Ashley (2013) @ Sprawl

Nicole Fox and Nicole Buehrer negotiates the awkward morning after in Ashley.

Hey, look! Another nipple poster.

At a glance:

Domenic Migliore's snailwork of a story Ashley (2013) a.k.a. Sprawl is an exercise in teen frustration that renders itself all too well at the hands of the director, Dean Matthew Ronalds. From the attractive poster, I'd thought it might be somethin like Flashdance (1983) meets Lolita (1997), or maybe even Gia (1998) meets Crush (1993). Turns out it's an indie drama scarcely worth watchin even for 22-year-old lead Nicole Fox, the fashion model starlet best known as the winner of Cycle 13 of America's Next Top Model. She plays a sullen 17-year-old student faced with a catalogue of personal problems like self-harm, bullyin, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, buddin homosexuality and a general disenchantment with life. She lives with her alcoholic single mum (Jennifer Taylor), who blames her husband's death on her. Gosh, if she only had AIDS this would be the middle-class suburban white version of Precious (2012), wouldn't it?

Bad news on the doorstep:

"I'm a teenager!"

I think a critical flaw in this effort is the surprisin lack of any moral resolution to the proceedings, but what upsets me the most is that the movie has little, if at all, to say about the human condition. There's plenty of amateurish camerawork to pick on, too. What will probably stop you in your tracks is the overdone soundtrack which is saturated with annoyin teenybopper music, tense piano pieces and even opera tracks -- all of which hardly improve the scenes. Hell, there's no tension to the narrative and sometimes I can't even bloody hear what the characters are sayin!

Perennial wonderment:

Michael Madsen:
Most hardworking cameo actor today.

Oh there goes Michael Madsen again, makin yet another five minute cameo in any shoestring indie project that could do with better billings. Didn't I just watch him last night in Nomad (2013) mumblin and barkin at someone as usual? Somewhere in the world, it's payday for Michael Madsen. Here, he collects after tellin Ashley what veal is and then tryin to cop a feel. What a plonker.

Reminds me of:

"This is how I feel about heterosexual sex and polite conversation."

That equally meanderin melodrama About Cherry (2012) starrin Ashley Hinshaw, about how a young girl becomes a porn star. By the way, there's hardly any nudity here, save maybe for an awkward phone sex scene. Oh wait, Nicole Fox does take her bathrobe off somewhere near the end, if you actually get anywhere near that.

Nicole Fox disappears into Ashley.
[Photo credit migliorephoto.com]

I can't remember if I cried:

Once the end credits rolled. Sheesh. Remember, I watch bad movies so you don't have to. If you paid to see this, you'd be mean enough to say it ain't too far off from a voyeur cam, the footage of a girl smokin, cuttin herself, smokin again, playin on her laptop and smokin again.

Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?

So was that endin an attempt at an emotional payoff? If I were payin enough attention, this movie actually has a very dangerous message. Me, I'm off to rewatch The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) to forget about all this palaver.★1/2
Bonus material:
Here are some production photos and a few movie stills if you insist on watchin it. You could also go check out the official website and the Facebook fan page.

America's Next Top Model Nicole Fox gives two for the cause.

How every successful relationship begins -- online.

Kill For Me (2013)

Katie Cassidy. Last seen in bloodied plastic in Nightmare On Elm Street (2010).

At a glance:

Kill For Me (2013) is an R-rated Canadian effort from Michael Greenspan, about roommates Amanda Rowe (Katie Cassidy) and Hailey Jones (Tracy Spiridakos) who share the problem of abusive men in the past and now must consider murder as an option to help settle each other's problems. Other casts include Chelah Horsdal, Colin Lawrence, Denis Corbett, Donal Logue, Leah Gibson and Ryan Robbins.

Bad news on the doorstep:

Not the strongest character expositions, made worse by several poor dialogues from a slightly lethargic script and an unrewardin twist climax. Katie Cassidy from TV's Gossip Girl and Arrow looks less interestin as the movie wears on.

Perennial wonderment:

Canadian actress Tracy Spiridakos looks a little like Amy Smart, doesn't she?
Okay, well, maybe not in this picture.

Reminds me of:

Mike Long of DVD Sleuth summarises perfectly: "Kill for Me is yet another movie where students never seem to go to school... plays like an odd combination of Strangers On A Train meets Wild Things. The movie wants to have an old-fashioned vibe while still portraying (nudity free) girl-on-girl action and some violent scenes. The end result doesn't add up to much and by the time the ending arrives, confusing reveals and all, most viewers will be saying 'Turn this off for me'."

Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?

Underwhelmin release. Show some love on Facebook if you've seen it.★★
Bonus material:

Katie Cassidy and Tracy Spiridakos.

About Cherry (2012)

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Toast (2010)

How do you beat the best lemon meringue pie ever baked in the world?

Ken Stott looks a bit like the
old guy from Up (2009), doesn't he?

At a glance:

Offbeat British telemovie set in the 60s, first aired on BBC One in December 2010. The narrator is Nigel Slater, an openly gay cook, food writer and TV personality whom New York Times' Stephen Holden calls "a Billy Elliot of the culinary arts". Not coincidentally, the screenplay is written by the same guy who did Billy Elliot (2000). Anyway, the proceedings are based on the memoirs first serialised in The Observer and then formin his 2004 autobiography Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger. We follow Nigel (Nottinghamshire upstart Oscar Kennedy as the younger version and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory's Freddie Highmore as the older one) as he lives out his early, pathetic and eventless Wolverhampton existence with his grumpy dad (Ken Stott) and acutely asthmatic mum (Victoria Hamilton) whose idea of cookin is boilin tinned foods in a pot. Title is a reference to the only thing the mum can do without burnin down the house.

Bad news on the doorstep:

I thought gays and pies never mix.

Strong first 15 minutes, everythin meandered thereafter. Probably that's why it's a TV movie. Pronounced lack of energy to the picture, nowhere as compellin as Billy Elliot and certainly well within the weekend viewin that TV series director S.J. Clarkson is comfortable with.

In the production notes, the adaptation is explained: For Hall it was a daunting task to convert Slater’s memoir to the screen. The book had been constructed as a large collection of beautifully crafted vignettes. These were moments that Slater recalled with stunning detail, but which were ultimately episodic, collated into a large canvas upon which the audience can see the entire scenery of Slater’s young life etched out. “It was clear to me that there was a proper narrative there underneath, but the way Nigel wrote it dusted the surface,” says Hall. “So it took a long time to piece together, like a jigsaw puzzle, all the little bits that he’d dropped from the book to make a clearer screenplay.” Shouldda taken a longer time, methinks. Really wanted to enjoy this but it came across grossly uneven and self-important to me.

Helena Bonham Carter
makes her presence felt in any movie.

You do like them prickly, don't you, son?

Perennial wonderment:

How Helena Bonham Carter can inject some pizazz into any role and movie, as she does here. Her solid performance as the brash but redoubtable house cleaner Mrs Potter is one of the few high notes of the movie.

Reminds me of:

It really oughtta been Chocolat (2000) in the West Midlands but no such luck.
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
Consistently but intentionally underhit throughout, this was probably magically intimate on paperback but it's hard to care for its big screen adaptation. Difficult to relate to Nigel here beyond token sentimentality. In fact, it made it all looked a bit too ordinary. Loved the Dusty Springfield score though, so we'll be kinder.★★★
Bonus material:

"Toast may have discarded some of the darker episodes from Slater's adolescence but it stayed doggedly loyal to the spirit of the book:
think Cinema Paradiso, but with pork pies instead of movies."
- This Is Leicestershire

Grace (2009)

Jordan Ladd

At a glance:

"Please, you don't understand.
She's special. She needs special food."

Jordan Ladd, the mildly sexy blonde you won't remember from movies like Cabin Fever (2002), Grindhouse (2007) and Hostel: Part II (2007) stars as an uneasy new mum in Grace (2009), a slick little horror flick produced by Hatchet (2006) director Adam Green. It's about this woman who gives birth to a stillborn but miraculously wills the baby back to life, unaware of the sick proceedings that follow. It really is quite classy I must say, and various themes of deviatin behaviour are explored, particularly those with maternal elements. Think jealous lesbians, overbearin post-menopausal mothers-in-law, lactatin fetishists and vegan apologist hypocrisy. This is wholesome R-rated stuff backed by some intense camerawork, even down to the filmin of food. 

Bad news on the doorstep:

If you've been only exposed to the traditional mould of horror movies, then you wouldn't give a cow's backside that this is a psychological thriller that studies motherhood anxiety, conventional midwifery and the catastrophic effects of nosy in-laws. You'd be only wantin to ask me if the baby is actually a zombie, or if the baby is Satan, or if the baby looks like Najib (since its a bloodsucker) or if the baby is only a dream, et cetera.

Perennial wonderment:

Do cats really reject soymilk?

Reminds me of:

Teeth (2007).

Watch out for:

Birthin scene. I guess givin birth to a dead child must qualify as one of the richest experiences a man can never have.
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?

Some rather original ideas here you might like. Not for expectant mums, of course.★★★

(500) Days Of Summer (2009)

At a glance:
Offbeat, dreamy and soundtrack-charged while amazingly maintainin a healthy distance from the dreaded teen genre we've come to loathe, this movie is a success story of sorts. Firstly, it walloped the sixth Harry Potter movie on a per-theatre basis when it went on limited release in the U.S. back in July. Then, there's multi-talented Zooey Deschanel (pic) who recently tied the knot (somethin her character found very difficult to do in the movie). Seems like everythin surroundin this gem of a date movie simple oozes positivity, down to the blue-centric colour palette used in the movie to bring out Deschanel's eyes! Told out of order with title cards to denote which days out of the titular 500 did the lovers do what, (500) Days Of Summer takes us through a serendipitous romance that is not so much witty as it is silly - but the winsome pairin of Deschanel with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (pic) as a suitor is at once disarmin and completely engagin. The male character Tom goes through courtship hell with his crush Summer, as we watch them through 95 clumsy but meaningful minutes of shower sex, Ikea shoppin and Brit pop discussions. There's even a delightful Bollywood-style musical sequence like what Toby Maguire did in Spider-Man 3.
Bad news on the doorstep:
Some elements took some shine away from the experience - plenty of tame humour and extended periods of pointless inactivity that could've been omitted. The assurin narrator who started us off on the story doesn't return to send us off on a happy endin either.
Reminds me of:
Walkin around Ikea with a male friend of mine after watchin Serendipity at 1 Utama. Gay.
Watch out for:
If you're watchin this in Malaysia, the word "penis" is cut from the park rendezvous, in case you're wonderin what that whole scene was about.
Most memorable line:
Aha! To protect you, I can't say.
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
Four stars. A strong finish. Prevailin social sentiments on contemporary romance elevate the movie from inoffensive to memorable. Some may wish there were 500 more of them days.

Brüno (2009)

At a glance:
In Brüno, gay Austrian fashionista Mr. Gehard does what he did as far back as 1998 - provokin unsuspectin people with his cinematically outrageous GAP sentiments (that's gay and proud, as a fashion-conscious Yorkshireman once shared with me). He learns dildo-to-dildo combat and irks Christian pastors. He tries to go straight by engagin in a romp with pornstar Michelle McLaren (pic). He talks about human rights issues with Paula Abdul while sittin on Mexican labourers actin as stools. He chases after Harrison Ford and gets told to fuck off, an obviously unstaged footage that accurately portrays how half the world must view this horrifically absurd character.
Bad news on the doorstep:
There is such a thing as too much and Brüno just underlines the irreversible fact that his celebrated characters, at one time so devastatingly funny, have ran their course. They're simply too recognisable now and the gags have become too tedious a chore to sit through a full feature for, never mind the activist protests and public uproar.
Perennial wonderment:
Sacha Baron Cohen's incendiary interview tactics are undoubtedly ingenious, being able to bring out the ingenuous best out of the real-life celebrity and public figures whom he pursues. The use of presumably faux-German words like spooncktum is also clever if not nauseatingly near to the mind. Mockin celeb trends like baby adoption plus political correctness in language are also done well by Brüno, who insists that "African-Americans" is the right term to call anyone from the African continent because anythin other than that refrain is racist, while at the same time bringing a black baby on a talk show and spectacularly exaggeratin his love for a child who is obviously not his. However, somewhere after the first third of the movie, it becomes obvious that Borat and Ali G are both much more likeable characters than this annoyin blonde buffoon whose watchability nosedives sharply into the risque and repetitive. Brüno is simply not sincere enough for us to care about.
Watch out for:
A Cambridge scholar doin a 2-minute oral sex simulation scene with an imaginary dead person. You'll find it a godsend that the man has decided to retire all his characters like Borat, Ali G and now Brüno.
Most memorable line:
Brüno after eatin a lot of pies: "I'm committing carbicide."
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
Tastelessness is personified by Brüno to good, one-time box office results. May it never be repeated for as long as anal bleachin is not a lunchtime topic with colleagues at work.

Edmond (2005)

Mena Suvari, the essential whore.
Always with directions to the closest ATM.

At a glance:
Somewhat a more twisted revisit of Michael Douglas in Falling Down (1993), this time its all about gettin laid and nobody does a less convincin job that the character actor William H. Macy (pic) in his role as a look-what-you-made-me-do Edmond Burke. Chronicled in the course of one long night, our fumblin anti-hero leaves his wife abruptly and goes downtown on a mission to wet his wick but the bizarre and surreal soon drives him to murder, although you don't really think it's anyone's fault. Seems like that's the message - an ordinary middle-class man carryin his white man burden to Trouble Town.

William H Macy talks money with Bai Ling.

Bad news on the doorstep:
It's just a little short of bein a thinkin man's horror movie. Meanin, it's for film students.
Reminds me of:
American Psycho (2000) and those Lynch movies. William H. Macy's bedroom scenes still bring back the horrors of havin caught a glimpse of his unsightly knob in The Cooler (2003). Not a pleasant experience.
Watch out for:
Mena Suvari (pic) as a whore, Bai Ling as a stripper and Julia Stiles as a waitress whom Edmond takes home.
Most memorable line:
William H. Macy goes "that's too much" every time he hears the price for a score. It's an amusin refrain because his character has principles, just like the protagonists in Herman Yau movies.
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
If I do get it, which I think I do, then it's gotta be ★★ stars because there's gotta be a neater and cleaner way to present this. If I don't get it, it's ★★★★ alright!