Movie Review: The Great Gatsby

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Genre: drama

Rating: **** (4 out of 5)

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is one of the most enduring 20^th Century novels in the English language. First published in 1925, the tragedy lays bare the glamour and perils of pursuing the ever elusive American Dream. In the decades since, The Great Gatsby has become a staple in high school syllabi in America, alongside Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. 

The Great Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann

Every year I teach The Great Gatsby to 11^th and 12^th graders. One of the first things I point out to my students is the novel’s relevance in today’s world. Despite its setting in the Jazz Age – the decade between the First World War and the Great Depression and arguably the most romantic time in all of American history – its depiction of the nouveau riche, the yawning gap between the have’s and the have not’s and a society on the brink of moral and economic collapse all rings true to observers of Modern China.

Australian director Baz Luhrmann is best known for putting out bold, stylized and extravagant spectacles, from Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! to the Broadway adaptation of La Boheme. Watching a Luhrmann film is like watching the Cirque du Soleil: an assault on the senses by eye-popping sets, shimmering costumes and a menagerie of musical numbers.

In The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann has done it again. He turns the volume button way up and drags the color saturation dial to the max. The result is a 3D extravaganza of overflowing champagne, anachronistic hip-hop music and all the art deco opulence imaginable. The film is every bit as decadent as the Jazz Age itself.

Party scene after party scene in the spectacular adaptation

Luhrmann by and large stays close to Fitzgerald’s original story, with the exception of the framing device he invented for better story-telling on the silver screen. The film opens with Nick Carraway, the narrator-in-chief who recounts his traumatic experience in New York City from a rehab facility. This allows the rise and fall of mysterious billionaire Jay Gatsby to unfold in the way it does in the novel. Fitzgerald fans will be pleased to see that all the literary symbolism that runs through his novel, such as the green light in East Egg, the clock on the mantlepiece and Dr. T. J. Eckleburg’s giant eyeglasses, has been carefully preserved. And the three most important scenes – Nick’s first party at the Gatsby Mansion, the reunion between Gatsby and his love interest Daisy and the Plaza Hotel confrontation – are treated with care and dramatic tension.

Almost as twinkling as the Tiffany’s jewelry worn by Daisy are the all-star cast, many of whom deliver their career’s best. On that subject, we must start with Leonardo DiCaprio, who looks like a younger, less detached Robert Redford (who starred in the 1974 movie adaptation). DiCaprio’s Jay Gatsby is at once determined and halting, earnest and evasive, invincible and vulnerable. It is the first time I actually notice DiCaprio as a serious actor rather than just another Hollywood leading man. 

"Champagne, old sport?"

Tobey Maguire holds his own playing the wide-eyed Nick Carrway, the observer from “within and without” who takes it all in with equal intrigue and disgust. Australian actor Joel Edgerton also gives a compelling performance portraying the gruff, bigoted scion Tom Buchanan. The only disappointment is English actress Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan. Looking like a younger version of Michelle Williams, Mulligan comes up short on both looks and gravitas. We can’t comprehend why a man like Gatsby would spend his entire life chasing a girl like Daisy. Perhaps Scarlett Johansson or Rooney Mara would have been a better casting choice. Worse, Mulligan plays Daisy as a feeble victim of a love triangle instead of a callous narcissist and a willful accomplice to her contemptible husband. It is where the movie misses the mark.

In the end, The Great Gatsby is a highly entertaining drama that falls short of the serious tragedy that perhaps it never aspires to be. It is more wowing than it is touching. Because of that, the movie is universally panned by movie critics in America. But such is the peril of working with literary classics like Great Expectations and Anna Karenina: everyone has a preconceived notion of what the movie adaptation should look like. I also wonder whether movie critics are knocking the movie or Fitzgerald’s novel itself. Indeed, revisionists have long questioned the “greatness” of The Great Gatsby and called it “flawed” and “overrated.” So whether you end up liking the movie – which I did – or hating it ultimately depends on whether you like the book itself. 

First edition published in 1925 by Scribner's

Movie Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

Director: J. J. Abrams

Genre: Sci-fi

Rating: *** (3.5 out of 5)

Star Trek is an American cultural phenomenon. Created by television producer Gene Roddenberry in the mid-1960s, the franchise has spawned no less than six TV series and a dozen films. It even hired a linguist to invent Klingon, a language spoken not only by the fictional warrior race on set but also by hardcore fans at science fiction conventions. The enterprise commands a cult following of devotees called Trekkies, who know every trivial fact about the show, the characters and the actors who play them.

Star Trek owes much of its success to the winning combination of adventures and moral lessons. It tackles issues like racism, feminism, human rights and wars. Above all, the show teaches young viewers to be open-minded and accepting of each other's differences. Aired between 1966 and 1969, the Original Series was one of the first American TV shows to feature a multi-racial cast.

Star Trek Into Darkness by J.J. Abrams

Like Star Trek, director J. J. Abrams is an American cultural phenomenon. He is the Steven Spielberg and George Lucas of the 21^st Century. In 2006, he successfully revived the Mission Impossible series after John Woo ran it to the ground. His first Star Trek movie in 2009 and sci-fi/thriller Super 8, a tribute to Spielberg’s ET, have cemented his status as the leading science fiction go-to guy. Abrams is now entrusted with three of Hollywood’s most coveted franchises: Mission Impossible, Star Trek and Star Wars. Star Wars: Episode VII is set to be released in summer 2015.

In Star Trek Into Darkness, the dream cast from the universally praised first installment returns, with Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Simon Pegg as Scotty and Zoe Saldana as Spock’s multi-lingual love interest. Quinto, whose claim to fame was his super-villain character Sylar in the hit TV show Heroes, is the glue that holds the entire movie together. In Into Darkness, the super-villain role Khan falls on Benedict Cumberbatch, a British actor largely unknown to the American audience. Perhaps because creating a good villain is so difficult, director Abrams borrows a page from The Avengers. Like Loki (the chief antagonist in The Avengers), Khan spends much of his screen time trapped in a glass cage on a spaceship playing mind games with the good guys. Like Loki, Khan too sports a British accent and a slicked back hairdo. 

Director Abrams and the cast

The opening sequence is arguably the best part of the movie. It starts with an Indiana Jones-esque foot chase through an eye-popping cornfield, as Captain Kirk and Lieutenant McKoy are pursued by native tribesmen on the planet Nibiru. The scene makes the 3D format worthwhile, with spears and arrows flying past the audience with great realism. The spectacular set piece is what Star Trek is all about: exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new civilizations. I wish the rest of the movie would be more like that.

Far from going where no man has gone before, Abrams sticks to the same tricks that made the first installment a box-office juggernaut. Like its 2009 predecessor, Into Darkness is action-packed and the script is laden with literary and self references. But there is not one surprise or wow factor in the second film for fan boys to cheer about as they walk out of the theater. Instead, the non-stop peril facing the Star Fleet seems labored and manufactured. Crises seem to happen on cue: an engine malfunction dovetails nicely with the discovery of malice; a new disaster unfolds as the previous one is averted by sheer luck. Just as I have feared, the movie ends with a drawn out hand-to-hand combat between the good guy and the villain, a tiresome finale that reminds me of the torturous remake of Total Recall last year.

Kirk: "I don't want to lose you, Spock"

The homosexual subtext between the cocksure Captain Kirk and the stoic Spock is unmistakable. The Odd Couple’ish bromance in the first installment has blossomed into full blown man love. It surpasses even the ambiguous friendships between Thelma and Louise, Sherlock and Watson, and Sam and Frodo. There are moments in the film when the audience seriously think that the two men will suddenly lock lips. But they don’t. Instead, they touch hands on opposite sides of a glass pane like two star-crossed lovers. And why not? I'd like to think that most of us today are more open-minded and accepting than audiences in the 1960s.

Movie Review: Iron Man 3

Director: Shane Black

Genre: superhero

Rating: *** (3.5 out of 5)

If by now you still haven’t watched Iron Man 3 or need to read a review to convince you to, then you are probably not a superhero fan and can't tell the Green Lantern from the Green Hornet. Chances are you haven’t watched the first two Iron Man movies or The Avengers. That means you haven't witnessed the way Robert Downey Jr., who plays motormouth/billionaire/playboy Tony Stark, delivers zinger after zinger with deadpan perfection and carries an entire movie from start to finish. You have been missing out.

Iron Man 3 by Shane Black

Iron Man 3 is a cinematic treat. By itself, the movie doesn't hold a candle to the triumphant Avengers or any of Christopher Nolan's apocalyptic Batman films. But viewed as part of the trilogy, it is light-hearted, good-natured and, despite franchise fatigue, still makes for a great Friday night entertainment. 

Second-time director Shane Black is responsible for the box office dud Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in 2005 and is better known for writing all four Lethal Weapon movies. In Iron Man 3, Shane plays it safe and sticks to the same formula that has worked well for the first two installments: punchy one-liners, spectacular fight scenes and the determination to not take itself too seriously. Above all, Shane relies on Robert Downey Jr., who plays his role with such effortlessness that the director simply steps back and lets him do his thing.

The movie also boasts an all-star supporting cast. Rebecca Hall, who plays a prudish intellectual in Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona, is botanist Maya Hansen. Guy Pearce, best known for his cult hit Memento, is geneticist Aldrich Killian. Then there is Ben Kinsley (Gandhi, Hugo), who plays a super-villain called the Mandarin with great theatrical flair. The Anglo-Indian veteran actor steals the show despite Downey's dominating presence. To boost ticket sales in China, the film's producers initially enlisted Asian stars Andy Lau (劉德華) and Fan Bingbing (范冰冰). Whereas Lau reportedly turned down the offer because he found his character too “dispensable,” Fan took the part but appears only in the film’s Mainland version.

Ben Kingsley is the Mandarin

Iron Man 3 gets off on a sluggish start. Tony Stark’s sidekick Happy Hogan, played by actor-director Jon Favreau, takes up too much screen time in the first half-hour, as his tiresome bantering with Stark drags on. It is perhaps part tribute and part appeasement to Favreau, who directed the first two Iron Man movies but was dropped after Disney took over the series from Paramount Pictures.

The pace picks up quickly, however, with the emergence of the Mandarin who looks like Osama Bin Laden in a Qing Dynasty court dress. He is Fu Manchu meets Ming the Merciless, a caricature Star Trek villain that borders on offensive. There are other cringe-worthy moments too. One of the attacks plotted by the Mandarin has pedestrians blown to pieces outside the TCL Chinese Theater, a scene that evokes gruesome images from the Boston Marathon bombings. Alright, so the movie was shot months before the Boston attacks and the director couldn't possibly have seen that coming. Superhero fans would have let that one slide.

The Mandarin’s war chest consists of an army of genetically-altered Frankenstein fighters, thanks to an invention called the Extremis (an apt name for a party drug). Their bodies generate superheat that can burn through even Iron Man's armor. When they attack with bone-crushing strength, they bend their heads slowly to the side, a hark back to Kristanna Loken's T-X character in Terminator 3. 

The epic finale thrills superhero fans

The large action set-pieces -- of which there are many -- are as thrilling as theme park rides. They culminate in an epic finale that does not disappoint Iron Man fans. For non-fans, however, the fight sequences can be noisy and confusing. They will also find the story implausible. The bad guys, sophisticated enough to hack into government computers and plot meticulous attacks on a global scale, crumble too easily in the last 15 minutes of the film. And the way Extremis alters the human DNA and how easily the genetic changes can be undone all seem a bit far-fetched. But if you are thinking about plot holes, you are probably not watching the film properly. 

So to all of you superhero skeptics out there, go watch the first two Iron Man movies at home and catch the latest installment on the big screen while it's still playing in theaters. Girlfriends and wives, you owe it to your boyfriends and husbands because they sat through Letter to Juliet and Love and Other Drugs with you. You will find Iron Man 3 a lot more tolerable than, say, The Green Lantern.

Movie Review: Oblivion

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Genre: Sci-fi

Rating: ** (2 out of 5)

SPOILER ALERT: this review contains spoilers.

Tom Cruise’s acting career now spans more than three decades. At age 50, he has perfected what I call the “renegade hero” genre. In movie after movie, from the Mission Impossible franchise to Minority Report and Jack Reacher, he portrays a special kind of American action hero – not that the kind that shoots his way through exploding buildings like Bruce Willis and Will Smith – but a more brainy, reflective and troubled man of action who uses both brains and brawn to fight a system that comes crashing down on him. How many times have we seen IMF agent Ethan Hunt go from being the hunter to the hunted and turn on the very organization he serves to prove his innocence? Cruise plays that role so successfully that at his advancing age he can still carry an action flick better than most young Hollywood heartthrobs. Although he doesn't always get the credit he deserves, his enduring career casts a long shadow on other spy-fi roles like Jason Bourne and even the modern James Bond.

Oblivion by Joseph Kosinski

In Oblivion, Cruise does it again. He plays drone mechanic Jack Harper in the post-apocalyptic world. The year is 2077, six decades after mankind pushed back an alien attack by nuking their own planet and emigrated to a Saturn moon. Harper is among a handful of Earthlings who stay behind to repair unmanned drones used to rid the wasteland of any remaining alien life forms. But the mechanic is haunted by recurring dreams and flashbacks, until a chance encounter with Julia (played by Olga Kurylenko) makes him realize that his friends and foes are not who they appear to be. And so there we have it: another renegade hero ready to take on the establishment. In the final struggle, Harper decimates his true enemies and gets the girl.

Oblivion is directed by 39-year-old Joseph Kosinski whose only credit is Walt Disney’s TRON: Legacy. Like TRON, Oblivion is heavy on visual effects but light on emotion and substance. The movie amounts to two hours of sensory assault that puts the audience to sleep despite ear-splitting sound effects and dizzying chase scenes. I haven't yawned that much in an action movie since Transformers 3. 

Oblivion is also derivative. Harper’s awakening from a make-believe world and his earthshaking discovery that he has all along been fighting for the wrong side are taken straight from The Matrix and Total Recall. Kosinski's second film is a rehash of spy-fi greats with a little WALL-E, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow thrown in. 

The resemblance to The Matrix is uncanny. Tom Cruise has the same confused look as Keanu Reeves. Morgan Freeman talks like Laurence Fishburne. And Olga Kurylenko is a less edgy Carrie-Anne Moss. Even the drones behave like the squid-like sentinels. The only thing missing is Hugo Weaving’s bullet-dodging, shape-shifting Agent Smith.

Cruise and his co-star Olga Kurylenko

Another problem with Oblivion is the casting. Ukrainian-French model-turned-actress Olga Kurylenko looks like a young Catherine Zeta Jones and acts like a Bond Girl. Wait a minute, she was a Bond Girl! Kurylenko plays a Bolivian femme fatale in the universally panned Quantum of Solace. It’s a miracle that the girl with an unpronouncable name and zero acting talent is able to bounce back and star in another Hollywood blockbuster. English actress Andrea Riseborough holds her own as Harper’s steely, make-believe wife Victoria. But her character (and her British accent) reminds me too much of Kate Beckinsale in the awful remake of Total Recall. Talk about haunting flashbacks.

Lacking both creativity and an emotional punch, Oblivion adds nothing to the sci-fi canon. The many visually spectacular sets – including a stunning glass-and-steel apartment where the hero and his wife reside (and swim in the nude) – are interesting but fail to revive a labored, lifeless story. As such, the movie’s title is well chosen: it will be forgotten in a few months and disappear into cinematic oblivion.

It does have some stunning sets

Restaurant Review: Brickhouse

Location: Lang Kwai Fong, Central

Type of food: Mexican

Rating: *** (3 out of 5)

Like many other aspects of the Hong Kong culture, our culinary scene is largely driven by fads. Two years ago we experienced a burger craze, followed by a steakhouse obsession. Now that beef patties and porterhouses are no longer in vogue, food lovers flock to taco joints like moths to the flame, whatever the cost. It seems only a matter of time before American fast food chain Taco Bell – and its irritating canine spokesperson – jumps into the fray. Nevertheless, the spectacular failures of Krispy Kreme and Dairy Queen in Hong Kong may be giving Gidget the Chihuahua some pause.

Brickhouse in Lan Kwai Fong

But I digress. Opened last August, Brickhouse is tucked away at the end of a narrow back alley off D’Aguillar Street. With no signage on the main road, the restaurant is impossible to find without asking for directions and looking like a lost tourist. The taqueria is wedged between and under old tenement buildings in the kind of place you expect to be dripping roof juice and infested with local crawlies. Despite its "ghetto" location, the restaurant displays the typical hubris of a new kid on the block. For starters, Brickhouse accepts no reservations and has no phone number for inquiries. It does not serve lunch and puts a one-hour limit on dinner tables, which is their way of saying “eat up, pay up and get out.”

To avoid a long wait, my guest and I showed up at 6:30pm for an early supper. By then, the restaurant was already packed to the rafters. We were seated at the open counter by the entrance, with nowhere to put our jackets and bags. I was literally eating in the alley, inches away from the crowd standing around an oil barrel like union workers at a picket line -- they were poor folks who arrived after 7pm hoping to get in. The people at Brickhouse weren’t kidding when they promised us “street food.” Sitting next to me was a pair of Americans yapping about professional tennis at the top of their lungs. I was relieved when one of them suggested to the other that they “go somewhere else" for drinks.

Visit their friendly website

Brickhouse does not have a big menu, just the usual offering of Mexican finger food. For appetizers, we tried the tuna sashimi tostadas and grilled corn-on-the-cob, sprinkled with grated cheese and coriander. Both were tasty but not fantastic. For entrees, we consulted the off-menu chalkboard and opted for the rib eye tacos stuffed with salsa and manchego cheese. It was a wise choice. We followed that with the grilled “Sunday chicken,” which was tender but didn’t taste very Mexican. I was hoping to wash down my dinner with a mojito – which the restaurant didn’t have – but went with something more adventurous: the diabla, a potent mixture of vodka, raspberries, pomegranate and jalapeño peppers. If I didn’t have to drive home after dinner, I would have gone for a second. And a third. In the end the bill came to $650 for two, which was reasonable by LKF standard.

Brickhouse opens from 6pm till 2am Mondays to Wednesdays, and till 4am Thursdays to Saturdays. It is the perfect place to grab a bite before or after clubbing in the area. The one-hour limit poses no threat to most patrons, who chuck down their tacos and tortillas in minutes and "go somewhere else" more comfortable. While fans call the restaurant hip and happening, I find it unbearably crammed and noisy. Now that I have tried it once, I don’t think I want to walk down that dark alley again.

Literally eating in a back alley