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The Machinist

In The Machinist, Christian Bale plays Trevor Reznik, a machinist who hasn’t slept in a year. As a result he is gaunt and emaciated and prone to memory lapses and paranoia. Through the movie, he slowly unravels the mystery of his condition and, although at times a bit confusing, lets you experience his bewilderment and provides a reasonably satisfying realization phase. In the end, you sort of share his sense of final relief. The movie reminded me of Fight Club (chronic insomnia) and Memento (writing down information except Reznik writes his reminders on Post-Its). Aside from that, there is no other comparison with the aforementioned movies as this movie is darker, more morbid, and more gory. Pretty good if you’re into that kind of movie.

Rating: 4/5

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Another Holiday

Yesterday was a another whimsically declared holiday. For Metro Manila, that is. Is this part of Arroyo’s “holiday economics”? Supposedly, because it’s a long weekend, people would go out of town and therefore stimulate local tourism. Notwithstanding the fact that tourism sucks as a long-term industry, what about the potential production of all these people who are out of town (or more likely just malling since going out of town is becoming a rather expensive proposition)? Where’s the economics sense in that? Maybe, it’s part of a scheme to reduce the number of people in Metro Manila so that they won’t join the demonstrations (like most people still care). Or maybe I’m just too cynical. Maybe the government learned of a destabilization plot and they are just after the safety and well-being of the Metro Manila populace (who were probably out malling). Who knows?

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The Island

I was just looking for something to help me chill out from a pretty stressful week at work and school and The Island was it. It starts off in a 1984-like utopian world where Lincoln (Ewan McGregor) goes about his daily life, usually working. However, he also has this penchant to lurking around restricted areas. Then, on one of his explorations, he got a jarring reality check when he discovers the truth about “The Island”. He immediately sets out to rescue Jordan (Scarlett Johansson) who is about to go to “The Island”. This is when the action began in spades and shovels. The action is entertaining enough though they can sometimes be too loud and noisy (including a car chase reminiscent of the looon car chase in Bad Boys 2). The story was essentially just a foundation for these action sequences. Which is too bad since it could have been as nice as that of Equilibrium or The Matrix. Still, as an action fix, it delivered (though not as well as the two aforementioned movies).

One last thing. I know movies are commercialized but can’t they tone commercialization down a bit?!? The movies is peppered with 2-second brand exposures and it got kind of annoying. It even includes ones of MSN Search and XBox. M$!!! Maybe that’s why I was annoyed :P

Rating: 3/5

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Tired

I’m tired. I think I’m still mentally drained from yesterday’s finance exam. At first glance it looked like a giveaway exam. But our professor has devious ways of making things a bit harder. Take for example the subtle wording in one question: Net Income as against EBITDA. It’s so basic and yet it got me. So irritating X-( And then there’s the essay part that had to be answered not in paragraph form but in a bullet point format. Have you ever encountered that? I had to pause and think how to go about doing that one. I ended up with bulleted paragraphs :))

UPDATE: Turned out I did pretty well in the exam. Happy happy joy joy!

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War of the Worlds

I’ve heard about H.G. Wells’ books of the same title though I haven’t actually read it. War of the Worlds is based on the events in the book but focuses on an average man (Tom Cruise?!? How can he be average?) doing his best to keep his family of two kids in one piece (literally and figuratively) amidst the ongoing chaos of war. Too much drama for my taste but it actually kind of works. Dakota Fanning played the horrified innocent girl pretty well and Tom Cruise is not too shabby either. But the setting of this human drama could have been any war, it definitely didn’t have to be H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds which I expected to be this epic battle between Mars and Earth. Sure, the aliens and their retro juggernauts were awesome especially when they kill people one at time time, making it so much more horrific (although the efficiency of the method is a bit questionable) and US Army’s relatively puny firepower did add some pretty nice fireworks but as a whole, the war bit ended up a letdown and definitely not the reason to watch this movie. But if you miss Tom Cruise’s Jerry Maguire emoting, you just might want to.

Rating: 3/5