MARCH 22 — It’s been a while since I last had to really plan my free time to catch a bunch of exciting new movies opening in Malaysian cinemas within just one week of each other.
In fact, after the movie industry was hit by Covid-19, I don’t think I’ve ever had to do this, which is a scramble that I kind of miss sometimes, especially since it was such a normal occurrence in the last few years before Covid-19 hit.
Back then it was very normal to see two Hollywood blockbusters competing against each other on the same weekend, with added competition coming from hot Asian titles from countries like South Korea, Hong Kong, India, China, Thailand and Indonesia, not to mention local movies as well.
With so many movies and so little time (and money), efficient and prudent planning was a definite must for movie geeks like me.
It finally happened last weekend, when I had to try and find the time to catch three exciting new movies opening in Malaysian cinemas.
One of them, Mickey 17, opened the week before, but since I spent that weekend back in my hometown with my family to celebrate Ramadan, I had to squeeze watching all three into the same weekend.
These three movies are still playing in local cinemas now, so if you’re looking for a worthwhile night out at the movies, please do check them out.
Ne Zha 2
Easily the most talked about film in Malaysia right now, Ne Zha 2 is, as of March 17, 2025, the fifth highest grossing film of all time, overtaking Star Wars: The Force Awakens with a box-office collection of US$2.08 billion (RM9.19 billion), and still very much counting.
And, it hasn’t even opened in Europe yet, not to mention many other parts of Asia, as it has only opened in eight markets so far.
As someone who missed the boat when the first movie was released back in 2019, I made it a point to watch Ne Zha first before diving into the sequel, and I fell in love, hard, with that first movie.
It was such a great movie that I’d even put it alongside top tier Pixar titles like Up, Wall-E and the later Toy Story sequels.
I was still impressed with Ne Zha 2, which was dazzlingly rendered and blessed with one exciting action sequence after another, but I kind of missed the big heart and the small moments that made the first film such a fetching and magical experience.
If you want a thrilling visual feast consisting of epic battles, wild imagination and a healthy dose of potty humour, this one will definitely rock your boat.
If you want a bit more heart to go with your animation, just go back to the first film and relive the magic.
Mickey 17
Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s stock has risen so high after winning the Oscar with Parasite that it’s almost illogical to expect his follow-up film to reach the same heights.
It’s a good thing then that he chose not to make the same kind of film for his follow-up and instead returned to the world of science fiction, which he’d previously explored with Snowpiercer and Okja.
The film stars Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes, who, in order to evade a loan shark, signs up to become an “expendable” on a space faring voyage, which means that he agrees to be cloned every time he dies, with his memories imprinted, because expendables are given the most dangerous of jobs during the mission.
From this imaginative setup, the film raises some very interesting questions about mortality, identity, class status and most strikingly, colonialism.
There are obvious allusions and similarities to what’s going on in the world right now, especially once the spaceship lands on a far-away planet with native inhabitants that look like giant fanged insects, and the word “extermination” gets thrown around with abandon by the mission’s leader.
Not exactly a home run, but definitely a film worthy of repeat viewings and further rumination.
Novocaine
If you want pure unchecked mayhem, Novocaine is the film to see this week.
It is stupendously gory, outrageously fun, and endlessly entertaining in a way that only successfully executed high concept superhero movies can be.
This one stars Jack Quaid (from the also outrageously fun The Boys) as Nathan Caine, who suffers from something called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis (CIPA), which apparently is a real condition.
In short, Nathan doesn’t feel pain, so much so that he’s even afraid to consume solid food for fear of unknowingly biting his tongue and bleeding to death, and needs to be reminded by his alarm to take a pee every few hours, because he won’t notice that his bladder is full.
Directors Dan Bert and Robert Olsen take this slightly exaggerated real concept to posit the question: what happens if someone with CIPA comes across an opportunity to become a hero?
This is what happens to Nathan when his new girlfriend Sherry is kidnapped during a bank robbery, which leads him on a wild goose chase across the city to save her, which of course sets up plenty of hilariously brutal action set-pieces, all of them creatively choreographed.
Playing a bit like John Wick/Nobody with the cheeky spirit of The Boys, this one’s a really well-crafted crowd pleaser.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
