Byzantium

Ratings: 7.5/10

Film class: B 

Genre: Drama 

Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) and her mother, Clara (Gemma Arterton) are vampires who seek refuge at a coastal town in a deserted hostel named Byzantium, after their whereabouts were discovered by a mysterious brotherhood vent on hunting them down. 

*spoilers ahead* Unlike other vampire movies, this one stands out in terms of novelty of the origins of vampires. No one vampire who was supposedly the maker of the others, the only way to convert into a vampire is to locate a secret cave found only by a map passed on to a selected few. 

Also, the scriptwriters dealt away with the usual cliches such as garlic and exorcism-like holy water sprinkling. No crosses to ward the vampires off... because.. it's  not neccessary. These vampires only have the 2 most definitive traits of vampires, their craving for blood, and their immortality. They don't have superhuman strengths, nor do they go around attacking innocent victims. Instead they lead rather normal lives, feeding off humans only when necessary - and only when they have given their consensus.

Byzantium is a vampire movie not meant to scare, but one to skilfully portray the emotional burden of carrying an unorthodox secret and the loneliness of immortality. Elaeanor is emotionally trapped with this secret and decides to share it with a local boy, leading to dreadful consequences. Realistic playout, credible storyline. 

This movie has the finese, a literary rendition of a classic vampire story which stands out in modern day cliche vampire flicks where love and desire doesn't dominate as the main themes. Just like Interview with the Vampire, there's such a strong focus on the main leads due to the demands of good acting that you cannot not feel for them... making it more than just a "movie-watch", an experience worth craving for. 

The Internship

Ratings: 7.4/10

Film Class: B

Genre: Comedy

This made my day, or night. 2 outstanding salesmen settle for an internship at Google after their company shuts down. Good at what they do, but not tech savvy, they must compete with a bunch of smart asses to land them a job. Dislike factor; Owen Wilson: 8/10, Vince Vaughn 7/10. However, putting both of them together, they make an awesome duo. They were pretty good in Wedding Crashers, but somehow their chemistry has evolved to new heights in this movie.

Entertaining, heart-warming and hiliariously crude at times. These 2 guys have no holds barred, yet they still managed to allow the plot to be the main focus. Usually with folks like them (eg. Hangover), all the focus are on the cast, not the story.

Had a short tour in Google Headquarters thanks to the movie and while I'm not sure how true the culture is over there, I sure was impressed with the famously cultivating working environment of Google. I had the thinking that all Google staff are supposed to think out of the box, but in actuality, the so-called "tests" that the interns had to go through was more on building teamwork, being resourceful and expressing humble determination - credible skills and mindset needed of their staff... not some overly fanciful out of the box solutions to everyday realistic problems.

The internship offers more than the simplicity of its poster, it illustrates the limitations of modern day technology, valuable skills needed that is often overlooked in this new millennium and that the "overgrown underdogs" have more to offer in life in this techno-savy present than the modern day geniuses - life lessons that only the "outdated" past can teach.

About Time

Ratings: 6.0/10

Film class: B 

Genre: Sci-Fi Drama

On his 21st birthday, Tim's dad broke the news to him that the guys in his family line has the ability to travel through time. All they have to do is simply to find a dark corner, clench their fist, close their eyes and think back to a point in their life that they want to go back to... Easy peasy. They can't travel to the future, and are able to only travel to a point in their lives. They will then take over themselves at that point in time, and relive that moment all over again, with little impact on the future.

While the time travelling concept is nothing new, the effort needed to actually do it was too incredibly easy, however also causing the credibilty to suffer. Major repercussions such as the butterfly effect were conveniently brushed aside with a simple explanatory matter-of-fact line. *major spoilers ahead* The underlying morality of Tim's ability was also not addressed, shifting the focus to his child-like actions - all he used his ability for was to get a girl to like him and "procrastinate" the death of his father.

If you really think about it, it wasn't a romantic comedy like how most people would expect it to be. Tim's relationship to gorgeous Rachel Adams (the word "gorgeous" was intentionally inserted, rather out-of-place, to justify the higher ratings I gave this movie) was based on deception - using his time travelling ability to perfect conversations, build stronger emotional and physical connections. 

He basically abused his ability to make himself look good... altering his bestman until it reached his ideal outcome... messing around with his sister's boyfriends hoping to make life better for himself so that he doesn't lose his sister, and spending "extra" time with his dad all by himself because he couldn't let go.

It might come across as light-hearted and heart warming to some, but deep down I felt cheated. It was like witnessing a crime and there was nothing I could do about it. At the very least, I had hoped for "aw" romance, but the closest "aw" I got was "aw-ful". 

The World's End

Ratings: 6.1/10

Film class: B+

Genre: Sci-Fi comedy action 

Gary King (Simon Pegg) reunites his group of 4 friends to conquer the most epic drinking marathon 20 years after their failed teenage attempt. It requires them to go from pub to pub (12 pubs in total) in their childhood town, to drink a glass of alcohol at each pub before reaching their final destination, the last pub on their list, The World's End. 

Unknowing to them, the town has been taken over by aliens, forcing them to become unlikely heroes, humanity's last defense. 

While the premise of the plot sounds interesting, the movie failed to deliver. There were funny bits here and there, but the story fell flat with its silly ending. My brain cells went on strike and were willing victims of the alien invasion. 

Strong cast, semi-decent scripts, but on the other extreme side of the spectrum, horrible story development with a disastrous ending. Quite the "complete" movie if you ask me. It was unfortunate, really, with such a strong cast, just like the characters themselves, this movie was struggling hard not to be wasted... And it sure didn't sober up at the world's end. 

The Master

Ratings: 6.2/10

Film class: B

Genre: Drama

A disturbed and aggressive navy veteran returns home and is allured into joining a cult by his charismatic leader. 

Hmm... what more is there? I guess that's about it, the story is as simple as it sounds, depth added by the characters' varied personalities. 

An artsy disturbing movie about the human psyche, especially that of the disturbed war veteran "Joaquin Phoenix", this film is more character study than movie movie per Se. By artsy I mean full of dialogue, full of chopped up random scenes which disrupts your viewing pleasure. It sometimes seems almost draggy, aggravated by the grainy cinematography, and it makes no difference even if you watch this in high def. However, thanks to mr violent, that's where all the "action" comes from. 

There's no take home message here, which kinda makes me feel like I wasted time on it. It's a lengthy one, this one ( like most other off mainstream artsy films), and is sure to screw your mind up a little. If you're not ready for that, then you had better not confront the master... 

Gravity

Ratings: 8.0/10

Film Class: A 

Genre: Action Drama

Is this the first movie made to portray realistically a survival situation in outer space? I don't know the answer myself, but I believe it is. 

I mean there's lotsa sci-fi movies out there, like Star Wars and Star Trek, there's even Moon, but this is possibly the most realistic space movie made. No aliens, no clones, just plain familiar "present-ries", like satellites orbiting Earth, and astronauts maintaining them. 

What seemed like an "everyday" routine turns out to be a disaster for medical engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) when a Russian satellite was blown up. 

It created a chain reaction, causing a bunch of debris to orbit Earth every 90 minutes. The butterfly effect at its bleakest. If you're wondering how exciting can this movie be (like I did) since there's pretty much nothing much out there in space, there's your ans. Top it up with limited oxygen, abandoned space stations, stellar acting from the only two cast in the movie and state-of-the-art CG, Gravity is one insanely intense gem in modern cinema. 

*Spoilers ahead* It didn't occur to me how scary it was until the very first first-person-view shot. I came to understand how disorientating a stranded somersaulting astronaut in space would feel like, and I felt pretty giddy during the first 30 mins of the film, thanks to the skilful film making which added such realism there was no way any audience wouldn't empathize with Ryan. 

The director wasted no time in introducing us to Matt's personality during the opening scene, subtlety through his conversations with Houston, the land comms station. I personally thought this was well-thought because it not only injected humour to a possibly monotonous setting, it also contributed to alleviating despair with a light-hearted sense of hope which would otherwise be missing if it was simply a solemn movie. 

Some of the parts were quite ingenious, on how Ryan tried to save herself, and there was always a "dead-end" somewhere, to create that added sense of tension. Will she be saved? Or will she die in space? After all, surviving in space is all about 10% oxygen, 20% determination and 70% luck. 

Gravity is nothing like I've ever seen. Despite only 2 cast, it truly deserves an "A" for film class due to the CG and the acting. I really felt as though I was in outer space (though I will never know how it really feels like) even though I only watched it in 2D. Even the scripting and storyline delivered. It was a full package - A space experience you don't want to miss. 

Switch

Ratings: 1.0/10

Film Class: B

Genre: Action

One of the worst movies I've watched. No, correction, make it the worst. Switch makes the flop Chinese movie The Treasure Hunter look good, that's how disastrous this is.

I shan't even spend more than a sentence explaining the plot, because when I started watching it, the plot became irrelevant, nothing made sense. Even if you had read the synopsis at the back of the DVD cover (like I did), you'll feel cheated because the synopsis is as good as it could ever be. In this case, words speak more than a thousand pictures. The dead text was more interesting than the sum of pictures put together. 

But if you must know, Switch is about a stolen treasure, one half of a painting, that somehow everyone wants to get their hands on. 

It must have been so embarrassing for Andy Lau to star in this... He either didn't know what he was getting into, or he was seriously desperate for cash. It's no surprise to see Taiwanese beauty Lin Chiling star in yet another flop movie, let's face it, she's got the looks, but she can't act. Still, she's makes the movie a little bit less torturous. 

I haven't felt so negative about a movie in a long while, but it didn't take Switch to make me feel that way 15 mins into the movie. I thought it was a flukish feeling, I mean, there's Andy Lau and Lin Chiling in this for christ's sake, but I so wanted to give up 49mins into the film. I somehow managed to force myself to sit through the entire movie because I wanted to be fair in my critique, despite already knowing what the outcome would be. 

At least the senseless fighting scenes were decent, and the cinematography was scenic. It was like watching bits and pieces of different adverts from time to time; there's Andy Lau in a watch commercial, in a car commercial, in a beach resort commercial etc. Mostly showing off a picturesque Dubai. 

There was zilch character development, due to the annoying jump cut scenes which never lasted more than 5 minutes each. There wasn't any continuity in the scenes and the progression was all too convenient. During one scene you see Andy Lau on the verge of death, the next, the villains traveling to a secluded forested region, the next, a group of doctors trying to save Andy Lau, the next, 5 yrs later, he's all good to go. Yup, this is just one example of how slipshod the director's works is. 

I 2nd the opinion of a reviewer on imdb, that the director should be banned from directing any movies in future. It's just a disgrace to the industry. It's an insult to movie goers, and to the fans of those poor stars. I can't believe I paid $19.90 for this, and a thought flashed past my mind during the movie, I actually thought of stopping the movie, ejecting my DVD, and snapping it in half. Yes, I felt terribly insulted. I had actually contributed to the director in "recuperating his losses". 

Switch was a low class copycat of Mission Impossible, with the wire hangings, and the face disguises. There was an "ultimate" twist in the movie! The villain had a face disguise to cover up his own face! Cos his "real" face was disfigured in a fire! "Wow!!" Disguising your face with a better looking version of your own face! Who would have thought of that?! 

Too many stunt doubles were used, and the battle between Andy Lau and the villain in fencing suits out of the blue was just lame. It didn't even make sense, the only explanation I could come up with was that the director thought he had come up with an "ingenious" idea of using stun doubles without being too obvious.... FAIL! Stab me please!! 

Note that I haven't added any warnings about spoilers, because trust me, you wouldn't want to torture yourself with this brainless piece of crap.