The action scenes are fun to watch, Matthew Vaughn can certainly direct action. The characters are also more developed, certainly we remember them more than in the comic. This is true for Red Mist especially.

In the comic, Millar used him as a twist to reveal who he really was. But in the movie they remove that twist and instead try to develop him into a more rounded character, somebody who’s not totally evil like his dad, but who’s also not a good guy at all. A more ambivalent character.

In the movie there is also less back and forth between “superheroes exists” and “superhero can’t exist”. I think they accept that Big Daddy and Hit Girl are in fact superheroes, so their origin is not revealed as a lie. Which makes the last battle emotionally relevant.

That final battle is also all-out superhero style, complete with a jetpack for Kick-Ass. That was so over the top that I enjoyed it.

Another big change from the comic is that Dave does get the girl, which could be seen as a Hollywood ending. But in general, it does feel like Dave actually accomplished something, instead of the empty feeling at the end of the comic.

This is not a great movie, but it was fun to watch and it solved some of the big problems in the comic. I understand the comic and script were completed in parallel, so the ending felt very different.

If you’re not offended by a little girl cursing and killing people, this might be a fun movie to watch. I was surprised that even my wife kind of enjoyed it.

Rating: 3 Stars

It is narrated by the teacher of this community, who tells us of the strange events of that time. First the doctor is injured, then some children are kidnapped and tortured, other women die, a barn burns etc…

SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT!!

The village people (and the audience) start wondering who is doing these terrible acts, but what’s important here is what really happens in the village. We slowly learn that some men in power positions in the village appear kind from the outside, but at home they are tyrants, especially to their kids.

I think that’s the key to this story, these fathers (with the mothers watching) are horrible to their kids. Some think they are righteous (the pastor), but some are just abusing their kids (the doctor). Throughout the film we see the various kids trying to rebel, to find an outlet for their frustration. But in the end they still have to obey their parents.

However I think they do find an outlet, which is taking revenge on whoever they hate. The teacher himself plainly accuses them of this, but even though we don’t get a definitive answer, I think he was right. However, the real problem is not the kids, but their parents. This might be Haneke’s way of showing us where evil people come from, or what could lead them to an “evil” path. Ultimately parents have a big impact on their children.

The more I think about it the more I get, which is something Haneke does very well in his movies. I’m sure there many more hints that I missed, I admit I watch this in 3 separate sittings and a few days apart, so I was definitely confused at times as to the identity of the characters. I could barely make out the adults, but the children were hard to identify.

Which means a re-watch would definitely be rewarding. This is another good movie that makes you think, which I’m always up for. However the pacing was a bit slow and it felt so distant that I didn’t feel very connected to the characters.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

It’s a fascinating study of Mary’s life and connections to her work as well as anything else that comes in Ellis’s mind. Usually these type of comics bore me, but in this case I was very interested.

The art by Marek Oleksicki certainly helped keep me interested. His black and white art is very detailed, which is perfect for rendering the many different places we’re taken during this journey. While reading this I was really immersed in the story.

I don’t really know anything about Mary Shelly and her book, but this was still a fascinating read and not a big commitment with less than 100 pages.

I can see why it appealed to Taiwan, there are many elements they’d enjoy, which I’ll try to list below.

The lead actress playing Tomoko is Japanese, and she has some scenes talking in Japanese, but mostly she talks in Mandarin with her heavy accent. Taiwanese just love Japanese people, and their accent (for girls) is endearing (even to me).

The lead actor playing Aga has that typical “bad boy” look, even though he’s actually a good guy. He seemed to have a good chemistry with Tomoko, especially when they were fighting all the time, before they hooked up.

When Tomoko is not present, the characters speak the Taiwanese dialect, which makes sense considering this takes place in the south, in Hengchun. The place actually looks beautiful, one of those resorts by the beach, which is not what I see when I think of Taiwan. All this I think appeals to Taiwanese national pride.

Then there’s the music, which appeals to everybody I guess. There’s not a lot of it, but after so much practice, we had to see them play at the end, and I think it mostly worked.

The love story told in the old letters felt a bit cheesy to me, and being narrated in Japanese didn’t feel particularly poetic, which is what it was intended. The English translation was fine, I just didn’t find those scenes “touching”.

In the end, I can definitely see why it was so successful in Taiwan, and since that was the intended audience, this is a successful movie. I wasn’t born in Taiwan, but I’ve been there many times. Even so, I wasn’t in love with it. It’s an ok movie, but nothing special to me.

Rating: 2.5 Rating

Then there’s a group of friends who share an apartment and seem to have sexual adventures. There’s a comedic tone throughout, even though the subject is serious (relationships, prostitution etc…).

However towards the end things get more serious, as if to tell us that even though these boys take life very lightly and joking, sooner or later life will catch up with them. The movie ends with a certain sadness that I didn’t see coming.

It’s an odd movie, I don’t think I enjoyed it much (the humor itself wasn’t laugh out loud funny), but it certainly has some message behind it about Taiwan of the time, even through the eyes of foreigners. I just didn’t enjoy it in general.

Rating: 2 Stars

Visually it’s stunning, even though this is 10 years old and the first Pixar feature film, it still looks very modern. I was surprised that many toys were actually real toys before the movie (though not living in US I didn’t recognize them all).

But I think the story was key to its success. Seeing the toys’ point of view when their owner is not around is a genius concept. Even I was curious about it. But there are also some mature themes that probably only adults can appreciate.

Kids these days change toys so often that they appreciate them even less than when I was a kid. I used to treasure my toys and kept them even after I grew up. They became almost collectibles that I would only look at, instead of play with.

Apart from that, this is just a thrilling exciting movie. It was fun to see them in the outside world, and even scary to see them in the bad boy’s room. There was a real sense of danger, especially with those monstrous looking toys.

The main characters were also well developed, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen did a great job at giving them a soul. They might be only toys, but they’re just as human as we are.

I’ll be watching the sequel soon.

Rating: 4 Stars

In the middle of these two, is Malik, who starts his 6 years in prison by doing a favor to the Corsicans, killing an Arab, Reyeb. From there we keep following Malik’s life in prison. It’s a roller coaster, alternating the almost boring life in prison with only a few intense violent scenes.

It’s a long film, but it’s necessary to tell this story about Malik and his growth. I really don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll just say that it’s well worth watching, one of the best crime movies of the year.

After he kills Reyeb, he keeps seeing him in his head, and he becomes his “invisible friend” in prison. There are only a few scenes with him, though I’m not sure it helped us get into Malik’s head. It felt more like a gimmick, even more so at the end.

Character wise we’re really concentrating on Malik, other characters are not that well developed, expect maybe for Luciani. But the others are introduced with their names superimposed, so that we might remember them better.

Tahar Rahim plays Malik, and he does a great job. The difference between Malik at the beginning and the end is noticeable, not just in his look, but his general physicality.

Rating: 4 Stars

This is a very odd and almost surreal romance. It’s narrated by Vicky from 2011, telling us about her youth in 2001, when she was living with her boyfriend Hao-Hao. She’s not happy in this relationship, he’s basically a loser who takes it out on her and lives off of her.

However this is not a typical abuse story. He does not beat her, but he is very jealous of her and often goes through her things and accuses her of cheating on him. He shouts at her, but I got the feeling that they both knew he wouldn’t harm her, that it was almost like a mask that he puts on, but deep down he’d never hurt her physically.

She tells us that if she left him, he would always find her and beg her to go back, crying. She does go back to him, though we’re not quite sure what she does that, at least we don’t see it on screen, but I think she’s hinting that she did like him, or need him somehow. And he is obsessed with her (he likes to smell her), but there’s one scene where I think he shows that he cares about her. He’s doing drugs, which she’s not happy about, but to spite him she takes it from him and wants to do drugs herself. But he doesn’t allow her, and throws it away. I think even though he’s self destructive, he doesn’t want her to do it too.

There’s also another man in her life, Jack, who’s involved with the crime community. He’s much more in charge, and he’s kind to her, but his involvement with crime is bad for her.

The narration is often paired with slow motion, which gives it a dream like atmosphere, almost a nostalgic feeling for those times, even though they were touch times for her.

I like that this movie doesn’t spell out the relationship for us to see, instead it’s much more subtle and we can try to draw our own conclusions. It felt like an emotional puzzle or mystery. But the pacing is very slow, and some scenes might feel boring. It succeeds in creating a particular feel, but it didn’t completely satisfy me.

Rating: 3 Stars

Obviously there are some difference of opinion on how to deal with it, and the siblings have a few arguments about it. But there’s nothing too dramatic, they do not shout at each other or physically fight, instead they just talk it out and make decisions together.

What’s touching is the more subtle sadness they feel, both at letting go of some of their childhood memories (and their mother’s memory), as well as the way their life has changed. They’re still a family, they are as close as possible to each other, they certainly are not estranged from each other. But their situations are just so different due to, well, life.

This film really captures that fact of life very well, anybody can understand this. This is a very moving film, but it does it very subtly, without big dramatic moments that only serve at manipulating the viewers emotions, often accompanied by a big dramatic musical score.

The final scene gave me a nostalgic feeling, which I thought was a great way to end this story.

Rating: 4 Stars