this is about except that it’s by Mike Leigh whose filmography I am familiar with. I thought I was getting ready for a character study of someone whose life has been turned topsy turvy by the vagaries of life. Holy cow! I can’t believe how much caustic vitriol a person can hold.

Pansy (a brilliant Marianne Jen-Baptiste) is a woman tormented by anger and depression, hypersensitive to the slightest possible offence and ever ready to fly off the handle. She criticises her husband and their adult son so relentlessly that neither bothers to argue with her. She picks fights with strangers and sales clerks and enumerates the world’s countless flaws to anyone who will listen, especially her cheerful sister Chantal (Michele Austin), who, despite their clashing temperaments, might be the only person still capable of sympathising with her.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from this. Pansy makes spewing vitriol to anyone in her radius a damn near art form. Yet, I sympathise with her because I know it can’t be easy living in her world in which everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, irritates her to the high heavens. I kept waiting for a backstory that doesn’t quite materialise. In the end, I realise Leigh is not fashioning his storytelling in the three usual acts. The ending doesn’t tie up everything in a neat bow but it stayed with me.

It’s very seldom I come across movies in which the dialogue is alive. This one has it in spades and then some. I can’t say it’s for everybody but I can proclaim I love it. Even now as I am typing this I can feel Pansy looking over my shoulder. (4/5)




Even before watching this I already know about all the negativity about it. So one fine day when I had 3 hours to spare and I could put away my armchair critic’s hat, I put the movie on and in less than 30 minutes my hat went straight up.

Megalopolis is a Roman epic set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero, the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.

I can see all the lofty ideas – legacy, art, life, but nothing coalesce into a coherent narrative. Characters sprout lines that seem full of meaning on paper, but absolutely bloated and meaningless when they leave their mouths. Even the look of the city feels garish and tasteless. The acting is so wooden that I feel I can do better.

This is 2h 18min I cannot get back but like an accident site I had to see it, even if it’s a train wreck by one of the world’s best directors. If you want to make a beautiful-looking movie that is a mega disaster, this is it. I don’t know, maybe there are people who will dig this movie but I am sure they are in the minority and might be full of BS. (2/5)

 

[westendboy]

Just a quartet of quick ones…

At this moment of writing, The King’s Warden has become the highest grossing film by revenue in South Korea. So I walked into the theatre anticipating a rouser of a film. It’s good but it’s not that good. I supposed if you are a Korean, watching the movie will imbue you with a swelling cultural pride and identity.

In 1457, a violent coup throws the Joseon Dynasty into disarray. Teen king Yi Hong-wi (Park Ji-hoon) has been stripped of his crown. In a remote mountain settlement, village chief Eom Heung-do (Yoo Hae-jin) struggles to keep his people fed. When he learns that hosting an exiled noble can elevate a village’s wealth and status, he makes a pitch for his hamlet of Cheongnyeongpo to be the next open-air prison for those for the political exiles. His wish comes true, but instead of an old lord, his village gets the deposed king.

Just before the ending credits, we are told that these two central characters existed in historical annals and that they are the best of friends. How much of what is depicted in the film is true, I wouldn’t know. I saw it as an amalgam of historical facts, wishful concoctions and creative storytelling.

Director and co-writer Jang Hang-jun has given the story a grounded-ness plus a huge dose of broad comedy coming mainly from the village chief character with his cockamamie scheme. The jokes don’t always land but there is no denying Yoo’s compelling character. The heart of the story is the relationship between the exiled teenage ex-king and warden. At first the relationship is transactional – the warden needs him healthy so he can keep receiving food and goods from noble lords, while Yi is reticent and guarded. It is through food that they start to bond and a certain incident at the cliff enamoured the entire village to the teen king.

This is a story of two contrasting tones. In the second half the story takes on a serious tone culminating in an emotional towering climax that had me on the verge of tears and quivering lips. This last act is earned through the most unlikely friendship between two people of two vastly different class. Best have a tissue ready at this point. Me? I don’t believe in tissue. If a movie has done its job well, the tears will happen and they are the greatest tribute to a story well told. (3.5/5)


Freaky Tales is a wholotta fun. They sure weren’t kidding about the adjective in the title. Depending on your predilection you might think it’s a messy exercise, but I happen to feel this is very fun gonzo filmmaking with a strong essence of anything goes. If this movie can even get Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelssohn to come onboard, it has to count for something.

This is an anthology of four interconnected stories set in 1987 Oakland, CA which will talk about the love of music, movies, people, places and memories beyond our knowable universe. It also feels like a love letter to the Bay Area.

It takes a while to find its footing because the first story is the weakest of the lot. If you survive that you are in for a lot of gory grindhouse violence and a fantastic cameo by Tom Hanks. Best to watch with popcorn, chips and beer. (3.5/5)


The Red Line is a Thai movie made under the Netflix umbrella. It’s about three women who fall prey to a ruthless phone scam. To settle the score, they’ll take on the criminal network that stole their money and get back their dignity.

The red line refers to that thin line the women have to cross to make the scammers get their comeuppance. Essentially, to do that they have to work their schemes like the criminals, they have to become criminals to get back at them.

This is far from being a great show. In fact, it’s mediocre at best, but it ends on a note to suggest there might be a sequel, god forbid. But the thing is I watched this through vicarious eyes. Some years ago, during the last World Cup I was scammed of nearly $15000 so I know how the characters feel and I want them to exact their revenge. The good news is that a couple of months later, totally out of the blue, I got my money back, every single cent. Till this day I don’t know what happened and how I got my money back. So you see, I really enjoyed watching this. Thank goodness I didn’t need to cross a red line like the women. (3.5/5)



This last one I will talk about comes with a funny story. Sometimes in my class I get to finish the lesson early and I will chat with my students about books, movies or music, all of my greatest loves and sometimes I get pleasant surprises by them. One such day I asked them for the scariest movie they have seen and two boys immediately screamed The Medium in unison (I am guessing they saw it one after the other since they are classmates). So one afternoon I watched it by my lonesome (wife saw me put the movie in my Netflix watch list and immediately said she will not watch it).




There are quite a few reasons to see the movie. It’s from director Banjong Pisanthanakun who made Shutter and writer Na Hong-jin who made Chaser and The Wailing. This was actually Thailand’s submission for the Oscars and it explores the thin line between humans and spirits and what happens to those who cross that line without appropriate psychic protection. However, the main reason for me to check this out is because I can engage with my students next week talking about the movie. See the stuff I do to create rapport with students. I just hope the movie is worth my time, it was.

The narrative framework employed to tell the horror story is part travel documentary and part found footage. The setting is Isan, northeastern Thailand, a region steeped in cultural history, religious rituals and rites. The cinematography is drab with a green tint throughout which works along with the documentary cinescape. After studying the lives of shamans across the country, the film crew decide to focus on Nim (Sawanee Utoomma). Nim is a shaman, a vessel to provide interaction between the villagers and a mysterious goddess named Ba Yan. Nim’s possession is a benevolent one; it is a great privilege for Ba Yan to reside in her soul and Nim’s love for her fellow villagers is palpable. Then all hell breaks loose when Nim’s sister, Noi’s family is in trouble with a malevolent spirit who is taking over Noi’s daughter, Mink’s body.

I have seen my fair share of evil possession and exorcism movies, but there are some cool scares to be had here. I like those scenes of Mink’s possession juxtaposing with the everyday. The one of her on a float passing through the crowd comes to mind.

I particularly enjoying watching the early scenes of possession when the family is still floundering with what they are dealing with. There is a sex scene with Mink and various men of which I will be definitely talking to my students about.

The climatic scene is full-blown action-packed which totally went against the grain of how horror was depicted earlier. This part is so crazy that the camera crew shot everything with night vision and it did cross my mind that this is the most professional camera crew ever. With all the crazy shenanigans happening, the crew kept their camera on the horrific scenes and captured everything. At one point the zombie was so self-aware that she tells a cameraman: “here, give me the camera. Let me film you instead.” Then we get to see a man writhing on the ground with his innards hanging out. This scene took me out of it and I started laughing.

I learned an important life lesson which will come in handy in case I am an assistant in an exorcism. If the exorcist says keep the door closed and never open it for any reason, he means it. So what if you hear a baby wailing inside. F*$k maternal or paternal instinct. If you want to live, don’t open the door, don’t be a busybody.

The ending has got to be one of the most un-Hollywood endings ever. Let’s just say the good guys don’t win all the time. I also like the coda at the end which essentially gives a cool new layer to the story in that in the face of pure evil, is faith alone enough? I am looking forward to discussing the movie with my students this weekend and I might have to advise their parents to put a parental lock on Netflix. (4/5)

 

[westendboy]

We have seen a lot since my last post, so I will choose just 6 to say something.

We love Beef S1. Creator-writer Lee Sung Jin took a simple premise of a road rage incident and led it to a memorable game of oneupmanship and a study of two worlds on opposite sides of the social ladder. The plot spirals to unpredictable terrains and vacillates between nail-biting tension to drama and to comedy. The laughs were never cheap and the tone was pure perfection. I had no idea which direction it would go from episode to episode and the ending of “nobody wins” hit the spot.

S2 just can’t cut the mustard. The cast consists of many solid names, but the writing feels off. Like S1, all the characters are awful narcissists, but unlike S1 I find it very difficult to root for them and when I can’t care for the characters’ plights the show won’t grip me. Worst still, I kept getting The White Lotus vibe which means S2 can’t quite come to grips with what it is trying to do. Sometimes bigger doesn’t mean better. Maybe S1 set the bar too high and this one just can’t measure up or come even close. (3/5)

On paper I doubt I will dig The Madison. It’s about how a New York family’s life unravels after a tragedy. Then they will process their grief while vacationing in rural Montana, where they explore human connection amid their profound sorrow. Since it’s written by Taylor Sheridan, I had to give it a go and I didn’t come up for air till it was over with a lean and mean 6-episode run.

This is Sheridan preaching a Neo-Western lifestyle and it’s a damn convincing sermon, helped by some gorgeous cinematography and a halcyon way of life. There is fish-out-water comedy but mostly this is the Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell Show as Pfeiffer navigates the terrain of grief. I am surprised I like this a lot. (4/5)


My 10-year LCD HDReady TV finally called it quits while we were watching Heathers. I don’t believe in relying on just my projector for entertainment so I was in the market for a new TV. Frankly, anything I get will be a major upgrade from my faithful servant of 10 years. It was during one of those evenings that a salesman demo a Samsung OLED and he showcased a scene from Bloodhounds to show how it can handle inky dark scenes. I was more impressed with the show than the TV (it didn’t have DolbyVision so that’s a miss).

With Bloodhounds, you enter the nefarious world of loan sharks. The show purports that there are good ones and there are the really badass ones. Gun-woo (Woo Do-Hwan) and Woo-jin (Lee Sang-yi) are initially opponents in the ring, but soon become the best of friends. Guys just want to be boxers but the black society of loan sharks in S1 and underground fight club in S2 refuse to make their lives easy.

The brotherhood between Gun-woo and Woo-jin is the emotional backbone, but the meat of the show are the fights. I must say the well choreographed fights, which usually involves bare fists, rods and knives, are the meat. It is exhilarating to look at the action till the point I feel like hitting gym. Realistic, grounded and visceral, the fights obey the laws of physics. I can literally feel my body getting blue blacks as I ogled at them going mano a mano against so many. The plethora of villains are also colourful and all manner of badass with S2 upping the ante. The fights also feel like they have real stakes and our protagonists do get injured even if they can recover by the next episode.

The only complaint I have is with the last 2 episodes of S1 with the huge tonal shift. Suddenly there are so many wise cracks when the heroes should go into revenge mode. But when the fights happen I forget everything. Oh… I must also say S1 has the third best knife fight. You might ask which are the first 2 – in my humble opinion, #1 is The Raid and #2 is The Man From Nowhere. If you like action I highly recommend this. Choo and I finished S1 and 2 in 3 days! How’s that for a 1-2-3 combo punch? (4/5)

In preparation for The Devil Wears Prada 2, we watched part one again. We entered into the world of haute couture and had a great time again. You want to see how 20 years whizzed by feels like? This is it. Streep, Hathaway, Blunt and Tucci embodied their characters like they played them yesterday and none of them looked like they have aged 20 stones, unlike me.

Okay, I didn’t think this is good because the story lacks the scrumptious bite of the first. But it is still fun to see them engage in whip-smart dialogue. The story is thin – Andy is helping Miranda navigate the magazine into the digital future. It is the type of plotline you can see from a mile away. I didn’t appreciate how Blunt’s character is written and her character feels like many steps backwards from part one; I don’t buy it. However, as a full-on nostalgia trip this is pretty cool. (3/5)

Deep Quiet Room (深度安静) was screened during the Singapore Chinese Film Festival. It was nominated for 7 Golden Horse Awards but sadly didn’t win any.

It begins with a meet-cute but this isn’t a rom-com. From that moment onwards we go down a rabbit hole – After the alleged suicide of his pregnant wife, Ming undertakes to care for his father-in-law, but discovers dark family secrets that reveal the motive behind Yi-ting’s tragic decision.

The slow burn pace is deliberate as we get to follow Ming as he navigates his loss, grief and the mystery of the why. Though slow I never found it boring and was curious to see what Ming will do once he knows the truth. Choo was very astute – 30min in she turned to me and whispered two words, then 45min later it turned out she was right. Once it was clear and Ming makes the dire decision, it felt like a 3.5 movie for me. Then came the Q&A which changed everything.

The audience asked some pertinent questions and director Shen Ko-shang explained them so eloquently. His explanation frequently puts the movie in a different light and I found myself appreciating his storytelling even more. I will mention one – Shen explained he started out as a documentary filmmaker and he wanted to approach the subject matter as a documentary. But he changed his mind and decided to make a narrative film to reach a wider audience on the difficult subject of child abuse. Still, he couldn’t escape his roots as a documentary filmmaker so his choice of camera shots are never close-ups, preferring to hover his eye around the principal. His idea wasn’t to tell a story in the conventional sense, but to let the audience feel the struggle of Ming as he comes to terms with the tragedy.

I enjoyed the illuminating Q&A which made me see the movie in a whole new light. I even went up to the director to tell him that. (4/5)

Joko Anwar’s Ghost in the Cell opened the same week as The Devil Wears Prada 2. This was always in my radar because I love Joko Anwar’s horror movies and never miss any of them. The dude knows how to make old school horror with minimal CGI and the way he builds tension is masterclass. But I didn’t know he can also do comedy. I saw this in a theatre with 4 other patrons and guess who laughed the loudest.

The story is mainly centred inside Labuhan Angsana prison, where the inmates live with daily problems: oppression from prison officials, as well as hostility and violence between fellow inmates. One day, a new inmate enters and one by one the inmates die in very horrific ways. After learning that there is a ghost that kills people with the most negative aura or energy, the inmates compete to do good deeds to maintain their positive aura. But of course, it is very difficult to stay positive in a prison full of injustice. Until they realize one thing that seems impossible but they must do to stay alive: unite to fight the oppressors, even ghosts.

This one is total bonkers, I mean reading the synopsis above already made me go huh. But the execution is a barrel of fun. It is so free-wheeling and gonzo you will just willingly put your brains on the floor and drink in all the splatter, gore and violence like it’s OJ. The deaths are gnarly art installations and my eyes were wide opened. I love how the prisoners start to connect the dots and learn what they have to do to stay alive. What I didn’t count on was the biting satire on systemic corruption.

My only complaint is that the ending felt rushed and a little too easy. Overall, I would think you need to put this on your radar if you enjoy creative genre films. (4/5)