Megan Fox’s Body and Other Movies Hitting Hong Kong This Month

Megan Fox, Astro Boy, Matt Damon and the King of Pop.

Here’s a quick round-up of what’s heading to cinemas around Hong Kong over the next few weeks:

• The Informant!
  October 22
  Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre in this true story about the price fixing scandal that rocked the commercial livestock industry in 1992. Directed by Steven Soderberg of Ocean’s 11-13 fame. See our review below.

• Astro Boy
  October 23
  Flying through the sky, he may be small but he’s strong inside. The original robotic Pinocchio is back in CG and animated by Hong Kong’s Imagi. Watch out for Cantonese and English versions of the film.

• Jennifer’s Body
  October 29
  Megan Fox goes from fighting robots to being the devil herself. Juno writer Diablo Cody is behind this girl power horror movie, but who cares what its about – Megan Fox runs around in revealing attire with nary an Autobot in sight.

• This Is It
  October 29
  Horror movie jokes aside, this is the documentary that Sony paid millions of dollars for, as its MJ’s last footage before his death in July.

• Saw 6
  October 29
  They’ll keep making these until they lose money which apparently they never do. Tobin Bell is back in the 6th edition in this horror franchise. Great posters though!

The Informant! Review

Opens: Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
Starring: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale and Melanie Lynskey
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Opening today is Matt Damon’s newest movie The Informant! A political dark comedy that we had a chance to screen on Tuesday night to a full house in Festival Walk with some of our readers who won tickets courtesy of Warner Bros Hong Kong.

Technically, The Informant! was a sound film, great performances, great dialogue, great editing and cinematography but to be honest the subject matter is debatable if its “movie material” – we’re sure there are many other corporate greed stories and/or characters that are much more interesting than this one.

Its got the standard set-up of all of these types of based-on-real-events movies: main character narration, quirky supporting cast filled with recognizable faces (in this case the actors from Back to the Future, Quantum Leap and Highlander were welcome) and the last frames where they sum up what happens to all the characters and their fates.

Compared to Erin Brockovich the movie that won Julia Roberts a Best Actress Academy Award, The Informant! is definitely a very well paced film that had some great lines and a great performance by Matt Damon who made you believe he was this character and any Damonisms disappeared especially under those 30 extra pounds he put on for the role, but coming out at the end of it, what was the point? No matter if you are the good guy, you are still the bad guy? Reminds us of the line from Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight.

The film received generally favorable reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 75% of critics gave positive reviews based on 122 reviews with an average score of 6.8/10. Metacritic reported a score of 66 out of 100 based on 35 reviews. Film critic Roger Ebert awarded the film 4 stars out of 4 claiming “The Informant! is fascinating in the way it reveals two levels of events, not always visible to each other or to the audience.” So while we thought it was so-so it seems the overall movie press was more impressed than we were.

Some of the winners from our contest were nice enough to chime in with a few words:

Denise said:

The movie was great..really quirky and funny. My favourite part was when he talks about the polarbears: “Polar bears cover their noses before they pounce on a seal. How do polar bears know their noses are black? Did they look in the water one day, see their reflection and say, “Man, I’d be invisible if it wasn’t for that thing.”

Paul said:

It was funny and dark. Matt Damon was great. If you want a more realistic take on the Tom Cruise movie “The Firm” this is it, with more jokes of course!

Tim said:

I thought it was pretty good actually. The parts when he talks over what’s actually happening in the scenes were enjoyable and quite informative (I hope they were real information!)

There’s one thing that I want to point out, is that for a late night movie, I wasn’t tired a single bit because there were always something interesting being presented.

I did enjoy it being so “light” that it’s was a relaxing movie to watch, as opposed to the trailers that it played before.