Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)

The driver with no name.

Humanity and brutality. Director Nicolas Winding Refn, who deservedly won the Best Director Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, has beautifully tackled both in a stark existential light, that which echoes the likes of "Taxi Driver", and ultimately weighed both in a blurring contrast which highlights the compromises of poor choices. "Drive", with its violent nature and perverse tone, could have easily been a disposable Grindhouse-like feature. Its exaggerated depiction of nerve-wracking gore, an aspect that is a most common reason for audience polarization, complements the whole film but still suggests a heightened feel of sensationalism for the sake of shock.

Yes, these violent scenes are truly unnerving, but looking at the main character, a skilled driver who works in the movies and also for night heists, played with great control but also with unflinching rage by Ryan Gosling, his mysterious transformation from a passive loner to an involved, blood-drenched avenger is the one that's much more disturbing. Forget the violence first, it is this protagonist's motives and questionable decisions that is the film's center. With him lacking enough character background, it makes his actions all the more intriguing, but his surprising notion towards love and connection without much words to back it up, on the other hand, makes him all the more affecting.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn and screenwriter Hossein Amini (basing his screenplay on the novel of the same name by James Sallis), exposes two primal human impulses, to kill and to love, and brilliantly incorporated it into the film's stylized, almost poetic take on noir. What resulted is a perfect amalgamation of both substance and form, with a fair amount of adrenaline rush to sweeten it all up.

In its very immediate surface that echoes some action film formulas, It is expected for "Drive" to contain one-dimensional characters, particularly the villains, played by Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman. But these displays of intended shallowness is overwhelmed by the film's pitch-perfect rendition of tender love. Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan sure has never worked before. Ryan Gosling sure is already initiated with love stories. But Carey Mulligan has been memorable via her turn as a naive young woman in "An Education", so jumping from innocence to maturity, performance-wise, is really quite challenging on her part.

It's almost a thing of miracle, but their chemistry here in "Drive" flowed smoothly despite of some initial constraints. Carey Mulligan, although very young, has portrayed Irene, the main reason for the driver's daring decisions, with this sense of desensitization towards life. It's as if she has gone through so much that she simply wants someone to hold. And him, the driver, on the other hand, being lonely and a complete nobody all his life (albeit him being a stunt driver for the movies), only wants someone's life to touch. With the use of great lighting, cinematography and music (with the elevator scene being the best example), "Drive" has successfully established these two characters' link with an almost melodious feel but also is effective in breaking it.

Narrative-wise, the film is tight in its execution, holds on firmly with what it is all about, and never went on for something else. This particular focus for what's immediate rather than to experimentally delve more on something that is marked with pretense only highlights the film's material strength in its consistent ability to tell a story and also to seamlessly state why it has been told in the first place. It roots out, of course, as what I've said earlier, from the characters' flawed choices.

Nicolas Winding Refn has stated that "Drive" is a tribute to surrealistic director Alejandro Jodorowsky, whose cinematic deviance is a thing both of beauty and disgust. That is particularly limiting because "Drive" is, above all, a general tribute to what great, uninhibited filmmaking is all about.

FINAL RATING

Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh)

Slumber.

Things happened. Mysteries were unraveled. A woman's adventurous desires and curiosities were explored. Yet first-time director Julia Leigh's "Sleeping Beauty" felt like nothing has occurred in its entirety. With its sterile cinematography that surprisingly enhances the film's numerous scenes and effectively infuses a certain fascinating spell into its very mood, this visual stagnation that seems to pull "Sleeping Beauty" into the more elitist forays of art house self-indulgence, ironically, has also been its most appealing quality.

With a thematic feel that somehow reminds me of "Belle de Jour" and a bit of "Eyes Wide Shut", this film deeps its fingers into the dark waters of moral decadence, that which involves prostitution, without articulating much explicitly about it. Though it sure shows high-class hedonism brought into the extremes and has initiated Emily Browning's character Lucy into a world of worldly desires and emotional abstractions, Julia Leigh has able to handle all of these heavy-handed subject matters with finesse, therefore highlighting the film's very elemental issue of sexual and psychological adventurism without visually going over-the-top.

With enough reason, I sure did expect this film to be a bit more daring than it actually was, based on its compelling gist, some hearsay, and Emily Browning's intent to flex her indie muscles, which more or less suggests that it's a given that she will delve into nudity. Admittedly, the film sure had its issues, particularly its sudden transitions from one pointless scene to another that really shouts of incoherence. But in many moments, Emily Browning's uninhibitedly strong performance subtly redeems all of these missteps. Of course, it's hard to rescue a film, however great its starring actors or actresses are, from narrative imperfections. Even the characterization of Lucy had its major flaws, specifically the fact that she did the things that she has done in the film without any concrete motivations.

Was it for money? Then why did she burned one during a scene? Is it for carnal pleasures? Then why is she constantly hesitant and unsure of what she's doing? Ultimately, maybe Julia Leigh is too set on molding a very complex character that she has unwittingly brought Lucy into a place with a tad too much questions without clear signs of answering them, let alone some tries to do so. But to redundantly express myself, Emily Browning sure has delivered a stellar performance in this film that completely erases her earlier fiasco in Zack Snyder's "Sucker Punch".

Now, to consider another perspective, Maybe Julia Leigh has intentionally painted Lucy's character in an obviously abstract form simply because she wants to convey her female protagonist's boundless alienation, both from her immediate environment and from us, the audience. "Sleeping Beauty" is, after all, a tale of a woman's aimless descent not into some cliched madness, but into a conscious reality of submitting to depravity.

But as deficient as the film may be in terms of its certainty for narrative goals, a scene halfway into the film has stood out the most on how it has perfectly deviated from the film's overall nature of existential aimlessness with its all too vulnerably human voice. It's the scene where this old client, as he gets ready for his 'turn' for the sleeping Lucy, poignantly recounts a short story to the madame, Clara (played by Rachael Blake), that relates to his existence.

He expressed the fact that all his life, he didn't have any 'broken bones' (symbolically presenting his mundane, all too normal and restricted existence) but merely pretended. And now that he's broken down and wearily old, he has regretfully conceded to the fact that they are now, sensing that everything's too late, that time cannot be turned, and it is only from this carnal retreat (in the form of Lucy) that he may find momentary peace.

This sequence really did struck a chord and left a relatively powerful impression within me with its assurance that at least in a film filled with meaningless encounters with sexuality, perversity and whatnot, there's someone who's indeed in the mix not for the utter senselessness of it all but for a tired admittance of defeat. A film that is truly not for everyone, and I mean it.

FINAL RATING

All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar)

Cecilia Roth as Manuela.

With the brilliant "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" being the Pedro Almodovar film I've watched prior to this, his exploration of the unparalleled emotional strength of women, at least in my self-chronology, continues on with "All About My Mother", a film that lightly caresses your heart with its poignancy but also puts into humorous situations after another the subtle absurdity of life. Although it's Almodovar's witty screenplay that is the film's beating heart, it's the sheer talent of its cast that has fueled it with pure and unbridled energy.

Performances by Cecilia Roth, who played the main character Manuela, a single-parent hardened by the terrible highs and lows of life, Marisa Paredes as the stage actress Huma Rojo, Penelope Cruz who contrasts all the other performances with her subdued turn as Sister Rosa, and especially Antonia San Juan's colorful portrayal of the character Agrado (the best performance in the film), a person whose socially unacceptable transsexualism never hindered her from being an optimistic representation of a hard-living modern woman, sweeten the screen with a unique vigor for life.

The film's title, "All About My Mother", when you look at how the narrative has unveiled itself, does not fully suggest that the film is indeed purely about Manuela's individual exploits as she searches on to locate her son's father and as she takes care of numerous colorful characters. With the use of the possessive pronoun 'My', which of course pertains to Manuela's son Esteban, who before dying in a tragic car accident wishes to know who his father is and who, after death, may have continued to look down upon her mother as she copes up with his death, with her quest and with life itself, it suggests that the story is spiritually progressing through Esteban's birthright to know his father. So the film, in essence, does not merely get its life force from Manuela alone, but also from the memory of Esteban's final wish.

"All About My Mother" is, in context, a humanist adventure fueled by a two-sided notion for a tribute: One given by the already omniscient Esteban in an underlying manner, who flowers up her mother's endeavors by means of his prose taken from his diary, and one by Manuela herself as she tries to keep the fire burning in Esteban's torch of memory by way of fulfilling his dying wish: To find his father.

Unlike the later "Goodbye, Lenin!", a film from which we rarely see the character of the mother but infinitely more of her son as he desperately find ways to fend off any shock or surprises that may worsen her health, "All About My Mother" views this idea of a parent-child relationship in an opposite way by championing the concept of a mother's love to her son (instead of the other way around), but in an equally unconditional light.

In the film's entirety, its urgency is more inclined towards the dramatic rather than the comic. Of course, the spontaneity of the more humorous moments adds to the film's effective tonal shifts from colorful to gray and vice versa, but "All About My Mother" is infinitely more important to be absorbed as a drama that articulates the emotional context of promises, mistakes and reconciliations rather than as a comedy of blunders, innuendos and homosexuality. Nonetheless, the film works in either way.

But what has slightly put me off about the film, on the other hand, is its running time. Pedro Almodovar greeted our senses with exuberant, highly original characters yet ends the film with suddenness. It's one thing for a film to end and for us to want more, but to ask for more plainly because something lacks is another. I don't know what I've felt between the two when the film has ended, but I surely would have loved the film more if it would have been a bit longer, and I don't care if the conflict is already resolved. Well, on second thought, maybe it's just delusion.

FINAL RATING

Tower Heist (Brett Ratner)

Comic actors Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy star in "Tower Heist".

With a half-engine steam of energy seemingly got from Danny Ocean's capers and John Mcclane's shoeless skyscraper escapades coupled with a fine comic establishment by way of the 'recruitment for a mission' treatment, "Tower Heist", though pure disposable fun and nothing more, is truly well worth your time.

Ben Stiller, with his usual gentleman approach to humor, is the sober center of the whole film while Eddie Murphy, in his pure ghetto ass glory, serves as the film's riotous catalyst for its scattered, language-driven comedy. With director Brett Ratner having successfully handled Chris Tucker's mouth in the "Rush Hour" films, there's no doubt that he can also pull it off with Eddie Murphy. Even more so that he has greatly incorporated considerably resonant dialogues into Murphy's character without going over-the-top.

With many actors in the film for the director and the writers to potentially play up a convincing chemistry, Ratner and company conjured up a nice balance among the chief players, with established actors like Casey Affleck and Matthew Broderick having their respective moments, while budding ones like Gabourey Sidibe and Michael Peña stealing scenes of their own. For some, "Tower Heist" may seem a bit too formalistic in its execution of a comic caper. Though that and a slight lack of climactic ingenuity may very well be considered as hindrances for it to achieve a certain uniqueness that will separate it from other films of its kind, its 'no detours' take on its narrative makes it all the more enjoyable and easier to take that at least, though stealing a car from a secured skyscraper isn't really what 'reality' suggests either, creates a vulnerably believable atmosphere where thieves may get caught anytime and that plans can be half-baked as best. No twists to spice up the character dynamics, no plot distortions to sweeten up what's happening and no far-fetched surprises for us to surmise.

For once, it's truly refreshing to see a film dealing with a big-time caper without complexities that were there just for the sake of surprise. "Tower Heist" captures what is 'enjoyable' without any plot pretensions and instead sticks with what the story is all about and what the characters are going to do. I'm just having a problem with the fact that the main antagonist isn't that well-formed as a character and too hands-off with what he's accused to do (securities fraud, especially inflicted to his own employees) that I consider having a bunch of laid off guys (well, and a hardened thief) storm his expensive flat and break glasses and walls to steal a millions' worth of an article a bit of an overkill. He's just too corporate and too thinly-introduced as a villain to be remembered and be taken seriously. For a film to succeed, a memorable adversary must be of the essence.

Sadly for "Tower Heist", it had its 'James Bonds' in the guise of Stiller and company but seemingly neglected the notion for a more crucial 'Blofeld'. The film had numerous high points, especially Eddie Murphy's scenes of comic tirades that may seem generic and over-used but admittedly never gets old. But as the film heads towards a potentially explosive 'climax', the part where I often ultimately weigh off a writer's talent in how he/she can properly wrap all of a film's happenings into one final justification, "Tower Heist" exhausts itself on its own ideas that it reaches a climax where the words 'lukewarm' and 'underwhelming' are written all over.

Maybe the film being all too linear is both its strength and weakness. With that, "Tower Heist" surely isn't a perfect heist film nor is it an excellent comedy film. But at the end of the day, "Tower Heist" mixed both genres in moderate amounts and as a result, created a finish product that may not be ideal representatives of either but nonetheless a film that has the ability to deliver just the right dose of adequate escapism, but one that certainly won't last that long.

FINAL RATING

The Serpent's Egg (Ingmar Bergman)

Liv Ullmann and David Carradine.

I am really not quite sure what really is "The Serpent's Egg" more weighing flaw: The whole alienating premise of the film or David Carradine's robotic performance. But basing my choice on my better judgment, I'm gearing more towards the latter.

Throughout this whole Ingmar Bergman-directed feature, aside from that final, pseudo-scientific revelation, the film really felt nothing but an aimless exercise in existential angst. With our disillusioned and hapless protagonist roaming the decaying streets of 1920's Berlin that is completely unaware of a governmental take-over being led by someone named Adolf Hitler, I think that the groundwork as to why he's slowly being consumed by despair was not properly established, resulting with us being left with a main character that is both underwhelming and emotionally plodding.

I just don't think that David Carradine, a cult actor known for roles such as "Caine" in "Kung Fu" (a bit unrelated but it's interesting to note that his character here is then named "Abel"; a sort of an unconscious biblical allusion) and later as "Bill" in Tarantino's "Kill Bill", fits these kinds of roles. He's just relatively too tough-looking to really make his character believable and empathetic. Even Liv Ullmann, an actress of great emotional depth, is a bit out of place playing a forgettable character.

But then, there's Sven Nykvist's calculated cinematography that constantly puts dread and bleakness even in the most joyous cabaret settings and at the same time, finds emptiness even in a crowd. This is particularly evident in the film's impressive and disturbingly ambiguous opening scene (that is, until the climactic final exposition) where Nykvist has shot a scene of people of different ages and walks of life descending a stair with deeply melancholic and exhausted faces in stark, grainy black and white.

At certain points, the film's flimsy hands seem to let go of my already fleeting attention, but there's no doubt about the uncannily fascinating impression that the climactic 'explanation' scene, pulled off rather brilliantly by Heinz Bennent who played an experimentation scientist who knows the core secret as to why people like Abel are slowly slipping off from sanity, has left me.

Yes, it does felt that that crucially revelatory sequence looked and sounded more like a scene that you may see from those 'mad scientist' movies rather than from 'art' films like this, but for it to prophetically foretell the Nazi revolution's supposed 'New Society' and at the same time highlighting and comparing its idealistic superiority to an old one founded by the goodness of man is truly unnerving and, in a way, very brave.

And considering that this is Ingmar Bergman's first and only Hollywood film, "The Serpent's Egg" should be remembered more as a testament of his unbounded audacity rather than as a disappointing speed bump in his otherwise flawless oeuvre.

FINAL RATING

Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (Lino Brocka)

Anguish.

Living in the modern Filipino film culture, one can't easily delve oneself deeper into it without even hearing about the film "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" and marvel about how heavily metaphoric the title really is. And then, with an unconscious compulsion, you then become curious. What is the film really all about? I, for one, initially thought that this film, although undoubtedly one of the finer Filipino films, isn't clearly one of the all-time greats. That's me and my unflinching idiocy. I then rewatched it with the aforementioned question rerunning in my mind, and then some. And just like that, I was in utter awe.

"Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" may widely be considered as Lino Brocka's seminal masterpiece, but somewhere within the corners of my mind where "Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag", "Bona" and this film are on a continual struggle for subjective supremacy, it might just be his best work.

Contrary to Brocka's trademark ambient sounds-enhanced, raw visuals-enforced neorealisitic approach to contemporary Filipino squalor that has been ever prevalent in his later films such as "Insiang", "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" boasts of a powerful human drama set within the hypocritical social and religious milieu of a seemingly quiet rural town.

Part coming-of-age film and part cinematic indignation of inhuman judgments, the film succeeded to disturb, touch and shake viewers all at the same time with its potent ability to deliver both an encompassing social commentary and an observant exploration of an adolescent's moral journey from debilitating indifference to something mirroring righteous courage and humanity.

The teenager, named Junior, played by then-rookie actor Christopher De Leon (who won a FAMAS for his performance in the film) who surprisingly handled the role like a seasoned veteran, is caught at an early crossroad; in this existential standstill, he can't seem to find his own path. Should he follow his father's successful yet women's perfume-laden path (a serial womanizer, that is)? Must he pursue a romantic, but ultimately hollow and immature commitment, or does he have the fiber to embrace the lives of two sideshow social outcasts whose deeply felt relationship overpowers their physical and mental shortcomings?

In some ways, just as how Brocka applied it to his later film "Jaguar", "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" is a film that deals with crucial choices. Even with the dream-like opening sequence alone which, in a very hallucinatory way, portrayed the emotional nightmare of an abortion, both in its procedure, the aftermath (this powerful scene prophetically answers some of the questions that were raised in the 1985 film "Hinugot sa Langit) and the psychological effect once the choice regarding it was finally made, though in the film's case, a one-sided one at that (Lolita Rodriguez's Kuala seems unwilling).

Today, mentioning the name Lolita Rodriguez is like unveiling a dignified marble statue of a true Filipino cinematic icon, and for that kind of automatic pop culture thinking, suffice it to say that it was duly in part of her legendary performance in this film as the town lunatic, Kuala. It's one of the best performances in all of Filipino cinema, and her detailed conveyance of staggering facial expressions and uncanny gestures brilliantly merged and crisscrossed both the overly animated movements of a dirty mental case and the uncommon emotional depths of a woman who just suffered too much and is begging, by way of her soul creeping silently through her eyes, for all of it to end.

Mario O'Hara's role as Berto the leper is just as tricky to pull off. Listening to some of his lines, the character may easily drift into one-dimensional nobility, but O'Hara kept it all together quite consistently and has able to display the visceral goodness of a man who has nothing left to lose but just enough time to love. Eddie Garcia also shined in his role as Junior's father, Cesar, a role he so conveniently and effortlessly played that the very polygamous core of the said character has since been iterated quite heftily in his action film roles (the 'Manoy' persona).

One of Brocka's real, unequaled strengths is his great execution of endings. The one here in "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" is a great example. Playing with the facial expressions of both the extras and the chief actors while still maintaining the emotional strain of the ending's dramatic center, the film, although can easily be branded as a communal tragedy, is still hopeful despite of its wounded premises. And as Junior emerges from Kuala and Berto's hut, carrying a symbolic purity that is a product of two individuals that were subjected to inhumanity, there's a feeling of solitary safety, and at last an emphasis, as Junior looks upon the people's guilty faces, of what was really weighed and found terribly wanting: the town itself.

FINAL RATING

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman)

Randle.

Even though I have watched "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" way back (I think I was in 4th year high school or something), seeing it for the second time after reading the Ken Kesey-written novel from which the film was based is like seeing it anew. With the similarly-titled book conveying an uncanny life and energy that easily stimulates both the raw senses and the imagination, this film adaptation bursts of the same raw vitality of the human spirit fully prevalent in the said literary work. It's as if this film isn't merely a cinematic translation of classic literature but more of a direct affirmation of the material's true underlying power.

Even in just the film's opening scene alone, as we see the car which carries our flawed hero R.P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson in a performance that only 'he' can call his own) into the mental institution, there's this clear-cut inevitability of a living and breathing cinematic rendition, and how everything, although there were drastic liberties taken by director Milos Forman and company, really seems to fall into place and almost symphonic in a way. Never have I been more excited of seeing a book's setting, which in that case a mental hospital, being visually laid down into separate sets of narrative establishments, and never have I been more compelled to see characters, even clinically-crazy ones at that (which I have treated as my subconscious friends for more than 2 weeks while I read the book), slowly populate the composite spaces of the screen.

Considering that the film is that of a mercurial human drama, inappropriately as it may seem, I was extremely pumped up towards re-watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in the same way as when I'm about to watch a nicely-hyped thriller feature. And as the film, with only slightly more than 2 hours in its sleeve to cover all of the novel's essence, comes to an end, I came to a conclusion which I deem to be very proper: As a mere adaptation, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" had its issues, particularly the much discussed and polarizing change of the story's main point of view from Chief Bromden (played by Will Sampson) to McMurphy. But as a stand-alone film, it really is quite untouchable in its unwavering capacity to deliver a walloping emotional punch and an unforgettable humanization of a place commonly conceived to have forgotten about it. It is indeed one of the best films of the 70's, and the fact that it has swept all the major honors in the 48th Academy awards agrees with my rave assumption.

What really moves this film forward in terms of both pacing and characterization, aside from the brilliant dynamics of the relationship between Nicholson's defiant McMurphy and Louise Fletcher's great portrayal of a mechanically brutal Nurse Ratched (I wonder if she's an acquaintance of Miss Trunchbull, or Warden Norton perhaps), are the eager and resilient all-around performances by the film's sideshow supporting cast of Acutes and Chronics, specifically early roles by Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd and especially the underrated character actor Brad Dourif. Cinematographer Haskell Wexler (edit: I read in the IMDb trivia page that he was actually replaced by Bill Butler early in the production due to Wexler's creative dispute with producer Michael Douglas) finely contrasted the mental institution's structure, both its calm exterior shots and white-painted interiors which symbolically exudes the characters' pristine but insidious imprisonment within a so-called therapeutic environment with the suggestive spark plug-like 'chaos' about to explode at any given time.

Like Milos Forman's earlier "The Firemen's Ball", through the use of quick cuts and rapid verbal noises to highlight the escalation of tension and full-blown disorder, he has painted a fragile mental atmosphere merely held together by the Big Nurse's wide-eyed cold glances and authoritatively monotonous voice, but is forcefully being loosen up by McMurphy's knack for anarchic freewill.

But McMurphy is by no means an enduring hero of sorts. Unlike other inspiring, Oscar bait-y films that have since came out of the bowels of Hollywood, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is never meant to be a black and white struggle between the proverbial 'good' and 'evil', but as a timeless study of extreme authority clashing with non-conformity.

Chief Bromden, on the other hand, is our mediator, but at the same time, a conceptual representation of the 'unreliable' narrator (at least in the novel). And as what I've mentioned above, if the varied characters have been my friends for the past 2 weeks or so while I read the book, Bromden has been my bestest there is, and seeing him quite underdeveloped in the film is like reuniting with a good ol' friend of mine again after so many years but mysteriously does not seem to want to talk to me anymore.

But through that crucial flaw, a flaw so detrimental that it has given Ken Kesey enough reason not to watch the film until his dying days, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is still a masterful film that blurs the boundaries between comedy and drama, the bittersweet and the tragic.

"But I tried, didn't I? Goddamnit, at least I did that." Great, enduring words from McMurphy which speaks of great meaning regarding the characters' predicament as much as it does to filmmakers in general in the context of literary adaptations. There's a recurring trivia that Ken Kesey, seeing this film one time on TV without knowing that it is indeed "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", thought it was interesting (of course he immediately found out). Just as what I've said earlier, although in some ways a letdown as an adaptation, it brilliantly succeeds as a film which holds its own ground as a genuine classic of American cinema.

FINAL RATING