Psychokinesis (2018)

Psychokinesis (2018)

6/10

Starring

Ryu Seung-ryong

Shim Eun-kyung

Park Jung-min

Directed by Yeon Sang-ho

I have seen many superhero movies, so have you and I can bet you have not see any like this. We see the heroes beginning and the difficulty they have in getting to master their powers, but this movie took that to a new level.

Instead of the hero looking for some tights and jumping off buildings to some out of place fun, why not a hero with no clue? That is what this South Korean science fiction is about, a man who gets powers and has no clue what to do with it.

The movie’s comedic moments and action scenes is nothing in comparison to its story. The weight of the tale that has this man all tied up trying to save his daughter is poetry. When his ex-wife was killed in a raid on his daughter’s chicken shop you would expect him to step in and be a dad. The man was so busy trying to find a way to make money from his new powers instead of trying to build a relationship with his daughter.

The plot is well written that it exploits the dramatic. Many touching moments and there were times you get scared for Ru-mi’s life as her father is a selfish jerk.

The plot shows us Ru-mi a successful cook, so popular that she even got a segment on TV praising her cooking. Ru-mi is successful because of her hard work and her mother’s perseverance to make something out of their lives when Ru-mi’s dad walked out on them.

Like I said above there was a raid on Ru-mi’s shop as the complex which her shops reside has been taken over by a rich co-operation. They are trying to get Ru-mi and the others to leave, but they are being stubborn. During a raid, Ru-mi’s mother in trying to protect her daughter gets killed.

Far away we see Ru-mi’s dad, a good for nothing security guard. He drinks water from a stream at the time when a meteoroid hit the earth near the stream contaminating it. He discovers he has psychokinesis by some freak accident, but immediately gets a call from his daughter. Note, he hasn’t seen or spoken to her in I want to believe is over a decade. She informs him of the death of his ex-wife. He goes to be with her and tries to get her to forsake her fight against the co-operation in order to protect her life.

She refused and he decided to stay behind, trying his best to monetize his new found gift.

During another raid, he helped his daughter and the other occupants with his powers, but the praises got into his head. He starts to plan other things with them, how they can fight the co-operation instead of talking them to vacate, as they are there illegally.

His inability to know what to do at every turn, keeps driving a wedge between him and his daughter. Also there are some other crazy people this movie has packaged to make this movie an all round entertaining ride. The plot has you on different ends on what is going on. Are you for the illegal occupants protesting the sale of their complex, or the co-operation trying to take over their property with reckless abandon for the safety of others.

How this amazing Korean movie ends is left for you to see, I can bet you cannot put together the surprise ahead when you get to see this movie.

It is cool, great, touching and all round entertaining I give this a six out of ten.

Christopher Robin (2018)

Christopher Robin (2018)

7/10

Starring

Ewan McGregor

Hayley Atwell

Bronte Carmichael

and the voice of

Jim Cummings

Directed by Marc Forster

The amazing franchise of Winnie the Pooh and his friends never seem to get tiring to me. I have long been a fan of the silly old bear and I was happy Disney decided to do a life adaption of A.A. Milne book.

The CGI is awesome and Ewan McGregor was just classy as he always his. Jim Cummings who has been the voice behind the stuffed bear in the animations was called to come be the same voice here. It was to me added advantage hearing the voice I have longed associated with Pooh, reprise his role as the voice behind the stuffed bear in this life adaptation.

Before we dive into the plot, it is worth noting that this story is not as soul searching or on the same level as the ones of the animations.

To be honest, Disney has mastered the stories in the animations because there is little limitation. All they have to do is think it and then draw it out as they have thought it to be. But in the life adaptation you can see the certain constraints they faced. The stuffed animals looked a little different from the ones we have come to know in the animations.

Regardless of the story not being in the same level as the animations it is some wholesome fun. The Disney magic will have you in smiles as you coast through this movie with ease.

The movie starts with a brief party as our stuffed friends are doing a send forth for Christopher Robin who is heading to boarding school.

After the sad goodbyes we get to see Christopher grow to be a fine gentleman who has left his childhood behind. He (Ewan McGregor) is now married with a daughter of his own and is no longer fun. The whole struggle of trying to get ahead and make enough money for the family has Christopher distancing himself from his family. Worse still he is finding it hard to connect with his wife and he is losing his young daughter’s love as she is getting tired of always trying to please him.

After a planned family get away to a place of his childhood was disturbed by his official commitment at work, his wife and daughter went ton their own.

While Christopher is trying to navigate his official duties in the hundred acre woods, Pooh wakes up and discovers that his friends are missing.

He decided to go visit Christopher something he doesn’t do, but it seems he has to as he cannot find his friends. Pooh goes to the human world and meets Christopher who is struggling to understand how someone he believes to have been an imagination could be before him. Pooh fills him in on the missing Piglet, Rabbit, Eeoyore and others. Christopher is trying to get Pooh out of his life, but Pooh still needs his help to find the others.

The whole movie is amazing and funny. I enjoyed myself thoroughly and you will too if you go see this with your family.

Night School (2018)

Night School (2018)

6/10

Starring

Kevin Hart

Tiffany Haddish

Directed by Malcom Lee

The night school is a cool movie. I’m not much of a fan of Hart’s kind of comedy, but this drama setup was fun to watch. He playing a struggling man trying to get his life in order so as to keep his life in order was just epic to see.

What I enjoyed most is the way the movie did not dive in the way you would have expected when the characters were being introduced. The movie had some characters that were really over the top, but they all just played well with the narrative the movie had to deliver.

The movie plot is about a man named Teddy Walker (Kevin Hart). Teddy drops out of school when he discovers he struggles when he has to concentrate in tests. He decided to take his life in his hands and make it without his GED.

Years later he becomes a successful salesman at a barbecue grill store. He is also in a relationship with a wealthy woman named Lisa. In order to keep his status up with her he develops schemes to make it possible to keep up with her lifestyle. Teddy was living way above his means, but he was in love and wanted to marry Lisa.

After a good proposal turned his office into a fire hazard, Teddy was out of work. His boss bailed on the company and Teddy now has to get another job, while lying to Lisa that everything is great.

His best friend Marvin offers him a job in his company if Teddy can get a GED. Teddy believing that he can charm his way into getting anything he wants starts to front the job title. He convinces himself that he can get his old school to give him a certificate without doing the work.

He shows up at the school to discover that someone he once bullied who hates him is the new principal. That was not the only obstacle, the Night School teacher (Tiffany Haddish) was also not falling for any of Teddy’s charms.

Teddy now faced with the problem of doing the work, still wants to find a shortcut to getting his GED.

The movie never goes the way you would expect which is cool and entertaining. Directed by Malcolm Lee (Spike Lee’s brother) and his last film which he did with Tiffany Haddish Girls Trip (2017) was also cool to see.

The movie is cool, the characters were fun and all is great if you can take your time to see it.

The Meg (2018)

The Meg (2018)

3/10

Starring

Jason Statham

Li Bingbing

Rainn Wilson

Ruby Rose

Directed by Jon Turteltaub

Here is a movie that I have to say had a marketing campaign that was not anywhere in the small scale. We all knew about the production and the release. My belief that when the marketing is so aggressive there must be something to hide came true when I saw this movie.

The movie is not spectacular it is not amazing, it is memorable and it is just an overly glorified B-movie that you can go through life not watching.

Learned a new word, Megalodon. Which was a type of shark which existed some millions of years ago.

The Meg movie is based on this per-existed creature. This movie is based on a book named Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten. The movie is not spectacular and it is not so inviting with a long delay for things to happen. To be honest the movie is to me, an expensive B-Movie.

The acting was ok, but the delivery could have been more entertaining. The movie was like a roller coaster one time everything is on the rise with some presumed moment coming up, then other times it just drags.

Here is the plot. During a deep underwater rescue our lead Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) leaves a man behind. He did this because he believes the rescue was going to end badly with everyone dead instead of one.

Jump some five years ahead a billionaire was sponsoring an exploration into the deep underwater. This simple exploration led to the release of something no one was expecting, a shark. The problem is, the shark is not just any shark it is a Megalodon.

Well, add to this some weird moments of everyone in the movie having some emotional breakdown the movie just kept going high and low. Aware of their issue the Billionaire led his crew to try and stop a Megalodon.

An hour into the movie they thought they had everything under control, when they discovered they had to deal with more than one Megalodon.

Somehow they got out of the water safe, when the Billionaire had a stupid idea that he had enough men and fire power to deal with his problem.

Well using your wealth of movie knowledge you can guess what happened to him and his plan.

The movie is not good and I can only but regret seeing the movie.

The movie is directed by Jon Turteltaub who has had a better career doing good movies than this.

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018)

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018)

4/10

Starring

Wendi McLendon-Covey

Madison Iseman

Jeremy Ray Taylor

Caleel Harris

Directed by Ari Sandel

Slappy the evil ventriloquist dummy from the Night of the Living Dummy books is back. The intent of making a stand alone sequel which you can jump into at any time and still enjoy this movie ended up not being a good idea. In comparison to the first Goosebumps movie of 2015 this movie is not as fun.

I wish the movie picked up from the last Goosebumps movie, and the way this movie ended was just too loose and dull to be expecting a third part. With the financial struggle this movie had in its opening weekend and not pulling as much positive response like the first, this movie may not get a third part.

The plot starts with the introduction of the family which Slappy was going to be torturing. Now the main problem with this plot is the smoothing over of the supernatural and the real. There seem to be all muddle up and it was more silly watching Slappy interact with humans than I could have imagined.

Our set of trio are Sonny, Sarah (Sonny's sister) and Sam (Sonny's best friend). Sam was dropped over in Sonny’s home to be watched over by Sonny’s mother while the father goes out of town.

The boys started a company which helps people in getting rid of their junk. They got a call to come get rid of some junk from an old house. The deal was they could keep anything they want from the junk.

The duo saw a book, opened it and then Slappy appeared. They decided to keep it. They mistakenly brought Slappy to life and he decided to be part of their family. His idea of being part of their family was to make things good for the trio, which included taking care of their problem. The problem with Slappy taking care of your problem is that, Slappy’s idea of “taking care of” is not humane.

When the trio noticed that Slappy was evil they tried to get rid of him, but that didn’t go so well. Slappy decided to get things back to the way he is familiar by bringing to life his own family of evil creatures. This time he brought to life the costumes from an Halloween store.

Now in some weird stupid coincidence the trio were able to dig up from the internet the incidents that happened in the last Goosebumps movie. Now they have to find R.L. Stine (Jack Black) and together find a way to stop Slappy.

The movie is not so amazing and unlike the first where monsters were everywhere to keep you entertained, here you have to get half way before we see them.

The idea of keeping this family fun, ended up making this movie something I will not recommend anyone to see for the lack of any kind of fun it has.

Smallfoot (2018)

Smallfoot (2018)

4/10

Starring the voices of

Channing Tatum

James Corden

Zendaya

Common

Directed by Karey Kirkpatrick

Smallfoot is an animation for kids. The animation tale and plot is so set that only children will enjoy it, which in the end made the movie actually sad for me. The animation is from animator of the highly successful franchise Despicable Me (2010)’s Sergio Pablos.

This for me is an apple falling far from its tree of origin because if you look back at the other works Pablos has been involved. From his time in Disney with animations like Tarzan (1999) and many others to Minions (2015) and Despicable Me 3 (2017), this is shit in comparison.

The very annoying thing present in this animation is how they wasted so much time breaking into songs. Yeap!!! This is a musical animation that breaks into songs when there is nothing to fill the emptiness of bad scripting. The movie plot is a reversal of the idea of looking for Bigfoot. Many people are out there looking for Bigfoot believing that it exist, well imagine the idea of Bigfoot looking for you. The movie is about Yetis which could be Bigfoot or Abominable Snowman believing that Smallfoot (humans) exist.

The lead in this movie is Migo (Channing Tatum) who is excited about the idea of being a gong ringer. In the world of the Yeti the gong ringer is the person in charge of waking up the sun.

Migo’s family has been tasked with the job of waking the sun. Which are done by shooting the Yeti at a gong far away which he is supposed to strike with his head.

One day when Migo was doing his gong prep with his father, he got distracted when he was in the air and landed way far off. There he witnessed a plane crash landing on the snowy mountain. He went to investigate and there saw a human which he calls Smallfoot and runs off to tell everyone.

The problem is that in the Yeti’s society they all follow the teachings of the stone which says that Smallfoot don’t exist and other made up stuff.

The chief of the town and the keeper of the stones tries to disprove Migo. But his daughter believes Migo and takes him to her layer where she has formed a small club.

The club are believers in the existence of Smallfoot as they have many human items to prove.

Migo and the crew of believers decide to make their way down the mountain to see if humans exist.

On the human side there is this wildlife enthusiast Percy who is trying to capture a great footage of made up tales to get great TV ratings. He was the one that comes across Migo and some weird things happen between both characters as they form a friendship, which could unite both worlds.

The animation is so not classy, and the plot very low brow, that I cannot in good conscience say you can go see this movie.