Movie Reviews with halochief996: Men In Black 3

Whats up everybody. Well I just got back from an awesome trip to California.

It was really nice got to spend time with my family, eat some good Asian food, and meet some new and old friends.

Anyway moving on

The Secret World of Arrietty

Hayao Miyazaki is one of my favorite movie producers. His Japanes Anime movies are amazing, inspiring, and really awesome. Out of all his movies, my all time favorite has to be Spirited Away with Princess Mononoke as my second favorite. I didn't have time to watch this film in theaters but I really wanted to see it, so when it came out on DVD, I immediately bought it.

Plot: The story is based off a novel The Borrowers by Mary Norton. However in Asian folklore, there are stories about little people that live in human houses and take/borrow things. Anyway there is a family of little people, called Borrowers, that live in this Japanese country house. There is the father, Pod, the mother, Homily, and their daughter, Arrietty. Anyway during a gathering/borrowing session, Arrietty is spotted by a young sick boy, named Shawn, who has come to the house to rest in preparation for an intense surgery he is about to undergo. The boy is curious and he tries to help her and her family. Arrietty and Shawn soon become friends, and share an adventure together to find her a new and happy home. Its a kids movie. The story is nothing amazing, or earth shattering, in fact it it is pretty weak and not presented strongly. However it does bring up morals about not giving up, and how everybody is the same no matter how big or small they are.

Genre: Its a cartoon/Japanese anime kids movie. The animations are really nice, and the world as seen through the eyes of the borrowers is really nicely done. Hayao Miyazaki films always have great animations, well designed worlds, and great attention to art and detail. However all of this is dragged down by a story that doesn't really amaze or get you thinking about it at the end. To be honest, at the end of the film, I saidThat's it. The movie is pretty short, and it doesn't have that intense rush or speed as seen in previous Miyazaki films. In short, it starts off slow, with a few scenes of intensity, that builds up to a climax that's easily resolved and then the movie ends. Other than that the voice acting is good.

Overall: Its not one of Miyazaki's greatest films. But its certainly not a bad film. The movie is pretty short. The story is not really fulfilling, and at the end it kind of just leaves you hanging. However the animations, the design of the world, the characters, and the artistry are really good and beautiful. If you like Miyazaki films, then you should not overlook this one.

8.5 out of 10

Men In Black 3

When I was in California, I told my cousin, we had to go see this film. The first two Men in Black movies were awesome. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones make a good duo. Finally after many years, they make a sequel to Men In Black.

Plot: The story continues where the second movie left off. Its been many years, and agent J (Will Smith) and K (Tommy Lee Jones) have been kicking butt as the tough duo of the Men in Black agency. However an evil alien called Boris the Animal escapes the heavily secured moon prison, and goes back in time killing Agent K, the Men in Black agent that took away his arm and killed his evil life-consuming race. By doing this, the earth is invaded by the evil life-consuming race, and its up to agent J to go back in time to save the younger version of his partner (Josh Brolin), and stop Boris and his evil race of aliens. The story is very much like a Men in Black story. Basically there is an evil alien, and Agent J and K, the best Men in Black agents, have to stop it and save the earth. A well written story.

Genre: Its a comedy, action, sci-fi movie. The aliens are nicely created and interesting. Especially Boris. The action is intense to an extent, and presents the story creatively and interestingly. The special effects are well done, and Will Smith, Josh Brolin, and Tommy Lee Jones give amazing performances. Their jokes and personalities make this movie funny and enjoyable.

Overall: A very solid, good sci-fi movie. The actors give brilliant performances in this film, and the action and comedy make the movie's story interesting, and funny. A good Men in Black film and a good reentry into the series.

8.5 out of 10

Asian Star of the Week

OK when I was in California, I was hanging with some friends and we had a little something to drink. Anyway we had a laptop, and this video came on

http://www.youtube.com/wa...lated

And two things went into my mind. One: that's what its like when you are high, or when an Asian is high that's he or she sees things and feels. Two You know behind all that crazy makeup, graphics, and music, the chick is pretty cute.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

Her real name is Kiriko Takemura. She is from Japan, and is very popular around Asia. In a way she is like a Japanese Lady Gaga/Katy Perry. She is pretty cute looking.

I want to dedicate this blog to the US military servicemen and servicewomen serving our country. Happy Memorial Day, and Thank you for protecting our country.

That's it for this week's blog. Thanks for reading.

Movie Reviews with halochief996: Battleship and The Dictator

Man I've been going through so many games. I started playing games that I haven't touched for a while like Halo, Batman Arkham City, Toy Soldiers, and others. Also been trying to finish the previous two Max Payne games before diving into Max Payne 3. Other than that still keeping up with COD and Battlefield. You know my KDR is affected everytime I go back and forth playing those games. Other than that, this week there were many season finales of my favorite shows including:




and



Well I guess I'm just trying to get all that fun out of my system because once its June and July, I'm not going to have any fun. Summer School:( Moving on

 

The Dictator

 

Ah Sacha Baron Cohen. This guy always seems to be in the most ridiculous roles for movies. He's funny and some of his jokes and sayings are in a way philosophical. But he can be kind of crude, weird, strange, and just plain disgusting. He is an actor that is able to cross the line on some issues and make offensive things funny. I watched Borat, and I have to say there were some funny parts and there were some WTF parts. Yep lets just say the WTF parts in Borat are the reason I skipped Bruno. Although he was pretty funny in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Anyway his new film The Dictator tries to make fun of all the dictators in the world. After all we already dethroned one, and another one has already died. Well his movie does a good job making him look like a fool.



Plot: The story of The Dictator is well, an interesting yet funny story. Admiral General Aladeen is the dictator of Wadiya. He hates democracy, oppresses his people, executes people that piss him off, and is trying to build nuclear missiles with pointy ends. Anyway he is summoned by the United Nations to give an address about his nuclear program, and what he is doing for his country. He goes but things don't go according to plan. His most trusted adviser goes against him, by having him kidnapped, and replacing him with a double. His adviser plans to make Wadiya a democracy nation. Its up to the dictator to stop his adviser and make sure his country remains a dictatorship forever. Like I said the story is fairly interesting maybe absurd. There is a lot of culture clash between Western Democracy and beliefs, and Middle Eastern dictatorship and beliefs.



Genre: The movie is a comedy. There are slapstick jokes and jokes about dictators of the world. At the beginning, they even make a message saying that they dedicate this film to Kim Jong-il. Along with that there are some terrorist jokes that actually made me laugh really hard. Everything about the movie made me laugh. Some not so hard. There are plenty of jokes to go around. From terrorist jokes to dictator jokes. I especially liked the one about Spoiler:throwing baby girls into trash cans, a funny joke about China under Chairman Mao's rule. However like Borat, there are some parts, well lets just say may be offensive to some people. Sacha Baron Cohen gives an excellent performance. He could pull off being a dictator, along with being gay french race car driver, a ignorant Kazakhstan person, and a crazy gay guy. Yeah he is still the actor that likes to go overboard. The other actors give a good enough performance to make this film funny.



Overall: A pretty funny movie, but not for everybody. There are parts that are really low class and just plain wrong and pointless. But the jokes, metaphors, and messages conveyed through this absurd Cohen film are funny enough to make me laugh through the entire film. Its not better than Borat, but its still pretty funny. I'm wondering should I give out the score or is the dictator going to come out and kill me if I do. Oh well.

8.3 out of 10

 

Battleship

 

When I saw the trailer for this film, I was thinking to myselfTransformers 4? I mean judging by the trailer, the movie looked like it was going to amount to anything good. The only reason I wanted to see it, was because Liam Neeson was in it. Anyway I decided since it was summer, I was going to go see the movie at midnight. The movie went beyond my expectations.



Plot: The story is very simple and easy to get. Basically during an international naval exercise between many nations, some weird objects enters Earth's atmosphere. The reason is some genius made a long range telephone that actually communicated with a planet that had life on it. Anyway those aliens traced the call back to earth and now have begun an invasion of the planet by sending a small scout army. The alien army has created a barrier around hawaii and has trapped 3 destroyer ships within the dome barrier. While the rest of the naval fleets are outside the barrier. Its up to Lt. Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch from John Carter), a very stubborn and destructive man, to take command of his ship and stop the alien invasion. The story is shallow and nothing that different from other alien invasion movies like Battle LA, War of the Worlds, and others.



Genre: The plot may be weak, but the action is intense. You see this movie may have a bad and unoriginal plot, but it makes up for it, with a lot of action and intense battle scenes. As the title says, this film is based off the board game that some of us had played. I remembered those days. Yep that was my second strategy game I played (chess was first, after that warcraft, starcraft, and a couple of Lord of the Rings strategy games took over; still play chess though). Yeah there is a scene where the movie is actually like the board game. But that is pretty much one scene, and the only connection to the board game. The rest is all character development, and STUFF BLOWING UP. The acting is good enough. I mean there is so much action and intense moments that you could probably care less about the acting. I mean its good enough to create a good atmosphere and setting for the movie. You'll have your hero who sounds like a Jimmy Tatro, the frat star. And you got Rihanna who is not bad, and Liam Neeson who still sounds like a badass.
The sound effects also are really good, and the music score by the end of the film is some good old fashion Vietnam-era music. The special effects are also really well done, but the aliens though could have been more creative Spoiler:They are basically lizards who hate the sun. The only thing that really makes me mad about this film is that they didn't make Neeson say They sunk my battleship.



Overall: I expected the movie to really not be impressive, but it was impressive. The action, special effects, and sound were awesome and make up for the shallow plot and average acting. Like Battle LA only better, this movie is a good tribute to United States military and its allies especially to the United States Navy and its allies.

9 out of 10

 

Asian Star of the Week

 

Lee Hyo-Ri (이효리, 李孝利)


A beautiful girl from Korea. She was the lead singer in a K-pop group called Fin.K.L. in 1998. Now she is a solo artist and has appeared in a few TV dramas. Anyway she is cute.













Well that's it for this weeks blog. Hope everybody's summer is going well. Until next time, happy gaming.

Movie Reviews with halochief996: Dark Shadows

Well so far I've enjoyed summer alright. I've been catching up on some video games that I haven't finished. I finished Prototype 2 on Xbox 360

Finished Mass Effect 2

And been playing some Call of Duty, Battlefield, DOTA 2, and Max Payne 1.

Yep so far I've had a productive summer. Anyway moving on.

Dark Shadows

Johnny Depp is dam good actor. I like him. He always can make a movie funny yet serious. When he is with Tim Burton, the guy behind Corpse Bride, and The Nightmare before Christmas, it seems that they make a good combo. Lets just say this movie is not one of their finest.

Plot: The film is based off an old TV show/Soap Opera. In the 1750s there was this family called the Collins. They were powerful, rich, and had built a city in America. Anyway the son/heir to the Collins fortune, Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), lived an awesome life. He then found his one true love. However there was a jealous witch (Eva Green). Barnabas slept with her once, but she never let that go. Anyway she put a curse on the family. He lost his one true love, his family, and became a vampire. And he was locked up in a coffin by the witch. Now about 200 years later, in the year 1972, Barnabas awakes from his coffin by luck (some construction workers were building a McDonalds). However things are not what he expected. His family's business is almost in ruins, the family is dysfunctional, and the witch has taken almost complete control of the city. Its up to Barnabas to reclaim what is rightfully his, restore his family, and restore his family's business. Its not going to be easy since he has to fight his control his vampire instincts and abilities, and also deal with the seduction techniques and charms from the witch. It sounds like an interesting story. And its good concept and idea. Crazy magical creatures and people in an era full of hippies and drugs.

Genre Its a comedy film with vampires, witches, ghosts, and magic. Its a good story, but the movie poorly executes the story. I mean don't get me wrong there are some funny parts. Johnny Depp makes some good jokes here and there. For most of the movie, you hear Johnny Depp sounding all shakespeare like with his English vocabulary, and metaphorical sayings. I mean its funny hearing him speak all proper in an era where its OK to not be overly proper. Its also funny seeing him try to adjust to the modern lifestyle. For the most part you will see him try to control his vampire urges, not really, talking with his family, restoring the family's business, trying to woo the governess of the house, and also fighting the seductive witch. Out of the whole movie, I thought the parts where the witch was trying to seduce Johnny Depp were the funniest parts of the whole film. Other than that, I didn't really laugh so hard throughout the movie. I chuckled a lot. The ending I will say is very random too. Spoiler:It suggests there will be a sequel but I highly doubt there will be one

Overall Its an OK movie. I mean Johnny Depp does a descent performance in the film. This is probably not his best film, nor the film he will be remembered the most about. The comedy is funny but not laugh out loud funny. And the story could have been told better. The ending as I said before is random. For this movie, if you have the time and the money go watch it in the theaters. Otherwise just skip it, rent it, pirate it, or grab it in the bargain bin.

6.2 out of 10

First Impressions for Video Game High School

Now this is special post for my blog. I've been waiting for this to come out, and finally it has come out. So for now pretend this is Film Reviews with halochief996.

So I'm sure some you have heard of Youtube sensation, freddiew. He's well known on Youtube for making awesome action videos relating to video games and always involving guns, insane stunts, and awesome special effects. So anyway its been known for a while that he's been working on a big project called Video Game High School, aka VGHS. Well finally its here. And so far I'm impressed. The first episode is out, so I will focus mainly on the first episode, and just letting you know its my first impressions. And I understand there are more episodes. THIS IS NOT A TROLL OPINION.

So in the first episode you get a cool intro scene and then it gets you straight into the action. You get to know the characters. Also Justine Ezarik makes an appearance.

Yep what a hottie. Anyway so besides that the first thing that people will start to notice is a scene typically seen in freddiew videos. An action scene with guns. A good Battlefield spoof. The action is intense, amazing, and very much like a video game with people that really look real instead of 3D computer generated images, not that many special effects. The characters are also funny, well crafted, and are believable. I'm going to give kudos to the actors of the film. The Law for example is funny and the perfect bad guy/badass punk player. Pub stomping games. Also the kid, Brian, is the perfect good guy/hero to battle this obnoxious villain. Just from the first episode you can kind of tell where this miniseries is going. Brian is a hero after he defeats the Law, one of the greatest video game players in the world, and gets accepted to the most prestigious school, Video Game High School. And thus begins theJoseph Campbell's monomyth, or the hero's journey. Even the acceptance video is funny. I like it. The world and settings are really nicely constructed to be believable, and nicely told and presented in an understandable manner to the audience.

However I have some concerns. I've seen all of freddiew's videos, and I like pretty much all of them. I'm an action junkie. However I treat video games as an art. And this goes for movies too. Every single video game and movie in my opinion is like a painting. That's why I don't like to see hollywood try to make movies about video games. More or less they disgrace the painting. I know freddiew has done a great job making videos about video games. However the one thing I noticed about the first episode of this film is that a lot of the action and focus was on a shooter video game. There was though a funny reference to strategy games with the K-pop (Korean pop music) pretty boys. ;) But pretty much all of it was on a video game that was a shooter. I know its the first episode, and don't get me wrong its an awesome episode. But from what I see in the video is that the main character and villain have a rivalry in a shooter video game. The point I'm trying to make is, video games are not just only shooters. That's just one genre of video games. What I hope to see in later episodes of VGHS is different genres of video games presented. In movies, there is not one genre of movie, there are many genres of movies. Video games are the same way. Its not just shooters, there are RPGs, fighting games, sports games, strategy games, etc. That's why in my eyes I see video games and movies as art. Basically what I'm trying to say is I hope in the laterVGHS episodes, they do not just focus on shooters, instead having episodes where they show some kind of RPG or platformer game, etc. Because this mini series really could be an awesome film about video games, unlike those hollywood fails. And the trailer does show that they are going to bring in different genres of video games and make references to video game pop culture.

Overall I'm really impressed with the short video, and I can't wait to see the next episode. On the current youtube rating scale, I give it a thumbs up. On my scale for movies, I give it a 10 out of 10.

Here is the trailer for the series

http://www.youtube.com/wa...all-u

and here is the first episode

http://www.rocketjump.com...ode-1

Enjoy.

Again this post is my first impression. This is not a Troll post, and in no way I am trying to offend freddiew.

Asian Star of the Week

It's freddiew.

ROLOLOLOLOLOL. Just kidding. I'm writing this blog really late and I need a good laugh. Anyway moving on

Ai Shang Zhen

A beautiful Chinese model. She's hot. I'd tap that.

Anyway also I want to say to all the mother out there in the world

Until next time, happy gaming.