Category: movies

Read the credits after you watch a movie. Aren’t you amazed at how many people were paid to contribute to creating it? These are good times indeed.

Blade Runner (1982)

Note to self: There is no need to ever watch Blade Runner again.

I think we Netflixed it sometime in the New Jersey era (2003–2008), and parts of it seemed vaguely familiar this time around. I didn’t like it then, and I didn’t like it this time, either.

Yes, Blade Runner is a classic. And yes, the rainy/neon Japanese/German/Spanish vision of the future, with giant pyramid skyscrapers, is wonderfully creative (if not realistic for 2019). And yes, the movie has an interesting, philosophical sci-fi premise. But it’s just brutal. And it goes on for too long.

We watched the theatrical version this time; maybe the international version? I dunno, there are lots of versions. In the version we watched this time, there were silly voice-overs, a happy ending, and no unicorn dream.

The premise is that bio-engineered people (originally created to do dangerous work off world) have developed realistic emotions and thus resent their short lifespans. Four of them are back on Earth for some reason and Harrison Ford’s character is supposed to “retire” (execute) them, which is a creepy thing to have to do because they’re not that different from regular people.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/blade-runner/id594314564

The reason my husband and I watched Blade Runner again was that we are typically intrigued by movies made from Philip K. Dick stories.

Have not seen:

  • Radio Free Abelmuth (2010)
  • A Scanner Darkly (2006)

Okay, I guess I would watch Blade Runner 2049, which is supposedly going to be released later this year. Not a remake, but rather some kind of sequel. With Harrison Ford in it.

Arrival (2016)

I love books. I love languages. I built welovetranslations.com. 

You can read this post on that site!

I’m so glad a friend who wanted to see it it invited me along or I would surely have overlooked this gem.

In Arrival, lonely linguistics professor Louise gets called in by the top army brass alongside your more typical math/physics guy to try to figure out how to communicate with the aliens in one of twelve lens-shaped black ships hovering over different parts of the world (the answer: coffee rings!), but the clock is ticking because the win/lose approach favored by the Chinese (and by some rogue American soldiers, for that matter) could result in catastrophic alien retaliation.

Arrival is not very actiony; there’s a lot of quiet drama in with the sci-fi. There are a couple of nice themes, but nothing overbearing. The film never even gets near the “hold hands and sing kum ba yah” cliche, which I perhaps was dreading. The black lenses recall Arthur C. Clarke’s monoliths, but that’s the only similarity Arrival has with 2001:A Space Odyssey. Nor did it have the nonsensical transcendent mystery of Close Encounters. Nor was it anything like Independence Day (1995). The movies it’s being compared to are all movies I haven’t yet seen (Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian).

The movie has been described as “sophisticated”, “intellectual”, “thoughtful”, “pensive”, and “cerebral”. That’s great. Quibble how you will about inaccuracies in the depiction of linguistics, the fact that Hollywood deigns to depict a linguist at all is nice.

I further approve of this movie because it didn’t announce that it has a heroine (rather than a hero). Arrival contains absolutely no obtrusive feminist rhetoric, spunky, defensive or otherwise. There’s just a likable woman smack at the center of the story. The heroine is played by Amy Adams, seen ten years ago in Disney’s Enchanted. The male scientist (played by Jeremy Renner, Marvel’s Hawkeye) for all his supposed skills, is just along for the ride.

It’s a wild ride, difficult to describe without giving the game away, somewhat like Predestination (2014). I’m also reminded of The Three-Body Problem, which also dramatizes the effect of aliens on humanity.

Since the not-fictional Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is part of the backdrop of the movie, I would like to point out that learning a new language—learning anything—does change your brain, but not like science fiction (or even the real Sapir and Whorf) would have you believe.

Watch on Amazon

Keep reading for a detailed plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Also see below for a brief comparison of the movie and the short story it was based on.

Continue reading Arrival (2016)

Jackie Chan comes to Plaza Singapura to launch Kung Fu Yoga

When I went to see Railroad Tigers, I saw signs heralding Jackie Chan’s visit to Plaza Singapura, so I made sure I was there. I should have made sure I was there earlier…

Below are the best of the lousy photos I managed to snap amidst the forest of arms. Clearly I was not cut out for the life of the paparazzi. Still, I did get to hear and glimpse one of my favorite movie stars, which is a thing I never really expected would happen—especially because Jackie Chan routinely almost dies.

Continue reading Jackie Chan comes to Plaza Singapura to launch Kung Fu Yoga

Railroad Tigers (2016)

In Railroad Tigers, Jackie Chan’s character is a Chinese villager living under the yoke of the Japanese army during WWII. He is the leader of a secret rebel group, the Flying Tigers. He leads the small, patriotic group on raids to harass and steal from Japanese soldiers stationed on the trains that pass through his village. They aren’t soldiers, though, and although they constantly risk getting caught, they never really accomplish much. What can they do to truly help their country? When a wounded soldier tells them he has failed in his mission to blow up an important bridge nearby, they know what to do… but not how to do it. Will they succeed?

Almost the whole film happens on a train, though there are some scenes in the village as well. I laughed a lot and thoroughly enjoyed it. Those who have disparaging things to say may have found the pro-China and anti-Japanese themes distasteful; or they may dislike silly action movies, since many action movies these days are gritty, dark, or at least largely serious in tone; or perhaps it’s partly just that they’re English speakers who don’t like having to experience jokes via subtitles.

In fact I wish my Mandarin (and my Japanese) were stronger, because then I’d have been able to appreciate the dialog better. Nevertheless, even though I mostly had to rely on the English subtitles to understand the dialog, it was still hilarious. And you don’t need subtitles for the slapstick comedy, anyway; you could get a fair amount of enjoyment from the movie even with the subtitles off—assuming you like slapstick.

In fact, the main reasons I like Jackie Chan’s movies are: (a) they’re silly, and (b) each of his characters is charmingly and effectively protective. Moreover, as other reviewers unfailingly point out, it’s amazing that Jackie Chan is still not just alive but also kicking. Hats off to an amazing and very dedicated lifelong artist!

Watch on Amazon

I’m looking forward to the next Jackie Chan movie already, and I don’t have long to wait: Kung Fu Yoga is being released in Singapore this week.

The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)

To call this movie didactic is to make ‘didactic’ a compliment! The story is a clever allegory about a boy who’s bored because he’s lazy, jaded, or both. When he suddenly finds a huge gift box in his bedroom one day after school, he pulls it open to find a tollbooth and a car that takes him through a gate to another world, where he must convince two kings to allow Rhyme and Reason to return to a land suffering from chaos and discord. On the way he has to learn to value knowledge and thinking using words and numbers as tools to defeat the demons that lurk in the Mountains of Ignorance.

Much of my love for this movie is probably nostalgia, but even if you’ve never seen it before, I think you’ll love the colorful Dr. Seuss–like visuals, the allegorical names, and the thrilling adventure quest itself.

The movie is mostly a cartoon, but opens and closes with live-action sequences filmed and set in San Francisco.

I was so pleased when Warner Brothers released The Phantom Tollbooth on DVD. I loved the movie for years. I must have seen it by borrowing it on VHS tape from the library, Turtles, or Blockbuster, and I probably only read the classic 1961 book years after the fact.

I was reminded of The Phantom Tollbooth when I watched Disney’s Robin Hood because one of the voice actors (Candy Candido, who has a very distinctive, very low voice) is in both. In this movie, as the Awful Din, he sings: “Haaaaave youuuuu… ever heard an elephant tap dance, on a tin roof late at night? That’s noise! Beautiful noise!”

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-phantom-tollbooth/id386179275

Keep reading for a detailed plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)

RahXephon (2002)

The show has stunning visuals; long, meditative pauses; a sci-fi plot with humanoid aliens; giant mechas, good and bad; Mayan design motifs; a coming-of-age story; time distortion; love triangles; a chosen one; an immortality quest; military loyalty and in-fighting; and more hidden identities than you can shake a stick at. Weird as the show is, it all comes together in the end (unlike Lost). Highly recommended!

I bought this set in Singapore very cheaply—too cheaply, it turns out. The picture quality for a good third of the episodes is terrible. Though the box has the MDA approval sticker on it, I don’t think the discs are legit.

Furthermore, this version has English subtitles but no English audio, except for the random words that are in English in the original. Hearing the original audio is somewhat edifying because I still remember some Japanese words from a class I took back in… 2002, coincidentally. However, I watched the show in English years ago, and I remember the story as being thoroughly weird even without subtitles that come across as error-prone, awkward or downright mystifying.

I want to watch the show (and the movie) with English audio and better quality video, and I feel bad for buying some kind of knock-off—I really try not to do that, since I think the content owners should always get the requisite fees. Luckily, there’s a RahXephon DVD set on Amazon again.

Titan A.E. (2000)

Weird music, beautiful drawn—and early CGI—visuals, and one of very, very few sci-fi movies in which the artificial gravity malfunctions and everything starts to float: Titan A.E. in a nutshell.

In movie history, it was the film whose financial failure destroyed Fox Animation Studios, the company responsible for the widely respected film Anastasia, its direct-to-TV sequel, and absolutely nothing else. (Fox’s BlueSky studio—responsible for the Ice Age franchise, among other things—is having better luck.)

Steve Perry and Dal Perry’s novelization of Titan A.E., which I read in 2007, added a lot to the characterization of the aliens by giving us the queen’s perspective.

I love not only the gravity malfunction, but also the hip 90s feel, the shiny bits of Wheedonesque dialog, the alien language and spacecraft, the hydrogen plants, the wake angels, the tense hide-and-seek sequence among the reflections in the ice crystals, and the (admittedly rather too instantaneous) transformation at the conclusion. I even like the prologue and yes, the “scrappy/grand” humans-are-underdogs plot.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/titan-a.e./id270551266

Emma (Paltrow 1996)

Having just read Jane Austen’s Emma, I thought this movie version of Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow felt shallow and rushed. It’s conventional to say, especially with classics, that the book is better than the movie, but let’s go beyond that and attempt to say why.

One reason is that the movie must show where the narration can tell, and in this case, telling is better than showing, because Austen’s conveyance of characters’ feelings and attitudes is masterful. Her storytelling will be remembered when the names on the avenue of stars cease to evoke even the faintest flickers of recognition.

Another reason is that since in the novel there is a lot of narration, and the “action” consists primarily of people having conversations, the moviemakers invented “plausible” activities for the characters so that the actors have something to do in each scene apart from talk. The activities came across as contrived, though. I’d rather have been a bit bored by the characters’ social lives than feel distracted because the characters were acting like puppets on strings pulled this way and that by the needs of modern Hollywood.

The scene in which Emma and Mr. Knightley practice archery was particularly unsubtle, since it showed that her conclusions were, shall we say, totally off the mark, while his were, you guessed it, right on target. If you’re not already groaning from the overbearingness of the metaphor, consider that Emma’s mistakes are matchmaking errors; she’s trying to play cupid (as the text on DVD cover informs us, lest we fail to notice this entire bit of cleverness).

A third reason this version of Emma was slightly disappointing was that it pales in comparison to the just as short but more authentic A&E version of Emma starring Kate Bekinsale (also released in 1996). I remember the raw emotion of the scene at Box Hill vividly, though I watched it almost two years ago.

I must have remembered how the actors in the Beckinsale version looked and behaved, because the characters all seemed off in the Paltrow version. I don’t think it was just that I saw the Beckinsale version first. Can anyone believe a beauty like Gywneth Paltrow could be vulnerable, let alone mistaken? She’s the embodiment of smug confidence. Bekinsale portrays Emma’s characteristic overconfidence without the uncharacteristic hotshot attitude shown in the photo that adorns the cover of the Paltrow DVD.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/emma/id514463001

I had a similar issue with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet in the 2005 Hollywood version of Pride and Prejudice. She’s just too spunky and exaggerated for the character to be historically believable. As in 2005, Hollywood tried to up the entertainment value, and that spoils it for me.

Give me history or give me death.

Or rather, if you’re going to modernize Emma, go all the way.

Rogue One (2016)

Prequels have the problem that you already know where they’re going to end. Rogue One had a couple of other problems, too: political correctness, rushed world-building, and lazy characterization. What it had going for it was nostalgia, humor, and a big CGI budget. Overall, I’d say it was okay but not great.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story/id1179624268

More details, with SPOILERS, below.

Continue reading Rogue One (2016)

Doctor Strange (2016)

I dare you to find a review of Doctor Strange that does not contain a variant of the word “kaleidoscope”. The special effects are indeed special.

As for the rest, you’ve got a gifted, wealthy, arrogant neurosurgeon, recently come down in the world; he gets his comeuppance from an ancient mystic who he hoped could give him back the use of his hands but who instead involves him in the struggle to protect Earth from some kind of evil purple chaos. Will he learn to suppress his ego, to conquer by submitting, or will he be seduced by raw power and the promise of immortality?

I loved the laugh-out-loud magic-meets-mundane humor as well as the special effects, but if you’re not a fan of fantasy, this Marvel Studios production will probably stretch your patience too far. There’s a bit of that same “the real world isn’t real” stuff that’s in the Matrix, which is fine as long as you don’t apply such fictional logic to the real real world. It’s not very tempting to do so, though, since the movie itself barely even takes the magic seriously.

What it does take seriously is the message. The movie wants us to remember that mental, physical, and mystical talents are all ultimately meaningless—or catastrophically destructive—if not wielded humbly.

Watch on Amazon

Keep reading for a detailed plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading Doctor Strange (2016)