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Tom and Jerry (II) (2021)
5/10
Failure Nostalgic Production
6 March 2021
A weird combination of cartoon and live-action movie. Every violence screens such like punching and kicking between Tom & Jerry has made me uncomfortable, and my head even sympathy the pain. Exaggerated fights and destructions are OK in cartoons; In real life? No. I think the live-action "reality" scenes had triggered Uncanny Valley fear, humanoid objects provoked strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion.

The leading character, the girl's image and voice too sweet. Her action of raising her eyebrows and staring is very contrary, doesn't seem convincible to make audiences laugh. I couldn't tell if she lack the natural talent in comedy, or the script is plainly bad.

Overall, this is a failure nostalgic production.
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Vivarium (2019)
2/10
Creepy
3 April 2020
Trailer is much more exciting than the film. I watched it for 30 mins, and it's so creepy and intolerable for me. I guess it's a bi-polar favor choice for different people.
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8/10
Eye catching
29 February 2020
8/10 movie that will make you laugh and it's full of whimsical fantasy
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Ready or Not (I) (2019)
5/10
what marriage is like
2 January 2020
Marriage is a real fight in life. It's more than just love and passion. (Especially for Chinese multi generation family.)

Your marriage life would be miserable if you ignore his background and his family. Your life will be no better than playing the "hide and seek" with his weird lifestyle, nonsense family rules and mean relatives, there's countless guns and arrows will make you either surrendered or run for escape.

The mother-in-law said she like you, but she would also harm you easily. Don't fight with your mother-in-law. Your husband might fall for you when you're in an disadvantage position. Men would promise you everything when he's in love. But he would also turn against you when you're not in his interest.

He sweared, you're everything to him, he would die if you're gone. Ironically, he was the one who put you to death in a marriage. You have to use your full strength to dodge the knives from your ex.

Finally when sun began to rise, and marriage came to the end, your former lover turned back into a (hypocrite) gentleman and ask for your forgiveness. Every woman probably want to have a super power to blast him to death.

So girls, are you ready or not?
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Frozen II (2019)
8/10
Amazing CGI
2 January 2020
1) Impressive CGI effects, Elsa is so beautiful! I love all of her costumes!

2) Music are good, Frozen 2 has qualified soundtracks, however it lacks the charm to form another catchy solo like "Let it go".

3) Elsa's magic took over most of the scenes and it's kinda overwhelming, Poor Anna became less and less important, her existence is weakened by the magic. Not to mention Kristoffer, he became a tool-man.

4) Kristoffer's solo, "Lost in the Woods", it's awkward. The late millennials and Gen Z has little to none common sense with this '80s nostalgia MV.

At last, it's worth the ticket. A movie you won't regret to watch in the big screen.
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5/10
Bad image design
14 October 2019
The character image design is so bad. Boring re-edit.
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I Am Mother (2019)
7/10
Easy guessing movie
8 June 2019
Warning: Spoilers
There are a lots of hints, easiest one was the beginning (around) 13,800 days after extinction, that's 37 years. The plot is easy to guess combined with the trailer and title.

If I am the mother, I will study human genes to elevate the status. If humanity means to fail, killing the evils and raise the new generations will not help. We're the same species.
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7/10
Story is so weak
17 May 2019
Great CGI, I love the fluffy pikachu and all other Pokémon. Turing a 2D cartoon character into a live action model is pretty amazing.

Entering the Ryme City reminded me of Zootopia, but this move is insipid. The storyline is weak. Nice nostalgia work in the nutshell. The ending surprised me, and I'm glad my pikachu is not a raunchy guy.

7.5/10
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Green Book (2018)
9/10
Bittersweet
20 March 2019
Warning: Spoilers
It was supposed to be sad, yet it made me laugh most of the time. Ineffable story, it touched my sensation sometimes, although I knew it's different from the reality.

The most unforgettable plot is when the pianist saw the black slave farming laboriously under the heat, Dr. Shirley was well dressed and sat inside the car while his white driver needed to check the car motor. That contrast was so strong; The white driver and the black farmers, they all doing the labor work regardless color. Meanwhile, Dr.Shirley and those farmers are all black, but their status are totally different. This part aroused audiences sensation for purpose. Not in favor, but strong contrast indeed, it's a good trick to leave impressions.

The movie also got me down every time when the pianist suffered unequal treatments. A top educated pianist with two honorary doctorates couldn't win him any respect in South. The movie named Green Book, it's a travel guide, only its listed businesses would accept African American customers. Dr.Shirley was refused to many place under the segregation, even a bathroom - to handle a man's basic needs. The host of the house would still turned his request down, the irony is they claimed themselves the most educated and powerful in the area. They appreciated Dr. Shirley's skill, but didn't respect him as an equal person. Dr. Shirley endures all these unequal treatments. He still put out a big smile, act courteous and speak mannerly to his white audiences. This suffer is silent but I seem to hear the heartbreaking from his soul. A silent torture of a man's pride, again and again, but a brave soul always born with endless courage.

Despite this, the rhythm of the movie is not depressing at all, it's bittersweet and heartwarming. The journey is funny with the Foodaholic driver, Tony lip's character image is hilarious. Dr. Shirley and Tony became friend, and their understanding of each other is more than just two cultures or any stereotypes. Their friendship is beautiful and rich in layers. However in real life, the pianist's family claimed Dr. Shirley never be friend with Tony, the movie was edited by Tony's son. Whatsoever, the script provoked thoughts, But when you walk out the theater, you would still memorize it as being short and sweet.
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9/10
Most touching animation series
4 March 2019
It's been a long days ever since from the first movie I watched when I was a teenage. I was so entertaining in the beginning when toothless find his light fury. The courtship part was hilarious. The hidden world is beautiful. In the moment when all the dragons made obeisance to their alpha - our toothless, it took away my breath; It's like looking at my son growing up and graduated from college. (Although I don't even have a son yet.)

The joy I have in the first half make me so sad to watch the end when hiccup and toothless separated to protect their species, and created their own families without company. The reunion happy ending just made me sadder and realized the untold long period separation has been gone so long, that hiccup even doubted if toothless could remember him or not.

What the saddest thing is I don't even know will it possible to write the fourth movie script! This 3rd movie blocks all the potential plots, hiccup is a full beard grownup man now, I am terrified to see an old man hiccup in the future.

In conclusion, How To Train Your Dragon movie is the best animation series I watched as long as I can recalled when it compares to the Ice Age, Kungfu Panda or Toys story. The script is so deeply moving, the series tells the story of each character's growing, sacrifice and courage. Poor hipccup lost his leg in 1st movie, lost his dad in 2nd, and lost his dragon in 3rd; made it more realistic compared to many "dog can't die" stories.

Last question is: imax vs. 3D, which one experience better?

Theater review 3/3/2019 IMAX visit.
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4/10
BS re-edits
25 February 2019
Watched up to episode 5, and I lost all my interest. The beginning was okay, cinematography filmed beautifully. But the acting and plots were so drama and mechanically. Also, costume is cheesy, actors always dressed in white and sew with cheap white fur, the shiny fabric (silk?) was available everywhere, even servants would dress in silky clothes. Another thing that upset me the most is many actors have a modern face, and ediors tried very hard to film them in an instagram filter tone; the entire thing is not matched, and the dark lighting also a big No No.

Not to mention the plot is nonsense that grownup teenage boys and girls wen to school together in the Song Dynasty? (Song was the dynasty inspired the idea that women should have tiny feet, and widows can't remarry. And Chinese ancient culture has a rule that "Boy and girl age seven (serve) different seats." Hence this schooling together is totally illogical.)

The little girl, small Minglan in the beginning has great tearful acting, her tear breaks my heart. The girl's performance and adults are simply two extremes. The grownup Minlan is so depressed, I have no interest to watch a bitter hardship story. Besides, many characters are lacking individualities, plot device is straightforward without logic most of the time.

After I gave up the tv drama, I read some reviews and found many readers dislike the drama when it compared to the original novel, and some novel contents from those reviews shows a great story was untold. Hence it brought me to the original novel, and the original story was so fascinated. The story is completely different from the tv drama. The novel tells the story of chooses, how they made the chooses, and what the chooses bring to them. Everything happened for reasons in the novel, unlike the Tv, the main concept of this drama has nothing similar to do with the original novel, the editors already created a different story - a story that I am not interested and only endure to ep 5.
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7/10
A feast for eyes, I wish I could love it.
25 February 2019
A feast for eyes, CGI work great in every fighting scene. I wish I could love this movie. I heard a lot of compliments about the movie, but unfortunately the movie only presented a brainless story.

Everything is so predictable. A cyborg girl built with go-beyond technology. This setting takes away all my worries because she'll almost Invincible. I didn't see any obstacles other than her romantic relationship problem. I wish I could see more story from her mystery background rather than her soapy romantic story.

The plot is not attractive - a typical story that lower class challenge the power holder - it appears trite and insignificant to me, especially I'm not a huge fan of the cyborg-punk setting.

PS. After reading the reviews of the Movie vs. Manga comparison. I found the original manga sounds much more interesting compared to this movie.
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Memories of the Alhambra (2018–2019)
3/10
Self interest lost up to ep 6, also heard the ending would be disappointed
7 February 2019
I watched up to ep 6, and I found it boring, the romantic screens are so cheesy and terrible, and the revenge game started not to make senses. I searched online and I found many disappointed reviews, hence I gave up.

Pro: the beginning setting was mind blowing, playing reality game in real life with eye contacts. Good CGI, exotic style and architecture. Con: weak social relationships between characters, zero chemistry. Most importantly is lacking realistic to being poor and act poor in Spain when the character has so many jobs, just plainly cliche.
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Airpocalypse (2018)
3/10
Ewww, you can't predict how worse it can be.
28 January 2019
TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE, a cock-and-bull story played to the gallery, wasted my time. The portly middle-aged men and the bald head men are not funny (I mean all 4 of them). The gags and material has no taste and low wit, and I felt extremely uncomfortable of the romantic plot device, when the guy touched the God of Electric's body, that's so disgusting.

3/10 to DuJuan's goddess dress, that's th wonky thing that I'm satisfied in this movie. But the modern traffic police uniform doesn't fit her, she is so thin and this caused she looks quite abnormal when surrounded with normal people, especially centered of a bunch of mid-age men. In the other hand, DuJuan's image does not meet the role; According to the story, she supposed to be punished by the God down to the Earth and suffered many miserable poor lives, however, DuJuan's acting was not convincing at all.
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Extinction (2018)
6/10
Surprised movie if you can bear the crazy kid.
20 January 2019
First at all, the kid's screaming is really annoying and she drives me crazy. I almost skipped this film, there was more than a moment that I was desperately wanting to close the movie window to stop the noise.

The story is great and surprising, no spoilers here. Just be patient to wait for the plot reversal.

Last but no the least, I really want to roast the weapons of the 'Mars enemies'; for a civilization that is able to migrate to Mars, they only have guns that are similar to Earth.
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Time Freak (2018)
6/10
After a decade of devotion, he's tired and want to quit.
20 January 2019
This comedy-romantic story starts with a good concept. It couldn't go anything wrong if you want to kill time with it. The best friend is fun, his scenes are hilarious. But the main characters - the nerd physics and the blond bartender - they seem to have zero chemistry.

The first half is okay, if we just let go "the college student invented a time machine" setting.

The other-half is going nowhere, when the guy get hookup with the machine and keep going back to fix problems. I was expecting something bigger and deeper like The Butterfly Effect movies, or alternatively ending with a bigger picture. Not ends with silly car chasing, the scene is awkward, and no one laughed.

On the other hand, the ending is meaningful in some way. It reveals the differences between man and woman. In a relationship, man can always sensibly stop the loss straightforward when he feels tired, even he's hurting inside; By contrast, woman mostly hooked up with her partner after a long period of devotions and commitments in a relationship, it's hard for them to cut off the memories and emotions.
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Bumblebee (I) (2018)
7/10
Animalification Bumblebee
10 January 2019
Theater review: (1/7/2018) My anticipation for transformer series movies is: as long as it can tell a complete story; fortunately it didn't fail me.

Although the plots are soapy and corny. But let's be kind and give applause to a female lead movie, moreover the autobot CGI fighting is smooth, at least they fight for reasons, unlike the chaos transformer 5. Lastly, the memory-lost bumblebee is cute, it melts my heart when he winks his blue digital eyes, it reminds me the Wall-E. The animalification bumblebee really helps it win the heart of female audiences.
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Brexit (2019 TV Movie)
5/10
Meh.Drama. Things are oversimplification
10 January 2019
The movie plot is predictable, and the real life story is unfolded, it's fast paced, only broadcasted brexit news from the past. The whole story is short, 120 minutes is not enough to tell the whole event, and again, the brexit is not done, British is still negotiating. The movie is biased for sure, as a person who knows nothing about British politics, I can see the script clearly against the Vote Leave campaign. The story depicted that the British referendum was manipulated by Dominic Cummings, a sociopath political strategist? And the whole result was dominated by the online data analysis power? Isn't it too oversimplification? The perspective is limited and the event's reasonable analysis is absent. Too drama, I want documentary, not politics, meh.
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Replicas (2018)
7/10
Fake Science but enjoyable to watch
2 January 2019
Rhythm is intense, some science concepts are interesting like a lower rank Black Mirror. Overall, the movie is enjoyable to watch. However those science technologies are so brainless and easy to find loopholes. The movie involved many different science topics, they're entertaining in some ways, but very fake. At least clone starts from an embryo; this movie's clone only needed 17 days and produced a fully grown human, regardless adult or kids, all matured in same time length, this plot is so fake.

Also if we dig further about the replica's self conscious and moral conscience, it's hard to believe that the replica wife not even questioning her identity after being told she's a clone. And the most interesting part is to convert human conscious into database, and memory can be edited and deleted, unfortunately the movie didn't expanse this idea.

Anyway, it's a nice popcorn movie with interesting sci-fi concepts, but after all, it's still a typical Hollywood family story, a man will do everything for his family, an action/drama movie with science outerwear.
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Hunter Killer (2018)
6/10
Popcorn movie: Intense fighting & illogical plot
30 December 2018
Typical American heroic story with submarine setting. Great green screen works! I have to confessed I really enjoy the underwater battles, it's eye catching. Nice popcorn movie. I only watched a few military thriller before, I like the submarine fighting, but the plots are so illogical and unrealistic. Characters are not charming, the acting is like deadpan.

ps. I felt weird that the scriptwriter tried to disgrace the Russians in such character images. It just made the movie looks more brainless.
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Smallfoot (2018)
7/10
Deeper though than just a cartoon, unfortunately has a cliche happy end
27 December 2018
This movie is beyond my anticipation because I picked it to kill time, it's deeper than just break the (tradition) stone and accepts the new minds. The best part is the rap of the Stone Keeper, the upper class uses machines to create clouds, hides the truth under the clouds, and creates fears and lies in the name of protection. At the end, curiosity breaks the fear because questions lead to knowledge and knowledge is power. I hope one day we can be the same as the yeti, we will no longer hit the gong to wake up the sun to raise because of what the 'old stone' said.

I think the movie can be better if it ended at the part when the stone keeper saved everyone, or when the human Percy save Migo by turning himself in. The embracing another culture part is just cliche, unrealistic and unconvinced. We the human, we don't treat another species as our own kind. The finial happy ending is more like designed for kids.
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Bao (2018)
8/10
Chinese food
27 December 2018
I watched this short in the theater with the Incredible 2. It tells the story of motherhood with all the food that she made for her son from baby to rebellious teenager. A touching story with my familiar Chinese food. Sorta cliche, but I will give an extra star for the cultural diffusion.
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6/10
Excellent acting. Nonliner Narrative: too many messages in a pot doesn't taste good.
27 December 2018
Cast acting was excellent, every breath and wink depicted a story.

The movie is dark, every hotel guests have a secret and dark past (maybe except the singer), and the editing technique is a nonlinear narrative that parallels distinctive plot stories, also narrating past stories into the main plot. The first 25 mins was meh, the entire first hour came with many broken pieces from different characters and the suspense tension was not strong, it barely kept my interest.

The most excited part for me was when Billy Lee (The Thor actor) appeared unexpectedly and the following unexpected reverse from Miles. (PS. the actor of Thor is really HOT when he moves his hip and abs 😍) But the character, billy Lee was hard to follow, he only brought out a nonsense heresy story, sexy body and morbid killing game.

The movie comes with so many absurds, crimes and cults. It tried too hard to put different elements together like the Vietnam war, the racial issues, hippies and FBI, etc. And I do believe it's trying to metaphor the mysterious hotel belongs to the government, and exaggerated those surveillance recorded tapes, made it a bunch violences. It's over the top and I don't really see a message that is clearly sending out. Overall, each reverse plot brings a little excitement, but never eventually reach the climax.
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7/10
Pop culture movie: It's good, but it can be better.
23 December 2018
Watched in the theater on thanksgiving day with family, and the movie wasn't as good as I expected, it lets me down because we made this movie into the schedule after the dinner, otherwise I would just go to shop on the thanksgiving day.

What I like: The movie usually started not bad, the first half part was fun, the introductive internet world is cute, everyone can find common online things we use daily. I even spot the Ads like Purple the pillow brand. The car racing is exciting, and the adventure in Disneyland is fun, the princesses talk is hilarious.(The princess theory is so sarcastic funny, good job Disney, but I think I watched this part in the trailer. So it's still funny but not surprising.)

What I dislike: The main storyline was simple, kinda cliche with the misunderstanding the mad at each other and be friend again story, I can not say it is so very intriguing. The visualized internet world is nothing new either, I was not amused after watching emojis movie and the Ready Player 1, those pop culture background settings are similar by visualized internet features into a 3D world, made 2D characters lively and interacted with each other.

In summary, even the storyline is weak, but who cares, it's good enough to be a holiday family movie, perfectly suitable for kids, no harms no bad influence. And Adults can also entertain ourselves by checking out pop culture Easter eggs. Ticket worthy, but i expected the movie can be better.
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7/10
Decent, but not as strong as the old one.
23 December 2018
Asians' favorite character is back after 20 years!

As a kid, I was so obsessed with Sakura's beautiful costumes, and so as my other friends. I remembered the old time that how we rushed to go home and caught the TV schedules, collected the beautiful stickers and posters . We learned the introductory divination from Clow Cards to Tarot. It was a sweet and greedy childhood, we always wanted to collect more and more. It was great money making seasons to the sellers I guess, everything printed with Sakura, and we all buying it because everyone liked this animation from kindergarten kids like me to teenage girls.

And, this fever is still on fire after 20 years. The original Cardcaptor Sakura cartoon is still quite fashionable, it's not outdated when I watch some episodes from the old one that was made in 20 years ago. At least each episode tells a story, and the whole thing is inspiring full of positive energy, it's delightful.

The new cartoon is decent, but not strong as the old one. I don't know how to put into words, but probably that's the pain of growing up, happiness changed with age, many things become not amusing. I missed the old time, the simple joys that I could easily access from a cute cartoon tv shows. Also, it's true that the new magic array pattern is less fine compared to the old magic array.

Anyway, it's good to see the puppy love ending of Sakura and Li Syaoran, it fulfilled my childhood hope.
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