Counthaku

I caught this on the plane from Dubai to LA. Not sure if I was just sleep-deprived and delirious or just needed to watch something light-hearted after having my spirit demolished after watching Sicario, but Hollywood Adventures unexpectedly ended up being one of the best movies I've seen in a while.

The visual gags made me laugh, the tongue-in-cheek humor kept a smile on my face, and the likability of the main actors kept me engaged. Zhao Wei is charismatic and plays her character with a dynamic personality, while Huang Xiaoming looks like he's having a lot of fun while playing the straight man. Dawei as the wise-cracking sidekick and his self-aware jokes about movies (including the one he's in) were icing on the cake. Props to producer Justin Lin for helping to get this movie, a collaboration between US and Chinese cinema, made- he's also probably responsible for improving the car scenes, given his experience on the Fast and the Furious movies.

Don't expect Hollywood Adventures to be The Godfather, but if you're in the mood for a ridiculous, entertaining movie, expect to be pleasantly surprised.

"The girls that I like as human beings I'm not sexually attracted to, and the ones that I am sexually attracted to I don't particularly like as human beings." Such is the type of quote that characterizes the dialogue of "The Longest Week," a movie I watched without ever having read anything about (which is pretty rare for me). Despite (or perhaps because of) that fact, I was pleasantly surprised by "The Longest Week," and found its running narration- complete with character descriptions such as "an anti-social socialist" and "closet conversationalist"- bantery dialogue between the two male leads, and overall visual style to be endearing rather than simply derivative as its critics classify it.

I also enjoyed the film's flirtations with being "meta"- the novel published by the film's protagonist is actually the same story as the film, and references are made to Fitzgerald and Wharton.

That being said, the film assuredly has its weaknesses- namely that we never feel fully connected to the romantic leads, and are thus unable to empathize with them, and that the narrative structure/arc doesn't quite feel fleshed out/complete enough.