The Village

everybody was saying they hated it, "maasar ka lang" or "i found the movie pretentious", etc. okay, this movie sucks big time then, but when my friend and I got to G4, the only other movies that were on were: Cinderella Story (juvenile), princess diaries 2 (ditto), this lawyer-romance flick with pierce brosnan and julianne moore (i'm so not in the mood for a sexy, romantic comedy), and alien vs. predator (i didn't watch their separate movies, the thought of watching them together in one is the farthest thing from my mind).
so despite everyone's bad reviews we went ahead and got the tickets for the village. i prepared myself for the worst, i mean no matter how bad, it's still shyamalan's movie, and i've sat through movies like feeling minnesotta (the worst movie i've seen so far in my opinion - yeah i don't get it either, i love keanu, i adore cameron, heck throw vincent d'onofrio in the mix and it's still good, but that movie really hit rock bottom, as in - all time low for me), so anyway, i thought i can probably take this one, couldn't be as bad as that.
i sat through it, the whole 2 hours and 15 minutes of it. the verdict? liked it... liked it a lot! for one the ensemble of actors was really something else, i mean there was william hurt, sigourney weaver, adrien brody, joaquin phoenix, there's even (put the name of that guy in the murder by the numbers thing who's also hedwig's boy toy in hedwig and the angry inch), so at first, as the names of these actors were flashed on screen i thought, man, the script and direction must have really been foul for such an assembly of actors to manage to mess this movie up. i mean hello! william hurt! he was my crush when i first saw him in (put the title of the movie where he appeared with Geena Davis, and he's a divorcee who lives with his overprotected sister and their other brother here), :-) but seriously these were all good actors in my opinion. anyway, turned out the movie isn't as half-assed as i thought it would be judging from the reviews i've heard around.
maybe the reason why everybody hated it was that people were taken in and deceived, especially by the trailer, which sort of made it out as THE horror flick of the century. what else would you expect from scenes in a dark, eerie woods in 19th century New England, with howlings and tolling of bells and scared gasps, moving shadows and loudly breaking twigs. after taking in all that hype everyone was prepared to be scared out of their wits, i bet most were wondering what sort of horrifying creature Shyamalan would conceive to top all the others that have gone hollywood before. we were all set up for a suspenseful time where the monster will try to get (and will probably get) the protagonist. the movie would end up in one bloody gore where the monster is thought to be defeated by the hero in their last struggle where he took his last breath, only to be hinted of a sequel when a finger or the whole arm of the monster will be seen moving from the heap just before the credits roll in. well, the movie wasn't any of those things. it wasn't about any monster at all, or any horrifying creature, if at all it was a sad story of a group of people's floundering hope to build their own utopia and separate themselves from all that is vile and violent. it was also a story of courage and love.
i say it's great because it made me assume things and, the plot was revealed bit by bit. just when i thought i knew what was going on, another unexpected thing happens and i'm completely caught off guard. i mean i like it in books when the author kept me guessing, and when i thought i knew the answer it turned out to be something else. i like it in movies too, that's why i loved "the others" and "the usual suspects". there's another story brewing in there, a very different one from what i anticipated. i tend to get disappointed if i can get ahead of the author or the writer.
of course there are a lot of holes in the movie. stuff that made me go HUH!? and no matter how much artistic license i give to the creators i just couldn't swallow some of the plot points that made the movie weak because of their implausibility. my major quarrel was that they made ivy's character be somebody who can not see with her eyes well but who can sense somebody's aura. if she can do that then how come in the forest scene later she couldn't tell that the monster wasn't really a monster but adrien brody's character? with the earlier assumption of her unique ability, shouldn't she have been able to recognize him especially if he is particularly a close friend of hers?
as for what stood out for me in the movie, i choose the the "romantic" scene with lucius and ivy on the porch. i rarely get kilig moments when watching romantic movies, the lines are often lame and unreal or too saccharine that it just drowns me. lucius's "declaration of love", if you can call it that, is the only other one up there in my list of most-romantic-lines-uttered-in-movies-ever, the other one being ben affleck's character's dialogue to alyssa outside of a car one rainy night in "chasing amy". my criteria for a romantic line? well, let me see, both were uttered by the guy almost in exasperation at the girl and not meant to impress her at all but rather to vent out the feelings that he can't bear keep to himself anymore: without the frills. raw and direct. in my book that was what made it sweet. the only ones i can imagine a guy saying to me that might make me swoon and melt.
so, yeah, i thought it was a well spent 100+ pesos. i can't think of any place else better to spend my rainy, classes-are-cancelled-because-of-bagyo thursday afternoon.

Orange County

I watched it a few years ago -- for free! I was still an employee at ABS Interactive and I was given the ticket as an unlooked for favor, Studio 23 sponsored the advanced screening if I remembered it right. I just breezed through it, okay so I liked Jack Black, he was really funny but aside from that I took nothing else from the movie. That little insignificant movie starring Tom Hanks's son slipped out of my mind into oblivion. That is, until I saw it again on cable a few days back. It had a different impact on me. It made sense this time. I even identified with the character. I know not a lot of people would find sense in this movie, but I wondered why I did, and that only at the second viewing. Well, probably because this time I can see where the main character is coming from. He wants something and he thinks of only one way of getting it. He was so stuck in that road that he missed the point that there might be other roads, and that he might have chosen that particular road as an escape from something he didn't want to admit that he wants to escape from (whew! that was a mouthful!). When he realized all these at the end, things became clearer. He removed all the clutter and finally identified what he really wanted. And realistically set to accomplishing them, carefully considering alternative ways of doing it. In some ways I think I'm in a phase where I want to do things too, and I'm also stuck in this road i've chosen. is it the only road? what other roads lie ahead for me that I haven't considered? hmmm I smell a prayer item here :-) this is really a subject for prayer.
Anyway so at the second viewing I did liked the movie better, not for anything else but for the main point that the writer wanted to get across to the audience.