Category: Movie Review

My Rating:

This evening I went to see the movie “The Lake House” at UA Time Square, Causeway Bay.

A great movie. Although the story is not exactly original, Mark Walters’ 2005 movie, “Just Like Heaven” had a similar idea, but instead with a spirit and a living person. Also one of the movies from My Must See Movies list. The main difference is that The Lake House had two of the biggest stars from Hollywood, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.

I particularly like the way the movie was able to keep the story twist and turning, which captured my attention throughout the movie. As many of you know, the ability for a movie to capture my attention is one of the methods I use to gage the interestingness of a movie.

The casts were able to make a simple story idea into an interesting movie.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it if you can
	Waste your time elsewhere

My Rating:

This evening I went to see the movie “Stormbreaker” at UA Time Square, Causeway Bay.

I can’t believe I picked another bomb. That’s two in a row. I really should stick to My Must See Movies list.

This movie is a Mission Impossible / James Bond / Inspector Gadget want to be. Unfortunately, they did not do well imitating either. The dialogues in the movie were horrible but then they were not total faults of the screenwriters.

They had Ewan McGregor as one of the leading actors in the movie, but his role is more like a cameo, after being killed off almost 15 minutes into the movie.

Mickey Rourke was the main villian of the movie, who barely saved the movie, but he’s an outgoing actor that is hanging by the thread.

They also had Alicia Silverstone to play the pretty girl in the movie, but Silverstone was her typical self as she had always been in movies like Miss Match and Clueless, basically a clueless pretty dogooder.

I had an impression that most people went to see the movie because of Alex Pettyfer, but I did not think he was that good looking. Pettyfer was playing a teenager, which he is at 16 of age in real life, but he has this deep voice making him appear to want to play an adult.

At the end of the movie, they even left an impression that there will be sequels. I gasped at the idea but know that they would not be able to cheat me out of the price of a ticket again.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it if you can
	Waste your time elsewhere

My Rating:

This afternoon I went to see the movie “Miami Vice” at JP Cinema, Causeway Bay.

One simple word “BAD”.

I must say this is one of the worst if not the worst movie I’ve seen this past 3 years.

I appears to me that they tried really hard to reproduce the 80’s TV series “Miami Vice“, which they should never had done. They should have try to produce a movie simply called “Miami Vice” about vice cops in Miami with the typical modern police story flare. At least that would have been much better than what was done.

Although in Hong Kong’s perspective, this is a foreign movie, but never thought that I would feel that way in the theater watching it. Through out the movie, there were many scenes I had not idea what the character were saying. I had to glance at the Chinese subtitles to try to figure out what I had missed. This is from a guy who does not really read Chinese.

For some reason most of the characters in the movie were mumbling their lines.

It was not long ago that I gave a movie 5 penguins, but it had been quite some time since I given any movie 1 penguin. That’s because in this case I do not have a rating that is lower.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it if you can
	Waste your time elsewhere

My Rating:

This afternoon I went to see the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” at Ocean Cinema, Tsim Sha Tsui.

What can I say, Johnny Depp is at his usual best.

For some reason ever since Johnny Depp stared in the first Priates of the Caribbean movie he seems to have carried his Captain Jack Sparrow character into his real live. Or may be it is just him playing the role to promte the movie. During his interview on David Letterman, when Letterman ask when he will take the gold teeth caps out, Depp just said, “why take them out when there’s a third movie”. Yes, for those who do not know, there is another sequel coming, “Pirates of the Caribbean 3“. It was three years between the first two in the sequel, this next one is tentatively going to be released on May 25, 2007.

Anyway, this sequel has the same priates chants, characters and sword fights that everyone expect from a priate movie. Although at times there are too many of the usual expected stuff, which made the movie a bit slow.

I always judge the interestingness of a movie by how often I notice my surroundings during the movie. Although it was not often, I was not able to totally immerge myself. Even so I do enjoy the movie and the performance of Depp. The special effects and makeup are amazing too.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it if you can
	Waste your time elsewhere

My Rating:

This evening I went to see the movie “Cars” at UA Windsor House, Causeway Bay.

For the regular readers and people who knows me, they already know that I am a fan of Pixar. This movie has only further reinforce that feeling of mine. You also know that I reserve the 5 penguins ratings for movies that I want to see a second time right afterwards.

Cars being the last movie title in the original Pixar-Disney contract, is definitely one that would have convinced the Disney executive that they cannot loose Pixar to its competitors. May be the Disney board members received a preview of Cars before they decided to purchase Pixar; making Steve Jobs the largest shareholder of Disney.

I had always enjoyed the smart humor of the Pixar artists, Cars is definitely no exception. As usual the Pixar designers were able to transfer the characteristics of each actor, behind the voices, to the actual animations. Making me want to see Pixar’s up coming movie, “Ratatouille” (Rat-a-too-ee), even more.

As in previous Pixar movies, characters from past Pixar movies also made cameo appearances. Like the Toy Story characters appearing in “Finding Nemo“. But not wanting to spoil the surprise, I will not tell you who or when they appear in Cars. You will have to enjoy finding this out yourself. May be in a few weeks time, after most people who wants to see this movie will have seen the movie, you, the readers, can return to this post and submit your “easter eggs” of where these cameo appearances were.

I for one had already subscribed to Amazon’s announcement for when the DVD comes up.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it if you can
	Waste your time elsewhere

My Rating:

This afternoon I went to see the movie “Superman Returns” at GH Grand Ocean Theatre, Tsim Sha Tsui.

I don’t recall the last Superman movie with Christopher Reeves, but apparently Superman had left Earth for 5 years and now he has returned.

Unfortunately, I feel this movie has fallen victim to the traditional sequel blues. What I mean is that, typical sequels are never as good as the first one. Only the rare occasions has this rule been presently broken. For example, Indiana Jones series, Jack Ryan series, Star Wars (episodes IV, V and VI).

I do admit that the special effects in this version of Superman is very good. But compared to the technology back when the last few Superman movies were made, digital special effects have advanced substantially.

The plot is truly in the spirit of traditional DC Comic Superman. So I guess for the die hard Superman fan this is a good thing.

For those of you who are old enough to remember the Super Hero cartoons; I am not sure if they are still aired anywhere on Sunday mornings. I wish they would make a movie of the Super Heros: Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Batman & Robin, and who else? I can’t remember the complete list of Super Heros.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it if you can
	Waste your time elsewhere

My Rating:

This afternoon I went to see the movie “Superman Returns” at GH Grand Ocean Theatre, Tsim Sha Tsui.

I don’t recall the last Superman movie with Christopher Reeves, but apparently Superman had left Earth for 5 years and now he has returned.

Unfortunately, I feel this movie has fallen victim to the traditional sequel blues. What I mean is that, typical sequels are never as good as the first one. Only the rare occasions has this rule been presently broken. For example, Indiana Jones series, Jack Ryan series, Star Wars (episodes IV, V and VI).

I do admit that the special effects in this version of Superman is very good. But compared to the technology back when the last few Superman movies were made, digital special effects have advanced substantially.

The plot is truly in the spirit of traditional DC Comic Superman. So I guess for the die hard Superman fan this is a good thing.

For those of you who are old enough to remember the Super Hero cartoons; I am not sure if they are still aired anywhere on Sunday mornings. I wish they would make a movie of the Super Heros: Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Batman & Robin, and who else? I can’t remember the complete list of Super Heros.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it if you can
	Waste your time elsewhere

My Rating:

This evening I saw the movie “Red Eye” on DVD.

This movie reminds me of Harrison Ford’s Jack Ryan series, but not as professionally made. It does have the same elements of conspiracy, but the character developments were weak and felt rushed.

I really should stick to My Must See Movies list, when choosing movies to watch.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it if you can
	Waste your time elsewhere

My Rating:

This evening I went to see the movie “She’s The Man” at JP Cinema, Causeway Bay.

I guess this was the first time I had ever been to a movie and felt that it was a “girl’s movie”. The only other movie where I felt this way was “Legally Blonde“, but I did not pay to see that.

I can imagine “girls” would react in such a way, as portrayed, given the situations presented in the movie, and because of this it earn an extra penguin in my rating for this movie.

So if you are a female and like this genre of movies, you will also enjoy this one. For the rest, you know my rating system… remember to subtract the penguin earned.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
	Wait for the DVD
	Buy from iTunes Store
	Rent it if you can
	Waste your time elsewhere

My Rating:

This evening I went to see the movie “X-Men: The Last Stand” at JP Theatre, Causeway Bay.

After seeing the Mission Impossible sequel only a month ago, this sequel of the X-Men series was definitely a disappointment. The plot was weak the story-line was not believable. The acting was mediocre in my opinion.

One of the most ridiculous thing in the movie was when the villain actually lifted Golden Gate Bridge so that he and his followers can reach an island off San Francisco Bay, called “Alcatraz Island”. As many of you who had been to San Francisco or live there, already realize that taking a 15 minute ferry ride to the island is a daily event. The writers could have made the villain and his followers take some sort of futuristic “fast” boat to the island and it would be more believable and equally impressive.

Aside from this there were many other scenes that are neither believable or necessary to the plot, but those other scenes were not shown in the trailers so I do not want to blow it for any of you would want to be defiant and venture to spend the value of a movie ticket to find out.

Although the title of this latest sequel suggest it is the last of the series, now there is rumors that a forth sequel may be ready to go into production. I hope that the movie goers will reflect their opinion readily so that those movie investors would spend their money on sequels that may have much better plots (ie. “Indiana Jones series”, etc.).

Rating Legend:
Not to be missed
Wait for the DVD
Buy the VCD
Rent it if you can
Waste your time elsewhere