I watched the movie The Incredible Hulk with Jia Hao on Monday at Marina Square. Thanks to Golden Village’s members birthday month movie treat, I got a buy 1 get 1 free ticket voucher. Hence the both of us only paid “half price” for entry.

I must say I was never a fan of The Incredible Hulk. I never watched any cartoons or comics of it, and neither have I watched the 2003 version which seemed to be pretty dismal in performance. So I watched The Incredible Hulk from a non-fan point of view, and frankly speaking, it’s not that bad at all.

The story was told in a good manner that a non-fan such as me can understand what is going on. However there are minor faults that leave me wondering what happened. For example, the Doctor that eventually “treated” Hulk unsuccessfully was slammed by the Hulk-nemy. (Hulk’s enemy lol) He got some Hulk’s blood that drip on his forehead and his skull seems to mutate and swell. But that’s the end of it. No explanation, nothing. Or perhaps I couldn’t catch the explanation, if any. So what happened to the guy? Another monster in another sequel? No idea.

At the end of it all it showed that Hulk didn’t transform for a very long period, and he was just sitting there and suddenly his eyes turn green and the number of day count got reset to 0. What was that? Upon checking Wikipedia, it actually means the Hulk is now able to transform at will.

There seems to be a future sequel though. I somehow predict an Ironman Hulk combo since Tony Stark came out to say they are forming a team. It could be potential merger of the two superheroes. But it may not be also. Not too sure, but there seems to be potential for sequel, whether its Hulk alone or not.

Overall it is a pretty interesting experience, and Liv Tyler is very beautiful as usual. And Hulk cannot have sex because he get’s too excited and will turn into The Hulk. It must be quite gross to turn into the Hulk midway during the deed huh?

I entered the movie theatre at 4.20 and it ended by 6.20 or so. Taking away the advertisements of about 15 minutes, that means the duration of the movie is about 1 hr 45 minutes? I must say I was never bored. One thing weird though, this is the first time I laughed at the “switch off your handphone” ad. It contains a cold pun by Jack Neo though. And the advertisement of Shaolin girl shows the female lead in Galileo (JDrama) doing some fighting. Can’t really link her first image to the second. Lol.

Back to the point, other than minor faults listed above, I guess the movie is ok. Oh I remember something. They never really said what happened to the Abomination. Did they kill it? Or do some experiment? Not too sure. If you enjoyed it or hated the movie, leave a comment?

I watched this movie yesterday with my “Royal Family” clique comprising of godsis Cheng Ying, as well as Michelle and Taiman. We met at Vivocity and Taiman actually got lost. We were supposed to have dinner together at Kopitiam but he ended up walking to HarbourFront and then found GV before Kopitiam. Hence he bought the hot dog from the GV Candy Bar.

Anyway the movie “started” at 6.45pm, but it was full of advertisements (GV leh), hence it only started proper about 20 minutes later. The real movie lasted about 2 hours, and by 9pm the movie was showing the credits.

This movie is the fourth installation of the Indiana Jones series, and it is much hyped over. The first was Indiana Jones and the raiders of the lost ark, then Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, then Indiana Jones and the last crusade. I very much preferred the last one (The Last Crusade), and after watching the movie, I still think The Last Crusade is better.

What can I say? I feel that the movie is a little too short to satisfy. Come on, Indiana Jones has been MIA since 1989, and all we can do is this? The hype balloon is claimed to be much bigger than it really is. But, I don’t think Harrison Ford is too old. He’s a great actor and fits the Indiana Jones character really well. The problem does not lie with him, but with the plot. If, the plot is thicker, perhaps I will find it deserving of the hype.

The movie seems to be very much action. Perhaps I just enjoyed the mysteries of the Last Crusade better than this latest one. However, even if I enjoyed the 3rd better than the 4th, let it be known that I enjoyed myself very much with this movie too. The plot is good, just that it could be better and longer (satisfying fans worldwide).

As a whole, I’m rating this a 7.5/10. It’s a good movie to catch, especially if you have been faithfully, like me, watching the past 3 Wednesday’s Channel 5 re-runs of Indiana Jones.

I went to watch Made Of Honour (external link: Wiki) yesterday with my parents at Jurong Point. I must say that it’s a pretty nice movie, though the ending is cliché. I think you can guess the ending because I guessed it too. Let’s just say that such love stories usually end with them going happily ever after. But, the way it ended is really cliché. That, I leave it to you all to watch or guess. Give comments and I will verify.

Basically, Tom, the leading man, is a Casanova. He sleeps with girls every day of the week, and one of his rules is that no consecutive girls in the same week. This means, 7 days a week, 7 different girls to go to bed to. His best friend is Hannah, a girl, whom he cherishes the friendship with and hence does not have any sex with her.

When Hannah goes to Scotland on a business trip, he finds that his life is boring. The girls of his life does not satisfy him (not sexually, but I mean they just cannot replace Hannah in his life as his close friend). That is when he realizes that he can’t do without Hannah. He decides to confess his feelings for her when she comes back, but when she does, he discovers that some bloke proposed to her (only knowing each other for weeks) and she agreed.

He becomes her maid of honour, and tries to sabotage the relationship. Ok, maybe not sabotage, but what he does is to make her feel that he is the one who understands her, not him. She starts to realize the difference too in the middle of the movie, when the Scottish man she is marrying hunts deer, and she herself is pretty anti-violence towards animals.

In the end the two of them get together of course, but how I shall not say. But they do get together and live happily ever after.

I rate this movie a 8/10 based on the funny parts of the movie, as well as the feelings and thoughts that I have after I watched it.

My own thoughts and feelings

After watching this movie, I felt that perhaps it is always good to have close female friends, and have this period of seriously understanding each other first before getting attached and deciding to get married? I realize that teenagers tend to have a wrong view of what love is, and their relationships end up really shaky. Hence I thought it is important to make sure you know who you are loving?

I thought it was rather sweet too that they progressed from good friends to best mates for life. But let’s not kid ourselves, sometimes that is hard to get. I mean, how much time do you have to cultivate a good friendship with a particular person, and what are the chances that both may be compatible as a couple? One may be close friends but not best mates for life.

But of course, I too, realized how inferior I am. Even though I am not a Cassanova (effectively I should rank better than Tom), but I do not have a life. As you see, Tom (other than the sex life), has friends and they go play basketball together..blabla. But I don’t really meet up with my own friends that much to even exercise? Nor go on parties together, visit other friends blabla. Somehow, I’m a total geek. Gah.

Anyway this is a pretty interesting movie despite it’s ending. If you have cash to spare, do watch it. It’s a nice romantic comedy. One of my favourite genres.

Well I went to watch Untraceable today at Vivocity. I must say that it’s a good time to watch movies at vivo in the morning/afternoon timeslot because there are lesser people and you will be able to queue and buy tickets (of course, if the movie is super popular, I guess you should book tickets).

Anyway, I noticed Untraceable from their youTube trailer, and I guess the potential of the story got me interested. Basically, Untraceable is about this psychopath who invites the world to kill with him by linking the rate of death to the number of people logging in. The more people who view the murder process, the faster the person dies.

I rate it a 2.5 stars out of 5, and it’s not a must watch and I will say why in the following:

Spoilers Alert though

The killer is not untraceable. In fact, it would seem that it is quite easy to trace the killer because one of the FBI agents found out something and got killed.

The total dead people count is 3 and 1 kitten is killed in the process.

The first person is a helicopter pilot who piloted the helicopter as the psychopath’s dad killed himself on a bridge. On his chest were words carved using a knife. The words are “Kill with me”. An anticoagulant was linked to this pilot and the more people who watch, the more anticoagulant was injected, and he bled to death.

The second person is the Channel 12 News reporter who interviewed many people and even compiled clips of best suicides. One of those was the suicide of the father. In short, this is the man who made it possible for other people to know of the father’s suicide. One of the clips is titled Rush Hour Suicide. He was cemented to the floor and heat lamps were shone at him. The more viewers there are, the faster the heat lamps lighted up. He died being cooked alive.

The third is the FBI agent who supposedly discovered something. I am not too sure if he knew before he was caught or not, but he when he was dipped in the water with sulfuric acid slowly being injected, he used winks to send a message to the FBI. The message turned out to be “our suicide”, which was linked to Rush Hour Suicide. That clip is the father’s suicide clip, and from there they managed to link everything together.

The female lead got caught in the end and you will know why because the stupid trailer included that scene inside. I’m like just waiting for the female to get caught. Anyway she survives and manages to kill the asshole before he kills her. It ends with her showing her badge to the cameras, something which I do not understand.

Spoilers End

Anyway it’s not a very good movie, so there is no need to spend money watching it. Good for plain entertainment though.

More Links

Wikipedia
IMDB
Official Site

The general story is that the President of the United States has been shot, and there are many witnesses with many points of view, including one with the mastermind of the terrorist plot. The movie will show you each witness’s viewpoint, and up till a certain moment in time, they will backtrack like reversing a VCR. Then another point of view will begin at the same time as everyone elses’ begin, at 12pm. This goes on for quite a number of time, so you may either be sick of the way the story goes, or you can find it refreshing. I found it refreshing and a nice way to show everything.

In the last point of view, everything will be shown from each of the witnesses last point of view, and you will see what they saw before the movie stopped showing from their point of view. You can see that some people are just being made use of and they die in the end. Some people are really bad.

Spoilers!!!

Well, one of the secret service dudes is part of the terrorist organization. The shot that hit the “president” came from a window and is operated by a machine getting commands from a PDA phone. Same goes with the bombs. I say “President” because it’s fake one. A double. Anyway the real president still gets kidnapped.

The day is saved when a lost child stands in the middle of the road. The rogue ambulance carrying the terrorist and the President had to break and do a drift (ok maybe not intentionally) and the ambulance got overturned. The hero, Thomas managed to check the situation out and save the president again. I say “again” because he saved the president once. Maybe they should give him a hero’s retirement with a great pension.

Spoilers end!!

Anyway I think it’s a pretty great movie to catch. I rate it 4/5 stars. I think that’s high because I don’t rate 5/5. There is no such thing as a perfect movie.

Other links
Vantage Point Movie Official Site
IMDB
Wikipedia
Apple Trailers

Movie Information

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker
Director: Pete Travis
Genre:Action/ Adventure
Language: English
Release Date:20 March 2008
Running Time:86 minutes

I didn’t watch Evangelion the Anime, and thus I went with no information and zero interest because I have no idea what Evangelion is actually about. The movie entertains right from the beginning, and I could understand most of the things that were inside even though I have no prior experience at watching Evangelion. From Wiki articles, I realized that this movie is actually more or less the same as the first few episodes of the anime on TV. Hence, Evangelion fans would probably be very familiar with everything.

The story begins with a boy named Shinji Ikari who is going to meet his father whom he has not seen for 3 years. An angle (the bad monster) attacks the city and Shinji is rescued by a pretty lady who turns out to be a colonel. Anyway, Shinji is asked to pilot the Eva Unit 01, which he refuses. When he sees the primary pilot Rei stuggling because of an old injury, he agrees to pilot the unit.

The story shows 3 battles between 3 angles, of which the last is super strong and is the bulk of the story and action. For more information, read wikipedia (link below).

There are a few questions which I had after I read the movie. There seems to be a pact with another company SEELE which was left unanswered (but anime fans will definitely know since its in the anime). Similarly, the last part shows this naked guy who wants to meet with Shinji. Reading Wiki allows me to understand that he is actually the last and 17th Angel who will eventually take over the piloting of one of the eva units. He will then allow Shinji to kill him.

Thus, the movie isn’t all that good because as a non-evangelion-anime-tv-fan, I get confused by many new things popping up here and there, but due to a lack of screen time, they went unanswered.

Anyway, the story ends with To Be Continued, so I would expect Evangelion: 2.0 to come out sooner or later, and I would have to watch it for completion’s sake.

I rate it 3/5 stars because of the questions I had, but it is a very entertaining show nonetheless.

The Water Horse is fundamentally a story about The Loch Ness Monster, and it talks about this boy Angus who found a black lump by the sea side. He brought it home and tried to use a knife to open it, and he managed to clear the mud to reveal a blue stone – an egg, really.

Thus this begins the adventure of the boy who raised the Loch Ness Monster, also called the Water Horse, who supposedly have magical powers. This is a story about the boy who lost his father in the war and found solace in his own pet. The boy eventually had to sent the horse into the Loch (or Lake or body of water) because he was growing too big.

Spoilers Ahead:

The war office had sent a battery of artillery and the commander had tried to impress Augus’ family by firing shells into the Loch. Naturally it angered the water horse and then it became an angry being. Some of the military guys wanted to kill it, and they got capsized eventually by the water horse. The story continues when the boy tries his best to save the water horse, and how the water horse managed to escape into the open in the end.

Spoilers End

Anyway, the movie’s pretty ok and I didn’t get bored. However on further thinking, I guess it wasn’t an extremely interesting flim. I watched it because it had the Loch Ness like monster inside and I thought it would be fun. I rate it 3/5. I think it will be a good movie to catch with kids.

Information:
Cast: Emily Watson, Alex Etel, Ben Chaplin
Director: Jay Russell
Genre:Fantasy
Language: English
Release Date:6 March 2008
Running Time:112 minutes

I watched “L Change The World” today at GV Max in Vivocity. I must say the seats are great. Anyway, the movie is a spin off, which means it has nothing to do with the official death note story. In the first place, the movie death note wasn’t exactly in tune with the manga’s. But this has nothing to do with Death Notes though the shinigami appeared for a few seconds.

The story is about another clever human, but clever in the medical field. The gist is that there is this virus that spreads quickly and kills humans quickly too. L only has a few days left before he dies from the Death Note, and he has to solve the case quickly.

Spoilers ahead:
The movie is about the virus, and its creator is this clever lady, whom it was discovered to be K, another of Watari’s people. Watari told K to change the world, and she thought she could change the world by killing off humans who were destroying Earth’s ecosystem.

The virus has an antidote who was discovered by this brilliant scientist, K’s colleague. When this scientist discovered that K is so evil, he injected himself with the deadly virus, and kept the antidote with himself. To prevent a disease outbreak in the facility, K has to destroy the lab herself, and the antidote is also gone.

However, this is not before the scientist gave his daughter something to pass to Watari (whom is dead but no one else knows). The daughter holds the key to many mysteries, and without spoiling further, let me just say that all ends well and L saves the day.

Spoilers end…

Oh..Do stay after the credits. There is a 5 second clip that shows L munching on a chocolate bar before the subtitles announce that L passed away peacefully. I guess there won’t be a sequel? Or will there? Near, a character in the manga, is manifested in the flim in the end. Perhaps this means there is a chance for future movies? However, with L missing, perhaps the attraction isn’t there anymore.

For entertaining me for 2 hours, I give “L Change The World” a total of 4/5 stars. Do catch it if you have watched the previous 2 death note movies. It will help in understanding the gist of the introduction.

The Straits Times Life! Section rated Ah Long Pte Ltd a 1 star movie out of a possible 5. This is the first time I have ever seen a movie get such a rating. Even a so-so movie gets 3 out of 5. Jay Chou’s KongFu Dunk movie even got a 3 stars.

The Straits Times Page 4 states that this movie has many similarities to another Korean movie titled My Wife is a gangster. In it, the woman got married at some relatives wishes, got a not so macho guy as a husband, blabla. The movie even started with a narration for both movies. Somehow I wonder if its true that Jack Neo did not watch the movie at all. The parts are really similar, though the main plot is different. Perhaps its just a coincidence. (By the way, my professors refused to believe that any algorithm that we create can be similar in nature)

Anyway, Jack Neo seems to enjoy using Fann Wong portrayed as a guyish person. Perhaps this can boost sales? Other than the “attraction” of seeing Fann in such a different role, fans of Fann (no pun intended) will probably flock absent-mindedly to watch the movie for their idols.

Has Jack Neo lost his touch? I don’t know. However his past work seems to be having the signs of depreciating standards. Gone were the days of “I not stupid”. Even “Just Follow Law” seems a little lame.

To tell the truth, I would rather put my money in CJ7.

I went to watch 27 Dresses yesterday, and I must say that I have enjoyed it very much. Romance isn’t a genre of movies that I will watch frequently, but this one is a romantic comedy, and I do watch comedies to have my fair share of laughs.

27 Dresses, for the uninitiated, is about this lady who has been a bridesmaid for 27 times, putting in effort for every friend’s wedding but not getting any love in return. She has a crush on her boss George, and the problem arises when her sister returns home and meets George at a company party (Jane, the eternal bridesmaid invited her own sis there and created the problem). Soon, her sister and George decided to get married and Jane is left feeling upset. However, Kevin (played by James Marsden, also starred in Enchanted), a newspaper writer she meets starts pestering her. Eventually Kevin did something that made Jane super upset, and things cool off for a moment.

Spoilers ahead:
Well, no prizes for guessing, but in the end when everything got sorted out (the wedding between the sister and George blew off because Jane showed George her sister’s lies), she discovered the guy she actually fell in love with isn’t George, but Kevin. And no prizes for guessing again, she got married with Kevin in the end.

Cliche? I guess so. The story’s ending could be guessed right at the start of the movie, but its refreshing actors and actresses, coupled by a good laugh every few minutes, really made my day. If you have money to spare, why not catch 27 dresses? Some links are given below for your perusal:

Some Links:
Official Website: http://www.27dressesthemovie.com/
IMDB: Internet Movie Database
Apple Trailers