Cinematic Concerns

Before I saw the film I noticed that an American friend had posted on Facebook that he thought Salt was one of the worst movies of the year. Which I didn't completely buy (for obvious reasons, if nothing else thanks to a particular director of Asian ethnicity). Reviews were mixed, but Salt's box office performed pretty well against Inception.

Having seen the film, I'll mostly just state what I posted on Facebook: 8/10. Pitch-perfect pacing (editing), Angelina Jolie's nuanced performance, plus excellent casting choices overall, with a plot that doesn't surrender its twists easily while keeping an eye on audience expectations throughout, and moderately exciting action sequences, with an engaging action score ... and, for once, a political action thriller.

To embellish further ... The movie was a surprisingly short 100 minutes, considering that the movie had so much plot points to squeeze in; so much happens that it felt like 2 hours had passed. But I was really impressed with the editing. Judging by the shots we see in the trailer, quite a lot of story beats were cut out, that is, not whole scenes, but bits and parts of a scene, and I'll bet the movie is better for it. As a result, the story just moves, very important for an action film. It doesn't even linger for some briefly melodramatic scenes, which makes it even more poignant.

I say Angelina Jolie's performance is nuanced, and that is obviously rare in action movies, where you don't tend to notice such things, and hence actors don't tend to bother. Is it Oscar-worthy? Depending on the rest of the year's female performances, if I were an Academy member I'd put her name down for nomination. But then look at the other casting choices. I won't go into details, except in one case: August Diehl. His is a small role, but for some reason I noticed, which to me signals that as small as his role is, the intangible things he brings to the role is important – in fact, so important, or else Angelina Jolie's performance wouldn't seem so good. But watching it superficially, it would not seem like he's doing much.

Diehl, as it turns out, played Sturmbahnführer Hellstrom in Inglourious Basterds (the one who threatens to spoil the plans in the extended German bar sequence), where his performance impressed Brad Pitt enough to recommend him for this film. Interestingly, his English is not tinged with heavy German accents ... in fact, most German actors barely carry any of that stereotypical Austro-German accents that people love to poke fun at nowadays. How intriguing.

There was a major plot twist which I didn't see coming, but which I recognise that, given a lesser director and editing team, would probably be blown wide open at least halfway into the film. And obviously if you sat down to analyse the film (such time in your hands you have), you'd be able to prise the plotholes flesh by flesh from the movie – but I consider the film a successful one if it manages to make us like it enough, and paces the movie properly that we don't notice).

I spent the movie thinking, damn, the score's signature is familiar, but couldn't really work out who the composer was. Of course, it was James Newton Howard. Good choice. (The last political thriller score he composed was, I think, The Interpreter. The effectiveness of that movie's climax depended on his music.)

I shan't say anymore, but direct you to Roger Ebert's review, with which I wholeheartedly agree with, which is not always the case.

Every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it’s the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they’ve done, I want that effort there — I want that sincerity. And when you don’t feel it, that’s the only time I feel like I’m wasting my time at the movies.

And if you wonder why local Malay movies (or perhaps it's fair to say, most Malaysian productions) are so hated among certain sections of the population, well, there you go.

For the up-and-coming, young Malaysian film directors, let this be your motto.

I've never reviewed plays before, heh.

I went to see this one with friends coz I thought the premise was daringly provocative for Malaysian society. The play deals with issues of sexuality and is originally from Britain – where to call it provocative would have you laughed off the stage – and as I understand was not amended much (if at all) in its translation to the Actors Studio production here by director David Lim, even leaving in references to pounds and the Tube. As for the actors, thankfully the choice was not made for them to fake some British accents – which, in my condescending view of Malaysian mentalities, I half-expected to see happen – but uses what we call "theatrical Malaysian English", which is of course appropriate, but which is often highly annoying when used in other contexts. (Like everyday conversation and the rare Malaysian English-language film or TV show.)

What's the play about? Well, the following trailer should give you an idea.



The play is as simple as that, without any subplots and subthemes, most likely to its advantage. The dialogue is foul-mouthed and moderately witty (well, it got the audience consistently guffawing every few minutes).

The acting, as my friends agree, is good. One thing that I appreciated was that the gay characters weren't overplayed – flappy hand gestures, for sure, but it seemed embodied and rather natural, as opposed to "flap-my-hands-see-nah-how-gay-I-am!".

My favourite performance is that of Hana Mazlan, who plays the 'other woman' with a consistent smile throughout the play that makes you point out, instead, that twinkle in her eye. She made her character both cute and deliciously manipulative, and I was rooting for her to emerge victorious in this so-called ultimate bitchfight.

Jon Chew and Iedil Putra were both convincing enough playing their gay characters (I am assuming, by default, that the actors are in fact straight ... doesn't matter either way), and, again in Malaysian society, daring in their willingness to go all touchy-feely, though the playscript doesn't make it necessary for them to go much further than that. It generated enough awkwardness among the audience to make them laugh, certainly. Jon, in particular, has some rather juicy lines – vitriolic verbal assaults and comebacks mostly at the expense of Iedil's character, which he pulls off nicely by riding the cadence of the dialogue lines. Iedil Putra, on the other hand, given long strings of sentences at many points of the script, unfortunately squanders them by spitting them out ultra-fast without necessarily making each of them count, but at least the frustrating indecision of his character he got it down.

Thor Kah Hoong as the unexpected guest to the dinner party at the climax of the play is effective enough as the counterbalance to the "other woman".

One suggestion is that the actors should refrain from continuing with their lines while the audience are still laughing loudly; many a line were missed because of that. A couple of seconds of gap couldn't hurt, no one would accuse them of being too sitcom-like.

On the whole, an entertaining play on a Saturday afternoon, offering a breath of fresh air to the often uninteresting plays and musicals I see on offer in local theatre, with a fair calibre of performances that isn't trying too hard to impress. Who says that Malaysian theatre has to stick to just Malaysian-produced scripts? In fact, I'm now starting to think it might not be a bad thing for the majority of plays staged here to be from scripts written by Western playwrights for now, the better to challenge our thespians' skills. But perhaps I'm partial to Western plays. So there.

I'd say a solid 6.5/10.

The blogpost title is a misnomer. More than the other so-called reviews this is written more for the benefit of future me. You're invited to listen in, if you really have time to waste on these ramblings.

More than anything, Inception reminds me never to make a half-assed film. Never to show a bad film to an audience. Spend that extra amount of week (or, indeed, year) to figure out that plot point properly. Push your actors further just so that the required threshold of emotion is sufficiently breached, to be burnt into its celluloid form. Prepare yourself mentally even more to handle all the shit that the production process throws at you that threatens to derail the vision of the movie. Protect that vision at all cost. And make sure that vision is valuable enough to yourself, is worth protecting to begin with, or else, DON'T FUCKING MAKE IT.


To the people who make useless Senario-type movies or any other Malay horror or 'comedy' movies that are fit only to entertain the putrefying fuckwit masses, to the people who supported filmmaking purely for commercial purposes, to the people who sold out, to the voices who say "you gotta start somewhere, make something to start with even if it's bad", this is my fuck you: curses and plagues upon every one of you. For you are the reason (other than the inevitability of imperfection in real life) that I don't get to watch accomplished movies like Inception every other week.

In short, the lesson here is: never make a bad movie. (To be more realistic – never release a bad movie.)

"I Have To Go". Nolan again ... Always Nolan, damnit.

Inception is compact with ideas, and those ideas bring about the tense action sequences in the film, bringing a VERY rare sense of the ideas of the movie driving the action stuff. And many a scene is so packed with ideas, that sometimes every other dialogue line in itself contains enough of a premise to spark off another movie.


The setup of the movie is fresh, with enough time spent on it (two and a half decades of on-and-off pondering, according to Christopher Nolan here) that its logic makes sense and the plot structure holds. Despite the apparent complexity of the plot, once the rules are explained to us, we get it, and we can extrapolate from those initial rules and generate derivative rules from that, sometimes arriving at a new synthesis of ideas or rules just as the characters do – almost never before.

And as for the plot being complex, it isn't really, you just gotta be diligent, be sober and awake, enter the cinema with a mind that is ready to work – and then it becomes moderately easy to follow; as there is a very simple layering pattern to the plot, you just need to orient yourself every time we transition from one scene to the next, and the filmmakers have done all that is within their responsibility to do to help you, the audience, along in figuring out where you are. SO DON'T FUCKING COMPLAIN THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON. If you do, you might as well give up on yourself – why bother living?

The movie pulls no punches, you gotta be ready for it: the movie dives right into it and the pacing doesn't give you time to be lazy. It's like going for a marathon, or a game of tennis, if you go with the right attitude, you are set. No such thing as not understanding.

[Minor spoiler in this paragraph.] But then, I begin to wonder, would the average Malaysian audience get the significance of what they see inside the small safe at the end of the movie? It's not just a childhood toy, I feel. It's the shape of the thing.


Leonardo DiCaprio deserves to be nominated twice next year for playing two roles that have to do with the psychological struggle of deciding between apparently disparate realms of reality (not helped by the malevolent presence of psychotic dead wives); one for Shutter Island, and one for this. It would be hard for any one of the other mighty talented actors to be nominated for this film per se, but I don't see why this shouldn't at least be nominated for Best Ensemble at the SAG Awards next year. If ten Best Picture nominations still hold for next year's Oscars, this should clinch one of them. Then the original screenplay. Then the art direction. Then the direction. Then the editing. Then the cinematography. Then the sound. Maybe the score.

Trivia: Marion Cotillard and Guillaume Canet played a couple in Jeux d'enfants (Love Me If You Dare). Earlier, DiCaprio had acted opposite Canet in the not-so-great movie The Beach. Now he completes the circle by acting alongside Cotillard in this film. All three are consummate, serious actors. Another trivia: Dileep Rao seems to be making a career out of playing roles which serve to provide support to the protagonists in their missions; he's done it in three films within a year.

One more thing you gotta give Nolan credit for. We have always known that the "it was just a dream" plot twist is extremely undesirable when telling stories now, nothing annoys the audience more. Yet, it is this vicinity which Nolan's story operates in, and for that he is bold, but also with this story, lucky, that – assuming he has played his cards right, and I think he did – he never has to enter that conundrum. I guess another way to see it, is that the cop-off that was "it was just a dream" is completely neutralised when you face it head-on and made it the point of the movie, the movie's central theme.


But, man ... Nolan really loves to throw in ambiguous hints in the last 20 frames. Bastard.

In response to a friend's comment on Facebook, expanded:

It's the idea of entering dreams, given a structure with a seemingly scientific set of rules, leading to the sort of "what if?" possibilities that both makes the mind boggle and also makes us go "man, I wish that were true so that I could experience it", and develop an emotional yearning – THAT'S sci-fi at its best. Here we're dealing with immortality, and omnipotence, and in this case, what the protagonist chooses to do with it – to preserve memories for reliving, to hold on to love as it was before ... which is striking pretty close to my thesis short film, so I'm biased.

From Roger Ebert, and perhaps also pointing out what makes a great movie (though, the opposite is equally likely):

Here is a movie immune to spoilers: If you knew how it ended, that would tell you nothing unless you knew how it got there. And telling you how it got there would produce bafflement.

My friend Arivind says in his blog:

I just wanted to point out the one thing that I loved above everything else that blew my mind about this film. In the film, the characters tell us, that to plant an idea, that idea has to be in its purest, distilled form to take root and grow. Behind all the visual flair, stunning logic and mindfuckery of a plot lies one simple idea: A man just wants to find a way back to his kids.

Which inadvertently led to further solidifying of what we all think the ending is. First, about the kids, I'm thinking of A Beautiful Mind and what John Nash said in the rain. Then, as Arivind brought up above, Dom just wants to get back to the kids ... just as Mal just wants Dom to be with her. ... Get it?

One commenter pointed out here, simply and thus brilliantly:

First time I watched it I mumbled jokingly "That's some BS"! In a good way though that I knew he would do that. The second time I already had my decision made up that Cobb is awake and not dreaming.
After, however... it shouldn't matter because Cobb is with his children dreaming or awake. In fact, he actually walks away from the top. Every other time he spins it, he looks closely to see if it will stop or continue.

And yet another comment suggests that, whether the ending was real or dreamed, they are both happy endings. That is a beautiful, sublime thought.

I honestly can't remember the last time at the cinema when I laughed so hard that enough tears formed to obscure my vision.

And this for the 2D version of the movie – damn it, why wasn't a 3D version of the movie screened for the preview audience, considering this IS a 3D movie? (Yes, the answer is kinda obvious, don't say it.)

Unlike other so-called 3D movies, this one is is not converted/fake 3D, but beyond that, they actually made use (made fun of) the whole objects-popping-out-of-the-screen thing (but to serve the story ... or generate laughing beats, not just a 'wow' effect). I'm absolutely gonna watch the movie again, in 3D. And for those of you who are planning to watch the movie (all of you, I hope), you should never, never, never watch it in 2D. It's just a waste.

(This is coming from the guy who said, don't watch the 3D versions of Clash Of The Titans, Alice In Wonderland, Toy Story 3, and – when they release – especially NOT The Last Airbender, or Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows.)

To reiterate - WATCH IT IN FREAKIN' 3D!!!

As for the movie, the story works, the characters are funny and lovable sometimes even capable of generating heartwarming sentiments (that includes the movie's villainy protagonist), the jokes range from sniggling funny to uncontrollable laughter funny, the pacing of the movie is perfect, the animation while often simplistic (in the sense that it generally lacks texture details which you'd expect to see in Pixar and Dreamworks productions, though not at the level of Astro Boy) serves the story just fine.


But above all, the yellow minions.

I am not kidding.

I'm trying to remember the last time I found a character design (and character mannerism) that is so lovably cute. If I try hard enough I may be able to think of one, but otherwise, I may have to go all the way back to Totoro to find another character that is just as cute and idiosyncratic and how-I-so-wish-it-were-real-so-that-I-could-erm-squeak-it.

They provide some of the biggest laughs, with their nonsensical dialogue ('Baboy?' 'Baboy! Ba-boooy ...'), hyperactively hoppy demeanour, gung-ho do-anything-the-boss-asks attitude, with boundless (and sometimes misplaced) optimism, and a cute tendency to engage in mischievous sibling-rivalry type of bullying ('poka??' PUNCH!). Most of all, is a torchlight gag that sent my friend Dominic laughing so much that I think he missed the next two jokes of the scene.

If the movie wasn't this good, I'd have do one of those film critic things and say, "If only we had more of the yellow minions ..." But, to its credit, the rest of the movie managed to sustain our interest and did not get overshadowed by the minions. It managed to weave in what initially seems to be an off-tangent subplot involving three girls, which provides a kind of heart to the movie that is only slightly surprising. ('Only slightly' because lately, for whatever reason, animated features have started improving their storytelling – not just the jokes, but good drama as well. This is true even for the last Shrek movie.)


The movie is manic, and eager to throw scene after scene that consists of funny gags, not all that is necessarily relevant to the main plot but which the audience clearly found hysterically funny ... but ultimately everything makes sense, including character motivations and plot ... that is, if you still have the mental capacity to analyse the damn thing after laughing at yet another minion joke.

By the way, if you think Julie Andrews didn't get to shine with her voice acting in the Shrek movies ... man ... alright, just go see it, figure it out yourself which character she is.

Oh yes, there was a joke involving the current financial crisis ... unfortunately, no credit to Malaysians, my friend Dominic and I were the only ones laughing out loud at the cinema. Perhaps there were no accountants or businessmen in the entire screening. Then there was another joke that generated complete silence that referenced Coppola's The Godfather.

Funniest movie I've seen this year, so far.

One thing I noticed: pretty much the entire animation team are French, and the movie is listed as (and announced during the trailer as) 'A Chris Meledandri Production'. Meledandri apparently previously produced lots of successful Fox movies like Ice Age (maybe the Scrat concept is an influence here?) and Alvin & The Chipmunks. And just who are Illumination Entertainment? Anyway, one of their upcoming movies is the Easter bunny movie Hop.

Meanwhile, another film reviewer went ahead and said what I didn't quite dare say:

I’m still considering whether I’m ready to blaspheme... No, wait: I’m coming to a decision... Yes, I shall blaspheme: Despicable Me is better than Toy Story 3. There. I said it.

I have to say, I am SO glad the Malaysian Censorship Board stayed their hands on this film – NOT ONE CUT! Oddly enough, they are one of the few people for whom we would cheer and clap for not doing their job.

The movie itself, I really wanted to watch it, not just because the trailer proved promising in a "this looks silly but probably entertaining" way, but also because Jay Baruchel is fast becoming one of my favourite actors to watch, and I'm probably one of the few people who've seen Alice Eve in a movie before. (She played a similar – though less strategic – role opposite a then rising James McAvoy in the British rom-com Starter For Ten. Her American accent is flawless, by the way – well done, girl!)

In the event, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, but more importantly the film does what every self-respecting rom-com does successfully nowadays: it goes superficially deep at about the two-thirds mark, in order to generate a kind of emotional resonance ... i.e. I began to feel for the characters and their predicament, and through that we learn a single lesson (or two) about life. Now I'm not suggesting that the movie was being preachy, that's not what I meant by 'lesson'. I just meant ... it provoked some thoughts.

Jay Baruchel was clearly well-casted, and certainly I and many young men can relate to him. (Young men with girlfriends already, well, I guess they better be careful about saying out loud that they can relate to him. I mean, I don't know, it's gonna invite a conversation with the girlfriend if they said it out loud, right?) As for Alice Eve, she plays a very pretty girl and sells that so well that I wasn't rolling my eyes at the slo-mo intro montage of her sashaying into the airport terminal with every pair of male eyes radar-ing on her; but the more challenging part is that she is also playing this perfect girl without any personality issues and a smidgen of family issues. (I mean, in every other movie, that kind of girl would've been a little bit of a bitch or a slut ... even if she's the female lead, am I right?) It is to Eve's credit that, at least during the duration of the movie, we totally believed that she was sincere.

Then, the next thing about what the movie does well, is how it uses the male and female leads' best friends. (Here would be a good time to reflect on that rom-com convention that also happens to be patently unrealistic: how everyone seems to only have one or two or three friends – in some cases, not even friends, but only colleagues – in these movies, without any sign that they have other friends in other parts of their lives. Even if they are supposedly popular.) Yes, Kirk's friends here often say stupid stuff that have their own logic. But Stainer, the character played by TJ Miller, actually has his own moment, which then propels him to do something to save Kirk and Molly's relationship. Of course, it was also him who causes Kirk's self-confidence issues thanks to his incessant and OTT theorising. Then there's plump and naïve Devon, whose theories are entirely borrowed from Disney fairy tales ... but then they make sense, and in a way he's the angel to Stainer's devil. Mike Vogel stars as the third of Kirk's best friend – and the trivia here is that Vogel and Miller both broke out career-wise from more dramatic roles in Cloverfield. Another actor to note is Lindsay Sloane, whom I remember from the brilliant little indie comedy The TV Set, here hamming it up as Kirk's bitchy ex.

There are almost no flaws to this little rom-com. For a while I was thinking, how odd, the movie doesn't actually have any sense of conflict; I mean, Molly pretty much starts going out with Kirk from the 15-minute point of the movie, and Molly seems perpetually amused while Kirk seems perpetually nervous but still holding it together for the most part. What was there was contradiction, the fact that a hard 10 like Molly would go out with a hard 5 like Kirk. Which makes guys like me ... daydream. Anyway, so, when it came time to generate some conflict so that we can lead to climax and resolution – in other words, Kirk and Molly have to fight/break up at some point, I thought the way it happened was rather abrupt, artificial even. Molly was trying to be understanding, but Kirk was just being unreasonable ... and why? But I thought about it a bit more and realised that actually it makes sense; the fight was generated because it links to the movie's theme. The theme of the movie – in this case, the lesson that the main character, Kirk, has to learn – is not about Kirk earning points so that he could grow from a 5 to a 10 and thus overcome the comparisons, but to realise that the problem was the comparison itself and to stop doing it. I think it works in that way.

Well, I'm clearly over-analysing. I meant this to be a short review. Whoops. Bottom line, I enjoyed it, loved the characters, laughed at the jokes. (The jizz joke wasn't actually too disgusting. It's totally realistic, could happen to any guy with a hot date ... Think about it, what would you have done in that situation?)