Movies Update

Over the past couple of days or so, I watched quite a few movies. I had actually wanted to watch Men in White also, but it was sold out, so we couldn't manage to catch it. Nonetheless, I'd still like to talk about some other feature films I watched.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

The final installment of the Pirates trilogy, although some fans have started rumours that there are talks of a Pirates IV.
I remember I watched the first Pirates Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl on VCD during some chalet. Then I watched the second Pirates Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest alone in the cinema, that was the first and only time in my whole life I went to the cinemas alone. And now, Pirates III, after an extremely excruciating wait.

I loved Pirates III no matter how bad the reviews are, no matter what anyone else says about it, I just know I loved it. It was funny, and exciting, and interesting, and filled with really cool Johnny Depp. It answered all the questions left behind by Pirates II and wrapped the whole Pirates installment up. The effects were also cool, and all the characters showed character, with the glaring exception of Sao Feng who did nothing except say "Welcome to Singapore", but with the delightful example of the undead monkey who stole my heart.

At 168min long, it's well worth the ticket price without being long drawn and boring.
A 9.5/10 with the 0.5 deducted for the lack of depth of Sao Feng's character.

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Zodiac

It's a film well worth watching. I saw the trailers for quite some time already, and ever since I saw the trailers, I thought that this would be a really good show, and it didn't disappoint. Based on a true story about this serial killer, but because in real life the crime is still unsolved, what the film could do was only to propose of possible theories which the author of the book came up with. It's clever and good, but mostly the film appeared to be a documentary of the book with little creativity flaired by the director, but it isn't that bad a thing for a film of this genre.

Into the film, the way Robert Graysmith became obsessed over this serial killer reminded me horrendously of The Number 23, you can see my examination of The Number 23 in my blog piece here. But I must say Zodiac had a stronger plot after all it was adapted from a book, and the whole structure of Zodiac was more planned out and less confusing. Perhaps because Zodiac's based on a real life story, I can feel a stronger liking for this than The Number 23 even though when watching the latter I loved it too.

This was another long film at 158min, but it was because they covered a long span of like a couple of decades before concluding the whole event. A 9.5/10 film too, with the missing 0.5 somewhere because there's the lack of cohesiveness of the whole film and the lack of style.

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Ocean's Thirteen

Yet another sequel, this is the third installment of the Ocean's franchise. Wait, it sounds weird because this sounds like there were 13 installments of the Ocean's story, but in fact there's only three. I watched Ocean's Eleven on TV and really liked it a lot because come on everyone loves a clever deception. Bad guys are cool~ In anticipation of Ocean's Thirteen, I rented Ocean's Twelve to watch last week, but somehow, I didn't quite like the twists to the plot and the ending seemed a bit weak. However, Ocean's Thirteen brought back the delight of the Ocean franchise with the funny bits back and the amazing characters and a very clever deception.

I'm always amazed with how the character work together. Danny Ocean's the clear leader since they are called Ocean's Eleven, so it's assumed that the ten other people work under Ocean, but there's the charming Rusty who seems to be the shadow king. In the words of the characters themselves, when Linus asked them who they's look for when they have problems or have stuff to bring up, all of them answered "Rusty". In a way, Rusty isn't Ocean's sidekick, but something more interesting. The sidekick character is left for Linus to be. Linus is amazingly dumb and innocent which also makes him quite cute, he tries so hard to act like the model sidekick that he's just so funny. The Ocean series is a splendid example of how to incorporate so many characters and so many stars well into a big budgeted production without making anyone unhappy.

I quite like the plot of Ocean's Thirteen with the deception they were to carry out so masterfully planned, and all the work that they did worked out so well and according to plan although there were some hitches, luckily they were able to work everything out and their planned worked. Simple and good, no need for too many frills and thrills. What I like most were all the inside jokes being made and the running gags, continued from the style of the previous Ocean movies.

122min packed in a whole lot of fun and laughter, me gives it 9.5/10 because well, there's really a lacking in plot twists and everything just worked out so well, too well rather.

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So there, three films, all 9.5/10 films, all long films passing the two hour mark, but all highly recommended by Joan~ Wow, I just realised that the three films added up to 448min in grand total, that can make up to like watching Shrek 3 five times!