AMERICAN SNIPER - 2014

Clint Eastwood doesn't cover himself in the flag in American Sniper. I don't recall seeing the stars and stripes fluttering until just before the end, although that may be my faulty memory. There's so much tension in the foreground throughout this extraordinarily gripping movie that it's sometimes hard to notice the backgrounds.

The film does not quite glorify the American role in the Iraq war, but it won't displease those who supported it either. Eastwood walks a fine line – or has a bet each way, if you prefer. He has been public about his opposition to that war, but the critique here remains personal and subtle. It's the story of one man's war and the toll it took on him and his family. It's not about why the US went to war in Iraq, although we do see Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) and his new wife Taya (Sienna Miller) reacting with anger and shock to the television images of the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001. If he hadn't already been desperate to get into combat, that made him more certain about the rightness of what he was about to do.

Moral choices: Bradley Cooper, right, as sniper Chris Kyle hates wars in general but is enjoying himself too much to quit. Photo: Supplied

Kyle left soon after on the first of four tours of Iraq, as a newly trained Navy SEAL, with an ambition to become a sniper. The book he wrote later makes clear he was gung-ho, full of simple Texas truths and wholesome Christian certainty. Dodging tracers in the helicopter on his first mission makes him fret: "Damn, I thought. We're going to get shot down before I even get a chance to smoke someone."

That line doesn't make it into the movie: it would make him less sympathetic. Even so, there's something dark and bleak about this man. Kyle became the most successful sniper in US military history – with something like 160 "kills". His work supporting advancing troops by hiding on rooftops in Fallujah and killing "hostiles" made him legendary, but Eastwood is interested in the moral dilemmas that such a man faces – even when he has an unshakeable belief in the rightness of what he's doing.

That's why the film begins with an agonising choice: Kyle (Cooper) is on a roof watching through his scope as a woman emerges from a house in front of oncoming Americans, somewhere in Iraq. He watches her hand a rocket grenade to a small boy, who then runs toward the troops. With no supporting vision, his commanders in the rear tell him it's his call. Eastwood then cuts to Texas, and Kyle as a boy (Cole Konis), hunting with his dad. He kills a deer with a clean shot and earns his father's praise. The dilemmas don't get any easier as the film develops, either at home or in the field.

It's like watching a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the making, complicated by the complex psychology of Kyle. He knows he's saving lives by taking them; he hates the enemy enough to find killing them easy. After two tours he hates war in general, but he's enjoying himself too much in this one to quit. Back home with wife and newborn baby, he worries about the men he's not saving.

None of this surprised me. We've seen it before, but Eastwood is good at making it seem raw and personal, largely by the care he takes in building a character, and the situations that will test them. If there is anything that distinguishes his recent movies, it is the room he gives actors to create a character, and the awful moral choices they confront. Bradley Cooper responds to the challenge by making Kyle seem both modest and naive, ruthless and cold-blooded, ambitious and self-effacing, all the while ratcheting up the signs of raging internal tension. He's never as easy with it as he pretends and the self-justifications get harder and harder.

Some have called it a movie glorifying a killer, but I didn't see much glory in Cooper's eyes. Those around Kyle call him "legend" and "hero", and he squirms. What kind of hero shoots women and children from 1000 yards out?

Eastwood started in movies as an actor with a gun and a killer smile, dispatching punks. His most recent films have largely been about the limits and consequences of violence. Not screen violence like  in Dirty Harry, but real violence – as in the women's boxing ring, or the vicious old west, or an urban slum blighted by criminal gangs. At 84, he remains as potent a filmmaker as ever, and maybe even more nuanced.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/american-sniper-review-clint-eastwood-creates-a-tense-complex-movie-20150120-12u61w.html#ixzz3Y7QCGT5n

TRAILER

                            FAST & FURIOUS 7

Plot
With his brother (Luke Evans) hospitalised, Deckard Shaw (Statham) vows revenge and sets out to send Dom (Diesel), Brian (Walker) et al to the big bodyshop in the sky.

Review

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The Fast & Furious franchise has gone full Toon Town. What began six films ago as Point Break with pimped-out rims has since become the world’s most expensive Road Runner skit — essentially The Rock hitting Jason Statham over the head with an anvil while Vin Diesel sticks his finger in a light socket. Horror maestro James Wan (standing in for series stalwart Justin Lin) has embraced the saga’s unreserved silliness wholeheartedly, shaking the bottle, popping the cork and letting it all burst forth in a fizzing, frothy fountain of swollen muscles and polished chrome.

The film opens with Statham’s salty killer Deckard Shaw growling “bollocks” at his ailing brother’s bedside. We pull back to see that he’s slaughtered two dozen SWAT members and shot up half the hospital just to deliver a ‘get well soon’ in person. Segue to an outrageous, cock-measuring punch-up with The Rock, and Wan has set the tone for the entire movie. To appraise the plot in too much detail would rather miss the point. Suffice it to say this is senseless bobbins from top to bottom and makes not one lick of sense if regarded with anything approaching logical scrutiny. As with the previous instalment, Diesel’s ragtag band of street-racing ragamuffins have somehow graduated from small-time crooks to a globe-trotting Special Forces outfit — a kind of wifebeater-sporting IMF with a throaty V8 stuffed down its trousers.

They flit from London to LA via Abu Dhabi and Azerbaijan in search of mysterious device ‘the God’s Eye’, which will help them track down Shaw — a premise somewhat undermined by the fact that Shaw himself is in hot pursuit, dropping in on every location they visit like a bestubbled T-1000. But of course, none of that really matters when you’re watching a live-action Looney Tune in which people jump supercars between high-rises and pull doughnuts on the edge of cliffs. This boasts set-pieces that might well be the franchise’s most demented yet (which is saying something after 5’s safe-dragging cars and Diesel’s cross-carriageway tank flight in 6). Paul Walker runs the length of a bus roof as it slides off a cliff, Diesel flings his ride at a helicopter and the entire team parachute out of a plane in their cars. Furious 7, as it’s known Stateside, exalts in wanton carnage, giddily surpassing Michael Bay levels of destruction by the story’s end.
While The Rock continues to gnaw on the lion’s share of both lines and laughs (muscle-flexing his way out of an arm cast is a particular joy to behold), F&F7 is very much Diesel’s film. Meat-sandwich Dom is the unlikely source of both exposition and emotion here, and though the amnesia subplot with Michelle Rodriguez’ Letty is risible (one chapel-based flashback will make you laugh out loud), he fills the role admirably. Sadly, it comes by way of necessity as Paul Walker’s death mid-shoot required substantial changes to the script. To the credit of all involved, the joins are largely seamless. Walker’s brothers, Caleb and Cody, stand in for the actor in a few long shots and CG trickery competently fudges the close-ups. It does add a slightly sombre note to an otherwise upbeat film, but the care with which the issue is handled forms a genuinely moving tribute to the actor, Toretto’s usual guff about “family” striking a chord that it never has before.

Fast & Furious is Hollywood’s most ludicrous (and Ludacris) franchise by a car-length, and 7, which feels like a trolley dash in a napalm factory, is the most gonzo instalment yet. But despite dialogue that makes The Expendables sound like Shakespeare and action to make even Wile E. Coyote cock a disbelieving eyebrow, this is a gleeful, exuberant romp of a movie. Not bad, then. Just drawn that way.

Official trailer

Dawn of The Planet of The APES [2014]

Dawn of The Planet of The APES 

Right after the movie release of the Rise of the Planet of The Apes, lots of viewers are anticipate on it's upcoming movie Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

 As expected, it does not failed their viewer’s expectation not only because the apes looks even better than in ‘Rise’.

 It contains lots of excellent visual effects, actions and acceptable good storyline. 

The movie starts off about the bad relationship between the humans and apes because most of the people was dead and left with only few people because they were immune to the virus. Apes, on the other hand are doing good. They manage to form a huge family rules by the leader, Caesar starring Andy Serkis. They help out each other and developing a sophisticated language through sign and speech. But one day, these survivors hang on by a thread because their resources are dying. A former architect Malcolm starring Jason Clarke was sent into ape territory outside San Francisco to resuscitate a hydroelectric dam. It is his community's last hope to restore the power. However, one of the follower of Caesar, Koba starring Toby Kebbell hated the humans and do not trust them. Then, the story continues between the trust and intact relationship of humans and apes. 

Here goes the thriller!

Happy watching~!!! 
by Joy