Last year, doing the recap of the movie I had seen, I called it a non-retrospective and ended up ranting about the types of films that were hitting the big screen. This year, not very much has changed and there were… disappointments. It’s also likely that my viewing habits had changed over the year, mainly due to a fiscal shortage. While I had to be picky about what movie to catch in the cinema, much of that choice was also taken out of my hands, mainly by how movies are distributed here in Penang, and Malaysia by default. Years back, there was one movie I really really really wanted to see in the cinema. There was the poster hanging on the cinema walls under the “Coming Soon” boxes. The trailer was screened in the cinema before several movies for months. Ultimately, it never arrived. At all. Serenity was lost. I did ask about why the cinema had promoted the movie with the poster and trailers, but never brought the movie in the end. I asked at different cinemas at the time, talked to the different managers. One said that the movie didn’t do well in Australia, so it wasn’t expected to do well here. Another said that they only show movies they were given by the distributor. Another said that they couldn’t promote the show in Malaysia, that there was no audience. One of the staff members just said that the movie must be bad, that’s why they don’t want to show it in Malaysia. Now, there would be some that would agree that Serenity isn’t that great a movie. It’s science fiction, it’s partially a western, it’s based on a short lived and little seen TV series. And for me, it was one of the best movies ever (that I bought the Australian Limited Edition DVD set, the US DVD and the Collector’s Edition DVD that came out later. I triple-dipped that sucker. Anyone wanna sponsor me the Blu-Ray edition?) I mean, c’mon, that space battle towards the end was big screen worthy! But, let’s get back on track. Locally, I’ve gotten to know the manager of my preferred cinema and he’s told me basically the same thing. He has no say in what movie comes to the cinema. He gets the film or the tape, and he decides how to schedule them on which screen. That’s it. The choice of film is made two levels above him - the head office of Golden Screen Cinemas in KL, and the distributors themselves who ultimately decide what to put on our screens. As far as I can determine, there may be two or three major companies, such as UIP (United International Pictures, I think they handle Universal and Paramount), whatever company is distributing for Disney, and maybe one other (handling Warners and Fox, and some independents). A couple of them may actually be under the control of a local government conglomerate, most likely Berjaya, they have their hands in monopolising everything. In the interest of making money, they would, of course, select the movies that are most likely to sell, easy to promote (action! violence! big stars!) the same way Hollywood would most likely push a movie. So, we get more of the action films, the horror films, cartoons for the kids, etc. The more drama oriented films - maybe even the romance and comedies to a lesser extent - are often side-stepped. I posted up to 46 reviews for movies I saw in the cinema over 2013 (and a few seen elsewhere, such as on disc or over ASTRO). By the way, first new movie of the year - which I decided to pass on - is Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. The aforementioned fiscal factor also led to some movies being bypassed, most prominently Monsters University. Thing is, I didn’t really care for the characters, even in Monster Inc, which I felt was the low point of Pixar movies at the time (Cars II may actually take that spot now). The lack of solid dramas saw, more often, delayed releases (The Butler being one, 12 Years A Slave being the more current one) and usually in my least preferred cinema, i.e. it’s a hassle to get to it, the seats are awful and the last time I was there, the sound system still sucked. Made it easy for me to bypass and just wait for it to turn up on cable or borrow a disc off someone else. So in that light, it’s no point for me to do a “Best Of” list. There were movies I enjoyed watching this year, and the ones I enjoyed surely baffled others. Quite often, there were movies where I just like parts of instead of the whole. As much as I love The Croods - the opening ‘breakfast chase’ scene being one of the best animated sequences I had ever seen in 3D, the rest of the movie was not bad - it got middling ratings from critics across the board. Probably for not being a Pixar feature, or that it features Nicolas Cage. The Lone Ranger was a bit of a meandering mess, but I love the opening train sequence and the closing train sequence. They’re some of the best orchestrated chaotic action scenes put on screen this year. It’s the middle part that could have done with some trimming. There seems a need for these movies to hit a particular running time - an average film runs 130 - 140 minutes these days, even when they don’t need to. See The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug as a prime example. One of the slimmest movies of the year was also quite divisive for some. Gravity peaked just about the 90 minute mark with its fairly outrageous plot mechanics but undeniably amazing cinematography and choreography.
What else? I love the first half of Riddick, not so much the second half. Machete Kills had some insanely ingenious moments (like the “3D sequence”) and best use of Mel Gibson as a villain. Love the sword fights of The Wolverine while the rest of the movie could have tightened up a bit. The “Major Tom” moment for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was the best use of a Bowie song in an impeccably realised sequence. Furious 6 was good for its insane action, stunts, physics defying mid-air catch and flying headbutt, but Fast 5 is still the best of the series. Chris Hemsworth was good in Thor: The Dark World, but he excelled in Rush. Pacific Rim was simply awesome, to the point that the likelihood of having a sequel by director delToro seems so slim. And, for me, discovery of the year was Detention for its audaciousness at flipping horror and science-fiction conventions. While I don’t often pick a “movie of the year”, it might be easy to note that Frozen ended up with the highest rating among the movies I reviewed. So there… let’s see what 2014 will bring around. I expect it’ll be a great year for science fiction.
2 Comments
1/3/2014 08:07:34 pm
Did you change the background, you´ve updated the site, look´s nice.
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bck1402
1/11/2014 10:13:39 pm
Sorry for the late reply. I've got to check up on the notices more often instead of just dropping by once a week.
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