When spring is hotter than summer

It’s another slow month, for a number of reasons, chiefly being Sony Malaysia’s unwillingness to release the Xperia Z1 Compact before people completely lose interest. So, to kill time, I have decided to review four more movies that I have watched recently. I know it’s still very early in the month, considering Need for Speed isn’t even out yet, but worry not for I shall work on that when it does go on air. Again, spoiler alert, because some really deserve mention.

First off is American Hustle. A show which starts with the most amazing intro ever: ‘Some of this actually happened’ instead of the usual ‘based on a true story’. A story about how a pair of con artists get pulled into an FBI op to nab as many ‘criminals’ as possible, or that’s how it started anyway. It slowly turned into an operation to arrest as many people as possible, even if it means baiting honest politicians (two words you don’t normally feature in the same sentence, let alone next to each other) into taking bribes. The film ends with politicians being arrested and real criminal masterminds
remaining free to terrorize whoever they thought was born with a wrong face.

This is a good movie, which I like for a number of reasons. The first is that despite the happy-ish ending, it ends with a bitter taste, much like reality, though this may be because of it being based on a true stor… *ahem* because some of it actually happened. Actually, most of which still hold true today; rich criminals kill every man than isn’t a subordinate and rape every woman that isn’t a wife or mistress and still get away scot free while the one politician that actually serves the people among the infinite that lord over the people get lumped together and are treated like scum anyway.

Second is that it touches on the very grey nature of the world, with insights into the life of the nearly non-existent good guy politician and maybe the FBI as well. Now, I’m not sure how the FBI actually works, but in this movie, which I’m going to trust because apparently some of it actually happened, they’re much like salesmen; like how the sales of the salesmen matter while the quality of a product and the honesty of their marketing doesn’t, the FBI seems to work with a similar principle where it’s the number of arrests that count and not who they arrest and the legitimacy of the arrests. And so there’s a very convenient plot: the FBI needs to meet their arrests quota for the year or something, so they go at first aiming to arrest members of the criminal underworld. When they realize that that’s not possible due to insufficient evidence and time to gather them, they turn to arresting politicians, most of which are not clean anyway. When even then they fall short, they resort to baiting the rarest thing in existence – a clean politician that actually serves the people of his constituency – into taking bribes and hence putting some dirt on him to justify his arrest. So yes, this world is very far from black and white, where the supposed good guys do very far from good things to falsely maintain their good image, and the brilliance of one good guy politician getting overshadowed by and lumped together with the rest of the scumbag politicians. And this movie portrays it quite nicely. Almost perfectly, in fact, but that may be due to the fact that some of it actually happened (yes, I absolutely love that phrase).

So yes, good movie all in all, but I will not recommend watching on any of Malaysia’s big screens. This is simply because there are far too many cuts, most of which I would attribute to Amy Adam’s character, who is very scantily dressed at her most dressed moments, to say the least. While this is very much understandable as she has to play a stripper in the late 1970s, what is not understandable is the movie, being rated 18, still has cuts. So what is the bloody point of the bloody age restriction? They might as well give it a 13PG or U rating since they cut all the bits deemed inappropriate for kids anyway despite the 18 rating. Either that, or I overestimated the standards of the horny old geezers at the censorship department; they can probably fap to a female tennis match, when the players’ clothes start to get soaked in sweat and their nipples start poking out of their clothes (this is not meant to be an insult to athletic women, but it is meant as an insult to the horny old geezers at the censorship department and their mind-bogglingly low standards of pornography).  So to rectify this problem, there should be two classifications for this movie; 18 for the uncut version and a 13PG or U version where they can cut the whole movie as far as I'm concerned.

With that done, we move on to Non-Stop. If you’ve seen the trailers, then there’s not much more to say, since that’s pretty much the gist of it. Also, if you have seen the trailer, you’ll be able to see the plot twist coming way before it happens. Or at least won’t be surprised when it does. There isn’t much action, but there is a lot of tension. Which is to be expected from that sort of scenario, but a lot of it seemed very unnecessary; nothing good old honesty can’t solve. Because of this, the movie can feel quite draggy. Then you have the clichéd good guy wins ending.

Despite all this, I would still say that this is worth your money. Yes, it is stereotypical without much innovation, but the characters are played so perfectly that the realism alone makes it worth your money. Well, realism of the characters staying in character at least. The major fly in the ointment is that the plot would be dramatically shorter and there would be less tension in the air if the main character was honest from the start, but I still say that this movie deserves a chance to be judged by yourself.

Then we have 3 Days to Kill. This is, to me, a gem in more ways than one. The first being the main character who isn’t the most overpowered character in the story. This is a rare break from the cliché that we are otherwise too familiar with; the main character always has the better technique, reflex, instincts, thinking etc. This time, the main character is strangely overshadowed. Sure he is skilled, but it is strangely pleasant to find that there is someone out there half his age with twice his skill. And while not the first, it is quite refreshing to see a movie that mixes seriousness with comedy, and in this particular film, you see the main character juggling his job with his family as well.

The fly in the ointment, however, can be found at the ending. It’s quite fairy tale-ish when it could have ended in a darker, more realistic tone. That aside, this is a movie that I would really recommend watching.

And finally we come to Philomena. I was initially put off by the title because it sounded like a Malay movie, which meant complete utter rubbish with very, very, VERY few exceptions. As it turns out, that was just my ignorance in action, because it was actually a British-French-American comedy-drama based on the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. So yes, a based-on-a-true-story movie. Which I loved, because it does touch on some fairly emotional themes.

What I did find strange, however, was that there was a cut or two in this film. With hindsight, this wasn’t strange at all because the film was distributed by The Weinstein Company, which was famous (or infamous) for the production of many anti-Catholic films. This meant that the cut scenes had something to do with the presence of religion-bashing dialogue. What this shows is, the feeble-minded horny old geezers at the censorship department not only have low standards of fappable material, they also have dangerously low faith in the faith of their fellow believers. The bleeding irony right there, ladies and gentlemen.

And so, because of that, this is the perfect movie – with no flies in the ointment – that I will not encourage you to watch on the big screen. Sure the cut dialogue may seem insignificant, but I can’t help but feel cheated. In fact, I don’t even know if it was actually insignificant or not. It might actually turn out to be a big chunk of key plot explanations, for all I know.

Right. Now that we are done with my reviews, I would like to talk about movie reviews. Yes, irony number two incoming. It would seem that the current trend, based on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, at least, is that if there is action, the movie isn’t good. Which is rubbish. Take 3 Days to Kill for example. It has one fly in the ointment. One. But there was a lot of shooting and killing and driving fast sideways. And what rating did it get? 31% based on 64 reviews. American Hustle, with close to no action and no fly in the ointment? 93% based on 240 reviews. So one fly in the ointment, muzzle flash, death and tyre smoke deserves a 62% drop? Really? Seriously? The consensus at Rotten Tomatoes says that American Hustle is “Riotously funny and impeccably cast, American Hustle compensates for its flaws with unbridled energy and some of David O. Russell's most irrepressibly vibrant direction.” Which is fair, except for the first bit, because if American Hustle was ‘riotously funny’, then 3 Days to Kill would give you asthma. American Hustle was funny, sure, but only just, while 3 Days to Kill, on the other hand, was properly funny. You could have a full house watching American Hustle and you would still not get louder laughs than an empty 3 Days to Kill screening, let alone more of it. The only exception to this ‘action is bad’ trend is The Lego Movie, for reasons that will forever remain unknown to the thinking man.

Then we have RoboCop which got a 49% based on 180 reviews. Rotten Tomatoes consensus writes "While it's far better than it could have been, José Padilha's RoboCop remake fails to offer a significant improvement over the original," which is to say “it’s as good as the original, therefore it’s rubbish.” I mean, seriously? So filmmakers take a 10/10 film and turn it up to eleven and you call it rubbish. Do they have to make it eleventy one zillion times better before you give it the good rating it deserves?

In conclusion, reviews – including this one – are useless. This is because sometimes you get a reviewer having completely wrong expectations about a movie, getting disappointed when watching and ends up raging about the movie not meeting the initial unrealistic expectations. These are probably idiots who go watching 3 Days to Kill expecting it to be literally 72 hours long, among other things. Although, admittedly, it would be better if they named it 3 Months to Kill instead.That said, some movies really do deserve their low as hell rating, like I, Frankenstein and The Legend of Hercules which got 4% based on 71 reviews and 3% based on 63 reviews, respectively.

So what you should do instead is read on a movie’s synopsis, not review, and then decide if it would be worth your money. Because reviews – which tell you if a movie is worth watching – are unreliable, you will, as I did, just have to make the gamble yourself and see if a movie is really worth your money.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.