Memories of My Heart

Wow this was quite a movie guys.....  and yes I loved it, the story was different and it featured my favorite male actor - Ramsey Noah ;) .... Other major casts are Nse Ikpe Etim, Ini Edo, Desmond Elliot, Uche Jombo, Monalisa Chinda, and Kofi Adjorlolo... Apparently the movie was also directed by Desmond Ellioit (idk why dis dude has to feature himself in any movie he directs *scratches head*)

That aside, this movie tells the story of a young aspiring actress Halle Davis who has attended several auditions without success. She gets convinced by another auditionee to attend one more audition for a movie being produced by Desmond Elliot. As they wait for the auditions to begin, she overhears Desmond discussing with his co-workers that sponsors are dropping out of the project and he is looking for a way of contacting Mr. Bankole Da Silva, the son of a famous oil "magnet", to sponsor the project. Out of desperation to land a role, Halle claims to know Mr. Bankole and that infact Mr. Bankole happens to be her  fiancé. However, she gives them one condition: in order for her to get him to sponsor the project, she has to get the lead role. She is offered the lead role and as days go by, Halle finds herself entangled in a web of lies and deceipt and strugles to untaggle herself from the mess she has created.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the realm, Mr. Bankole has just suffered a car accident and has temporary amnesia (rolls eyes lol). His Doctor, Dammie, nurses him back to health but also falls had for him so she starts an affair with him. Eventually, Dr Dammie comes across a diary in Bankole's house where he wrote down some aspects of his life esp. his love life. She finds out that he has a  fiancée  somewhere but out of selfish desires to keep him as her man, she fails to reveal this piece of information to him. Yes, I know y'all wondering how come his father or friends didn't tell him about his fiancée  and where was said fiancée when all these where happening? .... watch to find your answers :D

Pros:

I loved that the storyline was new (at least am giving nollywood the benefit of doubt here because am yet to watch another movie with the same story). Is the movie predictable? Well it's a love story, we needed a happy ending lol. I liked that the picture quality, acting and background music flowed well. Also the music didnt tell us the whole story (thank God!). Still not convinced you should watch it? Please do because of Ramsey and Nse, their acting is amazing and they have great chemistry. Besides(regardless of what anyone else has to say), Ramsey Noah is one handsome guy who seems to get hotter with age ;D ... Oh and how can I forget, it only had TWO parts, that's unheard of in Gaijawood.

Cons:

Of course there are some cons lol. Some scenes could have been shorter really (so have your remote handy). I hate how they forgot about the whole Desmond Elliot movie aspect of the story the moment the focus shifted to Bankole's love life. They never did go back to tell us if the movie project was successful and if the movie actually succeeded in launching Halle Davis' acting career. Also, after Dr. Dammie found the diary, she spent days reading it at home. What happened to work? I mean she is a doctor afterall... I would've assumed it was a weekend but Bankole went to work. Other than these, I didn't have much problem with the movie and story.

It's a love story, it's a really good movie, it's short and it has humor to it so y'all will enjoy it i promise.

watch the whole movie on any of these sites:

movies.africanseer.com, videos.onlinenigeria.com, arodrive2.com

~Yv.

Letters to a Stranger

Let me start by apologizing for the overdose of Genevieve Nnaji in all my recent posts. Believe me it is unintentional ;).... Now to the movie: Although it is a relatively old movie, it is one of my favorite Genevieve movies and I decided to review it just because ... lol

Starring Genevieve Nnaji, Yemi Blaq, Joke Silva, and Fred Amata. Letters to a Stranger focuses on a young lady Jemima and her diary lol. Basically, Jemima is engaged to Fred but Fred loves his job more than his woman. So, Jemima keeps a diary addressed to a non-existent stranger were she pours out her heart and frustrations. Shaa one day one day, she  tries to call her sister (or best friend - can't remember who exactly) but mistakely dials a stranger's number. She begins talking to this stranger and they eventually become phone buddies. She eventually meets up with this stranger and they become really close friends. Now, the more time her fiancé dedicates to his job, the more his negligence pushes Jemima closer to mr. stranger. Well, as Nollywood movie would have it, mr. stranger actually knows mr. fiancé (yikes)... Standing at a crossroads between two guys she cares about, y'all have to watch to find out what happens.... lol

Personally I loved this movie.... I thought it was cute (shaa the chemistry between Genny and Yemi was the cute aspect :D)

Pros:

 the picture quality and sound were good and the background music did not summarize the story lol. Though the story was simple, I liked how it deviated from the typical Nollywood love theme. I also liked that they didn't have the actors speaking "shakespeare" and being all cheesy. There weren't that many unnecessary scenes (PHEW!) .... so the whole movie was only two parts (I know that's unheard of in gaijawood ). The ending, though completely unexpected, was great. 

Cons:

This naijachique has no complaints. Well there are complaints but I love the movie too much to actually voice them hehe. If you haven't seen the movie, now is the time to ;)

~Yv

Emerald and Wild Passion (Sequel to Emerald)

Hmmm where to start with this review? I was really excited to see this movie after it was recommended by some people online (nairaland.com). But I have to say am very disappointed with the movie. It had such potential in part 1 (despite my fast forwarding) but it literally went downhill afterwards.

The main characters are Majid Michel (as Maximillan), Genevieve Nnaji (as Emerald), Tonto Dikeh (Becky), Geraldine Ekeocha (Mrs. Davies), Halima Abubakar (Mary), Ladi Tortty (Clarissa) and Ikechukwu Onyeka (Stan).

Basically,  Becky returns from the UK, decides to open an antique shop and asks Emerald (her cousin) for help(Emerald recently graduated with a degree in business admin). One day, they go to an antique dealer to purchase some items and Emerald comes across an emerald ring. An older lady (who appears to be a sales assistant in the store) see her admiring the ring and insists that Emerald buys the ring as it is meant for her. She tells Emerald to pay whatever amount she can afford for the ring; so, Emerald ends up buying it for N5000.  Later at lunch Emerald tells Becky about the ring and Becky tells her that the ring should be worth over 10000 euros. 

Shocked Emerald tells Becky that the older lady sold it to her for only N5000 but Becky did not recall seeing any older lady in the store (which seemed strange). Emerald decides to return the ring because she feels bad about buying it for so cheap. But that night she falls asleep wearing the ring and ends up having a very strange dream. The rest of the movie then revolves around her strange dreams, the emerald ring, and the mysterious old lady who sold her the ring.

Pros:

I really can't think of any pros to this movie. 

Cons:

OMG where do I start in this category?  First,I couldn't really feel the chemistry between Majid and Genevieve (which was rather disappointing!).
 Tonto Dikeh cannot act as far as am concerned and that is all i have to say for her. Now the storyline of this movie had so much potential but it failed to live up to expectation. From flashback to dream to reality with no form of clarity in between. Gosh I was so confused and the sequel of the movie (Wild Passion) only helped in fueling my confusion and annoyance. 

Genevieve's first dream was about her and Majid and some kind of plantation work. Majid's family were the plantation owners while Genevieve and the other workers were the plantation "slaves" etc. 

My problem with this dream is they never did tie it up with the rest of the movie. Yes in "reality" Genevieve met Majid in a different setting and every major event that happened in her dream also happened in the same sequence except there weren't any plantations involved ... OH WAIT!!! This "reality" turned out to actually be another dream ... 

YES, by the end of Wild Passion 2 (the sequel), we realize that all of Emerald (both parts 1 and 2), and Wild Passion 1 (a complete and useless flashback of Emerald part 1 SMDH!) were all dreams that told the story of what happened in the past. So it's now up to the modern day Emerald to prevent the occurrences in her dreams from happening in real life .

Bikonu how the olden day Emerald (the slave worker) & Maximillan and the modern day Emerald & Maximilan relate to one another is beyond me *scratches head in confusion*. The whole movie revolved around the emerald ring but we never actually got a full story of this ring and how it got past down to generation ... neither did they bother to actually explain what happened to the servant girl who the ring supposedly belonged to. And WHO DA EFF was that old lady? They never even told us her story or explain why only Emerald could see her? *angry face* Not to mention Majid's wife (the wheel chair wife).... did she go scot free after plotting and killing her husband ???? Oh wait maybe that scene was also a dream! ...OMG I was so effing confused and irritated with this movie !!! Honestly this movie made no sense to me and the horrible lighting made watching it extremely hard. I DO NOT recommend it at all. 

the movie is on onlinenigeria.com for those interested:

Emerald 1_1

Emerald 1_2

Emerald 1_3

Emerald 1_4

the sequel (wild passion) is on there too. 

Enjoy 

~Yv

I broke my heart

I can't decide how I feel about this movie. So am gonna classify it as watch at your own risk and as partially recommended. 

Featuring Mike Ezuruonye, Yvonne Okaro and Yvonne Nelson, the movie had the potential to be great. I even persevered till the end of the movie (can't believe I lasted that long) just to give it a chance.

At the end, I just felt like the writers couldn't decide what direction they wanted to go with the story. One minute Mike and his wife are being lovey dovey, next minute they are arguing about careers, next thing they are becoming distant because wife works too much (which makes no sense since she worked at the bank and we all know banks close early mchteeeeww). Mike, on the other hand, works as a movie director/producer but aparently has more time for family than his wife *rolls eyes*. 

Anyway, they are a family of three (mike, wife and one kid) but can't seem to be able to manage their home (oh btw they also have a cook!). One day, wifey runs into her long lost and trusted childhood friend (Yvonne Nelson) and gets the brilliant idea to help 'said friend' out by offering her shelter and a job. So Yvonne Nelson comes to live with her in her matrimonial home as her guest/house help. And talking of house, that their "house" was just ridiculous!!!! Maybe people actually live in a "house" like that but based on this movie it was unrealistic for this family to live in such a house. The producers didn't try at all when they chose that house. 

Back to the story: the good thing is that it didn't go the typical long-lost-friend-comes-into-matrimonial-home -and-steals-husband/gets-preggos-route ... phew! That is not to say that husband didnt start falling in love w/ said long-lost friend ooo (y'all shoulda seen that one coming). Did I mention that wifey had two coniving, lying, backstabbing bitches as best friends? Little did she know that said besties were plotting the downfall of her marriage.  

My problem with this movie is the unrealistic nature of it. How can a family of three - husband, wife and one child not be able to cope even though they have a cook already(they definitely did not need Yvonne Nelson's help in my opinion!) Besides, every normal woman knows better than to invite another grown ass and beautiful woman into her matrimonial home (doesn't matter how much you trust your husband he is still a man!). Also, which bank employee works past 6pm (you ain't the owner of the bank). And my God, that house was ridiculous (yes i still can't get over that one)... can someone say over-exaggeration? And the wife's mother was just useless when it came to advising her daughter smh! Also, what kind of woman doesn't know her friends? Esp. those she calls best friends! Did I mention that towards the end of the movie, the workaholic wifey suddenly had all the time in the world - typical Gaija movie...no coherence! 

I don't know how i feel about this movie. It would have been good if they had at least made it more realistic. Shrugs, y'all can watch it when you don't have anything better to watch. Honestly it's not as bad as Blackberry Babes or Beyonce and Rihanna. And I actually like the two Yvonne's [not because they are my namesakes ;)] and Mike. So give it a shot at your own risk:

Watch the whole movie either at arodrive2.com or at onlinenigeria.com :) 

~Yv

Silent Scandal

Ssshhhhh it's .... a... silent .... scandaLLL! hehehe

My peeps, this is an interesting movie, at least the name goes w/ the storyline lol. It features Genevieve Nnaji (as Jessie), Uche Jombo and Majid Michel (Naeto). Genevieve is a single mum in the movie and her daughter Ella is kind of wayward -- smokes, drinks, parties yada yada yada. Her BF Majid loves her shaa but kind of depends on her for money so Ella even steals from her mum to help him out. Eventually Genevieve gets fed up w/ her daughter's behavior and sends her to the UK to live with her father. After Majid's source of livelihood (Ella) is gone, he decides to get a job and winds up at Genevieve's company where he gets employed as her personal driver.... And as fate would have it..... y'all need to watch it to see what happens :D 

You guys this is not a new movie (2009).  I actually saw it last year but I couldn't help myself so i saw it again 2days ago and I still loved it. It's a great movie and even though i wish it had a different end, I still liked the end of the movie (Majid is the guy ;0) 

Yes, I totally recommend the movie, the storyline was great. Of course you can't have a naija movie without some flawed and unrealistic scenes. Ella was supposed to have been sent away to the UK to stay with her father but on the way to the airport the grandma decides that Ella could stay with her in Abuja. It made no sense how they managed to conceal that info from Genevieve who believed her daughter was in the UK.  There are other scenes that I could go on and on about but quite frankly I don't have the energy for it .... so i will just say have your remote handy because some scenes simply must be fast forwarded. PS: there is a beautiful scene in the movie that y'all cant miss .... so watch it watch it watch it ;)

Here is a trailer:

watch the full movie @ onlinenigeria.com : http://premiumvideos.onlinenigeria.com/adHF.asp?blurb=5126

Felicima

In all honesty, I wouldn't say this was a great movie because it bored da hell out of me 70% of the time. But I do recommend it because of the beautiful message it carried and that's actually why I watched all of it. The movie revolved around politics, equality, justice and the disabled. The lead characters were Genevieve (Felicima) and the disabled guy (Agu Agidi). 

Basically, Felicima is a  young, confident, beautiful, powerful, no-nonsense, stylish, blah blah blah blah, and successful public relations business woman (exhales loudly, lots of adjectives hehe). She is well known to the public as a female business mogul. One day she drives by a beggar who is reading a newspaper and becomes intrigued by this unusual behaviour. She stops and introduces herself but the beggar already knows who she is since she is all over the newspapers. She talks to him for a while only to realize that this was an educated beggar who could read, write and speak fluently (he even has a class where he teaches other beggars) but his disability makes life unlivable and that's how he ended up on the streets. Y'all have to watch the movie to find out what happens.
The main theme of the movie focuses on how the world (esp. we Africans) treat the disabled and less privileged members of our communities. Genevieve in this movie represented the privileged ones with prospective future endeavors whereas the beggar represented the less and under privileged. 

Pros:

The movie had a great theme and that is a good enough reason to watch it. Both Genevieve and Agu played their roles well and the message of the movie was clear and well delivered.

Cons:

The picture and sound quality were horrible (OMFG ). As expected, they just had to have a ridiculous scene in the movie. The scene were Genevieve's house burned down was the most ludicrous thing I ever saw in a movie [wait that's a lie ... shooting someone and having them cry out "you just shot me, now am about to die"   is actually more ludicrous hehehe (<<< this happened in a different movie lol)]. Of course I already told you I was bored out of my mind most times so please have your remotes next to you while watching this!!!

All the Blackberry Babes movies

I was going to write a review for this movie when it first came out but I never finished it. As I’m writing this, I’m yet to finish BBB 2 but I saw and heard enough of it to figure out what went on. I’m writing this now because 2 more parts were just released last week and provided what I hope is the end of the story. 

For those who don’t know, there are four parts to this movie. Not four videos, four actual parts: Blackberry Babes 1 and 2 and Return of Blackberry Babes 1 and 2. This name was milked for all it’s worth and the filmmaker just decided to prolong the uselessness. Between Tonto’s bendy rollers, the excessive overdo, the fone and the number of times I heard the term Blackberry, this movie was working my last nerve by the end.

There are way too many characters and way too many side stories to begin to explain them without confusion. Just know that the premise of the movie is the addiction to Blackberrys many Nigerian girls apparently have and the foolish lengths some people will go just to show off and the story revolves around a group of frenemies: Vivienne (Tonto Dikeh), Damisa (Oge Okoye), Kim, Keisha aka Geisha (Mary Remmy) and Nichole. There were 2 or 3 other girls in their crew whose names I can’t remember because they did absolutely nothing of worth. Tonto and Oge were at the top of the pack with their 5 to 7 blackberries and all the other girls were killing themselves trying to catch up. Other secondary characters worth mentioning are Apollonia (Eniola Badmus), Muna Ibekwe and Tonto’s uncle because they really are the only ones who were constant through all the movies. There really isn’t much to know other than these girls will do anything for a Blackberry phone and constantly show off.

The producer is the same guy who made Beyonce vs. Rihanna or Beyonce and Rihanna and I am ashamed to say I made it through that joke of a production; I really wasn’t expecting anything from this movie to be honest. For the first two parts, the story was very one dimensional and it suddenly changed in the last two so that it wasn’t really about Blackberrys that much anymore.

Pros:

The movie is funny in parts but then it gets redundant. I think it’s meant to be a satirical look at girls’ obsessions with material things, in this case blackberries, in which case the forming and fonerizing and everything makes sense. Of course they over did it in places, it wouldn’t be a Nigerian film without the girl with one line pouring all her frustrations with her role into that line or without somebody aka Oge Okoye claiming she had an interview with the American Emberssy.’ But I’m trying to be positive by saying that the message of this movie is that too much attachment to trivial things is bad. It's a sad sad situation if this is how it actually is. What else? Not all the acting was horrible. Apollonia, Tonto, the girl who played Kim and I guess Muna and Oge were not that bad compared to others in the movie, fone and tongue biting aside. The girl that played Nicole, her own fone entered a whole other level; it became irritating to listen to her talk after a while. She’s also living proof that jealousy is the ugliest trait.

Cons:

There were a lot of things wrong with these movies that were annoying mostly because you could clearly see how they could have been done differently. Scenes that could have been condensed, side stories that should have ended in part 1 and characters who could have been scrapped. The whole idea of fraud they introduced with Muna and Oge and eventually Tonto kind of makes sense to the whole story although I still don’t understand what they were transferring from people’s phones or how none of the people figured out who it was. They mentioned every social networking site, even the ones that people don't use anymore and parts of the movie read like an ad with the characters spelling out all the uses of their phones. The movie was redundant; most of the wardrobe was just something else, the dialogue was cheesy and the ending was rushed and predictable. None of the "bad" characters redeemed themselves at the end, just a lot of humiliation and had I knowns. 

So to conclude this long ass post, this is one of those watch at your own risk kind of movies. Depending on who you watch it with and how good they are at commentary, you will either be very amused or very irritated. This, I know, is a movie I cannot go out of my way to watch twice.

Blackberry Babes part 1 (via youtube):

Private Storm

I actually saw this movie a long time ago...started reviewing it but never quite finished writing up the review until now lol
It's funny that it has taken me this long to publish this particular post because I actually liked this movie. Featuring Omotola J. Ekeinde, Ramsey Nouah, John Dumelo and Ngozi Ezeonu. It is an interesting movie, great story line with enough suspense to make you watch it till the end. 
Briefly:
Ramsey and Omo-T are in love and engaged. But Ramsey has anger/ insecurity issues and beats the hell out of Omo-T with every little provocation. Needless to say, their r/ship eventually goes down the drain (even though it took Omo-T forever to come to her senses and make the right decision for her) ...


My Review:
Despite some fast forwarding and occasional minute irritations with Omotola's Character (whom I really
 wanted to slap more times than I can count), I couldn't bring myself to stop watching it. Recommended?
Definitely YES! If you are looking for a movie, great storyline, beautiful performances by the actors; or just a 
movie with some eye candies ;) this is the movie for you. 

Check out the trailer below: 

(movie is no longer at arodrive2.com but I found the whole movie at afrolynx.com so y'all can watch it there :) ... here is a link: http://afrolynx.com/2010/12/31/a-private-storm-part-1/

Njoy ~Yv

Garden of Love and Tears

It's been a while fellas.... so today, I saw this movie Garden of Love and Tears featuring Ramsey, Tonto Dikeh, Patience Ozokwor and Kofi Adjorlolo.

Here is a short gist of the movie: 

Ramsey is a family man, married to Tonto w/ 2 kids. Tonto is a "psychologist" (and i say that in quotes for a reason)... Anyway, she counsels people going through marriage or r/ship crisis ... and she has a perfect marriage that is admired by most (such a cliché ) ... One day, Tonto comes across Ramsey (who she overly trusts) spoon feeding a lady at lunch (you have to watch the movie to find out who the lady is). All pleas for forgiveness falls on deaf ears because Tonto wanted to teach him a lesson.... As you can predict,  one misunderstanding leads to another and eventually all hell breaks loose leading to the downfall of their marriage.... While all these are going on, the kids are on vacation in the villa with Ramsey's parents Kofi and Patience....OMG these two people are something else i.e. cat and dog. What a  hilarious couple...just picture Patience chasing her husband with a gun roflmao .... Anyway the movie ended nicely and at least there was a message behind it unlike most movies i have seen recently ... this review serves as a little preview of what to expect in the movie as I really don't want to give the whole story away before you watch it (.... but this na naija movie so am sure y'all can already predict the rest of the story lol). 

Pros: 
I loved the fact that Ramsey was in it (y'all know i love that man ). I loved the story behind the movie even though it was an unnecessarily long ass movie (4 freaking parts ... parts 1 and 2 really could have been summarized in 30mins). I also liked how Kofi mixed igbo and ghana language (it was too funny) and of course Patience (one of my fav actresses) she worked her role well well lol...

Cons:
I hated majority of the acting esp. in the beginning when they introduced Ramsey and Tonto's family (too damn cheesy)... and talking of cheesy, Ramsey and his best friend/colleague had the cheesiest convos....
 Example, in one scene Ramsey asks about his best friend's wife-to-be and the guy replies "I can't seem to stop dreaming and thinking about her. She has transported me into another realm"   ... a normal guy would have prob responded with "my guy, this girl don dey make me kolo ooo" or something naija-ish like that... lwkmd for that scene, too funny.
Furthermore, I did not like how Tonto played Jenny's role. Am sorry to say but that girl really can't act. She knows how to roll her eyes (I give her credit for that) but that's about it. She couldn't portray the emotions required of her character (I wish Genevieve or Nse Ikpe had been given her role). Boy oh boy, even her role as a psychologist was a big fail... she should have at least researched the career a bit beforehand smh. 
In some parts of the movie, The background noise and the voices were messed up . 

All in all:
 I really enjoyed this movie. It is not perfect but it was still enjoyable because it made me laugh a couple of times. So, i recommend it....below is a clip (watch the whole movie at arodrive2.com or at onlinenigeria.com)

I hope you guys enjoy the movie, and i hope to be back with another review shortly ~Yv.