Conan The Barbarian

CAST: Jason Momoa, Ron Perlman, Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan, Rachel Nichols, Saïd Taghmaoui, Leo Howard, Bob Sapp, Katarzyna Wolejnio, Nonso Anozie; DIRECTOR: Marcus Nispel; WRITER: Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer; GENRE: Action/Adventure; RUNNING TIME: 112 minutes.

Technical Assessment: 4

Moral Assessment: 2

CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 18 and above.

A character originally created by Robert E. Howard, Conan is a great warrior in the continent of Hyboria.  When Conan (Jason Momoa) is but slightly older than a boy, he loses his father.  He alone survives when his village of Cimmeria is razed to the ground and his people, including his father, massacred by a marauding army led by Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang).  This sadistic man is assisted by his sorceress daughter Marique (Rose McGowan) in his search for the missing fragments of a strange mask which will give him the powers of a god.  He finds the last missing fragment in Cimmeria and his army marches on its path of destruction.  Conan grows up in the fringes of the cities, sharpens his fighting skills and nurtures in his heart the desire to avenge his father’s death.  When he is ready for his mission of revenge, he goes in search of his father’s murderer.  Khalar Zym, on the other hand, is on another quest for the only surviving descendant of the pure bloodline of an ancient royal dynasty.  He believes the blood of this descendant, a beautiful girl named Tamara (Rachel Nichols) will bring back to life his sorceress wife and thus usher in an era of unprecedented power and evil in Hyboria.  Conan finds himself thrust into a mission that is more than self satisfying revenge.

Conan The Barbarian is an unadulterated war spectacle. Except for some “peaceful” interludes which are actually scenes of impending bloodshed, the film is crowded with graphic gory fights and fierce battles from the beginning to the end.  And at the end everyone and everything evil is annihilated by the hero just like the expected ending of a fairytale.  For the movie is also like a dark hued fairytale with its sorcery, black magic, monsters, accursed object (a mask, not a ring this time), and the “knight” (but not in his shining armor) who rescues a damsel in distress after slaying, not the dragons, but equally hideous serpents and other sea monsters.  This present movie is a remake of an earlier one that is said to have helped launch an unknown (at that time) Arnold Schwarzenegger into his successful movie career.  It is doubtful, however, that this present movie will bring the lead actor into sudden fame.  Though Jason Momoa has a body that may be the envy of many and fighting skills meant for an action picture, this movie can hardly make an impression.  The setting (some building and castles in the midst of barren deserts look like cardboard sets), the costumes, lighting, dialogues, even the music may need upgrading.  Some of the lead actors, though not so well known, are adequate in their acting.  Rose McGowan as Tamara looks lovely but does not have much chemistry with the hero.  The movie with its hi-tech CGI and good special effects may be entertaining for action picture aficionados.

When one hears the word “barbarian”, one conjures up images of cruelty, immorality or behavior unacceptable in civilized society.  Well, all of these are found in this movie.  And since Conan the protagonist here is called the “barbarian”, one wonders if he can be both barbarian and hero at the same time.  For to most of us, a hero vanquishes what is evil and is the embodiment of what is good and noble, though not without a flaw. Well, Conan is consumed with hate and desire for revenge for his father’s death.  And one can understand why he feels this way.  One can empathize with a son who has lost a reversed father and most especially if the father has been murdered.  It is a crime that cries to heaven for justice and yet one can never justify revenge and exact another death or “take the law into your own hands”.  Our Christian values are such that we cannot right a wrong by doing another wrong.  Now this “barbaric” side of Conan is tempered by another facet of his character – his kindness to others especially the oppressed and the unfortunate as seen in his fights to free the slaves and captives from cruel treatment.  He does not have to risk his life for them or for the girl Tamara who he does not know and to whom he is not attracted, at first.  But he does.  This spirit of self sacrifice, also bravery and heroism in the face of great odds especially when done for others are positive values in the movie, but the  excessive violence, gore and brutality are objectionable especially for the young who can get desensitized  to violence.  Although the sexual scenes are mostly done in the shadows, still there is implicit sexual intimacy outside of marriage and this cannot be condoned.

Revenge Of The College Ghost

CAST:  Carly Schroeder, Cody Linley, Micah alberti; DIRECTOR: Tyler Olier; GENRE: Horror/Suspense; RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes

Technical Assessment: 2

Moral Assessment: 2

CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 18 and above

Newly high school graduates Sandy (Carly Schorader) her brother and friends are having fun in their graduation party when they suddenly decide to go to the graveyard where they used to play hide and seek with rhyme as children and do it again as adults.  On arrival at the game site, a strange girl appears and wants to play with them.  Despite finding it odd, they think there is nothing wrong to have her in the game so they take her in.  They continue the fun until the strange girl is trapped to be the end loser of the game and at the full sight of Sandy jumps off the cliff.  The friends report the incident to the police, however the body is nowhere to be found.  Since then, the friends of Sandy are killed one after another without any trace. They disappear together with memories of them except with Sandy who is the only one left to remember her missing friends.  Because of this, she is mistaken to have developed lunatic tendencies and needed medical helps. In Sandy's struggle to prove otherwise, she realizes that a childhood friend named Angela whom they have wronged many years ago has something to do with the strange happenings particularly the disappearance of her friends. 

One thing unusual in the story of the film Revenge of the College Ghost is that, the spirit in revenge is not of the dead rather that of a living person under the state of comma relying on life support who has been confined for a long time at the hospital.  The idea of deleting people in the memories of people they lived with except the lead character is mind boggling for viewers.  However, this niche of the story does not compensate the overall treatment of the film.  The settings together with the flashback scenes are like bits and pieces put together without continuity.  The cast does not look like newly high school graduates in their teens. They appear to be all experienced adults who are into active sex, drinking and looting spree.  Acting wise most of the actors in the film could not do any better.  The film is actually more of a suspense thriller than horror.  The appearance of the shaking ghost does not help either.  Overall, the film has not much to offer technically.

Everybody is called to be good at any stage of life.  The film Revenge of the College Ghost depicts that the wrong deeds in childhood will haunt and even make a person's life miserable.  It touches on a confusing theme of the unlikely wandering of a revengeful ghost of a still living person that is capable of  killing people who wronged her in the past.  With the varying manners of death particularly the very gory ones, obviously, life is not valued in this film. The young people depicted in the film have the tendency to be irresponsible and insensitive.  Whilst the film has the context of the western culture, the Filipino viewers may be cautioned that high school graduation weekend happening can be wholesome as against sexually-oriented, alcoholism, looting and daring graveyard night game as depicted in the film.  Even the lead character who initially resists but eventually joins the looting and even unofficially applies euthanasia to the girl in comma.  The little effort that show good sides of the characters are hardly notice due to overwhelming exposure of conflicting values in the film.

The Smurfs

CAST: Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris, Jayma Mays, Sofia Vergara; DIRECTOR: Raja Gosnell; WRITER: Peyo, J. David Stem, David N. Weiss; GENRE: Animation, Family, SciFi/Fantasy; RUNNING TIME: 86 minutes.

Technical Assessment: 3.5

Moral Assessment: 3

CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 13 and below with parental guidance.

SYPNOSIS: The Smurfs make their first trip to the big screen in Columbia Pictures'/Sony Pictures Animation's hybrid live-action and animated family comedy, The Smurfs. When the evil wizard Gargamel chases the Smurfs out of their village, they're forced through a portal, out of their world and into ours, landing in the middle of New York's Central Park. Just three apples high and stuck in the Big Apple, the Smurfs must find a way to get back to their village before Gargamel tracks them down.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

CAST: James Franco, Tom Felton, Andy Serkis, Brian Cox, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, David Hewlett, Tyler Labine, Leah Gibson, Jamie Harris; DIRECTOR: Rupert Wyatt; WRITER: Amanda Silver, Rick Jaffa, Jamie Moss, Pierre Boulle; GENRE: Animation, Suspense/Thriller; RUNNING TIME: 110 minutes.

Technical Assessment: 4

Moral Assessment: 3.5

CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 13 and below with parental guidance.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes opens with a mad hunt for simians in the deep jungle, for transporting to a laboratory in New York, where Will Rodman (James Franco) does research  exploring drug therapies for diseases of the brain.  One of the apes, named Bright Eyes, soon catches the technicians’ eye for her superior intelligence—the effect, apparently, of her being given the test drug.  Convincing his boss that the drug has great potential for medical and financial success, Will makes a presentation for the board of directors to invest in the breakthrough drug.  Bright Eyes is supposed to be the star of the presentation, but as she is coaxed out of her cell, Bright Eyes becomes vicious, resulting in a wild chase in the laboratory that ends in the presentation room where Bright Eyes is shot dead on the conference table.

Soon Will and his assistant discover a baby chimpanzee under Bright Eyes’ bed, and realize that the dead chimp in her ferocious behavior was not being aggressive but only being protective of her new born.  Meanwhile, the boss has ordered that all 12 chimpanzees being drug tested be put away.  Because Will and the assistant do not have the heart to put down the baby chimp, Will agrees to secretly take it home for a few days.  Days stretch into weeks, months and years until the baby chimp, named Caesar by Will’s Alzheimer-stricken father, grows into a remarkably intelligent simian.  Caesar’s loyalty to his human family results in mayhem, disturbing the neighborhood until there is no choice but for Caesar to be hauled away to the local zoo. 

If you have seen Planet of the Apes’ progenitors, you might expect another B-movie of this one, but no.  First, the apes here are no longer actors wearing ape suits.  And the apes here are… well, the apes here rise, as the title says.  Especially Caesar.   Motion-captured by Andy Serkis, Caesar—who reaps our kudos for singlehandedly creating the suspense in this film—is nothing the audience is prepared to meet.   Serkis motion-captured the character Gollum in Lord of the Rings—remember?

Motion-capturing is a fascinating cinematic process where the human actor plays the part but the film character’s image is subsequently superimposed on the actor’s.  Avatar used the same technology and the same WETA FX team of technicians.  In this case, the actor is Serkis, and the character is Caesar the chimp.  Thus in the final product we don’t see Serkis anymore, only the chimp.  That’s pretty tough for Serkis who had to learn how to move and emote like an ape for his character to be credible.  Human acting skills plus technology equals astonishing movie moments.  Director Rupert Wyatt plus Serkis plus WETA FX techno-magic equals the rise of Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  Add to that the just-right script by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver and you have a powerful tale to remember.  Franco’s performance also reveals a compassionate dimension never before seen in past roles.  We cannot go on assessing the film without eventually giving spoilers.   In order to grasp the complexity of the plot as well as the mysteriousness of life that it dwells on, one must view the film—rather, experience the film—even without reading a review of it.    

One exceptionally good thing about Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the confident handling by Wyatt of red-hot issues like DNA manipulation, man’s cruelty to animals, father-son relationship, corporate greed and the dignity of death.  His almost casual treatment of such delicate subjects serves as a flawless background for unexpected tenderness, much like crumpled black velvet cradling exquisite pearls in its folds.  We have yet to meet a person who wasn’t uplifted from watching this film.  Go see it and tell us what you think.

Cowboys & Aliens

CAST: Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Sam Rockwell, Clancy Brown, Paul Dano, Keith Carradine, Abigail Spencer,, Ana de la Reguera, Noah Ringer; DIRECTOR: Jon Favreau; SCREENWRITER:  Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby; PRODUCER: Alex Kurtzman, Scott Michelle Rosenberg, Roberto Orci, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard; EDITOR: Dan Lebental, Jim May; MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Harry Gregson-Williams; GENRE: Action/Adventure, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Thriller,  Western & Adaptation; CINEMATOGRAPHER: Matthew Libatique; DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures; LOCATION: USA; RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes.

Technical Assessment: 3.5

Moral Assessment: 3

CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 14 and above.

A stranger (Daniel Craig) who knows and remembers nothing except the English language stumbles into a desert town named Absolution with a shackle around one wrist.  Lean and mean, he s a gunslinger and is feared from the start, but when recognized as the wanted criminal Jon Lonergan, he becomes the target of the town’s iron-fisted ruler Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford).  Absolution’s town folks live in fear but the fear of human tyrants turns into terror of the unknown when the town is attacked by screaming aliens who set it on fire and abduct townsfolk at random.  Then the mysterious stranger Lonergan becomes the town’s sole hope for salvation. Lonergan slowly starts to recall who he is and where he’s been, and discovers the power behind the shackle on his wrist.  Aided by another mysterious traveler Ella (Wilde), Lonergan forms a posse oddly composed of  his opponents, Dolarhyde and his cohort, outlaws, Apache warriors.  They have one thing in common: their survival is threatened by the aliens.

The title sounds jokey, but the movie is not.  It’s in fact a cross between a class B Western (set in 1873) and class B science fiction, but in fairness, director Jon Favreau makes the odd combination work, turning it into light entertainment that is never too funny to look trivial.  But maybe because at this point, one cannot imagine a movie being that funny when Daniel Craig is in it, he who plays characters in movies that forbid him to smile.   Besides, Craig is, after all, still James Bond in the back of our mind, nobody to fool around with.  That may not be too good for Craig’s career in the long run.  Stereo-typing equals predictability, see?  It’s bad for the box office.  But let’s focus on Cowboys and Aliens for now.  Technically it’s okay, even surprising at some turns in spite of its computer generated protagonists, and with some big names in the kitchen like Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Gazer, the viewer is assured the storyline is worth the time it takes to finish a bucket of popcorn in the theater.

Cowboys and Aliens is “new” in the sense that the good guys and the bad guys of the traditional Westerns here stop trying to annihilate each other and instead merge to fight off the extraterrestrials.  When enemies unite to reduce collateral damage by saving the innocent, that’s good for planet earth, isn’t it?  When bad guys rise to goodness and good guys rise to heroism, the transformation does everyone a lot of good, correct?  Cowboys and Aliens is strong on promoting the family, too, and that makes it easier for the viewer to close an eye on its Western style and CGI violence.  There’s a part where a character complains that God hasn’t done much for him, and another answers to the effect that we shouldn't expect God to do everything—we have to “earn His presence... recognize it, and act on it”.   Not a bad message for a movie that aims to be a different Western, one with aliens with secret inner parts that unfold from their chest cavities—like the lethal drills that protrude from James Bond’s car tires—to rip humans open.