Amour (2012)

An octogenarian couple decide to face the rest of their days in private, with dignity and grace after the missus has a series of strokes.

The gimmick: You can watch it as an unsentimental, yet moving melodrama.

The other gimmick: You can watch it as part of Haneke's long filmic project of subverting bourgeois sensibilities.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 26 December 2012.

Arbitrage (2012)

Richard Gere plays a Wall Street tycoon whose timing has never been worse when his mistress dies suspiciously on the eve of a big deal that will sour if it doesn't leave his hands soon.

The gimmick: Instead of a Wall Street, that is, a Greek tragedy of outsized personalities and appetites, Arbitrage presents the radical idea that Wall Street criminals are best talked about as criminals, full-stop.

Watch for: How the blue collar procedural fits the white collar setting; a very sneaky script.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 26 December 2012.

Won't Back Down (2012)

Dissatisfied parents and teachers take over a school, literally.

The gimmick: This movie teaches you how to take over a school. It doesn't focus on what happens afterwards. That's because it's a film backed by the school privatisation lobby, and the lobby either doesn't care about what happens after, or doesn't want you to know that none of such recently privatised schools succeeded.

Watch for: bunch of Hollywood liberals suckered into a right-wing project; an 'inspirational' movie going through the motions; very good but very dishonest scriptwriting.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 26 December 2012.

Jack Reacher (2012)

A lone gunman is caught with incontrovertible evidence. A badass former MP is brought in to either clear his name or make him hang.

The gimmick: a classic Western (Reacher as the man of violence from out of town) masquerading as a gumshoe procedural. Note: this is purely the director's spin on the novels, not the author's.

Watch for: clever scriptwriting, grasp of genre cinema, the very limited Tom Cruise cast in an appropriate and effective role.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 19 December 2012.

The Hobbit: An unexpected journey (2012)

The charm of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit lies in its naivete, in its innocent comedy, and sense of naughty fun.

Peter Jackson's The Hobbit rewrites the comedy into part of the dark epic of Lord of the Rings.

The result is a story that is unsuited to the genre, at odds with its telling, and at odds with its intended epic greatness.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 12 December 2012.

Bachelorette (2012)

Another experiment in gender reversal, Bachelorette is basically The Hangover with a female cast.

So, the gimmick is: drunk and high bridesmaids try to fix a very big problem on the eve of the bride's big day.

Our verdict: very tolerable as long as the characters were mean, impolite, and merciless towards each other. Turn towards sentimentality not appreciated.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 12 December 2012.

Intouchables (2011)

A sickly, rich white aristocrat employs a poor black immigrant as his nurse. Hilarity ensues instead of teachable moments.

The gimmick: Instead of a sentimental Driving Miss Daisy, expect an all-out, increasingly politically incorrect comedy with insensitive jokes that take the pathos out of the situation.

Watch for: a rare comedy where nothing's too sacred to mock, where mockery is the best medicine to mend broken hearts and souls.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 12 December 2012.

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

Silent Hill is one of the very rare video game to film adaptations that get it right.
Silent Hill is not about the horror and gore, and least of all the thrills. It's all about psychological horror

The gimmick: Your protagonists escaped Silent Hill. Now Silent Hill wants them back and is willing to warp reality to retrieve them.

Watch for: Several hallucinatory sequences, quite possibly inspired by John Carpenter's They Live.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 5 December 2012.

Alex Cross (2012)

Morgan Freeman used to be Alex Cross in the 80s. Now it's Tyler Perry. sans drag.

The premise remains the same: a violent, depraved, serial criminal whose madness or modus operandi is so obscure, whose identity is so cleverly concealed, is bested by Detective Dr Alex Cross in a dizzying series of plot twists whose flimsiness and plot-holes are overwhelmed by the sheer speed they are introduced.

Watch: If you like your detective thrillers pulpy, with a slight pretension to intellect.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published at 28 November 2012.

Grabbers (2012)

Sleepy Irish seaside town suffers an invasion of blood-sucking aliens. Aliens are mortally allergic to alcohol. Hilarity ensues.

This is one of those B-grade sci-fi horrors that practically write themselves and appeal to the Ed Wood school of filmmaking.

Watch for: an actual budget, decent acting, funny script in what could have been an Ed Wood film.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 28 November 2012.

Stolen (2012)

Nicolas Cage is a master thief forced to pull off a heist when both the cops and his former partners go after him following his release from jail.

The gimmick seems to be: Crapsack post-hurricane New Orleans, heist film done old school style, filmed with 80s extravagance of crashes and explosions.

Watch for: a very competently written and directed heist film, the resurrection of very old school heist tropes.

Read my full review on Fridae, first published on 28 November 2012.

Life of Pi (2012)

A boy finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean with a zebra, an orang utan, a spotted hyena, and a Bengal tiger. Hilarity does not ensue.

This is an adaptation of Yann Martell's inspirational novel, The Life of Pi. You'll either love the film or hate it to bits depending on how you take to Martell's Orientalist dime store spirituality, and whether it inspires you to take an oppositional reading of the film.

Watch for: Achingly beautiful CGI.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 28 November 2012.

Undefeated (2011)

Undefeated bucks the recent trend of investigative documentaries and goes old school.

The gimmick: watch a coach take charge of an underdog team and turn it around in one year by stressing on character, integrity, hard work, and transcending beyond race and class.

Watch for: a sports documentary that's a natural allegory for Being American.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 28 November 2012.

Red Dawn (2012)

American gets invaded by Russians Chinese North Koreans in this remake of the classic by John Milius.

Things play out the same, mostly. Aside from the rampant gore and body count of the original, and Milius's vision of a war that is both noble and soul-destroying for both occupiers and guerilla fighters.

Watch: The Original. This one lacks conviction.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 21 November 2012.

Rise of the Guardians (2012)

Taking a different tack from its source material, holiday mascots in Rise of the Guardians are reworked into comic book style superheroes. You're really watching an Avengers of Holiday Mascots rather than a Holiday Mascot Movie.

Watch for: an interesting way to solve the Adult Audience Problem in a children's movie. As a plus, you'll have fun identifying, appreciating, and second-guessing the superhero trope and narratives that power this kiddie flick.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 21 November 2012.

Black Gold (2011)

Two little princes become hostages to a neighbouring emirate. They grow up, get involved with the daughter of their captor. Oil is discovered in the no-man's land. Hilarity ensues.

It's an old fashioned romance about heroism and derring-do that John Milius (Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, Hunt for Red October) might have written in the 1980s.

Watch for: how the film avoids being a political piece about the beginnings of western dependency on Middle Eastern oil and the American intervention and imperialism in Arabia.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 14 November 2012.

Cold War (寒战) (2012)

This police procedural has the HK police force scrambling to combat a group of well-organised terrorists who have a mole in the force.

The gimmick: opposing interests, political manoeuvring, and grandstanding and everyday politicking within the force is of more consequence and more entertaining than their search for the terrorists.

Watch for: highly sophisticated, intellectual writing in a police thriller.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 14 November 2012.

Chasing Mavericks (2012)

Biopic of one Jay Moriarty, who was the best extreme, record-breaking surfer who lived clean, had a big heart, and died young.

Michael Apted (7 Up) makes up lack of dramatic tension in Moriarty's rise to greatness by applying the structures of the inspirational film.

We think Gerard Butler's turn at The Yoda helped as well.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 14 November 2012.

Where the road meets the sun (2011)

Four international character types and indefinite stayers in a Los Angeles motel find themselves improbably paired up, held up, and recombined as each other's theoretical antithesis in Flaubertian fashion by their first-time Singapore director.

As artificial and uninvolved as it is derivative and trying way too hard, the film suffers from a vast ambition that's all too pedestrian, and an execution that's undercooked.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 14 November 2012.

Pitch Perfect (2012)

This is an adaptation of the delicious non-fiction book GQ magazine editor Mickey Rapkin wrote after spending a year covering the US college competitive a cappella scene and reporting its shenanigans.

Expect: an even less politically correct take on Glee, with less cheesy storylines, and better, less autotuned singing.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 7 November 2012.

All in good time (2012)

Newlyweds can't get any because they live with their boisterous, larger than life parents.

It's a bedroom farce, domestic drama, and a romcom that thrives on intergenerational and cross-cultural dynamics in British Asian families.

Watch for: the veteran cast stealing the scenes from the romantic leads.

Read my full review on Fridae, first published on 7 November 2012.

Trouble with the Curve (2012)

Think of this as the old school reply to new science Moneyball.

Clint Eastwood plays an ageing talent scout who is due to be replaced by number crunchers after one last signing.

Watch for: quirky sports drama full of sports minutiae, a predictable if moving family drama, and a well-made road movie that delivers a slice of Americana.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 31 October 2012.

House at the end of the street (2012)

Newcomers move into sleepy town, next to a serial killer and her tormented, nice brother.

It's a modern horror film, but done entirely with the thriller sensibilities of Hitchcock and Brian de Palma.

Watch for: Jennifer Lawrence, who proves she's not a flash in a pan.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 31 October 2012.

Apartment 143 (Emergo) (2011)

Technically a found footage horror, Apartment 143 is a supernatural procedural where where a team of paranormal investigators are invited to solve a pressing problem.

Ditching modern horror un-storytelling, we're presented with the old school notion of horror and hauntings as an externalisation of prepubescent sexual anxiety and the family psychodrama.

Watch for: horror with a good story; a found footage horror that doesn't suck.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 31 October 2012.

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

Spooky special effects continue in their search of a story in Paranormal Activity 4.

It's not scary, feels tedious, and has no sense of storytelling. Just like all of Oren Peli's 'horror' films, including Chernobyl Diaries.

Forget the stupid marketing and Skip This With Extreme Prejudice.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 31 October 2012.