JULY 7 — The arrival of the month of July also means that the summer movie season will be in full swing now, even more so than the already pretty happening months of June and May, which have seen expected blockbusters like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,Deadpool 2, Incredibles 2, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Rampage opening in local cinemas.
When you also take into account the smaller distributors and smaller films also fighting for screen time in Malaysian cinemas, it’s pretty much a bonanza when it comes to choosing what to see and what to miss.
I’ve already written about three movies last week, plus a few more that I wanted to see but still haven’t managed to find the time to like Adrift and the Malaysia-set Hong Kong flick The Leakers, but already a few more new movies have opened since, so I’ll write about those that I did manage to see here.
Sicario: Day Of The Soldado
In all honesty, this is pretty much an unnecessary sequel. Sicario was perfectly fine left alone as a single movie.
But since Hollywood decided to make one anyway, I’ll have to say that I was quite pleasantly surprised that the sequel did not end up like most Hollywood sequels do, in the bad movie rubbish bin.
Continuing with the characters of Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) from the first movie, the sequel throws the viewer head first into Matt’s world of black ops manoeuvres, before finally catching up with Alejandro.
Matt is hired to use his experience and expertise to kick start a war between Mexican drug cartels, as part of America’s “unofficial” tactic in their war on drugs.
We’re introduced to an ensemble of characters that we know are destined to come across each other somehow, and director Stefano Sollima (who did ACAB aka All Cops Are Bastards and Suburra) handles the multiple storylines neatly, but without much of the visual flair that previous director Denis Villeneuve brought to the first film.
A very solid, if unspectacular, sequel that does justice to the spirit of the first. If you have any love for Sicario, then you’ll get your money’s worth with this sequel.
Brother Of The Year
Thai studio GDH, which rose out of the ashes of GTH (home to hits like Pee Mak, Shutter and Hello Stranger) has established a brand so strong that a lot of people will just watch anything they produce, because they have set the kind of high standards that audiences fully trust by now.
With the huge success of the studio’s Bad Genius in China last year, where it earned a historic US$41 million (RM165.6 million), and the huge hype it received in this region, hopes are understandably high for its latest film Brother Of The Year.
Directed by Vithaya Thongyuyong, who did The Little Comedian and My Girl before this, Brother Of The Year is already a huge hit in Thailand, but anyone expecting a standard rom-com will probably be a bit disappointed here as GDH continues on its recent path of trying to craft unconventional hits, which it does here when the movie switches gears from the rom-com and sibling rivalry comedy formulas of its first half into more earnest dramatic territory.
My problem with this film is in the pretty strained and forced attempts to engineer crisis and which therefore affects the emotional motivations of its main characters.
In short, even after acknowledging that some form of suspension of disbelief is always needed when watching a movie, there are some serious issues with the believability factor here.
And while I still did find a fair amount of things to enjoy here, when compared next to GDH classics like Bad Genius and One Day, this one just pales in comparison.
Ant-Man and The Wasp
This being the summer movie season, sequels are of course the norm. And after the crushing power of Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel now brings us the sequel to Ant-Man.
Still directed by Peyton Reed (who took over from Edgar Wright in the first movie), it’s only after watching this sequel that one will realise what sort of effect Wright had on the first movie, even after he withdrew from the project.
There’s still plenty of great humour in this sequel, but unlike the first film which saw the humour being the film’s raison d’etre, the humour in this film is used to fill out and colour the plot instead.
It’s still funny, touching and entertaining, that’s for sure. And this one may have bigger (and probably better) action scenes and a more well-defined plot, but there’s something about the cheeky spirit of the first film that makes you miss it.
Ant-Man was a small film, knows it, and works out a way to make itself special because, not despite, of that small-ness. This one doesn’t seem too sure how to reconcile being small and a bit bigger at the same time.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
