Lucky 9 Movies

Our week together turned out to be quite good despite not going farther than Festival Mall Alabang or Tagaytay. To make up with the cancelled road trip I played some make believe situation by considering our own home as a hotel as if being out of town and staying in a comfy hotel room. To make it a bit more realistic I let the air-conditioning turned on every night, woke up late, ate without counting calories and going out of the “hotel” any time we like.

After celebrating our exact wedding date with the rest of my wife’s team members, the other days of the week were spent mall hopping, window shopping and of course watching movies. And since we’re celebrating our 9^th year, I will do a brief review of the 9 movies we’ve seen recently - not necessarily within the anniversary week. By the way, I’ll rate the movie from 1(poor) to 5(great) stars just like my wife and I do in our individual diaries (which reminds me that I haven’t updated mine for a long time).

9.  Forbidden Kingdom (Jet Li. Jackie Chan). I’m not so sure if I enjoyed this movie or not. It may have something to do with too much exposure to MMA especially UFC on TV that I’m not buying the flying kung fu stunts anymore. What I like about it is seeing both actors back in business and being together in one film I think is a good way to do just that. 3 Stars.

 

8. Kung Fu Panda (Jack Black. Jackie Chan. Lucy Liu. Angelina Jolie). Being a fan of cartoons, I can immerse myself into it in no time every time I see one. Frankly speaking, I find this Kung Fu movie better than Forbidden Kingdom due to the fact that I have no reason to question once I see the characters, like the bulky panda, float in the air to do gravity defying stunts. It’s not impossible. Why? Because it’s cartoons. Duh. Po rules!  4 Stars.

 

7. Get Smart (Steve Carell. Anne Hathaway). There’s always anxiousness inside me whenever I get to watch a film that is closely similar to previous movie. I have some reservations that this stupid-field agent-comedy movie will be a letdown. Thankfully, it wasn’t the case. The casts (and characters) and story of this film are a great combination. The comic scenes are so hilarious that I was either laughing or giggling from the start until the end of the film. Jim Carey beware. 5 Stars.

 

6. Evan Almighty (Steve Carell). We caught this one on TV while lazily channel surfing one afternoon. It was just a couple of days after we watched Get Smart and my interest to see another version of the famous ark story grew with the fact that Steve Carell is portraying as Noah.  I was fascinated with the idea of mixing a biblical story to a modern setting but I don’t know if my mother would have been laughing as I find some of the exchanges blasphemous. Anyway, I did have a good laugh from majority of the scenes and more importantly I think that the same moral of the story is conveyed as intended in the bible. I’m becoming a Steve Carell fan. 4 Stars.

 

5. Letters from Iwo Jima (Ken Watanabe). This one was from the DVD - another Clint Eastwood film to complement his Flags of Our Fathers movie. I always wonder if there are good people on both sides of the war and this movie helped prove that. The Iwo Jima story reminds me that most soldiers fight with what they believe is right regardless what side they’re in.  In a sense, one you consider a foe is actually a hero of the other side. Comparing the two war films, Letters from Iwo Jima is better than Flags of Our Fathers.  Additionally, dubbing the film in Japanese with English subtitles created a more genuine experience to it.  5 Stars.

 

4. The Happening (Mark Wahlberg).  This film is like some of the dreams I had. It starts with something so interesting that no matter how frightening it was, I forced myself to stay in it in order to find out how it will end.  It’s like a nightmare that you have no control over what you’d see next and every scene makes you curse and jump out of your bed and find yourself sweating from the excitement and/or fear.  At the end of this movie my wife and I were staring at each other still with lots of unanswered questions but being an M. Night Shyamalan flick the end is no surprise – and I love it. 4 Stars.

 

3. Wanted (Angelina Jolie. Morgan Freeman).  Have you ever had a time when you felt like they cast a well known celebrity to compensate with the movie’s poor story? In my opinion, this movie is one of those. Angeline Jolie was like an a wriggling bait so irresistible to an unsuspecting fish like me that despite having seen the trailers with bullets circling its way to find its intended target I still got to watch it in the end. I could have give in to the idea of the intelligent bullets but I called it enough when the story came to be about killing individuals as dictated by a loom supposedly started by weavers from long time ago. To me that’s just crap (pardon the word). 4 Stars – for casting Angelina. 2 Stars for the whole story.

 

2. Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton). Other than fearing lightning, I fear that I might see another lousy Incredible Hulk movie once again. I wisely skipped the first version of this marvel comic character but unfortunately watched it either on a pirated copy of the public buses or from friends’ houses (also pirated, I suspect). But having watched almost all film being shown this week, I hesitatingly agreed to see the new Hulk movie with my wife. Good thing this new version erased all my doubts as the movie progresses. I was awed by the actions scenes, I find the CGIs are not exaggerated and the actors are convincingly good. Lastly, having an unexpected twist in the end makes it more interesting. See for yourself. 4 Stars.

 

1. Made of Honor (Patrick Dempsey. Michelle Monaghan). What better way to cap a week of wedding anniversary celebration, than to end it by watching what else? A wedding movie of course! The movie is about a platonic (or more aptly, hypothetical) relationship which led to a crazy love story. What sets this movie apart from other romantic movies is the idea of having one man being tagged and eventually agreeing to be the bride’s maid of honor.  Although come to think of it, IF I were in the shoes of the male character, I can’t imagine myself to last that long as just being a friend with a lady as lovely as Hannah.  4 Stars.

 

Don’t get me wrong, but whether I enjoyed the movies we’ve watched or not, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the company of my dearest (wink!) wife. We’ve been in the movies 11 years ago (wink again) and hopefully we’d still be together to see more of it even if we’re as wrinkled as English bulldogs.