An aggressively bonkers espionage film, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, has breached into comic book territory by amplifying its level of outrageousness in this sequel. The main attraction remains to be its bombastic action designed for viewers with an attention span of a Boomerang app (the delirious cab chase at the
Author: Kevin Tan
As a kid, I used to sneak inside a closet. I never made it to Narnia, obviously. Yep, I'm much cooler online.
Baconaua
As dawn starts to creep in the horizon, we see the silhouette of Divina (Elora Españo), with a spear on her hands, standing in a the sea waist-deep. She’s sizing up the water, cautious not to make any unnecessary commotion. But no amount of concentration can make this a day
Kiko Boksingero
Family dramas often have the dire need to verbalize emotions via heavy-handed dramatic confrontations. Thop Nazareno‘s coming-of-age drama Kiko Boksingero spares its audience of this embarrassing rehash and instead sustains a light tone all throughout. The result remains to be a fully-fleshed earnest story efficiently utilizing its modest screen time.
Sully
Sully opens with Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) having a PTSD-induced, 9/11-reminiscent vision of a plane crashing into a Manhattan skyscraper. This is the “what-if” scenario that haunts the titular hero after successfully landing the engine-blown Flight 1549 on the chilly Hudson River, and miraculously saving all 155 souls
Mechanic: Resurrection
Watching this film without having seen the trailer made me ask these following questions: Is this the film where Statham is a no-questions-asked transporter of precarious things? Or maybe this is the crazy Statham film where he needs to constantly keep his adrenaline flowing either by getting into fights or
Lav Diaz’s ‘Ang Babaeng Humayo’ Teaser
Based from Leo Tolstoy’s classic “God Sees the Truth but Waits,” Ang Babaeng Humayo (english title: The Woman Who Left) tells the story of a woman named Horacia who is released from prison after being wrongfully-convicted for thirty years. She resumes her life as a charitable pillar of the community.
Train to Busan
Nothing turns me off more than when zombie films gradually derail from character development and fall into the trap of gorefests and amusement killing just for the sake of it. Train to Busan, however, restores my faith in the sub-genre as director Yeon Sang-ho does not treat his characters as
The Secret Life of Pets
A Toy Story for pets. There, I’ve gotten it out of the way – the classic Disney film that every critic will mention in reviewing Yarrow Cheney’s and Chris Renaud’s The Secret Life of Pets. Perhaps cracking early the plot resemblance spoiled my high hopes for this film. We have
Ben-Hur
Concept-wise, this strangely-refreshing interweave of Ben-Hur’s story to Jesus’ life has the potential to work out just fine. Director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) acknowledges the pressure of living up to the 1959 Academy-Award winning classic by starting the film with a flash-forward of the iconic chariot scene,
The BFG
The odd sight of BFG’s “frobscottle” – a green fizzy drink where the bubbles go down instead of up, speaks to the tonal dissonance that normally shouldn’t work in this feature film. From the get go, The BFG begins like a classic, possibly dark, tale set in the cobbled streets
Jason Bourne
Matt Damon has said in his previous interview, “We have ridden that horse [Bourne series] as far as we can. So, if there’s going to be another one, then it would have to be a complete reconfiguration.” Hence, upon seeing Jason Bourne and realizing that there’s no story here that
Lando at Bugoy
I am left with ambivalence upon learning in the credits roll that Lando at Bugoy is actually inspired by a real-life story. Does that supposed to elevate this film when it also happens to reinforce the silent opinion that the straightforward execution makes it look like it’s something you can
Ignacio De Loyola
The most earnest moment in Ignacio De Loyola comes from a scene where the eponymous saint asks a prostitute to visualize God sat on an empty chair and think of the things that He would say to her. She replies with:, “He doesn’t care who I was or where I’ve
Ghostbusters
Upon release of the allegedly “lousy” trailer of Paul Feig’s gender-bender reboot of the 1984 classic, Ghostbusters, netizens immediately imagined numerous ways how it could go wrong. Sure enough, this controversy is addressed during the film with a misogynistic, break-the-fourth-wall YouTube comment to a ghost footage, “Ain’t no bitches gonna
Eye In The Sky
How many calls does it take to release a single hellfire missile? How many approvals does it take to sanction the potential death of an innocent in order to kill high-profile terrorists and therefore prevent a terrorist attack from happening? For an average citizen, all these logistics seem to be
Dukot
In a society where crime has inevitably become a way of life, director Paul Soriano (Kid Kulafu; Thelma) presents his latest film, Dukot, as a peephole into the traumas of abduction. The film delves into the psyches of both victims and perpetrators to show that evil persists in all social
Ice Age: Collision Course
The Ice Age franchise, now roughly 15 years old, started with the journey of Manny, Sid and Diego rescuing a human infant back in 2002. Since then, these mammals have been subjected to a meltdown, a dinosaur invasion, and a continental drift. By then, you’d think it’d be best for
Alice Through the Looking Glass
To be fair, I remember enjoying Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland when it was released way back in 2010 and perhaps that was because 3D technology was relatively new by then. Taking the reins for this sequel is James Bobin (The Muppets writer and director) and he borrows the former director’s
The Achy Breaky Hearts
Follow my blog with Bloglovin Perhaps a popular opinion nowadays is that traditional marriage has partially lost its allure, most especially to an unprecedented portion of millennials. With its concept constantly reshaping over time and across cultures, society is now capable of embracing new ideas on love and sometimes even
The Legend of Tarzan
When it comes to recycling yesterday’s heroes, one can wonder if there’s still a place in contemporary cinema for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ century-old, Tarzan. Arguably, the last thing viewers want to see is another exhausting reiteration of his origin story – a pratfall that David Yates (director of the last
Central Intelligence
When a film has a tagline as witty and sharp as Central Intelligence‘s – “Saving the world takes a little Hart and a big Johnson” — something tells me that the producers came up with that pun first and decided to commission a script around it after. True enough, this film
Now You See Me 2
Normally, suspension of disbelief can suffice to maximize one’s viewing pleasure in illusionist films, which tend to capitalize on showmanship to camouflage the many plot holes of the story. However, the second act of the 2013 surprise hit, Now You See Me, requires a brain entirely shut off for one
Disney is roaring waves in teaser for new animation feature ‘Moana’
These days I’m immediately sold whenever a trailer flashes the words “From Disney”. The film outfit has earned the reputation of producing films with really good story and gorgeous art direction. After all the praise Zootopia earned this year (and notwithstanding previously released successful animated features like Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph
The Nice Guys
While there are many ways to attack the buddy cop genre, at its core are two wildly different personalities forced to work together amidst disaster. The rich history of this genre continues this month as Shane Black, writer-director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, revisits black comedy in his new neo-noir
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
Whenever a terrible movie gets a sequel, we ask ourselves, “WHY!?”, yet in some cases, a funny thing happen…sequels turn out to actually be not bad! Now to say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is a massive upgrade from the unsatisfactory 2014 ‘reboot’ is an accurate
