Archive for the ‘Muvee’ Category
Friday, June 13th, 2008 |
I should have read the synopsis. When I saw the trailer, I thought it could be some tornado terrorizing the city and everyone will be running away from it. I got the last part correct, and the movie isn’t about any tornado or hurricane. It’s just some breeze that scares the shit out of people.
*Takes deep breath*
When plants are threatened by pests, they release toxins to drive away the threats. In the movie, plants view humans as pests. The toxin confuses the human mind and affects speech and actions. The instinct to stay away from danger will be disrupted, causing the infected to commit suicide in the most gruesome way.
The movie starts off at Central Park, Philadelphia. The breeze became pretty strong and people started to act weird. Some stopped walking, some walked backwards. Some kept repeating their speech. Then all of a sudden a girl with a bun in her hair stabs herself in the throat.
I was quite thrown away with the beginning. Who would have thought that it would be so straightforward? I expected the movie to show the cause of infection before showing the effect. However, having watched Sixth Sense (and still loving it!), I thought the ending would disclose some kind of twist. But it didn’t happen. Sigh.
Mark Wahlberg is a Science teacher who tries to flee from the disaster. He also has to protect his wife, and his best friend’s daughter. The best friend decided to go another direction to find his wife, who stayed behind to buy a doll house for their daughter. Unfortunately the best friend got infected and committed suicide.
In the end? The trio survived in the lamest way. The phenomena stopped 30 minutes before they decided to expose themselves in the open. Experts commented that it could just be a warning before a bigger strike. The very last scene is in a park in France, where the breeze started to blow strong again. Everyone stopped walking except one of them who turned and said “Oh My God” in French.
The theme of the movie is survival, but the underlying message is that we should take care of plants before the plants take care of us. During my secondary school days, the teacher forced us to swallow tons of essays about the adverse effects of deforestation and that popular greenhouse effect. I think I puked them all out once my SPM was over. They could have gone the other way out, where the essays can waterslide down the toilet. Hehe.
*Another deep breath*
While this movie isn’t exactly the worst that I’ve ever watched, I still regretted forking out RM9 for it. Definitely on my stay-away list. Also… this is a horror movie, and I HATE HORROR MOVIES.
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Monday, June 9th, 2008 |
Tom is not your average cleaner. He cleans gory crime scenes for a living. Not quite the type of work any normal guy wants to do. You probably need iron guts to withstand looking at so much blood up close.
The movie starts with a straightforward introduction to the nature of our cleaner’s job. Scraping blood off tables and wiping bloodstains off sofas are just the tip of the iceberg. He even revealed his secret ingredient that added the extra oomph to his cleaning agents - Listerine.
One day, our cleaner received an “order” to clean up a murder scene. He went into a huge mansion, to find the white living room partially in red. The way he cleans up the mess amazes me. It’s so clean people wouldn’t know 10 minutes ago it was there were guts and blood splattered almost everywhere.
He went back to the crime scene the next day to return the keys as he had forgotten to do so the day before. Greeted by the lady of the house, he was invited into the house. When the lady asked why would he have keys to the house, he tried to explain that he was in the house yesterday for a “job”. The lady didn’t understand what job was it, despite several hints from Tom. Tom then asked about her husband, which was the murder victim. The lady could only say that her husband was missing and might be back in a few days.
Tom realized that he had cleaned up a murder crime scene before anyone knew about it. He thought he could just keep quiet about it, but the police soon found cleaning agents in the house. Tom became the prime suspect as he was thought to have killed the victim and cleaned up the place.
The story progressed real quick, and it turns out that Tom was a former police officer. So he decides to investigate on his own. He made some findings, and managed to find the real killer in the end.
The movie stars Samuel “Snakes on the Plane” L. Jackson as Tom and Eva Mendez as the victim’s wife. Eva Mendez didn’t really do much in the movie, I think she was cast for eye candy. As a conclusion, this movie is a nice thriller and could have made my must-watch-again list if not for the abrupt ending. The poor twist at the end was bad taste.
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Thursday, May 15th, 2008 |
Jo and I decided to catch a movie last night, but had to choose between Speed Racer and What Happens In Vegas. After some consideration we opted for the former because the latter seems to be less interesting. Besides, I have been wanting to catch the Wachowski Brothers’ flick for some time now.
At the beginning, the movie emphasized on the relationship between Speed and his brother, Rex. Not many funny stuffs there, but it was clear to show that Speed and Rex are very close. Throughout the movie, it seems to be sending a strong message about the importance of family ties, and how materials like immense wealth and luxury can never break the bonds between family members.
Other than that, the whole movie is just a huge twirl of colors. Seriously, I never expected the movie to turn out like this. I was expecting something like a dramatic Speed Racer ala Batman Begins. The movie turned out to be some cheesy pop kid flick aimed at audiences below the age of 7. I think if I watched this movie as the 24 year old I am, it’s going off the charts for all that I care, but I left my brain at home. I managed to giggle at the funny scenes, like the ones with the incompetent ninjas.
Time passed real quick. It was already two hours before I knew it. I think it must be the thrilling racing scenes that took my breathe away. There hasn’t been a movie that made me forget time for a long time now. It was exciting to see how race cars can be modified to sabotage the competition. Who would have thought of a spearhook? In spite of it being illegal, I think it’s brilliant.
In short, Speed Racer is an enjoyable movie as long as you don’t mind the weak emphasis on the storyline because the race scenes alone will blow your mind. Not really impressive, but I think it gave Speed Racer a fair adaptation to the silver screen.
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Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 |
Another long-awaited movie came and went. To be honest, I stepped into the cinema without knowing what to expect, except for the short clip 10 minutes into the credits. After reading many good reviews I figured I should give this comic adaptation a try.
The movie was quick to reach its climax without any dilly-dallying. Though most of the movie was clearly showing Stark building and experimenting with his suits, the big battle between Iron Man and Iron Monger was a blast. It could have been more of a blast if the fight didn’t end easily.
Now that Obadiah Stane is dead I am quite certain he won’t be back in the sequel. His son Ezekiel could be back, like how Green Goblin’s son sought revenge on Spiderman in the sequels. But without sources and leaks I can never be sure.
When I read the Wikipedia about Iron Man’s enemies, Mandarin’s background seemed to be quite familiar with what was shown in the movie. Raza, one of the Afghan terrorists, praised Genghis Khan, and is the leader of the organization called Ten Rings. A glance at the Wikipedia page for Mandarin reveals that he is a descendant of Genghis Khan and wears ten rings. The most apparent difference is that Mandarin is Chinese, and Raza doesn’t seem to be from China. This could just be an honorary mention as he was initially planned to be the villain instead of Iron Monger.
Stan Lee continues to cameo in more superhero movies. He was seen being mistaken as Hugh Hefner by Tony Stark at the entrance of a party.
A memorable light moment was when Jim Rhodes had the chance to don his own War Machine suit, but gave it a pass by saying “Next time, baby”. Though the crowd didn’t laugh at that joke, I knew that was clearly a War Machine tease.
Usually when the credits start to roll, most people would get up and leave the room. This time around, almost half of the room stayed on to catch the short clip hidden 10 minutes into the credits. This, according to director Jon Favreau, was the biggest secret of the movie.
The hidden clip was something like this. Tony Stark enters his mansion and was greeted by Nick Fury to tell him about the ‘Avenger Initiative’. This could be some kind of kick-start of the two Avengers movies coming out on May and July 2011.
The next Iron Man movie will be released on April 30, 2010. That’s a long, long wait to see War Machine.
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Saturday, April 19th, 2008 |
The Jackie Chan vs Jet Li hype is overrated. While I have enjoyed Jackie Chan’s previous works such as Drunken Master, Police Story and Rob-B-Hood, I also admired Jet Li’s kung fu flicks such as Fearless and his series of Wong Fei Hong movies. However when the two were put together in the same movie, it seemed like the mountain was too small for two tigers.
The long-awaited fight scene between Jet Li and Jackie Chan was quite disappointing. It seemed like the movie was trying too hard to balance between the two, and as a result the fight ended in a truce. I expected one of them to beat the crap out of the other, then the loser would come back for another round to settle the score at 1 - 1.
Jet Li was quiet throughout the match, and then suddenly spurt out some English at the end of the fight. His Englund dawn powderful, man. Most of the time I can’t catch what the heck he was saying. Thank God for the subtitles.
Why oh why did the Jade Warlord and his cronies wear so much eyeshadow? Does it actually mean something or did they really put on the makeup to look more intimidating? It seems to me, that the Jade Warlord wore the most makeup.
The storyline seemed to focus on the American boy too much. Well, of course, since he is the lead character in the movie. I wasn’t used to watching a movie with Jackie Chan or Jet Li in it where they are not the lead characters themselves. Also, the way the characters appear and join the boy to face the Jade Warlord is a joke. That Sparrow girl just appeared out of nowhere and then cried father and mother, wanting to seek revenge on the Jade Warlord. The monk in white (Jet Li) also appeared out of nowhere moments before the fight against Jackie Chan. And Jackie… well… he was introduced as a roaming beggar who seemed to have passed by in coincidence.
Since Jet Li plays a monk, and also the Monkey King (Sun Wu Kong) Jackie Chan has to have two roles as well. I didn’t notice this until the very end of the movie. Jackie plays Lu Yan, the aforementioned beggar. He is also the old, old man in the present time who opens a pawnshop selling bootleg kungfu DVDs. I don’t know if the old man is a descendant of Lu Yan, as it wasn’t mentioned in the movie.
I can’t say I didn’t like the movie. The visual effects were awesome. Especially the part when the boy freed the Monkey King. I would rate this movie at 7.5/10. It can be an entertaining movie if you don’t look too much into the details.
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