Joshua

Child's play
Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre September 24, 2007



Directed by George Ratliff
Exclusive at Ayala Cinemas

Remember the original The Omen? Not the remake last year. That movie (which wasn’t really scary back in 1976 but then so was the remake) was first to show how a creepy mop-top kid can make a movie creepy. Or was it the 1956 classic The Bad Seed? That had a girl in pigtails. Anyway, Joshua has strong references to horror movies of old (hence, the mop-top).

Joshua isn’t a horror movie though. It’s possibly psychological, but damn if it’s thriller; although it does offer a thing or two for post-movie discussions. It’s a little suspenseful. That’s it.

Joshua (Jacob Kogan) couldn’t care less the day his new baby sister Lily arrives at their upscale Upper Manhattan condo. Each day that passes something bizarre happens (in case you miss the days, there’s a day counter onscreen). One day baby Lily starts crying and doesn’t stop. On another the dog mysteriously dies. On another Joshua disembowels his stuffed toys.

But Joshua lights up whenever Uncle Ned (Dallas Roberts) arrives and they do a showtune together on the piano, which Joshua plays very well.

Mom Abby (Vera Farmiga) suffers from double post-partum depression, if there is one, since she hasn’t overcome her first bout after Joshua’s birth. Daddy Brad (Sam Rockwell) is being stressed out, working and taking care of the family while mommy is going loony. (Spoilers onwards) One night Brad watches the family videotapes and discovers the reason why the baby keeps crying. Joshua is one bad kid.

It’s interesting to watch how Rockwell believably tries to control the situation, as a father suspecting his own young son of doing horrendous acts. But Brad’s fate at the end is no more twisted than the final scene, where Joshua, in his squeaky young boy’s voice, sings to his Uncle why things happened as they did.

The movie is interesting and nonsensical at the same time: it plays like a former film-student’s clever homage to old-style psycho suspense thrillers, minus the terror. The movie’s main conceit is that Joshua’s killer instincts are taken for granted upon Lily’s arrival. Nowhere is it even implied that he had that tendency prior. Damon, the bad seed in The Omen at least had a supernatural source.

Clues point everywhere as to how the movie plays out, but it repeats its theme – that of Joshua’s psychopathic reactions upon the arrival of Lily – until the climactic father-and-son confrontation at the park. At which point the movie lands on that incredibly creepy ending with the Uncle.

Rockwell has a firm grasp of his character, offsetting the rest of the cast’s overzealous portrayals. Farmiga, portraying a mother teetering on a nervous breakdown, has an Abby that borders on the funny. And Kogan’s Joshua has one look plastered on his face. But that’s likely directorial, not the actor’s.

The most interesting part of Joshua is not the ingenious plot or the killer ending (although the movie’s ending outweighs the rest of the proceedings, called a McGuffin or a plot that pushes the story forward but has no relevance otherwise).

(More spoilers!) It’s more interesting to understand how the filmmakers developed this disturbed story about a psychopathic kid with some sort of a homo-incestuous Elektra-uncle complex. Is Joshua an unprocessed behavioral condition of the writer? What drove them to make this madness? Somewhere in this movie is the portrait of the artist as the character.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

Pride chickens
Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre, September 19, 2007


Directed by Dennis Dugan

Here’s a “gay” movie for straight people minus the homophobic guilt. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is the everyday man’s attempt to understand what gay people in the West have been fighting for for many years.

Best friends Larry (Kevin James) and Chuck (Adam Sandler) are typical Brooklyn firefighters who do very manly stuff everyday. Chuck is the playboy ladies man while recently widowed Larry raises his two kids by himself.

An insurance loophole prevents Larry from transferring his dead wife’s benefits to his children, so he asks Chuck to pretend to be his gay domestic partner so he can still apply for the benefits.

Enter a very nosy anti-fraud investigator Fitzer (Steve Buscemi) who’s dying to prosecute the two as soon as he proves the partnership is a fake. Larry and Chuck then hire lawyer Alex (Jessica Biel) to help them prove their gayness to the City, except Chuck has the hots for super sexy Alex. Worse, their firefighter boss Capt. Tucker (Dan Aykroyd) wants Larry and Chuck to spill the beans.

The mixups are cleared in time for a straight ending to the tune of George Michael’s Freedom, but not before Chuck and Larry declare their undying love in front of a courtroom full of people. Openly gay celebs Richard Chamberlain and former ‘N Sync Lance Bass make cameo appearances.

The movie is filled with homophobic slurs and takes aim at stereotypes and then retracts the insults to preach tolerance in the end. As a message movie it only skims the surface of gender politics. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is less about gay marriage and more about name-calling.

As a comedy it is only funny in a freshman level; you’ll laugh at the physical comedy and sometimes at the verbal ones, and in case you missed a point – like the vampire and fruit costumes – they’d be glad to explain it overtly in the same scene.

Producer Adam Sandler miscasts himself as the studmuffin chick magnet – something Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson or Vince Vaughn might have pulled off more convincingly. Sandler even gets to touch Biel’s breasts while pretending to be gay about it. How believably funny is that? Ving Rhames steals the show at some point as the muscular big guy grinding his hips and singing I’m Every Woman in the locker room shower while the rest of the firefighters stare in shock.

Nowadays it’s everyone’s big business to know whether Piolo or Sam or whoever is gay. Some weird pandemic curiosity to put a tag on everyone. That’s exactly what I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is about. Tagging everyone. This movie is not about gay marital rights, it’s more like a straight comedy gone a little askew.

Go ahead and laugh. It is funny, in a thoughtless, juvenile way. Just don’t pretend the prejudice wasn’t there – it’s hidden deep inside your closet.

The Brave One

The subversive

Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre September 12, 2007

Directed by Neil Jordan
Starring Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard
R13/ 119 minutes
Warner Brothers/ Silver Pictures

She was 12 years old when she portrayed a prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s classic Taxi Driver. She won her first Oscar as a rape victim in The Accused. Jodie Foster is known to take on strong roles, even as she traded barbs in Inside Man, between Clive Owen and Denzel Washington. A French director once compared her to God’s perfect acting machine.

So what is she doing in The Brave One? She becomes an action star. Foster plays radio commentator Erica Bain who spends her off-time recording everyday sounds of New York City and then makes romantic observations of the city’s decay in her show called Street Walk.

While walking her dog in Central Park one night, Erica and her fiancé David (Naveen Andrews) are violently mugged. She wakes up after three weeks in a coma only to find out David dead. Erica becomes introverted, afraid of the city she once called “the safest big city in the world.” She buys a gun and slowly devolves from a law-abiding citizen into an out-of-control vigilante who has found a new source of power that can eliminate her fears.

Complicating things, Erica develops a unique friendship with police detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) who is helping her find her fiancé’s killers. It is only a matter of time before Erica or Mercer finds the killers.

It is always an event to watch Foster in any role. Foster is riveting as a traumatized Erica Bain whose struggle to cope with her loss and her fears are so internalized they are expressed through her bloodshot eyes, her lowered voice and the faint wrinkling of her brows.

Does her hand shake after she pulls the trigger? No. Near the end when she exacts her ultimate revenge, Bain has mutated from shaking victim into a tight-lipped machine. Her transition makes The Brave One a fascinating watch.

But it is a weird watch, one that has a subject matter that bravely opens the narrative to controversial territory, except much of director Neil Jordan’s deliberately slow treatment keep Erica safely on likeable ground. Except for Mercer, whose sympathy with Erica lies on his guilt of failing to catch her attackers, the rest in the movie belong to demographic stereotypes whose characters are casually forgettable. It’s unclear whether the movie is outside looking in on Erica or attacking white supremacy. The treatment doesn’t seem to be brave enough to push the envelope further.

Yes it has a happy ending, to the music of Sarah McLachlan. This exploration into a character’s darkening psyche ends in a satisfying manner, one that Pinoys would usually like. But do remember this is a revenge movie where the main character takes the law into her own hands.

Either rule the law, or the law rules.

Day Watch /Dnevnoy dozor

Russian Cooler
Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre September 7, 2007

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov
Based on the novels by Sergei Lukyanenko and Vladimir Vasiliev
R13/ 132minutes
Fox Searchlight/ Channel One
Dubbed in English

Can the forces of darkness prevail over the forces of light? Can Russian filmmakers make a horror fantasy movie as gritty and stylized as Hollywood can make them? Can you say Timur Bekmambetov faster than you can say Wachowski Brothers?

Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor) is the second part of the Russian mega-hit horror-fantasy series ala The Matrix and Underworld beginning with Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor).

In the series, the supernatural forces of the world known as the Others are divided between light and darkness, and an ancient truce guards the balance between the two. To preserve the truce, the Light Others conduct the Night Watch while the Dark Others conduct the Day Watch so neither side tips the balance. An inquisition set up by both sides punishes those who break the truce.

A prophecy predicts the emergence of a Great Other who can tip the balance to its favor, except that its very emergence would plunge the world into another supernatural war.

Night Watch followed the story of Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) who sought the aid of a witch to kill his wife’s unborn child which he suspected was not his. Twelve years after, Anton has become a Night Watchman and the child has grown into the boy Yegor (Dyma Martynov), who shows signs of being the Great Other. At the end of Night Watch, Yegor learns that his father Anton tried to have him aborted, and Yegor takes the Dark side to spite his father.

In Day Watch, Anton is secretly covering up Yegor’s attacks on normal people, a violation of the truce, leaving the Night Watch unable to prosecute Yegor. Realizing that Anton is the only person who can influence Yegor to convert to the Light side, the Day Watch led by Zavulon (Viktor Verzhbitsky) makes several attempts at framing Anton for the murder of several Dark Others.

Their last attempt succeeds, despite the efforts by Light side leader Geser (Vladimir Menshov) to hide Anton in the body of Light side sorceress Olga (Galina Tyunina). Anton’s redemption rests on the posession of the Chalk of Fate, a legendary magical chalk that can rewrite history.

On Yegor’s 13th birthday, Anton loses the Chalk to Zavulon’s minions, Zavulon poisons him and Yegor unleashes his powers battling the Light side’s Great Other, Svetlana (Mariya Poroshina), destroying Moscow in the process.

Day Watch has the feel of a live-action modern gothic graphic novel, depicting the dim, cold streets of post-Cold War Moscow intermittently lit by the glowing neon lights of its newfound wealth. With so many characters and diverse motivations involved, Day Watch is more busy pushing effects-driven action than ironing out its encyclopedic narrative. Then again, that is always the challenge with adaptations. Once it gets there, though, the action really kicks in.

Stripped of its Russian identity, Day Watch is your typical big-budget summer blockbuster that’s all spectacle and little emotion. Lengthy, dizzying, fast and fantastically silly, Day Watch is a strong Russian statement that Hollywood doesn’t rule the cinematic world. That’s why it’s interesting that Hollywood is financing the third part, Dusk Watch (Sumerechniy Dozor).

Let’s do some math. Day Watch was made with a budget of $4.2 million (approx Php195 million in our money) and earned more than $31 million in Russia alone – at 25 rubles to a dollar, that’s more than RR790 million in their money.

For once the Ruskies rule the day.