RESTLESS

 Today's weather - sunny

I just watched a movie starring Bryce Dallas Howard recently and surprisingly, this movie is produced by her. This British-American movie stars Henry Hopper and Mia Wasikowska as the two main leads.


Enoch, a young man who was the only survivor of a tragic traffic accident that claimed the lives of his parents, lived a life shrouded by the ghost of the past. He dropped out of school, had a Japanese pilot ghost as a friend and spent his time attending funeral memorials in an attempt to find closure to his parents death.


At one of the memorials, he befriended a girl Annabel, who was a brain tumour patient with only three months to live. They connected with each other emotionally and soon became a pair. Annabel was an optimistic girl who looked at death in the face and tried to make the best of her last days, enjoying the company of Enoch.


Finally, Annabel passed on and her memorial was designed and decorated by her and Enoch with the things she loved. There, a smiling Enoch managed to let go of his past unhappiness, embraced life and death and found the closure he needed to move on in life.


This is a movie that I don't particularly love or hate. I merely enjoyed it for what it is - simple, sincere and without shocks and frills. Interestingly, this movie has our local actor Ng Chin Han playing the doctor of Annabel.

50/50

 Today's weather -sunny

I have never really watched "Third Rock from the Sun" but I always like Joseph Gordon-Levitt because his acting is so sincere and authentic. Although he does not possess a leading man's good looks, he has a certain charisma about him that just makes him so likable. Seth Rogen, on the other hand, has a goofy kind of charm that makes him so endearing and provides comic relief to almost any movie he is in.


When you have both actors in the same movie, it couldn't be that bad. While I don't think this movie is extraordinarily exceptional, it is still very watchable because of the excellent acting by the cast.


Starring as an average guy-next-door who just discovered he has a rare cancer, Joseph learnt to come to terms with it with the help of his friend Seth whilst at the same time, tried to cope with the infidelity of his girlfriend (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) and console his mum (Angelica Houston) about his medical condition. His salvation came in the form of his female psychologist who just came onto the job recently.

HEREAFTER

This is a movie about the afterlife and starring Matt Damon, Cecile de France and George McLaren as the main leads. The story started off as three separate tales on how each of them have a brush with death - Cecile almost drowned in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Matt had a high fever when he was younger and almost died from it and George's twin brother died in an accident.

The movie took its time to develop the characters depth and showed how death affected them in one way or another. Their separate life stories eventually converge together when they somehow meet each other in a London Book Fair towards the end of the movie in a happy ending.

I personally didn't quite enjoy the movie because the director Clint Eastwood tried to deliver the characters with a purpose by taking his time but I felt he lost the audience in the process because the loose ends were only tied at the end and even so, it seemed very trying and was hardly convincing. I love the start of the movie and the CGI effects of the tsunami but it deteriorated from there onwards. The suspense built up in the movie could not lift it from its dreadful pace.

Anyway, the very beautiful Bryce Dallas Howard cameoed in a small role but that was not enough to save the movie.