I’m very free with nothing much to do on this first weekend of the year. Yesterday on the New Year’s Day, I went out to Bukit Bintang and visited three malls at once (Pavilion KL, Fahrenheit 88 and Lot 10) for movie (Ip Man 3) and shopping. Had fun on the outing yesterday but definitely not my wallet since I do bought a jacket and a long pants. Furthermore, I had lost over 200 bucks on rummy gambling during the evening of New Year’s Eve. That’s my most unlucky day playing rummy in recent years. So, on this weekend, I think it’s the best to just stay at home to avoid from using up my hard-earned money again. With nothing much to do, I had watched one more movie and it’s ‘Anomalisa’. Here’s the movie review for these two movies.
First is ‘Ip Man 3’. It is the latest sequel and it is also known to be the final movie of the trilogy of this successful Hong Kong film series about Ip Man, a legendary master of Wing Chun martial arts. Donnie Yen reprised the titular role and as expected, he is great in it. His excellent performances in all these three Ip Man films made him a kungfu movie icon with immense popularity (many people now called him as Ip Man rather than his real name, Donnie Yen). Usually, sequels wouldn’t work out as well as the first movie in any film franchise but it is an exception in this case. ‘Ip Man 3’ delivered in all aspects, from the plot, action sequences, acting, effects, etc. I can say that it is even better than its first two predecessor films.
No longer having issues with the Japanese army or foreigner’s challenge in the past two films, Ip Man (Donnie Yen) tried to settle for a low-key life with his wife and his son. However, he is interrupted by triad people led by a Westerner (Mike Tyson) who tried to burn down school and abducted his son. Later, he is also challenged by another Wing Chun master, Cheung Tin Chi (Zhang Jin) while at the same time learnt that his wife is slowly dying from cancer. A wonderful, engaging and a moving storyline that never fails to have my attention throughout the whole movie. The action sequences and choreography are quite a lot, fantastic and kept me at the edge of my seat. Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Ip Man 3’ a total of 8.4. A great movie that lived up to my expectation. This is also personally my best Hong Kong film of the year 2015. I’m sad that this is the end of the Ip Man film franchise with Donnie in it. It is also widely reported that this may be Donnie’s last martial art film since he is also getting old already.
It’s time for another animated movie, ‘Anomalisa’. I only watched this after knowing of the critical acclaim this movie received and it is now a strong threat to ‘Inside Out’ for best animated film in 2015. The movie is about Michael Stone, an author of books on the subject of customer service who struggles with his inability to connect to people. One night, while on a routine business trip, he meets a stranger who changes his world view. The plot appeared easy to be understood but the movie turned out to be very ‘deep’, introvert and weird for me. I also didn’t expect that the movie is slightly adult-themed which is unnecessary and plays no role at all in anything for the story. However, I’m impressed by the stop-motion effect and the unique cinematography of this animated movie. Besides that, I’m not attracted to this kind of movie. I just couldn’t understand it and I’m possibly one of the very few who couldn’t really get this film. Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Anomalisa’ a total of 6.3. I just couldn’t see how this movie is getting universal acclaim from critics.
(Images in this post are from various sources throughout the world wide web)
