The Social Network
http://en.wikipedia...._Social_Network
The movie from 2010 about the rise of Facebook and its creator Mark Zuckerberg. At the time I refused to see it as I was over the whole social media bandwagon. Every few months there was a new social network, MySpace was crashing, and I wasn't going to bother investing any of my time into a social network that would be redundant before it even took off (Google+). Now that the dust has settled and Facebook is the clear winner of the social networking arms' race, I thought I would check it out. This movie is more an autobiographical film on Zuckerberg, which is quite fascinating. In human history, something like Facebook has never existed, so to see how it began is a thrilling story. Most people know the basic gist of how it began; Zuckerberg, a Harvard student showing great computer programming skills, builds a central network that would link all the fraternity networks together. From there it branched out to nearby universities, and finally to other countries. At the centre of the story is the controversial proprietary legal battle of the ownership of the website. Before the invention of Facebook, Zuckerberg had organised to help other students build a incredibly similar website, where they shared code with him. This is the core plot of the movie, where lots of the questions raised aren't answered, but are left for the viewers to make up their mind. Of course with these types of movies, they're not 100% accurate, and the person at the centre of the movie denies a lot of what is in the movie. From doing research afterwards, most of the movie is factual, especially the timeline and progress of Facebook, it's just that some of the friendships/rivalries are exaggerated for dramatic effect. Overall, a pretty interesting movie I would recommend.
Gattaca
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
A futuristic movie from the 90s that flew under the radar. The movie is based in a future where DNA manipulation has reached a point where everyone is super-humans. Diseases have been manufactured out of human DNA, IQ points are near perfect, and life expectancy can be narrowed down to the day. It's a future where a 'traditionally conceived' human has no place and is shunned. Because everyone is super smart and dedicated to their jobs, humans are now in a robot type trance, paying little attention to their surroundings. Vincent, who was conceived traditionally, has dreams of being an astronaut, but with his DNA being substandard, he'll never progress beyond being the janitor at the space station. This is where the movie becomes a caper film where Vincent takes on the identity of someone with near perfect DNA. Through various ways of tricking the system to thinking he is someone else, he works his way onto the spaceship crew. However the authorities know someone is an imposter and the film becomes a cat and mouse game. What stood out for me is how close they got this depiction of the future back in the 90s to way we are inevitably headed. This is a very unique story with plenty of suspense.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
http://en.wikipedia...._Winter_Soldier
The latest instalment in The Avengers franchise now out in cinemas. If there was ever a movie I wanted to avoid, it was this one, as the first Captain America movie was a laughable cartoony mess about Hitler and a dude with a flaming skull. Anyway, I tagged along to this, expecting this worse. Fortunately, this was much better than the first with an actual coherent story which took a turn towards the spy genre. This even had GSP at the beginning of the movie as a villain. Everything up until the last 10 minutes of the movie was well done; with many twists and turns of the story and plenty of action. Then just when you think the story is going to wrap up, scoring a solid B, it has an epileptic fit and undoes all the tight story telling. Obviously this is because these movies have no real endings and need to set up the next movie in the franchise, but it was so in your face like a turkey slap. If you're a fan of these movies, no doubt you'll enjoy it. But for people like me, you'll be spending your time being distracted by glaring plot holes.
Saving Private Ryan
http://en.wikipedia....ng_Private_Ryan
Another movie I never saw when it originally came out. I'm kind of glad I waited until now to see it, as I was 13 at the time and most of it would have gone over my head. This is a powerful movie and I really appreciated it after seeing so many hit and misses of war genre films. Set during WWII, this firstly follows the battle to take a beach in France where hundreds of soldiers are going into battle knowing they are about to be slaughtered, yet knowing it's necessary for the soldiers behind to overwhelm and take the beach. This opening scene holds no punches and is as raw and gory as it gets. The plot then takes a turn where a group of soldiers are assigned a mission to find the remaining alive brother after the other 3 brothers were killed in battle (there was a protocol to immediately send home the sole remaining sibling if all others has been killed). The remaining brother is obviously Ryan, hence the movie title, but his location isn't exactly known. Then men then trek out to find Ryan while navigating the ugly side of war. This movie is very highly rated and I agree with all the reviews, it's a great and powerful movie. The tension between soldiers, the familiarity with death, and the different ways people deal with and justify their actions during war; it's incredibly realistic and relatable. I highly recommend this if you haven't seen it.