Central Intelligence - CIA Agent and An Accountant to Save the World?

After having a psychologically tiring day at the office, I felt the need to watch some funny stuff and fortunately, this movie (which I believe should be funny based on the trailer I've seen earlier) just premiered. Coincidentally, my wife was having the same feeling, so she agreed to watch this too and she helped me buy the tickets for 7.15PM show. Since the time was quite late, I still managed to have a bite before the movie started. There were some new trailers of the upcoming movies prior to the start of the movie, which made my wife and I ecstatic such as Tarzan, Ghostbusters, Independence Day:Resurgence and some others. Anyway, let's start with the movie itself.

Brief Story Line

Movie started with scene from 1996 where a young high school student was bullied for being different by some other students led by Trevor and thrown into the school hall naked where all students were present to hear speech from Calvin "Golden Jet" Joyner the student voted to be most likely to success. Calvin felt sorry and immediately gave his jacket so the boy can cover himself. He was very thankful to Calvin and ran out of the hall.

Twenty years later, Calvin now become an accountant and was feeling down after seeing his former assistant promoted to a partner in his firm faster than him. He expressed his disappointment to his wife Maggie who was his high school girlfriend (played by Danielle Nicolet) and rejected Maggie's request to go to the high school reunion since he wanted to avoid being asked how he was doing now and so on. 

When Calvin was at the office, he befriended with a guy called Bob Stone in Facebook who claimed to be his high school friend that was bullied 20 years ago. Calvin met Bob in a bar and was very surprised to see him changed into a very big, tall, muscular guy (played by Dwayne Johnson - Fast Furious series, San Andreas etc). He was even more surprised when Bob was apparently having a good fighting skill and fend off some bad guys in the bar.

After having a fun night, Bob requested Calvin's help to look into his personal offshore account, using Calvin's knowledge in forensic accounting. The account seemed to be an account used for bidding and after Bob accidentally dropped the coffee on the laptop, they stopped checking and Bob stayed for the night.

On the following day, few CIA agents led by Agent Pamela (played by Amy Ryan - Birdman, Goosebumps etc) came to Calvin's house to arrest Bob who was apparently a former CIA agent himself but selling a secret data that can open up the information of all agents around the world and murdered his partner Phil (played by Aaron Paul). Calvin who was surprised of these facts was forced to help CIA to capture Bob. He was used as bait and came to office where all hell breaks lose when Bob really came and made Calvin unwillingly became his accomplish. Calvin managed to escape from Bob and again asked by CIA agents to help them capture Bob. 

So will Calvin help CIA to capture Bob? Is Bob really the bad guy that CIA claimed to be? Is there some other explanation? Find them all till the completion of the movie.

End of Brief Story Line

My wife and I quite enjoyed the film. There were quite a number of fun scenes and some touching scenes. Kevin Hart gave a lot of funny remarks and I personally think that he was the star of this movie. He was quite believable as a high school student who seemed to be having the brightest future but fail to live up to expectation (at least according to himself). Meanwhile Dwayne Johnson gave a good performance in the fighting and action sequence. There was also a surprise showing of Jason Bateman as the older Trevor and cameo appearance by a famous funny actress before the end of the movie.

I believe this movie can be classified as action-comedy with emphasis on giving a strong moral message about the bad things of bullying as it would usually leave the person being bullied scarred for life. And the worst part was generally, the person who bully did not even realize or felt sorry for bullying just like it was pictured in this film. 

If you want to enjoy some fun, without over thinking and watching Kevin Hart's jokes combined with The Rock's fighting skills, this one certainly fits your liking. But please do not expect non-stop laughing as sometimes it was combined with the relationship scenes between the two of them. There were plenty of enjoyable scenes as well, but my most memorable scene was during the therapy session of Calvin, Maggie and Dr. Dan. 

Please do not leave your seat very fast as there were some funny bloopers/gag reel (scenes that did not make the movie as they were usually wrong acting, or the actors laughed at serious scenes etc). This would give you extra laughter.

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

(TV SERIES) LUCIFER Season 1 - The Devil Taking Vacation on Earth

Yes, you read it correctly. This is a story of Lucifer, the Angel who was cast out of heaven and condemned to rule Hell for eternity but felt bored and decided to take a vacation in Los Angeles. That's the premise of the TV series and definitely what interest me. It's a brand new series in 2016 and only consisted of 13 episodes, so pretty short and did not take me a long time to watch the whole season completely. Anyway, here is the story from the first season.

Brief Story Line

The pilot episode would introduce us to Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis mostly played in British TV shows), the devil who had the power to compel people exposing their deepest desire and charm people to do stuff they would not ordinarily do and also ladies to have sex with him. Lucifer owned a night club called LUX and he had a bartender named Mazikeen usually shortened to Maze (played by Lesley Ann Brandt - Spartacus series) who was actually a demon that left hell together with Lucifer for Los Angeles.

In first episode, a pop star named Delilah who knew Lucifer from days before her fame was shot to death while together with him. Lucifer who was immortal survived the shooting and wanted to find out the person behind Delilah's murder. So when detective Chloe Decker (played by Lauren German - A Walk to Remember, Hostel Part 2 etc) was assigned to this case, Lucifer offered his help to solve the murder which was rejected by Decker.

There was also another detective Dan Espinoza (played by Kevin Alejandro - True Blood series) who was Chloe's separated husband. He suggested Chloe to close the case fast as it was considered just a drug deal gone wrong.

Lucifer who would not take no for an answer easily, tried to do his own investigation and he met Chloe again who finally decided to better let him help her rather than interfering. In this episode we were also introduced to an angel named Amenadiel (played by D.B. Woodside - 24 series, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 etc). He kept on encouraging Lucifer to return to hell since he was stuck with the task of guarding hell while Lucifer was taking this vacation. Lucifer would always reject Amenadiel's requests.

During their investigation, Delilah was found out having a lot of session with a therapist named Dr. Linda Martin (played by Rachael Harris - Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Barely Lethal, etc) who would later become Lucifer's therapist as well.

Lucifer and Chloe were doing quite well together solving the first crime, despite Chloe's uncomfortable feeling with Lucifer's apparent self confidence, narcissism and claiming to be the Devil. She felt that Lucifer was able to provide some good insights and out of the box thinking. Lucifer himself was very curious on Chloe since he was unable to use his charm on Chloe at all. Lucifer also despise children, so he was very annoyed with Chloe and Dan's daughter Trixie, even though Trixie liked Lucifer as she thought he was funny.

In the following episodes, Lucifer who felt good after helping solving case, used his charm to convince the police and let him be the civilian consultant for police and partner with Chloe. There was also a long outstanding case that involved Chloe where another police named Malcolm was shot and in a coma stage (referred to as Palmetto case). Some of the police, especially Malcom's partner felt that it was Chloe's fault and blame her, which is why Chloe having difficulty getting a partner.

The cases that Lucifer helped Chloe would usually be murder from various background and also a case of robbery. Their ultimate case would be in episode 12 which continued to episode 13. In each episode, Lucifer would always try to seduce Chloe and find out why his charm did not work on her, while Amenadiel would always try to find ways to make Lucifer go back to hell using various methods from good to bad for an angel. Meanwhile Maze would also despise the fact that Lucifer was getting more and more attracted to humans and becoming less and less of a devil.

So, could Amenadiel successfully make Lucifer got back to hell? What would Lucifer's relationship with Chloe develop into? Is Dan going to get back to Chloe? Will the Palmetto case be solved in this first season? 

Find them all in this very interesting first season of Lucifer!

End of Brief Story Line

I truly enjoyed this series a lot. The first few episodes got me hooked, but somehow it became a little bit slower, until the 6th episode where the ending gave us quite a surprise and 8th episode which gave a bit of a cool twist. Then the series got a bit more serious as it gave something extra than the usual seduction of Lucifer to Chloe and his crazy acts during investigation. While the final 2 episodes were cool and gave us a nice ending where it would make us getting wildly speculating of how the second season would be.

I also felt that Lucifer was very charming and truly believable as a Devil who can compel people and a real ladies man with his British accent. Chloe's sometimes disgust and disbelief of Lucifer's claim to be the Devil with God as his father was also very funny, especially in a scene in episode 4.

Overall, this series is something different than the usual police procedural series. Lucifer's charm combined with Chloe's insecurity as a police due to her background makes this one a good watchable series. There were of course many hilarious moments involving Lucifer's craziness.

So if you would like to watch the Devil taking vacation on earth, this is definitely a must see one.

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

Special Note:

This is an adaptation from comic books created by Mike Carey and published from Vertigo (different line) of DC Comics which is like a brand name where certain comics with more adult content are published. Some of notable comics from Vertigo include Sandman, V for Vendetta, A History of Violence, Constantine and others.

Now You See Me 2: The Great Illusionists & Magicians Returned

This was 1 of my most anticipated sequel this year. The original was released back in 2013 and I truly loved that one. Hence, when I saw the trailer to the sequel, my wife and I decided to watch this one at the earliest screening. So when it premiered yesterday, and coincidentally my wife's supposed function was rescheduled, she was able to buy the tickets for 6.25 PM show. Lucky for me I still managed to get to the studio on time despite the heavy traffic when I went back home due to the fasting month. Anyway, let's continue to the story.

Brief Story Line

Story started with scene from 1984 where Lionel Shrike a very famous magician then, was trying to do an escaping act from a locked safe which was chained and dropped into a river, while Thaddeus (played by Morgan Freeman - Million Dollar Baby, The Dark Knight and many others) was narrating in front of TV. The escape act was some kind of challenge from Thaddeus. Before the safe was thrown, Lionel still managed to speak to his son and ensuring him that as magician he would always have backup plan. Those of you who watched the original movie would know the outcome of this escaping act.

Moving to the current time, FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes (played by Mark Ruffalo - Avengers, Foxcatcher etc) was trying to convince his new boss Agent Natalie (played by Sanaa Lathan - The Best Man, Alien Vs Predator etc) to allow him catching the 'Four Horsemen' whom he was unable to "catch" for doing heist and acting like Robin Hood in the original movie. Though Agent Cowan was suspicious of Dylan's involvement in the four horsemen's previous act, Dylan was allowed to capture them using his own personal time.

One of the Four Horsemen, Atlas (played by Jesse Eisenberg - Batman VS Superman etc) was having some contacts with "the eye", the supposed behind the scene organization that arranged for their acts few years before. Atlas was feeling that he should be the leader of the horsemen instead of Dylan, but he was told to wait. When Atlas got back to his home, he found a lady who seemed to be able to do lots of magic tricks named Lula (played by Lizzy Caplan - Cloverfield etc). She managed to escape from Atlas' house after he tried to capture her. 

Atlas later went to meet the other horsemen Merrit McKinney (played by veteran Woody Harrelson) and Jack Wilder (played by Dave Franco - 21 Jump Street etc). They were introduced by Dylan to the newest member of the four horsemen, Lula who would replace Henley (Isla Fisher). Though the other three horsemen were surprised, but they followed Dylan's instruction to move on. Dylan later shared their next target of heist would be to infiltrate a tech company on the verge of releasing a new handphone which would download private data from the users.

During the launching of this new handphone, all of the four horsemen would show their talents including Lula the latest member. Meanwhile Dylan would operate from the outside. However, things went haywire when suddenly the FBI were able to find out about their plan and they had to escape.

The four horsemen who were now in Macau were met by the person responsible for their disclosure. They had no choice but to assist him acquiring a computer chip that can expose and delete any data from any computer from a seemingly impossible "fortress". For this heist, they would be provided with items from a magic store keeper named Li (played by Taiwanese actor/singer Jay Chou - The Green Hornet) and his aunt.

Due to the complexity of the story and the various plot twists, I will not be able to write any more without breaking some spoilers. Therefore, it would be better if you just continue watching and see whether these four horsemen can achieve their goal.

End of Brief Story Line

Watching this movie would put you into a sense of awe when the four horsemen were showing their act. There were 3 scenes of such cases, where the 2nd one was more tense because of the worry they could be caught, while the last scene was more awesome in the individual magic/illusion act. There was also a cool fighting scene involving Dylan with some thugs using his own ability to use illusions.

I like this movie and had good experience watching it. But if you asked me, personally I believe the original is more superior to this one. I guess maybe I was having too much admiration towards the original and felt that the elements of surprise was not so surprising here. I also think that the new Lula character was not too believable as a good magician, and I really believed there is no necessity in having the Chase character as a relative. He can be any random character and it would still make sense. Maybe the film maker just want to make it funny, though I think it's not necessary.

But of course, the illusions, the fast hands were the good part of this movie. I saw David Copperfield's name mentioned in the credit scene (not sure I remember the role, perhaps as consultant). There were also some funny moments in this movie. 

If you are a fan of the original, this one may disappoint you a bit, but it is still an OK sequel and it's certainly a different type of genre altogether compared to comic book adaptations or plain action movies. If you have not watched the original, please ensure you watch it first before you watch this one, otherwise you will be left with wondering about the movie's plots.

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