MODERN DAY TIME TRAVEL

MOVIE REVIEW:

LOOPER

By:

G.P. MANALO

Starring:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Bruce Willis

Emily Blunt

Looper takes place in the year 2044 wherein Time travel isn’t invented yet until the next 30 years, but when it did. Time travel became illegalized and almost everything people do are being monitored. The concept of time travelling is being done when some organizations want to kill someone they hire a guy from the past to kill it for them and that is where our main Looper, Joe comes in. But when his future self appear right before him and escapes. He finds himself in a whole mess of danger.

Looper is one of my anticipated movies of this year (next to The Dark Knight Rises and Avengers) ever since i saw the trailer. But I didn’t go all the way like “Oh this’ll be one of the best and original sci-fi movies of the year” or something like that. The last time I said that was last year and the movie is “In Time” and... That ended badly.

And I was wrong it wasn’t a failure at all, it was actually a pretty good movie. The people i know in the community of cinephiles like me are telling me that “the first trailer is all you need to watch” which I did that the two other trailers are the things that i don’t have to watch because they spoil way too much.  Go in to this movie without any knowledge at all, You’ll have a better experience watching this movie. The movie was unpredictable at some point, there were points that I didn’t know that it could go down in a road like that. The first trailer, the way they describe the movie made this movie look like a basic Sci-fi action movie but when you watch a film this film has layers upon layers of something beyond just the time travel element of the film. The movie does feel original throughout the movie, the very least feels like Terminator 1 and Source Code at the same time with its own twist.

I have to say this is probably the best sci-fi action movies since The Matrix (not the sequels). Especially in this day and age of reboots/remakes this is an original and fresh sci-fi movie we have now. But I have to warn you if you are expecting a badass action sci-fi film you might be let down at some point because there was a large amount of down time here and there but that’s just you. I was interested because the down time in the 2^nd act of the film is building up to something big and you don’t really know what’s going to happen until it is revealed somehow.  The writing is brilliant in this film, I do love how these characters interact with each other, in fact it feels like a Tarantino film at some point when you are hearing the dialogue, probably because it does feel realistic that you can picture two guys saying this to each other in a diner or a mob boss having a dialog with one of his men (Huh... Starting to sound like Pulp Fiction now).  The action in this movie at some point feels intense (I’m a sucker for silence during action movies) especially that climactic scene by the end. The special effects seemed real from a movie like this the special effects feels very real to me. I mean the effects look like it can be done by a movie with hundred million dollar movie but a 38 Million dollar movie with these kind of special effects is impressive.

The performances in this movie are all great especially coming from the guy who directed Brick (Brilliant film I highly suggest you watch that film).  First of all Bruce Willis, Is one of the surprising performances in this movie. Lately Bruce Willis does look he is only doing it for a paycheck (though i had to wonder did he even know that he’s in an ambitious type of film and nothing like 12 Monkeys or  The Fifth Element?) But here it’s not your typical John McClain performance he’s been doing for the past years (it feels like his performances in 12 Monkeys though.). And we have Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Who is having a good year by the way) pulling off a very good yet spot-on impression of Bruce Willis, Which is kind of a thing nowadays for Time travel movies there will always be actors who will have a spot on impression of an actor who is either playing his/her past or future versions of themselves (like Josh Brolin in Men in Black 3).  His prosthetic make-up really does make him look like Bruce Willis. Which in the trailers it doesn’t really show that the make-up is trying to make him look like Bruce Willis but when you do see this in-motion in the movie you notice there that he does look like a young Bruce Willis. We also have Jeff Daniels as the main bad guy in this movie was also good, I loved his dialog they wrote for him throughout the film and lastly we have Emily Blunt which I can’t really go into detail with because this one element about her plays a huge part in the movie. So  I can’t really go into detail further. All i can say is that she is great especially the kid in this movie. The kid is not a well known kid actor but probably after this movie he’ll soon be famous because of his performance in this movie. He is one of the best child actors especially coming from this movie.

In the end I loved Looper, definitely one of the best films of the year (maybe i could even put this up higher in my list of Top 10 Movies of the year). It’s fresh, Original, Intense, Well-Written, Directed, and Acted. It’s one of my favourite sci-fi films of all time and definitely one of my favourite films of all time.  Rian Johnson once again made a masterpiece and I would love to see more films from the man.

MY RATING:

EPIC WIN! - 5/5

THE RIGHT JUDGMENT

MOVIE REVIEW - DREDD 3D

By:

G.P. Manalo

Starring:

Karl Urban

Olivia Thirlby

Lena Heady

Dredd - In the future, Violence corrupts the vast land of mega city one but the people who stops those violent people are the Judges who possess the power of Judge, Jury and Executioner. In this movie the main focus is a judge code-named, Dredd and one day he took a Mutant Psychic, Anderson to an evaluation exam. Little did they know they found themselves in a situation far more extreme than that when a threat called "MaMa" trapped them down in a building to kill both of them.

Of all the comic book movies besides The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers we also have this year is, Dredd; Dredd is probably the one that I was very curious about, from the trailers, the photos they didn't really caught my interest. But I was still very optimistic about this movie, I went in blind enough to be surprised of what's going to happen on-screen. And I have to say someone should fire the marketing people for this movie because this is actually an awesome movie than i was expecting it to be. The trailers showed that this movie is like a futuristic version of this year's The Raid: Redemption or maybe even the original Die Hard (which is basically a character going up and down a building while killing people along the way). Me being a Comic Book Reader I have not read any Judge Dredd Comics unfortunately, I don't know where to start and yet I can't even find some comics of it as well but I know enough of him, i believe. The 1995 Stallone's Judge Dredd Is pretty Over The Top (wink wink) in a bad sense up to the point that it is a shit fest.

2012 has the biggest surprises; this is definitely one of them because this movie is very good in a lot of ways. It's not really original when it comes to story, It does feel like the The Raid: Redemption/Die Hard starring Judge Dredd, It is very awkward to see that It is like the same movie i saw this year. Everything in this movie worked out pretty well on its own if you stopped thinking that this is like The Raid: Redemption, but i digress, even the gimmicks like the Slow Motion effect worked. When I saw the trailers, it looked like they're going overly crazy with the slow motion effect in this movie. 

Sometimes I would be entertained with slow motion if it is done right, not like how most movies we had this year like Resident Evil: Retribution or Underworld Awakening where it is very overused way too much but here they cleverly pushed it in as a plot device and they actually made slow motion actions look like art (Even I'm surprised to describe it that way), that being said the movie is visually impressive and cool. Speaking of action, this movie is an example of a very good popcorn movie, we had many of those this year but this one is definitely one of them. It has everything a popcorn movie should have and it is really fun and entertaining action sequences, badass characters and a very enjoyable film overall but my one gripe would probably be the fact that it ended very anti-climactic, when you see the film you’ll know why. It’s very much because it is built up to this moment and it just ended in a snap. Though my experience was pretty "choppy"; some of the gory scenes were fast-cuts, I guess it’s the local censorship's fault. Is the 3D worth the price of admission, not really, Sure you have a few good shots here and there. I believe you can still enjoy this in 2D nonetheless. 

With all the talk of visuals out of the way, the writing is pretty strong for the most part. There were still some lines that are pretty bearable to listen to, But it's not something compared to what Stallone's Dredd is (*Insert corny yet funny line here*). But still, the writing was able to write some characters very well. Comic Book films, nowadays do tend to have that "Dark and Gritty" tone, I thought that tone fits here because this character is a very dark and brooding character especially the setting, I don't think a campy light-hearted comedy-action film can be that relevant for the character's lore. Karl Urban as (Judge) Dredd wasn't bad at all, as I reflect on it I thought that he was a perfect choice to be Judge Dredd and it is also pretty mind-blowing to see him keep the helmet on throughout the movie (that’s pretty rare in superhero movies nowadays), he did say some cheesy lines but then again at least it's not as worse or cheesy than Stallone's line deliveries in the 1995 film, I thought the writing was self-aware enough for it to be tongue-in-cheek. Olivia Thirlby as Anderson wasn't bad as i was expecting her to be, I thought the character was relevant and strongly written. And lastly we have, Lena Heady; I thought she played the role great, honestly the performances aren’t nothing special but they are still good nonetheless

In the end, Dredd 3D was very surprising, as I’ve said; this movie is the definitive pop-corn movie experience. Its hardcore, It has entertaining action, It has really badass characters and a very solid story though it did have a very anti-climactic pay-off. I enjoyed Dredd 3D very much, fans of the comic will be happy that they finally have their favorite character to justice and casual movie goers will enjoy this as well. It’s the best version of the character we have in theaters. 

MY RATING:

4.5/5 - FOR THE WIN!

AGAIN?

MOVIE REVIEW:

TAKEN 2

Starring:

Liam Neeson

Maggie Grace

Famke Jensen

Taken 2 – After the events of the original Taken movie, the same organization who took his daughter is now out to take revenge of all the lives he took from them. As Bryan returns to Turkey/Istanbul, He finds himself and his family in danger again as he and his wife got... Taken Too (Get It? Wink Wink)

"Give my movie a bad review will you?

I was a big fan of the first Taken movie, I t was a really huge surprise that year and an example of a quality action movie. It wasn’t your average action movie; It was fresh and original, But that new car smell is gone now when this movie came out. As much as I want to be optimistic about the movie, I just really can’t before going in to see this movie. There is nothing good to expect but just Liam Neeson kicking-ass and when he does, you can’t tell what the hell is going on because of the shitty editing which I will go through later. But Taken 2 ended up being a disappointment to me.

The movie’s only purpose is to get more money because of the surprising success the original had. But it is a very unnecessary move; In fact this entire movie is unnecessary to even exist! The story doesn’t even have anything to continue from the start. I think that having the Mob Boss to actually go out and kill Liam Neeson’s character is the only thing they have going for but the execution was done poorly. The villain of the movie is barely even a villain and not even as threatening as you are expecting him to be but rather stupid. He makes all these threats that he can’t even do which results too an obvious failure (who the hell would kidnap someone and leaves them alone in an are with no one guarding at all? I guess this guy is the answer). But when you think the villain is dumb even what the hero does is dumb, By now you've probably heard a lot of people saying this specific scene (which I'm pretty sure this movie is famous for it now) is the scene where Liam Neeson asks Maggie Grace to throw a grenade off of a rooftop so that he can hear it and find the exact location of where she is standing..... Yeah....... I think I met a few people from Istanbul who got pissed  because it made them look bad.

The movie is filled with very bad plot holes that made the storytelling a gigantic flaw, In a movie like this I would try to enjoy myself despite how bad the writing and acting is (Hell I enjoyed Expendables 2 even if that movie has flaws) but this didn't. The action is not really enjoyable because of the editing, The editing in this movie is like how the characters in Speed Racer talks; fast, choppy and sometimes annoying. Liam Neeson is the saving grace of this film, Without him this movie could go nowhere. But the rest of the cast was just bad. Maggie Grace who is really annoying me lately because this is possibly the second movie in a row where she always looks like that she's crying (Even in the second trailer of Breaking Dawn Part 2 made it look like she's pulling off the same thing).  Famke Jensen is also annoying in this movie, I get it you have to be scared and all but she was doing it rather over the top.

In the end as much as I was optimistic about this movie I was very disappointed with this movie. The execution is bad, I went in for the action anyways but i end up not knowing what was going on, the performances are your typical action movie type of acting (But Liam Neeson wasn't bad at all). If  I would suggest one thing and it is for you to go out buy a DVD of the original Taken movie and watch that instead, Avoid this movie in anyway you can.

MY RATING:

0.5/5  - FAIL!