honorhorror Reviews

The Social Network (2010)

What this generation has come to be?

[8/10 · 21 May 2012]

When you picture a villain in your mind, I guess the most convenient way is to think up a hideous face, and put the many undesirable qualities in your opinion behind that face, so he would speak the same awful languages you've come to be familiar with. I wouldn't be surprised if the portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in this movie was come up in this fashion.

With 95/100 on Metacritic, 3 Oscars and so much hype, The Social Network can be called a monumental success in Hollywood. David Fintcher may have again proved that he is not only a storytelling master, but also a mastermind of medias, as evidenced by the convoluted nature of the Social Network project, and the explosive media coverages after-wards. I believe this movie will be discussed, analyzed and staying in its controversial status for the next decade. I, for one, am totally compelled to find out about the real Zuckerberg. However, such interests only garnered me more curiosity in digging deeper about him. After all, the aftertaste of watching a big screen villainous main protagonist is strong, especially if such a figure feels like your unfriendly neighbor who is in possession of similar, uh, admirable qualities.

Liked I said, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the real-life Zuckerberg is quite friendly, and easy to get along with. However, the real issue here, is how I should live with the fact that, as a fellow geek/nerd, would what Zuckerberg wants to say be similar to what I want to say? Having been following the discussion board here, I cannot help but notice that people are generally offended and raging out against Mr. Z portrayed in this movie, pulling no punches in calling him "douche-bag" "self-absorbed" and so on. Some also said he's probably autistic and even aspergers. Moreover, some went on to say that being autistic doesn't justify what Mr.Z has done in the movie, which I totally agree. But still, under all these fancy terms, these extravagant wrappings, what would Zuckerberg feel? Is he really comfortable with being a modern day Butch Cassidy, aka a role model for renegades and rebels?

Thus I remembered a time where all people felt compelled to justify themselves to their subjects. The rich wished to justify his wealth either by appearances of hard-working or good heritage; the religious would wish to justify themselves by their deeds, as holy as possible; while rebels generally overlooked, or lived in the limbo created by other people's justifications. If Mr. Z was a 1st-century Jew (actually he's a 21st-century Jew), he would most likely end up as someone like the prodigal son in the Bible's "Prodigal Son Parable", instead of the billionaire he is now. The sheer difference of these two outcomes drives me to ask, if Mr. Z in the movie, a rebel and a billionaire, felt the need to justify himself? Or more personally to us commoners, would he feel totally free and more-evoluted if he reaches a point of completely no need to justify himself, when he's crowned with all these paramount achievements? To my disappointment, when I saw his business card, which said, "I am Mark Zuckerberg, Bixxx", I knew instantly he was still compelled to justify himself and his legacy, just like the old-fashioned religions. This business card is essentially saying, "I am the Lord of this business, and this is my Ten Commendaments for you, which is actually only One-commandments, that I AM Mark Z, and you're my Bixxx." Why is that? Aside from raising more brows and attract more medias, wouldn't 2 Billion dollars have made him feel safe already, that he needs stunts like this? That's when I realized that, the sheer irony for people like Sean Parker and Mr.Z in the movie, is that they went so far in denying their religious nature, and the fact that by saying something like "This is our generation, our rules", they're essentially creating new religions, for both themselves and the others . The prodigal son in the Bible, despite his rebelliousness and reckless, childish behaviors to destroy himself, saw no point in gratifying his own namesake, or writing down his own legacy and epics. However, we modern people are so into raging against the old values and creating our own, that when something backfires at us to make us feel there are after all something wrong with the whole idea, we are only left in a position to regret (or like Mr.Z did in the movie, expressing his contempt to the judge and jury).

The movie ended with the friendship between the two lead roles presumably broken forever, while the lawyer got some insight into Zuckerberg's deeply troubled self, which he seldomly leak to his 500 million Facebook friends. Once a friend of mine told me that, justification is for reconciliation, at least that's what happened in the Prodigal Son parable that the Father reconciled beautifully with his prodigal son. The Bible told me that whether you're an authentic A-hole or just someone who tries very hard to be one, you're welcome to accept Jesus' love, and be reconciled with him. I truly wish Mr. Z and Saverin can be reconciled in a graceful fashion, too.

Supernatural: Survival of the Fittest (2012) Season 7, Episode 23

Garnering enough dedicated fan base, and you can feed them with Dick Roman's syrup and make them watch another season.

[10/10 · 19 May 2012]

Talking about double standards, I never really dropped my skepticism for another CW show "Nikita" cause every time I try to buy myself into its logics and twists, I was made aware of the premise of that show which is essentially two skinny Barbie dolls trying to save America and teach us low-life's some true colors. They are just directed to their destined triumph where there always are Ken dolls waiting to kiss them in sunsets. Supernatural, however, entertains me in multiple facets while logics boil down to pretty much like, "Nah, this is all just demented supernatural stuff, yeah?" Which is why I keep referring this show to friends of mine as "guilty pleasure" since I could be aware of the culmination of bad theology and blatantly offensive parts of the show. So the fact is Christianity takes center stage as the laugh stick, while nearly all other religions took shots in their backs. This "screw all you religious hypocrites" vibe reached an all time high in the episode "Surviving of the Fittest", where we got a upright nun's bone in a cynical's hands as an ultimate weapon against the "another most difficult monster to take down". The show seems to be so eager in claiming itself as unredeemable, pulling no punches at these jokes in excellent (I tip my hat to the writers, again) sarcasm. Interesting enough, people with their cynical pop-corns choked on their chills somewhere in the show's plot, sadly.

So you may have noticed that most negative criticisms come from the audiences who're aware of the "lameness" where Cas was reconciled with Dean and Dean's cause when he sensed a thread of Dean's forgiveness. I smiled through that part because having a Ghandi-quoting, "make-love-no-war" Cas returning to his normal angel awareness takes some serious guts from the show-runners, and some over-the-top absurdity to add to the show's already-paramount, uh, absurdity. Now you've dropped your cynical pop-corns because after all the 24-episode story is still a reconciliation and redemption story, and the show-runners opted to diffuse the absurdity, a bit. Now those who care about the characters have more to worry about, which is the fate of Cas and Dean in, ahem, purgatory.

This instantly turned a lot of people off. But to me, honestly it's not a big issue, since I somehow figured out that the way you make "guilty pleasure" works for me is to somehow balance the scale between "totally guilty" and "totally complacent" with pleasure. The show-runners are smart enough to pull this trick off again and again, while preventing from appealing too much to my daily-weakened religious conscience. After all, keeping the fate of the main cast in a hunting reserve does make a fan's heart squeeze a bit, doesn't it? The cumulation of the nihilist ego in the trend of this new story arc of "Supernatural" does make me wonder how Season 8 would come into light. My point, that the writers essentially takes the spitting if they keep writing that there's a sovereign God and such God is a jerk, still stands. Also, if you declare a troubled kid a lost course, and decided to add more trouble to him, well, you'd be careful about things taking a dramatic turn, Deus Ex Machina style. Such a comment is irrelevant to a delusional angel at all.

Fringe: Brave New World: Part 2 (2012) Season 4, Episode 22

The residual value of a TV show, the residual value of dedicated fans.

[8/10 · 12 May 2012]

Being the Season finale, this proves to be a decent, tight episode that reconciled with many pivotal moments in previous episodes and seasons. There would be so many "told-ya" moments that make the fans jump from their couches.

Just my opinion, but did anyone suspect that the Fringe division was fooling around when they clearly knew where did the Belly-gang disappear from, but didn't even try to check the surveillance footages to narrow down the possibilities? Aside from some moments like this that knocked me out of my suspension of disbelief, I could live with this episode and even say it is greatly watchable and entertaining. We got some totally wicked and creepy dead person interrogation and one-very-gruesome bullet extraction. In fact, you can still sense that there must have been a last-minute save for the show to be renewed, that many scenes were serviceable as series finale, too.

It is an episode where all core relations and connections that we fans come to care about are all put to test. The relationship between Walter and Olive, Walter and Astrid, Olive and Peter and most notably, Walter and William Bell. From some mainstream critics' reviews I can already smell the detachedness they experienced when Belly invited Walter to a verbal wrestling of metaphysics, one that concerns with the Biblical God and the justification of his creation, and so on. As religious as the main cast (most notably, the remarkable John Noble) might be, this is almost bound to be bashed by the internet community, since what absorbed the fans into this show in the first place was the politically-neutral nature of this alternate-universes-ridden, pseudo-scientific-boasting story. Injecting some stoic, evangelical conversations into the middle of the story is as preachy and comic as it can be. Yet, I wish to read it as a desperate move to be reconciled with the lost Godly traditions the ancestors of these young audiences once had, which would shed some light onto the current turmoil the world is driving into(one that not too much better than depiction of Fringe). I guess the show runners know their business in terms of where to tread carefully and when to retreat to safer territories.

That led to my assessment of the currently existing 4 seasons of Fringe, which came with some pleasant closure by today with "A Brave New World Part 2". The core of the struggle depicted might be far-fetched and unconvincing, but through this exotic looking glass, one can expect to get warm and cozy in the core relationships the fans have come to know. It felt like every show (or movie) from J.J.Abrams would end in this fashion, with main characters and their significant others gaining some closure/resolution/reconciliation, while the mythology/science/exotic worlds take a backseat, like the so many mysteries from "Lost" never getting straight answers. Granted that human questions can be potentially tricky to answer (wait, is human the only being that's capable of asking questions?), but paralleling them with engineered (read:directed) perspectives of different mythologies is bound to be beautiful, isn't it? Why do I want to refer to Fringe, or "X-files" or "Supernatural" for insights of difficult or unexplainable phenomenons (timeloop, for one thing) when I can actually go to the library for a whole archive of documentations of these stuff? Why do I want to see the war of words between two grandpas about God and human suffering, when I can actually go to the nearest bookstore for a 2nd-hand copy of C.S.Lewis' "The Problem of Pain"? Why don't I go to my mum's place and hug her, but rather weep over Walter and Astrid's emotional moment and sigh over the invaluable nature of family love? Well, I think it's because I believe in this show's unsound vow to make more out of the sum of these elements. And, when this little share of faith seems dishonored, I feel like the residual value of the show and the residual value of me following the show would both be drained. I surely wish the show good luck in finding its anchor, its identity in its 5th and last season.

Supernatural: There Will Be Blood (2012) Season 7, Episode 22

Well thought-out, with some nicely nuanced parts and some forced narration.

[9/10 · 12 May 2012]

If you just turned off the TV after seeing Supernatural, and stood up from your couch yarning, would you look in the mirror and laugh at your own over-weighted self. That's what I did in my most cynical and entertaining style, and don't get me wrong but all the smart political comments accumulated in this season is being paid off in satisfying fashions.

On the surface, this episode is just standard fan service, with Crawley returning with his hellish sense of humor, and a run-of-the-mill fetch task to work out for the main characters. I felt like I could almost picture how the season finale is going to be, with ghost Bobby and all the other peripheral characters fitting into the "Independence Day against Leviathans" kind of story. However things quickly got interesting. When Dick Roman got interviewed, he has reached his all-time-high arrogance and like anyone(or should I say "anything" instead in the Supernatural universe) with a big ego he slipped out a keyword for his master plan--"make the human species as tasteful and healthy as ever", while looking into the camera with a big smile to you and me--the fattened, chip-swallowing geeks in front of TVs. Yeah, nice touch. With a downward-going economy in the real world(and lots and lots of social problems including tainted baby milk powder among other unheard-of woeful stuff in another hemisphere), this is some serious irony regardless of race and nationality. This episode basically maintains this wicked-fun vibe that also infected the Winchesters, whose adventure went on with some unexpected frustrations like Dean cannot devour his favorite garbage foods. There were also some twisted humors that kept knocking down the 4th wall here and there, including having the Alpha vampire saying "see you next season". However, there are also some narrations that sadly phase you out of the immersion like Dean and Sam's self-righteousness to insist rescue the little boy.

As a typical piece of post-modern art, Supernatural has always been about telling a over-serious mythological story with funny and cynical undertones, especially to its dedicated audiences, the equally-broken-as-the-Winchesters young adults whose everyday resentfulness, bitterness and pressure cannot be let out in public ways (No offense but I am often like that). Seeing another "you" who's on the brink of being zombiefied after swallowing so much delicately processed food might just be a smart metaphor for our worship of nihilism and cynicism when we laugh through a whole season of bad TV brainlessly. I surely hope that, just like Sam and Dean's "residual" sense of self-righteousness, "Supernatural" would use its self-awareness for good just like this episode "There Will Be Blood", which inspired some self-reflection and responsibility for me. As usual, I would like to end up my review with a salute and good luck for Supernatural.

Machine Gun Preacher (2011)

I've got mixed feelings for this movie.

[5/10 · 6 May 2012]

It's no secret that as a young Christian, someone like me would be drawn into the story of "Machine Gun Preacher", which according to its Facebook tag line, is "a great story of human and redemption". However, my admiration for this real-life saint, this living legend wasn't enough to cushion the disappointment and confusion after seeing the movie.

On one hand, Mr. Childers' vision in saving children from battlefields is inspiring, especially worth a mention to Christians in peaceful countries who took peace and life prosperity for granted. The movie depicts him as being driven by this vision almost into the abyss of madness, which is beyond reasoning, beyond family commitments and even beyond his own faith in God. You can taste that the movie makers are tough and brave enough to show you the dark sides of a modern-day saint, which is kinda like the point of modern storytelling. It's as if they were totally expecting (or maybe even aiming for) controversy in the first place, that the depiction of Childers' religion reaches new heights of theatrical unconventional-ism. This is not a man who reach out to unfriendly fellow human-beings with a "turn the other cheek" attitude, but rather a man who strike out like a wolf without any fear to hold him back from executing an enemy. When Gerald Butler roared with AK-47 in hands, he was not shouting to the evil rebels who like to grab kids and brainwash them into killing machines, he was literally shouting out to people who are disconnected from the real cruelty which is happening every minute. If Childers ever want to laugh at us for being fat and useless, I would say he has every right to say so because

trying to defend yourself whether with mental cleanliness which you call "pacifism" or smart argument that we are too little too feeble to do anything substantial for those kids, there are those risking their lives on the front line for them.

On the other hand, the Christianity I know may not work like what the movie depicts. I know some dedicated Christians who work in rehab centers here in Thailand, who has to witness the addicts getting clean only by the grace of Jesus. That certain process is extremely painful, challenging and no less difficult than being born all over again. However the movie, to my disappointment, took the transformation for granted. In a way, I also wish this kind of "montage cleansing methodology" can be applied in real life, which would save so much time and strength. Unfortunately, I don't believe so. It seems to me that, as far as Childers' motivational sermons(speeches) go, he may have turned his church from a place of healing into a shooting gallery, with bullets made of religious terms. Although it seems more dramatic and scary on the big screen, but one has to confess that Christians can often do so without ever realizing it is exactly what Jesus hated so much about religious people in the 1st century. The movie itself also acknowledged this issue lightly, but indifferently marched on with Childers at the center of righteousness. Childers' donation collecting approach is more like "call yourself a bastard if you don't care", which is amusing since it reminds me of some Chinese advertisements and viral marketing methodology in which a curse is landed onto you if you don't act as required. I am also pretty sure that's not how Jesus preached in the Bible.

Whether it's for artistic reason or not, the story development in this movie, as some reviewers pointed out, is a bit inconsistent. Potentially it can cause many unnecessary confusions to those not familiar with Christian faith, in my opinion. For example, there was a scene in which Childers made a bad decision to leave dozens kids behind when there weren't enough room to move them back all at once. This led to those kids being slaughtered and burnt, which made Childers questioning his God, commenting that Mr. Almighty doesn't care or doesn't exist. So the scenario is, you did your best calculations and pulled out a long shot, which the "God Insurance Co.Ltd" didn't choose to cover, and you're so angry that you call God a fraud. How smart is that? Still, Jonas in the Bible did something similar, but Jonas' story ended on the note of God's reassuring words, unlike Mr. Childers' story which ended on Childers being "redeemed" by the little kid who was forced to kill his family, when the kid told him not to lose himself in catastrophes. So I guess the inconsistency of the story comes with the problem of redemption. Who was redeemed by whom from what? How's redemption ever possible? The movie started off establishing the power of the God's love as the ultimate answer, but gradually skewed towards humanism which finally sees Childers as the fleshed out hero, who's maybe one step away from claiming higher moral ground than God (which I surely hope the real-life Childers won't do).

With this review, I hope that some bottom-line can be given to my fellow movie-goers who walked out of the theater confused, or even offended by the Christianity depicted in the movie. Also, I hope to know Mr. Childers in real life better, and will look forward to be inspired by his account of faith and redemption.

Supernatural: Reading is Fundamental (2012) Season 7, Episode 21

A strong episode with some serious philosophical notes, and some returning themes.

[9/10 · 5 May 2012]

After almost a whole season without much of the old-school Supernatural regulars (Cas, Crowley, Meg among the ones still alive), Reading is Fundamental feels like just the right episode to kick everything into their most comfortable places in this show. It is proof that Supernatural is usually stronger in its well-developed mythological habitat, aka a place where "angels" and "demons" can well fit into the same house.

I once read from a famous pastor's work that "American culture is Calvinism plus business achievements". Oddly enough, a show as unconventional as Supernatural would fit somewhere into this sentence, if you realize how much the show derives from the Biblical view of the world, and how fun it is for this show to continue its pop-culture reference tradition. The newest one of the later is a well-placed reference to the Transformers, which I laughed out loud for quite a while. Speaking of the person who uttered these funny words, Cas' return is somehow reminiscent to his mortal trip back in Season 5. Thus, the show cashed out some capital from the glorious old days by repeating the philosophical mind-bending of dragging an angel down to the human level. It is still unclear how this funky new Cas would fit into the new story arc, since it's not as well planned and masterfully unfolded as the old Eric Kripke story arc. Let's just hope he will make as much fun as he gives exposition in later episodes. Anyway, some moments worked out great, especially the scene between Cas and Dean when they played a board game with metaphoric undertones. It feels like an assessment of the old theological question about predestination from the universe of Supernatural. And this episode on its own is an excellent example of TV entertainment.

As far as the show's big statements go, this episode may have reached some new heights in claiming that "angels are incapable to care" and many recurring accusations about God. From Season 4 and 5 we already knew that the chosen prophets in Supernatural universe can be really wimpy, unfortunate in their gritty predicaments, yet the show knew how to wrap things up in a relatively graceful way by concluding the story with a big exclamation mark that "Oh, I see. So everything WAS in God's plan after all despite so many crazy and sad things happened." My point, same as last week, is that it seems meaningless to write a story where God is a jerk (or irresponsible) since the writers are essentially the God of the story and will take the final blame, especially when the story turns out to be a bad one. So as a fan of the show, I wish Supernatural good luck for this and next season.

Supernatural: The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo (2012) Season 7, Episode 20

It's funny, in a crazy way.

[10/10 · 28 April 2012]

It felt a simultaneously good and bad thing to build the entire show on a string of geeky and crazy ideas. On one hand, the stable fan base may not grow dramatically when we're so deep into the story. Yet that is where Supernatural truly shines. The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo is such a typical Supernatural episode, and it's the reason I watch this show.

So, in order for this episode to work for you, you'd at least have to watch the movie "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" US version to understand the spoofs. You'd also need to belong to the generation which accepts Harry Porter as their one and only true "High Art" like Sam did in the story. Actually, this one might come out as one of those better meta-episodes that will leave a grin on your face long after you saw it, and not just for making fun of Star Wars in unexpected ways and quoting Harry Porter as a guiding star. The episode is not particularly long, but totally eventful and epic in scale with a lot of good suspenses and good actions. While the 7th season had already garnered some bad reviews from critics, calling it dragging with its main story arc, this episode really tightened things up, wrapping up Frank, Bobby and Dick Roman's storyline in a satisfactory way with bunch of new possibilities in hand. The writers totally deserve some good credit. The apparent achievement here is that they advanced the main storyline without compromising the parodied fun.

In a way, you can call this episode an inspiration for the elder generations who want to reach out to the younger, Dungeons and Dragons generation. When Charlie, the "Lisbeth" of this episode freaked out and froze, Dean totally ran out of ideas to work her around. On the other hand, Sam is able to pull the impossible by referring to her own personal "Bible", aka the Harry Potter books in order to motivate her. Should we want to make clarifications and good parables in our effective conversations with this generation (I am 25 by the way, but felt a bit stuck between generations and cultures), that might just be the humility we need. At the end, Dean said Charlie is like a little sister he never wanted, which is bittersweet considering what the brothers have been through. Listening to a 30-something Dean uttering this sentence can be ironic, since the show-runners are in fact responsible for writing them into a seemingly endless pit of misery. Every time I laughed at Dean and Sam on the screen simply made me wish more that my life isn't just another sarcastic episode of "Supernatural".

Unknown (I) (2011)

Why did I figured out the plot of the movie at the very beginning......

[5/10 · 5 June 2011]

You know, if you are a big fan of espionage thrillers, don't watch this movie. That's because you will get the entire story figured out about 5 minutes into it.

I watched this film for the sake of Liam Nesson, who was ever impressive as tough guys with a tough voice. This is especially true in movies like Taken. When I first had my eyes on Unknown's poster, I had the feeling of Dejavu. But, since everything resembles Taken, that's not entirely a bad thing, right? Then I went into it expecting some bad-ass actions and a solid story. At the Berlin airport, when Liam Nesson's "wife" mockingly said the line "giving the speech, seriously?" I got the whole plot worked out. It's kinda sad to see how much your mindset is as clichéd as Hollywood wants you to be.

Then the entire movie played out as I expected. It almost seemed like the writer jumped out near the end saying, "aha! You must haven't figured out some minor twists even if you worked out the main twist." And I said like, "That's exactly the kind of little twists I was expecting, and do you have any more tricks up your sleeve?" Man, Liam Nesson in Taken was so cool, but in this one he's just like a little girl imitating Jason Bourne. If they could only smooth up some ridiculous romance and unconvincing character development, the movie would be more watchable. It must be a luxury compared to the budget of the film......

Although, Unknown was so devastatingly clichéd that it might inspire so many great parodies. Wait for those genius on the web to do so.

5/10.

X: First Class (2011)

A great production with some rough corners.

[8/10 · 3 June 2011]

Before I went into cinema for X-Men:First Class, a few media reviews really had cranked up my expectations. So, let's be honest, and say that this movie was so close to meet my expectations.

The filmmakers did a fantastic job knitting up everything in the first act, made it very character-driven. Nothing in the first 40 minutes makes you feel half-cooked because neither Charles' nerd personality nor Eric's washed-up revenger aura ever feels old. The whole movie basically feeds you with a great sense of retrospective spy movie. The same approach was at its peak in another superhero marvel--The Incredibles. It works fantastic if you factor in the fact that X-men:First Class is not a cartoon. There are action sequences set throughout the movie deliberately minimizing the use of CGI, which added significant believability to the film.

The 2nd act, which to my surprise, didn't really slow down for character-building. The movie is fantastic in bringing actions and characters to a balance, which worked just like the first two X-men films.

I was ready to be bombarded by the massive amount of CGI in the climax of the film, which if not for the restraining, smart usage of special effects during the first half, would not be so obviously artificial. That issue, along with my hectic expectations for the drama between Charles and Eric did make the climax of the film a bit, uh, unsatisfying. I was really thinking about if they can wrap up everything until Charles said half-mockingly, "I'd soon be bald."

The new Mystique, played by beautiful Jennifer Lawrence, was at the heart of the whole drama side of this action film. Mystique's character building was maybe the best compared to the main guys, Charles and Eric. Mystique's struggles of identity crisis, despite its cartooned roots in X-Men universe, is heartfelt. It's especially true to those living in a multi-ethnic environment. Mystique was so outstanding that both Charles and Eric had left something to be desired, in my opinion. Charles and Eric on the other hand, felt like they were already in their full-blown form. It's kind of hard not to factor in my own interpretations and assumptions when I tried to appreciate their development.

At last, the movie is complemented with a great score. 8/10. Way to go, X-Men. If you like to hear about my interpretation about Charles, please feel free to read on.

So, here's my interpretation about Charles's development in First Class. Charles was born in the upper class of his world, which formed his view of the world and mindset in a mainstream way. His mind-reading abilities allowed him to walk in the rains of social life without getting wet, which formed his illusion of being the mighty leader/father figure of mutants. If not for Magneto, he'd probably never feel the pain of belittled, incompetent, and incomplete. His disability to walk, along with the loss of his sister, aka Mystique, humbled him and sent him on the way to be closer to the a father figure/authentic peacemaker. Alas for Charles, no matter how many times he had read Mystique's mind, there were actually more delicate matters than he could fathom that was going on in her. Don't we, the self-respected intellectuals often do the same with our families? We sometimes feel like what's truly important is only arm's length away, yet in our frustration we turn to pervert or twist it. If that's the case for you, then may God help us as he helped Professor X.

Fringe: 6B (2011) Season 3, Episode 14

A beautiful story, both standalone and well fitted into the series.

[10/10 · 27 February 2011]

Actually, there are some respected reviewers around on the internet that didn't care much about this episode, and simply dismissed it as a boring, slow-pacing soap opera. It is sad, that after almost 3 full seasons, Fringe still suffers from a misplaced ID card, that loudly writes "Sci-fi horror" more than "mytery and fantasy".

This episode, in my opinion, is the very episode in Season 3 that matches up to the quality of what was considered to be Fringe's "Constant"--"Peter". On an emotional level, they both showed the determination of the creators to transform it from a X-file wannabe into the cousin of "Lost", which is good because "Monster of the week" formula gets old in these days, especially if you had the familiar monsters and just gave them a slightly different but still quite over-the-head explanation(X-files would say "blame the aliens" while Fringe would say "blame the other dimension").

You don't necessarily need to be charmed by movies like Up to appreciate the subtlety of this episode. In fact, it's very fun and funny to compare it to Up for many similar qualities, like the interchange of metaphors and various paralleling themes. The relationship between the old couple living in the apartment was somewhat a mirror to Peter and Olive's twisted entanglement, be it "quantum" enough or not. "To cross the line" is like the keyword of this episode because Walter, P&O, and the old couple all have lines to cross for similar reasons. The final result? They got paid off all in satisfying ways. For Walter, it's just touching to see a crazy genius' moral struggling to match up to the coldness of his nemesis, his arch-enemy. It's also a precious reminder to me that it is those at power that needs people's care and consideration the most--before we conclude and wrap them up in monstrous coverages. For the old couple, it's even more interesting because "Crossing over" or "cross the line" to them really have more layers than those main roles. To them, the very line they would probably be crossing is a line of sanity, reason, common senses and even religious conviction or clarity. This is a highlight of "Fringe"'s struggles at heart. Though I'm not really bought into the mythology of Fringe, I'd like to appreciate their effect and artistic considerations of presenting the tongue-in-the-cheek differences/similarities between alternate dimensions and afterlife.

And, to the stars of the show, Peter and Olive, their line to cross is a both the borderline between 2 universes and the invisible line marked by Olivia's emotional scar, as she kept on resenting the fact that which would have possibly been the most important and beautiful part of her life was stolen by her arch[-enemy. Ethically speaking(gosh, if there are still anything that can be called ethical if there are really two universes at war) Peter and Olivia belonged to different worlds, and they'd better leave each other untouched to prevent further complications. Yet, as complications and conflicts both marched on regardless of their position, it's also relieving to see they have the courage to come to terms, which finished building up the story's many further possibilities.

Way to go, Fringe team! And best wishes.

The Blind Side (2009)

Reminds me of lyrics of Amazing Grace.

[9/10 · 30 August 2010]

The Blind Side has been marketed as an Encouragement movie in Asia, and many Oriental audiences clearly have this message received that the movie is praising USA for having the best education system that inspired equality, humanity, etc..

While in my opinion, this movie very much reminded me of the lyrics of Amazing Grace, that "through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come". Just like the beginning of the movie, this story is not about encouragement of success, but about the predicaments. Compared to his friends in the same block, Michael Oher is a rare case that he didn't bounce into others' surviving logics of violence and pride, though he's totally homeless and hopeless. Yet, I can't imagine if I were him when the Tuohy family accepted him into the house, how hard would I work and behave to win their approval. Very luckily, Michael Oher wasn't me. Out of some stubbornness of holding true to his own feelings, his heart leads him to choose otherwise again and again, thus unfolded this story beautifully.

Note that the Tuohy family wasn't the first family to shelter Oher. The P.E. teacher's beautiful reasoning got him into the school in the first place, and the warm-hearted Big Tony also gave him a place to stay. But, as the movie showed us, you can love but you can't enforce it. Both the decision of the school and the decision of Big Tony were pushed decisions. It can all end up "let somebody else be Christian about him". In 2 Corinthians 9:7, it says "each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." Guess it applies here. Our actions, especially those in the name of charity, usually starts as a delightful little touch of love and mercy, and dies in the name of responsibility. Oher wrote a sad essay "White Walls", indicating that the stakeholders around him all did their parts pretty hard though their "hard" and "best" is not enough. Yet, God didn't knock on each of their foreheads saying "you are not treating Oher well enough!" Instead, God inspired a family that actually can do better and really have a vision for a life with Michael Oher. With 3 sentences, Leigh Anne Tuohy invited this unknown and possibly dangerous factor into their house. These 3 sentences are, "Why are you going to the gym?" "Do you have any place to stay?""Don't you dare lie to me!" They don't even sound kind enough as invitation, yet they are out of a woman's love, so personally, so honest and powerful.

And that started this marathon test for this woman's love. The first time, it was because the 10000$ coach has been ruined by Oher's massive body. But, Leigh Anne just said, "Do you want to stay here?" The second time, it was gossips from Leigh Anne's reference group, who are at least as rich as her. They questioned her generosity was out of some "white guilty thing" and pointing out Collins (the daughter of Leigh Anne) might become a sex victim of the massive Michael Oher. Mrs. Tuohy only said "shame on you" to those gossipers, but she didn't hesitate to ask about her daughter's feeling either. The third time was the car accident which Michael was mainly responsible. Again the pressure was on Leigh Anne as the public doubted her love for this boy, but she bravely ignored the public and comforted her boy. The fourth time…... It never ended, and it never will. That makes me envy the USA system and USA culture, but oops, if their system and culture are so perfect that love grows out of ground just by itself, why do Michael and Leigh Anne have to overcome so many prejudices and bitterness? I think, questioned to the end, system can't love, and despite many schools made biblical quotes their motto, system surely can't do anything in Jesus name. If a system can admit Oher into the school out of Christian duty, then this system can also dismiss Oher from the school logically, fairly, systematically in Jesus name. And anyone not completely ignorant would see the fact that nothing would be achieved in this way.

We are creatures living in a machine, but I believe we are not machines. "Don't you dare lie to me" again was heard near the end of the movie. In the name of fair and righteousness the system questioned all that Tuohys had done for Michael. This is a reasonable doubt that the Tuohys loved Michael so much only because they are boosters of their university. It's the toughest test for Leigh Anne so far, and for the first time in the movie she couldn't find a way to instantly cope with it. She feared that Michael can run away and never come back. Finally, it's Leigh Anne's leap of faith to tell Michael that "it's your decision, you life", that again allowed their love to triumph over doubts. See? The system has to stay neutral to be fair and functional. And, if the system has to assume we humans are also only machines, I guess it's our duty to prove otherwise. That would require a continuous dedication and courage to come through many dangers, toils and snares. And the only way to do that as I have come to know is to believe. I surely hope that my fellow audiences don't only draw their conclusions of this movie on Dale Carnegie's books and theories, but also listen to Amazing Grace, that "It is grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home."

Suspect X (2008)

Beauty and Beast series: Suspect X.

[9/10 · 25 August 2010]

Have you ever wondered if by some chance, the story of Beauty and Beast had each of their counterparts in oriental world? In fact, many post-modern classics in Oriental world had this context of beauty and beast in love. Sometimes, the beauty is at the same time the beast (you can find dozens of Japanese comics in the type), while other times you will find the stories featuring the protagonist gradually becoming inhuman to pursue the love of the beauty.

The story of Suspect X features one of the most memorable Oriental lead Mr. Ishigami. He's not a people person, and certainly not an enthusiastic lover. He is, in summary, a man of his logic and mathematics. Yet, in order to cover up for the beautiful neighbor's crime, he pulled a magic trick which had the police messing around with no progress at all. What did he do on earth? How are the police not able to relate the murder back to the ones that commit it? Spoilers alert.

The whole movie Suspect X is like a poetic journal conceived in Mr. Ishigami's mind. It stayed cool until the last moments; it presented you with all the necessary facts. Japanese cinema has been famous for its social concern especially in the detective genre. However, unlike the old movies that bash the social immorality explicitly, Suspect X doesn't complain. Or, should I say its complaints are all silent, implicit, waiting for the concerned parties to unveil.

Actually, if one can taste Mr. Ishigami's mindset, one would be shivering because something is terrifying. You may sigh for him because he may still lack certain sectors of knowledge like female psychology and personalities to render a perfect cover for the crime. Or else, you may sigh for him because the wanderer he killed and he are of the same kind, which was spilled out by the society like urine after the society utilized one. In his vision, the wanderers are accurate like clocks, indicating their inhuman, robotic status, or oops, he already considered them a bunch of dysfunctional mechanics. If a robot kills another robot, it would be completely amoral. Unfortunately, both the wanderers and Mr. Ishigami are still considered humans by the law, therefore must be put to judgments.

Haven't any of us made up our minds just like Ishigami to be a biologist, mathematician, scientist, etc. to fulfill our life? One can easily find out that he's not the genius the other people said he would be. Yet, is that all about life? For a modern Oriental, however, such can very much be the case. The cultural dilemma we have here is that of a functional social component and its(or should I say his) humanity. Talents, fame can all become curses. People stop taking you for who you are and only recognize what you are talented in or famous for. As Orientals, we have reluctantly found out the more secular we become, the less our cultural identity can comfort or shelter us. Last week I visited my 90-year-old grandma who couldn't remember me. Note that 30 years ago she was the finest nurse chief in my city. If we ask secularly what is left in her now, we would know that we are all heading to Mr. Ishigami's way.

When we say the word "dead end", do we actually hope to die in that "end"? Again in my peers, I already know several geniuses that are as pessimistic and depressed as Mr. Ishigami. More interestingly, their view of love and romance is also similar to Ishigami's that their deepest, most innocent love for another person should be packed, reserved on the shelf like medals. In fact, they also know this is not exactly a healthy way to look on love. And, that's why I said Suspect X is either an Oriental Beauty and Beast story or a silent accusation to the society we are living in. Many were awed by Ishigami's "self-sacrifice" and how deep his love actually is. Many succumb to this romanticized yet twisted "love" Ishigami has. Many are even ready to tell their spouse that they are willing to become anything for their other half. While audiences with similar personality to Ishigami tasted this bitterness secular can't know.

To prove that Ishigami's "sacrifice" is not pure, one only needs to see one fact, that he killed another person. Anyone overlook that fact should simply see their ignorance not only to the poor, but also to people's souls. On the surface, his "love" is selfless. While John the apostle said in the Bible, "God is love", Modern Orientals often say the opposite "love is God". Ishigami may not really be a "obsessive perverted" he pretend to be when he gave in himself to the police, but he's absolutely obsessed with the perfected-in-his-mind life of the beautiful neighbor and her daughter. As the movie showed us, the Hanaoka mom and daughter lived a painful, shattered life in a shattered family further riddled with crime tragically commit by themselves. Yet one as obsessive as Ishigami can be bought into this vision of female angels if one's totally hopeless.

However, one similar to Ishigami still has another choice. That is to confess his love. If that came out a failure, then one still can confess that his love is unhealthy, not only to a priest, not only to a psychiatrist but also to God himself. Love can be powerful, and love can also fall and still be powerful in a demonic way. When love falls, one's ego will make sure nothing else can sugarcoat it. Then despite how selfless that love appears, it's essentially selfish. Suspect X's story also reminded me that "poor" is not only a word to describe the financial status, but also a word of soul, that intellectuals can be as poor as beggars, and we don't need to be a social worker to care for them.

Toy Story 3 (2010)

Identity Crisis: Toy Story 3.

[10/10 · 16 August 2010]

What if somebody come up and tell you, "hey, I need to tell you that all your life up to today is just a series of unhealthy obsessions"? For me, that might just be the case, which gave me a perfect reason to see Toy Story 3, a masterpiece of identity crisis.

In Toy Story, Buzz Light-year needed to cope with the fact that he was made to pretend to be a space ranger to entertain kids, though he personally believed he's really a space ranger. In Toy Story 2, Woody and his new friends needed to decide whether to stay with Andy though they fully realized what would happen when Andy's done with them. Toy Story 3 has a strong premise that this day actually came. It's even worse that Andy's mom pushed Andy to make a tough final decision about his beloved toys. Andy struggled, and decides to take only Woody to the university as a monument for all his toys and childhood times. He packed the rest of toys in a bag and decided to put them aside in the attic, yet the reality took another road right into the most menacing adventure the toys ever faced. Not knowing which toy will meet his/her demise in this last episode in a trilogy, we laughed, and we sobbed through the movie. And will they make it home? I will let you to find out in theater if you haven't seen the movie yet. Spoilers alert.

Granted that Pixar has this magic to make a bunch of CGI plastics talk and act so lively that, we feel they are more alive than our daily lives. Granted also is the suspension of disbelief, when you can actually hug and play with these characters in human sizes in Disneyland. It should be cool to shake hands with Woody, telling him "you are one of the sheriffs I admired". Disney has made these dreams come true over the years when kids cried upon the send-off of their beloved cartoon hero/heroine. However, after Toy Story 3, you should be clam that your kids learn to accept what was coming so peacefully. That's how intrinsically satisfying Toy Story 3 was. I don't have kids yet, but I pretty much grew up with this series (Toy Story was released when I was 9). Believe me that I am grateful to see such a grand, deep send-off, so heartfelt.

Though experienced movie-goers probably can recognize Losto as the villain within the first looks, I still think about his causes. I want to know how he actually felt. I'd like to know if put into his shoes would I do any better? See, Losto was abandoned so casually by the family he was in, that after quite a heck of journey through the wildness he only found out he's "replaced" by an identical bear. Suppose toys really have hearts and feelings, this agonizing pain would be unbearable. Though I doubt the same situation would ever happen to me (which was described in "The Sixth Day"), I definitely can see the trend that the definition of a "good man" is rapidly collapsing into good worker, good husband, etc. And even the definition of a "good worker" is collapsing into efficiency, accuracy, etc. In 10 years, the measure of a "good man" will never be the same again. The point is, mass-manufacturing of desirable skills and traits had seen their successes, yet something important about human is lost in translation. The toys, in any era, are disposable. Today with mass-production, toys are naturally considered highly substitutable. Toys' lives only last until that particular owner is done with them. If that's the way this world works, then toys are only pitiful shadows of another flawed species, us.

In my opinion, that's why we'd better believe we have souls rather than just a series of complex chemical reactions in brains (according to Watson and Crick). Otherwise, we are just more complicated toys with better mechanics, which function until the day of breaking. And, that's the way Lotso looks at his kind. What Lotso has inside him instead of a "soul", as I see, is an angry "ghost", or something different, unspeakable to Woody and his friends. That's probably why the joker toy described Lotso as a "monster". In fact, by believing he and his kind is nothing more than mechanic trash, one like Lotso can really become so. C.S. Lewis once said in his book "The Problem of Pain" that souls exist in relationships, like we only get a grasp of an animal's soul when we are its human masters. For toys, you'd believe toys have souls because they have a heartfelt relationship with Andy. For us however, everyone needs a relationship with his or her creator, who made sure in the beginning of this world, that we are not disposable mechanics, but living humans in the image of him.

In the end, yes, we may face our demises in many ways, be it in furnace or in soil, on sickbeds or streets. Yes, we may not find every sentimental value, every romantic relationship everlasting. But beyond all the present ugliness and darkness there is a purpose made for us. A great man once said, "To truly love a person is to look on him/her in the way God has ever wanted." Beyond Andy's needs of toys, beyond Molly's needs of toys, beyond Lotso's hierarchy of toys, beyond Stinky Pete's version of hygiene eternal life…in a gallery, and even beyond mom's eagerness to see her boy growing up, Andy made this deliver once and for all, thus delivered our beloved toys out of their seemingly destined ways of getting loved and dumped again. They won't last forever, but they won't lose faith in each other again. We won't live forever either, but are we ready to look on ourselves in God's way? You know, right now, he is smiling at you from somewhere.

Salt (2010)

Salt: Let's pretend.

[8/10 · 9 August 2010]

Let's play an interesting game. First, let's pretend we are Americans, and now we need a politically right evaluation on Evelyn Salt. Hands down our final evaluation showed that she's highly emotional, sensitive therefore even she's a female Jason Bourne minus the amnesia, she still stands for the basic ingredients of humanity, that all she did in the entire movie was for her husband, which provided the very soul of the Salt character. Without this love for her husband, Salt wouldn't have gone rogue on her Russian superiors. Therefore, the American values again prevailed, saved itself from within, that everyone deserve to preserve human loves. This is something that would never become a part of the calculation of Russian red baddies.

Let's pretend again, that we are Russian red baddies. Now we need a politically right evaluation on Evelyn Salt, or comrade Chenkov. Name: Agent Chenkov, alias Evelyn Salt. Identity: Russian super spy(or Super Russian Spy). Status: Defected. Reason of defection: decades of corruption from evil Western Capitalism and so-called humanism. Although our top cognitive trainer and personality-modification specialist had brainwashed her 100 times during her childhood, we can still only control the time of her activation. Our opponents, the top USA brain-washing specialists had inserted a fail-safe program into her, a husband. Therefore, whenever we activate her, the evil USA had ensured she 100% goes rogue upon activation because of the death of husband. Evaluation Conclusion: more authenticated brainwash mechanism needed. Ho ho ho!

Had fun reading my evaluations? So did I. Now comes a more interesting question for die-hard secularists:which evaluation do you like to believe? That's because, if we choose to believe the Russian's, just like a lot of post-modernists believed that humans, on earth, are only puppets of ideological projections and biochemical reactions, we would have to accept the logical conclusion that Russian baddies are just quantitatively inferior to USA, and someday they are gonna come up with this more authenticated brainwash mechanism which no Americans can hide from. That comes to my point, that my USA side of evaluation, though pervasive in illustration, provided some truth on some level.

In Timothy Keller's "The Reason For God", the author had come up with this intriguing argument as a response to the staggering individualism that "is there anyone in the world right now doing things you believe they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?" All those, who until the last minute, believed everyone has the right to decide what's right and wrong for himself/herself, has to say, "yes". In return, Mr. Keller would ask them to reflect on if there's some common moral reality that is there not decided by any individuals but by the divine holiness. In my opinion, Salt is a very similar case in which the secularists, post-modernists, liberals can have a good opportunity to think about the very basis for their paradigms. After all, there are too many assumptions for the whistle-blowers to push things in the right direction. That they essentially believe in the American values is just one of these assumptions.

Maybe we can pretend again, that we are actually Russian goodies. Then the evaluation conclusion would be: we admit we have made mistakes, terrible mistakes that stretched human natures too far in violence, cold-bloodiness, etc. Maybe humans have ultimate good ways to follow, ways that are more important than defeating another nation. Maybe even someone as robotic as Salt can still be returned to who she's supposed to be, in God's eyes.

Despicable Me (2010)

Beauty and Beast series: Despicable Me.

[8/10 · 2 August 2010]

Well, recently I've seen two films that could sum up the basic Beauty and Beast plot. One of them is Universal studio's Despicable me, casting a lot of fancy names among the charming voices. The other one is called Suspect X, which was made in 2008. We can really have some insights into the difference between the Easterners and Westerners comparing these two movies. So here is my Beauty and Beast series.

Despicable Me has, in many ways, reminded me of the early Shirley Temple movies in 1930s. Though, you'd be surprised that even me, an oriental, have seen most of Temple's classics like "Littlest Rebel""The little Colonel". It's always the same formula--adults have been unhappy until they meet the magnificent Temple. Actually, the true magic comes from it was the process of transformation, that beasts can transform back to humans with love and lightheartedness. The Oriental movies, on the contrast, often feature this process in the other direction, that humans essentially become something else. Suspect X is one of the examples, and please feel free to refer to my review for that title.

My criticism for Despicable Me is only of the slightest, that the characters in this movie apparently have a blood tie with Tom and Jerry. Anyone in the movie, heroes or villains, practically cannot die even if they get smashed by moon. Also, stealing the moon is a somewhat romanticized act, a villainous master plan that's actually considered cute and silly. Therefore, it doesn't really sum up real criminals and their behaviors.

But, isn't that where this film shined? Isn't that a perfect way to illustrate to both adults and children that there's no point to be a champion in negative ways? The only other thing as silly as Gru's moon-stealing plan, was the bed book preserved so dearly by the 3 orphans. I can't agree more with Gru that it's story-less. Yet, the most heartfelt scene in the entire movie was exactly when Gru reluctantly reads it to put the trio to sleep. While he was performing the 3 little kittens' roles with his fingers, he actually discovered his own transformation, a transformation from the gritty, twisted Darth-Vader-wanna-be to 3 little orphans' real father. Love happens, even if love can only be expressed in the stupidest way. Isn't that exactly like how the God communicated with us? We are bound in time and space, and it seems our way of stupidity cannot be stopped, like all the killings, wars, etc. Our proud wisdom, utmost, is to make poems of the killings, wars, sex, so on so forth. Yet, our creator found a way to communicate his love to us. Suppose Gru still couldn't help thinking the book's stupid, he can never receive the message from this beautiful relationship. The tricky thing is, it's not the 3 little orphans who needed this message of love and inspiration, it's Gru who needed it the most. It took him some time to struggle, and then he finally accepted it. In the Bible, Jesus told us that if we don't return to children's form, we can't enter his kingdom of heaven. That reminded me not every villain is as lucky as Gru, so how should I know I possess a complete soul to love, or more importantly, how should I know I have love?

On his road to world-class villain, Gru made many mistakes to prevent him from being a real villain. Yet, he has done some wrong deeds if you count in his motivations. He mistreated people all around, attempted to feed the orphans like dogs, etc. Still, there seemed to be some kind of guardian angel on his shoulder who drags him from doing actual harms every time. It's a comedic nod that such a person as Gru is nice inside, just like the Beast in Beauty and Beast, that no matter how hard he tries; the real badness is just too bad for him. Plus for Gru, he practically slipped into the father role quite successfully in all the evil attempts. So, if we find out later that a mistake was actually a necessary one on our way to the right path, does it still count as a mistake? According to the Bible, we as sinners at our best can only be honest enough to admit our mistakes just like Gru's home-made bed book. Yet in God's hands, love can cover sins. Gru was taught to seek forgiveness and redemption, and the orphans were taught to forgive and accept. The salvation, the love is just completed in their relationship. I guess all the mistakes still count as mistakes, yet the girls chose to let go of their father's mistakes. It's beautiful.

Theoretically, we should be more physically capable to love as we grow up, but why do we feel more chills instead of warmth from love? When I was little, I listened to Beauty and Beast and believed. As I have grown up, I became more inclined to accept that "all people are of social products, and there's no intrinsic goodness in humans" (Popular idea since Kant and Marx). However, this idea, subtly comes from Gru's "3 little kittens" book, tells me that as we grow up our capability to be loved had drastically reduced. Gru needed a stupid bed book to return to child's form to be loved, and I needed another book considered stupid by many to return to child's form to be loved. That's the Bible.

Inception (2010)

Inception: "bigger the ego, more striving for clarity."

[9/10 · 29 July 2010]

Created out of a great filmmaker's ego, Inception gives us this message, "bigger the ego, more striving for clarity." I believe, in time, such events are happening: 1, you pay 7 dollars for this movie; 2, you finished seeing it, and you are giving thanks for this mind-messing roller-coaster. 3, though you know it's meant to mess with your mind, you consider Inception highly remarkable. You walked around, recommending it to friends, and already filed your vote for best movie 2010......4, you go on the IMDb, launching yourself into the debating as whether the tin top stopped or not in the end.

Such is the win-win proposal proposed by Inception: you pay the money, you feel happy to lose your sense of reality, and you praise it on its way to Oscar. I'd only wish there is a similar proposal proposed by my own daily life. But oops, aren't there enough such proposals in practice? Alcohols, drugs, pornography all give you a very similar proposal to escape the reality. Yet, they are not considered high art, unlike Inception. In fact, the dilemma I face when thinking about this wonderful movie I just saw is that, should I ask for clarity in this story? Because, if I do, I would fall into the debating trap set by the creators of the movie, that I will have to take sides of beliefs to clarify whether there is an absolute reality or everything was just a bubble in Mr. Cobb's mind. But if I don't, how can I find any coherence in this story, or, how am I going to tell my kids about this movie when they reach the age of questioning adults? Nolan's a genius. His movies, from Momento to The Dark Knight, all feature some questions with no absolute answers. Yet, all his movies can be enjoyable in a gritty way. Inception is no different. The multi-layered dream sequences are simply breathtaking, with only the snow mountain scene a bit less captivating. Anyway, it's a much more fluent, enjoyable ride than The Dark Knight (at least in the first viewing). I need to confess I like it, and will support it in the Oscar season. Yet, I like to discuss a bit deeper about the clarity question I brought up.

Despite the fact that we are all familiar with Nolan's style, that he likes ambiguity of messages and questions with no absolute answers, one can expect the discussion board here on IMDb has already been filled with blatant debating over the reality/dream problem left by the closing scene in the movie. Relax, I have no intention to throw myself into it, nor do I want to analyze the practicability of raiding another person's dream. One really can't fully enjoy this film if he doesn't forgo the desire of absolute clarity. Actually, some 2600 years ago, King Solomon already said something similar in Ecclesiastes 7:16, that "Do not be over-righteous, neither be over-wise—why destroy yourself?.....The man who fears God will avoid all extremes." Some questions contain traps in themselves, thus cannot be answered absolutely, like "Do you have any solid evidence to say all that happened in Inception took place in Mr. Cobb's dream?" Therefore, bigger the ego, more the struggle for clarity, thus more pain. Actually one doesn't need a context as complex as Inception to get the idea.

Concerning complexity, here's a simple comparison between the process of performing an "inception" and a confession. See, in order to perform an inception, one need to lure the target's consciousness into his sub-consciousness, hiring the best architect to build the scenario while fighting all the target's defending instincts dressing up as 007 goons. Sometimes the whole thing can mess up, and the inception performer even needs to use his own "limbo" to extract the target's consciousness, risking everything he has. Oh, I still forgot to mention the deliberate way they get pulled out of dreams layer after layer…… Sadly, in the movie, their mission objective of this inception is obviously evil, therefore making the whole process as impersonal as possible is also vital. I can't help thinking if I have the technology of inception when I want to confess to my love interest, should I perform an inception on her or just go and tell her that "I love you"? One would be illogical if he chooses the former (what's the point of making a confession impersonal). Such is the simplicity of doing the right things. Another example is asking for Jesus' help. In illustrating the simplicity of receiving God's grace, Jesus told the listeners, "…Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."(Luke 11:9-10) Except when we already know what we are asking is intrinsically wrong, or when we presume God is a bargaining doctor who talks in riddles for a higher fee, we would always enjoy his goodness and grace in praying.

The world is often a hostile place, like Mr. Cobb's dream, you never know when the pedestrians would elevate from staring at you to stabbing you. Even worse, there are too many traps and too many wrong questions to ask. Nowadays, technology advancement keeps erasing our definition of right things and wrong things to do, while keeps stressing on doing things right. Inception is really a good movie that reminds to do the right things rather than doing things right.

Predators (2010)

Culture Shock Series: Predators

[9/10 · 18 July 2010]

Well, why doe "Predators" belong to "Culture Shock" series in my review? That's because humans in this movie are totally strangers from different cultures, and they are being hunted by an alien civilization on another freaking planet. How much culture shock do they have to suffer? That being said, Predators is a somewhat surprisingly good movie to recommend this year. It's a proof that with enough heart and effort, you can make something shine even the backdrop is run-of-the-mill.

Preventing spoilers, only my favorite scenes will be listed here: 1, the final duel and trap-setting; 2, "Life and death of space Morpheus"; 3, "revelation of the nice pacifist guy"; 4, "Master Predator VS. Junior Predator on probation"; 5, "Welcoming treat with a touch of Major Dutch". They are not super-expensive, there's no massive CGI involved, but they are all very effective in making the story more and more interesting. There are moments that are genuinely for fans, if you happen to have wondered how exactly Billy's knife fight worked out in the original predator. There are also genuinely written plot developments for intelligent viewers, if you watched closely enough on the nice pacifist along the way. Frankly speaking, I was always assuming the movie will take the run-of-the-mill road like the previous AVP movies, and that's where the makers worked hard and made me satisfied. They are aware of the clichés and they're not afraid of joking with you. That's good.

OK, let's go back to the Culture Shock theme the movie possesses. Imagine there's actually a race from the deep space that cared to make an encounter with you, what overlapping point in the cultures would you find to communicate? And yes, the answer provided in the entire Predator series is Violence/Killing. Same thing applies to the earth. Humans from different cultures have been exchanging bullets, grenades, bombs, warheads for centuries after they found exchanging cold arms a bit, eh, inefficient. Oriental gentlemen used to say, "Exchanging words of politeness before you exchange warfare." Sadly, we usually can't learn enough about each other before we had warfare. Over the years, the Predators adopted Major Dutch (Arnold)'s booty trap strategy and was honest enough to admit they are ruthless/shameless enough to apply all kinds of predating tactics on their human opponents. They learn fast and the odds are not good for us. It appeared they have unlimited potential to best their prey, humans are beyond redemption in front of them. However, you can't make something slapstick without praising it enough. Despite what the audiences felt about them, Predators are still only dolls under writer's pen. And, that's how the master predator defeated his own logics when he fell into the pianist's trap. It's also an ironic proof that humans can't imagine anything even nastier than themselves. See, humans cheat, lie, betray, devalue themselves in this movie while the junior predator on probation (we have no idea what he did to deserve being tied up, maybe he's not qualified in the final exam and was on probation) was somewhat faithful to hold his promise to the pianist even though he knew he's no match for the master predator (who's maybe his headmaster). That being said, I'd say the predators are pretty...straight, honest, abiding and somehow lovable, unlike the ever-sly and evil human killers. And that's why, as you've noticed, that I kept using "him" for predators, not "it".

If the original Predator is about humans vs. natural cruelty vs. alien brutality, Predators the movie is about the same but you can replace "humans" with "humanity crisis". As the story goes on, the topic "how can you hold your humanity and dignity" was brought to discussion several times. It ended with different conclusions, but the final answer cemented by the survival of leading male and female is quite interesting: "human's surviving instincts and humanity are like two sides of one coin, when they are covering each other, humans can live on." I haven't fight with any Predators, but definitely would give this philosophy a try if someday they come to me, which I believe, will not happen.

The other interesting question is about whether predators can be called "space people" or only "space animal". One great man who believed in Jesus once said even there are space people; they may not be as brutal and evil like us. The previous Predator movies, if followed the formula of making Predators totally inhuman, all provided some scare, while the first AVP movie (directed by Paul W.S. Anderson) broke this rule and had the predator forming a friendship with human heroine. That turned a lot fans off, but again reminded me that humans can't really imagine anything nastier than humans. See, if they are only animals, they'd only be hunting for their existence, killing for food or reproduction, and you just need to kill them like killing animals. But Predators also have some Samurai dogmas, cannibal customs of wearing human trophies and restless desire to learn killing. Sadly, combining such features with animal instincts still can't produce something we never have in the history. They are, utmost, on par with the worst human killers (not to mention the real human killers are actually nastier than them).

Royce and Isabelle watched the new chosen killers being parachuted into the jungle, and turned away from them, they didn't say they won't trust these freshmen to the game, but they believed more in finding a way out of that planet by themselves. Do we have anything to believe, to behold in our daily humanity crisis? Honestly, I am not waiting for the cuddly E.T. to help subliming human nature, because some 2000 years ago the one who created us already opened his door and call out to us, "come home". How much longer will this door be opening, that I don't know, but I only have this life-time to make the choice.

Ip Man 2 (2010)

Culture shock series: Ip Man 2.

[7/10 · 25 June 2010]

The first Ip Man movie ended with some archive footage of real Ip Man, summarizing his lifetime contribution to martial arts and Hong Kong alike, cementing his status as the Wing-Chun master who popularized martial arts as a socially-acceptable sport in Hong Kong...... The second Ip Man movie, on the other hand, ended with the brief introduction of the iconic Bruce Lee being once the student of Ip Man......

That kind of reminded me of my high school. The most famed figure "nourished" by my school was a Nobel Prize winner who stayed at my high school for maybe 6 months before he moved to another city. Yet, my school invited him to every important ceremony. For the show, every time this Nobel Prize winner would lecture the students of how he loved his school and how the school has provided him with scientific spirit. Later at university, I was told by someone from another city that this Nobel guy also gave speech to his school every year, claiming the school to be his "mother" who breast-nursed him with super-advanced knowledge…… For the record, that man wasn't a fraud, neither was Ip Man. The problem is, Ip Man 2 was a hilarious devastation of the title character. I especially found the first Ip Man enjoyable because Donnie Yen gave a very believable performance as the hybrid of a traditional Chinese Confucian and a Kung-Fu master. He was a kind, restrained family man who possess megatons in his sleeves to beat up bad guys and Japanese alike, yet he was still an everyday man who frown upon trifles just like you and me. His spirit as a man, the temper and will was wrapped up by his humility. His humility was wrapped up by a sense of realism well-weighted by his courtesy and intelligence. It is a well-layered performance which is also very emotional, sometimes too emotional that all the Chinese can't help admitting they have a painful spot about Sino-Japanese war. All in all, Ip Man was a perfect illustration of a perfect Chinese, according to Chinese values. It talks big, but it's also self-contained, avoiding the deifying effects otherwise.

And that's why I think Ip Man 2 was like a slapstick version of Ip Man 1. Donnie Yen continued to impress as a martial-arts-wielding Confucian, but the story went into a total mess. The fighting choreograph is pitch-perfect just like the first one, but that's not the whole point since Ip Man 2 clearly has a point to make. OK, so the story begins with Ip Man settled in Hong Kong to overcome a few culture shocks brought about by the local triads. As a glorified fighter, Ip Man avoided total war with the other Kung-Fu schools, only to justify his capability of standing the other masters. Up until here, the story was good. But then Ip Man tore his martial robe and revealed himself in a superman suit, only the letter on the chest was not "S" for super but "C" for communist. OK that's not what exactly happened, but he told the triad boss that he's not going to pay protection fee for his school because "there's no such reason". The second half of the movie told us about how Ip Man kicked a Caucasian ass not exactly the same way he kicked Japanese last time. After we witnessed an on-stage murder of the triad boss manipulated by evil Englishmen, Ip Man was enraged and evolved into "Super-Saiyan" to challenge the English boxer, defending Chinese dignity. This time around he had a few wounds on his face, but was still able to best the opponent with a series of accurate punches in Wing-Chun style. After he defeated the arrogant mad Englishman, he gave a Gandhi-style speech to encourage common understanding and respect, claiming "All humans are born equal, despite different social classes". I was able neither to cry or to laugh because this is not only out of character, but also a black-humor mockery to his "humility" philosophy developed this far. Maybe the last time he didn't give this speech because he was shot on the stage; that's my impression after they made Ip Man looked like a clown.

On this point, they could have ended this slapstick, saving some grace for a lively, believable Ip Man. Yet, they introduced Bruce Lee and his gratification. It's again a hilarious disgrace in practice because as a modest Confucian, one wouldn't go around boasting his student, not even in his biography movie. If we admired the humility wrapped up in his courtesy the first time, what we saw in Ip Man 2 was exactly a modest person selling his humility around on the street, still claiming to be modest. It's a clowning farce against Confucianism if you watch closely enough, but sadly it will still be interpreted as a patriotism masterpiece in China.

As a Christian myself, I have come to learn that if one uphold/deify something or someone other than the God, that someone/something will instantly begin to degrade. In a morality-dropping era, those who found a modest person may uphold this humility, only to find humility itself doesn't solve anything. Worse, humility can't be marketed around like Ip Man's Kung-Fu skills. That places me, a traditional oriental people in an embarrassing position, where one has to dig up something to uphold, to be proud of. That Nobel winner was my school's pride, Ip Man was Chinese's pride, Gandhi was Indians' pride. Then, in my philosophy maybe Jesus Christ is the pride of human. But oops! That's not true because Jesus died on the cross in a most humiliated way. Even before he died, he was mostly a small time carpenter, a not-so-successful teacher and trouble-maker in Jews' eyes. No, he's not the pride of human, but he is the savior and hope of all humans. If you're interested to find out about him, feel free to download a copy of bible to read.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Father-absent series: Terminator 2.

[10/10 · 19 June 2010]

The moment T-800 took John Connor with one arm and bosom-ed him against his leather jacket, I knew it's cozy, safe to be in there. Why? Because my dad used to put me in his bosom and ride me home on his bicycle. If all the CGI and camera work made Terminator 2 way ahead of its time, then it was the stubborn terminator who refused to die again and again made this movie nearly timeless.

This review along with other reviews in the "Father-absent series", intends to explore how the absence of fathers affects people's mind and spirits, in and out of movies.

Terminator 2 is the kind of movie that reminds you why you love to see movies. As an enthusiastic fan of the series I bought DVD-9 deluxe set the moment it's released. After maybe 3-4 viewings it again bothered me as what did I own when I say I have this DVD. Do I own the 120 million dollars of budget making T-1000 alive on the screen? No. Do I own the finest hour of Arnold's career? Nope. Maybe even Arnold didn't really enjoy being Terminator after all. What I owned might be the chance to enjoy being chased by crazy cyborgs then being saved by a father-like T-800. It was timeless to me because it was cemented in my childhood memory. 30 years later, when some teenagers buy it in some ultra-definition format, they may not be entirely impressed by the SFX, but they'd be very impressed by their grandfathers' definition of a "father figure", or someone with impenetrable chest and belly muscles, a willingness of iron to protect his family, and an unconditional oath of alloy to stick with you.

In this sense, Terminator movies are not only mindless Science fictions, but also a crazy prophecy about our status quo. The prophecy states that we as mankind already failed decades before our destined nuclear holocaust, because in our hands something superior was born. The terminator as the movie portrays, have all the desirable male qualities: versatile, strong, disciplined, and favorably indestructible, blah blah blah. This also reflects how the modern society, how the "here and now" philosophy teaches us about man. We are put into jobs to provide accuracy, efficiency in our performances. We are put into families to be an effective money-making machine. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against Capitalism. Ever since my primary school, my arts teacher used to call me "examination machine" because he was angry to see my excellence in doing examinations but dull mind in painting. But for some reason, I believed man stands for something unique, something to do with the greater good, something only man can stands for. It seems John Connor's puberty was also a lost journey to find out about man.

The savior in the movie John Connor never met his birth-father, he was raised up by a overburdened, apocalyptic-fanatic mother who's given him everything except a father. Though the later stories about him were all about an ongoing struggle as a savior he may never come to be, Terminator 2's story might just be the most important part of John's life. What he lacked in flesh, the terminator made him up in machine, a perfect substitute of father. Even better, in Sarah Connor his mother's eyes, this "father" is better than any father he can have because "he will stick with John in any circumstances". Sadly, with his magic "neurological CPU" and "progressive learning", the terminator finally learned about human's feelings and love, and in his noble action to self-destruct, he completed his dedication to greater good, thus completed his way of martyr.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't have "Neurological CPU" and "progressive learning function". That being said, my logic would never catch up with the Terminator's logic, so I can't find the answer about the greater good by calculating. Guess as a dumb student who was a "examination machine", I can only believe such a thing as "greater good" existed. Unlike Mr. Connor who found out about the greater good on a terminator, I find it on Jesus Christ. Also unlike many people's presumption, Christianity had very similar notions with the terminator story. The one that stood out was man's failure to carry on the greater good. The Bible told us mankind has failed their relationship with the Lord God, therefore even this species is going on to exist on the surface of the earth, every one of them can't escape the final destination of death. In other words, they failed before their actual "judgment day" just like in the Terminator movies. The difference between the point of the Bible and Terminator movie is just the question why humans failed. If you are particularly curious, please find yourself a copy of Bible to read deeper about it.

John Connor in his 20s, need the harassment of terminators in all genders and all models to remind him of the urgency of apocalypse. Without crazy machines tailing us, what do we need to remind us such urgency? Are natural disasters enough? How about pollutions? Along with our own personal pains, health issues, emotional traumas, political insecurities, these pains of human can very well be our gift from the one who created us, "a flag of truth in the fortress of sins" as a great man once said. It's a time to reflex.

Cast Away (2000)

Culture Shock Series: Cast Away.

[8/10 · 16 June 2010]

There was an earthquake in Sino 1978, when the government decided to open the gate of the country and allow the free trade and economics. That marks the first wave of material renaissance in Far East. That's something you can easily check from any history books nowadays, but what you probably won't find in the books is the sentimental values of people at that time. When Sino people had their very first color TV, first Teddy bear, first turbo washing machine, they attached their feelings to them, only to find out there are far better quality of products out there waiting for them. Into the 1990s, they are all confused because there's no clearer boundary between good communism and bad capitalism. Former garbage and treasures now exchanged ID cards. Now in 2010s, despite one's denial of his/her lost status, we are all castaways.

The image Cast Away portrayed with Tom Hanks is quite simple, an everyday man was the sole survivor on a coral island, and the only friend he got was volleyball. People take an interest in seeing this movie for questioning our take-for-granted identity of human being, etc. However, the true controversy off the screen comes from the ever-clever product placement in it, that the storyline actually is one huge super commercial for Fed Ex, Wilson sports, and some other brands. Whoever wrote the script must be a genius. Yet, we as conscious, commercial-spoiled human beings are questioning something beyond Chuck Noland's humanity issues. That is, is there ever a point of rooting your sentimental values on mass-produced products? How about actually hug the values provided by your everyday Coke commercials and such? I am afraid no one will go to bed with a Wilson volleyball even after seeing Cast Away, but I am quite sure there are people who get frustrated when they find out half their life was devoted to something equally lifeless as Wilson.

My first guess is the value system everyone possesses in this world. Taking mine for example, my system told me the most valuable existence in my life was those time with my family, especially when I was only a child who's not ashamed asking for a hug every minutes. But, that's the answer I got when I was older and things can't be same ever again. When I was 18 years old, I had my favorite computer, Nintendo game console and my admission letter from a University. My value system told me at that time the most valuable in my life was again something from the past, the moment I celebrated my manhood with best friends, the family and hometown I am about to say goodbye to, etc. There can be many explanations to this stupidity. For me, it would be immaturity because I was a teenager at the time. However, the moment my father saw me off the way to the university at the train station, he also felt his life was pumped out into a vacuum after parting with me. For months and years this vacuum was choking him so harsh...... Another explanation would be an uneven value system. That we do not have multiple types of wealth that can balance out if one goes wrong. I graduated from finance major, so I personally like this explanation as it sounds slightly more scientific and economic. However, the dilemma presented to me again was like this: as an atheist, I accept "we are here and now only" values. But again, any reasonable, self-respected realists would end up in a paradox, that any wealth in the long run is perishable so there's no need to raise a family(remember you may end up like Chuck Noland that your wife accepted your death when you are just missing), there's no need either to plan for your living, etc. Then in a month or two, the wreckage of your consciousness and health would be warning that you are walking drunk and sleeping in death.

But you won't be that ignorant. Like Chuck Noland you will finally learn to pick yourself up and find something to behold. Luckier than Noland, besides volleyball we've got football, the world cup, Beckham's tattoo, NBA, and what we IMDb guys like the most, movies. You can even make a ranking list to value them like I did. I listed God as No.1, and that's predetermined because otherwise my pastor's going to have a serious conversation with me. Then, it didn't take very long for me to find out whatever was at No.2 in my authenticated value system tends to overthrow the God. Matthew 13:44: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." It finally appeared to me that a value system I made that had God on the highest ranking doesn't work. Instead, a value system put into me by God would be beyond my reasoning. It asked me to put behind everything and accept him and him only. As a sinner, I have run away from this answer several times.

The enormous ocean washed up Chuck Noland. His passion, his 5 years of life, his family and every other thing possibly he owned in his value system. What proved to be waterproof in his heart was pain and loneliness. What would bring him salvation? I don't know because this is only a movie, a world conceived in people's mind, which may or may not have the concept of salvation at all. But I know his pain and loneliness can't be more real than ours. And, it doesn't seem like a value system dilemma to me anymore. It seems more like a dilemma of soul. On one side, it's the brooding and evolving sin, still escalating in the time-line, while on the other side is Holy Spirit's unchanged whispering prayers for us, echoing in the eternity.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Father-absent series: Pan's Labyrinth

[9/10 · 15 June 2010]

When the good doctor asked him why he was so sure his unborn baby was a boy, he simply said "Don't mess with me." He deliberately instructed the doctor to save the baby if the childbirth goes into trouble. He regularly gains strength and faith from a cracked watch left by his father, who broke the watch to acknowledge the child his time of death. Upon defeated, his final wish is the same of his father's, but was answered by "He(the baby boy) won't even know your name" and a bullet in the face. It was a demise the audiences felt he deserved much earlier because he's a perfect Nazi, spreading inhuman evil with his dreading presence. He likes to sense with you, but prefers more striking demonstrations which advertise his insane ego. Ladies and gentlemen, you've seen evil fathers, but you haven't seen something so implying as a father, even he's practically only a stepfather.

This review intends to explore how the "absence of father" can affect stories, human minds and essentially, our souls. Please also refer to other reviews in "Father-absent series".

If the ways of our fathers were wrong, do we have a way to know it and for some chances to defy it? I tend to doubt that. C.S.Lewis said in his book The Problem of Pain that humans as we are today are not quite the same species the creator made in the first place because somehow we chose to fall from original grace. Dealing with terms of spiritual world, true definition of purity and innocence and co-existence of heaven's way and human's way, Pan's labyrinth is quite a special movie. When this movie was spreading to Asia back in 2007, the public was shocked by the sheer aesthetic value as well as a very poignant, equally brutal and fairy feeling attached to this unique experience. However, the critics, professors and young graduates alike also fell into a debate as what on earth was the director Del Toro wanted to tell us. I respect all the theories that can make their own senses, which I have no intention to dive into today. What I feel compelled to find out is the movie's implications on a higher level.

Despite the movie's offer of high production values especially those great nature views, the visuals are all wrapped by a haunting loneliness, helplessness and confusion. Ofelia's father died in the bombing, her mother was forced to marry a monster for surviving. The only real father she got was in the children's book. Despite all the goodwill from this fantasy-inspired, heavenly-crowned God-like father, his runner/servant-angel was a "Pan", who talks in riddles and assign Ofelia with dangerous missions to return to heaven's heritage. Even the most warm-hearted woman around couldn't get a grasp of what's really happening to Ofelia, not to mention those self-crowned, tyrannical men. It's never this clear a message, "there are no men anymore in this world but male monsters in men's shape". Translated into my real world, am I really so different from Captain Vidal? For the record, I don't kill people like having breakfast, and I don't torture people like enjoying butter on a toast. No, I've killed no one with my hands, but I've killed in my mind. Why? Because I am a male human. I loved to allow my anger to rape my sadness, awkwardness and goodwill to apologize and rebuild relationships. It's been years for me, decades for my father, thousands of years for talented Oriental men looking for a perfect flag to devote our blood to and worship our egos in. More importantly, I, like Captain Vidal himself, enjoyed the temporary alliance of my ancestors' honor and my own pride, thus also the power and justification to reign over weaker, more obedient groups. That's the lawful way to grow your pride and ego, and to carry on one's family line especially in traditional Oriental families. Ironically, as a Christian now, I still feel the need to grow in this way sometimes, and often felt beaten by womanizers and smarter people who I tend to look down upon. Luckily, now I know it's a dead road, a highway to the hell.

Captain Vidal's army was triumphed over by brave guerrillas, but his way of killing wasn't. Of the worldly terms, Ofelia doesn't have to save his baby brother from anyone because no one intends to kill him. Of worldly terms, Ofelia died a foolish death, a death so fatefully descends upon her just like the male monster Vidal always have wanted. Pan's final task for Ofelia was far less difficult in physical terms, but intrinsically more difficult for a species that already betrayed its creator. I tend to believe it's not Ofelia's love for her little brother that bought her a ticket to heaven. I believe it's Ofelia's decision to let the heavenly father's way to carry on her rather than the world's way, as illustrated by all the explosions in the backdrop.

In the end, one side is the haunting escalation of violence. The survivors only have the chance to sob upon the dead, after all the bullets hit their destinations, after all the people killed the ones they wanted to kill. On the other side, Ofelia reclaimed princess and reunion with her family. It's only a movie of course, so I don't see the necessity to go into debates as "which side is essentially the reality".But for real,is there a heaven? do we believers reunion in heaven? I think it's a question better asked when one's got experience, wealth, health, reasons, intelligence all striped down to zero. It's a question better asked when one has a Bible in his hand which one can turn to Gospel of John chapter 14 verse 2 to 3. It's also a question better asked when one's willing to let our heavenly father's spirit, his way and truth running inside one's soul.

The Wolfman (2010)

Father-absent series: The Wolfman.

[7/10 · 14 June 2010]

With two striking genius as the leads(Both won Oscar), Visual effects geek Joe Johnston as the director, The Wolfman entered our sights with its 1930 roots of gentlemen-ship, new millennium gore and very primitive brutality. However, the highlight was still the twisted father-son relationship.

This is a review written under "Father-absence" theme, please also find my other reviews in this series to get an insight into Asians' perceptions on popular movies.

All the classic monster movies got this birthmark, that the idea is conceived, inspired by absence of fathers/bad fathers in real life. Frankenstein was a story of "sins of the father's" which is told in a forwarded/futuristic narration. Dracula movies usually features a Dracula who likes to pretend being a loving father, yet featuring religious fanatics of Christianity as worst villains. "Interview with the Vampire" features everlasting homosexual "love" and a failed attempt to be a father figure. However, so far there's no movies like The Wolfman that directly writes the father-son relationship into such an escalating catastrophe. Guess the werewolf movies are all mirrors to our bloodthirsty natures/craziness/sins in a way.

Into the 20th century, Darwinism was just at its dawn to overtake half the scientific world as well as spiritual. Early mechanics and technique in treating psychological disorders were also introduced, while the Church and the protestants strive to maintain their voices in this shape-shifting world. Caught up in the middle were the Gypsies who neither gave in to spiritual resorts provided by churches nor succumb to scientific mindsets that translate the whole world into mechanisms. Out of his passion to save his little brother, celebrated actor Lawrence Talbot traveled back to the gritty homeland where his estranged father awaited for him. He tracked down his brother's murderer into the Gypsy camp, where a mysterious creature with big fangs wrecked havocs around ripping a lot people apart. Bitten by this monster, Lawrence found himself gradually transforming into a werewolf as the moon reaches full. Deliberately releasing him in the night of final transformation, his suspicious father turned him in to the bureaus. Finally revealing his status as the werewolf that killed his own wife, Laurence's mother, Old Talbot invited his son for a final duel at home...... In the meantime, the beautiful Gwen also set out for the cure/redemption for her beloved Laurence.

Other than an extraordinary tolerance to gore, you will need the ability to read between the lines to understand what The Wolfman tries to tell you. It is quite an interesting illustration of a splitting world that will never make the same sense again. No matter which lot they represent, the mob are always ignorant, unorganized and downright vulnerable. They can neither get a grasp of what's going on nor get the final answer to the origins of this curse/craziness/sins/anomaly, despite their unique claims to do so. Yet at the core of the movie, the old father repeatedly quotes the "Prodigal son parable" from New Testament. He had every due rights to call his son a "prodigal son" as the traditionally-upheld father(ancestor), yet ruthlessly passing on his sins/disease/curse/craziness to his poor family. Walking on water, the young widow set up a temporary alliance with the Gypsies, the only group who provided help and some goodwill of "saving grace". It's interesting that the story verified Gypsies and Gwen's love for Lawrence because despite they don't present any ideology, their love and compassion were both humble. Unlike Gwen and the Gypsy woman, the other groups were all holding up their own egos, just like any organized religion/group/party like to uphold "flags of their fathers". In this sense, the movie is not only illustrating the father-absence status of the 20th century, the movie's even rationalizing it with the notion of women's ability to pass on the only ultimate goodness, favorably the pagan goodness in an esoteric pattern. I haven't seen the original 1941 version, but I can surely tell it must have been quite an achievement among other post-modern stories that struggle to seek purity, clarity and maybe, redemption in a crazy world.

This phenomenon, however, has been obstinate in the humanity. If secrecy, ambiguity in conducting and other esoteric characteristics could all be verified as "humility", then I guess one would invite evil beliefs into his/her life. In the city I live, there are thousands of fortune-tellers who make a good living on people's broken souls. As a Christian, I admit it might be unfair for one to admit and cleanse his ancestors' sins as well as the world's sins that descended upon him. Indeed, just like Lawrence we are heirs to sins/curses rather than heirs to happiness/innocence in this crazy world. However, if admitting one's sins and committing oneself to Jesus is truly the only way one can escape from being harvested by hell's fire, yelling "unfair" won't do you any good. While there's no clean getaway by simply conducting Gypsy relics, there certainly is a way to allow your soul to be saved. Besides, I haven't seen any werewolves, nor did I think people need to be monsters to be capable of monstrous deeds.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)

Sadly, it spent too much time being run-of-the-mill.

[6/10 · 14 June 2010]

I tend to feel Prince of Persia the movie owed me a watchable story, after paying 140 Baht(more than average in Thai cinemas) and two unremarkable hours in the digital cinema. I also tend to doubt the possibility this movie will ever speak to you with any messages, should them be fairy tale messages or serious politic messages. That being said, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is quite a disappointment from a bunch of names I admired.

The Parkour sequences were fun to watch, so was the siege sequence, but if you have watched the trailer, you've seen them all. It's never really captivating. You got eye candies, just like you've got Dastan and Princess Tamina, but you've also got terrible performances and disturbing character background illustration. That part that talked about Tamina's coronation as the Sand prophet was so hilariously bad that I almost laughed out. What was more hilarious was her character's development after the flashback, that Tamina transformed magically from a cursing,sarcastic-talking person into a religiously holified person......

I guess the movie's intrinsically bad because of the script, that they tried to please all the demographic groups so they had to forgo all the valid, culture-identifying messages. The CGI landscapes of ancient Persia spent many millions, yet never succeeded in giving you anything material. The story had Dastan started in the slum, and granted him a heart of gold that cemented sibling love as the only thing that's closest to a "soul" in this hollow story. Unfortunately, the most emotional role who also provided the best fighting sequence is not our prince, but some "knife thrower".

I gave the movie 6/10 out of the respect for Ben Kinsley having very dark eyeliner, and the final act that somehow managed to save this movie. What I like to talk more about is the potential it wasted in this great context. With human dreams to go back in time to fix mistakes, sands as the symbol of infinite bleakness/lifelessness, exotic locations with exotic tales, POP the movie could have told you a story, favorably in a fable style, just like the original games. Yet it misused the knife of time, made the prince an underachiever in almost every remarkable aspects in the original game, and tell you craps like "some souls are bound beyond time". Time-traveling in a fantasy context was great, at least in Groundhog Day, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and the Sands of Time games.For the record, The Two Thrones gave you great opportunities to recognize and reflex on your own dark sides, and suggested you to choose the way of repent rather than the way of chasing shadows. Are mainstream audiences really so secular that they can't even stand fables with a bit biblical touch? Or are they only being awed enough to respect some environmentalism because Avatar had awesome visuals? I doubt it, and I strongly believe someone can make a much-better POP movie that is really epic.

Ratatouille (2007)

Life-changing Ratatouille.

[10/10 · 9 June 2010]

The truth about reviewing your favorite movie is it's never easy. After all these years, Ratatouille happened to be my favorite USA-made cartoon. Or, should I say it's destined to be? OK, let's be fair first. Ratatouille is not a movie you'd like to go into with your rat-hating grandma, especially when you still want to save some goodwill for her.

But again, this is a movie I need to recommend to everyone except those who never had any struggles in lives. What precedes the technical terms, atheistic values is its natural reflection on many aspects of my real-life experiences. OK, I am in my mid-20s, having finished university but not in the line of work I love, just like Remy. However, I was also extraordinary like Gusteau, and just like him I wasn't approved by everyone and had a difficult time struggling with it(luckily for me it wasn't a heart attack). Still, I like to review movies which also sums Anton Ego's profession, though unlike me he likes to make harsh comments every time. I don't know how many of you IMDb guys are just like me out there on earth, but it's surely unlikely that you can relate to all the main characters in a movie. Oh, I still forgot to tell you, that the movie is about making delicious cuisines, which is a hobby I have developed after watching Ratatouille.

Yeah, and that's how Ratatouille made to my No.1 animated movie of all time. It's so personally inspiring, yet it balanced individualism and collectivism in its brilliant plot. According to Brad Bird the writer/director, this movie is what he wanted to make for a long time but had to drop it because it may be considered too offensive. My experience showed that there could be some kind of sexual preference/bias to this film, that all the male audiences I know loved it instantly including my 55-year-old father but half the female audiences felt reluctant to finish watching it. My mum had to do some serious thinking to appreciate its value after the first viewing which she bite her fingernails through. That being said, Ratatouille does have some crude humors and implications if not interpreted right would offend certain group of people. But, isn't that exactly like the modern globalizing world we're living in? Values, ideologies, customs all struggle to find their places in a newly shuffled world. Young people are often caught up in the middle; some of them carry a talent so dangerous yet so fascinating, like Remy. Some of them only want to stay out of trouble, like Linguni. The way they have to survive together combining a mouse's wizardry and a human's appearance is instantly pervasive, bizarre and unrealistic, yet in my opinion it's a very realistic metaphor to the unfair, hypocritical and above all imperfect human realities.

The movie is very dark at times, especially when Remy was led by his father to visit the mousetrap vendor machine. Meanwhile, it's very poignant and tear-jerking especially in the end. Backed up by his entire family of rats, Remy made a dish most unexpected by the egotistic food critic Anton Ego. With the very first bite, Ego's pen dropped on the floor, his eyes widened and entire person freeze in awe. The camera moved into Ego's eye as he brought up the early memory in which mom cooked him the same dish--Ratatouille for him after he injured himself riding a child's bicycle. As he jumped back to reality, he didn't bother to pick up the pen, and finished the dish all the way up like a child. The long lost joy revived on his wrinkled face. Ego asked for the cook to express his deep appreciation, but Linguni refused his praises. Colette and Liguini then told Ego he had to wait for all the guests to leave for seeing the real cook. Ego waited until Liguini presented him Remy in a cook's hat. After Remy showed him all the hard evidences of cooking his favorite dish, Ego left Gusteau's restaurant to write his dish review. Overvoiced by Ego reading his review, Remy stood in the back-alley of the restaurant, gazing at the happy Liguini couple who called him to join them on the way home. He waved them off, and turned to find his father calling him to join the rats family's way home. Loving Linguni and family at the same time, Remy waved his father off, and stood in the middle of the street savoring the triumph as well as enjoying the independence. "This is a long night to remember", thought him to himself in a special bitter-sweetness. Little did he know, this bitter-sweetness is also shared by his father, who finally learned to accept his son's difference, as he sleeps in the moonlight. In his review, Ego reflected on his harshness and tendency to entertain the world rather than giving them true talent and truly delicious food. He told the public that the chief cook of Gusteau restaurant is unbelievably low-born but is the best cook in Paris. In his self-reflecting review, Ego redeemed himself. In the next day, Gusteau Restaurant was closed down for hygiene problems, and Ego lost his job as the high-profile food critic because he gave Gusteau positive comments. He then invested in a small restaurant which in no time attracted thousands of guests. Then the movie ended with Remy, Linguni and Gusteau being partners and closed friends.

have I ever had, or will I ever have another touching moment like what I just described to you in a movie? I hope I will. The notion of adventuring with your own unique taste in Ratatouille directly resulted in me becoming a amateur cook, who enjoyed friends' expressions as they bite my works like tigers. "You should open your own restaurant." They sometimes tell me so. "No", I replied, "I don't want the bureaus finding a rat in my hat, besides, I'd rather cook for family."

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Quite an interesting re-imagination of a classic novel.

[9/10 · 7 June 2010]

Before seeing Sherlock Holmes, I was warned by a senior friend that Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes went intolerably far from its source material. As a self-respected Holmes fan, I gave up seeing in theater. Luckily enough, I picked it up in HD format several months later, and it gave me a lot positive surprises.

That being said, I've seen quite a few Holmes movies before this blockbuster, and I wasn't too impressed by those poor adaptations just yet. None of them had a Holmes that lived up to the caliber of original novel's spirit. Still, I wasn't expecting a radical re-imagination of that meditatively brilliant role at all; I don't feel the desire to see him on the screen. Maybe that's because all these years the world has had too many super detectives jumping-examining-analyzing on and off the screen. Most recent greatest detective stories all stocked their firepower in the characters instead of the mystery(L.A.Confidential). Will this particular movie which had a bizarre feeling of Iron Man in 19th century (the trailer) do any different? To my surprise, Sherlock Holmes feels very fresh, comical, surreal, yet if there can ever be any performances that really is that inspiring, mind-bending as the title character, it would be Robert Downey Jr. Knowing that it's a Guy Ritchie production, I expected the same magnitude of mischief, mayhem and crude humor like Rock'n Rolla, Snatch, and Lock Stock. But thankfully the final product's efficiency in relating audiences' minds to their loved roles is far better than one can expect, as long as one's not a religious fanatic who believed in everything in Holmes books. So long as you care to know, the story opens with Holmes apprehending a shadowy serial killer whose high profile in the society shocked London, who later turned out to possess the capability to rise from grave, wield black magics and wreck havocs around London and terrorize the public. Holmes had limited time to figure out the opponent's master plan, which also involved far more people than one's imagination......

I guess you can't find a single case in Holmes books that either exactly matches this movie plot or feels totally different. That means the movie's a very brilliant adaptation that gains the strength from both the source material's roots and the screenwriter's originality. It's a story that keeps your brain processing the data just like Holmes himself while also convince you to sit back and enjoy the ride with your popcorn. With no presumption for the plot, fans can find many Eastern eggs and accept the director's goodwill in them. For example, all the scientific devices in the movie had their originality from the books, but the fast pacing hinders you from remembering their exact location in the novels. In terms of characters, although I am not too thrilled to see Holmes having such an obvious soft spot for Irene, all the characters play their parts in the story pretty smooth. Moriaty's involvement in the plot is too obvious to entertain the fans, but luckily the makers were aware of it. I was puzzled by the fact that Downey got a golden globe for the title role before I see this one. Now I've seen it, I can tell you the bottom-line is that no one had been so convincing as well as entertaining in this role. It's worth seeing for that if you don't have another reason.

While supremely sophisticated in Science knowledge and detective technique, Holmes was never so interested in ideology and politics. The makers are insightful enough to get this right in the adaptation, which leaves some key messages to be openly interpreted. After all, it's a story about the whole London in panic for black magics and Satanic villains who claim to be Satanic. It's a Holmes point-of-view to visually reveal the clash between spiritual assumptions and experimental science in the transition of 19th and 20th centuries, and the movie definitely takes Holmes side to criticize or mock universally at religions and spiritual beliefs. In this sense, it's acceptable to see churches having a mental breakdown in the storyline. It's also a remind to me that it's not reality, but Holmes, down to his fictional bone and love-it-or-hate-it roots and ideological notions. After all, Christianity is never really about anything indestructible human can possess or wield, but rather about right way to live your destructible life. If you are interested in discussing further, please contact me with Email: [e-mail]. Have a good time watching it! 9/10 Almost perfect, very masterful adaptation and production.