Monday, September 3, 2012

Movie-Maddening Mode

Watching movies can be named as my main activities during these past few weeks starting from the beginning of Raya holidays. I've watched a mixture of newly-released movies and also old movies.

These are the list:
(Watched in cinema)
1) Paranorman (Personal Rating: 4 thumbs up)
2) The Expendables (Personal Rating: 4 thumbs up)
3) Premium Rush (Personal Rating: 3 thumbs up)
4) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (Personal Rating: 3 1/2 thumbs up)
5) The Dinosaur Project (No thumb up at all... :P)

(Watched in downloaded version in laptop)
6) Accepted  (3 1/2 thumbs up)
7) Batman Begins   (4 1/2 thumbs up)
8) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon  (4 thumbs up)
9) Doraemon movie  (4 thumbs up)



For this post, I am going to give my two cents about three movies, The Expendables 2, Batman Begins and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. These three movies are action movies but with different focuses and approaches.

 
First, I am going to talk about The Expendables which I watched at GSC cinema at Gurney Plaza. Honestly, I did not have any background knowledge about this movie as I did not follow the previous Expendables. However, it is quite easy to catch up with the plot as it wasn't that complicated. Overall, I think Expendables is a comedy action movie - light, fun to watch as you can see most of the familiar faces in action movies reunited in this movie. There's a new addition to the Expendables clan here though, if you noticed (of course you'll notice him cause he's the hottie in the clan) Liam Hemswroth who in actual life is the fiancee of lucky Miley Cyrus. However, when the movie ended, I am quite surprised to see a few of the audience in the cinema fell asleep. Either because the movie ended near midnight or because these audience are not into action movie. My guy friends who were with me said these audience were sleeping (which majority consisted of female) because girls are not really into action movies but they made me an exception because to them, I am like a guy to them (seriously?). A true lady (like me, ahem) can also actually accept the so-called guy movies. If you like The Avengers and X-Men, you will probably like this movie because of the genre it portrayed. It is action movie with comedy but not a really deep message compared to the Batman trilogy which I am going to talk about in the next paragraph.
(Personal Rating: 4 thumbs up)
 
 

Although I have a crush on Christian Bale, that is not the main reason why I like Batman. I loveeee Batman trilogy because of the actions, the storyline and the brilliant message in it. The message was deep, the dialogue was brilliant, there were a few meaningful quotes that you can find in this movie. The one that I recently watched was Batman Begins. One of the quotes that was memorable and significant here was "It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you,"  a saying which I quoted from Rachel's character (played by Katie Holmes). It was a movie full of sarcasm and irony of life. I started my craze on this movie after watching The Dark Knight and more engaged to it after The Dark Knight Rises. Ironically, I watched Batman Begins last. Batman Begins's storyline is not depicted in a chronological manner. It was filled with flashbacks. Compared to Tim Burton's version of Batman, I prefer Christopher Nolan's Batman more as he gives more personality to Bruce Wayne - a true hero that doesn't really care about the fame of being one and really protective of his loved ones.
(Personal Rating: 4 1/2 thumbs up)
 
 
 

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a movie rich in Chinese culture and martial arts. From my perspective, this movie focuses into the Chinese martial arts skill more than the storyline itself because for each of the kungfu action scene, the scene was shown for quite a long time in the movie. The message that I can get from this movie is the fight for freedom and equality for the women in the olden days as portrayed by Zhang Zi Yi's character - who was forced to be married to a man whom she doesn't love, and martial arts is not gender-based, whether you are a man or a lady, as long as you're determined enough to practice the skills, you will become good at it just like what was portrayed by Zi Yi and Michelle Yeoh's characters in this movie. However, I do not really get the real focus of this story, whether it is on Chow Yun Fatt's character or on Zhang Zi Yi but I personally guess the real main character of this story is Zhang Zi Yi. She is a mix between good and bad, she has a conflict within herself in deciding which is the right thing or the wrong thing, thus the stealing and returning of the sword. It is a movie worth watching especially if you're into martial arts and Chinese culture.
(Personal Rating: 4 thumbs up)
 
 
Till then. Bye.