waiting for superman (2010). directed by davis guggenheim.

the other day on twitter, me and a friend got into a discussion about lousy education systems and predictably, she said malaysia is the worst. may be because we went through the system, and despite being able to go to uni via that system, get a job and earn a reasonably comfortable living, we forget of inherent factors that make or break that system. year in, year out, the education minister reports increasing number of students passing with higher and higher marks in national exams that we are often fooled of the real situation. 

what about the majority that didn't do so well? what will happened to them? why couldn't they do any better? is it fair to say that some kids just can't learn? is there anything we can do about it? is the system at fault? what are the factors that contribute to kids not learning what they are supposed to learn?

these are hard questions that the film is trying to answer, something we all should be worried about too. 

i think whatever plagued the american education system, if looked close enough, we will find an eerie similarity with what is happening in our country. those good marks are nothing but a mask. that is the  topic of interest in waiting for superman, a documentary that follows a father's search and countless other parents for a good school for their kids. i must say, this film is much more suspenseful, engaging and puts you on the edge at the precarious decline of the public school system in america than a lot of action flicks playing out there. it's heartbreaking seeing single mothers working 3 jobs trying to pay for private schools, hardworking children from poor neighbourhoods putting their hopes on lotteries in order to gain entry into a good school. the film explores the issues that turn american public schools into a sinkhole (increasing drop out rates, no improvement in reading and math skills) - a powerful teacher's union that makes it impossible to fire bad teachers (and there are lots of them on the payroll and not doing their job) and complicated management of the school system that makes it inefficient.  the real losers - kids. 

this is a powerful film that educators and parents should watch and understand - for nothing is more impactful to the future generation than quality education. 

food for thought!

dream house (2011). directed by jim sheridan.

the only saving grace of this movie is that it runs for 92 minutes otherwise i would have walked out of the cinema. it's been a while since i watched a hopelessly bad movie (the last one was final destination 5 (2011)) and it is most unfortunate that this one comes second - it has daniel craig, rachel weisz and naomi watts; on top of that it is directed by jim sheridan of my left foot (1989), in the name of the father (1993) and in america (2002) fame. come on! i was angry by the time the film ended - it was flat, no intonation, no climax, the mood and atmosphere is all wrong (thrillers don't work with too much light!) and i don't buy the plot. craig needs to see spider (2002) if he wants to give a credible potrayal of a man who lost his mind. may be the script is weak, that not even a good actor or a seasoned director can salvage the movie.

i am disappointed, and i dare say that was a waste of my 10 bucks. 

the tree of life (2011). directed by terrence malick.

last weekend friends of mine who lived in downtown houston asked me to come along to watch margin call (2011) at river oaks theater located right in the middle of the city. they didn't tell me that the cinema is the oldest cinema in houston, and that it has only 3 screens. by the time we got there, tickets were sold out for all movies (which were only 3). one of them then suggested that we go back to his place to watch the tree of life (2011), him being new to high brow art movies, recommended by his boss, and thinks he couldn't make it watching the thing alone. 

before i say anything further, let me just iterate that in general i like terrence malick films. they are not conventional, lots of people find them too dreamy, slide-showy - i've heard worse - the p-word. pretentious.  

whenever i watched malick's films, the word that comes to my mind is beautiful. the cinematography, the moods, the colours, the fact that it seems to drift in no particular direction often puts in me in awe. but that's me. i am impressed that he doesn't have the need to tell the story like so many other directors might have done, it is like he doesn't care what people think about the film, because his role as a director is to put the story out there as he sees it. it doesn't matter to him if you get it or not. that's just how he sees things. 

which of course, makes my two guy friends who love block buster action franchise squirmed in their seat  in confusion and impatience. but they made it through the whole 2 hours and 20 minutes, relieved that they finally watched "an art film".   

i don't know if it is an art film. it is a terrence malick film and there is only one terrence malick which makes it singular on its own. in a nutshell, the story is about a middle class family in texas, the stern patriarch played by brad pitt and his angel-like wife starring jessica chastain trying to raise 3 boys in the midst of surburban monotony, economic down turns, parental discord and teenage growing pains. the story is told through the eyes of jack, the oldest of the 3 boys and i feel it is imperative that while watching the movie, audience need to assume his point of view to appreciate the movie. i can't be the person watching it from the inside, i need to be in the movie along with jack and it takes me back to my childhood. i can relate to the lazy days, my disciplinarian and moody father, my soothing and full of love mother, and their fights which scared the hell out of me. the movie invokes those memories - and i guess it can't be done without intimately recording the seemingly useless details of those times. i was a child and didn't know what life will be, which i think fits the movie ostensible lack of plot. it is also expansive in its tribute to the mystery of life - right from the big bang through the dinosaur sequence and to the human fetus, wondering at the question why are we here? jack marvelled at the difficult question, as i did, back then. 

this film is not for everyone and many critics praised it for being brave (while failing at the same time) because hardly anyone these days apart from terrence malick and the great dead directors like stanley kubrick and andrei tarkovsky make films like this anymore. nobody seems to wonder about the continous flow of life, endless and has no beginning. the film is not perfect, but it is good that someone out there is praying to this grand monument we call life. 

the machinist (2004). directed by brad anderson.

he is gaunt and too thin for his 6 ft frame. he can't sleep, must have been for a long time now. you will immediately feel sorry for him, something is eating up this man mercilessly, in fact, if this is the price he has to pay for whatever wrong doing in the past, you'll say, enough already. he seems like a regular guy if not for the anorexic body, but something is wrong. his co-workers avoided him, hated him actually. we don't know why. the director is dropping little hints here and there - in his apartment, what about a big guy following him around and he doesn't look pleasant to be with.  the atmosphere is bleak, there is no sun. the only ray of hope comes in the form of a single mother and her son, whom the thin guy enjoys spending time with. something is bothering him though - something. 

director brad anderson weaves a tale of regret that literally eats a person up. christian bale famously lost 63 lbs for the role, and by the end of the movie, you will throw your hands up in the air and cry - for the love of god man, stop punishing yourself. we forgive you. forgive yourself. now eat. and sleep. 

and that's all that he wants. to be free from guilt. to be free from illusions that things done in the past can be fixed. you can only forgive and live with your sins. and then you can sleep. 

such a simple pleasure to earn, isn't it? think again the next time when you can't sleep. it can eat you alive. 

scenes of a sexual nature (2006). directed by ed blum.

i don't enjoy assembled cast hollywood films. i don't remember the last time i watched one and actually like it. i often find it lame, pretentious and worse of all, not funny. personally i think it is a waste of talent pool, but come christmas and valentine's day, there usually be droves of assembled cast feel good films that hardly feels... joyful. 

defeats the purpose, eh?

there are many things i like about this movie. apparently it is an assembled cast film but since i don't know a lot of british actors, it is refreshing to see people who are actors acting as opposed to famous hollywood actors acting. actors should become the part, not the other way round. i don't pay to see a movie to see leonardo di caprio acting to be leonardo di caprio because i want leonardo di caprio to be whoever the script wants him to be. off tangent, my bad. but that's my point why i hate assembled cast hollywood films. 

this movie is about the misadventures people encounter in their search for love, and specifically, sex. i find most of the subplots interesting, for example the story of iris and eddie, the old couple who at last met after 50 years of looking for one another. another one involves pete and molly, the divorced couple who are so happy despite the fact that they are dissolving their marriage. the funniest has got to be noel's persistent bad day when a woman proposed sex to him in the park only to call it off half way through and he was left with his white preppy flat butt in the air, pants in the ankle. he is naive and too honest, and it should not come as a surprise why women immediately take him for a pervert. 

is love about being together while letting our partners do what they like although it is displeasing to us? is love sex, and vice versa? could love come in to our life if only we could stop being defensive and take a little joke about ourselves? could love be paid in money, secret meetings and far away holidays?

louis said it best - it is easy to love someone, not so to like them. 

fight club (1999). directed by david fincher.

i didn't noticed before that edward norton has no name in this movie and i have watched it god knows how many times. david fincher's dynamic direction is still refreshing as it did 10 years ago, putting humour in otherwise a very bland life of an neurotic insomniac who had to be someone else in order to feel free. brad pitt nailed the role of tyler durden, nameless norton's alter ego which is his total opposite - he's flamboyant, smart, outspoken, sexy, opinionated and strong. perhaps the movie is a collection of cool one liners that underscore the anxiety of a generation of men that feels emasculated by the lack of doing anything traditionally associated with being a man. norton is great at playing the hesistant everyday man whose confidence is at an all time low. it is a dark comedy, and after many many viewings, i still find it funny - the issue of emasculation and over consumerism are more relevant today as they did 10 years ago. 

bronson (2008). directed by nicolas winding refn.

after watching several hollywood movies back to back, i was relieved that i finally got to watch something different. i don't know if bronson market itself as a dark comedy, because i was giggling at 1am, at the absurdity of bronson. the guys is stark raving mad. he could be schizophrenic. who in their right mind would pick fights in prison knowing that your stay would be prolonged, and solitary confinement at that?

the good thing about this movie is that director nicolas winding refn doesn't take a linear approach to tell the story. bronson is obviously crazy and suffer from delusion of grandiose, to the point of creating an alter ego called charles bronson because "i want to be famous". tom hardy as bronson is compelling to watch, he brings realism and bestiality to the character. he lacks control and operates by a different logic that is not normal like other people. 

i doubt this movie works for everyone - there's nudity, too much violance, and chaos. but we do need different things, once in a while. 

wuthering heights (2009). directed by coky giedroyc.

a friend of mine turned me into a tom hardy minion. ok the guy is great to look at and i like his acting. i haven't read literature in a long time, and not really the bronte sisters fan. but god, i was shocked when i saw this. not because it was not good, but i don't expect the melodrama to be of hindi movie proportions. tom hardy as heathcliff bowled his eyes out upon finding out that the his lover died. cathy, his married lover went out of her mind when heathcliff married someone else to spite her. it ended badly for all of them since both cathy and heathcliff could not let go of each other and determined to burn everyone who got in their way. 

tom hardy brings a raw animal passion and the bad boy mystery to heathcliff, which according to bronte's enthusiasts is what the book portrayed heathcliff as. at times i find hardy odd in the movie, he is too modern and lacked the sensitivity of 19th gentlemen personified by actors like alan rickman and ralph feinnes. i recalled feinnes in onegin (1999) - he is heartless hiding behind the gentleman facade who destroyed anyone who came into contact with him - feinnes played the character with malicious gentlemanly air. cathy played by charlotte riley is equally powerful in her desire for heathcliff. 

i may not enjoy the story that much given my aversion for emotional theatrics like that, but i like the acting, not conventional to period dramas, but anything different is a good change. 

the ides of march (2011). directed by george clooney.

anyone familiar with shakespeare's julius ceaser would recognized the ides of march as the date of caesar's assassination. before watching the movie i thought something important is about to happen on march 15, but, not really. 

it is more about the intrigues, back stabbing, lies and desperation common to this thing we all know as politics. i enjoyed the story, and it mirrored closely of current events as we speak. we sort of know who are they talking about, in fact we are not surprised if this sort of thing happened as we naively want to believe that there is honesty and integrity in the democratic process of election. 

the film has two actors i like very much, phillip seymour hoffman and paul giamatti. they are seasoned campaigners who would do anything to win the ohio primary, in contrast to the young idealist ryan gosling who insisted he need to believe in something or the candidate in order to serve the cause. wrong. idealism is dead the moment one is threatened - as the story insisted - there is no integrity to be found, anywhere.

read ‘The Ides of March’ and the danger of idolatry

warrior (2011). directed by gavin o'connor.

i don't know why i don't like warrior that much. i think i may need a second viewing. i think i don't enjoy the movie because there was sound problem in the theatre at katy and i can't make what the people on screen were saying. this is bad because it gave me the impression that there is a lack of time spent on the background of the principal characters. 

may be. 

though i suspect that is the case. some reviewers pointed out - by giving us little clue of what really happened between during the boy's growing up years, audience are not insulted with the obvious. honestly i don't mind a bit more drama. hardy doesn't say much apart from growling and grunting (which is good, hey that's acting ok!), but when he starts throwing coins at his father and breaks the old man with his adamant refusal to try to be family again, that's the kind of drama that i want to see. there is a scene when he picks up the old man, drunk for the first time after a thousand days of sobriety - we see that this is a man who can only connect with pain. 

at times i feel like watching vignettes of earlier fight movies despite knowing there is a moving plot and it is populated with intensely involved characters. if not for solid acting from nick nolte, tom hardy and joel edjerton (aussie men have the sexiest accent, amen!) i would have felt this movie is no better that last year's the fighter (2010) (which i don't enjoy that much either..i thought it was so-so). secondary characters in this movie, such as the principal and the movie parking lot scene makes the movie cartoonish. 

perhaps all those can be forgiven if i see it the second time and appreciate the movie for what it is. i like tom hardy's wounded beast persona who fights because he has a lot of rage to burn, edjerton's mild mannered family man who is doing the best he could and nolte's the alcoholic father who is trying to make amends with his sons albeit a tad too late. 

when they got in the cage to fight - these two have a lot to talk about. but there are not words for buried pain, and all that's left is anger. 

brawl it out, and i hope you will heal.  

there is another MMA fight movie worth checking out - red belt (2008), directed and written by david mamet, starring chiwetel ejiofor. it is not about toxic family legacy, and it's short of the intense fight scenes, but like one comment that i read - if you like emotions and objective correlatives, this can be hugely satisfying too. 

karla (2006). directed by joel bender.

both the lead actors misha collins (pretty boy angel in supernatural seasons 5,6 and 7 (2005-current)) and laura prepon (that overgrown girl in that 70's show (1998-2006)) did a terrific job potraying sexual sadists paul bernado and karla homolka that raged canada in the early 1990's. i was disgusted and i doubt i'll give this movie a second watch. they raped, tortured and killed at least 4 young women in which one of them was homolka's younger sister. 

how screwed up is that? 

i am not going to decipher what these two are made of - suffice to say that the film conveyed the things that we don't expect from seemingly regular people. both bernado and homolka looked normal and well adjusted enough to the common eyes - until they get behind closed doors and started acting out their sexual fantasies (of the bad kind).  

disturbing shit. coupled with it being a low budget film, at times i feel like watching cheap porn. 

capturing the friedmans (2003). directed by andrew jarecki.

last week after one of those tiring trips to duncan, i found myself unable to sleep. that's what happens when i am too tired that i am physically unable to rest. good thing i brought along this dvd, as i have been meaning to watch it for years. 

i don't know when or where i read about it, but i was immensely curious. the story is heartbreaking, watching a family disintegrate and go against each other under the huge pressure of (false?) accusation. this documentary is based on the real case of arnold and jesse friedman, in which father and son were accused of child pornography and sexual molestation of minors, allegedly had taken place during their weekly computer classes conducted for the neighbourhood children. the story explored many angles of the accusation - the uneasy bond inherent in the family between father, mother and the children; the police questionable investigation in obtaining testimony from the abused kids, the validity of using arnold friedman's interests in child pornography to convict him of sexual abuse despite obvious lack of physical evidence, the ease and speed of the public to judge and place blame without  enough information. 

this is a witch-hunt. by the end of the documentary, i am not convinced that arnold friedman had molested all those kids. while he has a lot of demons in his closet - child porn, two occasions of sex with underaged kids, his sexuality is questionable that perhaps makes him a poor husband - that is not a good enough reason to ruin him with charges of sexual abuse. it destroyed his life, and shattered his family into pieces. 

it reminds me of something much closer to home, and perhaps something that we are all guilty of when the trial and emotions were running high, back in the years 1998 till 2000. remember the anwar trial? when we were all too quick to judge, and we know nothing much of what happened, till today. 

i am just glad his family stood by him then, and right till this very moment. 

moneyball (2011). directed by bennett miller.

i am just done reading a technical paper on shale gas petrophysics so now i am going to splurge my opinions on moneyball that i caught at amc katy mills 20 today.  

i am a big fan of sports movie. and this film is very well done. the script is written by the formidable steven zaillian and aaron sorkin, cinematography by wally pfister who have done great work in the dark knight (2008) and inception (2010). i like watching movies, apart from suspending time for two hours, is that i get to see beautiful moving pictures taken at all sorts of angles and perspectives and moods imaginable. while this movie doesn't call for camera tricks like the dark knight, i enjoyed seeing close ups that brings bokeh to the foreground. things like that, you know. 

while watching the movie, i thought of arsene wenger a lot. yeah, the arsenal manager. the movie asks this question - how does one win the league when one does not have a lot of money? billy beane (brad pitt), the oakland athletics manager turned to statistics and mathematics for some guidance after losing yet another season and finding himself unable to compete monetarily with the big boys when it comes to getting the best players. his unorthodox method (i don't find it unusual, he's just optimizing...we have a subject on that) of tracking players' performance and optimizing them mathematically shunned him from his own team, but he is a desperate man trying to win with whatever amount of money he could spare. they managed to go unbeaten for 19 straight games during the 2002 season, but it was not enough for them to win. the method works - it could help to value players to a more reasonable number, but money is all it takes in getting the best players a team needs.

i haven't seen pitt in a while and it's always a pleasure to see him. he always has this cool dude thing going, but not so much in this movie. it's good that he plays a different kind of character - a guy under pressure to win, not so much from the boss, but from himself. somehow he is trying to atone for his failure as a player that started out with so much promise that didn't turned out to be so. it is also refreshing to see jonah hill as peter brand, the young yale economics grad brought in by beane to be the in-house player statistician who is playing against his usual comic role. 

i must have seen too much of gosling lately, that pitt is a sight to a sore eye. not that i am sore from watching gosling, on the contrary. i think pitt's voice have changed a little, it sounded deeper. which is all good with me.  

conspiracy theory (1997). directed by richard donner.

horrible movie. the only highlight of this film is when mel gibson used a floor mop to ditch patrick stewart in a bucketful of water. i watched the movie because it was written by brian helgeland (of L.A Confidential (1997) fame) and i thought, it can't be that bad. but i don't get it. may be i was tired from 10 hours drive from oklahoma city to houston that it is not immediately apparent to me what the story is trying to say. 

i find the story telling undecided and the characters contrived. the story revolves around jerry fletcher (mel gibson) a chatter-box new york cabby who dabbles in conspiracy theories, linking the most unrelated things till it gives a veneer of "it could be". he takes it seriously and living his life to feed his paranoia. at the same time he has an unexplained crush on alice sutton (julia roberts), he doesn't know why he likes her but somewhere at the back of his mind he feels the responsibility to protect her. there are moments in which gibson's natural comedic flair could have sooth the movie a little, but it's not his fault that the movie sucks. there are elements in it which doesn't add up and it sort of got lost - perhaps of trying too much (FBI vs CIA vs manchurian candidate experiments vs julia roberts the love interest vs deranged psychiatrist) as opposed to letting real people tell the story. 

hesher (2010). directed by spencer susser.

right after watching this movie, i decided to read some reviews about it on the net. some described it as a dark comedy. when i think of dark comedies, something like the royal tenenbaums (2001) comes to mind. this one, hmmm...i find it mostly depressing. humour wise, i am not sure if i should laugh at a grown man watching a child being bullied, is it supposed to contrast with another scene in which a skinny girl tried to defend the child with her small fists and got pushed around for it? may be, because i don't get the humour in that. 

starring joseph gordon-levitt, rainn wilson and natalie portman, the story is about a family paralyzed by loss with the death of wilson's wife from a car accident. he is unable to function as a father to his 13 year old son, constantly sleeping his life away with anti depressants to shield himself from impenetrable pain. the boy is uncared for, bullied at school and kept going back to the junk yard for the car that killed his mother. he met gordon-levitt by chance, who calls himself hesher (a slang term for mulleted miscreants), a homeless person who decided to move in into the boy's house and wreck havoc for...being himself. he's unkept, dirty, listens to loud music like no one is around, talk about sex like it is the weather, burn a car to get back at a bully - hardly a role model to a grieving boy who missed his mom. 

at one point of the movie i thought hesher might be schizophrenic.  

come to think of it, none of the adults in the movie are functional role models. everyone is engrossed with their problems that a new day simply means new problems or extension of old ones. does hesher's arrival into their lives a catalyst for change? personally i find that part staged. he is hardly in control of his life - if doing whatever he wants constitute control and freedom, the real comedy is how the boy and his father is inspired to start living their lives, is a bit beyond me.  

or...may be because hesher is such a loser, people wake up of their dreamless stupor, and think, hell, i don't want to be that guy. ok, may be that's the joke. i get the gist of it, but i think the execution could have been better. it could try to be more interesting in terms of story-telling, i could think of many indie films which are interesting in their own way despite the minimalist style. 

the believer (2001). directed by henry bean.

hate is a sick thing. self-hating is even worse. it often comes from some place in the heart that is full of love and devotion and then it gets twisted by disappointment, like all that faith and belief failed you somewhere along the line. you then ceased to believe, but because this system if what you grow up with, the thing that you used to devote yourself to, the thing that forms the very basic framework of thought at the back of your mind - you can only hate and say you no longer believe, but that attachment, that love, will never go away. sometimes you even find solace in it. you still have respect for it even though you bashed it as being irrational and blind devotion is no use for anyone.  

i think you hate the fact that despite of your utter belief, it failed. i think you hate the self that choose to believe despite all odds. is it possible to leave everything behind and become this new person with a new belief system that is not embittered with the past?

this film is based loosely on a real life story of dan burros, a jewish american who was a member of the american nazi party. disturbing is an understatement to describe a jew who becomes a nazi skinhead that goes around beating other jews, planting pipe bombs in synagogues and being a racist dick to practically anyone who is not white. he hates himself for being born a jew and growing up believing in judaism, and seemed to take on the burden of history on himself. his logics goes - the holocaust happened because the jews are weak people, because their belief makes them the sacrificial lamb. why don't they react with violence like he is now? why can't they? the jewish god is nothing but a bully who enjoys inflicting pain on his people to show his power. 

if only history and the reasons why people act or react could be broken down with such simple logic.

in the atmosphere that we live now, where paranoia and being defensive is pervasive, i think this movie questions the reasons why we choose to believe in certain things, and why we don't. we have muslims bashing islam (if we have self hating jews, i am sure we are abound with self hating muslims) and non-muslims who simply hate muslims, as danny balint put it we just hate them and we don't need any other reason. the guy in the movie is highly intelligent and articulate, but he is disturbed in his blind quest for something to believe and to make sense of the world that follows no rules since a long time ago.

detective dee and the mystery of the phantom flame (2010). directed by tsui hark.

i had wanted to watch this movie in kl since it got pretty good reviews. i passed moneyball (2011) over for tsui hark's latest offering - and boy, it's been a while since i last see people flying at the flick of their feet. in the tradition of sherlock holmes, andy lau's dee is the smart aleck detective who received a commission from the empress to investigate the case of  people combusting into flames. he has a prickly relationship with everyone around him, only because he has no interests in in the game of politics and power and care only for the truth. plot wise, i think it's alright, i can take people flying and extravagant costumes that comes with pretty heavy headdresses - all this in the mood of an investigative story telling. 

however, i find the use of cgi (computer generated imagery) not natural in this film that it ends up looking like a bad patch up job that doesn't complement with the festive costumes and expansive sets. tsui hark also employed dv (digital video) in a number of scenes which gives a contemporary feel to the film - i am no dv fan especially in period films (if this can be called that..errr may be not..dated is the right word) which to me does not add to the merit of the story. at one point, as i was watching the movie, i thought..god damned it, tsui hark is going dv-mad like micheal mann did in miami vice (2006). 

american psycho (2000). directed by mary harron.

i watched this movie when i was studying in sydney. it gained notoriety for being graphically violent, the novel itself is violent coupled with brett easton ellis' penchant for long sentences that stretch pages. if not for mary harron's tasteful direction, this movie would go straight to B grade. i read the book before watching it - it is about a soulless yuppie who went on a killing spree to gain some meaning or insights of a person who is just not there. he has a shell of a human being, but inside he is vacant. the backdrop was the wealthy 1980's - where excesses were just everywhere - the rich are bored and money is a poor substitute for genuine human connection, women are just playthings for men and nothing more than sex slaves. i guess the story could be told in a less shocking manner - but that's the point - that decade in the 80's - it was a decade of shameless decadence. 

oh yeah - that was christian bale, who later on becomes the morally adamant dark knight. 

50/50 (2011). directed by jonathan levine.

cancer is a number's game. it's cruel when young and old lives are being measured by percentages of chance. it's depressing when friends you hang out with today won't necessarily make it tomorrow. one thing for sure, it filters out the people who really love you to those who are not. the movie layers the funny bits without losing sight of the weight cancer brings to its sufferer. it is pain, but if you want to live, then that is exactly what you have to keep doing. 

there are moments in the movie that i like, such as the burning of a painting of gordon-levitt's ex-gf that was split into two screens.