This week's highlight: Red Cliff 2!

Among the recent batch of Romance of the Three Kingdoms adaptations (Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of a Dragon, An Empress and the Warriors, etc.,) Red Cliff is the most entertaining and lavish in terms of production design. It's not perfect, but perfectly epic and grand, with lofty and mighty men (both in strength and intellect) crossing blades in great and important battles. Red Cliff 1's momentum kind of dwindled in the final scene, so it'll be interesting to see how the story continues and finishes in this concluding chapter. My knowledge of Chinese literature is hopeless, but from what I've heard, there's going to be some major betrayals, and men hugging, crying and dying together. Also, doves. Lots of doves.

This week's highlight: Ip Man!

Firstly, it's "Ip Maa-an", as in "bun". Secondly, this is not a superhero movie about a guy who can turn into, or have the power of "Ip", whatever that means. Ip Man was actually the name of the man who taught Bruce Lee how to kick serious ass. With Donnie Yen as the lead, historical accuracy be damned; I just want to see some balletic bone crunching done better than anything Jet and Jackie could muster up in The Forbidden Kingdom. Keep an eye out for another Ip Man biopic in the near future, courtesy of Hong Kong film auteur Wong Kar Wai.

By the way, Happy New Year guys! : )

This week's highlight: Australia!

It's high time we're getting an overblown epic period movie to chew on. Seriously, I want to love this. It's got Wolverine looking like Clint Eastwood in The Man with No Name mode (sans poncho, sadly), the always-game-for-a-sex-scene Nicole Kidman, beautiful cinematography, and probably the entire continent of Australia! But, uh-oh, critics aren't too happy about it. I have a bad feeling about this...

This week's highlight: The Good, The Bad and The Weird!

With a title like that, director Kim Ji-woon, whose last movie was the so-so A Bittersweet Life, is surely asking for it for homaging someone as high up there as Sergio Leone. His recent big win at the Korean Blue Dragon Film Awards helps though. Will catch it this Wednesday.

This week's highlight: Madagascar 2!

Madagascar was one of the few Dreamworks cartoons that wasn't blatantly condescending. The first Madagascar paired up a lion and a zebra as best zoo buddies, but the movie was daring enough to explore the consequences of this unlikely friendship outside of the comforts of their captivity. However, at the end of the day, it's still a Looney Tunes type of cartoon with nary a semblance of logic in its "reality". Let's just hope the second one is even as funny as the first.