Home Sweet Home: Rebirth - Not As Bad As I Thought Would be

When this movie's poster was placed in the biggest Indonesian cinema chains, I was quite intrigued but did not give too much thought about it until I saw the trailer. To be honest, it did not look too promising then. However when the film was finally released yesterday and it played in the cinema very near my home, I felt it was very convenient and decided to give a try by myself as my wife was not keen on the movie. All right, let's just get to it then.

Brief Story Line

Jake (William Moseley - The Chronicles of Narnia movies, The Royals TV series etc) who worked as police in the US was having a vacation in Bangkok with his wife Prang (Urassaya Sperbund - Love You to Debt, Thai Cave Rescue mini series etc) and their young daughter Loo (Akeira Hadden). Their supposedly wonderful trip was disrupted at first when they met with a mysterious monk named Chan (Alexander Lee - 3 Peas in a Pod, Moorim School: Saga of the Brave TV series etc) who seemed to know a lot about Jake.

Gran Turismo - An Exciting and Entertainment Movie Based on True Story of a Gamer Turned Real Life Car Racer

I was interested in seeing this movie after I saw the trailer few weeks before. So I convinced my wife to see it this weekend together with another film as part of our movie marathon. OK without further ado, I'll get right on it.

Brief Story Line

Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom - Carnival Row TV series, The Lord of the Rings trilogy etc), the marketing executive of Nissan managed to convince his bosses to form an academy for players of the "Gran Turismo" racing simulator and turn them into actual racer. He later decided to employ Jack Salter (David Harbour - Violent Night, Stranger Things TV series etc), a former race driver as the trainer for the GT Academy. In order to find the best players in the world for this purpose, they put up a competition.

Free Guy - Very Fun and Enjoyable Action Comedy Movie

I have seen this movie being promoted frequently in the internet and I also saw its trailer few times in the cinemas before. Obviously this kind of movie was very interesting for me, but due to some reasons, I only managed to see this yesterday with my wife few days after its release in Indonesia. All right, I'll head on to it now.

Brief Story Line

Guy (Ryan Reynolds - The Hitman's Bodyguard, 6 Underground etc) was just a regular person working as a bank teller in Free City and was best friend with the bank's security guard Buddy (Lil Rey Howery - Vacation Friends, Judas and the Black Messiah etc). Guy's life changed drastically when he met and fell for Molotovgirl not realizing that he himself was just a Non Playable Character (NPC) in an open world online game and she was just an avatar played by Millie (Jodie Comer - Killing Eve TV series etc).

(2021) Mortal Kombat - Good Enough Adaptation of Highly Popular Fighting Games

I have been hoping that this movie would be available on cable TV soon and I would not be too far behind with other audience who have seen it in theater. So when there was notification from Catchplay+ that it premiered on 20th May, it was a very pleasant surprise for people like me who are still not comfortable yet going to the cinemas. Anyway, I will just go straight with this movie which I watched together with my wife.

Brief Story Line

A professional MMA fighter named Cole Young (Lewis Tan - Wu Assassins TV series etc) found himself caught in the middle of the war between Earthrealm and the Outworld led by its leader Shang Tsung (Chin Han - Skyscraper etc) who wanted to rule both worlds. Shang Tsung assigned his ruthless assassin Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim - The Swordsman, The Night Comes for Us etc) to kill Cole who seemed to have important role in the latest tournament to the death between the two worlds, called Mortal Kombat.

Monster Hunter - Entertaining Fantasy Movie for Pure Action Fans

This movie has been playing in Indonesian cinemas for a while but like in previous cases, my wife and I opted not to see them due to the pandemic. So it was quite a pleasant surprise when I got notification that Catchplay+ was going to have this movie on their platform starting from 4th of March. Anyway, I'm going to start with my views now.

Brief Story Line

A group of armies led by Lt. Artemis (Milla Jovovich - Hellboy 2019 version, Future World etc) which included several soldiers such as Lincoln (Tip "T.I" Harris - Ant-man and the Wasp etc), Marshall (Diego Boneta - Terminator: Dark Fate etc) and few others were trying to look for another unit who called for help earlier. But when they reached the destination, somehow they were transported to another world where big monsters exist and they had to fight for their lives.

(SPECIAL SCREENING) Touken Ranbu - Live Adaptation of the Highly Popular Video Game from Japan

I noticed about this movie as part of the new films to be shown in CGV and as luck would have it, my wife got another invitation to the special screening a week before its wide release. However, due to some reasons, we were only allowed to post our views about the movie today. Anyway, I wrote this post few days ago after the screening since I wanted to write them while it was still fresh in my memory. So what was the movie about? Let us go into detail below.

Brief Story Line

Set in the future, a group of young men who were "transformed" from various swords owned by people in the past were recruited as part of a team to maintain the history intact from attacks by evil forces who wanted to change history. Led by their captain Munechika (Hiroki Suzuki), the rest of the team that included the joker Nihongou (Hiroaki Iwanaga), the youngest Fudou (Taizo Shiina, the hot headed Hasebe (Masanari Wada), the guy dressed like a mage called Yagen Toushirou (Ryō Kitamura) and Yamanbagiri (Yoshihiko Aramaki) were sent on a mission to protect history related to the 16th century Japanese feudal lord Oda Nobunaga (Koji Yamamoto).

Ready Player One - A Fantastic Movie of Virtual Reality World by Steven Spielberg

This was a movie that had been playing since 28 March in Indonesia. However, as I went for long holiday starting from that day, I did not get the chance to see it since it premiered. I did however manage to see this yesterday with my wife. We were a bit undecided at first where to watch it, since it did not play in my favorite theater with Dolby Atmos system, but then I remembered it was a Sunday and I had a bank card that give me promotion every Sunday. So off we went to Plaza Indonesia and saw this one at the studio with exactly the sound system I wanted. OK, enough of those now and let us get started with the movie.

Brief Story Line

Story was set in the year 2045, where the condition of the cities were very densely populated and people felt that the virtual reality world (referred to as OASIS) was more enjoyable than the real world. Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan - X-Men: Apocalypse, The Stanford Prison Experiment etc) was a teenager who just like any other people, also went to OASIS most of the time. He used the avatar name of Parzival and considered himself as a Gunter (Egg Hunter due to his mission to find Easter Egg in the game). In OASIS, Parzival was best friend with Aech (Lena Waithe - Master of None TV series etc). During one of the race, Parzival met with another famous mysterious Gunter named Art3mis (Olivia Cooke - Ouija, Bates Motel TV series etc) who later on would be like his partner in acquiring the Easter Eggs.

Tomb Raider - A Reboot of the Movie Based on Famous Video Game Character Lara Croft

Yesterday a brand new movie which would not even play in the US until next week was already premiering in Indonesian cinemas. There was no convincing needed for me to see this one on its first day. As it happened, my wife and I had some personal matter to attend to at Lotte Avenue, so we saw the movie there. It was playing in 2 theaters but we chose to see it at Studio 1 with the Auro 11.1 sound system. OK let us move on to the movie now.

Brief Story Line

Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander - The Danish Girl, Jason Bourne etc) was a young woman working as a bike courier in London. But she was in fact the heir to a large business from her father Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West - Money Monster, The Affair TV series etc) who had been gone missing for years and presumed dead. The business was being handled by an associate of Richard named Ana (Kristin Scott Thomas - The English Patient, Four Weddings and a Funeral etc) who was trying her best to get Lara to take over the business.

Resident Evil: Vendetta - A Very Cool CG Animated Movie Based on the Popular Video Game

I was intrigued about this movie when I saw the poster in the coming soon section of 2 cinema websites in Indonesia. At first I thought it was another sequel to Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, but when I read it a bit more, I realized it had got nothing to do with that movie. Anyway the movie premiered in some Indonesian cinemas starting from Saturday. As I was having another weekend staycation with my wife on Saturday, I only went to the cinema today after we checked out from the hotel. My wife was having various things to do at the time, and hence I watched this movie by myself in Plaza FX. Ok, I will proceed to the movie now.

Brief Story Line

Chris Redfield (voiced by Kevin Dorman) was a member of BSAA, an elite unit specializing in killing the undead/zombies. He was given the task along with special forces from another unit to capture the notorious weapons dealer named Glenn Arias (voiced by Alexander Polinsky - Charles in Charge TV series). Though the mission was not successful, Chris did manage to find out that Arias was working on a new kind of virus to create the undeads.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - Or is it???

Resident Evil has been 1 of my quite favorite action movie with the war between human and zombies. So when I heard there was going to be another movie in the "series", I did not hesitate to decide in seeing this one when it premiered yesterday. As usual, for a weekday movie premiere, my wife was kind enough to spare some time to buy the tickets for me (thx honey). The time was 7 PM and it was in Lotte Avenue with the Dolby Surround 11.1 system which would quench my thirst for a good sound system when watching this kind of movie in theater. After having our light dinner, we arrived at the studio at almost the start of the movie.

Brief Story Line

Movie started with few minutes of background story of how the zombies were created, which kind of summed up the entire 5 previous Resident Evil series and continued with our main protagonist Alice (Milla Jovovich - Ultraviolet, The Three Musketeers etc) who arrived at Washington DC only to find out that there was no one to save. After fighting off a very large monster, Alice reached an Umbrella corporation old office where the computer was switched on, and the Red Queen (the hologram of young Alice) informed Alice that the cure to the T-Virus was already created. She convinced Alice that the cure should be acquired in 48 hours otherwise it would be released only to the Umbrella Corporation executives. The location of the cure was none other than the underground headquarters called the Hive in Raccoon City where it all started.

Assassin's Creed - The Adaptation from the Popular Game from Ubisoft

I have been quite late in the recent few weeks in catching up with premiere of the newest movies. Just like this movie which premiered on Wednesday, I could only watch it yesterday. And it seemed that pattern might continue until next week when I am more able to juggle my work schedules with my after office private activities. Anyway, this movie seemed very interesting, especially from the trailer, the main actor and also the adaptation of the hugely popular action adventure game in various platforms. My wife who is a fan of Michael Fassbender was interested in seeing this movie as well since the action sequence looked cool. So yesterday she bought the ticket for our usual 7 PM show at Lotte Avenue. Well, what's the story all about? Let's find out.

Brief Story Line

The first few minutes of opening scenes were showing the ancient secret societies named Assassins in the year 1492 in Spain. It seemed to be an initiation of some sort to a member named Aguilar (Michael Fassbender - X-Men First Class trilogy, Prometheus etc). Scene moved to the year 1986 where a young Callum Lynch was instructed by his father (Brian Gleeson) who seemed to be a member of the Assassins as well, to run away as far as possible, since he was going to be captured.

Warcraft: The Beginning - Another not so Successful Attempt of Video Game Adaptation to Movie

I have heard about the news that the Hollywood wanted to make the movie adapted from 1 of the great games in PC from few years ago, i.e. Warcraft. As I have previously mentioned, I was a bit skeptical when it comes to movies adapted from video games. However, when I saw Angry Bird movie (which I have reviewed before), I changed my mind a bit and wanted to give this one a try.

Unfortunately, when I saw the trailer to this movie, I became less excited since the movie's CGI seemed too obvious for my taste. I felt that I could be watching the cinematic scene from the game itself which I think should not be the case for a US$ 160 million budget movie. Nevertheless, I still want to give it a chance. So when I have the earliest opportunity to watch it, I went to the theater and see it.

Brief Story Line (warning possible spoiler)

Movie started with the scene of Durotan (played by Toby Kebbel - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) an Orc chief of the clan Frostwolf having a chat with his wife Draka (played by Anna Galvin) who was pregnant with their child. They were worried about their child's welfare since their world were almost destroyed. The warlock chief Gul'dan (played by Daniel Wu - Hong Kong actor in New Police Story, Shinjuku Incident etc) wanted to bring the horde (the Orcs people) to a new world, through the portal that he would create. That new world happened to be the seven kingdoms of humans. Gul'dan always used fel (a magic that can bring extra power to the orcs and even bring the dead to live) to increase his power over the orcs.

When the portal was opened, the majority of the Horde led by Gul'dan and their warchief Blackhand (played by Clancy Brown) and his right hand man Doomhammer (played by Robert Kazinsky) together with Durotan, Draka and a half Orc-half human prisoner named Garona (played by Paula Patton - 2 Guns, MI:Ghost Protocol etc) came to the humans' world. Draka delivered her baby during the process. Once they came to this world, the Orcs started to invade the villages and take humans as prisoners. These humans would serve as the source of fel magic for Gul'dan.

Meanwhile in the humans world, Anduin Lothar (played by Travis Fimmel - Vikings tv series) who was a famous knight and the brother in law of the king Llane (played by Dominic Cooper - Howard Stark of Marvel's comic book movies & TV series) got the news of these attacks by giant creatures riding on big wolves. When he returned to the palace, he was informed of a mage named Khadgar (played by Ben Schnetzer who looks so much alike 1 of my colleague at the office. LOL) going through the corpses of the orcs attack. He informed that the fel magic was used in this attack and informed the Guardian must be summoned.

Due to the critical matter, Khadgar and Lothar went to the place where the Guardian, Medhiv (played by Ben Foster - Contraband, The Finest Hours) had been staying for a while. Medhiv was a very powerful warlock and when he was informed about fel magic, he immediately agreed to look into these attacks. Khadgar was very amazed with the huge collections of magic books in Medhiv's place and located a book that could give him a lot of information later.

Medhiv, Khadgar and Lothar met with the group of orcs who wanted to attack the village. They had a major fight where with the help from Medhiv, all the orcs who have been fed with fel magic could not survive and only few were able to escape including Durotan. He later released Garona from the chain and head back to orcs' base. The humans were able to capture 1 of the orc and Garona and return to the palace.

Finally the humans were able to understand the purpose of orcs invasion to their world. Few of the humans army led by Lothar, accompanied by Khadgar and also Garona went to investigate the portal and to find the way to fend off this invasion. Durotan who felt that Gul'dan was not the right leader to give orcs a new place to stay and bring peace, wanted to bring down Gul'dan. However, since Gul'dan was too powerful, he wanted to seek the help from the humans and asked Garona to mitigate this "peaceful" cooperation.

So can this cooperation be successful and bring down Gul'dan? Or will it go wrong and make the hostility be even worse? Will Garona be helping the humans due to her feeling towards Lothar, or would she choose to fight for orcs whom she had been living with all her life as prisoner? Find them all in this 2 hours movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Well after watching it till finished, I cannot help but feeling the movie was good, but not that great. To my surprise, when I finally watched the full movie, the CGI did not seem so obvious like in the trailer. It was a little bit better. But it might be because I saw it in a large theater. Not so sure if I saw it in the usual smaller theater.

Anyway, I enjoyed this movie but not as greatly as I would hope for. However, it was not that bad either. There were few fighting scenes (not brutal ones), some good special effects on the magic of Medhiv and Gul'Dar, plus some better fights usually involving Lothar (which made me tempted to watch the Vikings TV series where he was the main character). There were also few brief touching moments but not the tearful ones.

There was also 1 scene that I felt like a story of Moses from the bible when Durotan's child was put in a basket and put into the river, and funny enough the person next to me said the same thing to her company about similar Moses scene.

For a video game adapted film, this one was only a so so movie. I was truly hoping the fighting scenes would be a spectacular one, but somehow it lacked that touch. Again it might be due to the special effects of the orcs that were not so satisfying to me.

Btw, I believe the title had the word "Beginning" since they wanted to do a trilogy of this one.

If you want to enjoy the special effects of great fighting scenes between humans and orcs, I strongly suggest Lord of the Rings trilogy or The Hobbits trilogy to be your better choice. However, if you want to enjoy the nostalgic feeling when you play this famous video games created by BLIZZARD, where you can choose to fight as humans or as orcs, then this movie could satisfy you.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars