KrisWorld Movie Marathon

KrisWorld is having a Harry Potter festival with all four movies in the franchise being shown in-flight. I watched Goblet of Fire first. Personally, I think each iteration of J.K.Rowling's books are getting worse. It's the same for the movies. It doesn't help that they keep on changing directors. The film comes with an MPAA rating of PG-13. That probably means only for those aged 13 and below, as this is definitely a movie for kids and tweens. Take the Christmas dance ball for example. All these fine wizards worrying who to bring, what to wear, etc. What about the comeback of Lord Voldemort? What about the threat of the Death Eaters? Doesn't anybody care anymore? Then the dance ball becomes a rock-and-roll concert. Where did that come from?! If this is a movie about the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, then concentrate on the them. Don't populate it with too many distractions like the Yule Ball, Hermoine's spat with Ron, Harry's romance with Cho Chang, Harry's fling with Myrtle in the pool, etc. And then that encounter with Voldemort is one long boring monologue. I was, like, can you just zip it and kill Potter already? Rowling did kill off the champion of Hogwarts Cedric to spice things up a bit, but it's not enough. The three tasks assigned for the 1994-1995 Triwizard Tournament is a little bit interesting, but great CG alone is nothing without a good plot.

Next up is Prisoner of Azkaban. At this point, my patience with bad movies is wearing thin, so don't expect any glowing praises for this. Ok, first rant. What's with the bloated aunt sequence? Is it even relevant to the story? My guess is that it's put there only because it was in the book. And it makes for cool special effects. The whole film feels like a mish-mash of extended sequences - the floating aunt, the magical Night Bus, the biting book, Professor Sybil Treelawney and her divinaiton class, Buckbeak the Hippogriff, more Quidditch matches (for the nth time), spells class, potions class, and other inanities. It's a good thing we didn't have to watch the kids brush their teeth in the morning. The only good thing about the movie is the time travel angle, which explained everything neatly the second time around. Then again, using time travel as a deus ex machina to resolve all the loose ends is not good storytelling. I don't blame Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien, A Little Princess). That's just how the story goes. At least he was able to extract some better-than-average acting from his wards.

I got so fed up with Harry Potter, I decided to go for some old-school Chinese martial arts flick like Seven Swords (a.k.a. Chat Gim or Qi Jian in Mandarin). In summary, it's another nonsense movie in spite of the big stars and the cool trailer and the massive hype. I mean, what ever happened to Tsui Hark? This is the guy who gave us classic series such as A Better Tomorrow (a.k.a. Ying xiong ben se) and Once Upon a Time in China (a.k.a. Huang Fei-hong). Seven Swords is set in 17th century Western China, where the long-ruling Ming Dynasty was overthrown by Manchurian invaders from the North. To prevent any possible uprisings, martial law was declared. All martial art practitioners are to surrender all weapons to government officials, or else face immediate execution. Fire-Wind and his Goth goons have been on the rampage, and their last port of call is Bowei Fortress. Knowing their days are numbered, retired executioner Fu Zingzhu and villagers Wu Yuan Yin (Charlie Young) and Han Zhi Ban (Yi Lu) travels to Mount Heaven, and came back with four master swordsmen as reinforcement. Seven of them against Fire-Wind's hundreds. Yeah, right. Each of the swordsmen comes with a specially-designed sword. When the rouges come knocking at the village doors, Charlie Yeung doesn't even know how to operate her sword. RTFM, girl. Surprisingly, she didn't end up as dead meat. You know how it ends: good guys and bad guys have a final climactic battle. One side wins. Honestly, I don't see anything good in this movie. Leon Lai can carry a tune, and he acts not too bad in Infernal Affairs, but in this movie, he's made of wood. Charlie Yeung is as cute as ever, but that's all there is to it. So-yeon Kim is a looker, but too bad I don't understand Korean. And her actions make no sense. Donnie Yen is a solid martial artist, but he doesn't get to show off his sills much in the movie. There's lots of fighting scenes all right, but the camera work is such that you can't see much of the overall choreography.