Movie 1: Election 2
Time: Wed, 7.25pm
Venue: Jubilee, Ang Mo Kio Central.
Director Johnnie To continues the saga of Ho Sing, a secret society that has the history of 300 years, where the seniors are electing a new chairman to run the society for 2 years. Louis Koo and Simon Yam are the contenders for the election, and Yam has the desire to run for another 2 years again. (If you have watched the prequel, you get what i mean when he killed Tony Leung Kar Fai with a piece of rock.) Koo, being his favourite assistant cum the biggest threat, falls out after both of them have a conflict of interest in the trial. To be the chairman, the killing begins.I leave you guys to see what happens in the end. But seriously speaking, Koo did 2 things that irks me, and makes the movie an unforgettable classic. You get what i mean when i tell you this:
Sin 1: To save his skin, he killed his bestfriend, who is an undercover for the police. (Note: Koo himself is a police undercover too.) The handsome hunky looking bespectacle dude, unfortunately, was tied up and kept into a sack, and thrown into the middle of the sea. My god, what a waste of cute looking guys.
Sin 2: Koo killed Yam's assistant, chopped and make mincemeat out of him. He chopped the body (where the audience could see the parts coming off from the body), placed it into the mincemeat machine and viola, here comes the freshly made mincemeat. Eventually, the mincemeat enter the doggie's stomach for dinner. Aunties and ah sohs oohs and aahs and aiyohs throughout the scene.
Mabey the ah sohs should think twice before bringing their kids to queue up for free tickets to an adult movie in future.
Movie 2: The Sentinel
Time: Thurs, 11am
Venue: HP Hall, The Cathay
Just in case why it is named HP Hall, The Cathay Hall 2 is sponsored by Hewlett-Packard, your well known PC cum Printer coy. The aging Michael Douglas had an affair with Kim Basinger, who plays the 1st Lady of US in this action thriller, about Douglas, who works for the secret service for 25 years, was framed for a conspiracy of assisnating the US President.
Director Clark Johnson ( who brought you S.W.A.T ) fails to bring in any new surprises into the thriller. Douglas, after seeing him playing as a US President in The American President (1995) and Detective Nick Curran in Basic Instinct (1992), he rotate his role as police officer, business man and yada yada yada...
Now, he plays an agent in the secret service. Not much chemistry with co-actor Kiefer Sutherland, who plays an FBI agent who investigates the conspiracy.
It was so so to see 2 uncles solving the riddle to find the mastermind, but interesting to see Douglas and Basinger having an affair, despite their old age in the movie industry.
Movie 3: 16 Blocks
Time: Thurs, 1.05pm
Venue: Hall 4, The Cathay
Richard Donner of Lethal Weapon fame casts the aging Bruce Willis (he is aging, gone were the days he chased after the crooks in Die Hard.), Mos Def and aging David Morse (made the history in Taiwan for being the 1st American actor to be nominated in Taiwan Golden Horse Award for the supernatural thriller Double Vision with Tony Leung Kar Fai and Rene Liu.) in the thriller, where Willis has to bring Mos Def, a witness to police corruption, to the court by 10am. They left the prison at 8.10am, and all hell breaks loose from Chinatown in NYC where Willis gets himself some boose and locked the talktative Mos Def into the car. The crooked cops wants to kill Mos Def, and when Willis killed the killer who attemp to silent Mos Def, the duo has to run across 16 streets to get to the court before 10am.Coompared to The Sentinel, 16 Blocks gives a harsher and more real look of the crooked cops in America. Slightly more violent and more gripping sequences than Sentinel. Filmed in the real time (where the story has to be told from a certain time to the deadline, no few hours later, no a night later, no 1 week later, no nothing.) and in the busy street of NYC, 16 Blocks is definitely digestable. However, Mos Def seems to take the limelight of Bruce Willis, where he have no problem throwing out 10 sentences in a chaotic hour. Willis, on the other hand, does not have much dialogue in it, except that he develops a beer belly specially for 16 Blocks.
Indeed, it kills a lot of my time so as to make life easier, but at the same time, i am making up my loss for NS right now. After seeing what will be playing in the theatres during my 2 weeks o confinment, these 3 are definitely much more better than what will be making into its way to the theatres.
And here is the score card:
Election 2: 7/10
Sentinel:6/10
16 Blocks: 7/10