The Rocket (***1/4)

Superficially, this charmer seems like it could be a Laotian variation on Whale Rider, the decade-old surprise hit about a Maori girl who triumphs despite her grandfather’s efforts to discourage her. It’s also a story about people from a traditional culture colliding with modern ways, and also features a not-so-loving grandparent. In this case, Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe) is a small boy, and his grandmother is the discouraging one, believing that Ahlo, as the only survivor of twins, brings bad luck.

A forced relocation (to make way for a dam project) brings tragedy to Ahlo and his family, but this movie is not a lamentation about the loss of traditional culture, and not a melodrama, but basically, in the end, a feel-good film about Ahlo’s spirited attempt to break his supposed curse via a contest. Along the way he befriends a little girl being taken care of, or maybe taking care of, what must be Laos’s number one James Brown disciple (he even looks like the Godfather of Soul). The ending to the story feels a bit too easy, but a lot of charm and originality should overcome most such objections. If the subtitles are not a bar, this may even appeal to kids, who should appreciate the independence of its young hero.

IMDb link
 
viewed 10/22/13 7:10 pm at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and posted 10/22/13

The Grudge 2 (*1/2)

? A sequel to a remake that is, however, not a remake of the Japanese Grudge 2, though it is nonetheless again directed by and written by the auteur of both versions of The Grudge, Takashi Shimizu. Got that? The important thing is that the creepy dead woman and child are back. This time they’ve got they’re sights on Amber Tamblyn, who plays the sister of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character from the first film. She’s come to Tokyo to figure out what Sis is doing in the hospital, but it turns out that the ghosts are also doing some traveling. No longer confined to an old house, they’re also targeting some girls at the nearby English-language school and a family in a Chicago tenement.

+ Well, no doubt about it, the dead people are creepy. Decreasingly scary, but creepy.

- If the lengthy description above makes it sound like the plot’s complicated, fear not. You won’t fear much, actually, because if you’ve seen the first movie, you’ve seen all there is to fear. Other than the new characters (Gellar’s being just about the only holdover among the living ones) and the new settings, there is precious little to carry the story forward. Over and over, someone is looking at something that suddenly turns into a dead person, sometimes scaring them, sometimes killing them. Tamblyn finally finds the woman who can explain everything, and the woman says, in essence, sorry, you’re screwed. Indeed.

= *1/2 Even fans of the original are likely to echo the befuddled mutterings I heard around me when I exited the theater. I think they were confused by the plot, thinking that there would be one.

IMDb link

viewed 10/14/06 at Moorestown