Run (2013)

Mortal Kombat's Sub Zero? No, it's William Moseley in a parkour flick for tweens.

I once tried out for the 100m hurdles and hurt my balls.

At a glance:

Don't think there's been better "movie ambassadors" to parkour than Banlieue 13 (2004) and Yamakasi (2001), so Simone Bartesaghi's indie effort Run (2013) with the folks from Team Tempest is a worth a look-see if you're into this scene. It's supposed to be in 3D too, I think, though I watched me the regular version. What you get is a serviceable little time-waster, starrin William Moseley (English child star from the 2005 Narnia movie) as "hero... thief... traceur", as the taglines will have it. Nope, the man's instantly forgettable.

Bad news on the doorstep:

Unfortunately, Run tends to careen towards Step Up and Streetdance territory, lackin both the urgency and the pedigree to be taken more seriously by a wider audience. I'm not surprised some might even fall asleep watchin the trailer -- it's quite a lethargic little number for a movie about freerunnin! So I'm thinkin the only people who can be remotely excited about this are ) members of the production and distribution team b) parkour fans c) teenage moviegoers who will gobble up anythin with a young cast and a romantic subplot. It was a chore to finish this without some sort of substance abuse, really.

Perennial wonderment:

Slug parkour. This picture I found off the Internet must be some sort of cryptic review of the movie.

If I were born in a French banlieue, would I have been a traceur? All I can do now is admire all these Luc Besson movies and think of how I'd been chased by people all my life and never made an international movement out of it.

Kelsey Chow

Reminds me of:

Dance movies for teenagers. Can't believe I've had to watch a few. I think I've only ever enjoyed Honey (2003). Come to think of it, the female lead here looks a bit like Jessica Alba, doesn't she? Too bad she doesn't do much.

Watch out for:

Kelsey Asbill Chow, the Chinese-English looker who appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) but someone like my sister would remember as Gigi from TV's One Tree Hill. She complements the fluff here perfectly.

Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?

I guess what tipped it for me was that the parkour scenes aren't really immersive or fun to watch. Oh, well. Check out the official website and Facebook page for more info. I'm off to bed, fellas.★★
Bonus material:

What a poor promo pic. This review is to help out.

Lovelace (2013)

Peter Sarsgaard tickles Amanda Seyfried's tonsils in Lovelace (2013).

At a glance:

The real Linda Lovelace.

How far does a girl have to go to untangle her tingle, asks the poster for Deep Throat (1972), the purported most profitable indie flick of all time at some $600m (not accordin to the mob who funded it), out of which tragic starlet Linda Lovelace received none of the US$1250 owed to her. I wish I were livin in those pre-Internet days to experience fuck flicks at standalone cinema wankathons, at least once in my life. If I did, I wish I got to know Linda Susan Boreman, the unassumin Florida schoolgirl turned world famous porn star, often credited as bringing adult entertainment into the forefront of mainstream attention. This very sympathetic and one-sided Andy Bellin / W. Merritt Johnson treatment is a biopic based on Eric Danville's 2001 book The Complete Linda Lovelace, focusin on how the lass escapes her religious mother (Sharon Stone) to meet and marry the charismatic hustler Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) who would end up bein her papa pimp and punisher. Who would've thought that Linda's impressive capacity for fellatio would send her up the dizzyin heights of international superstardom and then down so far to the lowest levels of human depravity? Lovelace (2013) is a movie I was excited to read about and I wanted to like.

Bad news on the doorstep:

Juno Temple would've been my top choice for Linda.

Dirty beauties Juno Temple and Chloe Sevigny both have small roles in this and I wish either of them had landed the leadin part instead. Was Amanda Seyfried cast because of her freckles and her 60s style, upside-down heart-shaped tits? I read that Kate Hudson was first choice! What a disaster that would've been. Far more critical than that, of course, is how easily the picture goes down, when contrasted against the cultural significance of its characters. I'm talkin about how it "reduces an immensely disturbing, politically byzantine tale to a series of cartoonish vignettes" and how "this celeb-studded biopic squanders a gutsy performance by Amanda Seyfried while making '70s porn look scarcely more sleazy than a movie-of-the-week melodrama from the period", accordin to Rob Nelson for Variety. Sarsgaard and Adam Brody especially give some layered, highly watchable performances but the way all the characters enter and exit the proceedings, e.g. Playboy legend Hugh Hefner played by James Franco, simply devalues the explosive subject matter. Not only is the camerawork rather static, the characterisation makes caricatures out of everyone and many potentially powerful scenes lose their emotional gravitas, e.g. Dad (Robert Patrick) talkin to his little girl on the phone about how he had to walk out of the cinema, and Linda survivin a beatin in the streets only to be rescued by cops who were more interested in gettin her autograph.

Well, at least the retro typeset and production design was spot on.

James Franco's pipe-wielding Hugh Hefner!

Perennial wonderment:

Will we ever find out how much the movie actually made? Did Hugh Hefner really get a blowjob from Linda and was he really a sympathetic figure who wanted her to be a legitimate movie star? Was Linda actually a pathological liar and used everyone, just as much as they used her? It would've been nice to at least cover the other angle about how she felt the anti-porno movement also manipulated her durin her last days.

Reminds me of:

The wonderfully depressin biopics Auto Focus (2002) about Bob Crane and What's Love Got To Do With It (1993) about Tina Turner - both of which are vastly more resonant and wholly entertainin than this one.

I can't remember if I cried:

When it stopped at 92 minutes. What kind of self-respectin biopic has such a short runtime? No wonder everythin seems rushed!

Most memorable line:

Chuck says: "No, Linda, it's Shakespeare. I told them you do a great English accent, particularly with a cock down your throat."

Innit sad that a movie so big gave so little to Linda?

Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?

Total Film's Kate Sables notes that for a movie obsessed with truth-tellin, Lovelace "ignores the competing accounts of its heroine’s porno past, privileging only her own version". Another online comment dismisses Lovelace as "nothing more than a by-the-numbers, woman empowerment, Lifetime channel Movie Of The Week…with nudity". I do feel it's not very tender and disappointingly mediocre. For a more academic view on the topic, check out the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat. By the way, does anyone know what happened to that other Linda Lovelace story that was supposed to be out this year, Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story (2013), starrin Malin Akerman and Sasha Grey? I read that Lindsay Lohan was supposed to be the lead. Oh well, meanwhile I'll have to check out Paul Schrader's The Canyons to see how LiLo is doin. ★★1/2
The day the music died:

R.I.P. Linda "Lovelace" Boreman (26 Jan 1949 - 22 Apr 2002)
and Charles Everett "Chuck" Traynor (21 Aug 1937 - 22 July 2002)

Bonus material:

Some of them like to use you, some of them like to be of use.

The Chaos Experiment (2009)

At a glance:
Uneventful scuffed project, starrin Val Kilmer (pic) and Eric Roberts among others. So scuffed was it that they didn't even dare release it in too many cinemas, despite a reported budget of US$ 7 million. Story? It's about a deranged scientist who locks six people in a Turkish steam bath and threatens to turn up the heat if the local paper doesn't publish his story about global warmin. Also known as The Steam Experiment. Whatever.

Chaos babes Cordelia Reynolds, Megan Brown & Eva Mauro.

Bad news on the doorstep:
To put it plainly, very unrewardin. Yep, there's a customary twist, of course. Avoid.
Perennial wonderment:
If I could ever learn to talk like Armand Assante, who plays a cop in this movie. You know, the Stallone-lip Italian mumble.
Reminds me of:
Cookin myself in the sauna as a pimply kid at Tropicana Golf Club.
Watch out for:
Eve Mauro (pic) takin off her top and walkin around the steam room askin to be raped like a whore on three weeks unpaid back rent. This is just about the only scene in the whole show that's worth any interest. I'm now curious to watch what I suspect to be her other nude roles in films such as Miss March (2009), The Grind (2009) and Wicked Lake (2008).
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
On account of Eve Mauro's tits - ★★
Trailer for the curious:

Bonus material: