Gulliver's Travels (2010)

Jack Black brings his pop culture referencing routine to this adaptation of Jonathan Swift's social satire.

It's not quite Gulliver's Travels as Jack Black's demented mash-up of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Gulliver’s Travels.

Watch if you're a fan of Black's comedies.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published in 22 December 2010.

Yogi Bear (2010)

Unless you were born in the 60s, you're too young to remember watching The Yogi Bear Show on TV.

This mixed CGI and live action feature film is a nostalgic throwback to 1980s children’s comedy films, replete with 1980s children comedy conventions and tropes.

It was far more entertaining than I expected.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 22 December 2010.

TRON: Legacy (2010)

Cult classic Tron gets a sequel in a decade of sequels and remakes.

Long missing for decades, Flynn is believed to be trapped and in hiding in the virtual world of Tron and it's up to his son to rescue him.

Technically a sequel, Tron: Legacy plays almost like a straight remake of the original story. We're docking points off for that!

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 15 December 2010.

Facing Ali (2009)

Living with Parkinson's disease, "The Greatest" gets a tribute in a documentary summarising his youth and boxing career.

The gimmick here involves Muhammad Ali's life and career narrated by a parade of 10 of his greatest friends and professional foes.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 15 December 2010.

Time Traveller: The girl who leapt through time (時をかける少女) (2010)

The girl who leapt through time is the title of far too many novels, manga, anime, and live action films that feel like remakes, sequels, and adaptations all at the same time.

This 2010 entry thankfully IS different though. Watch it for the side-plot where the time travelling protag and her friends learn to make short films, and wait for the recognition of filmmaking as memory and thwarted desire to hit you square in the eyes.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 15 December 2010.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the dawn treader (2010)

It's Michael Apted's turn to helm a Chronicles of Narnia film.

The series has had a troubled history, its installments veering between wholesale adaptation of CS Lewis's annoying Christian proselytism and a pure CGI action fest.

Apted thankfully makes the film an adventure story for children.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 8 December 2010.

Box! (ボックス) (2010)

Box! is Rocky in a Japanese high school.

It's a sports film for people whose only introduction to boxing is Rocky, apparently made by a director whose only introduction to boxy is also Rocky.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 8 December 2010.

My soul to take (2010)

More of a warm-up to Scream 4 for Wes Craven, this horror flick treads territory that is familiar and safe to the director and his following.

If you watch this, you can play a party game called “Identify which Wes Craven movie this scary moment or trope comes from”.

Or you can view this as a mid-career summary project of an excellent genre director.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 1 December 2010.

Skyline (2010)

This dreadfully boring alien invasion flick is still worth watching - precisely because it's really hard to make an alien invasion flick boring.

What's more, it's a labour of love. The invasion scenario is meticulously plotted (and approved by military historians, no doubt), the specialist alien troop designs are fascinating.

The film just doesn't come together but if you're military geek, you might want to take the chance.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 1 December 2010.

Confessions (告白) (2010)

The game begins in earnest when a teacher announces in homeroom she knows who among them bullied her daughter to death, and that her exquisite revenge will come in time.

It's a revenge film that's told via the confessions of the guilty parties - which isn't common in this genre.


Read my full review in Fridae, first published on 24 November 2010.

Spring Fever (春风沉醉的夜晚) (2009)

A gay man, his accidental bisexual lover, and that lover’s girlfriend form the inverted Jules et Jim triangle of the film

Spring Fever was shot on the sly in Red China with its director serving a lengthy ban from making films.

We gather the director's ban was just too much to bear. There's just too much happening, so much being said that the film feels out of place with itself.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 18 November 2010.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: part 1

David Yates, a long-time TV productions director, ruined the previous Harry Potter film. Which really looked like a TV feature.

Yates redeems himself with a more epic-looking Deathly Hallows here.

That said, the decision to split the finale into 2 parts resurrects Tolkien's Return of the King problem - there's far too much exposition here building up to an all-action part 2.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 18 November 2010.

Magika (2010)

Two children find themselves transported into a universe populated by fairy tales and folk legends from the Malay-Indonesian archipelago and walk-on cameos from Cathay Keris and Merdeka film classics.

The film has a lo-fi, low-budget quality that evokes the Ed Wood "Let's put on a movie!" charm.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 10 November 2010.

Megamind (2010)

As Pixar retreats into making sequels, rival studios are learning how to write original stories.

Megamind subverts the superhero genre, with its anti-hero being forced to make a face turn when the Superman clone announces his retirement.

Will Ferrell is at the top of his comedy game here, making this a wacky film that stands up on repeated viewing.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 4 November 2010.

Flowers (花) (2010)

6 short stories about women in 6 decades of Japanese post-war history, filmed in the style and genre that were predominant in the period the stories are set in.

This is as close as you can get to a live action version of Millennium Actress, and just as touching and sentimental a tribute to Japanese cinema.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 4 November 2010.

Son of Babylon (ابن بابل) (2009)

Blake saw the universe in a grain of sand. Now you can see the nation and its peoples in a road trip movie.

A Kurdish grandmother and her grandson search for his disappeared father following the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Unlike other road trip movies, this one is really depressing and harrowing. I suppose you can watch this with Sandcastles as an "evacuation of national history" double-bill.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 3 November 2010.

It's a wonderful afterlife

The creators of the British Indian comedy genre return with another comedy about marriage, and life in English towns.

Until Pride and Prejudice and Zombies gets adapted for the screen, It’s a Wonderful Afterlife holds the crown for the romantic comedy/horror comedy mash-up madness.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 27 October 2010.

Last exorcism, The

A priest conducts exorcisms knowing from experience that there's no such thing as demons or demonic possession, only confused children in need of counselling and stressed parents in need of some reassurance a spectacle and ritual can offer.

The last exorcism may be the only decent film in the found footage horror genre precisely because its plot isn't bounded by the genre's premises itself.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 27 October 2010.

Social Network, The

The 'making of Facebook' movie is also a biopic of sorts of Mark Zuckerberg.

Here, the Time magazine's 2010 "Man of the Year" is cast as a modern day robber baron whose willingness to do very nasty, possibly unethical, and borderline illegal things is central to his success.

I suspect this might make a great double-bill with There will be blood.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 27 October 2010.

The girl who kicked the hornet's nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes) (2009)

The victim who survives to enact unholy vengeance on her tormentors is the theme of the final film in the Millennium trilogy.

Yes, I'm saying this film is a well-disguised slasher flick where Lisbeth Salander is your Final Girl.

Shifting from murder mystery to conspiracy film to a slasher flick masquerading as a courtroom boiler, this is isn't just for the completists.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 20 October 2010.

Bestseller (베스트셀러) (2010)

A disgraced author eager to make a comeback secludes herself and her troubled daughter in a creepy old house in a rural town, whereupon obviously Strange Things Happen.

The Korean psychological thriller and its trademarked Double Twist shows signs of being stretched beyond its creative limits in Bestseller.

Unintentionally campy in its first half and a showcase of everything wrong about the Double Twist, this is one to avoid.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 12 October 2010.

I am love (Io sono l'amore) (2009)

Tilda Swinton is matriarch of a ridiculously wealthy family, The Woman behind The Man, and all-round successful mother - and all that will change when she falls in love.

A more mannered, deliberate reworking of Teorema and its critique of capitalism and the family, love is set loose and all that is solid melts into the air.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 6 October 2010.

Eat Pray Love (2010)

Snicker all you want but there's something to be said about the myth of travel - that it will change you forever, show you the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, and perhaps you will meet a tall, dark stranger...

Eat Pray Love is a well-executed entry in the genre of travel films where WASP Americans are schooled in the wisdom of good living and good loving by swarthy people.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 6 October 2010.

Dinner for Schmucks (2010)

Hollywood remakes Le diner de cons.

From a mean, social comedy of manners about a moron driving an average man mad, we now have a moralistic, sentimental comedy about an idiot savant who drives a type A yuppie mad.

May work if you're the sentimental type.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 6 October 2010.

The Other Guys (2010)

The comedy team of Adam McKay and Will Ferrell reunite in another genre parody.

This time round, it's the buddy cop film and the Lethal Weapon series.

The string of gags this time round aren't that funny. What brings the house down though is its verbal comedy, transplanting the mouleitau sensibility wholesale from Hong Kong to Hollywood.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 29 September 2010.