RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN

Title : Race to Witch Mountain

Cast : Dwayne Johnson, Alexander Ludwig, Anna Sophia Robb, Carla Gugino

Genre : Action, Science fiction

Rating : Quite entertaining

Pic : wikipedia.org

Synopsis:

Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) is an average cab driver down town Las Vegas, until one day he meets alien siblings Seth (Alexander Ludwig) and Sara (AnnaSophia Robb), they give him a bundle of cash and tell him to go as soon as possible to one direction. While driving, some government agents pursue and try to catch them. Seth, whose ability is to penetrate any solid object move out from the running cab, standing in the middle of the street and crashes pursuer's car without even moving. Having succeed to escape from their pursuer, the siblings tell Jack to stop in front of an old ragged house.

The siblings enter the house, several minutes after Jack decides to follow. The house is quiet and abandoned, Seth and Sara are hiding behind a sofa when Jack shows up, they warn Jack to be very quiet. Seth leads the way, is entering some secret doors and exit to unusual place. A minute after Sara takes whatever they need to have, a fire attacked began. It's Siphon, an assassin whose mission is to eliminate Seth and Sara. Succeed to escape, Jack brings the siblings in a bar to refresh, and Sara explain that they come from a distant planet, sent by their parent to take their parents experiment results which contain lots of information about the earth, it will help them to save their dying planet without attacking and invading the earth, since the government of their planet is meant to do so. Not so long after, the agents show up and ask Jack to surrender, with the help of a waitress they escape from the ambush.
Jack decides to go back to city and meets one of his passenger, Dr. Friedman (Carla Gugino) at UFO expo and with her help, they will find the siblings' aircraft.

Comments:

The film is a mix between a family drama and action, well you can't expect Dwayne Johnson to play pure drama right? ^_^. Interesting, with easy to guess plot. I think if the government agents were made even more aggresive like you saw in the matrix or bourne identity, it will add some thrill in the movie. Anyway, it's quite entertaining for a weekend movie and if you want to see something light and a little bit of thrill.

Fun facts:

• It's a remake film, the original film is played in 1975
• Jack's cab number is the same with the original film in 1975
• imdb.com
  

KNOWING

Title : Knowing

Cast : Nicholas Cage, Chandler Catenbury, Rose Byrne, Lara Robinson

Genre : Adventure, Science Fiction

Rating : Nice with bad ending!

Pic : wikipwdia.org

Synopsis:

In 1959, the new opening William Dawes elementary school use a student's idea to remark the day with a time capsule. The capsule will be filled with drawings of students and will be open after 50 years. One of the students, Lucinda Embry, writes lines of number instead of pictures.
In 2009, Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury), whose father is a professor at MIT, received Lucinda's letter. Caleb's father, John (Nicolas Cage) accidentally find the meaning of Lucinda's number lines. At the end, he finds that all the numbers show accident dates and numbers of victims occur in the past 50 years, and according to Lucinda, 3 fatal accidents are going to happen. Meanwhile, Caleb is starting to receive visits of strangers and hear voices.

John is trying to convince his colleague, Phil, that they will face major disasters, but it comes to no avail. While searching to Lucinda, John meets her daughter, Diana (Rose Byrne). After train crash in the subway, Diana agrees to help John. They visit Lucinda's home and find strange rocks, Caleb and Abby (Lara Robinson), Diana's daughter, being left in the car and once again strangers come to visit them. While trying to solve Lucinda's last line, John then find out that the earth will face a doomsday. The sun is forecast to have a super flare, which will burn 3-4 planets around. Diana is panic and brings Abby and Caleb to evacuate and left John to solve Lucinda's last message.

Comments:

I almost chose Knowing for my best movie of the first quarter, but the end of the movie was really disappointing. It's almost the same watching Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull or The Forgotten which starred by Julianne Moore, great films but become real awful at the end. I know this is a film and people can do anything in it, but aliens? Come on, the ending made the movie really tasteless. The aliens took Caleb and Abby and put them in a new planet to start over, just like Adam and Eve. Boy, that's weird.
Anyway, maybe i'm not aliens fans, except for ET, but why would aliens have power to mess up earth's lifes? Just weird.

Fun facts:

• The phenomenon of people looking for patterns in randomness (number strings, faces in trees, shapes in clouds etc.) is called Pareidolia.
  

• A New York City subway operator is seen wearing an MTA logo on his uniform. However, he's wearing the logo that has not been used by the MTA since 1994.
• The character played by Nicholas Cage, a MIT professor, claims the ozone layer can be "burned away" by the Sun. The Sun's radiation ionizing the atmosphere MAKES the ozone layer. The only way to eliminate the ozone layer is extinguish the Sun, not have it send more radiation than usual.
• The solar flares knock out John's cellphone, yet he is still able to somehow receive the phone call from the gas station.
• They are opening a time capsule that was placed in the ground in 1959, when William Dawes Elementry School was built. The building that they are in front of is Camberwell High School. This building was built in 1941 and looks too old to have been built in 1959.
• They talk about caves near route 40 in Groten. There are no caves or route 40 in Groten.
• It has been scientifically proved that there is no possibility of our Sun ever emitting a super-flare as stated in the film. Flares are caused by manipulations in the Sun's magnetic and gravitational fields, these are common. However, for a super-flare to occur, there would need to be a massive celestial object (such as Jupiter) at a distance no further than the Earth, to have a massive pull on the Sun's gravitation, thus when breaking the magnetic bonds, a super-flare breaks out. Jupiter is much too distant from the Sun to ever have that effect and there is nothing else that large anywhere nearer.
• imdb.com
  

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

Title : THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

Cast : Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith

Genre : Science Fiction

Rating : Boring T_T

Pic : 21cineplex.com

Synopsis:

You can read it here

Comments:

Sorry, i really felt reluctant to continue posting it. Gosh, i need a week to finish this posting T_T.
At first i thought this movie was about saving the earth. The brave, heroic action like what you see in independent day, deep impact, or armageddon. But it was not and i was upset. How can some aliens decided not to destroy the earth just by looking at 2 persons? Well, that was just to easy. No conflict, no action, nothing huge apart from that blue amazing sphere. And compared to Matrix? A, a, way beneath (sigh)

CLOVERFIELD

Title : Cloverfield

Genre : Science fiction

Cast : Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel

Rate : The worst movie i've ever seen :(

Pic : wikipedia.com

Synopsis:

Intinya, film ini menceritakan tentang empat sekawan yang bertahan di tengah serangan monster yang menyerbu kota New York. Seluruh kota di luluh lantakkan dan patung Liberty sebagai simbol kebebasan, terpenggal kepalanya. Rob, Marlena, Lily dan Hud harus berjuang keras mempertahankan hidup dan menyelamatkan Beth yang terperangkap di reruntuhan apartment-nya

Comments :

Have you ever watch Gozilla? Nah, film ini ga jauh beda tuh.
Di Cloverfield, kita diajak untuk ikut dalam ketegangan yang terjalin dalam film tersebut, jadi berasa mengalami sendiri gitu. Tapiiiiiii, kalau anda orang yang melihat film untuk menikmati jalan ceritanya seperti saya, rasanya film ini termasuk yang tidak bisa dinikmati.
Frankly, gambarnya yang goyang membuat saya pusing. Semula saya masih berharap gambar goyang itu hanya di awal cerita, tapi ternyata di keseluruhan film gambarnya memang goyang!
Kalau anda pernah lihat video amatir tsunami yang ada di TV, nah seperti itulah film Cloverfield ini. Bagi saya, pengambilan gambar yang aneh itu membuat saya kehilangan minat untuk melihat cerita sampai akhir, yup saya keluar 40 menit setelah film dimulai, ga tahan bow, pusing!

• Melihat akting para pemainnya memang boleh diacungi jempol, saya tidak melihat muka terkenal disana tapi akting mereka sangat natural, dan kalau saja gambarnya ga ancur, saya pasti senang melihat film ini

Jadi, kalau anda termasuk yang tahan dengan gambar goyang, silahkan saja lihat film berdurasi 70 menit ini, tapi kalau saya? No way!

Fun facts:

• Selama scene di terowongan kereta api, kemeja Rob nampaknya bersih dengan sendirinya. Semula kemeja itu kotor dan bernoda keringat, kemudian menjadi bersih, lalu terlihat kotor lagi.
• Source: imbd.com