serene’s posterous

I am not sure what to say about this movie.  The first hour or so of the movie is quite good.  What happens when a hit goes wrong, and the hitmen have to lie low in a foreign country?  The acting was great too.  Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes were all memorable in their roles.  I also liked the touches of humor in the situation.  But then, I was quite disappointed in the farcical ending, so I can't really recommend the movie.

This is a rather disturbing film.  What if there's some kind of virulence that spreads easily, making everyone infected blind?  What if there's one person who is immune?  Julianne Moore is excellent as always.  Although, I wonder why didn't her character do more when the inevitable Lord of Flies thing happens.  She is the only person with sight after all...doesn't that give her an enormous advantage?

Not sure how this movie ended up on our netflix list, but I think we probably read a very positive review somewhere...

Essentially, this was a teenage road trip comedy.  The movie wasn't terrible and we had some laughs from it.  It was rather puerile and crude at times, but at its core, there were cute love stories, and characters who were likable.  Memorably, James Marsden plays against type in a supporting role as a macho, crazed brother.

I loved the movie.  I watched this in 3-D, which was an interesting experience given that I haven't watched any of the recent 3-D movies.  The effect is subtle, no gimmicky popping in your face kind of things.  I am not sure if the regular 2-D would be a diminished watching experience because presumably the colors would be more vivid in 2-D.

The best part of the movie is the prologue, which I think is the emotional core of the movie.  The sequence of little scenes of Carl and Ellie's lives and the passing of time and the dreams and heartbreak.  I can't say I have watched a more emotional and powerful sequence in an animated movie.  The rest of the movie was very good, but it never reached the heights of the prologue.

I really want to go watch it again.

Another action-packed movie.  Well, it was entertaining but pretty preposterous, with several plot threads left hanging by the end of the movie.  The movie is all about Liam Neeson, the grizzled, experienced ex-intelligence agent, trying to save his daughter, played by Maggie Grace, and not caring about what/who gets in the way.  The body count is high.

Entertaining.  Better than The Day the Earth Stood Still, which we
watched yesterday.  This movie was quite exciting, but nothing really
special or extraordinary.  I did like the neat montage in the opening
titles that describes the origin story.  And the Hulk is scarier when
he was in shadows - at the first transformation - before you know how
he looks like.  Liv Tyler had some bad lines, but at least she and
Edward Norton had some chemistry.
 
Also, there were funny bits about how tiresome it is to rip up clothes
- "más stretchy!"

The movie starts out quite strong (although Eu-Jin complains that there are no crampons in 1928 and points out that the ice axe is too short), but in the latter parts of the movie there were a lot of silly pyrotechnics and pointless action scenes.  The ending is sort of an anti-climax too.  The movie didn't make a lot of sense but at least it was sort of entertaining.

Keanu Reeves is well cast...his usual wooden acting skills are appropriately alien-like.  The kid (Jaden Smith) is quite annoying, and Jennifer Connelly has the thankless role as the female scientist.  John Cleese had a good cameo - and gave an impassioned argument on the behalf of humans...

The movie was good fun.  Indeed, it was somewhat like a series of action sequences strung together.  But the action scenes are very well done and it was more intelligent than the usual run-of-the-mill action movies.  It was probably quite difficult for the young actors to fill in the roles that probably would forever be associated with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy etc.  I think the actors, particularly Chris Pine and Karl Urban, largely did a commendable job of capturing the essence of the characters without mimicry.  It does seem like there potentially will be many new movies to come with this new cast of characters.

* Spoiler Alert  *

This is one way of "rebooting" the series with the same characters and having Leonard Nimoy play Spock again...but I don't really like time travel plot devices.  There are just too many potential paradoxes in messing around with the timeline.

Instead of going to Big Dance on Friday night this year (because I was too tired after a week of a lot of lab and not enough sleep, and didn't get around to getting tickets), I watched Star Trek II with friends before watching the new Star Trek reboot later in the evening.

Admittedly, I have very little familiarity with the Star Trek lore.  I don't think I have watched any of the old TV series or the movies.  I may have caught a few episodes of the Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Enterprise, but I was not big fan.  It was probably a good thing to catch Star Trek II first because it made the new Star Trek movie more enjoyable later in the evening - I could appreciate some of the things the director/writers added just for the fans.

Star Trek II shows its age, since it is from 1982.  Ignoring the cheesy special effects, it was a reasonably good and suspenseful movie with the running theme about growing old and had some great lines.  I liked that the villain, Khan, was brilliantly over the top (plus that silly exposed decolletage of his costume).  The setup was a tad slow, but once the movie got going, it never got very dull again.

I found the movie okay.  I think Kevin Smith made a Judd Apatow-like movie (or was it the other way around, since Kevin Smith came first?).  I think he was trying too hard, with a ton of profanity and a lot of pushing of barriers and nudity.  The movie was still reasonably sweet and funny in spite of this.  Seth Rogan is probably typecast.  And I don't quite believe in the romance between the lead characters, which makes the ending less satisfying.  Remember to wait through the credits...