Twice is Nice

Robert Downey, Jr. made me believe that he was born to play Tony Stark. After seeing him in all his armored glory in Iron Man, I knew for a fact that Marvel Comics had hit a grand slam homerun. Universally lauded as one of the best comic book adaptations ever, the first Iron Man made fanboys like me ecstatic and begging for more. Almost two years to the day since then, we all got to see Downey don the red and gold armor once more.

A lot has happened since Tony Stark revealed to the world that he was Iron Man. Stark Industries has never been more successful and the US government wants to acquire the armor to supposedly keep it out of enemy hands. Tony hasn’t told anyone though that he’s been having problems brought on by the Arc reactor in his chest. He’s begun to take more risks, even promoting Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) to be SI CEO while hiring Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) as his new assistant. Meanwhile in Russia, Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) has been using his father Anton’s notes to create his own weapons based on Stark technology. When Vanko joins forces with Stark rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) to get the military contracts that Stark has given up, it can’t be good news for Tony.

Director Jon Favreau got right back on the driver’s seat in this sequel and continues the story of everyone’s favorite self-destructive and narcissistic billionaire. Downey seems even more comfortable in Stark’s skin this time around, really going to town with his manic personality. He also gives Tony some weakness when confronted with his mortality, and I loved the fact that the filmmakers touched on Tony’s great comic battle with alcoholism from back in the 1980s. He once again pulls off the arrogance and devil-may-care attitude of Stark with aplomb. Though some complained about Don Cheadle replacing Terence Howard as Lt. Col. Jim Rhodes, a good actor like Cheadle made it work. He is a bit small beside Downey, but when he dons the Mark II and War Machine armors, it doesn’t seem awkward at all. For someone like me who actually owns the first appearance of the War Machine armor, it was definitely a geek-out moment when that armor first appears.

Both Paltrow and Favreau (as chauffeur Happy Hogan) are tasked to do more in Iron Man 2, and it was great seeing them rise to the challenge. Pepper Potts has too often been nothing more than a glorified secretary in the comics and it looks like screenwriter Justin Theroux made sure to give her more responsibility while also keeping her banter with Stark going. Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury was also more than just someone you waited to see after the end credits. He gets to be a legit bad-ass, the one guy you believe can place Tony Stark in his place and wake him up from his drunken stupor. I also enjoyed the fact that Johansson was more than just eye candy as the Soviet superspy known as the Black Widow. She definitely channels her comic book counterpart and brings all of Natasha Romanova’s sexiness, physicality, and allure to this role.

Though Sam Rockwell brought some sneaky “Tony Stark-wannabe” sensibilities to his role as Hammer, you knew from the moment he stepped out of the shadows that Rourke was going to steal every scene he was in. In this revival of his career, Rourke successfully merges the comic book personalities of both the Crimson Dynamo and Whiplash into someone who is basically a dark reflection of Tony Stark. He seems to relish getting into Vanko’s skin as well as the tattoos, the Russian accent, and the bitterness of the character. My one wish that wasn’t fulfilled in this film was a face-to-face confrontation between the Russian Black Widow and the Russian Whiplash.

Overall though, I have to give Favreau, Downey, Paltrow, and everyone connected with Iron Man 2 major props for taking the time to really thresh out a great film, not just a great sequel. The technology on display is such an essential part of the Tony Stark/Iron Man character and I was very happy with the way that the filmmakers liberally used them. Giving a nod to old school expositions and “World’s Fair” types of shows was also something I appreciated, right down to the cheesy themesongs and welcome video from Howard Stark (John Slattery). Once more, the respect given to the comic source material is such an essential element of any good movie adaptation and Iron Man 2 delivers that in spades. I think I still like the first film by just a tad, but this is still a fantastic and fun ride that everyone should enjoy on the big screen. Bring on Iron Man 3!

Not Quite Winners

To say that I’m a fan of The Losers graphic novels would be a huge understatement. I started collecting the five collected graphic novels back in 2004, way before there were even rumors of a movie. I liked the comic because it talked about a special forces team that was wronged and were trying to get revenge. It felt like a cross between Three Kings and Ocean’s Eleven. Thus, I had quite high expectations for the film adaptation.

Sent to the Bolivian jungle by the US government to hunt and kill a target, the team known as The Losers changes their mission parameters when they see some anomalies. Speaking to a mysterious voice known only as “Max” (Jason Patric), The Losers are left for dead. Col. Franklin Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) convinces his team that they can get their revenge on Max while the rest of the world thinks they’re dead. Joined by the enigmatic Aisha (Zoe Saldana) Clay’s team plots a way to get back to the US while exacting justice on the man who wanted them dead.

For me, the best part about The Losers is seeing the team come to life on the big screen. I liked the casting for the most part, particularly for Clay, Aisha, Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) and especially Jensen (Chris Evans). They looked and felt exactly how they did in the source material. Though Columbus Short was good as Pooch, the comics kind of portrayed him as an older man. Idris Elba also gave a credible performance as Roque even though he was a white man in the comics.

My first problem with this movie is the casting of Jason Patric as Max. The main villain of the comics is kept a mystery for so long that his ultimate revelation was a major event there. In this film though, we’re introduced to Max fairly early and he’s nothing like I expected him to be. Patric plays him as an over-the-top villain with no redeeming qualities and it often seemed like he was trying too hard in the role. It didn’t help that his dialogue often sucked.

Another glaring problem with The Losers is that it was often bogged down by bad pacing. Just when you think things are picking up and the action is about to go non-stop, there are moments when everything slows down in favor of dialogue when it isn’t really necessary. Those scenes could have been done in a way that the quick pace of the movie could have been maintained, but director Sylvain White didn’t do so.

There are definitely scenes in the film that were great to see since they came straight out of the comics. The characterizations of Jensen, Cougar, and Pooch, as well as the team’s relationships with one another made the characters likeable enough, it’s just that the deficiencies were just too glaring to make The Losers into a real winner.

She Blinded Me with Violence

The past two or three decades have seen so many so-called “experts” telling us that we’ve been desensitized to violence in the media. We’ve heard arguments that since there’s so much graphic violence, blood, and gore in movies, TV, and newspapers that we no longer get shocked when we see all of those things in real life. Believe me though when I say this: watching Kick-Ass will shock you out of any desensitization you may have had before you entered the cinema.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a geeky high school student who dreams of becoming a superhero. Living with his widowed father and hanging out with fellow geeks Marty (Clark Duke) and Todd (Evan Peters) he wants to make a difference in his community while also impressing his crush, Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca). Creating his own superhero costume, Dave assumes the identity of “Kick-Ass” but gets beaten up the first time he tries stopping crime. Eventually gaining fame through YouTube, Dave inspires other heroes to put costumes on, but it also earns him the enmity of the mob run by Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong).

Kick-Ass literally kicks serious ass. Based on the Icon Comic written by Mark Millar and drawn by John Romita, Jr., the film is over the top in its depiction of violence and I loved it. Johnson gets his ass handed to him a number of times, cementing why there are no superheroes in real life. His portrayal of Dave is different parts funny, pathetic, tragic, and ultimately, triumphant, no small feat for someone in their first major movie role. His interaction with the equally geeky and awkward Chris D’Amico/Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is funny because both desperately want to be cool yet fail on so many levels. Mintz-Plasse still reminds all of us of his role as McLovin in Superbad, and it’s going to be tough for him to get out of these kinds of roles, but I’m not going to hate him for making the most out of the situation.

Ultimately, most people will love the character of Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) and her father Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage). Not only do they love using weapons and killing bad guys, they actually have a real, loving father-daughter relationship. I knew that I’d seen Moretz in other films, but I didn’t realize that she was the little girl in the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror or Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s sister in the horrible (500) Days of Summer. She’s just amazing as the cussing, balisong-using Hit-Girl and I’ve got no doubt that she’ll be a star after this. Cage lost a lot of his “geek credibility” because his performance as Johnny Blaze was so bad in Ghost Rider. In Kick-Ass, he gets that geek cred back in spades. You actually see glimpses of the great actor that Cage was before he tended to just do any movie that met his price.

Director Matthew Vaughn really seems to go to town with the tongue-in-cheek humor and graphic violence in Kick-Ass. Although at this point, I haven’t read the source material just yet, I’ve heard from multiple sources that the film captures most of Millar’s and Romita’s humor, in-your-face action, and unapologetic displays of gore. Vaughn uses the violence though, not just for the sake of showing blood and guts, but also to hammer home the notion that superheroes are best left in the realm of make believe. Also, I’ve even heard some people say that the film version of Kick-Ass actually surpasses the comic version in terms of coolness and fun. That is a major accomplishment for any movie adaptation to achieve.

I realize that it’s only been four months in 2010, but I’m already saying that Kick-Ass has been my favorite movie of the year so far. It’s irreverent, it’s imaginative, it’s hilarious, it’s pathetic, but it’s also tons of fun to watch. I’d definitely watch it again in a heartbeat, for fear of Hit-Girl kicking my ass all over the place.

Turn Back The Clock, Turn Off The Brain

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that with a title like Hot Tub Time Machine, you pretty much check your IQ at the door. The mere premise of the movie is ridiculous and the trailer essentially shows you everything you need to know about the film. But, those are also the same reasons why I wanted to watch this movie in the first place; because every so often, you just want to turn your brain off and have a good laugh.

Old high school friends Adam (John Cusack), Lou (Rob Corddry) and Nick (Craig Robinson) have grown apart over the years. Mostly due to work or just a change in their priorities, they’ve stopped hanging out but still fondly reminisce about their heyday in the mid-1980s. When Lou accidentally almost kills himself, the three guys (joined by Adam’s nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) head off to one of their favorite hangouts in the 80s, Kodiak Valley Ski Resort in Colorado. Getting drunk and high while relaxing in their hot tub, the quartet magically find themselves transported back to 1986. Initially planning to do exactly what they did the first time they went through that “Winterfest ‘86” weekend, Adam, Lou, and Nick eventually decide to change things. The ramifications of their actions though might end up changing their 2010 lives too.

Hot Tub Time Machine is one of those movies, like The Hangover or The Pineapple Express, that you just enjoy for itself. No deep plot, no convoluted story, no major character development. Just a fun ride that you watch with a buddy and let the good times roll. Cusack is the biggest name among these actors and it was fun seeing him letting loose here after seeing him most recently in 2012 and Must Love Dogs before that. As a fan of The Office, I was thrilled to see Craig Robinson in a real starring role in a film and he doesn’t disappoint. He brings some of that swagger he has as Darryl on TV but also portrays a completely different character here as the whipped Nick.

To me, the major surprise here is Corddry. I barely noticed him in Blades of Glory, Old School, Semi-Pro and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. In fact I only paid attention to him when he played a manic, racist agent in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Here in Hot Tub, he’s actually got a meatier role and he gets to interact in almost every major scene with Cusack and Robinson and he’s hilarious as the manic-depressive Lou. Duke is also pretty funny as the nerdy Jacob, and I found it amusing to find out after watching the movie that he’s best friends with another “geeky” actor, Michael Cera.

As funny as this movie is, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how the local Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) made such inane cuts throughout the film. They basically cut out some shots of women’s breasts as well as some jokes about sex and relegated the Filipino audience to guessing “What happened?” It’s these kinds of stupid censoring that makes me wonder if the censors think we are all infants whose eyes need to be protected from boobs and sex talk. Pardon my French, but give me a fucking break, MTRCB.

All things considered, I had fun with Hot Tub Time Machine. The comedy was wild, the sights and sounds from the 80s plastered a smile across my face, and I really liked the chemistry of all the actors involved. So it’s not a deep movie. So sue me.

The Life and Times of a Basketball Lifer

I grew up watching the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers. They were my team the moment I saw Magic Johnson leading a fastbreak and dishing off to James Worthy, Byron Scott and/or Michael Cooper. The team in “Forum Blue and Gold” got my attention when I first started watching basketball in the late 1980s and they still hold sway in this era of Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol. Yet despite that Laker-love, my many relatives in Chicago began converting me to the then-hapless Chicago Bulls in 1985 when a rookie by the name of Michael Jordan took to the air in the Windy City.

Imagine then my excitement to actually shake hands and interview one of MJ’s own

 teammates from the first Bulls’ championship, point guard BJ Armstrong. In town to promote the Junior NBA program of the league, I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to the former 11-year NBA veteran thanks to global NBA sponsor Gatorade and got some insights into how special those Bulls championships were. “This is basketball heaven right here!” BJ said of the Philippines, reveling in the love that’s been thrown his way by a nation of people with non-stop hoop dreams.

Benjamin Roy “BJ” Armstrong, Jr. was the eighteenth pick in the 1989 NBA draft out of the University of Iowa. In just his second year, the Bulls climbed to the top of the mountain and won the NBA Championship. He was part of the first Chicago “Three-peat” team, emerging as the starter in the 1992-1993 season when he was the league’s three-point field goal percentage leader. In the wake of Jordan’s first retirement, he became an All-Star in 1994. He was the Toronto Raptors’ first pick in the 1995 NBA expansion draft and eventually played for the Golden State Warriors, Charlotte Hornets and Orlando Magic before winding up his career back where he started, in Chi-Town, in the 1999-2000 season.

Asked what it was like to play alongside Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant and those famed Bulls teams, BJ shared that he didn’t really think about that until after he had retired from the NBA. “At that point,” he said, “Michael wasn’t ‘Michael’, Scottie wasn’t ‘Scottie’, and BJ wasn’t ‘BJ’. We were just a young team trying to learn how to beat the Celtics.” He further elaborated that the Bulls were too busy playing basketball and living in the moment that they had no inkling that they were making history. Acknowledging that the Detroit Pistons were at the top of the NBA in the late 1980s, BJ said that all of their efforts were directed towards coming together and working as a team to dethrone the Pistons and win their first title.

A self-proclaimed “basketball lifer”, Armstrong had been playing basketball since he was a kid in Detroit and remains involved in the game even after his NBA career has ended. Spending one year working for ESPN’s NBA Fastbreak show, he then worked as Assistant General Manager for the Bulls and is now involved in sports management with the Wasserman Media Group. In fact, he’s the agent for the Bulls’ new superstar, Derrick Rose.

He shared a funny story wherein he and Michael Jordan caught an NBA game just a few weeks ago. BJ and “the greatest player to ever put on a pair of sneakers” looked at each other and realized that they were having fun just watching an NBA game now that they were both retired from the league. BJ added that Michael basically “had to buy a team” so he could experience being a fan again, referring to Jordan’s purchase of the Charlotte Bobcats. He noted that Jordan is an NBA lifer like he is, so much so that during Jordan’s first retirement, BJ said “he was calling me everyday anyway, talking about the game, going over scouting reports.” He concluded that Jordan “will be involved in basketball his entire life. That’s who he is.”

Recalling how his first NBA coach is now the coach with most NBA Championships with ten (and counting), BJ said that he was very lucky to play for Phil Jackson. “We came in together,” BJ recalls of Jackson, “He was just a rookie coach in my rookie year and Michael Jordan was a young player, Scottie Pippen was in his second year so it was just a matter of all of us there, at the right place, at the right time.” He added, “our personalities meshed, we won a few games along the way, and before you knew it, we were crowned champions. I’d love to think we knew what we were doing, but we didn’t. We were just young kids.”

On their way to building their dynasty, the Bulls had memorable rivalries with the Pistons and

 the New York Knicks. Even as I asked BJ why rivalries don’t seem to exist in today’s NBA, he thinks it’s because of the high turnover of players in the current game. “The fans in particular don’t really have a chance to grow with that group,” he lamented. “There’s no attachment with the team because the teams are always changing.” He goes on to note that, “very rarely do you see teams stick together now for 4-5 years. Every offseason, you juggle your lineup.” In his generation, Armstrong relates that team executives would let guys grow together and see if they develop over the course of 6-7 years. With all the wheeling and dealing in the NBA though, BJ said that in the end, “the best players always find a way to have their team in a position to win.”

 Since BJ is still involved with the NBA and now with management of athletes, it was only natural to ask him about the possibility of a Filipino getting drafted by an NBA team. Without skipping a beat, Armstrong said that sometimes, you just need the opportunity to make that impact. “At some point, the stars are gonna line up, someone is gonna believe in you, which will then inspire you to believe in yourself,” he declared. When fellow blogger Eddie Ching asked him about the possibility of the Bulls drafting former Ateneo Blue Eagle team captain Chris Tiu, BJ smiled at Eddie and said “I like the way this guy thinks!” Ching added that Tiu doesn’t even have to be signed, just drafted, and that adidas could just make jerseys in the Bulls’ famous red and black with “Tiu” and “17” emblazoned on it. “Instantly, you’d sell 100,000 jerseys overnight,” he excitedly told the former All-Star. Armstrong the businessman then half-jokingly told Ching “Let’s talk later!”

Clearly, basketball has been very good to BJ Armstrong. From his roots in suburban Detroit to his days in the Big 10 Conference playing for the University of Iowa, to the championship days with the Chicago Bulls, all the way to his current stint as a player agent, he’s come full circle. From learning the game to now being a teacher and mentor to a new generation of players. Noting that he doesn’t know anywhere else in the world where basketball is loved like it’s loved here in the Philippines, BJ Armstrong looked as comfortable here as he did shooting threes in the old Chicago Stadium. He looked like he was at home.

Thanks to Gatorade, Mr. Ton Gatmaitan, and Mr. Rick Olivares for this interview.

The Life and Times of a Basketball Lifer

I grew up watching the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers. They were my team the moment I saw Magic Johnson leading a fastbreak and dishing off to James Worthy, Byron Scott and/or Michael Cooper. The team in “Forum Blue and Gold” got my attention when I first started watching basketball in the late 1980s and they still hold sway in this era of Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol. Yet despite that Laker-love, my many relatives in Chicago began converting me to the then-hapless Chicago Bulls in 1985 when a rookie by the name of Michael Jordan took to the air in the Windy City.

Imagine then my excitement to actually shake hands and interview one of MJ’s own teammates from the first Bulls’ championship, point guard BJ Armstrong. In town to promote the Junior NBA program of the league, I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to the former 11-year NBA veteran thanks to global NBA sponsor Gatorade and got some insights into how special those Bulls championships were. “This is basketball heaven right here!” BJ said of the Philippines, reveling in the love that’s been thrown his way by a nation of people with non-stop hoop dreams.

Benjamin Roy “BJ” Armstrong, Jr. was the eighteenth pick in the 1989 NBA draft out of the University of Iowa. In just his second year, the Bulls climbed to the top of the mountain and won the NBA Championship. He was part of the first Chicago “Three-peat” team, emerging as the starter in the 1992-1993 season when he was the league’s three-point field goal percentage leader. In the wake of Jordan’s first retirement, he became an All-Star in 1994. He was the Toronto Raptors’ first pick in the 1995 NBA expansion draft and eventually played for the Golden State Warriors, Charlotte Hornets and Orlando Magic before winding up his career back where he started, in Chi-Town, in the 1999-2000 season.

Asked what it was like to play alongside Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant and those famed Bulls teams, BJ shared that he didn’t really think about that until after he had retired from the NBA. “At that point,” he said, “Michael wasn’t ‘Michael’, Scottie wasn’t ‘Scottie’, and BJ wasn’t ‘BJ’. We were just a young team trying to learn how to beat the Celtics.” He further elaborated that the Bulls were too busy playing basketball and living in the moment that they had no inkling that they were making history. Acknowledging that the Detroit Pistons were at the top of the NBA in the late 1980s, BJ said that all of their efforts were directed towards coming together and working as a team to dethrone the Pistons and win their first title.

A self-proclaimed “basketball lifer”, Armstrong had been playing basketball since he was a kid in Detroit and remains involved in the game even after his NBA career has ended. Spending one year working for ESPN’s NBA Fastbreak show, he then worked as Assistant General Manager for the Bulls and is now involved in sports management with the Wasserman Media Group. In fact, he’s the agent for the Bulls’ new superstar, Derrick Rose.

He shared a funny story wherein he and Michael Jordan caught an NBA game just a few weeks ago. BJ and “the greatest player to ever put on a pair of sneakers” looked at each other and realized that they were having fun just watching an NBA game now that they were both retired from the league. BJ added that Michael basically “had to buy a team” so he could experience being a fan again, referring to Jordan’s purchase of the Charlotte Bobcats. He noted that Jordan is an NBA lifer like he is, so much so that during Jordan’s first retirement, BJ said “he was calling me everyday anyway, talking about the game, going over scouting reports.” He concluded that Jordan “will be involved in basketball his entire life. That’s who he is.”

Recalling how his first NBA coach is now the coach with most NBA Championships with ten (and counting), BJ said that he was very lucky to play for Phil Jackson. “We came in together,” BJ recalls of Jackson, “He was just a rookie coach in my rookie year and Michael Jordan was a young player, Scottie Pippen was in his second year so it was just a matter of all of us there, at the right place, at the right time.” He added, “our personalities meshed, we won a few games along the way, and before you knew it, we were crowned champions. I’d love to think we knew what we were doing, but we didn’t. We were just young kids.”

On their way to building their dynasty, the Bulls had memorable rivalries with the Pistons and the New York Knicks. Even as I asked BJ why rivalries don’t seem to exist in today’s NBA, he thinks it’s because of the high turnover of players in the current game. “The fans in particular don’t really have a chance to grow with that group,” he lamented. “There’s no attachment with the team because the teams are always changing.” He goes on to note that, “very rarely do you see teams stick together now for 4-5 years. Every offseason, you juggle your lineup.” In his generation, Armstrong relates that team executives would let guys grow together and see if they develop over the course of 6-7 years. With all the wheeling and dealing in the NBA though, BJ said that in the end, “the best players always find a way to have their team in a position to win.”

Since BJ is still involved with the NBA and now with management of athletes, it was only natural to ask him about the possibility of a Filipino getting drafted by an NBA team. Without skipping a beat, Armstrong said that sometimes, you just need the opportunity to make that impact. “At some point, the stars are gonna line up, someone is gonna believe in you, which will then inspire you to believe in yourself,” he declared. When fellow blogger Eddie Ching asked him about the possibility of the Bulls drafting former Ateneo Blue Eagle team captain Chris Tiu, BJ smiled at Eddie and said “I like the way this guy thinks!” Ching added that Tiu doesn’t even have to be signed, just drafted, and that adidas could just make jerseys in the Bulls’ famous red and black with “Tiu” and “17” emblazoned on it. “Instantly, you’d sell 100,000 jerseys overnight,” he excitedly told the former All-Star. Armstrong the businessman then half-jokingly told Ching “Let’s talk later!”

Clearly, basketball has been very good to BJ Armstrong. From his roots in suburban Detroit to his days in the Big 10 Conference playing for the University of Iowa, to the championship days with the Chicago Bulls, all the way to his current stint as a player agent, he’s come full circle. From learning the game to now being a teacher and mentor to a new generation of players. Noting that he doesn’t know anywhere else in the world where basketball is loved like it’s loved here in the Philippines, BJ Armstrong looked as comfortable here as he did shooting threes in the old Chicago Stadium. He looked like he was at home.

Thanks to Gatorade, Mr. Ton Gatmaitan and Mr. Rick Olivares for this interview.

Island Fever

I’m a sucker for psychological thrillers. There’s something about the darkness of the topic and the way they always seem to explore some aspect of the human mind that appeals to me. That’s one of the reasons why I liked playing video games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill so much when they first came out. The darkness and the mystery involved were scary but at the same time, very appealing. In the hands of a modern maestro like Martin Scorsese, I had very high expectations for his take on the psychological thriller genre with Shutter Island. After a bit of a rough start, I found myself liking it.

In 1954, United States Marshall Edward “Ted” Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from the Ashecliff Hospital on Shutter Island on the outskirts of Boston. The prisoner, Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer) seems to have vanished into thin air. As he asks the head psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley) for assistance in the investigation, we find out that Daniels lost his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) to a fire and that he served in World War II during the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau. Strange things continue to happen around the island and Daniels is convinced that Dr. Cawley and the hospital staff are covering something up. Even as Daniels tries desperately to get to the bottom of things, he learns some things about himself that he might not be able to handle.

To say that Martin Scorsese is a master of modern cinema isn’t much of a stretch. The man has made some of the greatest films of all time such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and The Departed. He doesn’t just direct gangster movies or sports films as he’s managed to cross genres with ease. The last time he directed something similar in tone, it was the great remake of Cape Fear featuring Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte back in 1991. In the case of Shutter Island, the film starts off quite slow. There’s a whole lot of exposition required to set the tone here and it takes a bit of a while to see why that happens.

DiCaprio seems to really be at his best when Scorsese directs him. Much like Scorsese and Robert De Niro worked fantastically from the 1970s to the 1990s, so have the director and DiCaprio been amazing in the 2000s and beyond. His portrayal of the hardnosed investigator starts off by being subtle, but as you peel the layers away, he starts showing depths to the personality just as we see depths to his story. By the time we get to the twist in the ending, you’re feeling all kinds of empathy, horror, and sadness for the character.

Kingsley has been relegated to character roles over the decades, but that doesn’t make his performance any less stunning. Seeing him on the screen with DiCaprio and the great Max Von Sydow is a real treat because actors of this caliber so rarely appear in a scene together, let alone a single motion picture. Michelle Williams is also pretty effective as Daniels’ dead wife, someone who haunts him and is the root of all of his issues.

As I mentioned earlier, the slow pace at the start of the film can really bore you if all your concentration isn’t on the film in front of you. Despite the ominous tone set once Daniels and Aule arrive at the island, and in spite of the investigation going through thunderstorms and cover-ups, it still feels slow. At some point though, Shutter Island felt like those old school games I wrote about. I guess nowadays with movies being done based on video games and vice versa, that was inevitable, and it’s not like I didn’t like that comparison in the first place.

Again, I can’t repeat enough that the payoff to Shutter Island occurs near the end of the movie when the twist happens in the story. When the twist happens, you find yourself thinking back to how the film started and how certain things that you might have neglected are suddenly significant now. I just felt that Scorsese could have gotten to that twist at a quicker pace than what he did in this example. 

Unity Through Sport

Sports movies tend to be one of two things: either really good (The Natural, Hoosiers, Remember the Titans) or really bad (Fever Pitch, Blue Chips, For the Love of the Game). You know that sports movies are supposed to inspire you, make you believe that great things can happen through a sport, and that the good guys win in the end. Now add to those elements some political intrigue, racial segregation, and the fact that it really happened in South Africa and you have the Clint Eastwood-directed Invictus.

After Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) is released from his 27-year prison term in 1990, change begins to grip South Africa. By the time he is elected president in 1994, the country is a year away from hosting the Rugby World Cup. Realizing how big this could be for the country’s unity and future, Mandela has a heart-to-heart talk with South African Springboks team captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon). If this underachieving team of underdogs can actually come together and shock the world, maybe this “rainbow nation” will come together and support them. The odds are long and a lot of South Africans have openly rooted against the Springboks all their lives, but Mandela and Pienaar believe that something special can happen.

I read somewhere that it was only a matter of time before Freeman portrayed Mandela in a film. After all, the great actor has always played wise characters or men with great dignity as seen in Driving Miss Daisy, Unforgiven, and especially in The Shawshank Redemption. He steps right into Mandela’s shoes and captures the spirit of a man who has survived almost three decades of imprisonment yet emerged stronger, smarter, but with forgiveness in his heart. Damon may indeed be a lot shorter than the real life Pienaar, but he gives a very credible performance as the team captain who’s trying to lead his team to victory while also trying to inspire a divided nation. Even in his own home, though his Afrikaan wife and parents support him, they’re wary of Mandela. That’s in stark contrast with their household help who loves the new president.

For me, the performances of Tony Kgoroge as Mandela’s head of security Jason Tshabalala, and the trio of Patrick Mofokeng, Julian Lewis Jones, and Matt Stern as the racially mixed security detail surrounding the president. Their interactions with one another, ranging from distrust to discomfort, mild amusement, and eventually winning together served as great contrast to the main storylines of the World Cup and Mandela’s struggle.

Eastwood manages to bring all these elements together in a two-hour long sports movie that has some very moving scenes in it. I particularly found the scene where the whole Springbok team goes to where Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island and Pienaar examines where the man was incarcerated for 27 years to be very powerful. As a sports film, you know this is leading up to a happy ending. But when that inevitable ending finally does happen and the whole nation erupts in celebration, I’ll admit that I still had chills down my spine. For only in sport can moments like these happen, where people come together to cheer for a specific person or team. Whether it be Manny Pacquiao or the Ateneo Blue Eagles, sports can unify people in ways that very few others can.

At the end of Invictus, that’s what really gave me chills. For when the Springboks won the World Cup and Pres. Mandela hands Pienaar the Web Ellis Trophy, you could feel the entire South Africa cheering them to the upset win over the heavily favored All Blacks. People who hated the Springboks or never even cared about rugby were all watching on television as their team won for their country. Now that’s what you call a Hollywood ending.

Finding Some Airspace

As someone who’s had recent experience with losing jobs, I’ve found that the words of people in human resources departments are hardly comforting. When somebody tells you that you’ve been rendered redundant or that your services aren’t necessary anymore, it’s a crushing blow to one’s ego and you start to feel your whole world crumbling around you. Imagine then the life of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a corporate downsizer from Career Transition Counseling who travels across the United States to inform people that they’ve been fired because their bosses are too cowardly to do so. That’s the premise behind Up in the Air.

Ryan’s lifestyle of living out of airports, hotels and his luggage has alienated him from his family and basically all other human beings. He’s been thriving in this atmosphere and loves racking up the frequent flyer miles and the perks of his travels. When Ryan is informed by his boss Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman) that the company wants to cut back on expenses by implementing the ideas of newbie Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), Ryan argues that Natalie has no clue on how he conducts his firings. Forced to take Natalie under his wing, Ryan starts to share his philosophies with her while seeing how he’s essentially become devoid of emotion. Ryan also begins to have feelings for Alex (Vera Farmiga) someone he was just supposed to have a harmless fling with, and is forced to return to his family to see his younger sister get married.

I only heard the Oscar buzz surrounding Up in the Air late last year but I really had no idea what it was about. I’ve been a fan of Clooney’s work, but I didn’t really feel a need to see every film he’s ever starred in. Truth be told, the first time that I tried watching this movie, I basically fell asleep through the first 40 minutes. However, when I gave it another shot, I found it to be extremely intelligent, engaging, and pretty moving. Director Jason Reitman adapted the film from Walter Kirn’s novel of the same name together with Sheldon Turner and it’s a movie that’s heavy on the dialogue. In this case, lots of dialogue is a very good thing as it basically brings us straight into the head of Clooney’s Bingham.

Vera Farmiga is great as Alex especially when she tells Ryan to think of her as “you with a vagina”. She manages to charm the charmer in Ryan while also tending to the bruised ego that Natalie has in the middle of the movie. She also hides an unexpected secret that caught me completely by surprise. Anna Kendrick is also fantastic as the ambitious Natalie, someone who gave up her own dreams to follow a boy. Their interaction, particularly when Natalie talks about what she thought she’d be at a certain age in contrast to what she perceives Alex to be, was a winner to say the least.

Still, make no mistake that this is Clooney’s movie through and through. I had gotten to the point where I began to think of Clooney as little more than just a pretty face. Graying at the temples and running around with hot supermodels/actresses, but still capitalizing only on his looks. Up in the Air reminds us that the man is still an actor. He’s still the charming rogue that he perfected in the Ocean’s series of films, but there’s actual vulnerability here. You see it when he tries to reconnect with his sisters, when he tries to talk to his future brother-in-law, when he comes to a realization in the middle of an important speech, and especially when he comes face-to-face with Alex’s secret. Clooney actually made me care about his character, and for that he and Reitman deserve tons of credit.

Smart films too often go unnoticed or worse, go over our heads, in favor of Hollywood’s blockbusters. I am pleased to say that I gave Up in the Air another shot after dismissing it as “too talky” the first time around. It turned out to be one of very few films that had me thinking and marveling at its brilliance once I completed it.

Nothing Beats the Original

First things first, I loved the original Clash of the Titans. I mean LOVED it. I first saw it when a tito of mine sent a Betamax tape to us of the movie in the early 1980s. As a kid who was always interested in mythology, it was a veritable treasure trove of Greek myths, legends, and monsters. Every time that I watched it over the years, I began to appreciate things that I didn’t notice as a kid. There was the fact that the great stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen created all the creatures for the film like the Kraken, Medusa, Calibos, Pegasus, etc. There was also the fact that popular actors like Sir Laurence Olivier, Burgess Meredith and Maggie Smith were prominently featured. It also made Harry Hamlin a star before he appeared on L.A. Law. Suffice it to say that when I heard that Clash of the Titans was going to be remade, I was giddy with excitement. But did it measure up to the original?

 

Perseus (Sam Worthington) has been caught up in a war. It has cost him the only family he has ever known and he discovers that his real father is the god Zeus (Liam Neeson). The city of Argos has been targeted for destruction by the god of the underworld Hades (Ralph Fiennes) unless Perseus can find a way to defeat the monstrous Kraken. He embarks on a quest fraught with danger and monsters. Denying his demigod status, can Perseus save Argos while defying the gods?

Let’s get to the good stuff first. The effects for Clash of the Titans were topnotch. Visuals have indeed come a long way since 1981 and today’s effects have been able to do a lot more with powerful computers than anything Harryhausen could create with rubber and clay. The pace of the movie is quite fast which I believe is helped by Hades’ stating that the Kraken will be unleashed in ten days instead of the 30 days in the original. The 3D conversion was also horrible and completely unnecessary. It was so obvious that the producers just wanted to cash in on the 3D craze and rushed it for Clash.

Gemma Arterton as Io was also breathtakingly beautiful in this movie. It’s like in every scene she appeared, she had just taken a shower. She clearly had more chemistry with Perseus than Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) did so the twist in the ending wasn’t such a shocker.

The problems I had with this film are many, not the least of which is that it just didn’t capture the spirit of fun that the first Clash did. I guess director Louis Leterrier and Worthington wanted to inject some 2010 sensibilities into the story, particularly by having Perseus reject his godhood. Well excuse me, but doing that basically decapitates the Perseus story altogether. Perseus reveled in his demigod status and enjoyed the gifts that the gods gave him. To have him turn his back on those gifts and reject Zeus just made him seem like a petulant child.

I also couldn’t understand how Leterrier could cast great actors such as Polly Walker as Cassiopeia and Danny Huston as Poseidon yet underuse them for such a big movie. Even Alexander Siddig as Hermes and Izabella Miko as Athena were relegated to mere window dressing in the scenes on Olympus. It’s like Leterrier hired a casting director to get these names and faces then he decided to leave them on the cutting room floor.

Don’t get me wrong, 1981’s Clash already took a lot of liberties with the myths for the sake of making the story more interesting and heightening the adventure factor. Substituting Perseus for Bellerophon and integrating Medusa into the adventure all worked out in the end. Even the Kraken wasn’t a part of Greek mythology and was actually a Norse sea monster. It just seemed like 2010’s Clash lost some of the cheese and lighthearted fare that made the original such a classic in the first place.

I still had fun watching this new version, and it clearly helped that I was watching with other fans of the first. Let’s just say that I’d still take Laurence Olivier, Harry Hamlin, and Ray Harryhausen’s clumsy animation over the slick armor and self-doubting Perseus of the remake any day of the week. Still, it was fun hearing that line again. You know it, "Release the Kraken!"

Growing Up Viking

I’ve recently come to appreciate Vikings a lot more than I used to. I blame the Northlanders graphic novels written by Brian Wood because he’s made Vikings brutal, graphic, and very violent. A few years ago, the Antonio Banderas starred in The 13th Warrior based on Michael Crichton’s book Eaters of the Dead. It was also a great interpretation of Viking life and the way of the cold Norsemen. In other words, most of us got the impression that Vikings were oversized marauders who enjoyed pillaging villages, using giant bludgeoning swords and wore helmets with horns.


Thankfully, How to Train Your Dragon gives us other aspects of day-to-day Viking life. For young Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), the pressure to live up to his father’s legacy is tremendous. Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) rules the island of Berk and deals with some unusual pests. Dragons have been raiding the village, taking away their food and livestock. Hiccup isn’t big or strong enough to join his fellow Vikings and feels like a disappointment to his dad. When he builds a machine that downs the never-before-seen breed of dragon known as the Night Fury, all Hiccup has to do is slay the dragon to prove himself worthy of his fellow Vikings. However, he sees something in the Night Fury’s eyes that make him reconsider everything he knew about dragons in the first place.


My favorite animated Dreamworks film of all time is Kung Fu Panda. It captured all the right elements of good animation, great voiceover work, and a fantastic story at the heart of it all that separated it from what I perceived to be missing in Shrek and its sequels. Luckily, How to Train Your Dragon echoes Kung Fu Panda in that regard. The animation competition between Disney-PIXAR and Dreamworks has been so strong lately that if one slips up, you can bet the other will take advantage. As a result, we as film viewers emerge as winners.


The story of Vikings in itself is already fun, but add to it the insecurity that Hiccup feels when trying to measure up to such a dominant presence as his father and still trying to fit in with other kids his age, and you’ve got a winner. It would have been good to just have Hiccup meet Toothless the dragon and be instant friends, but to have him try to win the dragon’s trust and the dragon needing Hiccup’s assistance to be able to take flight again was another brilliant move. I particularly liked the ending which saw Hiccup not exactly unscathed after the final battle.


Baruchel has been a hot commodity in Hollywood lately, joining his peers Michael Cera, Jonah Hill (starring here as Snoutlout) and Christopher “McLovin” Mintz-Plasse (cast here as Fishlegs) as sort of a new generation of comedians. He brings a great deal of awkwardness and insecurity to Hiccup that made his anguish believable. I’ve also got to give props to Craig Ferguson as Gobber the Belch, trainer of the young Vikings. He gets into the whole spirit of being a taskmaster while also relaying tales of his Viking exploits that have cost him a few limbs. Fellow Scot Butler has his best role since his starmaking turn in 300 here. Butler as Stoick once again portrays “the great leader of men” role, but it’s his vulnerability as father to a son that shows some real voice-acting chops.


I really liked this film because it managed to tell an awkward coming-of-age story while also talking about understanding other species/races and interaction between fathers and sons. The fact that it had Vikings, dragons, and great 3D animation almost seem secondary because the plot at its core is just that good.