Two Movie Reviews -- 2012 and Rebellion (同門)

Saw two movies in the last 48 hours.  48小時內看了兩套電影。

2012

I was lucky to get a ticket to the premiere of 2012, starring John Cusack.  The premise of the movie (no surprise given the movie posters) is that the world will come to a catastrophic end on 12/21/12.  Although lots of people get killed (come 'on, the world ends!), the movie makers make a point to not show graphic violence (e.g., blood; limbs ripped off; etc.).  Even without blood and gore, I was surprised to find myself kind of nauseous at the idea of the world coming to an end.  Watching familiar cities like LA and DC get obliterated kind of made me sick to the stomach.  Very weird since I knew (I hope!) this was just a movie.

Obviously, the whole movie is not believable (unless you indeed subscribe to the notion that the world will end in two years' time).  The movie highlights the environmental crisis that our planet faces and serves as a vehicle to show off Hollywood's latest and greatest CGI effects (which were cool but not orgasmic).  I did particularly enjoy the performances by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton.  The relationship between Chiwetel's character in the movie and his father did get me all choked up on more than one occasion.  All in all, I say "go see it".

Like some of Hong Kong's premieres these days, all people entering had to surrender their cell phones and cameras and there was a silly made-for-show security presence.  I, for one, managed to sneak in my cell phone by swallowing it outside the theater.  Getting it back out was not the most pleasant thing in the world but I did request extra butter on my popcorn.


同門 REBELLION

同門 is the 5,434,889th film made about Hong Kong's triad underworld.  In a story that spans a single night, you get your usual not-so-tough guys talking tough, women dumbing themselves up (one poor actress' only scenes in the movie were either performing fellatio, riding, or getting f-ed by her sponsor, who likes to have sex every moment he is not talking triad business or hacking other people to death), and unrealistic street fighting scenes (50+ men killing each other with metal pipes and watermelon knives in the middle of the street and no police show up).

One of the most hilarious scenes in the movie was when two triad henchmen were "talking business" in a club.  In the background is a stripper doing her thing against a stripper pole.  It was SO obvious that this girl had never seen a real stripper before and for some reason, it seemed that none of the males on set had either.  This girl was gyrating like she was a Turet's sufferer in lingerie and I completely lost focus of the main actors in the scene because I was too distracted by her convulsions (yes, convulsions!).

A shout-out goes to two AnD artists whom I saw in the movie -- AnD founder Conroy Chan and the multi-talented Jun Kung.  There might have been more but I couldn't identify them.  Conroy and Jun play triad henchmen and I thought they did a pretty nice job with their characters.  Jun is super-duper fresh in the movie and I loved the a**hole that he plays.  On more than one occasion, you just want to reach out and smack him.  Conroy is the reluctant triad middle manager who puts family above all else.

I like Shawn Yue but they kind of make him retarded in this movie.  (Excuse the term but that's what they did).  His character's supposed to be the up-and-coming star in the triad society but any time anyone asks him a question, his response is "I don't know".  He says "I don't know" about 50 times in the movie.  I guess it must have been intentional...

Two nice twists -- movie is not set in TST or Causeway Bay and the ending (i.e., the "who done it?" moment) is refreshing.

"Worth watching but wait for the DVD."

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