When I first heard that a movie adap­ta­tion of this book was going to be made, I was filled with appre­hen­sion. I am a strict believer of the quote “Don’t judge a book by its movie” but after watch­ing the trailer, I must say I have high hopes.

Be warned though, I per­son­ally think the trailer shows too much of the plot.

One Day– The offi­cial trailer

The story revolves around two peo­ple, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew who meet a day after their grad­u­a­tion and the rest of the movie will show the progress of their rela­tion­ship– or lack thereof– for the next twenty years on the anniver­sary of the day they met– 15^th July.

There is def­i­nitely some­thing refresh­ingly fresh and real­is­tic, yet depress­ing at the same time about the book and I am sure it will show well in the movie. Scenes shown on the trailer are pretty much accu­rate to the book, even to minor details like Emma Morley’s blue dress in which she wore for her ex-roommate’s wedding.

Written by Nishan Ganesan 

An amaz­ing take on the Cuban rev­o­lu­tion through the eyes of four very dif­fer­ent, true Cubans.

Soy Cuba(1964) — Trailer

A side note to those who wish to watch this film. A bit of knowl­edge on the Cuban rev­o­lu­tion will make your expe­ri­ance much eas­ier. If you do not know who Fidel Caestro is or that in the 1960s, polit­i­cal Cuba was a bat­tle­field, you are likely to get con­fused. Strangely, a ver­sion of this film with­out the harsh Russian trans­la­tions that punc­tu­ate the lovely Spanish dia­logues does not exist, and nei­ther does a Cuba with­out the Russian social­ist influ­ence. This film is openly anti-American and anti-socialist. In short, breath­tak­ing propaganda.

Written by Trey Seah

The Good: The fam­ily mes­sage, the well struc­tured story, a good char­ac­ter arc, good plants and pay­offs, and extremely good nuances.

The Bad: I guess the CGI at the end of the film is a lit­tle too fake? And the pen­guins were too cute for me to notice much of Jim Carrey. He did a great job, but the pen­guins were sim­ply cuter.

The Ugly: I was too busy enjoy­ing the movie. There weren’t really any killer points about this film. Perhaps the overly pre­dictable plot would be the killer. Then again, cliché works right?

Prior to watch­ing Mr Popper’s Penguins, I had no idea what this film is about apart from the fact that there are pen­guins involved. I did not have any expec­ta­tions for the movie at all, apart from the cute pen­guins, I don’t really know any­thing else. I’m not a fan of watch­ing movie trail­ers, and so the rest is his­tory. However, after watch­ing this film, I was indeed pleas­antly sur­prised, and this is one of the bet­ter films out of those I’ve watched (X-Men: First Class, Super 8, Green Lantern, Mr Popper’s Penguins) these 2 weeks.

The quin­tes­sen­tial Hollywood love story. Featuring two leads who would do
any­thing to be together. Well, this one is sup­pos­edly based on true events. Who played the lead char­ac­ters, you ask? The epony­mous Phillip Morris is played by Ewan McGregor, who is bet­ter known as “pre­quel Obi-Wan”. What about his lover? Natalie Portman? Nicole Kidman? No, this time he’ll be mak­ing out with Jim Carrey (among other… activ­i­ties), who’s play­ing Steven Jay Russell.

I Love You, Phillip Morris was given a very quiet release in 2010. It wasn’t even released in Singapore, so I had to pro­cure the DVD while I was over­seas. Set in the 1980 to 1990’s America, the film is basi­cally a love story told from the view­point of the pro­tag­o­nist, Steven Russell. Steven is a mar­ried man who is dis­con­tented with his lot until a car crash makes him decide to embrace his secret life: the life of a gay man. Without me giv­ing away too much, Steven lands him­self in jail and meets Phillip Morris. What fol­lows are Steven’s brazen (and mostly suc­cess­ful) attempts to escape from jail and make life good for him­self and Phillip.

Written by Parveen Kaur

An unmanned loco­mo­tive, “777”, car­ry­ing car­loads of haz­ardous chem­i­cals is on the way to Stanton, South Pennsylvania. At 70 miles per hour, efforts made to derail the train before it reaches Stanton fails but with only the heroic acts of two men, a vet­eran rail­road engi­neer (Frank Barnes) and a young train con­duc­tor (Will Colson), Stanton is saved by what could have been, the “biggest rail dis­as­ter in the his­tory of the northeast.”

And that is the “Unstoppable.”

My brother asked me, “Parveen, have you watched Unstoppable? I have the CD.” The first thing that came to my mind about the film was some police force unit, being “unstop­pable” in catch­ing crim­i­nals, etc. So I said play it. These kinds of movies do inter­est me to some extent but lit­tle did I know that this film was out of the con­text of what I was think­ing and far more inter­est­ing than any other movie I’ve watched before!

Written by Trey Seah

I’m here to review RocknRolla’s sound­track, a 2008 mafia movie directed by Guy Rtichie. It’s a movie based in British. You can read Andric’s review of the movie here.

On a side­note, he gave it 3.5÷5, which is a lit­tle low to me. I would seri­ously give the movie a solid 4/5. A must-watch on my list, but let’s move on.

Some say, a good movie sound­track is when you lis­ten to the sound­track, you can close your eyes and imag­ine the scene of the movie in your head. I beg to dif­fer. To me, a good movie sound­track would be deliv­ered when some­one who has never watched the movie before, lis­tens to the sound­track, and still be able to under­stand the feel of a movie.

That’s what this sound­track deliv­ered to my ears.

Sure, I enjoy the com­pos­ing genius of Hans Zimmer on movies like Inception and Batman, John Powell’s excel­lent work on the Bourne series. But RocknRolla? It’s in a class of it’s own.

Written by Christopher Sim 

The thing about watch­ing movies that have been “inspired” by estab­lished works or events is: part, if not most, of the plot would be known to you.

This was what I was think­ing about before going into the cin­ema today. Being a long­time fan of the Green Lantern comic series, the prospect of see­ing the printed, comic-book uni­verse being trans­ferred onto the movie screen excited me. How would the film’s mak­ers inter­pret the idea of a inter­galac­tic police force that adhered to a one-color dress code? How would Mark Strong por­tray Sinestro and bring us through his fall from grace? Well, I wasn’t dis­ap­pointed, but I cer­tainly was not sat­is­fied. As much as it pains me to say this, Green Lantern is basi­cally just another super­hero film rid­dled with clichés and hor­ri­ble acting.