Margin Call (2011)

The Wall Street fall that sparked the (still, in 2013!) ongoing financial crisis of 2007 gets the dramatic treatment in Margin Call.

The boardroom drama is how you'd imagine Steven Soderbergh might direct the story as a thriller and crime procedural.

Brilliant, if underrated.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 28 December 2011.

Petaling Street Warriors (大英雄，小男人) (2011)

Whoever thought that Wong Jing's brand of relentlessly crass comedy and lame jokes would be a model of filmmaking?

I introduce you to the team behind Petaling Street Warriors, a film that features male chastity belts, erections, outsized boobs, characters with speech impediments.

Watch only if you've actually been watching this sort of films for the past 15 years and can't think of how else to spend your money near Chinese New Year.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 28 December 2011.

The Artist (2011)

Talkies are in and a silent film star finds himself on the way out, just when he spots a talented starlet.

Michel Hazanavicius continues his project of making parodies and pastiches of film genres from the past.

This time round, the director strikes gold because The Artist transcends the story it tells and becomes a tribute to an era of filmmaking that the world has passed by.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 21 December 2011.

Mission Impossible: Ghost protocol (2011)

Possibly the best Mission Impossible film in the series precisely because it doesn't rely on the intense emoting of Tom Cruise.

This is a Mission Impossible film with wit and comedy, and doesn't take itself seriously. The thrills just come far more naturally after that.

Watch this for: Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 14 December 2011.

New Year's Eve (2011)

If you've watched Valentine's Day, you know exactly what to expect from Rob Marshall's New Year's Eve.

It's an attempt to create a western version of the Chinese Holiday Movie.

You know, where the stories all suck and there's no reason to watch it aside from the fact that the studios put out something for the holidays so you feel obliged to watch as a tradition.

Read my full review of Fridae, first published on 14 December 2011.

The Well-digger's Daughter (La Fille du Puisatier) (2011)

A daughter of a well digger gets pregnant by the son of the local merchant. Oh, the scandal!

Beginning with such a sour note, a sympathetic, even comic story is woven around the provincialism of small-town types and their fiercely held, though quaint, mores and codes of honour.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 7 December 2011.