MOVIE REVIEW: Gravity

Images of astronauts in space always gives us a sense of awe and wonder. Working literally on top of us with the greatest view of our planet as their background. What if there was imminent danger to their line of work? The movie Gravity shows that in the most beautiful yet terrifying way.

On her first mission to space, mechanical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) installs a new system on the Hubble Telescope. Her cocky yet suave mission commander Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) is right by her side. Totally in command, Kowalski is in constantly comunication with Mission Control (voiced by Ed Harris in a fitting homage to Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff) and cracking up jokes at work to ease the complex job that they are doing.

When there was imminent danger up ahead, it's up to them to figure out how to survive and director Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Y Tu Mama Tambien) does compress a great tale of survival in a place that we know little of  in 90 minutes.

Gravity is Sandra Bullock's film from start to finish and she does what only a few actors have ever accomplished: she gave a performance that complimented the visual effects in the film. She is on her way to her second Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Gravity is well worth your hard-earned money to see and experience on the big screen one of 2013's best films. Better yet go see it in 3D and even on IMAX to fully appreciate this great film.

MOVIE REVIEW: Fruitvale Station

The title of the film comes from the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Station in Oakland where on the early morning of New Years Day 2009, Oscar Grant, a 22 year old was shot and later died after allegedly resisting arrest after an altercation inside the train coming from San Francisco where he and his friends celebrated the New Year. Witnesses were able to document the incident by their cellphone cameras and other recording devices. The film focuses on the last hours before the shooting and it begins with one of the eyewitness video that was uploaded online.

Running in only an hour and 24 minutes and using a handheld camera most of the time, Ryan Coogler delivers the goods in his full length directorial debut that echoes another young African-African first film, John Singleton, who in 1991 directed the groundbreaking Oscar nominated Boyz n The Hood. The film  does not waste its time on unnecessary dramatics and goes straight to the point. Michael B. Jordan in a star making turn humanizes Oscar Grant. He is not a saint, has flaws and a bit thuggish often times. The good thing though is that the film showed through Jordan's breakthrough performance is that he tries to straighten up his life in a harsh world that he's in. Regardless of what kind of a person he was, Grant did not deserve to die that way. Melonie Diaz as Grant's girlfriend Sophina and Ariana Neal who portrays their daughter Tatiana gave sympathetic performances to counter Grant's perception of some people to him. Fruitvale Station showed Oscar Grant to be a loving family man and would do anything for them.

Academy Award Winner Octavia Spencer as Grant's mother Wanda proved that her Oscar winning turn in The Help wasn't a fluke. She is one mom who is fed up with all the petty things his son but the unconditional love shows.

Fruitvale Station is a hard movie to watch for we know what happens, but it is also a feel-good one for it shows that Oscar Grant was loved by his family and friends.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Conjuring

We go to the movies to be entertained and it's a bonus if it's from a true story, well made and you learn something. new. Based on a little known incident in Rhode Island during the early 70's, The Conjuring has all those qualities that I mentioned and it's quite a surprise that it comes from the guy who directed the now infamous first\ Saw movie: James Wan.

Set in the early seventies with some flashblacks, The Conjuring featured noted New England husband and wife demonologists who first gained prominence in the Amityville New York incident Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) who after a talk in some university were asked by Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor) to check out her house she and her family moved  in Rhode Island after some restless spirit continues to bother her family there. Together with Carolyn's husband Roger (Ron Livingston) and their five daughters, what they have encountered is something extraordinarily demonic.

Without the use of special effects, The Conjuring is a throwback to the classic horror movies that rely on sound, motion and the use of camera angles. It all worked well. The use of the gadgets in those era to capture an image of the spirits inside the house is well thought off and the soundtrack, production design and soundtrack does evoke that era. The bureaucracy of the Roman Catholic Church on exorcism cases which is a hassle for it takes so long before a priest can perform on a possessed being is also mentioned in the film. The ensemble cast also have excellent rapport with Oscar nominee Farmiga as the standout. Her Lorraine is restrained yet she shows dignified strength in moments she sees which we most fear. It is arguably an award worthy performance.

This is James Wan's best film so far and it's very gratifying for us avid moviegoers that from Saw to Insidious (which some people I know say that it's the scariest movie that they have ever seen) , he was able to evolve as a filmmaker and now The Conjuring, his masterpiece. He has found his niche in the horror genre and I hope that award giving bodies will notice his talent. It is one of 2013's best movies and it joins the ranks of The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror and The Sixth Sense as the greatest horror/suspense films released during the US summer season.

MOVIE REVIEW: Pacific Rim

When a channel opens underneath the Pacific Ocean that serves as a passageway for the Kaijus (strange beasts) from another dimension to wreck havoc on surrounding cities around it, mankind has no recourse but to create Jaegers (hunters) - robots almost the same size as the Kaijus to protect the planet from total apocalypse.

Pacific Rim is director Guillermo del Toro's love letter to those Japanese monsters movies and as he proved in his Oscar winning Pan's Labyrinth, he knows his mystical creatures. The film has the 50's-60's monster/alien invasion B-movie vibe while making very good use of  3D technology. This is the first film since Avatar that is worth the price of it.

Since the film mostly focuses on the battle between the two gigantic creatures, cities with skyscrapers are virtually destroyed. It is heartwarming for a movie fan like me to have two of the cities I love prominently featured in the film: San Francisco and Manila. Both were destroyed in the film but hey Manila in a science-fiction robot-monster movie? Only in our dreams before, but Guillermo del Toro fulfilled it. We have seen those scenes before in Michael Bay's Transformers films and most recently in The Man of Steel, but it is better executed in Pacific Rim and not as tedious to watch in the previous movies that I mentioned. Michael Bay can learn a thing or two on how to make the perfect summer blockbuster and he can start by watching this film. The lead role of Jaeger operator Raleigh Becket is played by British actor Charlie Hunnam (2002's  Nicholas Nickelby and TV's Queer as Folk) and he has great chemistry with the prominent names of the cast members such as Idris Elba, Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi (Babel) and Charlie Day (TV's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Ron Perlman (Del Toro's Hellboy) also has a prominent supporting role. 

Pacific Rim is so far the pleasant surprise in the summer movie season of 2013 dominated by the comic book franchises. A visual treat that has a story too!!

MOVIE REVIEW: World War Z

Loosely based on the book by Max Brooks (son of comic great Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft), World War Z is from my memory, the first zombie film that treats the undead as victims from a global plague like it was some sort of a disease. TV's The Walking Dead, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later and the 2004 movie remake of Dawn of the Dead - were arguably the best ones among the zombie genre in recent years, then mix it up with plague films like 1995's Outbreak and 2011's Contagion. The result is one highly entertaining summer blockbuster that despite its deviation from the original source, the effort and labor of love of actor/producer Brad Pitt, director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace and Monster's Ball) and their crew with all those rewrites and reshoots did not go to waste.

United Nations worker/troubleshooter Gerry Lane (Pitt) has the unenviable task of saving the world from a global pandemic that turns people into zombies at a fast rate!! From virtually wiping out the population of the eastern United States (Philadelphia, Newark, New York, D.C) to horror at a US military base in Korea, a Lord of the Rings like invasion scene in Jerusalem and a tight suspense filled climax at all places Cardiff, Wales. World War Z delivers the goods. It also helped that Brad Pitt is the only recognizable star in the film so the concentration and empathy of the audience is with him being a loving family man to his wife Karin (Marielle Enos) and their two daughters Constance and Rachel (Sterling Jerins and Abigail Hargrove) and in real life, the world's most famous father to his and partner Angelina Jolie's six kids.

I saw the film in 3D and I say that it was more of a distraction watching it with an extra pair of glasses in the cinema.Good old regular 2D is okay with the film.

MOVIE REVIEW: Fast and Furious 6

One of the unexpectedly successful movie franchises in recent years now veers towards James Bond and The Dark Knight territory in Fast and Furious 6. What used to be a series about car racing, now also includes gadgetry and some world domination minded villains thanks in part to the film before it, 2011's Fast Five, easily the best in the series which reignited the already fading movie franchise and became both a critical and a box office success - the highest grossing one so far.

After Five's Brazil, the gang led by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Ryan O'Conner (Paul Walker) already lead luxurious lives and go around the world using the money they got from the previous film's villain, except in the US where all of them would be put behind bars. They are asked by their erstwhile adversary Federal Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) to help track down a British mercenary (Luke Evans) who led a terrorist incident in Russia. How some stunt drivers were able to stop a madman is absolutely ridiculous in every sense in the world, but amazingly director Justin Lin and screenwriter Chris Morgan delivers the good in the sixth installment of the series. 

Some of the favorites from the other films are also back such as Han (Sung Kang), Tej (Ludacris), Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and as fans of the series know, at the end of Fast Five, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), whose character was killed in a previous film, amazingly comes back with a twist of her role. Haywire's Gina Carano is the newest member of the cast playing an agent alongside Hobbs.

London is a more subdued setting compared to the much colorful and sunnier Brazil in Fast Five, but there is a James Bond vibe into it. The climax in Spain is one action sequence well done but one would wonder how long is the runway when the crew tried to take down a cargo plane where the villains were. One must just suspend it's disbelief when you think about it.

Highly entertaining, Fast and Furious is a well made follow-up to the best film in the series, and after the end credits sets up a well-made epilogue featuring the newest member of the series, to the seventh installment of Universal Pictures money making franchise.

OFFICIAL TRAILER: August: Osage County

Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts team up for the first time in the film version based on the Broadway play by Tracy Letts. Looks like an Oscar contender to me.