MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

I watched this movie weeks ago and I seriously don't remember the Mel Gibson and Tina Turner version, so I couldn't do any comparison.

Starring Tom Hardy, whom I knew would go far after the 'Inception' movie and he did in 'The Dark Knight Rises', as well as Charlize Theron, this genre of movies of a post-apocalyptic world in a desert wasteland has little appeal on me. However, I like both leads as Max and Furiosa respectively, and was pleasantly surprised to see Nicholas Hoult, who was still strangely cute as the war boy Nux.

Furiosa drove five mistresses of the Immortan Joe to escape from the Citadel where they were held captive as breeders to produce offspring for the tyrant leader. With the aid of Max, Nux and few surviving members of her clan, they escaped further into the desert just to make a turn back to confront Joe and his legion of warriors, before defeating them and returning back to the Citadel.

If given better movie choices, I wouldn't pick to watch this movie though.

Max

Max held captive

a war born and raised boy Nux

who can resist the frowned expression of Nux?

Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe

Zoe Kravitz (extreme left) seemed to be appearing in a number of recent movies

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2

I am really loving this Marvel Comics remake of the Spiderman movies although I must admit I didn't quite like it in the first movie. The chemistry between the leads Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone as Peter Parker aka spidey and Gwen Stacy really came through so genuinely that it made the movie believable. Every scene they were in were lit up with sparks and together they were so likable.

So the ending was really sad when the movie makers decided to kill Gwen off, as in the comics, due to a whiplash effect. Emma came a long way and I am starting to really like her since the first time I saw her in "The House Bunny" in 2008. It is almost as if Peter Parker is nothing without Gwen. I imagine her coming back as Mary Jane Watson with a different hairdo in the next movie but subsequently I read that Shailene Woodley took on the role of Mary Jane, to my great disappointment. Shailene may be good in "Divergent" but no way close is she going to replace Gwen. I am just glad that the producers did the right thing by not introducing Mary Jane's character in this movie soon after Gwen's passing, otherwise audiences like me would hate her since Emma set the bar so high for anyone else to reach. Mary Jane's character is best left to part 3 after everyone has calmed down.

Sally Field's character Aunt May looked almost in tears in every scene and I started to see her as just a sad and pitiful widow with nothing that could cheer her up since Ben Parker's death. The new Harry Osborn aka Green Goblin in this movie in the form of Dane DeHaan also couldn't replace the James Franco's portrayal in the previous remake. Jamie Foxx's character as Max Dillon aka Electro was kind of silly and shallow. The other characters Rhino and Norman Osborn were just plain boring and seemed like insignificant fillers to make the movie so long.

Something that stuck with me was the poignant valedictorian speech made by Gwen at her graduation ceremony:

"Hmm, I know that we all think we're immortal. We're supposed to feel that way, we're graduating. The future is and should be bright, but, like our brief four years in high school, what makes life valuable is that it doesn't last forever, what makes it precious is that it ends. I know that now more than ever. And I say it today of all days to remind us that time is luck. So don't waste it living someone else's life, make yours count for something. Fight for what matters to you, no matter what. Because even if you fall short, what better way is there to live?"

Strangely, the easter egg that followed after the movie was on X-Men's Mystique in an army camp, supposedly as a lead-up to the upcoming "X-Men: Days of Future Past" movie.

the chemistry is undeniable

can the real Sally Field stand up?

Peter and Harry Osborn with a sleek but flat hairdo

a hideous Green Goblin

Max's deluded behaviour is unconvincing as an electrical engineer

Max transformed into Electro after an industrial accident

Gwen at her last moments before she fell to her death

this is the comics version

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 HOST

It was movie week for me and I caught this sci-fi movie starring one of my favourite actress Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel and William Hurt.

Set in the future where an alien "amoeba-like" parasite known as souls came to earth to inhabit the bodies of humans. When that happens, the human host usually loses its self-consciousness and gets taken over by the identity of the inhabitant, which is able to tap into the memories of the former. In some rare cases, the human host is strong, resilient and possesses a consciousness to resist the soul. Saoirse as Melanie Stryder, is one such case. 

Taken away from her younger brother Jamie by a group of possessed humans and implanted with a soul known as "wanderer", her love and desperation to find her brother gave her the will to co-exist with the wanderer in a single body. On the other hand, the kind and compassionate wanderer which live thousands of years and traveled across the intergalaxy was moved by Melanie's personality and love for her brother and boyfriend Jared that it helped her escape to seek out her uncle in the desert. Hot on her heels is her alien pursuer known as the Seeker, who was relentlessly obsessive with converting Melanie into one of their kind.

Melanie was rescued by her uncle, found her brother and boyfriend while at the same time, the wanderer fell for one of the humans Ian. Conflicted with the feelings of two minds in a single body with two separate lovers, Melanie has to race against time to maintain her sanity to save herself, the wanderer, her brother and the rest of the human survivors.

Saoirse gets prettier by the day, since I last saw her in "The Lovely Bones" and earns my respect that she's one of the best younger actresses, with a squeaky clean image, of today. Max Irons, who is Jeremy Irons son, and Jake Abel delivered credible performances in the movie as skeptics who initially doubted Melanie's continued existence with an alien soul in her body but turned protective towards the two separate identities in the latter part of the movie.

I don't think this movie did well at the box office because there was hardly anyone in the cinema. I guess it may appear very strange to viewers to see two minds conversing with each other throughout the movie but I enjoyed it nevertheless.