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.

Justin Bieber: Never say never (2011)

If you crossed the vanity flick and the documentary, JB:NSN is what you might get.

It's nominally a documentary but one does more than its fair bit of celebrity myth-making instead of revealing the world behind the showbiz curtains.

You won't find out anything about the music empire manufacturing Bieber. Thank goodness he can sing.

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

Security Police: The motion picture (SP 野望篇) (2010)

Here, a Japanese serial remarkably similar to The X-files makes the transition to feature film.

A policeman with pre-cog abilities gets sucked into a plot by a cabal of young Turks aiming to seek power.

Part of the fun is watching how the conspiracy theory genre gets deformed into a Thousand Xanatos Gambit with proliferation of conspiracies within conspiracies, and super-secret factions that even secret factions aren't aware of.

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

Limitless (2011)

Imagine Flowers for Algernon reworked for the Prozac age.

Imagine that instead of a morality tale, we get a pulp thriller involving shadowy forces (government, Wall Street, big pharma) that seem to have escaped from Aronovsky's Pi.

Limitless promises a heady, intellectual film but delivers standard potboiler thriller.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 6 April 2011.

My Best Bodyguard (มาย เบสท์ บอดี้การ์ด) (2010)

You can indeed watch My Best Bodyguard as a modern zombie flick even if it has no zombies.

It does have all the typical tropes of the zombie flick, from xenophobia, political paranoia, corporate greed, military stupidity, bureaucratic paralysis, and cold-blooded bureaucratic utilitarianism.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 6 April 2011.

Carmen 3D (2011)

Passion! Seduction! Obsession! Crime! Murder! Opera is a case of taking tabloid news and setting it to music.

Unlike U-Carmen eKhayelitsha and Sweeney Todd, this is an actual stage production that's been filmed for audiences in the cinema.

The compromise between stage production and film aesthetics AND 3D takes some getting used to, though.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 1 April 2011.