The Battle For Haditha

"The first casualty of war is innocence"

The above was the tagline of Platoon, a war movie which took the stage at the Vietnam war. Indeed, the entire sentence captured the pure essence of war, any wars. The Battle For Haditha exactly visualized this fact accurately.

I watched this movie about a week ago and I couldn't help but thinking that the victims of a war and any wars are the civilians first, then the soldiers the second. Nobody sane enough would have wanted to have a war raging on. We can't blame the resistance, we can't blame the civilians, and we can't blame the soldiers. The only side that we should blame at would be the ones who pulled the strings, the puppeteers.

Let's be honest, the Iraq war was never been for the sake of Iraq and even so, it was never for the sake of democracy. For the Americans? I don't think so. In fact, how many has been spent to fund the war?

Enough for the crap talk, anyways. The plot was smart enough not to create a one-sided opinion. You wouldn't be blaming the civilians, the soldiers, or the resistance. It would be more likely that you would be blaming the war itself.

Acting may not be the main strength of the movie, but compared to other war movies, this one is rather unique. I believe it deserved a 7.5.

Rocket Science

At a glance, this is a teen movie, but with much better quality. I was attracted to watching it after I've read a recommendation from the internet. After it's been idle on my shelf, finally I watched it yesterday. It could have been better, though. Fortunately, unlike other "high school movies", this one managed to set itself apart from the pack.

The acting was great, and the film was rather enjoyable. The only thing that rather confused me was whether the main plot was actually the debate competition or simply about relationship between Ginny and Hal. Either way, none of it seemed to be resolved. Hal never won Ginny, and he didn't win the competition too. It was rather surprising that Hal and Ben failed to anticipate the disqualification from the competition. They should've known whether their participation would be legit or not. If not, why bother to participate?

As for Ginny, I considered her as the antagonist. Recruiting a stuttered student for a debate competition? Come on, what's more cruel than that? Also, if she didn't like Hal at all, she should have just dodge the kiss. No need to make that bloke's life miserable because it's already miserable enough.

One more thing, I'm baffled. Do debate contests done in the way they were done in Rocket Science? If debating means talking as fast as Vicky Pollard, then how could the audience digest the matter being debated? Debates should be all about how reasonable and accurate your arguments are, not about talking faster than speeding bullet. Gosh, if only there are speeching tickets...

Overall, I give it a 7.0. Good potential, but somehow to me, it missed the point somewhere.

Pathfinder

This blood and gore packed movie was filmed in a 300-style. Despite the "artistic" look, the plot itself seemed to be typical of "one man killing machine". And yes, it had a rather similar flow like Apocalypto (the second half of Apocalypto, to be exact). Acting was rather "so-so", and rather the leading roles were played by swords and blood. The whole plot was rather "generic", thus nothing new offered here.

Overall, the main strength and the only one positive point was its look, but not the content nor the quality of the acting. Even so, I gave it a 5.0 as the final score.

By the way, the picture above is rather odd, isn't it? Usually decapitation cuts the neck leaving the area below the nose to the, at least, jaw, intact. But I don't see the mouth. So, I assumed that Ghost yanked the helmet so hard that the Viking lost his wig and the helmet, but not his head. Yup, that must have been a wig and a helmet.

Juno

This movie has great script & great acting. What else would you want from a movie? It managed to deal with abortion issue neatly, I think. Despite the strengths, I wonder if it was realistic enough to expect anyone would behave exactly like in the movie. Tell me what would you do if you're on Juno's shoes? I bet most of you ladies would panic. And how would your parents react to that kind of news? Would they be as supporting as Mac and Bren? I doubt it. Generally, parents would go into berserk or crying. But that didn't happen to Mac and Bren.

Mac: Did you see that coming?
Bren: Yeah... but I was hoping she was expelled, or into hard drugs.
Mac: Yeah, that was my first instinct too...

I was amazed when I watched that scene. I wished that every parent would be as understanding as these two. Of course, that would be too hopeful.

The way the movie explore the abortion issue was also great. Juno knew she wasn't ready to keep the baby, but on the other hand she couldn't just throw it away or even abort it. Yes initially she thought of abortion, but she thought of a win-win solution to that issue, which was to let a couple to adopt the child. The couple would be happy, Juno would be able to continue her school without having to babysit her child, and the baby would be saved from doom.

Ellen Page was great, the entire cast were great, but I must say it must have been the script that made the entire movie great. My only issue was with the realism factor. Come on, how many similar cases (in percentage) could have ended up the Juno-style? Even to this day, there are still many would-be children killed by abortion. Pro choice or pro life? Well, I'd say both are choices.

Ellen Page was nominated for Oscar for her role as Juno, but apparently Marion Cotillard's was even better in portraying her role as Edith Piaf.

Overall, I'd give the movie a 9.5 (I still think it's too good to be real).

The Onion Movie

Right after I watched Chaos Theory, I grabbed The Onion Movie. Honestly, I was hesitated in buying the movie. The fact that Steven Seagal was in it made me think too many times before I checked the internet and saw some good opinions about it.

Well, I like parodies, so essentially, I like the movie. Yes, it sometimes went too far, but in the world of humor, I think it would be forgivable. Just don't expect this movie to be able to escape condemnation from the Middle Eastern.

From "Internet crash boosts productivity" to "Martyrdom made easy", most but not all the jokes were pretty good. But the smile on my face suddenly vanished whenever the Cockpuncher shows up.

The rewarding experience from watching this movie was simply I found a new source of laughs (that would be Onion's website) apart from Cracked.

For the efforts to ridicule, the movie deserved a 7.0. Could have been better, but Seagal ruined it.

Here's Martyrdom Made Easy:

via videosift.com

Chaos Theory

Just finished watching this a few hours ago, and I think it was quite good. I must admit that apart from Reynolds, only Stuart Townsend managed to somehow deliver a good performance. The rest of the cast were simply "so-so".

Initially I was intrigued by the title. Chaos Theory seemed like a promising theme, just like what were offered by No Country For Old Men, where a mere simple thing could entwine the destinies of many people, and to be more precise, displayed accurately by The Theory of Everything, one of the CSI's episodes in season 8.

The movie, unfortunately, stopped at Frank's unfortunate way of discovering that something has been awfully wrong all this time. And that's that. So what? Susan still loves him, Jessie, too, why taking it too hard? I mean, there's nothing wrong with Ryan's acting, it's just the plot that playing out that depression way too much.

I actually got and idea to make the plot interesting... Why not make Frank gone berserk and violent, putting on one of Jason Statham's badass look and accidentally or intentionally (I don't care, take your pick) shot Buddy? Still, that would be impossible for Frank Allen. Frank's a nice man, too nice. Yet that "nice thing" made it through the end without truly meaningful bang.

The final score, I'd give it a 6.5, saved a bit by Ryan and Stuart's performance.

The Forbidden Kingdom

Great scenery, good fighting scenes, interesting plot, a bit disappointing acting. While it was starred by two great martial artists Jackie Chan and Jet Li, I personally think that their individual movies were much better than Forbidden Kingdom.

The problem with this movie is the acting. I think it could be better if the movie was filmed in mandarin, not in English. Especially Jet Li, the English was awful. Jackie was slightly better, but not good enough. Also, I could swear that I heard Liu Yifei referring herself as "she"? Why not just "I"? Yet, if the entire movie was filmed in mandarin, that would pass the awkwardness to Michael Arangano. Perhaps a Babel fish would be the best solution?

Anyway, the scenery was great, and that was a plus for the movie. Still, I could only give 6.5 for this one.