An invigorating day at the movies

Having rediscovered of late the wonders of watching movies in a movie house, we have since made it a point to dedicate a day at the movies each week. The practice has also doubled up as catching-up time with friends we have been much too busy with work to bond with. Or it has served as our own alone-with-myself time when we didn’t feel like being with anyone. Our most recent watchings have been Chinese Zodiac, Warm Bodies, Broken City and Hitchcock.           

Our memory of Jackie Chan has been of Drunken Master, which marked him as a legend in martial arts action films. We admit to going to Chinese Zodiac despite its brainless unattractive film title since it supposedly would be his last film.

A human (Teresa Palmer) and a zombie (Nicholas Hoult) fall in love in Warm Bodies

We suppose that at 58, he has decided that the standard comic Indiana Jones clone that long served him well should be put to rest. Indeed, the story of Jackie’s search for 12 zodiac heads stolen from China for his own profit was boring us, to say the list. Even the stunts fell flat with our only enjoyable portions being his free-falling without a parachute and rollerblading laying down that brought him under vehicles most of the time.

On the other hand, Broken City started off promisingly for us with its portrait of a big city riddled with corruption preparing for the upcoming mayoralty elections. What luck, we thought, it is a portrait of Manila where Russell Crowe is Mayor Alfredo Lim and Barry Pepper is ex-President Joseph Estrada as his competitor. Both are interesting characters; both are not without their faults big and small.

While Russell succeeds in attracting attention (after a disappointing role in Les Mis) as the brilliantly corrupt mayor who has more up his sleeve than anyone could muster, it is Mark Wahlberg as Billy Taggart, dismissed cop turned private eye, drunkard and homophobic, who shines in his performance. Catherine Zeta-Jones as the mayor’s wife is a welcome addition to the cast.

Most reviews we read were bored stiff, dismissing the film as film noir of big city corruption of 60 years ago. But this is no film noir, this is today Manila, today Philippines, and to us the characters run so true, especially the part where mayor is found to have been involved in a billion dollar fraud where a financial firm has bought a low-income housing complex call Bolton Village and made oodles out of it for him and his cronies.

Another film we watched and enjoyed was Warm Bodies adapted from a book that tells of a zombie named R (Nicholas Hoult) who falls in love with human Julie (Teresa Palmer). It ends in an unbelievable story of how Julie reciprocates his feelings, and helps R in running up the battalion of zombies to change their ways, and the humans to change theirs. Amazing, but despite the odd premise, a love story is a love story and we found those beside us wiping away their tears. Come on guys, if you can accept how Twilight ends, this can be no different.

Finally, we go to the biopic Hitchcock, the most revered director of his generation, and it could have been considered blasphemy to tamper with his life and works. And yet, that is what director Sacha Gervasi deigned to achieve, with the expected result of sneers from the gallery as well as the boxes, which we attribute more to envy than anything else. 

Presented as a commemoration of Hitchcock’s works, for the most part the period between North by NorthWest and Psycho, the film has been dubbed “dishonestly reverential and sentimental.” With Anthony Hopkins as a perfect Hitch, he has been shown to be alternately obsessive, bullish, ruthless and troubled, with an inordinate interest in blonde leading ladies and a married life where brilliant wife (Helen Mirren) who was once his boss is relegated to the shadows. The problem with biopics is that one has no idea when truth ends and fiction begins.

As the Washington Post puts it, “There’s something tonally off about the master of anxiety, neurosis and disquiet being depicted in a story this cozy.”

The great cast is completed by Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh, James D’Arcy as Anthony Perkins, Toni Colette as Hitch’s long-suffering assistant, Michael Stuhlbarg as Hitchcock’s agent, Richard Portnow as the legendary Barney Balaban and Jessica Biel as Vera Miles.

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