Angels & Demons

Venue - Cineleisure

If you feel like lately most the movies on showing aren’t enough to fill your intellectual mind and satisfy your curiosity, well look no further as we have the latest installment from the Dan Brown franchise of ever epic religious treasure hunts entitled Angels and Demons. Will this be enough to pull in the crowd and leave fans of the book thirsty for more?

Big Holes equal Bad News

"Despite his notorious relationship with the Church, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is once again called upon to decipher the clues to a catastrophic conspiracy. The Pope has died, and before conclave can begin to determine his successor, the four preferitti (primary hopefuls for the papacy) are kidnapped. An ominous threat of their hourly demise, along with the complete annihilation of Vatican City, is issued as an elaborate revenge scheme for a persecuted group known as the Illuminati. With their meager time limit steadily counting down, Langdon, accompanied by beautiful physicist Vittoria Vetra, must travel throughout Rome to unravel the carefully hidden signs that will lead them to a terrifying adversary, a harrowing discovery, and the shocking truth." - IMBD

If in doubt send the girl in first

I’d have to say that I actually enjoyed this film. It was like a big puzzle which had action, suspense and drama all bundled into one. The flow of the movie had a bit of a Die Hard feel to it, in a sense that there was a time factor to consider. He had to try to solve each of the following to save the Cardinals. This setting gave it more of an edge which would really keep you on the edge of your seat. Unfortunately I’ve never read the book so I don’t really have anything to compare it with, but I definitely felt more interested in this one compared to Da Vinci Code (which was a bit overrated).

Obi Wan as Ewan McGregor

Storyline was good and the scenes or puzzles weren’t too over complicated that needed too long of an explanation, which I think was rampant in the Da Vinci Code. It’s probably a bit more light hearted and much easily acceptable which will probably be a lot more appealing to those who don’t really follow the franchise. If you’re looking for a night out or quite possibly going on a date, then this movie is for you. Should be able to impress your date with such interesting topics such as “I like this but the book explained a lot more” or “This beats Wolverine!” So finally the first thumbs up from me in quite a while.

Ratings – 3.7/5

Star Trek

Location - GSC Pavilion THX Screen

“Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Howdy MobieFans! Growing up, and being a sci-fi fan, you’d usually be pushed into 2 pretty specific categories. A Star Wars fan, or a Trekkie. As you might not have guessed, I have always been a Star Wars fan and found most Trekkies deeply uninteresting and ironically enough, a lot dorkier than myself. So will this new self titled Star Trek movie change my perception of the majority of Trekkies all over the world?

Deep thinking was always a favourite pastime on the Enterprise

Without trying to give too much away, the movie revolves around the origins of the crew of the starship Enterprise which we have become so accustomed to over the years. This movie also gives a little bit of twist, in the sense that it’s a prequel and a new movie altogether. Movie starts off with a Starfleet ship being attacked by a very very big Vessel. The leader of this big Vessel is in search of a certain Mr. Spock, of which the captain of the Starfleet ship has no idea of what he is talking about. From this you start to deduce that this ship doesn’t seem to be from the present but from a different time frame. The first officer of the Starfleet ship, George Kirk evacuates the ship after being repeatedly shot at by the Vessel. Without any hesitation he decides to stay aboard the ship and attack the Vessel just so that the escape pods would be able to get to safety. It is from this that the pod carrying his wife and his son are able to escape and later own his son will grow up to be the legendary James T. Kirk (played by Chris Pine).

Going outdoors never included matching outfits

I’d have to say that finally this was the first movie in a long time that I actually enjoyed watching. Not that the other months were filled with dire and gut-inducing movies, but it has just been a while since I’ve gone to the films and just came out smiling. The movie had such a good flow to it, it never over emphasised too much on the origins of each and every character. Whenever a crew was introduced, you’d take it, put it on the board, look at it and carry on. Unlike some films where they try too hard to explain origins and ended up dominating the whole film with character biographies like a secondary school history book. More action less talking please.

Not everybody found "your mama jokes" amusing

Also it definitely had more outside action scenes which didn’t make it look too much like a management meeting like in every other Star Trek episode. Visually it looked outstanding which is far cry from my previous review of Wolverine. But its probably because u tend to associate sci-fi films with visually stimulating shots and therefore there’s more need for CGI as compared to other types of films. Without doubt this is probably the benchmark for this summer blockbusters.

I’m not such a Trekkie fan but I can assure you that if you’re a fan of Sci-fi, action and general wholesome entertainment then this is a movie you have to catch on the big screen. I think it’s worth emphasizing that you can save money from watching all the dramas, comedies and romantic films in the comfort of your home, but when it comes to the big movies this year, please by all means watch it at a THX screen and a combo popcorn meal in hand.

Ratings - 4/5

X-Men Origins : Wolverine

Venue - GSC Midvalley

Walking about nowadays, I’ve noticed the lack of anything good in the cinema. I suppose its spring or pre summer so therefore the big movies are all being postponed until the summer blockbusters. Think at one point you had an array of chick flicks such as Confession of a Shopaholic and He’s just not that into you. So what exactly do we have for the men then? You’re not going to believe this.

My Endless Love

Story starts by trying to explain Wolverine’s origin as a small child and his relationship with Victor Creed or as we will come to know him as Sabertooth. It seems as though they are related or something and seemed to have outlast all kinds of wars (this probably shows that they are immortal or something). If you follow comic books you would know that Wolverine isn’t immortal but he has a self healing mechanism as well as some boney claws which was quite amusingly depicted during the film. What exactly is Sabertooth’s mutant powers besides unkept fingernails is anybody’s guess. Besides I’m far too lazy and couldn’t really care if his secret to eternal youth is a healthy diet, lots of sleep and regular exercise. Okay, back to the story. As the years go by Sabertooth starts to be a bit of a lose cannon. During the Vietnam War, he and Wolverine are then sentenced to death for breaking the code of war (harming innocent civilians). But as you probably can guess, they don’t die. Along comes general Ryker who sees an immense opportunity to draft these two highly vicious mutants into his special squad. They go along but Wolverine then realises that this “new” squad isn’t really very nice and they too are into killing civilians. He then packs up and leaves the team and Victor behind forever. But little does he realise that his past will catching up with him real soon.

Spa treatment tends to bring out the tiger in you

In terms of action sequence I would be fair and have to say that it brings out the mutant action element for all to see and enjoy. But besides that this was a terrible terrible terrible movie. Most of us already knew that this wasn’t going to be a very good movie what more a tribute to the Wolverine character from the X-Men 1 and 2 (not 3 cause that was crap). This just had such a cheap B-grade element to it and effects were so dire you could even pick out poorly edited scenes in the movie (watch out for the toilet scene where he’s checking out his new claws). On top of that, the story really couldn’t expand to anywhere else. Yes he has claws, yes he lost his memory, yes he smokes cigars. As much as I do like Wolverine, I’d have to say his background in this movie really isn’t that interesting. It just looked like another way to milk the whole Hugh Jackman phenomena while it still lasts. For fans of Ryan Reynolds (who plays Deadpool in this film) may have been slightly disappointed for of his lack of screen time over the course of the movie. Fret not girls (I’m assuming that’s why you came to watch this movie) for a spinoff of Deadpool is already in progress so you should be seeing more of him when the movie comes out.

So what exactly have we got to look forward to now? Well at least I’d have to say the worst is over (kind of like the recession I suppose). So now only good things should be coming out for the month of May, June and July. Brilliant.

Ratings – 1.5 / 5