Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts

After Marvel established the MCU decades earlier, now DC Comics ramps up their offerings to solidify the DC Universe.  After the success of Wonder Woman, Deadpool and Aquaman, they released another super hero in Shazam.

Movie starts off with a youthful Thaddeus Sivana in a car with his dad and brother when suddenly he gets transported to the Rock of Eternity.  The ancient Shazam was searching for a new champion so he was thinking Thaddeus was someone with a pure heart but he failed when he was tested and he was returned to the car right away.  Thaddeus return resulted to a car accident where his dad was injured and became a cripple.

Fast forward to the present times, another teenager Billy Batson (played by Asher Angel) comes into view.  A troubled teenager, he is a regular in and out of foster homes as he tries to search for her birth mother.  After a few families, he is now fostered in the home of Victor and Rosa Vasquez (played by Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans respectively) who has 5 other foster children.  Even with the Vasquez love, Billy continued to be alone and would not want to have anything to do with the Vasquez home.

During this time, an adult Thaddeus Sivana (now played by Mark Strong) finally made his way back to the Rock of Eternity and was able to get the Eye of Sin.  He won over the ancient wizard and used this power to kill his dad and his brother along with the board of directors of Sivana Industies.

After a few scenes in school and at home, we find him running away from bullies and hides away in the subway when it was now his time to be transported to the Rock of Eternity.  Finally the ancient wizard found his champion in Billy and he transferred his powers to him via Billy shouting the name "Shazam" while holding the magic staff.  The ancient wizard turned to dust and Billy now Shazam, went back home as Shazam and sought the help of his foster brother, Freddy Freeman (played by Jack Dylan Grazer) who knows about superhero stuff.  The latter helps him discover his powers until Thaddeus confronts him Shazam.  A fight ensued and Shazam being inexperienced, he barely escaped Thaddeus' wrath, but the latter was able to guess his true identity.  Thaddeus then kidnaps the other foster children hoping that Billy would rescue them which he did.

When Billy came as Shazam, he knew he can't fight all the seven sins, and remembering the last words of the ancient wizard, he shares the power to his foster brother and sisters.  Now that he has levelled the playing field, he was able to confront Thaddeus alone while his brothers and sisters took care of the other sins.  In the end, Shazam was able to outwit the seven sins and got the Eye of Sin from Thaddeus.

The movie for us was quirky and funny as they intended it to be.  We thought they followed the formula for Deadpool complete with funny antics and lines except for the R-18 jokes and graphic representations.  Consider this as mellowed down or GP rated Deadpool aimed for the younger crowd.  We like Zachary Levi as Shazam and boy he is funny.  He really was a good pick to play the title role while the foster parents were a perfect fit.  The other foster kids gave decent performances in the minimal screen times they were given.

Storywise, as an origin story, it wasn't boring and slow.  They told the story in such a simple and fast pace that we didn't miss or skipped a beat as to how he became Shazam.  There might be more to the story which was "skipped" but we didn't mind it all, as long as we know where he was coming from, its okay with us.  The origin and character development of the anti hero Thaddeus Sivana was similar with that of Billy Batson but we find him being resentful and wants to return to the Rock of Eternity enough motivation to be bad.

The pacing of the story was nice and it we liked the roller coaster type of story telling where you find some parts slow and then picks up the pace again.  What diminish our interest is the build up of some scenes.  Comedy situations were fine, but sometimes we are confused when the scenes turn to drama of sorts.  We were expecting a scene to be funny then it becomes serious and then vice versa.  These scenes we mentioned are just subtle so if you are not much into this film, you will never notice them.  You will still be entertained by this movie.  Shazam is a good super hero movie and kudos to the DCU for striking a home run with this.  We just hope they can mirror this success along with that of Wonder Woman, Deadpool and Aquaman to their Batman, Superman and Justice League franchises.

Since this is still new, you can buy the DVD or Blue-ray to watch this.




I'd like to buy some of your finest beer please - Shazam (2019)

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Synopsis
In a world not governed by money, time is the currency and every second counts.  We start the movie with Will Salas' (Justin Timberlake) birthday.  This event is memorable for the citizens as this is the age wherein people don't age.  As evidence to this, check out the sexy Olivia Wilde as Will's mother.  All monetary transactions are paid by time and they hold on to these on their arm.  It shows how much time you have left in the land of the living.  You earn and pay with time.  Once your time is up, you simply die.  

The story begins to get rolling with the introduction of one rich (with a century on his arm) guy who is too tired to being immortal.  He's got lot of time that he would be almost that, immortal.  He then proceeds to bequeath this gift of time to Will, sparing some time to himself so he could die.  Armed with lots of time (with the death of his mother) he proceeds to go to the land of the rich (we are not clear why) and meets Sylvia Weis (played by Amanda Seyfried) who is the daughter of a rich time mogul with centuries on their arms.  Sylvia being a rich kid, was fascinated by Will's actions unbecoming of a rich person and proceeds to be smitten.

In his travel to the rich, the Timekeepers are investigating the death of the rich guy from which Will got his time.  Will became a suspect and was apprehended by the Timekeepers at Philippe Weis home (time sequestered) but was able to escape using Sylvia as a human shield and hostage.  In the process of escape, they figured in an accident and while unconscious, the time on Sylvia was stolen by the minutemen (thugs) headed by Fortis (played by Alex Pettyfer).  Suddenly Sylvia is now poor for the first time and now fears for her life knowing she has minutes on her arm to live.  She experiences a life reversal and created an advocacy with Will in tow.  To rebel against his Father and become a crime couple with Will like Bonnie and Clyde.  

They steal from the rich and gives to the poor.  Very Robin Hood and very noble.  The movie then shows their journey into crime with the Timekeepers and Minutemen behind them.  The movie also showed how they got their biggest score that toppled the economy based on time.

A very futuristic film  on a different world that has a complicated premise, with lots of characters and twists, may turn off some viewers.  If you can't immerse with the science of this, we suggest bring a friend who does, you will need him to explain the logic of the whole film.

If you are a fan of Justin Timberlake, then watch away and be mesmerized with his onscreen presence.  Watching him alone makes up for the time you will watch this film.  Gladly his performance improves in every movie he make and we liked him in this one.


A New Look in Life - In Time (2011)

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Synopsis
A young jungle man gets enamored by a naive and sweet princess and proceeds to show her the greatest sight to behold, a unicorn.  This act proved to be fatal to the unicorn as its horn was taken by the Lord of Darkness henchmen.  Earth fell to an cold abyss and the princess was held captive by the evil Lord.  It is now up to the young man to defeat the Lord of Darkness, rescue the princess, bring back to life the unicorn, and return the world to what it was before tragedy befell it.

Our take
When we first watched this eons ago, we never get past the beautiful smile of a young Tom Cruise.  In every scene we can only see him.  Then in present time, we saw it was being shown in Amazon Prime Video, we can't resist the urge to watch this movie once again.

Tom Cruise still had that charming smile, the only difference is that we noticed how crooked some of his teeth were.  Very much different from the Mission Impossible series we now know.  Nevertheless, he was still awesome to watch and yes we now noticed that he can act.  We love his bravado and his youth, matching beautifully with the story line.  Although he doesn't look like a credible jungle man, we still overlooked this fact and focused on his acting, which we felt made the film enjoyable to watch.

Mia Sara was great as the sweet and naive princess.  Although her sweetness sometimes turns bland along the way, she still have other tricks up her sleeve, thanks to her role here.  In a section of the film, she transforms to an evil princess and showed how she can do a role reversal to a T.  She made a few movies during her heyday but we like her the best in this one.

The acting by these two were commendable but I congratulate its Director Ridley Scott for giving us a wonderful fairy type of a film.  1985 doesn't have much in special effects but we loved the prosthetic involved in the characters and set production design.  It created for us a beautiful earth and why we should protect the same.  Using the best special effects at that time, we were glad that it was done so beautifully.  

I don't know if you would agree with us, we would consider this one a cult classic.  A story worthy of telling many times over, good versus evil, with the good winning in the end, with goblins, trolls, and an evil dark lord plus good direction and story telling skills, a pure winner by our naive standards.



A Young Tom Cruise in Legend (1985)

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Synopsis
Perseus AKA Percy, a teenager with Dyslexia all his life suddenly finds himself as a demi-god.  The son of a mortal mother with Poseidon, the God of the Seas.  He then is not safe in middle earth only to find out that he is suspected of stealing Zeus' lighting bolts.  The stolen stuff created a stir in Olympus that Zeus wrath will fall upon us hapless mortals.  To add matters worse, his mortal mom gets kidnapped by Hades (God of the Underworld) and ransoms her for the stolen lightning bolts (which Percy doesn't have).  Even without the lightning bolts, he proceeds to rescue his mom, assisted by his demi-god friends.  The adventure then begins and so does our movie.

The movie is based on a series of books by Rick Riordan, this one was from "The Lightning Thief".  Being a fan of Harry Potter, we thought this was in the mold with that.  Although we haven't read the book, we will take the movie as it is.

Starred by some acting bigwigs in supporting roles like Pierce Brosnan and Sean Bean (couple of double 0's), and Steve Coogan, Rosario Dawson and Uma Thurman, we can't seem to find fault if we based on these casting.

Indeed we found some faults still.  The story line is a bit free flowing and that the only challenge we see fit was the time with Uma Thurman's medusa.  Although she was defeated rather easily, but it showed how intelligent and cunning our hero is.  Other situations were merely fillers and can be done away with and yet the movie remains intact.

An origin movie of sorts, its the establishment of the characters that made this movie a bit slow in the beginning.  The usual twists and turns are present that made the other half enjoyable in that sense.  The only thing that left us hanging is the fact that Zeus is like a child who lost his toy and blames other people for his wrath.  When returned of his toy, everything is fine.  Are the Gods like these?  That might be so, look at how Poseidon treats his demi-god son Percy.

The whole movie in itself is about the father son relationship of Percy and Poseidon.  The lightning theft is the one that made the movie with enthusiasm.  Thank God for the veteran actors, their acting made the movie enduring to watch until the end.  When everything was going slow again near the end, good thing Hades turned up with Persephone.  They are quite a couple.

Overall, although we haven't read the book, we felt that the book is more fun to read than watching this one.  An origin film is usually not something we expect much of and this one is the same.  Still, a watchable film then watch the sequel, the Sea of Monsters, a better movie in our books.






What Struck Us with Percy Jackson The Lightning Thief (2010)

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Is the risk worth it?  In the movie industry lacking in new story lines, reboots have been rampant.  It's a sure fire way of earning money at the box office if you just re shoot a classic, in this case its Tron first shown in 1982.  Lo and behold, they didn't do a reboot, but instead the producers simply made a sequel, 38 years after it was first shown.  A big gamble if you ask us.

When the sequel, Tron Legacy was shown, a lot of critics gave it a low score, as if showing disappointment to its story line and the whole movie altogether.  We disagree with their opinion as we liked it the first time we watched it.  If we did have misgivings about it, its our disappointment that we had to wait for 38 years to watch a sequel to a cult classic.

The original Tron even with some cheesy animation and special effects, it was something ahead of its time.  The story was very thin yet it was entertaining enough to be made a cult classic.  Fast forward to 2010, special effects have jumped up with leaps and bounds.  After hearing critics, we thought this movie was lame compared to the first yet here I am extolling how great it was.

We also thought that Computer Graphics or CGI would wow us that it had a bad story line, but here we are loving it as well.  Story starts with Kevin Flynn lost in the grid.  His son, Sam Flynn finally grew up with a father, is full of anger in the world.  He rebels against even to his own company.  He was raised diligently by Kevin's friend, Alan Bradley (Tron in the Grid) yet he feels he was just making a rosy picture of his long lost Dad.  He didn't believe in the grid, so his Dad for him, simply left him all alone.

Somehow into the film, Sam got transported to the Grid.  He finally saw another world that his dad was telling his about.  A world that has been transformed by CLU, a program created by his dad Flynn, to create and maintain a perfect world.  Perfect isn't perfect as Kevin realized and he tried to stop CLU.  The latter took over and Kevin went hiding in the Grid, unable to escape to the real world.  Sam in the grid was captured by CLU hoping to draw out Kevin in the process, immerses Sam in the games.  This movie then takes into an overdrive of our senses.  With electrifying graphics and cool sounds by def punk, the whole environment brings us to the digital world of the grid.

Being the son of Kevin Flynn, Sam also has the knack for the games and survives a number  of matches until he was rescued by Quorra, an Isomorphic Algorithm or iso.  She brought him to his father finally and emotions surge between the two.  Sam wants to bring his Dad to the real world while Kevin wants to stay and hide from CLU.

Children don't listen to their parents so instead of hiding, Sam decided to take steps to get back to the real world.  He tried to enlist help from a David Bowie look a like and things got a bit edgy,  eventually Dad comes to the rescue of Sam.  Since he was already within the clutches of CLU, both dad and son now decides to return to the real world through the portal with Quorra in tow.

In the end, Dad's love shines above anything else with Sam and Quorra finally makes it to the real world.  With a story line or lines more or less original, we think this film can stand on its own, independent of the first one.  So one can appreciate this even without watching the original Tron.  We have watched this movie many times over and somehow this film gets better every time.  

Now for those into visual details, CGI might not be up to Star Wars Awakening standards, still we didn't feel this hampered in its story telling.  We like to see more sequels in the future.

We hope that we don't see the sequel in the next 38 years or so.




Tron Legacy (2010) A Sequel Long Overdue

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After watching the very first trailer in 2018, we are already excited for 2019.  Our emotions go wild similar to our excitement to Black Panther.  A movie, the first of the series for these characters and they both come before the Avengers (Infinity War for Black Panther and Endgame for Captain Marvel).  Each movie somehow establishes a story that connects to the Avengers, helping us the moviegoes understand the latter.  This style of movie showing giving these films awesome box office figures.

Black Panther was Marvel's first film about a black skinned character and Captain Marvel is their first heroine film.  So similar to the former, the latter should be impressive.

Literally we have trouble sleeping right now and we pray already that March 6 is tomorrow already.

March 6 is for Captain Marvel

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After growing up with their songs playing background during my childhood years, Queen has been in my blood for ages.  Their music has endured in me since then however I had little knowledge about the band who sang them.  I can only remember the lead singer, Freddie Mercury and that he died of AIDS related complications.

It's seldom I watch biographical or true to life movies as sometimes they are different depending as to who was telling the story.  In this case, its the remaining band members who are in control of story thus I assumed it would be factual as it ever be.

The whole film is a filled with music, their music as to how it came to be.  From the very beginning of how Freddy came into the band and of how he transformed it into what we know as Queen.  It was nice giving a back story to some of the chart topping hits they made.

Freddie is the focus in the movie as it shows his travails into marriage to a life changing realization that he was a bisexual and how he and the band accepted the fact that he had contracted AIDS.  

If you are a music lover and loved their music, then this movie is for you.  Their greatest hits are included herein and you won't be disappointed.  


Rami Malek (who plays Freddy in the movie) had his best performance here to date.  Never knew he could play a huge role like this and pull it off.  Kudos to Rami for being here, giving justice to the role of Freddy.  He was scarily similar to the late lead singer.

As Rami astounded us with his acting here, it was Gwilym Lee as the Brian May who stood out.  His role of the Brian was truly topnotch and we were made to believe he is the real Brian May.  His portrayal needs to be pointed out as you might only watch Rami's role in the film.  I think it was Gwilym who really held the movie together.


The other band members were okay in their roles thus passable to be the band members of Queen.  Disappointingly, Mike Myers failed miserably to portray Ray Foster.  His prosthetics or makeup reminded me of Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder.  His acting was questionable until I made a research on his character.  Ray Foster was not existent.  It was a fictional character (actually was roughly based on EMI executive Roy Featherstone)  they created to highlight the executives who did not like the songs the band did.  There goes the "true to life" part of the movie.

As we felt that there were some blanks in the Queen timeline, we tried searching for these online.  The more we searched the more we found loopholes and "fiction" in the story.  We became detached from the movie.  A big disappointment if you compare it how we "liked" the movie when we watched it.

If you are here for the music, then watch on.  If you want to find out how Freddy's life played out and how the band went through life, then don't take it in as a whole.  Don't research about them after watching like what we did.  Just enjoy the movie.

Yes we enjoyed the movie, we liked the songs, we liked how they ended the film with their show at the Live Aid in 1985.  The recreation was superb but was short of 20 minutes, the time Bob Geldolf gives to those performing on stage.  You may watch this in google as the performance will still blow you away even if this was from 1985.  Click on the link herein.

Overall the movie rocks, never mind the fact checks we made about it and stomp your feet and sing along with the film.








Is This Real Life? - Bohemian Rhapsody

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Stan Lee was an American comic book writer, editor and publisher and many things at Marvel Comics.  He revolutionized the comics industry since 1960s  by co creating Spider-Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, Thor, the X-men, and may other fictional comic characters.

His trademark when his creations get into movies or tv, he makes funny cameo appearances in them.

We love watching Marvel films hoping to see Stan Lee's cameo.  Be it humorous or serious, nothing excites us more than waiting for his appearances.  Sometimes his cameos are better the entire film altogether. LOL.

Thanks Stan Lee for your creations from the comics to animation to live action films.  He was 95 years old.


 Too see his cameos in live action films, as a tribute to the guy, we are linking this video of all his appearances in films.


Thanks Stan Lee For Making Our Life Enjoyable

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After being previewed in the Avengers Infinity War, we now get an origin story of Captain Marvel coming out in 2019.  Since we are excited to see how Captain Marvel would correct the Thanos' snap, we are given the back story on Captain Marvel.  So when a trailer came out, we are all excited to see a snippet of who and what she is.

Now looking into the trailer, it didn't show much of her story.  We all know that she is human, and is a strong woman with powers.  Since this is a trailer, we need to watch the whole movie I guess. LOL.

If you have some comments or suggestions please do email us at pinoymovieclub@gmail.com.




Captain Marvel Trailer is Out

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We haven't seen Jackie for sometime in movies so when one do come up, we do hope we would watch it.  Honestly this writer does not watch his movies in the theatres as his movies suck in the line of Chinese Zodiac which was horrible.  I forgot already the storyline of the latter and for this one, it might end up the same way.


His formula is always the same, his line into comedies, he works with a sidekick or in tandem, with him providing the comedic punches some movies are blockbusters this way.  Sometimes we had enough of this shit and we do hope he makes another movie with another formula.  Actually he did with "the Foreigner" and he was fantastic in that role.

In this film - he starts off as a Hong Kong detective (isn't he always?) who lost a partner and takes care of daughter left behind.  Then comes a silly american con man who gets tied up in the story.  Simple story of how I wish they remained simple.  Making complicated storylines (which they did) simply spoiled the whole thing.

Now lets breakdown how this movie got to where I thought it went south on me. Start off with the casting of his sidekick, Johnny Knoxville.  Yes the same Johnny of the famed Jackass movie.  So we were expecting him to be a jackass in the film, yet he wasn't.  He was not funny either.  Casting is flawed all the way except for Eric Tsang whom I have followed dearly in his films.  All actors were terrible and I need to give a special mention to the Russians for their awful performance.  Jackie's acting was the same with all his films so its bearable, even with Eric Tsang's great presence, it wasn't enough to save everyone here.

Now comes the technical part of the film.  Lighting and location settings are funny, not in a good way though.  It was as if most scenes were done with CGI.  The worst scene here was when they were traversing over a cliff.  It was so poorly done I cringed when I saw it.  Another one is the scene is when they both stayed overnight at a Mongolian village.  Lighting was so off and the camera angles so not good that you think their set was located in a grassy field in a park.  Another off moment in the village was when they sang a song by Adele.  I said what?


A forgettable film.  A regrettable film.  I do hope Jackie Chan chooses his projects well.  He is already in his twilight years, he should act his age already.  I'm not expecting him to be active like his Police Story days.  Those films are etched in history as memorable movies in the like of Drunken Master and Rumble in the Bronx.

This film however will go in the forgettable annals of Chinese Zodiac, The Myth, Kung Fu Yoga, and Dragon Blade.

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Another Film by Jackie Chan That's Truly .....................

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