The Chaser

Times Watched: 1
Watched With: Miss Q (28/09) @ GV VivoCity
Snacks: Nachos & Green Tea
Hidden Scene After Movie: No

나는 잘생기다.

Eom Joong-Ho (Kim Yoon-Seok) is an ex-cop turned pimp who ultimately has a good heart and is just trying to make ends meet.
But when several of his girls go missing he suspects that they're either running away or being sold by someone else.
He traces their last known contact to one his regular customers Je Yeong-Min (Ha Jeong-Woo) who is not selling them - he's killing them.

So now it's a race against time for Joong-Ho as he tries to save one his girls Kim Min-Ji (Seo Yeong-Hee) from the clutches of the serial killer.

The premise seems really simple but you'll be surprised at how this movie twists and turns. You'd expect it to go one way but it very plesantly goes the other and keeps you glued to find out how it's going to turn out next.
It does however tend to get a little draggy at times which makes it seem like a really long movie but it's not.
Acting is superb and lot is simple but clever.
Makes it little wonder this movie was a big hit in home country Korea.

Final Verdict:

Never Back Down

Times Watched: 1
Watched With: Nobody @ Home
Snacks: None
Hidden Scene After Movie: No

Amanda Heard is so hot.

Jake Tyler (Sean Faris) has just moved to Orlando with his mum and little brother to star anew after the death of his father.
Jake's got a short temper and a habit of getting into fights which doesn't help his situation at home.

At the new school Jake befriends Max Cooperman (Evan Peters) who introduces him to
the hidden culture of street fighting.
Youths fight it out for pride and the scene is ruled by rick kid Ryan McCarthy (Cam Gigandet) who enjoys the attention as much as he enjoys humiliating his opponets.
Top it off? Jake falls in love with Ryan's girl Baja Miller (Amber Heard) who is then torn between the 2.

So who's going to help new boy Jake?
Who else but mixed-martial arts gym trainer Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou) who tries to harness Jake's anger and talents and hopefully Jake will be able to keep out of trouble in his new school.

I had heard from a few people that this movie sucked.
But surprisingly it wasn't half-bad. It was surprisingly engaging compared to recent teen culture movies.
The direction was superb and the casting was brilliant.

New kid Sean Faris is a dead ringer for a younger and leaner (and taller) Tom Cruise if you notice and baddie Cam Gigandet makes it hard for you to hate him.
And have i mentioned? Amanda Heard is so hot.
I think i might have just found a new beauty to look out for in Hollywood.

Not as bad as you might think.
But maybe best to wait for the DVD though.

Final Verdict:

Tropa De Elite (Elite Squad)

Times Watched: 1
Watched With: Mr Rider @ GV Cinema Europa (27/09)
Snacks: None
Hidden Scene After Movie: No

"Dagger to the skull and nothing to the wallet."

The slums of Rio Di Janeiro are ridden with drug dealers and thugs. Drug dealers and thugs who co-exist with corrupt police officers who accept bribes. And the youth suffer the effects of such corruptions of society.

Capitão Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is a captain in the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (BOPE). His wife is expecting their first child and his job is making it harder and harder to fulfill his role as husband and father.
It is time for Captain Nascimento to find a replacement. Time to find a badass who would be tough enough to lead BOPE.

In step 2 best friends Neto (Caio Junqueira) & André Matias (André Ramiro). One is ready to pull the trigger anytime to get the job done while the other chooses reason and logic over violence and even aspires to be a lawyer.
Both are cops who are tired of the corruption around them and decide to join BOPE to wage war against the dealers and the corrupt cops.

Can one of them be the tough new leader of BOPE and replace Captain Nascimento?
Can Nascimento bear to be replaced after being in BOPE for so long?

holy shit this movie was not bad balls.
the action is gritty and the plot is engaging. I guess the fact that you get an insight into how it might really work there in the slums is a very appealing idea.

You will tend to put yourself in both the shoes of the poor people in the slums who have no choice but to turn to that life due to poverty & then in the shoes of the BOPE officers who have no choice but to resort to brute violence to get the message through amidst all the corrupiton and greed.

People who liked City of God will like this.

Final Verdict:

Disaster Movie

Times Watched: 1
Watched With: Miss Q @ FilmGarde KLP (19/9)
Snacks: Grape Soda
Hidden Scene After Movie: Yes

No puns about the title i promise.

Will (Matt Lanter) has been having recurring dreams about the end of the world and when it finally looks like the big day has arrived, Matt has to go on a mission through the tumbling city with his buddies Calvin (G. Thang) & the pregnant (swipe at Juno) Juney (Crista Flanagan) to rescue to his girlfriend Amy (Vanessa Minnillo) before the whole world ends.

Along the way they bump into all sorts of characters like the Enchanted Princess, Hellboy, Batman, Iron-Man, Beowulf, Carmen Electra and even the assassin from No Country For Old Men.

what the hell...

Writer/Directors Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer started out really well in their careers with relatively funny spoof movies like Scary Movie 1,2 & 3. But since then their movies have really sucked.
Date Movie sucked.
Scary Movie 4 sucked.
Epic Movie really sucked.
Meet the Spartans wasn't so bad.
But this new Disaster Movie was really really really bad.

To be honest the only time i laughed was during the Alvin & The Chipmunks spoof bit (now THAT was pretty funny shit).
but other than that you just wonder to yourself what the hell you're doing there watching that movie.

Seriously people. Avoid this movie.
If there was a rating lower than half on this blog i'd give it.
so this movie can count itself lucky.

Final Verdict:

Mamma Mia!

Times Watched: 1
Watched With: Nobody @ Cathay EHub (14/09)
Snacks: None

here i go again. (my my how can i resist?)

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is about to marry Sky (Dominic Cooper) on the Greek island on which she lives her free-spirited mother Donna (Meryl Streep) and Sophie has but one wish - for her father to give her away at her wedding.

Here's the problem - she doesn't know who her father is.

And now she's narrowed it down to 3.
So she invites Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan), Harry Bright (Colin Firth) & Bill Anderson (Stellan Skarsgård) without her mother's knowledge in hopes she'll figure out which one of them is her father by the time her wedding swings around.

But as you can expect - things are never so simple.
So with her 2 best friends Tanya (Christine Baranski) & Rosie (Julie Walters), Donna must now juggle the prospect of her daughter's wedding and also all 3 of her former lovers showing up at the same time.

And of course there NO better way to perform such hilarity other than to good ol' ABBA tunes am i right?

Well first off i think Meryl Streep was a horrible miscast in this.
They should have gotten Michelle Pfeiffer or something.
But Amanda Seyfried is so hot as usual so it kind of cancels that out.
And the setting of Greece is spectacularly beautiful!

ABBA songs are always fun to listen to and since the stage play was so popular i guess a lot of people expected the movie to be good as well.
And i think it wasn't too bad but it wasn't as good as other musicals that have been made into movies y'know...
Kinda like... hmmm.. how do i put it...

This movie made me want to listen to an ABBA greatest hits CD.
This movie made me want to go on a holiday to Greece.
This movie's biggest fault is that it made me want to leave the cinema immediately to do those things.

Final Verdict:

Babylon A.D.

Times Watched: 1
Watched With: Miss Q @ Cathay EHub (11/09)
Snacks: Corn Dog & Green Tea

another futuristic action movie? hmmmm.

It is the future. A time where people sell guns on the street and extinct animals can be cloned back to life.
Toorop (Vin Diesel) is a mercenary for hire and Gorsky (Gerard Depardieu) intends to make use of Toorop's talents.

The job? To smuggle a girl to America.

Aurora (Mélanie Thierry) has a special gift that seems to be of interest to several parties. So Toorop and Sister Rebecca (Michelle Yeoh), a nun and guardian of Aurora must try to transport her across the borders.
And in the mean time several other people including mysterious Darquandier (Lambert Wilson) and the religious sect The Neolites want their hands on the girl as well.
Worse type.

I had read reviews about this movie before i watched it.
And they were all bad.
But when the movie started I began to think that maybe they were wrong. The show started out well enough with an interesting premise.
But the more and more the show went on, the deeper and deeper it crawled into the unending pit known as "sucks to the max".

Director Mathieu Kassovitz had complained that the studios took a beautiful plot and forced him to make an action movie instead of an action film.
Hmmm... maybe if they had let the director do his thing then maybe the plot wouldn't have degraded to the point of being horribly predictable.
And a note to the director - not bad. But you REALLY need to work on your fight scenes bub. way tooooo close-quarters for my taste.

Well at least Vin Diesel was entertaining as usual.
This movie actually started with a passing rating. But alas it was not to be.

Is it ironic that the first letters for each word of this movie's title spell out - B.A.D??

Final Verdict:

Bangkok Dangerous

Times Watched: 1
Watched With: Nobody @ Cathay EHub (07/09)
Snacks: None

What the hell is up with Nicholas Cage's hair??

Joe (Nicolas Cage) is a hitman.
And a meticulous one at that. Always living for the job.
But now it's time for that one big hit. The last one that will make him enough money to be able to stop killing and retire.

So Joe's arrives in Bangkok for the job.
But being the final job, the usually tough Joe starts to go soft and goes against his usual rules.
He takes a street bum Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm) under his wing and manages to fall in love with a deaf-mute pharmacist Fon (Charlie Yeung).

Surely this is not going to go as well as his previously normal textbook jobs.

ai yai yai.
Nicholas Cage used to be such a good actor. Not great but at least some of his movies were pretty okay to watch.
But over the past few year his movies (including big budget ones like Ghost Rider) really fucking sucked shit.

I didn't watch the original Thai movie but this remake helmed by the same directors The Pang Brothers was quite bad in a LOT of ways.
The plot was SO predictable, the dialogue cry and on top of that - you have to put up with Nicholas Cage. And his hair.

Yeah sure. It's a hitman movie.
But it could have been so much better.
Hmmm maybe it was a little TOO simple? Or a little too sucky.

Final Verdict: