Category: Movies

Watched The Island today and it wasn’t as bad as what everyone was saying it was. You can watch the trailer here. You know what movie it reminded me of? It totally reminded me of I, Robot. It was basically a very high tech futuristic movie with tons of advertisement. The sweet Cadillac in this movie was equivalent to the Audi that Will Smith drove in I, Robot. They were also advertising MSN Search on the Information Directory booth which I found funny since I work at Microsoft. I just noticed it was advertising Cisco Systems on the screen too! There were other advertisements too, but I don’t recall them at the moment.

Spoilers:

I was expecting much from this movie after hearing what people had to say about it and I didn’t get much. But it looked like a high budget film so I thought I’d give it at least a try. Turn out pretty fun. Lots of pretty neat gadgets and tech toys. Plot was sorta too easy to figure out since the trailer basically told you pretty much what “The Island” was and with that, you pretty knew how it would’ve ended. What shocked me was not how it ended, but how it got to the ending. I was totally surprise with the “mistake” if you know what I’m talking about. Also, the ending sorta just dropped off with everyone escaping, but what happens then is a question I’d like to be answered. These are clones and can easily be mistaken as the real thing, as Tom Lincoln proved. Also it wasn’t clear how much the defense department was backing this and how much they knew. It actually seemed like they knew that the lab was a real live human farm.

Watched SPL (殺破狼) today. Movie was actually pretty bad. Not really sure why I sat through the entire movie. Maybe it was because it felt like it could’ve redeemed itself. Just a lot of fighting and kilings with no meaning. You can watch the trailer at the official site listed above. I’ll admit the style was interesting and the fighting choreography was really nice, but the storyline just plain out sucked.

Spoilers:

The story begins with a court case and an accident. The biggest crime lord in Hong Kong has been caught and pending the trial, he’s most likely going to be going to jail. However, the witness, on route to the court, was killed in a car accident, planned by the crime lord of course. The witness was even surrounded by 4 police officers. Of course the crime lord is set free since there was not enough evidence once the witness is dead. The main inspector also found out that he had brain cancer after getting checked up after the accident. Chances of curing it are slim.

The story fast forwards 3 years and now and that main inspector is about to retire. His team is sad to see him leave. Some time ago, he sent an undercover into the crime lord’s gang. Also, a new inspector has been assigned to lead his team and he’s been following the inspector around. I’m not sure if I’m using the term inspector, correctly. It could may as well have been lieutenant. Anyway on his last day, this undercover gets murdered and he had promised everyone on his team that no one would get hurt. So of course the team was really demoralized to see one of them killed. At this time, someone recorded the whole incident on tape and brought it to the police. However, it clearly showed the crime lord beated up the guy with a golf stick, but it was someone else who killed him. So the rest of the movie is about trying to frame the crime lord, but implanting evidence, destroy duplicates of the tape, and etc. However, their plan fails and the crime lord promises to have everyone of them killed that night and that does happen, besides the captain and the new guy. Just a lot of sensless killing and at the end it didn’t really resolve anything. Thanks to Donnie Yen’s amazing fighting skills, he gave up his police badge and gun and beat the crime lord in a match, I think killing him in the end. I do have to admit, I might’ve watched the China version where the last 5 minutes were cut to make it “politically correct”. The ending was horrible, just horrible.

I finally got around to upload the The Myth Bloopers. I also uploaded a 2nd file which includes the bloopers from The Myth (神話) and the music video which I found at the end: The Myth Bloopers (Long). I finally saw the Cantonese version, though half of it was still in Mandarin (to make it more legit I suppose). I still really like the scene right before Jackie Chan goes off to the battle, and as promised, here it is: The Myth – Before Battle (direct download). Enjoy!

Here’s the script of the dialog occuring if you don’t understand Mandarin: (Jackie Chan is General Mung)

General Mung: Soldiers of the Mung Clan, listen!
General Mung: If you still have parents, stand out!
General Mung: If you’re an only child, stand out!
General Mung: If you have a wife or kids, stand out!
General Mung: Anyone that stood out, you’re responsible for guarding the camp. Everyone else, mount your horse!
Nangong Yan: General! We’ve shared pride and honor for many years already, why can we not fight to death together when the time has come?
Nangong Yan: Nangong Yan swears to follow the General until death!
Soliders: We swear to follow the General until death!
Soliders: We swear to follow the General until death!
Soliders: We swear to follow the General until death!
Soliders: We swear to follow the General until death!
Soliders: We swear to follow the General until death!
Soliders: We swear to follow the General until death!
Soliders: We swear to follow the General until death!

I didn’t like a lot of the translations that they provided, so I made some of my own. Though it may not be the best, I hope it’s adequate.

Watched Wait’ Til You’re Older (童夢奇緣) today. You can watch the trailer here. At first I didn’t think much of this movie. Seemed like another movie to waste my time on. Only reason I’d watch it was because Andy Lau was in it and that I happened to get ahold of a Cantonese version. However, the movie turned out to quite a surprise. It basically involved a kid who wouldn’t forgive his father and wanted to grow up faster. However, many stuff left unsaid creates a wonderful story I’d recommend that you’d see.

Spoilers:

The story starts off with a little boy hating his father. At first you learn that his current mom is his stepmother and sometime later on you find out that the mom actually suicided and he’s blamed his father and his stepmother ever since. This little boy was especially naughty, running away from home a few times every week. He would go back to the old house and hide there and await for his father to come. He demanded that either he bring back mom or pay him HK$300. He was collecting money so he could one day run away for good.

However, one day, the stepmother got so pissed with the shenanigans, that she actually threw him outta the house. At this point, he meets an old man in the park which claims he’s invented a potion that’ll allow things (including humans) to grow up faster. The man wouldn’t give it to the boy, so the boy ends up stealing it. Immediately the next day, he grows up to become a 20yr old man. There was a side story with him trying to date his teacher and him helping out his friend, but that wasn’t too important to the plot.

Later on, he actually gets to see the other side of his father. Since the father didn’t know he had grown up, so he was able to talk to him about things that he’d never tell his son. During a flashblack, you learnt that the son and mom actually both tried to commit suicide by eating a poisonous cake. However, doctors were able to save the boy, but not the mom. The more he hung out with his father, the better he thought of him and really wanted to apologize for hurting him so much. One thing to note, is that the potion wasn’t a one time deal. He was growing at a rapid rate. By the 3rd or 4th day, he was already getting white hair. One time, the father brought back this older version of his son for dinner and he starts provoking his stepmother, asking why she was the third wheel in the relationship. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! Suddenly, the mother cracks and starts blurbing out the truth. It turns out this boy’s real mom was a mistress, and his father was long married to this woman before meeting his mom. The mother couldn’t stand sharing this man with another woman, so she decided to kill herself, along with her son. However, since the son survived, the only thing the father could do was to bring him into his current family. However, because the son never knew the truth and because the father didn’t want him to know the truth and ruin the image of his mother, the boy was always angry at the wrong thing. After learning this, he wanted to become small again and rushed to the old man in the park. There he begged him to give him the potion to make him smaller. The old man says, “There is no such potion, but it’s never too late. Spend the remainder of your time wisely, and you won’t regret your life.” He tells his father the truth and even manages to bring the family back together by apologizing to his stepmother for his mother. The ending was a bit weird. I was really expecting him to wake up from a dream…, but the credits just started to roll up.

So stanman and I met up today for dinner and movie. Before dinner, we watched a couple episodes of Initial D 4th Stage, since he was a bit behind. During dinner, we chatted about a variety of things, including Chinese school, Saturday morning cartoons, how mechy and Carrie meet up for lunch sometimes at Applied Materials, what to do for Thanksgiving, etc etc. Near the end of dinner, we were talking about stem cells and cloning and suddenly a question hit me, how exactly does cloning work? You take someone’s DNA or genetic information and you stick it in an egg. How exactly does that work? I mean, I understand if you stick a sperm in an egg (invitro-fertilization), I understand how a baby can come out of that, but how exactly do you take genetic information and make it into a sperm. And even after that, how do you make it so that the sperm donates BOTH parts of the genetic information and not accepting the egg’s genetic information. In normal babies, half the genetic information is donated by the sperm, while the other half is donated by the egg. Does that mean we currently can only make female clones (using female genetric info + same female egg)? Maybe someone with a better understanding of cloning can help me with this.

Afterwards, we headed over to the theaters to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. You can watch the trailer here. The movie was really fun, but the theater was packed. We got to watch the digital version and the previews were amazingly clear.

Spoilers:

I felt that the movie was moving rather fast. The 1st competition (fighting with the dragons) only showed Harry’s match. It would’ve been interesting to see how the others defeated the dragons too, but maybe the book didn’t include that. Then they introduce Cho Chan who Harry has a crush on, but too bad Cedrick, a better wizard than Harry is already asking her out. However, luckily, Cedrick is no longer in the picture thanks to Voldemort. Then there’s that scene where Hermoine “sorta” confesses her love to Ron by saying that next time he should ask her to the ball earlier before another boy asks and not keep her as a backup. I thought that was sweet, though Hermione was crying. I actually wanted Harry and Hermoine to be the ones to get together. It’s like the hero and the heroine thingy. Who’s this Cho Chan that came out of nowhere?

You actually find out why Harry Potter wasn’t killed by Lord Voldemort. It had something to do with his mother’s love, but I wasn’t exactly sure. You also learn that Malfoy’s father is part of Lord Voldemort’s henchmen (or what did he call them?).

Another thing I want to see is Harry and Victor Krum battle it out in a game of Quidditch.

Watched Deuce Bigalow – Male Gigolo several days ago. You can watch the trailer here. I really liked the first movie, but the 2nd movie was a bit disappointing. Basically cheap laughs and trying to milk more money from the original. It was still fun, but as not up to par as the original.

Spoilers:

So you learn Kate (the wife of Deuce) was killed by sharks during their honeymoon. So Deuce gets in trouble with the local police and goes to Amsterdam where his old pimp TJ is residing. There, a man-whore serial killer is on the loose and TJ gets blamed. So Deuce has to go around sleeping with woman trying to find out information information about the real killer. What I’m not too sure about is why the woman all had problems again. I mean, these were high class gigolos getting killed… Like I said before, the movie wasn’t that great. But good news is Deuce meets another hot girl that likes him. But obsessive compulsive disorder have symptoms like that?

Went to watch The Squid and the Whale with CDMCC and Elizabeth. You can watch the trailer here. Movie was painfully funny. Just very wrong at times too. Overall, it was one of the better movies I’ve seen recently.

Spoilers:

The movie is basically about 2 parents and 2 sons. The parents ended up splitting and decided to do joint custody on the sons. The older one likes his father more and the younger one likes the mother more. Both parents have a Ph.D. in literature and although the father has written many books, he’s been unemployed lately and looking for a publisher to publish his writings. The mother on the other hand has been writing articles to journals and magazines and getting accepted, and her fame is slowly growing creating jealousy for the dad.

The younger son was hilarious. For some reason, he got addicted to drinking beer and even hard liquor. He also had an obsession with jerking off in school and spreading his semen over random things.

The older son liked pretending to be interested in arts, but all he could ever do was bullshit and plagerize. He played a song at a talent show claiming he was the writer. Turns out it was Pink Floyd song. He also asks his father for his opinion on the books the school assigns him to read and if dad has even the slightest negative remark, he decides it’s not worth reading. He tries to play off he’s some major artsy type person and recommends people different books, but when discussing the plot, all he can say that that author was being ambiguous. He didn’t even know the author of some of the titles he suggested.

I don’t want to ruin any more of the movie, but the father and mother were quite some colorful characters too. Them and all their affairs.

If you’ve seen the movie, did you ever figure out what the kid threw up after drinking all that alcohol?

On a different note, does anyone know what the reference “the squid and the whale” is from? I was thinking either Moby Dick or 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, but am not too sure myself.

Watched Saw II with stanman today. You can watch the trailer here. I thought the 1st one was better compared to this one and stanman concurs. The first one had methological planning and things took some time to figure out. This movie went zooming through most of the ‘works’ and didn’t really give time for the audience and the actors to figure stuff out. Also the original hint was too easy to guess.

Spoilers:

So the story begins with a detective and a son, who aren’t really in good terms. The son just got arrested for stealing and his dad came to bail his butt out. So the story continues, this time instead of having just 1 or 2 people, the jigsaw collects I believe 6-8 people and put them into a house (not a room this time). They’ve been poisoned with nerve gas and will die within 2 hours. The son was one of them that was caught. Among the people who were caught, one of them was the girl that actually survived one of jigsaw’s previous games. The cop busts jigsaw’s hideout and finds out that his son has been caught. Jigsaw demands to play a game and all he has to listen and his son will be okay. However as the 2hr limit approaches, you can realize what usually happens with cops in that situation. However, going back to the house and the ones inside (major spoilers coming up) , it turns out that the others beside the boy, were people who were set up by his father and sent to jail. Some deserved it, while others didn’t, but all of them hate the father. Does the kid survive? What happens to the dad? Why was the girl caught a 2nd time? Guess you’ll just have to watch it to find out.

Saw The Honeymooners a few days ago. Storyline wasn’t that great, but it was a funny light movie. You can watch the trailer here. I’m still not too sure what the title is referring to. Does honeymooners have some adjectives associated with it?

Spoilers:

The movie is about a bus driver that always has big dreams which always fails and has a waitress that has a simple dream of owning her house. They fall in love and eventually get married. The husband keeps wasting money on ‘his dreams’ of getting rich quick and they end up never having enough money to buy the house. This is a comedy movie, so the storyline doesn’t really mean much. They find a dog one day. The greyhound was really really fast, so they try enlisting it to race and they go through some hoops and stuff which forces them to waste money training and getting ‘papers’. While this happens, there’s a house that goes on sale which everyone really likes. However, the money’s no longer there. What will they do if the dog doesn’t win?

The Unsaid was quite an interesting movie. You can watch the trailer here, but I personally think it revealed a bit too much if you’re planning to watch the movie. It’s a suspense thriller type of movie, where you try to solve what really happened before the movie ends and reveals it. The storyline was pretty typical about psychopathic patients who repressed their memories, but I found it rather close when it started to show similar behaviors to myself. As the title suggests, the most important things to ourselves are the things left unsaid.

Spoilers:

Movie’s about a psychiatrist named Michael Hunter who long has given up his practice, but instead now writes books and gives seldom lectures, but he’s still quite renown in his field. A old student of his, Barbara, which has become a rather good psychiatrist herself requests the help of her old professor to look into a boy. This young boy saw his mother get killed by his father when he was 6 or 7 years old. He’s turning 18 in a few weeks and she believes that he’s not ready to leave the nest yet. He’s shown no signs of being affected by the incident at all and she believes that he is repressing it all and requests the help of Mike.

Mike initially rejects the request for help. He himself gave up practice after his own little boy died. It was quite shocking to find out why and I could’ve never guessed. But somehow that boy reminded him of his own son in some way and he decided to go help him. Then there’s this long story between Mike unraveling the past and the relationship developing between Mike’s own daughter and this boy Tommy. What I found odd, was that what Mike did wasn’t really spectacular and how he was able to start getting Tommy to crack while no others did was somewhat unbelievable. Tommy actually cracked quite easily. However, do note, I was able to guess exactly what happened midway through the movie so I’m feeling quite proud.

Though both the reasons for Kyle’s, Mike’s son, death and what really happened with Tommy were quite disturbing… though that itself may have revealed too much…

Repressing emotions is a really bad thing, but it’s the easiest way to escape feeling down.