Chatter Of The Squirrel

Movie: Gabriel

Watched this with KinHup cos we happened to be at the cinema, and bored.

I’ve seen the trailer for Gabriel, and it looked like a Highlander / Blade kind of movie, with fists and guns.

Finite number of immortals fighting each other. Low budget-ish, given the unfamiliar names in the credits, thus putting the movie in the same category as Night Watch perhaps…

7 fallen angels and 7 arch-angels, made human and fighting in Purgatory.

But I found the story predictable. No surprises at all. I’ve read enough stories from Vertigo comics to know how fictions often deal with fallen angels.

I even predicted the nonsensical and gratuitious love scene. It’s not typical of angel stories. But it must have been piss added by a random producer to make the movie taste better. (Editors and producers tend to favour the flavour of their own bodily excretion.)

The fights are few and far in between, and the quality of the choreography left much to be desired. The movie was no where near what its trailers tried to make it out to be. Factoring in the creative poverty of the choreographers, it was apparent that the movie cannot be saved by the merit of the climatic fight scene. Therefore, it must end in a twist.

A very obvious twist, that one should figure out about 30-40% into the movie.

Movie: American Gangster

Denzel Washington. Russle Crowe. Just doing what they do.

Bored.

Good acting.

But boring story.

Movie: Cloverfield

This movie is the bastard child of Blair Witch and Godzilla.

Went to watch it cos was with KimHoong and CheeKidd on Wednesday, and there wasn’t anything else to watch at Cineleisure. It’s either that or smell what The Rock is cooking, having already seen Gabriel and American Gangsters earlier with KinHup.

I’ve already heard about Cloverfield, and knew I won’t be able to tolerate the motion sickness. But what to do…

Spent most of the movie with my eyes closed, peeking out only when the monsters appeared.

Still brought me to the brink of puking though, but managed to keep my lunch down.

Not much else needs to be said about Cloverfield. If you’ve seen Blair Witch, if you’ve seen Godzilla, then you can imagine exactly what it is.

And just to remove the tension of the ending… It ended like Blair Witch, and not Godzilla.

Movie: Rogue Assassin

Mr. Transporter is FBI.

Mr. The One is a Yakuza assassin, then a Triad assassin, then killing whoever he likes.

The general plot is fine. Got a decent ending.

But the director is talentless. He’s done a couple of Eminem music video. And suddenly jumped to an action movie with big ticket stars? Perhaps a rare opportunity for Jet Li to elevate himself from crappy action flicks, to something with a bit more story. But no luck again.

Inexplicably, the director took all these great stars, and have them posture in front of each other. Excessively. He barely stopped short of asking the actors to unzip their pants and measure their man-hoods on camera. So many scenes just didn’t make sense!

Even Devon Aoki was in the movie! But all Miho did was order a chef’s salad with dressing on the side, while figuratively castrating two men with her literal knife.

With the cast and the story, I just felt that this movie could have been so much better. But why did they ask an MTV director to do the job?

Movie: Eastern Promises

Aragorn is a Russian mobster in London. The King Kong girl is a midwife.

A Russian sex slave dies and is survived by an illegitimate child.

There’s a mob boss. A closet homo. A couple of gang killings.

And one long knife fight sequence in a sauna where you can see Aragorn dressed only in body ink. If anyone wants to see his manhood flopping around, run to the DVD store and grab this movie.

Otherwise… *SNORE!!!!*