Movie Reviews

Recently Rob has been blessed or cursed with seeing a few flicks, so without further ado...

New Police Story: Jackie Chan's newest HK film and a continuation of his Police Story movie series that I never really followed, but it was shown on the plane back from Singapore and it won lots of awards, so I thought "what the heck!". The story is an old cop loses his spirit after losing his partners to a bunch of extreme-sports cop killers and regains it thanks to a spunky new recruit. This is one odd movie, about 90% of it is a typical (if mildly more serious) Jackie Chan movie that has that odd vapidness almost all of his movies have. Those of you who have seen them (and I suspect it's most of you) know what I mean, there's just nothing much to his HK films except stunts and the time spent between stunts. (Not that the American ones are much better, but they do seem a little more "solid" in the character department.) There is just something about his films (and many HK films) that makes them feel "unreal" that I have never been able to put my finger on. I'm not referring to stunts or gunplay, but character and drama, and the ability to tell a story with multiple levels of meaning. (There are exceptions, but Jackie usually isn't in them...)

Anyways, back to New Police Story, as I said, it's 90% brainless entertainment, but every now and then there will be something happen that's shocking, touching and bordering on truly great movie moments. I was honestly ready to start crying twice while watching it, and only held back because I was on the plane and Connie would start laughing at me. (The plane was so new it had video screens in the back of every seat on the plane with video on demand, video games, video shopping, and the remote attached to each seat could even be used as a satellite cell-phone. So she was watching "Alfie" while I watched this...)

Blade III:Trinity: Blade kills vampires amid much bad acting and dialogue, do da, do da. Don't even rent it, you'll be wasting precious moments of your life, much less your money.

The League of extraordinary Gentlemen: Yes, Rob finally caught this one on one of the movie channels the other night. Overall, since I have never read the original and had no preconceived ideas (except that it wasn't very good) going into it, I kind of liked it. A group of Victorian Age adventurers are assembled to defeat a foe, and use their unique powers and skills to do so despite the odds and a few twists. Typical adventure-film fare, and not as badly done as it could have been. (See Blade:Trinity) I'm not going to see it again, and don't mind not having paid to see it, but then, I paid to see Blade...

Meet the Fockers: A guy takes his girlfriend's stuck-up parents to meet his laid back hippie parents, I think they called the sitcom version of this Darma and Greg. A cute comedy with most of the best bits already in the preview, but it still made me and the rest of the audience laugh. A nice rental.

Hide and Seek: After his wife's suicide, a psychiatrist takes his young daughter to the countryside to recuperate and weird things start happening in the horror-thriller way of things. I admit this one did a decent job of keeping me guessing what was going on right up until the end (it has a typical Hollywood ending once the truth comes out, but is good until then) and with lots of red-herrings and misdirections. I'd actually recommend this one as a rental.

That's all for now.
Seeya in the theatre!
Rob