What I loved most: Realistic potrayal of kampung & city life

What I really hated: Bad dubbing for the lead actor

This is a simple love story yet enjoyable for everybody in the family to watch. It is a typical rich-boy-meet-poor-girl type of film, with some drama thrown in between.The film started off with the introduction of Tengku Amir (Indonesian Teuku Zacky Azwar) character - a succesfull corporate figure from a royal family. As other characters were introduced, the story starts to develop - both Tengku Amir and his sister Tengku Alyssa (Julia Zigler) are dating gold diggers Erina (Dynaz Mocktar) and Helmi (Nazril Idrus) respectively. Their adopted brother Tajul (Opie Zamie) is the court jester of sort and the heroin Maisera (Nur Fazura) is a university graduate kampung girl from Kuala Pilah who works at his father's workshop and refuse to work in KL since "it is the state of capitalism". When Tengku Amir met with an accident while trying to avoid cow dung in Kuala Pilah's kampung road, Maisera and her family came to the rescue. To repay their kindness, Tengku Amir offers Maisera a job at his office in KL and Maisera's life as a kampung girl in the city begins. Despite knowing the fact that Tengku Amir is seeing Erina, Maisera can't help falling into him while trying to avoid the proposal of Abang B (Razali Ismail), her family's adopted son who is more like a brother then a lover to her. She confessed on all these in her blog and apparently, Tengku Alyssa is an avid reader of this "Workshop Girl" blog as well. When Tengku Amir's family organised a party aptly themed "Kayangan", Maisera was confronted by the bimbo Erina which later made her left the party on a kapchai in tears. To make thing worst, heart broken Abang B was also involved in an accident that night. Now Maisera ahs to decide on the man to be loved, either pursuing the love of Tengku Amir or Abang B... The film try to potray daily life in a realistic manner, especially at the kampung which doesn't look pretentious at all (gossip monger kampung folks, show off etc). More interestingly, the Negeri Sembilan dialect was well spoken by all of the actors. However, when it coem to the city and corporate life its looks quite fake. Tengku Amir's doesn't sound natural in his speech, maybe because of the dubbing make it feels like watching a Mexican telenovela. The scene at the company party, especially when Nina (Dee in drag) and Tajol were performing Seiring & Sejalan was jsut a time waster - its not funny at all. However, the producer were trying to potray high society and corporate life as real as possible I guess, such as during the theme party with Poco Poco dance ( a must at Negeri Sembilan's roaylty parties) as well as by the cameo appearnce of corporate big shoot such as Datuk Nazim Razak and Datuk Ali Kadir (as a corporate Mat Rempit, no less). An enjoyable watch for the whole family.

What I loved most: Neat editing & cinematography

What I really hated: The gossip mongers kampung folks

This is a horror movie with a different - it is a cross between an art movie, a love story and a family drama with horror elements thrown in. The movie begins with a freak accident involving Nasrin (Natasha Hudson in her award winning film debut) that result in an ugly scar on her face. From then on, she keep on listening to voices calling her name and started to act strangely. She even avoiding her fiancee Yusuf (Farid Kamil) and wanted to call off their engagement. Things get worsen when she became obsessed with an antique mirror that her mother Siti (Khatijah Tan) found in their house's store room. Apparently, the mirror is haunted by the spirit of Mastura (Deanna Yusoff in a misscast role), the great step-grandmother of Nasrin who practiced black magic during her lifetime. Since Mastura has an unfinished business decades ago with Nasrin's paternal great grand father, her spirit slowly possesing Nasrin to create havoc within the family and among the kampung folks. Then, strange things and murders began to happen in the once peacefull kampung and it is up to Nasrin and her mother to fight back the evil Mastura. What impressed me most with the film is its neat editing and beautiful cinematography. The scene that I like most is when Nasrin was facing the haunted mirror and her image was replaced by Mastura at the other end of the mirror. The flashback during the kenduri scene was also beautifully done. The film also did not resort to using the cliche long haired ugly looking ghost image just like most of Asian horror flicks. In fact, the ghost in this film is a beatiful caucasian looking woman that scare peoples with her body language, eye contact and sexy laugh. All these make this is a beautifull horror movie indeed. However, the CGI image during the film finale could have been done better - its looks quite amateurish. Kudos to first time director Zarina Abdullah and her team for producing this beautiful horror movie. She and Natasha Hudson truly deserve to win the most promising director and actress awards respectively at the recent Malaysian Film Festival (FFM20).

What I loved most: The countryside, the actions scenes

What I really hated: Timothy Dalton :)

When London's top cop Sgt Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) was transferred to Sandford (a peaceful village in North London where crime rate is low) he thought that he'll lose the excitement in his job. Partnered with Constable Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), they are totaly mismatched with each other and have to solve petty matters like chasing a runaway goose. The quaint village apparently hide a dark secret and conspiracy amongst its peoples and neighbourhood watch committees. When bizzare accidents keeps on happening in the village, Sgt Angel set to investigate on this matter, not knowing to him that most of the villagers (including his partner) are in a big conspiracy and will do anything to keep this dark secret. This action-comedy cop movie start off like a drama but as the story develops, things getting fast paced and more action scenes thrown in, with copy cat action scenes taken from Hollywood movies such as Bad Boys and Scream. Nevertheless, this British production still maintain its originality and truely enjoyable to watch. It is on par if not better with some of Hollywood's releases.

What I loved most: Nothing much...

What I really hated: Directing, storyline, (over)acting, almost everything I guess....

I know this movie is not my cup of tea from the trailer but the free tickets that I got landed me into the cinema hall and it was a 2 hours of torture for me. Despite the regional colloboration between India, Indonesia and Malaysia, Diva fails to impress me. A musical film, the story revolves around Kartika (Ning Baizura in a mature than her look role), an international diva who returned to her homeland Malaysia for good. She also wish to reconcile with her mother Ibu Niken (Fauziah Nawi - why she accepted the role still puzzling me..) after she ran away form home to pursue her musical career. At the advise of her childhood sweetheart Arman (Indonesia's Jeremy Thomas, initially I thought he is an Indian actor until he opened his mouth and come out with thick Indonesian accent), to make amend with her mother Kartika agreed to run the musical school founded by her late father and be the mentor to young singers. She then formed a quartet call Jiwa that is made up of Idid (Adam AF), Mera (Jessica Iskandar), Eja (Balkisyh Semundurkhan) and Jay (Awal Ashaari). However, the success of their singles made Jiwa turns away from Kartika and deserted her on the eve of a main concert that Kartika hopes would reconcile her and her mother. The opening scene of the movie at the airport was quite promising but as the story develops, I started to hate the movie. Though the storyline is simple, it wasn't develop well with lopholes and flaws here and there. Even the script was also not well written. Some of the scenes are quite illogical and pretentious, such as when Ibu Niken lighting a candle in broad day light and when Mera was singing at her goreng pisang stall and ignoring the customer (Kartika) who was standing in front of her (it would be a better scene if Mera was shown singing while turning her back at Kartika instead, there will be an element of suprise to the audience as well ). The acting of Balkisyh, Pushpa Narayan (as a journalist) and AC Mizal (Rudy, driver to Kartika) are quite over acting and over the top, at time irritating. Even the product placements and promotion of the main sponsor Hotlink was done distastefully - the worst product promotion that I have seen in recent local movies (Celcom was promoted way better in Sumolah & Waris Jari Hantu). Maybe because of Indian director Sharad Sharan at the helm, Diva ended up like a typical Bollywood movie with song and dance sequence throughtout the movie. The only consolation that I got from the movie is the cameo role for the late Hani Mokhsin in probably his last's film role. This film is a failure of 3 nations colloboration I would say, a fallen Diva.

What I loved most: Action scenes (& lots of it!)

What I really hated: Maggie Q's Mai - another stereotype of Asian baddies in Hollywood flick

In this 4.0th instalment of the Die Hard franchise, Bruce Willis is back to reprise his role as NYPD Detective John McClane. What seems like a simple assignment to him - to pick up a suspected computer hacker Matthew Farrell (Justin Long) for questioning by the FBI - turn out to be a 24hour adrenaline pumping misison instead. Right in the begining when he arrived at the hacker's flat, they were attacked by snipper shooting from the next block. From then own, its action scenes throughout the movie - car chase, dark tunnel crash, chopter and car crash, bombing of the Capitol House, SUV in the lift and even highway chase with a fighter jet in order for McClane to foil the plan of cyber terrorist Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) to create nationwide havoc. Martial arts fan would be delighted with the kick ass kung-fu fighting scene between McLane and Mai (Maggie Q in another stereotype Asian bandit role in Hollywood movie - duh!) but its the nicely edited fast paced action packed CGI scenes that really steal the limelight. The human drama was also potrayed in the movie in term of father-daughter relationship between McLane and his daughter Lucy as well as Farrell's geeky computer whizz character. Its a movie for you to relax without thinking too much and just enjoy the actions scenes from start to finish.

What I loved most: Raffi Ahmad's acting

What I really hated: Weak and flaws storyline and directing

The storyline of this film is simple. "High school "friends" Ryan (Irwansyah) and Cinta (Acha Septriasa) are having difficulty to express their love towards each others (isn't it a simple 3 words phrase "I love you?"). When Ryan was killed in an accident before leaving to further his study abroad, Cinta was devastated mainly because Ryan left her without uttering that 3 magical words. This made the bimbo Cinta's life in a limbo -she really wonders what is Ryan's actual feeling towards her up to the extent that she is more concern on this rather then mourning the demise of Ryan - duh! Since Ryan has an unfinished business in the world, he requested to the angel of death to give him another chance - even at the expense of not going to the heaven at all (isn't that love is stupid?). Ryan was then given 3 days to solve this matter and returned to the world using the body of Doni (Raffi Ahmad) - a just deceased gay boy who committed suicide. Now that he is given another chance, Doni (Ryan) must convince Cinta (and his family) that he is actually Ryan and the reason why he return from the death - just to utter that 3 magical words... *yawn* Though the storyline is rather simple and straight forward, there are few flaws and plot holes throughout the movie that seems illogical at all. For intance, when Ryan was about to board the plane at the boarding gate, he turned away and left the airport (a modern looking Jakarta airport?) in hurry looking for Cinta right under the airport security's nose without even being stopped. In real life, this would trigger not only flight delay but terrorism alert as well (no wonder Garuda is ban from going to the EU then LOL). Another flaw is when Ryan try to rescue a girl in a car accident (which eventually lead to his death) and yet other onlookers including a TV news team just stand around and looking at the action. The TV newscaster ( Nirina Zubir in a bad cameo role) was more concern on recording the situation rather then doing somethig. Doni's death that make it to the front cover of a magazine with the headline "Gay Mati Bunuh Diri" (Gay Commited Suicide) and his smiling face was used as the cover picture is another big flaw. It seems that death of a gay is such a big deal in Indonesia. In fact, Doni (Ryan) himself was unable to get his death certificate from the hospital (so that Ryan can prove to Cinta that Doni is actually death) and yet his death already a main page article of a glossy magazine - talk about irresponsible reporting here, and Indonesian thirsts for gossips. Even the ending of the movie in a Superman Return like scene leave much to be desired.. The saving grace for this movie I would say is Raffi Ahmad's acting that overshadowed Irwansyah and Acha Septriasa themselves. The soundtracks are also memorable. Apart from that, the film is just a stupid movie for me and I wonder why is this trash is release here....