We the Children

We the children continue to enjoy the great Kung Fu Panda series and give Kung Fu Panda 3 a resounding thumbs up. From saving multifarious species, Po’s attention this time around is dedicated to saving his own kith and kin. A great entertainer

15.5/20

More Panda More King Fu

In Kung Fu Panda II, The Kung Fu Panda quintet (Po the Panda (Jack Black), with the tigress (Angelina Jolie), monkey (Jackie Chan, viper (Lucy Liu) and mantis (Seth Rogen)) are at peace, and Po is in nostalgia mode with the goose father. In the meantime, Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), the ambitious peafowl, has a new weapon at hand, and seeks to take over China. Not if Po can help it. What starts off as a rescue mission for a single village soon erupts into an action-sequence-a-minute all out battle between good and evil. And it remains to be seen whether the sheep oracle’s (Michelle Yeoh) prophecy of the black and white warrior defeating Lord Shen will come to pass. With a galaxy of stars providing the voice-overs, Po the high-energy lovable fighting panda, can effortlessly chop and kick his way through many more sequels to come

14/20

Salt It.

Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie)’s talent for the action heroine is obvious, her choice of plot is two decades too late. Evelyn Salt is at the very least a double agent, but is she a triple agent? It is distressing that every aspect of the plot seems to have been drawn from some currently irrelevant Cold War cliché, and, in spite of the same, some of the sequences are barely believable. Cut to the story. An interrogation of a Russian defector reveals that the CIA interrogator – Evelyn – is possibly a double agent (why he gives this information voluntarily to the CIA at large is but one of the faux pas of the movie). In any case, Evelyn performs her dubious role admirably in battling the forces of law and order while fulfilling her near-impossible assassination missions through various decent to good action sequences, and suffice to say that many realities are stretched. When you have finished yawning through the Defcon II and suicide bomber and Universal Soldier-like sequences, the movie trails off rather ambitiously in the quest for a sequel. All the best on that one, Evelyn

10/20

LA Changing
Clint Eastwood continues his glittering directorial second coming with Changeling. While Angelina Jolie is better known for her more “commercial” performances (with the possible exception of A Mighty Heart), here is a clearly well-deserved Oscar nomination. The movie is about a single mother and her boy that goes missing and her search for that boy. In the course of that search, many wrongs are righted – the LAPD is reformed, laws regarding detention without sufficient evidence are passed, a serial killer is unearthed and executed, a boy returns to his family. And in the middle of all this is the poignant undertone of the search by Christine Collins of her son Walter Collins, alternating between hope and despair and taking the viewer along with both

Rating 16.5/20