RIFLE RANGE BOY

Sometimes you wonder. Is it just you, or is everybody going a little mad? Are people increasingly indulging in self-defeating activities which will, in a matter of time, blow up right in their faces? Why do they open themselves up to vulnerability? Is their desire to express themselves so important that it has to be imprinted digitally to the end of times. Why is there a pressing need to be with them or against the rest? Is there no middle ground? Why do they think it is a test of love to exhibit bedroom antics to the full view of the public? And still call it expression, even when others call it exhibitionism. You know there is no wrong or right answer? Truth is a multifaceted son of a gun with the last laugh when it finally comes to the fore. Your time is getting near, and you want to ride in the sunset, hurting fewer and fewer people every day. You want to thank your lucky stars for the times in your life, which you had in your own right, which had been unpredictable, but in the end...

Devil All the Time (2020) A t one look, it seems that the story is going all over the place. At one time, you think that one particular character is the protagonist, but wham! she is killed off. Then another also killed off, and another yet again. There are plenty of killings and dying on the whole, but then, it all builds up to make sense at the end. There are many cryptic messages embedded within the storyline that questions the perception of what evil really is. Our divinity and evil part and parcel of the same continuum, not in contradiction but a mere extension of a spectrum?  One complements the other. Just like how light is appreciated in darkness, evil is necessary for us to appreciate goodness. Like how it is a necessity that Tom never catches Jerry for the excitement to continue. Will E Coyote will never have the Road Runner for dinner for Coyote may become mad if, one day, he gets up in the morning to realise that he has nothing to do. Satan can never lose if Goodness we...

Sathyathai Thedi  (Seeking the Truth; @ Asothoma Sathgamaya,  2013) First, it was Zakir Naik who was heard telling his congregants that the old Hindu scriptures did indeed quote of the arrival of a messenger of God. In his usual style, he went on ranting his references to the said inscriptions. Just that people are too set in their mindsets to accept that, he alleged. Now I hear the same pitch being repeated. This Christian evangelist film tries to sell the idea that the Ama Veda did hint of Prajapathi, the Lord of the Universe, being Jesus Christ himself. Somewhere in it, it was apparently mentioned of the Creator who needed to be sacrificed for atonement. In their eyes, it fits perfectly in their narrative that Jesus, who is God himself, had to be sacrificed to wash the sins of Man. The whole film can be described as a hermeneutical gymnastic as the protagonist goes on rattling verses after verses from the Veda, Upanishads and even Kural to drive home the message that...

Risen (2016) Like what my friend says, it is about love and faith. Faith gives us that tuft of hope when the going gets tough and the end seems hopeless. The fight would go on by offloading some of the pressures to an overseeing Being, while Man can continue doing what he does best. When anxiety builds up and all odds are stacked against him in an unfair distribution, Man starts asking what the meaning of life is all about. What he gets is a muted, deafening, stony impassive silence. When he thinks the Power above would be just and equal in his distribution of comfort and happiness, what he sees are random occurrences and chaos. Nonbelievers accuse believers who surrender themselves to outlets like self-indulgences and religion as quickly laid out answers to the questions of life as committing philosophical suicide. He accepts the absurdity of our dull and futile lives by actually killing off our ability to inquire and reason. He seems to be taking the easy way out without really...

Son of God (2014) It is only human nature to be inquisitive. The human mind always tries to explore the unknown and try to go beyond the boundaries made by Man. Hence, when it was mentioned in our newspapers that the above film was banned by the local film council, the only natural reaction was try to watch it and that was a piece of cake. After watching the whole 2h44m presentation, which is more of a docudrama, you come to realise that it was no big deal. It did not appear to be controversial or powerful enough for its viewers to be born again. In fact, it was like an Easter performance for a Sunday school students. Maybe some the depiction of cruelty of man to each other may be too much for young hearts to stomach. It runs through Jesus' life story concentrating mainly from the time he enters Jerusalem during Passover. Looking at it from the outside, the situation of people in that era is similar what people are going through all the time. Tyranny rules, people in power d...

Alert: Sensitive topic, readers' discretion advised! The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) The more you suppress something, the more people want of, e.g. the plunging of the cleavage! Once it is in the open, the more people will shy away but then some people would swear that something are better left to imagination so that the discovery would all be worth it! Just like that, the curiosity in me wanted be to view and judge for myself the film banned in many countries including Malaysia and Singapore -The Last Temptation of Christ.  The movie can be roughly divided to 2 parts - the first being His revelation of being the Son of God and the second (which is the one angered most believers) which is the purely fictitious part. Jesus, a carpenter, is collaborating to make cross for the Romans much to the chagrin of the Jewish people including his friend, Judas. He has these pains and voices in his head that keep on coming and irritating him.  He tries fasting, whipping hi...