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REVIEWSPREVIEWS: The Manchurian Candidate
Politics has always been an evil business, be it in the US, Pakistan or anywhere else in the world. But The Manchurian Candidate treats the viewer to an interesting interpretation of the shifty political process.
The story is about Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), a former army man running for the post of the US vice-president, whose mother (Meryl Streep) is married to a powerful, well-connected senator. Shaw has a mysterious past. While fighting in the first Gulf War, he was captured and ‘brainwashed’ by the enemy. With him was Major Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington). The process was so successful that Shaw is willing to even kill if his operators so desire. Marco, on the other hand, is living a relatively normal life.
However, all that changes when, after watching Shaw campaign on TV, Marco realizes that something went wrong while they were in enemy custody. Now, the real fun begins when he tries to figure out what really happened to them and what, basically, are the intentions behind this plot?
Anticipation is the only thing that keeps the viewers stuck to the screen. While Denzel Washington delivers a tremendous performance, as expected, Meryl Streep also does justice to her role. The Manchurian Candidate, a remake of the 1962 original starring Frank Sinatra, is surely one of the best political thrillers to be made in a long time.—Aftab Borka
A Cinderella Story
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Fairytales seem to be in vogue this year, with a seemingly never-ending string of releases.The latest from this herd is A Cinderella Story, which stars Hilary Duff as Sam, a nerdy high-school senior whose father died when she was young. She is ordered around by her stepmother and stepsisters, yet dreams of making it into Princeton one day. With a non-existent social life, Sam finally meets her Mr Right in a chat room. Their cyber relationship progresses through emails and text messages.
As the two finally meet at the school’s Halloween dance, things get complicated when Sam finds out that her prince charming is Austin Ames (Chad Michael Murray), a popular jock. Austin can’t recognize who his Cinderella really is because Sam is wearing a mask. As midnight approaches, she runs off, leaving her cell phone behind in order to get to her family diner where she works, on time. Can Sam find the guts to tell Austin who she really is?
Coincidences are so stretched to the limit that if they were stretched any further, there would practically be an explosion. Murray isn’t all that charming since he has as much personality as an overcooked marshmallow. The cast is weak and Duff reluctantly takes centre stage. Aimed at the preteen and teen girl crowd, ACS is typical fare that is sometimes cheesy and sometimes innovative. “Once upon a time…can happen anytime,” the movie’s tagline boldly claims. But in Hollywood, it happens all the time.—Taimur Saleem
Yu-Gi-Oh — The Movie
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When it seemed like the Pokemon craze had finally left America and Europe, a money-eating franchise called Yu-Gi-Oh (King of Games) has appeared. Yu-Gi-Oh — The Movie is based on the popular children’s card game and anime series from Japan. The franchise is so popular in the US that the Americans decided to make a 90-minute episode out of it, dubbed it a movie and hoped no one would notice.The film begins when our hero Yugi Moto puts together pieces of an ancient Egyptian pyramid necklace called the Millennium Puzzle. Through it he is somehow linked to a 5,000-year-old pharaoh ingeniously named … Pharaoh, who coincidentally looks like an older version of Yugi.
Some years later he becomes the Yu-Gi-Oh (a hologram card game where animated monsters battle each other) champion, whom everybody wants to challenge, especially his arch-rival and classmate Kaiba, the wealthy video game entrepreneur. Somehow Pharaoh’s arch nemesis, Anubis (who was vanquished by him for eternity 5,000 years ago), takes over Kaiba from the third dimension and tries to destroy him though a duel, after which he will take over the world.
From thereon we get to see an action-packed soul-eating contest with some good tactical moves, moral advice, badly dubbed dialogues scripted by American writers (the same mistake they made when adapting Final Fantasy) and below-average visuals.
Watch this only if you are an anime fan who has seen this series or played the game or really, really can’t get your hands on any cartoon for your kids (although it is better than Barney).—Farheen Jawaid
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