Category: Movie Review

My Rating:

This evening I went to see the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” at Broadway Theater, Olympian City Plaza.

Johnny Depp has always taken on strange and unusual roles in the past. This time with the character of “Willy Wonka” it is definitely the most unusual even compared to “Edward” in “Edward Scissorhands“, but Depp made it very believable.

Depp played an eccentric chocolatier who owns the worlds best chocolate company. With a director like “Tim Burton” the story became a fairy tale similar to Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands“, “Big Fish” and “Beetle Juice“. You could see elements of all these movies in this one.

Along with Steven Spielberg and John Woo, Tim Burton is one of my three favorite directors. This time Burton had again brought us his traditional fairy tale that we have came to expect.

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My Rating:

This afternoon I went to see the movie “Robots” at AMC, Festival Walk.

At first, after watching the trailer for this movie I was a bit skeptical whether this will be a good movie to watch, but then I found out that Robin Williams was the voice of one of the robots (“Fender”) I knew it will be good. I was not wrong.

Fortunately, I stuck to my believe of watching the movie in the original language version and not in Cantonese as I mistakenly did with “Madagascar”.

I always believe that animated comedies should be played (or voiced) by professional comedians. In this case, like many of the professionally created animations, the animators modeled the animated characters based on the actors who did the voices. For example, in this movie “Fender” has all the characteristics of Robin Williams and it just would not be the same if I had watched the movie with some Hong Kong actor’s voice.

There are many analogies to the famous movies in the past and situations that most North Americans would relate to. With the latter I do not think the audience of Hong Kong would be able to relate, because of this I do think the non-North Americans around the world will like this movie as much.

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My Rating:

This evening I went to see the movie “ The Island” at Golden Harvest Theatre, Ocean Terminal.

As soon as I start watching the movie it reminded me of the 1976 movie “Logan’s Run“. Although the plot is different, there are many parallels that can be drawn from the two movies.

Many thinks that “Scarlett Johansson” is good looking, but I personally finds her to have a baby face, but then some people like that. I did not like her in the sleeper “Lost In Translation” and I don’t like her here. For me neither the looks nor the acting attracts me to her.

All in all I feel that I have wasted 136 minutes of my time. This can be a miss for those who haven’t forked out the money.

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My Rating:

This evening I went to see the movie “ Fantastic Four” at Broadway Theaters, Olympian Plaza.

To my present surprise this is not a bad hollywood production of the Marvel comic and cartoon. It has many of the Spider-man feel to the movie.

On the other hand, the reason why I enjoyed this movie could be because I had dismissed it when I first heard about it and had no plans to watch. Hence, it did not make it into my “Must See Movies” list.

The characters are familiar to me, but then I am old enough to have seen the cartoons on TV in Canada when I young.

Some may ask why I am then being so hard and only give this movie a 3 Penguins rating. Aside from the beautiful cinematography and special effect, the acting was not that good. All the main characters came from not so big hits in the past and I just cannot appreciate the acting. Although, it could partly be the result of poor dialogues.

So, if you’re one of the Marvel fans, this is a must for your video collection, but otherwise there are many more Summer hits to choose from.

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My Rating:

(Reserve)

This evening I went to see the premier of the movie “Madagascar” at UA Theater, Time Square.

I give this movie a very low rating, but to be fair it may be caused by the fact that I saw it in Cantonese. Since it was free I cannot complain. The hundreds of kids in the theatre seem to enjoy it. So I will do a review of it again if I go see it again when the movie officially release next week (July 14) or purchase the VCD/DVD.

One thing I did notice was that, even ignoring the Cantonese translation of the jokes, Dreamworks had again created satire of famous motion pictures like they had done in past movies. For those like me who loves movies, they may get the analogies, but others may not even notice this form of metaphor.

Knowing that there are always loses from language translations, particularly for jokes. Many times it really depends on who made or delivered the translated jokes. Perfect example was when I was discussing the movie “Finding Nemo” with a friend who watched the Cantonese version, there were so many places that the English audience found hilarious, but she had no idea what I was talking about. To a point where she decided to go to see the movie in English again. This time the distributors in Hong Kong found Hong Kong actors who are not really great verbal comedians, nor appropriate children comedians to deliver the translation, and I don’t think it really worked.

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My Rating:

Tonight I went to see the movie “War of the Worlds” at Broadway Theater, Olympian City.

This is a remake of the original movie in 1953, which was in itself an adaptation of H. G. Well’s novel.

Although, I have not read H. G. Well’s novel or seen the whole of the 1953 version of the movie, but only bits and pieces of the 1953 movie. Steven Spielberg had accurately reproduced the 1953 movie with today’s technologies in his version of the movie. The only thing I wonder is… WHY?

At the moment this movie is very successful at the box office, but it may be the results of publicity and the names of Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise.

Hollywood had made many movies in the past with similiar story line, but this version is really not as good as movies like “Independence Day“.

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My Rating:

Tonight I went to see the movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” at Broadway Theater, Olympian City.

The story of this movie is fairly original, but half way through it started to be a bit unbelivable.

The leads “Brad Pitt” and “Angelina Jolie” were perfectly cast, with each of them playing their sterotypical roles.

For some reason this movie reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “True Lies“.

The only reason that this movie deserves 4 penguins from me is because you can really enjoy the better sound quality of DVD with this movie.

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My Rating:

Tonight I went to see the movie “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” at Ocean Terminal.

Although, this is yet another sequel of the many in the past few months. It is a must see for all Star Wars fans.

For the past 28 years many of us had lived with the story of Star Wars. For those who did not read the books, we were left with a set of untold stories from the original Star Wars movie back in 1977. Now with this latest version of the Star Wars saga, we are finally able to visually satisfy the numerous questions left after watching the first three epsiodes (IV, V, VI) of the series over 20 years ago.

George Lucas is definitely a perfectionist and amazing story teller. With this latest movie, he has closed the book on the story that he started 28 years ago. Every aspects of the story were completed nicely. Particularly the ending that lead smoothly into the original movie (now known as “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope”).

He even included battle scenes that he and his team made famous with the original 3 movies in the series back in the 80’s.

I did not give it a perfect score only because, for some reason, it still did not have the spark that I experienced with the original 3 movies.

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My Rating:

Tonight I went to see the movie “XXX: State of the Union” at Broadway Cinema, Olympian Plaza.

Well what can I say? One can never expects too much for sequels. This version of the XXX series is no acception. In the past I had complimented the execptional story line and overall directions of “great” sequels, but this definitely does not fall into that category unlike: “Ocean’s Twelve“, “Meet the Fockers” and “Bourne Supremacy“.

May be it has to do with the cast of the movie. The one real veteran of the movie “Samuel L. Jackson” did not have that many scenes where as, correctly so, the lead of the movie, “Ice Cube“, dominated most of the scenes.

I know “Ice Cube” already had many movies (23) under his belt (including the 2 that are announced), but in my opinion this singer/stage performer turned actor still have much to learn before he becomes the likes of “Robert De Niro” and “Tom Hanks“.

So, this is definitely a must have for those who collects Action movie DVDs or VCDs, but I don’t think you need to spend the money for the movie theater experience.

Rating Legend:
	Not to be missed
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