Pinoy Movie Club

Reviewing a movie shown since 1999 would be a confusing one for you our readers. Yes, Bicentennial Man was shown 1999 and for most you, you might not have been born yet. Although this maybe the case, it still noteworthy to resurrect the same. With the advent of Netflix, this movie was resurrected from whence it was kept. It made us realize that we need drum up interest for this wonderful movie by Isaac Asimov.

The cast is headed by Andrew (A name given to the lead character who's a robot by its first master). Played by the legendary actor Robin Williams, although known as a comedian, he brought to light Andrew's character to humanly heights. No mean feat to impersonate a robot who wants to be a human.

During the early part of the film we are shown his "robotic" faults, maybe there's something wrong with his programming or severed neuron wires, he was showing human traits. These baffled his owner Sir Richard Martin (played by Sam Neill) and one of these instances was Andrew carving out a wooden toy for Litte Miss, Martin's daughter. A robot can replicate a toy to a T provided that a template is provided. In Andrew's case there was no template, it was from sheer memory that he was able to create one. Making him regard Andrew as human and he finally "taught" how to be one.

In this film, it came to a point where "freedom" was discussed. We are so used to be free that we don't know what it is to be one until the film elaborated how to have one's freedom. Of what responsibilities that entail to maintain such freedom.

After freedom, Andrew learned the value of mortality. He realized that humans eventually wither and die. He saw his love ones age and eventually were no longer with him. It then propelled him to search for immortality for humans. With his AI getting smarter, he partnered with an engineer and proceeded to create himself as a human. In the process has helped the humans to prolong life and eradicate some of the body's frailties.

Its a bummer when your AI brain got smarter and smarter, he develops emotions and love. Yes a robot with feelings, yet when he tries to express this, the humans took this trait lightly. One such case is when he met Little Miss' grand daughter Portia. He got into euphoria when he is with her, and went in a jealous fit when Portia was engaged. All this while, his programming was still in robotic state. Portia meanwhile has feelings for Andrew as well but couldn't commit to him because he is still a "robot". Even with technological advancements made to upgrade Andrew's body, he was still stymied by his programming.

What Sir Richard Martin teaching him to be human, its was still short of success. It was Portia who finally completed his AI training. Andrew understood how irrational humans are and finally went over the hill and had "human" thinking. Of course with the help of technology, Andrew had human feeling skin and was able to feel how a kiss would feel and eventually able to have sex.

Like in all happy endings, Portia fell in love with Andrew, however society still would not grant them the sanctity of marriage. He was still regarded as a robot and robots don't age and die. As his love for Portia is great, he proceeded to prolong her life as he possibly can. With the realization brought about by the world leaders and with Portia's prodding, he understood that humans would eventually "die". He then did the unthinkable. When most people would value the immortality he possess, he made modifications to his body to degrade and eventually "die".

The last parts of the film truly is a game changer for the viewer. We have seen his struggles with his quest to be human yet we as humans don't value it as much as he is. This is what made this film strong and watchable in my viewpoint. The film invokes a lot of ideas to its viewers and gives us another perspectives on our lives as well.

I do hope that this review sits well with you and watch the film. I was not paid by Netflix nor I endorse them outright. I am only pushing for the film and I hope you can get a copy of it.

Going Forward 200 Years - Bicentennial Man

After given the chance to have a Netflix account, we have watched some great movies in the process. Without it we would have not seen Manhunt. A 2017 film by John Woo, who has not made an english language film in years.

Now Manhunt is a pan asian film offering you Chinese, Japanese and South Korean actors. Although set in Japan, being in a global situation, we can find these nationalities in Japan. A very unlikely scenario only John Woo can pull off in the action genre.

For this review, we shall warn you that there might be some spoilers, but we will try our best NOT to do so.

As a gist of the story. A Chinese Lawyer, based in Japan is wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit and he eventually was cleared. Now thats the story in itself. The other details are some the usual villains and supporting casts that John Woo intricately wove into the film making it interesting.

John Woo being an action genre director, you can see his grandioso work here in Manhunt. Although I am skeptical of how police detectives and a lawyer for that matter know martial arts. Being handcuffed together and was able to defeat an army of assassins. Come on, how can this be? How can one person be lucky, or two people in this situation.

Except for the handcuffed scene, all the action scenes I can take in already and its truly cinematic. I was reminded of the John Woo style when a dove crossed the path of the lead actor. It was similar to the one he did with Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 2.

Story wise, the film holds a lot of twists and offers a different story flow. We have seen a lot of movies already and more or less you will expect some characters to behave in the way we know already. Some do still follow their character mold while others do not. Although we felt that some characters can be left out of the story, but somehow they were given a brief 15 seconds of fame.

This film had a lot of characters and each one has a story to tell in this film. How they intertwine there lies the John Woo touch. Some maybe holds true to the story, others were merely fillers. The story of manhunt can be akin to the american movie "the fugitive" starring Harrison Ford but this movie was expanded three times over. While the Harrison Ford film is great already with simplitiy, the complexity of Manhunt did not even matched the former.

John Woo's Manhunt's excitement level is similar to that of MI:2 yet story is not that exemplary. Talk about trying to complicate the movie with innumerable twists and turns plus lots of characters. The story could have been made more simpler, and just hold on to the John Woo magic, Manhunt would have been better that what it is right now.

I wouldn't pay the theatre to watch this movie, but since its in Netflix, it goes well with what Netflix has to offer.

Why did I watch this? Two things. John Woo.... and Ha Ji-Won... John Woo delivered what was expected although I wished it to have a better story, while Ha Ji-Won I was disappointed. She merely was a supporting character here or even a character negligible to the story line. She could have been something more to the film.

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John Woo Magic is Back - Manhunt

We love Wade Wilson aka Deadpool in the first movie. It was so successful that creating a sequel is a no brainer for 20th Century Fox.

Now here comes Deadpool 2 with an expanded cast. It's a bigger, more budgeted, expansive storyline, more bad ass, more emotional movie by our favorite R rated superhero. As they say, is bigger better?

With the new movie, the usual characters came back to reprise their roles. Of course there's Wade Wilson, Vanessa, Weasel, Blind Al, Dopinder, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Colossus. Completing the massive casting are the addition of Cable, Domino, Bedlam, Peter, the Vanisher, Firefist, Zeigeist, Yukio, and Juggernaut. Look at that long list of characters. Add to these the cameos of Alan Tudyk, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt (a half second image of The Vanisher), and as a joke to Deadpool, when he was in the mansion and stating the fact that in the x men mansion he can only see two x men, in one scene while his back was against the door, we see professor x, the beast, quicksilver and the rest of the core x men characters. What an awesome casting and cameos the second installment this is.

Now does mean bigger is better? For this reviewer no. The first film had focus. We see his love for Vanessa all throughout the film. In the sequel, it was just an introduction the X-Force (a possible spin off franchise) and it left a bad taste in my mouth thinking so.

Now the first film we liked it because of Vanessa, it was a light hearted romantic film with great action scenes. In this one, Vanessa was killed in the first few minutes of the film. What? She was killed right off the bat just as she said she wanted to have a family with Wade Wilson. What a downer. As most film critics would agree, her death was vital to establishing a new family and new spin off franchise for 20th century fox.

Now to keep the costs between the budget given, upon the start of their first mission, Bedlam, Zeitgest, Peter and the Vanisher got killed in a freakish fashion. Call it as a bad comedy but it was entertaining how they died. Domino was the only one left standing and for a good reason. She was interesting enough how luck would play by her side always.

The original cast of the first film had a brief showing here adding to my disappointment. Vanessa gets killed, Blind Al had only two quick scenes, Weasel was only important to the interview of the applicants for the X-Force, Dopinder still did not offer something new (except for the last scene when killed off the headmaster), Colossus is still the metallic idealistic guy. The film somehow introduced something from the LGBT community, providing a love interest for Negasonic Teenage Warhead in the character of Yukio. Deadpool is really pushing the envelope a little bit far each time in the area of sexuality. We didn't say its a disappointment but other film goers might be reactive to this.

Now we liked the action scenes and the wise cracks of Deadpool as always however it was not enough to say 2 was better than the first. There were so many disappointments to bring our reviews down. Let us just confine them into three major ones. The First disappointment was that Vanessa got killed in the first few minutes and second, it was just an introduction to the X-Force. Third disappointment was the fact that the movie trailers showed the new characters only to be killed outright. What a entertaining scene but a let down at the same time.

Now other disappointments were in character of Firefist. We liked the choice of the actor for it. Instead of following the comic book rendition, they opted for a chubby teenage kid, good choice. However we didn't like his acting in this film. We felt that all scenes he had the same acting. It left us kinda bored and wish the story would move on already. Juggernaut had a brief stint here as well and served as a friend to Firefist. After a few minutes of struggle, he was done for. Although he was resurrected from the X Men films, his re introduction herein was the same, short, brief and sweet.

All I can say, the ending credits was far more entertaining than the movie itself. He used the time travel device by Cable to save Vanessa and right the "timeline". All's well that ends well.

I can't say you will be wasting your movie money here but it was worth the trip. The movie is entertaining and exciting enough to make you feel happy spending your money. Just make sure you stay until the very end. Another motivation for you to watch this film, if you time you saw a dark side of Deadpool in the first, this one is much darker.

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Is Bigger Better? - Deadpool 2

This review is so late however for me its not. I have missed this in the theaters and its only now I watched it. A film by Christopher Nolan, I am intrigued by the movies he megged prior to this. The dark Batman series, Inception are among the movies he made that I loved. Now this.

Dunkirk (Dunqerque in France) is a story set in the early part of World War II, and it featured the defeat of the British and French forces in France. Due to the overwhelming forces of the Germans, both armies were pushed back all the way to Dunkirk for a naval retreat. Surrounded by the Germans, their only way out was through the beach in this area.

When you read the story line, its simple. Evacuation of the fleeing army how complicated can it be? Based on historical records, it saved a total of 330,000+ British and 130.000+ allied soldiers. The beach head had no proper dock to speak of, making the procedure difficult. The beach has shallow adding to Kenneth Branagh's character's worry. No naval ship could land and pick up from its shores, and few boats to take men from the shore to the the ship. Enter the pleasure yachts, fishing trawlers, and small boats to the rescue. A worthy story to tell in a movie.

Now Christopher Nolan did not implore the use of Computer Graphics here. He might have but based on many accounts, he used the real thing for the movie. He got the airplanes flying and crashing, boats sailing and sinking some in the process.

Unlike other war movies wherein there are back stories to the characters involved, herein the director immediately immersed the viewer to the rigors and horrors of war. When I was minutes into the frist parts of the film, I couldn't make sense of it all. I was waiting for a scene where they explain what was happening, even when I finished it, nothing was explained or maybe there was and I missed it. One will surely miss the explanation (if there was one) as I was immersed with the film.

I felt I was part of the film. War is unexplainable. All one will experience in war is the fear of death, dodging bombs and bullets, the state of panic. No one will come up to you to explain, you will simply have to run in the face of danger. This is what I think Christopher Nolan wants to impart in this film.

Even with scene transitions, you will feel immersed and trying to understand what the characters are going through. There were great characters in this film and kudos to Nolan for this. Making the film interesting until the end. What stood out for me here are the roles taken in by Kenneth Branagh as the Naval Commander handling the evacuation. He kept on seeing the British Side from Dunkirk and kept calling it home. He even stayed the Mole (a breakwater of sort, a short walkway from the beach as well). Another character that stood out for us was that of the Moonstone Yacht captain Mr Dawson (played by excellent actor Mark Rylance) and his son Peter (played by Tom Glynn Carney). They exemplified how properly they treated a shell shocked soldier. Another worth mentioning also is the character of Tom Hardy's Farrier. An RAF Pilot who continued to protect the skies over the fleeing soldiers. He continued to do so until he ran out of fuel. Call that heroic.

Now going back to the whole immersive film, not only visually done, it also had a great sound to accompany each scene nicely. No wonder this film also won 3 Academy Awards, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing.

This writer like watching documentary films and this one went a step further in recreating one of the great world war two events there is. This may have been a defeat for some, but the british saw this as a success and viewed the returning soldiers as heroes.

Dunkirk - A Rescue Like No Other

After writing about who "survived" Thanos purple finger snap we now get into a "proper" film review. Its almost a month now since the movie debuted in the theaters so we assumed most of you have watched the film. For those who have yet to watch it, STOP reading this one already. This review will have lots of spoilers for you. If you don't care about the spoilers then read on.

Before this film even was shown in the movie houses, we were already bombarded with trailers, and film critics, comic geek, marvel fans with their predictions how the film would go and end. So it was difficult to watch this film objectively.

We knew beforehand that Thanos will get all the infinity stones and half of the universe will die. What happens before that is the question. We also knew that vision will die because one of the stones is the one that keeps him alive.

This notion of Vision's death is what dragged the whole movie into and with the other supporting casts creating the side stories. The love story between Vision and the Scarlet Witch was drummed up to create drama herein. Where in previous films, we knew somehow that they "connected" somehow, in this film, they were full blown lovers. Sneaking away from the Avengers just to enjoy themselves.

This connection gave the movie the emotional cliffhanger all through the story telling. How would Scarlet Witch deal with the emotional stress? Remember that in the Age of Ultron, how she was emotionally unstable to begin with. Here she still has this dilemma but in the end, she was able to accept Vision's death, albeit then Thanos spurred everything. Thanos really is a bad ass and rude if you ask me.

Now the side stories. Aside from the fight in Wakanda, Wakanda Forever!!!!, there was a fight on planet Titan. Each fight had their own drama but with similar objectives - to stop Thanos. What was important with the fight on Titan is the fact that Doctor Strange has watched millions of outcomes and told Tony Stark there was only one outcome with them winning the tide against Thanos. Knowing this, he pleaded with Thanos to spare Tony Stark's life for the Time stone. I surmised that this was the ONLY way that they would win in the end. So I was relieved when his final words to Tony would be "this is the only way".

Now we shall go into why I felt that after the death of superheroes was temporary.

1) Because Doctor Strange said so. He is so sure of himself and that giving up his life for Tony Stark, a man he knew briefly, should not be taken lightly. By giving his own to fail is a necessary requirement for them to succeed, then he just assured us that they will win and will bring back all if not most of the dead superheroes.

2) Black Panther the movie was a blockbuster when it came out, so killing off the character will not give us a sequel and will be a big financial loss for Disney.

3) We knew that Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 will be out so we know that it would be a quiet and unexciting movie without Star Lord and Gomora in it.

4) In Thor Ragnarok, Odin mentioned "Asgard is not a place, it is the people". That's why they put all the Asgardians to a huge spaceship bound for Earth. Then in this movie, they all were killed in the first 3 minutes leaving Thor as the last one. In the comics, the Asgardians finally reached Earth and established a colony. So expect them or some of them to eventually reach planet Earth.

5) Definitely Doctor Strange will come back. Who would better confirm that his plan worked if he wouldn't be back? So we guess he will in Avengers 4 and a possible Doctor Strange sequel.

Now a movie with a great magnitude of a cast will definitely be without some holes in how the story would be told. The movie in itself is two and half hours long and after watching this, this gave us a lot of questions more than answers.

1) Why was there more superheroes killed compared to those who survived? I saw in a video that most of those who survived formed part of the original avengers. Is this Disney's way of going full circle? From those who started it, they are the ones to end it as well? Lets see how they do this in Avengers 4. A quirky survivor was Rocket Raccoon. Why was he the last one who survived from the intergalactic characters? We guess that the Avengers will bring the fight to Thanos and Rocket Raccoon can bring them there. Now that's logical.

2) Why did Star Lord acted the way he did in the last part? I accept already the fact that Thanos would win in the movie but at the way Star Lord facilitated this was something I was dumbfounded. Instead of following the plan, he went berzerk over the death of Gomora. Yeah we get it, he loved her but instead of helping the others get the infinity gauntlet, he went nuts and fired at Thanos. Did he went off plan or was it according to Doctor Strange's plan?

3) How did Nick Fury that Captain Marvel survived the purge? In the ending credit scene, we saw him using a device calling upon Captain Marvel. Yes we know she's alive as we have seen a lot of articles about her having her own film. Did she really survive or not, will we see her in Avengers 4?

4) Who will not be re incarnated or survive Avengers 4? We suspect Captain America will die. Why? His contract with Marvel is expiring soon and he has signified he will NOT be doing anymore Captain America. Are we correct in our guess?

5) When an invasion was happening in Wakanda, where were the United Nations? Was there no time for them to act? When the first attack happened in New York, the whole world has been alerted of Thanos' threat. Why was there no reactions from them? The Hulk was there along with Wong who was left behind. Is the UN a helpless group that they were not included in the story?

There are more questions left in my mind and will write more about it after I do some vetting. I hope these questions will be answered in the next Marvel movies - Antman and the Wasp (although they didn't delve into the infinity war theme in their first movie), Captain Marvel (will it feature some of the infinity war details?), Venom (really now) and X-Men Dark Phoenix (since Disney bought 20th Century Fox - will they intertwine the story line with Thanos? Will they make this the first film to crossover or merge to the MCU?).

See, more questions than answers. Although I didn't liked this movie as I hoped to be but I still rate this film as something with a passing grade. I consider this as a prequel to something grand in Avengers 4. I hope that movie won't disappoint or else it will bring both movies to my purgatory list of movies that I hope I will forget.

If you have other questions about the movie or have comments - please email us at info.katooga@gmail.com. We love to hear if you have anything more to add with what we have mentioned here.

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images herein are ctto

we are not comic geeks and we do not consider ourselves Marvel know-it-all experts. we reviewed the film according to its entertainment value as a movie goer.

Pinoy Movie Club

Going Forward 200 Years - Bicentennial Man

John Woo Magic is Back - Manhunt

Is Bigger Better? - Deadpool 2

Dunkirk - A Rescue Like No Other

Avengers Infinity War - Which Side are You on?

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