CinemaShafiq

  I am going on a daily marathon of Martin Scorsese's films, and I would say that this film showed just how versatile Scorsese is. From releasing a mafia story in 1990, to thriller in 1991, then to a good 1800s New York romance drama in 1993. The Age of Innocence felt like it's one of the classic 1920s-50s Hollywood films that was set in the pre-war or 1800s America, and the performances of Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer added strongly to this effect. It's hard to believe that this film was released in 1993 when the settings, costumes and prop were all nicely polished and set as in the 1800s. This film also showed just how powerful Daniel Day-Lewis' acting is and just how great and a versatile actor he is. I watched this film after watching Gangs of New York, and it's hard for me to believe that the brutal racist gangster in Gangs is the same actor that portrayed this calm and composed soft-speaking gentleman in Age of Innocence. This is definitely one of Sc

  Mehh it's alright.  You can definitely expect that it would not be a smart movie or a well-choreographed practical action movie, but the chemistry between The Rock & Statham was fine. And I like the unexpected secret cameo. Still, this film was really not in league with other films in the Fast & Furious franchise, it was filled with crappy CGI, overly used cheap humour, too much slow mo and illogical action scenes (yes, even for Fast & Furious standard). 6/10

The last time I watched this film was back in 2009 at my school, when my replacement teacher showed this movie for us on a projector in a science lab. So my memory about it was very vague and upon a proper rewatch, I am actually slightly disappointed. The first film was a classic, and the second & third installment were basically good, enjoyable 80s action popcorn movie. 20 years later, after Rambo III, we found out that Rambo is now living in Thailand, isolated and far from his old life. I expected more from this as it was directed by Stallone himself, but sadly a lot of aspects of this film were a failure. The story was simple, not a problem but damn it, the casts, everyone basically besides Rambo were annoying, miserable and badly written. The cinematography was nothing extraordinary, and the CGI was hideous and notably bad on a lot of action scenes.  Eventhough the music scores by Brian Tyler was good, as well as the gruesome realistic potrayal of the Burmese civil war was inte

  A very good feel good film. It has been such a long time since a film gave me such good vibes and made me happy after watching it. Also my mouth was watering seeing Jon Favreau sizzling, sautéing, and frying stuffs in the kitchen. And now I'm curious on how a cubano tastes like. That little unexpected cameo was also fun. 8/10

  Chris Hemsworth's new Netflix film Extraction turned out to be worth the watch.  It is a good action-packed popcorn film and this film showed that Hemsworth is the one amongst the OG Avengers who has the most diverse acting range and also a bright career post Endgame. 6/10

  Just what the fuck. This was easily one of the worst action films I had watched in years. It was cheap, poorly written, edited and even poorly acted. Liam Neeson is the kind of actor that works best when he is an addition to an ensembled movie, but oh boy cannot really hold a movie with him being the titular hero. This movie was an easy cash grab with the quality of a B film or a Diva channel film. The only good thing about this film was that at least now the franchise is finally over but Liam Neeson still however keep on doing the same type of films over and over for the past two years. 4/10

  Garbage. This film was just a clear cut copy and paste remake of the famous cult classic 2002 straight-to-VCD Momok. M Jamil must be thinking too highly of himself and his telemovie that he thinks people would highly anticipate and really love to see each scenes, one by one, being remade. Making Faizal AF4 who cannot act as the main cast definitely didn't help this film. Nabil was hyped on the poster but he was in for like 10 mins. Better watch the old VCD one. 3/10 

Upon watching it, I bet it was not well received when it was released, and I was right. Turns out the film becomes a cult classic a few years after its release and it was not hard to see why. With an interesting premise and a strong acting by Christian Bale, together with its early 2000s leather-punk-rock-music campyness, it was a good dystopian sci-fi film; and the only thing that bugs me was how cheesy the "gun-kata" was. Obviously it drew inspirations from The Matrix, George Orwell's novels and also Chinese kung-fu films and everything was mixed in a blender and blended. Still, it's Christian Bale. 6/10

The first film by Martin Scorsese that showed Hollywood his entrance for him to become one of America's best film directors. Also an early entrance for Robert de Niro and Harvey Keitel in their career. 46 years later, they were reunited in Scorcese's The Irishman. It was fun watching them back in the days when they just got started. Also in this film, Keitel liked girls with poking nipples idk 8/10 

  A mess. And I don't even feel like reviewing it. I watched it with a student discount for the ticket price and I watched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi with IMAX screening(s). Just tells how much I didn't care anymore. If anything, it clearly shows that Disney totally have no plan whatsoever since the beginning on the "sequel trilogy" and George Lucas was right that he sold Star Wars to "white slavers". 6/10 but most marks are for the impressive visual effects only.

  A masterpiece by Bong Joon-Ho. He brilliantly crafted a thriller/drama film that has some dark comedy bits and most importantly a deep social satire at its core.  The social commentary was a reality check and gut-wrenching; and is very relevant for 2019. Well-casted and visually beautiful with brilliant cinematography that brought its smart screenplay to life. Definitely one of my top 5 films of 2019, and one of top films of the decade. 9/10

This film in a nutshell: "Sob sob look at me I'm an opressed woman and all men are evil but btw! Let's dress up like hookers and kill innocent people on our rampage because that's women empowerment!" Seriously nothing works in this. The story and acting was messy and cringy, music was out of place, and the characters are nothing like their counterparts in comics or TV series. Huntress and Black Canary in Arrow are hundred times better. Black Mask was a disgrace. Seriously why did Ewan even agreed to this. After many achievements by DC in 2019 with the Oscar-winning Joker, a fresh and unique take on superhero lives by Doom Patrol, HBO's Watchmen, and the TV mega-crossover that is Arrowverse Crisis on Infinite Earths and a good family movie Shazam, Birds of Prey was a bad way to start 2020. Ah, maybe 2020 is so jinxed by it that is why this year sucks so much. But I think Wonder Woman 1984 would be good. Hopefully. 4/10

A haunting and intense recount of the Chernobyl incident in 1986. Craig Mazin successfully made a grim, haunting, suspenseful recollection of the incident based on the actual facts and persons involved. Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgaard and Emily Watson's acting were excellent in portraying conflicted important personas in the 80s Soviet. There were comments criticising that the one bothering thing about the series was that the fact that all the casts were using English, and not Russian, but to me, that didn't even matter as biopics not using the original language is pretty common and the series actings, story and other technical aspects was too damn good to consider such small issue. The music, composed by the brilliant Hildur Gudnadottir and the costume department, covering makeups and attires of the casts add to the haunting elements of Chernobyl, and Craig Mazin got the environment of the 80s Soviets perfectly, even to the tiniest details such as the color of th

As expected of a 90s comicbook movie, way before Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and Bryan Singer's X-Men paved the way to the golden age of superhero movies; Spawn was cheesy and campy as hell, with all it's 90s campy elements - leather attires, crappy punk rock music etc. However, the movie got the titular character, Spawn, right. His origin story, and his badass costume design were totally cool, unique and remarkable. Despite the poorly animated third act, I like this film for it's good old 90s films campiness and for our badass Spawn, the first antihero on big screen before Blade, Deadpool or Venom.  I can't wait to see how the upcoming Todd McFarlane's  Spawn  reboot gonna look like. 5/10

Not the better Michael Mann movie, too bad because I really enjoyed Heat and The Last of the Mohicans . Gong Li and Colin Farrell's chemistry felt really forced. Mann was making their relationship the typical "law guy meets hot crook girl and fall in love" but it did not worked for me. There are no chemistry whatever between them at all.  I still like the whole "undercover cop dealing with drug dealers" vibe though, it feels like a GTA movie. Hmm.. about time we got a live action GTA movie. Still, to be honest, I never planned to watch this movie. I know that it exists and it was a remake of a 80s TV series but I was on Netflix one day, and the thing that got me into watching is Linkin Park's "Numb" Encore version in the beginning though, and that's the best outtake of this movie. 6/10

Well.. it's just that, I guess? I give credit to the film and Namewee for being so brave and I would consider this is the first local film that went all out for political satire - jokes about Najib, Rosmah, GE13 jokes, IC to immigrants jokes, Lynas etc. This film also had Namewee-style handprints all over it, and this film also was set in a fictional Malaysia, as Malaysia is being invaded by the Luk Luk army, and Atikah Suhaimie is running around in skimpy nurse outfit , which definitely is not the type that Malaysian nurses wear. But I'm not complaining.  Nurse mode Atikah Suhaime Banglasia was interesting as it was set in a fictional Malaysia and packed with political satire with a Bangladeshi worker as the protagonist, so we see the struggles and what the immigrants went through everyday, so that's interesting. But that was all Banglasia had to offer. It doesn't go any deeper than that, exploring carefully or in detail about the hardships and oppre

As a movie lover as well as someone who is really invested in Malaysia's political scene, I think the existence of this film itself is an accomplishment. The story of 9 May 2018 indeed, should be made into a film. With that being said, this film was good, but it could've been better. The six-story narrative may need to be revised or cut to less than six, and it can be felt that this film was rushed as the script itself felt like assemble of events happening in Malaysia, before and during the GE14.  I am a lover of historical and biography films, but it irks me a bit when a film that had a potential to be great turnt out to be only subpar, especially coming from Nik Amir Mustapha (whom directed KIL , a local film that I really love) and Saw Teong Hin (who directed Puteri Gunung Ledang ).  The story(ies?) were messy and the overall production of this film just felt rushed. They should've take their time to develop and produce this movie, Pakatan Harapan is going to

This whole movie is basically just Jared Leto enjoying his weird affection to the Japanese culture, this time; a white yakuza. Maybe he didn't had enough satisfaction playing with Japanese elements in Blade Runner 2049.  There was nothing much about this film, it was about Jared Leto being a former US military, stranded in Japan, and for some weird reason in the universe that this film was taking in - the Yakuza seems to be very welcoming in accepting a gaijin , a white one especially, being accepted into the family. Sure, to be honest, the promise of a white guy being a part of the Yakuza is actually interesting, and there were plenty of materials already made on this premise.  However, what we got is one long movie, which drags and didn't really deliver a good story about that and what was more annoying is that there seems to be illogical "white saviour" moments sprinkled in this movie. It felt like Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai . That fi

Truly a brilliant, disturbing, surreal film. One of the weirdest or most disturbing film I ever watched. No spoiler - It's a story about a family, in which it seems like a bit suspicious in the beginning, and as the story flows into 40 mins of the film, the truth about the family unravels and you would not expect it. It falls into the "surreal" or "disturbing" genre for me, and there were also slices of satire or dark comedy that can be felt in the film. Good cinematography, good casts and definitely goes into my "disturbing movies" list. 6/10

James Wan is a creative and brilliant director who managed to balance between adapting comic-accurate elements in  Aquaman  while ensuring it's "cheesiness" was not overboard and that the film would still fits in the DCEU's aesthetics. Aquaman is to me, the best DCEU movie so far (before Joker came into the existence). It was fun, energetic, a campy ride with emotional moments and it served more as a fantasy movie with a sprinkle of superhero elemens on top of it. I can't help but to think that it is a mix of Thor, Black Panther, Star Wars & Lord of The Rings. And the mix worked perfectly.  DCEU, thanks to Zack Snyder, has been this gloomy, brooding, supposedly "realistic" looking-universe, and it was daunting. Such settings might be suitable for a Batman film, but not all DC characters. James understand this and he really did his best in giving the faithful adaptation of Aquaman's comics - known for its campiness (talking wit