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For the supposedly scary parts, the old horror movie staples—strange voices, sudden noises, things turning themselves on—are executed so sloppily, they’re almost laughable. I wish they were laughable, at least I might’ve been entertained. Instead of atmosphere, we get a gray palette that makes everyone look like a corpse, and doors creaking open and shut, as if the entity were some kind of door-humping poltergeist. People are always taking baths; I’m guessing this is supposed to parallel the constant rains, but I am possessed by the need to submit a column.

Read our review at InterAksyon.com.

The Cinema One Originals Festival is on from November 11 to 19, 2013 at Glorietta, Trinoma, and Robinson’s Galleria cinemas. For information on the films and complete schedules, go to their Facebook page.

Click on the image to read the screening schedule at Glorietta.

Seen the movies? Post your reviews in Comments.

– Hmm.
– Hmmm.
– This prologue with Elves just screams Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital. I’m going to call the villain Bad Legolas.
– Asgard looks like Rohan, Gondor and Rivendell in the Lord of the Rings movies.
– And the score is very Howard Shore.
– It’s kind of crowded. I recall Asgard being more…monumental in the first movie.
– (Moment of respectful silence as Thor takes his shirt off.)
– Who directed this?
– Alan Taylor. Did several Game of Thrones episodes.
– Did he do the Red Wedding?
– Naah, that was David Nutter.
– Game of Thrones has a movie feel, this has a TV feel. As in network TV.
– Yeah, I get the impression that the director was directed by a lot of people.
– That’s what happens when you have a big movie franchise. Too many cooks. All of them trying to relieve the pressure of making 200 million dollars on the first weekend.
– Aaaaa! Loki looks like he’s auditioning for a Goth band.
– Or covered in Ly-Na pearl cream.
– That’s it?? Jane Foster’s been looking for him for two years and he just appears?
– I think they crammed in too many plot points, characters, details to satisfy the fanboys, so everything feels rushed. There’s no time to enjoy the moment.
– Why is Erik Selvig suddenly a comic character? He was a serious man in Thor and in The Avengers.
– Maybe there’s a clause in the Skarsgard family contract that says they all have to be naked.
– If someone had to be naked, why couldn’t it be Chris Hemsworth?
– Darcy gets some funny lines, but they fall flat because they’re not set up right.
– The sudden tone shifts from serious to comic are jarring.
– Even in the big emotional moments, you feel like you’re being rushed. Hurry, hurry, we still have a lot to work in.
– I liked the Branagh Thor, it was all about character.
– Remember, this isn’t just a movie anymore, it’s an installment in a big franchise that is part of an even bigger franchise. They have to expand on stuff from the earlier movies and then set up plotlines for the next several movies.
– Disney, will you please allow Loki to be an evil supervillain already? Get over your crush.
– Ah well. I like it, though.
– It’s fun, just overloaded.
– We love you, Thor! We wish there were more of you in your movie.
– Remember, we have to sit through the credits.
– Ooh, stinger.
– So that’s the storyline of the next Avengers movie. It involves…a bunch of items.
– Oh, he’s joining the Marvel universe.

Verdict: Watch. It’s not as if you had a choice (Nothing else is showing).

L-R: Barkhad Abdi, Tom Hanks and Faysal Ahmed in Columbia Pictures’s Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass

Captain Phillips, the thriller by the reliable Paul Greengrass, is excellent. We know exactly what’s going to happen, but we sit there clenched for two hours anyway. Based on actual events, the film stars Tom Hanks, who returns from a long series of blah projects (Though we really liked Cloud Atlas). Our only beef with the movie: A ship with no Filipino crew?? Is there such a thing?

We’re seeing a mini-trend in Hollywood cinema: the protagonist struggling to survive in a hostile environment using only their wits. Earlier there was Gravity, in which Sandra Bullock as the survivor of an accident in space tries to get back to earth. (You can bitch all you want about the scientific errors; it’s magnificent). Now there’s Tom Hanks’s Phillips, whose ship is boarded by Somali pirates. The actual crew members in that pirate attack are contesting Phillips’s version of events; the dispute doesn’t make the movie any less gripping.

Coming up: Robert Redford as the lone sailor steering a damaged boat on the stormy seas in J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost. (Chandor’s previous project was Margin Call, a Wall Street drama with a terrific ensemble and lots of talk. His second movie has one actor and very little dialogue.)

Alone against terrifying odds. Is that America’s mood at the moment?

L-R: John D’Leo, Robert De Niro and Dianna Agron in Relativity Media’s 2013 film The Family, directed by Luc Besson

The Family stars mob movie veterans Robert De Niro (if we have to name his mafia movies…) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Married to the Mob) as Americans in the witness protection program, living in France with their two teenage children. It’s funny in parts, but mostly just odd. We missed the opening credits, and given the movie’s abrupt shifts in tone, we thought it was a first film by someone with a beef against the French. Then we find out that it’s by Luc Besson.

The Family is a predictable culture clash comedy in which the French condescend to the Americans but the Americans’ dexterity with violence wins in the end. Basically De Niro is doing a parody of his career highlights, but he seems to be enjoying himself. Dianna Agron is very good as a young girl in the throes of first love, but she seems to be in a different movie altogether (not her fault). Pfeiffer is fabulous in the scene where she explains the difference between olive oil and butter—we suddenly recalled the bit in Scarface where she snorts coke off her fingernails.

The result is a slightly awkward yet enjoyable homage to American mob movies. You can’t get more homage-y than De Niro’s ex-mobster attending a French film society screening of Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese is credited as producer). This is the kind of movie where you wish the mobster’s family would beat all their neighbors to a pulp.

We sense another mini-trend in the current cinema: Americans fighting to survive in a world that hates them. If it’s any consolation, they still save the day.

As long as we’re recalling the movies of our childhood, remember Meatballs? Bill Murray’s first movie.

Photo of Sissy Spacek and Chloe Moretz as Carrie from the NY Daily News.

– Whyyy?
– WHYYY?
– Why bother remaking a movie when the copy is inferior in every way to the original?
– Okay, name some remakes that are as good as or better than the original.
– Uh…I can’t think of any.
– Because they don’t exist!*
– Kaloka! Ang taas pa naman ng tingin ko kay Kimberley Peirce because of Boys Don’t Cry.
– Is it still believable in this day and age that a teenage girl doesn’t know about her period? Sure, she’s the extremely sheltered daughter of a religious nut, but she goes to school and has internet access.
– Bongga talaga si Sissy Spacek. She was in her 20s and 30s when she played teenagers in Carrie, Badlands and the start of Coal Miner’s Daughter, but we never doubted she was an adolescent.
– Maganda yang actress in the Amy Irving role. Ang kagandahan niya lang ang pinag-iba ng pelikulang ito.
– Yan ang kontrabida?? Si Nancy Allen, gusto mong sampalin, sabunutan at sipain. Her, I can’t even tell her from the other mean girls.
– May igu-guapo pa si Tommy Ross.
– Remember the original Tommy Ross? William Katt at his Redford-est.
– Baka naman tayo lang ang ganito. Maybe viewers who never saw the Brian De Palma Carrie will enjoy this.
– I don’t know. There’s no tension. It’s entirely predictable. I don’t feel anything except Whyyy.
– Ngek. The mirror scene was the eeriest bit in the old movie, and they dumped it.
– “Eerie” doesn’t apply to anything here.
– Isn’t anyone going to sing “I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me”?
– Korek! Tayo na lang ang kumanta.

– Dapat super-kilig yung prom. From a downtrodden outsider Carrie is raised to great heights, so when the fall happens, we totally understand her wrath.
– Ano ba, walang 360 pan??
– Hindi sapat ang teen angst niya para mangyari yan.
– Aba, superhero ang dating niya. Jumi-Jean Grey??
– Suddenly I understand why Gus van Sant did his shot-for-shot Psycho remake. There’s no point in redoing it!
– What’s your nominee for worst remake ever?
– Sabrina. They even got the dress wrong.
– Wala akong maramdaman.
– Wait, the movie can still redeem itself. Remember that famous last scene?
– (Reaction to the last scene) YECCH!
– The best thing I can say about this remake is that it makes me feel like I’m seeing the original for the first time! Sissy Spacek deserves an Oscar award. I hope they nominate her at least, but I’m not holding my breath since this is a horror movie. Piper Laurie’s over-the-top performance is so enjoyable and somehow fits her character’s over-the-top psychological dysfunction. I hope they nominate her as well.
– Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore are both wasted in this.
– I love Chloe, but she doesn’t need telekinesis. She could kick all their asses.
– They should’ve made Carrie a boy and cast Dane DeHaan from Chronicle. He has Sissy-like fragility.
– They could’ve made Carrie a girl and still cast Dane DeHaan. Kaya niya!
– Pino Donaggio’s excessively lush, excessively melodramatic score is excessively apt, overscoring the movie’s over-the-topness. It’s one of those rare instances when you don’t miss subtlety at all.
– Yeah, a movie like this calls for music that’s big and operatic. Not that generic stuff.
– And De Palma knows how to make our hearts beat faster with the most excruciatingly slow slo-mos. Better yet, he makes us feel like we’re almost invading a scene with his repeated use of the 360 degree camera pan.
– You can’t take a realistic approach to material as weird as this. It must be over-the-top, or what is the damn point?
– I bet this movie is going to be as hard to remake as…Psycho!
– What’s that other Brian De Palma telekinesis movie?
– The Fury!
– Where Kirk Douglas and Andrew Stevens were perfectly cast as father and son. Pareho silang mga panga na tinubuan ng tao.
– I suddenly realized that the best remake of Carrie is…Chronicle!

Rating: Skip.

Noel recalled an Almodovar movie that features telekinesis: What Have I Done To Deserve This?

Get the English translation here.

* * * * *
– Reader diaw says David Cronenberg’s The Fly and John Carpenter’s The Thing are superior to their originals. True, clunky old B-movies can be improved with higher-grade directors and technology.

Noel agrees that the technicals of The Fly remake were a vast improvement, but doesn’t necessarily agree that it’s a better film. There’s nothing more disturbing than that last shot of the man-fly saying “Help me! Help me!”—the kind of disturbing that makes you think about it for years after. (Heelp meeeee!)

– turmukoy writes that Martin Scorsese’s The Departed improves on its source, Lau and Mak’s Infernal Affairs. Expect heavy opposition there, but we think that in this case, outside of the basic premise, the original and the remake are two completely different animals.

– We just remembered James Toback’s Fingers and Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Both intense and brilliantly-acted, but again, different animals. Fingers is about the disintegration of a personality, Beat is a very smart gangster movie.