Ah, the fourth installment of Indiana Jones. There must be a lot of people who are looking forward to George Lucas’ and Steven Spielberg’s latest offering. I went to watch it last night and didn’t quite like it. More on that later. First, the summary. For once I didn’t copy paste from somewhere else. LOL!

The year is 1957, and the movie opens with a row of military vehicles driving along a lonely road in a scorching desert. A not-that-young-anymore Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and his sidekick Mac (Ray Winston) is caught by Soviet agents lead by the ruthless Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett). They want something from him - the way to find the Crystal Skull.

Together with Mutt Williams (Shia LeBeouf), his mentor (John Hurt) and his mother (Karen Allen), Indiana Jones must race against to Soviet agents to be the first to find the Crystal Skull.

Okay, the movie was full of the usual exploring different countries and running into the forests and visiting old temples - like most of Indiana Jones’ movies. I expected something full of adventure and puzzles, much like movies such as National Treasure. Boy was I disappointed.

Everything was so easy, from the deducing of the clues, how they escaped the bad guys to deciding what steps to take next. Indiana Jones had kinda lost his edge, being much more ’softer’. I’d expected someone who had great witty and sarcastic comebacks.

And don’t get me started on the ending, after all that swordfighting, punching people in the gut and bleeding noses, it was SUCH a letdown.

Lets hope the next installment of Indiana Jones - I think there is going to be one - would be much much better than this one.

Rating : 2 out of 5 stars

The Chronicles of Narnia : Prince Caspian starts of some 1300 years after the Golden Age of Narnia where the Narnians were prosperous. Telmarines invaded Narnia and is now controlled by the evil King Miraz, who took the throne from the rightful owner Prince Caspian.

This movie - adapted from the 2nd book ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ written by C.S. Lewis - was more entertaining then the first. I thought the first was kinda draggy but this second movie was a good blend of good storytelling, action filled sword fighting and heartwarming scenes. I won’t say that its the best movie I watched, but its not bad

Bring the family, but make sure your stupid kid doesn’t kick the back of the chair in front. We were sitting in cineleisure’s couple seat when this couple sat behind us with a small kid who was noisy and kept kicking both of our chairs. The noise I understand, but the kicking? WTF! I even asked you to please stop but soon after that she started kicking again.

Rating: 3 stars

Thanks to Fly FM’s Night Flight, I won four free tickets to watch Speed Racer at GSC, One Utama just now. So I brought along Aree, Pam and Jazzy (but Jazzy couldn’t make it and the bf is sick). The movie started at 9pm but we went in a bit late coz we had dinner at Zuup first (their New England Clam Chowder is to die for).

Synopsis from Yahoo! Movies : To Speed Racer, nothing says “family values” like barreling down a racetrack at face-flattening speeds. So when mega-mogul Royalton offers the young driver a corporate sponsorship, Speed turns him down. An enraged Royalton tells Speed he’ll never win a race again, and he’ll send ninjas after Speed to insure it. It’s up to Speed, his best girl Trixie in her pink helicopter, and the enigmatic and brilliant Racer X to ensure Speed’s victory in “The Crucible”: the same perilous cross-country free-for-all that killed his brother. Will Speed follow in his big bro’s tire tracks?

At first, I didn’t really have high expectations for this movie because I read a review somewhere that it wasn’t so good and I never did like racing cars stories. Plus, comic/cartoon series based movies sometimes are a flop.

However, Speed Racer blew me away. Directed by Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski, the same people who brought The Matrix, it was a fast paced flashy movie combining well known and loved characters with a good story and fantastic effects. Not to mention a good lineup of actors and actresses namely, Emile Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, Kick Gurry.

Edit : Oh yea, i forgot to mention that it’s Rain’s Hollywood debut as well. Rain (whose real name is Jung Ji Hoon) is a South Korean singer/actor. Rain’s role is a Japanese driver who teamed up with Speed Racer and Racer X to race in the Crucible - like an underground race thats very dangerous and full of cheating contestants. KInda weird how they never mentioned him in the synopsis tho.

I loved how they combined comic book/cartoon style drawings with real life. Its really like reading a comic book with the characters having flashbacks and when the hero looks at the heroin, the background becomes blurry with colourful hearts. LOL! The CGI of the racetracks and scenes were also fantastic. Not too outrageous that it looks so fake (like most Malaysian movies attempts at CGI) but very creative.

All in all, great movie, good storyline and plot (I think aree felt like crying at some point) and superb cast - like the very yummylicious Matthew Fox and cute, adorable rain.

Rating : 5 stars

p/s: Jules of FlyFm asked if it was the movie with the talking dog. Well there isn’t any talking dog but there is a cute monkey.

I watched Iron Man this afternoon at Cineleisure. Not many people in the cinema, in fact we had the whole row B to ourselves. The synopsis from Yahoo!Movies : “Tony Stark is a billionaire industrialist and genius inventor who is kidnapped and forced to build a devastating weapon. Instead, using his intelligence and ingenuity, Tony builds a high-tech suit of armor and escapes captivity. When he uncovers a nefarious plot with global implications, he dons his powerful armor and vows to protect the world as Iron Man.”

Usually with comic-turn-big-screen movies, there is some element of disappointment because its lacking certain elements but this movie has been touted as one of the best comic turned movie. Its set in sometime in the future where our technology is more advanced such as smart homes, hologram type of screens, model rendering which takes 2 seconds (as compared to the current 12 hours). It helps that Robert Downey Jr was good in his lead role of Tony Stark/Iron Man.

I enjoyed this movie because it wasn’t too out of this world with totally unrealistic CGI and weird plots. Good movie! So don’t forget to catch it in cinemas

Rating : out of 5

I just found out about this from Delinn. GSC Alamanda is opening on April 3rd and they are offering free tickets! Yea! You can watch movies for free from 29 March to 2 April. The movies they are showing are “Alvin and the Chipmunks”, “The Golden Compass”, “National Treasure”, “Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium”, “Anak Halal (Malay)”, “Impak Maksima (Malay)”, “Om Shanti Om (Hindi)” and “CJ7 (Chinese)”.

All you have to do is print out this coupon here. Each coupon is valid for two tickets and each person can have four tickets. The movie schedule is at that website also.

Whee~~ now got place to lepak if too lazy to go to class class finishes early.

We were walking around after buying tickets for the movie 10,000 BC (which was good but more on that later) when I spotted this shop selling the very adorable CJ7. They sold it in a few sizes - handphone hangers, keychains, flat rounded zipper wallets but he bought me the biggest one (about RM20) they have to hang in the car, the one with a suction cup

Cuteness!

p/s: did you know that the small kid is actually a gal in real life? The actress’ name is Kitty Zhang YuQi nine year old Xu Jiao. (EDIT: Opps..put the wrong name. Kitty Zhang is actually the cute teacher in that tight cheongsam, the girl who played the kid is Xu Jiao)