I'm So Excited (Los Amantes Pasajeros)

Pedro Almodóvar's newest movie is an extremely frothy and highly campy comedy that is essentially an anthology of stories tied together with the thinnest and flimsiest plot. Don't expect it to be like Almodóvar's previous brilliant work like Volver, Todo Sobre Mi Madre, Hable Con Ella and the most recent La Piel Que Habito, and it can be quite enjoyable. Embrace the silliness, frothiness and bawdiness (MDA's words), and it's not too bad a way to spend 90 minutes.

The poster basically says it all. The tone of the movie is set from the opening introduction and credits. There are some definite laugh out loud moments, a lot of sniggering and snark, and quite a number of eye-rolling, but critically, nothing really stood out. The plot as aforementioned is thin to the point of invisibility; the acting is camp not high art. There were some innovative directing and some attempt at depth (exploring certain themes). It seemed that Almodóvar had an idea - a situation - and tried to run with it for 90 minutes. Although making it a comedy was a much more refreshing idea than another tense situational drama, but in the end, the only consistency throughout is that Love, irregardless, triumphs all. So actually, not too bad a V-day movie to watch.

Here's a link to the hilarious, implausible, total-out-of-left-field, homage to the show's (English) title: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5izcGzirZHQ

Nebraska

A simply complex, darkly comedic fable by Alexander Payne that is much better than his last movie, The Descendants, mainly because it is so much less self-obsessed and self-smug, but also has a much tighter story-telling and generally better acting. It deserves all the nominations that is has gotten.

Having the film shot in black and white is a very smart choice by Payne. Without colour differentiation, there is no distraction from the story, the acting and the cinematography. But of course, with such a technique all the other aspects must be excellent. Thankfully, with a script written not by Payne but by Bob Nelson, we have a script that is simple in its complexity exploring the paradoxical, and often silent, relationship between father and son, and also illuminating the harsh truth about Greed. And in between all that, there is still space and time for smart, witty, and drily deadpanned moments to liven things up.

Luckily Payne, as a director, is also much better here, with a tidy storytelling finesse and smart camera choices to not only bring out the comedy in certain moments, but also the tenderness and fragility in others. However, sometimes he goes a bit overboard with the cheesiness. But one pet peeve here is the over abundance of in-your-face product placement. So much so that it was rather distracting at times.

3 standout performances here. Bruce Dern is brilliant here in his subtlety. The 2013 Cannes' Film Festival Best Actor winner has the charms and screen magnetism that George Clooney only dreams he has, and his eyes are amazing in its ability to convey emotions. Here is an actor that knows that good acting does not require you to be loud and dramatic/drastic (looking at you here Matthew McConaughey), but it is the simple, quietness that is the most challenging. Like Emmanuelle Riva in Armour, his brilliance will surely be overlooked on Oscar night. Although if trumped by Chwitel Eijofor for 12 Years A Slave it would not be a snub.

Then we have June Squibb, who gets the best lines of the show. Her tough as nail performances belay a gentle affection and allows us to question the relationship that she has with her husband.

Lastly, Will Forte as the wide-eyed lost-son. Forte plays the straight man here and yet with his un-assuming character we come to believe him and understand why he does the things he do. As an audience surrogate he was very effective because we believe this man can exist.

Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael did a great job here. Filming in black and white is very challenging and yet he balanced the tone, the lighting, the contrast superbly throughout with gorgeous framings of landscapes and wide-angled shots.

Mark Orton did the music for the movie, and he gave the film a very folksy-sounding country score which was appropriate for the tone of the movie, but also aurally it was like the movie: simple but complex.

Robocop

Disclaimer: I remembered watching the original 1987 movie and loving it, and even now although I cannot really recall the plot points, I still remember certain scenes and how in awe I was with it back then. 

A rote, mediocre crime thriller that failed to live up to the pedigree of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven classic, but it is not for without (some of) its cast trying their best.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with sci-fi remakes/reboots such as this and Total Recall, just updating and modernising the tech/science is not enough. The original films captured the zeitgeist of their time; but now, with a saturation of sci-fi in the media, this concept just feels old and tired. On television, we have Almost Human that pairs human detectives with cyborgs; we have Intelligence that sees a man connected to the internet and "cyber renders"; we had movies like Tron, The Matrix Trilogy, I, Robot, and Her which ranges from popcorn blockbusters to the thinking man sci-fi; we have books by Isaac Asimov, Neal Stephenson and William Gibson ("Neuromancer"); the rise of cyberpunk; the mainstream acceptance of anime.

As such, without anything new or original, the old concept of putting a man into a robot will still feel old and unexciting. So when the rote, predictable A-B-C plot fails (at times thee screenplay by Joshua Zetumer is just plain contrived and lazy when it comes to resolving tension/issues) what else can capture an audience attention? There are no eye-popping CGI or robotics (Transformers has got that down pat), and even the shock-reveal of what's under the robotics is really not that amazing after seeing a dragon come to live in The Hobbit: TDOS. The directing by Jose Padilha was so-so with too much showy "made-for-3D" moments, effects heavy, and messy when they are not CGI rendered, action scenes.

Then that leaves us with the acting. Joel Kinnaman resumes his The Killing brooding persona and he did his best with just his face for most of the times. although his chemistry with Abbie Cornish was lacking. Cornish, on her part, was rather convincing as the distraught wife although a pity they did not explore their relationship more (now, that would have made the film more differentiated). Gary Oldman gave his role a degree of gravitas and added a humane complexity to his scientific mind. Michael Keaton just chews his scenery and not in a good way; Jennifer Ehle was just sleepwalking through her way. Samuel L Jackson was just extraneous and someone up there really just want him to cuss and swear (Jackson is just becoming a walking caricature).

Lastly, not sure if it was meant to be satirical or literal, but there were clear undertones of the film-makers' (producers, director, writer) politics and thoughts on the Sino-US relationship (especially when the film was not even filmed in China), and even their views on the war in Iraq/Afghanistan. And to the final scene, this is my reply: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjMqda19wk 

August: Osage County

Some plays make great movies, and some plays just make good movies. This black comedy falls more into the latter like Roman Polanski's Carnage, John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole and John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. Tracy Lett's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning story is definitely the strong point here, but like all the previously mentioned plays-turned-movies, the acting are the aces here, and with a large cast like this almost everybody had their moments. Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, besides being the biggest names here, also gave the best performances of the ensemble with Roberts a particular stand out. She definitely has been missed.

John Wells was an able director but perhaps a bit too safe and restrained. That said, not even Polanski could get Carnage to Oscar glory. However, Wells was at times too predictable and mildly overly melodramatic in his scenes.

Tracy Letts adapted his own award-winning play for the big screen and, having not seen the original play itself, I would not be surprised if there were changes made. However, what I see on the big screen is a richly dark family comedy that spoke of an estranged family with each member bearing a secret that all just comes tumbling out in one cathartic exodus. The reveals not only peels off layers of each character but also illuminate the themes of blame, self-responsibility, karma and, in a morbid sort of way, love. Throughout all that, there were many moments of comedic gems which really incited genuine laughters and smiles. But I think like most great plays, in the translation to the silver screen some form of intimacy and immediacy is lost in the words. And with big stars, we tend to over focus on the physical performances rather than the power of the words. As such, sometimes, the material gets overshadowed. Oh, and that epilogue is totally extraneous.

Streep gets another Oscar nomination for her role here as the matriarch of the family and I sincerely thinks she deserves it a lot more than Sandra Bullock for Gravity. Although, there are times when Ms. Streep begins to slightly overact and her accents slips up. Her dining table scene may be the most showy, but it is her quietly powerful swing-scene with her daughters and her final scene with Johanna that shows her brilliance.

Roberts has been missed, and it is easy to forget that she too has an Oscar for Erin Brockovich, and is not just the Pretty Woman. And here, she reminds us why she got an Oscar. She is at times fiercely independent and protective, and at moments silently fragile and vulnerable. Throughout the whole time we get a sense that she is a woman torn between family and self, love and responsibility. Her exasperation at things beyond her control tears her apart, and Roberts portrayed all these very convincingly. Unfortunately for her, the competition for this year's Best Supporting Actress is just too strong, but her nomination reminds us again of her true ability.

Briefly, Juliette Lewis was perfectly cast as the youngest, slightly more flighty daughter, however her beau in the show, Dermot Mulroney is typecast and rather boring. Julienne Nicholson was also excellent as the straight-woman to her other two sisters, and with Masters of Sex on her resume too, she is turning in very fine work these days. Her beau Benedict Cumberbatch, unlike Mulroney, was totally acting against type, all hunched up, mousey and stuttering, but pity his role was not really significant. Then we have the two older folks: the very excellent Margo Martindale and Chris Cooper. Martindale should deserve a nomination too alongside Roberts. She was a woman of restrained strength with her own secrets to bear. With Cooper, their last scene together was a heartache. Lastly, Abigail Breslin was kind of wasted to act as the broody, insolent, rebellious teenager, and Ewan McGregor barely had much of a time to develop an interesting backstory or category.

This show will be remembered as the one where Meryl Streep screams at Julia Roberts and Roberts jumps Streep. A dark family dramedy that was generally very well acted and in the end may give you pause to examine your own relationships with your family. One very memorable line early in the show, and I paraphrase from memory goes: "If we were able to see the future, we would probably not get out of bed."

Her

All the hype about Scarlett Johansson is totally justified. Spike Jonze has given us a not-really-that-original-in-concept, post-modern love story that genuinely made me laugh out loud a few times, and smile a couple more, but nonetheless had a depressing undercurrent throughout as a commentary/satire on our current society and the route that it is heading towards.

The script is one of the more original ones this year and is a clear frontrunner for winning the Best Original Screenplay (although I have yet to watch Nebraska). It posits a question: what will happen if the technology that we interact with everyday, interacts back with us? It seems like an idea that Isaac Asmiov would have toyed with, but here we get Jonze's take.

The biggest challenge here will be how to keep the audience engaged when essentially this movie about one man talking to himself? And here was how Jonze scored a coup de grace by casting Johansson as the voice of the AI and Joaquin Phoenix as the lonely man. Johansson's smokey, raspy voice may be the best voice-acting since ever. She made the OS seemed so real. The passion, the self-doubt, the warmth, the curiosity...it's no wonder Phoenix's character would fall in love with her. But then again, his character just so happened to be in the right emotional spot for such an occurrence to occur.

However, on a deeper level, it could also be seen as a chauvinistic movie with the females being more aggressive and the reason why man (?Man) built AIs in the first place. *spoilers* Olivia Wilde's character scares off Phoenix because she does not want to waste her time; the ?receptionist in Phoenix's office is a man who is dating a seemingly more powerful female lawyer; Amy Adam as Phoenix's friend gets left alone because her husband could not control her, and she designs games about being the stereotypical "Perfect Mom"; even Phoenix's ex-wife as played by Rooney Mara is shown to be a rather passive-aggressive manipulative bitch that seemed to be responsible for the divorce.*end spoilers*. It could also be turned around and say that it was a pro-feminist movie with women being superior or better than man.

Phoenix was a good match for the role. He inhabited the loneliness of his character and as he begins to fall in love, we see him come out of the shell that he had hidden himself in. But we always get the sense that he never really stepped fully out. Jonze needed a believable lead actor for whom the audience can relate to, and with that moustache Phoenix was not as easily recognisable and so more relatable. He always looked so alone and apart from everybody even when he was in the same room. His clothes by Opening Ceremony definitely made him stood out, although he kept wearing the same, distinctive pieces again and again, and it got rather annoying for continuity purposes. Unless Jonze is trying to make a statement out of it. That moustache really does age him like how it aged Watson on Sherlock.

Jonze directing was simple in its subtle complexity. The mixing of up locations: California and Shanghai to give us a sense of interconnectivity. Perhaps in the future we could really go from east-to-west through a tube. The stylised palettes to reflect the mood of his lead protagonist. Bright and sunny when he's in love, dark and grey when he's not. The gorgeous futuristic sets also deserve a praise (and an Oscar nomination), as does the hauntingly beautiful song "The Moon Song" (also a Best Original Song nominee) as sung by Johansson in the movie, and Karen O. over the end credits.

A smart, witty script that was brought alive by two actors, and explored an interesting concept that raises many questions, through a simple boy-meet-girl love story for the post-modern times.

Looking

Disclaimer: I don't watch Girls.

Episode 1, "Looking For Now": A look into the modern day singles in San Francisco filled with pop-culture references and lexicons like "OKCupid", "Facebook" and "Instagram". They being gay is absolutely irrelevant. As a series premiere episode, this was unique in that we just drop straight into their lives. There were no exposition-heavy introductions to load us down. Jonathan Groff is a pleasant character surrogate to this world, and his sweet, innocent baby-face makes us easy to feel for him and his quest for love. The other two leads Frankie J. Alvarez and Murray Bartlett are at the moment not interesting enough yet especially when their narrative threads are so predictable and cliche.

Episode 2, "Looking For Uncut": The instagram filter like look continues as we proceed to be the fly-on-the-wall of these 3 men. Groff swings from irritatingly naive to winsomely innocent. But at the end of it all, nothing really much happens. No big revelations or epiphanies, but just 3 friends chugging along life and finding their way around it.

Episode 3, "Looking at Your Browser History": An improvement in quality in terms of characterisation and plot development. A much better thematic backbone about looking for your own identity. Each of the 3 main casts finally get some sort of conflict that they need to overcome, although Groff, as the lead character, just seems to be still looking for love. Well. Russell Tovey is in the house, and adding a British star is always fun and Lauren Weedman is the true breakout here. She has been given best lines/moments of the episodes she's in and she has been consistently funny too.

Dallas Buyers Club

Disclaimer: By now, a number of award-shows have already been out and both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto have been sweeping them up. Inadvertently, expectations would be high, especially for McConaughey who is riding high on the McConnaissance.

This movie suffers from what I have now christened as The Iron Lady syndrome: a so-so movie that was bolstered by its star(s). In this case, we have a poor-to-mediocre movie with two great, nominee-worthy performances by its actors, Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, but only Leto truly deserves the statue come Oscar night.

Based on a screenplay by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, DBC is a documentary-like presentation of one man's life that was schizophrenic in style, tone and identity. Borrowing from the movie, it felt like a Neanderthal seeing a transgender for the first time and not knowing to call the lady a Fella or call the chap a Miss. 

The movie cannot decide if it wants to be a dramatic or historical biography of Ron Woodroof. We got scenes that exploit homophobia and scenes of shameless Oscar-baiting despair, fear and lost; but we also have moments that tease of drama and emotions that were brought up then rapidly swept right away. All these and not counting some of Borten's and Wallack's clunky dialogue (Best Original Screenplay?!).

Then we also have Vallée's directing that was filled with clumsy metaphors, amateurish symbolism and foreshadowing, and bad continuity/editing (look at Gravity to see how clumsy imageries can at least be gorgeous depicted and shot). Characters have a tendency to pop up out of nowhere, and within moments forgotten. 

You sit through this movie trying to decide what kind of guy they want us to see, and it is all thanks to McConaughey's startling portrayal that we could even sit through all 116 minutes of it.

That brings us to the stars of the show. 

The charismatic McConaughey gave his career-best performance to date. No doubt about it. He has managed to give us layers within layers of this complicated person despite the poor characterisation on paper. However, despite his dedication to the craft and shedding all those musculature, his performance lacked the nuance that would have otherwise made it stoodout. There were still moments where he was still the same-old McConaughey of years ago - except a lot thinner. Partially it was also Vallée's fault for not giving him enough screen time to emote his drama. Just as we are about to hit a dramatic climax, we are cut off to the next scene. Also, McConaughey needs to take lessons from Claire Danes when it comes to the ugly cry-face (come on...some chin quivering, dude!). As such, although he is deserving of his nominations and the accolades, but when it comes down to "Best Actor", based on the nominees list, Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave) is still the one. 

Jared Leto, on the other hand, was simply amazing. He was the emotional heart of the show. With one particular scene, which again just came out of nowhere, he was utterly heartbreaking in its ethereal despair, loneliness, fear and pain (that scene was reminiscence of Anne Hatheway's award-winning I Dream A Dream in Les Miserables). The rest of the time, Leto was simultaneously funny and sad. The withering looks of sardonic pleasure were spot on, as were the downcast eyes of regret and self-pity. His character's emotional arc was more fleshed out, but his relationships with the other main characters were at best sketchy.

Lastly, a word about Jennifer Garner. No offence to her, but I remembered what I used to think of her back in her Alias days. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is Sydney Bristow. She still does that. However, the greatest fault here is that her character is absolutely useless and unnecessary from a narrative point of view. And unfortunately, Garner made it more so. 

Oh, and Denis O'Hare was a delightful snake.

In the end, you endure the movie for the ground-breaking, star-making turns of its two male actors and perhaps learn a bit more about a slice of history (and America's hypocrisy). But if you are looking for a great movie about the AIDS epidemic or the LGBT community, this is not it. Watch the play The Normal Heart instead.