April Movies

Hey guys!

I feel like it's almost a habit to say this but... How is this May already??? And a week into that, for that matter? LOL. I believe it's a sign of one getting old, i remember time used to crawl when i was in school! Anyway, it's a little latter than it ideally should be (ideally i would post movie reviews on the first day of the new month, but writing movie reviews actually takes me longer than most other type of posts!) but here it is at last! Mini reviews on movies i've watched on April!

Honestly, it was one of those "MEH" months where most of the movies were less than exciting for me (even with the two super heroes movies that came out on April). I like some better than the others, but none of them really gripped me, except maybe for The Raid 2 that prompted me to actually write a full review on!

1. House at the End of the Street

I didn't even know that this was such an old (2012, WTH) movie at that time. I was desperate to watch anything and this was showing, promising itself to be a horror movie (yeah, i prefer supernatural kind of horror than thriller but beggars can't be choosers!) i decided to drag my hunny to watch it. I forgot that i do not like Jennifer Lawrence much, so when the movie failed to deliver-i got even more annoyed at her *irrationally* LOL.

Newly divorced pair of mother-daughter moved into their dream house in a small rural town. The house was sold (or was it rented...) at a low price because at the house nearby, a young girl killed her parents in that very house. Elissa (the daughter, played by Jennifer Lawrence. I am trying really hard to identify why i dislike her so much. I think it's her cold expression and eyes that makes it hard for me to connect with her. No matter what her role is, i feel like she looks very cold, which is cool for some of the movies, but with ones where the audience need to sympathize with her, it just doesn't happen to me) start befriending the boy from that family, the only survivor of the incident, things started to go wrong.

I find the movie very flat and boring, i pretty much guessed the bad guy (it's not what it seems to be) pretty fast into the movie, even though the reason why the bad guy was a bad guy surprised me, that didn't help the movie for me. I didn't like it and if you're thinking of watching the DVD or download it, if your taste's similar to me : don't bother.

2. Captain America : The Winter Soldier

I really liked the first movie and i think Chris Evans' scorching HOT, but sadly i didn't go cray cray over this movie. It was just alright for me, the start was a bit boring (fanboys, don't get mad at me!) and gets better after a while. It must be  me who's at fault, because hunny liked it a lot and it got rated 8.2 in IMDb.

Steve Rogers, awakened after decades of suspended animation, found himself in a completely different world. He has to learn to get used to this new world and battle against bad guys at the same time. He seems to be in a better place than when we last saw him in The Avenger, though-but not for long. Nick Fury was killed by a mysterious assassin known as The Winter Soldier, right after he warned Steve that SHIELD has been compromised and not to trust anyone. Captain America then was branded a traitor by the organization and turned fugitive, went on a quest to get to the bottom of it all with the only aids from Black Widow and the Falcon (i really like the Falcon!).

People are raving about this all grown up type of super hero movies, with political drama and conspiracy theory, but i am a simple girl who prefers to be entertained, not confused *LOL*. I dunno, i do like darker types of super hero movies (you know, the Dark Knight, and the new Superman), but this one just didn't really do it for me. Once the action started, it was pretty entertaining and all, but it's nothing special to me. I really love Chris Evans, but this time i actually preferred watching Andrew Garfield (who i do not find attractive, and Spider man is like my least fave super hero) in Spider man. It's totally a matter of personal preference though, it's not a bad movie and it's worth catching, i'm just not crazy about it.

3. Rio 2

I didn't watch the first movie (and not too interested to do so) because it was at that period of time when imported movies were scarce due to the newly announced taxes debacle that caused most importers to withdraw their movies in 2011 (those were dark days -____-). It also didn't seem particularly interesting to me (coz i'm not into birds? LOL) so i never bothered downloading it or whatever. Hunny wanted to take Baby Boy to watch this second installment though, so we did and i actually quite like it :).

Blu, Jewel and their kids went to the Amazon after seeing the possibility of more Blue Makaws like them living there. Blu, who is a very domesticated and humanized bird found it hard to fit in with the wild birds and things get even harder with him having to face his stern human-hating father in law and Jewel's childhood sweetheart.

The story is very simple and uncomplicated, but with enough humor to entertain me (and Baby Boy) from start to finish. I was especially smitten because, ugh.. I'm a huge fan of Bruno Mars and i might be biased, but i think he totally did a great job :D! It's a pretty straight forward, wholesome family movie (with some colorful animated birds and fun songs), so it's a pretty entertaining choice for the whole family (especially ones with young children) but it's nothing new or mind blowing. Still it's not a total waste of time to watch, in my opinion.

4. Sabotage

I have no idea what i was expecting, but i guess i thought the movie would be the usual Arnold Schwarzenegger's silly, action packed movies. Not that i am familiar with his movies, i've only been watching a handful since i used to stay clear of the typical guys-action movies before i met hunny. But the ones i did watch (you know, The Expendables. And... errr... Escape Plan. That's all i remember *___*) was usually funny so i was a bit taken aback by this much more serious (and must i add, boring) movie.

A group of elite DEA (that looks nothing like the authorities) tried to rob a drug cartel while taking them down. Their bosses got a whiff of it, suspend them until the higher authorities decided to put them back on the field (due to lack of evidence) when one by one, the members got brutally murdered.

No, seriously... I cannot take Arnold seriously, this movie's got too much drama for him to handle! I mean, i can probably watch him in a less comedic movie, but with full actions in it but not the ones with too many complications and weird twists like this one. I am all for smart movies, but this one is... I dunno. I just don't like it. I don't get it and it made me sleepy. On a totally unrelated note, the group looked so much like the gang in Sons of Anarchy and i laughed out loud when i saw Sam Worthington with braided goatee. Not a good look, Sam, not a good look. If you believe in my taste, skip this!

5. Transcendence

Transcendence is not a fantastic movie, but it's one of the highlight of the movies i've watched in April. Maybe it's got to do with my very soft spot for Johnny Depp, or maybe because i always have a fascination with this sort of sci-fi movie (how do i explain this. I don't normally like sci-fi movies much, but i like the sort with human clones, artificial intelligent kind of stuffs. I like The Island, Surrogates, Elysium. You catch my drift?). It's not the most exciting movie, in fact it can be a bit slow for some people, but it was pretty good for me.

Dr. Will Caster is a prestigious AI researcher working on a sentient machine that combines the intelligence of everything with a full range of human emotions. In short, a very smart AI with independent mind and emotions. It made him a target of an anti-technology extremist who in the end managed to kill him, slowly. Before he died, his wife and best friend (both highly respected researchers in the same field) managed to transfer his being into the research computer and he lived on (or did he?) as a software, expanding and getting more and more thirsty for knowledge. The moral question is, if it's something they should've done? Is it really Will, the person inside the software or if it's really just a computer who thinks it is Will?

I just find the whole thing fascinating. But it's not a perfect movie, most of AI and clone type of sci-fi often are underdeveloped and sadly this one seems to suffer from the same case. It's still worth watching though if it's for its unique concept and Johnny Depp :).

6. Mall Klender

The only local movie i've watched this month. There was a time where horror movies were the king in the local movie scene and we used to produce the scariest horror movies ever (think Tusuk Jelangkung 1, 2, Kuntilanak, etc) then the moment passed and the good quality horror movies started to be replaced by semi pornographic, slapstick comedy horror. Which are stupid and horrible. It's been a very very very long while since i watched a decent local horror movie, but with Shandy Aulia and Tasya Kamila (both do not take semi porn movies and usually take pretty good roles in pretty good movies) on the lead and the theme about a real, existing mall with a real tragedy behind it, i hoped for at least a semi-watchable movie. I didn't get what i hoped to get.

Mila was foretold to have her sixth sense revealed at the age of 23, she became obsessed with the supernatural world and keep on hunting for proofs that supernatural world exists with her three friends.  They go to one haunted place to another (i was pretty excited to see a glimpse of the reportedly local haunted house, Rumah Darmo in the intro) without any luck. They then took on a challenge from a Mall owner in Yogyakarta to stay for 24 hours locked inside the mall to proof that the mall is not haunted. They have nothing to lose, if the mall is haunted then they have the proofs they were looking for and if not then they would get IDR 500.000.000 from the owner. 

So, i began to suspect the movie's quality after the super long and highly stylized intro with the casts posing and acting like they were in a dark, scary place with a disturbingly annoying soundtrack on the background. It started out pretty good with Mila's grandpa performing an exorcise ritual, it went downhill from that first few seconds and never recovered. It was super boring, cheesy, flat, uninteresting, unexciting, and plain stupid (and it dragged on and on and on and on...). It should've never been produced. An utter waste of celluloid. I was damn disappointed, since when Shandy Aulia accept such horrible scripts? It's super bad, SKIP SKIP SKIP SKIP! I heard that it's showing in other S.E.A countries (retitled as The Mall), the horror! It's so embarrassing OMG, now all S.E.A people would think that we make stupid movies *cries*!!!!!

7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Thanks to hunny, i now learn to enjoy super heroes movies, but like i stated earlier, my least favorite would be Spider Man. I mean... Spider!! Ewww... I think the way he swings around is not very cool *LOL*, and i hated Tobey Maguire! He's just... ew. The only saving grace for me was James Franco, coz he's drop dead gorgeous. So when they re-booted it  i was like, WHYYYY.... But i must admit, i like this new spider man about 10x better than the previous one. I also like Andrew Garfield (even though i don't think he's cute, but he's very likeable and quite endearing) about 20x better than Tobey Maguire. This second movie's even better than the first in my opinion, Andrew Garfield made Peter Parker less annoying and whiny, and i like Gwen Stacy better than Mary Jane.

Peter Parker always remembered Gwen Stacy's father's dying wish for him to stay away from her, but he couldn't distance himself from her so they kept on having an off again on again relationship and it's eating him in the inside. He is torn in between being the Spider Man and Peter Parker, he also kept on searching for the truth about his parents. A new villain emerged at the form of Electro (seriously, Jamie Foxx.. He never looks so stupid and disgusting. And pathetic haha) then his old friend, Harry Osborn returned (the new Harry... Ew. Ew.) and Peter realized that all of his enemy has one thing in common : Oscorp company. 

Even as my least favorite super hero, this movie actually became the highlight of my April movies (littered with boring as fudge movies zzzz) alongside The Raid and Transcendence. It was funny, entertaining and quite exciting. I would never be able to take Spider Man's silly villains seriously, but maybe Spider Man's not something one should be taking seriously in the first place. I totally enjoyed the movie and highly recommend it for popcorn movie lovers. I just couldn't believe they would kill off ggg...geeee...ghhhhhhhhh.... Oh sh*t i shouldn't spoil it for you since it's still showing at full force right now. For die hard Spidey fans, the killed off character shouldn't come as a surprise, but for someone with no Spider Man knowledge like me, it shocked the hell outta me. And annoys the sh*t out of me as well. LOL. 

So that it! The reviews of movies i've watched in April! I think May would be a better month-movie wise-if i can judge it on the first movie i watched in May, The Other Woman which is damn hilarious and a MUST watch! Not gonna blab too much about it, you gotta wait for my May movies review to know my full opinion on it, but i urge you to watch that movie!

Toodle for now!

#Pink

PS : Have you read this entry about why i started blogging? If you haven't, it'd mean a lot for me if you'd just click this link and read it, i'm joining a writing competition but sadly the winner's decided by vote so i need your guys' support! Don't worry, you just need to click on the link and that's all!