My movie marathon January 8, 2009

For the past few days, I’m been festering on the computer chair and watching free movies online. Instead of doing something productive like practising the JS Bach piece.

 

These are the movies I watched, with my own personal opinions. Whatever, I don’t care if it’s boring, thoughts were swarming in my mind as I watched these and I have to get them out somehow)

 

Pan’s Labyrinth

I like the setting. It’s set in Spain during the Spanish civil war. I thought that the movie would be centralled around fairytale-ish magic, but the plot is evenly split between the magic of the labyrinth and the darker story of how a ruthless Captain is trying to kill all guerillas while at the same time use Ofelia’s(main character) mother to have his own son. Based on my assumption anyway.

 

I quite loved it. I love movies like these, where ficticious characters are put into real historical events with a bit of mystery and little action. I don’t like fantasy usually, but this one was different from the rest somehow. It involved more emotion and talking rather than action and plot, so I could follow along quite effortlessly.

 

The Devil Wears Prada

Laugh all you want. I watched this because the storyline just seemed more original compared to other chick flicks(though most of it is still cliche), though HM told me that its based on the Editor of VOGUE(in USA I think, what’s her name… Anna Wintour?).

Anyway, this movie was very annoying to watch because it was on YouKu and YouKu videos take AGES to load, so I had to keep pausing and waiting and pausing and waiting etc.

Overall, I thought it was quite decent, but it’s not a very deep movie. It’s just something you watch for a laugh and most of the time, it’s just interesting because you get to see all her different outfits and find out how she manages to do what seems like impossible(ie. Getting 3 manuscripts of an unpublished Harry Potter book)

 

Bridge to Terabithia

I thought this would be Narnia-esque, but in fact, all the fantasy in the movie is clearly only a part of the children’s imagination. It’s supposed to be.

The main storyline doesn’t lie in their magical imagined world, which was what I initially thought. In some ways it was touching, as touching as family movies go. But I was also quite disappointed that there was really no fantasy world involved, apart from the magic of friendship and imagination.

 

Angus, Thongs and perfect Snogging

Mavis told me this was good, and since I felt like watching comedy, I went for it.

There’s not much of a plot, its just an everyday life of a 14 year old girl in Eastbourne, England. It’s quite refreshing somehow because usually we watch these films from USA and to watch one from the UK(complete with school uniforms) offers a fresher perspective of the “typical teenage life”.

There weren’t subtitles, so sometimes I had no idea what they were saying because of the British accent. It’s more amusing than funny, but some parts were rather boring. To be honest, I was quite relieved when it ended because it seemed to be dragging on for quite awhile.

 

The Forbidden Kingdom

I chose well by picking an English-Chinese language movie because there were NO subtitles. Though: “WHat if I chose a Korean one?”

 

 It’s a Jackie Chan flick, so it was complete with the usual Kungfu action scenes that I used to like, but now don’t because I find it quite a bore to see them flying around, not being able to tell who is who. I liked the adventure part, but not the action. That’s the difference.

 

I’ve never heard of the myth that the Jade Warlord turned SunWuKong into stone then cast away his magical staff, so I assume its invented. Most times, what was interesting wasn’t the story plot, but the conversations between the American teen(who was somehow teleported to ancient China after holding the SunWuKong staff and now has top return it to the stone statue of SunWuKong or he cannot return to the modern world) and his entourage of highly-skilled companions, namely this monk, a girl who seeks revenge on the Jade Warlord and a drunken immortal(Jackie Chan).

I think that was what kept me watching. Just to see how the teen who is trying to learn Kungfu do something stupid(like when he doesn’t know ancient Chinese like to speak metaphorically and he took them literally). Oh, and also to laugh when they made the Jade Emperor speak in English!

 

Other than that, this was rather disappointing for a JC flick. Or maybe its because it was so blurry.

 

Forrest Gump

I’d heard my friends talking about it, but I forgot to watch it till this morning. And they weren’t exaggerating. Tom Hanks is a great actor. The movie is amazing.

The storyline is so unique, and you get a lot of talking and first-person narration, just the way I like it. It’s extremely interesting because you don’t think that someone with an IQ of 75 thinking that the money he invested into “some kind of fruit company”(in fact, Apple Computers) can make it as a millionaire, rub shoulders with not just one, but a few presidents of the USA, fight in Vietnam and run across America for 3 years.

 

And impossible as it seems, the movie seems to make it look realistic, like it actually could happen. There were happy events, sad events, and it has the bizarre combination os wanting to make you both laugh out loud and cry at the same time.

I am now a fan of Tom Hanks. He’s great at accents, and also at acting. In ‘The Terminal’ he put on some Eastern European accent, and in Forrest Gump, he put on the same accent as what the people in “Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry’ had. If you’ve read the book you’ll know it. It’s hard to describe.

This is my new favourite movie after Pan’s Labyrinth.