TITLE: Ploning
DIRECTOR: Dante Nico Garcia
WRITERS: Dante Nico Garcia (story); Dante Nico Garcia (screenplay) ...
CAST: Judy Ann Santos, Gina Pareño, Mylene Dizon, Meryll Soriano, Ces Quesada, Tony Mabesa

This movie changed my perception of Judy Ann Santos. I don’t remember liking or watching any of her films in the past. But thank God I watched Ploning. It’s remarkable, I enjoyed every bit of it.

Set in the 70s or around the time when the late President Marcos was still in power, the movie plays the simple life and culture of the people of Cuyo (Palawan) at that time.

It is not just a two-hour story-telling, it is a visual treat.

The shots are splendid. It was like watching a slide-show of sunsets, long beaches, and other still-lifes, which are not actually still. The film opens and finishes with a grand artwork: Cuyon’s bay area, slowly illuminated by gas lamps. So artistic!

If I had not read reviews of the film earlier, I would have thought the movie was shot elsewhere, like outside the country.

Director Dante Nico Garcia picked Cuyo, Palawan, for his fist full-length film, being a place where he spent most of his childhood.

He might be a neophyte filmmaker, but Garcia was really good. I don’t know how he did it, kept me focused to it even if I don’t normally enjoy movies with subtitles. Even if the story is so ordinary, not even catchy. it is in how it is delivered that makes it extraordinary.

The actors had to learn the Cuyunon dialect so they could say it with ease. In the movie, it seems they are natives of Cuyo.

Ploning is a nickname (a Cuyunon must have a nickie) of a lady (Judy Ann). She is admired by the people around her because of her strength. And this strength the people are drawn together like they are one big family, it constantly keeps the fervor in them to live their daily lives as happily as they can, even if they only have each other.

At the first half of the film, I was wondering when this Tomas would finally come out, if he would come out at all. Tomas is Ploning’s boyfriend, who had gone to Manila to work, and has not returned since.

For the many years that he was gone, Ploning has been telling to the people around her that she would go to where Tomas is to reunite with him. Everyone has been looking forward to that day. If Ploning has kept them happy, they would also like to see her happy.

In another of her dramatic moments, with knees bended to the muddy ground, Gina Pareno screams at God of how unfair He is to her. First he took Tomas and now He melts away all her salt with the rain, when all she wanted was to earn from it so she could take home the bones of her son, Tomas, who already died of some sickness years ago.

Everyone is shocked.

Ploning could only give them a half smile. She will not cry, as she does not want to burden her neighbors and the people she loves with her own sadness.

She is a friend to everyone, even to a 6-year-old Digo, who would then turn into a seaman and would then be looking for his “Nay Ploning” 25 years later.

Everyone loves her. And still talks about her even after her death.

One scene from the movie I can never forget is when the big brother is punishing Digo after the latter, while spoon-feeding their paralyzed mother, asked: “Nay, kailan ka mamamatay?”

The question earns the child a punishment, he is tied to a tree at their backyard, and while the big brother is pouring his anger to the wood he is chopping, the paralyzed mother, half lying to her bed, shouts to the latter to stop punishing the “bunso,” as he was only asking a question.

I loved how the mom repeatedly begs the big brother to forgive the little boy, even if the process is almost killing her. I wish I could quote the exact words she is saying there.

There are other remarkalbe scenes in this movie, scenes lifted from our very own culture.

Ploning is one of the few best movies we have.

Labels: drama, indie, romance

TITLE: Casshern
DIRECTOR: Kazuaki Kiriya
WRITERS: Dai Sato, Shotaro Suga, Tatsuo Yoshida (Characters)
CAST: Yusuke Iseya, Kumiko Aso, Akira Terao, Kanako Higuchi, Fumiyo Kohinata, Hiroyuki Miyasako

Marketed as a scifi action-adventure story, Casshern is not quite what it says it is. It's a serious yet bizarre piece of film, rendered almost entirely on the greenscreen with special effects that so closely border the Rule of Cool you don't really care what's going on half of the time.

Let's begin at the beginning.

Casshern is set some time in the future right in the wake of a fifty-year war between two great countries. The world now is a dark landscape, covered in pollution, but as with any great wars, the aftermath has resulted in a bubble of technological advancements. One such advancement is Dr. Azuma's breakthrough discovery of Neo-Cells, which are not unlike stem cells that can endlessly regenerate. Dr. Azuma first comes up with the idea in an effort to find a cure for his ailing wife but tries to get the government interested by highlighting the possibilities of such technology. At first rejected by the government, his research eventually finds secret funding from Naito, the government's military adviser.

While Dr. Azuma is busy playing god, his only son, the idealistic Tetsuya, volunteers to join the army and gets killed in the ensuing fight. Dr. Azuma receives the news of his son's death at the same moment he realizes that his Neo-Cell research is a failure. Just as Tetsuya's body is escorted to Dr. Azuma's laboratory, a huge bolt of lightning suddenly descends upon the facility. The incident causes a phenomenon, resulting in the creation of artificial humans called "Neo-sapiens." The government soon eliminates all save for three, who manage to escape into an abandoned city filled with dormant robots. There, they vow to take revenge upon humanity which rejected them.

Meanwhile, back in the lab, Dr. Azuma tries to revive Tetsuya by putting his body in the Neo-cell tank. The attempt is successful and Dr. Azuma tasks Dr. Kozuki, his colleague who also happens to be the father of Tetsuya's fiancee, to treat Tetsuya's yet-unstable body. Eventually, Tetsuya heals but by then the Neo-sapiens have waged a full-fledged war against the humans, destroying cities and killing humans without mercy. It is now up to Tetsuya to stop them but he is not without his own nightmares to battle.

That's about as straightforward a summary as I can do with this loopy, dense, and outright weird post-apocalyptic movie. To add more to the confusion, nearly all characters are conflicted. There's Dr. Azuma, who only wants to cure his wife but ends up playing god and "giving birth" to the Neo-sapiens, the enemy of the human race. There's Tetsuya, who starts off as extremely idealistic and nationalistic only to find that the war he is so proud to take part in turns out to be nothing more than manslaughter of the mass variety. And, of course, there's the Neo-sapiens themselves who, for all intents and purposes, are the children of the human race but who find themselves targeted by their hatred.

Like its characters, the movie is multi-layered. It's quite an accomplishment, when you think about it. In an attempt to connect all characters, the film manages to squeeze so much information in just forty minutes. Even so, I can't say that Casshern did not suffer as a result. At several points, it did feel like the movie is needlessly detailed. It tries to be political, sci fi, action, drama, romance and philosophical all at once, and while for some people, that's what makes this movie special (at least, when compared to other CGI action movies out there), it begs to be told: Make up your mind. Unfortunately, the film never does and we are left with a story that's confused with itself.

That said, let's move on to the more enjoyable aspects of Casshern. There is no doubt that the best part about Casshern is its clever use of CGI and the digital backlot filmmaking method. The picture is beautiful, hands-down. Rather than try to be realistic, the film, in noir-esque fashion, saturates many of its scenes with unassuming colors to reflect the maudlin mood, puts its characters in stark contrast with the background by putting undue emphasis on such negligible objects like Braishin's cape or Luna's eyes, and then makes everything -- literally -- explode once the action starts. The film even employs stop-motion animation like you would never believe: screws and bolts flying about as Tetsuya rips through the robot army, holy crap!

Casshern's script may be weak in terms of character development and plot execution, but the story concept is fascinating by itself. Add to that the astounding visuals and the movie does what it's meant to do: entertain.

THE SCORE

Story - 5
Sound - 6
Cinematography - 7
Picture - 8
Special Effects - 8
Acting - 5

Overall - 6.5/10

Labels: action, adventure, cgi, dark, drama, futuristic, psychological, scifi

TITLE: Kino no Tabi: Byouki no Kuni -For You-
DIRECTOR: Nakamura Ryuutarou
WRITER: Sigsawa Keiichi (light novel)
STUDIO: Shaft
TAGLINE: "The world is not beautiful. That, in a way, lends it a sort of beauty."
VOICE CAST: Maeda Ai, Aigase Ryuuji

For every thing of beauty is an ugly side. This is never better played out than in the latest Kino no Tabi movie, titled "The Country of Illness" (second of three installments).

The movie follows Kino and her faithful talking motorbike, Hermes, into a highly advanced subterranean city where people live inside a sterile and sealed environment. By request of one of the city's more important citizens, Kino spends time with a sick girl and relates to her the tales of her many adventures.

This movie, as well as the original TV series, has no overarching plot. Every episode, every movie can pretty much stand on its own so that there is no need to get your hands on either the series or the first movie to make sense out of it. Because of this, the movie is very easy to watch -- what, with a straightforward plot and a rather puerile script. But I think that because of this sheer simplicity, the movie is able to evoke so much atmosphere it's hard to put in words.

Kino no Tabi does not have pretensions to depth. Indeed, it is not meant to be a very deep, psychological, mature piece of film. It is exactly what it appears to be: an anime about a traveling kid. Its genius lies in its ability to look through the eyes of its main character, Kino, and feel her sympathy without, however, getting involved. The resultant effect is a somber film that just hints at depth and melancholy but with a complete lack of irony.

It is something that is hard to achieve in an anime, especially an anime that uses the art and the style of Kino no Tabi. The simple yet effective lines, the use of cell-shading to add dimension to otherwise static-looking characters, and a powdery palette make this series look like a children's picture book. And complemented by the leisurely way the story unfolds itself, Kino no Tabi is a prime example of the slice-of-life genre where everything else is subdued to emphasize the least focused aspect of storytelling: the building of atmosphere.

Labels: adaptation, anime, futuristic, slice of life

TITLE: City of God
DIRECTORS: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund (co-director)
WRITERS: Paulo Lins (novel), Bráulio Mantovani (screenplay)
TAGLINE: "If you run you're dead...if you stay, you're dead again. Period."
CAST: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen, Douglas Silva, Jonathan Haagensen, Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge

Story: Gangsters killing one another. But this is a no non-sense film, it is even touching at some point.

Set in the 60’s in a ghetto of Rio de Janeiro, the film brings you to the lives of those people living in the slum, to their violent world: young armed thuds smashing other people’s properties to steal and their younger siblings watching them like heroes as they do it.

Then these younger fellows grow up to be just like their older brothers, who at this time, are already long dead.

There are several characters in the story. I’ll talk about Rocket and Li’l Ze being the most significant ones. Rocket wants to be a photographer while his neighbor Li’l Ze wants to become a hoodlum just like his brother. While still young, Li’l Ze has already seen the danger of living in their world: police ransacking their homes to find their brothers held as suspects and killing them if found or their brothers killing innocent people for money, and has come to love every moment of it. Cruelty is actually an understatement for this movie.

Already grown up, Li'l Ze, who at a young age (called Li'l Dice) just for the love of being in control killed several people while tasked to serve as lookout while his brother and friends were robbing a hotel, becomes a powerful drug dealer in their city. He is not only a drug lord that manufactures and sells drugs to everyone who wants it, he also kills everyone who tries to stop it. And while he is busy building up his empire and killing people along the way, the other boy Rocket is still living in poverty. The boy’s only dream is only to become a photographer anyway.

Then comes another interesting character of Knockout Ned, a man whose girlfriend was raped and murdered before his very eyes by Li’l Ze because she refused to dance with him. To take vengeance for his girlfriend (and members of his family who became Ze’s next victims) Knockout Ned then becomes a part of another group that wants to end Ze’s killing spree. You may ask what is the police doing at this time? The police is, as you’ve already guessed it, also plays its own part of the gangster’s game by receiving its share of drug monies. Why, peace should have been there had this force been doing its job.

So it’s war between the two rival gangs now. It starts with the chasing of a chicken by Ze’s group. The runaway chicken crosses to the other side of the road where Rocket, who at this time is already a photographer of a local daily after his picture of Ze and his gang members accidentally got published, is walking with a friend. And while the young photographer is trying to catch the chicken to give it to the waiting party at the other end, Knockout Ned’s group arrives at the opposite end. Rocket is now caught between the two clashing parties, all armed and ready to shoot.

And then war breaks free.

Fortunately, Rocket is saved by his amazing power to duck and roll. And gets the best shots of the war that is going on around him.

The war kills Knockout Ned, who is shot by their new recruit, a little boy who only wants to get even with the killer of his father. It turns out that that killer is Knockout Ned, who died while trying to save the avenger.

Then police comes in the scene a bit on time. Leaders of the two groups are arrested including Ze. Police chief then brings Ze to his lair to get payment in exchange of his freedom. And since Ze invested most of his money on guns, he only has so little to give to the police. He is so broke. After getting a few of Ze’s money, police then leaves the broke drug dealer alone, who promises to bring his empire back. But even before he could say it, the little boys, I mentioned earlier, now with their real guns, mercilessly shoot him to death. They take over his business.

That’s how brutal it is.

There is no happy ending to this story.

You will learn that this is based on real events. There is even a clip of an interview of Knockout Ned before he died. He said there something like how the police at that time turned a deaf ear to their cries….

The movie in 2004 was nominated for 4 Oscars.

Labels: crime, drama, thriller

TITLE: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
WRITERS: David Koepp (screenplay), George Lucas (story)
CAST: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf

I love the Indiana Jones franchise! I watched every single Indiana Jones movie ever made so you're looking at a huge fan. When I heard that there was a re-make twenty years after the last installment, I was literally screaming-thrilled. Even more so when I learned that Cate Blanchett, arguably one of the most talented actresses of this era, was going to be in it.

So what happened?

George Lucas happened; that's what.

First, a briefer on the plot:

Famed archaeologist/adventurer Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones is called back into action when he becomes entangled in a Soviet plot to uncover the secret behind mysterious artifacts known as the Crystal Skulls.

The movie features the Mayan civilization, all but lost to history, and the old El Dorado myth. No more Nazis. Instead, we get a healthy dose of red Soviets walking around in their starched military uniforms.

Blanchett, playing the prime villain Col. Irina Spalkov, sports a cool helmet-style hairdo, an even cooler personality and a stiff Russian accent. Very proper. Very correct. Very foreign. I love the character already!

LaBeouf played the greaser, bike-riding, leather jacket-wearing, knife-wielding "Mutt" Williams, Indy's sidekick and son. I didn't see The Transformers so the last time I saw LaBeouf was when he was still a kid playing the brat brother from the Nickelodeon sitcom, Even Stevens. He's gone a long way from then. His character in the Crystal Skull is still hilarious but more grown-up and tougher. I mean, hell, if he could give someone like Irina Spalkov a run for her money in a particularly hairy fencing scene, then he must be one tough meanie to beat.

I didn't look at the movie poster before I watched the movie. I wanted to surprise myself and boy, was I surprised. Especially when I saw Karen Allen make her appearance somewhere in the middle of the movie. I had no idea she was even in the movie. The actress reprises her role as Marion Ravenwood, Mutt's mother and Indiana Jones' leading lady in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I think was the best Indiana Jones movie ever made. Not much to say about the character, except that she has since mellowed down. It must be the work of motherhood. The best part about Allen's role in the movie is that it adds to the overall nostalgia.

And lastly, Harrison Ford plays Indiana Jones once again. He makes a dramatic, albeit quirky appearance, as a hostage of the Soviets. The camera does not immediately show us his face but once the shadow of a man in a fedora hat appears we know it's him.

The movie is jam-packed with action. From the beginning, we get to see Indiana Jones make fast work of Soviet soldiers as he escapes through a rocket-sled across the Nevada desert and ends up in a nuclear test site. Indy barely escapes with his life, taking shelter inside a lead-lined refrigerator, where the FBI eventually found him. There is a brief respite as Indiana returns to university but this is cut short when Mutt appears with a story about Oxley, Indy's friend from academia, being kidnapped by the Soviets. Then, a thrilling motorcycle ride through the city, through university grounds, and through the freakin' library! And if that isn't enough, the movie features soldiers attacked by gigantic army ants, Mutt swinging through trees with monkeys, scary drops through not one, not two, but three waterfalls, skeletal remains of conquistadors and aliens and finally -- and this one is a stretch -- a flying saucer. Whew!

It is an entertaining movie, no doubt about it. I loved that Crystal Skull is less of an Indiana Jones-centric film but more of the entire Jones family adventure. But the aliens was...a bit too much. I mean, flying saucers and intergalactic portals -- come on!

I give the movie a B+ because it is an entertaining family film. If you liked all the other Indiana Jones films, you're going to like this one. If you didn't, then there's no talking to you.

Labels: action, adventure, fantasy, futuristic

TITLE: Little Miss Sunshine
DIRECTOR: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
WRITER: Michael Arndt
TAGLINE: "Where's Olive?"
CAST: Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Tonie Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin

Little Miss Sunshine. I've always wanted to watch this movie...for the laffs. With Steve Carrell and Toni Collette on the cast, it's bound to be dysfunctional. Also, at the time, it was being lauded in many indie film fests as a good movie. What I didn't know was what "good" really meant.

First off, the summary:

Beauty Queen-wannabe Olive Hoover finds out that she qualified for Little Miss Sunshine. The pageant is going to be held in California in two days and her family -- motivational speaker dad who's trying to sell a success book with little success, pro-honesty obsessive mom, depressed uncle recently released from the asylum, Nietzsche-reading teenager brother who's taken a vow of silence, and heroin-snorting foul-mouthed grandpa -- all realize that they have to drop all of their plans to accompany her and show their support. The entire family go on an impromptu 200- mile roadtrip, but with the yellow bus breaking down on them will they make it on time?

The movie is slice of life, which means that it's all just a series of one adventure after another with barely any plot to thread them all together. And nothing actually happens to the characters afterwards. We don't get to see the father finally get a break in his 9-step success book. We don't get to see the depressed brother become well again. In other words, there is no happy-ending. What we do get to see is a glimpse of what sort of people Olive's family is and how close they really are to each other.

I love that part where everyone pushes the bus in order to get it started and then quickly jump in before they get left behind. Symbolic. They all try so hard to make it work and it does work, just not in the smoothest way you'd expect.

But my favorite scene is probably the talent portion where everyone saw, for the first time, what Olive's heretofore unknown talent routine is. It's a very suggestive dance to the tune of "Super Freak" by Rick James and Olive dances it with such joy (even dedicating the routine to her grandfather who taught her the moves), completely unaware of the subtext behind it.

Everyone, the audience and the other contestants, were so offended that they start to get up and leave, and the pageant manager tries to get Olive's father to get off the stage. You can see it on Greg Kinnear's face how humiliating the entire thing was, not only for him but for his family, and how much he just wanted it to be over, but then instead of stopping Olive he humiliates himself further by joining in the dance.

I laughed so hard I cried. He'd do that to himself than destroy his daughter's self-esteem by making her stop.

Little Miss Sunshine is a beautiful film. I do not regret watching it. There are many more things that the film can teach you -- about double standards (the other contestants were offended by Olive's routine, unaware of the hypersexual looks they donned for the contest), about teen angst, etc. If you want to appreciate the movie, you have to like the slice of life genre and don't expect too much from it. Take everything as it comes.

THE SCORE

Story - 8
Sound - 6
Cinematography - 7
Picture - 6
Special Effects - 1
Acting - 8

Overall - 6/10

Labels: comedy, drama, humor, indie

TITLE: Beowulf
DIRECTOR: Robert Zemeckis
SCREENPLAY: Neil Gaiman & Roger Avary
TAGLINE: "Pride is the curse."
CAST: Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robert Wright Penn, Angelina Jolie


I have to admit that I never read the poem so I can't really make any genuine comparisons between this adaptation and the original.

Anyway, here's a very short recap of what the movie is all about:

The movie Beowulf is about a warrior-hero, named, well, Beowulf (Ray Winstone), who comes to save the kingdom under the rule of King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) from the FUGLY party-pooper demon, Grendel (voiced by Crispin Glover).

Beowulf, and his merry band of vikings (think 300 but with only 14 men), killed Grendel but when it came to Grendel's vengeful mother (played by naked, wet and computer-generated half-lizard Angelina Jolie), he found his sword melting away in the face of her beauty and her promises of wealth and power.

Years later, Beowulf, now an aging king whose reputation went far and wide, found his kingdom ravaged by his own personal demon -- a fire-breathing dragon, his son by Grendel's mother. Once again, a hero is called for. Who will answer?

It's quite simple, isn't it? And obvious. But I guess that's what makes it a good movie to watch. With a straightforward plot like that, you don't have a lot of expectations. And this movie being marketed as Oscar-contender animated feature, I guess at least one of your reasons for watching it is the supposedly fantabulous CGI.

Then again, we're talking about an adaptation of an epic here and by such writers as Neil Gaiman (man, I didn't even realize until I saw the credits) and Roger Avary and director Robert Zemeckis, who gave us such runaway hits as Forrest Gump, Back to the Future, and most recently Polar Express, another entirely live-action performance-capture technology-friendly film.

That said, I'm not overly impressed by the CGI in this movie. Since all the characters are played by real actors in real settings, the animation artists really had very little to work with, apart from adding a few details to the background and some airbrushing here and there.

One of the main problems I see in animation technology is the apparent absence of gravity. When a character falls down, it's just not convincing. You can't really feel the impact even as animation artists try their darnest to simulate disturbed dust and what-not. Also, the eyes tell it all. In a few scenes, the characters still look a bit spaced out. I see that animation technology still has a long way to go.

But despite that (I might even say BECAUSE of that), I think the movie gave a whole new dimension to the story of Beowulf. I realize that a lot of people compare this movie to the dumbness of 300 -- all mindless visuals and gore, no soul -- but look a little closer. Gaiman and Avary added flaws to the hero, made Beowulf a bit of a pain in Unferth's (John Malkovich) butt...turned him into an unreliable narrator with a propensity for exaggeration.

For instance, during his retelling of a swimming race he had, Beowulf made his adventure sound more dangerous and exciting than it actually was and flossed over the parts where he wasn't being very heroic. That scene with the mermaid/sea monster was a foreshadowing of Beowulf's eventual downfall at the hands of Grendel's mother. It showed his weakness of the flesh.

As how the film turned out, Beowulf wasn't a hero because he killed demons and became a good king (I'm assuming he was a good king). The character was, in fact, weak and very human. What made him different from King Hrothgar -- who, like him, fell for Grendel's mother, to his complete and utter shame -- was that Beowulf took responsibility for his own mistake. He killed the dragon himself and did not wait for a young hero to come and slay the beast for him, like what Hrothgar did.

I think that was the best part about the film -- the portrayal of a flawed hero. Other than that, this action-adventure movie offers a lot of, well, action and adventure and little else. There was some attempt at a love-triangle between Queen Weathleow (Robin Wright Penn), Ursula (Alison Lohman) and Beowulf, but it got sidetracked when it was time for Beowulf to don his armor and go dragon-slaying once more.

The ending was also pretty interesting although I am not certain if this was really in the poem or mere speculation by the screenwriters. Either way, it does pose a few questions for the viewers, one of them being what kind of character is Wiglaf? Being merely foil to Beowulf's swash-buckling hero, we don't really see much of Wiglaf's true character in the movie, and I like that the writers are aware of this and made it seem like if the movie was ever continued, it's going to be about Wiglaf.

In sum, this movie is for those people who like action-adventure films. The CGI technology used makes it a little different from all other action-adventure offerings this year. You might also want to watch this movie for a slightly different take on the epic poem. Or if you're just looking for an entertaining movie without a lot of heavy drama, then this is it. These days, you can't really go wrong with Neil Gaiman.

THE SCORE

Story - 8
Sound - 7
Cinematography - 7
Picture - 9
Special Effects - 10
Acting (Voice) - 7

Overall - 8/10

Labels: action, adaptation, adventure, animation, cgi, fantasy