Reviews

Fox thinks that they might generate the same hype as what Lionsgate did for The Hunger Games, though it looks pretty decent, it never comes any closer to Katniss' revolution. It is properly story-driven and undeniable an intriguing young adaptation without any annoying unnecessary stuffs, changing the idea of Hunger Games with a maze and end the story just like Cabin in the Wood except that with some proper explanation do not really contribute to make the film looks brilliant, but more on recycling the same idea. When the film starts to break out to find an exit from the creepy and horrifying maze, the twisted ending is not really surprising but more to the mindset of the studio that they hint to produce more sequels. However, the performance of the young casts are good and the strong scores have actually made the adventure looks extremely thrilling.

Family and trust are two huge themes that play an essential role in this sequel, making it one of the most successful and emotional summer blockbusters this year behind Days of Future Past. Director Matt Reeves is able to embrace the challenge to maintain the epic strength from Rise of the Planet of the Apes and deliver good story, though slightly underwhelming strong human-apes relationship and a bit of overlong in the first half of the film. The plot itself is pretty straightforward, ventures in four main aspects - home, family, war and future; predictable but full with moral values. The apes are mimicking human by having the same personality which indirectly let audiences to see our own real personality from what had happened among the apes this time. Although the climax does not seems to be extremely exciting, the most successful move of this film is to hire Michael Giacchino as the composer who has contributed both horror and emotional types of scores to enhance the darker tone of the film.

While one might step into the theater expecting just an amazing love story of a young couple, you might actually leave the hall with whole lots of additional surprising beautiful thoughts. It brilliantly combines humors, love, inspiring and heartbreaking moments of the two main characters who suffer from cancers. Other than the love of the adorable couple, it is also well balanced with the sweet family relationship and friendship; which all of these elements are switching well between the fictional and the medical parts. Both Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort spark a great chemistry, they immerse well into the characters and illustrate the audiences with different level of emotions. The film does not use much of scores, instead choose to manipulate musics that indeed fit the story perfectly. It may also be one of the most pathetic film with sad moments and cancer suffering, but the true beauty of this film is its beautiful metaphors and soul-salving quotes that remind all of us not to give up easily, as life is always amazing for everyone.

The 4th entry of the Transformers series has ventured into a fantasy adventure with completely different cast, different style and different tone but Michael Bay proves that he does not really need a superior Oscar level story to maintain his robotic franchise as an entertaining popcorn flick. While the destruction is not as big as in Dark of the Moon, adding more retro style fighting scenes between Transformers would definitely fulfill the fan base but they might be a bit upset due to the limited appearance of the cool Dinobots and Galvatron. Of course, being the first to be filmed in IMAX 3D cameras, Bay has guaranteed a sophisticated visual stunning experience to the audiences. Kruger's script might be a little bit of overlong with some usual unnecessary scenes but it is glad to see that the overall tone of the film appears to be more serious. Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci performed well together with the robots, Kelsey Grammar is perfectly made up for the villain; but Jack Reynor and Nicola Peltz lost their chemistry with Wahlberg. The scores, composed by both Hans Zimmer and Steve Jablonsky, as well as music from Imagine Dragon have changed as well, but it is still powerful and explosive just as the film. Overall, audiences would just need a relaxing mind to enjoy this summer blockbusters which is totally full of fun without needing to squeeze their mind until the ending.

All of the ideas in the film are familiar and repeatedly used before in major Hollywood film but director Doug Liman has done a mix and match brilliantly by adapting from the original novel and then recombining the elements from The Source Code with alien invasion into something refreshing which audiences have not seen for a long time throughout the cinematic experience. While it starts off a bit slow with the usual style of mission impossible and a little bit of video game effects, it builds into a cool and thrilling adventure thanks to the great inspiring yet emotional chemistry between Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. With addition of some smart dark humors, chilling action scenes, strong scores and stunning visual effects during repetitive death/ life, the film has turned out as a successful and entertaining science fiction for this summer.

Dreamworks is challenging Pixar to make one of the most epic and meaningful trilogy just as what Toy Story has achieved previously. The sequel is not only ambitious but also much more daring in its theme and story telling style. The Vikings have ventured into an adventurous and bigger expanding world as compared to the first one, more complexity in terms of plots and characters, outstanding cinematography of two focusing themes - dragons racing and war. It is impressing but risky to see it goes deep into a darker tone which Disney never has a gut to do so. Overall, with amazing scores mix from John Powell and Jonsi; it is just beautiful, fully emotional and the bonding between Hiccup and Toothless grows even stronger, making the sequel a long lasting memory more to the young adults.

X-Men is the only special superheroes franchise that is brilliant enough to make its installment to act as sequel and prequel at the same time. Bryan Singer has successfully turned it into ten times bigger that what Avengers has done, by gathering all of the great characters and separate them with balanced characters developments. It is definitely one of the best screenplay since The Dark Knight trilogy, which utilise time travelling at best to deliver the finest and most emotional installment ever in the franchise with well combination of humors, thrillers, cool actions, great effects and amazing yet powerful scores. Hope and faith are two essential inspiring elements in the film that it ends just in perfect.

It tries to be big and ambitious by having a good source of ideas but the screenplay itself appears to be lost in momentum by having a lot of flaws, being slightly boring and illogical. It is a science fiction that combines conflicts of supercomputer, misuse of technology advance, humanity and moral ethics but ended up unclear whether to focus on which element. The story has chosen to just simply progress without going further in details; which might leave an impression of not to confuse the general audiences by being straightforward. However, it is considered fine for Wally Pfister's directional debut as he compensates by providing the film with a great cinematography and visual effects. While the performance of Johnny Depp does not seems to be outstanding, at least, the reveal of real intention of the main character at the ending seems to be favorable.