Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts

9.07.2010

Movie Watching:The Fly and The Fly 2

苍蝇人(The Fly,又译苍蝇/变蝇人)是个1986年的老片子,经常见到有人提起它,却一直没有看过,印象中是部小经典的科幻恐怖片。没想到影片如此震撼,两部都令人动容。

一个聪明、和善又腼腆的科学家,发明了可以使物体瞬间转移的机器。一位漂亮的女记者结识并仰慕他,两人坠入爱河。在一次感情误会中,科学家醉酒后冲动得用自己做实验,有只苍蝇不小心飞进了仪器,系统出错把人和苍蝇的基因混合,科学家变成了恐怖的苍蝇人。

他开始老得很快,后来发生变异,脸上长满血疙瘩、皱皮、流脓,身体血肉模糊并长出昆虫的毛,吃东西要先吐出酸液融化再吸食.....其视觉效果即使在20年后的今天看还是恶心到极点,让人真想一枪毙了它,然而这恐怖东西体内,却是那个曾经聪明可爱的男人,他还会开玩笑说自己可以被关进动物园。女记者眼睁睁看着相恋至深的情人变成一团狰狞的怪物,昔日俊朗的脸她的手只要轻轻接触就会把肉撕下来,她上前紧紧搂住这个发脓发臭的苍蝇人,除了痛哭,无能无力。

科学家的状况一天比一天糟糕,牙齿、指甲、皮肤通通脱落流脓,肌肉大块大块烂掉,里面长出苍蝇的躯体,与此同时他开始逐渐失去人性。看着镜中的自己,曾经拥有美丽的女友和最伟大的发明,曾经前途无量,然而现在他的头脑和灵魂还在,身体却是苍蝇,他告诉女友要她离开永远别回来,因为也许自己会伤害她,听到女友远去的脚步声他又陷入痛苦绝望,他的爱已经永远无法表达---我想起了经典的Edward Scissorhand

更不幸的是女记者发现自己怀孕了,而且是带有苍蝇基因的胎儿,惊恐中她去堕胎,得知消息的苍蝇人在最后一刻赶来,女友哭着说自己没有选择,他低下头不停重复“too bad,too bad”看到那无比悲伤、心碎的眼神,我觉得他太可怜了,谁说这是科幻恐怖片?从头到尾都是爱情悲剧。苍蝇人这个角色从诞生的时刻开始,就注定了自己的悲哀。

接下来的结尾,科学家肉体彻底脱落,变成一只巨大的苍蝇,口中喷出的液体象浓硫酸一样具强腐蚀性,善良的本性也完全泯灭,他丧心病狂得强行把女友推进仪器,想通过操作使包括胎儿的他们三人合为一体,变成一个混合人。最终,前男友救了女记者,失败的苍蝇人慢慢爬向女友,我以为他象许多影片一样要做最后袭击,但不是,他用苍蝇爪子抬起女友的枪对准自己的苍蝇脑袋,示意女友开枪,结束他如此痛苦的生命。

看过太多爱情童话,结局往往是美好的,而且总在试图告诉人们,外表并不重要,心灵才是最可贵。可是,当一切成为现实时,没有童话,只有噩梦。别以为爱可以化解魔法,爱得再深,也只有用枪声结束曾经的刻骨铭心。这一点和《KingKong》的结局不谋而合。再想起苍蝇人,我已经忘了他的可怖,象《Edward Scissorhand》一样,记住的只有悲伤。

《The Fly》2围绕女记者生下的孩子马汀展开故事。马汀跟他的父亲一样友善、腼腆,并且更聪明。他在实验室里长大,被那些人表面友好、实际却把他当成实验品。开始马汀是正常人,想继续他父亲事业的人都失败了,只有他成功并且还找到了替换DNA的方法。那些人用马汀的金毛狗偷偷做实验,看到狗狗被折磨成半死不活的痛苦怪物时,马汀哭了。

马汀还幸运得遇到一位对爱情同样忠贞的美丽女友,可惜他体内潜伏的苍蝇基因注定要发作,可惜他注定不是一个完整的人。不甘心被当成实验品,他和女友开始了逃亡。逃亡过程中马汀经历了和他父亲一样恐怖的外形变化,这也是最令人伤感和感动的一段,欣慰的是不管他变得多么可怕,不管他多么绝望,不管他怎样哀求,女孩始终都没有离开。而且即使如此,善良的马汀也始终没有打算牺牲别人来替换自己的变异DNA。

可是当马汀全身被体内吐出的茧丝牢牢织住,变成一只大虫茧再也无法动弹,他们不得不又回到实验室。2比1人性化了许多,马汀后来破茧而出变成巨型苍蝇,与实验室的人们作战时,他会放过保安犬并轻抚狗狗。个人更喜欢第二部还因为它是喜剧结尾,马汀最终在紧要关头依靠自己发明的DNA替换技术救了自己,坏老头变成全身腐臭的苍蝇人供实验观察,马汀则拥有了全新的完整人生.

皆大欢喜,坏人得到惩罚,好人活下去。

科学家和他漂亮的女朋友(The Fly)
Haha牺牲色相。也是TheFly的情节。
变形后的科学家和前男朋友的战斗。(TheFly)
Movie Watch: How Do You Remake The Fly Twice? Ask Cronenberg
完全变形。(The Fly)

孩子出生啦!(The Fly 2)
File:Fly2Poster.JPG
Like Father, like son =.=(The Fly 2)

Movie Watching: Splice




Staring the youngest Oscar Winner Adrien Brody, directed by Vincenzo Natali and his friend Guillermo del Toro(Bravo for his imagination!). Eventhough theme of "Splice" sounds cliche, this, is surprisingly twisted. Yes, the genetic and human cloning issue is no longer an unknown topic to the public. Yes, splicing of human DNA and Animal DNA used to be debated across it's morality stance. But this movie? No, they talked about the possibilities of the outcome. What is science without religious guidance, or from the starting point, Ethics of the creator, you might ask? Well while I am watching this movie,I can't help flashing back to a 1986 movie called "The Fly". (You know, Elsa the female scientist was pregnant by that monster. That's the sequel starting point, i guess.) Kinda scraping horror elements from the past, except that the graphic technologies improves a lot.

Lots of space for the audience to weight in. Giving name to the Specimen(adding in human characteristic); Contradiction among protagonists. Baking Old Greek mythology (having sex with the mother and kill his/her father to end the tale) That's why I said, it's heavy but without pleasure. Your sight is blurred by the spiky emotional and moral grotesque, that kinda dark pleasure.

Loneliness, poor Dren. She(or he? she changed her gender into male at the end of the movie) followed the sequence of evolution and learned from her parents through observing every single action. (Can't imagine to have a kid like this) What is her purpose of living in this world? To apply makeup and wear beautiful clothes? To play around with a kitten? We won't know.



"Splice"Movie Poster 1

"Splice"Movie Poster 2

Adrien Brody

Rating: 7.0/10.0

9.01.2010

500 Days Of Summer and Going to Be Autumn



Meet Zooey Deschanel. Main Actress for the movie: 500 Days Of Summer.

Meet Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing the main protagonist in this movie.





Reappearance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the movie"Inception". Really didn't expect him to reappear in the screen this way.



Anyway, this is the poster for 500 Days Of Summer.
Thumbs up for the review. Really is a different story about love, unlike those commercialize romantic comedies.

7.01.2010

Movie Watching: The Hedgedog By Mona Achache







This hits the bulleye in my heart.(or nearly, perhaps)I used to dream of the combination between tenderness of French Art sensitivity and Japanese neat manipulation, and this movie goes beyond my expectation.

Elegance of portraiting Muriel Barbery's bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Paloma is a 11 years old girl with artistic and cultural background who's determined to commit suicide at her 12 years-old birthday. Equipped with her father's old camcorder, she decided to film down her surrounding and provided some narrating why she want to get out this "fishbowl". She mentioned that the world is a huge fishbowl with adults banging around their head in the fishbowl and she gave some in-depth explanation(or assumed, childish to an adult) of the incidents around her. She tried to find a reason to proof that this world she is living in is degrading her dignity and the "adults" chasing on wealth,political position(her father is a politician), satisfaction of their taste buds(even ignored the alarm of their neighbours' death due to healthy problems )and ended their life with the fear of death is a shame to her. She even drew a emotion calender on her bedroom's wall(Omg, her drawings are beautiful!) to countdown her death. She stole and stockpiled her mother's tranquilizers and crushed them so that she can die without pain by consuming those(lol, she even tried it on her goldfish). She pinpointed the adults' blindspot of extravagance and mask to hide their pea-brain give us(we the audience) some space to think about that(Her mother's concern on plants more than her daughter and who is addicted to Freudian analysis, tranquilizers, and champagne, her parent's guest who knows little about "go" but describes the function behind it wrongly etc.)

Then the camera switched. Widower Monsieur Ozu moved into a flat besides her house and converted it into a Japanese oasis with Zen-ism and aesthetic calm( I love his house! Even the toiletbowl will sings Mozart's when you sit down! OMG I love your house!)Meanwhile, Madame Michel is in charge of the janitor post in the luxury 5-unit Parisian apartment. (their elevator! So sophisticated!)When the gentleman Monsieur Ozu met Madame Michel, he correctly assumed that she is a "hedgedog with hostile spikes outside but terribly elegant inside. " He presented a 2-volume "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy(name of Madame Michel's cat) then invited her for a dinner (which Madame Michel had to seek help from her friend to get a dress and a haircut as she never bother about her outfit for a long time), followed by sharing an old Japanese film together.

Back to Paloma, she is clever to unfold Madame Michel's spiky shell and included her in the filming as well. She said to Madame Michel,"you found a perfect hiding place" by pointing towards the door when thousands of books were piled behind it.It's Madame Michel's Reading room. She draws a card for her together with her Reading Room with her own imagination(and that is LOVElY). Paloma admires her because she can spend hours in her backroom reading books, while appeared as a grumpy old creature outside that people don't even see and bother about her. The downhill of the story crushed viewer's fairytale by ending Madame Michel's life in a car accident when she tried to help a drunken man away from the street. Only then, Paloma realised the meaning behind "death". "Death" is not one's feeling or ending of one's life only, but the impact on his or her relationship circle around him/her.

I recommended viewers to watch this movie for a few times as this is a rare masterpiece. As i mentioned, French director has an poetic sense in conducting flipping landscapes and body languages.


Rating: 9.0/10.0

5.27.2010

Movie Watching: The Pianist





Stunning.Even I shudder when I thought about the heavy atmosphere of World War 2 formed by millions of bleeding flesh and tormenting souls.I start to rethink about meaning of "happiness" ...and you,you know, just think about the our life.The fact that we can sit in front of the table and lift our spoons and chew a mouthful of rice is...heaven to them.I refuse to watch this as a film.It is a reminder, a reminder to be deeply etched into our mind:war is cruel.From this film,I saw how German soldiers forcing residents of ghetto(including a handicapped old man) to "Jew dance" in front of others,shouting "Schneller! Schneller!" [English: Faster! Faster; how they intruded an apartment and ordered all the family members to stand up and tossed the wheel-chaired grandfather down from 3rd floor balcony to the pavement due to "disobeying the order"; how they randomly pick workers out of the line and made them laid on the floor with bullets served(Particularly disturbing about this scene is that the officer runs out of bullets on the last man (Szpilman's friend) and has to stop and reload his gun before shooting him same as the others A starving old man robs a starving old womans pot of food, she screams for help and then watches the man run off it with is which makes the food fall to the floor. The man bends down to eat it, while the old woman is sobbing hitting the man with her purse. and even worse,they gathered the non-productive generations-old folks and children of the Jews to be "purified"...really,history of the Jews are soaked with blood.In the film,the director don't speak.He patted our shoulder and pointed to the film,"look, this is how our ancestors struggled and victimized. The main character of this film is a famous polish Jew pianist,Wladyslaw Szpilman's memories of event.Adrien Brody portrayed Szpilman is a victim of war.there's no hero in this film,rather,this film reflects the shallowness of those action movie where hero stood last and unharmed.This film is not an entertainment.And remember,the lesson of life was to remembered by we so that in future,we will not repeat the same mistakes
Rating:9.0/10.0

5.21.2010

Movie Watching: The White Ribbon









This is a 2009 black-and-white German cinematography by Writer-Director Michael Haneke.Unfortunately(or maybe,fortunately) it is quite difficult to search for this film in Malaysia.Action-packed and Massive Explosion lovers,sorry,this is an art-film which most of the audience will yawn their heads off. In this story,the storyteller is the School Teacher (Christian Friedel),unroll the story from a 1st-person view.Set in a small northern German town before World War 1 stretch his despicable claws, a few curious and disturbing incidents happened. First is the doctor is injured when his horse tumble over by a wire hung between two trees,the farmer's wife dies in the sawmill when the rotten wooden board give away, The baron’s eldest son goes missing on the day of the harvest festival and is found the following morning in the sawmill, bound and thrashed with a cane. A barn at the manor burns down. The handicapped son of the midwife is attacked and almost blinded.Meanwhile, theres an almost innocent appearance of the children's behaviour.They roam around with the face of a live-free kid yet inside was bearing guilty of parroting their parents(or adults)sins.The narrator avoid any vulgarity and at the same time,reveals how morally bankrupt when people closed their doors behind their back.In fact,the narrator tried to explain the origin of Nazism which is lurking deep in their soul and hence,led to eruption of World War 1 and World War 2.That's the reason why the narrator refuses to solve the puzzle in the end. Indeed,the narrator only says that the events he's describing “could perhaps clarify some things that happened in this country”.He gives the right of judgment back to the audience and instead of a sense of reassurance.It’s not mankind that is evil, we would conclude, just a few twisted individuals.
Rating: 8.9/10.0

5.10.2010

Movie Watching: Precious



Oh..Don't 'Wow!' when you saw the name 'Mariah Carey' in the list.According to the reviews, I am supposed to prepare some tissues aside while I watch this movie. In fact, I completed this movie with dry eyes. Ok, about the story. This is an adaption from a novel 'Push' by sapphire ,story of Claireece Precious Jones, an obese and pregnant teenager whose life so far has been filled with nothing but unrelenting private abuse and systemic public neglect In the end, she tried to do something which is, according to her, meaningful to life,or 'precious'. So instead of reading them aloud in words, this movie doesn't roll the wheel smoothly as it seems.Well. at least(if you are talking about the emotional part)actors are in-role and languages they used are quite 'illiterate',but to wrap up a conclusion, this movie is just a better-than-average movie for meRating: 5.5/10.0