Who's watching this Watchmen?
(Warning: plot twists discussed in detail)
Getting the big question out of the way: Damon Lindelof's new HBO miniseries is fun. Fastpaced, engaging, funny and at times even witty, it ingeniously picks up the various threads of Alan Moore's intricate weave and extends them, introducing patterns and themes of its own to create a new narrative.
Splitting image
Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story starts positively: Charlie (Adam Driver) and then Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) reading offscreen what they like about each other while Baumbach runs a series of images as illustrative commentary. Then the kicker--this is the start of a mediator session where the two are in the process of divorce, and Nicole refuses to read to Charles what she's so movingly and eloquently written. The end of the relationship, not its affirmation.
I heard you make movies
In The Irishman (2019) someone puts a question to Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), the same question that is title of Charles Brandt's 2004 book--the same question one might ask of Martin Scorsese with the same innocuousness, and just the hint of something more.
Eskapo begins with video footage of the days just before Martial Law: eerie,
washed-out images of marching demonstrators and riot police. I've
always thought that in this cybernetic age our memories would appear
as if shot by videocam and with the first few minutes of his film,
director Chito Rono seems to suggest this--the First Quarter Storm as
a collective nightmare, witnessed through the unblinking eye of
television. It's a terrific beginning that sets an ominous tone for
everything that follows.
Lost in space
Paul WS Anderson's Event Horizon is arguably the Mary Celeste of science fiction cinema, not just the story of a ship adrift in the vast oceans of space but the film itself falling victim to malevolent forces (Paramount Studios) and mutilated, the missing portions gone forever.
Romantic? Yes. The film?
Should I stay or should I go?
Denise O'Hara's Mamang--part Gothic character study, part memory play, part comedy of accommodation--was one of the best films of 2018, I thought. Her sophomore effort Tayo Muna Habang Hindi Pa Tayo (Dating Not Dating) is at first glance a slick exercise in the Philippines' most popular genre of the moment (the romcom) at second glance develops (nonfans might say 'devolves') into something messier more troubling.
No guts no glory
Frank Borzage's No Greater Glory is often considered one of the greatest anti-war films ever made--or is it?
