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The Wrong Missy (2020)
Go rewatch Forgetting Sarah Marshall instead
This movie is truly, truly bad. The writing is genuinely atrocious. Kudos to Lauren Lapkus for giving her best and going all out with all the physical humour. But her character are just one dimensionally annoying, lack depth and generally beyond redemption. Scratch that, actually every character is like that. This is such a giant waste of talent and money.
Les Misérables (2012)
An exceptional movie.
I'll be honest, I am neither a big fans of musical movie nor a big fans of French literature. Previous to watching this movie, I have no idea what Les Miserables is about, other than it is written by a famous French writer Victor Hugo. After I saw it gets so many award on Golden Globe, bored out of my skull on a Tuesday afternoon, I decided to give Les Miserables a try.
And boy, does the movie blew my mind. It instantly got my attention with the first song, "Look Down... Look Down" by Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman)and his fellow prison mate as they pull the damaged ship into the dry dock. Starting from a person who broke his parole in search of a better life, then becoming a mayor and saving Cosette from the Thernardier couple and raising her as his own daughter until the moments of his death, Hugh Jackman is magnificent in this movie and he has brilliantly bring this tale of redemption to life.
Then, there is Javert (Russell Crowe), a person who does everything by the book, everything is principle, principle and more principle. There is literally no gray area, it is either black or white, heaven or hell for him, which only make his suicide scene even sadder in my opinion, because his only wrong was letting Jean Valjean and a wounded Marius go, but he seem to think that he had somehow failed himself and his principal, and decided the only way out was death.
Also worth mentioning here is Anne Hathaway's character, Fantine. Despite her scenes in this movie aren't very long, but her scenes are definitely some of the saddest, especially the scene after she was raped and started singing "I dreamed a dream", it is just something very befittingly beautiful when she sang it in a whisper at first, then the whisper turned into a scream and the scream turned into a sobbing voice.
The only downside is that the French revolution's storyline are totally overshadowed by the love story between Cosette, Marius and Eponine. But that is quickly forgiven, when the story shift it's focus back to an old and sick Jean Valjean, where he decided to leave his daughter to Marius without saying goodbye, and ask Marius to keep his secret from Cosette. Also, I decided not to talk about the second last scene in the movie, which the best part of the movie, so you can experience it yourself in cinema. Remember to bring tissues, lots of it.
Finally, I just want to make it clear that every song in this movie is recorded live on the set as the actors and actresses sing it, not ADR or lip-syncing. I think this alone is a very impressive feat and for one movie to success in so many aspect, this is definitely one of the best movie of 2013. For the final score, I'll give it a 9 out of 10. Definitely a must watch.
Serenity (2005)
If you missed this, you are going to regret it.
First of all, this review contain spoiler for the Firefly series and this movie. And if you haven't watch it, what are you doing reading about it on IMDb, go buy the BluRay and watch it. NOW. GORRAMIT.
First of all, the opening to this movie feels different than the story on Firefly. It is very dark and grim. Mal have become somewhat colder than he was on Firefly. The situation is tense and Mal is threatening Simon and River to leave as they prove to be too much a problem. But then the story picks up again when River kick everyone's ass (Awesome job, Summer Glau) after being activated by secret message encoded into a Japanese commercial.
I love it when they visit planet Miranda and found out about the PAX virus. From there on until the final credit roll, it was freaking awesome. One of the example being Reavers vs. Alliance, how much more can you ask for? Obviously, Wash's death was really sudden and really sad. I can't believe my eyes when I saw the scene. Poor Zoe. Near the end, there are more ass kicking, including River taking down all the Reavers, Mal one on one fight with the government assassin guy.
Overall, the production value of this movie is really high. CGI looks way better than it was on the TV series. Oh, if only Joss Whedon will make a sequel to this movie. Now in the tradition of Firefly's multicultural background, I'm gonna end this review with a Chinese sentence: 我可以向你保证,这是本世纪最好的科幻片。
Castle: The Blue Butterfly (2012)
A fun episode with an awesome story.
This episode is really a pleasant surprise and so far it's the best episode in season 4.
The LA Noire-esque setting with Castle and Beckett as Joe and Vera; Lanie as a Betsy Sinclair the night club singer; Esposito as a Cuban hit-man and the funniest of all Ryan as an Irish mobster. I love the part when Catle ask Ryan to say Boy-o repeatedly. And the cheesy dialogs that seems like it's ripped straight from a black and white movie, it's just perfect.
The investigation in present day was kinda meh, but things got interesting whenever the story cut to 1947, and we finally get to see some romantic action between Nathan and Stana but only as Joe and Vera though. But still, here's hoping by the end of season 4, both Castle and Beckett will be together. It's also cool to see Molly Quinn playing someone other than Castle's good (but sometimes emotional and quite annoying) daughter.
And let's not forget the ever so awesome Mark Pellegrino as both Tom Dempsey and Tom Dempsey III. Kudos to the production team for having Mark Pellegrino guest staring in the show.
Sien lui yau wan (2011)
Surprisingly bad movie, probably one of the worst in 2011
I have only watch the original once, when it's on TV, and it's quite good. So I thought I might give this a try.
The director of my favorite Chinese film last year (Ip Man 2) directed this movie, Louis Koo is in this movie (one of the better actor Hong Kong's film industry had to offer). I mean how could this movie get a score lower than a 7? That's was what I thought before I watch the movie.
Half an hour into the movie, I had already regretted I spent RM8 on this. This movie is a huge disappointment. It's boring, the character is dull and the post production crew didn't even try to get some good voice actor to dub the Mandarin speaking character. Seriously, the character's face does not match their voice. (I watch the Cantonese version).
And the acting done by the guy who play Ning Choi San is really bad. Didn't they held an audition to find suitable actor/actress? Because of the bad voice acting and unsuitable actor, the only character you really care about in the whole movie is really Louis Koo alone.
Also, Wai Ying Hong's character as the tree monster is a bit exaggerating and ridiculous, the next thing we know, the villain ends up becoming the second funniest character in the movie.
Finally, what is wrong with Hong Kong's film industry lately? Why are there a myriad of actor/actress from mainland China in Hong Kong movie lately? Most of the character in this movie are played by mainland Chinese actor/actress. It's not like I'm a racist against mainland Chinese or anything, but if you can't speak Cantonese, don't audition for a role that needs you to speak Cantonese. It ends up becoming a mess after the dubbing.
P/S: I'm really sad I had to say this, but the only good thing about this movie is the babes and Louis Koo's jokes.
The Malay Chronicles: Bloodlines (2011)
A surprisingly good movie.
A Malaysian action film based on real history about Langkasuka, sounds great. It's been a while now since the last Malaysian high budget movie (Puteri Gunung Ledang) came out, and to my surprise, this movie was executed really well.
The fighting was very intense and the movement is comparable to some Thailand martial art movie. There are also some funny moment between the Chinese Admiral, Marcus and Merong. Of everything the movie had to offer, the music is the best, as it was really good and did a lot to make the already intense scene much more impressive. The CGI in this movie is also very good, but for some reason had a huge quality drop in last part when depicting Sultan Mudzaffar Shah walking towards the harbour.
Also, the story was a bit rush. For example, they didn't explain about the relationship between Embok and Merong, then all of the sudden, the narrator (the Sultan) came out and said that Embok was pregnant with Merong's baby. IMHO, this should be make into a trilogy to explain the full story thoroughly.
And what is wrong with speaking proper English? Why is there so many broken English in this movie? You see, games like God of War depicted ancient Greece, but with characters speaking proper English, and I didn't see any problem with it, so I really don't understand why should the actor use broken English instead of proper English.
At last, I give this movie a 7 out of 10, because the production value was high and some of the scene is really good, but sadly it also has some serious flaw that made the movie incomplete.
Predators (2010)
Bad, bad, bad.
==Story== Royce and other character parachute from the sky, gather up, realize they are not on Earth. Then, they found a survival that had gone insane and shooting their way through predators. That's about it, that's the overall plot line. It is stupid, not interesting, and almost makes me fall asleep. Score: 3.5/10
==Music== The background music was mediocre at best, and out of sync at one part. Score: 5/10
==Graphics== The CGI are really outdated for 2010's standard, especially at one scene where they show an explosion. It was trying to look gore (like God of War gore, which I think it should be) but quite unsuccessful in my humble opinion. Score: 6/10
==Characters== Of all the characters, Stans (Walton Goggins's character) was the best. He tried to be funny, and it was pretty good. The Mexican and RUF guy died before we really get to know them. Isabelle, the IDF chicks was hot and pretty good. The "doctor" was not convincing and he does not give me any emotional impact like being angry or felt betrayed. Nikolai and the Yakuza was badly written character. Noland is only being written to extend the length of this movie.
My biggest complaint is the one with Adrien Brody's character, Royce. Being the main character, he definitely deserved the "Least Known Main Character Award". He acts like an asshole in the movie, being not give a damn to the most of every one, he had literally no on screen chemistry whatsoever with Isabelle during the movie. He run alone to the spaceship just to found out he had no idea how to get on board. (And suddenly, he realized that he's not really such a bad guy after all) So he went back, act like he care about the others. He killed the predator and save Isabelle then become a great hero.
In a nutshell, I just don think his characters make sense, at all. Score: 5/10
Whiteout (2009)
What a mediocre movie.
First of all, this is one of those movie that starts greatly, and when downhill right after that. The Russian plane crash premise was good, but the serial murder part is just really mediocre. After the first few scene, I knew that old doctor is wrong somewhere, and must be responsible for some crime or something. And, the ending is really bad, the doctor committed suicide and 6 months later Robert Pryce (the UN guy) is playing bowling with those "radioactive jellybean" cans and I was like what the hell??? Come on, it deserve something better than that. Also worth mentioning is the CGI, it's really sucks for 2009 standard.
If it was up to me to write the script, I would have make the old doctor the only survivor of the Russian plane crash (The 2nd Pilot) and come back to get the precious diamond he try to stole 50 years ago.