Movie Review: Amphetamine 安非他命

When director Scud introduced his movie Amphetamine before its screening at the Berlinale film festival, he said, „maybe one day I’ll make happy movies, but for now I can’t.“ He was referring to the loss of friends to drugs in his recent past. As the title of the movie already suggests, that is precisely what Amphetamine is about. However, as Scud went on to explain, the Chinese characters making up the word 'amphetamine' literally mean 'is this not his fate?’, and thus the movie is also about fate and about love.

In short, Amphetamine is the doomed love affair between a Hong Kong finance manager Daniel (played by Thomas Price) and fitness trainer and martial arts aficionado Kafka (Byron Pang). The former is gay, and the later is straight. Kafka is desperate for love and, having just split from his girl friend, gives in to the overtures lavished upon him by Daniel. The two embark on a passionate love affair which is intimate but not sexual as Kafka cannot get himself to have sex with a man. Daniel, who is at ease with this part of their relationship, grows increasingly frustrated with Kafka’s worsening addiction to the drug amphetamine, whose destructive influence on Kafka interferes more and more with their relationship. Fuelled by the drug, the ghosts of Kafka's past come to haunt him, and he ends up craving for and at the same time rejecting the love offered to him by Daniel – in essence, reacting to love in the same way he reacts to the drug.

Amphetamine is a brilliant movie on many levels. It is beautifully shot and cleverly edited, mixing various levels - past, present, future as well as drug related visions – into a cohesive whole. Starting with the opening scene of a winged, angel-like Kafka hovering above the roofs of Honk Kong to the underwater scenes towards the end of the movie, it includes greatly imaginative, highly symbolic imagery which is a joy to watch. The actors are top-notch despite this being their first feature film (Thomas Price is a DJ and Byron Pang a model). The movie is highly erotic and features plenty of nudity of members of both sexes, which has led other reviewers to label the movie a soft porn (a fact which, I think, says more about the reviewer than about the movie).

Where I believe the movie fails is to tell the story convincingly. The negative turns of fate piled upon poor Kafka (a no-good drug dealing brother, poverty, the father’s early death, and the mother’s prolonged illness and eventual death; and even a gang rape, the trauma responsible for Kafka's unwillingness to have sex with Daniel) are over the top, creating more drama than need be. The dramatic ending is maybe unavoidable in the logic of this scenario, but ends up leaving a bitter after-taste – a feeling of 'too much’ (this is a very Western way of looking at it, obviously – quite possibly, a Chinese or Asian viewer may not be struck in a negative way by this kind of story telling). My other problem with the scenario is the premise - is a love affair like this (a passionate, non-sexual but intimate relationship between a gay man and a straight man) even likely to happen? Whether or not you are able to suspend your disbelief is crucial to whether you like or dislike the movie.

Personally, I like the movie a lot, and while it is not perfect, I wholly recommend it, for its technical and artistic brilliance, for the actors and for the raw emotions on display - even if I could have done with a little less drama.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

More information can be found at the movie's official site.

Movie Review: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

First things first: if you are not a Battlestar Galactica fan, or if you haven't seen the series, then this straight-to-DVD movie is not for you. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan assumes that you have seen the series from beginning to end, that you know the characters and pretty much remember the main events.

The movie basically retells the events of the first two seasons from the perspective of the cylons. The central character is Father Cavil (a.k.a. Model One), or rather two Father Cavil's (one on Galactica, the other one on Caprica), as they plot the destruction of those humans who survived the cylon's nuclear attack on the planets of the twelve colonies. One subplot thus follows the schemings of Cavil on Galactica and on the other remaining ships of the human fleet, as he cleverly manipulates those cylons that have infiltrated the fleet to take actions against the humans, even if this is against their will: he talks a reluctant Boomer into killing Adama, and attempts to convince an unwilling Simon to blow up the ship on which his wife and stepdaughter live. Various Sixes turn up, too, in various guises and with varying inclinations to help Cavil.

The other Model One has attached itself to the struggling rebel group surrounding that other cylon, Sam, on occupied Caprica. This Cavil ends up developing sympathy for the humans - a plot point that seems contrived as it goes wholly against the grain of that character, even more so as his 'conversion' comes from a rather silly remark made by Sam concerning the nature of love.

The movie opens with both Model Ones being marched to the airlock, then flashes back to the destruction of the colonies (shown in starkly eerie details), then follows key plots from the first two seasons as the cylons keep sabotaging the fleet from within and attacking from outside; and ends with the truce proposed by the cylons to the humans and the demise of the two Cavils.

Using the rather odious character of Father Cavil as the central figure was a bit risky, but it works, mostly for the charisma of actor Dean Stockwell, even if he has a tendency to over-act at times. It's also nice to see the Simon character (Rick Worthy) getting a bit more screen-time, as this character was shamefully under-used in the series.

The movie uses a large amount of footage from the series and cleverly injects the cyclon subplots into them. Edward James Olmos' direction is fluid, the editing crisp, and the plotting faultness. As said above, this is more an exercise in style (or as some cynics claim, a last attempt to milk the hit sci-fi series now that it has run its course) than a movie that can be valued on its own merits, but it still amounts to almost two hours of good entertainment for those who have enjoyed the series.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Movie Review: Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces), by Pedro Almodóvar.

Broken Embraces has, by all accounts, all the ingredients that have made the recent string of Almodóvar movies great: women and men on the verge of a nervous break-down, passion, drama, death and Penélope Cruz. This time around, 'though, the mix doesn't ignite: the movie ends up making for a boring two hours.

The plot involves Mateo (Lluís Homar), a blind script writer and former movie director who reveals to his young collaborator the story of how, some 14 years ago, he was involved in a passionate love affair with Lena (Penélope Cruz), the actress in his last movie and also the girl friend of the rich old tycoon producing the movie. The love story turns into drama when the tycoon finds out about their affair, leading eventually to a death and to the loss of Mateo's eye sight.

Along the way, Almodóvar offers us a string of cinematic gimmicks such as movies-in-movies and, in Lena, countless references to classic divas and film roles, from Audrey Hepburn to Kim Novak. The styling is perfect as ever, and Penélope Cruz a joy to watch. There are also the type of surreal scenes that Almodóvar excels in, such as when a lip reader reads back to the tycoon the none-too-flattering remarks about him spoken by Lena on a surveillance tape.

Where the movie goes wrong, 'though, is in the plotting. Too much time is wasted in unimportant details in the present-tense story line, leaving too little room for the supposedly passionate love story in the flashback scenes. The illicit affair is jumped into with hardly any build-up; and apart from two or three scenes where we see the couple involved in passionate kissing, the passion is mostly talked about (and talked about and talked about) or happens offstage, behind closed doors.

Broken Embraces thus never lives up to its potential, ending up as a movie that talks about passion but fails to deliver it. The most disappointing of Almodóvar's movies since High Heels.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Movie Review: District 9

Maybe it does take the name of a Hollywood name like Peter Jackson to catapult a non-Hollywood science fiction movie like District 9 into the awareness of international critics and viewers, but so much the better. This is one movie that deserves the hype that is currently building up around it.

District 9 tells, in mock-documentary style, the story of a middle-management operative, Wikus van der Merwe, who is pushed into the leading role of evacuating over a million aliens from District 9, the shantytown camp near Johannesburg, where the creatures have been held since appearing in a giant derelict space craft some twenty years ago. As Wikus leads the operation with a mixture of bureaucratic correctness and utter despise for the insect-like creatures, he becomes exposed to a chemical substance from the space craft and from then on slowly mutates into one of the creatures himself; whereupon he finds himself being a prisoner of his employer for the very reason that his altered DNA can trigger the alien weapons which a human cannot. What follows is a story told before, of a man who becomes what he despises most, and ends up having to ally with his former enemies against his former allies.

The story, written and directed by South African born Neill Blomkamp, is an obvious allegory of his country's apartheid past, and possibly also a comment on the xenophobic riots from a couple of years ago which left several migrant workers from South Africa's neighbouring countries killed by an angry mob. The use of a pseudo-documentary style is convenient for showing how far ingrained the racism towards the aliens has become in humans, with little or no sympathy being shown for the creatures throughout all the strata of human society. In this, I was reminded of the treatment that Romanian gypsies currently receive in many European countries, where media, right-wing politicians and un-reflected hearsay contribute to a deep but vague feeling of antipathy, accompanied by openly racist legislation in a number of EU countries, towards this 'alien' people right in our midst.

With its tight plotting, the movie manages to generate a feeling of unease that it does not relent throughout most of its duration, although some of it is mitigated through the cathartic shoot-out at the end. Wikus's mutation into an insect-like alien is highly reminiscent of David Cronenberg's The Fly; I found this not the only similarity to Cronenberg's movies - the said sense of unease and the slightly surreal, claustrophobic atmosphere are other common traits.

I also liked the fact the aliens were truly that - alien - for pretty much most of the film. Despite the human names the aliens were given, the creatures shared very few human traits - apart maybe from a certain gluttony. Again, towards the end, a movie-typical father(?)-son relationship ends up humanising the main alien character, as does the apparent bonding between Wikus and the alien. The last half hour of the movie is why I do not give the movie a 5/5 rating: despite being very entertaining (certainly to science fiction fans), the ending lets in a few of the Hollywood stereotypes that the movie was consistent enough to avoid until then. It can be argued that plot devices like the alien father/son subplot or the human/alien bonding help in bringing the movie's message home, but I think that it somewhat reduces the impact of a movie that for the most part remained intense because it remained different.

Finally, it should also be added that the movie's production is of great quality. Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop and Weta Digital companies have created top-notch special effects, and the aliens are certainly some of the best CGI creatures on celluloid. Also, as humans and aliens alike are variously blown or torn to pieces in very graphic detail, the film is not for the squeamish.

In summary, District 9 is one of the best science fiction movies of the last years, and does what sci-fi does best, i.e. use the fantastic and the futuristic to reflect upon human nature in the here and now.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Movie Review: Brüno

The title of Sasha Baron Cohen's 2006 movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, at least indicated at a plotline carrying that movie. His latest outing, Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt, points to just what the movie is: a series of skits designed to expose the homophobia in much of American culture. Along the way he also showcases parents willing to expose their toddlers to about anything in order to get them into show business; charity PR consultants who don't know the first thing about current world affairs; and celebrities who, when asked to sit on people, are more concerned with their image than with the 'chair people' they sit on. All this is not always done in the best of taste, but it is hilariously funny. Brüno may just be the funniest comedy since, well, Borat.

The movie also leaves you admiring Cohen's courage as you see him chased by an angry mob in Jerusalem, or thrown at with metal chairs while making out with another man in a pit fighter cage.

For me there are two main items where the movie falls short (apart from the minor issue of a missing plot): Cohen doesn't know when to finish a joke - some scenes carry on well beyond their punch line and thus lose much of their momentum. The other criticism that can be levelled at the movie is that Cohen went looking for homophobia where he would predictably find it: in the army, with redneck hunters and conservative Christian preachers. Borat gained much of its social relevance by exposing racism and antisemitism in average people. This type of more subtle observation is missing in Brüno.

Ahead of the movie's opening, the media made much of the fact that in their view, Brüno's antics did more to enforce gay stereotypes than to expose homophobia. Time magazine ran an article on how negative comments on Twitter by the gay community caused the ratings to fall dramatically within two days of the movie's opening in the US. Personally, I have heard very few negative comments by the gay community, and even Germany's usually übercritical Spiegel magazine carried an article that the gay & lesbian organisations in Europe had a generally favourable view of the movie.

Granted, there were a couple of clichés the movie could have done without - such as the various sex devices and gimmicks. However, given the hyperbole dished out by Cohen, I fail to see how people could take Brüno's antics as a real representation of a gay man. And if there are some people who do, well, quite frankly, then the joke is on them.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Movie Review: Terminator Salvation

Yesterday I finally got around to seeing the new Terminator movie. I've been putting it off, mostly due to the bad reviews the movie has been getting in the US and over here. So last night, I expected the worst and came out having quite enjoyed the movie. This left me musing all day why I liked the movie and the critics didn't. I didn't find an answer, but left me with enough arguments to write my own review. So here it goes.

Here's what I liked in the movie: having moved the franchise to the much vaunted Days of Reckoning, the movie does a good job of conjuring up an apocalyptic mood. Rendered in almost colourless hues, with impressive CGI backdrops of bombed out cities, and with the constant threat of machines out to grab the last humans, the mood of despair and paranoia couldn't be better visualised. The action scenes are well orchestrated, and despite what one may fear, not as drawn out as they could be (but it is an action movie nonetheless). They leave enough room for character development, story telling and of course for repeating the message underlying the first Terminator movies (i.e., men and the rise of the machines etc.).

The cast is very strong, lead by the central character of the half-human/half-machine Marcus, played to great tragic effect by Sam Worthington, with great support from Moon Bloodgood, Anton Yelchin, Helena Bonham-Carter and others. The movie, to me, felt more like an ensemble film than did the previous movies, which I thought was a good thing as it did not rely on the "lone hero" cliché.

This brings me to the negative points in the movie. I see two main ones. One is that the director and/or writers obviously felt like kids in a candy store and came up with any machine possible for the CGI guys to implement. Was there really a need for sentient motor bikes, transformers, flying saucers and even machine kraken (though I liked those)? Less would have been more, and might have helped to focus the action on the sinister, skull-headed terminator models, who got pretty much side-lined but were the most impressive of the lot.

The other weak point of the movie: a totally underwritten, bland John Connor. The character which was supposed to take centre stage stays on the side-line, mostly because the writers did not provide him with a background (unlike Marcus, who gets an origin story of sorts). There is no link back to the boy of the previous movies; there is a vague attempt at continuity provided by the voice of Linda Hamilton on tape, but this doesn't really do the job of filling in the holes. There are some good ideas (the prophet who isn't believed, the good soldier who learns to disobey), but overall the John Connor storyline feels rushed and incomplete.

The pregnant wife that the writers plant at his side is treated even worse: she's there, she's pregnant, she utters a few lines - but we do not know where she comes from, how they met etc. etc. . The movie's makers could have created a more credible story line by developing a boy-meets-girl around John Connor, in parallel to the budding Marcus-Blair romance. This would have gone a long way of making the character more approachable.

So, in the end, the movie is carried by Sam Worthington, and while this makes the movie less than perfect, it doesn't make it anywhere near awful. The film delivers intelligent entertainment, and if the writers learn from their mistakes and concentrate more on developing John Connor, then the planned next two instalments should really work.

If this was a starred review, I'd give Terminator Salvation 4 out of 5.