Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell)

The couple in grief.

Distressing emotions encapsulates "Rabbit Hole", a film adapted from a stage play about a couple dealing with the aftermath of their son's accidental death and its wheel boot-like effect to their ability to move on. Again, these are one of those films that, if handled carelessly, can easily drift into cheap melodrama. But "Rabbit Hole", with all its cinematic simplicity and believable performances delivered by Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman (an actress very much used in playing emotionally incapacitated housewives), it has carried itself as a film dealing with realistic situational emotions rather than a dramatic show-off.

I am in no possible position to expound myself and mutter solutions about the couple's grief in the film. Yes, standing from afar, looking in as a pseudo-caring outsider, one can give out emotionally hollow words to console the sufferers just for the sake of giving in to the idea of helping out. But as the film portrayed all the pain of letting go in the center of a suburban landscape, it will take more than friends and some group therapies: One needs to do it within, swat away the personal demons, and emerge from the titular 'rabbit hole' of despair anew.

Symbolically, it seems easy and we may see married couples who have lost their child having a constant smile on their face. I'm not heading into pessimistic territories here, but I think those who wears weary smiles are the ones who haven't got out of the symbolic hole completely. They can easily be those who have mutually decided to just live a clockwork existence based on half-meant acceptance. It may sound harsh, they may look happy, they may have reclaimed possession of a vehicle towards a fresh beginning, but the wheel boots are still on and they're not moving any further. But then again, as I have told, I'm in no position to tell of solutions, just plain, instinctive speculations.

For some, "Rabbit Hole", although a very simple film, may be emotionally too much, but the film supplied its own consolation to husbands and wives with the same emotional condition: 'One must think of a parallel universe'. That somewhere, amidst the sadness in one, everything's right and ideal on the other. Illusion it maybe, but it's a start.

FINAL RATING

Unstoppable (Tony Scott)

"Damn Ethan Suplee!"

Tony Scott/Denzel Washington action vehicle (with Chris Pine somewhere in the backseat) that inherited its tension and suspense from films likely to have gotten such factors from: Yes, you guessed right, "Speed" and "Die Hard". But this time, there's no lunacy-drowned Dennis Hopper or a smooth-talking but devious Alan Rickman to thwart, but a train of doom propelled into a certain explosive destruction via the incompetence of Ethan Suplee's character aka the 'indirect villain of the film'. The initial relationship between Chris Pine and Denzel Washington's characters was kind of a good-natured version of that in "Training Day". It mirrors Denzel's interaction with Ethan Hawke in the said film enough for me to anticipate him to convince Chris Pine to smoke a joint while they operate on some trains.

Do not get me wrong, their bond, though a bit pushed just for the sake of putting some emotional meat into the characters, is about to head into a very good chemistry. But because of the film's cliched characterizations, both of them transformed into, well, cardboard heroes engaged to save the artificial day once more. And as if implying our ignorance of some heavily complex machinery involving locomotives and railroads, director Tony Scott smartly inserted some perfectly detailed situational graphics and explanations on how the various plans would turn out. Disguised as media snippets. Yes. You reckon how reporters expound certain things to television viewers? That's how it is.

On a different note, I'm also at odds with certain emotions involved in the film, such as all the other characters, except the two leads, clapping and shouting ecstatic cheers ("You can do it, daddy!) every time Chris Pine dodges certain death or when Denzel Washington successfully jumps through tank cars. Come on, you're not watching televised sports. And while they're on the mood for that, they could have distributed some beers and placed bets. It should have sealed the deal for some maximum television entertainment.

And one other thing, as proven with an exclamation point and fully suggested by an epilogue title card, if you're an action movie character separated from your wife and kids and is living a meaningless existence, do something heroic. No, not helping an old lady cross the street. Not even saving a kid from a house on fire. To ensure tearful reconciliatory realization, stop an explosive train. And to regain your daughters' cheery attitudes, receive a kiss from Rosario Dawson. Now you see how paradoxical Hollywood can get in solving certain domestic problems? There's "Unstoppable" for you.

FINAL RATING

The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese)

two people consuming the fruits of forbidden love.

Film Review Archive (date seen: January 4, 2011)

Once again, Scorsese leads us through places almost bound with secrecy, wrapped in customs, littered with hidden scandals, and the people that inhabits them whose mastery of conversations, socialization, and even dining were too great in its artificiality that they almost looked like performance acts. No, it's not the Italian-flavored crimeland we're talking about here, but 19th century New York where high society dwells on everything material and excessive, where moral righteousness is not a code to follow but more of a trend to fashionably don.

At first, I had doubts if Scorsese's known visual compositions really belong to such a type of film set in an era of restraint and conservatism. But with his combination of attention to details and an inclined exploratory viewpoint of the social class' amoral gutters amidst its elegant vanity, he used a distinct style (at times, darkening everything on screen but a smooth-edged circle to contain the main subjects, or even letting a character face the camera and speak of a potentially saddening letter with great joy and eagerness) to really fit the film's grasp of irony. Those who accuse Daniel Day-Lewis as a scenery-chewing hack will be utterly disproved in his performance in this film, using the fine attitudes of an obligatory gentleman to depict the numbered movements of an 1870's society male while maintaining his attachment with controlled subtlety. With this type of acting approach, Day-Lewis has able to internalize and show on screen his character Newland Archer's episodic implosions about his clamor for freeing himself from the bondage of his class' norms about love.

Though "The Age of Innocence" had its moments of beautifying high society's excessive lifestyles, Martin Scorsese and Edith Wharton's novel (from which the film was adapted) have successfully portrayed an escapist love surrounded by eyes of the self-righteous ones, the impossibility of its fruition, and the beauty of its acceptance. Living the life of grandeur may be like lying in a bed of roses, but the occasional thorns sure do hurt.

FINAL RATING

Love Actually (Richard Curtis)

Rowan Atkinson: a British comedian, an angel of love.

Film Review Archive (date seen: January 3, 2011)

Aptly taglined as 'The Ultimate Romantic Comedy', director Richard Curtis (of the "Blackadder" and "Mr. Bean" fame) and his exceptional ensemble cast certainly have enough to boast for and much love on their hands to show for it. I'm not a fan of rom-com films mainly because of its high percentage of probability to recycle ideas and be formulaic, but "Love Actually" really has a different mindset to accompany the romantic mosaic in the film: And that is its genuine optimism about love and its inseparable grasp of the human heart.

I can understand, in all of "Love Actually's" sugar-coated, almost flirting with fantasy tale of connected romances, why a hefty amount of critics disliked the film. But with this type of offering, packed with great writing, humor as sidings, and a cast of genuinely talented actors (take note, this is not a love team-carried, 'cute fest' rom-com film, dear reader), there's little to no chance that anyone would really have the enormous pride to hypocritically reject such.

"Love Actually" is, well, a celebration of love, the many hands of fate that distributes it to each and every one of us, and the emotional epiphany when it finally arrives. Some may be fruitful, some may bear otherwise, but after all, equal ration 'love' still was. In the end, the will to decisively act to follow it through is completely ours. But of course, the uncommon spirit of an incoming Christmas certainly helps. Well, and a mysterious Rowan Atkinson cameo may also do wonders.

FINAL RATING

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch)

The philosophical Ghost Dog, looking upon town, clenching his sword.

Film Review Archive (date seen: December 31, 2010)

More or less, "Ghost Dog" is a slow-paced elegy about a man living his life based on an obsolete but absolute code. But with auteur Jim Jarmusch on the helm, it turned out to be something more, blending uncommon existentialist philosophies with themes such as racial generalization and the reality of living a life of crime.

The film is about an African-American hitman whose fascination with pigeons is far greater than his interest with human interaction. But he did have legitimate friends: A French-speaking Haitian he prefers not to understand and a naive little girl which he spends brief times conversing literature with. These tiny bits of characterizations may stand out as 'pretentious', but what us audience can understand about Ghost Dog and his world about to violently collide with change, add the fact that even a crime family can only afford overweight old-timers as henchmen, is that people like these are commonplace and the uncommon connection gathered by the eponymous character an urgency.

But above the symbolism and layered meanings beneath the enigmatic text from the 'Hagakure', Jim Jarmsuch's main consciousness and intent may still be to simply create a crime film that will challenge the norms of the genre and also to create a level of its own (pretty much like his unorthodox western film "Dead Man"). When I first saw this film on IMDb, I slightly (but subtly, mind you) laughed about the idea of Forest Whitaker (which delivered a great performance, nonetheless) as a Mafia-commissioned neo-samurai. But then again, with Jarmusch and his highly affluent cinematic mind, well, "why not?"

FINAL RATING

Despicable Me (Pierre Coffin)

Gru: The villain with megalomaniac plans and a paternal heart.

Film Review Archive (date seen: December 30, 2010)

Good amalgamation of the usual colorfulness of the animated genre with the uncommon exploits of a villain (more of a larger-than-life thief really) named Gru, and the fact that he may not be as bad as what his reputation tells of. In terms of execution, "Despicable Me" do not have anything extraordinary to offer but the common 'change of heart' type of theme, but it surely does have its share of moments.

I'm impressed with the overall voice talents of this film, with the chief actors such as Steve Carell and Russell Brand not cashing in on their fame to just deliver a pedestrian, lackluster, 'do-you-recognize-this-voice' type of performance; instead, they became the character, putting up unrecognizable, fairly ingenious voice alterations to accompany the visual looks of whoever they play. "Despicable Me" is a good (and funny) animated film overall, but it just did not hit the higher notes to maximize its entertainment value (unlike what "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" did).

What the film did was it relied too much on the 'cute' factor and the cliched interactions between the main characters, leaving the material's great potential still widely unfilled. I cannot say that "Despicable Me" is wholly inspired in its creation; but the concept surely is.

FINAL RATING

Boys Don't Cry (Kimberly Peirce)

Chloe Sevigny and Hilary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry".

Film Review Archive (date seen: December 24, 2010)

What mainly affected me about "Boys Don't Cry" is it's great departure from the common stigmatic view of homosexuality in our society and instead focused all its succeeding events through the eyes of Teena Brandon/Brandon Teena, a delinquent who spends some of her days in constant transgressions, and majority of it dating unknowing women with her disguised as the opposite gender. Through this treatment, director Kimberly Peirce captured the essence of her existence more, an individual that may be conscious of her disguises to lure love into her, but unconscious of the buried truths of what and who she really is.

This was flawlessly played by Hilary Swank, whose utter devotion in playing the teen who lives a lie was too consummate that her initial immersion to the role even roots way back to her very audition. The supporting cast was particularly able and strong enough to carry the harrowing feel of the film, surrounding Brandon Teena's persona and her actions as critical pieces to either make or break her.

I completely sympathize with Brandon Teena's tragic fate, but I would not go around the web in complete justification of all of her actions. But even though she's done some things that aren't supposed to be done, she did not deserve any of what she has gone through, let alone the things that were inflicted to her. But that, as they say, is 'that'; our society is always fixated on casting the initial, judgmental stones to flawed individuals vulnerable enough to absorb all the pain.

Do not worry if this review (an essay about the film's themes, more like) offered any spoiling innuendos (at least to those interested in seeing the film), this isn't your ordinary cinematic hodge-podge. It just happens to be a film mirroring the genuine harshness of reality and the implications of people's lesser judgments. One must learn to deal with it, and also with the futility of the 'stone' we unconsciously carry all our lives.

FINAL RATING