Reviews

First off, I enjoyed watching GLOW, even as a non-American, non wrestling fan. I personally rate things harsher than most, with 10s almost never given out and 9s very rarely, so my 7 would be most people's 8, meaning I actually like it pretty well.

Most of the show's highlights are covered extensively in the top rated reviews here, and I'm sure I have little to offer with regards to either the wrestling aspect of the story, or the overall 1980s nostalgia of the backdrop. Season 1 is well structured, focused and concise, and the two female leads both got plenty of chances to shine, which they absolutely did.

My main complaint lies with one particular aspect of season 2: I feel that not only is Ruth slightly underused in season 2, which is still somewhat understandable, given the addition of new characters/newly explored relationship dynamics, but also that when Ruth is given screentime, she's misused in certain episodes.

The only time Alison Brie was truly put to test as a dramatic actress (not talking about the wrestling action scenes) in Season 2, happened after Liberty Belle breaks her foot, when the two of them argued bitterly in her hospital room. In most episodes, she's just a supporting character with one vastly overused and annoying gimmick aka her Russian accent. The narrative thread swings wildly throughout the season and needs some focusing. I get it that the producers probably consider this as an ensemble cast, but since GLOW isn't a sitcom like The Big Bang Theory where little narrational continuity is required between one episode and the next, I can't be the only prolific film/TV buff who would like a little more focus on the central characters.

Also, like with the final season of The Office, I completely disagree with the writers' choice of a so called romantic interest for the top billed character. In the Office's case, after Steve Carell left, they spent the entire final third of the penultimate season building Andy and Erin as a true-love in waiting couple, with Andy chasing her all the way to Miami to win her back in typical Hollywood romcom fashion to end the season. This seemd such a perfect end to their on-and-off struggle to accept each other over the years, only for the show to completely ruin his character in the final season (granted there was the writer change and Ed Helm's schedule conflict) and ruining their relationship. After Erin dumped Andy, I stopped caring about the story because it was such a disappointing betrayal to what the writers themselves spent so much time and effort to build.

In GLOW's case, especially after the obvious reference to the MeToo movement in one of the earlier episodes where Ruth was sexually harassed by the TV exec, I actually felt bad for Sam when he tried to kiss Ruth in the formal in ep 9 and Ruth rejected and then literally ran away. What was that? They're doing a fine job with Sam's redemption arc up to that point. Straight after, at the end of the ep, Ruth tries to visit the camera guy's house uninvited, in clutches, and tries to climb dangerously tall flight of stairs alone. This is both corny and cliche, not to mention unrealistic and is the result when writers plan the key events over an entire season and then writes the story to fit this structure.

Finally, even if you simply had to have Ruth and the camera guy together by this point, what's so special about him? Anyone with half a brain can see that Ruth is the most talented of the whole bunch, so talented (and very beautiful) that the whole back story of her being 'completely unsuccessful as an actress her entire career before GLOW and remained an undiscovered nobody' beggars belief. If the camera guy is in any way an interesting character at all, then how come I can't even remember his name after binge watching the entire season? Would you cast someone like him, or write a character like him, as the male lead of a romcom or a romance story at all? To summarize, I care about Ruth's character development a great deal simply because I think it has potential to be the best part of the story and that I think she is the soul of GLOW. Ruth is supposed to be the central character of the show that holds the rest of the pieces together, at least that's what I gathered from watching season 1, and I feel that Alison Brie's considerable talent is being underused here in the 2nd season.

She's also an amazing voice actor, which I'm sure the creators of the show are well aware of, but they seriously need to explore more intersting venues of her character to add more depth, instead of endlessly recycling the Zoya thing. This is also why my least favorite episode from season 1 was where Ruth went to a party with the motel manager pretending to be Russian. I'm not Russian or Eastern European but seriously, Russian accents are not funny and gets tiring really quick, especially since we already had Borat 13 years ago for that gimmick, tone it down a notch when she's off stage.

I understand the need for variety over the course of a season, but even relationshp dramas need a little focus and continued character development, or you'll end up with the later seasons of TBBT. All said I still find enough parts of GLOW interesting enough to look forward future season(s).

This is the second feature film release in 2017 to be based on the popular IP "Xin Li Zui", and has an even bigger cast than the earlier one, with A-Lister Deng Chao starring. Sadly, most aspects of the film can best be described as "average", or to be expected.

The film attempts to utilize (thought about using the word exploit, but then decides against such a cynical expression) various controversies of yesteryear (referencing plenty of infamous cases that any adult living in China should be familiar with) to make the film appear "up-to-date", relevant, and socially conscious, and it more or less works. Other than this, however, the story has little that hasn't already been done to death by other filmmakers.

*spoiler alert* My major complaint about this film, is the similarity of the last 15-20 minutes of Act II to genre classic Se7en. Really, swap the identity of the poor victim from the male protaginist's wife (Gwenyth Paltrow in Se7en) to his adopted daughter, and you will have yourself an almost scene-by-scene, plot point-by-plot point repeat of the final 20 minutes of Se7en. I don't know about movies, but if you do something like this when writing an academic paper, your dissertation perhaps, those anti-plagarism softwares will be flagging like crazy and you will likely get caught for doing something that is really lame. *spoiler alert ends*

The technical departments are mostly fine with one exception, the editing. The editing in this film is absolutely terrible, to the point of being actively disruptive to my normal moviewatching process. Either cutting away from a scene-ending shot too soon, or ending a scene-starting shot too soon, or making a random cut out of nowhere, the editing is often clueless and I actively complained to my friends multiple times during the screening, and they were also annoyed by it. Granted, it is not AS consistently awful as in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, but that's not saying much, is it?

Most of the characters are built in your typical cookie-cutter fashion. The female lead delivers a particularly wooden performance that fails to measure against the even second most important female character in this film -- a 13 year old school girl played by an early teenage actor, which is quite something when you think about it.

Overall I would have rated this a 6/10, ie. okay to decent, if not for the obviously similarity to Se7en in the final 15 minutes of Act II. As it stands, a slightly disappoiting 5/10.

Other reviewers will no doubt cover the nicer aspects of this film, most notably the overall aesthetics, cinematography, sound, and the performances of the two main characters, more elaborately and in greater detail than I will be able to, so please allow me to focus on the areas of this film where I think should have been better.

The pacing after the promising first half-hour or so is sluggish at best, downright dreadful at worst. Knowing its runtime, I kept checking the watch to see where I was in the story, and I almost fell asleep twice between 30min to 1hr30min of this film.

About 15-20 mins worth of footage can easily be cut out of this film with minimal impact on the story progression or the characters. Quite a few of the dialogue scenes in the middle part just seem to go on forever. One example: the Japanese monk tells our main protagonist Bai Juyi of his trip across the seas to visit the Tang Emprie. This takes place RIGHT AFTER about 3 mins of mind-numbing dialogue, and this not-very-useful reveal takes the audience next to a series of scenes taking up another 3-5mins of runtime, scenes which depict his journey and which serve no other purpose whatsoever. This could have been done more cleverly with a flashback or two, each consisting only a few shots, with the monk's voiceover telling us the more important points. I don't know if the script was rushed during development or pre-production, (how can you rush the development?), but the dialogue scenes in Act I genuinely seems better written and more on point than later scenes.

What's worse, the first Act sets up a rather epic fantasy tale full of suspense and action, an impression which is then gradually crushed within the next hour or so, and will leave audiences more accustomed to traditional Hollywood narrative cinema bitterly disappointed, or feeling misled. I'm not an action fan or a genre fan at all, but I fail to see the point of making a big budget CGI fest set in a fantasy version of ancient China, baiting us with lots of Hollywood style action and suspense building in the first 30-40 minutes or so (in a way reminiscent of the 1999 Mummy, or other similar creature features), and then leaving the rest of the film completely void of both action and suspense, where all the CGI seemed to have done was depicting banquets and minor characters performing minor tricks.

Even I was bored with all the endless talking and disposition aka Chinese TV opera style narration that occupy more than half of this film, which is a complete waste of its big budget visual spectacles. I could have basically shut my eyes after the first Act, and would have gotten 90% of the story right just by listening to the endless dialogue and voiceover narrations. The storytelling, I'm afraid, simply isn't involving or engaging enough for me to care.

This is not helped by the fact that our two main characters, who are really well set up and looked really promising, was forced into secondary status and were practically useless in the second half of the story, which is a shame for all the potential for a dynamic relationship that was wasted. Both of the two main characters received decent build-up in the first half, only for it to stop there like an unfinished project. This leads us to another important issue which this film unfortunately does not satisfy, and that is, a coherent structure that makes the entire two hour story an organic whole. Setting up a whole new set of characters, some of them absolutely crucial to the plot, only halfway through the film is a big risk, and I'm afraid it doesn't pay off in this film's case, or doesn't work as well as intended.

*spoiler alert* Since at the core of the plot is a murder mystery, why would you leave our two "detectives" out of the solving of the mystery like this? This film makes this year's Murder on the Orient Express look like a detectie masterpiece, when it decides to just show the audience everything they have been asking themselves, plus everything they may have been wondering, plus everything they may not even aware are there, plus some things nobody asks for. The middle part really, really is too long for anyone who can't be satisfied by beautifully choreographed visuals alone. For the entire second half of the movie, our two main characters are just standing there at various scenes, witnessing flashbacks with the audience. They are passive, irrelevant, and useless, and this is such a waste to all the character building efforts in the first half.

The film basically ends without even a perceivable climax, and I don't mean that there has to be a grand action set-piece near the end. I know the scene which you may think is the film's climax, but to me, it is simply insuffient, narratively, structurally, or emotionally.

Ultimately, the story is rather similar to some of those ever-so-popular young adult Wuxia novels out there these days, where everybody is secretly in love with everybody else, where everyone and everyone's uncle have been harboring a secret identity/secret past, and artificial plot twists come in ever greater abundance the closer we get to the end.

To summarize, this is a very good looking film with great visuals and sets, a very promising first Act, and then kind of falls apart halfway through when the film itself becomes a confusing mess of two timelines, two sets of characters, and many irrelevant plot points. 6/10. Okay, but could've been much better.

The Intern is one of director Nancy Myers' better works in the genre, although not the best. It has its moments of bitter heartbreak, internal conflict, and fairy tale ending, but literally none of these evolve around the title character, but the intern's young female boss, played by Anne Hathaway. If you like her, or appreciate her performance, then you'll like enjoy this film, and vice versa. These emotions ultimately fall just short of inspiring, which is a shame. With more character development and a less predictable plot, perhaps it could have been even better. (Although its reception and box office numbers are still very respectable as things stand).

I imagine Robert De Niro's character was intentionally designed to stick as close to the wise old man/sweet father-figure stereotype as possible, and in De Niro's case with a perma-smile, and it works in this film most of the time.

However, this is also my biggest disappointment with The Intern. De Niro's character is inherently limited for the same reason that it works in the way it does. There is no character arc whatsoever for him in this film. Rene Russo aka his newfound love technically doesn't count, since this little romance subplot was as artificially inserted as they come, and could be seen coming by anyone familiar with the genre from miles away.

De Niro started the movie bored with retirement (this boredom not represented in any meaningful way), and he sees an opportunity to work in a new internet company which happens to be located in the same building where he spent his entire working career (little secret revealed halfway through with no consequence). De Niro's character finishes the movie with a girlfriend (Russo), a new close friend/boss (Hathaway), but how is he a different man than when he started? How is he changed? What has he gone through? Next to none.

One moment provides a glimmer of hope as De Niro and Hathaway engage in a heartfelt exchange in the hotel room on Hathaway's marital situation, a conversation which makes it plain obvious to the audience that we are at least halfway through Act III now, with one big resolution coming up soon to end the story. Disappointingly, Hathaway's crisis practically solves itself in no time (the cheating Hubby confesses his wrongdoing and begs for a second chance, which Hathaway happily accepts, thus giving the happy ending the filmmakers want to give us in a very rushed manner), De Niro is then back to showing the young-lings the wisdoms of life, teaching tai-chi to his boss who has just gone through a private nirvana and was born again. De Niro is the same man in everyway throughout the film.

My other complaint is that the plot twists are all too predictable, or perhaps it's just that I've seen too many similar films and all the usual premises have been done to death in them. The big reveal at the end of Act 1? Turns out the senior intern has a history with the building. The intern is unwanted by the boss, but gradually transforms her opinion of him, even becomes a part of her personal life? This can't be the first film where you've seen a similar plot. The central focus of Act 2? Turns out the boss's home life is far from perfect. How so? A cheating husband, of course. Perhaps I'm complaining too much. Hathaway's performance is stellar, and overall it has been a better than average viewing experience, but I can't see myself wanting to visit this again in future. 6/10 (fresh)

In light of Universal's lukewarm attempt at kicking start their planned Dark Universe earlier this summer with the underwhelming The Mummy reboot, I was suddenly reminded of Van Helsing, the supposed big budget summer season starter of 2004 for which the studio must have carried similar hopes, but ended up way short.

With the Mummy reboot, one could lay blame chiefly on the chaotic script which was beyond salvageable, not to mention Mr. Cruise himself allegedly spent months in the editing room after principal shooting. Cruise also brought his long time collaborator, Mission:Impossible writer/director Christopher McQuarrie to help with the script during development. Yet with a script like that, there was not much veteran playwright but first time blockbuster director Kurtzmann could do. With Van Helsing, it becomes harder to throw blames around.

Do you blame the incoherent and totally predictable mess of a plot to the badly written script? I suppose you could. Do you blame the million or so clichés and bad dialogue on the script, too? I suppose you could. Do you blame the absolutely horrible, laughably bad fake Eastern European accents uttered by Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxborough (just about the least menacing or scary villain they could have come up with), and David Wenham (whose sidekick character is the antithesis of funny) and over the top dramatic acting on the director? Again, I suppose you could. Since the film is written and directed by the same person, riding on the success of the two Mummy films, I guess that means you can just blame him then?

Yes and no. Universal's decision to put so many of their classic monsters into one popcorn summer movie with no clue whether it is supposed to be a horror, or fun action-adventure so it ended up being neither is also part of the problem, and a major part at that. The idea of making several solo origin movies first, and if these were successful, then make an ensemble tentpole obviously wasn't so hot back in 2004. Would the film have done differently if it were to come out 10 years later, under a director director? I doubt that too, seeing how The Mummy 3, The Wolfman, Dracula Untold and finally Tom Cruise's The Mummy turned out. It's totally understandable for Universal to be obsessed with their classic horror monster IPs, in the same way WB never seem to be able to let go of the classic folk legend IPs such as Pan/Jack the Giant Slayer/King Arthor that have caused them mostly flops. I'm sorry to say this, but Universal genuinely seem clueless at developing their horror monster IPs, ever since The Mummy returns 16 years ago.

Credit where it's due, the production value is excellent, which is to be expected given the large budget spent on making this film. The big CGI hallway sequences is no faker than The Matrix Revolution in late 2003, the female vampires are a bit awkward through my polished 2017 glasses, but other than that, the technical department have done their jobs superbly. There really isn't much that haven't been said about why the film's bad, on the other hand. The 'horror' aspect consist of only jump scares and very little else, and even Jackman's title character, the only one in the story not terribly underwritten, seems to lack in any kind of flavor so even Dr. Van Helsing becomes a bland and generic hero, one without an origin sub-plot or even a character arc. Where is the crisis for him, what is at stake here on the most personal level? The end of the world if Dracula is not stopped? I'm sorry but that's not good enough. Even the romance subplot feels forced.

(Not to mention this film started Jackman's unfortunate "holding my dead love interest in my arms while howling and sobbing in great pain, and doing all this topless" roles which was repeated 2 years later in X Men: The Last Stand.)

Ironically, Alan Silvestri's soundtrack proved to have enjoyed a far better shelf life than the film itself. Song's from the score was used all over TV, includin multiple times during the peak years of the world's most popular car show, Top Gear. Hearing the Van Helsing soundtrack while watching super cars race through southern Europe is pretty funny.

I agree with the 5-7 star reviews saying Van Helsing is great, mindless silly fun, I do. When the title Universal logo turns black and white and morphs into a burning torch, I was epically excited in my seat, expecting a truly scary film with a grander story than the Mummy films. Needless to say, I was immensely disappointed. I don't give out 8-10 scores easily, and 5-7 is my usual mark for a passable product, hence the score of 4 here, indicating disappointment.

I watched this documentary on its opening weekend with an old school friend who went to the same medical college where this film is set in and where the majority of this film's story occurs. I basically got a live commentary from my friend on the Who's Who of some of the medical staff, which was really insightful and for which I am very grateful.

This documentary mainly evolves around four ordinary inpatients and their families at the Ostetrics department of the University hospital, (in fact, all of the patients are rural farming families in Hubei Province). The patients encounter various problems and difficulties as their respective due dates draw nearer, which present bigger and tougher dilemmas for their husbands. The struggles clearly have enormous impacts on these families, and the film does not shy away from revealing the full magnitude of those difficulties, be that health-oriented or fiscal, nor the anxieties of the expectant mothers and fathers-to-be. It's hard for me, sitting in a comfy cinema seat, to sit through the rougher parts of the story, as hardened grown men were reduced to hard sobbing over seemingly insurmountable financial woes facing their wives' approaching child birth.

The editing is fairly standard and does not give the pretense of being narratively driven. This is more of an observation of fragments of people's lives in and outside the hospital ward. The main characters - four inpatients and their families - are shown in no particular sequential order. The medical orderlies, with one doctor in particular, command respect through their professionalism and sometimes inspiring speeches. The camera-work is also pretty straightforward for documentaries of this type and an apt choice given that by consistently using third-person it considerably enhances immersion on the part of the viewer. Also, given that this is a film about child birth, there is an actual uncensored child birth scene, so be warned, as such graphic content may not be everyone's cup of tea. The best part of this film is of course the way free flowing emotions are running wild. The truthfulness of the documentary lends power to creating dramatic tension the type of which rarely seen so convincingly in narrative cinema, and I am happy to report that I've had a hugely engaging experience.

8/10

This is a remake of the 1991 classic Once a Thief, a John Woo gig featuring absolute A- Listers such as megastar Chow Yun-Fat, heartthrob Leslie Cheung and HK's own 'Marilyn Monroe' Cherie Chung. Due to skyrocketing talent fees the Chinese film industry experienced in recent years, it's now increasingly more difficult for a would-be blockbuster to assemble a large cast of A or B-Listers, so the cast of The Adventurers, starring Andy Lau, Hsu Chi (with her newly-wed husband Stephen Fung at the helm), Jean Reno among others, is already one of the most high profile releases of the summer in China, but even this cast pales in comparison with that of the original, which is a shame. Imagine if Pitt, Damon, Roberts were all replaced with notable but much less bankable stars in Ocean's Eleven. Like Clooney in Ocean's Eleven, Andy Lau's character also begins the film as a parolee after serving several years in prison. This is where the comparison stops, however, as Ocean's is without a doubt a much superior film.

The Adventurers maintains the original's 2 male 1 female 'gang of three' setup, complimented by Zhang Jingchu, who plays Andy Lau's ex-girlfriend, and Jean Reno, whose French cop chases after Andy Lau across Europe. Most of the film's humor is provided by actor Sha Yi, who perfectly portrays the superficiality of his 'tu hao' aka 'Nouvelle Riche' character who easily falls prey to Hsu Chi's stunning beauty. However, much of his lighlights were linguistic, and being a native Chinese myself, I doubt if these would cross over to the English speaking audience. Other than Sha Yi, one could make the point that the film lacks in terms of 'entertainment'. There are only a few funny moments I can recall, and most of the (limited) banter between members of the gang fell flat at my viewing.

The film benefits from fluid camera-work, so at least it's a fairly good looking film, but it's mostly held back by a plot that is way too predictable. There are several twists in the final act, none of them surprising. The action set pieces are solid but uninventive, as one questions whether it's wise to stick so closely to the original film's formula of car chases and gun fights, especially since the action/heist genre has advanced so much in the past two decades. Also, by focusing primarily on the action, the film somewhat sacrifices character development opportunities. Ocean's Eleven explains practically everything to its audiences, such as the group's funding, line of thinking, risks, etc. In The Adventurers, as I watched the group travel from one place to another and REACT to situations, I wondered how everything 'behind the scenes' worked, because these were never explained. In other words, there aren't many details for the keen eyed spectator to pick out. In this sense, this film's much closer to Ocean's Twelve in being a somewhat messy story that just kind of 'happens' without much external logic supporting it.

Overall, this is an OK adventure/heist film with beautiful visuals and a predictable, formulaic script that's not likely to make you awe in wonder. 6/10

This is a surprisingly solid little romantic comedy with a simple message that manages to convey a sense of sweetness that lingers on even after the film hits the end credits.

The film has a very basic premise: what if beauty REALLY isn't skin deep? With this central question comes several others: What if one's appearance is the direct reflection of one's 'inner beauty', and what if somebody suddenly begins to see the world and everyone in it in exactly this way? It sounds like the recipe for a dramatic, thought-provoking, award- winning tear-jerker, but having suffered from the viewing trauma wrought by last year' Collateral Beauty (marketed to be just such a thing), I'm not so sure. What we got is a Farrelly brothers project starring 1st-time-leading-man Jack Black, and so it should only be judged for what it is, a mainstream studio film and a PG13 romantic comedy.

Such a subject matter could have easily fallen prey to a much more vulgar brand of humor , so it's refreshing to see the offensive fat jokes and cuss words kept under control here. The dialog is a little lacking in terms of memorable highlights but is otherwise fine. The film doesn't rely on cheap and abundant uses of slapstick action that has no consequence whatsoever to either the plot or the continuity within the scenes, or on visually striking wacky sidekicks to create humor (I'm thinking about you, Mr. Sandler). The 'ugly' versions of people are striking when they appear, yes, but they are not subjected to mocking or outright bullying like, well, Adam Sandler movies tended to do.

Jack Black does a nice job portraying a 'shallow' guy who undergoes an internal transformation within the main storyline, bringing his character arc to a fulfilling end. However I have wondered how prime Jim Carrey would have fared as Hal, but prime Carrey probably would command a more dominant role as THE central and therefore only truly meaningful character, and that wouldn't do since it would mean stealing the show from Gwenyth Paltrow. Paltrow gives perhaps one of her sweetest performances as the utterly self-conscious, grossly obese Rosemary, the highlight of the film for me. She manages to bring out the innocence and fragility of a down to earth (very obese) young woman who seems to know and accept the fact that she's never going to be associated with ideas such as beauty, attractive, etc, even when she's in her own slim and frankly smoking hot version. I have watched Adam Sandler's 2002 film Mr. Deeds prior to writing this review, and Winona Ryder's character in that film, in both her 'Virgin Mary' act as well as the 'I'm changed' good woman version, lacks depth when compared with Paltrow's Rosemary.

The direction overall seems spot on for the leads, and the selection of the soundtrack contribute to the overall feel of the film - lighthearted, a little silly, but sweet and even a little moving at times. Jack Black dances a lot, slim Gwenyth falls a lot, and fat Gwenyth hurts a lot, but it's the scene of the burn victim girl that stands out as a very touching human moment.

However, one may argue that the film's male gaze is sometimes too obvious for the wrong reasons. Paltrow goes semi-nude on several occasions and I'm not sure how these are supposed to work with the dating couples in the audiences. The films settling with fat=ugly 99% of the time also needed some polishing. Jill's character feels like wasted potential. She's the only 'pretty' pretty woman in the story, she witnesses Hal's transformation first hand, but she's reduced to a cheap plot device at the end of Act 2 as the 'coincidence' that Rosemary stumbles into. Since its revealed that Jill's actually a nice person because she disliked the original, 'shallow' Hal, then surely we could do without the 'let's go to my bed tonight' seduction just to somehow contrast her with the saint like Rosemary. I feel that Jill' character should be better developed and more involved with the main storyline. I even think that a scene showing Jill and Rosemary meeting and talking about Hal could be great.

I can see why the film has middling reviews from both critics and the general viewing public. Even after a slow start, the story drags on at times, the humor isn't that funny, and the dialog is average. I first watched this film back in 05, with Chinese subtitles, when I was a high schooler in Beijing. More than a decade later, as an exec in the film industry, I gave this another try and am pleasantly surprised to find that it still moved me at several places. It could be the universality of its subject matter. Not many American comedies can to more than merely entertain the international audience, but this one pulled it off. Hence my rating, a very solid 7.