When you have the venerable Chen Kaige at the helm, you can expect lush visuals that are hard to ignore. Colours, textures, movement, all come together in an airy dance that is pure foreplay to the eyes. CGI fever has overtaken many modern films in China, no doubt due to the rising younger audience who…
Tag: film review
PITCH PERFECT 3 (FILM REVIEW)
Last call Pitches. This reviewer says: we can hope. In the latest installment, the girls may have left their textbooks, but the scriptwriters seemed to have returned to theirs. Pitch Perfect 3 sees the harmonising group Bella take on the biggest stage ever – real life. Things after college is note-acibly not as glamorous, and…
A TAXI DRIVER (FILM REVIEW)
Other than in South Korea, and for people in that region during May 1980, not many may have known about the Gwangju Uprising, where hundreds, and some witnesses suggest thousands, of civilians were massacred during demonstrations against a military coup. This state secret back then would have gone undocumented, if not for Jürgen Hinzpeter, a…
THE PROMISE (FILM REVIEW)
The 47-storey scalloped architectural project that is Sathorn Tower is like the Titanic. It was to be the tallest and most luxurious of buildings in Bangkok, commanding priceless views from its prime position. But Thailand’s financial crash in 1997, nicknamed the Tom Yum Goong Crisis, sunk the development and everything was brought to an abrupt…
CHINA’S VAN GOGHS (FILM REVIEW)
Made in China. The very line elicits derogatory reactions – cheap, fake, inferior. In the village of Dafen in the city of Shenzhen, one can say this rings true. In 1989, a Hong Kong businessman began turning hamlet into horde, with his peasants-turned-oil painters replicating masterpieces of the Western world for sale. He started with…
GEOSTORM (FILM REVIEW)
The worrying trend of climate change has provided fodder for big movies these last few years. From documentaries to epic disaster movies, the topic is a compelling one as we throw out many “what if” scenarios. Geostorm is the latest entry that places us in the future of a possible scenario, where we use tech…
MIDNIGHT RUNNERS (FILM REVIEW)
South Korea has been dishing out finely polished film productions in recent years, going big-scale from sets to budgets. It’s good to see someone in Asia carrying the torch in this region, as other giants like Hong Kong, China and India struggle to catch the wind in their filmmaking sails. Midnight Runners is South Korea’s…
KODOMO TSUKAI AKA INNOCENT CURSE (FILM REVIEW)
Children, can be creepy. With their beguiling ways and cherubic faces, they intensify horror when gurgle becomes growl and smile becomes sneer. This formula has kept classics going – think Children of the Corn or The Omen – and in Japan, director Takashi Shimiau has been terrifying audience with Toshio, the mewling boy from Juon….
THE TAG-ALONG 2 (FILM REVIEW)
It won awards for the two leads and topping The Conjuring, was also the highest grossing horror film in a decade for Taiwan. So it’s not surprising that the 2015 The Tag-Along spawns a sequel from director Cheng Wei Hao. The Tag Along 2 is more of the familiar, following the predecessor’s key devices but…
MON MON MON MONSTERS (FILM REVIEW)
Right off the bat, acclaimed director Giddens Ko makes his statement – this is not like his 2011 hit You Are The Apple of My Eye. Mon Mon Mon Monsters may be set in a high-school, but bears nothing of the previous work’s whimsy or sentimentality. Instead, it asks the classic question – what makes…
WONDER BOY (FILM REVIEW)
Behind every song, there is an untold story – the liner of Wonder Boy promises. The inspired biopic film of our homegrown singer-composer Dick Lee sounded like a good idea during inception, but sadly ends up off-key. Benjamin Kheng is the 16-year-old Dick Lee, an outcasted musically-inclined boy who has a thing for composing his…
Wish Upon (Film Review)
It seems like horror films these days come more with cred tags than an actual tagline. You know, the sort that goes “by the makers/producers/director of Insidious/Conjuring/Annabelle”? Wish Upon is the latest entry, opting to put the combination of Director and Annabelle together to achieve that repute. The cursed wish box film certainly holds some…
Spiderman: Homecoming (Film Review)
Coming after the box office titan that is Wonder Woman, one can only imagine the pressure faced by the execs at Marvel and Sony. Especially after a string of reboots that were tepid at best. They have nothing to worry about with Spiderman: Homecoming. It is amazing. Just when superhero franchise fatigue is setting in,…
Wu Kong (Film Review)
Also known as Wu Kong Zhuan, this newest adaptation of the Monkey King’s adventure stems from the writings of an internet sensation by the name of Jin Hezai. The budding internet novelist burst into fame in 2000 with a version that layered modern-day ideas into the classic, in a more consumable tone. Think Young Adult…
The Wall (Film Review)
There’s two sides to every story. And The Wall tries to paint that by pitting an American Ranger against an Iraqi sniper in a tense 90-minute standoff in the desert, with titled wall between them. It’s 2007 and the Iraqi war has ended. Sergeants Shane Matthews (John Cena) and Allan Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are a…
Colossal (Film Review)
Gloria (Anne Hathaway) has fallen and can’t get up. The spunky online writer with a blunt haircut lost her job in New York and can’t muster enough self-worth to pursue another one. She proceeds to lose boyfriend and home, forcing her to escape to her parents’ unrented vacant house in her small hometown. This girl…
HOUSE OF THE DISAPPEARED (FILM REVIEW)
This might be the first time I’ve seen more ladies than men at a horror screening. I think the strapping Ok Taec Yeon had something to do with this. In House of the Disappeared, Mi-hee (Kim Yunjin) returns to house arrest after a 25-year jail-term sentence for murdering her husband and, presumably, her missing son….
Alien: Covenant (Film Review)
I never considered myself a purist. But Ridley Scott might make one of me yet. Director Scott’s Prometheus began a journey into an origin story, effectively transforming the word universe from noun to concept. Although panned by some fans wanting their high-thrill monsters and less rhetoric, the first prequel was not only a box-office success,…
SIAM SQUARE (FILM REVIEW)
What is busiest during the day, usually morphs into the creepiest at night. And so with Siam Square, Phairat Khumwan conjures an urban legend of a missing girl who haunts the grounds at night, forever searching for her way out. I’m sure there’s a big life lesson here, ending with a big, “moral of the…
29 + 1 (Film Review)
Age milestones, like the annual New Year event, have a profound effect on human beings. Somewhere along the way, they have warped from celebrations to stressful introspective checkpoints. “What have I done with my life so far?” one asks of themselves. No one is feeling this more keenly than Christy Lam (Chrissie Chau), a high-flying…
Going In Style (Film Review)
You’ve got Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Alan Arkin – something’s gotta work, we say. Unfortunately, even this trio of legends fall flat in Zach Braff’s Going In Style, going through the entire film like a dress rehearsal. It’s like that itch which you can’t really get to, or that sneeze that never came –…
Fabricated City (Film Review)
“If it wasn’t something new, I had no reason to come back,” proclaims Director Park Kwang-hyung on his latest film, Fabricated City. And admittedly, the classic story of a scapegoat turning tables on his offenders is getting a little predictable. After a decade-long break, Park injects enough ingenuity into his latest work to keep the…
Rings (Film Review)
Origin stories are coming fast and furious in the film industry these days, as studios milk successful classics for all their worth. Reboots, spin-offs – you name it, there’s one for all the major titles. Part of this movement has stories being expanded, and although this execution has proven successful for a few, it usually…
Hidden Figures (Film Review)
“Freedom is not asked. It’s demanded,” hisses the husband of Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae). In Hidden Figures, freedom is very much needed in segregationist Virginia, 1961. On top of fighting patriarchal battle-lines with condescending men, our trio of brainy mathematicians must fight racial discrimination as African-American women working in NASA. Taraji P. Henson is Katherine…
MORGAN AWYONG 