Maze Runner: The Death Cure - The Thrilling Conclusion of the Maze Runner Trilogy

Finally the third Maze Runner movie played in theater after the last one back in 2015. So yes it was a long time to wait for a final movie especially since the first and second movie only had 1 year span. We in Indonesia were quite lucky as it did not play far behind the US premiere. Since the movie had Dolby Atmos sound effect, my wife was kind enough to accompany me see this one at a studio that had the sound system in Epiwalk, despite it was not her most favorite places to hang out. Ok let us move on to the movie now.

Brief Story Line

The movie started months after the event of Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, where the Gladers led by Thomas (Dylan O'Brien - American Assassin, Teen Wolf TV series etc) with his best friends from their previous time in the maze Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster - Love, Actually, Death of a Superhero etc) and Frypan (Dexter Darden) were trying to help Minho (Ki Hong Lee - Wish Upon etc) escape from the organization who were doing experiments on them earlier named WCKD (referred as Wicked). The three of them were accompanied by Brenda (Rosa Salazar - CHiPs movie, Night Owls etc) and Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito - The Usual Suspects, Breaking Bad TV series etc) to find where Minho was placed and experimented on by Wicked to find the cure for the virus. 

Meanwhile Teresa (Kaya Scodelario - Pirates of the Carribbean: Salazar's Revenge, Wuthering Heights etc) was now fully assisting Ava Paige (Patricia Clarkson - The Green Mile, Pieces of April etc) who was Wicked's head of research for the cure. She believed that her work was really important that could save all humans. Wicked's head of security Janson (Aidan Gillen - Game of Thrones TV series, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword etc) who was supportive of the research, was always looking for ways to capture all the immune people especially Thomas.

So could Thomas and his friends save Minho and the rest of the immune children from Wicked and also destroy the organization? Find them all in this entertaining action science fiction movie.

End of Brief Story Line

This movie had a duration of more than 2 hours which I think was to capture the essence of the conclusion of the whole story. I personally felt that it was a good choice since I understand that previously there was a plan of making the finale into 2 parts like Hunger Games and Divergent series which would make the movie most likely boring and a bad way of trying to make big bucks. Hunger Games finale part 1 was having too much conversation while Divergent's last movie (at the time I write this) never make it to the conclusion because of its low commercial success. We have to thank the director Wes Ball who was the one insisting of the movie not to be split in 2 parts.

As a fan of action movies and I believed majority of the audience who saw this one in theater with us last night (which btw was fully packed) were very satisfied with the movie that was almost full of action and intense moments. The movie started off very brightly with an intense action sequence, then there was also brief suspenseful scene involving Cranks (the zombie-like humans infected by virus) but in the middle the movie pace slowed a lot. Until the final third of the movie which gave us a full blown high octane entertaining action sequences.

I loved the conclusion of the movie as I think it really suit the main story which was supposed to be the cure. I also loved the make up effects and of course the amazing sound effects especially during the fights, shooting, explosions and suspenseful scenes. The movie did not only provide us action sequences, but there were some emotional moments as well towards the ending which I know affected my wife a bit.

Since the time my wife and I saw the first movie, we were pretty hooked with the series. The first movie was mysterious and very suspenseful especially during the times when the Gladers were trying to escape from the Maze. The second movie was also very interesting especially in the beginning but then the story became a bit more complicated. Now I thought that the final movie would be very complicated, but surprisingly it was not the case. I was able to capture the essence of the movie quite easily. However, it would only be understood if you had watched the first and second movie. If I got to choose though, I honestly felt that my experience seeing the first movie was the best, because of the intriguing and intensity plus the mystery surrounding the Maze.

One thing that was a little bit disappointing was the appearance of Walter Goggins (The Shield and Justified TV series) as a forgettable character which makes me felt he was underutilized for such a good actor. Plus the slower pace in the middle that took a bit too long to my opinion. But overall it was still a very much enjoyable fun ride and definitely a worthy conclusion of this trilogy. Oh in case you are wondering, there was no end credit scene to this movie so you could immediately go to the restroom if you had been holding off for more than 2 hours.

So if you have watched the first and second movie, this one definitely is a must see movie. But if you have never seen them before, then you have to see The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials first in order for you to understand the storyline of this movie.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars

PS: The Movie was adapted from the novel of same title written by James Dashner. The reason why it was playing only 3 years after the second movie was due to the fact Dylan O'brien had a severe accident during the making of this movie and the production had to stop for almost a year.

(TV SERIES) iZombie Season 1 - Funny Interesting Series Where Zombie Assists Homicide Investigations

I could not remember how I found out about this series, but I am truly glad that I started to see this few days ago. When I watched the pilot episode, I was immediately hooked and could not stop it. I was always looking forward to the time when I finished my work so I could go home and continue watching it. Last night I finally completed the first season. So here are more details of the series.

Brief Story Line

Olivia "Liv" Moore (Rose McIver - A Christmas Prince etc) was a medical resident in Seattle's hospital and was engaged to Major Lilywhite (Robert Buckley - Lipstick Jungle, One Tree Hill TV series etc). Liv's life was turned upside down when one night she was turned into a zombie who had to eat people's brains. In order to keep a permanent supply of brains, she decided to work as assistant Medical Examiner in the morgue under her boss Ravi (Rahul Kohli). However, whenever Liv ate a human's brain, there was a side effect where she would sometime got a vision of the person's lives.

Meanwhile Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin - Freelancers, Breakout Kings TV series etc) was a homicide detective with the Seattle Police Department. During the course of his investigations, he would require the help from the ME office about the cause of death or other information of the victims. This would be where Liv's visions would come in handy while assisting Babineaux in the investigations.

But things would not be as easy as it would seem, especially with the appearance of a mysterious man called Blaine (David Anders - Alias, Heroes TV series etc) who would have an enormous impact on her life. So how would Liv deal with her life that was ruined by becoming a zombie? Could she hide her true condition from everyone including her best friend Peyton (Aly Michalka - Easy A, Phil of the Future TV series etc)? And how did she become a zombie in the first place? Find them all in the first season of this wonderful series.

End of Brief Story Line

Well I hope that the above brief story line did not reveal too much information as I would prefer that you enjoy the surprises and fun experience that I had while watching the series. There were few exciting twists and funny moments which usually happened during Liv's interaction with Ravi, or the amusing time whenever Liv's personality was affected by the human brains. Apart from fun moments, there were obviously some touching moments involving Liv as she tried her best to maintain her sanity as well as the relationships with Major and her family & friends. Detective Babineaux's occasional confused/amazed expressions whenever he saw something weird with Liv were also priceless.

I loved this series because it was able to combine the usually scary zombies into a livelier human-like person with a police procedural type of story. Police procedural series is one of my favorite genre of TV series where we would be shown various cases on each episode to be investigated to find the culprit and usually with a larger story arc that run through a whole series or few episodes (Monk, Castle, CSI, Criminal Minds, Lethal Weapon to name a few). Which is why when such genre was combined with a zombie, I had a lot of fun watching it. I think it had some similarities with another more comedic series like Psych which my wife also totally loved.

Through out the first season which ran for 13 episodes, I felt that the first few episodes were very fun and intriguing, but then the middle episodes became a bit too standard and seemed a bit losing momentum. However from episode 10 onwards it started to pick up the pace until the season finale which I absolutely loved. It was a very amazing episode and I felt it was the perfect finale for a first season. I really really am intrigued to see the following season to find out what happened after that ending.

The series did not have a lot of special effects and the cases sometime were not very very complicated. But it was actually the journey towards finding the bad person that was the main attraction. The makeup effects were so so for a series with zombies. So do not expect the type of zombie apocalypse series like The Walking Dead where the zombies were scary and always go around looking for humans to kill & eat. Interestingly, this series was loosely based on comic book of the same title from Vertigo (the part of DC comics which specialized in different type of heroes or anti-heroes, like Lucifer). There were some brief scenes that looked like they were taken from comic books which I personally think gave a nice touch. However, the comic book itself had different persons all together. The only similarities were the way the homicide investigations were solved through the "visions" from the victims' brains.

In short, if you are looking for a police procedural TV series where the main protagonist is a female zombie and had some funny moments with witty conversations, then this is definitely for you. Now if you prefer your zombie to be the main antagonist, then perhaps this would be too weird for you. However, I would still recommend you give this one a try and watch it as I am pretty sure it would provide you something different and fun. The choice is yours.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The Commuter - Another Cool Liam Neeson Action Thriller Movie

After almost 2 weeks of not watching a movie in the theaters (I did not see last week's Insidious: The Last Key due to various reasons), I finally went to the cinema again yesterday when this movie premiered. I am a fan of the latter Liam Neeson's movies which usually translate to some cool actions, so my wife and I had been eyeing to see this one. It so happened that my wife's cousin & his wife also love to watch movies and asked us to join them watching this together. And the four of us went to see this in the Premier class at Lotte Avenue while enjoying our dinner (thanks to them both for the treat!). Anyway, let us go on with the movie.

Brief Story Line

Michael MacCauley (Liam Neeson - Schindler's List, A Monster Calls, Taken trilogy etc) was an insurance agent who had to commute by train every day from his home to his work place. This had been going on for the last ten years and hence he basically recognized most of the other commuters as well as the train conductors. He lived with his wife Karen (Elizabeth McGovern - Downton Abbey TV series) and son Danny (Dean-Charles Chapman - Game Of Thrones TV series). Before working as insurance agent, Michael worked as police detective with his former partner Alex Murphy (Patrick Wilson - Insidious, The Conjuring etc) and captain Hawthorne (Sam Neill - Jurassic Park, The Tudors series etc).

One evening while going back home in his usual train, Michael was approached by a mysterious woman named Joanna (Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air, The Conjuring 1 & 2, etc) who gave Michael a simple task and in return he would be rewarded some cash. The task would be to find a person in the train who did not belong there with very few clues, and if he could find the person before the last stop of the train, he would be rewarded with a larger sum of money. Michael was intrigued but as we would soon find out, the task was not as simple as it should be. He would be caught in a dangerous cat and mouse game where his and other people's lives would be put on the line.

So could Michael complete the task? What would he entangle while doing so? And could he do it in such a short time? Find them all in this intense action thriller movie.

End of Brief Story Line

It has been a while since I last saw Liam Neeson's action thriller. I think the last one was Taken 3 which though I loved, but not the best of the trilogy. So it was rather refreshing to see him here again doing what seemed to be his best genre, i.e. an action thriller. What was wonderful about seeing him was Liam Neeson had such a commanding presence on screen that it felt whenever he was in a movie playing a tough guy, he really nailed it. In here, he played a character who was being suppressed so hard that he had no choice but to fight back, and boy he really fought.

As usual, he would be able to do the fight skillfully but not in the very fast style a la Jason Statham or Donnie Yen but his own style which was brutal and kind of like a street fight. In here, all the fights done were good, but my most favorite would definitely be the one in the small compartment before the final stop. Apart from the cool fight scenes, there were also various intense moments involving the train. The train's high speed sequence towards the end was absolutely breath taking and so intense that I was literally holding my breath. And I know my wife also screamed a little during some of those awesomely done intense moments.

This time, the movie did not have too many funny moments, apart from some brief comments towards the end of the movie by other commuters. For a movie that was shot mostly in a confined space of a train, the early part of the film was a bit too long to my personal opinion. This resulted to a bit of a slow pace at the start. Not until the scene in the train did we feel the movie picking up the pace. Personally I think that if the earlier part was made a bit shorter, the movie would have been a nonstop thrill. To tell you the truth, I also felt a bit of similarity with another Liam Neeson's movie Non-Stop where the scenes were mostly done in an airplane. This should not come as a surprise since both were directed by the same person Jaume Collet-Sera who also directed few other Neeson's movies such as Unknown and Run All Night. Jaume's style of making thrilling intense movie was pretty good as proven when he directed the shark thriller movie The Shallows.

I found that the sound effects of the movie was excellent and the special effects were good. It also provided us some twists and an interesting plot of finding out who the person was which kept us guessing till almost the end. The opening sequence was uniquely done but may seemed a bit confusing first, though after a while you would understand it better. The movie's main attraction would definitely be Liam Neeson who already built up a rapport for being an action star even at his age. I pretty much enjoyed the movie as it was truly entertaining though I would have loved it more had the intensity started a lot earlier. Overall it was a good entertaining movie, and one that should be enjoyed as an action thriller film.

So if you are a fan of Liam Neeson and want to see his collaboration with Jaume Collet-Sera again, then this should be a definite choice. If you like this kind of genre, you would surely be entertained. And it is worth to note that during this Award period in January where the movie options were limited to heavy drama (or a horror movie), then this could be a good alternate movie. 

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Bleeding Steel - Not the Best Jackie Chan's Attempt in Sci-Fi Movie

It was one of those rare weeks where none of the new major Hollywood movies premiered in Indonesia. So it was nice to see the latest Jackie Chan movie playing in cinemas yesterday. My wife and I had been fans of this mega star for more than half of our lives, hence we definitely were excited that we could see the film. Well let us move on to the movie.

Brief Story Line

Officer Lin Dong (Jackie Chan) was a very good special agent who led a team of highly trained police officers and trusted to do the most difficult assignments. His most reliable team member was Susan (Erica Xia-Hou). After a very dangerous assignment which involved protecting material witness Dr. James (Kim Gyngell) who created a mechanical heart, Lin moved on to Australia where he seemed to take an interest on a young college student named Nancy (Ouyang Na Na - Mission Milano, Beijing Love Story etc).