The Judge (2014)

Stuffed with downer endings and sucker punchlines, The Judge is the Game of Thrones of courtroom dramas and dysfunctional family dramas!

Days and Clouds (Giorni e nuvole) (2007)

A comfortably rich couple are financially ruined and in the devastation of the Italian economy, find themselves sinking down the class ladder faster than their cash is running out.

August: Osage County (2013)

Let me tell you a story and you tell me: is it material for a comedy or a tragedy?

--Melinda and Melinda

Prisoners (2013)

Paul Dano goes full retard in Prisoners

Shame (2011)

A man addicted to sex and porn finds himself unravelling when his sister stays over.

The gimmick: Shame forgoes the usual niceties of character development, plot, and narrative structure for a depressing psychological study fuelled by Raw Acting.

Watch for: Carey Mulligan, whose character and performance punctuates the one-note storytelling of the film. Watch only if you liked Hunger.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 30 January 2013.

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.

Dangerous Liaisons (危險關係) (2012)

This would be the third cinematic remake of Les liaisons dangereuses of note.

Cheat sheet: A pair of frenemies decide to ruin a morally upright society woman for fun and giggles. And sex. This remake trades the Ancien Regime for Jazz Age Shanghai.

It's a huge mistake. Jazz Age Shanghai was never a strait-laced, moralistic society where the proceedings of such dangerous liaisons would be a shocking, untold scandal. There's no sense of near-absolute cynicism, amorality and malice either.

Watch for: Stupendous sets. Otherwise: Watch the Korean remake instead.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 10 October 2012.

The Words (2012)

A dissipated pulp writer presents a novel about a plagiarist who discovers his story is Based On Real Life because the real author tells him All About It.

Highly postmodern, the literate thriller sets up a series of Chinese puzzle box narratives. That ride is fun and worth the entry price.

What isn't fun is how all that careful literary construction leads to a very disappointing punchline.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 3 October 2012.

The taste of money (돈의 맛) (2012)

Like Kim Sang Joo's previous film and the one before that, this one is a family drama exposing the baroque excesses, corruption, and hypocrisies of Korean elites.

Just like the previous film, this one centres on how every member in a household end up abusing one of their servants. This time, it's their valet and oddjob man.

Watch: only if you thought JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls was too subtle and subdued.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 1 August 2012.

Stricken (Komt een vrouw bij de dokter) (2009)

A couple in a Lubitschean marriage find their arrangement unworkable when the Missus has a Terminal Illness and the hubby continues his womanising.

It's a virtuous woman dying melodrama with a huge curveball. You're treated to multiple interpretations of her arrangement with the husband and the buffet of possibilities make for delicious viewing.

The fun and creative storytelling ends when it collapses down to one possibility by the time the lady expires.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 4 July 2012.

The Vow (2012)

There's a joke about how women turn out to be completely different after marriage.

This romcom/melodrama has the newlywed wife losing her memory of the past 5 years. Now the poor sod realises he's married to a cold, materialistic daddy's girl rather than a bohemian chick who ran away from home.

Hilarity doesn't quite ensue when he tries to woo her afresh; there's a fundamental problem with having this based on real life premise turned into a romcom which the film doesn't solve.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 4 April 2012.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

Freud, Jung, their patients, and their followers talk  themselves into one fine mess in this period biopic.

The tawdry details, the high-fallutin' theories, and the purple drama are all true, which makes this piece of entertainment even better. You may have to brush up on classic psychanalytic theory first to appreciate what's happening, though.

Watch for: Brilliant stage writing, Cronenberg transitioning from body horror to psychological horror. Pay no attention to Kiera Knightley's overacting!

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

5 Days of War (2011)

The Georgian War of 2008, a debacle sparked solely by Mikhail Sakashvili's military adventurism, get a glossed-up retelling where Georgia was the victim and hero.

Funded by Georgian businessmen, it has the best (or most desperate) Hollywood talent their money can buy.

Watch for: Renny Harlin's action direction. Despite his long Hollywood exile, he still knows how to make a good-looking film. As a war film with serious truth issues, watch as a doublebill with In the land of blood and honey.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 29 February 2012.

In the land of blood and honey (2011)

War movies are propaganda films, especially if they're very serious movies not intended for entertainment.

Angelina Jolie's directorial debut tries to tell a very serious story about true things, very bad things that happened in the Yugoslavian War while mixing it with a Romeo and Juliet narrative.

As a highly selective, virulently anti-Serbian account, the only thing it proves is how easy it is to manipulate a know-nothing liberal with good intentions into backing the wrong dog in a war where everyone tried to wipe out everyone else.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 29 February 2012.

A Happy Event (Un heureux événement) (2011)

Pregnancy and parenthood seem to inspire the best comedies in Hollywood. In this film, pregnancy and childhood are tacked together like a Frankenstein's monster: one half of it is a quirky comedy, the other half is a melodrama that just goes on and on.

It doesn't work at all because the director doesn't understand the logic of film.

Pregnancy is pretty much the same for everyone but child-rearing and parenthood is so varied, that's where the fun should be. Consequently, quirky pregnancy comedy cannot fail to be generic; parenthood melodrama cannot fail to be myopic and tedious.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 11 January 2012.

My week with Marilyn (2011)

Once upon a time, Marilyn Monroe starred in the same film as Sir Laurence Olivier, which bombed. Both did not enjoy their time together. Both came out the better for it.

Sadly, the emerging genre of the limited biopic isn't championed well by this film.

Being a snippet of a story from the point of view of a bit player, the film does not illuminate on the careers and personalities of Monroe or Olivier or offer penetrating insights into filmmaking or even show off its magic.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 4 January 2012.

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.

The Help (2011)

A privileged white woman with a college degree returns home, plans to write a book about the lives of her town's black housemaids.
It's a feel-good Oscar bait film about the civil rights era which manages to sugarcoat the worst injustices and violence in that period.

You may have objections to the lazy writing, which resurrects an army of stereotypes like sassy African-American nannies who spout homespun truths...

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 19 October 2011.

A little bit of heaven (2011)

Here's a modern take on classic Hollywood's triple hanky weepies.

The gimmick: the heroine expiring from a terminal condition is not that virtuous but rather a funny, sassy, liberated, sexually explicit modern girl.

My verdict: It works. Raunchy comedy takes the sting and tedium out of the developing melodrama.

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

City of your final destination (2009)

Think of this as Passolini's Teorema in reverse: an Everyman visits a filthy rich family and gets screwed up by every member so he can discover himself.

Played depressingly straight despite the sheer comedy in its premise, it's a very tedious film.

The period colour, gorgeous sets, and shimmering cinematography are the only reminder that you're watching a James Ivory film. Sadly, it's inferior to any Merchant-Ivory production.

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