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Mong bat liu (2003)
Finally an awesome romantic drama.
Put it like this, Lost in time is the best romantic drama to come out of Hong Kong since the movie endless love(C'est la vie mon Cherie). What is even better is that the director of that movie, also directed this beautiful movie.
Wai(Cheung)is waiting for her fiancée(Louis koo)who is a bus driver to come, unfortunately he meets with an accident, and eventually dies. Wai so shocked with his death, that she cannot even shed a tear. There is nothing she can do, with a son that her fiancée left behind, she has a handful of work to do. To provide support for herself, and supposedly her son, she goes in the bus service business that her fiancée was in. She has a hard time, but Fai a colleague of her fiancée helps her out, supports her and her son. Wai finds herself falling for him, but she is lost, in that should she forget about her fiancée and go for Wai, or she should just live with the good memories that she shared with her Fiancée.
Oh I so wish Hong Kong would come up with plots more like this, that is the biggest problem. They do not make so much original romantic drama's, they are just Triad/cop crazy. Director Yee showed that Hong Kong can indeed come out with great, emotional, romantic drama's, and Lost in time is the greatest example for sure. You can't help but just love the feel of this movie when you are watching, from the streets of Hong Kong, to the inner feelings of the characters.
Cecilia Cheung was just awesome, in looks, and acting. Her acting in this movie got her best actress award in the 23rd Hong Kong film award. Her character brought out a range of emotions, that were just great to watch. This is her best on screen performance since ever, 10 times better than her performance in her movies that came out after this movie, and wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better than Fly me to Polaris. I say watch Fly me to Polaris first, hate her in that movie, then watch Lost in time and then love her, then you will get a good inner feeling out her. For Lau Ching Wan, I just loved seeing this guy in his serious acting mode, cause honestly his comedic acting is very tiresome. Very refreshing it was to watch him in this movie, his acting was very natural, and a character that you can both love and feel pity. The best performance he has put on screen since his other project with Yee which was Endless Love. Although Louis Koo played a very minor role in the movie, you can also like him for some reason. The performance in this movie, is what boasts this movie way higher.
Too bad there has been no other romantic drama as brilliant, and beautiful as Lost in time recently. Lost in time is not a supposed tear jerker like endless love, but lost in time has quite realistic emotions exploding out of the screen, that you can come to admire very much.
This is my favourite movie of all time out of any movies, either Hollywood, China, Korea, Japan, Lost in time is my favourite of all time period. For me it is going to quite hard for a movie to top Lost in time for me.
If I said that Lost in time is my favourite movie all time, that means that every single person reading this review should go and watch it, I don't care the way you get it either stealing, killing, or just buying or renting, go and WATCH IT!
11/10 Extremely beautiful movie to watch.
Dip huet seung hung (1989)
Wooooooooooooooooooooooo!
In the Year 1986, John Woo turned, then dramatic actor, Chow Yun Fat into Action man. A better tomorrow spawned a bunch of heroic bloodshed movies to come out, heck the movie was the influence for the Hollywood violent action movie pulp fiction.
3 years later....
Who can use double guns better than Fat? Jet li, Jackie chan, Donnie yen, Sammo Hung show art with their fists, and feet, Fat shows art with guns, and it's freaking awesome.
Put it like this we got ourselves a lot of hero playing, and woman being paid to only cry, but we got a guy here who is also being paid to show us some hardcore gun-play, and that is why this movie is truly worth seeing.
Fat is an assassin, that has been recently sent to club to get assassinate his next victim, he succeeds, but along the way he accidentally blinds a singer(Sally yeh). Regretting so much, and feeling pity for her, he then get's close with her, and later is going to make one final hit to get enough money to pay for her surgery to recover her vision, what stands in the way is a cop out for justice(Danny lee), and of course the bad guy.
Seeing this being in the late 80's, you can't expect a innovative plot, but you can expect a simple story, which is bad guy versus good guy, with a big showdown in the end between both sides. Add Fat into the showdown, countless amount of guns, dual pistols, blood,art, and hundreds of dead body, and what you get is bone crunching entertainment.
Character's is the biggest flaw in this movie, they are very underdeveloped, they are paid just to have one kind of personality. Fat a guy that really cares for his best friend, and the girl he accidentally blinds. Danny lee is just a cop with fat being his number one priority in taking out. Sally yeh, although she is a beauty, she came out very disappointing, all she did in the whole movie is cry. The director used her just for the emotional parts of this movie, and there was too much hero playing in the movie, such as the ending. In the end Who the hell cares about the characters, we want gun clicking, blazing, action!
Overall if you are a fan of Hk movies, and you have not seen a better tomorrow, the killer, bullet in the head, and of course hardboiled, then you are not truly a hk movie fan, cause you are missing the experience and feel of these movies. The Killer should be watched just for entertainment, so just take in all the cliché, hero playing, and manipulative melodrama from the girls, sit back and relax, and scream wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! During gun-play.
Beautiful Life (2000)
Typical, but manipulative
Beautiful life is the first and only Asian drama I have watched so far. Why did I watch it? Well the reason is that when I ran into this drama I just happen to run into comments like these, "This is the second J-drama I ever watched and this is still my favourite drama of all time." "Explosive ending," "Be sure to have a box of tissues beside you cause I assure you will really need it." Also half of the nation was watching this show. But this is a terminal illness melodrama, but reading these comments made me curious, thinking that is this drama manipulative enough to make me cry? Also does this melodrama have an unexpected ending? In the end this is just one extended terminal illness/romance melodrama, that is quite manipulative because of the charismatic and confident acting from the actors and actresses.
Kyoko is a librarian who is living her life on a wheelchair, and is quite a burden to her family. Shuji is a hairdresser, working in a famous salon, and has a goal set to become the top hairstylist. These two lives cross, in what forms into friendship, and later love. The obstacles that are standing in this couples way is Kyoko's older brother, and Kyoko's condition that is getting worse as the clocking is ticking. The couple have a dream, will this dream every come true? Will they be able to live a "beautiful life?"
Plot here is the most basic terminal illness plot ever. Heck the plot has every single terminal illness cliché in the book, and I am serious about this. The most annoying is that I expected the ending to be different, since these people were talking about the ending so much. Take a guess how the ending is going to be like, and I guarantee you will be correct on how it ends. At the same time the plot had some great sub plots, such as the relationship between Kyoko's best friend, and Kyoko's older brother, when you see these moments the word come into your head is "cute." Overall the plot was quite disappointing, but for some reason when I woke up the day after I watched the show, the memories of this show came into my mind, which is a good thing.
The characters in this drama is the reason to watch this show. All of them are great to watch, and very likable, no matter how you look at them. All them shared great, fun moments together. The acting was quite good in my opinion, but the biggest flaw is the way that takako takiwa thinks in this show. I swear every single time, she says stuff, and does stuff for us viewers to sympathize for her, also she keeps talking about death, making it like she really want's to die. But the acting is quite manipulative, and you can fall under a hypnosis and still love her character, the best part is the way she smiles. I watched this drama for her, and I was still happy with her, cause physically she was awesome, and her acting was decent, but the guy who stole the show was her older brother.
In the end, the conclusion I came up with the question "why do people love this drama so much?" The answer is that this is one of the first terminal illness drama's to come out, even before the movies you see today. If you have never watched a terminal illness drama, then I recommend this, and I am guessing that you will love it, including depending on the kind of person you are, this can be a forced tearjerker on you. If you have seen other terminal illness drama's such as some of the Korean movies like a moment to remember, the last present, and such, then I say you can pass this, cause there is nothing new in this, but you can just watch this drama to pass some good time, and for the good moments. If you can take all the manipulative actions and dialogs, then you can enjoy this drama. Again I'll say it, just don't expect anything new, whatever you expect from this show, may be correct, but the show can be quite memorable, and some good moments can stay in your head.
On a Sidenote, I have never let out a tear while watching a sad melodramatic movie, and I am happy to say that this show did not have the power to me cry once again, quite proud I am.
3.5/5 ***.5 I'll give this 1 infected thumb up. Still watch this for the good moments, and character's.
Tokyo.sora (2002)
Good movie for the patient ones
Tokyo Sora, is a very slow movie, that has some pacing problems with the characters, but putting all that aside, and just watching this movie with patience, this movie can be quite compelling and rewarding to the viewers.
Basically there really is no story, it's a character driven movie. There are six woman who are trying to make a living in the City of Tokyo, all six woman get into realistic situations, and interact with the people they know just to make their lives better. We have girl 1, a student who is learning the Japanese language, and is a part time art class model. Girl 2 is a girl who gives out free tissue samples, and is just trying to make a normal living in her apartment. Girl 3 is an art student, who has gotten a boyfriend for the first time, and is struggling in the world of a girl image. Girl 4 is waitress in a coffee shop who enjoys interacting with her boss I'm guessing, and a small little affection for each other is implied. Girl 5 is a late twenties woman, who works at a lingerie bar, but she has a dream of becoming a writer, and is ambitious to make a story that will impress an editor she met during a phone convo about her previous story she wrote. Girl 6 is lonely and very depressed girl who is a hairdresser, and also works at the lingerie bar.
The plot may sound extremely boring, but the director has someway for you to be interested in the interaction and situations these people experience, not only that, you can be compelled by these interaction's, and grow close to the characters.The plot in my opinion is just plain old normal. This movie is like taking videotapes of woman in Tokyo without them knowing, that is how realistic this movie looked, and this kind of style made this movie quite unique. The best thing about this movie was the character interaction, the relationships that were developed for some short time, and broke after a short time, which made you feel like you are actually witnessing all of this. The plot has thing, that can suck you right into the movie, and actually witness all these events taking place close up.
Characters in this movie was the biggest problem. Although they were are all very likable, the pacing for their stories were extremely uneven, which stopped you from learning much about some of them. Girl 6 we never got to know much about her reason of depression, girl 1 and 2 had a lot of screen time in the beginning, but after the halfway mark of this film,they can be extremely forgettable, they dedicated most of the screen time to girl 5, the rewarding thing about that, is that she was a character that you can grow extremely attached to from her happy relationship with the editor, to the trigger of depression for her. girl 3 and 4, they did not even feel like the main woman out of the 6 woman, cause they were so shallow, and they were given the least screen time, especially girl 4. The fact is that the outrageous uneven pacing with the characters, was the small downfall for the movie, but still physically, and mentally the girls are quite likable, even though they did not get much screen time, which is quite amazing I think.
The most amazing thing about this movie was the lack of duologue, I think for me out of every single movie I have seen in my entire life, this movie had the least duologue, lack of duologue made this movie even more realistic. Relationship for these woman did not develop because of some big obstacle they had to go through like other movies portray, but they developed like how you would see in your everyday lives, e.g some guy/girl trying to draw your attention by having similar interests, or another one is just becoming boyfriend, and girlfriend *just like that* with nothing developing for that event. The other amazing thing about this movie was that the movie hardly had background music, out of what I can remember only like 2-3 scenes had music playing.
This movie is extremely slow, but it has all the right reasons to be. Refreshing movie this is, I enjoyed watching this film, even if it was slow, cause at points the director wins you over somehow, but this movie was extremely fresh, and not like your everyday movies you watch, this movie went for realism, and it hit the mark, and made it somewhat compelling and joyful. My only warning is that this movie is only for people that have patience in watching movies, and just want's to go with the flow of the movie, not for people, who are looking for twists, and fast turning points.
My score 4/5 ****
Gangster (2006)
It's been a while
This is the best Indian movie I have seen since who knows when, since lately 95% of Hindi movie suck a lot. Also It's been like 2 years since I saw a Indian movies, because of Indian movies sucking.
I watch a lot of different kinds of movies from different countries, either Hong Kong, Japanese, South Korean, Indian, and Hollywood of course, but personally I hate Bollywood the most, with Hollywood right beside it. As you can see that Indian movies are quite notorious for copying other movies, such as for example, Oldboy and Zinda, and Man on Fire, and Ek Ajnabee. The moment I saw some music videos and trailers for the movie Gangster, I had a hunch that this would be the Hindi movie that a lot of people would like, and I guess me being such a big movie buff, It turned out correct for me, and critics.
A girl named Simran, falls of a boat while she was drunk, and her friend saves her who's name is Akash. It is later known that they have known each other for only a month, but they have grew so close to each other. It seems that Simrans past has put a wall between Simran and Akash, later while Simran was drunk Akash got some info out of Simran about her past, well first of came the obvious, she was a whore, which is the most obvious coming out this movie since the movie's title says it all. She basically fell in love with a gangster named Daya, they fled the Country together to escape from the clutches of the cops, with them they took a child, and unfortunate accident struck, that changed the relationship between Daya and Simran. Now Akash has heard the story and he has fallen madly in love with Simran, and Simran has also fallen in love with him, Daya has turned up after a long time, has gotten to know this affair, now the question is what will happen? The title's name is "Gangster", really this movie has nothing to do with gangsters, but one of the characters being a gangster. The movie is basically a nice love triangle, with some face punching emotional drama, with all that the movie turned out excellent, This movie is also one of the most original movie to come out where the movie takes place in modern times, in another Country. The Story and characters are so engaging, that you can come up with so much pathos for them, that at points you can get that spine tingling, or fuzzy feelings from watching a nice emotional scene.
The Characters were awesome, every single actor played there role very well, including the guy who played Daya, and Akkash. I was amazed how well the actress played the role of Simran, cause first of all it is her debut film, and she is tangled in a love triangle. The characters were very likable, especially Daya, a very quiet guy that get's his job done without even speaking a word, and the moments he shared with Simran were very good.
The Cinematography for this film was another extremely nice thing about this film. The film was shot in such a nice setting, with falling leaves from trees, and also the setting of South Korea, the camera work was awesome. The Beauty this film had, made the movie very enjoyable to watch.
Music is another great thing about this movie. The Soundtrack was excellent, my personnel favourites "Ya Ali", and "Bhiggi, Bhiggi," basically the music proved that Indian music is superior to other music industries like Hollywood, and Japanese.
Overall this is a Indian movie that comes once in a while. and I sure say this is a must watch. My review said that the movie was flawless, but what stopped me from giving it a perfect mark is that they just had to use this small scene from the movie Gladiator, in the end of the movie, which kind of annoyed me, but with that aside, this is a must watch movie for those who want a change from all other crappy, cliché, and Hollywood crap Indian movies.
4.5/5