The Great Wall 長城

Released Year: 2016

Directed by 张艺谋 Zhang Yi Mou 

Casted by:

Matt Damon as William Garin

景甜 Jing Tian as 林梅 Commander Lin Mae

Pedro Pascal as Pero Tovar

刘德华 Andy Lau as 王军师 Strategist Wang

Willem Dafoe as Ballard

鹿晗 Lu Han as 彭勇 Peng Yong

张涵予 Zhang Hanyu as 邵殿帅 Commander Shao

彭于晏 Eddie Peng as 吴将军 Commander Wu

林更新 Lin Gengxin as 陈将军 Commander Chen

黄轩 Huang Xuan as 邓将军 Commander Teng

 Story:

During the Song dynasty, a few miles north of the Great Wall, William, Tovar, and three other survivors from a European mercenary group searching for black powder are pursued by Khitan bandits. Upon escaping they seek refuge in a cave, but are attacked by a shadowy monster, leaving only William and Tovar alive, the former having slashed off the monster's hand. The next day, they stumble upon the Great Wall and are taken prisoner by Chinese soldiers, who are led by General Shao, General Lin, and Strategist Wang. The officers have been preparing for a monster invasion which happens once every sixty years. However, they are frightened upon seeing the monster's hand, identified as a member of the Taotie species, as they believed the invasion was still weeks away. Suddenly, a wave of monsters attack the Great Wall, and the soldiers respond with archery, ballistas, and catapaults which throw burning rocks. Lin leads a company of female soldiers who jump off the Wall and are pulled back with elastic cords. The monsters are more intelligent and numerous than the soldiers' expectations, but are repelled with William and Tovar's assistance, which earns the soldiers' respect. Later, William and Tovar meet Sir Ballard, a European who, like them, had ventured east twenty-two years ago in search of black powder, which might be sold for a fortune back in Europe. However, Ballard was also taken prisoner, and has been serving as an English and Latin teacher. The three men discuss plans to steal black powder from the store-room and flee while the soldiers are occupied by battle.

During the night, two monsters manage to climb the Great Wall and kill a guard. Shao and Lin lead a platoon to investigate, but they are ambushed and Shao is killed, leaving Lin in charge. Around this time, an envoy from the capital, Bianliang, arrives with an ancient scroll, which suggests that the monsters are pacified by magnets. To test this theory, William suggests that Lin should capture a monster alive using harpoons laced with sedatives, and delays his escape plans to help. At the next battle, several monsters are ensnared, and William bravely slides down a chain to ensure that an ensnared monster is not freed by other monsters. Tovar delays his escape to assist William, to Ballard's disappointment. The soldiers resist the monsters by fighting vertically along the Wall while tied to a chain, and by using spinning mechanical blades. As the monsters are too numerous, Lin resorts to using black powder rockets, whose existence had been a secret. After the battle, the captured monster is taken to the capital by the envoy. A short while later, a hole is discovered in the base of the Great Wall, which the monsters have used as a bypass, a reflection of their cleverness. While Lin investigates, Tovar and Ballard try to escape, and knock William unconscious for resisting. Some distance away, Ballard abandons Tovar, stealing his horse, but is captured by the Khitans, who accidentally ignite a bomb killing themselves and Ballard. Tovar reclaims the horses, but is captured by Chinese riders.

Knowing that the monsters are nearing the capital, Lin orders the use of an unstable technology, namely hot-air balloons, to reach the capital more quickly. Most of the balloons catch fire and the soldiers fall to their deaths. William boards the last balloon with Wang, following Lin to the capital, where they find most of the city already ruined. However, they think of a plan to kill the queen monster by tying explosives to the captured monster from earlier, and giving the monster meat to deliver to the queen. The three people climb a tower to shoot a black powder rocket to detonate the explosives, during which Wang is killed. Two rockets fail, but the third succeeds, after William throws a magnetic stone at the queen right before the rocket hits. In the aftermath, Lin is promoted to regional marshal, and William forgoes a reward in exchange for freeing Tovar. The two are allowed to return to Europe and a contingent of cavalry are sent to protect them.

 L² Scored: 10/10

L² Comment:

This is the first english-language movie that is directed by Zhang Yi Mou in his 33 years of being a director. He has won a lot of awards in Asian but can he won one from the Western country by this movie, let's see... Using the same concept of his 2002 movie HERO, he used sharp colors to differentiate the team of army in this movie.I love the storyline of the movie, very exciting and new while the way of defensing The Great Wall are fascinating as well. Matt Damon still look superb, being the few only western actor, he managed to shine together with the Asian actor but not overly outcast-ed his fellow actors in the same film, which i think is quite important as well... Of course this movie also let a lot of the Asian actors & actresses has the chance to show their face in Hollywood, good work Zhang Yi Mou :)

Contagion

 Released Year: 2011

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Casted by: 

Matt Damon as Mitch Emhoff

Marion Cotillard as Dr. Leonora Orantes
Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Ellis Cheever
Kate Winslet as Dr. Erin Mears

Jude Law as Alan Krumwiede
Gwyneth Paltrow as Elizabeth "Beth" Emhoff

 Story:

 The film follows several interacting plotlines, with no single protagonist nor antagonist, over the course of several weeks from the initial outbreak and attempts to contain it, to panic and decay of social order, and, finally, to the introduction of a vaccine. It is revealed in the end of the movie how the virus began.

After a business trip to Hong Kong, businesswoman Beth Emhoff stops in Chicago for a dalliance with an old boyfriend before returning to her husband and family in suburban Minneapolis. At first she appears to have contracted a cold during her trip. Her son, Clark, also becomes symptomatic and is sent home from school. Beth's condition worsens and two days later she collapses with severe seizures in her home. Beth's husband, Mitch, rushes her to the hospital, but she continues to seize and dies of an unknown virus. Because it affects the brain and central nervous system, pathologists attribute it to a meningoencephalitis virus. Mitch returns home and finds that Clark has also died from a similar infection. Mitch is put in isolation but turns out to be genetically immune to the disease. He and his daughter attempt to flee the city, but a military quarantine has been imposed, and they are forced to return to their home to face decaying social order and rampant looting of stores and homes. Not knowing whether his daughter inherited his immunity, Mitch struggles to balance his teenage daughter's frustration with quarantine with his desire to protect her, while trying to come to terms with his own loss.

In Atlanta, representatives from the Department of Homeland Security meet with Dr. Ellis Cheever of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and express fears that the disease is a bioweapon intended to cause terror over the Thanksgiving weekend. Cheever sends Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, to Minneapolis to begin the investigation. In addition to tracing the outbreak back to Beth, Dr. Mears has to negotiate with local bureaucrats reluctant to commit resources. She later becomes infected with the disease after being in contact with contaminated fomites while staying at her hotel. The Minnesota National Guard arrives to quarantine the city, and a badly deteriorating Dr. Mears is moved to the field medical station she helped set up, where she later dies.

Investigations into cures via treatment protocols or vaccines initially prove fruitless as scientists cannot find a culture to grow the new virus, which has been named the Meningoencephalitis Virus One (MEV-1). Professor Ian Sussman violates orders from a CDC scientist, Dr. Ally Hextall, to destroy his samples and identifies a line of bat cells that will support research of a vaccine. At the CDC, Dr. Hextall uses this breakthrough to begin to characterize the properties of the virus, which turns out to have a mix of genetic material from bat, pig and human viruses and appears to spread via fomites with a basic reproduction number of two. This later goes up to four after the virus mutates.

A conspiratorially minded freelance internet blogger, Alan Krumwiede, posts videos about the disease, and in one of them appears sick and later claims that he recovered using a homeopathic cure called forsythia. Panicked people attempting to obtain forsythia overwhelm pharmacies, accelerating the contagion as infected and healthy people congregate. Krumwiede leaps to national attention and, during a television interview, accuses Dr. Cheever of informing friends and family to leave Chicago before a quarantine is imposed. It is later revealed Krumwiede was never sick with the virus, but was attempting to boost demand on behalf of investors in the companies producing and distributing the homeopathic treatment. He is arrested for conspiracy and fraud, but is soon released after his 12 million blog readers collect and pay his bail.

Dr. Hextall identifies a potential vaccine, using an attenuated (live) virus. Because of the difficulties of human subjects testing, she follows the precedent of other vaccine researchers and inoculates herself first. Hextall visits her gravely ill father in the hospital to expose herself to the virus and test the vaccine. Production of the vaccine is rapidly ramped up and the CDC awards vaccinations via a random lottery based on birth dates for one full year until every survivor is vaccinated. Dr. Cheever, feeling guilty for his past actions to protect those who are close to him, gives his fast-tracked MEV-1 vaccination to the son of a janitor he works with at the disease center. Dr. Hextall places the surviving samples of the MEV-1 virus in cryogenic storage with H1N1 and SARS.

Dr. Leonora Orantes, a World Health Organization epidemiologist, travels to Hong Kong to trace the origins of the infections. She collaborates with Sun Feng and other local Chinese epidemiologists and public health officials and they identify Emhoff as patient zero. As the virus spreads, Feng kidnaps Orantes to use her as leverage to obtain the first MEV-1 vaccines for his village. Orantes spends months living in rural China with the villagers until the vaccine is announced. Feng exchanges Orantes for the vaccines, which turn out to be placebos. Orantes rushes away when she is informed of this, presumably to warn the village.

The film concludes by tracing the origin of the virus from a bat nesting in a tree being cleared by Emhoff's mining corporation. The bat flies to a nearby pig sty and drops a banana where it is eaten by the pig, presumably transferring the bat virus into the pig. The pig is sold to and butchered by a chef in a Macau casino, who greets Beth Emhoff without washing his hands of the pig's blood, transferring the bat-pig hybrid to her and creating the MEV-1 human strain.

L² Scored: 10/10

L² Comment:

Oh fuck, this is an extremely good film. I love all those big casts and the storyline, there's almost flawless in this film~ excellent work and excellent cast :)

We Bought a Zoo

Released Year: 2011
Directed by Cameron Crowe

Casted by:
Matt Damon as Benjamin Mee
Scarlett Johansson as Kelly Foster
Colin Ford as Dylan Mee
Maggie Elizabeth Jones as Rosie Mee
Elle Fanning as Lily
Thomas Haden Church as Duncan Mee
Desi Lydic as Shea
Patrick Fugit as Robin Jones
Story:

Benjamin loss his job and bring along his son Dylan & daughter Rosie move to a new house, which is also a zoo that they have bought. At the zoo, they met Kelly and others who take care of the zoo. In the same time, Dylan meet the beautiful Lily who is the niece of Kelly.

Benjamin is having problem dealing with Dylan who hates staying in the zoo and having no friends at here except Lily. Benjamin also have financial trouble to maintain the zoo's expenses while having argument with Kelly who care a lot about the zoo. Having a conversation with Kelly outside the house about Dylan, Dylan overheard and have a big fight with Benjamin. But a sick tiger "Spot" has bring them together. With the huge money left over by Benjamin's dead wife. After getting the license of the zoo done, they open their zoo on 7th July and make a lot of promotion about it.

But raining season came and all of them were worry nobody will come to visit the zoo. On 7th July, a sunny morning greet them. The Mee was happy but nobody came for the opening. Dylan doubt about the absent and ran along the path while the other follow. They saw some big tree fell along the road which block the visitors. They help out the visitors to cross and finally the zoo is full of people.

L² Scored: 7.5/10

L² Comment:

This is a very nice film to watch in cinema based on a true story. Though the storyline is a bit different from the true story but it is still nice. What a brave family to buy a zoo :) But Matt Damon look so old in this movie :( Where's the sunny good looking guy been? And Scarlett Johansson, omg~ she look so ugly in this movie!!!

Green Zone

Released Year: 2010
Directed by Paul Greengrass

Casted by:
Matt Damon as Roy Miller
Amy Ryan as Lawrie Dayne
Brendan Gleeson as Martin Brown
Greg Kinnear portrays Clark Poundstone
Story:

Iraqi General Mohammed Al-Rawi, hiding in Baghdad, is meeting with his aides and talking about the invasion of Iraq early in the morning of March 19, 2003. Al-Rawi suggests that they wait until the Americans arrive and perhaps make his army an offer to join their forces before forming an insurgency against the invaders.

Four weeks later, U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller and his squad investigate a warehouse, believed to be holding Weapons of Mass Destruction. To Miller's surprise the warehouse is not secure, with looters making their way in and out as soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division sporadically fight the Iraqis. But they find that the warehouse is empty. At a debriefing, Miller brings up the point that the majority of the intel given to him is inaccurate and anonymous, stating that on his last three attempts to find WMDs, his team had come up with nothing. High-ranking officials quickly dismiss Miller's theory about the intelligence being false. After the debriefing, Miller meets Martin Brown, a CIA officer based in the Middle East who tells Miller that the next place he is going to investigate for WMDs is also empty, as a UN team had already searched there two months ago.

Meanwhile, Clark Poundstone is welcoming Ahmed Zubaidi an Iraqi politician at Baghdad International Airport, where he is questioned by Wall Street Journal correspondent Lawrie Dayne. She asks if she could speak to "Magellan," to which Poundstone says that he is too securely "locked up". While investigating another site, Miller is approached by the Iraqi who calls himself "Freddy", who tells Miller that he saw some Ba'thist VIPs meeting in a nearby home. Miller and his men swiftly arrive and burst into the house. Al-Rawi narrowly escapes, but one of his henchmen is taken into custody. Before Miller can extract any more information the man is grabbed by special operations personnel.

Miller goes to Brown's hotel in the Green Zone and tells him what happened. Brown arranges for Miller to visit the man removed from his custody by the special operations personnel. Before leaving he is approached by Dayne. Miller soon finds the Iraqi informant in prison. Near death from his brutal interrogation, the man responds to Miller's question with one word: "Jordan." With Brown's help Miller's suspicions are confirmed that Al-Rawi met with Poundstone in February in Jordan as Poundstone's inside man.

Miller has by now realised that Poundstone probably wants to prevent Al-Rawi from disclosing the fact that he had never confirmed the presence of WMDs. When Miller tries to meet with Al-Rawi to encourage him to turn himself in before he is killed by Poundstone's men, he is kidnapped by Al-Rawi's men because Poundstone had just announced the decision to disband the entire Iraqi army. Al-Rawi tells Miller that he told Poundstone there had been no WMD program since the First Persian Gulf War; Poundstone was being used by his superiors in Washington so that Iraq would be invaded. American forces commence an attack on Al-Rawi's positions and the general flees. Meanwhile, Miller kills his captor and races to capture Al-Rawi. When he finally manages to catch up with him, Freddy suddenly appears and kills Al-Rawi, saying to Miller, "It is not for you to decide what happens here." Later, in his hotel suite, Miller writes a report of everything that happened.

Miller confronts Poundstone in a meeting and gives him the report. Poundstone tells Miller that WMDs do not matter. Then Miller violently grabs Poundstone, saying "the reason we go to war always matters"; but they are pulled apart. Poundstone then rejoins the Iraqi meeting, only to see the Iraqi factional leaders yelling at each other and leaving the meeting. Afterwards, Dayne receives an emailed copy of Miller's report. Miller sent it to all major news agencies around the world. The camera then pans out to show Miller and his squad driving off on the Iraqi highway, which is now used by Coalition vehicles, with the Iraqi oil fields in the background.

L² Scored: 2.5/10

L² Comment:

Yawn, military film is so not my cup of tea, no matter how hot Matt Damon is~ YAWN x 100000