Street Dance 3D

Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Patrick Baladi, Nichola Burley, Chris Wilson, Eleanor Bron; Directors: Max Giwa, Dania Pasquini; Producers: Allan Niblo, James Richardson; Screenwriter: Jane English; Editor: Tim Murrell; Genre: Drama/ Dance: Cinematography: Sam McCurdy; Distributor: Viva International Pictures; Location: UK; Running Time: 98 mins;

Technical Assessment: 3
Moral Assessment: 3
CINEMA Rating: For viewers 14 and above

Street Dance 3D features winners from the reality show Britain’s Got Talent and heavily borrows themes from previous dance movies: competition, fusion of styles and determination. The movie begins with Carly faced with putting together her dance crew after Jay, the leader and her boyfriend, announces that he is leaving. The crew also loses their rehearsal space and is to find alternative spaces which at times prove to be insufficient. The crew dreams of winning a dance off finals and make it to New York but things look impossible without an appropriate rehearsal space. Fortunately, Carly meets Helena, a ballet instructor running her own studio with a lot of talented but passionless dancers, in one of her deliveries. She manages to invite Helena to her crew's rehearsal. Helena is impressed with the group's vibrance and offers Carly free use of the ballet studio on condition that Carly would teachstreet dance to the ballet students. The task is difficult at first as the two dance disciplines clash with each other but in the end, the ballerinas and the street dancers become friends and come up with a unique dance choreography. The plot thickens as Carly falls for Thomas, one of the ballet students, while Jay tries to get back to her.

Very seldom do we see a dance movie with a serious plot other than trying to win in a competition or pass an audition. Street Dance is not different. You’ve seen the storyline once too often that at the very first dance sequence, you already know the last one. The performances are a little too flat – a common dilemma in trying to cast real non-acting dancers. The dance disciplines are a bit type-casted. Ballet need not be stiff and snooty and street dance need not be carefree and crude. The choreography is good and entertaining but nothing really memorable that will be a signature move in the years to follow. However, Street Dance has one trick up its sleeves – the use of 3D technology. With a lot of stop-motions, intricate leaps and footwork and powerful music, the movie is very entertaining and enjoyable.

There are two important lessons one can pick up from the movie. One is determination to succeed. In life, we always have a competition to win and a goal to accomplish. The movie reminds us that along the way to success are heartaches and challenges and we need not only a strong character but also resourcefulness and flexibility. There are times you have to work with people or circumstances that are completely the opposite of what you are used to. And learning to deal with such adversities strengthens your person and improves your creativity. Another lesson deals with unity as a fruit of respect and acceptance. People need to acknowledge the beauty and brilliance of another no matter how good he or she may be in one area. Learning to do so opens people up to cooperation and collaboration, thus leading to more refined and profound output.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Bryce Dallas Howard, Xavier Samuel; Director: David Slade; Producers: Wyck Godfrey, Greg Mooradian, Karen Rosenfelt; Screenwriters: Stephanie Meyer, Melissa Rosenberg; Music: Howard Shore; Editor: Art Jones, Nancy Richardson; Genre: Fantasy/ Romance/ Thriller; Cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe; Distributor: Summit Entertainment; Location: Vancouver, Canada; Running Time: 124 mins;

Technical Assessment: 3.5
Moral Assessment: 3.5
CINEMA Rating: For viewers 14 and above

The message of Eclipse
By Teresa R. Tunay, OCDS

Jacob is hot about Bella, Bella is hot about Edward, Edward is keeping his cool until he marries Bella. Champions of chastity should know how to use the movie to advance their cause.

SYNOPSIS. The police are perplexed by inexplicable disappearance of otherwise ordinary and peaceful citizens from several counties around Forks, Washington. They suspect that these people have been attacked by wolves. The truth is they’re being “recruited”. The redhead vampire Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her new vampire-lover Riley (Xavier Samuel) are creating an army of “newborns”—freshly bitten humans-turned-vampires—by abducting and ambushing these mortals and sinking their fangs into their victims’ necks. Victoria wants to wipe out the Cullens and the mortal teenager Bella (Kristen Stewart) to avenge the death of her true love James. Newborns are supposedly much stronger than vampires who’ve been around for decades, thus the Cullens admit that even in number alone they are no match against the plasma-thirsty newborns. Bella’s sweetheart Edward (Robert Pattinson) and her admirer Jacob (Taylor Lautner) are left with no choice but to make a truce and combine forces to protect Bella from Victoria and her neophyte but plasma-hungry recruits.

REVIEW. Now it’s not just vampires against werewolves. It’s bad vampires against good vampires collaborating with werewolves while the inscrutable Volturi, the vampires’ ruling council, watch from the bleachers. Interesting? You bet.

The action is Eclipse’s edge over the first two movie versions of Stephanie Meyer’s saga, Twilight and New Moon. With no mean thanks to CGI (computer generated images) wolves the size of well-fed lions battle lightning-quick vampires—that’s a novelty, but there are way too many swish-pan shots and quick cuts to close ups for the viewer to clearly see how the fight progresses. You see who survives the encounter but how it happens is left to your imagination; after the initial collision between werewolf and vampire, you just see one or the other dead. (Jackie Chan offers infinitely better choreography!)

Vampire to vampire combat, however, isn’t that bad; action is sustained until one emerges as victor. One thing about this movie: the carnage is bloodless. When a werewolf is killed, you just see a dead animal, period—a slaughterhouse is definitely bloodier. Even when a vampire is decapitated, no blood flows out of the wound—just crushed ice, like that which spills out of your freezer when you clumsily empty it. (That can’t be said of Ninja movies where blood flows like a leaking fire hydrant.)

So, if only for the stylized and bloodless violence, maybe some would rate Eclipse like a cartoon—funny enough for young children—but if you examine the primary storyline, perhaps you might see it’s dangerous for teenagers. And immature adults.

The story, plain and simple, is a dime-a-dozen romance involving two males and a female. But the Meyer mythos lends the love-triangle a different coloration—one male is a vampire, the other is a werewolf and since according to the novelist vampires and werewolves are by instinct (im)mortal enemies, the rivalry between the two over the human female consequently offers more dynamic interaction than if all three belonged to species homo sapiens.

Minus the vampire-werewolf backdrop, Eclipse is but a story of lust—suppressed and unrequited lust. Putting it nicely in teen lingo, Jacob is hot about Bella, Bella is hot about Edward, Edward is keeping his cool until he marries Bella. One male teenage viewer coming out of the theater was overheard, “Puro Bella, Bella, Bella, nakaka-irita!” (It’s all about Bella, it’s irritating!) But that can’t be helped, considering that novelist Meyer’s intention is really to focus on chastity—and what better way to make chastity shine than to set it deep against a swirling mass of dark, overpowering emotions?

Bella is a self-absorbed teen-ager searching for her identity, a virgin who has fallen in love with a vampire and wants to give herself totally to him, now. But Edward is pat on his principles so he tells Bella: marry me first. Gripped by incomprehensible passions, she rejects Edward’s stand as “ancient” but hangs on to him anyway, while remaining ambivalent about Jacob, her muscular, shirtless admirer. She says she’s in love with Edward but wouldn’t let go Jacob—what a tease. Bella may be in love with Edward, but she’s also in love with the idea of being in love with a vampire, and is beguiled by the prospect of being forever 18.

What Bella doesn’t seem to realize—let alone be willing to admit—is that it is lust controlling her this time. She keeps Jacob around to boost her ego which is repeatedly bruised by Edward’s constant refusal to yield to her sexual availability. When Bella kisses Jacob in plain view of Edward, she probably has in mind, “Look, Eddie Boy, if you don’t want me, somebody else badly does!” When Edward says, “You love him (Jacob)”, and she answers “I love you more”, she could be thinking, “Yeah, Jake’s got gorgeous pecs, but yours glisten in the sun!” So, what is Bella really after?

Jacob is after Bella—has always been since Twilight, through New Moon—though it’s doubtful whether he wants Bella for her own good. Cocksure about Bella’s covert feelings for him, he’s much too wrapped up in his desires to even begin to know what Bella really wants. His consistent sales pitch to Bella is You’re-a-fool-for-wanting-him-when-I’m-better-for-you, uttered in various versions but almost always with a wolfish growl. Jacob’s smugness borders on the ridiculous when he says to Edward, “I’m hotter than you!” Yeah, we know it’s because werewolves are supposed to be warm-blooded while vampires are made of ice inside, but, Attention, please!—his close-up shot here reveals Lautner really meant it for Pattinson, not for Edward. Hot and hotter—such is the name of the showbiz game.

If Meyer’s point in her saga is upholding chastity, she uses the century-old vampire Edward to advance her cause. His decisions and actions show it, and his lines are unequivocal. Edward, despite multiple graduations from high school through the decades, still ticks with the mores of his times—when a man courted a woman, asked her father for her hand in marriage, and kept the fire in his loins under control until the wedding night. Of the three characters in the love triangle, Edward is the one who loves most selflessly, putting the welfare of his beloved above his own. As Jacob is to realize in time, Edward is a gentleman’s gentleman, willing to let Bella go should she opt to be with another man.

Before you decide whether to align yourself with Team Edward or Team Jacob, remember it’s only a movie. Engaging though it is, like a telenovela to many people, this vampiric business is still fiction. At the rate Eclipse is drawing crowds (eight out of 12 movie theaters in a popular mall is showing Eclipse, with the 2D version selling tickets at 400 pesos each), a reality check is in order. To prevent yourselves from getting carried away by this Gothic romance, ponder these silly concerns:

--If vampires are made of ice inside, does it follow that whatever they eat become frozen in there?
--If these bloodsuckers don’t bleed, what has happened to all that blood they’ve swallowed for eons?
--If vampires and werewolves can come to a truce for the sake of a loved one, does this mean there’s hope for the war freaks of our world?
--Since vampires claim being a vampire is a curse they don’t want, then why do they still defend themselves when attacked? Why not just allow themselves to be killed? Or is suicide a no-no for vampires?
--On what day of creation did God create vampires and werewolves?
--Is this movie safe for young children? Answer: Parents who let their 3-year-old watch Twilight on DVD with them were aghast when guests asked the child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and the kid gleefully replied, “I wanna be a vampire!”

Eclipse offers much to discuss at home or in school; church workers, take note. Fiction though it is, the fact that young people are trooping to the theaters to watch Eclipse means they resonate somehow with the movie’s content. They may identify with the characters, or recognize their own demons in the tug-of-war between the characters.

The tug-of-war is not between Jacob and Edward, but between Bella and Edward (lust and chastity), between Bella and herself (to want or to wait), and between the two brats Bella and Jacob—(I want what I want now!). The message in Eclipse is, really, “True love waits.” It is Edward’s stand. Isn’t it ironic that it should come from a vampire? Young people pay over and over again to hear that message—if champions of chastity see that as the factor behind Robert Pattinson’s instant stardom, they should know how to use it to advance their cause. Bella may have said Edward’s spiel for chastity is “ancient” without realizing she spoke the truth. The virtue is “ancient” because it has survived generations of vice; and it has survived because deep within the human heart, chastity is the desire of all ages.

(The author is Founding Board Member of the CBCP/CINEMA)

Predators

Cast: Adriene Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Oleg Taktarov; Director: Nimrod Antal; Producers: Elizabeth Avellan, John Davis, Robert Rodriguez; Screenwrites: Alex Litvak, Michael Finch; Music: John Debney; Editor: Dan Zimmerman; Genre: Action/ Adventure/ Sci-Fi; Cinematography: Gyula Pados; Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Location: USA; Running Time: 107 min.;

Technical Assessment: 3
Moral Assessment: 2.5
CINEMA Rating: For viewers 14 and above

One by one, they drop down from the sky and into the jungle, giving the impression that they are all part of a parachuting outing gone wrong. Are they trainees in a jungle survival exercise? It seems no, because each of them is ready to kill man or beast in order to save his own neck. Soon they learn that they are all killers. They are Royce (Adriend Brody), a dyed to the wool mercenary; Isabelle (Alice Braga), an Israeli army sniper; Cuchillo (Danny Trejo), an Hispanic drug-gang enforcer; Stans (Walter Goggins), a death-row convict; Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov), a Russian Special Forces operative; an African warlord (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali); a Yakuza (Louis Ozawa Changchien); and Edwin (Topher Grace), a mild-mannered doctor who’s the only one among them who is not a killer. With survival as their main concern, they realize it’s much better to have bad company than to be alone in such a menacing environment. And later, they discover they are on another planet, and while the vegetation closely resembles Earth’s, the animals are an entirely different matter. The truth soon dawns on them: they have been brought there in order to be hunted for sport by unknown predators.

The main hitch about attack movies such as Predators is its predictability. You are sure the lead characters will in the end prevail over their predators, so that the suspense is in guessing the order in which the others will be eliminated. Punctuating the rather slow first half hour of Predators are escapes from booby traps and metallic monsters that look like warthogs. By the middle of the movie the tension stems from the identity of the invisible hunters: who are they, and what do they want from the humans? The casting is good, lending credibility to each character; and the actors prove their respectability by giving serious performance despite the implausible plot. The steamy jungle and its strange creatures keep audience attention level high, while cinematography blends well with CGI.

Predators offers many opportunities for mixed group discussions on ethics and life values. One question to throw would be “Would you kill people for a living?” It could also tease minds by asking “Why is it that the only one who seems to have a conscience in the movie is the woman? Are women more moral than men?” Science teachers should also enlighten their students about a breathtaking scene where the planet is surrounded by four moons too big and too close to be real: remember this is science fiction. Those with queasy stomachs and delicate ears are warned: bodies are impaled and guts spill out in this movie; obscenities and other unprintable words are uttered as well. Remember these characters are mercenaries, not diplomats.

Toy Story 3

Cast: (Voice only) Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Estelle Harris, Michael Keaton; Director: Lee Unkrich; Producers: ; Screenwriters: Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich; Genre: Animation/ Comedy/ Adventure: Distributor: Pixar/ Walt Disney; Running Time: 102 mins;

Technical Assessment: 4
Moral Assessment: 3
CINEMA Rating: For viewrs age 13 and below with parental guidance

Andy, the owner of the toys is now grown-up and is leaving for college. His mother asked him to sort his things and decide which goes to the boxes labeled ‘college’, ‘attic’, ‘donation’ or the garbage bag. This is such a heart-wrenching moment for his toys that have not been played for a long time and have been kept in the toy chest for years. Andy decides to put Woody in the box “going to college” while his other toy friends are put in a trash bag but Andy intends to put them at the attic. His choice of container leads to a near rendezvous of the toys to the garbage truck. Afraid that they may end up in the landfill, the toys managed to climb back and decide to go to the ‘donation’ box headed to a day care center. Woody knows the garbage truck incident was a mistake and he tries to convince them to come back home. The group did not believe Woody and they find themselves in the day care center and welcomed by a strawberry scented bear named Lotso. They are convinced that they have found their new home in the day care center and are assured by Lotso that they will be played there. Woody is still not convinced so they decided to part ways. Woody later on learns that Lotso is not the friendly teddy bear he appears to be and his toy friends are now in danger.

Toy Story 3 could be the most anticipated family movie of the year. Being the third installment of a successful franchise, it has to at least be at par with its earlier versions or better. And it never failed in this respect. The creators of the movie managed to thicken the plot with its new premise and additional villain characters which are far more evil-like and frightening than the previous villains in earlier movies, making Toy Story 3 the darkest film of the franchise. This time, the fun and laughs are lesser, but the sentiments are more or less the same. The movie is still as imaginative and the “great escape” adventure of the toy characters is very engaging. The voice actors are great as they have always been. All in all, Toy Story 3 remains to be both fun and heart-warming experience that brings out the child in all of its audience no matter what age.

The Toy Story has been working on its original premise, what if toys are like humans with feelings and emotions. This makes the children, and even the child-at-heart, appreciate all things around, both living and non-living, especially those that make them happy however temporary. The film successfully conveys this idea and achieves such effect to a great extent. For most times, audiences forget that they are actually watching toys. In the movie, toys are actually more human than other humans. How does it really feel to be abandoned? Or left alone? Or betrayed? It is almost always easier to escape and evade but the toys in the story has taught its audience loyalty, courage, perseverance and far more importantly, hope. Against all odds, they stick together and their friendship and camaraderie make them survive any ordeal, making things work for them in the process including a peaceful turnover, a meaningful goodbye and a sentimental letting go. The evil ones get their punishment and the good ones are rewarded. However, the ‘prison break’ and ‘great escape’ plots and some degree of violence in the movie may be a bit dark for the very young so CINEMA recommends that parents supervise their children below 13 years old while watching.

The Karate Kid

ASSESSMENT ONLY
Cast: Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan, Taraji P. Henson, Wenwen Han, Shenwei Wang; Director: Harald Zwart; Producers: Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Ken Stovitz, Jerry Weintraub, James Lassiter; Screenwriter: Christopher Murphey; Genre: Action/Drama/Family/Sport: Cinematography: Rodger Pratt; Distributor: Columbia Pictures; Location: USA/ China; Running Time: 140 mins;

Technical Assessment: 4
Moral Assessment: 3
CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 13 and below with parental guidance

BRIEF FILM SYNOPSIS

Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) is a 12-year old living in Detroit, USA when his mother Sherry (Traraji P. Henson) gets a job in China. Once in China, Dre misses home and wants to go back to the USA. His mother tells him that China is home now, and he must learn to accept his new home. Dre begins to like China when he falls for his classmate Mei Ying (Wenwen Han). Dre’s feelings for Mei Ying are seen by Cheng (Shenwei Wang) the class bully who is out to stop it. Cheng puts Dre to the ground with ease using his Kung Fu training. Dre doesn’t have a chance of using the little karate that he knows, and Cheng proves it the next time he sees Dre. Dre is getting beaten badly when Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) the maintenance man, secretly a Kung Fu Master, stops the fight. Dre persuades Mr. Han to teach him Kung Fu. With this knowledge, Dre must now face down Cheng in a fight to win his respect in a Kung Fu tournament.