Her (2013)

Joaquin Phoenix has a meaningful relationship with his personal computer in Spike Jonze’s scifi arthouse take on Chobits

Ilo Ilo (爸妈不在家) (2013)

Ilo Ilo is the proverbial swallow that may or may not signal a coming of age of Singapore cinema

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.

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.

Wolf Children (おおかみこどもの雨と雪) (2012)

Like Mamoru Hosoda's previous work in The girl who leapt through time and Summer Wars, this is another socially conservative animation...

celebrating the bonds of family and community, the selflessness that a healthy community showers on individuals, the selflessness that parents shower on their children, and how individuals grow up and find maturity when they find their place in the larger community.

Watch for: the Miyazaki-esque ecological message, which makes the preachy moralising easier to swallow.

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

House of Pleasures (L'Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close) (2011)

This slice of life film features Parisian courtesans in the turn of the century on the eve of the Great War.

Just like its ideal doublebill partner Flowers of Shanghai, the film obsesses over the courtly dance between the girls and their patrons, the complex social niceties that created their social world and papered over the ugliness of their lives.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 25 April 2012.

A Simple Life (桃姐) (2011)

A middle aged bachelor takes care of his amah when she retires and enters a nursing home.

This is the closest Hong Kong auteur Ann Hui gets to making a weepy Hallmark movie and extolling the virtues of benevolence and loyalty that typify old school Chinese.

Watch for: Ann Hui's very understated scriptwriting. Mind you, this could easily have been a shrill story about ageing and the plight of domestic servants in Hong Kong. Not that the territory doesn't need a shrill poke about these issues.

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

A Separation (جدایی نادر از سیمین) (2011)

Within a domestic drama and courtroom procedural lies a complex, morally ambiguous story about being good and lying for the greater good, and the inability to do otherwise.

Director Asghar Farhad's neorealist direction is an antidote to the standard American formulations of the suburban angst drama.

Watch this for: superb and empathetic storytelling.

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

Albert Nobbs (2011)

Hard times breed hard folk. Or folk more willing to transgress boundaries.

Albert Nobbs is really a woman in drag who finds herself inspired settle down with a girl and get respectably married.

Far more tragic than the stage adaptation, Nobbs is an ideal companion piece to Remains of the Day, which features a protagonist who is simultaneously trapped and liberated by his choices.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 15 February 2012.

Red Dog (2011)

It's a series of shaggy dog stories starring the same dog, different owners.

It's a rambunctious biopic of a wild dingo who became a beloved mascot of a mining town's inhabitants.

It's also a rambunctious, roundabout celebration of Australia's pioneering spirit.

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

Pinoy Sunday (台北星期天) (2009)

A pair of lowly-paid labourers in a foreign land stumble across a red leather sofa.

Its appearance seems to herald the fruition of the fantasies, dreams, and hopes that have been keeping them sane and happy thousands of miles away from home.

The director plays the premise for laughs. You won't see too much of how foreign labourers are exploited in shiny, modern Asia - which Taipei stands for but could easily be Singapore or Dubai.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 15 June 2011.

Red Dragonflies (2011)

An artist returns to Singapore to hold an exhibition; memories of teenage years and a vastly different Singapore landscape are evoked.

Red Dragonflies is more video installation than a film to be consumed.

It's also one of those films that examines the nature of nostalgia and sentimentality without resorting to either.

Read my full review on Fridae, first published on 4 May 2011.

Norwegian Wood (ノルウェイの森) (2010)

The adage these days is that you can’t make good film adaptations of great novels.

With Murakami flying in as (a very brutal) script doctor, Tran Anh Hung manages to achieve the nigh-impossible.

The sideways adaptation is a meditation that those whose bodies we desire, those whose company we enjoy, and those whose presence we can live with are categories that rarely coincide.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 13 April 2011.

The kids are all right (2010)

A pair of lesbian mums and their teenaged children are introduced to the biological dad. Hilarity ensues.

This is a typical Sundance film, which means it's a conventional comedy about an unconventional family that still manages to be a pro-family, family values film.

Nevertheless, it can still put a conservative board of film censors in a tizzy.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 23 February 2011.

Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives (ลุงบุญมีร:ะลึกชาติ) (2010)

A man dying from a terminal illness begins to see visions of past lives while being visited by ghosts and monsters.

Those who aren't familiar with Thai culture and politics may watch this as a quirky and meandering Magic Realist drama.

Those familiar with Thai culture and politics will recognise an aggressively irreverent screed against the various elites of Thai society.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 26 January 2011.

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.

Girl$ (囡囡) (2010)

Kenneth Bi, the go-to director for Hong Kong's films about LGBT and troubled youths, takes on compensated dating in Hong Kong with Girl$.


Bi's story follows a quartet of friends over the period of a month in a stream of consciousness style.

We recommend you watch this in the original Cantonese for the very earthy Hong Kong slang or not at all.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 9 September 2010.

Villon's wife (ヴィヨンの妻) (2009)

The biopic of the artist, either as mad, bad, and dangerous to know or as a suffering genius is often unenlightening.

What audiences really want to know is how anyone would put up living with an artist.

Villon's Wife is best seen as multi-character study posing as mystery drama that answers this first question while setting up others and answering them in turn.

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

Taipei Exchanges (第36个故事) (2010)

A pair of sisters run a curio shop and cafe. Over the film, you will learn with them the foundations of economics, the meaning of life, and everything that matters.

Just think of this as a diabetic, cutesified version of Freakanomics for the Oriental market.


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

Baarìa (2009)

Mining his hometown for inspiration, the director of Cinema Paradiso delivers a most depressing film where three generations of a peasant family endure the bullying and depredation of landlords, industrialists, politicians, and soldiers.

It's a Grand Narrative as seen from the eyes of the little people.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 9 June 2010.