Tomorrow: When The War Began - Renegade Teens As War Heroes

Novelist John Marsden sold millions of copies for his book - "Tomorrow: When The War Began", a series that has a rabid teen following in Australia and New Zealand. In fact, when news of its impending film adaptation came, the teenage online community was abuzz with excitement, each one giving their 2 cents about who should play Ellie, Homer or Kevin.

I was just glad to have finally caught on with this Australian phenomenon.

Capsule

A group of teens heads down to the wilderness for a camping adventure. There's headstrong Ellie (Caitlin Stasey) and her bestfriend Corrie (Rachel Hurd-Wood) whose relationship with boyfriend Kevin (Lincoln Lewis) is on simmer. A few other guys in their company include hunky Homer (Deniz Akdeniz), et.al. While in the wilderness that night, they noticed a parade of war planes flying over them. War games, maybe? The morning after, they found their homes abandoned; their parents gone, dogs splay dead on the road; everything in disarray.

Later that night, they learned the shocking truth: Australia has been invaded by a neighboring nation (I'd say they're either the North Koreans or the Chinese) who wanted Australia's affluence to spill over. They saw their parents in prison camps. What are they supposed to do when it seems help is nowhere in sight?

The film is a fantastical adventure about teens who decide to fight back to reclaim what is rightfully theirs: freedom, property and their family. And their first step was to blow up a bridge heavily used by the invading forces to transport supplies. Can they summon enough guts to pull the plan off?

Isn't that a testosterone-charged imagination?

Youthful charm and exuberance fuel its fantastic storyline, you somehow need to suspend disbelief to thoroughly enjoy its premise! They've hired soap veterans for their cast (Caitlin Stasey is from "Neighbours"; Deniz Akdeniz is from "As The Bell Rings"; and resident bad boy Lincoln Lewis is from "Home and Away"). Message boards mostly agree with the casting of Deniz as Homer, and Caitlin as Ellie, although some find Caitlin too chic to play Ellie (who should have a farm girl persona). I am not familiar with Stasey's other characters so I found her perfect as the main protagonist.

The movie is told like they were still on the incipient stages of adventure, thus we may expect a couple of sequels, as this is somehow "designed" as a trilogy. I wouldn't complain on that. I had fun watching them shoot the bad guys and blow up stuff. And it didn't hurt that the guys were such eye-candies. Deniz's Homer smolders! And Chris Pang (who plays Ellie's love interest Lee) has an endearing personality.

Caitlin Stasey constantly reminds me of Harry Potter's Emma Watson! As Ellie Linton, she "rocks"!

Cute guys in a row. The guys from Stuart Beattie's "Tomorrow: When The War Began".

Deniz Akdeniz, Lincoln Lewis and the gorgeous Chris Pang saying "cheese"!

Lincoln Lewis and Deniz Akdeniz share the Bronte Beach sun.

Deniz Akdeniz is born in Australia to Turkish Cypriot parents thus the unique name - and such exotic looks. In the film, he plays Homer who's infatuated with Fiona (Phoebe Tonkin).

Lincoln Lewis has a huge Australian teenage following due to his usually bare-chested role in the soap "Home and Away". He was involved in a sex scandal involving him and a starlet, the video taken from his cell phone, which he later boasted and showed to his TV cast-mates. This eventually ended his 3 year character as Geoff in "Home and Away" where he won a Logie as "the most popular male star". Scandal made him even more so. Right, Hayden?

Lincoln Lewis

Lincoln Lewis plays Kevin Holmes who's more interested in securing his safety than looking after his girlfriend Corrie. Later in the film, Kevin redeems himself.

Chris Pang plays Lee, Ellie's love interest.

Tumbok - Exhaustingly Marooned in Cliche

When I was a child, I had a yaya who flourished in her fantastical stories. It was a childhood replete with the most vivid tales of folk lore and superstitions. She loved scaring me until I was blue and shaking under my sheets. But then she would smile and assure me that bad things happen only to bad people. How naïve, right? But it was sweet, and I soon learned to cope. Children are resilient and learn to adjust in time. I still get my goose bumps when watching horror flicks, but I can now sit through a marathon of them wearing a poker face, seemingly without care, but with toes curled down below.

“Tumbok” is one of those superstitions that I’ve come across early on. It’s when a street or two converge, and this focal point becomes the epicenter of bad luck. This is the point of contention in Topel Lee’s “Tumbok”.

Young couple Ronnie (Carlo Aquino) and Grace (Cristine Reyes) inherit a room in a doddering, ramshackle building right where three streets converge. Most of its tenants have all but deserted this tenement, except for the few occupants in the same floor as Grace and Ronnie’s. The transfer has been smooth as the couple is being ushered into their new abode, with great help coming from their landlord Mark (Ryan Eigenmann). But things go bump in the dark, and Grace is plagued by visions and sounds that don’t quite exist on second sight. Gradually, a series of mishap characterize the fate of the building’s inhabitants: an explosion at the students’ room; a constantly bickering couple (Wendy Valdez and DJ Durano). Moreover, there’s a ghostly child named Yumi who vanishes just as quickly.

Furthermore, cataclysms seem to follow the couple. Ronnie develops a non-healing wound where worms crawl out of and Grace starts dreaming of being taken advantaged by Mark. Even job opportunities where Grace has already been accepted disappear (the employing officer dies). Are these things related to their present home? Lumen (LJ Moreno), the couple’s cousin, soon confirms this, albeit fatally so.

CONGESTED THOUGHTS

Early on, the story is congested with recurring scenes set to establish an atmosphere of dread: an off-kilter music that suddenly turns into loud bangs saunters along with visions of ashen faced children – peeping through doors, gazing from the foot of the stair, morbidly dipped under water in a tub, or gliding sideways behind their backs. How much mood do you need when you find this gimmick nauseatingly repeated 5 times in the first 20 minutes of the movie! Does it get scarier the more we repeat it? The element of surprise dissipates as quickly after the 5^th appearance-disappearance and this “contraption” becomes exhausting. You end up getting sensitized - and it isn't even half way through the whole movie.

Unfortunately, there are more derivative scenes you can easily identify from ten dozens of horror flicks: doors suddenly opening (this happens 4x or so); the protagonist waking up from a bothersome dream (this happens 3x); invisible creatures creeping under the bed; crawling hands moving under the blanket then sliding through the hair; ghouls posturing behind Cristine or Carlo like they are about to devour them, but when they look behind, there’s no one there. Yup, all of the above, with nauseating regularity.

Where is the T in T-junction?

At some point in the film, you realize Topel Lee is stuck in a narrative plateau. Yes, the director has an enviable cinematic eye. He creates images that reek with mood and an impending doom, but he has, of late, been victim to the “horror checklist”. He dutifully enumerates them in his cinematic pad, then peppers the whole story with “lots of it”. We are seeing him in an unflattering light. The realization becomes clear: Topel Lee is not a competent story teller. In this movie, he is completely at a loss. Desperately!

I once rationalized this suspicion and pointed the blame to mainstream film making because I have seen his “Dilim” (2005, with Mario Magallona and Rica Peralejo) and the “Ang Manunulat” segment of the omnibus project “ImaheNasyon”. These two films were progressive and entertaining works from Lee. But let’s check out his last 3 movies: the execrable “White House”, the vomit-inducing “Wapakman” (with Manny Pacquiao, and one of the worst films of the decade), and the uneven “Sundo” (with Robin Padilla and Sunshine Dizon). Clickthecity reviews have been kind to Mr. Lee, but after several movies, I just do not understand a statement like “…but he's capable of so much more.” More what? More of “My Kuya’s Wedding?” After making these last three films, Topel Lee has indeed shown what he is capable of doing. And this isn’t much!

Is there really an immense talent behind someone who shamelessly imitates Yam Laranas’ “ghosts in the tenement” tales? Are people really so forgetful of Laranas “Sigaw” (with Iza Calzado) and its American incarnation “The Echo” (Jesse Bradford and Iza Calzado)? Some of the characters in "Sigaw" included an abusive cop and his battered wife. Lee updates this in "Tumbok" with an abusive security guard and his wife (Durano and Valdez), which is a demotion since, heck, it’s just DJ Durano playing the part, and we don’t want to upstage Carlo Aquino who is the police department’s official photographer, do we? These “trapped characters” keep re-experiencing these events in vicious cycle. Wasn’t that the delectable conceit in Yam Laranas’ movie’s epilogue?

Even the details are indolent. When Ronnie bangs at the door of the rambunctious students to ask them to pipe down, they just ignore him. So he pulls his police badge out from somewhere under his shorts! When he visits a hospital to see his wife, he once again flashes his badge when all he needs to do is ask for the room number since he is the patient’s husband after all. His badge is glued somewhere in the recesses of his ass, and he's just too happy to flash them when he can.

Once again, we turn “medical”. In one scene, Aling Elsie (Malou de Guzman) points out, “Buntis ka? Ang lakas ng pintig ng leeg mo eh.” Distended neck veins are a sign of pregnancy? You better rush that girl to the hospital because such distention is synonymous with right-sided heart failure more than pregnancy. I have never heard of such hogwash! When Ronnie unfolds the bandage from his arm wound, he finds it throbbing and growing, with worms crawling out of a hole, yet we don’t exactly see him rushing to the doctor. He treats it like it's a pimple waiting to be squashed. Cash strapped maybe? “Naubos ang savings ko sa libing ni Lumen,” he reasons later.

Cristine Reyes is an engrossing presence, making this cycle of clichés a wee bit tolerable, and Carlo Aquino makes the most of his low-ranked police officer with an adumbral past. Unfortunately, pairing Reyes and Aquino together was like lighting a torch filled with water, instead of petrol. There isn’t any spark to speak of. Ara Mina and Jao Mapa’s cameos (a side story that supposedly explains Ronnie’s past) feel incongruent to the idea of "tumbok". After all, how can Ronnie forget everything about his origin? A coping mechanism to forget? Was he an amnesiac in the vein of Toni Gonzaga (“My Amnesia Girl”)? Ryan Eigenmann renders the flick some gravitas, but his incubus (a demon who descends upon people to have sexual intercourse with them in their sleep) feels too manipulated a character to be believed, a plot device that doesn't quite hold water. Are we still talking about “tumbok” (“poison arrow” in feng shui) here or is this a separate entity? The devil's child, perhaps? These fusion of ideas clutter around in confusion. But, hey, at least we have a lot of atmospheric shots, di ba?

Finally, just to lay out the concept of “tumbok” on the discussion table, check out our diagram of “tumbok” above (courtesy of www.cavitehomes.com) and compare this with the “other” entity called “Curved Knife” road. Then compare this with the building used in the movie (see the photo above). It hardly describes a “T-junction” to me, does it? Maybe they should have re-titled this one with something more appropriate. Like “Hilo”?

Bonamine, anyone?

Cristine Reyes - engrossing presence

Cristine Reyes

Cristine Reyes

Ryan Eigenmann - enough gravitas

LJ Moreno as Lumen discovers that Ronnie and Grace live right in the heart of superstition.

Lamog - Maui Taylor & Ace Castro Shake A Dysfunctional Family

I was admittedly looking forward to watching Carlo Alvarez’s “Lamog” (Bruised), something that doesn’t happen often with me and local flicks. I’ve chanced upon the trailer of the flick and it looked promising enough, it echoed movies like “Gamitan”, “Hibla” and other Maui Taylor movies of the past – those that provoked and bristled with an undeniable undercurrent of suspense. Moreover, the camera work seemed inventive, the shots moody and glossy. And I have always believed that movies should be visual first. It has to start with the basic knowledge of imparting a story on a visual tableau because if all you have is a great story, sans cinematic technical facility – go write a book instead, honey!

These days though, it’s easier to expect cinema that doesn't quite deliver the goods. So let’s get down to business.

Eddie (Ace Castro) is an I.T. professional enjoying a frenzied, albeit financially lucrative existence in the big city. One fateful day, he gets a call from an old friend. It has been two months since the demise of his mother. Though he’s practically abandoned his family, he’s nevertheless furious why his brother Atong (Chris Evert) didn't inform him. With his girlfriend (Ruth Russel), he saunters back home. He arrives at their old house now craggy and rundown, leaves strewn everywhere, as though it’s just memories taking residence. He eventually finds his brother Atong, now married to Lila (Maui Taylor), the girl he left behind without saying goodbye. It’s now his stepfather (Emil Saldoval) calling the shots. After a brawl and a caustic altercation, he learns that most of his deceased mother’s properties have all been dispossessed. After all, her dialysis and eventual funeral services siphoned most of the family’s resources. Furthermore, Eddie didn’t leave them a forwarding address. “Hindi umiikot sa ‘yo ang mundo,” accuses his stepdad. From there, they’re left with hushed conversations brimming with pathos of a strained past.

Eddie’s contention doesn’t end with his mother’s death. When he finds himself alone with Lila, he couldn’t stop himself from touching her. The attraction is mutual. Lila stops his advances. The morning after, Eddie leaves in a huff. But not before realizing that he has to make his proper goodbye this time. “Para matuldukan,” he tells his girlfriend. During their discussion, Eddie unwittingly tries to win Lila back, making excuses for himself. Lila’s inconsolable: “Hindi mo lang alam kung gaano kahirap mula nung umalis ka. Lamog na ang puso ko, lalo mo pang binubugbog.” Cryptic words, indeed.

Eddie drives away, but they ran out of gas. The couple returns to the house and finds it abandoned. Later that day, Eddie witnesses events that would eventually clue him in on what’s been transpiring there. Henceforth, the narrative switches genre.

The ex-girlfriend, the brother, the protagonist, and the stepfather (clockwise from top-left).

It was crucial to find the perfect protagonist to buoy a labyrinthine plot, and for the most part, Ace Castro fits Eddie perfectly. In fact, we have someone who inhabits his character like second skin – and Ace is snug as a bug in a rug, so to speak. His manner of delivery could have used a little more finesse as he comes off too street smart sometimes. If you’ve made a good life in the big city, a little refinement in your manner of delivery could have strengthened a character's believability. Castro looks conspicuously good, his images (in contradistinctive angles) remind me of Dino Guevarra, Joseph Bitangcol, even Daniel Matsunaga, while his Pinoy looks is reminiscent of Dennis Torres (“Lagpas”). Castro makes a great lead. It is quite evident the way director Carlo Alvarez pans through Castro’s profile and contour with deifying close-ups. The camera loves his actor. This unfortunately exposes Castro’s unflattering side (healed pimple scars, conspicuous cinematic make-up and lipstick). Take note of Alvarez’s camera work: he pans objects as though they are sentient characters – the ramshackle house, Eddie’s car symbolizing affluence over a grungy past, edgy silhouettes. Alvarez is an insightful visual artist. But it’s in the attention to detail that the director turns a bit sloppy.

Maui Taylor’s return to the screen is a welcome delight. This time around, Taylor loses the “school-girl vixen” demeanor that she was known for. Her face looked fuller, and curiously more elongated than triangular, giving her a more mature look. Her presence renders this production a legitimate feel. Emil Sandoval has a certain level of adroitness in his characterization, but it would have benefited with a little more subtlety. There were instances where you’re made acutely aware that the narrative was swerving towards Cesar Montano’s “Ligalig” territory. In fact, there should have been a bit of a historical exposition into Emil Sandoval’s motives to give his character adequate raison d’etre. The nature of a person is the sum of his experiences from his past, di ba?

The past and present face Lila in brothers Eddie and Atong.

Ruth Russel (aka Ruth Partida) and Ace Castro (aka Dexter Castro)

Spoilers!

Music (by Alfredo Onleo) prevails over the narrative in heavy handed convention. It gets obtrusive when the score is laid out loudly even during specific moments when you’re supposed to pay close attention to what the characters are saying. In a scene where Lila was pleading for her stepfather to stop the slaughter, she shouts: “Eddie, tama na!” It wasn’t Eddie facing her with a gun, it was her stepfather (Emil Sandoval)! While Sandoval was sodomizing Lila, you’d hear her cry (without tears), yet Eddie’s girlfriend from the next room didn’t hear the fracas that included taking a kidnapped girl (Maribel Esteban) inside the house. "'Di man lang nagising? Baka bingi," asked someone near my seat. And do kidnappers really take their victims home? I thought that was a major no-no in Kidnapping 101. (Never take your victims home or at work where people could easily trace you.)

Director Alvarez is adept, deviceful and capable. And “Lamog” is a serviceable romp into dysfunctional domestic territory. By maneuvering it from a cabal dramatic feature into a full blown suspense thriller, some narrative elements get unhinged. A few more questions are suddenly exposed and left unrefuted.

I'm giving Alvarez my thumbs up. Let’s hope he doesn't end up as a “great visual technician but otherwise gravely wanting of storytelling skills”, like Michael Tuviera or Topel Lee.

Ruth Russel fights for her man.

Beautiful Maui Taylor returns to the big screen.

Ace Castro as Eddie

Dennis Torres of "Lagpas"

Brazilian Comedy in Claudio Torres' "The Invisible Woman"

I am trying to remember any Brazilian comedy I've watched as I write this, but nothing comes to mind. Most of the films I've seen from that country were dramas, and since we've a lot of Brazilians making a living in the Philippines, I might as well try to understand them through films. What makes Daniel Matsunaga, Fabio Ide and Akihiro Sato laugh?

Director Claudio Torres' comedy "The Invisible Woman" gives a partial answer. A 32 year old traffic controller Pedro (Selton Mello) falls to pieces when his girlfriend Lucia (Fernanda Torres) dumps him for a German guy. But little did he know that his next door neighbor Vitoria (Maria Manoella) has been spying on him all these years. Vitoria is married to an unaffectionate police man who eventually succumbs to a heart attack. Soon after Pedro's marital troubles, he starts imagining a bombshell Amanda (Luana Piovani) coming on to him, but is she real? Pedro's best friend Carlos (Vladimir Brichta) doesn't think so. Has Pedro gone bonkers? What will happen to the infatuated Vitoria?

Charming actors buoy fantastical situations and character that will have you guessing, is Pedro really going nuts? Or was it the spoiled tuna? (He was later admitted for food poisoning secondary to a canned tuna.) There is a certain sweetness in Vitoria's unrequited affection to her disturbed neighbor. When Pedro started taking his date to watch movies, or for candlelit dinners, we just knew that something wasn't right with Pedro. But his scenes at the dance club were just too funny to miss.

Light weight Brazilian comedy with charming actors. I've a winking smugness. Isn't that a joy?

Elevator scene

Luana Piovani is beautiful and statuesque Amanda. Is she real or not?

Maria Manoella is Vittoria who's infatuated with his next door neighbor Pedro.

Vladimir Brichta as Carlos, Pedro's best friend. He fell in love with Vitoria.

Selton Mello who looks like Brazil's version of Colin Firth.

Selton Mello is a multi-awarded Brazilian actor.

Lihim ni Adonis - Ill-Conceived Sexual Rigodon with Jeremy Ian

The pulchritude of a young man in Jeremy Ian is highlighted in Noli Salvador's "Lihim ni Adonis" - a little seen Pink Film from the makers of "Haliparot (Mana sa Ina)" which hybrids straight erotica and the pervasive pink flicks.

The story follows Adonis (Jeremy Ian), young, fair, good looking barrio boy who lives with an ailing father and a younger brother Gian (Gian Santos) in dire need of help for his studies. But Adonis' good looks has caught the attention of rural lass Vina (Thea Alvarez). When Vina's father (Dan Alvaro) learns of Vina's affection for Adonis, he plots a plan to snag the strapping young lad right down his daughter's lap. After all, Adonis' father has unpaid loans that's long overdue. The old man balks, but Vina's dad sweetens the deal, promising to finance Gian's studies. Suddenly, getting married wasn't such an acrid predicament. So Adonis clinches the deal.

On their matrimonial night, the dissolute bride finds her carnal advances rejected, paving the way for clues about Adonis' secret - his sexual preference, a fact hitherto ambiguous. The plot thickens when Jomar (Diomar Dyangco), Adonis' best friend from his childhood days, rides back into town with his friends (Charles Delgado as the wheedling Jun). One day, while Adonis finds a drunk Jomar at the riverside, Adonis coerces his helpless buddy, giving him fellating pleasures, despite the latter's protest: "Ano'ng ginagawa mo? Huwag! Tama na!" Which is funnier than executed because how can an able bodied young man who's capable enough of walking on rough terrain over huge boulders, adept enough to take off his swimming trunks and jump into a heavy stream, but suddenly defenseless against the oral advances of his dear childhood friend? A conundrum indeed.

The succeeding days pass by as the story plateaus into narrative skepticism. Jomar meets Vina, and he's besotted. But this doesn't stop him from sleeping (again) with Adonis who was himself lured into Jun's (Charles Delgado) seductive bed. Hilariously, this trifling detail of attraction and rigodon has Jomar sleeping with the sexually frustrated Vina who suddenly finds the nirvana of pleasure in Jomar's voracious appetite.

The adulterous couple starts to plan their great escape. But not before reclaiming Vina's fortunes (a wad of money given to Adonis' younger brother for his studies). One fateful day, Adonis catches Jomar and Vina in flagrante delicto. He wails in deep sorrow: "Paano n'yo nagawa sa akin ito?" which all the more made me chuckle considering he's been shagging every other guy who waves their penises at him. These are cinematic moments of utter enlightenment. Common sense left the production when they filmed this.

When I present details of a story, it is with the objective that something out of a movie is worth a healthy discussion. But the nature of logical argumentation is so thin, I am hardly able to contain myself from just altogether abandoning this article. Why else would it take me almost a month to force myself to write this? That's why I know that there is a more powerful Being who dispenses people with enough resolve when the going gets tough. Let's consider the decision of Vina's father to marry off her daughter to someone who doesn't even have a job? Dan Alvaro's going away present for his daughter Vina (who admitted to having a crush on Adonis) was this young man whose father owes them a fortune. Dan, a soldier, was leaving his family because he was assigned to faraway Mindanao. His parting message: "O gusto ko pagbalik ko, marami na akong apo ha." Wait a minute, is he going to Tibet? Eritrea? Liberia? Turkmenistan? Or maybe Neptune perhaps?

Thea Alvarez and Diomar Dyangco share illicit moment as Adonis' wife Vina and best friend Jomar.

On a more positive note, Jeremy Ian is a star find. Though he was dull and robotic in his small part in Noli Salvador's "Haliparot (Mana Sa Ina)", Ian delineates his character's sense of perdition, of his loss of freedom, his probity regarding his sexual orientation or preference. We are not saying that Ian is already a thespian - far from it, actually. But his several scenes where he cries didn't end up amateurish, sappy, or floundering the way Jeff Luna usually delivers (by the way, where is he?) The coarse and reckless camera work sometimes pans his pimple ridden face which further renders empathy to his dilemma. And it doesn't hurt that Jeremy is so easy on the eyes, you may as well freeze a frame, and I wouldn't mind gazing at him. Oohlala indeed!

Thea Alvarez who has gained notoriety in Lucas Mercado's modern day soft porn flicks ("Darang", "Libido", "Bata Pa Si Rafael") doesn't do so badly herself, considering her character takes a back seat to the title role. I've never considered her pretty but I now understand why perving men constantly "search" for Thea's name in this blogsite and elsewhere. She has this allure of insidious naivete that makes men's motors running.

Diomar Dyangco, who has his start in legitimate indie films like the Cinemalaya flick, "Rekrut" tries his luck with this Pink Film. Though he doesn't come off awkward, his character is recklessly ill conceived, providing funny moments in scenes that should otherwise be austere. But this tack of piecing the characters together is deliberate and audacious - the objective is really to find them in sexual rigodon with each other. Do you wonder why?

Thea Alvarez gradually claiming her throne as the princess of B-flicks.

Diomar Dyangco will appear in an indie re-enactment of the Ampatuan massacre opposite Snooky Serna.

Note:

Please read our featured post on Cinema Bravo and why Web Criticism isn't always about good and reliable writing:
- http://makemeblush2.blogspot.com/2016/10/cinema-bravo-film-criticisms-execrable.html