Spoilt For Choice : Cinema Experiences in Malaysia

Spoilt For Choice : Cinema Experiences in Malaysia

BY IAN TAN

Malaysia has really stepped up their game in terms of the various cinematic experiences it offers its movie-going audience. As of recent, we have been treated with an overflow of different cinematic experiences from the numerous cinema chains in the country. Popular names like IMAX, BeaniePlex and DOLBY ATMOS come to mind. With so many labels to each new cinematic experience, one begins to become overwhelmed with all the confusing types of offers and what exactly their differences are. Here, I break down some of the top cinema offerings in Malaysia.

IMAX

First up is The IMAX Experience. IMAX is known to be the world’s most immersive movie-going experience, and rightfully so. Its screens are the largest in the world, spanning a cinema hall’s floor to ceiling with a width that goes from wall to wall. In addition to being larger, wider and taller, IMAX screens are also slightly curved, allowing audiences to be truly enveloped in the movie. Combine that with the curved seating arrangement and you get a movie experience that looks good no matter where you’re sitting in the hall. Even the front row seats are elevated slightly. Besides the extra large screen size, IMAX also features a laser-aligned surround sound system that allows you – the audience – to pinpoint exactly where any sound in the room is coming from. How’s that for bringing movies to life?

Beanie

BeaniePlex is arguably the most comfortable and homey cinematic experience out there. The concept is simple: audiences sit in bean bags instead of standard theatre seats. If you love watching movies at home in bean bags while shoving popcorn up your face, you’ll love watching movies in Beanie. It has been voted the world’s most comfortable cinema by film websites such as Gizmodo, ScreenCrush and MovieFone. This is cinematic comfort at its best.

INDULGE

Now here’s one super-duper luxurious cinematic experience of the highest class. This is Gold Class on a whole other level. INDULGE sports a fancy looking lounge with magazines, jazz music, an array of cuisine to order from, and one ultra-comfortable recliner seat complete with leg extensions and a blanket. And if you ever get hungry in the middle of the movie, just hit the button on your seat and a waiter will attend to you shortly to take your order. Also, INDULGE halls are equipped with silver-coated screens to produce a sharper, more precise looking image. The 7.1 surround sound is also terrific.

Dolby Atmos

Dolby Atmos is the future of surround sound, made possible today. ATMOS is a surround sound system that uses ‘pan through array’ technology. What this technology enables movies to achieve is the precise movement of sound that follows any moving object on the screen. For example, in a standard cinema hall you may hear a spaceship travel from the left to the back to the right and finally to the front of the hall, but that “real” sense of movement just isn’t there. ATMOS is able to deliver this real sense of movement all around the hall. Not only does an ATMOS hall feature additional side, front, and back speakers, it also includes ceiling speakers for additional immersive value. Now imagine a rainy scene and being able to hear the sound of raindrops dripping from the top of the hall, or a spaceship flying over your head, behind you, then right in your face. With ATMOS, the sound possibilities are limitless.

D-Box

From home technologies to the cinema, D-Box allows you to practically “live” the movie. A D-Box cinema seat is, in essence, a motion chair. It moves in accordance to the movements and action you see on screen, so if a car accelerates and crashes, you’ll feel the force of acceleration and the impact of the crash; just without you dying. D-Box seats allow you to control the motion level to ‘Low’, ‘Medium’ or ‘High’ depending on your preference.  At the moment, D-Box seats are available exclusively in THX certified and Dolby ATMOS equipped halls, so you can expect a good deal of action-packed cinematic glory when experiencing a film in this double-featured hall. D-Box allows you to experience action in movies like never before.

GSC Maxx

            GSC Maxx is Golden Screen Cinemas’ Premium Large Format, featuring larger-than-usual cinema screens equipped with Dolby Atmos and THX certification. Like IMAX, its halls are designed to bring audiences closer to the onscreen action, so the seats are on a steeper gradient than usual and the picture sharper.

Now that you’ve got the lowdown on the many cinema experiences Malaysia has to offer, think of the next time you want to watch a movie and maybe pick one of the 5 premium experiences we just covered. The future of the cinematic experience is here, and you’re given the privilege to give them a go. So the next time you choose to see experience a movie, experience it in IMAX, BeaniePlex, Dolby Atmos, D-Box, or even INDULGE (if you want to feel like a sir).

IMAX is available at TGV Sunway Pyramid, 1 Utama, Tebrau City & Sunway Pyramid. Beanie available at selected TGV cinemas and INDULGE exclusively at TGV 1 Utama.

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Dolby Atmos is available at selected GSC outlets and D-Box exclusively at GSC Pavillion and 1 Utama. GSC Maxx + Dolby Atmos is available at GSC IOI City Mall & GSC Ipoh Parade.

'The Expendables 3' Review

The Expendables 3 Review:

Running Out of Fuel

BY IAN TAN

Sylvester Stallone and his expendable crew are back for a third outing in theatres, this time with the additions of Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes, Antonio Banderas and Mel Gibson, among others. This time however, it’s not only other famous 80’s action heroes that join in the ensemble cast for this third film in the Expendables series; newer, younger action stars such as Kellan Lutz and mixed martial artist Ronda Rousey join the crew to add some young blood into the series.

Replacing Simon West in the director’s seat is Patrick Hughes, who does an adequate job at this sequel, even if it lacks some of the fun that made the second film work. What Hughes does improve on over the last film, however, are some of the character dynamics and motivations. As much as characters aren’t necessarily the main reason why we go see an Expendables movie, it’s something that definitely elevates the movie slightly, as good action is made better when character motivations drive the action, and not the other way around. It is that aspect, and the inclusion of Mel Gibson’s character Stonebanks that I personally thought were nice inclusions to the movie and added some depth to it. Some. This still is an Expendables movie.

The performances from the returning cast members continue to provide us with likable, sometimes funny characters and add to the fun of the movie. Sylvester Stallone still makes for a commendable team leader as Barney Ross, with Jason Statham equally as good as his right hand man Christmas. Everyone else seems to be having a great time shooting this movie, which just adds to the fun of the movie as a whole. The newer, younger Expendables are serviceable in the action sequences but are underutilized character-wise, having one-dimensional personalities and wooden dialogue. Ronda Rousey in particular, is terrible in this movie. Anything in regards to speaking any line of dialogue to emoting are just painful to watch in her performance, to the point that we just want to see her kick more ass and stop speaking completely. The same can (sort of) be said about Antonio Banderas’ character, Galgo, a character with the audience tolerance level of Jar-Jar Binks (eek!). Galgo never, and I mean never shuts up, and has officially become the Expendables’ most annoying character. Much of this is due to the improvisational work on Banderas’ part, which could have easily been edited out of the final film. Mel Gibson on the other hand, is pretty good playing the villain here, adding some gravitas and seriousness to the movie, which is a nice touch. Next to Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character in the previous installment, Gibson’s Stonebanks is probably the best antagonist the series has had so far. Good on you, Gibson.

As for the action – what these movies exist for – The Expendables 3 is unfortunately low on anything truly worthy of it being called an Expendables movie, considering all the macho-ness that surrounds it. There are a couple of cool action sequences, most of which involve practical, physical stunts. It’s nice to see how some of these actors really treat age as just a number. But this film just doesn't have enough of that to truly harken back to 80's action flicks that prided themselves with nearly zero use of CGI.

Speaking of CGI, pretty much every explosion seen on screen is the work of ones and zeros, and really, really pulls you out of the whole 80’s-gritty-action-movie feel this series is going for. The film’s climactic battle features not one, but two horribly animated CGI helicopters in the summer’s cheapest looking chase sequence, made even more cringe-worthy considering that the Terminator, Jet Li and Han Solo are the ones manning one of the helicopters, ultimately making you question their bad-assery. Another downside to the action is just how frenetically edited some of the hand-to-hand combat sequences are. At one point, Ronda Rousey's character goes against two bad guys while Wesley Snipes fights another somewhere else, with Antonio Banderas or Kellan Lutz or whoever it was fighting some other bad guy in the mean time. The thing is, all these fights are incomprehensible pieces of half a second’s length of footage strung together in a confusing sequence that makes you just want to give up on wondering who’s fighting who and where. That one scene with Kellan Lutz riding a motorcycle up a steep, steep ramp and grabbing on to the edge of a building before pulling out a gun and shooting a band of bad guy fodder was a jaw-dropper though.

On the whole, The Expendables 3 feels rather lackluster in execution. Although it does attempt to script better character interactions and motives, the choppy action and straight-to-DVD level special effects take away from the overall sense of gritty, practical effects driven realism that the previous instalments had more of. It isn’t as bad as the first film, but not exactly an improvement over the second either.

Final rating

The Expendables 3 gets 6 out of 10 stars – Just download it.

'TMNT' Review

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Review:

Dumb Fun With a Sprinkle of Nostalgia

BY IAN TAN

Michael Bay now owns yet another kids-cartoon-turned-movie film franchise, this time in the form of the beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. With the Transformers franchise under his belt, and given their poor critical reception, audiences were extremely skeptical about how this Michael Bay produced reboot would fare. Just a reminder – Bay is PRODUCING this movie, not DIRECTING it. There have been one too many people labeling this as “just another Michael Bay movie” when as a matter of fact it isn’t. He’s had his fun with the billion dollar grossing Transformers: Age of Extinction already. Sitting in the director’s chair for 2014’s TMNT movie is Jonathan Liebesman, who previously helmed the terrible Battle: Los Angeles and the underwhelming Wrath of the Titans. Now that worries me more than Michael Bay producing this movie. Adding to the fan-rage was the fact that Megan Fox was cast as the inquisitive April O’Neil, which seems like a huge miscasting decision. With nearly every reason to hate this movie comes the question, does it really suck?

Thankfully, this film is not a total disaster. It’s far from perfect but it’s not the piece of complete junk we thought it was going to be. Fans of the titular turtles will be pleased to see that a good deal of the turtles’ characterizations and interactions in this film are in fact very similar to the way they were in the cartoons. Michelangelo still cracks a joke every second he gets a chance to and loves pizza more than anything, Raphael maintains his rebellious ways and ideals, Donatello is still the one with the brains, and Leo continues to be the big brother of the group. It’s pleasing to see that the filmmakers chose to maintain these characters’ personalities and keep the overall tone of their dialogue similar to that of the cartoon. In fact, the Turtles are the best part of the movie, and provide fans with a nice sense of nostalgia. I did have a few gripes about the Turtles however, one of which are their designs. Being reimagined and brought to life on the big screen by CGI and motion-capture, the turtles do have a good touch of reality to them, which can be a little unsettling to look at as they sometimes look a bit too human for turtles. Another thing that bugged me was the casting choice of Noel Fisher as Michelangelo. In the cartoons, Michelangelo served as probably many fans’ favourite turtle of the bunch. Here however, I felt that he came off as rather unfunny and at times irritating, with half of his jokes falling flat. Also, none of the turtles get enough dramatic weight and/or character arcs as they did in the cartoons and other incarnations. Several personality traits are merely mentioned but not incorporated fully into the overall story of the Turtles throughout the movie. Speaking of story, this movie’s plot is paper-thin and feels like an extended 100-minute version of a script that was meant for a 30-minute TV episode. Furthermore, the movie’s final showdown could not be more identical to The Amazing Spiderman’s.

The human characters here are nothing to shout about; some are downright terrible (Will Arnett as Vern ­­­Fenwick) while others are decent (William Fichtner). I will say this though, Megan Fox was (thank goodness) not awful as April O’Neil. She sure isn’t the best person to be casted as the character but there are times when she does put some effort into her scenes, and it pays off. This is probably one of her better performances, even if that’s not saying much. In terms of design and costume, Shredder is likely to please fans, but from a character standpoint, Shredder is given nothing to work with as a player in the movie’s plot, giving any villain related exposition and play to William Fichtner as Eric Sacks, who is serviceable in the film but not as menacing or intimidating as he could have been.

As for the movie’s special effects, they do look more polished than they did in the trailers. Granted, they still feel like video game graphics at times but given the subject matter at hand, it isn’t really that big of a deal. The sound mix on the other hand, is quite amazing and definitely lends a lot to the action scenes that the movie has to offer. Multiple sounds travel from every corner of the hall and make for a very pleasing cinematic sound experience that really complements the onscreen visuals and action. Here, Liebesman steps up his action game with some excitingly fun action sequences that feature multiple spinning camera shots (Michael Bay influence there) that really take audiences on a pretty fun ride that almost feels like you’re on a roller-coaster, better seen in 3D. One scene in particular involving the turtles spinning around Foot Clan vehicles while facing an avalanche is a real standout.

On the whole, 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a fun, dumb movie aimed mainly at kids who don’t care about interesting or strong characters, or a story that makes sense. Long-time fans of the Ninja Turtles will be happy with its treatment of the Turtles and will remind them of those Saturday morning episodes, and while the movie does have some well-executed action and a great sound mix, it isn’t enough to make up for it’s numerous flaws and lack of story-telling creativity and character development.

Final Rating

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets 5.6 stars out of 10 – Fun but flawed.

'Into the Storm' Review

Into The Storm Review:

Decent Destruction

BY IAN TAN

Directed by Steven Quale, who acted as assistant director on James Cameron’s Avatar (Oh hey, this sounds promising!) and director behind Final Destination 5 (I take that back), Into The Storm follows three groups of characters – a father in search of his lost son, a documentary crew on a tornado lookout, and two amateur dare-devil YouTubers – all in the midst of an onslaught of multiple tornados surfacing their town of Silverton. But hey, were human characters ever the main attraction of disaster films such as this one? No, although a little character development does help. We’re mainly here for the tornados and large scale disaster sequences, aren't we? With that in mind, does Into The Storm deliver?

Well, sort of.

First off, the characters in this film are a more grounded, relatable bunch compared to those of the Roland Emmerich camp of disaster films (2012, The Day After Tomorrow) and do help set up the film nicely, allowing for some neat everyday conversations and humour. Richard Armitage gives a commendable but easily forgettable performance as Gary Morris, father of high school teenagers Trey and Donnie, played by Nathan Kress (Freddie of Nickelodeon’s iCarly) and Max Deacon respectively, both of whom give fine and likable performances. However, as the film progresses and as the stakes get higher, drama and character development take a back seat in favour of large scale CGI disaster set pieces, which ultimately made me less engaged in what was happening as the script, penned by John Swetnam, gives little substance to the film’s characters after the midway point of the film, ultimately making me less interested in them and the perils they faced. Every character story and development in this movie feels undercooked. Couple that with two annoying characters (the dare-devil YouTuber amateurs I mentioned earlier) on par with the Racism Twins of Transformers 2 and we get a pretty looking movie with some pretty weak (and stupid) characters. Seriously, this movie could have done without those two idiots and no one would complain.

On the other hand, Into The Storm does have some pretty neat, and different disaster action sequences that are as thrilling as they are intense. Shots of a tornado catching fire and turning into a swirl of fiery destruction and two airplanes smashing into each other are real highlights. Unfortunately, other scenes such as one involving graduates tossing their grad hats into the air for them to simply be blown away by strong currents of air are executed with less skill and never fully reach the sense of cinematic spectacle it tries to achieve.

One other aspect of the film I did like was the use of handheld “documentary-style” filmmaking, which, to Quale’s credit, makes good use of its nearly-micro budget of USD 50 million for a more immersive and realistic looking film. Also, the film’s incorporation of Dolby Atmos benefits the film during its big, loud disaster sequences. Cars fly in front and over your head while tornados and wind are made all the more scary and enveloping with the additional speakers and use of pan through arrays (more on that in my Dolby Atmos article next week). As a result, audience immersion is boosted, putting us smack in the middle of the chaos. There were people in my theater screaming and jumping out of their seats every time a tornado started wreaking havoc or when trees starting getting rooted up from the ground and flung in front of characters.  It was quite the ride, I must say.

Overall, Into The Storm is slightly-above-average B-movie fare, sporting some neat visual effects and sound design, but lacking enough substance and the sense of “epicness” that most disaster themed movies have become synonymous with. It’s an “okay” time at the cinema, but there are better, more cinematically inclined films out there that would provide more bang for your buck.

Final rating

6.7 out of 10 stars – A decent time killer.