When I first heard of G-Force, I thought it was the 70s-80s cartoon, Battle Of The Planets, aka G-Force. So it was quite disappointing to find out this is actually a guinea pigs in Mission: Impossible.

But these rodents were pretty well engineered and looked real enough, and definitely cute enough. Yes, even the mole. But that shouldn’t be any surprise after Stuart Little.

Best thing I can say for this movie was that adults could enjoy it just as much as children. The jokes, the pace, the script were all entertaining and fun to watch. Especially the CGI which was flawless. But the story really wasn’t anything to shout about. It was very lightweight and predictable, just enough to move things along. And a strong protagonist was missing from start to finish. It was certainly a different approach but still wasn’t strong enough.

The actors didn’t have to do much here. Bill Nighy just had to look enthused about his creation, Zach Galifianakis was just to support the rodents, and Will Arnett didn’t have a lot of lines or jokes; he looked a little uncomfortable while trying to look serious.

But the voice actors however were spot on, except Penelope Cruz who I found quite distracting in her accent. I couldn’t recognise Nicholas Cage too so that was very well done.

Rating: 6 / 10

(all images from imdb.com)

What’s great about this movie was the performances by Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, more so with Sheen. Even though I’ve never seen Frost or Nixon before, but what the actors brought to their roles were so in-character that you would believe in these characters, didn’t matter if they existed in reality or not.

Frost when meeting Nixon always had this careful,  humble and sincere respect towards Nixon; even after their interview sessions at their final rendezvous, there’s still that awkward silence from Frost and I thought that was very well played by Sheen.

The best interaction and dialogue came not in the interview, but that midnight phone call made by Nixon to Frost, they weren’t even in the same room and yet the explosion was there. Langella brought the script to life as he shouted them out in the empty, dark room.

Other players included Kevin Bacon and Matthew Macfadyen who turned in respectable performances but the same couldn’t really be said for Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt as there weren’t anything impressive about their roles even though they didn’t do anything wrong. Platt however had the best comical lines.

And I thought Ron Howard was right to leave out any romance from the plot. The pace ran very well and the story or anything else for that matter was over done. Editing wise however was too predictable in the sense that the cuts came exactly in places where it should, and that was quite disappointing.

Rating: 8 / 10

(all images from imdb.com)

The early life of Genghis Khan. This picture boasted beautiful scenery and costumes that gave a sense of the nomadic lifestyle of that era.

But the story, however close to the truth, was a little dull. Much of the time we see Temudjin got captured, escaped, ran, captured again, and so on and so forth. It got tedious after the second time. And the action never picked up, not that I was expecting it, but there just wasn’t enough of anything to keep the movie interesting.

What kept Temudjin going was his love for his wife, which came as quite a surprise given how Genghis Khan’s ruthlessness preceded his name. And it was the actors, Tadanobu Asano as Temudjin, and Sun Honglei as his half-brother slash protagonist, that really kept the movie going.

There weren’t any great choreography for the bloody fight scenes, which isn’t a big complaint from me. But the final battle was just too weak, with ninja-like commando-warriors suddenly coming out of nowhere with some crazily intimidating long swords; going into the battlefield on their own and then suddenly retreating; and in the end getting killed by their own brothers. That was just weird and too “Hollywood” for me.

Rating: 6 / 10

(all images from imdb.com)

What’s typical about the story was its style like many other Korean movies, the first half was filled with humour before the drama and disaster set in. What’s typical was like many other Hollywood disaster movies, the story first focus on a few group of people and their individual stories first, before going into the disaster so that the emotional drama was there.

But how it has done well was the story of those group of people, and that’s where the difference between this and other Hollywood movies lie; though not by too much as many sub-plots reminded that of Hollywood.

The CGI however were done well enough to be believable. But it was how the visual effects were used to humour in some cases, were most impressive.

But before the CGI kicked in, it was quite a long waiting game in the first half. That’s where the characterisation of the people involved were important and they were done well enough to keep things interesting most of the time. Among the cast, Ha Ji-Won stood out being the most charismatic and likeable.

Rating: 7 / 10

(image from beyondhollywood.com)

The lewd jokes were all I can remember from the movie. So lewd sometimes they became uncomfortable to sit through. They were talking about “flicking the bean” for a good five minutes and our local censorship board was oblivious enough to let it, and among other such innuendos, slide.

But what the movie talked about very truthfully was how men see women and what they really want, with the most brutal honesty. Sometimes exaggerated slightly but other times right on the money.  However, the characters were the ones that were overly exaggerated in their stereotypical roles.

I would have very much preferred to see someone else who wasn’t as hot as Katherine Heigl played the role of a woman who is unable to land herself a man. Perhaps a scene could have been devoted to show how this woman was transformed by Gerard Butler’s character from the proverbial ugly duckling.

None of the jokes were original; crude languaging were thrown in to substitute for lacking in everything else, and to give that “different” kind of entertainment; but luckily the actors made it work, barely. But what’s Kevin Connolly doing in there in that one lousy scene that could have been done by anyone else?

Rating: 5 / 10

(all images from imdb.com)