RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 3, 2012

Cast
Michael Miu
Sonija Kwok
Michael Tse
Linda Chung
Ron Ng
Joyce Tang
Him Law
Mandy Wong
Yoyo Chen
JJ Jia
Mannor Chan
Oscar Wong

Description
To Chinese people, having your own house is more important than anything else, even if it means paying a high price. In this drama, the characters face all sorts of troubles and money temptation for the mere sake of buying a house.

Synopsis
Renovation contractor KWAN KA-ON (Miu Kiu Wai) is the elder of four siblings, while his wife SZE LONG-KIU (Sonija Kwok) is a typical housewife. Buying a house is their longtime dream. But when his younger brother, KWAN KA-HONG (Oscar Leung)’s business goes under, they shelve their plan to help him overcome his difficulties. KIU has to look for a job too. Unwilling to see ON shoulder the burden on his own, KWAN KA-LOK (Linda Chung), the third of the siblings, turns to her supervisor KO WANG-CHIM (Michael Tse) for assistance, resulting in her taking part in an indecent proposal. Her boyfriend, TING KOON-FUNG (Ron Ng), breaks up angrily with her when he finds out about their affair. KWAN KA-WING (Him Law), the youngest of the four, prefers spending to saving and decides that he will in no circumstances help in the service of the mortgage. The family dream of buying a house turns out eventually to be a nightmare that never ends.

Character Map
- Michael Miu <==> Sonija Kwok (married)
- Michael Miu <==> Linda Chung, Him Law, Oscar Leung (siblings)
- Michael Miu <==> Ron Ng (good friends)
- Michael Miu <==> Michael Tse (conflict)
- Sonija Kwok <==> Mandy Wong (bad terms)
- Linda Chung <==> Ron Ng (lovers)
- Linda Chung <==> JJ Jia (love opponents)
- Linda Chung <==> Michael Tse (have an affair)
- Ron Ng ==> JJ Jia (uses her)
- Mandy Wong <==> Oscar Leung (married)
- Him Law ==> Sonija Kwok (sympathetic)
- Him Law ==> Mandy Wong (dislike)
- Him law <==> Yoyo Chen (married)
- Michael Tse <==> Joyce Tang (married)
- Joyce Tang ==> Linda Chung (hostile)

Info
- Michael Miu and Sonija Kwok are married.
- Michael Miu is a Interior Design worker.
- Sonija is a housewife, but later becomes a bank teller.
- Michael Miu is Linda Chung, Him Law and Oscar Leung’s elder brother.
- Mandy Wong plays two characters. She plays twin sisters (Mandy and Jessie).
- Mandy (Jessie, the younger twin) is married to Oscar.
- Linda Chung is a real estate attendant.
- Linda is Ron’s girlfriend and later fiancee. Linda also has a relationship with Michael Tse.
- Him Law is Yoyo Chen’s husband.
- Yoyo and Mandy (older twin) are best friends.
- Michael Tse and Joyce Tang are married.
- Michael wants to take revenge on Michael Miu’s family.
- Joyce Tang is a former celebrity.
- JJ Jia is Joyce’s younger sister and has a relationship with Ron.
- Ron is a financial broker and fails in his investments.

source from:  asianuniverse

Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is a retired smuggler living quietly with his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and their kids. Until Farraday’s past comes back to haunt him when brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) dumps an important shipment overboard. When Andy’s thuggish employer (Giovanni Ribisi) threatens not only Andy, but Farraday and his family, the protagonist must take on one more operation to help pay off the debt. And you know how one last jobs go.

Assisted from land by ex-smuggler buddy/construction foreman (Ben Foster), Farraday and Andy set sail on commercial freighter from New Orleans to Panama City. Of course, it is soon evident that many characters have secret motivations of their own, which sets up several double crosses. Events spin out of control as plans change without warning and Farraday is forced to improvise.

The film’s best asset is its impressive cast, particularly the humorous interplay between Wahlberg and both his friends and foes. The funniest moments come from his antagonistic relationship with an austere and nasty ship captain (J.K. Simmons).

The Americanization of this story results in some alterations and a few minor gripes. Farraday is much more of a moral hero in this version, with his rough edges smoothed out considerably.
Additionally, a new back story makes the Farraday family more financially successful, and as a result some of Kate’s decisions under pressure (namely, not leaving town) are poor and unnecessarily endanger herself and the children. The final scenes also clean up a few too many loose ends, losing a rather clever gag from the original in the process.

But the bigger budget allows for more elaborate action sequences. In addition to the immediate threat imposed by the gangsters, Farraday finds himself caught in the middle of a machine gun fight during an armored truck raid, desperately trying to keep a vehicle from falling out of a shipping container’s open door while it is begin loaded on the ship. Director Kormákur milks every scenario to its maximum potential, constantly putting Farraday in situations that leave him seconds away from either detection or death.

It’s very silly and will produce a few snickers, but for the most part Contraband is a decent action romp with enough thrills and entertaining dialogue to make its journey from Iceland to the U.S. a successful one.

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The “present” is sometime in the last several years, after Thatcher’s husband, Denis, has died and Margaret’s mind has begun to go. Even buried under the usual layers of old-age makeup, Streep conveys the former prime minister’s intelligence and spark that manifest themselves during moments of lucidity. When her daughter, Carol (Olivia Colman), and other caretakers are not around, she sees and speaks to her dead husband, whom she misses terribly and cannot let go. He’s played by Jim Broadbent, dotty and darling as ever. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that a movie of Streep and Broadbent doing nothing but toddle around the house saying affectionate British things to each other would be magnificent.

The bulk of this movie, however, is told through that venerable tool of the biopic, the flashback. Wearing less makeup but equipped with appropriate dental costumery, Streep plays Thatcher during her rise to prominence in the 1970s, followed by the surprising run at the prime ministership that put her in office for all of the 1980s. Working from a by-the-numbers screenplay by Abi Morgan (Shame) and directed by Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia), Streep’s version of Margaret is unyielding, uncompromising, and usually convinced of the rightness of her position, morally and politically. In her early years in Parliament, the lone female among dozens of harrumphing coots, she comes across as a powerhouse, a force to be reckoned with. She is smart, she has ideas, and she deserves to be taken seriously. In her later years, this evolves into browbeating staffers like a schoolmarm.

Thatcher’s determined resilience is the only thing that drives her, as far as the movie is concerned. Scenes from her younger days (in which she’s played by Alexandra Roach, with Harry Lloyd as Denis) show her as steadfast as ever. There’s a brief suggestion that her commitment to public service has caused her to neglect her family, but that line of thought doesn’t go anywhere. Every now and then her anti-union, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps conservative rhetoric makes you think there might be insightful parallels to be drawn between this and the current political climate, but the movie isn’t interested in them. Like that other recent biopic about a controversial conservative government figure, J. Edgar, The Iron Ladydoesn’t want to take a firm position on anything.

What it wants to do instead is to be a nice, inoffensive political biography that could be shown to high school students on days when the teacher doesn’t have a lesson plan. On those terms, it’s not bad. Streep and Broadbent are entirely watchable, and Thatcher’s story, even in its vague and watered-down state, is inherently interesting. Thatcher’s detractors will be furious that the film isn’t more of a hit piece, while her admirers will probably find it shallow. So who’s it for? People who don’t already have an opinion on Margaret Thatcher — my fellow Americans, most likely.

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I wish that “disclaimer” were the dumbest thing about this derivative faux-documentary, but it isn’t. Not by a long shot. The dumbest thing about it is that even though it doesn’t feature a single original idea or scary moment, a group of movie-industry professionals chose to put it in theaters. Theaters that charge admission! And it never even rises to the level of Fun Bad, where at least you can find enjoyment in the train wreck. A train can’t wreck if it never tries to go anywhere. It’s like they tried to make the blandest, most derivative, least memorable horror movie possible, carefully avoiding anything that might resemble actual entertainment.

Like 98 percent of all horror movies made in the last five years, The Devil Inside pretends that it is a documentary. The subject is Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade), a young woman who’s trying to find out what happened to her mother, Maria (Suzan Crowley), during an exorcism 20 years ago. The filmmaker, Michael (Ionut Grama), follows Isabella to Rome, where her mother is being held in a mental hospital. Mom has been under lock and key ever since some Catholics tried to exorcise the demons out of her and she killed them (the Catholics). At some point she got transferred to this Italian facility, because for sure the United States is always handing criminally insane people over to foreign asylums, just for fun.

Anyway, Isabella drops in on a class at the Vatican’s School of Exorcism, which not only exists but permits random tourists to drop in. There she befriends two young priests named Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmuth), who have a secret project where they try to cast the demons out of people the Church has given up on. After visiting Mom in the loony bin, Isabella is convinced she’s still possessed by Satan (or by whichever of Satan’s interns was assigned to her 20 years ago), and so then there’s a lot of wheel-spinning and time-wasting before the movie finally gets to the point, which is obviously to have Ben and David try to exorcise Isabella’s mom.

All of which sounds like potentially good fodder for a creepy demonic-possession thriller, if not exactly a groundbreaking one. But instead it’s a weak, tedious waste of time, with even the reliable gimmicks of the genre rendered impotent by apathetic execution. And I really do think “apathetic” is the right word. The screenplay, by director William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman, isn’t just devoid of wit and flavor — it doesn’t even try to have any. (Bell and Peterman were also responsible for 2006′s dumb Stay Alive, about a deadly video game.) Bell directs with all the enthusiasm of a guy who was called into work on his day off.

Most damning of all? The movie has no ending. Apparently unable to devise a climax and resolution for their mundane story, Bell and Peterman pulled the old “and that’s where the tape suddenly ran out!” maneuver — the ultimate lazy cop-out for the found-footage genre. The message is clear: the filmmakers didn’t feel like coming up with a satisfying conclusion to a movie that already wasn’t trying very hard. Moviegoers are sometimes very easily entertained, it’s true, but I find it hard to believe that Bell and Peterman honestly believed this pile of nonsense would please anyone.

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Graff’s Camp and Bandslam were refreshing in the way they addressed teenagers without pandering to them, depicting a summer theater camp and a battle-of-the-bands competition, respectively, with honesty and affection. They weren’t great movies, but they had some life to them. In contrast, Joyful Noise feels phony and pointless, a muddle of discarded Gleesubplots.

At least it has the good fortune of being enacted with enthusiasm by a very appealing cast, or else it would be completely unbearable instead of just mundane. That cast is headed by Queen Latifah and, of all people, Dolly Parton, who has not appeared on the big screen since 1992′sStraight Talk. (She had a role in 2002′s Frank McKlusky, C.I., but I can’t find any proof that it actually played in American theaters.) Both women get a chance to do what they do best — sing and be sassy — so you can understand why it appealed to them. Beyond that, it’s hard to say.

They play parishioners and choir members at a holy-rolling church in Podunk, Georgia. It is a very folksy place, the kind of town where people deliver a lot of homespun wisdom that begins with “My mama always said” and “My daddy always told me,” and where many of the colloquial sayings involve chickens. Vi Rose Hill (Latifah) is a working mother whose husband is doing a stint in the Army, leaving her to handle their high-school-age children alone. G.G. Sparrow (Parton) is a rich grandma whose husband is the choir director. He’s played by Kris Kristofferson. Do you like Kris Kristofferson? TOO BAD! He dies during the opening credits.

Vi Rose is appointed as the new choir director, a snub that might lead to friction between her and G.G. except that the movie quickly forgets it and goes somewhere else. The choir is a perennial runner-up in a national competition, but they’re hoping this might finally be their year to taste sweet victory. Vi Rose is perceived as too tame a director, though, and won’t let her daughter, Olivia (Keke Palmer), really let loose and dazzle everybody. She feels such a display would be inappropriate when the point is to praise God — a philosophy that would make sense if the choir weren’t primarily singing pop songs that don’t mention God anyway. (Foremost among them: Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.”) Vi Rose has some concerns about the specific musical arrangements, too, but I was never able to tell the difference between the ones that were OK and the ones that weren’t. They’re all loud and exuberant and involve piano, drums, guitars, and a horn section. Are certain chords unholy? Are certain keys unsuitable for worship?

Meanwhile, G.G.’s teenage grandson, Randy (Jeremy Jordan), has come to town, wooing Olivia and allegedly causing trouble, though the movie is pretty scant on details of just how Randy’s presence is a problem. He seems like a decent kid to me. He uses the power of music to help Vi Rose’s other kid, Walter (Dexter Darden), come out of his Asperger’s Syndrome shell. Vi Rose and G.G. quarrel about some things. And so on.

Littered throughout all of this are about a dozen half-considered plot threads. There’s Earla (Angela Grovey), a choir member who’s unlucky at love. There’s the town’s economic depression, symbolized by Caleb (Andy Karl), another chorister, who might lose his job. (The other singers in the choir don’t even get that much detail.) There’s Manny (Paul Woolfolk), the boy who likes Olivia and sees Randy as a threat. There’s some nonsense about Vi Rose’s husband (Jesse L. Martin) and his reasons for reenlisting.

The result is a seriously cluttered movie, one that spends just enough time on each thing to make you think it’s going to develop it, but not enough time to make it interesting. Is it a story about Vi Rose and G.G.’s rivalry? Is it about the young romance between Olivia and Randy? Is it a drama about Vi Rose’s family? Is it the choir’s pursuit of victory? It is all of these things, and more! No, actually, it is none of these things, and less.

But the cast has spirit, and a few of the many, many musical numbers are infectious. Parton radiates enthusiasm and affection, clearly enjoying herself, and is even game for some jokes about her obvious plastic surgery. (“I am who I am!” G.G. declares, to which Vi Rose replies, “Maybe you were five procedures ago.”) Latifah is saddled with an ill-defined character, but she delivers one powerhouse speech to her daughter late in the film that makes up for it. For the first 20 minutes or so, Joyful Noise is a pleasant little down-home hootenanny. Then it gets lost in its jumble of bland subplots and grows tedious, making us look anxiously at our watches as we wonder when this preacher is going to wrap things up.

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The action sequences are executed with the confidence of a veteran…

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First time Director Mike Cahill has created a psychologically harrowing film that is both engrossing and enjoyable. The electro soundtrack by Fall on Your Sword suits the paranoid atmosphere and gives a cool modernist edge to the unfolding drama. The often claustrophobic cinematography is interestingly varied, mixing hand held shots with beautifully static scenery and some great cutting techniques. The opening shot of Jupiter is particularly compelling as is the use of voiceover. One of the many stand out scenes involves a scientist whose first contact with the duplicate earth is televised and her reaction (and the reaction of the viewers) to her talking to herself in a possible parallel universe is goose bump-inducing.

There are a couple of clichéd plot developments and sometimes too much emphasis on creating a mood but the acting is very natural and mostly the tale is intriguing. The lo-fi special effects add to the realism of the piece which would be spoilt by over enthusiastic graphics and like the film itself, merely suggests oddness in the galaxy and doesn’t try to explain too much. So for a grounded take on the sci-fi genre this film is certainly a success and will leave audiences confused and comforted in equal measure.

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This time out, Holmes (Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) take on their most dangerous adversary, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris). Frustrated by Holmes constant interference, Moriarty threatens Holmes on two fronts – an assassination plot, along with a vow to murder newlywed Watson, his wife Mary (Kelly Reilly), and any others Holmes has involved in his schemes. Holmes sets out to shadow his friends on their honeymoon and track down the potential killer, the brother of a fortune-telling gypsy (Noomi Rapace), and the journey takes them across Europe, including France, Germany, and a castle perched rather absurdly atop a mountain in Switzerland.

The focus here is again on the banter between the leads. Like a period buddy cop movie, the script is peppered with even more rapid-fire bickering and humour, expertly delivered by its two leads. There are a few new amusing character tics added to Holmes, including an intense aversion to horses that leads to several chuckles.

Visually, it’s a treat as well. Ritchie employs his signature slow-motion and various camera tricks to surprising effect. He mounts the camera to the actors at several points in one of the big action scenes near a munitions factory, keeping the cast member level while the background shakes and shimmies.
It’s a nifty visual gimmick. He even manages to add wrinkles to Holmes’ premonitions, including a clash between himself and the antagonist that occurs solely within the minds of the two characters.

The early demise of an already established character is also a wise move, helping establish more tension and a sense of danger for the leads. While there are certainly details of the story that could be picked apart, the film maintains a rapid pace and continuously introduces items and clues important to the plot. These bits of minutiae spring up often enough that the viewer’s brain is kept sufficiently busy putting the pieces together, instead of identifying any weaknesses.

Ultimately, all of the right choices have been applied to this sequel. Like it’s predecessor,Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows isn’t going to win any awards this season, but it’s a high energy effort with a strong cast, a great sense of humour, higher stakes and a unique visual style. What more could you possibly expect?

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The meticulous, high-class manor is essentially a fancy bed and breakfast for people who prefer their pillow adorned with an unconscious prostitute. Fine dining in pressed tuxedos and pretentious fireside discourse over brandy is flanked by half-nude women in lingerie, and precedes a prim madam named Clara (Rachael Blake in a high bun and low-plunging neckline) taking each John into a bedroom and telling him, “You’ll be safe here. There’s no shame. No one can see you.”

Clara also reiterates the only rules. No physical marks. No penetration. In this way, Leigh’s film strips the sensuality from sex, in order to examine underlying desires and motivations, though the effect isn’t as profoundly provocative or deeply moving as in Steve McQueen’sShame, where Michael Fassbender’s Brandon never feels this secure or safely unexposed.

Only Leigh flips the focus of Kawabata’s story to one of the somnolent, specifically honed on a university student named Lucy (Sara to her customers). Emily Browning, who was already fetishized this year in Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, is beautiful but boring in the frustratingly surface-level character. Lucy works temp jobs. She’s a lousy roommate. She drops in on an ambiguous relationship with an ailing friend named Birdmann (Ewen Leslie). She picks up strange men in night clubs and exerts a level of control over them. Then, as Sara, she lets it all go completely and debases herself to a nude porcelain plaything. What kind of woman would allow this violation? Why? There is a market for this? Why can’t Browning emote?

Leigh’s movie is an avant-garde look at prostitution and a feminist portrait of a woman who discovers when she lies down at the office she gets fired, but when she lies down in a bed she can afford a swanky high-rise apartment. But with little insight into who Lucy is or what she feels, aside from a late outburst, Sleeping Beauty is just lazily provocative, then woefully soporific. Give in. “You’ll go to sleep. You’ll wake up. You’ll feel profoundly restored.”

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Reitman was almost apologetic, though maybe sarcastically, about the deep depression in this character, especially in comparison to the plucky teen played by Ellen Page.  YA is also written by Diablo Cody, though Juno’s snappy witticisms are replaced by the blunt remarks of an alcoholic sociopath.

Not that young adult ghost-writer Mavis Gary is of any physical danger to others, but she’s caustic to the point of being hurtful and seemingly friendless in a messy Minneapolis apartment.  Reitman often introduces her passed out, face-down on her bed, or pinned under the arm of a hairy, drunken mistake, while trashy reality TV snobs like the Kardashians reaffirm her grouchy entitlement.

As unglamorous as the role is (and it gets worse), Charlize Theron fully embodies the despicable Mavis, enough to eventually humanize what could easily have been a one-dimensional bitch.  Right down to a look of disgust as Mavis recalls her “hick” hometown of Mercury, MN.  A baby announcement from an old flame, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), sparks a sudden desire to return and relive her glory days of prom queen popularity.

Mavis is 37, but a midlife crisis would imply she’s lived a life past high school.  Other than a fizzled marriage, her existence amounts to Maker’s Mark and vicariously reliving high school through her teen fiction heroine.  Despite a blown deadline on the final “Waverly Place” novel and while cursing Mercury aloud, she packs her bags (and her Pomeranian, Dolce) and heads home in hopes of winning back Buddy… who is married with a newborn.

Clearly, Mavis is painfully delusional.  But her point-of-view is unique and darkly humorous, even if her selfish perceptive is so skewed its often uncomfortable.
She’s usually dressed sloppily, but for Buddy — and later, his wife, played perfectly by Elizabeth Reaser — Mavis dresses up and pampers herself with make-up and manicures, as if being pretty will solve everything again.

Providing the baffled, sarcastic voice of reason is Matt (Oswalt), a classmate she runs into and exploits for booze. He too is broken, crippled and emasculated by jocks in a violent assault senior year, and equally frozen in his teens, wearing faded concert tees and tinkering with toys in a basement bedroom. Oswalt is hilarious, as expected and despite a convincing limp with a cane, yet he’s surprisingly vulnerable in the role, holding his own opposite an Oscar winner.

What develops between them is an awkward bond, built on mutual sadness and nostalgia. But Mavis’ chase of Buddy is downright cringe-worthy. Reitman loves an uncomfortable moment, and there’s no shortage of embarrassments for Mavis, who is oblivious in her own reality. Her progress, or lack thereof, is sporadically narrated by Theron’s voiceover, though as excerpts from her final Waverly Place book. After this, she’ll be forced to move on.

Reitman and Cody’s newest joint effort is a more mature collaboration, and a step outside their own comfort zones. Young Adult stays more true to its flawed characters than their teen pregnancy indie, and both are played to painful lows by anchors Theron and Oswalt.

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