Chloe: Review

Chloe. Or Amanda Seyfried's way to make up for Dear John.

You know, there's always going to be that one hot up and coming actress in Hollywood that had just done a really big movie and will inevitably do a film where she is naked throughout? Well this movie is the Amanda-Seyfried-naked movie. No actually, this is the Amanda-Seyfried-naked-a-lot movie. Do not watch this in a Malaysian cinema. There were some sex scenes in this that were pretty fucking awesome!

So Chloe centres around a married couple played by Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson who have been married for a long time but a string of strange behaviour, shifty excuses and pictures of his young female students in his phone leads Julianne Moore to suspect that her husband is cheating on her. So she enlists the help of a callgirl named Chloe played by Amanda Seyfried of Mamma Mia! to befriend her husband and seduce him so that she can catch him in the act. But what first started as a strictly business relationship between the two slowly turns into pure lesbian awesomeness!

The film is directed by Atom Egoyan, who's kind of made a signature for himself making erotic thrillers like Exotica and Where The Truth Lies. And while most are calling Chloe his weakest film, I thought it was pretty darn good. The film moves at an excellent pace, steadily balancing between an Egoyan typical erotic thriller and a character study.

Julianne Moore leads the first two acts of the film with a fantastic performance as she always gives in all her movies. Very tricky how her character plays out in this film being the suffering, sexually frustrated conflicted woman who's life opens up and begins to change with the presence of Amanda Seyfried's character. I can't say enough about how much  admire Julianne Moore. And my God, she is like what? 50 years old now and she has a naked lesbian scene in here with Amanda Seyfried.... and she's actually hotter than her!

Liam Neeson is great to with the small role he plays in this but the star of the show which really only comes into full effect towards the last 15 minutes of the film is Amanda Seyfried. Her performance of Chloe starts out really good, but always in the shadow of Julianne Moore until the end. I hope I'm not spoiling anything if I said that there is a big twist at the end of Chloe, somewhere along the same vein as Fatal Attraction. And it's in that last 15 minutes, Amanda Seyfried proves her worth as a young actress.

In the very last scene of the film, and I don't wanna spoil much, but Amanda Seyfried becomes.... frightening. And I mean truly, genuinely scary. Remember how Tobey Maguire was in Brothers and how you actually feared for Natalie Portman's character? Yeah, Chloe gets all fucked up like that and it was awesome. There's one part where Seyfried breaks the fourth wall and just stares at the camera, and it was totally freaky. Totally freaky... and totally hot! Did I mentioned that Seyfried is either fucking or naked throughout this whole movie? If that doesn't get you to watch this, I don't know what will.

And while Seyfried did shine in that segment, I was kinda disappointed that the ending chose the Fatal Attraction end route. The conclusion just felt so typical of that erotic thriller genre which this movie didn't feel typical about up until that point. I really wanted Chloe to end in a more clever, cerebral way but it fell flat.

 

I think Chloe is a good film, not incredible by any means. But it is a very solid, well paced, well acted movie that people can watch and enjoy but it will be forgotten in a few months.

RATING: 6.5/10

Character Posters & Trailer For Sucker Punch

So check it out, the character posters and trailer for Sucker Punch brought to you by Zack Snyder, the guy who directed 300 and Watchmen.

Set in the 1950s, “Sucker Punch” follows Babydoll who is confined to a mental institution by her stepfather, who intends to have her lobotomized in five days. While there, she imagines an alternative reality to hide her from the pain, and in that world, she begins planning her escape, needing to steal five objects to help get her out before she is deflowered by a vile man.

The film stars Emily Browning of Lemony Snickets: A Series of Unfortunate Events, Abbie Cornish of Bright Star, Jena Malone of The Messenger, Vanessa Hudgens of High School Musical 3, Jamie Chung of Dragonball Evolution and Carla Gugino of Watchmen.

Sucker Punch will be out in theaters in 2011.

First Poster For Yogi Bear

See... I have this gift of telling whether a film is gonna suck or not just by looking at the poster. Guess what? This is gonna suck ass through a straw. I bet my left nut on that.

The film stars Dan Aykroyd as Yogi, Justin Timberlake as Boo-Boo, Anna Faris as Rachel and Tom Cavanaugh as Ranger Smith. And was directed by the man who gave us another rape of a movie classic, Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

The abomination will hit theaters in December. Oh ho... I'll definitely have a review for this one.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Review

The one thing I've noticed coming out of this movie... the more movies Nicolas Cage does, the longer and weirder his wig gets.

You know I really, really didn't want to watch this.. being that this film is another testament to Disney deliberately cannibalizing material from it's golden years and turning it into sappy, uninspiring, pop movies for the annoying teen crowd. This 1 hour 30 minute film was of course based on a 5 minute segment of Fantasia and as much as I wanted to hate it... The Sorcerer's Apprentice was surprisingly not terrible.

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So the film starts with Merlin who trained 3 sorcerers (Nicolas Cage, Alfred Molina and Monica "Titty-Mchottie" Bellucci) as his apprentices to fight against the evil witch Morgana from raising an undead army to take over the world. But there is betrayal and Merlin dies and bla la la bla bla, Nicolas Cage ends up with the sole responsibility to find and train the next Merlin to beat Morgana and save the world.

Now going back to where I said this film isn't terrible. Yeah, I was quite surprised actually,  thought this was gonna suck ass through a straw. But with low expectations comes surprisingly entertaining movies. Through the whole film, though laden with grotesque attempts of humor and attempts at trying to make this film like the next Harry Potter, I found the film to be tolerable. It's still Disney crap but at least I wasn't bored nor pissed off.

My brother Nicolas Cage has come back from cinema hell baby! Kick-Ass and this film proves that Nicolas Cage no longer sucks. His wig is still laughable but damn was he badass in this. He nailed the Balthazar that sort of does have the wisdom and stern nature of Yen Sid from the original Sorcerer's Apprentice segment but his character has been very much modified to fit a modern setting, yet he does not lose the flavor of an ancient wizard. Balthazar sort of reminds me of Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid, he's lovable, funny, unorthodox but if he wanted to kick your ass... you'd be so dead by now.

Cage was convincing in this part, entertaining throughout... if only he didn't have to interact with that whiny irritating S.O.B Jay Baruchel. He's a nerdy underdog character who is trust upon with special magic powers, you'd think that he'd be a character you could root for. Hell naw, far from it. This guy is incredibly whiny, he constantly complains through the whole movie about how, "Oh nooo, I don't wanna get involved with magic, no... I'm just a nerd kid." But then Ncolas Cage will do something cool and he goes, " Whoaaa," and then tags along and ends up whinning again.

And it so does not help that his voice is one of the most irritating, nasal voices in the history of nasal or voices. He is slowly becoming one of those third generation actors like Michael Cera who is constantly portraying the same character in every movie he gets. And the shit part is, you know he is a good actor if you saw him in Million Dollar Baby. Jay Baruchel just isn't cut out to carry a lead role. Maybe as a cartoon voice though because he was fantastic in How To Train Your Dragon.

But the special effects and magic in this were cool. I like that they found a way to explain sorcery with a scientific reasoning, and between this and that other Harry  Potter knock-off Percy Jackson, Sorcerer's Apprentice is a whole lot more realistic. There is a scene in here where they transformed a fake dragon dance costume into a real dragon which was totally bad ass. They even had a part where the people operating the dragon is going, "WTF???" Oh and I gotta mention the climactic car chase scene in this which was typical Bruckheimer-Turteltaub work but still very effective.

And now I get to the inevitable part where Disney recreates it's Fantasia segment. If you don't know what I'm talking about.. fuck you and go kill yourself. But watch this first.

This iconic scene was recreated inside the film. And it's been getting a lot of heat from other movie critics, but I don't know... I kinda liked it in here. Certainly doesn't match up to the magic of the original Sorcerer's Apprentice but it was a very deserving homage.

Oh and one last thing I gotta add, I have no problem with product placement or song promotion in a film if it fits the story, but in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, they played OneRepublic over and over and over again. They even stopped the entire flow of the story and played Secrets from start to finish complete with lightning bolts striking Teresa Palmer.

So it isn't a perfect movie, heck it isn't a very good one either. But there is no way I can't tell someone that it is worthwhile to watch The Sorcerer's Apprentice in the theater with a full price admission.

RATING: 5/10

Inception: Review

Okay.. you know what? I fucking hate this movie! Cause just when I thought The Dark Knight was going to be the greatest thing I could ever witness on a cinema screen, Inception actually managed to top Nolan's last film on almost every level. FUCK!

Somewhere in Emeryville, the people who made Toy Story 3 are watching Inception and going, "FUCK! We were so close!" Any hope Pixar had of landing Best Picture has been reduced to rubble with this Christopher Nolan masterpiece.

Inception takes place in a world where technology exists for people to invade someone's mind when he/she is dreaming, where the person's mental state is at it's most vulnerable. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a thief who specializes in extracting information and ideas from the minds of his targets. Now Cobb and his team is faced with a new challenge. To go into the mind of an energy conglomerate heir and pull off the reverse. Planting an idea in the persons mind instead of stealing it.

I'm gonna level with you early that Inception is either going to be one of the most confusing or mind blowing piece of cinema you might see in a long long time. The film will challenge you to really pay attention and think for 3 straight hours of this intricate puzzle piece that Christopher Nolan has created. But even if you don't get everything at the end, there's one thing I'm sure no one can deny that Inception was one of the most compelling suspenseful movies they have seen.

How the fuck does Christopher Nolan does these kinds of things. This motherfucker has been consistently topping his films with something even better. Momento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and now Inception. Everyone of these is darker and better than the last. I'm dangling my balls out there again and dare say that Inception tops The Dark Knight in every imaginable spectacle. Nolan might very well be this generations Brian de Palma if not the greatest modern filmmaker of our time.

This film is so complex, so deep, delving deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the mind. The pace moves break neck fast I could barely catch my breath. The second the film hits the 2 hour mark, things get so crazy and fucking awesome, the only thing I could do was just sit in marvel at the beauty of this film. And the fact that I was never bored with this film says a lot about Nolan as a director and writer because the climax of Inception is a fucking hour long and it cut into 4 different timelines. But my God, everything blended so seamlessly, such a work of genius.

And what an elite ensemble of actors lead by Leonardo DiCaprio to drive this masterpiece into the ground. Ellen Page of Juno, Joseph Gordon-Levitt of (500) Days of Summer, Dileep Rao of Avatar, Marion Cotillard of Nine, with Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy is just the group of actors Nolan deserved to bring a dark tapestry of suspense and drama to full bloom.

Points to Ellen Page who truly held her own up against the brilliant performance of Leo DiCap and Joseph Gordon-Levitt who's actually my fav character in the film and has a mega awesome badass fight scene that is right up there with The Matrix's lobby fight scene. Marion Cotillard shines as a twisted manifestation of Leo DiCap's subconscious. Every scene that Cotillard is in is genuinely frightening.

But the star of the film and one truly deserving of his first Oscar was Leonardo DiCaprio who navigates this wildly ingenious screenplay with an equally tour de force of a performance. If you thought his tortured character from Shutter Island was messed up enough, you gotta watch how fucked up his character is in Inception. So much emotional baggage and hurt pulsating through every pore of his body. I salute you good sir.

Inception is every sense of the word storytelling brilliance and it's beginning, build, climax and ambiguous ending is going to be the subject of many discussions for years to come. Now let's kill that third Batman movie! Muahahahaha.

RATING: 10/10