Category: Movies

Pretty boring movie. I left this playing in the background as I typed up my UI Test Plan sometime last week.

Official Site
IMDb: 5.2/10 (2,626 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: C- / Yahoo! Users: C+
Rotten Tomatoes: RATING: ROTTEN / READING: 19%
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Spoiler is going to be short.

Movie is based on The Graduate (1967) being a true story and the life after that.

The trailer basically tells the entire story. Daughter finds out her family is one inside The Graduate and both her mom and grandma had sex with this one guy. And apparently she falls for him too. Her fiancé finds out and they break up. This make 3 generations of girls from the same family to made love to 1 guy, which is pretty sick. However, in the end, she comes to her senses after finding out why her mom married someone else, and gets back with her fiancé. The fiancé had one condition: no daughter of theirs would ever get within 100ft of that guy.

Saw this movie today and it was almost as bad as what everyone else seems to think about it. The movie is actually based on the animation: Aeon Flux, which was released back in 1996. The story for the original may have been good for its time, but compared to the Matrix and other films and movies in this category, this story is as cliché as it can probably get. As a pure action non-thinking movie, it might work. There’s nice sceneries, nice cg, pretty women, and a lot of gun fire.

Official Site
IMDb: 5.3/10 (6,616 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: C- / Yahoo! Users: C+
Rotten Tomatoes: RATING: ROTTEN / READING: 10%
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Story starts off immediately giving you the impression that the government is bad. In exchange for a perfect society or utopia, people give up their freedom and let the government oppress them.

There’s a group of rebels called the Monicans, if I haven’t mispelled it. Their sole purpose is to take down the government and Aeon Flux is their top agent (or if you can call them that). Anyway, they have some weird way of telecommunication which was never really explained who it work. It seems you dig through your skin and push onto a bone and then you enter this mode and you can talk to the handler, whatever she or it might be.

Story begins with Aeon Flux losing her sister because the government though the sister was part of the Monicans. At this point, Aeon Flux was already part of the Monicans and she blames herself for getting her sister involved. From that point on, she swores revenge on government.

So one thing that doesn’t make sense is the Goodwill Dynasty that lasted 400 years. The Monicans have a simplistic idea if you take out their head, everything will be all good. It also seemed that it’s been the same chairman for these past 400 years. I mean if that’s the case, obviously either immortailty has been discovered, or some cloning is taking place (given that humans still experience death).

I’m not going to get into the end game for this spoiler, but one of the things I never got was why the people were so stupid. Why has no one dared to exit the walls? Why has no one questioned (not even that Monicans) what that flying object is where all the cloning has taken place. I actually found it surprising that Aeon Flux was so surprsied to find out that everyone was a clone. Also another funny thing is in this futuristic society, the only way to tell if you’re pregnant was to go to this government agency. There was no over the counter 3minute results thing where you pee on, because as you might’ve guessed, the clones were inserted into the females, who don’t seem to have any fertility problems. I guess all the men just got unlucky and became sterile. There must also be no concept of DNA and how the father and mother must contribute half of the chromosomes. I wonder if parents in this society ever thought why their child didn’t look like them.

Saw this movie last night with CDMCC and Elizabeth. The movie didn’t quite live up to my expectation, but it was still a movie I enjoyed. Also, as CDMCC pointed out, there was a lot of racial profiling in this movie and the movie seemed to be trying to make a statement about it, but didn’t really express its final opinion. The ending felt a bit off, but overall, there was closure.

Official Website
IMDb: 7.5/10 (6,984 votes)
Yahoo! Movies:The Critics: B+ / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: RATING: FRESH / READING: 88%
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The movie is about a bank robbery planned to perfection. Clive Owen plays the lead of the bank robbers and Denzel Washington plays the lead of the detectives. They battle in a series of mind games which were entertaining. The who, what, when, and where are never really that interesting in such movies. The rea question is why and how? Not to spoil anything, but when the trailer tells you the why, it’s not the truth.

One of the riddles Clive Owen gives to Denzel Washington is: “What weighs more? All the trees that make up all the paper currency in circulation or all the trains that pass through Grand Central Station in one day?” The answer to that riddle isn’t import, as it did its job by making the people lose focus. They actually started arguing about which Grand Central station and if you can actually pass through. Anyway, they mentioned that US paper currency isn’t made out of trees, but cotton instead. I found that surprising, because I knew they were printed on special paper, but I thought it was some special tree found in only certain parts of the world. From Facts About U.S. Money: Currency paper is composed of 25 percent linen and 75 percent cotton. I never knew this and found this pretty interesting.

The story progresses, the detective slowly catches on, but by the time he realizes the robbers and trying to stall, they rushed in. However, their plan was completed. They’ve gotten what they wanted and the trick was setup. As you probably saw in the trailer, they inter-mixed with the actual hostages and used other hostages as their alibi.

However, after the bank robbery, no one was killed; no money was stolen; and there were no robbers. Denzel Washington’s head told him to just bury it.

I won’t tell you what the real trick to it was, but lets just say Clive Owen walked out through the front door almost untouched.

Like I said, I was somewhat disappointed with the trick. Either because it was revealed too much or I was hoping for something much more cunning.

Watched Derailed today. Movie was okay. There was a twist, but I guessed it halfway through the movie. Even so, the movie was still enjoyable. Something I’d recommend you watch when you’re bored.

Official Website
IMDb: 6.0/10 (4,445 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: RATING: ROTTEN / READING: 22%
Yahoo! Movies: Critics: C- / Users: B-
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So the movie starts out with some inmate writing a journal, which I had thought was the voice of Clive Ovens, who plays Charlie in this movie.

The movie than takes you back in time on how this whole thing started. Jennifer Aniston plays the part of Lucinda, a financial analyst. The two meet up on a train ride into the city one day when Charlie forgot to purchase a train ticket and didn’t have any cash on him and Lucinda offers to pay it. Some spark immediately goes off and one thing leads to another, and they decide to cheat on their spouse. So to backtrack a bit, both Lucinda and Charlie are married. I’m not sure exactly why Charlie wanted to cheat, because he’s already got a hot wife at home, but the story goes on and I’m guessing there’s some marital problems or they’ve gotten bored of each other.

Anyway, right before they start doing it, some mobster breaks in and holds them to gunpoint and forces them to give up their wallets and purses. He then goes on to knock Charlie out and rape Lucinda. Lucinda didn’t want her husband to find out, and tells Charlie not to report to the police.

However, the troubles don’t end there and LaRoche (apparently the name of the mobster) calls back and blackmails for more money. First $20,000, then $100,000. He was able to give up the $20,000, but the $100,000 meant the money they’ve saved up for 7 years meant to be used to treat his daughter’s kidney problem. He talked to his lawyer which said the only thing he can do now is to get the female vicitm, Lucinda, to testify against LaRouche. Lucinda still declined and mentions that she had an abortion.

Charlie tried to sought out alternatives, so he talked to a buddy of his about his problem. Winston said all the guy needed was a scare and he’d back off. However, Charlie didn’t want him to do this for free, and Winston said how bout he pay him 10% and he’d take care of it. However, even after showing up an hour early, LaRouche was still 1 step ahead and walked by and shot Winston to death. Also do note that the $10,000 he payed Winston with was on company money and LaRouche warned him if he ever tried to pull anything like that again, money is the last thing he’d have to worry about.

Charlie ended up having to dispose of the car and body, but fails to send the car into the river. Immediately the next day, there was an investigation.

A few days later, he receives a call, and apparently LaRouche has broked into Lucinda’s apartment and demands that he brings the cash now, or she’ll die. Charlie doesn’t have any option anymore and withdraws all his savings and ends up paying LaRouche.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

However, the next time she looks for Lucinda, she seems to have vanished completely from the world. Lucinda turned out to be a different person and apparently the woman Charlie was apparently cheating with was someone named Jane who was a temp for Lucinda, who helped answered calls and etc.

He then went to her apartment and found out that a couple was living there before and they had just moved out. The photo that fake Lucinda had shown Charlie was apparently taken from the apartment brochure. So he stalks the trains and one day, he finally meets her again. He follows her and apparently she found another fish. He also sees her kissing LaRouche and driving off together. He starts brewing a plan on how to get the $100,000 back. Apparently the hotel worker was in on it too. He rents a room and waits for the right moment to take action. He ends up knocking LaRouche out and breaks into the room. He tells the fish that he’s being conned and demands his money back. Fake Lucinda was willing to give it back, but after LaRouche regained concious, he still wasn’t willing to give it back, even at gunpoint. However, the fish started to make move and shots were fired and everyone was killed, besides Charlie. He wipes off his prints and leave the scene of crime and returns to his room.

As he was leaving, the police were checking the hotel’s safe and he noticed his bag there. He had a really fancy bag with a dog tag that said please return to Charles Schine. The hotel keeper gave him a funny look, but there wasn’t he could do.

The final scene involved him getting prosecuted for embezzlement and because he returned all the money, he had to do hours of community service, by teaching classes in prison. Apparently LaRouche wasn’t dead yet and ended up in the same prison. He writes him a funny note and tells him to meet in the laundry room. When they meet up and LaRouche is making more threats, Charlie takes out the knife that Winston had given him. After stabbing LaRouche, he tells him, he had specifically chosen this prison to teach at.

One thing that wasn’t ever revealed was that when Charlie confronted fake Lucinda, she replied that not everything was a lie. I wonder which part she was referring to.

Just watched McDull, The Alumni (春田花花同學會). There’s so many cute scenes and tons of hilarious scenes. It’s a typical Hong Kong movie without much plot, just a bunch of nonsense, but it’s been awhile since I had that much fun with a Chinese movie. There’s a some cute songs too. I’ve posted the McDull piggy animations videos yesterday’s post. You can view the trailer at the Official Site (listed below) and check out the other music videos too.

Official Site
IMDb: 5.9/10 (37 votes)
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There’s really nothing to spoil here. The movie is basically of connected little stories don’t have a beginning nor end. It’s just a bunch of silliness, randomness, and nonsense.

Between the stories, there’s this series of animations with McDull, a popular pig in Asia. The pig’s rather cute too. See yesterday’s post for the videos. After watching the movie all the way through today, I noticed I actually missed one animation, though it was rather short, so I’m not sure if I’ll be ripping that.

Some scenes I remember on the top of my head include the guy frying an egg with his cpu; captain of a sunken ship sacrifices half his butt so the people don’t starve; a parody of Running Out of Time (暗戰) with Wong Kai Sheung (黃啟順) screaming to the robbers and yelling his name; 2000 graduates eat a restaurant; dreams of jobs when the kids grow up include blowing bubbles in cappuccino and ripping bongs out of chicken legs. One college graudate from BBBQ is specialized in chopping animals and she had the elective of either chopping chickens or scooping rice and she chose the latter. When the place she was interviewing at asked her to chop a chicken, she asked for a manual. Haha. Then there was the point when they introduced the roast animals (duck, pig, chicken, etc) as cute little animals. Then he was thinking why he’d enter this business. If he could redo it, he’d do vegetarian, but he still loves this. Then they broken into dance and sang a vegetarian meat song.

Utlimately, this is very much like a kid’s movie, but it contains many elements a kid would never pick up on. Definitely really funny and worth the watch. Then again, I was doing Puzz 3D at the same time.

This song is so catchy: Fing吓Fing吓 (Do note, it’s a mp3 rip from the movie, so the quality isn’t exactly the best)

Just watched this movie today. Decent enjoyable movie. Pretty much like most Disney sports movie where the entire plot is already known 5 minutes into the movie. I even knew the ending before they announced what the ending could’ve been. Though I do have to say, the trailer made Harry Vardon like a bad guy, but he totally wasn’t.

Official Site
IMDb: 6.5/10 (681 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B
Rotten Tomatoes: RATING: FRESH / READING: 61%
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So the movie starts off with a poor kid seeing seeing some gentlemen deciding to buy a golf course through where his current house is. Apparently this was Harry Vardon, who grew up to become probably the best golfer this world has seen, still holding the record for most (6) British Open Championships. Francis Ouimet was born in a poor family and worked as a caddie to bring home some income. Because of this, he fell in love with the game.

Slowly as he grew older, he got better, and the golf course watcher took notice of him. He nominated Francis to enter an amateurs tournament, but the registration fee was $50. He begged his father to loan him the money, but the father agreed on only 1 condition. If he loses, he’d have to give up the dream of playing golf. Francis agreed.

And as expected, he lost and instead of caddying, he went into as a busyboy for a retail shop selling golf clubs and equipment.

Oh yah, there was a girl involved, but nothing really happens. She might as well not be in the entire story, and there wouldn’t be a difference.

So one day, the club wants Harry Vardon to come to the US Open and win the trophy back for the Britons. Harry apparently had won that trophy many many years ago. The story continues and Francis was once again asked to play, but this time in the US Open as an amateur. At first he declined, but after he found out Harry was playing (Harry has been his idol ever since he was a kid), he decided he wanted to play. His dad found out days later and of course he was unhappy and even threaten to throw Francis out of his house. The mom on the other hand had been quite supportive.

The round started and Francis has his ups and down, even tying 2nd at one point, but falling back down to 17th and 18th because he cracked under pressure. But he got better. He also had this 10yr old caddie that was super awesome and funny.

And you might as well guess the ending on your own, since it’s just that obvious. One thing I didn’t get was why did Harry keep seeing those men in black. Another thing I suspected to happen was that his father would come out and support him before his last shot, but he didn’t. The father did appear later, but the emotion just wasn’t as strong.

Mr. Bean is back! This British movie was quite funny, though Mr. Bean was a bit more serious in this film than his previous ones. Yet another movie I’d recommend you watch if you have some free time.

Official Site
IMDb: 6.9/10 (601 votes)
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First of all, the title sort of gives away the main plot, but that maybe that was intended. Oh… did I ruin the story for you? Well, you’re the one who clicked on the Show link.

Movie starts out with a scene with a rather beautiful lady getting arrested for murdering her husband and his lover for cheating on her. It was also quite noticable she was pregnant. The judge decided to send her to a psychiatry until deemed ready to return to normal society.

Moving onto a different scene and town, we meet Mr. Bean and his family of 1 wife, 1 daughter, and 1 son. Everyone in the family has problems. Mr. Bean is too cowardice and to boring. Mrs. Bean cusses a lot and seeks a life with more thrill. The daughter is into dating and having sex at the age of 17 (which apparently is legal). The son is always getting bullied. So it seems like only a miracle would save them. I also forgot to mention Mr. Bean is a reverend.

Do note, bean is not mentioned in the entire movie. I just don’t remember their names and too lazy to look it up.

In comes Grace, their new nanny. As soon as Grace arrives, all their little problems seem to disappear one by one. First off, the annoying dog that barks all night just suddenly disappears.

Grace gives some suggestions to Mr. Bean and people slowly like his sermon. She even points to sexual descriptions in the bible that sparks his love life with his wife again.

The daughter suddenly becomes interested in cooking, but everytime she brings home a boy, it’s still a new one everytime.

The son that gets bullied witnesses all the bullies crashing into the wall after Grace secretly cut their brake lines.

The wife was the biggest problem of all, as she was somewhat cheating behind Mr. Bean’s back, but not officially since they never ‘did’ it. Just kisses and semi-stripping.

Grace attempts to fix that too and one time catches the guy (Mrs. Bean’s golf teacher) filming the daughter as she is changing clothes. Whack and he is dead.

The whole secrecy is revealed, and as the title suggests, she is Mrs. Bean’s mom and they had taken the baby away from her when she was in the psychiatry, but has managed to escape. You also found that the dog AND the dog’s owner were both killed. Which really sucked, because I thought like Nanny McPhee, she had done some magic to get rid of them.

So she forces the mom to get rid of the bodies, which she was more than happy to. On one hand, you could see Grace as a crazy lady, but on the other hand, you see her as the savior of this family, even though it came at some sacrifices.

Story goes on. Mom has to leave, but promises to visit. Everyone’s happy… until some enviromentalists says there’s some weird algae growing in their pond (where the bodies were dumped) and the only solution to fix it before it begans to spread was to drain it. Welp, like mother like daughter, that problem was taken care of.

Just watched this movie yesterday. I thought the movie was pretty fun. It was a mixture of comedy, detective, and sexiness, though I’ll admit I didn’t solve the mystery before they did. Then again, I wasn’t really trying.

Official Site
IMDb: 7.9/10 (6,570 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B / Yahoo! Users: B
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This movie is about how Harold, who apparently is a crook, ends up becoming part of Hollywood when he gave his all time performance at an audition. Later on, he gets invited to a party and there he meets his high school crush. He also meets Perry there, who apparently is supposed to give him detective lessons for his upcoming part in the movie.

One thing leads to another and now we end up with 2 dead bodies, seemingly not related at first. Then there’s the trying to frame Harold for the crimes, followed by the assassination attempt on both Harold and Perry. One thing leads to another, it winds back up to his high school sweetheart Harmony.

So the 3 of them work together as they try to solve this mystery and miracle happens to dumb people apparently.

There wasn’t much to the plot itself, it was the the way the story was told that made it fun. Something I’d recommend to watch if you have time.

Went to watch this movie tonight with CDMCC and Elizabeth. All this time, I was calling this movie “cash” as in memory cache, but apparently it’s a French word and pronounced something like ca-shay. Movie overall was thrilling and suspenseful as I expected. I also thought the movie was in English, but that didn’t change my feeling toward the movie much. There were some gory scenes, which you can read about in my spoilers.

Official Website
IMDb: 7.6/10 (2,699 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: Yahoo! Users: B-
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Ultimately, this movie is about the conscience of the human mind.

The movie starts out with this family receiving video tape recordings spying on their house. The movie does a good job switching back and forth the modes, sometimes tricking the user if this is a recording or if it’s actually happening or not. It was always accompanied by a drawing of a kid coughing out blood.

Of course the family gets scared and after the 2nd tape, they went to the police, but the polic said there wasn’t anything they could do until “something” happens.

You then see a boy coughing out blood in one of the scenes. Turns out this was just a dream as you find out later in the movie.

Then everyone received a postcard. Let me backtrack a bit. This is a family of 3: father, mother, and son. Father’s a TV guy who does book reviews. Mom is a writer of some sort. The kid goes to school and is part of the swim team. When I say everyone received a postcard, I mean the father received it at work, the mother received it at home, and the kid received it at school. The postcard had the same funky drawing of a kid spitting out blood.

They receive another tape, this time showing the house of where the father grows up. He starts getting scared. He goes visits his mother who still lives there and asks her if she remembers Majid, apparently a boy they tried adopting a long time ago, but she has horrible memories of him and things didn’t exactly end well.

Then a next tape arrives, this time showing how to get to some random flat. The father decides to go and check it out. At this time, he spills he has a hunch on who it might be. The wife tries to find out who, but he wouldn’t say, and they have a major argument over this and about trust.

He goes to the flat and finds out some old guy lives there. Apparently the old guy knows him. The father is 100% certain that he was the one that has been harassing him and his family and threatens to do something if anything happens to them. Turns out this old guy is Majid. He denies ever making those drawings or recording his family. After he leaves, he calls his wife and tells her that no one answered the door and apparently no one lived on that flat according to the apartment manager.

That night, they received a tape showing the conversation between the father and Majid. The truth is out. The father tries to apologize for lying, but he said he kept it as a secret for her own good. She questions why he thought Majid would want revenge. He first doesn’t say anything and then said he made up some lies when he was a kid. She asks what lies. He goes, lies that 6 year old would make, child stuff. Basically not answering the question.

Story continues and one day, the kid doesn’t come home. The parents of course got very worried and even ended up going to the police and taking them to Majid’s place. Turns out Majid has a son. The police arrest the two on the suspicion of kidnapping, but there wasn’t any proof, and the police wouldn’t take the video tapes as evidence.

The parents of course were worried sick, but the next day, the son comes home. Apparently he stayed over at a friend’s place without calling home. The parents were overjoyed, but the kid seemed to have some animosity toward the mom, which he didn’t have before. He seems to believe that the mom is having an affair with her book publisher.

One day, the father gets a call from Majid asking him to come up. At first, he didn’t want to, but Majid offered to tell him the truth behind the video tapes and drawings. He goes up to his flat. Basically what happened in the next 30 seconds was: “I didn’t do it.” followed by taking out a switch blade (or one of those old shaving knives) from his pocket, and slitting his own throat for suicide. The father was shocked. He runs away and apparently goes to watch a movie for the next few hours.

He returns home, and the wife is talking with some people. He hides in another bedroom and calls his wife and tells her to come meet him in the bedroom, but don’t let the guests know. She excuses herself and finds him in the bedroom. At this point, I’m thinking it’s probably the police trying to ask questions about the husband. I mean he was stupid enough to just walk away from the scene. Anyone who saw him would make him the most suspicious if the cops didn’t believe it was a suicide. He tells her that Majid is dead and he needs her to get the guests out of the house. She’s shocked too and obliges. When she returns, he asks her what excuse she used, and she asks why does it matter? She told them that her husband just called and needed her to meet him somewhere. I’m thinking… is that okay to tell the police? Turns out the guests were just some family friends.

He tells her about the Majid incident. So, now the wife is curious about Majid, she forces the truth out of her husband. Turns out, Majid’s parents were killed in a protest, so the family that they were working for decided to adopt the kid. This same family was the family of this guy. Majid got his own room, was bigger and tougher, and had good disciplined. He was jealous and sick of him and wanted him out. So he began making lies about how Majid would cough out blood. Of course, there wasn’t any proof and the doctor didn’t find anything wrong with the boy. Later he told Majid that his father wanted him to kill the rooster. You actually see this scene earlier in a dream. When nothing was explained, it seemed that Majid was a aggressive kid and wanted to even hurt this guy. So you see Majid chop of the head of the rooster and let it wander around like a headless-chicken. The scene was pretty intense and gross. The boy runs to the parents and claims Majid was trying to scare him.

The parents had enough and decided to send Majid away to an orphanage or some sort.

Later on, the son of Majid comes and meets the father at his work place. The father tries to avoid him, but he starts to create a scene and he takes him to the restroom for some privacy. They start talking and the son knew his father’s death was a suicide. I actually thought the son was going to pull the same trick and kill himself right then and there. The son also claim the videos and drawings weren’t from him, but he did like to see what the conscience was doing to this poor fellow.

The movie ended with a scene of the son of Majid (I believe) talking to the son of this family at school. It seemed like an open ended way to end the movie, but I really think this was a recording of sometime before. In fact, right before the son disappeared. If the son of Majid had come and told the boy that his mom was having an affair, then everything begins to make sense. The son knew about his father and how he was given such a shitty life because of some lies and decides to play mind tricks on this family. Unfortunately, the mom and the son had to get involved. This move would ultimately end up with the kid sleeping over at a friend’s place that night and not bothering to call home, creating a series of events to follow.