Interloper View

I expected a lot of people wanted to see this movie but was still surprised when I tried to book the ticket online one week before the movie started in our local theaters. Half the seats were already taken. Had I waited until Thursday, I would not be able to get any good seat. The movie continued from the post credit scene of Thor: Ragnarok where the ship carrying the survivors of Asgard encountered Thanos’ ship. From then, it was action all the way. Since most of the Marvel movies were building up to this story, majority of the characters also appeared here. The few missing were Hawkeye and Antman. The Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy were powerful but no match to Thanos and his lieutenants. From previous movies, Marvel were willing to kill off major characters such as Odin, Quicksilver. However, the number of characters killed off in this movie was still surprising. The carnage and destruction surpassed the two earlier Avengers movies. However, I was still surprised that t...

I was reluctant to subscribe to any streaming service but since it was offered free, I decided to try it out. This is my impression of the service. iFlix Logo Selection IFlix provides a combination of Korean and English movies and television series. There is a collection of Marvel movies, of which Guardians of the Galaxy is the latest. Series includes shows from TLC, ABC, Nickelodeon, and ABC. The Korean selections are from O!k and tvN. There are also some Malay movies and Malay series as well as Malaysian Football. I found some great Korean movies and series which I would not have found without this service. Only one of two series are up to date - The Flash and Britannia. The variety is enough to keep me occupied. Download Download for offline viewing is only available for series. Downloads are disabled for movies. Downloads expire after seven days. When downloading, we are prompted for the resolution to download, so that we know how much storage will be consumed by the dow...

Spider-man: Homecoming is the latest reboot of Spider-man. I expected it to be great but the feedback from my family were as follows: My son: “The story is too cliche”. My daughter: “It was Meh!” My wife: “The story does not get me emotionally involved!” What I liked The introduction to Toomes was good, providing with his motivation; change to survive. However, I felt a bit irritated with the time spent on Peter making his video. I realize it is meant to show us his enthusiasm and excitement but I felt it a bit out of place. His interaction with Karen (his suit) was hilarious. The potential for the suit is incredible; maybe even more capable than Ironman suit (even though they were both invented by Tony Stark). Using Captain America videos to teach children good values was great. The movie ties very nicely to other MCU movies explaining what happens alien technologies leftover after the Avenger battles. Which makes me wonder, does the same happen for the battle occ...

The thriller for the movie looked interesting enough with lots of action so I thought how bad could a story of King Arthur be. The movie is a complete departure from the legend of King Arthur. Modred was killed by Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, at the beginning of the movie. Excalibur is made from Modred’s staff; that was never the case in any of King Arthur’s tale before. In the past, King Arthur is crowned the king immediately after he pulls the sword from the stone but in this movie, he had to learn how to use the sword. Merlin did not appear in the movie, instead you have a mage that is more like the Beastmaster than a mage. Vortigern, Uther’s brother took over the kingdom. The story was also very confusing. There was a point where he threw away the sword and then later he has the sword again. How does Arthur with a handful of comrades evade the whole army of Camelot and why does the army support Vortigern and try to kill the true heir of the kingdom. The 2004 version ...

I decided to watch The Mummy because I was given a free ticket. I tried going yesterday but the cinema hall was full (except for the first two rows), so I decided to book the ticket online and went today. The story was straight forward; an ancient princess made a pact with the devil and was sealed alive in a tomb. She is then set free by a person with questionable ethics who in turn was cursed by her. In the end, that person becomes a hero. As part of the Dark Universe, there is a team specialized in seeking out monsters, study them and destroy them. The leader of the team is Dr Jekyll who has to inject himself with a serum periodically in order not to turn into Mr Hyde. Tom Cruise plays Nick Morton who uses his position as a U.S. military officer to recover artifacts and sell them in the black market. His friend Vail appears to be there to provide some comic relief. Overall, the movie was enjoyable but not very memorable. Disclaimer: I was not paid to write thi...

My son wanted to watch Cars 3 but will only be released in August so we decided to watch Despicable 3 instead and I am glad we did. The main villain of the show is Balthazar Bratt, who was a former child actor who portrayed a young super villain which was cancelled when he reached puberty. Gru was fired from the Anti-Villain League by its new leader because of his failure to apprehend Bratt. His minions thought that this would be a good opportunity for them to become villains again. They abandoned him after he flatly refused them. Only two minions remained because they were not present when the rest of the minions made their demands to Gru. This set the stage for Gru to meet his long-lost twin brother Dru. They were separated when their father and mother divorced - each taking one of the twins. Turns out both parents were disappointed with the child they raised. The father was a super villain but Dru was not good at being one while the mother did not want Gru to be a super ...

When the thriller first came out for Wonder Woman, I thought it would not be very interesting; I expected a dated and dull scene set in the 60s. After watching the movie today, I am glad the movie was totally different. It turns out to be one of the best movie from the DC universe since Man of Steel. Since this movie tells about the origins of Wonder Woman, it contains some basic elements such as She was formed from clay (so she is not really one of the Amazons). Her first enemy is Ares, God of War. The first man she meets is Steve Trevor. Her primary weapons are the bracelet and the Lasso of Truth. She goes by the name Diana Prince. I loved the pace of the story, where at a young age, she was already interested in learning to fight against the wishes of her mother. The mother finally relented but asked that her training be tougher than the others on the island so that she will be best and surpass her trainer. Even though Diana was powerful and knowle...

I heard of Ray Kroc when some people approached me to join a multi-level marketing group, using him as an example how networking and franchising can help make me rich. I joined the group for a short time but was not really successful in it. As a result of the above experience, I was intrigue when I heard of The Founder, a movie about Ray Kroc. I was able to identify with him the challenges of trying to sell five-spindle milkshake maker, the frequent rejection he had to face (but I did not find his sales pitch that convincing). His experience with the slow service and wrong orders at the various dining establishments are still present today. It was incredible to see how Dick was able to remove all things that did not add value to their business and developing a process that made their restaurant very efficient while maintaining quality and consistency. However, Ray Kroc found more value in the brand name. One of the things Ray learned when he recruited franchisees was...

I was looking for a movie to watch with my wife and decided on The Warrior’s Gate. I thought it was a normal Chinese Kung Fu movie but was deeply mistaken. The movie started with a Kung Fu fighting sequence but from a video game. Turns out it was an English movie. It is a movie about a boy (Jack Branson) who lives with his mother (I do not remember what happened to his father) facing some bullies in school. His mother was about to lose their home because she has not been able to sell any houses for several months. He worked for a Chinese man who gave him an ancient looking box.  The night after he took the box back to his room, a Chinese warrior appeared and seeking his game alter ego (Black Knight) but settled with him instead. He was to protect a princess. It started with a difference in culture but soon he managed to introduce his culture to her before she was kidnapped. He followed the kidnappers into the box even though he did not know how to fight. The prin...

I used to like X-men comics, however, I found that the stories contain too much negative energy, hatred between men and mutants. I realize that there a lot of similarities in reality. Anyway, I still went to watch this movie. The movie starts in ancient Egypt, where En Sabah Nur (aka Apocalypse) was revered as a god on the way to transferring to a new body. As the process started, a group of people tried to kill him by bringing down the pyramid and killing the new body before the process completed. They were partially successful in their attempt - he was protected by some of his powerful followers who died protecting him. His revival in 1983 appears to be due to the action of Moira, who was following some worshippers of Apocalypse - she left the entrance open and allowed the sunlight into the cavern and activated the device used by En Sabah Nur and woke him up. We are then introduced to Angel and Nightcrawler - forced to fight with each other in an underground fight club w...

This movie was recommended to me by my brother. In a way, it is inspiring to see how Eddie dedicated his life (from the age of 10) to one goal - participate in the Olympics. Parents are supposed to support their children and help them achieve their dream, however, looking at what Eddie, that dream was clearly impossible. At first it was cute, dressing up and going out in the middle of the night heading towards the “Olympics”. I guess it is not that bad then, but if my children were to do that I would go crazy and immediately ground them. The world is not safe for a 10 year old to go out into the street on his own. As he grew up, he started trying different kinds of sports and it was obvious that he is not your typical sportsman - he was bad in almost everything he tried. At the end, he settled upon ski jumping - a sport that no one from his country participates (but used to). This is something I can relate to - join an activity where there is little interest and you can be...

Term Life is a story of Nick Barrow, who plans heist, but does not participate in them. A failed heist resulted in the death of the son of a cartel leader, Victor Fuente. Victor believed his kid was killed by Nick and wanted to kill Nick for it. The movie was slow in the beginning, but as the movie progressed I started enjoying it. Nick kept away from his daughter, Hailee because he did not want her to be involved in his world of crime. However, he had to went Victor sent his men after her. Hailee did not want anything to do with him either slowly grew to understand and love him. It was interesting to see how Nick uses his understanding of human behavior to plan out his work and how he uses it to hide in plain sight - especially when he told his daughter using wigs and sunglasses will make her stand out instead of helping her hide her identity. Later she asked him to show her how she plans out his heists. He did that by describing how to knock off a bakery - number one knowi...

The movie started in 1991 where Hydra being brought from a cryogenic chamber, his captors had a book that contains instructions on how to make him obedient to their command. He was then dispatched to steal a briefcase and leave no witnesses. This is later tied to the main storyline of the movie - similar to the Iron Man 3 where the something that happened in the past comes back to haunt us. As for the what led to the civil war, the destructions and bystanders killed in the earlier movies - Avengers, Captain America 2, Avengers 2 placed pressure on the government to control the Avengers. However, Peggy Carter reminded Captain America that sometimes it is necessary to stand up for what is right even if everybody else disagrees. The Sokovia Accord was proposed to place the Avengers under the jurisdiction of the United Nations. Tony Stark immediately supported the proposal because of of the guilt he felt after he was confronted by one of the mothers of victims in Sokovia. Steve on the...

This is an R rated movie and not a movie for children, so this is not one of those movies that I want my children to watch. The movie beginning was refreshing, Martha’s classmates shared what they wanted to be when they grow up - policeman, lawyer etc, but she came out and said that she is a T-Rex. Years later, she was having problem finding the right man and her best friend was trying to help her after her last boyfriend cheated on her. Mr Right is a reverse hitman, instead of killing people he is assigned to kill, he kills the ones who hired him. He noticed her in a convenience store and immediately took a liking to her and asked her out. Even though he told her that he is a hitman, she thought it was a joke until much later in the movie. After finding out that he is a real killer, she tried to break up with him but could not. Instead, he promised not to kill, even though there were many people out to kill him. Great jokes throughout the movie and love how the way he kills ...

Initially I was not interested in watching Zootopia in the cinema, but my son expressed interest in the movie. However, he was too busy with a lot of other activities and was unable to go with us. Instead I took my daughter with me to the movie. We loved it, the storytelling was great, it has mystery, plot twist and humor. We are first introduced to Judy Hopps, a bunny who wanted to the first rabbit to join the police force, but both her parents did not support the idea. They preferred that she continued the family tradition and remain a carrot farmer. Most would have succumbed to the pressure and give up the dream but not Judy. Her partner is Nick Wilde a fox; Judy fell for one of his scams during their first encounter, but managed to blackmail him to help her later in the movie. The movie makes good use of stereotypes in the story, showing how societies prejudice pressures makes some of these stereotypes, self fulfilling (as in the case of Nick). Judy and Nick reminds me of 48 h...

I was looking forward to watching this movie since it was announced and finally watched it this afternoon. The first part of the movie was used to help us understand the reason why Batman decided to go up against Superman. It was a nice to have Luther explain how he staged various events to push Batman and make him want to kill Superman. It is surprising to see the Kryptonian technology lacks basic security and how easy it was for Luther to take over the ship and use it to create Doomsday. The system appears more secure in the Man of Steel movie. It could be that Luther more tech savvy compared to Lois Lane. The subtle introduction of Diana Prince is effective, I thought she was working for Lex Luthor when I first saw her. She had not intended to join the fight, but changed her mind upon seeing the news on the plane about to leave the city. The secret file stolen from Luther provides an opportunity to introduce characters for the future movies without them actually appearing i...

Prior to the announcement of this movie, I did not know much about the character. The thriller was peaked my interest. I went to watch the movie yesterday with my wife but could not bring my children along due to the rating (even though they were interested). My wife missed all most of the jokes (due to her grasp of the English language) so did not enjoy the movie. Deadpool has the healing power of Wolverine and the wisecracking habit of Spiderman. Ryan Reynold is perfect for the role, poking fun of his previous role in Green Lantern asking not be given a green suit or any animated suit. He also referred to the limited budget for the movie saying why there were only two X-men in the movie. I guess it is true, sometime self deprecation is useful approach to humor. It was fun to watch how he grew his hand back after he severed it to escape from Colossus. His character and behaviour did not change much before and after his transformation into Deadpool. Colossus did not feel right in ...

I took my children to watch this movie last night. It is a Japanese live action version of a popular anime series (with English subtitles). I was surprised that both of them immediately agreed to watch the movie at night.  This is the first time my daughter has been to the movies at night. The poster for the movie is a picture of a person with a smiley face was not very impressive. However, after watching the movie, I found it funny and understand why my children wanted to watch the movie. The story is about an octopus-like creature threatening to destroy the world on March of the following year. The creature had just destroyed a large part of the moon leaving only a crescent. It is strange that such a powerful creature wants to be a teacher for 3-E of a prestigious Kunugigaoka Junior High School. It appears that the creature was fulfilling a promise to a former teacher to class 3-E. The students gave the teacher a  nickname Koro Sensei. As the movie progress, we get...

Based on the previous Hitman movie, I expected a lot of action and I was not disappointed. There was a lot of action and killing throughout the movie. The first part was confusing with Agent 47 trying to kill Katia when they were to team up (based on the thriller). Later in the movie, he explained to Katia that he was only marking her but did not really explain why he needed to do that. The movie felt very much like Terminator 3 where two invincible killers try to kill each other in order to get their prize, first Katia and later her father. The purpose was pursuit is to create an army of agents similar to Agent 47 and Katia’s father, one of the founder of the original program was the key. The leader of the competing agency is an old acquaintance to Katia’s father and wants to create an army for his organization but his connection with the original project was never explained. Katia was one of the subject of the original project which created Agent 47. Apparently the agent numb...

I went to this movie without any expectation - the thriller did not provide much details of the movie. I vaguely remember reading The Man from U.N.C.L.E. comics but do not remember much. It was refreshing to see that the movie using 1960s setting - so many remake of the old television and movies were modernized and did not really feel right. The cat and mouse chase between the two main characters (Solo, the American agent and Kuryakin, the KGB agent) would great, a well choreographed dance with each trying to kill the other but failed. It also sets a stage for the rivalry that is seen throughout the movie. This movie is about how The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was formed. I still do not understand why it is given that name since there is more than one person. While the original series had only two main characters, this movie had a third agent - Gaby, a female agent (revealed at the later part of the movie). The technology used in the movie appears exaggerated with the bugging devices...