Hello Hello!

 

June brings showers, flowers and beauty all around us. The name means youth from Latin juvenis, young people. As of today June 4, I think I have seen 4-5 free movies in the regular theaters as part of my Senior Citizen perks. Two of them really are for children, IF and Garfield...and I loved them both. 

I thought Garfield won't be a disappointment to watch for its cuteness based on the books but when we were introduced to Vic his estranged father (spoiler alert), we all saw a cuter fatter cat than Garfield himself, the ultimate lazy fat sarcastic cat. Never mind the storyline at first I thought. The 3D animation and wisecracks were good enough to grab our collective attention, adults and children alike especially if you're already familiar with the strip. Now if I wanted more immersion, maybe I'll plan on watching it again next week as I missed on the nitty-gritty of the criminal world they find themselves embroiled in not that any of it is complicated. Nothing here is. Maybe I’m just trying to adjust to the decadent movie-sized Eyecandy all throughout the 1-hr 42-min running time and leaving the details of the plots alone. Incidentally, I found my zen watching an array of brand new movies on the big screen which are all shown for free for Seniors who populate the theaters sufficiently and peacefully and just like most of them, a large chunk of my being is there for the very cool air conditioning and the generous recliner seats.

Today at least, my tummy is filled to the brim from eating lasagna (at Sbarro) prompted by the movie itself and I can't believe I actually, unknowingly dressed up for Garfield, my movie date! This is definitely not a Monday for me.

Then came IF, my second free movie of the day. (We're only allotted two btw.) It proposes the question: What if  Imaginary Friends (long for IF) were real? Well, that's a good proposition especially if you're in the world of showbiz as it is largely powered by imagination. Watching the movie, the question was more likely, what if  your imaginary friends in childhood never really left you and they're just there waiting to be noticed again? 

But maybe the first question is better.

It’s an age-old question and is far deeper than one would think. Of course the movie itself was geared towards visual gratification more than existential philosophy as the premise of the story was how would a young girl survive without her father who was confined in the hospital with sickness? And with a missing mother and only an aging grandmother to look after her, it’s a real world problem for her. Thankfully, with an upbeat dad despite his given condition, Bea the young girl seems to have been covered with protection by her father's rich imagination and loving heart. Soon after leaving her dad in the hospital where he is scheduled for an operation, everything seems to take shape for her, all in varied shapes of imaginary friends led by a mysterious host named Cal who looked all-too human.

She somehow makes physical contact with Cal who introduces her to an array of oddball characters beginning with Blue, a giant purple furball who gets anxiety if a human fails to acknowledge the existence of IFs. More follows and Bea even catalogues them for their names, description and purpose as each one seems to stand as guardian angels or IFs for real individuals who have turned into adults and have already moved on with their lives. It seems with their volatile nature, once they’re forgotten, they could really turn non-existent.

Luckily, Bea never lets go of her fertile imagination and keeps them all alive with the invaluable help of Cal. But when she realises in the end that that Cal was just as imaginary as all the others, her father recovers and takes over his dad duties. However, the IFs never really disappear.

When I watched the movie till the very end credits curious to see who voiced the major IFs as some of them sounded familiar, I saw many popular actors’ names filling the void. So what if these IFs were really real?

On Monday, I watched the post-apocalyptic Mad Max Saga, Furiosa set in Australia and although I’m not inclined to do a movie review, I’m just going to give some impressions on it. Just like with any Mad Max movie, you can expect gore and barbarism as this is set in a vast wasteland of “half-people”, those barely alive from the ravages of war and critical resource shortages. 

Re: Dementus the demented warlord. For the first part of the movie, the character poses almost as  a caricature of a villain as he doesn’t seem as hateful as his deeds…as slaughtering the mother of a seemingly unaffected female child named Furiosa and ready to sell her to a rival group, among others in his constituency as he is head of his own breakaway biker horde. He almost seemed guilty of grandstanding his evil deeds in an effort to be effectively charismatic to his band of hooligans. Because of this, I thought this movie would not be as good or engaging as the previous Mad Maxes where Mel Gibson didn’t need a prosthetic nose to show off his doggedness but Gibson was a protagonist and Hemsworth is the main villain. Still.

The serious presence of Furiosa on the other hand gave gravitas to the storyline as the movie was truly about her and her developing plot of vengeance to the very end where she fulfills her promise to her mother before she was killed.

As the saga progresses, things picked up the pace and we are presented with mechanistic action in the sprawling Australian desert, an integral part of the movie in itself.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. What can I say? There’s 30 minutes of running time (TRT) I have yet to view in the movie (because of brownout). All I can say is although it probably had a good storyline and craftsmanship, I truly missed the originality of the first Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston I saw on TV as a kid. Heston's sci-if movies are always a draw for me. Until I finish watching this modern iteration though, I can give it no verdict. 

To conclude, this together with the previous three I have featured here had remarkable CGI, definitely a modern movie tool that keeps evolving and a most welcome one. I love going to the big screen theater to watch movies and I will keep watching them, especially now that they are free for me to view.

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Update Update!!! -June 10 Monday

Today, I rewatched the first half of Garfield and almost the entirety of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and although I thought Garfield was not as fresh as the first time and turned out a little childish and silly now, Kingdom was less scary but still not my cup of tea. I just don't get it...the entire movie! The supposed richness of the CGI comes off as flat, unappealing and to tell you the truth, ugly and brutish as apes could be in real life. If you find the apes' acting good, I didn't find them charming at all. The hyper-realism of the CGI actually was a hindrance to a proper appreciation of the human-like behavior of these talking animals! Can you really imagine yourself talking to an intelligent ape? Even with this million-dollar movie thrown out there, I can't and I seriously don't want to. They're supposed to be portrayed as compassionate animals here, more compassionate than their retrogressive human counterparts but you just can't ignore the underlying or even hovering sense of discrimination and racism prevalent in this movie. I don't have to like every movie I see. Even if I made sure I finished the story, I have decided to give it a thumbs down. I have better taste than this coz honestly, this movie (franchise) gives me the creeps. The first iteration was definitely better.

Remember my sci-fi mash-up painting of Planet of the Apes and Hitchhiker’s Guide from 2023? Well, now I’m meditating upon its mysteries.