Movie Review: Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog is Disney's first foray into 2D animation since 3D animation took over several years ago. I don't know how kid's of today will receive this movie, but back then every 2d animated flick released by Disney was a major event. And I think this is exactly why I enjoyed the Princess and the Frog, it reminded me so much of my childhood.

That is not to take any merit away from the movie. On its own it stands as one of Disney's best. As with previous Disney creations, this one tries to update a classic story and is a brave entrance into untested waters. It features Disney's first black princess, Tihanna who is strong and independent and is unlikely to wait for any Prince Charming to save her from poverty. She dreams of having her own restaurant in New Orleans and she does everything she can to own one. But soon she discovers something more important in life that's been there all along - love and family.

Princess also features great music which shows what we already know from past Disney movies - they make movies not just for kids but also for adults to enjoy. The jazz tunes and performances is reminiscent of classic Disney fares such as Beauty's Be Our Guest filled with fireworks and amazing over the top animation.

Princess proves that Disney still has got it and I give it a B.

Movie Review: Percy Jacskson and the Lightning Thief

I used to spend hours in the library reading books about Greek and Roman mythology. It was like a soap opera about tall, magical creatures.  I'd still spend hours in Ateneo's library if I had a student i.d. but that's another story. My love for the gods and their wacky, overl-dramatic stories may be why I enjoyed Percy Jackson and the Lightning thief, given its many flaws.

The movie, based on the book by Rick Riordan, does not waste any time. The adventure immediately rolls out in front of us as a giant Poseidon rises from the ocean to meet with Zeus. Zeus's most powerful weapon, a lightning bolt has been stolen. And he thinks it's Poseidon's demigod son, Percy, who stole the lightning. Why he thinks this is so, I have no idea. Then we're off to an adventure within an adventure within an adventure. 

Percy has to go to Olympus and convince Zeus that he didn't steal the bolt.To do that, he must first train in Camp Half Blood, sort of like Harry Potter's Hogwarts, but with swords. After a half-day of training, he defeats the daughter of Athena, who's been training all her life. It defies logic but another adventure is soon upon us. His mother gets kidnapped by Hades so he has to go to hell and bring her back. But now, our Percy needs to collect 3 pearls which would help them get away from Hades once they're in hell. And so he meets Medusa, the hydra and visits the land of the lotus people. And Percy is so busy he doesn't even have time to grieve for his mother whom he thought was dead. (Maybe he got a peek at the script and knew she was alive anyway.) We don't even have enough time to really get to know Percy or his other friends and they end up flat.

And soon we reach the end and the movie feels less epic than its trailer. This could be because of their attempt to give the characters, the gods in particular, a modern twist, perhaps to make them more relatable, or to help kids easily identify ancient greek mythological creatures. The movie has literally shrunk the gods and thus made them a tad mediocre.

But still I enjoyed watching Percy, it's like playing a video game.

I give Percy a C+

Movie Review:Valentine's Day

The huge cast alone was enough to draw me into the movie house and force me to overcome my dislike for valentine's day - the holiday, not the movie . Valentine's Day, a movie about different people's experience of love stars Julia Roberts, Eric Dane, Jennifer Garner, Ashton Kutcher, Patrick Dempsey, Emma Roberts, Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez and Jessica Biel. The fun is in spotting the stars. Oh look there's the cute country singer with the buff wolf in that vampire movie. Oooohhh Pretty Woman. But that's where the fun ends for me.

Valentine's Day reminds me of Love Actually, actually. Both movies show how people experience holidays in different ways and how our lives are interconnected. In Valentine's Day the central figure that frames and holds this movie together is a flower shop. Here we see the staff with their own love stories to tell and how they are inevitably involved in the lives of their customers. We get to see love in varying degrees - romantic, maternal, homosexual, puppy, teenage. And of course there are the bitter stories of love, those that speak of being alone on the day of hearts, those that end in, well, endings. But somehow everything turns out all right for most of the characters. 

My problem with this movie though, besides the cliched montage of stories and characters, is the lack of oomph, of pizzaz, of thrill. Sure the movie tries to surprise us with several ooohh-I-didn't-see-that-coming endings, but there's really nothing original about the stories or the characters. They're mostly caricatures of valentine stereotypes. And because we know them so well already, we know where their stories end. The difference between  Love Actually and Valentines Day is that I still remember the former, years after and I'm sure to forget the latter like some dust-covered valentine gift that's not even good enough to be recycled.

As for performances, Anne Hathaway shines best here for me. 

I give Valentines Day a C+

Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes

The newest version of Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law is kick-ass. Sure a couple of us actually yiheeed at the closeness of Holmes and Watson, but this detective can kick Bond's ass.

Downey's Holmes is exactly like him: brilliant but wasted. This guy has issues. But he's a genius and he can't help it. He goes around analyzing people, their behavior, their physical appearance. He's a smug, arrogant jerk. But he gets the job done. 

I really could care less about the mystery that this Holmes is trying to solve. I am too much in awe at his utter coolness. The way he explains and analyzes what he's going to do to the bad guy, in slow motion of course. And he's always right.

I've always thought of Holmes as very cerebral and refined. So it's a surprise to see this new Holmes with muscles, wrestling with a monster in a ring. But according to PJ, who's read all the books, and reread them again after watching the movie (yeah, she's a nerd that way) the movie version of the detective is actually faithful to the books. So there.

And Law's Watson is the perfect foil and partner to Holmes. He wants stability and is about to get married but he simply can't rid himself of Holmes. 

This update on Sherlock Holmes is relentlessly fun and fast paced. 

I give it a B.

Movie Review: Paano na Kaya

Here is a conversation between my friend  and I after we saw Paano na Kaya?:

Wow.

Jon Avila had exactly one line.  Why was he in this movie?

Robi Domingo could sure smile, but what the  hell did he do here? Nothing. 

And Kim's mom what's-her-name smiles everytime her husband verbally abuses their daughters. This movie could've gone on without her too.

This movie could've happened without atleast 10 characters.

Wow, really? Kim's dad suddenly realizes he's a bad dad after that tantrum. But when his other daughter packed up and left him,nothing changed.

Conflicts sprout out like mushrooms in this flick no? Apparently Zsazsa's an absentee mom. 

How do you know? 

Because Gerald says so.

What's up with Gerald's clothes? They're always too tight.

Sometimes his half naked too.

Well something's got to pay for his gym you know.

We should've watched Blind side.

What and missed out on all the movie goers screaming everytime kim and gerald kissed.

This movie's the longer  version of that Taylor Swift video.Except that the Swift video's ten thousand times better.

and tolerable.

Gahhhd. 

Aren't they too young to be owning businesses. Or they just don't look like they know what their doing.

Wow they're also volunteer firefighters. 

This movie's got everything.

This sucks.

Did you count the montage?

Yeah you woudn't know there was a montage going on. The editing is bad.

The score was bad.

So what's good about this movie.

Silence.

The lines were bad. 

Yeah, they actually used that "It's not you, it's me line." Verbatim.

Lazy writers.

I like Star Cinema movies before. I enjoyed that John Lloy and Sara Geronimo flick.

Yeah. We should've just watched that again.

Movie Review:Avatar

I know this is awful late but let me have a go at it.

My friends are divided into two : a. Those who didn't like Avatar and fell asleep half way through the movie (that's you erika) and b. Those who liked it and wish there really was a Pandora.

After watching Avatar, I'm going to have to side with group b. Avatar is an excellent experience. I say experience and not movie because Cameron puts 3D technology into such good use that you really do feel like you are in another world with blue folks.

Cameron said he waited for 15 years to complete this movie because he was waiting for the right technology. Now I get it. Pandora, is something else. It's so pretty. Leaves and soil glow in the dark at night.  Mountains fly. Everything is interconnected - and more often than not, literally. Never mind the actors, this is a James Cameron movie. This is a James Cameron movie. This is about CGI, man. This is about how amazing that sky is and how big big that creature is. I can't even remember how many times I said wow. Wow. Everything just feels so epic.

And yes, this is a hundred times better than that sinking ship. 

Watch Avatar.

I give this movie a B+

Movie Review: Jay

The last Filipino indie flick that I truly enjoyed was Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros several years back. That movie brought back my fate in Filipino cinema. What followed were indie films that were either too obnoxious (paprofound pero wala namang laman) or gay without any real story to speak of. 

Until I watched Jay the other day.

Given the success of many gay sex indie movies such as Masahista, Ang Lalake sa Parola and Ang Lihim ni Antonio, it's no surprise that Francis Xavier Pasion's film was marketed as another gay sex film. Thus the inclusion of Coco Martin, apparently the fantasy of many gay men nowadays.

But not too worry, the story alone is enough to overcome any false marketing.

Here, Jay is stabbed 8 times by an unknown man, probably a male masseur hired by the victim. Jay, a TV "journalist" records on camera the events after the victim's death: the family's grief, the search for the killer, the sadness of his co-teachers and friends, the inquiry into his sexuality. 

The film opens with the end-product of the journalist's efforts, we begin with the ending, in short. My friend and I were amazed at how accurate the documentary format was - the angles, the pacing, the interviews, the reenactment, the music, the "realism" of it all.

Then we get to see what really happened in the making of the tv segment. Jay, the TV person manipulate everything and everyone he can to get everything perfect for television. He shoves his camera into a mother's face as she cries for his dead son. He makes her pretend to see her son's dead body for the first time again because the lighting was bad the first and real time it happened. He makes people confess to him in front of the camera. He goes through the dead man's clothes and cabinets and exposes whatever secret he finds and uses public service as an excuse. Nothing is sacred to Jay.

But we don't totally hate him because we know we'd do the same if we were in his shoes. Nothing personal, just a job.

But what is even more fascinating are the people left behind Jay. They are able to put aside their grief, act and allow themselves to be directed, as though in a movie, by Jay. Soon we see Jay's grieving mother putting on make up and eye drops before every scene.

But the movie goes beyond showing us how people transform in front of the camera. It is a witty play on truth and how it can be twisted  and processed until you no longer no what to believe.

Like every great movie, Jay asks the difficult questions in life. What is truth? when does truth start becoming a lie? If your truth is told through my eyes, is it still the truth? Or has it become something else?

Jay is also noted for the performances of Baron Geisler and the rest of the cast. They made the movie feel so natural, so , ironically, real.

There's not a lot of good Filipino movies out there, so please watch Jay.

I give this movie an A

Movie Review: Taken

I was still groggy from the bus ride. I looked outside, we were in Dau. I was 2 hours away from Manila. A new movie had started playing. I knew I was going to sleep through this one. There's Liam Neeson. I'm definitely sleeping through this one. 

Or so I thought. A couple more of minutes later and I was hooked. Like what's shown in the poster above, this is definitely Liam Neeson's movie. He is almost in every frame. and he's brilliant. He plays a retired detective and a dad to a 17 year old girl out to tour Europe, following U2's trail. 

His daughter is kidnapped and suddenly he's no longer retired. 

Watching Taken is like playing a video game. You start at Stage 1 where enemies are easily beaten, problems are solved quickly until we move on to the next stage. And just when we think we've found his daugter, as in the princess in those Mario games, we find that we must first defeat another more difficult enemy. 

I remember this play writing class I took in college. According to our professor, for our characters to be fully alive, they must have wants, desires, dreams. And our characters must go after those dreams and wants, no matter what it takes. Their every action must be dictated by those goals.

And man, does this guy run after what he wants. He jumps through buildings, shoots an innocent woman who serves him dinner, kills people, tortures and electrifies suspects, destroys buildings, and practically run over the whole of Paris - all to find his daughter. 

It was all so exciting, I wanted to hold on to the arm of the person beside me. Except that he was a complete stranger who might just punch me in the face.I swore to myself that if the movie did not reach its end by the time I got to Cubao, I'd stay on until Pasay. Thank goodness we found his daughter right before Nepa Qmart. 

Needless to say, I give Taken an A. Watch it. 

Movie Review: Baby Mama

Thanks to HBO, I've been able to watch flicks I've missed in the past couple of years due to work, social life or simple indifference. The other night I got to watch Baby Mama, starring Amy Pohler and Tina Fey.

I like Tina Fey and Amy Pohler. I enjoy watching them on SNL when they were still cast members. I perticularly like Ms. Fey, she's obviously very smart. She's the first female head writer for SNL, she writes and stars in the critically acclaimed 30 Rock alongside Alec Baldwin. She's can be a poster girl for the feminist movement. She's strong, beautiful and sexy.

If that's the case, her roles on screen might be a commentary on how society views strong women. In 30 Rock, she's made fun of by her coworkers,she's made to look sad and ridiculous. In Baby Mama, her character Angie, is at the top of her game: she's vice-president, she lives in an expensive apartment and, gasp!, she wants to have a baby on her own, without a husband. And here, once more, she's made to look lonely until she finds a man. But that's another discussion meant for another blog entry.

In Baby Mama, Tina Fey is her old awkwardly funny, witty self. And when paired up with Pohler, comedy ensues. However, like your typical SNL sketch some scenes fall flat and feel forced while others are comedy gem like that sequence where Pohler is getting fertilized.

What's refreshing about this flick is that it's a comedy targeted at women that's not a romantic comedy. It's not very often that that happens.

Baby Mama has its moments, but it's not enough, not even with Fey in it, to drive me to watch it again.

I give this movie a C+

Movie Review: Up

Wow. What can I say? Up has got to be my favorite my favorite movie of 2009.

I don't know how Pixar does it, but they pulled it off. they made another movie that's visually stunning and emotionally moving at the same time. When studios produce big-budget flicks with fantastic effects, they tend to forego the story, thinking the audience, who in their books must be composed of complete morons, will be so distracted by all the colors and glitz and awesomeness that we'll forgive them for one -dimensional characters and cliched stories.

But not Pixar.

Up is oviously marketed towards kids. But it knows perfectly well that kids do not equal idiots, thus it delivers a story that's smart and witty. The audience, made up mostly of kids, is made to deal with loss, death and sadness. In the first 10 minutes of the movie, we see how happy Ellie and Carl are (his sequence barely has any dialogue, which goes to show the strength of this movie's visuals that it manages to move the audience to feel Carl's pain later on). They meet, they fall in love, they dream together. Then Ellie dies and Carl is 78 years old. He is alone and he is being thrown out of his house.

Carl no longer smiles. He is bitter. He longs for his dead wife.

So he attaches a gazillion balloons to his house and flies off to South America to fulfill's Ellie's dreams. By doing so, he hopes to be closer to her. Then he realizes that he's taken Russel , the fat boy scout, by mistake and mayhem ensues. This story looks ridiculous on paper. For the rest of the movie, Carl has his house attached to his arms with a string as it floats up in the air. Then there are the talking dogs, a giant bird.

But on-screen, it all comes together. It all makes perfect sense. And in the end, we have a better understanding of how death isn't necessarily the end, how adventures come in many different forms, how friendships come from the most unexpected places and situation.

I give Up an A, no doubt.

Movie Review: Inglourious Basterds

It's 3 am and I can't sleep. I can't get Inglorious Basterds and every bloody detail of it out of my head. It should be enough to say that Inglorious Basterds is glorious in almost every way. But there's so much more that needs to be said about this Quentin Tarantino flick.

The film is a dark comic fantasy (and so it begins "Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France" and like a fairy tale, it is told in chapters.) about a gestapo unit of the Allied forces, led by Lt. Aldo Rein (Brad Pitt) terrorizing and killing the Nazis, including its very leader, Adolf Hitler.

This film will grab you by the balls and make you squirm and fidget in your seat from the first scene to the last.

Tarantino is an expert at creating atmosphere, especially tensed, suspenseful sequences that make you feel as though you were walking through an empty street and the air suddenly changes around you and you know you're being watched but you don't see anyone else, and you fear for your life, then you run. It felt exactly like that in the theater tonight, except that we couldn't run, we were stuck in our seats.

Nothing extraordinary is happening onscreen, nothing apparent atleast, yet you can feel the characters' tension, you can hear their heart beat, you can hear yours. In the first chapter, Col. Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz) pays a farmer and his 3 daughters a visit. Hans is cordial to a fault, he chats with the farmer, drinks the farmer's cow's milk, smokes a pipe. He asks several questions. This goes on for quite some time. We want to believe that Hans is kind and friendly, but we know better. We see the eyes of the daughters darting nervously towards each other. The silence is palpable. We can taste their fear. In fact, even before we realize it, it has become ours. We know that something is up. And it goes on some more, Landa drinks his milk, the farmer answers questions and it is torturous, it's like waiting for an unseen storm. In the next few minutes, a family has been massacred.

And the massacre is a scene from the Sound of Music compared to what follows - scalps are removed, testicles are shot, necks are broken, blood is everywhere. This is after all a movie about the Nazis and one made by the creator of Kill Bill. In one scene we see hundreds of Germans watching a film about a Nazi war hero killing hundreds of Jews and Allied soldiers. The Germans laugh, applaud and some even cry. Soon, the German-filled theater is burning to the ground. The Nazis burn to death, some of them are shot and the audience, including me, is laughing, applauding and I wouldn't be surprised if someone shed a tear or two. Here, the human capacity for violence is both glorified and questioned.

The film, albeit a fantasy of sorts, is insightful in the portrayal of Nazis. Murderers, this is what most of us in this generation know about the Nazis. In the film we see that like the very Jews they have killed, like the Americans and the English, and like us, the Nazis were also human, which makes them all the more fascinating.

The actors give pretty decent performances. Brad Pitt seems to be having fun playing the dedicated, Nazi-hunter with the Southern accent. But no one can argue that this is Christopher Waltz's movie. Here, he delivers a character who is charming, elegant, cunning and frightening. He lures us with his gaze, with his laughter, with his kind words, with his wit and his brilliance. Then he jumps a woman and strangles her to death. Every time Landa steps into the screen, my palms become clammy and a scream wants to come out of me and I want to hide under the seat.

Overall, Inglourious is exciting, funny and smart. It asks us a lot of questions without being overzealous.

I give this movie an A.

Go watch it now!

Movie Review: 69 1/2:The Making of the Most Artistic Filipino Pornographic Film Ever Made

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Movie Review: The Proposal

As romantic comedies go, The Proposal  has all the required elements. A girl and a boy who dislike each other so much , they're bound to fall in love. 

Margaret(Sandra Bullock) is the uptight, toughie editor that everyone hates. We know this because she rarely smiles, fires people at will and has her staff scrambling out of her way when she walks the floor. Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) is the hardworking wimpy assistant to Bullock's Margaret. We know this because he doesn't go on vacations and will cancel grandma's 90th party for work.  Obviously, these two are about to fall in love. Well, not after all the ridiculous and funny sequence of events they'd have to go through so that they'd realize they really do like each other after all.

Margaret, a Canadian, risks losing her job to a man she just fired when her company finds out that she's an illegal migrant. And so she ends up having a fake engagement with Andrew who was there at the right place, at the right time. Then they have to fly to Sitka, Alaska to meet Andrew's lovely, lovable family. And there she falls in love with the overwhelmingly doting family and Andrew, ofcourse. 

This all sounds tired and trite on paper. Heck, it sounds a bit like another Bullock movie: While you were sleeping. But it's the little accents and details - an eagle swooping in to eat a puppy, a 90 year old grandma dancing and chanting in the forest - and the actors' performances that give this movie enough leg, and heart, to stand strong.

Sandra Bullock has always been very charming in her movies. She stutters when she's nervous, she has little cute quirks, she can be elegant and clumsy at the same time and undoubtedly, she's very beautiful. And together with Ryan Reynolds, she charms us off our feet, making us sit through and even enjoy a predictable romantic comedy movie.  

I give this movie a B.

Movie Review: Bride Wars

War of the Brides

In Bride Wars Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway plays childhood best friends Liv and Emma whose lifelong dream is to be the perfect June bride, with the perfect husbands, wearing the perfect Vera Wang gown at The Plaza. 

Hudson and Hathaway bring their characters deftly to life. Liv is competitive and aggressive and squeezes a proposal out of her groom to be when she learns that Emma is engaged. Emma is passive to the point of letting people take advantage of her generosity. But oddly enough their friendship remains strong and beautiful. That is, until the hotel books their wedding on the same date and the bride wars ensue. 

The film contains  a few funny sequences spread here and there: Emma turning orange and Liv getting blue hair the week before their wedding and a dance off involving a male stripper. Fortunately -maybe unfortunately since they are very funny - the film does not linger on these sequences. Instead the focus is continually brought back to where it all started - Liv and Emma's friendship.At the heart of the story, of all the plotting and sometimes ridiculous sabotaging,  is a friendship that's even more beautiful than most marriages. The writers know that this is the film's core and they never truly lose sight of this foundation.

Although it must be said that it requires a suspension of disbelief, quite a lot actually to believe that both brides-to-be can afford such extravagances such as a Vera Wang dress, beautiful flowers, the most expensive venue in town, a 7-tier cake etc. Also, it's a bit insulting to women that these two have been waiting for nothing but the wedding of the century all their lives. there must be something more than this.

The ending is unexpected and could have gone the other way around - cheesy and melodramatic. Like Liv and Emma who discover something deeper than the perfect wedding, so do we find a gem of a movie beneath the chic flick packaging of girly gowns and shoes. So kudos to the film's writers for taking risks with a surprising and justified ending that is not so heart warming and not vomit inducing.

The movie's loopholes are saved by the solid performances given by Hathaway and Hudson.

I give this movie a C+.

Astroboy is excellent (movie review)

Over the Vampire weekend, I was almost peer pressured into watching that movie. But when we saw the lines that snaked all the way to China, we decided to see the movie with the least number of people lining up for tickets. So we saw Astroboy.

I was ready to be bored and fall asleep. Boy, were we in for some huge surprise.

Astroboy is a brilliant piece of film making and it certainly delivered the goods. Based on the Astroboy manga of our childhood, the movie is set in futuristic Japan where humans live side by side with robots which basically do everything for them, from the laundry to fighting wars.

The wonderful thing with this film is that it’s not afraid to take risks in the writing of its story. The audience, most of which are kids, are made to deal with difficult issues. Immediately at the start of the movie Dr. Tenma’s son, Toby, dies. Immersed in great sadness, Dr. Tenma builds a robot version of Toby. Using Toby’s DNA, the robot version has all the boy’s memories. But soon Dr. Tenma rejects the robot boy and abandon’s him. Toby, now Astroboy, realizes his robotic nature and leaves the city with a broken “heart”.

The film courageously tackles difficult themes: destiny, finding one’s place in the world, self sacrifice and what it really means to be human. But what’s great is that the weight of its themes is neatly wrapped in sequences and lines that are witty, visually stunning and exciting.

A character at the end of the movie says that Astroboy has more humanity than all of us. And that speaks of the movie itself which has more heart and soul than most non-animated flicks out there, certainly more than that vampire movie.

I give this movie a B+.

Too bad, it might not survive the Twilight weekend. Not even Astroboy can survive the rush of tween girls hungry for some brooding paleness.

Summer Love (Movie Review: 500 days of Summer)

Sure, I downed some bottles of beer, and maybe a few shots of Tequilas, after watching 500 days of Summer, but I truly enjoyed it. In fact, I've seen it twice. Goes to show how much of a masochist I am. 

If you've ever found yourself looking at the fb page of someone you used to love and obsess about, someone you thought you'd love forever, someone you once thought you couldn't live without and find that after all these time what remains are only traces of that pain and obsession, mere fragments of the ache you once suffered for the lost of that one person you thought you'd be spending your whole life with, then you'll know what the movie is talking about. Sure enough, as the disclaimer says at the beginning of the movie, this is not a love story.

Tom(played by Joseph Gordon Levitt) falls head over heels, crazy, madly in love with the alluring and enigmatic Summer (Zooey Deschanel). It's not so hard to believe that men would be falling for the Summer effect given that Zooey seems to have mastered the role of a beautiful and extremely charming woman, floating above everyone's heads, without a care in the world, but to experience everything with such freedom and carelessness. She's so free-spirited and detached from everything else that she doesn't understand how Tom can fall for her when she specifically told him from the start that she didn't want commitment.

But Tom does fall in love and she doesn't end up with him. His heart is broken. He has built his whole life around her and he might as well be dead. So he cries, mopes, wallows, drinks and waits for death.

But he doesn't die and he moves on. Without her. And that is life. One we've all experienced before in one way or another. We fall in love, we have expectations that clash with reality, we get our hearts broken, we suffer extreme pain and then we're alright again. It's such a common story, which is why it's so easily relatable.  Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the hurt guy so well, we almost feel his pain and we want to comfort him and break plates with him.  

The narrative is presented in a non linear manner, jumping around time, showing glimpses from the future and snippets from the past, we don't always know what's going on but we're stimulated and we're curious.  But other than that story-telling technique and the music from the likes of The Smiths, Feist and Regina Spektor, there's nothing really very special about this movie. It tries to have depth and insight, look edgy and smart through overused indie film techniques but all it does is reveal an overdressed movie pretending to be something it's not.

The film's real strength though lies in the simplicity of its story, the innocence and severity of love and how we all move on eventually, whether we like it or not. It may not be a love story, but it sure is a hopeful one.

I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. Don't see it with a broken heart, though. Or maybe you should

Movie Review: Showers and a million ways to destroy the world

So apparently there's a meteor shower going on outside.

picture from here

Iggs and I did stay outside for about 5 minutes. Then we got bored and stiff neck. So we went back inside the house. It's too bright to see the night sky anyway. That's the problem with living in Manila. The whole place is always lit up. We're so entertained by shiny billboards, lamposts and signages that we forget to look up and watch Orion.

In the 5 minutes we spent outside waiting for the sky to start falling, I unfortunately remembered the movie I just recently saw. 2012. Sure, that makes no absolute sense given it's in another movie that a big fat asteroid destroyed the Earth.

But man, 2012, that was a bad movie. Okay, it's not that bad. The effects were amazing. If I'd been one of the thousands stuck on the roof of their house during typhoon Ondoy, I wouldn't watch this movie. I'd probably start crawling under the seats at the sight of a giant wave conquering the Himalayas. I'd probably pee my pants watching Washington get swallowed by the ocean.

My friend and I concluded that the Philippines would probably be one of the first countries to be wiped out if the galactic alignment which would somehow cause continents to shift and destroy cities, happened.

My problem with the movie was one, it was too long. How many times do we need to see cities destroyed. Yes we get it, the world is ending. And in every possible way. Great floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, glaciers, tsunamis. You name it, this movie's got it. What, no frogs falling from the sky?

The movie is so saturated with destruction that you eventually get to a point when you actually wish for the earth to open up and swallow you whole so that this movie would end.

Then there are the speeches. Director, Roland Emmerich, does not only have a fetish for destroying the world (he also directed Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.) He's also a fan of long, cliche laden speeches. My gulay, how can all these people have time to talk about their love for their mothers, the greatness of human sacrifice and the resilience of the human spirit, when the whole state of California has just disappeared from right under your feet.

The cast was okay. Everyone did what was expected of them - scream and run for their lives, hold hands, and look frightened. And yes, John Cusack must have been a cockroach in his former life. He just won't die. Man, that's one lucky guy - getting to ride two planes to take him to China, while Las Vegas burns and the Vatican falls, and finding a ride in the middle of the Himalayas, the driver of which just happens to , tadaaa!!, have a way of getting them on board the only ship that could withstand Earth's destruction.

And the ending, what can I say? Africa's the place to be. Let's go I want to see the giraffes!

I give this movie a c+

Oh the stars might have started falling already. See you.