I don’t know why some of my friends said that this movie sucks. I find it quite good. Not incredibly ridiculously good lah… but it’s rather good. Some parts are draggy reminding me of movies like Castaway. But some parts are superbly thrilling.

There is this one part… I fell in love with its brilliant execution. Its suspense buildup, portrayal of its subjects, the introductory scene of the “dark seekers”, it’s fantastic. I love how the fear grips the Will Smith character as well as the audience. That whole part was superb.

Although the ending didn’t follow the novel’s ending, I think it’s a better finish than the original, which would have been extremely depressing.

I give the movie 7 outta 10. Pretty good movie. Got me thinking about it into the night.

And the best thing is… I get to eat nachos. Finally!

Popularity: 6% [?]

FINALLY!

I watched the movie yesterday night, after weeks of wanting to watch it. Hmm, I really don’t know where to begin with this awesomeness of a movie.

Ok, from the start then.

Beowulf was a legendary poem written by some guy. I only found out this fact after watching the movie, and my friend told me about it. That must be why it has such a fantastic storyline. Superb in every sense.

I haven’t seen a good ‘hero’ movie, set in medieval times, for a very long time. I couldn’t even remember the last good one. Troy, perhaps? But Beowulf is a ‘hero’ movie different from all others. It really captures how events turn to stories and then to legend. Like all legends from all over the world, they’re probably exaggerated a little to add a little flair. The movie’s witty dialogs and style will get you thinking about it way after the credits roll.

Beowulf was a viking warrior who seeks glory in slaying monsters. He travels with a small brigand of soldiers who call themselves Beowulf’s Army (simple enough, no?). In this movie, he travels to Middle Ages’ Denmark, where the city is under constant attack from a troll-like monster. I actually pitied the monster Grendal, and you’ll see why, if you watch the movie.

Ok, that’s as far as I can go without spoiling anything for ya. Coz, any further into the movie, you’ll encounter all the great elements that make Beowulf such a good movie.

I came in wanting to see its animation, rendering etc… but I ended up being fully immersed in the story, as if I’m in the heart of the action itself. The actors, voices, environments, monsters, everything… they’re just beautiful.

Beowulf was played by Ray Winstone, not really a popular actor, but he pulled off the voice with great majesty. Actually, when he first appeared in the movie, I thought he looked a lot like Sean Bean, who played Boromir from Lord of the Rings.

Then there was the old king, played by Anthony Hopkins. How the character emulates the actual actor is simply uncanny, unfathomable, unbelievable. I often find myself thinking if it IS real life. Beowulf’s loyal friend was played by the guy from Braveheart. William Wallace’s childhood friend, remember him? He looked damn familiar and again, the resemblance is uncanny.

John Malkovich’s character was also nailed to perfection. Even the style and trademarks of the actors were captured. All the way down to Anthony Hopkins slightly tilted head while acting, and John Malkovich’s weird style of talking. Oh, and who can forget Angelina Jolie… only, this time, she’s super-fine! Way better than the real one. Everything… and I mean, everything… is enhanced to perfection. She plays the sorceress/witch, by the way.

I can’t think of anything I didn’t like about the movie except that I wished it had gone on longer, maybe a trilogy? Like Lord of the Rings? Coz really, it’s of the same stature as LOTR, I think.

And to those people who still say that this is just a cartoon …. …. …. wake up. This is the future, and you people must be stuck in the stone age. I don’t care to argue with them anymore. Suit yourself and don’t watch it. Go ahead and miss out on one of the best movies of the year.

I give Beowulf 9.5/10. The 0.5 is due to the irritating exit light in my line of sight, and the fact that I couldn’t get nachos before going in, coz of some problems with the booking system. Other than that, Beowulf scores full marks on my watch.

Popularity: 6% [?]

The most recent movie I watched was Bee movie, a couple of nights ago. I never thought I’d go see this movie, but it turned out to be delightfully pleasant.

I wanted to watch Stardust actually, but the ‘animators’ persisted on watching the Bee movie.

It’s about how a single bee caused the entire upset of nature’s balance by placing a lawsuit against the humans for illegal harvesting of honey.

One thing I like about the movie is the familiarity of the voices. I could actually identify a few of them before the credits roll.

• Jerry Seinfeld plays Barry the Bee.
• The guy who voiced Joe Swanson (the cripple from Family Guy) plays the eccentric boyfriend.
• John Goodman plays the lawyer.
• Chris Rock plays the mosquito.

The jokes were very Seinfeld-ish. I loved Seinfeld. Therefore, the jokes, even though its translated to animation, told by a bee, is still funny.

I’d give the movie 7/10. It’s okay lah… Watch it for a marvel at how animation had progressed and Seinfeld’s little antics.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Resident Evil 3 was bad. I’ve already written about that. But the zombie movie I just watched tops all others.

The very popular Maddox wrote in one of his post about the best Zombie film ever. Dawn of the Dead, because it’s got some of the good things he likes about zombie movies. I used to think that Dawn of the Dead was the best too.

But today, I watched 28 Weeks Later.

It’s a sequel to 28 Days Later, which is a pretty good horror/zombie movie. It’s fresh, because instead of the zombies being mindless, blur-cock and always hungry for flesh creatures, the zombies in 28 Days Later were driven by Rage. They’re suffering from a virus, called the Rage Virus.
What it does is that it makes you vomit blood when you’re infected, within seconds! Then you immediately get up with so much energy as if you’ve downed 20 Red Bulls or something. Blood start to flow out of every orifice of your body and you can suddenly run at top speeds to chase after your next victim.

You start looking around, not for flesh coz you’re hungry, but for live humans because… well… because they’re alive. You just wanna inflict maximum pain and ultimately, death. No reason. Just wanna kill. Not the swift quick kill, but the ‘beat and whack and peel eyeballs off and dig cheeks in with bare hands kill’.

That’s the stuff of 28′ series.

Hot military doctor, and cool sniper, protecting two kids from hordes of infected crazy freaks.

For 28 Weeks Later, the story continues from 28 days later, where things had settled down. And US Military is overseeing a huge operation to re-populate the nation of Britain.

Then something cocks up, and the shit happens all over again.

I love this movie coz’ it’s damn huge. So, here’s a list of things I like about this movie:

• Huge military operation
  • Snipers picking off Zombies from Rooftops
  • Snipers picking off Humans from Rooftops
  • Snipers picking off panicked snipers from Rooftops
• Massive massive chunks of flesh, loads of blood, and guts spewing all over the place
• Helicopter blades slicing heads and limbs off zombie creatures.
• City-wide explosions
• Everybody Dies… grotesquely! (that’s a spoiler for ya!)
• The meanest, baddest, freakiest zombies ever!
• Awesome shock value!
• People getting flamed by flamethrowers!
• Muse’s Shrinking Universe is in the soundtrack!

This movie is awesome. Go and watch it if you haven’t done so already.

There are two sequels to Zombie movie that tops it’s predecessor.

1.  Resident Evil: Apocalypse after Resident Evil 1
2. 28 Weeks Later after 28 Days Later.

Other sequels like Land of the Dead (damn disappointing) and Resident Evil 3 just plain suck.

Interesting links regarding the movie:

Rage Virus on Wikipedia

28 Weeks Later official Website

Trailer

Popularity: 4% [?]

Milla J returns as Alice in the third and supposed final installment of this video game movie adaptation. As compared to the first two movies, I think this one pretty much sucks.

I was skeptical originally when I saw the trailers and pictures of Extinction few months back. I thought it was gonna be an all desert, all action, no story, movie. I was right.

Unlike Resident Evil and Resident Evil Apocalypse, this movie pretty much abandons whatever storyline it’s built up and went on a pointless and rather boring journey of zombie killing.

And somewhere towards the end, the producers must’ve realised that they don’t have a proper villian to fight Alice with, and so they made a cheesy villian out of the ’scientist’ guy. The whole thing was pretty lame.

As for Milla’s performance, she’s looking a bit hotter than her Resident Evil 2 self, which I think was her worst looking role. Maybe she’s overshadowed by the hot Jill Valentine (which sadly, didn’t appear, and wasn’t even mentioned, in this movie). Milla J’s Alice in Resident Evil 1 is still the best performance for me.

Ali Larter (the crazy psycho duo-personality girl from Heroes) was also disappointing. She carried a totally secondary supporting role. And the only actor which was carried over from the 2nd one, the military guy, was also insignificant. The reason is all the characters are pretty much the same. No difference in personality. Even the black funny guy from Apocalypse wasn’t as funny. I didn’t even realise it was the same guy

.

Alice in Resident Evil 1

Alice in Resident Evil Apocalypse. Worst looking. Jill Valentine was introduced, and she rocked.

Alice in Resident Evil Extinction. Better looking than part 2, but the worst movie of the three.

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend Resident Evil Extinction. You’d be better off knowing what you know about the Resident Evil story. This ending is not something you wanna seal the story with.

Should’ve watched Superbad instead.

Related Post:
Resident Evil Extinction

Popularity: 5% [?]

There are two parts to this movie. They weren’t kidding when they said Two movies for the price of One. But I heard Singapore showed them separately.

The first one I saw was Death Proof. Kurt Russel plays Stuntman Mike, who is really really psychotic. I mean he’s way off in his head. But that’s the cool thing. He looked like some loser stunt man trying to make it big. But when he gets to what he does, you don’t wanna mess with him… unless you’re part of a group of even more psychotic girls bent on destruction.

Too much conversation in this one, I think.

But the gem of the Grindhouse duo-movie is… PLANET TERROR!

This here, is Rose McGowan. She’s some stripper who just quit her job to become a stand up comedian. Then, a series of events involving Bruce Willis as an army commander, a bio scientist who cuts off men’s balls, and plenty of zombies got Cherry’s (her name) right leg amputated. Bizarre huh. Then she made a joke of how she WAS going to be a STAND up comedian.

Then later on, when Zombies with gross, disgusting, pus loaded bodies became rampant in the town, some hero guy, with a team of a BBQ chef and a sheriff went on to try to save the world. In the process, Quentin Tarantino tried to rape a one legged chick, who later got herself a new leg made of an automatic machine gun with flamethrower and grenade launcher built in!

Amazing story isn’t it?! You gotta watch it! It’s BLOODY awesome! Literally!

Who could resist a biker chick with one leg made of GUN and a pillion who’s another psycho crazy nurse?

It’s a winning formula!

Popularity: 4% [?]

I’m a bit late to watch this. Bogaman has already criticised me for letting this one go unwatched in the cinemas. It wasn’t till my lecturer brought up the movie while teaching about systems’ security, that I began looking for it.

Live Free or Die Hard. Die Hard 4.0. Two titles to describe one hell of an awesome movie. Yes, I agree with everyone out there, this movie kicks ass.

Bruce Willis simply has.. presence. He owns the scene that he’s in. Just like in Grindhouse:Planet Terror, but more on that later. Although he looked a hell of a lot older than when he was last seen as John McClaine, he still managed to pull off the character. His character seemed more composed, as if experience in death defying circumstances had prepared him for the new terrorism that’s happening.

Maggie Q’s also in the movie. And I really liked the face off between McClaine and Q’s character. Forgot her name; all I could remember was McClaine saying, “Alright, enough of this KungFu shit”. Hahah. Priceless.

Die Hards 3 and 4 involves McClaine with a sidekick, of some sorts. And I still think Samuel L Jackson’s role in DH 3 is better. I just like his acting. Samuel L Jackson freakin’ rocks. In this movie however, it’s some brainy hacker kid who somehow holds the key to dismantling the evil plans of the terrorist, who, come to think of it, is simply a disgruntled employee.

Action’s as good as hell. Everything was very gripping, even though you know that they’re all pretty unrealistic. But the ride’s good.

If you haven’t caught it, it’s time to Live Free or DIE HARD!

Popularity: 2% [?]

No Spoiler Section

I’ve always been a fan of horror films. I’ve taken the liking probably since I saw Scream 1 back in my secondary school’s AV theater. It’s left an impact on me about how simple ideas, good camerawork, excellent storytelling and minimal costume, props and effects can make a kickass film.

This review is about the Hamiltons, a movie which I’ve recently watched. It was released in 2006, and starred some unknown actors and actresses. I found out after the movie that it was done by independent filmmakers.

The Hamiltons is about a family who’s ‘lost’ both parents. The eldest, David, takes up the responsibility of taking care of the family. The twin brother and sister are the wild sides of the family, and the youngest brother is the broody type, probably still not over the parent’s death.

Sounds typical right? It’s all normal, except for a dark secret in their basement.

The concept is quite disturbing, although I think I’m becoming a little immuned to freaky and disturbed ideas.

This movie is a debut film by the Butcher Brothers. Quite interested in what they can produce next.

I give the movie 7/10. It’s got a good concept and execution, but it’s not disturbing enough for me. I guess scary movies are so typical that you need something different to provide that extra scare.

Spoiler Section

Contains spoilers. Highlight text to read.

OK, here’s my take of the Hamiltons. Read on only if you don’t plan to watch the movie.

The movie starts off with a hot chick bounded and gagged. So that caught my attention. Then, it shows that there are dead bodies in the basement, and there’s a monster locked up in a closet in the basement. Very interesting indeed.

Then on to some boring screen time with the family with some character development bla bla bla…

The male twin guy, Wendall, or something, kidnaps girls and ties them up in the basement. Weird thing is, everyone in the family knows it, and does nothin’ about it.

Then eldest, David, the responsible one, is also in on the mess. He comes down and does stuff to the girls. By now you’d be like… what a fucked up family.

Then it gets worse, with the goth (yes, GOTH!) twin sister, Darlene, messing with her schoolmate in her house, and ends up killing her. And check this. Darlene and her twisted brother Wendall happily devours the poor chick.

Francis, the youngest one, the one with issues, couldn’t take it anymore. He rescued the last remaining girl hostage and fled with her to some barn. But he realised that he’s just like his brothers. And he revealed that his family, unlike other families, require blood to survive. They’re vampires. He couldn’t resist himself. He ended up killing the girl he rescued.

The next thing you know, the whole family’s back together and they moved to a new neighborhood, like nothing’s ever happened.

I was quite disappointed that the monster in the basement turns out to be nothing but their youngest sibling, in nursery stage. And being vampires and all, I thought they’d be more umm, dark, and couldn’t survive in the sun or something. But I guess the filmmakers wanna break from the stereotype.

They should’ve revealed stuff about their parents too. I thought they didn’t just die. Something very wrong happened and it cost their parents their lives.

The movie rocked. The goth sister rocked too.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I meant.. order of the Phoenix.

I’ve read the book, years ago, and although I’ve forgotten some details, I remembered that the story isn’t as brief as the movie’s adaptation.

Even so, the movie dragged for a butt aching 3 hours. But it’s quite not bad actually. Thanks to the best types of goth chicks ever: witches.

You know how girls are always trying to be goth and stuff, but this movie featured some who are goth not because they try to be, but because they are. They’re witches. And they’re cool.

This here is Nymphadora Tonks. When I was reading about her, I never imagined her to be so cool as portrayed in the movie. Cool how she changes her hair colour following her emotions.

A potential goth chick, Luna Lovegood. I thought she’d be this zany, Trelawney-like girl who’s half crazy. But she turned out to be like.. this. So, it’s cool too.

I even liked Bellatrix Lestrange. Yeah, she’s evil and ugly and all. But she’s goth! And have you seen her in Fight Club? That’s cool!

When I saw Tonks in the movie, I was really expecting to see the Tonks/Lupin chemistry going on. But there were none. So that’s a minus.

And the other thing I really like about the movie are the usage of dark black figures!

Unhooded dementors aren’t as scary as when they’re hooded. But the flowing black smoky cloaky thingy is really cool.

Death Eaters apparating into black smoke and wisping through the air is also a fantastic sight. And the concept of the death eaters… I love it.

Is this really cool or what! Imagine this mask, cloaked and hooded in black, towering over you while you sleep, preying on your dreams…

The final battle scene’s pretty cool too.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Spiderman 3 Review:

Man… I’m gonna kill those people who TRY to spoil the movie for me, through their blogs or whatever means.

Because… the spoilers didn’t come true. They were just messing with me!

Anyways, I would obviously recommend this movie. Since it’s a superhero movie. And it’s awesome.

Except, some fans just didn’t like how they portrayed Venom. And I’ve been listening to too many hypes and discussions and predictions that I was somewhat affected by it.

But it’s still an awesome 3rd installment.

What?

That’s it from me. No spoilers. Not like some people. Go watch it. Gwen Stacey’s hot.

Popularity: 2% [?]