Category: movies

(Based on a true story. TV film by BBC and HBO – you might catch it on HBO one night.)

Alexander Masters (Benedict Cumberbatch) works for a charity group that helps homeless people. One day, their facility gets raided and the two charity workers in charge, later dubbed as the Cambridge Two, are arrested. Apparently, some of the homeless men they are helping have been selling drugs. Alexander helps set up a campaign to free the Cambridge Two, and in one meeting, he meets Stuart Shorter (Tom Hardy), who has brilliant ideas to help free the charity workers. “My name is Psycho, but you can call me Stuart,” he says, and he and Alexander become fast friends. Alexander tells Stuart that he wants to write a book about him, and though baffled by his interest, Stuart tells him to tell it backwards, to make it exciting, “like a Tom Clancy novel”.

In one scene, Stuart asks Alexander why he considers him – a criminal and a man with an unstable mind – as a friend. “Because you’re funny, intelligent, good company- what do you want, a fucking love letter?” Alexander says, but in the end that’s what Stuart gets. A love letter in the form of a biography, and later, this film, from a friend who has heard his darkest secrets but still loved him and wanted him understood and remembered.

Fine, fine performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy. I can’t praise them enough.

I Do Bidoo Bidoo is a film musical written and directed by Chris Martinez and stars our favorite, Eugene Domingo. It features a plot that we are all familiar with: Rock (Sam Concepcion), a registered nurse from a colorful, middle-class family, has been dating Tracy (Tippy Dos Santos), a beautiful girl from an uber-rich brood, complete with a stern, ex-general lolo, an almost-absentee businessman father, an unhappy mother, and acres and acres of farmland (“Please proceed to Gate 3” “Please proceed to the main mansion”). Tracy gets pregnant, and the film opens with Rock’s mother (Domingo) bewailing his future. What about your plans to go abroad? she screams at him while preparing the food to bring to his pamamanhikan.

It is an endearing film that does not falter when switching from hilarious to heartbreaking scenes. It has a hard time, however, in tying up its loose ends – the film ends with a montage and an out-of-place VO. But that doesn’t take away the fact that here is a Pinoy musical that is well-acted (seriously, what a great ensemble), that does not feel or look or sound awkward, and features truly good music.

At the screening we saw last night, the audience applauded.

Christopher Nolan wants to end big with his Batman trilogy, and end it big he did. The Dark Knight Rises begins eight years after the events of The Dark Knight – but I won’t discuss the film. I won’t even give you a summary. I’m telling you: Don’t read any of the reviews. Go into it blind, like a bat. All I’m going to say: I’ve seen all three Batman films from Nolan, and this is the first time Bruce Wayne (played by Christian Bale) came across as a sympathetic character. In the previous installments I didn’t care much for him; here, I’d give him a cup of coffee and listen to what he has to say. Maybe it’s his age. Maybe it’s the loss of hope. Anne Hathaway is fantastic as Selina Kyle. Michael Caine as Alfred J. Pennyworth shines here as an anguished man watching his young ward charge into a brick wall. So to speak. What a way to end for Batman, and what an ending.