A Stunning Hitchcockian Thriller

I've not seen such a masterpiece in the thriller genre for a long time - watching Stoker today was like simultaneously reading a poem and a suspense novel!

South Korean director Park Chan-Wook's first English-language film is a stunner - visually mesmerizing, sumptuous in imageries, and Hitchcockian in suspense! No wonder the film garnered a lot of attention at the recent Sundance Festival. Park is famous for stylistic violence, but with this English-language film debut, he has ascended to superstardom. Park's background is so interesting - a former philosophy student and a former film critic, he decided to try to become a filmmaker after seeing Hitchcock's Vertigo. After winning the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for his film Oldboy, he became famous for The Vengeance Trilogy. It's not surprising that director Quentin Tarentino is a huge fan of Park's.

Like Chinese-American director Ang Lee, Park used an interpreter on set even though he speaks English. But Park's accomplishment with Stoker is obviously supported by many other pleasant surprises, First and foremost, there is a total of eight producers including such famous names as Ridley and Tony Scott and Wentworth Miller, the hugely-popular leading star of the TV drama Prison Break. A Princeton graduate who majored in English Literature, Miller also debuted with his screenwriting talent in this movie, proving that he's not just a pretty face.

The cast is absolutely excellent - Mia Wasikowska (the lead actress in Jane Eyre) as the 18-year-old India Stoker; Nicole Kidman as her unhappy, self-destructive mother; and Matthew Goode (from Woody Allen's Match Point) as the ultimate creepy charmer, Charles Stoker. British composer Clint Mansell also wrote a mesmerizing score for the film.

For thrillers to be successful, they need to make the audience guess what's going to happen next. Stoker not only makes our brains work fast, it also makes us crave more - that's the creepy success of this masterpiece!

Best Oscar Show In Last Decade

The Academy Awards live broadcast finally has a dim of hope - last night's Oscars show was probably the best in the last decade. Seth MacFarlane proved to be an excellent choice as the new host - he was comfortable in his own skin, self-deprecating and not afraid to make some bold jokes. The authorities picked him because they thought he might attract a younger audience with his Family Guy and Ted fame. While we're still waiting for the Nielsen numbers to see whether the desired demographics tuned in or not, this boomer and others were glued to the TV set last night. In fact, it was quite difficult to get up from the couch and do other tasks such as taking a shower or going for a bathroom break.

MacFarlane even looked good in his white tux. I read that he has consulted veteran host Billy Crystal who has given him some tips. I've always liked Crystal, but let's not forget - MacFarlane is much younger, looks good and can sing!

Having Captain Kirk (the very overweight Canadian William Shatner) beamed in to offer his two cents worth and inviting First Lady Michelle Obama to announce the Best Picture at the end were pleasant surprises. The song and dance portions, including goddess-like Charlize Theron dancing a number with the Hollywood 'it' boy at the moment, Channing Tatum (Tatum strutted his stuff in Magic Mike and the Step Up movies while Theron was trained as a ballet dancer and performed in New York productions of Swan Lake and the Nutcracker); the entire principal cast ensemble from Les Miserables performing on stage; Barbra Streisand singing The Way We Were in memory of the late Marvin Hamlisch and for the first time at the Oscars in 36 years; Dame Shirley Bassey performing for the first time ever at the Academy Awards; all added to the glamour and pizzazz that the Awards show should represent.

Because it's MacFarlane writing some of the materials, the show was also fun for the first time in years - Mark Wahlberg and his teddy bear buddy cracking a few jokes (Ted was a successful Seth MacFarlane creation); Joseph Gordon-Levitt performing a duet with Daniel Radcliffe; and the muppets reenacting the cockpit scene in Flight were all good fun to watch.

I also like the pairing of the presenters - children of film legends who are now legends themselves (Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas); the lead cast of Chicago celebrating its 10th anniversary in film; the lead actors from The Avengers (but where's Scarlett Johansson?); the physically-opposite Charlize Theron and Dustin Hoffman. These are the people and the reasons why we love to go to movies. Obviously there was the usual protocol to expect - last year's award winners respectively gave out this year's Oscars. But the ceremony seemed to be shorter this year even though in duration, it was still three-and-a-half-hour long. The program also wisely shrunk the tributes and lifetime awards into reports from earlier ceremonies rather than having the actual ceremonies live.

The only surprises of the coveted Awards were only good ones - Life Of Pi won Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Visual Effect and Best Cinematography - and most of them associated with Canadian artists. I was also overjoyed to see my favourite director Quintin Tarantino winning the Best Original Screenplay for Django Unchained, a brilliant movie on slavery emancipation.

The evening's best-dressed awards should go to Charlize Theron with her stunning short hair and in a white Dior gown and Catherine Zeta-Jones in a gold-sequined Zuhair Murad gown. Overgilded, according to some fashion critics? Well, they have no idea what glamour means!

Was the show perfect? Of course, not. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond franchise, they should have all lead actors of the Bond movies all appearing on stage. I'm also tired of Jack Nicholson and his sunglasses. The production team of the Academy Awards show, get rid of Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep next year, keep MacFarlane as the host, and surprise us even more: then perhaps your show might even be a resounding success in the near future!

Painful But Honest Masterpiece About Power of Love

I finally got a chance to go see the critically-acclaimed Amour. And I'm now convinced that this will win the Academy Awards' Best Foreign Language Movie.

The film, directed by Austrian Michael Haneke, deserves to sweep the 2012 Palm d'Or at Cannes, two awards (Best Leading Actress and Best Film Not in the English Language) at the 66th British Academy Film Awards and four awards at the 25th European Film Awards.

What a great salute to senior film-makers and actors - director Michael Haneke just turned 70 and the two principal actors in the film, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, are both in their 80s. This is particularly a big feat for the director to have successfully brought Trintignant on board as the actor has retired from films since 1998! Emmanuelle Riva is not only beyond excellent in her role as the dying Anne, but she's also stunning at 86, both with or without clothes.

European movies are always more subtle and potent than North American ones, but this film manages to invite us, the audience, to participate in and observe the long and painful process of the body withering away. Ninety percent of the film was shot within the elegant Parisian apartment and we're witnessing just daily chores of what could be happening to ourselves or to our friends' families. But the apartment, as well as our bodies, could be prisons and the film is painful to watch because all of us either have experienced this kind of pain or, even worse, to see the cinematic mirror reflecting the imminent winter of our our own aging bodies!

The director is honest and minimalistic, but at the same time, brutal and raw in depicting the pain and truth of mortality. What's happening with the well-cultured and well-to-do octogenarians could happen to many, many others in different parts of the world. The couple has always been self-reliant throughout their lives and until the very end. Unfortunately, boomer kids are depicted as useless and only enhance the burden of the helpless couple. Yes, life is cruel, but it's also beautiful according to Anne (played by Riva)who's leafing through her photo albums during her last days.

We're never told what exactly happened to Georges (played by Trintignant) towards the end; but this is where I'm interested in comparing notes with my friends because the conclusion is subject to different interpretations. And, of course, the metaphor of the visiting pigeon and how Georges described it in his letter.

We learn from this movie that love is passionate, caring, routinely and fun; but more importantly, it's cruel, poignant, strong, violent and it eventually does come to an end like our frail bodies!

Tackling Mental Health In A Warm, Funny Way

I've been meaning to blog about Silver Linings Playbook for a long time. Having seen it twice now, I can conclude that even if you don't like any of the principal characters or actors, you are going to like the movie.

Mental health is a serious issue and many, many movies have chosen it as a main theme, but with a very serious and tragical treatment. With the stigma attached to this illness, comedies about the subject matter are difficult to succeed because any jokes will not be kindly taken. But director David O. Russell (The Fighter) adapted the novel by Matthew Quick into a wonderful warm, funny and touching movie.

The biggest irony of all is that even though the two lead characters in the movie are both former mental illness sufferers - Pat (played by Bradley Cooper) suffered from bipolar disorder and Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence) is a former sex addict - the people who are really currently mentally ill in the movie are all those around them. The key message here is obviously this: let's not discriminate or stigmatize mentally-ill patients because, in reality, all of us may not be as mentally healthy as we think we are.

I've always been a big fan of Bradley Cooper and in addition to playing this role in such a warm, genuine and honest way, he is also the producer of the film. Jennifer Lawrence has already swept both the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild Best Actress Awards for her role. At 21 when she was shooting the movie, the makeup director had to put extra liquid eyeliner on her to make her look older. Lawrence apparently fought very hard for the role because both Russell and Cooper thought she's too young to play the 'white trash' Tiffany. Now at 22, Lawrence has proven that she can take on any roles with gusto. She's excellent in this movie, but I thought Jessica Chastain is even better in Zero Dark Thirty. Nevertheless, Lawrence will definitely win the Oscar as well.

The entire cast is great and funny, but I've not seen Robert De Niro so good in a comical role in a long time. As Cooper's father, De Niro is not only extremely funny, but he's also an emotional jock with obsessive-compulsive habits. This movie was shot in Philadelphia where Bradley Cooper grew up in real life. De Niro, with his standard New York accent, was asking Cooper's visiting uncle for help when reading the script to make sure that he got the Philly accent right.

At the SAG Awards event, we also learned from Jennifer Lawrence that David O. Russell was drawn to the story because of the connection to his own son, who is bipolar and has OCD. What a great work of art and let's hope the movie will help motivate all mentally ill patients to get better!

Entertaining But Confusing 'Broken City'

In spite of bad reviews, I found Broken City quite entertaining, particularly if you're a Mark Wahlberg fan. The problem with this flick is that the writer Brian Tucker and director Allen Hughes (The Book of Eli, From Hell) are trying too hard. They make the audience work their brains out and we still can't figure out what the sub-plots mean at the end of the movie. In fact, my friends and I have concluded that some of the sub-plots are just superfluous.

Without being a spoiler, the Police Commissioner Carl Fairbanks (played by Jeffrey Wright) is totally confusing. You never know until the end which side is he playing with. While the hot Natalie Martinez (CSI New York) is still sexy playing Wahlberg's girlfriend, the story line around her is kind of weak. It's not even convincing that they've been together for seven years.

Then, there are the four principal characters: Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Barry Pepper. Wahlberg, as usual, plays a damaged former cop trying to fight the bad guys under any circumstances. As I've posted before, Wahlberg needs to take a break on this kind of character trail and should maybe try playing an evil guy. But he continues to produce and perform such roles as the alcoholic Billy Taggart in this movie. While women like to see him taking his shirt off - he did it again in this one - this kind of character just doesn't earn him additional respect. Wahlberg is one of the hottest producers now as both Entourage and Boardwalk Empire are hugely popular. But he needs to break new ground by trying a different genre soon.

There's no actress nowadays that is as glamorous and as good with acting as Catherine Zeta-Jones. There's no doubt that she's done some face work, but even though you can detect those flaws on her face, she's still drop-dead movie-star gorgeous in every scene!

Having just come out of a terrible role at Les Miserables (I meant he literally can't sing), Russell Crowe is actually quite convincing as the crooked mayor of New York, Mayor Hostetler. But it bothers me that except for Canadian actor Barry Pepper who plays Jack Valliant, and perhaps Wahlberg, none of the principal characters seemed to be making any effort in putting on a New York or even American accent. And this is just plain sloppiness! Pepper who played Robert Kennedy in the TV drama The Kennedys,
is so strong an actor that he's mesmerizing in every role he plays including this one.

If you like the principal actors and don't mind being confused every now and then, you will find Broken City entertaining.

Gangster Squad is No Untouchables

Watching Gangster Squad is like watching a very inferior The Untouchables. In fact, it's worse - it wants to be The Untouchables, but director Ruben Fleischer is not Brian De Palma.

Having said that, if your expectations are low, then you'll find the flick very entertaining because the costumes are great and the cast of male actors is very handsome. But why fine actors such as Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling appear in such an empty movie is just beyond any reason. Even though Penn has won many awards, I always find him a bit overacting just like Leonardo DiCaprio. And he's definitely exaggerating his role as Mickey Cohen in this one. The aging Penn seems to have taken his doses of Botox and facial expressions are just lacking - a smirk here and there and always giving a feigned, tough wise-guy kind of look!

Josh Brolin is so handsome that it's almost distracting. Unlike Elliott Ness who is believable because he's got his vulnerabilities, Brolin's character as Sgt. John O'Mara just lacks credibility because he's so focused on being the stubborn, good cop that he seems to be ignoring his friends, colleagues and family.

There's something wrong about Ryan Gosling's performance. As alcoholic Sgt. Jerry Wooters, Gosling almost strikes me as gay in his very effeminate role and voice in the flick. All the actresses in this flick are dispensable, so even Emma Stone's talent is wasted in this one. Stone's strongest asset is never her looks and to cast her as Grace Faraday was a big mistake.

Everything is predictable in this movie and there's no depth either in the plot or the acting. This is really not surprising since director Ruben Fleischer made his fame from Zombieland and music videos. What surprises me is that how did the team of six producers (including Fleischer as executive producer) assemble such a strong cast to play in this souless movie?

A Must-See Controversial Movie About Killing bin Laden

If you didn't know anything about award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow's background, you would have thought that perhaps she's born of a military family. Both of her two most recent works, including the Oscar-award-winning The Hurt Locker and her current Zero Dark Thirty were named after specific military terms which are jargons to lay movie-goers like me. But the 61-year-old woman director was the only girl born to a librarian and a paint factory manager. So with her education in fine arts institutions first as a painter, and then a graduate from the film program at Columbia University, one wonders why she has a track record of picking the most masculine subjects - cops and gansters, bikers, FBI agents, nuclear-powered submarine, the Iraq war and now, more recently, the CIA and the U.S. Navy Seals' capturing and killing of Osama bin Laden.

I have to admit that I wan't a fan of The Hurt Locker even though Jeremy Renner is one of my most favourite actors. But the movie won Bigelow numerous awards including being the first woman to receive an Academy Award for Best Director. Now history might repeat itself again in next month's Academy Awards event except that Bigelow is not among the Best Director nominees for Zero Dark Thirty even though the film is up for five Awards - Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Editing. The movie is controversial because of the waterboarding torturing of 'detainees' used. We all read about the Acting CIA Director protesting to the film studio and via a media statement that even though CIA operatives have met with the film's production team prior to shooting the movie, the torturing techniques used in the flick were inaccurate. There were speculations that this is the reason why Bigelow didn't get her Best Director nomination this time round.

Whatever people say about the accuracy of the plot details, Zero Dark Thirty (a military term referring to 30 minutes after midnight and is prevailingly pronounced as Oh instead of zero) is a fabulous film! What strikes you is the outstanding screenplay written by Mark Boal who is also one of the producers. He also wrote The Hurt Locker and In The Valley of Elah, another terrific film. While the thrilling plot and war scenes keep you on the edge of the seat, it's the screenplay and the dialogue that's captivating.

The entire cast is very strong, but Jessica Chastain is exceptional as always as CIA agent Maya. Chastain has expressed in various interviews that playing the role of real-life woman CIA operative who was the real heroine behind the capturing and killing of bin Laden was, in a way, Chastain's method of celebrating this woman's accomplishments. I also thought that Australian actor Jason Clarke, who plays another CIA agent Dan, should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Unfortunately, I think because he's the main U.S. agent executing the torture in the film, that's why he might have been snubbed by the Academy.

The movie is so intense that you wouldn't feel that it's 157 minutes long. For most of us movie-goers who already know the story's ending, to keep us biting our fingers throughout the film was a huge feat. When bin Laden was finally killed in the movie, I couldn't help but recall the TV newscasts of President Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and the entire senior U.S. Administration staff watching the whole thing unfolding in the Oval Office's Situation Room.

Even though you may not have a stomach for violence and torture, this is a must-see movie because it's history!