Real Steel

Real Steel is a very interesting and surprisingly great family movie. I know some people (me included) may be kind of sick of below average movies with giant butt-kicking robots such as the last Transformers but believe me, this one is different. I said it is a family movie because it basically is about the journey between a father and his son in rediscovering themselves and how they rebuild their shattered relationship. It is also like Transformers meet Fight Club, a story of Rocky retold with boxing robots in WRB (World Robot Boxing).

Starring Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a former pro-boxing champion whose days of glory is all but behind him. Now a total loser and a "bad bet", he tries to dig himself out of holes only to fall into deeper ones. When he finds out that his ex-girlfriend has left him with an 11 year-old son whom he has never met, his life is about to turn around slowly and ultimately they become a great father and son's team on their way to create the people's champion in robot boxing!

The storyline is rather easy to guess but very effectively told. Highly recommended!

Transformers 3

As one of the most anticipated movie of the year, Transformers 3 was a great let down for me. I think Megan Fox got out at just the right time. Although her replacement, a beautiful model from fashion powerhouse Victoria Secret, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley failed to bring anything fresh to the franchise. I don't have much to say about this movie except the movie was way too long for its own good and without much essence! 2 out of 5 I am afraid and this is coming out from a Transformers fan.

Fast Five

Fast Five is not only the fastest but I reckon, it's simply the best out of the five in the long running Fast and Furious series. Hell, it could be the action movie of the year; and yes, I know we still have more than half of 2011 left; and yes, the Transformer sequel is at the horizon; but the Fast Five is that good! Although the storyline might be a little thin but the jaw dropping actions and special effects are more than enough to make up for the shortcomings. It definitely kept me at the edge of my seat most of the time and when we reached the movie credits, I was craving for more!

Movie News

Well, not much of a news really. Last week we watched the much anticipated "the Last Airbender" (no no...not the original cartoon series which is brilliant by the way).
As I have suspected, it was mediocre bordering a total blockbuster flop. That's nearly 2 hours of my life wasted that I will never claw back. If given a choice again, I would rather chose to sit on my ass reading my boring pharmacy journals that are piling up on my desk for instance!

Reasons?
1. A western kid as Avatar?
2. Fire Nation from India? really?
3. $150 million?
---> Please check out the brilliantly made "Monsters" on a budget of just $15,000!
4. just poor acting
5. if I continue the list, I might get sued by the movie producer or worse, being called a racist!

Inception

Inception is a rather long and complicated movie to watch and digest.

I said long because it did feel that way to me unfortunately. Don't get me wrong though, it is really not a bad movie to watch but does it worth the movie ticket you pay for? You will have to decide it yourself I am afraid. May be because there is no real villains or heroes in this movie and because of that, I failed to figure out which character to get behind.

Basically the plot takes place in a world where a person can enter another person's dream by mean of "injection" containing powerful chemicals and sedatives. It is just like entering the "Matrix" except without the fuss of super computers and cellphones! Even better, unlike Matrix, if you die in your dream, you simply just wake up to reality! Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has a special ability to enter people's dream to extract and steal their secret. He was being wrongly accused of killing his wife and hence, unable to return to US to see his two children. Saito (Ken Watanabe), a rich Japanese businessman asked Cobb to plant (termed "inception") instead of stealing, an idea into his biggest business competitor's heir Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). The idea was so Fischer would breakdown and destroy his own company, and in return, Saito promised to see Cobb back to his children. Inception was considered impossible but Cobb has done it before, he did it to his wife which subsequently lead to her demise.

Jin was complaining of a headache after watching the movie simply because she had to concentrate so hard to understand the movie. While I did enjoy the spectacular CGI and the fast action, the movie did leave me with lots of questions to ponder.

Will I watch it again? I don't think so but the movie will sure make a great discussion topic with those of your friends who have watched it as well!

Toy Story 3

I couldn't believe 11 years have gone by since the release of the Toy Story 2! Usually the reason for releasing sequels to a successful movie is to capitalise on the success of the original movie and more often that not, sequels are usually, to put it simply, bad. Of course there are a few exceptions and certainly Toy Story 3 is one of them. In fact, out of the 3 "stories", the last one could be simply the best of them all!

If there is a Noble price for consistently putting out brilliant computer animated movies, it has got to go to the folks at Pixar. It's witty, inventive, creative, funny and choked full of emotions! It can make you laugh and it can put tears in your eyes too. The show simply glued me to the seat and kept me begging for more like a little child!

I am not going to go into the detail of the movie, but if you haven't already watch it, you don't know what you are missing out this year guys! I love Pixar!

Kick Ass

It's been a while since I have watched such a hilarious and crass movie as Kick Ass. The movie centered around Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a regular high school teenager who has nothing much going on in life. He has only a couple of good friends and his high school sweetheart thinks he is gay. Dave wants to spice up his life by being a superhero like Spiderman or Batman, the only trouble is he has no superpower at all, not even one single piece of fancy weapon. He is only armed with a green dive suit which he bought online and a great deal of courage/stupidity. Lucky for him, there are two others who have the same idea but actually know what they are doing.

Damon Macready a k a Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his even more violent and dangerous daughter Mindy Macready a k a Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) are vigilantes who work hard to stamp out Frank D’Amico Frank D’Amic, the top criminal boss in town.

I reckon it is a fairly good movie which will give you plenty to laugh about!

The Blind Side

I am not really a fan for drama but this movie is both intriguing and inspiring! The film is based on the earlier real life story of Michael Oher, who is a current NFL player playing for the Baltimore Ravens. Michael (The Big Mike) came from an impoverished family of 12 siblings and he was separated from her drug addicted mother since he was young. Since then, he moved from one foster family to another until he met Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock) and Sean Tuohy (Tim McGraw) on one cold night. Leigh Anne realized that Michael was homeless and was shivering in the cold weather, she decided to invite him to stay at their house. Slowly, Michael became part of Tuohy's family and their children love him.

Because of Mike's huge stature and gigantic strength, he is particularly suited to play American football and soon, he captured the attention of coaches from around the states. However, to in order to receive the NCAA scholarship, he needed to achieve 2.5GPA (I have no idea what it means but probably equivalent to TEE in Australia) but his GPA was too low at the time. Hence, Leigh Anne hired a private tutor to teach him at home and soon, all the teachers at the school were trying to help him out as well.

This one of the best "feel good" movies I have ever watched and it is probably Sandra's best!

Avatar

I can tell you right now, there is no better movie to wrap up 2009 then this blockbuster movie from James Cameron - Avatar!

You know when you go to watch a movie that is all hyped up, where almost everyone; critics or critics-wannabe alike, all said it's a bloody good movie, quite often you will leave the movie in disappointment because of your high expectation for it. Fortunately, this is not the case, James Cameron delivers a movie that is both original and spellbinding. If you haven't already watch this movie, do yourself a favor, go to watch it in 3d and your eyes will thank you for it. So stop reading this spoiler and get your butt into the movie!

Avatar is set in the year 2154 and takes place on a moon-like planet called Pandora where humans or rather, "evil" RDA corporation trying to mine a precious mineral. The only problem is, na'vi, a clan of feline-looking native humanoids is in their way and they are refusing to move. The science division of RDA, headed by Grace (Sigourney Weaver) created avatars, genetically engineered human-na'vi hybrids, to study the mysterious tribe. Jake (Sam Worthington) is recruited to replace his murdered twin brother and take the role of an avatar to infiltrate the na'vi. While studying them, Sam slowly falls in love with the princess of the na'vi clan, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). The story takes you through one of the most engaging and beautiful journey of Jake and Neytiri, and how they eventually fall in love.

However, when Jake fails to convince the clan to move away from their Hometree, where the greatest deposit of the precious mineral is, all hell breaks loose. The human forces, headed by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) starts to attack the Hometree and killing many na'vis along the way. Jake takes the na'vi side and starts to lead the na'vi to counter attack the humans. The main story is very simple and it reminds me of the movies like The Last Samurai. However, all the characters are so brilliant portrayed in the movie and they are so engaging...yes, did I mention engaging? ....emotionally engaging...it's simply beautiful! Although the movie has its sad bits but do not worry, na'vis believe in fairytale and the ending is a fairytale ending too :)

I give it a 4.9 out of 5! I hope James Cameron will continue to make the two sequels he promises lol!

2012

Have you got a billion euro to spare or two? Because that is how much you have to pay to reserve a seat to live beyond 2012!

From the director that brought you "Independence Day" and "The Day after Tomorrow", 2012 brought disaster movie to a new height! Everything is epic in this movie and almost everything is destroyed beyond imagination and to an epic proportion. The movie started a little bit slow but I was at the edge of my seat for most part of the movie.

As giant tsunamis and earthquakes escalate around the world, the rich and famous secretly embarking on their secret journeys to some giant heavy-duty ships in China while ordinary citizens of the world just go about their normal lives, seemingly oblivious of what lies ahead.

The dialogues and logic might be a little thin but I am a junkie for disaster flicks, so there are plenty to satisfy my craze and more than enough to compensate for the shortcomings.

It may not be as good as "The Day after Tomorrow", may be a bit cheesy at point and down right silly but it was a perfect movie for a mindless Friday night!

I give it a 3/5!

The first is teenage boy's wet dream, the sequel is just masturbation.

Well, there is nothing "naughty" about the stuff that I wrote here today. The above is a direct quotation from a critic from the Scorecard Review about the second installment of the Transformer: The Revenge of the Fallen. A quick check of the tomatometer, at 20%, it is considered by most movie critics around the globe as a utter disaster or a blockbuster flop. Well, I beg to think otherwise. True, the plot is getting thinner and the humour has grown a little tired but I still love those giant robots, those massive explosions and it's no doubt on par with the first. If you like the first Transformer movie, I think you are going to love this one. And guess what? In the packed movie theatre on last Tuesday night, I could confidently said Megan Fox was still the hottest chick in that room! Perhaps the biggest drawback about this second movie is that it is a tad too long, in fact, if it was about 30-60 minutes shorter, it would have been a perfect movie...yawn :)

Only a life lived for others is worth living

I couldn't even remember what was the last movie I wrote about in my blog. Not that I haven't watched any since then but none of them are really good enough for me to write about. I did come across some horribly bad, ill-conceived movies though, and a few good examples are the Babylon A.D. , Max Payne and The Day the Earth Stood Still - nearly 5 hours of my life wasted because of these three movies!

Well, finally I have a movie that's worth talking about - Ghost Town. Starring British comedian/producer Ricky Gervais as a dentist Dr Bertram Pincus who was discribed by his co-worker as "a f***ing prick", who absolutely loathed human race and had zero social skill. He gained the ability to communicate with the dead after momentarily dying during a blotched colonoscopy. Dr P was forced to mend his anti-social ways when he found himself haunted by ghosts who had unfinished businesses in the living world, including the suave Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), who remains concerned for the future of his attactive but slightly eccentric Egyptologist wife (Tea Leoni). This romantic comedy is a total stand out from those typical romantic "Hugh Grant" style chic flicks.

It's not the type of "laughing out loud" comedy but it was just so brilliantly made! 4.5 stars from me. Big thank you to Karen for recommending this movie :)

p/s for a LOL comedy, you can't go past Death at a Funeral, it's an instant classic!

Big Gun No Brain

Video game turned movie or movie turned video game, I couldn't really think of any truely successful incarnations except may be Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Max Payne is one of the latest video game turned movie title that hit our big screen lately.

I am a big fan of Max Payne game series and the use of "bullet-time" in the gameplay was nothing short of revolutionary at the time! This was also one of the main reason why I had convinced Jin to watch it with me a couple days ago. To cut a long story short, the movie definitely wasn't worth any cents of your hard earned $15 and the 100mins in life that you will never get back!

The movie is a little "too dark" to my taste and all the characters inside, including Max Payne have failed to connect with the audience in my opinion. At the end, I couldn't care less about what actually happened to any of them. The movie is not only lack of substance but also blatantly boring right through till the end.

The plot is fairly simple, Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is cop who is still trying to get over the death of his wife and baby while investigating several murders, while Mona Sax (Mila Kunis) costars as an assassin desperate for her own revenge of her sister. However, it's not all bad, the movie still manages to pull out some rather impressive visual effects and mindless big gun fires!

My advice - safe the $15 bucks. If you haven't played the game before, go and get yourself a copy of Max Payne or Max Payne 2 which should only cost you a couple of dollars by now :)

Go Bumblebee! I want one!

Well, I can't resist to pen down a few lines here about the movie which I just watched moments ago: Transformers! True to the magic of my all time childhood favourite animated series, this movie is a must watch! It's witty, it's outright silly and dumb at times, it's loud and senseless, but it's seriously fun to watch :) It's strange how a good movie can transform 140 odd minutes seem like 30mins of sheer rollercoaster joy! Like Matrix on steroid, the action continues from the start to credit. Do you still remember when you first saw the "bullet-time" in the original Matrix? That was exactly how I felt when I saw the CG generated robots battle sequence in this movie, equally impressive!

Shai LaBeouf (i-robot is the only movie I remember seeing him) acted remarkably well and his "bodyguard"...the bumblebee, although unable to speak most of the time, CG has managed to create some great emotion in his robotic eyes....reminding me of the puss in the movie Shrek :)

Make no mistakes, this is one of the best movie releases this winter...possibly better than the yet to be released last installment of Harry Potter! 4.5/5...minus half a star for the seriously complicated, seemingly illogical and perplexing "transformation process" of the transformers! ..but then what is logic you might ask me :)

Shrek The Third

Yea...that's right! It's another movie review time and this time is the long awaited sequel to two of my all time favourite animated movies - Shrek 1 & 2: Shrek The Third. Well, don't get too excited because to me, it's just like the other two "third sequels" that appear this year so far(Spiderman 3 and Pirate of the Caribbean - At World's End), Shrek The Third is a rather disappointment and lame film unfortunately.

I think Shrek is a little bit long in the tooth and this installment should have been a DVD-only release rather than the big screen. The movie tried very hard to be funny and unlike the previous installments, you would be hard pressed to find about fresh idea in this one, except the Snow White :)

The story is quite lame as well and the plot is sketchy at best. With the death of the frog king, Shrek was made heir to the throne which he actively refused. He then embarked onto a journey to find the next in line heir with donkey and booted kitty. In the meanwhile, Prince Charming was massing an army of fairy tale villians for an offensive take over of the Far Far Away. The whole movie is laden with stale and rather calculated jokes. Overall, it's a 2.5 stars movie and I think I have been very forgiving :)

Another Tuesday - It's Pirate time!

Pirates of the Caribbean: The World's End is a very long movie indeed, spanning nearly 3 hours from start to credit and you know what?...it feels that way too! Lucky we went to an earlier session, otherwise, I think I would have fallen asleep midway into the movie :) There you go, in a nutshell, this is how I think about the movie unfortunately.

It's way too long for the story and to make thing worse, it involves far too many characters which I think fail to connect with their audience. Forget about Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Barbossa is back thanks to Calypso, the goddess of sea trapped in human form by her lover, Davy Jones. It's Barbossa who leads the show this time round I think and thank god he does well to keep me interested at time.

Oh, just throw loyalty out of the window in this movie. In fact, betrayal is the most apt theme for this installment; betrayal of trust, betrayal of love, betrayal of friendship, betrayal of promises and there are plenty of it.

Saying that, I think this third installment is much better than the inferior second film, which until now I still can't fully comprehend...or is it just me? The movie excels visually and the epic ship battle is nothing short of spectacular but a tad too drawn out. Love the flying cannon monkey though :)

Overall, I give it 2.5 out of 5.

Spiderman 3

Well...guess what it's Tuesday movie time again. This time we went to watch Spiderman 3 with our friend Dao at Reading Cinema. My expectation was pretty high before I watched the movie because of the previous 2 installments which were reasonably good, as well as the proclaimed astronomical budget. The story was a little loose and a bit scattered but I think the director managed to pull them together pretty well. It's a job well done considering there are quite a few supporting charaters involved. Tobey Maguire (Peter) acted reasonably well in this movie, especially when he discovered his "dark side". Venom, which was the last villain in the movie mutated by the same alien black slime that changed Peter was a little bit disappointing in his ugly outfit and poor design...something unexpected from a movie of such a big budget. Overall, it was rather entertaining and visually amazing. Rating, a near 4 stars movie let down by the badly designed last minute Venom, highly recommended if you are spidy fan, personally I think it's on par with the previous installments.

Finally 300

I supposed to watch the movie 300 last Tuesday but couldn't make it because I was suddenly down with a bad sore throat and a stuffed up nose. Well, after reading mixed reviews and what Waynus has told me, I didn't go to the movie with much expectation. Surprise, surprise...it was one of the most exciting "war" movie I have ever come across. Despite full of computer generated graphics, the movie was actually rather "artistic" and quite original I thought. The use of slow motion and real time effects was nothing short of fascinating. The use of colour to depict the mood of the scene was well carried out. If you want to see a work of art, a masterpiece in modern movie-making and an amazing tale of sacrifice and unparallel comradery, you should not miss this movie! PREPARE FOR GLORY!!

Mr Bean's Holiday

We went to watch the Mr. Bean's holiday with my brother's family last night at Hoyts. Well, it wasn't as bad as some of those reviews on the net said. If you haven't watch it and are going to, please bear in mind that this movie is intended for children, so it might lack some sofistications but so what?! As a matter of fact, I truely found myself laughing my heart out at some scenes, in particular, where Mr Bean was trying to keep himself awake while driving to Cannes but kept falling asleep. That was pretty hilarious. Another scene that managed to captured my heart was when Mr Bean lost his bus ticket and then tried to run after the ticket, which was stuck on a foot of a runaway chicken. The soundtrack of the movie I reckon was fantastic as well. Overall, I think it deserve 4 stars out of 5 :)