Can a fine performance save a mediocre film? Yes and no. If you’re Meryl Streep, you can turn a cheesy musical (“Mamma Mia”), a by-the-numbers actioner (“The River Wild”), and a dawdling biopic (“The Iron Lady”) into enjoyable screen romps.
There are moments of searing—and soaring—introspection in “The Next Day,” David Bowie’s first album since 2003’s “Reality.” For most people, its release comes as a pleasant surprise, because they thought that Ziggy Stardust’s 66-year-old alter ego had already called it quits after surviving a life-threatening heart condition nine years ago. But, neither illness nor old age is enough reason for rock legends to hang up their microphones for good!
Scarlett Johansson was the only rose among the thorns in last year’s “The Avengers,” playing the Black Widow in the actioner populated by costume-clad super he-men. Next year, the lovely assassin she portrays will be seen again in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”
Justin Timberlake has never been as compelling an actor as he is as a recording artist—and, with vivid musical strokes, he proves this once again in the pop extravaganza, “The 20/20 Experience,” his eagerly anticipated third solo album.
In “The Croods,” Guy and Eep, the teenage cartoon characters voiced by Ryan Reynolds and Emma Stone, are having a hard time keeping romantic sparks flying, because Grug (Nicolas Cage), the latter’s disapproving father, always gets in the way of their burgeoning romance.
“Must be Love,” the splashy big-screen launch of Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo as a romantic tandem, has a pay-off worthy of its carefully calibrated setup. It follows the story of tomboy Patchot Espinosa (Bernardo) and her bosom buddy, Ivan Lacson (Padilla), who realize—but refuse to acknowledge—that there’s more to their relationship than friendship.
Things are beginning to heat up as summer approaches—and we’re not just talking about the weather. Psy has had his time with “Gangnam Style,” especially after it toppled Justin Bieber’s “Baby” early this month as YouTube’s most watched video— with more than 1.4 billion views!
It’s been 120 years since Thomas Edison introduced the movie camera in 1893. In the US, the 16-year-old National Film Preservation Foundation was put up to support activities that preserve films and “improve access for study, education and exhibition.” Of the American feature films produced before 1950, only about half of them still exist. Can we say the same thing about our movie classics?
Tinseltown’s biggest action heroes are making their movies more viewable by enlisting female co-stars who aren’t conventionally associated with actioners.
The entries to the P-Pop 2013 songfest aren’t really the “cutting-edge” tunes they’re hyped up to be—that would be overreaching. But, the lineup of “Himig Handog P-Pop Love Songs” compilation album comprises a homogeneous mix of romantic humdingers.
In his Hollywood directorial debut, Chan-Wook Park deconstructs the American gothic thriller and presents the mandatory elements of the hackneyed genre in fresh, compelling ways.
While we’re disheartened that Jun Lana’s “Bwakaw,” the country’s entry to this year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar derby, didn’t make the Academy’s official five-nominees list, it’s nonetheless hard to discredit the entries that did make the cut—because, when we saw all five entries last month, we noted how unique each of them was. Moreover, foreign language films need to be seen because they introduce us to issues and cultures that are different from the ones we’re familiar with.
