Renzie Reviews: Jumper (2008)

I had a chance to catch Jumper on the plane, on my way to Los Angeles from Manila.

It was going to be at least 11 hours, so as soon as we hit cruising altitude, and we all settled in, I thought this would be a good time to check it out, since I missed it on its regular run when it hit theaters earlier this year.

The concept of Jumper seemed promising enough: Hayden Christiansen's character finds out that he could essentially teleport, or 'jump', from one place to another.

Seems like a neat power- instantaneously transporting yourself from place to place at a thought. Rather convenient, especially these days when gas prices are off the scale.

Rachel Bilson (yes- Summer, of "The O.C." fame) provides the obligatory romantic interest and eye-candy for the movie. And bad-ass Samuel L. Jackson's character is a paladin- like a modern-day witch-hunter, who tracks down and neutralizes jumpers (along with other paladins) whenever they pop up.

Let's keep my review of this movie spoiler-free: great premise- in fact, a potential for a really great story, but the execution has left me terribly unfulfilled. Mr. Christiansen's acting, was once again, disappointing and completely unmemorable.

You got great effects though, and the action sequences were fast-paced and entertaining, particularly when Jumpers square off against paladins, or against each other.

For me, the characters haven't been developed enough for me to really care about any of them. Do I root for Hayden's character- being the underdog in the whole story? Or do I cheer on Samuel L. Jackson and the paladins- even if the whole motivation for slaying jumpers seemed really flimsy for me?

In the end, I really didn't care much.

If you had a choice to rent the DVD, I'd say you're probably better off waiting for it to show on TV, or mooch it off for free, like borrowing it off a friend who actually bought the DVD.

Not a total waste of time, it did have some entertaining enough moments- but if you had a choice of other things to watch, you probably wouldn't want to put Jumper high up on your priority list.

Cheers, everyone.

Renzie Reviews: Wicked Little Things

Recently-widowed Karen Tunny and her two daughters, Sarah and Emma, start a new life in a small Pennsylvania town up in the mountains, moving into an old house- which had been in the possession of her late husband's family for quite some time now.

What the Tunnys don't know is their new home is not so far away from the site of a horrible mining accident many years ago, where dozens of children were buried alive.

It doesn't take long for the family to realize that there's something strange going on- with their house, the surrounding forest, the townsfolk, and the town itself. Bit by bit, they discover the town's terrible secret- and the 'things' that wander the woods at night.

Wicked Little Things, in my opinion is definitely one of the better films in the After Dark HorrorFest lineup of movies. The rational part of me always tries to figure out the back stories and the motivation of what plagues the main characters- and this movie adequately satisfies my need for an explanation on what's going on.

It has a few 'I'm-at-the-edge-of-my-seat-holding-my-breath' moments, and has just enough gore to make certain scenes stand out, definitely not over-the-top. Well-executed, even more so knowing it was running on an indie film budget.

Final Word: You probably would have liked Wicked Little Things if you caught it at the After Dark Horrorfest from a year and a half ago. If you haven't, it might be worth your while to grab a copy of the DVD, and watch it on a dark night with some easy-to-scare friends for added fun.

Wicked Little Things theatrical poster from Wikipedia.

Cheers, everyone!

Renzie Reviews: The Hamiltons

I recently had the chance to watch the indie horror movie The Hamiltons. The movie came out in 2006, directed by The Butcher Brothers (Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores), and was part of the "8 Films To Die For" line-up of the very first After Dark HorrorFest in November that year.

If every family has its secrets, The Hamiltons sure takes the cake. The film, in essence, is a family drama, and revolves around the lives of the Hamilton siblings.

Our main character, Francis, has his trusty video camera, sets off to shoot a "school project" about his family. Bit by bit, we are introduced to the other characters. There's eldest brother David, normally reserved and subdued, who assumes the responsibility of caring for his siblings upon the accidental death of their parents.

Then we have the volatile Wendell and goth-chick Darlene; fraternal twins who seem to share a bond that keeps them apart from everybody else.

Everything seems to be normal within the Hamilton household, as the siblings deal with everyday life- school, work, family- but through Francis' camera, we slowly see what the Hamiltons are really all about.

Here's what I think about the movie. First off: I think it's great that an indie movie can deliver a captivating enough story, with minimal budget, virtually unknown actors, and not much in the way of special effects.

That being said, the movie didn't scare me at all, or disturb me to some extent. True, it is dark, but I was expecting a horror movie that would play with my fears somewhat, and not a family drama disguised as a horror flick.

Overall, I would say The Hamiltons is alright. Maybe a 3.5 out of 5. Worth watching, but manage your expectations somewhat. Probably worth getting the DVD, but only because it's part of a collection of a whole set of horror movies.

Despite my opinion, the movie is not only a fan favorite, it is also highly-acclaimed. After all, The Hamiltons is the winner of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the Malibu International Film Festival.

Grab a copy of The Hamiltons and tell me what you think about it.

Renzie Reviews: The Messengers

I've had the chance to watch The Messengers on Star Movies the other day.

I have to admit: I had high expectations for the movie- after all, it's a project from The Pang Brothers. These are the same guys who gave us the Asian Horror favorite The Eye (and its sequels) and action-packed Bangkok Dangerous. Plus one of the brothers (Danny) had also worked on Infernal Affairs (and its sequel and prequel)- a great movie from which Martin Scorsese drew inspiration from for The Departed.

The Messengers is a thriller directed by The Pang Brothers, and produced by Sam Raimi. I initially thought there was an original Asian version of the film, but later found out that it was Hollywood-backed from the very beginning.

Weird things start happening in the Solomon household after the entire family makes the move from the city to start a sunflower farm. But only the kids- teenager Jess and younger brother Ben- get to see the worst of it all. Naturally, all this tension threatens to tear the family apart- until they find out what's really going on- which is what the whole film is all about.

Like I mentioned, I had high hopes for the film. But it didn't really settle well with me. I'd say it would probably be because the movie didn't offer anything new to me in terms of scares and horror. Even the ghosts in the movie- with all the writhing and scuttling about on the ceiling and everything- almost seems so common now.

I had at least hoped for a brilliant twist in the end, but unfortunately it was rather predictable through-and-through.

My gauge for a good thriller, or a good horror movie, is that it screws you up after you've watched it- it makes you avoid all the usual everyday things. The Ring (Ringu- the original Japanese version) fucked me up so bad that I'd hate to put in a VHS tape into a player, answer an unknown number on my phone or even look at a static TV screen. Nightmare on Elm Street made me afraid of sleeping when I was a kid. Stir of Echoes would make me think twice about going under hypnosis or whatever harmless party prank.

With The Messengers? Don't move into a run-down farm in the middle of nowhere. You know shit's gonna happen when you find yourself in the middle of a crow infestation. And for Bob's sake, listen to the kids sometimes.

Final Word: probably worth watching once, but I wouldn't get me a copy on DVD.

Cheers, everyone!

My Cloverfield Weekend

"What the fuck was that?" I kept asking myself, after catching glimpses of the Cloverfield creature.

The movie definitely worked for me- I grew up appreciating Godzilla, King Kong and other monster movies. So I was trying to figure out- was it humanoid? Wait- that massive foot's T-Rex-like! It's reptilian! But what the frack are those things dropping off that thing? Hang on- they're like bugs from Starship Troopers...

All while trying to keep up with the frenetic camera movement and the shouts and screams from a terrified downtown Manhattan.

What I Knew About Cloverfield (before seeing it on the big screen).

I remembered seeing the trailer just before the Transformers movie last summer- we see a bunch of people partying from the point-of-view of someone's handycam- it seemed pretty ordinary enough, until something blows up behind the New York skyline- and the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty drops down from the sky. No movie title. Just that it's from J.J. Abrams and it's coming out soon.

Wow, that worked for me- first thing I did when I got home from the Transformers movie was to Google up J.J. Abrams' latest projects. There was a huge online buzz right after the nameless trailer was shown- it could have been anything- a "Lost" movie, some 9-11-inspired project- but hey, if there's a J.J. Abrams stamp on it, it was very most likely cool. All we knew was that they deliberately didn't show any movie title on it. And that the project was codenamed "Cloverfield".

It wasn't long until the second trailer hit the internet- and this time, we catch a glimpse of the massive creature lumbering behind a ruined building in the not-so-far distance.

Then you had blogs and websites all fired up- it was a viral marketing campaign- not unlike what these same guys did with "Lost". Everyone was trying to figure out what the creature was- some alien thing, a mutated whale, a godzilla-like monster, a leviathan woken up from centuries of slumber. You had MySpace profiles for the characters, sonar images of something huge approaching Manhattan, and even a sample of the creature's roar.

You gotta hand it to J.J.- he knows how to hit his target market. Heck, it worked on me.

My Take on Cloverfield.

I liked it. Very much. I think it was a refreshingly different take on the usual monster movies.

Yeah it was a little "Blair Witch"-like. But I didn't like the "Blair Witch Project" (I didn't see any witch for Bob's sake!). I mean, sure, it had great back stories, I like the way they set things up, but the movie left me disappointed and unfulfilled because there were so many ways they could've played with the story- but for some reason, just left it that way.

The movie had pretty much explained itself from the beginning: the military salvages some video footage from a tape found in the area that used to be Central Park (used to be? oh, OK, so we know something happened to Central Park), and we're about to check out said tape. So it's gonna be like watching the entirety of somebody's home movie- but of course we know that it's going to take a turn for the worse somewhere sometime soon.

Through this one 'tape', we get introduced to the main characters (virtual Hollywood unknowns- good move!) and it paints a picture of what's going down. Of course we know there's a monster attacking New York in here somewhere- I just wanted to know what it could do, where it came from and what it looked like, really.

I liked how the movie paid attention to details of the contemporary setting- how people were taking pics of the decapitated Statue of Liberty with their mobile phones and the amount of firepower the military responded with (infantry with AT4 rockets, an M1 Abrams blasting away, volleys from an MLRS, F/A-18s and a B2 bombing run).

What left me rather bewildered was- what was the creature's motivation? Was it really hell-bent on destruction? Were we being invaded by an alien force? Was it just hungry and cranky after waking up from a millenium of sleep?

It was only later that I found out that the producers deliberately left out the creature's biological rationale- opting to stay faithful with the one-person-POV angle.

Nevertheless, we do get a close-up of the big guy- like a finale of sorts- but not before he leaves half of Manhattan in ruins. I am so going to get me a toy figure of this thing when it hits the shelves.

Lessons Learned from Cloverfield.

Just like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Snakes on a Plane", we learn this: If you're going to generate a whole lot of online/viral marketing buzz, you have got to have a solid, likeable story behind it. Fortunately for Cloverfield, it did.

Of course the movie didn't work for some people- maybe they weren't the target audience to begin with- but for the intended market of the film, you'll hear praises, read about it in blogs, and see lots of sales from merchandising.

For me, the movie is a sign-of-the-times. It's almost like user-generated-content posted on YouTube- it doesn't have to have big names, nor does it have to look professionally made- it just has to fuck with your mind, make you ask questions, reel you in.

We know that J.J. just made a lot of money and earned a lot of praise and bragging rights on this venture- I say more power to him. (Very well played, J.J.- now let's see that new Star Trek movie you're working on...)

This post originally came out in another blog of mine, "Renzie's Rants and Raves". I moved it to this blog shortly after creating it in March 2008.

Renzie Reviews: Serenity (2005)

I don't think this movie ever made regular screening in the Philippines. But at the time, I remember all they hype online across bulletin boards and fansites.

Serenity is a movie set in Joss Whedon's Firefly 'verse, written and directed by the man himself (excellent job, mate!). His pitch: it's a western- just so happens it's set in the future. Firefly also never saw airtime here (at least not on its regular run), and TV.com actually reported it as one of the best sci-fi TV series ever.

So naturally, when I had the chance to pick up a copy of said movie, I told myself that I just had to check this one out.

I wasn't disappointed at all- in fact, it's thoroughly entertaining: witty dialog, great story, excellent character development, good shots and camera work. It was sci-fi, alright, but not cheesy sci-fi (some DO tend to go overboard). It has, in many ways, set the benchmark on how science fiction movies should be done.

The movie was all about Mal and his ragtag crew- the movie had done an excellent job building up the characters in a relatively short time, so that you can't help but root for them, even if you haven't seen Firefly ever before.

I find out later on that the story played out in Serenity happens after all the Firefly episodes. Note to self: gotta pick up the Firefly DVDs. Watch more of the crew of the Serenity.

By the time the movie's done, you would definitely want to get to know the crew of Serenity a little more- a lot more. And chances are, you'll be checking out their entry on Wikipedia, Firefly sites and download wallpapers and images and stuff. At least, that's what I did.

Yes, Serenity made me an instant Firefly fan. Once I had the chance, I got the DVDs to watch them over and over again. On top of the Serenity DVD to end the unfortunately short-lived TV series just nicely.

Thanks, Joss, for a really good story. I'm personally looking forward to your next project.