Film Works

Inception Film Review: An Exceptionally “Inceptional” Masterpiece

Now, Inception is more than just a leap of faith for filmmaker Christopher Nolan.

With its elements about powerful ideas, dreaming in a dream, and dreaming inside other people’s dreams, Inception is one entertainingly hard-core, multi-layered mindbender. This motion picture masterpiece is one of the strongest science-fiction concepts to come in a long time. Nolan and his production team construct a breathtakingly audacious blockbuster narrative while not leaving the intelligent and more demanding film lovers behind.

Inception is nothing less than astounding. It dreams big, dreams deep, and creates challenging dreams to engage the wide-eyed dreamy viewers. In doing so, the film’s own thin line separating dream space and reality innovatively creates such a well-mounted story. It carefully blends the conscious and subconscious in various levels. It balances philosophical ideas and narrative tension within a labyrinthine plot that engages in various forms, degrees and intensities.

Whether for its visceral popcorn thrills, elegantly laid out action sequences, boldness and restraint, this ambitious film knows how to manipulate its thematic fetishes and its complicated narrative structure.

Like its own theme, Inception taps into the subconscious of each viewer in its relatively comprehensible way. Orchestrated by a crafting hand of a director who knows what he wants and how to make things happen, even the most obscure details get digested as the film cinematically sells its conceptual and emotional investments. It’s bold, intense, exhilarating, engaging, and impressive. It is complex yet coherent. It’s something that can benefit repeated viewings and feed the viewer with something new or different each time. Preposterous, yet ingeniously done, it offers such an entertaining ride. It serves as a popcorn flick, too!

While it is ambiguous enough to lead to conflicting opinions, the main purpose of the film is to engage the intellect about its theme and concept, not just merely figuring out which one is real, which one is a dream. While additional viewings are needed to personally provide a more solid analysis and opinion about the film’s ending, it seems more like the filmmaker crafts this opus in a way that there is no concrete interpretation to dictate to each and everyone that something is or is not.

The various elements, symbolisms, characterizations, and dialogues are carefully planted in a way that they work together to let the audience go beyond the need to figure out a twist or find out the “truth” behind the main story. Like how actual dreams are, Inception is open to different interpretations. And it does so without making specific aspects of it bug its quality down. It works in higher levels of film viewing that it touches something beyond a film viewer’s surface thinking, quite different from how s/he would typically treat other movies. And this is what makes Inception seem quite different from the usual. It is endlessly elliptical and it works in many facets. It allows its tagline “Your mind is the scene of the crime” validate itself; while its grand provisions for a visual feast keep up with the more palpable sense of its thrilling ride.

Inception isn’t perfect. Yet, its weak points are unquestionably shadowed by its brilliant and meandering machinations. The film splurges and invests in its concept, story, script, visuals, sound, emotions, and intellect, in accordance to how the film language can intangibly bring out all its cinematic ideas and values across.

Like Leonardo diCaprio’s character Cobb, Nolan is a meticulously skilled extractor and an architect of deep and provoking thoughts. He is a sly narrative tactician who juggles at big ideas and make people think about his idea. He takes the audience to a pleasurable trip through varying mental labyrinths filled with elegant dreamscapes and genuine human drama. It has a sort of paradoxical architecture of its own as Nolan offers a clockwork-precise showmanship in every scene. By the film’s ending, he impressively allows the characters to wake up from their dreams to figure out what’s real. Yet, whether for his film’s characters or for his film audience, things doesn’t really end there…

Inception is a rare movie project that can be enjoyed on a superficial and/or progressively deeper level of viewing. It uncannily fascinates the audience as the story moves further into the challenging layers of the subconscious mind. It is a work of a visionary. For all its high production values and budget requirements, this is the kind of film that the big movie studios should support more often.

The Shining Movie Review: Stanley Kubrick’s Horror Masterpiece Shines for Many Generations

The Shining Movie Review: Stanley Kubrick’s Horror Masterpiece Shines for Many Generations
The Shining is a masterpiece of modern horror. With its remarkable visual panache and a keen sense of irony, it is a rare, chilling, majestic piece of cinematic fright benefiting repeated viewings.
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New Moon Movie Review: A Swoon Movie for the Fans

New Moon Movie Review: A Swoon Movie for the Fans
This second bite to the hugely popular Twilight saga can’t exactly do the same for the outsiders. It may not be good enough to seduce new fans, but it’s not bad enough to break off relentless infatuations from its very much anticipating target market.
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Watchmen: Deconstructing the Film in Reference to the Graphic Novel

Watchmen: Deconstructing the Film in Reference to the Graphic Novel
The film Watchmen is no doubt a love letter to those who have been waiting for the graphic novel’s cinematic rendition for the last two decades.
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Corpse Bride Movie Review: A Charming Grave Fairy Tale

Corpse Bride Movie Review: A Charming Grave Fairy Tale
Behind its eerie theme, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is fun, genial, expressive and charming. This semi-musical stop-motion animation celluloid baby is set at death’s door and salutes the liberating power of true love and sacrifice.
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King Kong Movie Review: A Beastly Adventure

King Kong Movie Review: A Beastly Adventure
Jackson’s King Kong proves to be an enduring part of film history and legacy all over the world. If LOTR is a magical classic in complete greatness, King Kong is a monstrous adventure flick with mainstream feel.
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Brothers Grimm Movie Review: A Grim for Brothers Grimm

Brothers Grimm Movie Review: A Grim for Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm is shallow, bland and disappointing. There have been a few sparks of promise, but the muddled plot messes up its very intensity.
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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Movie Review: A Trippy Imaginarium

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Movie Review: A Trippy Imaginarium
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is primarily a visual spectacle. While the film is not entirely successful, it certainly qualifies as a glorious mess of exploring an imaginative world.
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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Movie Review: A Slick and Solid Family Slapstick

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Movie Review: A Slick and Solid Family Slapstick
This eye-popping and mouth-watering film cooks up a veritable buffet of the bland and the bizarre, the sweet and the sour, and all other tastes generously offered on screen. It serves up a riot of glee, color, and absurdity.
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Film Review: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

A Trippy Imaginarium
By Rianne Hill Soriano

“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” has a vaudevillian spirit. It flirts with acid-laced visuals and spins circles around the viewers’ heads. The dizzy spell of visual fantasy and the rickety plotting both impresses and bores.

This send-off film for the late Heath Ledger (technically speaking, though personally, I think it’s his Joker in “The Dark Knight” that is his real great send-off) is a highly imaginative mess shot with boldness and extravagance. It works more like a cobbled collection of ideas rather than being a precious stand-alone story.

Though the visual flare is there, things don’t really hold together well. And this issue already gives consideration to the fact that Ledger only finished half of his work on cam – not to say that the other three guys who finished the work for him are of no good value. It’s just that the film, as a whole, clutters with artsy stuff – than mainly putting enough value to characterization. “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is visually packed with grandeur, but the story mishmash makes it tiring to watch many scenes. There is that feeling of being overdone. And at some point, it’s like eating too much of a well-garnished meal that’s out of nutritional value. The film’s storytelling can’t keep up with the trippy elements just packed together to create a full-length movie. It’s fitting more like a series of eye-popping music videos spliced together.

When looking at the film separately into scenes of fantastical spins, it’s generally fine. The anachronistic artistry of director Terry Gilliam makes visually splendid slices of brilliant madness. Rife with hyperbolic displays, it is grounded in a fantasy world rendered through an enigmatic odyssey of graphic invention. Yet, a film should put its various elements as a whole body of work. And in this case, “Parnassus” meanders around confused rhythms that make it more like rambling chunks of effects-filled magic that are mostly self-indulgent and gambling. Though it promises something fanciful at times, this doesn’t really quite add up to one grand sight. It teases with magnificently tantalizing moments, but the resulting film looks more like an outlandish jugging act that both dazzles and bums.

As a big-budget pageantry of shifting CGI canvases and frenetic elements, the big deal effects overpowers the story instead of just serving to spice up and backup the storytelling. It looks overburdened with ideas, visions, and concepts while becoming disappointingly moody at times. They are insisted with too much force and urgency that they are more off-putting than entrancing; more exhausting than exhilarating.

“Parnassus” is like a crammed artist’s mind traversing a shaky framework. Sometimes, the magic works and it’s blissful in its own right. But most of the time, it piles on glitter, grunge, and some mumbo jumbo puffs. It really needs a more coherent storytelling to pack every idea about art and imagination as insinuated in its theme. It seems to have passionate intentions about the contradictions of good and evil as played out in the hearts and minds of its characters. It is an ardent morality tale about the consequences of making deals with the devil. It provides a thematically potent sympathy moving freely to the people’s subconscious. And it feels through the artist’s life journey of pleasure and pain.

Heath Ledger’s Tony boosts the film’s value in his fine performance. It’s a chance to see him acting one last time before resting for good. On a lighter note, he will always be remembered with the great characters in his filmography. And the film is appropriately labeled as coming from Heath Ledger and friends.

Talented as he is (evidently with a number of good films under his belt), Christopher Plummer as Doctor Parnassus unfortunately lacks the intensity to make his character work here. His Imaginarium overpowers the film’s crucial element of characterization – although this issue is more a concern with the direction than what the actor can really deliver for what he is told to do. In fact, Lily Cole as Valentina, Andrew Garfield as Anton, and Verne Troyer as Percy have better characterizations than him. Despite the very tricky material, these three, along with Tom Waits who delivers a fine enough performance as Mr. Nick put some value to let the audience willingly ride along further the Imaginarium path.

The retrofitting of Ledger’s role works well on its own. Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law as the “Imaginarium Tony guys” even make more sense than what the clunks of the story make for the film’s entirety.

“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is primarily a visual spectacle. While the film is not entirely successful, it certainly qualifies as a glorious mess of exploring the imagination. Abandoning oneself to the occasionally uneven but visually stimulating images is the best way to enjoy it. And for those who are willing, it is a hollow, shambling, lovable mess of a movie to watch with a popcorn and soda.

Film Review: The Time Traveler’s Wife

Time Warping Love and Destiny
By Rianne Hill Soriano

“The Time Traveler’s Wife,” an across-the-years love story transcending space and time, takes a couple into the grandeur and sadness of life and the mystery of time in a combination of drama, romance, and science-fiction. Is it really worth your time or travel?

The very first thing to do is suspend the disbelief. It’s a sci-fi date flick where the nature of its illogical plot is essential to its very own provisions about the exploration of relationships in such a genre fiction offer. It can either be a picturesque, emotional journey working out as an elegy to love, fate, loss, and free will. Or it can be a trying hard romantic melodrama that will disappear from the viewer’s mind before too long. It’s actually dependent on mood, taste, and preference.

This film adaptation from an Audrey Niffenegger best-selling novel obeys no dramatic rules or narrative logic. It has some psychological dissonances that can only make things work if the illogical nature of the plot heaving away at space/time conundrums finds its wavelength through the right audience – those who can find a charming, if mildly depressing fantasy, and consider it a full experience that tugs at the heartstrings beyond the preposterousness of its story. It seems to peg around the combining elements of sweepingly romantic time travel movies like “Somewhere in Time” and the supernatural swoon of “Ghost.” Add up its old-fashioned treatment with a fairytale-ish glow, this thought-provoking melodramatic fantasy about what it takes for two people to overcome all the obstacles in their path together mainly works around the heavy emotional tones to create a deeper texture on its life, love, and destiny questions.

Time travel is an interesting and intriguing plot device. The characters’ unusual circumstances enable quite a bit of humor and mystery while surrendering to a far-fetched concept to reward the audience with a lush, high-gloss weepie by its end. The film stars Eric Bana as the Chicago librarian Henry DeTamble, a man suffering from gene anomaly that causes him to involuntarily time travel. And yet, the defective gene doesn’t prevent him from meeting his wife played by Rachel McAdams as Clare Abshire – with the two living the supposedly ideal marriage of genuine lovers. The complications his time travels create for his marriage is what emerges as a story of living such a life of stolen instances and valued moments.

“The Time Traveler’s Wife” tries to play itself out as a serious and heart-rending love story filling the emotional suitcase with pseudo-poetic significance. The film moves fast, as though to distract the audience from the convoluted storyline’s shortcomings and the nearly total absence of logic in its plot, and such make the viewer ask about the actual story making sense or not. The loose ends are even left untied that making the film really work is more than just the audience embracing the magic of its concept and its escapist date fare value; it should mainly deliver as an engaging cinematic offer with first-rate treatment and spellbinding storytelling than just merely prioritizing its commercial value above everything else.

The strength of the film is the emotional bearing that makes it more moving by its latter half. It could have benefited well if director Robert Schwentke gets to further explore the romantic elements and level up the story development to more imaginative heights. The picturesque look and fairytale sound makes it a pretty interesting escapist fare on the surface. And for viewers aching for a romantic drama that leaves them emotionally, honorably exhausted, this escapist offer can hold themselves towards the flick’s enveloping emotional grasp until its tear-jerking conclusion. Moreover, the soundtrack also adds a great deal to the film. Furthermore, it’s interesting to note that it’s already quite rare to see such an intimate love story with old fashioned treatment outside the demands for cinematic themes as comics, graphic novels, superheroes, spoofs, historical highlights, futuristic ideas, apocalyptic situations, sell-out gags, and “what if” issues, nowadays – which adds to its kind of charm for its preferred audience at this very moment.

This flick moves with a sort of a stately but confusing pace and era that its “bound by realism storyline flourished with fantastic elements” still depicts an unimpressive stature in its tone and actuality. And this reflects on the acting performances which become a combination of oblivious, touching, and confused. In its choice of decisions about what to keep and what to leave out from the book, it seems to cram too much into the runtime and it loses the elegance of the novel along the way – not to say that I have read the novel already, but it just shows in the way the storytelling flows in it’s kind of choppy plotpoints. And more than just the insights about love, destiny, and time, the audience finds it hard to directly relate to the film’s characters and situations amidst the suspension of disbelief. Many of the long spans of time passing between lines seem to have been inexpertly translated that they almost make sense but not quite. And with such little regard for establishing character or letting a moment play itself out, the movie gets weaker as it becomes even more convoluted and far-fetched by the last third of the story. Perhaps, the book fills in the blanks in emotional beats and plotting as the story strives for meaning in its affecting allegory about love that persists beyond the mundane timeline.

At first, I felt like Bana as the man with the time-traveling gene is a miscast. But after a while, I have then started to accept him for the role. He and McAdams grow to become easy enough on the eyes to distract from the script’s many plot holes and somehow compensate on the vague level of emotional investment to make the film still work on a certain light. Though not consistent all throughout, they still develop some charmingly emotional moments together in order to make a great looking couple with characters able to genuinely care about each other at times. There are also notably touching scenes including the one where Henry sees his mother at the subway. The climax scene of Henry’s life with his loving family going to the fireworks and hunting scenes are well-mounted. The sell-out treatment on the ending is a bummer. The romance is then deprived of an ending that feels earned.

While the film makes a decent enough date movie, this could have been a much better film. Nevertheless, it’s still a decent escapist romance for its particularly chosen market. It’s best not to overthink things to make it a more acceptable time filler. And maybe die-hard romantics won’t really mind… But those seeking a higher level of viewing experience would feel like they rather disappear and time travel somewhere else than sit through it.

Overall, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is not something to rush out to see right away. Yet, it still something to consider watching during some free time when on the mood – and by then, it could be something worth renting.

“Aninag” (Light’s Play) Film Photos

My second 35mm film “Aninag” (Light’s Play), 15 mins., 2005

“Karsel” (Prison) Film Photos

My first 35mm film “Karsel” (Prison), 20 mins., 2003

Aninag (Light’s Play) at Culture Unplugged

Film Article: PIFAN’s “It Project” Invites Filipino Productions

PIFAN’s “It Project” Invites Filipino Productions
By Rianne Hill Soriano

The 12th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PIFAN) opened diverse spaces and events including the various projects of the Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF). One of NAFF’s highlights included the “It Project” which opened a new gate offering production support to help finance film projects with high potentials. Out of the 19 projects, one Filipino project and another Filipino-American project were invited to take part of the event: Rico Ilarde’s “Killdroid” produced by Pete Tombs of Boum Productions Ltd. and Nathan Adolfson’s “The Help” produced by Adolfson through 5858 Films.

The opening ceremony of NAFF was held last July 19, 2007 at the Puchon’s Gyeonggi Art Hall and the closing ceremony was held at the same venue last July 23, 2008 – capping off the project with the “It Project” winners announcement and the “Fantastic Film School” graduation.

NAFF at this year’s PIFAN also featured the “Industry Showcase of Fantastic Cinema 2008” which extended its screenings with 50 international films. The industry screenings catered to producers and filmmakers to further promote both Korean films and the circulation of Asian films. The project provided NAFF guests exclusively with industry video library, guest lounges, and casual meeting places to facilitate the business. With more than 100 official guests of professionals in the film industry, it led diverse business meetings and developed new opportunities to Genre Cinema.

PIFAN also designed the education program through which genre film experts meet with prominent young filmmakers through the launch of the “Fantastic Film School 2008.” With “The power of Action Film!” as its slogan, this new enterprising industrial program of NAFF invited outstanding Asian martial arts directors from China, Japan, Thailand, and Korea to impart their spirits and methodology of martial arts to young filmmakers through invaluable lectures, seminars, and instruction.

Karsel screens at UST CineVita Film Festival on March 7

Rianne Hill Soriano’s first 35mm short film “Karsel,” her thesis film at the University of the Philippines Film Institute (UPFI), screens at the 2nd CineVita Film Festival on March 7, 10 A.M., at the Thomas Aquinas Research Center (TARC) auditorium, University of Santo Tomas, España, Manila.

“Karsel,” recipient of the Kodak Film Award 2003 and Best Production Thesis of UPFI, is a 20-minute film that delves into a young adult female’s submission to the conventions of a traditional home and her struggle for her liberation.

The film was made possible by the generosity of a number of people and institutions including Seiko Films providing the camera, lighting, and grip equipment, LVN Pictures Inc. for the processing, printing and editing of the film, and Optima Digital for the telecine transfer and colorgrading.

“Karsel” was also nominated for the 17th Gawad Urian for Best Short Film, competed at the Tel Aviv International Film Festival 2004 (Israel), and was a finalist for the 1st Indeo Film and Video Festival 2004 and International Women’s Film Festival 2006. It was also exhibited at the Pelikula at Lipunan Film and Video Festival 2004, Celebrating Women – Women’s Film Festival 2004, Eksperimento Film Festival 2004, UP Diliman Film and Video Festival 2004, 1st Pi Omicron Independent Film Festival 2004, Illuminations: Awarded Student Films of the UP Cinema Arts Society 2006, and a number of screenings in various school and art house events.

The film features thespians Summer Sumera, Gigi Pirote, Ermie Concepcion, Chum Aquino, Dingdong Rosales, Pam Sto. Domingo, Roma Regala, and Rico del Rosario. The production staff includes Rianne Hill Soriano as Director/Writer/ Executive Producer/Editor/Director of Photography, Eli Balce as Director of Photography, Chrisel Galeno as Production Designer, Joy Puntawe as 1st Asst. Director, Herbert Navasca as 2nd Asst. Director, Kiko Ortega as Musical Scorer, Noel Bruan as Sound Engineer, and Kiel Sandico-Fernandez, Madz Mandia, Joselle Acuña, and Janice Atencio as Production Managers.

Rianne also directed the 35mm short film “Aninag” which was screened at the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival 2006, New York Filipino Film Festival 2005, UNESCO Audio-Visual E-Platform, Clermont Ferrand Short Film Market 2005, 4th Neo-Angono Artists
Collective 2007, and competed at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival 2005 and Viva’s PBO Digitales Film Competition 2006 where it won 3rd Place. She is currently in the post-production stage of her new short film “Pera-perahang Lata.” Both films were grants from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

The CineVita Film Festival, which focuses on positive, life-affirming features, short films, and documentaries, is organized by The Varsitarian, official student publication of UST, and Institute
of Religion, with the UST Journalism Society, UST Literary Society, and Concilium Philosophiae.

Rianne works as a freelance director and writer. She is also currently a film writer for Yehey.com and a part-time educator for the First Academy of Computer Arts in Buendia, Makati City teaching filmmaking, scriptwriting, and directing and Colegio de San Lorenzo in Quezon City teaching photography, scriptwriting, and video production.

Stanley Kubrick DVD Collection: Full Metal Jacket

Stanley Kubrick Revisited
By: Rianne Hill Soriano

Good news to film buffs and DVD fanatics, now, you can include Stanley Kubrick’s opus ‘Full Metal Jacket’ to your collections.

‘Full Metal Jacket’

This film is a moving commentary on the dehumanizing process that occurs when soldiers prepare and engage in battle. It shows Kubrick’s notion of how the military changes ordinary people into killing machines.

Bleak but darkly funny at times, ‘Full Metal Jacket’ is a cinematic critique of how war affects the lives of many. Kubrick seems to direct his vision beyond the reality of the Vietnam War to issues far more universal and timeless. Set in the point of view of U. S. Marines from their brutal basic training to the bloody street fighting set in 1968 Vietnam, the film provides a riveting look at military life. Adapted from Gustav Hasford’s novel ‘The Short Timers,’ this 1987 Kubrick film is told through the eyes of Private Joker played by Matthew Modine, a cynical aspiring photojournalist who is forced to fight for his life and the lives of his fellow recruits.

The first half of ‘Full Metal Jacket’ focuses on the training of a squad of Marine grunts and the troubled relationship between their brutal drill sergeant Gny. Sgt. Hartman played by real-life drill instructor Lee Ermey and an oafish, flabby misfit and demented sharpshooter Leonard ‘Private Pyle’ Pratt played by Vincent D’Onofrio. This first half is jaw-droppingly good in its entirety – from the presence of the ensemble to the audio-visual splendor of its technicality to the simple and yet precise elements that infuses a dream-like, fatalistic quality on its theme and story.

The second half takes the grunts to Hue City during the turning point of the Vietnam War. And just like Kubrick’s powerful antiwar classics ‘Paths of Glory’ (set during WWI) and Dr. Strangelove (set during the Cold War), ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ once again explores the behavior of men in battle through a solid depiction of combat and the process by which the soldiers come to realize that they are, like it says on Private Joker’s helmet, ‘born to kill.’

What is even more fascinating with Kubrick’s films as this one is how they get to effectively manage universal themes while being specifically set in particular periods –never getting in any way obsolete until now. At this time and age, wars are still fought. The U. S. A. waging war to Iraq and Afghanistan can be interestingly compared to what has transpired in ‘Full Metal Jacket’s’ sixties Vietnam War setting. The comparison is edifying. And apparently, nothing has really changed much. Just like in the film, the soldiers trained to become killing machines are obliged to follow orders from their superiors, and in one way or another, they don’t acquire much knowledge about the people they come to defend. The morality issues are also explored. Private Joker wearing both a peace sign and a helmet with ‘born to kill’ writing maintains such irony the way the soldiers sing the Mickey Mouse Club hymn after fighting. Such similarities abound and they testify for the film’s take in the imposition of democracy through gruesome violence and destruction.

Personally, Stanley Kubrick, along with Tim Burton, is one my favorite directors of all time. And with many of Kubrick’s films now immortalized in DVD, he and his films can become treasure pieces for you too, the way they are to a hard-core fan like me.

Film Review: Day Watch

A Visual Caffeine
By: Rianne Hill Soriano

Starring: Konstantin Khabensky, Mariya Poroshina, Vladimir Menshov
Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov

‘Day Watch’ is a playful, surrealistic antidote to standard genre entertainment. It manages to be something more than the usual action, drama, and suspense. An audio-visual caffeine as it is, it has an unbridled cinematic creativity that makes itself a unique kind of movie experience. The film presents very real images managed by the right dose of twists and out-of-the-box visions. The style and treatment add emotional resonance to the epic energy of its intricate plot and its sharp, eerie, and visceral mood. It retains ‘Night Watch’s’ gorgeous and visually arresting style combined with that Russian streak of dark angst and a hip and new generation look.

‘Day Watch’ dives into the second chapter of the ambitious, visually dazzling Russian fantasy trilogy. It continues its tradition with a weird sense of humor and unconventionally presented special effects – shot in such a bold, crazy way that you would have to admire its pure audacity that effortlessly blends brilliant imagery with heart-pounding action sequences. Mixing history, sword and sorcery, and science-fiction, the film is bathed with opulent darkness and dread and a particularly Russian sensibility. The CGIs are incorporated into the real-life setting with a surreal context. And these elements turn out more organic than artificial. It clearly keeps the distinction between the pretentious and the profound. Add up its character-driven philosophy presented in a highly stylized form and you are on for a great combination of wall-to-wall action, oddly sweet-tempered mix of hyperbole, vexed characters, and profound issues about guilt, freedom, and responsibility.

At 132 minutes, the very core of ‘Day Watch’ is its reinvention of what Hollywood conventions can offer in the blockbuster market. Even though ‘Day Watch’ is probably a good 20 minutes too long, it is easy to forgive its excesses because director Timur Bekmambetov accomplishes such a stunning nature of effects that the Russian houses have been able to come up with on such a conservative budget – effects that range from horses smashing through the walls to a woman skidding her sports car along the face of a curved high-rise hotel to a climactic hotel showdown between the forces of light and dark giving another interpretation of the apocalypse. Indeed, he really knows how to marshal his limited resources into staggering heights.

Marked as a visionary filmmaker, Bekmambetov is certainly at the helm of the high-energy blast visual pyrotechnics look and feel for ‘Day Watch.’ Amidst the fact that he sometimes loses a more focused touch on the actual story in favor of impressive action sequences and amusing sidetracks, he keeps his story moving forward with the audience hooked up with every bit of his vision. The story could have easily bogged down with its mix of cumulative and complicated interpersonal dramas; but the wonderful acting, interesting characterizations, and great dialogues have all been powered up with many effective post-production tricks that you’ll be enjoying every shot, every scene, and every sequence.

Bekmambetov gives a deliriously stylish and endlessly inventive rollercoaster ride on this mainstream audio-visual opus from the novels of Sergei Lukyanenko and Vladimir Vasiliev. And it definitely sets the stage for a potentially interesting third chapter.

Film Review: Night Watch

The Powerful Others
By: Rianne Hill Soriano

With the slick, kinetic, and stylish visuals flourishing right down to its creative graphic treatment, ‘Night Watch’ taps the audience’s energy with its own distinct identity as an ambitious vampire film and Russian epic. Working with Sergei Lukyanenko’s novel, visionary director Timur Bekmambetov creates an absorbing tale of crime and punishment through a host of CGI-heavy and action-oriented supernatural thriller in a realist setting. It echoes as a cinematic concoction reflecting something like the Cold War being re-imagined as an eternal balancing act between good and evil.

There may be nothing completely new with ‘Night Watch;’ however, Bekmambetov consistently brings unique and inventive stuff to make the film seem all fresh to the audience. And with all the energy ‘Nightwatch’ contains, this dark, claustrophobic, grungy first chapter of a three-part tale becomes such a thrilling ride. It piles visual inventiveness, thick atmospherics, cool wits, grungy music, splashy production design and art direction, and kinetic editing – crafted within the various scenes that combine fantasy, action, suspense, comedy, and drama. The story is well-realized technically and thematically as familiar ideas are refreshed by the intriguing shift in culture and setting. The characters are sketched in shades of gray.

As a wildly entertaining fantasy thriller from the outside, ‘Nighwatch’ becomes an allusion to post-communist fears and frustrations from the inside – add up hints of Russia’s great silent-cinema past that add greatly to its modern appeal. Twisted, mysterious, bold, and compelling, it becomes all vamped out as it shows the latest vampire-slaying couture within the Moscow streets.

Overall, ‘Nightwatch’ is a formulaic and predictable take on a Hollywood staple reinvented the Russian way. It generally caters to the young and hip audiences. Moving at a fast pace with constant swoops and tracking shots, the visionary grandeur benefits from its Russian perspective containing many neat, original touches that makes the film jaw-dropping in its own right. With a bracingly vivid sense of style and character carrying greater weight because of its natural, historical progression, it becomes a refreshing take on a never-ending fantasy war between vampires and the forces of light. Indeed, it becomes a genre tale that transcends the story into a bewildering, jarring, and emotional opus.

Bekmambetov is a confident and original director whirling the ordinary into the grand. The epic framework of ‘Nightwatch’ allows him to kick off a promising trilogy that challenges the clichéd vampire movies plaguing the cinemas all these years. The film creates a caffeinated mood amidst the hallucinogenic images, blaring rock music, subterranean editing, flashy subtitles, vortexes of crows, music-video-inspired action, frenetic special effects, and cool characters. Amidst the multi-layered plot and fast pacing (that get a little confusing at times being inevitably overburdened with back story; and there isn’t much chance to take everything in then completely digest it in a whim), the audience is still able to risk logic to yield to the creative treatment of the film as the main character deal with monsters who are only visible in mirrors, evil toys sprouting spider legs, evil witches devouring life from others, vampires of dark and light investigating and taking actions on supernatural crimes the way detectives, policemen, and ordinary people do in the mundane world, a son he has lost and found in the most unlikely and dangerous means, and a damned woman who gets everything passing her way all messed up including an errant screw traveling from the hull of a flying airplane into the nooks and cranny of the gritty passages down the ground to her very coffee cup.

A goth-Russian supernatural epic as it is, ‘Nightwatch’ is 114 minutes of visually astounding, heart-pumping, and ultimately gripping movie experience.

Film Review: Cape Karma

When the Conscience Knocks
By: Rianne Hill Soriano

‘Cape Karma’ is an off-beat drama about a psychologically tortured man who lives by the lakeside. It is a very stylized film with a number of metaphors and thoughts about the concept of ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.’

The narrative shows a series of experimental flavors and allegorical statements about the life of a man losing his sanity. Its highly stylized treatment keeps up with its profound story. The conflict comes from inside the main character who lives a life of imagination, madness, obsession, and murder. The unconventional and surreal theme is planted deep into the film, and it works effectively with the film’s theme and treatment. The mild sexual content validates the madness and obsession in the story. The powerful visuals becomes an intense combination of realist elements and simple objects rendered in symbolic undertones. The juxtaposition of shots keeps up with a certain radical rhythm creating certain moods in line with the psychological drama’s demands.

Overall, the disturbing elements and experimental editing sustain the script’s madness. The metaphorical story effectively conveys the protagonist’s internal journeys which are physically shown in a series of external plotpoints.

The cinematography, art direction, sound design, and music all yield to the film’s stylized script and direction. Indeed, ‘Cape Karma’ utilizes various devices that keep up with the meandering and rattling nature of the story. And the film certainly builds up on the very concept of karma.

Amidst the number of mainstream movies being shown in a regular basis, watching this film is something different. Director Pankaj Advani creates a strongly felt open-ended story about certain key values in life – without really going overboard. And the turn of events makes the critical and creative minds of the viewers work in line with both the factual and imaginative aspects of the main character’s life.

The convincing performances add to the strength of the film. Rahul Dev’s crucial role as a crazy lead character, along with the rest of the actors and actresses comprising the ensemble of the film, delivers well in presenting such a story filled with inner emotional elements that determine how a lost soul can keep up with his life when his conscience keep on knocking his door every now and then.

‘Cape Karma’ is the kind of film that needs profundity to cope up well with its story. And with the number of symbolic objects and characters in the film, some may find the entirety of the film quite hard to understand. But for those who are fond of watching such artsy films, this is one good cinematic offer to really check out.