Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones Confirmed For Men In Black 3

Barry Sonnenfield, director of the Men in Black series has confirmed that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones will be reprising their roles in Men In Black 3 after years of speculation.
Sonnenfield reveals that Will Smith has been on board for the project for some time now but Tommy Lee Jones' involvement was not so clear, with rumors that Josh Brolin will be replacing him in the third film. Sacha Baron Cohen has also been approached with ideas of playing one of the alien characters in the film, possibly the villain.
At the moment, little is known about the plot of the movie, which Sony will be aiming to get into cinemas by Memorial Day 2011 (that’s May 30, 2011 to the rest of us), but we imagine it’ll involve Agent Jay (Smith) and Kay (Jones) getting in way over their heads with some angry alien beasties.
But Sonnenfeld did drop one more bombshell – MIB III will, like every single film in this or any other post-Avatar universe, will be in glorious 3D.

Source:  Empire Online

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Agora: Review

God, I've been putting off this review for a long long time now.
So okay, last year I saw this movie called Agora because I love Rachel Weisz and wouldn't pass up a chance to see her in nothing but a tunic. Agora is a Spanish film about Hypatia of Alexandria played by Weisz who tries to unite the city of Agora that has been torn apart by civil war between the Christians and the Pagans and Jews.
Let me first start the review by saying that I never supported Rachel Weisz winning her Oscar for The Constant Gardener. If anything she should have gotten nominated for Supporting Actress in The Fountain or even My Blueberry Nights. But in Agora, I solemnly feel that she was robbed of the Best Actress award. How the hell Sandra Bullock won is beyond me after watching Agora.
Weisz brings to life an iconic figure of feminism with the hardheadedness of the character Mulan and the grace of Mother Theresa. Every second of her on screen was breathtaking, so dynamic in vision and subtle in execution. Bar none, Hypatia is Rachel Weisz's best role to date. And speaking of date.. I wanna date Rachel Weisz! She so fine.
And her performance speaks a lot more considering the limited material she had to work with. Now, this movie is a complete borefest, it's 2 hours of long political talk in the fanciest language imaginable which was real agony to watch. The best scenes with the fights and Hypatia's scenes were all and all 30 minutes of the entire film. The rest were just........ zzzzzzzz.
And there was really a high chance for me to not like Hypatia at all in the movie because she was written so one dimensionally, that if I just read the script instead of watching Rachel Weisz'ss interpretation, Hypatia would have seemed more of a whinny feminist than a heroine. But Weisz stills pulls it off despite all that
But where the writing of this movie lacked, it made up for in it's stunning art direction. I mean, the architecture of Agora is really marvelous to look at. It puts the art direction in Troy to shame. Everything in the film is sweeping and epic in it's scope and the detail is super. And I like the sort of white wash cinematography Agora had and how it gets darker as the film progresses, symbolizing the lost of innocence in the city as war and religion tears a once great city apart. The costumes were okay. They're pretty much the same costumes in any other biblical Roman themed movie.
I can go on and on about all the plus points Agora has, but one thing that keeps making me give this movie a lower rating is the fact that Agora is really really boring. And I like boring movies. I sat through Gone With The Wind without so much as a yawn but I could barely keep myself conscious when I was watching this on my computer. For the most part, the scenes in Agora are great and completely necessary for the story.. but it's still so boring!
Also I'm kind of taken aback by the portrayal of Christians and Christianity in this. Agora has Christians being somewhat like medieval age Nazis who are trying to "cleanse" the city of non-Christians. Now I am fully aware that these are based on historical facts but still, them Christians couldn't have been that villainous right?
You know, I think I would have liked Agora more if I saw the movie on HBO or Hallmark or like on the History Channel or something. Cause that was what Agora came off as, a really really great movie made for television, something you would enjoy if you came across it when flipping through Astro or something
So yeah, Agora is a solid historical film with a stunning one woman show by Rachel Weisz. Other than that, it is pretty much an average boring period piece.

RATING: 6/10

Monday, April 19, 2010

Kick-Ass: Review

Am I considered a pedophile if I said that I am strangely aroused by that 11 year old psychopath?
Holy Bejesus was this movie the shit! You know, I never heard of the Kick-Ass comics until the movie trailer came out but now I think Imma gonna get the whole series after watching this gorefest of pure guns, blood and awesome!
So Kick-Ass is about this dude, Dave Lizewski who's pretty much a loser. He's got no girlfriend, has geeky friends, can't do sports, ain't smart, ain't good looking. All he does all day is read comic books and masturbate to porn, pretty much like me. Anyway, he has an epiphany of why no one ever tried to be a superhero before, so he decides to try it out and becomes Kick-Ass. After some really funny and violent obstacles, Kick-Ass becomes an international phenom, attracting lotso real life villains, i.e. mafia gangsters.
Kick-Ass grounds the whole stuff about superheros and examine how a real life superhero would fare in reality. In other words, you're either going to end up on Shutter Island or you are dead. Just watching that nerdy kid dressing himself up in a scuba suit and walking around dangerous streets and picking on these big ass thugs made me laugh till I cried my eyes out. I just kept thinking, "Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad."
I am a huge fan of the director, Matthew Vaughn who previously did Stardust and Layer Cake. This man is a fantastic genre director. I love how he took the gritty violence of layer Cake and combined it with the fantastical of Stardust and made an honest to God original, entertaining comic book adaptation. So far this guy is 3 for 3 with me.
This movie crams in a lot of plot and character development. It's almost as the first two reels of the film was a comedy with Kick-Ass and then it seamlessly switches gears into an all out action gorefest of heavenly splattered brains and guts with Kick-Ass sort of becoming a none character in light of the awesomeness of the duo of Big Daddy and Hit Girl.
One thing that Kick-Ass is going to be remembered for is being the movie that revived Nicolas Cage's career. Finally! He no longer a shame to the name of Nicholas muahaha. This guy is absolutely fantastic in the movie, watching him in this makes me take back every joke I ever made of him during his Bangkok Dangerous era.
Partly why he does so well in this is because of the great chemistry he has with Chloe Moretz who plays his daughter. They pretty much have a typical father-daughter relationship, only that he is training her to become a psychopath. He's going like, "Honey, if you kill this many people, I'll take you out for ice cream okay?" There's one scene in this where he's giving his daughter some homework and that homework is to let him shoot her in the chest and try no to wince or whine. Family of psychopaths, what can I say.
But as much as I liked Nicolas Cage, the star of this show was Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl. I kinda feel bad for that guy playing Kick-Ass being that this was his movie but every left the cinema talking about Hit Girl. And if it still isn't clear, I think I'm in love with this girl. She is the youngest cast member in the whole damn show but she has all the grittiest, most violent, bloodiest scenes.. and it is fucking AWESOME!
This girl right here, you probably recognize her as being Joseph Gordon-Levitt's sister in (500) Days of Summer; her character is going to be an icon. I can't wait to see how many girls are going to dress up as Hit Girl this Halloween. And next time if one of those Pandu Puteri come over and try to sell you cookies.. please for God's sake buy those cookies cause them girls are going to take a hint from this and beat the crap out of you. I love Chloe Moretz man! Aight the countdown begins! Only 5 more years till she's legally 18 muahaha.
So let's recap. Story? Good. Characters? Good. Actors? Good. Comedy? Good! Action? Good! Violence? Good! Gore and blood? Good!

RATING: 10/10

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Shutter Island: Review

Sigh. And some people say we can't make em like we use to anymore.
Shutter Island is about US Marshall Teddy Daniels played by Leonardo DiCaprio who comes with his partner Chuck to Shutter Island, an island with a mental institute for the criminally insane to investigate the disappearance of a female patient. But as the story progresses, we find out that Teddy has ulterior motives for being on Shutter Island.
Shutter Island is such a visually driven film, we get a lot of weird creepy flashbacks or dream sequences in the movie that at first will not make any sense to you but will still creep the hell out of you. Watching Shutter Island kind of gave me the feeling like I was watching The Shining again where everything is so ambiguous for the audiences interpretation to the point where it begins to scare you.
I totally enjoyed the ride I went on with this film. Let me just say without giving out any spoilers that you will go through psychological hell in this. No other film in a long time has given me this much sense of paranoia other than Shutter Island and when the full story unfolds for you, you begin to realize how brilliant everything else was leading up to the ending and how everything had a brilliant double meaning.
And speaking of psychological hell, I have to go back and rewatch this movie again because there were certain scenes in this film I found rather.... strange. I don't know whether it was me or it was just that bastard Scorsese deliberately fucking around with me but there were some points in the movie where there was something strange going on but it happens so fast, some people wouldn't even notice it.
 For example, there's one scene where a mental patient asks for a glass of water and then drinks nothing but air and in the next frame there's a glass of water in her hand. Or like a few shots where a whole scene was reversed. All these I think was done to intentionally make you feel a little crazy.
I think Leonardo DiCaprio is having sex with Martin Scorsese or something just like how Johnny Depp is having sex with Tim Burton cause that dude is in every Scorsese film I see now. But I really can't complain because DiCaprio is amazing in this just like how he's amazing in every other film he's in. But  gotta say that the best performance in the film was Mark Ruffulo who was seriously overshadowed by Leonardo DiCaprio here.
My complaint about this movie is that it is long. It's 2 hours and 30 minutes here, which is okay for some movies but there's only so much psychological twists you can take from a movie. I think that Scorsese could have been a bit tighter on his edits, trim the film down just a little bit especially those scenes where DiCaprio is running aimlessly around Shutter Island. It just draws out every scene way too long than needed to the point where it almost got annoying. I was going, "Okay... okay.... I got what I needed to know from this scene... so like why are you still talking around? Get on to the next scene!"
Also I have a slight problem with the ending, not because it wasn't a great ending but I found it a little to far-fetched. That's all I'm going to say cause I can't spoil too much for ya'll.  just think that no insane asylum would ever do something like that to (SHUT THE FUCK UP NICHOLAS YOU SPOILING THE MOVIE!!)

RATING: 8/10

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