Attack on Titan - Movie

I’ll be honest, when it comes to live action movies there exists a certain expectation from the fans of the anime they are based off of for the content to at least resemble the original stuff at the most basic level. For that reason I have to say that my recent experience watching the much anticipated Attack on Titan was then partially met. They had titans and 3D maneuver gear that allowed for some pretty epic scenes and delivered a platter of awesomely placed action cinematography that almost makes you forget there were just a few things off course about the whole thing.

The truth of it though, was had I gone into watching this not knowing the anime as I did, the movie would still have been pretty amazing, slightly confusing – yes, but still enjoyable. The overall story stayed the same as it followed the history of humanity being nearly wiped out by the flesh-eating titans, leaving a small percentage of humans to gather behind these walls in an attempt to survive against them.

Enter our brooding protagonist who, due to a significant loss, vows to kill the titans. In order to do so he joins the survey corps, a military-like group who train with the hopes of surviving against the threat that is the titans. The movie doesn’t do much to explain the different divisions so it’s a bit of a guess game as you watch on and try to figure out what’s going on, but as not much emphasis is put on them I guess the focus then shifts to the characters, which could have been better portrayed in my opinion.

What I did notice was that character development lacked a bit as the movie seemed to assume the audience already had an image of some characters while it focused on introducing its original characters and creating what I can only say was some very unnecessary scenarios. These scenarios actually had me staring dumbfounded at the screen and asking ‘W.T.F’ as I tried to accept that they actually happened.

In any case, the CGI was still pretty good in most of the scenes and the fighting was epic. Though the original story suffered some grating changes as it made it to the big screen, there were other scenes that made it in that could almost make up for the few blunders. The acting wasn’t perfect for everyone, but it was far better than expected.

Obviously I’ll watch the second movie, because what has been started must be finished. But I guess in the end, if I were to give it a rating it would probably be about four boxes of popcorn and maybe one large coke – if that means anything.

Hwayi: A Monster Boy - Movie

It’s been a long time since I watched a gripping psychological drama that had me on the edge of my seat as it forced my brain into following every detail of the story as it played out, but my does it feel good to get lost every now and then in one. Hwayi: A Monster Boy had me lapping up its story line with some eager eyes and it gave me something to enjoy. The relatively gruesome thriller could probably stand as one of the most bloody and uncensored Korean-based pieces of media I have set my eyeballs upon [to date] and I loved every minute of it.

The story is a dark toned one that has you follow a young boy raised by a group of criminals who aren’t the type to think twice before pulling the trigger. But despite being raised and trained by his fairly ruthless fathers, our teenage boy retains a rather innocent temperament as well as an artistic view of the world. We see him roaming the streets in a uniform as he longs for a normal life and especially the relationships that come with it.

But things don’t stay easy going for our boy as a job that his fathers have taken brings out the boy’s past and hidden secrets are revealed and mistakes are made as the boy is confronted by a rather cruel reality that has been hidden from him all his life. Things escalate from there, not only as the truth is revealed but as the boy is forced to follow in his adoptive fathers’ footsteps, an act that brings about the first crack in his already troubled psyche as things go south and quickly.

The show is well planned out and the pacing of how the events unfold is genius as you follow the story of the poor boy whose life is torn about in the most twisted of ways. The action is also pretty good and gruesome in all the right places. The acting was also on point as it breathed some amazing life into the scenes and brought the whole thing to life, so I have to give props to the actors, especially our lead guy as he brought home the troubled teen act.

One thing I also liked about the movie was its realistic expectation, in the sense of what you expected would happen to the actors. There were no ‘in the nick of time’ saves, or perfect shots all the time. Bullets missed and time was not messed with throughout the movie, especially there at the end. The drama was kept to a minimum which was pretty cool in my books.

All in all, a good psychological and suspense movie with some sweet action spots to wet the taste buds with.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Movie

If there’s one thing you can always count on, it’s that action movies always follow a certain formula that has been built through a time-tested algorithm sequence that has been created by those who know better and tested and approved by us average Joes and Janes. This sacred formula pumps out constant fast pace, in your face, delicious action movies that has graced the screens over the years since who knows when and to deviate from that formula would be, dare I say it… impossible.

Yet here we have a movie that took that formula and left out a few sequences as it delivered something of a brilliant piece of cinema magic as it graced our eyeballs with the fast car chase, the epic fight scenes and a bunch of other mouth-watering scenes that left you on the edge of your seat. All except for the lovely, sexy scene where the guy gets the girl if only for a moment, can you believe that?

I’m all for the fact that things like that shouldn’t be the focus in a good movie, but this just blew my mind. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation accomplished what many action movies tend to fail at and it did it with style. The movie was brilliant in my opinion as it delivered enough action and storyline to carry the whole thing through without relying on cheap tactics like a partially nude scene in the middle of nowhere.

The story followed our main hero as he struggled with the fact that he may have met his match as he came across an enemy that seemed everywhere while he himself had to deal with the CIA hunting him down.

The acting was amazing as you had great performances from the lead and his co-stars. The cinematography was beautiful and let’s not even get into the choreography. Another thing I loved was the attention to detail with the technology. Oh wow, was I drooling at that.

It’s safe to say this movie reaffirmed my geekdom and love for technology, but I’ll live with that. I mean come on camera’s that recognize your walk, posture and overall existence? Seriously? seriously!

Technology Banzai!

Jurassic World - Movie

Some movies are just destined to be awesome and with that being said, Jurassic World was always going to be at least your basic action-type, sweet dessert that you couldn’t say no to.

After watching all the teasers and eventually the epic trailer, you can imagine that one would be pretty hyped before setting foot into a cinema to watch said movie, but as many movies have proved before, trailers can sometimes be overhyped and the movie a total let down. Luckily, this beautifully shot dino-infested road trip wasn’t.

From the brilliantly shot cinematography to the beautiful scenery displayed and the acceptable acting I’d venture to say everything was worth the solo movie experience and then some. Though I might have scared my neighbors in the cinema by conversing with myself, I have to say I got excited by quite a bit of the movie as it got to some cool action scenes and pretty epic comedy squeezed in while still finding time to pay homage to its predecessors. I also couldn’t contain myself as I picked up on possible plot material for sequels in future.

Though the main story revolved around the creation of a new species of dinosaur that was not only fiercer and bigger but far more intelligent than its creators had anticipated, I found the underlying message of never to underestimate living creatures, regardless of how they were bred, quite fascinating. 

The struggle for survival throughout the movie was nostalgic of the other movies before, but it revived the fear factor for things as it reminded us of the raw brutality that these brilliant creatures were capable of, something the people had foolishly forgotten as they thought they had ‘tamed’ them.

An interesting twist though does give hope that these carnivorous creatures aren’t as dull as we’d like to think and that makes me very curious as to how any future movies would like to manipulate this kind of development.

All in all the movie was a great watch as it had just the right amount of blood and dino-battle as one would expect plus there are some bad-ass moments that have our lead actors showing that maybe humans might have survived with the dinosaurs all those years ago for a reason.

Parallels - Movie

Sometimes you watch something and all you can think is ‘what the f#@k!’ when you get to the end. Recently I watched said ‘movie’ and I call it a ‘movie’ very cautiously because I still don’t agree with it being referred to it as such. To be honest this movie felt more like a long pilot for a TV show than anything else.

Frankly, I have to be straight and say that if you go into watching this ‘movie’ expecting movie grade specs you will be somewhat disappointed as you get served a TV show meal with TV show acting and TV show plotting.


But alas, where ever one looks on the interwebs they say this is a ‘movie’ so what can measly ole me say or do about it?


But don’t get me wrong, Parallels is interesting. The concept is very intriguing as it has you anticipating what can be accomplished and explored, had this been a TV show, but also what is shown on screen is still pretty engrossing and has you wanting to see more of these various earths they speak of. 

The acting could be better, but I suppose they put whatever budget they had into CGI and the set to build the worlds they travelled to, even though it was only about three they showed us. The advantage of travelling to parallel universes is that you get to keep the casting pool relatively small, while the disadvantage happens to be the fact that whether these actors and actresses can act affects the whole movie, so it’s a win-lose situation I guess.

But, had this been a TV show, the actors and their respective characters could grow so it wouldn’t be a total loss and we’d get to see a possibly epic new fandom, but alas that remains to be seen.

Anyhow, all I can say is it’s a good movie to watch but it would be an even better TV show pilot, in my opinion.

Fast & Furious 7 - Movie

The seventh instalment of the fast and the furious movie franchise was always going to be a movie to have high expectations for, after all it would be the last movie we all got to see the late Paul Walker in and most likely all the others gathered for. So needless to say most movie goers went to the cinema expecting gold or at least a shiny silver and after accompanying a group of friends and family recently to go watch the movie I must say, it did not disappoint.

The racing crew delivered, in my opinion, quite a nice feature film in both acting and story as they tackled a revenge plot and a little side plot of one of their own recovering lost memories. For what it generally was, a racing movie with cars and girls, it gave good action shots with some daring stunts and some interesting location shots.

The cars were beautiful and the women were breath-taking as we followed the story where we find the crew being hunted by the brother of the man they took down in a previous film. As Dom so nicely puts it, ‘the sins of London have followed us home…’

Their hunter proves to be a deadly opponent as it turns out he happens to be a ‘ghost’ assassin, feared even by the people who created him, so basically your average bad guy that everybody is scared of.

But Dom and the family aren’t left alone to face this new threat as a secret, no name, shadow group approaches them to offer their services to help them deal with this new bad guy… so long as they do them a tiny little favour. I find this turn of events was just a convenient way to give the group the toys they would need to do the cool stunts and action scenes they would do later on in the movie, plus an excuse to go travelling to the beautiful locations they end up in.

The acting was on point with their respective characters that I am sure they have fully embraced at this point in the franchise. There was also a notable sombre tone that was underlined in the end of the movie for obvious reasons that took time to let the actors say a last goodbye to their late friend that made for a somewhat happy ending that still had you reaching for a tissue or two.

So all in all, it was a good action movie that satisfied the hunger for action, cars and sexy ladies. Plus the story was laid out, filled in and tied up all with a pretty bow. What more could you ask for?

Hot Young Bloods - KMovie

I decided to watch this purely because it had the one lead actor Lee Jong-Suk in it and based on the dramas I have watched and am watching with him in it I have high expectations all around. Attractive appeal aside he actually has some decent acting ability when it comes to playing his character and though I am beginning to sense a certain type of character that he always does tend to play I still find it worthwhile as the storylines he is associated with are always intriguing.

Hot Young Bloods is an interesting love story set in what I believe is the 1980’s. The set work is well down and the attitude by the supporting actors is on point. The overall feel of the story is pretty old school so that was a pretty novel experience. 

However, as old school as everything felt it was interesting to see that the language wasn’t so clean cut as the TV of old school used to be censored as the actors let loose a string of intriguing words every so now and then teaching me a few things in Korean I’m sure any language teacher would cringe away from teaching me. I loved every minute of it!

But the language wasn’t the only rough thing in this supposed romance as gang fights were key plot points in how the story moved as one of the female leads who is actually the leader of her own gang falls for the school playboy who goes out of his way to woo every girl except her.

It’s interesting to see how the delinquent queen pines over the playboy especially after a new arrival comes and creates further frustration for her. 

Admittedly there are some slow points every now and then where the story drags but there is always a quick gang fight to stir things up and get the story back on track as it moves to an interesting end.

50 Shades of Grey - Movie

I went into this cinema with mild to low expectations, thus my viewing of it might have been slightly skewed in some aspects. But never the less, it was a movie I don’t think I regret watching, mostly because I aspire to be an author who writes books that may one day turn into film. Though not of this content one can still dream such things are possible, I mean if Fifty Shades can do it, why not another random story by an author in a far off land called South Africa?

Anyway, I should probably mention I did read the book, though I barely remember the experience as it was quite a while ago and I never did make it through the first one, let alone the second one and though I own all three I’ve yet to finish reading the series. But thankfully the movie didn’t stray too off course as it delivered what was generally expected.

The reason I mention the books isn’t because the movie is based off of them, but because one would need to have read them in order to follow most of what was happening in the movie. Otherwise you would be watching nothing but something of a sweet romance turned strange porno that ended abruptly. But that of course is just my opinion.

The start of the movie is surprisingly good. The anticipation that is built up is decent as our main couple roll out the tension with good-ish acting as they play out the sweet moments but it becomes quite obvious that not much attention is given to the side characters as the focus stays on the main couple barely showing anything more than two to three minutes of any other actors at a time.

Is it because the producers couldn’t afford the actors show time, or didn’t care for them? Who knows… but it was kind of a let-down not to have more faces to focus on.

One thing I noticed though, once the ‘big reveal’ came and things became all steamy between our protagonists, I felt like there was something missing. Granted I kept thinking ‘wow...they must be really comfortable with each other to be doing these scenes together...’ I also couldn’t help feeling like a lot of the shots felt forced but I guess that was inevitable given the content we’re speaking about here…

And then the rest of the movie happened and it felt like an anti-climax. It was as if all the tension was spent and given out at the steamy scenes and the producers didn’t care anymore. They just wanted to end the movie.

Honestly, I don’t know if I was the only one but near the end there I was struggling to keep my eyes open as I slowly tried to keep myself awake. It was as if the plot stagnated and meaning was suddenly trying to be forced into the situation whereas it could have been slowly introduced along with all the kinky stuff.

But that end though… I can honestly say I didn’t see it coming. I liked it and yet I think they could have done it better, but again tis only my opinion. Will I see any more movies they will milk this franchise for, probably. I’m an unfortunate perfectionist, or maybe, just maybe I’m a masochist… either way I’m too curious for my own good and I recommend those open minded enough to be just as curious because the release of a movie like this in our time says a lot about our society and culture and if anything it deserves a speckle of ponder.