BMX Bandits

tags: Australian, comedy, rewinding the 80s

Product Description from Amazon

The future Academy Award® winner made her movie debut at 16 years old as the pouffy-haired star of this action/comedy about a cache of stolen walkie-talkies, three BMX-riding friends, and the ruthless bank robbers who will pursue them through every graveyard, shopping mall, construction site and waterpark in New South Wales, Australia. It's a high-flying ride to adventure filled with wild stunts, cool BMX outfits, creepy innuendo, cheezy synth music, an obnoxious fat kid, and gobs of fast & furious fun. John Ley (Mad Max), David Argue (Razorback) and Bryan Marshall (The Long Good Friday) co-star with thrilling cinematography from future Oscar® winner John Seale (The English Patient) in this Down Under 80s cult classic from Ozsploitation master Brian Trenchard-Smith, the legendary director of Turkey Shoot, Dead End Drive-In and Stunt Rock! 

16 year old Nicole Kidman and her wild pouffy hair

I have never been a fan of Nicole Kidman and have seen just a handful of her earlier movies [I honestly can't recall which ones] but not this way back when she was just 16, prebotox and ice queen persona. 

It's not a bad movie at all. It's kinda cheesy and there are none of the amazing Travis Pastrana stunts but I enjoyed it a lot. Nicole's stunt double is obviously a man which distracts a bit but over-all the movie is better and more watchable than what is being produced lately by Hollywood.

Currently streaming on Netflix and Amazon

Highly recommended 

Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead

tags: comedy, horror, zombies

Summary from Wikipedia

Continuing from where the previous film ended, Martin wakes up in a hospital after crashing his car while trying to escape from Colonel Herzog after finding one of the Colonel's coins in his car and placed under arrest when the police suspected that he killed his friends, laughing off the zombie explanation. The arm he sawed off to halt a bite infection has been replaced, but he discovers it’s Herzog’s undead limb that’s been attached to his missing appendage. He then escapes from the hospital and his zombified arm kills a police officer. Martin soon realizes that Herzog is coming back for revenge. The gruesome Nazi Zombies are back to finish some 70-year-old business: completing Hitler’s order to wipe out an entire town in retaliation for Norwegian anti-Axis subterfuge. However, Martin is not willing to die yet. En route, he gains variably competent allies in Glenn, a gay staffer at a local WWII museum, and the self-styled “Zombie Squad”, a trio of nerdy American siblings who've been waiting and preparing for the zombie invasion that popular media has taught them will surely come. Things improve a bit once Martin (whose zombie arm suddenly arbitrarily starts helping the good guys) manages to revive a troop of Russian POWs executed by the Nazis for the final battle against Colonel Herzog and his Nazi Zombie battalion.

Sequels are usually inferior to the first installment but in this case, the second is better. It is the best zom-com movie, better than Shaun of the Dead with more laugh-out-loud scenes. The movie is filmed entirely in English, has the same amount, if not more blood, gore, and spilled guts. It's really hilarious with its in-your-face politically incorrect scenes: everyone getting blown to pieces including the elderly and babies, zombies killing a wheelchair-bound guy; no one is spared. Quoting the policeman watching the battle scene: "It looks like a video game." Oh, and I really like the gross-sweet ending too.

Currently streaming on Netflix and Amazon. Watch the first one before viewing the sequel.

Multiple viewing is highly recommended for zombie movie fans.

John Wick and The Equalizer

Ugly and Ugly

Negatives:
Both movies have
>clichéd dialog and story lines
>"retired" protagonists compelled to come out of retirement
>ageing actors are embarrassingly unfit, they move slowly like molasses during hand-to-hand fights
>overrated directors
>extremely annoying music

Positives:
Zero

Not recommended.

Malice: A Mystery

 tags: cultural-Japan, mystery-crime, 

Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he’s planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems.

At the crime scene, Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka’s best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Years ago when they were both teachers, they were colleagues at the same public school. Kaga went on to join the police force while Nonoguchi eventually left to become a full-time writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka. 

As Kaga investigates, he eventually uncovers evidence that indicates that the two writers’ relationship was very different that they claimed, that they were anything but best friends.  But the question before Kaga isn't necessarily who, or how, but why. In a brilliantly realized tale of cat and mouse, the detective and the killer battle over the truth of the past and how events that led to the murder really unfolded. And if Kaga isn't able to uncover and prove why the murder was committed, then the truth may never come out. 

Malice was written in 1996 but only got translated into English in December 2014. It is a very short but clever murder mystery. Once again, as in Higashino's previous books, The Devotion of Suspect X and Salvation of a Saint, the killer is revealed very early on. The question is why, and the answers are slowly revealed as the investigation goes.

The novel uses the "unreliable narrator" device, manipulating the reader to form a [probably false] opinion about a character in the book. Higashino, however, gives tiny bits of clues to keep the reader in doubt as to who the real bad guy is. The book reminds me of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (read more than 2 years ago and also liked). Psychological whydunnit is becoming a favorite mystery sub-genre. When cleverly written, the novels make me think a lot while reading.

Highly recommended.

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (Jack et la mécanique du coeur)

tags: animation, fantasy, science fiction, tragic love story



From Amazon

Edinburgh, 1874. On the coldest day in the history of the world, little Jack is born with his heart frozen solid. Wasting no time, midwife Madeleine takes action and saves his life by inserting a cuckoo-clock in place of his icy heart. And now Jack will live…as long as he observes three golden rules: 

He must never touch the hands of the clock. 

He must master his anger. 

He must never, ever fall in love. 

But fall in love he does, to a bespectacled young street performer, Miss Acacia, with a soul-stirring voice. Now begins a journey of escape and pursuit, from Edinburgh to Paris to Miss Acacia’s home in Andalusia. Based on the novel by Mathias Malzieu, Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is a fantastical, wildly inventive tale of love and heartbreak, by turns poignant and funny, in which Jack finally learns the great joys, and ultimately the greater costs, of owning a fully formed heart.

I love animated movies. Toy Story 3 remains my favorite of all time. The recent Hollywood animated movies I've seen, unfortunately, only succeeded in annoying me, to name a couple: Frozen and Brave.

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, a French animated movie [original title is Jack et la mécanique du coeur], is wonderful. I really loved it and will watch it again. The animation is beautiful and the strange but fascinating story as well as the songs are great. I didn't mind the tragic ending which is done in a dream-like setting and not at all traumatic. I just wished the movie is shown in its original French audio including the songs. The English dubbing, thankfully, is done by British actors and not by American actors.

Highly recommended for adults and children over 12 years. One song and a few lines are a tad sexual and probably not appropriate for very young children.

Currently streaming on Netflix and Amazon.

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The movie is directed by Mathias Malzieu and Stephane Berla, adapted from a book and music album written by Malzieu who is with the French band, Dionysos. I listened to the French soundtrack and like the songs better than the English version.

The original soundtrack. Enjoy!

Miramont's Ghost

  tags: historical fiction, mystery


image by onidenki

Book description from Amazon

Miramont Castle, built in 1897 and mysteriously abandoned three years later, is home to many secrets. Only one person knows the truth: Adrienne Beauvier, granddaughter of the Comte de Challembelles and cousin to the man who built the castle.

Clairvoyant from the time she could talk, Adrienne’s visions show her the secrets of those around her. When her visions begin to reveal dark mysteries of her own aristocratic French family, Adrienne is confronted by her formidable Aunt Marie, who is determined to keep the young woman silent at any cost. Marie wrenches Adrienne from her home in France and takes her to America, to Miramont Castle, where she keeps the girl isolated and imprisoned. Surrounded by eerie premonitions, Adrienne is locked in a life-or-death struggle to learn the truth and escape her torment.

Reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, this hauntingly atmospheric tale is inspired by historical research into the real-life Miramont Castle in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

It's a good thing that Amazon Prime members are given this month 2 free books on its Kindle First program. However, one of the 2 books I downloaded, Miramont's Ghost, is a complete disaster. After reading the whole thing, I refuse to give this "soap opera disguised as a thriller gothic mystery" even a one-star. The only interesting part is the Prologue. The rest is just horrid.

It's an insult to say it is reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Oh, please! The book is neither haunting nor atmospheric and nowhere near the brilliance of Rebecca. The writing style is sophomoric at best and the author seems obsessed with the word "swallow", appearing more than a dozen times throughout the book. Almost everyone does it. She also likes the phrases "hair on back of neck stood on end" and "watching through her lashes". The author is either lazy or still needs creative writing lessons.

In my honest opinion the sad crying image above best illustrates the novel which I re-titled Sad, Sadder, Saddest - The Short Life of Adrienne Beauvier

SPOILERS ahead. If you are interested in reading the novel, please stop reading here.

The Martian

  tags: castaway, Mars, science fiction, space mission, survivor



Synopsis from Goodreads

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first men to walk on the surface of Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first man to die there.

It started with the dust storm that holed his suit and nearly killed him, and that forced his crew to leave him behind, sure he was already dead. Now he's stranded millions of miles from the nearest human being, with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his food would be gone years before a rescue mission could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to get him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills--and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit--he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. But will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

Astronaut/mechanical engineer/botanist Mark Watney speaks like a juvenile and spews f-bombs all the time, but I really like him, and the book. His sense of humor and ingenuity help him survive the planet until the rescue mission gets to him, if at all. Although the book is full of technical details that read like a manual, I wasn't bored at all and finished it in 2 days. I gave it only 4 stars because of the inclusion of the Chinese government in the rescue mission. Yeah, right, the friggin' Chinese! 

I mentioned some scenes that are very similar to the Korean movie, Castaway On The Moon. I was further amused that in the book, the NASA employee who discovered him [by monitoring/manning the telescopes] still alive on Mars is a woman named Mindy Park. Park is a Western as well as a Korean surname. Coincidence? Maybe.

Recommended to sci-fi fiction fans. 

The author also wrote a short but good story, The Egg.

Castaway On The Moon

tags: castaway, dramedy, love story, survivor

Synopsis from AsianWiki

Kim Seung-Keun stands on the ledge of an overpass bridge above the Han River. He’s in way over his head in debt and he’s ready to end his life right then and there. Mr. Kim then jumps off the bridge, but due to his own misfortune (or good fortune) he ends up washed ashore on a small nearby island. At first, Mr. Kim looks for every conceivable way to get off the island – which is in plain view of several nearby high rise buildings and apartment complexes. After a few days, Mr. Kim becomes acclimated to his solitary existence and he even starts to find comfort in his primitive surroundings.

Meanwhile, a young reclusive lady named Kim Jung-Yeon sits in her room, addicted to the online world of "Cyworld." She hasn’t left her apartment in three years and she doesn’t plan to leave anytime soon. In the evenings, when Jung-Yeon is finished updating her Cyworld home page, she dabbles in her other hobby which is photographing the moon. During one of those evenings, when Jung-Yeon is taking shots of the moon, she notices a "HELP" sign scrawled onto the sand of a nearby island. She then notices a strange man walking around the island and Jung-Yeon starts to view this man as her own personal alien.

Castaway On The Moon is one of my top favorite Korean movies of all time. I have seen it many many times while it was still streaming on Netflix. The movie is metaphorical and if you know or are familiar with Korea and its citizens, it's easier to understand its meaning. It is a mixture of drama with a bit of sometimes laugh-out-loud comedy, love story, and of all things, adventures in farming.

The male character tries to commit suicide but is unsuccessful and finds himself stranded on the small island in the middle of the Han River. He is very near yet so far from the city of Seoul. He tries to kill himself a second time by hanging himself with his tie but is interrupted by "call of nature". He decides suicide can wait and explores the island. He finds a discarded jjajangmyun (black soybean paste) noodle wrapper with its seasonings unused and intact. He is very hungry and the photo on the wrapper complete with carrots, green vegetables, and a boiled egg makes him even hungrier. He then with regret recalls the numerous times he refused to eat the noodles since he was a child. He vows to grow corn to make noodles from seeds dropped by birds. It's amazing that a simple noodle wrapper makes him forget his problems and the suicide attempts, and changes his overall outlook in life.

While these things are going on, he is being observed with a powerful camera by a girl from an apartment across the river. She lives with her parents but refuses to face them nor anyone else; they communicate by text messages. The girl is a hikikomori, a modern-day hermit similar to an agoraphobic.

In a sense both of them are castaways. The superb acting, directing, and script make these situations very very believable. I love this movie and cannot recommend it highly enough.

The movie is not available for streaming on Netflix and Amazon.

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I am currently reading THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir and it reminds me of this movie. There are some similarities - castaway, farming (growing potatoes), the will to survive, being observed from afar...

I will rate the book in a few days.

The Bone Clocks

 tags: family, fantasy, science fiction, supernatural

Synopsis

Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.
A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.

David Mitchell has yet to write a novel I couldn't love specially now that he has gone Haruki Murakami in Bone Clocks with elements of fantasy, sci-fi, supernatural themes. The supernatural good versus evil epic battle between super humans is worth the wait in Part 5 although these characters appear in parts 1 to 4. David Mitchell is a great story-teller and his prose is beautiful.

The 640-page genre-bending novel is divided into 6 parts, all bound to the main character Holly Sykes, and similar to Cloud Atlas, spans decades between 1984 and 2057. Although I have it in my Kindle, I borrowed the book from the library. I loved the feel of the book's smooth silky pages. It's a joy to read. Highly recommended

Books by David Mitchell I have read and also highly recommend:
Black Swan Green
number9dream
Cloud Atlas
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

Some characters in The Bone Clocks appeared in David Mitchell's previous books. My favorite is Dr. Marinus from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet.

Might contain spoilers

A Most Wanted Man

 tags: Hamburg Germany, Muslim terrorists, spy drama

Plot summary from IMDB

• When a half-Chechen, half-Russian, brutally tortured immigrant turns up in Hamburg's Islamic community, laying claim to his father's ill gotten fortune, both German and US security agencies take a close interest: as the clock ticks down and the stakes rise, the race is on to establish this most wanted man's true identity - oppressed victim or destruction-bent extremist? Based on John le Carré's novel, A MOST WANTED MAN is a contemporary, cerebral tale of intrigue, love, rivalry, and politics that prickles with tension right through to its last heart-stopping scene.
  - Written by Roadside Attractions

Grigoriy Dobrygin is the only reason I borrowed the DVD. I wasn't disappointed and I liked his performance here and even with the ugly beard, he still looked good. Thankfully, the beard was shaved halfway through the movie.

I knew I probably won't like the movie all that much because of the non-German cast, particularly Rachel McAdams. I was not expecting a blow-em-up thriller, this being an adaptation of a John le Carré novel, and I knew the ending would be a downer. The story is okay although I don't agree with its message. It's the American actors playing German nationals that ruined the movie for me. The acting of Philip Seymour-Hoffman is nothing spectacular; he's just his same old same old wheezy self. I don't know what the professional reviewers were talking about saying this is one of his finest performances before he died. And Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. Gunther is pronounced GOON-tur by Germans, not GUN-tur. Yes, you and the rest of the American actors playing Germans, it's your job to convince the audience that you are all native German speakers. If the cast were German actors, there wouldn't be a problem. They speak perfect English anyway so an English script for English-speaking audience should have been fine. The producers and the director preferred to cast well-known American actors but in my honest opinion that's a mistake. 

The Netflix DVD, to my surprise, has Bonus Features. It's another disappointment though because the feature The Making Of is like watching a Mutual Admiration Society footage. Meh.

Not recommended.