Resiklo

"Resiklo" (literally, "Recycle") certainly wouldn't be the worst film this side of the planet you'd see this time of the year. But any hope that this mega-budgeted movie (at least by Philippine standards) would enthrall will depend on how high you place your expectations as much as where you place them. This Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) entry offers a grand production design and decent CGI although the robots are only fun in small doses. Keep your expectations at bay and that may suffice to vindicate P120 off your pocket. But it's still a sad shadow of what could have been a terrifically tense Filipino sci-fi.

In 2021, the Earth is invaded by alien beings (Balangs) who then engage humankind into a worldwide war, destroying all the planet's natural resources in the process. In a post-apocalyptic Philippines, a band of survivors live in an undisclosed place they call "Paraiso," an underground society so hidden everyone else thinks it's a myth. Nevertheless, the people of this place fend themselves through their sheer ingenuity, using recycled scraps they regularly scavenge from the outside world for their basic necessities.

But eventually their hideout is located by the Mutanos, a group of beings who were once humans, but were converted by the Balangs into a superior mutated sentient. A chance encounter between Crisval (Bong Revilla), one of the residents of "Paraiso," and the son of the leader of the Mutanos leads to the death of the latter, and ignites the wrath of the Mutanos and wages a war against the humans.

The concept is actually fun but the perfunctory and predictable script, plus the embarrassingly wooden acting from Revilla limp this film right out of the door. Written and directed by Mark Reyes, "Resiklo" was supposedly pitched as an idea for a television series, but eventually landed onto the big screen courtesy of Senator Bong Revilla, who stars and co-produces. Reyes has a comparatively more coherent hold of the narrative this time than in "Mulawin: The Movie" two years back, but the rush to cover the expansive mythology shows through this anecdotal sort of a movie, following a number of characters from plot point to plot point but not offering a whole lot on the way of a sensible story. And the dialogues are written in dreadfully serious manners, it's hard not to force a groan when Revilla utters lines like "Overstaying na kayo, dapat na kayong i-deport (You should be deported for overstaying)!"

This leads to the film's biggest problem: it's boring. There's action scenes to be sure, but most of the film involves people walking around looking for scraps and faux-politicians talking about what they intend to do next to survive. The bland dramatic scenes then are punctuated by action scenes that are awkwardly edited and painfully lacking in the sort of visual detail that really makes them adrenaline-pumping. The movie's selling point of robots battling each other occur so short and so fast, and the rendering of the animation is at times so inorganic it's distracting. Personally, only one fight scene stands out and surprisingly it's that of Empress Schuck, where her blind character fights off Mutanos soldiers with her walking cane. Sexy.

Which makes you wish that the girl gets more butt-kicking screen time. Or maybe instead of playing a doctor (which takes a lot of time buying into), Michelle Madrigal were cast in the lead role wearing skimpy outfits, gunning the enemies out, ala Milla Jovovich. It wouldn't make the movie anymore logical, but it certainly would make it more interesting.

Oh well, what can I say, as someone who is involved in movie production, I keep a certain level of lenience when it comes to films that dares to be different with regards to how the story is told. If you strip a particular movie to its core, basically, its no different to any other movie out there, good or bad, Oscar winner or Razzie winner, its, like I said, how its told and that's the main thing that separates the good from the bad ones.

Going back to Resiklo, I must say it started out OK, the opening sequences were fine, though, that huge meteor looked so animated, but the succeeding sequences were good, especially the explosions on earth viewed from outer space. The whole movie starts to falter when we meet the protagonist, good ole' Sen. Bong Revilla, oh man, he's too old to be playing roles like this. So, we see him walking in this huge wasteland, supposedly caused by the alien invasion (which Im also assuming has happened a while back) and we see him in this weird attire yet his face looked like he just stepped out from the Senate. I mean, where is characterization here? Should you look at least, say, filthy, unshaven, haggard and stinking if your world was devastated? I'm sorry, but from the moment I saw him, it all went downhill for me. And as more as we get to know him, the less we feel empathy for him. The screenplay and direction was, pardon me for the word, inept. It was so conscious in making scenes stand out and polished that the director forgot how to organically weave all these scenes.

The supporting cast were lousy, especially his sons. Their acting was cliché and never really served any purpose to the movie. The only interesting character that came pretty close to convincing was Empress Schuck, but sadly hers was poorly developed. The only thing consistent was making the antagonist as less interesting and boring as the protagonist, at least in that regard, both were balanced.

The screenplay was laughable, and I had my loudest cackle when Sen. Bong says' "over-staying na kayo, dapat na kayong ideport!" What a line! The Christmas sub plot wasn't organically weaved into the story, Mark Reyes should've stayed on this subject, and it would've made the whole story interesting and relatable. That whole "singing/praying" montage was just for show and it felt an MTV that didn't belong to the movie.

As for the dull climax, well, there's nothing much to say, except that you know what will happen. I mean, there's a certain level of predictability in every movie, but how it takes its course is where the ingenuity of the storyteller comes into play.

Pros: The CG is quite decent and very good for Philippine movie standards. The designs are good and production value is quite high (again, going by Philippine movie standards). Although, the anime-style (exagerrated form over function) costume for the humans looks too tacky and doesn't work very well on the big screen. The robot fight scene was fun and looked great.

Cons: EXPOSITION, EXPOSITION, EXPOSITION. The director is a horrible storyteller and everything is done through exposition. The dialogue and acting will make you roll your eyes and cringe multiple times throughout. Poor character development, in fact a lot of the characters are unnecessary. Motivations for most characters aren't even expressed at all. Inconsistent tone. Comic relief scenes are scattered everywhere, all of them very corny.

Resiklo is a sci-fi flick about the future where aliens are enslaving humans, though not without some resistance. The plot involves resistance in the Philipines, where hero-type Commander Crisval is much feared and despised by the invaders. Part "Road Warrior", part "Transformers", part...eh, well a few other familiar movies came to mind while watching it, Resiklo is not bad for a Filipino movie, if you've seen many recently. The title, which means "recycle", seems to have ecological significance, but don't as me to explain. In spite of violent themes, this is basically a family movie, one the middle school boys might enjoy. While not up to American standards, the special effects are not bad. Some of the corniest aspects of the movie come from its desire to have "cool" dialog; this made the movie more entertaining, but not the way the producers had intended.

When I sat down to watch the 2023 action sci-fi movie "Transmutators", I figured that I was in for another grand mockbuster from The Asylum. However, this turned out not to be one such movie. And instead I found myself in for a Filipino attempt at an action sci-fi movie.

Director Mark A. Reyes delivered one of the worst movies I have stumbled upon in a long, long time. The movie's cover had nothing to do with the abysmal contents of the movie. The cover shows something that most clearly is a rip off of the "Transformers" movie, and thus I figured that it would be a mockbuster from The Asylum. But it turns out that "Transmutators" is actually a serious attempt at an action sci-fi from the Filipino cinema.

Now, I got nothing against the Filipino cinema in any way, but let's just be honest here, no one would ever believe that Filipino cinema would or could pull off a successful action sci-fi movie. And "Transmutators" looked like something from the 1990s, complete with laughable CGI, horrible special effects, and a script that was essentially just a dumpster fire.

To make matters worse, then I had the misfortune to sit through an English dubbed version of "Transmutators". And it is simply beyond my comprehension that the dubbing in 2023 is still as bad as it was back in the 70s. No one actually talks the way that the dubbing talents do; and I use the word "talents" very casually here. If anything, then the horrible dubbing in "Transmutators" just adds to the already mind-blowing cheese factor that director Mark A. Reyes's movie has.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble here. And I can't say that I was in the least bit impressed with the acting performances that I witnessed on the screen.

"Transmutators" is a cringeworthy movie in every aspect. And it is not even so bad that it becomes a fun movie to sit through. No, "Transmutators" from director Mark A. Reyes is just downright bad.

My rating of "Transmutators" lands on a one out of ten stars. Don't waste your time, money or effort on this particular movie; some of us did, so you don't have to. I would actually have preferred this to have been a mockbuster from The Asylum, as to the atrocity that it turned out to be.