Ice, ice candy

Review by Vives Anunciacion

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
Directed by Carlos Saldanha
Written by Peter Gaulke, Gerry Swallow, Jim Hecht
Voices by Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah
GP/ 90 minutes
20th Century Fox
Opens March 29

Manny the Mammoth, Sid the Sloth and Diego the Sabretooth Tiger return onscreen to escape global warming in the second installment of the hilarious 2002 animation. Ice Age 2: The Meltdown has more characters, more amusing gags and the memorable Scrat is still trying to catch that old acorn.

In Ice Age 2, global warming is melting the world’s ice, threatening to flood the valley where Manny, Sid and Diego are peacefully living with the rest of the prehistoric herd. News of a “big boat” where the animals can take refuge convinces the herd to leave the valley before the ice dam breaks.

Meanwhile, the happy trio of Manny, Sid and Diego are finding out they have new issues to deal with. Manny (again voiced by Ray Romano) yearns to discover another mammoth and refuses to believe he is the last of his kind. Sid (John Leguizamo), who was the crack of jokes in the first movie, yearns for a little respect from the herd. Diego (Denis Leary), the metaphorical cat out of the bag, discovers that his fear of water, and the coming flood is only making that fear worse.

Things get warmer when they accidentally meet Ellie (Queen Latifah), a female mammoth and her two pesky possum brothers Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck). Manny isn’t sure he’s happy to find another mammoth, since Ellie thinks and acts like she’s a possum. Before he can convince Ella to like him, he must first convince himself that he likes her and then convince her that she’s a mammoth. Sid and Diego help along in order to save the mammoth species from extinction.

Still funny and irreverent as the first outing but more character driven, The Meltdown sheds its evolutionary background and mixes biblical metaphors with mass extinction. Scrat the proto-squirrel provides side-splitting intermission, the same funny antics that made him the main attraction in the first movie. However, kids who were too young to see the first one will still find this a fun introduction to mammoths and mammals, as this version can stand alone regardless of the first Ice Age.

Great animation and visuals and a lot of funny stuff especially an update to the first movie’s “dodo” sequence – Sid gets to inspire a tribe of very impressionable mini-sloths. As soon as the animals reach the “boat” of salvation, though, the narrative and the comedy stand to a halt.

The first Ice Age may get the bigger share of laughs, but give no cold shoulder to this one – Ice Age 2: The Meltdown has lots of fresh stuff to cool down any globe-sized warming.

Ultraelectromagnetic violence

Review by Vives Anunciacion

State of the art horror in an obscure European hotel beats the crap out of a futuristic, effects-filled battle between humans and pseudo-vampires. Two movies exploiting the use of violence – and miles apart in quality, story and style.

Hostel
Written and Directed by Eli Roth
Starring Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson
R18/ 95 minutes
Lions Gate Films

Three American backpackers spend their after-college vacation touring Europe, when they are informed that a specific town in Slovakia is populated by beautiful women lusting for American men. Libidinously incensed, the three scurry to the obscure town and check in an equally obscure youth hotel where guests share rooms co-ed. After a night of pleasure, two of the Americans, Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) discover that their friend Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) is missing the next day. Things get out of hand when Josh becomes missing as well, and Paxton suspects that the town has dark secrets that would explain the absence of his friends. What he discovers, at the expense of his two fingers, is a horrific torture-for-fantasy modus hatched by the town’s populace.

Ultraviolet
Writen and Directed by Kurt Wimmer
Starring Milla Jovovich, Cameron Bright
PG13/ 88 minutes
Screen Gems

Set in the future, an unsuccessful military biological experiment to create the super soldier unleashes a deadly virus that spreads worldwide. Infected humans, called hemophages, mutate into vampire-like beings with heightened senses and physical abilities. Designated as threats to the survival of normal humans, the fascistic medico-military establishment has developed a biological weapon to exterminate all the hemophages. Their chance for survival is to fight back as rebels, led by ultra-assassin Violet (Jovovich). But Violet’s objectives are thrown into a conflict of interest when she discovers that the biological weapon is hosted inside the body of an innocent boy and she decides to save him.

Vile, Violet and Violent

In terms of filmmaking execution, Hostel is very effective as a horror movie, with a mild weird-Asian-horror flavor. Once the tortures start, the movie doesn’t flinch in depicting 1001-ways-to-torture-the-hotel-guest in all manner of blood spurts and metal tools and well-made prosthetic effects. Effective camerawork help build up tension, complimented by proper music scoring and editing.

Comparatively, Ultraviolet has more body count and wields guns and swords ceaselessly but refuses to show blood to keep its PG13 rating. A cross between Underworld and Aeon Flux, Ultraviolet is amateurish in plot and in execution, drowning everything in “style” but draining it elsewhere. Technically, the only thing commendable in this obviously Hong Kong production is the music by Klaus Badelt, who also did Pirates of the Caribbean and Constantine, and the lone arnis action sequence near the beginning.

Hostel feels like the teen-slasher movie for horny male geeks that producer Quentin Tarantino missed out making 20 years ago, but in contrast, Ultraviolet looks like it was made by a group of inexperienced teenagers with enough budget for chroma-effect computer-aided filmmaking.

Ironically

What is surprising is that no matter how bad Ultraviolet is as a movie, it represents a certain Asian incursion into Hollywood filmmaking (or specifically, distribution) that Filipinos filmmakers should look into. Hostel, disturbingly violent as it is, apparently is against violence. Unlike other movies which glorify violence in beautified, glamorous shots, Hostel purposely makes its audience squirm in order to remind people that violence is vile and disgusting

Ultraviolet was supposedly shot in High Definition (HD) digital video, which is important in terms of producing a movie for Hollywood distribution, especially here where digital movies are making waves. The lesson is that Hostel, with a budget (US$ 4.5M) minuscule compared with Ultraviolet’s (US$30M) and shot decently in more expensive celluloid, is lightyears better as a theatrical experience. It’s not the budget, nor is the technology used that matters – garbage in is garbage out.

Children of the revolution

Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre
March 15 2005

V for Vendetta
Directed by John McTeigue
Written by Andy & Larry Wachowski
Based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore & David Lloyd
Starring Natalie Portman, Hugo weaving
R 13/ 132 minutes
Warner Brothers/ Silver/ Vertigo

“No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a
means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard
a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The
object of power is power.” – George Orwell, ‘1984’

Beneath the futuristic storyline there is more than just spectacular action and effects. There is an idea, and the idea is of fundamental significance: “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.” V for Vendetta is the year’s The Matrix – visceral, verbose, volatile and very good.

Fourth in a series of graphic novels by visionary Alan Moore translated to the screen (From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Constantine), V for Vendetta envisions a futuristic Britain overshadowed by dictatorial rule. An enigmatic masked persona declares war against the authoritarian government in order to bring hope back to the nation, even if it means blowing up its Parliament.

Codenamed “V”, the masked terrorist aims to free the people of England from their corrupt government by carrying out the failed November 5, 1605 plot to bomb the Parliament building. On the eve of November 5 1605, Guy Fawkes, an avowed Catholic, was discovered by government troops preparing 36 barrels of gunpowder in a tunnel beneath the House of Lords. Sentenced to death by the anti-Catholic English government of King James I, Guy Fawkes and 12 other conspirators of the “Gunpowder Plot” were tortured, hanged and quartered. Today November 5 is known as Guy Fawkes Day in England.

In commemoration of that day, V plans to blow up the Parliament on November 5, 2020, spread chaos and ignite a revolution that he hopes will eventually replace the despotic government. His unlikely accomplice is Evey Hammond, an ordinary office girl working in the government-controlled TV network, whom V saves when she is attacked in an alley by abusive policemen. V gradually politicizes Evey each time they interact, seeing in her the face of the sleeping citizen who must awaken to the realities of their abused world.

From the makers of The Matrix trilogies come a surprisingly political movie about terror as a means to free people from their manufactured fears. V for Vendetta is a rhetorical ambiguity: the idea of a terrorist as a hero fighting a terrorist government is un-Hollywood at least, the movie might as well have been made by Al-Qaeda.

Terrific performances from the entire cast, especially Hugo Weaving who must articulate all manner of V’s nuanced machinations despite the macabre mask through voice and mannerisms. Natalie Portman saves her bad English accent by revealing a veiled strength under her fragile looks; she gets better after her head gets shaved in her torture scenes. John Hurt is every bit the raving dictator as he appears in huge screens (ala the 1990s Apple Macintosh TV ad also inspired by George Orwell’s 1984).

Great music, great design, great cinematography by Adrian Biddle (who died last December) and great editing help propel the sharp, lashing dialogue (except for Evey’s last monologue at the end of the movie), at some point Shakespeare is quoted in Twelfth Night.

V for Vendetta is no ordinary Hollywood popcorn movie (it isn’t exactly an action movie either); at its core is a chilling warning of a future when the survival of a nation’s people does not depend on whoever holds the mace.

Integrity above all

Review by Vives Anunciacion
Feb 27, 2006
Inquirer Libre

"We must not confuse dissent from disloyalty. We must remember always, that
accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due
process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven
by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and
remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to
write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment
unpopular. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape
responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to
abdicate his responsibility."
- From the March 9, 1954, "See It Now"
television broadcast on Senator Joe McCarthy.

Relevance and revolution are major topics in this year’s batch of Oscar hopefuls, all of them benefiting from spectacular performances. The first story is about America’s greatest writer and the birth of the non-fiction novel. The second is about a CIA agent caught in a global moro-moro between the US government and Arab oil. The last is a tribute to the newsman who fought a US Senator on the air and introduced broadcast journalism to the world.

Capote
*** 1/2
Directed by Bennet Miller
Based on the book by Gerard Clarke
Nominated for Picture, Direction, Acting, Support Acting (Female) and Adapted Screenplay

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays America’s greatest of writers, Truman Capote in this moody, contemplative story about the relationship Capote develops with one of the murderers of a Kansas City massacre.

In what is probably the best performance this year (my bet for Best Actor), Hoffman delivers a spellbinding, unforgettable portrayal of the colorful New Yorker, Truman Capote as he unhurriedly delves into the mind and soul of a man who admits to murdering an entire family in Kansas, eventually inventing a modern genre in literature. Unhurriedly is not a euphemism, the movie is decidedly lethargic and slow, Hoffman’s acting saves the movie.

Syriana
*** 1/2
Directed by Steven Gaghan
Suggested by the book See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism by Robert Baer
Nominated for Original Screenplay and Support Acting

Uncompromising in its message and provocative in intention, Syriana doesn’t flinch to repeat, in George W. Bush’s own words, America’s addiction to oil. George Clooney plays CIA field operative Robert Barnes who becomes a pawn and the fall guy in a global multi-government, multi-business conspiracy to keep the Middle East in chaos as the US drains its oil resources dry.

Syriana is choppy and relentless, a disfigurement resulting from its multi-character narrative and the sheer scope of information. Despite this, Clooney and co-stars Matt Damon and Jeffrey Wright manage to squeeze out unforgettable human characters made vulnerable by the powers that be. Great ensemble cast, editing, music and sound. The ending is almost shocking.

Good Night, and Good Luck
****
Directed by George Clooney
Nominated for Picture, Direction, Acting, Original Screenplay, Art Direction and Cinematography

Beautifully shot in color and rendered black and white in post-production and a marvel of economic storytelling at only 93 minutes, Good Night, and Good Luck pays tribute to the days when professionalism and integrity survived hand in hand with conviction and honor.

Practically channeling the spirit of Edward R. Murrow, David Strathairn makes an indelible, stirring performance as the TV anchor who exposed and clashed with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous Communist witch-hunting and unfettered inquisition in the name of national security. Good Night and Good Luck seamlessly combines archival footage and elegant photography to pit journalist Murrow against Senator McCarthy in a moral boxing match about truth, human rights, and freedom of speech. Sounds contemporary? The movie is set in the late 1950s.

No nonsense, no hype, except a clear purpose to remind the audience that democracy is everybody’s responsibility and not the government’s sword. By intention, message and make, Good Night and Good Luck is the best movie of the year.