Movies in July (Part 2)

Hi, y'all!!

Everybody ready for Part 2 of the movies i've watched through out July? Let's start!

Pacific Rim

One word for this movie : Epic. Hehehe... Yet another one of those movie i kinda dismissed at first (and honestly, a few minutes into this movie i kinda formed a review in my head already, calling it "a  boy's movie", but i soon changed my mind) but ended up really liking. And mind you, i'm not into the whole huge robot-alien thingy, i don't even like Transformers! But maybe i have a hidden reason why i gave this movie a chance after a few minutes (before dismissing and decided i didn't like it, which happened in some movies). The reason being, what else but a cute face? *LOL*. This time it was in a form of one Charlie Hunnam.

Charlie Hunnam as Rayleigh in Pacific Rim

Hmmm... That smile, those arms, that chest... *drool*... *slaps self back to reality*, a little bit about Charlie Hunnam before i carry on with the movie.. I kept on saying "He's so familiar!", "Why is he so familiar, though??" non stop, i probably annoyed hunny on end (but we watched this in the Premiere, and the sofas were quite far apart there so he probably couldn't hear me much), apparently he's also in the TV show Sons of Anarchy (not that i watch it, i just saw it a couple of times-for a couple of minutes-on Starworld). OMG! Who knows that underneath all those hair and bushy facial hair there's this face :

Charlie Hunnam

Okay okay, other than Charlie Hunnam, the movie itself was really HUGE lah! Of course it's one of those block busters movies, but if you compared it to, let's say, the closest thing to this movie, Transformers, i'd give it five stars (while i'd give the latter two or three stars max). It's not only an action/fantasy/popcorn movie, but the drama part were great as well. It was touching, real, and relatable. Oh, i don't really like the choice of casting Rinko Kikuchi (again, i think they always choose the fugliest Asian girls in Hollywood movies zzz i don't understand), but she wasn't too horrible either (she was wide eyed and all kawaii one second and hard and deadly on the next, a bit bipolar but she was probably told to do so).

Monstrous sea creatures (that's actually aliens) humans called Kaiju began rising from the sea, the world was at war against the creatures. They built Jaegers (the gigantic robots lah) to fight the Kaijus, every Jaeger must be piloted by two (whose mind were locked together so they had to be compatible at every way) pilots. But Kaijus kept on coming, bigger than ever, and faster than ever, in the end the world had no choice but to rely on washed up former Jaeger pilot (who stopped after a tragedy involving his brother/Jaeger co-pilot) and a rookie.

I truly wasn't expecting to like this movie, we saw massive posters of this movie everywhere we went in Singapore on June, i was quick to dismiss this as another Transformers wannabe. Boy, how wrong i was. This movie was fast paced, crazy, explosive, warm hearted, super entertaining, moving, and in short : Epic. A MUST MUST MUST watch, even for a girly girl like me (whose not into robots at ALL).

Red 2

Was pretty excited to watch this movie (coz i loved the first one), but... well, this is the example of the movie that i got too much expectations of and ended up not measuring up to the them *LOL*. I did read the reviews in Imbd before i write my reviews, sometimes i'd agree with them, sometimes i don't. This time the reviewer said Red 2 was better in every way than the original, but i had to disagree. I really didn't expect to like the first movie at all, and i was pleasantly surprised at how funny and exciting it was. The sequel was okay, but it didn't rock my world. Maybe because the first movie had the novelty point (it was not very often, seeing senior citizens and retiree on a battle field, holding huge gun and rolling around everyday-except maybe in The Expendables)

Retired CIA agent Frank Moses reunites his team of elderly elite operatives to track down the missing nuclear device from his old mission, many years ago. Maybe this time round we already knew who those senior citizens are and what they are capable to do, so it's lacking the element of surprise? At least that's how it feels for me. I just checked with hunny and he said he prefers the first movie too, although he did admit that the action sequences were much better in the second movie. I guess i liked it that in the first movie they rely more on the actors than the equipments?

Bruce Willis is always, always cool (Rosemary said he's the hottest grand daddy around *LOL*), but i do find him a little bit annoyingly too over protective in this movie. My fave actor in both movies were the same, John Malkovich is exactly the right kind of crazy, and he cannot be any more hilarious. I LOVE him!

I do think this is quite an entertaining movie and all, and sure, it's worth watching for. But honestly, for me it was nowhere near as good as the first one. I even got bored a few times during this movie, but it gets better once Catherine Zeta Jones swooped in. She's such a prefect diva!

Upside Down

This is a movie that took my breath away whenever i saw the trailer. Yes, it is quite an old movie, it was released in 2012, romance movies always takes the backseat in Indonesian cinemas. Screening one year after its initial release was nothing, some movies never even got screened zzz. Sad to say, the movie itself failed to bring me to another world that would filled my head with fuzzy images that i can't get off for days to come. It is good, but it's not THAT good.

There's two worlds with the exact opposite gravity, revolving around the same sun, in time they were pulled so close to each other, one world can always see the other-upside down. Adam (the always always exquisite Jim Sturgess, you know he is one of my fave actors, ever) is a young man with dreams in his heart in his crumbling, cold world. He met this young girl from the opposite world, Eden (Kristen Dunst, who happens to be one of my fave actresses of all time) and love grew inside their hearts until one day they were cruelly ripped apart. Ten years later, he caught a glimpse of his one true love-all grown up-on a TV show and he moved heaven and earth just to meet her again.

The story's perfect, the effect perfect, Jim Sturgess is perfect and Kristen made Eden loveable. So where did it go wrong? I dunno... I guess when they developed the story, it ended up being too rushed, too fast paced (which is great for action movies, not always the case with romance movies), that one didn't have time to slowly grow with them and root for them. I feel like i didn't have time to actually got to know the characters, and therefore CARED for them like how let's say, i cared for Edward and Bella (ever since the first Twilight). 

I dunno, the breath-taking, overtly unique trailer gave me hope that it'd be a modern take on Stardust (my other all time fave movie, after Twilight), but sadly it wasn't that beautiful. It was okay, a very nice watch, very unique and one of a kind type of movie, but the core-the love story-got too simple while they were focusing on the surroundings. Having say that, Jim Sturgess is so perfect, i can't imagine anyone can ever resist those big, puppy eyes. Even though the movie didn't rock my world, i won't say no to watching it one more time, just to ogle at the perfection that is Jim Sturgess.

Jim Sturgess, there is something about him...

The Wolverine

The viewer's rating for this movie in Imdb is 7.2, which is quite effing high. And that's something i cannot understand, because this is one movie that for me and hunny, totally fell way short off expectations. For us, this movie was a total snoozeville, totally shocking both of us. Having watched the X-Men movies and the former Wolverine movie, we both were aware that the two series have very different approaches. While X-Men were more cartoon-ish and super hero type, complete with the uniforms, Wolverine was more humane, real and down to earth. But this sequel was a far cry from the original, at least in our opinions.

Wolverine was lost to the world, feeling lost and unsure of his own place on earth, and started questioning (and cursing) his own mortality when one day, an old acquaintance (and i mean OLD, as in the guy was young when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed with nuclear bombs back in the day. Of course, Wolverine never aged) asked to see him one last time to say goodbye. But soon he realized that the old Japanese guy wanted so much more than to say goodbye, and Wolverine were caught in a huge battle with yakuzas and he began (somehow) losing his mortality. 

Oh, and Wolverine was in love, again. This time with a Japanese girl, who again, to my dismay, is not going to be considered even cute for Asian standard (or maybe Hollywood just have a very different type of cute???). 

This movie was painfully slow, Wolverine as a mortal didn't appeal me much, and there was no trace of the original movie or X-Men (except after the credit rolled *LOL*). The story was actually pretty simple, but i felt it was dragged on. I realize that this movie mostly centred around Wolverine's struggle to find himself again, but... i dunno. Too much Japanese mumbo-jumbo (and i am saying this with the purest intention, you know i love Japanese culture to death) to even begin to resemble anything Wolverine-related. I know they compared him to a ronin here, but it then got a little bit Last Samurai-wannabe and lost its identity a bit. More like those cartoonish Kung Fu Fighter (which is super different than X-Men) stuffs in some parts. It got slightly better towards the end, but even his final nemesis seemed quite ridiculous (even for the X-Men standard).

There's always a possibility that we had several expectation, it being a Wolverine movie (a review said this movie can be watched without watching the previous movie or any of the X-Men series, and it's completely true, not sure if it's a good or a bad thing) and all? But for me personally, even if it's not a Wolverine movie, just another movie altogether, it'd still be boring and disappointing. I'd skip this one, better re-watch the first installment. 

Turbo

Another good example on how your initial feeling upon watching its trailer won't always reflect on your overall feeling after watching the complete movie. Baby Boy's fourth movie (in the cinema) ever, he's been waiting for this movie forever! I wasn't too keen when i saw the trailer (and we must've seen it a hundred times, whenever we're watching some other shows), so i was pleasantly surprised that i ended up liking this movie a LOT more than i thought i would.

Theo is a garden snail with a speed fever, how very ironic. All of his life, he's been obsessed with speed and car races, and all of his life everybody around him told him to wake up and face the reality, especially his own brother. Until one day, he accidentally gained a super speed after a freak accident. He was then found by Tito, a taco seller who-much like him-always been dreaming on making it big somehow. Tito also introduced him to a gang of crazy dare-devil snails who ended up being his biggest supporters. They then embark on an impossible adventure, trying to get Theo the snail to win a car race named Indy 500.

This movie is quite simply, hilarious. I kept on laughing from start to finish, with enough hearts in it that i found my eyes brimming with tears more than several times during the movie. It was also funny for little kids, judging on how Baby Boy kept on laughing, cheering, and occasionally clapping *LOL*. He also repeated the lines and that's always a sign of him enjoying himself (a habit that i realized he inherited from me. Ask my hunny, he knows i like to repeat dialogues in movies that i found hilarious, that's bad in when we watches comedies because then i'd keep on repeating the dialogs, without realizing it of course). 

This was also probably one of the best animation movies i've watched for quite a while (although i'd agree with Arman, that The Croods so far is still the best this year, but i like Turbo a lot more than he did *LOL*), i find it to be totally worth watching two seats from the screen for, and Baby Boy felt worth watching the 9 PM show (coz we can't make it to the 3 PM show and there's no in between show around fasting period). I would say this is a must watch for animation lovers.Oh, and Ken Jeong voiced over ther crazy old lady perfectly LOL.

The Conjuring

With Pacific Rim coming as a close second, this movie wins as my favorite movie this month (and actually for many months), it definitely won my vote as the best horror movie of the year! And it's based on a true story, how terrifying!

Ed and Lorraine Warren were two famous paranormal investigators (Ed was said to be the only non-pastoral person who's recognized by the Vatican and actually was allowed to perform exorcism, i cannot be sure of the validity of this statement because i only saw it on the movie itself). The story took place in 1971, when a family with five young girls moved to a secluded area in Rhode Island. Paranormal activies began happening since the very first day they moved in, and only escalated to the point of harming the family. The wife then track down on the Warrens to seek their help. 

This movie was super super scary with lots of shocking moments. Let me tell you something, i am a die hard horror freak and in all of my 29 *ahem, gotta say this often enough before i have to start saying 30 in two months :(* years of living on this earth, i have watched countless numbers of horror films. Hollywood, Asian, European, even Australian. Just say it, i most probably have watched it and didn't bat an eyelash. I had never before, and i repeat, NEVER, screamed out. In fact, i despise those girls who scream nonstop in movies, even when nothing happened in the movie. I screamed once in this movie. A little yelp, i then slapped myself for being stupid, but still, a scream it was.

Another first, is that this is the first horror movie that made me shed a tear. Yep, the story was close to my heart because it was mostly revolving around a tight-knit loving family, tormented by the dark forces around them. As a family person and a mother, i GET this movie. 

And maybe because it is based on a true story, it was super realistic, not stupid of cartoonish like most Hollywood horror movies tend to be. And it didn't rely on sadistic scenes with unnecessary tormenting scenes to be scary. Of course, there were quite a lot of physical haunting scenes, but the scariest part came when you least expect it, which made it 100 times scarier! Plus, i am not usually all that scared of those ghost movies-where the ghosts were all women dressed in white, with long limp hair (this is insulting, it's like describing my own hair) that crawls to you-or stand behind you with leering face. I am always most creeped out when it involves a much scarier, dirty being, demonic presence (please, not those fugly-alien looking-animation demons. I'm talking more of the ancient, biblical demons) that creeps into people's lives, and ruin them.

This movie was fast, not a scene was unnecessary or stupid, the ghosts/demon didn't look ridiculous but actually really really scary, interesting, entertaining, terrifying, and most importantly, haunting. It made me unable to even blink, cowered behind my hunny, clutched the end of my seat, scream (or maybe yelp was more like it), and cried. It's a perfect horror movie. It's definitely one of my favorite now, i'd love to watch it again. I believe, this is the kind of movie every die hard horror (not the Saw type okay, the ghost/demon types) movies are always hungry for.

Oh, i must add that i found two very familiar faces playing the daughters! One was the girl who played Channing Tatum's character's daughter in White House Down and ther other one was Reneesme from Twilight!

A MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST watch for every horror lover. Not for the faint hearted! Considered yourself warned.

And that's all! The low down of all the movies we watched in the cinema all through the month of July! Hope you like my reviews and look forward for August movies reviews.

#Pink

PS : We're back in Taipei after spending three days in Hualien, so far i've been...sunburnt for the very first time in my life, got super bloated that it is hard to belive that on normal days it is actually flat FML, and eat stuffs i wouldn't normally eat n actually enjoyed them!