All I know about the 2011 movie Warrior is that my brother said it was a good movie that he said made people cry even if he didn’t. I looked up the trailer and found out that it was an MMA movie which only means one thing: that it’s about MMA or mixed martial arts. But Warrior is more than just an MMA movie- it’s a 2-hour long cliche infused with the MMA backdrop theme. Joel Edgerton plays Brendan, a physics teacher and former MMA fighter. When the folks at the bank tell him they’ll need to foreclose his house, he then becomes motivated to make some extra cash in order to escape from filing bankruptcy. He isn’t about to back down so he decides to go back to being a fighter to make an extra buck. Think John Q, The Wrestler, and Million Dollar Baby rolled into one, only the sport is MMA. Then enters a subplot about his long lost brother, Tommy (played by Tom Hardy), who, too, is a former MMA fighter and an ex-Marine haunted by his tragic past. He and his brother Brendan soon meet at Sparta, the Superbowl of MMA.

Nick Nolte plays Brendan’s dad and former trainer. Here, Nick Nolte is his Nick Nolte self (read rickety and sad). There is a dramatic scene where father and son (Nick Nolte and Tom Hardy) ensue their family drama which ends in Hardy throwing coins at Nolte. It was in this moment where I thought it’s sad seeing people onscreen being mean to their fathers, but it’s even sadder seeing people being mean to Nick Nolte. Anyway the point of my writing is that I enjoyed watching this movie albeit the closely shot fight sequences and cheesy split screen treatment for the training sequences.

The real point is that who cares if Warrior was a 2 hour long cliche? Everything else with a similar theme was. Joel Edgerton as Brendan is the hero I never expected and Tom Hardy was the tragic antagonist/protagonist I never thought was possible. We want to relate to our heroes in movies. The struggle was clear (a little too clear) and because of this, we saw that there truly is no heroism without failure risked or faced. Warrior isn’t a consistently good movie but that’s almost beside the point: the excitement is sustained by a brilliant idea (even if it’s “just an MMA movie”), a new variant on the classic theme of the underdog and his rise to glory.

Or maybe I just loved the use of the songs in the movie, ‘Start a War’ and ‘About Today’ by The National. What can I say, they’re my favorite band.

This entry will serve as a placeholder for myself to note that I should rediscover and rekindle how excited I used to get about movies in general. Seeing movie posters, new movies trailers, knowing what movies are coming up and movies that have yet to be discovered. Kael writes “People go to the movies for the various ways they express the experiences of our lives, and as a means of avoiding and postponing the pressures we feel. This latter function of art – generally referred to disparagingly as escapism – may also be considered as refreshment, and in terms of modern big city life and small town boredom, it may be a major factor in keeping us sane.”  Kael wrote this in the 50s but this still holds true up til today. Now let me catch up with keeping my sanity.

Contagion shows no clear deterioration of society and in the end, there is no catharsis. It doesn’t resolve anything that goes on for the past hour and thirty minutes, neither does any unifying theme stand out. To top it all off, it had a completely wasted all-star cast. Each character could’ve been removed without consequence and nothing would’ve mattered. Kate Winslet was somewhat forgotten somewhere in the middle. Matt Damon was a sad man all throughout. Gwyneth Paltrow’s acting prowess came out in photographs. Laurence Fishburne might as well could’ve been a character on TV. And the amazing Marion Cotillard was wasted. None of these characters were intertwined and none of them seemed worth caring for at all. You kinda just sit and wish that they’d all die at some point, just to make something happen.

Then something hit me right in the middle of writing all this down. I realized I care about movies too much to see them go to waste like this. If any more movies like Contagion start spreading like the plague (sorry, I had to), next time, I’d rather not know.

When Frank’s (Rainn Wilson) wife leaves him for the drug dealing Jacques (Kevin Bacon), he turns to religious inspiration in becoming a superhero. His mind is literally touched by the giant finger of God in a mildly grotesque scene that paves the way for the rest of this dark comedy. As a superhero, Frank’s weapon of choice is a pipe wrench. It’s a silly choice but it doesn’t look so silly once he starts bashing people’s faces with them till they start bleeding uncontrollably. It’s not a pretty sight. Actually, nothing in this movie is pretty to look at. Every subsequent crime fighting scene that goes on robs you of reasoning cos it’s so viciously funny in a very sadistic way (Shut up, crime!). Thankfully, there is justice for poor Frank in the end, albeit a tragic twist. This film isn’t for everyone but I’m glad it was for me.

I’m sick of seeing kid wisdom in romantic comedies. We already saw this in Love, Actually- and seeing it in that movie was enough. We saw it again in Definitely, Maybe. And again in 500 Days of Summer. We’ve seen it in almost every romantic comedy where adults are faced with love problems and it takes a bit of “kid wisdom” to smack them into their senses. But the thing with kid wisdom is that I don’t understand it. Is it supposed to be funny? Are we supposed to laugh seeing a 13-year-old preach about being in love and finding your soulmate and never giving up? It’s not cute and it will never be. It gets even more annoying when the adult protagonists realize that the kid wisdom makes sense and deliver the cliche line, “Kid, how old are you again?” (this has got to be one of my favorites).

There’s a lot of kid wisdom in Crazy, Stupid, Love; in fact, one of the main characters, Steve Carrell’s son Robbie, is the source of all that kid wisdom. It’s a real shame the final shot of this movie was of Robbie exuding the kind of “everything’s gonna be alright” look through his shaggy locks and annoying smirk. If it isn’t obvious by now, I really hate kid wisdom in movies, especially when it makes me forget about how excited I was about Josh Groban’s feature film debut. sad, sad

I wanted to watch Downloading Nancy when I first saw the trailer in 2009: it was during a time when I regarded all dark and depressing movies as good movies (in the same vein as art movies, haha). It’s hard to tell what makes a depressing movie good: does it strike the right emotional chords? Is there retribution at the end?. But in the case of this drama/thriller, you can tell there’s got to be something wrong when you start to snicker a little. Yes, somehow director Johan Renck managed to turn something as serious as emotional disturbance into something groan-worthy. Nancy (played by Maria Bello) is an abused and depressed wife who seeks solace in an online acquaintance. Later on we find out that their relationship is hinged on her request to be killed by him because she’s too weak a character to simply kill herself. Now this is where it starts to get freaky as Nancy begs her new friend, the sick sadomasochist Louis to release her from her painful life after they meet each other and have kinky sex. He then starts to fall in love with Nancy after spending few light moments with her and persuades her to stay alive.

I put this movie in my to-watch list in 2009. Almost 3 years later I now realize that just because a movie is “the most disturbing film I’ve ever seen” and “not for the faint at heart” does not mean it has redemptive value. It’s as if this movie was made for the sake of being twisted, with the added lure that it was based on true events. The entire cast, especially the main character, are unsympathetic. The therapist was stupid, Nancy was stupid, the husband was stupid, and I really couldn’t care less if they all killed each other. The only true disturbing aspect of this movie is how shocked its audience supposed to be, given that it’s an ugly story that should’ve been told in all its ugliness.

So this is the movie everyone keeps talking about. and by ‘everyone’, I am referring to the small number of people in my circle of friends who’ve endlessly raved about this sweet little Thai movie called A Little Thing Called Love or its alternate title ‘First Love.’ The alternate title seems more apt considering its simple and uncomplicated  plot.

Nam is an ordinary-looking (read: ugly) 14 year old girl who is secretly in love with an older schoolmate and school heartthrob, P’Shone. Girls swoon at the sight of him and no matter where he goes, what he wears, and  direction he looks, the camera angles and sunlight always seem to be in favor of his boyish looks and natural charm. He loves his family, he’s dedicated to his hobby (photography), and always carries with him a bright and cheerful disposition. (In other words, he is absolutely perfect and therefore this guy doesn’t exist). Anyway, Nam tries to do everything to get P’Shone’s attention, and this is where the story starts to gain footing. She undergoes a full ugly duckling transformation and soon enough she becomes the school hottie. It’s not such an unpredictable plot, in fact, First Love makes use of the usual romantic comedy formula. What makes this movie special is that it went into the joys and agonies of adolescence told from a young girl’s point of view. It’s a very enjoyable movie to watch, plus that Mario Mauer isn’t bad to look at either. Hee hee. Watch this movie!

As this movie came from the maker of the Saw series, I was glad to know that the same amount of bloodshed and gore wasn’t apparent in Insidious. It has its winning scenes (all the silly ones) and its not-so-winning scenes (where too much story exposition took place) but the craziness of it outweighed all the slow-paced parts but still it was all in great fun. Just remember when watching Insidious, if you think about it too much, you’ll miss the point of it.

Rakenrol is intended for a niche market, but within that market lies another niche market (ie: friends of the musicians and the filmmaker himself) sorry just had to say it but that’s how I feel. Anyway I didn’t feel a real connection with any of its main characters for several reasons: for one, we aren’t told little things about whatshisface Jason Abalos like where he lives, how many brothers and sisters he has, who his parents are, etc. But I assume his love for rock music was supposed to be a good enough standalone identifier. Rakenrol doesn’t represent the rock and roll music scene in the Philippines and doesn’t even feel remotely close to an accurate description of how a guy like whashisface Jason Abalos’ character made it to several gigs from singing in his bedroom in just a matter of months. I can tell it’s only been months because no childbirth was made known at the end of the movie. Random random random i will publish this unfinished with half baked thoughts. Another thing. Take a look at that misleading poster, you woulda thought the story would be told by Glaiza de Castro but no. Oh the only thing I liked about this movie was Jacci Rocha. I mean I like the name, it’s a good name, Jacci Rocha. Rolls off the tongue nicely and it’s very catchy. Jacci Rocha. Another thing. I can’t believe they screened this movie in international film festivals, knowing now niche within a niche market it is. At least poverty porn movies are relate-able to everyone else around the world but this one? I dunno. The songs weren’t even catchy or memorable. Then again, it’s a “personal project” so I shall say no more