Sense and Sensibility (1995) 5/5 Stars

Set in the1810 England, Sense and Sensibility is a movie based on the novel by Jane Austen.

Elinor (Emma Thompson), Marianne (Kate Winslet) and Margaret (Emilie Francois) are 3 sisters who came from a wealthy family.

Their mother Mrs.Dashwood (Gemma Jones) was the second wife of the wealthy Mr. Dashwood.

However, when he passed away, the 3 sisters and the mother learned that Mr Dashwood had leave his wealth to a son from his first marriage. They found themselves left with only little money and very little amount of monthly allowance. They reluctantly had to move to their cousin Sir John Middleton (Tom Wilkinson) estate in Devonshire. Desperate in this poor situation their mother Mrs.Dashwood was having it hard that she has to marry off her daughters to wealthy suitors.

Elinor the oldest sister were finding companionship with Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant) whose wealthy family did not approve on and tried to separate them. Marianne on the other hand were matched by their cousin with the town's eligible bachelor Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman) who was on the age of 30 something. Alas, instead of fancying him back Marianne was smitten with a much younger Willoughby (Greg Wise).

Every scenes of this movie is almost perfect.

The casting of this movie is stellar. Emma Thompson is playing the oldest sister part beautifully, looking strong out front but fragile inside. Kate Winslet suitably set in as the middle sister who loves Shakespeare's sonnets and believe in the fiery touch of love. Her piano play and singing on "Weep You No More Sad Fountains" which made the Colonel struck with love on the first sight is beautiful. Hugh Grant seemingly believable as the awkward, soft Edward Ferrars.

Hugh Laurie appear for awhile as a friend of the Colonel and so does Imelda Staunton.

Although the story is a tad slow, this movie by Ang Lee is highly recommended to those who are interested with period drama and of course the acting of the wonderful casts.


If you like this article by Marlina Koh, you might want to check these articles as well:

• Water for Elephants Movie (2011)
• The Lucky Ones (2008) Inspiring Movie That Captured Common Americans' Lives
• A Beautiful Life 不再讓你孤單 (2011) a Captivating Modern Day Chinese Movie
• 500 Days of Summer (2009) An Upfront Movie of Expectations and Reality of Love.
• Fast Five (2011) A Worth Waiting Sequel to The Fast and Furious Innstallments.
• Rise of the Planet of The Apes (2011) The Oppressed Chimps Fight Back
• Horrible Bosses (2011) Getting Rid of the Mean Bosses

Horrible Bosses (2011) 3/5 Stars

Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman), Dale Arbus (Charlie Day) and Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis) are friends since college.

They each have bosses who are making them living the hell everyday.

Nick’s Boss at work was President Director Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) a psycho maniac who killed anyone that sleep with his wife and constantly verbally abused Nick. While Kurt had to work under his former boss’s (Donald Sutherland) son Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell) a dense drug head douchebag . Dale on the other hand was working for Julia (Jennifer Aniston) a man-eater dentist who likes to seduce him at work which is not good for the fact that Dale is a committed person who’s engaged and going to marry his fiancée soon.

Their bosses were so horrible that the three of them finally decided to murder their bosses by using criminal advice from Jones (Jamie Foxx) who they taught was an ex murderer.

Julie Bowen played Rhonda Harken the wife of Nick’s boss who likes to sleep around with people.

Ioan Gruffudd appeared for a while as a mistaken assassin.

The casting is quite good but there are some moments where the movie seems too forced and unreal.

But overall with all the nonsense, it is a quite a good movie to watch if you are not looking for something too serious. See how the three of them trying to do a felony act that somehow makes them experienced the life of actions from it.

If you like this article by Marlina Koh, you might want to check these articles as well:

• Water for Elephants Movie (2011)
• The Lucky Ones (2008) Inspiring Movie That Captured Common Americans' Lives
• A Beautiful Life 不再讓你孤單 (2011) a Captivating Modern Day Chinese Movie
• 500 Days of Summer (2009) An Upfront Movie of Expectations and Reality of Love.
• Fast Five (2011) A Worth Waiting Sequel to The Fast and Furious Innstallments.
• TV Series: MODERN FAMILY (2009) A One Big (straight, gay, multi-cultural, traditional) Happy Family

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) 4/5 Stars

Rise of the Planet of the Apes starring James Franco as Will Rodman, a brilliant scientist who is researching for the cure to Alzheimer disease.

At first the test of the cure was done to Bright Eyes, who was showing advanced improvement in its intelligence and become smarter. Because of an incident , the company was shutting down the research, calling it a failure. Will who himself has a father with Alzheimer (Charles played by John Lithgow) was sure that his cure is useful brought home Caesar, Bright Eyes’ baby Chimp.

Caesar inherited the intelligence her mommy chimps gained after being injected with Will’s cure.

After another 5 year, Will watches as Caesar shown increasing intelligence even surpassing human kids. As his father Charles worsened with the Alzheimer, Will decided to inject the cure on him. His father was temporary cured and worsened later on after the body immune system fight off the cure. Will is then rushing to make a more powerful cure.

Caesar who is an adult chimp were caged at the primate centre owned by John Landon (Brian Cox) and his son Dodge (Tom Felton) after he defended Charles from Will’s neighbor Hunsiker (David Hewlett).

In that Primate Centre Caesar who was used to affectionately taken care of by Will, Charles and Caroline (Freida Pinto) has to faced a harsh treatment from Dodge and the other caged Chimps.

He then after feeling left and disappointed with his intelligence made the decision to free all the apes from the human.

The Rise of the planet of the apes is a pretty good movie with a decent casting. Although the actors did not get to do too much for the roles except James Franco who is the main character. This is one apes movie indeed.

The Chimp Caesar was really nicely made. The eyes expression, the sign language, shows that every creature not just human longed for care and acceptance.

If you like this article by Marlina Koh, you might want to check these articles as well:

• Water for Elephants Movie (2011)
• A Beautiful Life 不再讓你孤單 (2011) a Captivating Modern Day Chinese Movie
• 500 Days of Summer (2009) An Upfront Movie of Expectations and Reality of Love.
• Fast Five (2011) A Worth Waiting Sequel to The Fast and Furious Innstallments.
• TV Series: MODERN FAMILY (2009) A One Big (straight, gay, multi-cultural, traditional) Happy Family

TV Series : MODERN FAMILY (2009) 5/5 Stars

TAGLINE: One Big (straight, gay, multi-cultural, traditional) Happy Family.

Starting its Season 3 this year, Modern Family is an award winning comedy TV series from the US.

The series is revolving around the daily life of Jay’s big family which is somehow very unique.

Jay (Ed O’Neill) himself is married to his new wife Gloria (Sofia Vergara) a hot Colombian woman with her son Manny (Rico Rodriguez).

On his previous marriage Jay’s already had 2 kids who’s now a married adult.

His son Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) is married to Cameron (Eric Stonestreet). They are gay couple who adopted Lily, a Vietnamese baby.

His daughter Claire (Julie Bowen) is married to the dense Phil (Ty Burrell) and they are raising a traditional family. They have 3 kids: Haley (Sarah Hyland), Alex (Ariel Winter), and Luke (Nolan Gould).

The casting of this series is done nicely. The actors and actresses seem to bond very well and close which is good because the audience can be brought to believe that this is really a new kind of family living their daily life normally alas the differences of culture and lifestyle.

Modern Family is a hilarious combination of scenes and interviews, which is a little bit like “The Office”. They also included some sort of moral lessons and everyday issues with a nicely written script.

Every character in the series has their own personality and problems where in the end the importance of being a family is prioritized.

If you like this article by Marlina Koh, you might want to check these articles as well:

• Water for Elephants Movie (2011)
• The Lucky Ones (2008) Inspiring Movie That Captured Common Americans' Lives
• A Beautiful Life 不再讓你孤單 (2011) a Captivating Modern Day Chinese Movie
• 500 Days of Summer (2009) An Upfront Movie of Expectations and Reality of Love.
• Fast Five (2011) A Worth Waiting Sequel to The Fast and Furious Innstallments.

Fast Five (2011) 4/5 Stars

The Fast and Furious movie franchise has been a hit since its first movie in 2001. Focusing on a street racing, the series has the whole element of action and thriller on it.

After fascinating the adrenaline of the fans with the 4 previous installments, Fast Five is like the sequel that is being put on the top of the icing.
In this last series, directed by Justin Lin, the characters are nicely developed with a subtle twist in the plot here and there. The nice cars, their whole plan of robbing the number one mob in Rio de Janeiro will put your heart pumping and excited with it.

The former undercover cop Brian O’connor (Paul Walker) is teaming up again with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel). They are being helped by Dominic’s sister Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster), and they also call in a team of street racers that has previously appear on the last 4 sequels.
The team includes The Chatterbox Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), tech guy Tej Parker (Ludacris), Han Lue (Sung Kang), Gal Gadot (Gisele Harabo), Tego Leo (Tego Carderon) and Rico Santos (Don Omar).
They plan to rob off Hernan Reyes, the mob type businessman in Rio to get out for good and find a country with no extradition.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson also join the cast as FBI agent Hobbs who is hunting on Brian and Dominic with a super Hummer tank look alike car.

The cast delivered best acting so far for the series and the humor and storyline in this last installment is much more engaging.

Even at the end of the credit there is a teaser for the next Fast and Furious.

It is a worth waiting movie with all the hype about the whole installments.


If you like this article by Marlina Koh, you might want to check these articles as well:

• Water for Elephants Movie (2011)
• The Lucky Ones (2008) Inspiring Movie That Captured Common Americans' Lives
• A Beautiful Life 不再讓你孤單 (2011) a Captivating Modern Day Chinese Movie
• 500 Days of Summer (2009) An Upfront Movie of Expectations and Reality of Love.

DILEMMA (2011) 3/5 Stars

"Will you tell your best friend if you saw his wife cheating with another man?"

That is the biggest question where this movie is build around.

Ronny (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Kevin James) has been best friends for many years since college and they have been through a lot of things together. They even have a business together in automotive field. One day Ronny settled a meeting for the their company.

The head of the company likes their idea of a futuristic electric car with the sound of  a classic dodge charger, and thus they are in a middle of closing a major deal with Chrysler supervised by Susan (Queen Latifah)
All they need to do is making sure that the engine they are selling could work. And Nick has to finalize it in order for them to close the deal.

While all the stress are downing on them, the big dilemma come to hit them on the face. Ronny's face that is.
Ronny was having another big thing that he's planning on doing after they close the deal with Chrysler. Ronny is planning to marry his long time girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Conelly) after being cornered by Geneva (Winona Ryder), Nick's wife at one of their couples outing. When he is searching for a place to do the proposal, he happens to accidentally caught Geneva cheating with another man (Channing Tatum)
And so Ronny is now caught in the dilemma of choosing whether he should tell Nick (putting their deal in the line) or stay quite and just tell him after they got the deal.

This movie is quite entertaining.

Vince Vaugh appear desperate as a best friend with a big dilemma.

Kevin James looks as if he's gonna get a stroke at any given moment.

Winona Ryder, oh my gosh, I thought she look different nowadays. Still she is top notch in playing the part of a psychotic cheating wife.

Jennifer Connelly is sweet as usual.

A notable appearance by Channing Tatum as Zip.

Here is a good line from the movie that is pretty nicely written:

• Zip : "It takes two. And You know it!" (about cheating with Geneva)
  
• Ronny: "Yes, Not Three!" (about Marriage)
  
• Zip: "Get out of here!" *sobs*

It is a decent choice when you have free time on a Saturday Night.

A Beautiful Life 不再讓你孤單 (2011) 3/5 Stars

Starring Liu Ye and Shu Qi, it sets in modern day Beijing “A Beautiful Life” is a Chinese movie that has this delicate story which will make you unable to stop watching it.

Shu Qi plays a very beautiful Hong Kong Immigrant gold digger Li Pei that also worked as a real estate agent. While Liu Ye plays Fang Zhen Dong, a Chinese Police Officer that always become a role-model to his juniors and Colleague, he also has to shoulders a lot of responsibilities.

They accidentally met in a karaoke men’s toilet where a drunken Li Pei mistakenly gets into the wrong toilet and bump into Zhen Dong. Since then, there seems to be mutual interest between the two but with different motives.

In the end, after all the happenings, finally Li Pei is opened to a realization what is the true meaning of Love. When everything does not seems to look fair and ruined, the story came into a fairy-tale like conclusion that makes you as the audience feel the sense of wanting to believe and having faith again.

Shu Qi manages to play this strong girl Li Pei. As a very well experienced actress, she has undoubtedly captured the character and brought Li Pei to life.

Liu Ye a versatile China actor also nicely captured Zhen Dong character with every line in his face in every scene of the movie.

There was also a short appearance of Anthony Wong in this movie.

A Beautiful Life starts very simple and not so heavy but as the movie goes on the audience is brought to different levels of emotional rides and layers. If you like a nicely done movie and not just a time wasting thingy, you have to try watching this drama.

500 Days Of Summer (2009) 4/5 Stars

SPOILER ALERTS starts from here.
Do not continue reading if you do not want to get any spoilers.

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel this movie shows upon reality in about that delusional relationship most people have even experienced before.

It is a story that shows us in some relationships they do not always have a good ending. That in some baseless love stories, one person always love more than the other.

Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a guy who worked as a greeting card writer. He has actually always fancied the matter of architecture but never really pursue it. His whole life, he always have a perception that love is beautiful, love is grand, he watched “The Graduate” when he was a kid and therefore he has a strong believe in love and the idea of a soul mate.

When Summer (Zooey Deschanel) the new staff walked in the office where he worked, Tom felt instantly (love at the first sight) that Summer is the girl that he has always dream of meeting aside from her average looking posture.

This movie get a top-notch grasp of some love stories that do not told a lot in movies. We always believed in this fantasy that when we meet our “the one” it will all be like the Cinderella story or at least like Titanic. But no, sometimes we want to believe so much in love that we become delusional and biased, and that is where reality of love is laid down in front of us.

Unless you are a sucker over a total happy ending story, this movie is highly recommended. It has a good script, good actors, nice directing.

It is easily one of the best movies of 2009.

4 out of 5 Stars

Formal article : HERE

 

The Lucky Ones (2008) 2.5/5 Stars

Starring Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams and Michael Pena this beautifully made movie has indeed captured Americans common lives.

The three main actors starred as American soldiers who were serving at Iraq. As fate bring them together on the same flight back to America, the three of them got stuck in the same airport where there was a black-out incident.

Since the three of them are from the army, they have a mutual respect for each other and decided to tag along to rent a car so they can get to the place they want to by driving together.

As the story goes on the road we found out that these characters each have their own problems to solve!

Fred Cheaver (Tim Robbins) has finished his service and is going back for good. Colee Dunn (Rachel McAdams) is on a 30 days leave and going to deliver her boyfriend’s guitar to his family who died saving her while thinking of living with his family as well since she does not have her own family. Then there is TK (Michael Pena) who is also on a 30 days leave is back to face his girlfriend after getting an injury on his groin area (impotency) that might threaten his relationship.

Tim Robbins as a 40ish Cheaver is very believable with the acting, he manage to bring the veteran soldier to life and is pretty crushing when his character found out that the wife is leaving him and the kid needs USD 20,000 to go to college.

While Michael Pena as TK is hilarious since his character is trying to reveal the reason he wanted to go to Las Vegas to get his “thing” to work back on.

The most entertaining portrayal would be Rachel McAdams’ Colee Dunn who appeared to be very innocent and naïve throughout the movie, her character’s simple outlook on life rewarding her biting remarks from TK, “That girl is living in a dream”. When McAdams’ character found out about her dead boyfriend from his family, her acting is top notch and really felt. The other interesting thing to check out is her southern accent that is so drawly.

Along with these characters road trip we are faced with some Americans life as they are.

This movie is nicely casts and the story which at first seemed common, ended very open-hearted and when we all might think that even though sometimes life is complicated and messy, they always work out somehow when we are open to possibilities and try to help one another.

2,5 out of 5 stars

Formal Article : HERE

Water for Elephants Movie (2011) 3/5 Stars

This movie is set in 1931 in the great depression time.

Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) raised in a Polish family in America and studying to be a Vet like his Dad. But in the midst of his exam he is informed a shocking news that his parents died in a car accident.

Young Jacob then find himself adrift with no house and no family.

While walking on the side of a train track he jumped into a train for a free ride that he thought might take him to another city. But as faith brought him on board,The train belongs to a second rate circus group filled with circus performers, workers, animals and the boss of the circus group the charismatic August (Christopher Waltz) and his beautiful wife Marlena (Resse Witherspoon).

There is only one thing to say about this movie! It is beautifully made!

Robert Pattinson brought about a nice potrayal of Jacob. A young man struggling for life and love. The shots in this movie is beautiful as well. There are so many emotional up and down felt in this movie. It makes me forget that Edward the Vampire is in the movie. So, kudos for Robert Pattinson for taking it up another level of good performance.

Christoph Waltz and Resse Witherspoon

The talented Resse Witherspoon perform nicely it is hard to tell whether a stunt made that jump up and down the horse and elephant. The chemistry between her and her two male co-stars are blended nicely.

But Christoph Waltz! Oh, Christoph Waltz! Man, this dude sure brings the key performance. As the brutal circus owner and a possessive husband. I love this guy! He's so good. I think he can play any role!

Anyway, this novel adaptation movie itself is worth watching. Francis Lawrence makes it shocking beginning, funny in the middle and tragical and so many other emotions could come up while watching this movie.

It is a suitable movie where you can take your boyfriend and girlfriend to watch.

3 out of 5 stars

For a formal article click:
HERE
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