The Four 3 (四大名捕 3) (2014)

Hong Kong’s Gordon Chan concludes his Chinese X-Men franchise with sound, fury, and a flurry of carebear stares!

Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (狄仁杰之神都龙王) (2013)

Not an ideal sequel (or even prequel). Just watch Young Detective Dee for the magic of Tsui Hark

Prisoners (2013)

Paul Dano goes full retard in Prisoners

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

A washed-up, alcoholic screenwriter wants to write a screenplay about psychopaths. He gets acquainted with several. Hilarity ensues.

The gimmick: a genre piece that's a loving tribute, lurid pastiche, and sly deconstruction of genre norms, expectations, and cliches of the "LA crime story".

Watch for: a film that outdoes Tarrantino.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 9 January 2013.

Killing them softly (2012)

The mob gets held up in its own joint. A freelance enforcer is sent to investigate and punish.

The gimmick: It's a procedural written from the POV of the mafia, but more importantly, it's an allegory for the farcical bailout of the crumbling financial system.

Watch for: a clever, though not very subtle script; Brad Pitt at his seediest, world weary best.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 2 January 2013.

The woman in the fifth (La Femme du Veme) (2011)

Ethane Hawke plays a broke and desperate lit prof who lands a perfect job in a crapsack, seedy locale that should inspire him to write a masterpiece or die trying.

The gimmick: this is a moody and psychological retelling of film noir that brings out paranoia, darkness, and psychosis better than a mainstream thriller

Watch for: no coherent plot or storyline but an excellent atmospheric piece that hinges all on Ethan Hawke.

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

Red Lights (2012)

To commence: a deadly serious and literally deadly battle of wits to unmask, decipher, and explain a convincing series of confidence tricks masquerading as magic and illusion.

The premise: exactly the same as The Prestige, The Illusionist. You may watch them as a triple-bill.

To watch: a battle of ham between Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro, and Cillian Murphy.

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

The Moth Diaries (2011)

Moody, atmospheric, and menacing, The Moth Diaries goes back to the basics of vampire fiction.

Really far back to the triple threats of lesbian sex, blood, death in Camilla.

So it's fitting that our protagonist and heroine is a student in a boarding school whose place as queen bee is slowly taken over by a sexy, charismatic, maybe lesbian, maybe vampire...

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 20 June 2013.

The Adventures of Tintin

Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones series owe a literary debt to Herge, and it's only fitting that he direct this adaptation just like an Indy Jones movie.

So: The Secret of the Unicorn, The Crab with the Golden Claws, and Red Rackham’s Treasure are bound together in one film by Spielberg’s action-adventure movie sensibilities.

The film showcases Herge’s art style and his interests in action adventure, mystery, and foreign adventure – though sadly Herge's political and social satire is missing.

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

Confessions (告白) (2010)

The game begins in earnest when a teacher announces in homeroom she knows who among them bullied her daughter to death, and that her exquisite revenge will come in time.

It's a revenge film that's told via the confessions of the guilty parties - which isn't common in this genre.


Read my full review in Fridae, first published on 24 November 2010.

Son of Babylon (ابن بابل) (2009)

Blake saw the universe in a grain of sand. Now you can see the nation and its peoples in a road trip movie.

A Kurdish grandmother and her grandson search for his disappeared father following the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Unlike other road trip movies, this one is really depressing and harrowing. I suppose you can watch this with Sandcastles as an "evacuation of national history" double-bill.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 3 November 2010.

Bestseller (베스트셀러) (2010)

A disgraced author eager to make a comeback secludes herself and her troubled daughter in a creepy old house in a rural town, whereupon obviously Strange Things Happen.

The Korean psychological thriller and its trademarked Double Twist shows signs of being stretched beyond its creative limits in Bestseller.

Unintentionally campy in its first half and a showcase of everything wrong about the Double Twist, this is one to avoid.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 12 October 2010.

The girl who played with fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) (2009)

An investigative journalist and bisexual punk hacker end up teaming up again as we uncover, yet again, more shady goings on in the highest rungs of Swedish society.

The girl who played with fire suffers from middle film syndrome - venturing nothing new from the trilogy's first film.

It serves though to flesh out the fascinating character of Lisbeth Salander, as played by Noomi Rapace.

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

Sandcastle (沙城) (2010)

A teenager undergoing a rite of passage comes of age when he discovers, through his almost-senile grandmother, how Singapore's dark past clashed with his family history.

The personal never quite becomes political as melodrama takes over the narrative.

The director's first feature has two problems highlighting his problem with scale - there's far too much short film aesthetics (languid, repetitive artsy shots, endless framing shots) padding up the screentime, and far too many subplots competing for oxygen.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 25 August 2010.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008)

There are two ways of making a documentary. One is to present a balanced case with point and counterpoint, to arrive at some sort of an objective truth. The other is to present the case for one side so clearly that one would be forced to agree with it.

This documentary makes the case that a man whose guilt was never in doubt in a statutory rape case was a bigger victim than the girl he had relations with.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 19 May 2010.

Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos) (2009)

This is a riddle wrapped up in a mystery in an enigma...

Why would a successful director land up as a blind writer working and living under an assumed name (“Harry Caine”)?

What happened to the bombshell actress from his last and greatest film, whose photo is kept in a dossier in his desk drawer?

Who is the mysterious stranger who commissions him to write a screenplay that he rejects, and what does that screenplay and that mysterious stranger have to do with the first two mysteries?

Unravel the mystery by reading my review at Fridae, first published on 12 May 2010.