Hope Springs

Hope Springs, as the title would hint at it, is about having hope and hope following through with your expectations. Headlined by the Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones, the film morphs into a hopeful romantic movie about an elderly couple. But really, Hope Springs is actually the name of the small town where our two leads spend a few days or so to undergo an intense marriage counseling from this guy.

That's doctor-psychologist Steve Carrell. Would you really take this guy seriously?

Television Icons: Pepe Pimentel

Inquirer

Pepe Pimentel in his prime.

If you grew up in Quezon City in the 80s, you should be familiar with the first SM City ever – the one in North EDSA. If you’ve been there on a Sunday, at the food court, around noontime, then you would remember the show Kwarta o Kahon, a show that ran for more than twenty years.

Beasts of the Southern Wild Review, or An Open Letter to the Academy

Fox Searchlight

Dear Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,

What the hell is this travesty? Beasts of the Southern Wild, four Oscar nominations? Seriously? Let’s go through those nominations one by one.

Fox Searchlight

You do that, while we watch these babies race.

Veep. Season 1

HBO

If you’re not a fan of the mockumentary style of filmmaking, I have some bad news for you: it’s not going away anytime soon.

The mockumentary seems to be really effective in comedy, and American television has made sure to capitalize on this. Series creator Armando Iannucci has taken his BBC political satire The Thick of It (which I am downloading right now) and transferred it across the Atlantic to the bumbling and bungling (they mean the same thing, right?) office of the Vice-President of the United States.

IMDb

Looks like a nice place to work.

Boardwalk Empire. Season 3

HBO

Alternative title for this season: The Ballad of Gyp Rosetti. (I just love using “The Ballad of insert-name-here”. Makes it sound more poetic.)

Anyway, Gyp Rosetti is this guy:

HBO

Played by Bobby Cannavale, whose dick could be seen
dangling just a few seconds before this shot.

The Vampire Diaries. Season 4. Episode 11: "Catch Me If You Can"

A little more tame and romantic than carnal take-me-now sex.

With all the Original siblings present save for one, I do miss dear Elijah. Kol turned out to be somewhat a delay as to the search for the cure is concerned and the Damon-Elena thing (I will not refer to it as a relationship because it's really shady up to now). He's locked up because he's compelled by Kol to kill Jeremy. And Elena can't see a locked-up-in-the-Salvatore-mansion Damon because she'd do anything he'd say, including freeing him and endangering Jeremy's life.

Silver Linings Playbook

The Weinstein Company

What makes a great love story?

A great love story is one which makes you fall in love along with the characters. That’s because no matter what gender you belong to, you can always put yourselves in one of the character’s shoes. And pretty much everybody could relate to either Bradley Cooper or Jennifer Lawrence.

The Weinstein Company

Or both.

Les Misérables

Working Title/Cameron Mackintosh

The success of Les Misérables stems from the great directing of Tom Hooper. As a musical, it strays away from becoming merely a stage performance filmed on camera. Other movie musicals tend to be either “more movie than musical” or “more musical than movie”. Hooper’s Les Mis (yes, I get tired of typing the accented “é”), however, succeeds in becoming a perfect hybrid, becoming, in my opinion, a great example of musical cinema.

Working Title/Cameron Mackintosh

Nothing says "cinema" more than Russell Crowe's mug.

Life of Pi. 3.1415D

Clevver Movies via YouTube

Westerners are always suckers for anything oriental. This year, Ang Lee tries for another Oscar as he follows Danny Boyle’s formula of exotic vistas plus heavily-accented Indian actors. Although the film promises deep spiritual stuff, “a story that would make me believe in God,” it fell short. The Academy, however, has only one slot in its spiritual/New Age category, and between Life of Pi and Cloud Atlas, the nomination had to go to the former, as the latter was a bit difficult to digest, even for heavy psychedelics users.

Clevver Movies via YouTube

At least this film had animals.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. IMAX 3D

YouTube

*PISS OFF IF YOU HATE SPOILERS*

The greatest part of this movie is not actually part of the movie. It is the trailer that precedes it.

YouTube

Also Gemma Arterton's cleavage, of
which we  have no photo of.

The Vampire Diaries. Season 4. Episode 10: "After School Special"

Truth or Dare, The Vampire Diaries style

As the title suggests, it's an after-school school special thrown by Rebecca. It's really easier to compel a person and/or vampire to tell the truth rather than squeeze it out of him via physical torture. Emotional torture, on the other hand, leaves deeper and more permanent scars. What's fleshed out this time is Elena's true feelings (or could it still be the sire bond?), Shane's hidden agenda, and that the Originals know of Silas. Why the professor wants the first immortal resurrected, I'm not entirely sure. Is his agenda inherently evil because he is Silas in form but not yet in soul or spirit? Or could he just be a history nerd who doesn't really know what exactly he's dealing with?

On Movie Dates and North by Northwest

It was in August when my friend Camille tweeted a question about movie dates for her article for a men's magazine.

Movie dates aren't good for first dates. If you must, have it with someone you already know well, like a friend you just started having romantic feelings for, or a boyfriend. This is because a movie requires that your attention be on the screen, in a movie house, at the mall, and not on your date. Sure, you can talk about it over coffee after, but you basically wasted two hours not getting to know your date. Maybe you could watch a stupid movie so you won't feel bad that you missed a scene while trying to make out.

Homeland. Season 2

Showtime

Thus endeth the second season of Homeland. Was it any good? Of course it was. It won the second Golden Globes for Damian Lewis, Claire Danes, and for Best Television Series – Drama.

Showtime

The two winners doing, uh, drama.

Django Unbound Unfettered Unchained

The Weinstein Company

*PISS OFF IF YOU HATE SPOILERS*

Whether you love Quentin Tarantino or you hate him, you can’t deny that he is one of the few living original storytellers for the cinematic medium. For that fact alone, Django Unchained stands apart from its Hollywood brethren of adaptations, remakes, and reboots.

The Weinstein Company

Also, Jamie Foxx in electric blue.

Lincoln

DreamWorks/Twentieth Century Fox/Reliance

*PISS OFF IF YOU HATE SPOILERS*

Steven Spielberg does what he does best, and that is a new genre I have invented, called “time travel films”. The phrase may or may not catch on, but who the hell cares, right?

DreamWorks/Twentieth Century Fox/Reliance

Just stick a TARDIS in the background, and
there you have it ─ time travel film.

Elementary. Episode 12: "M"

CBS via DCT

Hello, is that Vinnie Jones? Why yes, it is. And in this episode, he plays a character called M. No, not the one from James Bond. The other British villain whose name starts with an M – Moriarty. Only Vinnie Jones doesn’t play Moriarty himself, but simply one of his henchmen.

CBS

I think this was how they shot Lord of the Rings.

Elementary. Episode 11: "Dirty Laundry"

CBS via DCT

This episode deals with spies, which just happens to be of the Russian variety. And here’s the kicker: they’re a full family, with Daddy Spy, Mommy Spy, and Daughter Spy. Mommy Spy’s dead, and the question is, who killed her? And that’s what Holmes and Watson are supposed to find out.

CBS

"Are you sure you want to leave, though, Watson?"

Zero Dark Thirty

YouTube

Wanna know what the title means? Google it.

For a woman, director Kathryn Bigelow sure knows how to capture the very masculine military life. She made her mark with 2008’s The Hurt Locker, where she beat out her ex-husband James Cameron for the Best Director Oscar. This year, she is not nominated for directing Zero Dark Thirty, a film about the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden (or Usama, because they refer to him in the film as UBL, which sounds like an amateur basketball league).

Salon

"Uh... Ukranian Basketball League?"

El Presidente

YouTube

The copy just sounds wrong.

There is a line from the film Braveheart which goes, "History is written by those who have hanged heroes." Aside from being a 4-5 hit alliteration combo, that saying rings true, especially in the days of the first Philippine republic.

YouTube

"A monkey with a gun? How fascinating."

The Top 12 of 2012. Sorry, Top 13

The reason this list came out late is because I was busy with real movie stuff. Like screenplays and shooting schedules and such. Anyway, the final number of films for this list was originally seventeen (17), and of course, since I wanted to make it a Top 12 list, I had to cut some titles out. So I took out The Descendants, last year's Academy award winner for Best Picture The Artist, and Hugo, the highest-rated film on this blog last year (9.1), because although they were screened in Philippine theaters in 2012, they were originally released in 2011. Then I had to take out Titanic, since it was technically just a converted 3D version of the same film that came out in 1998. Which was, like, more than a decade ago.

Then I was left with thirteen films. And I couldn't cut out any more.

So here now are last year's Top 13 movies. The title links back to the original review.

Fanpop

"You should've kept Titanic. I would've loved to be in this list."

Cloud Atlas

YouTube

Once in a while, a film comes along that creates a division between critics and filmmakers. In 2012, that film was Cloud Atlas─there was no middle ground; you either loved it or you hated it. I, for one, belong to the former, and I think that all the love and hate for the film can be boiled down to one reason: Cloud Atlas is just way ahead of its time. And here are four reasons why.

Cloud Atlas/X Filme/Anarchos

The special effects isn't even one of those reasons.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I cannot imagine how a film can squeeze so many veteran (and I don't mean "aged") actors in a film. Since Love Actually, a lot have attempted to achieve the same result, but none have ever replicated its success. Some came close, but still not quite. Until The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. And alas! It's still from the English.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a place for the "elderly and beautiful" in Jaipur, India. And it's where our veteran (this time, I mean "aged") characters are drawn to when their current life circumstances left them feeling alone, lonely, or wanting. Okay, that doesn't sound like Love Actually at all, but this film reminded me of it.

It's a bunch-of-characters-in-one-film kind of similar, eh?