AUGUST 11 — The arrival of August marks the beginning of the end of the summer movie season. Almost gone are the Hollywood tentpoles hoping to pick your pockets, and what we have now are the various potentially interesting titles from the smaller distributors out there, and maybe even an arthouse title or two.
I went on a bit of a cinema binge last week because of the many titles opening within just a week of each other, and here are four of the many I watched.
Mission Impossible: Fallout
The absolute clear highlight of this year’s summer movie season, Tom Cruise’s latest outing in what’s looking like a never-ending monster franchise is such a pleasant surprise that people have already compared the artfully done practical stunts here to Mad Max: Fury Road, and that’s an Oscar nominated movie.
I won’t go that far because Fury Road and Fallout have two very different settings and therefore very different sets of toys and aesthetics to play with, but at least five or six of the action set-pieces in Fallout will probably end up in the top 10 action sequences of the year, and that’s really saying something.
And unlike a lot of other action films, Fallout even bothers to craft a steady and strong storyline that’s also armed with a number of reveals, surprises, twists and turns that will keep your pulse racing in between the action.
Never mind that it also contains what’s probably the longest 15 minutes in movie history, that’s what suspension of disbelief is for when it comes to movies like this.
This one is just pure action blockbuster artistry in glorious full flight. Director Christopher McQuarrie has always shown that he’s got chops for stuff like this even at the beginning of his career with The Way of The Gun, but with the first Jack Reacher movie and now this, he’s stepped up another level. Watch this on the biggest screen you can for maximum pleasure.
The First Purge
For the first time ever in this Blumhouse franchise, writer-director-mastermind James DeMonaco is not in the director’s seat, making way for the pretty much unknown Gerard McMurray to take over directing duties in The First Purge.
But thanks to DeMonaco still working on the script, this new film, a prequel detailing how the very first “purge” happened, still feels very much of a piece with the first three films, whose strengths have always been with the brilliantly gimmicky concept, which leaves a lot of room for subtext and allegory.
Having someone who produced Fruitvale Station (a film about police brutality and prejudice against African-Americans) as this film’s director seems an apt move, because The First Purge more or less plays as if the characters in Fruitvale Station are stuck in a Purge film. More of the same then, but it works for me!
Burning
If I had to make only one movie recommendation this week, it’ll have to be this one. Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong returns after eight years away from the film festival scene, his last film being the critically acclaimed Poetry in 2010.
His latest film Burning, fresh from premiering at this year’s Cannes just a few months ago, makes a surprise stop at Malaysian cinemas and, depending on your tolerance for adventurous narrative filmmaking (with wonderfully blatant disregard for explicitly laying things out for the viewers), you’ll either find this exploration of class relations in Korea refreshing or infuriating.
It’s a story about an aspiring writer from the lower class who falls for a similarly lower-class girl from his hometown (whom he just met again in the city), only to have it all fall down on him when she then falls for a rich guy, played by the quite famous Korean-American actor Steven Yeun. Where this story goes and how Lee goes about telling it is what makes this one of the best films of the year so far.
The Meg
Judging from the film’s trailer, I already had low expectations for this movie, just hoping that it’ll be the fun and campy B-movie that the poster, concept and trailer sort of promised.
In short, if this one can be something like Deep Blue Sea, Eight Legged Freaks or even something inferior like Snakes on A Plane and the even worse Sharknado, then I’d already call it a job well done.
I mean, who doesn’t want to see a Jason Statham vs giant shark flick, right? Unfortunately, this one’s nowhere near any of them, and The Meg, despite it having a giant shark and the promise of a battle with Jason Statham, is one big cringe of a movie, and could just be the very definition of a “so bad, it’s bad” movie.
Hampered by some really cheesy dialogue, lame (and awfully edited) attempts at comedy that just end up making the supposedly “comic” scenes feel awkward, and total indecision on the filmmakers’ part on what sort of tone to approach the movie with, this giant shark movie is one giant chore to sit through.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
