SAN ANDREAS

I watched this movie on my birthday in Taiwan. It was my first choice because I would prefer to watch a chinese movie while I was there but this was the only feasible choice then given the time.

Starring Dwayne Johnson as the lead Ray, Carla Gugino as his ex-wife Emma, Alexandra Daddario as his daughter Blake, Ioan Gruffudd as the cowardice real estate developer Daniel, the asian actor Will Yun Lee as Dr Kim Chung, Colton Haynes as the helicopter rescuer Joby, this was a highly unrealistic movie where Ray, a helicopter rescue pilot, went about with his helicopter and a boat to save his ex-wife Emma and daughter Blake from the killer earthquake which measured 9.6 on the Richter scale, the tsunami, and all the effects of the catastrophe e.g. crumbling buildings.

Kylie Minogue had a cameo role as Emma's sister Susan and she died together with an entire building of people, except for Emma who managed to make it to the rooftop of the building and was rescued by Ray on his helicopter before going all out to locate Blake, who was saved by a stranger Ben Taylor, who later became her boyfriend, and his younger brother Ollie, before the father came to the final rescue.

Well, I looked past how unrealistic the plot was, and enjoyed the movie for what it was - an action-packed movie.

the collapsing Hoover dam 

seismologist Lawrence Hayes and the reporter Serena

San Franciso destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami

Ollie, Blake and Ben (L to R) watched on with horror as the tsunami hit their building

Ray and Emma

THE MAZE RUNNER

I caught this sci-fi movie last week and was sure glad I knew next to nothing about the movie before catching it because I was really impressed by it. I didn't know the storyline and didn't know who were acting in it but after the movie, I was excited enough to go online to find out more about it.

Starring a pool of mostly teen actors Dylan O'Brien, of "Teen Wolf" TV series fame, Aml Ameen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ki-hong Lee, Will Poulter, Blake Cooper, Kaya Scodelario who was the only female, I hope this movie becomes a sleeper hit. The only actors I knew of are Dylan, who I really liked as a secondary character with his good acting and humour in the "Teen Wolf" series, and Will Poulter, who I seemed to recall playing the bad boy in movies such as "The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader".

As with many recent movies, this is one of the movies of a trilogy. Written by James Dashner and published in 2009, this movie tells the storyline of a boy who woke up in a elevator cage from underground, with no prior memories of how he got there and what happened to him prior to the event, in an unknown place surrounded by a moving maze. He was one of many boys, known as Gladers, who woke up in similar circumstances monthly over a period of years with all necessities such as food sent up to them by their unknown captors with each captiive boy. The boys remained at the base camp because they couldn't find a way out of the maze, which changed configuration every night and which housed mysterious creatures known as grievers. Unlike all the boys before him who fell into their comfort zone following an established order and hierarchy of leaders and followers who run the place, Dylan as Thomas questioned their complacency, willingness and resignation in staying on in the unknown place held by unknown captors and created a series of events that rocked the community of boys who were divided by his actions. Suddenly, there was a change in the captors plans who eventually sent up a female, who only recalled Thomas' name and with a message that she was going to be the last one.

This set forth a chain of events which caused the grievers to be unleashed and attacked the community in broad daylight and prompted the group to be split. Thomas' unyielding determination and curiosity drove him to seek out a way to escape the maze and with his leadership and new found friends and supporters such as Alby, Newt, Minho, Chuck etc, finally made their way out of the maze only to find themselves to be guinea pigs of an experiment of a group known as WICKED (World in Catastrophe Killzone Experiment Department) from a dying world who tried to find a cure for a deadly Flare virus, and thrust into an unknown future to be revealed in parts two "The Scorch Trials" and the finale "The Death Cure".

i am so looking forward to the sequels.

the boys looking at the maze which shifted in daylight

Thomas, Minho and Chuck

Brenda and Thomas

Minho and Thomas running away from the changing maze

Minho and Thomas running back to camp

the three books of the trilogy

TRANSCENDENCE

This is one of the rare movies starring Johnny Depp with his original looks without any dramatic makeup. I almost forgot how talented he could be and how he actually look like. The other actors include Morgan Freeman, Rebecca Hall, Cillian Murphy, Paul Bettany and Kate Mara.

A brilliant researcher in Artificial Intelligence Dr Will Caster was shot and poisoned by a radioactive laced bullet fired by AI-protesters. His wife Evelyn tried to save what was left of his consciousness by uploading it onto an AI program he was working on, despite objections from Max, their friend and fellow researcher, who feared the perils of an artificial intelligence borne out of a human consciousness. Evelyn managed to resurrect Will's consciousness onto the processors which housed the program, and it craved for more knowledge from the internet. After successfully connecting Will to the internet, she escaped with the now liberated Will, who existed everywhere in the digital form, and set up a nano-technology facility in a suburban area which soon grew and expanded into a mega-power plant.

With the nano-technology, the equipment within the plant appeared to restore life to all living things such as dying plants and to heal the aged, sick etc and made them more powerful, but in actual fact, Will's consciousness took over their bodies, controlled them to do his bidding and tried to build an AI army in an attempt to save the world. By then, the AI resistant force and the FBI etc banded together to send a special force team to take down Will, Evelyn and the plant.

Frankly, this is not the first time I have seen such nano-technology, which actually appeared in the G.I. Joe movies previously. Whether the nano-technology is a saviour or destroyer of mankind was open to interpretation at the end of the movie.

Dr Will, Evelyn and Max

Joseph, FBI agent Donald and Evelyn viewing Will's consciousness on screen

Bree, who started the resistant forces

THE LEGO MOVIE

I don't know what to really say about this movie other than I was kind of disappointed given the hype surrounding it. The trailer was funny, I must admit but the actually movie didn't quite deliver. This is the problem with some movies these days because they made the trailers so well and condensed the entire movie into a few minutes that the rest of the movie looked bad in comparison.

For me, the best part of the movie came in the form of the voice-over by Liam Neeson and his cop character followed by Morgan Freeman's character. I am so in awe of how much power Liam's voice has over me. It was just a perfect match for the good cop and bad cop character. Batman came in a close third followed by Emmet. Other than that, I find that the movie was just kind of weird. Perhaps I am too used to movies with real human characters or even cartoons, but this one seemed a tad too static. The movie may be sort of 3D but the expressions were more 2D and flat than anything. Perhaps they tried too hard to impress the audience. Will Ferrell's appearance was also strange, to say the least.

The other characters e.g. Green Lantern, were just mere forgettable cameos.

A spirited Emmet who was unmemorable to the people around him

Emmet and Batman

This Justice League characters were not all in this movie