By Clarence Yu
Contributor

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have is a particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that will be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you.

WITH these few lines of dialogue, the stage is set for Taken. You pretty much know where you are going to end up as you step into the theater. But this is a kind of movie where you want to go along for the ride nonetheless.

Directed by Pierre Morel, Taken stars Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, presumably an ex-government agent who retired in California to live close to his daughter. He wanted to make up for all the lost time while he was away on active duty.

Mills is a loving father who is estranged from his wife (Famke Janssen) but wants to be there for his daughter.

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By Clarence Yu
Contributor

SOMETIME ago when I heard that Oliver Stone was making a biopic of President George W. Bush, something just didn’t feel right inside my stomach. After all, what else can you expect from the director extraordinaire who brought us Nixon, JFK and Platoon, among other films? Then maybe I thought he had a conspiracy theory thing going on, which would shed light on what really happened these past eight years.

Then I read initial reviews about the film–it was indeed a true-to-life biopic, so how could one get serious with it? Turns out, there are plenty of reasons.

History will probably judge George W. Bush as one of the worst presidents ever, and, at best, one of the most controversial. Stone however, doesn’t want us to have any more of that. We know it. We’ve been seeing the news, reading the papers, and watching all the comedians. Instead, he gives us George W., the frat and party boy, the alcoholic turned born-again Christian, the man who for the most part of his life stood in his father’s shadow.

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Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

I seem have a natural attraction for Woody Allen movies. Maybe because they reaffirm my faith in the one ingredient I deem important in a movie: the story.

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a typical Woody Allen film, meaning there’s always a cast of characters and it ultimately explores human relationships.

This time it’s a love triangle–Barcelona is a metaphor, of course. Meaning there should be sex involved and that Scarlett Johannson is somehow part of it.

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By Clarence Yu

THE Wrestler tells the story of Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke), a professional wrestler 20 years from the peak of his career in the 1980s. Once famous in the world over (think Hulk Hogan), he is now reduced to participating in independently staged matches and holding a part-time job to eke out a living.

He is estranged from his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), and the only person he can confide in is an aging stripper named Cassidy (Oscar winner Marisa Tomei) who is also past her prime. Unlike Randy, who is living in the past, Cassidy has a firmer grip on reality and is looking to finish her career as she realizes that she cannot sustain her job on her fading looks. Randy, however, is stuck in the past, reliving his glory days by taking steroids to sustain his aging body, and following a regimen that includes pumping iron and tanning himself in a salon to keep up appearances.

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By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

WHAT if blindness is an infectious disease that is contagious as the common cold?

This is the basic storyline–adapted from a novel by Nobel prize-winning author Jose Saramago–behind the latest film from rising Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener, City of God).

Don’t expect this to be something like “Outbreak”, though. There’s no use getting engrossed so much in how an antidote is discovered in the end. No other animal even appears in the movie except for a dog.

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