Top 10 Movies for 2013

Since 2013 is about to end and as we welcome 2014, I decided to give you MY top 10 movies for 2013 (in no particular order mind you). This of course wouldn't be possible if not for our friends from 20th Century Fox, Dreamworks, Warner Bros. Pictures, Solar Entertainment and new additions like Captive Cinema, CrystalSky and Axinitte Digicinema. 

10. Gravity 

Nothing can be more compelling than humanity overcoming anything being thrown at them including space debris and burning space shuttles. Add to that some stellar acting from Sandra Bullock and George Clooney and Alfonso Cuaron just paved his way to an Oscar.

9. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug 

The continued saga of Thorin Oakenshield together with the rest of his dwarf company and Bilbo Baggins continues and it's being shown in magnificent HFR IMAX 3D. Great adaptation and butchering of the J.R.R. Tolkien classic kids book and great way to give the ladies another fellow to swoon over in the form of Thranduil. 

8. Captain Phillips 

The only 'realistic' movie in my list. Captain Phillips is all about humanity in the face of adversity. It's a play on morals and decisions and compassion and it's got Tom Hanks in it playing the titular Captain Phillips. You'll also be amazed at the military tactics and precision that is the US Coast Guard and Navy Seals.

7. This is the End 

This one's on my list for all the sheer hilarity and dirtiness of the characters particular James Franco. I hated that they were pushing too much of the bromosexuality but that's all forgiven the moment you see the Backstreet Boys dancing in heaven to the tune of "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)".

6. Thor: The Dark World

Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman and Tom Hiddleston return for another serving of Asgardian goodness. There's so many things to love about this sequel. More humor and more Hiddleston however are the top reasons. And they got the ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston to play the bad guy Malekith the Accursed too.

5. Iron Man 3

Never have I ever thought that Tony Stark could actually be twice as good as the Iron Man armor. Shane Black delivers a really good and solid Iron Man movie focusing equally on the massive array of Iron Man armor as well as the man inside the shell. Robert Downey Jr. truly rocked this performance. Great cast too and despite the debacle of The Mandarin, it's still a good movie to watch.

4. Man of Steel

Director Zack Snyder shows us a radically different Superman in Man of Steel. This man really punches hard and even breaks necks (literally!). The world is different and the acting was OK. Henry Cavill also shows us why he was born to play the role of Clark Kent/ Kal El/ Superman. It sucks though that there's very little chemistry between him and Lois Lane Amy Adams. Still, a pretty great movie. It's like Dragonball Z only with DC's main hero in it.

3. Frozen

A DISNEY MOVIE THAT WILL MAKE YOU SING?!?! How long has it been since that were the case. usually it's just there to make us cry but it hasn't made us sing and hum. Frozen does that and delivers a wonderful story that's loosely based on the legend of "The Ice Queen". It's a love story but it's not played out entirely like that and while the main pull might be a love angle between Christoph and Anna, it's really the sisterly love between Elsa and Anna that gets the main spotlight. Massive props too for the addition of Olaf who's quickly become a favorite character of mine.

2. Mama / The Conjuring

Can't figure which of the two I liked best so I'm chucking them as a special two-in-one deal. Guillermo Del Toro has Jessica Chastain playing a reluctant surrogate mother/ aunt whose kids brought along the diabolical 'Mama'. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson on the other hand are real life paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine Warren. Both movies are scary and both have some sense of royalty among other horror movies that came out this year. 

1. Pacific Rim 

Giant fighting robots? Check! Giant monsters called Kaiju? Check! Two brooding and awesome pilots? Check! 3D monster-robot fights?! Check! Fuck the intricacies of the story and just watch this like 5 year old boy and you will surely enjoy this film. Nuff Said!

So there we go. Here's to more movies for 2014 and many more reviews! 

Captain Phillips Review

I made the mistake of dismissing Captain Phillips as another bad movie starring Tom Hanks. I was sorely wrong when we caught a special screening of the film.

There's a lot of thing going in Paul Greengrass' Captain Phillips. Quick disclaimer, Hanks here is not a gung ho pirate captain. He's basically an aged captain for a cargo shipping company that's been thrust into a very dangerous situation.

The high stakes drama at the high seas gives us a look at how dangerous piracy really is not just for the captains and first mates but also for the rest of the crew. Yes kids, this is just one of the many things that your dad has to go through in order to send you to school, put food on the table and give you your iPad.

Hanks was brilliant here. It's actually a mish-mash of some other Hanks classic characters. There's a bit of his rational Robert Langdon here, a dash of some Chuck Noland (from Cast Away) and a pinch of Woody. Either way, there's no real reason why you can't like Hanks' Phillips here. The Academy Award winner also shows us why he has been getting some rave comments about his acting chops as he shows us how the human spirit endures through the face of adversity.

Though the plot and the trailer might be a yawner, I can assure you as early as now that you won't be bored with this film. Everything was great. The visuals, the musical scoring, Hanks as the eponymous Captain Phillips and even the Somali pirates that boards the Maersk Alabama.

One of the best things about this movie is that it lulls you with a sense of false safety that everything's OK and then delivers another complication. In other films, the second or third twist will just kill you with boredom but its simply not the case with 'Phillips'.

It's easy to paint a picture of the Somali pirates as the bad guys, the guys who are simply looking for money but in this film, we get a fair amount of screen time for the pirates led by Muse (played by Barkhad Abdi). The skinny guy was a great character because he easily crosses over from good-guy-turned-bad-guy to somebody who's been thrust into a very deadly situation. He's also the perfect example of the adage 'looks can be deceiving'. 

I dunno, maybe there's a tinge of bias here for this film especially since I worked with a Maritime company in the past and was covering pirate incidents off the coast of Africa around the time that the movie was depicted in. For me, it's a sense of nostalgia as well.

Verdict: Captain Phillips is one of the best and modern high seas drama I've seen in the past few years. More like this please.

Tom Hanks Plays Real-Life "Captain Phillips" in Gripping Hostage Thriller

Tom Hanks plays the titular, true-to-life character in Columbia Pictures' “Captain Phillips,” a multi-layered examination of the 2009 hijacking of the U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama by a crew of Somali pirates.

The film focuses on the relationship between the Alabama’s commanding officer, Captain Richard Phillips and the Somali pirate captain, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), who takes him hostage.

The audience will not find conventional heroes in “Captain Phillips” — only human beings in all their societal, cultural, and personal complexities. Director Paul Greengrass saw Richard Phillips not as the engine of the story but rather as a man who, while quietly devoted to his work, gets suddenly swept up into a violent, global event.
“Phillips reminds me of men I knew when I was young, growing up with a father in the merchant marine: the working men who haul the goods we use around the world, who are the lifeblood of the world economy,” Greengrass says. “They are the truckers of the sea. It’s a very physical, blue-collar kind of world. To me, Richard Phillips is that kind of man — a kind of Everyman who finds himself in this unwanted confrontation,” says the director. “He’s really an ordinary person, but the way he responds to what happens to him and what this ordeal he goes through has to say about the world we live in is extraordinary.”

From the very beginning, the filmmakers envisioned Tom Hanks as the veteran merchant mariner Richard Phillips. Hanks has excelled in diverse roles depicting seemingly ordinary men facing extreme crises: from Andrew Beckett, the lawyer suffering from AIDS and fighting a wrongful termination suit in “Philadelphia,” to astronaut Jim Lovell, struggling to return to Earth after a moon mission goes awry in “Apollo 13,” to John Miller, the World War II captain searching for a missing soldier in “Saving Private Ryan,” and to Chuck Noland, the FedEx executive trapped alone on a desert island in “Cast Away.” Hanks builds characters from the inside out, endowing ordinary people with a quiet but extraordinary bravery. His portrayal of Richard Phillips is no exception.

Greengrass says of his first time working with the two-time Oscar®-winner: “Tom and I went on a journey together. In the beginning, he kept saying, ‘For me, it’s really just about a guy in peril on the sea’ — and Tom honed his performance down to something that stark and true. He spent hour after hour in that lifeboat — everyone was moved by how much he put into this. It was not just a matter of his talent, but of his willingness to explore every inch of this man’s humanity — the accuracy of what Tom did and the detail of it was magnificent. I was also incredibly impressed by his physical stamina. We were out on the ocean for hour after hour, and Tom never complained. He was always the first one to turn around and say, ‘I’m ready. Let’s do it again.’”

Hanks prepared for the role by getting to know Richard Phillips, visiting with the captain at his home in Vermont, where he lives with his wife, Andrea, a nurse. Hanks found Phillips to be an affable, self-effacing man who never saw himself as anything more than a seaman simply doing his job.

Incredibly, Phillips returned to his work at Maersk not long after his near fatal ordeal with Somali pirates. “That in particular I found amazing,” said Hanks. “That a man who suffered such a wrenching, terrifying ordeal, could bring himself to go right back to sea. I knew understanding Phillips’ strength — that particular kind of personal fortitude and connection to the sea, despite what happened — would be essential to understanding the sort of man Richard is. The reality is that not everybody has what it takes to be a ship captain — and not everyone could have withstood being taken hostage.”

Greengrass says that Hanks delivered a masterful, truthful performance. “I remember one very difficult scene. We were on the Truxtun and we were getting ready to film the scene, post-rescue. We asked Richard where that interview really happened, and he said it took place in the sick bay. Well, we’d been planning to do it in the Captain’s quarters, but as soon as he said it, the sick bay made much more sense. So Tom and I worked out how we’d do it, and I picked a crewmember from the Truxtun to play the scene with him. As a result, a woman who was not expecting when she woke up that morning to have a speaking role in a movie, or to be acting opposite a two-time Academy Award®-winner, did this climactic scene with Tom that brought the entire crew to tears! It’s just a stunning moment in the film.”

Opening across the Philippines in Oct. 23, “Captain Phillips” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.

Tom Hanks' New Thriller Captain Phillips Debuts Trailer

Columbia Pictures' new action-thriller "Captain Phillips" starring two-time Oscar-winner Tom Hanks has just revealed its teaser trailer and can be viewed here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEM5-6JxHJ8.

The film is the true story of Captain Richard Phillips (Hanks) and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.