Saturday, October 9, 2004

Movie reviews (contain spoilers)

Since my last pointless film review, I have watched three new films in the cinema. Since I am lazy to write my through thoughts on each of them, I will just post my (long) summaries here:

Layer Cake:

Based on the book of the same name, this is a classic British gangster movie. The plot revolves around a nameless character (XXXX) who is a drug dealer making and selling Ecstasy pills. While hating the lime light, he is also gathering enough cash for an early retirement out of the drug World.


However complication arises when a bunch of clueless pikeys robs a million Ecstasy pills of a Dutch drug lord and XXXX was asked by his boss, Jimmy Price to buy the pills of the tossers and to find a girl. Shits happen and soon some Serbian assassin is on his tail and he found out that his boss wants to fuck him up.

An excellent British movie that is made to look as realistic as possible. While other gangster movie such as Guy Ritchie's Snatch and Lock, Stock... as well as the incredible stupid 51st State (aka Formula 51) are entertaining, they are far from realistic. These films glorify gangsters but Layer Cake does not. In fact Layer Cake just proves how dangerous the drug World is and totally not glamorous. There are some silly moments and the ending is a slight disappointing. Minus one point for not showing enough of the hot and sexy Sienna Miller (as Tammy) and playing 80s British music in the first one hour.

A 8/10 - even though it is the directional debut of Matthew Vaughn.

Sky Captain & The World Of Tomorrow:

Well, the CGI is NOT as good as The Lord of the Rings, but then again, Sky Captain was shot entirely in blue screen. Gwyneth Paltrow is as annoying as ever. Why can't someone tell her she can't act? Jude Law's acting was al right. It was Angelina Jolie's rather brief appearance that, in my opinion saved the movie. Overall an al right movie but very annoying in many parts. The acting is bad as a whole but what can you expect when all the actors see are blue in colour.

5.5/10

Bride & Prejudice

This summary is a little long because I just watched the movie today and its still fresh in my head.

Inspired by the Jane Austen's novel Pride & Prejudice, this film follows an Indian family in typical Bollywood style. Directed by Gurinder Chandha, the director of Bend it like Beckham, it was shot in India, Los Angeles, London and Ealing.

Straight to the point then. It was disappointing. It was tedious. The director tried to make a musical, Indian, English and American movie all into one - which is plain wrong. I understand why the production team wanted to shoot part of the movie in London because its a British movie - but it was so unnecessary and does not contribute to the development of the movie at all!

The humour is thin and the development of characters is short. The lyrics of the musics are cheesy does the voices does not sound like the actors and actresses voice. I have enjoyed alot of Bollywood film in the past and this ranks among the worst in terms of dancing and music.


The character of Mr Darcy is played by the bland and boring Martin Handerson (the guy in Britney Spear's Toxic video).

I guess the only thing redeeming about this movie is the sexy Aishwarya Rai who plays Lalita, a character loosely based on Elizabeth Bennet.

I also can't help but wish that Gurinder Chadha would start casting western women as the leading role falling for the Indian guy. For the pass few films, we have seen Indian female lead roles falling for handsome white men ignoring the Indian male (often portrayed in a negative role). It is not a major issue and one that I do not really care about. But I do wish for a change.

5.5/10

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