Certified Copy

So I went to watch another art house film with my friend Mark.  I had previously watched the movies Before Sunrise (which I found out has a whopping 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes!) and Before Sunset with Mark and Certified Copy definitely reminded me of those two movies.  Certified Copy begins by the main character British writer James Miller giving a talk to an Italian audience on his book on the topic of originals and copies in the art world.  A French antiques dealer, whose name is not given, comes to attend the talk but leaves soon after entering since her son is hungry.  She leaves her phone number with the book's Italian translator.  Later James Miller comes over to talk with the French lady at her store and they begin on a short expedition to a town 30 minutes away from where they are.  The movie mainly revolves around their dialogue and the beautiful scenery of Italy.  Their conversation starts to take a strange twist when whilst at a cafe the woman who runs the cafe starts to talk to the lady as if Miller was the lady's husband.  When Miller returns after having been talking on the phone the lady informs Miller that the cafe owner thinks that they are a married couple.  Soon after Miller and the lady start talking as if they were truly married, to comedic effect.  I think the movie really portrays human emotions well and I think the mystery around whether the two are married or not is entertaining.  A really 'talkie' movie, enjoyable smart dialogue, I give it an 8/10.

Super 8

So I forgot to review this movie, I watched it sometime last month shortly after it was released in Hong Kong.  Having been a fan of the first two seasons of Lost I have since tried to follow up on J.J. Abram and his production company, Bad Robot Production, and their productions.   First up was Cloverfield, which was a big miss for me mostly 'cos I couldn't take all of the shaky camera work, although I guess the story line was OK and the production value was pretty good.  Next was Star Trek, directed and produced by J.J. Abrams, which was a fun movie, but the only thing that slightly bothered me was whether the physics of the movie was realistic or not.  I even watched Morning Glory, although only at my mom's suggestion, and although it was a chick flick it was enjoyable.  I've been digressing so I guess I should actually state my opinion about Super 8.  At the heart of the movie is a coming of age story and a love story between the adolescent hero and his love interest.  In the story the young characters are about 13 but we will see the young hero, Joe Lamb, overcome great hurdles in order to save his love, Alice.  I actually was lured into this movie thinking it would be more of a sci-fi action movie when actually the coming of age story and the characters of the movie mattered more.  The overarching story is that in 1979 a mysterious train carrying an unknown cargo crashes.  A group of young kids witness the scene as they were filming their film project at the train station where the train accident occurs.  As the next day comes strange things start happening in the neighborhood and the military comes in to try to manage the incident.  It becomes clear that an alien was on the train and escaped when it crashed and it becomes clear that the alien is responsible for kidnapping many of the residents in the area.  One night Alice goes missing and it is up to Joe to solve the mystery as to where she disappeared to and with the help of his friends he goes of on a search for Alice, even risking entering a zone where the military has been deployed and where civilians are not allowed to entered.  The movie doesn't go too deep into the sci-fi aspect but instead focuses on the characters and the relationships between Joe, his friends and Alice.  I guess it makes them more lovable and in the end you care about their fates.  The ending reminded me of the ending of E.T. and although ending was abrupt I think it was saved by the showing of the movie project that Joe's friend directed.  The movie project was a major part of the movie since it was how Joe grew attracted to Alice in the first place and also was how the kids spent their spare time.  By showing the finished film project it gives hope that the town moved on after the incident.  All in all a good movie.  I haven't been giving my film reviews any ratings yet so I guess this one will be a first.  This movie rates a 7/10, I would have given more but didn't mostly because there was such a build up to the ending but it sort of ended abruptly without answering questions about what happened next, like how the military would take responsibility for the incident.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2

OK so I had a period of time when I was too lazy to update what movies I watched and by now I've already forgotten what other movies I may have watched.  However I would not be able to forget the latest and last episode in the Harry Potter saga, it signaled an end of an era and fine conclusion to the series.  I won't go too much into the story but I guess the summary would be that Lord Voldemort is on a mission to kill Harry Potter and Harry Potter is on a mission to kill Lord Voldemort as well by destroying the remaining horcruxes, magical objects that contain part of Lord Voldemort's soul that allowed him to be resurrected after his death.  Each of the horcruxes are created with a mysterious magic that revolves around a murder and Lord Voldemort had committed many murders to create more horcruxes to ensure his immortality.  The story, I am assuming, is faithful to the book and therefore possesses all the qualities that attracted people to the book in the first place.  Of course the special effects help too and to conclude the movie the story jumps forward 19 years to see the families of Harry Potter and Ginny, Ron and Hermione and others sending their children off to Hogwarts.

Taken

So I'm not sure if there were any other movies I missed out, I can't remember.  I actually watched this movie on Blu ray at a friend's house, the movie was originally released in 2008.  It was pretty awesome since he had a nice home entertainment setup.  It follows the story of a father, a former CIA operative, who chases for his daughter after she gets kidnapped by an Albanian group of sex traders operating in Paris.  Although the movie was quite violent I couldn't help but side with the actions the father took in order to attempt to save his daughter.  The ending was obvious but the story did have one or two twists along the way where you wondered how on earth the father was going to escape his predicament.  A great movie overall, I liked the idea of attaching a reason and an emotion to all of the violence since you care that much more that the father achieves his goals in order to save his daughter.  I also liked the investigative side to the story where the father picks up clues along the way and must use both his brains and his physical skills to find his daughter with the risk of failure meaning he may never see his daughter again.

X-men First Class

So the movie revolves around the plot of how the X-men started out and how Magneto became a villain.  The main plot revolves around another mutant named Sebastian Shaw who tries to start a nuclear World War 3 so that he can start destroying mankind.  Charles Xavier (Professor X) and his team go on several missions in order to stop Shaw.  Although this is probably not part of the plot I can also imagine that since Sebastian Shaw's ability is to absorb raw power he would probably also want to absorb the power from a few nuclear bombs.  Once Shaw absorb the power he can reuse it to devastating effect.   The other main plot is Erik Lensherr's (Magneto) mission of revenge against Sebastian Shaw since Shaw kills Lensherr's mother at the beginning of the movie in an attempt to stir up Lensherr's magnetic superpowers.  I like how the movie provides the back story to the X-men universe, although I'm not sure how much of the story was actually inspired from the comic books.  I like how the movie thinks of small details as well, such as the back story as to how Charles Xavier gets paralyzed from the waist down.  Overall the plot was well written, I like how the story flows however the dialogue needed more work.  It was a fun movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Plus Wolverine's cameo was hilarious!  Also while I was procrastinating on this 'review' I also searched around Wikipedia for the new characters in the movie who I had not seen before and found out they all appeared in the comic books in the past, cool stuff.  I guess the writers needed to use new characters since most the characters in the original trilogy are young, with only Mystique, the Beast, Wolverine, Professor X and Magneto being aged old enough to appear in both the original movie trilogy and this prequel.

The Hangover Part II

So it's basically The Hangover in Thailand, virtually the same plot except different jokes some relating to transexuals.  Wasn't too offended in the way they portrayed Bangkok, I guess it's kind of hard to hide the truth of how sleazy it can be.  It's kind of funny because I've almost always been in Thailand with family, except for one school golf trip which was obviously kept PG, so that means I've never truly experienced the sleazy side to Bangkok, until I watched this movie.  It's a funny movie but it couldn't beat the first.  My dad wanted to watch it 'cos it was set in Thailand and I tried to persuade him not to.  Letting him watch the first one just made him wanted to watch this one more.  He had a blast watching both movies.

Souce Code

I'm feeling lazy for this review so let's just say the name of the movie was kinda lame.  Also I got confused.

Thor

All around fun movie to watch.  The story centers around the relationship between Thor, his brother Loki and his father Odin, all characters from Norse mythology.   On the day that Thor is to ascend to the throne and take position as the new king a group of enemies from a different realm attempt to steal the source of their power which they used to attempt to take over earth years ago.  The ceremony is interrupted and Thor is not yet made king.  Thor plans his own revenge against the enemies, the frost giants, and travels with some friends to attack the Frost Giants, sworn enemies of the...

OK so I was sitting on this review for a while and couldn't really be bothered to finish it so I decided to rap up the review in 3 words.  THOR IS HERE! (SC2 reference)

Lego Ninjas

Limitless

I liked the story of Limitless, I think the plot of any movie is important as I learnt from watching Sucker Punch.  The basic premise of the movie is that there is a new drug that enables the user to enhance his or her intelligence and focus to the point that it allows them be almost supernaturally smart and it allows them to become very successful at anything they come in contact with.  Naturally there are problems with others know about the drug and the main character Eddie has to fend them off.  As he starts taking more of the drug he also starts finding side effects.  I like the little adventure the story takes you through giving you some nice twists in the story.  Oh and the movie definitely shows that the dudes with the brains get the chicks.

Also some other random notes...I was interested to see Anna Friel in a movie role for the first time.  I haven't seen her in anything other than Pushing Daisies on TV.  Too bad the majority of her screen time was short and for her role they had to put make-up to make her look older.  Also at the end of the movie the main character tries to sound smart by speaking "fluent" Mandarin.  Bradley Cooper didn't quite manage to pull it off and the audience got a couple of chuckles out of it.

Sucker Punch

Firstly I didn't realize this movie was directed by the same person who directed 300 and Watchmen.  But I guess it didn't matter who directed this movie since the story line needed a lot of work.  The movie is set in the 60's, when mental health care was still antiquated.  The story involves a 20 year old girl "Babydoll" who is wrongfully committed to an insane asylum after her stepfather accuses her of killing her younger sister, when in fact it was the stepfather who killed her younger sister.  This all happens after the mother dies and the stepfather realizes the inheritance was given to the two daughters.  Here comes my first confusion: why did the stepfather kill the younger daughter?  What could he possibly gain, it wouldn't have helped him gain the inheritance, unless there was something else written in the will that wasn't revealed in the movie.  Once inside the insane asylum the asylum's orderly is bribed by the stepfather to perform an outdated procedure, lobotomy, to make his stepdaughter become mentally disabled for real.  The main plot revolves around Babydoll obtaining various items that will help her escape.  This is where the fun comes in, there are two levels of fantasy involved with the majority of the film with minimal amounts of time spent in the real world.  The first level of fantasy is a mob run brothel where Babydoll and other pretty girls work to please their clients.  They plot to escape and this part of the fantasy reflects what is going on in the real world.  Babydoll does an erotic dance, that sadly never gets seen on screen lol, that distracts all the men in the brothel when she takes center stage and the other girls work to grab their items to escape.  When she fantasizes that she is dancing she goes even further into another fantasy that reflects the struggle to obtain the item.  In these fantasies she enters worlds inspired by other works of fantasy like anime and video games.  The worlds include a samurai world, an orc fantasy world with dragons, a sci-fi fantasy with robots and a steampunk battle against zombie Nazi soldiers.  Why do I have to explain all this?  Because the plot seemingly tries to be interesting and convoluted but it's really not and aside from the fantasy the events in the real world part of the film are senseless.  In the end after grabbing all the items needed for their escape Babydoll and one other girl almost manage to escape but given that there is no easy way out Babydoll sacrifices herself as a distraction whilst the other patient manages to escape.  Spoiler: Babydoll gets lobotomized and becomes a mindless soulless person.  The orderly immediately feels immense remorse for having ruined a girl's life permanently and he gets arrested for having forged the psychiatrist's signature allowing for the lobotomy procedure.  I feel like this film had so much potential but it just had to end in a way that was sad and wrong on so many levels.  I guess Babydoll payed the ultimate sacrifice to allow her friend to escape.  It was a waste of all that effort into all the special effects for such a downer of an ending.  All the pretty girls in the movie too, so pointless in the end though.  Chick named Jamie Chung was in it, saw her in another movie too.  She seems like quite the B-movie actress given her past record, although her next upcoming appearance is in Hangover Part II, which I'm looking forward to and I'm definitely watching.  Vanessa Hudgens of High School Musical fame (not that I've ever seen it) was in this movie too.   To summarize my disappointment in this film I would have to say that it needed better writers, even a minimally creative plot would have helped drive the action better.

Edit: I feel I may have misunderstood the story but it doesn't really matter, I still don't like the story.  After reading this the story makes more sense but I don't know, the feeling of the movie still doesn't sit well with me: "Its about escaping to your mind as a coping strategy so you won't have to face your much more grim and darker reality."  Oh and the soundtrack was actually good.

Morning Glory

Morning Glory is a lighthearted comedy about a producer who finds herself in a difficult position as a producer of a failing Breakfast TV news show.  I would not usually be suckered into watching this kind of movie but I thought Rachel McAdams was cute so I didn't mind.  The movie has the predictable overcoming all odds sort of story line and a few good laughs sprinkled throughout the movie.  It made for a pretty enjoyable experience.  Harrison Ford is getting old though haha, he looked a lot better a few years ago in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

World Invasion (Battle: Los Angeles)

I always find a movie more enjoyable when I stay away from any hype surrounding it.  Also, watching trailers can often ruin a movie for me.  I had neither any hype nor any idea of what this movie would be like.  I guess it helped to know that it got bad reviews.  I didn't think this movie warranted the bad reviews it got.  The basic story is that aliens invade earth and come to take our water as it is a resource that they want.  They come violently, taking offensive action against the world's major coastal cities.  It was a basic war movie when it came down to it.  I guess my only complaint would be that the aliens didn't really have any special powers, they might as well have been humans fighting humans.  The movie was action packed and although it was predictable at times it always kept you on edge, not really knowing what's up next.  Also if you thought Transformers was a movie that was a major military propaganda tool then you'd be in for a surprise because this movie bleeds pro-marine agenda all over it.  This movie was fun for the action and CG these days is so incredibly believable.  I don't think at any point in the movie did my brain decide that the aliens were computer generated.

The Edge (Край)

First off I guess I skipped out on watching Black Swan, I'm not so great with watching that kind of movie these days.  My friend Mark is a big movie guy and since it's his last week of freedom before he starts work next week we decided to meet up to watch a movie from the Hong Kong International Film Festival.  There were too many choices so we ended up choosing a random movie that would be convenient to go to both in terms of location and time.  We didn't really look too much into this movie, but a quick look at it's wiki shows that it won a nomination for best foreign language film at the Golden Globe awards.

Knowing little about the movie we wondering why it got the category III rating (equivalent to being R-rated).  Thankfully there wasn't any sort of uber-violence though, just a few nude ladies.  The story looks at the main character after WWII.  After finishing his duties at the frontline of war Ignat is hired to work as a train mechanic at a Gulag.  From here on the story is rather complicated to describe though.  However it is pretty interesting.  With nothing much to do at the Gulag most of the story focusses on Ignat's obsession with trains.  It also focuses on the Russian's hatred of a German girl who Ignat finds while trying to recover an old train and Ignat's efforts to protect her.  High production values make for a very believable movie. The story of a protagonist protecting someone from discrimination is uplifting as she finds a way to live without hatred in her life in the end.

The King's Speech

I must say I was a little disappointed about this one, I guess that's what hype does to any movie.  It's not a bad movie but I guess it didn't really move me that much.  The story is about King George VI who had a speech impediment and his struggle to overcome it so that he could make speeches, made necessary by his role.  Not to say that it isn't an inspiring story, it's always great to see someone come through after their struggles.  The acting was also good, I don't know, I guess I was looking for that extra bit of sparkle.

Shaolin (新少林寺)

I'll start off by saying that this is the most pro-Buddhist movie I have ever seen.  The movie doesn't stop to promote the Buddhist ideals of peace, harmony, community and zen despite all of the action going on.  The main plot revolves around a fallen general who changes his wicked ways and becomes a shaolin monk.  He trains in the Shaolin martial arts ways and becomes a good monk, defending the people from his power hungry former officer.  I guess I'm not into all the emotional stuff in this movie.  All the crying is just a bit too much for me.  The action scenes were pretty good though and I guess I sympathize with some of the Buddhist ideals.  I guess I like the lesson in this movie that that we can all repent from our sins and change our ways, which is similar to that of Christian ideology but obviously different in its execution and faith.  Great acting skills from lead Andy Lau and Nicholas Tse, Jackie Chan added a few laughs too.  A very serious movie, I guess I'd prefer something lighthearted, then again the most movie I'll probably watch is Black Swan, though my reason for seeing it is mostly for Natalie Portman, maybe I should watch No Strings Attached instead for the same reason?  To be continued...

Fantastic Mr. Fox

A rather strange but funny movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox is full of surprises.  I guess from the opening scene it's hard to know what to expect next.  The stop motion animation is pretty creative, going beyond the rules of gravity and common sense.  The dialog is quick witted.  I love when the animals break out of their human like character when they eat and become animalistic.  All in all good fun I suppose.

The Green Hornet

This was a fun movie, despite all of it's failings.  I think the movie focused a bit too much on Seth Rogen's failings as a head superhero character and the drama over Cameron Diaz's character was unneeded.  Also much of the script needed more work to make it more believable and less Seth Rogeney.   What does make the movie enjoyable though is it's humor and craziness.  One example would be when the Black Beauty gets cut in half but can still run in front wheel drive.  Then there are the slow mo action scenes and Michel Gondry's psychedelic artistic shots.  I guess in summary the movie was a good laugh, not something to be taken too seriously.  Take a closer inspection and the story sort of falls apart.