Genre: Romance
Director: Lawrence Cheng
Cast: Ekin Cheung, Chrissie Chau, Ivana Wong, C AllStar, Alex He, Alex Lam, Miriam Yeung, Eric Kot, Chin Ka Lok, Angela Tong
RunTime: 1 hr 45 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Sexual References)
Released By: GV
Official Website:
Opening Day: 7 August 2014
Synopsis: The distance between two people in the world is the farthest not when they are face-to-face without realizing their love for each other; it is when they are deeply in love but are waiting for the other person to end the relationship first.
Sam and Barbara have been together for eight years, but the key to their relationship is breaking up. Each time Barbara threatens to leave, Sam would give in and beg her to come back, giving her an increasing upper hand. After their 99th breakup, the couple finally decides to stick through with their relationship and not break up so easily. They plan a future together by running their own café.
Served by employees Four Boys and frequented by the neighborhood eatery owner Shui Kee and Sam’s primary schoolmate FreeWin, the café soon becomes the hottest hangout spot, especially after Sam comes up with an off-the-wall idea, “the Breakup Mini Storage,” whereby customers can exhibit the memento mori of their broken up relationships for others to see. Sam is growing up at last: instead of frolicking all day long, he begins to draw serious plans about the future.
Ironically, the success of the café starts driving Sam and Barbara apart. When the café regular Lorraine , whose love interest just got married to someone else, grows closer to Sam, the 100th breakup between Sam and Barbara seems to be just around the corner.
Movie Review:
Not since ‘Love in the Buff’ has a rom-com from Hong Kong touched us as much as ‘Break Up 100’, whose title is quite the oxymoron to the genre. Yes, this is about a couple played by Ekin Cheng and Chrissie Chau who have broken and gotten back together a total of 99 times over the past eight years, and are now determined to break the cycle. Their plan? To quit their office jobs and open a café together, which they call ‘Café Je-taie’- the spelling error for the title which was literally meant to mean ‘café of love’ unintentional.
At first, it isn’t quite clear where director Lawrence Cheng and his co-writers Silver Hau and Skipper Cheng are going with the story. Sam (Cheng) and Barbara (Chau) hire a quartet of acapella boys (played by the real-life quartet C AllStar) as waiters; an artsy-fartsy type (Eric Kot) becomes their first visitor and orders French toast and latte; in order to get that French toast, Sam calls the neighbourhood ‘cha-chan-teng’ and ends up making the acquaintance of its owner Shui Kee (Ivana Wong); and Sam proves himself a kid in mind and heart by skipping work to hang out with his buddies.
But just when you are ready to dismiss ‘Break Up 100’ as yet another loose collection of amusing vignettes, Sam stumbles onto the film’s central conceit. A couple gets into a heated quarrel at their café, an altercation which ends dramatically with the guy taking off his shirt, shoes and pants in front of the rest of the patrons. After storming out, Sam finds a pair of wedding rings left behind on the seat and with no way of contacting them, decides to pen a short love poem on a note and place both on one of the box-shelves in the café.
The concept takes off like wildfire, with heartbroken individuals bringing their love mementos and placing them on one of the many shelves. Each object has a tale of love behind it, and each tale of love a lesson in itself encapsulated in a love note which Sam personally pens. As business booms, Sam gets it into his head to start opening branches, and together with his buddies, begin exploring possible such venues. And yet Barbara is hardly supportive when she finds out, berating him of not giving enough thought to it as he often does not with anything in his life as well as not consulting with her beforehand.
Thus precipitates the 100th breakup - and also where things start to get really interesting. Despite displaying some tendency at the start to veer into the whimsical, Cheng keeps it thoroughly authentic at this point. Rather than follow the typical rom-com template where boy and girl get a happily-ever-after right at the end, Cheng grants Sam and Barbara their seemingly happily-ever-after two-thirds into the film. Indeed, after some emotional wrangling with his buddies, Sam decides to apologise and save his relationship from Barbara - but in his zeal to avoid another breakup, Sam overcompensates and becomes a terribly muted version of himself.
Cheng’s intention as a filmmaker only becomes clearer towards the end. This is a film about breaking up and making up, two of which are necessary stages in any relationship; but more than that, Cheng is interested to probe at what cost one will go to avoid the unavoidable pains of either. Is it to the extent that we become someone else altogether? Does true happiness in a relationship come from compromise or mutual understanding? And perhaps most importantly, how do we recognise what we truly treasure and value in our relationships? While it may not be apparent at the beginning, Cheng dives confidently into examining each and every one of these serious-minded questions through the lens of Sam and Barbara, daringly ending the film on a bittersweet note which also leaves much food for thought for the viewer.
To his credit, Cheng navigates the tonal shifts of the movie expertly, starting with a playful tone and then slowly settling into something much more down-to-earth. The veteran screenwriter of Barbara Wong’s rom-coms ‘Break Up Club’, ‘Perfect Wedding’ and ‘The Allure of Tears’ also adds several nice touches as director, such as using C AllStar’s acapella voices for the soundtrack as well as a thoroughly enjoyable sequence in the middle where different strangers take turns to speak into the camera of their failed relationships. And as screenwriter, he adds a quirky twist by setting up Shui Kee in a fictional love triangle with real-life husband-and-wife pair Chin Kar-lok and Angela Tong.
Cheng also works casting magic by enlisting Ekin Cheng and Chrissie Chau in the lead roles. While Ekin may seem a natural choice for the character given his matinee-idol looks and his familiarity with the genre (the title of the movie quite clearly alludes to his earlier 1990s ‘Feel 100%’ hit), the age difference between the pair doesn’t make that pairing that intuitive; but Cheng deftly overcomes that by making Ekin Cheng the ‘kidult’ who remains childish and infantile for his age and Chrissie the exact opposite who makes the decisions for both of them. It’s a refreshing actor-character twist, and Chau impresses with quite possibly her most mature and nuanced performance to date.
Other supporting actors also add delightful bits to the movie, including C AllStar, Miriam Yeung as a female policewoman whose beat covers the street on which the café is located, Alex He as Ekin Cheng’s slacker buddy who still has a soft spot for his ex-wife, and not forgetting Jan Lamb whose expressive voice provides the narration for the movie. A little touch of sweet, a generous dollop of humour, slathered with warmth, poignancy and meaning, ‘Break Up 100’ is our favourite rom-com of the year.
Movie Rating:
(Sweet, funny, heartwarming and poignant, ‘Break Up 100’ will probably be the best Hong Kong rom-com you'll see this year)
Review by Gabriel Chong
SYNOPSIS: From the director of Captain America: The First Avenger and The Wolfman comes a psychological thriller about an unsuspecting office worker, Tom Miller (Max Minghella, The Social Network), who becomes trapped in his office building with a demented killer (J.J. Field, Captain America: The First Avenger). As Tom rushes to protect those employees working late, he soon discovers that his legal firm has been hiding sinister secrets that could put thousands of lives at risk. From the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious, comes a terrifying, psychological thriller where an ordinary office becomes a twisted killing ground.
MOVIE REVIEW:
It doesn’t bode well for a production liked Not Safe For Work to be sitting in Universal vault for the longest time without a VOD and theatrical release date especially it is directed by Joe Johnston whose last movie was called Captain American: The First Avenger.
Grossly underdeveloped and proceeds as a tired cat-and-mouse thriller, Not Safe For Work stars Max Minghella (The Social Network, The Darkest Hour) as a paralegal who is trapped in an office building with a killer out to destroy company secrets and anyone in sight. There’s like 5 minutes of context if you must know, something that involved a pharmaceutical cover-up and the mafia before all hell breaks loose.
Produced by Jason Blum whose microbudget production house has churned out hits such as Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Sinister and many other announced but unreleased horror thriller titles, Not Safe For Work is purely another rock-bottom, no frills production of his. Things can’t get any cheaper when you only have two guys chasing after each other in and out of rooms and cubicles for an appalling brief 74 minutes of running time. There’s an obligatory damsel in distress scene at the last minute with of course a dead security guard and janitor thrown in for good measure.
Johnston (The Rocketeer, Jurassic Park III) who has his fair share of hits and misses over the years has not much of an idea delivering a taut tense thriller. Every single scene looks predictable and cliché even the so-called twist isn’t that difficult to foresee. Minghella on the other hand is not that bad of an actor though he deserved better material and that include his co-star JJ Field as the ruthless killer.
This thriller should remain locked up at Universal until the world ends while the intriguing question of why Johnston signed on for this crap lingers on. You should be glad that we took the bullet for you.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
NIL
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Visual on the whole is serviceable and the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track delivers loud music cues and occasional gunshots.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD RATING :
Review by Linus Tee
Genre: Thriller
Director: Anton Corbijn
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright, Grigory Dobrygin, Nina Hoss, Daniel Brühl
RunTime: 2 hrs 2 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Some Mature Content)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films
Official Website: http://amostwantedmanmovie.com
Opening Day: 14 August 2014
Synopsis: When a half-Chechen, half-Russian, brutally tortured immigrant turns up in Hamburg’s Islamic community, laying claim to his father’s ill-gotten fortune, both German and US security agencies take a close interest: as the clock ticks down and the stakes rise, the race is on to establish this most wanted man’s true identity - oppressed victim or destruction-bent extremist? Based on John le Carré's novel, A MOST WANTED MAN is a contemporary, cerebral tale of intrigue, love, rivalry, and politics that prickles with tension right through to its last heart-stopping scene.
Movie Review:
Throughout the 122 minutes of this movie, one can’t help but constantly think about the great Philip Seymour Hoffman’s passing in February. The 46 year old American actor plays a world weary intelligence officer, a cynical man whose job has taken over his life, a messed up human being who doesn’t seem to find joy. This last feature role of Hoffman’s is hauntingly close to what he seemed to be like in his last days, and one wonders whether this is why the Academy Award winning actor (Capote) seems to be perfect for this role.
Based on the 2008 John le Carre novel, the story sees Hoffman’s German officer Gunther Bachmann being involved in an international dealing. It started when a half Chechen, half Russian and brutally tortured immigrant shows up in Hamburg's Islamic community, claiming that he owns his father’s fortune. This sparks off a complicated series of events involving lawyers, bankers and American intel forces. Is this man a true victim of oppression, or is he an extremist to be punished by law? Or are these questions even relevant in this day and age where concealing the truth may be a greater good for the human race?
This isn’t your usual popcorn thriller movie: director Anton Corbijn (The American, Control) employs long silences, talky conversations, dense plotting and greyly defined characters to illustrate le Carre’s tension filled world of intrigue, love, rivalry and politics. There is paranoia and fear throughout the movie, and you wonder what bureaucratic spied would resort to for, in the movie’s own words, make the world a safer place. Often, when nothing consequential happens on screen, you get a dreaded feeling that something gloomily terrible will take place.
Besides Hoffman, the director has a superb supporting cast to work with - Robin Wright as an American counterpart, Willem Dafoe as a shady banker and Rachel McAdams as a hopeful lawyer. But it is clear this is Hoffman’s show. You see his desperate attempt to make things right, his frantic need to regain normalcy, and the eventual hopeless helplessness that leaves your makes your heart stop momentarily in the last scene. In fact, the impact is so strong that you’ll leave the theatre wondering what how reality is defined in this messed up society of ours.
The drama is low-key and pain versus gain is wonderfully explored. The cold grey of the Germany’s Hamburgpermeates this film, just as Le Carre's bleak view of the world of spying underlies the plot. Towering over the recommended movie are the cast’s performances. Sure, you see Hoffman chain smoking, drinking, sulking and speaking in his signature deep voice for a large part of the movie, but you know he is aware of life’s pitfalls. The screenplay by Australian Andrew Bovell with cinematography by Benoit Delhomme complements the story perfectly.
This movie will be loved by art house devotees, and probably shunned by James Bond fans. It is no doubt a spy and espionage thriller, but appreciate its slow burning tension and you’ll be rewarded handsomely.
Movie Rating:
(This slow burning drama with a brilliant performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman will have you reflecting on how the world has messed itself up)
Review by John Li
Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Ronald Donaldson
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Olga Kurylenko, Luke Bracey, Eliza Taylor
RunTime: 1 hr 48 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Violence and Some Nudity)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website:
Opening Day: 28 August 2014
Synopsis: Code named 'The November Man'; Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) is an extremely dangerous and highly trained ex-CIA agent, who is lured out of quiet retirement on a very personal mission. He must protect valuable witness, Alice Fournier, (Olga Kurylenko) who could expose the truth behind a decades old conspiracy. He soon discovers this assignment makes him a target of his former friend and CIA protégé David Mason (Luke Bracey). With growing suspicions of a mole in the agency, there is no one Devereaux can trust, no rules and no holds barred.
Movie Review:
It’s not hard to see why Pierce Brosnan had, for a couple of years, tried to get this film made; despite being a perfectly capable dramatic actor, it is his time as James Bond that people remember most fondly about the 61-year-old Irish actor, so it is no wonder that Brosnan would want at some point to get back into the spy game. There is pedigree and potential here too - the character is the protagonist of novelist Bill Granger’s 1980s Peter Devereaux series, and if this movie adapted from the seventh book of that series hits paydirt, there are always many other books on which a franchise could be built.
Thankfully for Brosnan, who also produces the movie through his Irish Dreamtime company, ‘November Man’ is a sturdy enough thriller that could be the start of several such mid-budget European-set sequels to come. Gone are the gadgets, the girls and the quips that were a centrepiece of Brosnan’s 007 days though - Brosnan’s Devereaux is the kind of gritty spy Daniel Craig fashioned the 007 character after Brosnan departed, a no-nonsense CIA man at the top of his game who retired after a mission gone wrong with his protégé, David Mason (Australian actor Luke Bracey).
Devereaux is pulled back into the field when his former handler from Langley, a hawk-eyed Hanley (Bill Smitrovich), asks for his help to pull an asset out of Moscow. The woman has critical information about the future head of the Soviet Union, Arkady Federov (Lazar Ristovski), which the CIA would like its hands on, but Devereaux accepts only because she is also his former colleague and lover. That simple mission goes unexpectedly awry when Devereaux finds himself pitted against Mason, whose orders were not only to ‘take out’ the woman but also Devereaux himself. What’s more, Hanley is simultaneously taken into custody by his own CIA unit, after it turns out that he had recruited Devereaux behind their backs.
As scripted by Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek, the film combines a couple of familiar tropes. Here we have a teacher and his best protégé turned enemies, so that we get to see just how much of the former’s skills the latter has honed into his own. We also get a spy versus the Agency, with Devereaux seemingly gone rogue against the apparently corrupted CIA establishment. And finally, we get a witness everyone is after, who as Hollywood convention dictates, happens also to look like a supermodel - that would be Alice Fournier (played by former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko) - and is protected by none other than Devereaux himself.
So far, so good - for the first hour, Roger Donaldson directs a relatively taut and tense setup that keeps you hooked at trying to figure out just who is playing who. We know Devereaux is the good guy here, but just who is everyone else? Will Mason become a cold-hearted killing machine to take out his former trainer? Is Mason’s boss the one pulling the strings? What does he have to do with an operation involving Federov and a building which fell in Chechnya that precipitated the war between the two countries? And just who is this Mira whom everyone is looking for, who apparently has Federov’s dirty secrets from his past as a Russian general in the Chechen war?
But after a promising start, what was a tightly plotted affair starts to go off the rails. There are a lot of revelations here, and to be fair, a somewhat twisty knot of events to unravel the truth behind the smokescreens. Yet, the scripting gets weaker by the minute - in particular, a thoroughly extraneous scene where Devereaux confronts Mason in his own apartment and decides to teach the latter a thing or two about developing affections for the opposite sex by slashing the femoral artery of his next-door neighbour/ girlfriend for no other apparent reason - and the leaps of logic get more far-fetched as Donaldson tries his darnest to keep the proceedings moving at a brisk clip until the climax.
Never a less than competent helmer, Donaldson largely succeeds, inserting some efficiently thrilling car chases, shootouts and hand-to-hand combats in between the betrayals, admissions and ultimatums. It certainly helps that Brosnan is just as sure a hand at playing a spy, slipping effortlessly into the role with charisma and lending this screen incarnation of Devereaux a dignity and poise that very few silver-haired action stars can do. Brosnan’s co-stars are however forgettable, though Kurylenko proves to be a sight to behold in her own right when she puts on a short sexy dress to seduce Federov in his own hotel room.
To be sure, ‘November Man’ never quite comes close to the heights of Bourne, which is in a league of its own. But for less demanding audiences looking for some late-summer action, this entirely B-grade Euro-set thriller will do the trick. It’s got espionage, suspense, blood, some sex (clearly trimmed here for an NC16 rating though), and most of all, Brosnan; yes, the latter is singlehandedly the best thing the film has going for it. And in turn, Brosnan gets his wish - an opportunity back into the spy game, and a pretty good one at that too.
Movie Rating:
(The plotting does stumble towards the end, but this old-school spy thriller has enough twists, action and most importantly, an ace in former 007 star Pierce Brosnan)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Taron Egerton, Sophie Cookson, Sofia Boutella, Jack Davenport, Mark Strong, Michael Caine
RunTime: 2 hrs 9 mins
Rating: M18 (Coarse Language and Violence)
Released By: 20th Century Fox
Official Website: http://www.kingsmanmovie.com
Opening Day: 12 February 2015
Synopsis: Based upon the acclaimed comic book and directed by Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass, X-Men First Class), KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE tells the story of a super-secret spy organization that recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency’s ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.
Movie Review:
One of the most memorable scenes in the trailer was Samuel Jackson (who plays the villian Richmond Valentine in the film) proclaiming that ‘Kingsmen: The Secret Service’ is "not that kind of movie". And yup, it wasn’t a typical spy movie indeed.
Loosely based on the spy comic series, ‘The Secret Service’ by Mike Millar, ‘Kingsmen: The Secret Service’ can probably be summed up as: ghetto kid has the opportunity to do good and undergoes spy training. To a movie-goer who have not read the comic series, however, the movie remains entertaining and good fun.
In a few more words, the ‘Kingsmen’ is a modern take on the British spy movie genre – one that was different, but in a good way, from the too-serious Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the kind-of-serious James Bond franchise. Perhaps it is because we never saw George Smiley or James Bond in training.
It might be a coincidence, but the previous film helmed by director Matthew Vaughn, ‘X-Men: First Class’, was somehow similar to the ‘Kingsmen’, perhaps due to the material and set. Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton) is a school dropout who gets bailed out of jail and taken under the wing of Harry Hart (Colin Firth), a Kingsmen spy agent. Eggsy is thrusted into spy training and is forced to survive in the company of the bratty and snobbish upperclass British society, while Valentine tries to use SIM cards to stop global warming.
What struck me the most is the blood and gore throughout the film. While that might be seen as appropriate and normal for a movie with so many fight scenes, it did make the reviewer feel squirm at times. That said, the blood and gore did make the film more believable and exciting than other British spy movies, where there were minimal blood spilled (or so I remember) while the villians were somehow taken care of.
This is the second time in the recent years that Firth starred in an espionage film. His role in this film, however, is very much different from Bill Haydon from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (disclaimer: the reviewer has read the book, but not watched the movie). And it is a welcome change, with Firth being the butt-kicking, no-nonsense Galahad, the spy veteran and Eggsy’s mentor. Unsurprisingly, the role of a gentleman spy fits Firth to a T, while the fight scenes was the most un-Colin Firth, Colin Firth role I have ever seen.
Another standout is Jackson’s role as Valentine, probably the embodiment of the quote: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Valentine is ruthless while not being able to stomach blood and gore, having Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) to do his murderous bidding. But really, could you blame someone who is trying to save the earth from her eventual destruction, although in a really Machiavellian way?
There was also (thankfully) a lack of damsels in distress that needed saving. Well, almost anyway.
‘Kingsmen: The Secret Service’ comes at a time when box offices are filled with Academy Award-nominated films. While the ‘Kingsmen’ do not fit into that mould, it comes as a welcome relief to movie-goers tired of the more serious and artistic offerings currently available.
Movie Rating:
(While ‘Kingsmen’ is an entertaining departure from the usual spy genre, what you see in the trailer is almost what you get)
Review by Goh Yan Hui
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Promotional Clips for LITTLE BIG MASTERPosted on 27 Jan 2015 |
Genre: Martial Arts/Action
Director: Gordon Chan
Cast: Liu Yifei, Deng Chao, Ronald Cheng, Collin Chou, Anthony Wong, Jiang Yiyan, Alec Su, Yu Chenghui
RunTime: 1 hr 47 mins
Rating: PG (Some Violence)
Released By: Encore Films & GV
Official Website:
Opening Day: 21 August 2014
Synopsis: The reputation of the Four constables survives, but since Emotionless's departure, there have been changes at the Divine Constabulary. The four rescue Zhuge Zhengwo from An Yun Shan's mountain fortress, then with the Emperor and Di armies, they attack. But An Yun Shan absorbs their power, which means the constables and their allies now face their most lethal opponent yet, a nearly invincible kung fu master who won't stop until he has absolute power...
Movie Review:
At this point in the trilogy, ‘The Four III’ will only make sense to those who have seen the first two chapters. Based on Chinese Malaysian author Woon Swee Oan’s bestselling novel series ‘The Four Great Constables’, the series was meant to be a game-changer in the Chinese movie industry with its genre-bending mix of action, drama, romance and fantasy. Yes, the eponymous four under the charge of Anthony Wong’s Zhuge Zhengwo formed the Divine Constabulary, so named because each one of them is blessed with superhuman powers.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, there is Cold Blood aka Leng Lingqi (Deng Chao), a former spy from a rival crime-fighting department known as Department Six previously sent to infiltrate the Constabulary and learn their secrets who has the gift (or curse) of transforming into a beast when provoked. He is in love with Emotionless (Crystal Liu Yifei), a psychic in a wheelchair who immediately recalls Professor X. Looking after Emotionless like an older brother is Iron Hands (Collin Chou), whose power is apparent from his name. And last but not least, there is Life Stealer (Ronald Cheng), better known for being a fast talker and a wine lover than for any particular standout ability.
There is a whole lot of backstory in ‘The Four II’ which proves critical to understanding the narrative developments here. Emotionless has learnt the truth behind her family’s assassination as a child, which precipitates her disillusionment with Zhuge Zhengwo and Iron Hands, as well as to a certain extent Cold Blood. On the other hand, Cold Blood is caught in a love triangle with newly installed Department Six head Ji Yaohua (Jiang Yiyan), who is doing the bidding for a certain powerful Lord An (Yu Chenghui). Lord An wants revenge for his son An Shigeng (Yu Chenghui), the baddie from the first movie who is now grafted onto a tree for life. Oh, there is also a shapeshifter named Ruyan (Ada Yan) also doing Lord An’s deeds, who sets in motion the chain of events in this third movie.
If all that read like a head-scratcher, you’re not alone. Even those who have seen the second movie will probably need a refresher to call to mind all the convolutions that made up the scatter-haired plot, and which director Gordon Chan offers no abbreviation at the start of this final instalment. Instead, he and co-director Janet Chun plunge right into things, beginning with Ruyan’s escape from prison which leads to a failed assassination of the Emperor (Alec Su) when he decides one day to come down from his throne and visit the city unannounced in order to get a better sense of his countrymen’s woes. The Emperor survives, but is captured by Emotionless before he can get to the loyal Zhuge Zhengwo, and it should be no secret that the turn of events afford Emotionless the redemption she needs from her emotional baggage.
As loyalties are tested and traitors exposed, the relatively swift-paced conclusion builds towards an epic finale where the Department Six and Divine Constabulary join forces against the common enemy Lord An. It’s a pompous special effects laden climax all right, where not only does each character get a chance to show off his or her skill but to work together as a team to defeat their most formidable enemy yet. We won’t spoil the ending for you, but suffice to say that some will find the denouement – though logical – somewhat of a letdown, with Zhuge Zhengwo playing a crucial last-minute role to Lord An’s annihilation.
Even though it is the best of the three, it is unlikely that ‘The Four III’ will satisfy anyone who has not caught the earlier two movies. If the middle section plays like melodrama, that’s because Chan has the unenviable task of bringing closure to the myriad story threads that were left unresolved in the preceding chapter. And yet while it does manage to tie all the loose ends nicely, the intended poignancy of Emotionless’ struggle between forgiveness and revenge as well as the romantic stirrings between her and Cold Blood will likely be lost on those who are encountering these characters for the first time.
But for those who have followed them from first to third, Chan’s ensemble cast rewards your loyalty with their best performances yet. Deng finally settles into a more grounded character here, and he shares good chemistry with Liu, who in turn acquits herself well in her most emotive turn yet. Cheng brings some levity to the proceedings, while Chou is still sadly underutilised. It is always a joy to see veteran actor Wong on screen, who brings both dignity and gravitas to his supporting act as Zhuge Zhengwo – in particular, he shares a nice intimate scene with Liu and TVB actress Sheren Tang who has an extended cameo as Emotionless’ guardian.
So despite the misgivings about ‘The Four’, this final instalment still manages to cap the trilogy at a high. In terms of storytelling, it is easily the most fluid, and in character development, the least clunky among the three. Those looking for some grand blockbuster action will still however be disappointed, as Ku Huen-chiu’s choreography still leaves much to be desired amid the slightly improved CGI. Yet, it’s as good a conclusion as one can ask for, so if it’s closure you seek, then it’s closure you’ll get; everyone else need not bother.
Movie Rating:
(A finale that wraps the trilogy in good fashion, but is too dense and scatter-shot at the same time to be appreciated on its own)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: War/Action
Director: David Ayer
Cast: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, Michael Peña, Xavier Samuel, Jason Isaacs, Scott Eastwood, Anamaria Marinca, Alicia von Rittberg, Jim Parrack, Brad William Henke, Kevin Vance, Laurence Spellman
RunTime: 2 hrs 14 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/Fury
Opening Day: 22 October 2014
Synopsis: April, 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theatre, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) commands a Sherman tank and her five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Outnumbered and outgunned, and with a rookie soldier thrust into their platoon, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.
Movie Review:
War isn’t pretty. Nor does it kill discriminately. Hollywood woke up to that reality with Steven Spielberg’s ground-breaking masterpiece ‘Saving Private Ryan’ slightly more than 15 years ago, and hasn’t looked back since. Set within the same great conflict in modern twentieth century history, David Ayer’s ‘Fury’ possesses the exact same sensibilities. It is gritty and realistic, bloody and brutal, grim and sobering; to put it simply, it’s that kind of war moviewhich doesn’t paint its subject any differently from what it is in real life, and it does so with such persuasion that it deserves to be mentioned among the very best.
To be sure, Ayer’s propensity for raw authentic portrayals of masculine behaviour under fire wasn’t born and bred on this battlefield. Indeed, his preoccupation began on the streets of South Central Los Angeles, which formed the setting for his ‘Training Day’ script that won Denzel Washington an Oscar as well as the equally well-received LAPD drama ‘End of Watch’ two years ago. But Ayer truly comes into his own as a filmmaker with his latest, an apparent work in progress for many years during which he did the research on every little meticulous detail that shows on the screen – most prominently with the use of five M4 Sherman tanks and one German tiger in the production.
While it takes its title from the sobriquet of a particular Sherman tank with the four-letter word emblazoned across its barrel, ‘Fury’ is less about what happens outside the tank than inside the battered vehicle. Within those walls are five men led by Sgt. Don Collier, a.k.a. Wardaddy (Brad Pitt), a battle-hardened commander who has been fighting Germans through Africa, Belgium, the Netherlands and now on their very home soil. His crew includes gunner Boyd “Bible” Swan (Shia LaBeouf), a religious man who prays over the Germans he kills; Boyd’s loader Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis (Jon Bernthal), a short-fused belligerent hillbilly who is the most unhinged of the lot; and driver Trini “Gordo” Garcia (Michael Peña), the sole Mexican-American among them.
In a broad sense, ‘Fury’ does share some similarity with ‘Training Day’ – both films unfold from the point of view of a rookie; in the case of the former, a young recruit named Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), sent to replace the tank’s fifth crew member, the assistant driver, who has just been killed. Barely eight weeks in the Army and trained as a clerk typist, Norman simply doesn’t belong. “You’re no good to me if you can’t kill a German,” Wardaddy bellows, whose idea of initiating him into the necessary truth of war is to put a gun in Norman’s hand and force him to squeeze the trigger on a captured S.S. officer. Ayer uses Norman as the audience’s surrogate, plunged into these horrific necessities and forced to put aside conventional notions of decency and humanity in order to survive.
“Ideals are peaceful; history is violent,” Wardaddy explains to Norman when they get a brief respite in a German town which they liberate from the scourge of the Nazis. An interlude in the middle of the film that sees the two men chancing upon two German women in an apartment, the fortyish Irma (Anamaria Marinca) and her beautiful young cousin, Emma (Alicia von Rittberg) makes that point emphatically, the eventual denouement of the latter marking one of the most unexpectedly moving turning points in the movie. That sequence is also notable for being one of the most nuanced, in particular a segment in which the rest of Wardaddy’s team stumble upon the two preparing to partake in a meal of eggs and ham with their female hosts.
Ayer’s commitment to character is evident in this sequence alone, and he remains steadfast to it from start to finish. Though the characters read like archetypes for the genre, they are surprisingly well drawn. Each has developed his own defence as a response to cope with the horrors he witnesses, and Ayer captures their buried feelings with shrill immediacy. Their roles in relation to each other in the team are also clearly defined, and their camaraderie is made up of a rough and unpretentious intimacy.
Yet what proves to be far more fascinating is the complex dynamic between Wardaddy and his men, the former assuming the role of the latter’s paterfamilias as he watches over the latter with a keen eye not dulled by his combat weariness. In many ways, this is an old-fashioned platoon movie, but inflected by a post 9/11, post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan, 21st century point of view, and that perspective allows it, despite its familiarity, to subvert and enhance old-school expectations and come across both fresh and gripping.
The same can be said of star Brad Pitt’s riveting performance, which is no doubt one of his very best. Though one may be tempted to compare it with that in ‘Inglorious Basterds’, Pitt loses the hipster jokiness of the former film for a much more grounded and compelling portrayal of the tough and quiet squad leader filled with intensity and charisma. His below-the-line team is exceptional, including an excellent LaBeouf, an edgy Bernthal and a quietly solid Pena. But the film is also anchored on the other end by Lerman, his horror and disgust a cracked mirror for the crew as well as a proxy for the audience, and the actor best known for playing the lead in ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ is heartfelt to the point of being almost heart-breaking.
The fact that it resonates so immensely with us is testament to the power of this bleak and savage portrait of war. It is not about the honor, glory or majesty of heroes; no, it is simply about a fight for survival premised on the shedding of blood - heads are vaporized by mortar rounds; limbs are severed by bursts of automatic-rifle fire; and human flesh is charred by flames and shredded by shrapnel. Even so, it is a deeply sensitive exploration of the depths of hell in battle, shot with visceral and often shockingly grisly realism and driven by a top-notch calibre of actors you want to hear mentioned when awards season comes along. And when it’s time to write the history of Hollywood’s war movies, we’re sure ‘Fury’ will be mentioned among the very best.
Movie Rating:
(Gritty and visceral, this bloody and brutal depiction of the struggle among and within individuals cast into the necessities of war is a classic in its own right)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Cast: Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge, Perdita Weeks
RunTime: 1 hr 33 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Horror And Coarse Language)
Released By: UIP
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/AsAboveSoBelowMovie
Opening Day: 4 September 2014
Synopsis: Miles of twisting catacombs lie beneath the streets of Paris, the eternal home to countless souls. When a team of explorers ventures into the uncharted maze of bones, they uncover the secret of what this city of the dead was meant to contain. A journey into madness and terror, As Above, So Below reaches deep into the human psyche to reveal the personal demons that come back to haunt us all.
Movie Review:
‘As Above/ So Below’ holds the eponymous honour of being the first film given permission to shoot in the catacombs beneath the streets of Paris, which famously house the remains of six million dead. You’re not likely though to sense that distinction given to the film; instead of taking advantage of that opportunity, director and co-writer John Erick Dowdle’s horror saga unfolds not much differently than your standard issue found-footage thriller, which also means that you better be prepared for a nauseating time.
To be fair, Dowdle is no stranger to the format; together with his brother Drew (who serves as producer here), they have used the shaky-cam to good effect in the US remake of the Spanish hit [REC] as well as their earlier movie ‘The Poughkeepsie Tapes’. But whereas such a method may have worked for these other titles, it does nothing here other than induce motion sickness, but even more significantly, makes it even more difficult to see what exactly is going on, especially since most of the proceedings take place in claustrophobic small spaces.
The protagonist here is the female explorer Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), an intrepid historian/ urban archaeologist who speaks four living languages and two dead ones. Convinced that the all-powerful Philosopher’s Stone lies within the labyrinth of tunnels, Scarlett leads an expedition which includes her pal George (“Mad Men’s” Ben Feldman), her requisite cameraman Benji (Andrew Hodge) and three other local French urban spelunkers ((Francois Civil, Marion Lambert, Ali Marhyar).
Needless to say, their treasure hunt starts to get spooky as they go deeper and deeper into the catacombs. But besides some feral-looking character dubbed ‘The Mole’, the rest of the occurrences are pretty much the usual horror-movie suspects, including dead bodies, creepy ghoulish types in hooded robes wandering around, a rotary phone that rings for little rhyme or reason and many other little things that apparently belong to the household. And then there are the writings on the wall (we mean this literally) as well as the eerie chanting, which signify some supernatural occurrences, the change in tone marked by a significant change in the amount of crypto-superstitious baloney that you’ll either buy into or scoff at.
Notwithstanding the hokum, how much you’ll be scared depends on how well you take to jump-scares, of which there is a more than generous number of throughout the movie. Yes, while the setting does generate a fair amount of tension in itself, Dowdle panders to genre convention to try to give their audience a kick out of jumping in their seats. We don’t blame Dowdle; aside from some chilling moments in the final reel, there is a lot of running, crawling and screaming that doesn’t amount to much, especially since we are tended to look away every time that happens in order to avoid the inevitable headache thereafter otherwise.
Even at a relatively brief 93 minutes, Dowdle finds himself straining to keep his audience engaged. The characters are minimally involving, despite his efforts at forcing each one of them to confront his or her inner demons while being faced with the paranormal. Instead, try as he does, Dowdle fails to make any of his characters or for that matter his movie anywhere as compelling as the group of women trapped in the cave in the far superior ‘The Descent’, to which this thriller owes a weighty debt.
Of course, ‘As Above/ So Below’ has its own hook in offering its viewers a rare chance to see parts of the catacombs which are not open to the public, and yet it squanders that opportunity by choosing to tell its story in a format that is already way past its shelf life. Don’t get us wrong – we’re not against the faux-documentary format; there are many good examples of horror thrillers that have successfully made use of the format to build atmosphere. In this case however, it almost always works against the movie itself; after all, it is precisely when things start to get exciting that everything starts to go blurry.
Movie Rating:
(A found-footage horror thriller that squanders a perfectly good premise with shaky camerawork and unengaging characters)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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"KING OF MAHJONG" It's a Wrap!Posted on 29 Aug 2014 |
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