Author: Wanggo Gallaga

MOVIE REVIEW: Great premise, unrealised potential: a review of ‘Baghead’

The premise of ‘Baghead,’ the horror film by director Alberto Corredor and written by Christina Pamies, Bryce McGuire, and Lorcan Reilly, is actually quite promising. A young woman, Iris (Freya Allan), inherits a pub in Germany from her estranged father. When she signs the deed, she also ends up inheriting the entity that lives in the basement: the shapeshifting Baghead, who can turn into the dead. As the custodian of this malevolent being, Iris must keep Baghead in the basement but the temptation to speak with the dead – and make money while others communicate with the deceased – puts everything at risk.

It’s a great set-up for a horror film except Corredor and his creative team never take the time to really establish the aspects of the film that would give it its emotional weight. At the start of the film, Iris is seen breaking into her apartment, which she has been evicted from. Taking her things, she considers accepting her friend Katie’s (Ruby Barker) proposal to stay with her but then she receives the call about her father. We quickly learn that she hasn’t spoken to him since he had abandoned her, and she has been living in foster care after her mother passed away. With no attachments except for Katie and no money, she quickly flies off to Berlin and decides to keep the broken-down ruin of a pub. The film makes no effort to really show us Iris’ life before this story takes flight and she meets Baghead. Except for Katie’s offer to let her stay at her place “until she gets back on her feet” and the fact that Katie would drop everything and fly off to Berlin to help Iris out, we don’t actually see the bonds of the two girls for real.

In fact, the pub itself, situated in a dark, seemingly abandoned area of Berlin doesn’t even feel like Berlin at all. Throughout the film, there are several trips made from England to Berlin but it feels like no time has passed. The narrative never even really leaves the confines of the pub so you never actually feel the world of Berlin. It could be a pub in the outskirts of London or maybe in Wales or Scotland and it wouldn’t matter. It changes nothing on the DNA of the story and the script.

It is extra jarring because the way by which Iris and Katie discover Baghead is when a man, Neil (Jeremy Irvine) breaks into the pub and asks Iris to let him see Baghead. When he offers the broke Iris 2000 (they never even say euros or pounds, no denomination) to allow Baghead to let him speak to his wife, she instantly accepts.

This is where ‘Baghead’ manages some emotional heavy lifting. From the basement, Baghead can send visions and spells out of her prison. She tempts Iris with knowledge and information about her father (Peter Mullan) and it allows her to reconsider the reason for why he may have abandoned her. If he was responsible for Baghead then, maybe had no choice? The film explores the complexity of this quite well while the rest of the film flounders with a relatively weak investigation scene (from Katie’s perspective) of Baghead’s origins and a predictable subplot involving Neil.

When the plot starts to put everything together, forcing the characters to collide and Baghead’s machinations to come to fruition, the only relationship that is truly fleshed out is the one of Iris and her father, which has already pretty much resolved somewhere within the second act. The rest feels pretty much formulaic and by the numbers. There are some good moments of tension and fright but because you don’t really feel that invested in the characters, it’s hard for the film to muster up any real sense of fear or dread.

It’s also indicative of a very western approach to these supernatural premises. The lure of money and the fearlessness of such an entity feels so far removed from an Asian perspective. While the younger generation now do not believe in the supernatural, they do have the better sense to stay cautious when presented with it. Iris jumps straight into the fray without question after she realises the economic opportunities Baghead presents. Any Asian character would immediately find an exorcist or try and find a way out as soon as possible with as little interaction with the being as possible.

While floundering as a horror film, ‘Baghead’ presents quite an interesting discussion point about western approaches to the supernatural. It’s why – in my opinion – Asian supernatural horror always feels more grounded and more frightening. It’s because Asians fear and respect the supernatural. We grew up with it. We believe in spirits and ancestors and ghosts, to some degree. We know the dangers that lurk just around the corner when these beings are near. Westerners are sure they can overcome anything as long as they fight hard enough. They feel invincible in their own beliefs of the self. It is why a lot of the third acts of many western horror films – like ‘Baghead’ – don’t always work.

My Rating:

Baghead is now showing. Check screening times and buy tickets here.

March 4, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: The epic bait-and-switch of ‘Dune: Part Two’ and its criticism against imperialism

There is an incredible bait-and-switch that happens in ‘Dune: Part Two’ that manages to highlight the narrative control that director Denis Villeneuve and his co-screenwriter Jon Spaihts exercises on the material. Based on the book by Frank Herbert, with the same name, Villeneuve is quoted for saying that he reworked the movie to follow Herbert’s original intention to make the lead character Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) an anti-hero. Following directly from the events that transpired in the first film, ‘Dune Part Two’ explores Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica as they are assimilated into the world of the Fremen, the native inhabitants of the world Arrakis while the Harkonnen continue to try and mine the planet for spice, the precious mineral found only in Arrakis.

You cannot watch this movie and not see the critiques against imperialism that is on full display in the narrative structure and the imagery. Everything from the language to the brutality of the ways by which the Fremen people are oppressed point to past historical accounts of colonization by the west. That Villeneuve and his creative team adopt a middle eastern aesthetic for the dessert planet of Arrakis and the Fremen while the Harkonnen’s have a clearly fascist aesthetic is something that does not go unnoticed. Even the casting becomes symbolic of these representations.

The horror of western imperialism is in full display in this movie and it’s wonderful at how bold it is.

And this is where the bait-and-switch works in full effect. Because ‘Dune Part One’ sets up Paul as a saviour, a prophesied messiah who will free Arrakis and the Fremen from outside control. His father and his noble house is destroyed in the first film as the emperor (Christopher Walken) fears the growing popularity of Paul’s father, the Duke Leto Atreides. As Paul becomes more assimilated with the Fremen and his body ingests more of the psychedelic effects of the spice that enhances his already innate abilities, he is becoming more and more like the prophesied liberator of the Fremen. It’s the structure of the hero’s journey at full swing.

But the film – through the perspective of Chani (Zendaya), Paul’s love interest amongst the Fremen – manages to critique this constantly as the story unfolds. Through Chani’s eyes, she constantly reminds her people (and the audience in the cinema) that the prophesy was a story told by the order of the Bene Gesserit to create a faith-based fervor to manipulate the people to accept the coming of an outsider. As Paul tries to shake away the shackles of the prophesy coming to term through him, he struggles to stay true to Chani and his promise to lead the Fremen to sovereignty but there are forces that have been at work for centuries that he is fighting against.

In the almost-three hour running time of the film, Villeneuve and his team gives a hefty serving of life amongst the Fremen. Paul’s assimilation into their culture, even gaining the name Muad’Dib, is the avenue that allows us to see the beauty of the dessert planet and of the Fremen’s ways. Villeneuve, alongside his director of photography Greig Fraser, does an incredible job of capturing the beauty of sand and stone. There’s majesty in the dessert and ‘Dune Part Two’ is filled with this grandiose imagery. It is beautiful in its expanse of barren sand so when he situates Paul and Chani or any of the Fremen in it, the visuals of life thriving and pushing through against that backdrop is so stunning.

And while there’s a lot of time setting up for a magnificent climax as Paul makes a play to finally free the Fremen from imperial control, there’s also a lot of action in-between to keep the pace from meandering. There are incredible battle sequences that makes full use of the environment to portray what the first film had been promising us: the frightening force of the Fremen and “desert power.”

And if that wasn’t enough – though it is – Villeneueve also treats us to the incredible sequence of riding a sand worm, which we saw a glimpse of in the trailer. In the film, the full sequence of riding one is so grand that the audience I was watching with burst out in applause at the spectacle of it. Even I was clapping at the sheer bravado of it.

‘Dune: Part Two’ is an exquisite science fiction epic that needs to be seen in the largest screen possible with the loudest speakers that you can afford. The visual feast alongside the precision of its sound design and musical score promises that ‘Dune Part Two’ is a cinematic event that cannot be missed. To make things even more worth your time, the film explores the real-world horrors of imperialism by seeing things through multiple perspectives – from the emperor (by way of his daughter, played by Florence Pugh), to the oppressed natives by way of Chani, to that of its liberator, Paul, who may or may not be a pawn falling into the manipulations of the Bene Gesserit.

‘Dune: Part One’ gives us the structure of a hero story but as ‘Dune: Part Two’ continues the story, it upends everything and shows us a different side of the story. The complexities of colonization and imperialism is put into full view. And it’s a spectacle just as arresting as Villenueve’s incredible depiction of this epic uprising in the desert planet of Arrakis.

My Rating:

Dune: Part Two is now showing. Check screening times and buy tickets here.

February 28, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: ‘The Holdovers’ is an instant classic and a surprising tearjerker of a film

There are a host of films about the relationships between students and their teachers. Films that are of a mold about the true nature of education, which goes beyond what is taught in books. There were a lot of them in the 90s, like ‘Dead Poets Society,’ ‘Dangerous Minds,’ and ‘With Honors’ (though the teacher there is a homeless man played by Joe Pesci). In the mid-2000s, we had films like ‘The History Boys.’ They are coming of age stories set in school, that says a lot about the importance of a good teacher in the molding of young minds.

Writer and director Alexander Payne, who has struck gold with movies like ‘Sideways’ and ‘The Descendants’ has a gift for building stories of seemingly ordinary occurrences or relationships and turning them into these profound human moments of beauty and grace. He has a knack for finding the extraordinary in the most mundane of things and people.

He does it again with ‘The Holdovers,’ a movie set in the 1970s, at the tail-end of the Vietnam war about a schoolteacher in an all-male boarding school who has to watch over the students who have nowhere to go during the holidays. This teacher, Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), is a teacher of the classics and is hated by everyone, not just the students, but by some co-faculty too. He’s a cranky, old man with a strict sense of decorum and manners. It’s the perfect antithesis for any young male high schooler with the urge to rebel against authority.

Paul Giamatti stars as Paul Hunham and Dominic Sessa as Angus Tully in director Alexander Payne’s THE HOLDOVERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Seacia Pavao / © 2023 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

In this case, the teen in question is Angus Tully (a breakthrough debut performance by newcomer Dominic Sessa), an intelligent but troubled kid, whose issues with his parents have caused him to move from school to school. He is enrolled in Paul Hunham’s classics class and is the only one amongst his classmates who gets a decent enough grade but, like his classmates, he cannot stand the unflinching Hunham.

© 2023 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

Rounding up the cast is Da’vine Joy Randolph, who plays Mary Lamb. She’s the school’s cafeteria manager, and whose son was an alumnus of the school. Unfortunately, at the start of the film, she’s grieving the loss of her son who was part of the Vietnam war. As the only service staff left, she is allowed to grieve in peace, and she becomes a grounding force between the bickering of the two men left behind.

Dominic Sessa stars as Angus Tully and Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham in director Alexander Payne’s THE HOLDOVERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Seacia Pavao / © 2023 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

What makes ‘The Holdovers’ so enjoyable is that it’s intelligent and well-crafted. Paul and Angus are both articulate and witty. Their back and forth are clever but are also loaded with the stuff that these two characters need. Paul needs to practice his empathy, needs to be reminded he is part of a larger world, of society whereas Angus needs a guiding hand, an authoritative figure who actually cares about him. These two characters are exactly what each other need but can they break through their own first impressions of each other to get what they need?

The story is so simple. Being away from family (or disconnected from them like Mary is) during the holidays has put an emotional pressure on these three characters and they find themselves hanging on to each other, albeit unwillingly for some, to feel a little more human, to feel a little less alone.

© 2023 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

And in the process of all of this, the three find themselves going out of their shells, breaking free from the expectations of others and the expectations they have put upon themselves and find themselves on a road to healing.

Payne manages to present such simple ideas in a simple story but has the artistry to amplify the human elements of this story to create a profound sense of goodness that just springs forth from the tension between these characters. I was laughing all the way through the two-hour movie, laughing at all the verbal witticisms and the displays of humanity, both the strengths and weaknesses, that it made me feel good about myself. And, in a surprising twist, found myself sobbing at the end with the way the film finds a heartwarming resolution.

It’s not a flashy film, even the cinematography tries to capture the grainy quality of classic movies of the time period. But it’s so full of heart and so funny and so real in its presentation of emotions that it feels like a film I’ll be coming back to again and again and more so on Christmas. It’s no wonder that Paul Giamatti and Da’vine Joy Randolph are gearing up to the winners of the Oscars in their category. Giamatti is in his wheelhouse and may be the strongest contender to take the award out of Cillian Murphy’s hands. It would be deserving with this role in this movie.

My Rating:

The Holdovers is now showing. Check screening times and buy tickets here.

February 21, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: ‘I Am Not Big Bird’ is bold as it tries to push the boundaries, but it isn’t bold enough

Advertised as a raunchy sex comedy, ‘I Am Not Big Bird’ is pretty progressive in scope and vision. It’s a period piece (set sometime in the mid 2000s, pre-smart phone era) that stars a returning Enrique Gil (without his popular love team) in comedy that is set almost entirely in Thailand and is all about sex and genitalia. It’s been said over and over: this is so new to the Philippine film landscape and it’s refreshing. While a large majority of the country can still be very conservative (and even downright oppressive) in their views on sex, the new generations are more open about it (just check social media). It’s the perfect time for a comedy like this to stir the pot and push some boundaries and trigger some pearl clutching.

But as the movie unfolds – it’s the story of Luis Carpio (Gil), whose marriage proposal is rejected by his girlfriend of five years (because he hasn’t had sex with her as he is waiting for marriage) flies off to Thailand with his two friends for a chance to be “a bigger man,” as according to a random flyer that was handed out to him – the film is a lot tamer than I was expecting it to be. This is coming from director Victor Villanueva, who directed the excellently done ‘Patay na si Hesus’ as well as ‘Boy Bastos’ and ‘Lucid.’ Tonally, ‘Patay na si Hesus’ was way more outragous and provocative than ‘I Am Not Big Bird’ is, and it was not even revolving around sex. What creates this tempered outrageousness is its straddling its risqué elements with mass appeal. You can tell they want to push the lines but not cross it so they can keep the rating low and not raise too many eyebrows.

Case in point, the main dramatic premise of the film is that Luis, called Carps by his friends, looks exactly like the porn star known as Big Bird. Big Bird has a huge penis. It’s astronomically huge as we are shown this in the film’s prologue on a sex tape from Japan. So, humorously, the size is indicated via how much is pixelated in the video. An impression is created, the joke is set. But then the film never goes beyond this after the prologue. The three friends, which includes standup comedian Red Ollero as July and Nikko Natividad as Macky, have their first night at a seedy club. They are taken to a back room so that they can have sex with some of the hostesses there, but the film suddenly enters into an advisory that the scene is “too sexy for Filipino audiences” and goes to describe what happens in the cut scene with sound effects and a dub to amplify the humor. And then after we see the effect it had on our characters.

The film is fixated on the size of Big Bird’s penis (and the subsequent jokes of Luis, who ironically has a tiny one) and pushes the characters to do risque things. The many hijinks that follow from being mistaken for this porn star leads to kidnapping, to the possibilities of castration, and so on. The friends get high on psychedelic substances and, in one scene, have to try and make a porno and other such strange happenings. It’s all for laughs and I’m all for it – I just wished they allowed us to really get the full-on unsanitized comedy that this dramatic situation allows.

We don’t actually see them smoke or ingest the drugs. We don’t see too much skin (until much later, and it’s not from Enrique Gil, the main character of the film). It never gets dirty or grimy or full-on offensive the way that it teases us that it will. At least, in the presentation of Macky as a gay character, he actually gets to kiss another guy and they get almost naked and almost have sex. It’s where I thought this film would go but that’s the spiciest the film ever gets. There’s a scene where Gil has to kiss Deborah (Wipawee Charoenpura), a porn producer who is chasing after Big Bird, but as their faces come closer together, they change the angle of their heads, and we don’t actually see the kiss; just the impression of it.

It’s this sanitized tone that hinders this film from reaching its true heights and from really pushing boundaries. Yes, they say penis a lot and show us the huge bulge in full display in other scenes but it’s always just that: covered up and sanitized.

And for all the joking around about male genitalia and the like, the film does a sneak attack and suddenly turns to transform this film into a story about male friendships but the most important aspect of the friendship is not what the film is focused on either. Luis only shows up when he needs something and isn’t privy to the goings-on of his two friends. But this is only told and never shown. And while Macky’s story is at least given a scene, July’s back story isn’t even that developed. So, when the film tries to subvert the film’s comedy by surprising us with the story of the friendship, it feels forced and rather hollow.

What I do appreciate, though, is the friendship that is shown with Macky and July. If there’s anything to applaud, it’s the unproblematic friendship between a straight guy and a gay guy. The way the film just allows July and Macky to be good friends and not have their different gender preferences get in the way of anything is just so pleasant to see onscreen. I would have given everything to see more of this, and the fac that Luis wasn’t even aware. That is an important element of the story that doesn’t feel like it was given attention to.

As something new and different, ‘I Am Not Big Bird’ was poised to really turn heads, start conversations, and really break boundaries. But they played it safe. They got the laughs, for sure, the people in the theater with me were laughing at all the gags, shocked at “the audacity of it.” But this is the era of tv shows like ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Saltburn.’ Just a decade ago, ‘Game of Thrones’ was doing more shocking things about sex and nudity that hadn’t been done before. It’s a bold move for this movie to go in this direction, but it wasn’t bold enough. I would have liked it to go all-out.

My Rating:

I Am Not Big Bird is now showing. Check screening times and buy tickets here.

February 19, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: Crippled by a weak script, ‘Madame Web’ struggles to even be light and fun

There’s actually a lot going for ‘Madame Web’ to make it big. It stars Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney, one actress who has a following because of her star-making turn in the divisive but immensely popular ‘Fifty Shades of Gray’ and the other, a rising star from hit television shows like ‘Euphoria’ and ‘White Lotus.’ While it is a comic book movie, it is based off a not so well-known character, which means that the expectations won’t affect the movie as much; the creative team have more leeway to play with the character just a bit. It’s a women-led story, which addresses the growing call for more women-centric stories in all genres. It’s also directed by a prolific film and television director, SJ Clarkson, who has worked on episodes of ‘Jessica Jones’ and ‘Succession.’

Unfortunately, the film tries to spin a complicated web but the script by writing duo Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless and also with Claire Parker and SJ Clarkson fail to bring all of its elements together. ‘Madame Web’ is burdened by a narrative structure that spends most of its time establishing story points and explaining the protagonist’s abilities than actually setting up an intriguing character arc for her. The dialogue is also extremely prosaic and literal; explaining everything that is happening in the most straightforward (thus uninteresting) way. If any of the elements are working towards the possibility of this film being exciting or thrilling, the script somehow undermines any of this by focusing on plot points rather than character building.

The film centers around Cassie Webb, a paramedic, who was orphaned when her mother died in the Amazon jungle while researching spiders (as humorously explained in the trailer). Because of her being orphaned – what she knows is that her mother died during childbirth, though the audience is aware that she was killed by her security detail – Cassie has an aversion to children and motherhood. She seems more comfortable being one of the boys than hanging out with the wives and sisters and mothers of her co-workers. A near-death experience triggers her powers, her ability to see the future, and she ends up saving three young teenagers from being murdered by Ezekiel Sims, the man who killed Cassie’s mother. Cassie must discover her past and reconcile with the truth about her mother so that she can save the three young girls from Sims.

Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor), Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney) in Columbia Pictures’ MADAME WEB.

Clarkson takes a frenetic and loud directorial style for ‘Madame Web.’ Set in the year 2003, she infuses her film with older songs closer to that time period – ‘What’s Up’ of 4 Non Blondes, ‘Bitch’ by Meredith Brooks, and ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears – and tries to create urgency by fast cuts and crazy camera work but somehow the film always manages to feel unhurried. Even a scene where Cassie is on the job trying to save the lives of people in a burning building, it lacks urgency or excitement. From the get-go, the film employs these camera tricks and strange edits before any actual real danger or excitement has really kicked in. In the process, the film doesn’t quite achieve the energy it is trying to convey.

And the script is just literal and straightforward. At every turn, most especially in the parts of Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), the dialogue openly explains the character’s thoughts and motivations, which ends up making the film feel like a comic book. It feels like exposition and it spoon-feeds the entire plot of the film as to make sure that people understand what is going on – even though the film isn’t that hard to understand at all.

Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney in Madame Web
Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Because of this, Rahim ends up looking like he’s over-acting as he is trying to add a sense of drama and danger to his character (even though the film hasn’t quite given us any real reason to) while the young teens who are in trouble – Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’ Connor, and Isabela Merced – are doing their best with the most archetypally written teen characters in the genre. On the flipside, Johnson and the usually very interesting Zosia Mamet are doing the bare minimum for these characters, as if they both realised that the words they have to say are quite silly. They are working, for sure, but they aren’t sweating it out either like they usually do.

There is an interesting way that they visualize the way Cassie’s powers work at the start when she first gets the abilities. The jarring way by which time seems to keep repeating. It’s an interesting effect but it quickly loses its appeal after the nth time it happens. Later on, it starts to play with your head because you have no idea if what you are seeing is a vision or the actual scene. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It can really ruin the pacing, but more importantly, it kills any feeling of suspense or thrill for the film. At some point, we stop worrying because we know that Cassie will figure it out and avoid any real danger.

The issues with the script – especially the way it handles a critical point in the second act when Cassie finally explores her mother’s story – really keeps the film from finding any semblance of stability and keeps ‘Madame Web’ from being taken seriously – even as a light, fun comic book movie. It can’t even get into that level because everything is so out in the open in terms of that screenplay.

It’s unfortunate because all the elements are there. But unless it’s the animated Spider-verse franchise or without the backing of Kevin Feige and the MCU, ‘Madame Web’ might just fall in the same pile as ‘Morbius’ and the critically panned ‘Venom’ films.

My Rating:

Madame Web is now showing. Check screening times and buy tickets here.

February 15, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Poor Things’ reimagines the coming-of-age narrative through an absurdist lens

I’m a huge fan of the works of Yorgos Lanthimos. From ‘The Lobster’ and ‘Killing of a Sacred Deer’ to ‘The Favourite,’ I’ve found that his style of highly formalistic realities playing out a sort of morality play that critiques contemporary human society has always been executed with such a delightful meticulousness of craft. Not only are the worlds that he creates out of the box and off-kilter but the way by which he presents them amplifies the absurdity of human life. His use of crazy camera angles and distorted visuals (like the use of the fisheye lens in ‘The Favourite’) and the unsettling musical score that he favours; his works have always been equal parts hilarious and disturbing.

Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone on the set of POOR THINGS. Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Of the three works that he’s done that I’ve seen (and I heard his earlier, non-English works are even better), they have always been mired in irony and expressed a cynical view of the world. So, it’s surprising that his latest outing, ‘Poor Things’ ends somewhat hopeful, even joyful and it’s a shift that feels more aligned to his irreverent sense of humor because it still feels like the other shoe is about to drop. And unlike his previous films, this one ends right before it does.

Emma Stone in POOR THINGS. Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.

‘Poor Things’ centers around the growth of Bella (Emma Stone). We are introduced to her as a woman who had “hurt her head” and is now learning everything all over again like that of a child. While the setting implies a Victorian-era London, Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara opt for a dreamy, lo-fi steam punk world. It has shades of George Melies with a bit of the Spanish architect and painter Gaudi splashed into the aesthetic design. Bella is in the care of a brilliant surgeon Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a master of anatomy and surgery, who conducts experiments that is akin to Dr. Moreau. His home is a menagerie of strange animal experiments. A duck with a dog’s body. A chicken with a pig’s head. And then there’s Bella, a grown woman acting like a child.

Willem Dafoe in POOR THINGS. Photo by Atsushi Nishijima Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.

When Godwin asks one of his students, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to watch over Bella and record her growth, he questions her origins but cannot help but find her attractive. He falls for her and in the urgings of the paternal Godwin, Max proposes marriage to Bella, who at this point is old enough to understand a portion of what it means and accepts.

Ramy Youssef and Willem Dafoe in POOR THINGS. Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.© 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Except Bella still wants to know more about the world, so seduced by a sly lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), Bella leaves home to explore the world outside the safe yet imprisoning walls of Godwin Baxter’s home.

Mark Ruffalo in POOR THINGS. Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.

What presents itself as either a strange gothic romance or a meditation on the morality and cruelty of scientific experiments conducted in the post-period of enlightenment, the movie really is a coming-of-age story of a woman who wants to understand the world. Bella’s unique circumstance allows her to see the world as an innocent, with pure intentions and is grasping for experiences that will help her wrestle with all the emotions that come with the knowledge about the world itself. Her mental growth is quick and fast, and in a few months, she has the mind of an intelligent young teen (though the sentence structure of a verbose child) but, having the body of a grown woman, she discovers the joy and power of sex and enjoys it.

Emma Stone in POOR THINGS. Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Sex, then, becomes the fulcrum of her understanding of power and joy. Bella questions the world around her, including polite society, which – when taken from her point-of-view – is suspect about the true nature of the power dynamics involved. Unintentionally, to understand the world, she has to face what it means to be a woman and what society demands from her. With her child-like point-of-view, she feels no shame nor guilt of which society bears upon her. And because this, she is so much stronger than everyone in the world around her.

Everyone in this film is incredible, Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo are doing their best work – and these are two actors who always do amazing work – but here, they synch into Lanthimos’ sense of absurdity and they fit right in. The mannered performances are brought in with equal levels of absurdity but tempered with the reason that they don’t feel like they are hamming it up.

Emma Stone in Poor Things. Photo Courtesy of Searchight Pictures.© 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

But through and through, this is Emma Stone’s movie. It is all grounded on her and her portrayal of Bella. She is absolutely committed to this role and is unafraid of being foolish and vulnerable. She is acting with every inch of her body, creating a character that is rapidly growing before our eyes. From the times of Bella with the mindset of an infant to her fully grown and in full realization of who she is and what the world is capable of, you can see the shifts and nuances of the character’s transformation. If she wins her second Oscar for this role, it would be so deserved.

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo on the set of POOR THINGS. Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Lanthimos’ incredible filmmaking is so perfectly matched for this story. The pacing, the world building, the design, and the way he captures it on camera. After the prologue, he tells the story first in black-and-white to somehow mimic Bella’s view of the world – without colour, without understanding. But as she gets older, the colours start to come in. I was trying to take notice of when it would change and shift (I knew the film would be in color because of the trailers) but I was so engrossed in Emma Stone’s performance and the hilariousness of the screenplay that I totally missed the shift the film takes to colour. And when it does, the movie just comes completely alive as it coincides directly with Balla’s on growing perspective over the world.

It’s definitely a philosophical film as much as it is the ultimate coming-of-age story that I can think of. The incredible score by Jerskin Fendrix, with its discordant melodies highlight the imbalance of power and the ways by which Bella deals with the people around her. But the music finds moments of harmony, especially at its surprising end.

‘Poor Things’ is a complete assault on the senses and this aesthetic is wonderfully maintained all throughout its 142-minute running time. It’s an exquisite meditation on the world and manages to highlight the discrepancy of power between the sexes.

My Rating:

Poor Things is now showing. Check screening times and buy tickets here.

February 14, 2024
Movie Review: The new ‘Mean Girls’ musical is kinda fetch

I was expecting to hate the new ‘Mean Girls’ movie. I’m a huge fan of the original 2004 Mark Waters-directed film and feel that it’s a perfect movie on its own. It was a cultural phenomenon and the way the movie presented the idea of the high school queen bee archetype was the pattern for later usage of that trope, like that in ‘Gossip Girl.’ It opened important discussions about the way teenage girls see themselves and each other and how they tear each other down. Many of the lines in the film are still used today in memes and gifs and, on social media, October 3 is dubbed as ‘Mean Girls Day’ due to a line in the film that mentions the date.

When I saw the trailer for the film adaptation of the Broadway musical based on the 2004 film, I had to ask why. Why make another movie when the original movie was already perfect as it was? Especially when the whole idea of a nasty, mean queen bee is such an outdated concept in 2024? This is the age of the internet and cancel culture. People like Regina George would be canceled in a heartbeat. How would this version address this shift in the generational mindset? And the trailer made it feel like it was exactly the same movie with some jokes just swapped for a more modern take but was essentially the same.

So, I was sitting in my seat, as the movie began, and when the first song opened, an intro presented like an IG or FB reel or Tiktok with Janis and Damian (Auli’i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey, respectively) singing a song with the tone of a narrator, I immediately put my walls up and resisted. Despite the excellent vocals of Cravalho and Spivey, I found fault within the song. The two were playing their own instruments in a garage but the moment the garage doors open and it’s the wide-open savannah of Africa and we are introduced to Angourie Rice as Cady Heron, I was turned upside down.

It was an incredible scene transition that would be carried out throughout the whole film. Rice sings Cady’s first song about her life in Kenya and the song was catchy and allowed us into the interior world of our protagonist. One quick, clever transition later and she’s in high school back in the United States and experiencing her first day.

As much as I was resisting it, this musical version of ‘Mean Girls’ found a way through my walls. The full-on musical numbers help break reality and create a world for the film that is entirely of its own. It allows for the presence of a popular girl in school like Regina George to exist because the movie is not set in any sort of reflection of real life. It brought the story to the level of a fable or a modern fairy tale and so it created a space for the less realistic parts to exist.

So, when Renee Rapp makes her entrance as Regina George, the effect is actually quite staggering. Rapp is a powerful presence with a strong, powerful voice that demands attention. Rapp is not your typical svelte or skinny blonde girl. She’s a strongly built, hot young girl with the vocal chops of a diva. She has incredible confidence mixed with deadly charisma. Rachel McAdams, who originated the role in 2004, was perfect for that era’s imagination of the American dream girl but Renee Rapp is the rightful evolution of it. And boy can she sing!

Everything within this version of ‘Mean Girls’ pretty much follows the same narrative beats as the original. What is different is now that instead of Cady Heron’s narration, the voice-over is now song numbers and each girl gets a chance to reflect on their interior worlds. While Karen (played by Avantika) gets a humorous dance song about how young women can dress sexy during Halloween (as a reflection on the misplaced needs of young teen girls to be thought of as hot), it is Gretchen Wiener’s (Bebe Wood) song about her own insecurities that allows her to let Regina step all over her add something new and layered to the character.

Certain jokes remain the same – fetch is still there, and so is “she doesn’t even go here” – though others have been replaced with new jokes; some that work and some that don’t but what is surprising is that the core message of ‘Mean Girls’ has not changed over the years, but it still feels timely and important until now. The usage of the elements of social media and the internet somehow fits perfectly into the story and manages to highlight the overturning of Regina George’s popularity in favor of Cady and this is done really well with this new intrusion. It manages to showcase how shallow and petty all the noise in social media can be. One day they are praising Regina and the next, they are making fun of her and praising Cady.

This new ‘Mean Girls’ doesn’t quite top the original. It’s hard to do. What it does, though, is that it takes everything good about the first and dresses it up in modern sensibilities and makes it sing and dance and have really good scene transitions. With the vocal prowess of Cravalho and Rapp pushing it along for good measure, the film manages to justify its production and gives us a pretty fun time in the cinema in the process.

My Rating:

Mean Girls is now showing. Check screening times and buy tickets here.

February 13, 2024
MOVIE REVIEW: The unserious ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ struggles to make its quirks and whimsical elements come together

The moment I stepped out of the cinema after watching ‘Lisa Frankenstein,’ I had to really think about what I had just seen. It is an oddball of a film, a mixed bag of genres – Is it gothic-horror-comedy? Is it a dark, satirical, coming-of-age story? Is it an anti-romance movie with gothic inflections? – with so many quirks both in the script and direction that everything about the movie is distracting. The worst part was not knowing what the film was really about or what it was trying to do.

Set in the late 1980s, Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is living in an unnamed town with her dad, stepmom (Carla Gugino), and step-sister (Liza Soberano). Lisa is a survivor of a horrible attack where she witnessed her mother get killed by an axe murderer. She’s now an awkward teenager living with her oppressive, vicious stepmother and her cloyingly perfect, cheerful stepsister. She finds solace in spending time alone in an abandoned cemetery and dreaming about dying, lying on the ground side-by-side six feet under beside her favorite marked grave. After a rager where Lisa is drugged, embarrassed, and even sexually assaulted leaves her disoriented and walking home during a freak storm, for some crazy unexplained reason, a ball of lightning strikes the cemetery and brings the corpse of her favorite marked grave alive (Cole Sprouse).

From an awkward, antisocial teenager, the appearance of the undead boy somehow brings Lisa out of her shell. She dresses in Madonna circa 1980s-inspired outfits (with inflections of Stevie Nicks and the hippie-witch aesthetic) and her character does a drastic character change. She becomes more driven by her sexual desires and starts to fight back against the forces that have tried to bring her down – her stepmother and the boy who assaulted her – including being an accomplice to murder.

Because while Lisa is discovering her own strength and voice, the undead boy is slowly putting himself together, taking body parts from his victims so that he can be whole again. Throughout this process, he looks less and less like a zombie, throwing loving glances at the self-absorbed Lisa, and going through the entire movie communicating merely through grunts.

It’s a strange movie because there is no moral center that anchors this film. Yes, the murders that happen are bad and thus paint our protagonist, and unlikely romantic leads, as bad people but never does the film ever treat them as such. They are heroes in the way director Zelda Williams and writer Diablo Cody decide to depict them. The film turns each act of violence as comedic moments but never posits a stance about it. This ambiguity is refreshing but what it does is that it invalidates and undermines any moment of emotional weight that the film may try to achieve later on.

There are some interesting subversive elements within the film like Soberano’s Taffy. What would be a Regina George-esque character in any other film, is actually very sweet and genuine and is unafraid to call out her vicious mother and honestly try to treat Lisa like her sister. It’s a role that Soberano manages to portray with great aplomb. When things start to get hairy and Taffy and Lisa’s own relationship is put through the grinder, there’s a touching scene where Lisa finds a vulnerable moment and opens up to Taffy. It would have been more powerful had the film managed its quirky, ambiguous tone better. It’s hard to take this scene seriously when nothing else in the movie asks for that same treatment.

From the get-go, Williams’ and Cody’s treatment and style of this world is exaggerated and highly stylistic. It almost feels animated. Lines are delivered in such a mannered way that, at first, I thought everyone was overacting. It wasn’t until the movie stretched out that I realized everyone was acting in the same hyper-real way. It was a tonal direction – everything a little over-dramatic – that I saw the directorial control. Unfortunately, much like many aspects of the film, there’s no underlying intention behind any of it. It’s all quirky and unserious about everything – the romance aspect, the horror aspect, the gothic aspect, even the coming-of-age aspect – nothing is fully committed to by the creative team.

By the time the film ends, I felt no real connection to this world, to these characters, or to the experience. ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ felt like a hodgepodge of many great ideas and was shot and produced before any real development was put into the piece. Newton is acting up a storm but without any real context or grounding element to her character, for all her commitment, she ends up just seeming spastic and overdone. On the other hand, Gugino and Soberano find a sweet spot within the weird tone of the movie and somehow fit right in. They work completely in this movie even if the movie never really gets off the ground. I’m usually a huge fan of Diablo Cody’s work. Her previous films like ‘Young Adult’ and ‘Tully’ are just amazing works that get under your skin. Unfortunately, ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ does the opposite. It feels like an experiment in tone and whimsy that didn’t quite succeed.

My Rating:

Lisa Frankenstein is now showing. Check screening times and buy tickets here.

February 10, 2024
REVIEW: The first four thrilling episodes of ‘A Killer Paradox’ explores the possibility of a perfect crime

When watching a new series, there’s an unwritten rule that you give a show four episodes before you decide to finish it or to let it go. From the get-go, though, ‘A Killer Paradox’ sets the stage for the thrilling cat and mouse chase that’s to follow after Lee Tang (Choi Woo-shik of ‘Our Beloved Summer’ and ‘Parasite’) accidentally murders a serial killer. The show withholds judgment over Lee Tang’s crime.

On the first episode, it carefully sets up the pieces: our protagonist is not the nicest or the most likable of characters – he’s a directionless bum – and he seems surrounded by people whose struggles they wear out in the open for all to see. When he suddenly gets attacked near the convenience store where he works, he successfully defends himself but kills his attacker in the process.

A Killer Paradox Choi Woo-shik as Lee Tang in A Killer Paradox Cr. SONG KYOUNG SUB/Netflix © 2023

This event thrusts Lee Tang into a whirlwind of some of his neighborhood’s darkest corners. The cops are always at the periphery but only one detective, Jang Nan Gam (played by Son Suk-ku of ‘My Liberation Notes’), has kept him on his radar.

A Killer Paradox Son Suk-ku as Jang Nan-gam in A Killer Paradox Cr. SONG KYOUNG SUB/Netflix © 2023

As the episodes unfold, Lee Tang must decide to turn himself in or to stay out of harm’s way as the circumstances of that first murder somehow manages to yield no evidence of our anti-hero’s participation in the homicide.

But the show does not stop there. There are more dark and villainous people who orbit around Lee Tang and Jang Nan Gam and in the first four episode of this thrilling series, the tension builds up as the body count grows but somehow Tang manages to escape with Jang Nan Gam just hot on his trail. There are even hints of something beyond the ordinary in this story – that these coincidences are pointing to something extraordinary or even supernatural. The first four episodes leads you to think that but maybe there’s something else hidden underneath.

Despite Lee Tang not being a likeable character, the casting of Choi Woo-shik feels like a coup. They make full use of his innocent, youthful appearance – according to the internet, he’s 32 but he still can pass as a college student, which he plays in this show – and his features and physicality can make him appear harmless or innocent. So, the turn around after that first murder and how it affects him is such a powerful visual, especially because Choi Woo-shik is such a good actor that he makes it believable. And then, as the episodes start to unfold, his transformation is quite startling. This is very exciting territory for him to explore and it makes for great television.

On the other hand, Son Suk-ku is dashing as the jaded, tired detective Jang Nan Gam even though he’s not leaning into his rugged, good-looks. But it’s his character’s singular focus and his unflinching moral center that creates an image of this solid authority that adds to the tension of the suspense. If anyone is going to catch Lee Tang, it will be Jang Nan Gam. This is what Son Suk-ku brings to the table.

Director Lee Chang-hee (director of ‘Strangers from Hell’) is no stranger to this genre. He knows how to set up the stakes, to build the tension, to maneuver the scenes and the characters to maximize the thrill. Watching the first four episodes was so fast. Since the show is based on a webtoon of the same name (created by Kkomabi), the story is already laid out before us, and it takes such interesting and unfamiliar turns every episode.

A Killer Paradox (L to R) Director Lee Chang-hee, Choi Woo-shik as Lee Tang in A Killer Paradox
Cr. SONG KYOUNG SUB/Netflix © 2023

What makes this show extra appealing is how it illustrates the brutality of the violence of the murderous acts that happen in the show – regardless of who does it – and it creates arguments over whether these deaths can be justified or not. The character of Jang Nan Gam is there to remind us, always, that it never is but the show also shows us how justice in never truly realised in this world. It shows us how easily one can slip and think to take matters into their own hands.

A Killer Paradox (L to R) Choi Woo-shik as Lee Tang, Lee Hee-jun as Song Chon in A Killer Paradox
Cr. SONG KYOUNG SUB/Netflix © 2023

There’s no mention online on how many episodes this is going to be or whether it will be released in one go or not, but after four episodes, I’m definitely in it for the whole ride.

My Rating:

Watch ‘A Killer Paradox’ streaming on Netflix.

February 8, 2024
Movie Review: Spaeny is exquisite in Sofia Coppola’s ‘Priscilla,’ a film that is more impressionist than a dramatic biopic

Sofia Coppola takes an impressionist approach to the biopic, as she adapts Priscilla Presley’s memoir ‘Elvis and Me’ in her latest film. Coppola is not out to sensationalize the couple and instead puts her razor-sharp focus on the coming-of-age story of a young woman who is suddenly thrust into the orbit of one of pop music’s biggest stars. ‘Priscilla,’ as a film, makes no concessions in its treatment of Elvis. It knows who he is, and it expects its audience to do so as well. So, all of the trappings and glamour of his popularity is left in the periphery. Images of his fame tries to creep into the frame, but Coppola keeps it away. She focuses her camera on young Priscilla Beaulieu (played with a pitch-perfect performance by Cailee Spaeny) as she meets Elvis Presley at the age of 14 and is swept off her feet by his charisma and stardom.

Coppola keeps her camera close and tight. She only lets it breathe to contextualize the immensity of some scenes – to fully impress upon the audience the isolation Priscilla must have felt being alone with Elvis’ family and entourage in Graceland – before bringing it really close to her and her intimate moments with the rock and roll giant (played by a magnetic Jacob Elordi). It is these intimate moments that is rife with meaning and evokes the uneven power dynamics within the couple.

Image Source: Creation Studios FB

Elordi stands a whole 5 inches taller than the real Elvis, while Cailee Spaeny is only 5’1 (as compared to Priscilla Presley’s actual height of 5’4). The height difference on film between Elordi and Spaeny really helps visualize that tension. It amplifies the fact that Elvis was 24 when he began seeing Priscilla at 14 (though, amazingly, Elordie and Spaeny are roughly the same age). The film, following events from the book, portrays Elvis as someone who waited for her to be of age before he married her and slept with her, but the intensity of their relationship is put into question.

Image Source: Creation Studios FB

At 16, Elvis flew her from Germany where they first met to live with him in Graceland away from her family. The implications of this are huge but wonderfully enough, Coppola never places judgement on it. Sure, some people question it, her parents made him work for it, but never does Coppola take any form of judgement in the filmmaking. To the characters – Elvis and Priscilla – they were in love. The writer and director never shy away from the fact that she’s underage and that she was probably just as starstruck as she may have been in love and despite all his flaws (of which the film shows many), Elvis may have truly loved her.

Never does the film dwell on any of the dramatic moments – the arguments they have, the sudden outbursts leading to violence that Elvis would sometimes show, the ways by which Priscilla’s life is consumed entirely by Elvis’ being – the film gives us snapshots of these but never fully explores them. The film is working on broad strokes. ‘Priscilla’ is not out to discuss or explore Elvis and the effect of his popularity on the world and on people but pushes to put Priscilla’s life in the spotlight and how her being in his orbit has affected who she is and the decisions that she ends up making as she gets older through the film.

The movie plays out like a highlight reel, only showing the greatest hits of her memory, so to speak, that leads to her powerful decision to come into her own by the end of the film. We know or have heard of Priscilla’s story and what the film does is to create an impressionist painting that tracks particular moments in time that leads up to her eventual growth.

Grounding the whole movie, outside of Coppola’s masterful direction is Spaeny and Elordi’s arresting performance. Spaeny is at the center of it, having to play the character from 14 to 28 in the span of almost two hours. She gets all the emotional cues right and delivers a genuine performance that you cannot take your eyes off of while Elordi never tries to mimic Elvis, but he encapsulates his charisma and appeal. Coppola chose Elordi because he shares that same magnetism that Elvis Presley had and all Elordi had to do was amp it up to its highest levels.Of the many talks about Oscar snubs in this particular season, I feel that Spaeny is another performance that could have made it to the nominees list for Best Actress while Coppola could have also been considered for direction. But that’s just me. ‘Priscilla’ is not a mainstream or commercial movie. It’s an arthouse, memory piece that serves to evoke feelings and create an impression of womanhood growing at such challenging, unprecedented circumstances rather than to create an in-depth character study. It’s a masterful work that deserves a bigger audience.

My Rating:

Priscilla is now showing. Check screening times and buy tickets here.

February 3, 2024