Genre: Fantasy/Thriller
Director: Gary Shore
Cast: Luke Evans, Sarah Gadon, Dominic Cooper, Diarmaid Murtagh, Samantha Barks, Charles Dance, Charlie Cox
RunTime: 1 hr 45 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence And Disturbing Scenes)
Released By: UIP
Official Website: http://www.draculauntoldintl.com/index.php

Opening Day: 2 October 2014

Synopsis: Luke Evans (Fast & Furious 6, Immortals) stars in Dracula Untold, the origin story of the man who became Dracula. Gary Shore directs and Michael De Luca produces the epic action-adventure that co-stars Dominic Cooper, Sarah Gadon and Charles Dance.

Movie Review:

As far as reboots go, ‘Dracula Untold’ isn’t half-bad; in fact, we’d go so far as to say that it is pretty good. As imagined by screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, the titular bloodsucker begins as a 15th century Transylvanian prince named Vlad who trades his soul for the dark side in order to protect his family and his kingdom from the armies of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II. To be sure, their inspiration is rooted in history – the real historical figure of Vlad the Impaler was indeed taken by the Turks as a young boy and trained to kill without question or reason.

After a brief prologue establishing this crucial backstory, Welsh actor Luke Evans inhabits the role of the glowering anti-hero, weary of war and desiring only of peace. And yet that dream is shattered when his uneasy truce with the far-numerous Turks is disrupted one day by the Sultan’s demand for one thousand youths to join his army, including, we may add, Vlad’s own son Ingeras (Art Parkinson). Desperate for a way out, Vlad turns to the evil that he knows resides within Broken Tooth Mountain (so named after the Universal Studios theme park attraction) – a Nosferatu-like demon (Charles Dance) who offers him a drink of his blood for superhuman strength.

The price? If he can resist drinking human blood in three days, Vlad will get to return to human form. What happens after is a lot of CGI, some (especially the overhead shots of the scale of the Turkish invasion) impressive and others (like the mano-a-thousands shots of Count Dracula’s vanquishing an entire army) less so. Yes, since the outcome is pretty much known, much of the film fills itself with ostensibly CGI-enhanced Lord-of-the-Rings-style battle sequences that see Vlad alternate between human and bat form to sweep like a tornado through his opponents or command a whole colony of them just by waving his hands.

For obvious reasons, most of these sequences take place at night, but the nocturnal setting also means that the action often descends into murky chaos, such that what happens onscreen often comes off as a blur – and that is even on an IMAX supersized screen. Cynics will also no doubt find fault with the bloodlessness of these sequences, which despite boasting the stylish gloom of HBO's 'Game of Thrones’, is PG13 demure in order to ensure accessibility to a younger audience. But once you accept that this is no more than a glorified B-movie, you’ll learn to appreciate its pleasures a lot more.

Evans, for instance, makes for a surprisingly engaging lead in the titular role. Having proven his charisma in supporting roles such as ‘Fast and Furious 6’ and ‘The Hobbit’, he finally gets the chance to anchor a film from start to end, and acquits himself handsomely with a compelling portrayal of a man who must learn just how much of his own mortality he is willing to sacrifice in order to save the ones he saves. Amidst the noisy battles, Evans shares a couple of nice intimate scenes with Sarah Gadon, who plays his wife Mirena, and the chemistry between them builds to a heartbreaking finale that offers as good a reason as any for his subsequent – and inevitable transformation.

On his part, veteran commercials director turned first-time feature helmer Gary Shore fairs pretty well by keeping the proceedings lean and tight, with much of the storytelling in action rather than words. Besides tapping on cinematographer John Schwartzmann for some lush widescreen shots of Ireland, Shore also employs different stylistic flourishes to enliven the onscreen action, which in itself still gets your heart thumping – despite some clearly slapdash CGI especially in the depiction of them carnivorous creatures. It isn’t particularly inspired, but in the context of a diverting fantasy-horror, Shore’s raw instincts as a filmmaker do suffice.

And so if approached from the mentality that ‘it could be much worse’, ‘Dracula Untold’ actually stands on its own as an enjoyable piece of hokum. Pretending that it is anything more takes away the cruder pleasures it offers, and of course sets it up as something that it probably never intended to be in the first place. That said, it does end on a pretty exciting note – a coda set in present day sees Vlad encountering his seemingly reincarnated wife Mirena, with Dance’s malevolent character in close pursuit and intoning the last four words for a sequel we must say we are quite excited to see: “let the games begin”. 

Movie Rating:

(A suitably engaging origin story that lacks blood but has enough bite to satisfy as a diverting fantasy-horror)

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Jennifer Kent
Cast: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Craig Behenna, Tim Purcell
RunTime: 1 hr 33 mins
Rating: NC16 (Sexual References)
Released By: GV
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/babadook

Opening Day: 25 September 2014

Synopsis: A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.

Movie Review:

The Babadook is an Australian horror film that showed at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. It has received rave commercial and critical reviews. The Babadook is definitely not the conventional horror film. It is a moving story about Amelia (Essie Davis), a struggling single mother emotionally wrecked by her husband’s death six years ago. Her six-year-old son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman) displays behaviors associated with an Attention Deficit Disorder. Samuel proves to be a nightmare to discipline and Amelia soon grows weary of her life. Amelia does not give up on Samuel and continues to fight for him throughout the film.

Samuel has a hyperactive imagination and is constantly anxious of monsters hiding in his room. Samuel manages to alienate everyone around him (including the audience) with his strange obsession with weapons and monsters. The audience grows increasingly annoyed of watching Samuel’s antics on screen as he often puts Amelia in uncomfortable and exasperating situations. Amelia never celebrates Samuel’s birthday on the actual day, as it is a reminder of her husband’s death. Her extended family and friends cast Amelia and Samuel away, unable to tolerate Amelia’s depression and Samuel’s outlandish and even violent behavior. The relationship between Samuel and Amelia is portrayed to be an almost hellish nightmare at the beginning - Samuel is constantly worried about monsters and the possible loss of another parent, while Amelia is helplessly trying to care for Samuel without losing her mind. Midway through the film, the audience is left as tired as Amelia. The darkness and psychological strife that plagues this family sets the stage for The Babadook’s entrance.

“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook.” The Babadook is a nightmare of a children’s book. It has all the makings of a demented joke – a book that features a ghost called “Mr. Babadook” that threatens to terrify both Samuel and Amelia. There are graphic pop-up images of the Babadook killing a dog and terrorizing a child in his sleep. After Amelia reads this book to Samuel as a bedtime story (worst idea ever), the cliché horror montages creep into the film – Samuel begins to hallucinate, Amelia burns the book but the book mysteriously returns to her doorstep, and there’s also a gnarly cockroach infestation. Samuel promises to protect his mother from the Babadook and Amelia is driven to the brink of insanity. Her mental state paves the way for the Babadook to “let himself in”, and Amelia slowly begins to show signs of possession. This level of intense psychological turmoil that Jennifer Kent delivers with her sharp direction is what makes The Babadook a true standout from its counterparts. Kent takes her time the build the narrative and pays close attention to the details that illustrate the relationship between Samuel and Amelia. Unfortunately, the film ends up moving at a painfully slow pace, leaving the horror to the very end.

However, Kent’s artistic direction is commendable. There are many unique effects that the film employs. The Babadook is often portrayed as a shadow that is both sinister and childlike. The children’s book had come to life as a person’s worst nightmare. The use of shadows to deliver the scares was a clever hint to the darkness that has consumed the family. However, Kent’s approach could sometimes border on childish. There were scenes in the film that delivered more laughs than scares.

Nonetheless, the film is incredibly refreshing due to Kent’s unique treatment of the horror genre. On the flipside, it could also be disappointing to horror movie fans that watch the film expecting to get shocked. The Babadook rarely relies on the shock factor.  While horror film clichés remain, the film largely relies on the emotional havoc between Samuel and Amelia to deliver the adrenaline rush associated with the genre. Kent ends the film with a light-hearted note that hints at the mended relationship between Samuel and Amelia. She delivers a creative and satisfying ending to the emotionally dense plot.

The exceptional main cast carries the film’s intensity. Noah Wiseman’s portrayal of Samuel is truly praiseworthy. Samuel’s character is not one-dimensional; he is both completely aggravating and endearing. Samuel pushes his cousin off a tree house when she insults him. He even tries to physically fight the Babadook when it attempts to consume Amelia. While this may seem incredibly ludicrous, Samuel’s perseverance and big heart makes him the most enchanting character of the film. Noah Wiseman does an excellent job of being annoying and lovable. Essie Davis’ commitment to the role of Samuel’s mother was admirable as she delivered the many layers of powerful emotions consistently. Davis also delivers the horror in Babadook with ease. The scenes where she displayed signs of possession were incredibly unsettling, even after the movie ended.  

The horror films of today suffer from an over-reliance on CGI effects and a subpar plot. While minimal on the scares, The Babadook is full of surprises.

Movie Rating:

(Do not go in expecting a typical horror film. The Babadook is rewarding for those who are patient and open-minded)

Review by Aishwarya Kumar

Genre: Action/Adventure
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Cast: Shun Oguri, Meisa Kuroki, Tetsuji Tamayama, Gō Ayano, Tadanobu Asano, Jerry Yan, Kim Joon, Thanayong Wongtrakul
RunTime: 2 hrs 13 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)
Released By: GV and Encore Films
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 25 September 2014

Synopsis: Considered the world's greatest thief, Lupin III travels the globe, stealing priceless objects and announcing his intentions via calling card before pulling off the heist. Joining him are expert marksman and Lupin right-hand man Daisuke Jige, master swordsman Goemon Ishikawa XIII who is said to possess a sword and skills that can cut anything, and femme fatale Fujiko Mine who is a fellow thief and also Lupin’s love interest. Pursuing them across the globe is Inspector Koichi Zenigata, who has made it his life mission to catch the master thief. Will Lupin III succeed the legacy of his grandfather? How will he infiltrate a massive security fortress to steal the world’s most precious jewellery?

Movie Review:

“Har? Since when did Singapore have ‘Hougang Museum of the Arts’???”

That’s only the first of the many ‘unheard-of’s in this movie, Lupin The Third. The movie opens with the group of thieves (including Lupin III) competing to steal one of the most prized medals housed in the Hougang Museum of the Arts. They are a group of elite thieves known as The Works which is masterminded by a greying old man. As he plans for his step down and succession, it led to the unraveling of long-kept and dark secret behind ‘Crimson Heart of Cleopatra’, a priceless ancient treasure. A twist of events sets both Lupin III (Shun Oguri) and Michael Lee (Jerry Yan) on an adventure to steal the treasure from the most guarded place on earth.

Other than having Singapore as one of the backdrops of the thieves’ mission, the film was also filmed in Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines. In fact, the crew and the cast spent almost two months in Thailand for the purpose of filming. The movie also had a multi-national cast, including familiar faces such as Jerry Yan and Kim Joon, which is quite a pleasant surprise.  The movie also boasted a total of 4 years of time spent on both the beginning to post production, with script development taking up 2.5 years. Well, this is rather understandable because although the movie is primarily helmed by the Japanese production team, almost half of the dialogues are non-Japanese. Which leads us to a mind boggle – why go and make things so complicated?

It seems like the only probable explanation to that is to appeal to a wider international audience. However, that attempt was weak and not-that-successful as there were really many strange English dialogues, weird conversations. They were so awkward that you simply cringe and squirm in your seat, and you would even feel slightly embarrassed for the cast. There’s also some amount of Chinese and Korean, just for the records.

One would expect that maybe another aspect of the film can compensate, such as the action. -But sadly, that didn’t work out too well also. The movie was heavy on action, and had quite a generous budget, with lots of explosion and CGI to ‘complement’ the action. However, they were mostly unremarkable with the exception of the car chasing sequence, which was particularly awful to watch. The action scenes were old-fashioned and sloppy, like those you would see in a 1970-80s film. The intended comedy was also a little exaggerated and counter-logic. While that is probably accepted in the manga or animation, the same could not be used in a live-action adaptation as it loses contradicts too much with reality.

It’s a true pity that even though the movie managed to rope in many actors such as Shun Oguri, who actually did quite a good rendition of Lupin III, the film didn’t work out to be a memorable one. The film seem to only carry the brand name of ‘Lupin III’, being boasted as one of the most popular and well-liked manga. Even if the sole motive of the movie is to entertain, it’s only a B-grade among the lot. 

Movie Rating:

(Excruciating is how you would describe the experience of being put through 133-minute worth of haphazardness and inconsistencies)

Review by Tho Shu Ling

Genre: Crime/Drama
Director: David Dobkin
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton, Dax Shepard, Vincent D'Onofrio, Leighton Meester, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Lancaster, Melissa Leo, Ken Howard, Emma Tremblay, Balthazar Getty, David Krumholtz, Grace Zabriskie
RunTime: 2 hrs 21 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Coarse Language)
Released By: GV
Official Website: http://www.thejudgemovie.com

Opening Day: 16 October 2014

Synopsis: In "The Judge," Downey stars as big city lawyer Hank Palmer, who returns to his childhood home where his estranged father, the town's judge (Duvall), is suspected of murder. He sets out to discover the truth and along the way reconnects with the family he walked away from years before.

Movie Review:

Robert Downey Jr. plays Hank Palmer, a criminal lawyer based in Chicago. He seemingly has everything going for him; a bucket-load of swagger, sharp clothes and good looks. In the middle of court proceedings, he is informed of his mother’s death. We get a glimpse into Hank’s dysfunctional family life as he heads home to Indiana for his mother’s funeral. Hank and his father, Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall), have a difficult relationship to watch on screen. He doesn’t refer to him as Dad/father, but as “Judge” instead. A pretty accurate description of Robert Duvall’s character - he is   hypercritical, incredibly judgmental, and self-righteous. Hank is the embodiment of everything his father despises – shrewd, arrogant and morally ambiguous. Joseph Palmer lands himself in trouble when he’s arrested for running over a parolee with his car. Hank decides to stay and represents his father in court.  The rest of the film deals with how Hank and his father navigate their differences and regrets amidst the mild courtroom drama and melodramatic family squabbles.

The story had much promise to be a fast-paced courtroom thriller or a heart-warming family film. The film however struggles to find its place, stifled by mind-numbingly dull dialogue and overly used plot. The writers decided to throw in every possible cliché you could find to make the film a giant cheese-fest. The family dynamics developed are cripplingly obvious - An ex-alcoholic father now suffering from stage 4 cancer, loving and understanding mother (who we never get to see), older brother Glen (Vincent D’Onofrio) living in the aftermath of an injury that cost him a baseball career in the big leagues, middle child Hank, and mentally challenged younger brother Dale Palmer (Jeremy Strong).  It seems like everything that could possibly go wrong happens to the Palmers, and this is dragged on for a good, long 2.5 hours (Sigh). Father and son come head to head and hash out their personal differences in court (yes this is the unsatisfying climax we waited for), and the tension stays stagnant till the very end of the film.

David Dobkin’s treatment of the film has led to its downfall. He is not subtle in his approach, leaving little to the imagination. Billy Bob Thornton plays Dwight Dickham, the opposing attorney in the case against Joseph. We already can predict the backstory of this character, but the film makers choose to tell us anyway; Dickham chooses to pursue the case largely because he wants to settle the score with Hank (big shocker there!). There is a shouting match between Hank and Joseph Palmer before the final proceedings. To add to the dramatic effect, the director decides this should take place at home in the midst of a hurricane storm. In the film, Hank often reflects to his childhood days when he often went fishing with his father. Minor spoiler alert – the storyline ends with both father and son fishing together and sharing compliments in a picturesque river. The banality of the film is partially insulting.

The story could have worked with just Duvall and RDJ, two very strong leads that could have brought this film to reach its potential. The film suffers from over-casting and clumsy direction. In addition, the film’s treatment of female characters is tragic –  Vera Farmiga and Leighton Meester’s characters are pointless and seemed like last minute additions to the otherwise male-dominated film. For a story with so much potential, there is really nothing much going for it. On the bright side, we discover Emma Tremblay (previous credits include Elysium, 2013 and The Giver, 2014), who plays Lauren Palmer, Hank’s enchanting daughter. She becomes the centerpiece of the relationship between Hank and Joseph, but before that could develop any further, she’s shipped off to Chicago and is not seen again. There’s just too many characters, too many narratives, and they all manage to stagnate leaving the audience uninterested in the conclusion.

Duvall’s talent is undeniable, but he is overshadowed by endless melodrama and unnecessary interactions with peripheral characters. There are some moments between Duvall and RDJ that are well developed. For example, Hank finds his father collapsed in the bathroom after a round of chemotherapy. Both Duvall and RDJ up their game and commit to this memorable scene. RDJ’s subtle nuances in the scene reflected the character’s inner struggle in accepting his father for the man he is. Duvall in this scene becomes a character that you can sympathize with, and yet manages to keep it light-hearted with his comical interaction with RDJ.

One of the redeeming qualities of The Judge is RDJ’s charm, but even that wears thin towards the end of the film. No amount of RDJ swagger could save the limp humor and predictable screenplay. This film was Robert Downey Jr.’s chance to prove his acting prowess beyond the carefully branded blockbuster movie characters (i.e. Iron Man and Sherlock) that he’s grown comfortable with. However, RDJ struggles to find the sincerity to match the tone of the film. In most of the scenes, the character of Hank feels like the alter ego of Tony Stark, with the same mannerisms and demeanor of the latter. Perhaps this is the flavor that RDJ brings to every one of his films. While entertaining to watch (this writer is a huge fan of RDJ), it proves to be the wrong fit for The Judge.

The Judge has a plot full of promise. The treatment of the plot however is a colossal failure as it leaves little to the imagination and very little praise to say about the film. Essentially, The Judge is too long, too predictable, and too simple. 

Movie Rating:

(Watch The Judge if you are really bored, or if you are a huge fan of RDJ)

Review by  Aishwarya Kumar   

Genre: Sci-Fi/Adventure
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, Bill Irwin, Mackenzie Foy, Topher Grace, David Gyasi, Timothee Chalamet, William Devane, Matt Damon
Runtime: 2 hrs 49 mins
Rating: PG13 (Brief Coarse Language)
Released By: Warner Bros
Official Website: http://www.interstellarmovie.com/index-intl.php

Opening Day: 6 November 2014

Synopsis: Interstellar chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.

Movie Review:

How do we begin to describe ‘Interstellar’, Christopher Nolan’s most ambitious film to date? There will probably be no doubt, once you’ve seen it, that it reaches for the stars; whether it manages to get there is quite something else altogether. Whereas ‘Inception’ showed the filmmaker’s refusal to be restrained by physical dimension, his latest sees him attempt to take an even bigger leap across space and time, envisioning our three-dimensional reality as part of a larger five-dimensional whole, and employing some of the very best technical wizards to create such wondrously dazzling visuals that you cannot help but be mesmerised.

By imagery alone, it is flawless. A dying dust-choked planet Earth in the near future is depicted in a somewhat familiar yet eerily unsettling landscape of agrarian society. A single spacecraft is seen as a gleaming spark against Saturn’s giant gaseous rings. Bright flashes alternate with pitch darkness as the same spacecraft enters a wormhole to emerge in a different galaxy. Each planet we explore in this brand new world is a sight to marvel in itself - one an endless expanse of water where waves rise higher than the eye can see; another is pure ice, where even the clouds are snow chunks. And amidst such surreal beauty, the one scene that will probably stay in your head for a while is that of different moments in time as a binary puzzle, meant to illustrate a key relationship in the film about gravity and time.

Since his breakthrough hit ‘Memento’, Christopher has displayed a fascination with twisting time, and ‘Interstellar’ is no different. It may unfold in a largely linear fashion, but it plays with time more than you realise. On one hand, time is relative, such that one hour on a foreign planet counts for seven Earth years passed - so much so that while Matthew McConaughey’s NASA test pilot named Cooper looks the same throughout the film, Timothee Chalamet and Mackenzie Foy as his 15-year son Tom and 10-year old daughter Murphy are replaced midway by Casey Affleck and Jessica Chastain respectively. That is the easier part - and then there is the scientific mumbo-jumbo that sees time in the context of black holes, gravitational singularities and the possibility of extra-dimensional space.

Another hallmark of Christopher’s films has been their cerebral aspirations, but ‘Interstellar’ surpasses all his previous works by (over)reaching into an unnecessarily convoluted labyrinth of hokey quantum physics. To be sure, it is very serious about being serious, throwing about plenty of technical dialogue and making no apologies for assuming that its audience for smart intelligent beings. A lot of that will undoubtedly whiz by on the first viewing, but by trying to engage on such an intellectual level, it ultimately becomes the cause of its undoing with a logic-defying second half that cross-cuts furiously between Cooper in a race-against-time up in space and Murphy in a similar position back on Earth. Even without thinking too much into it, one already gets the nagging sense that it violates its very own relativity principle of one hour versus seven years.

Yet ironically, that is also the most entertaining segment of the film, which otherwise spends too much time (in Earth years, we may add) on melodramatic partings and monotonous stretches in space. With his brother, Johnathan, Christopher wraps the heady interstellar voyage around the bond between parent and child, or more specifically, that between Cooper and Murphy, who takes the parting especially badly; but these supposedly heart-rending scenes at the start are overwrought, and no thanks to Hans Zimmer’s incessantly intrusive score, terribly manipulative. In contrast, a simple scene where the camera is simply trained on Cooper as he cries his eyes out watching years and years of backlogged video messages left by his son back on Earth is much more poignant - and without a soundtrack that instructs you how to feel.

It is also lacking in the bond between astronaut and astronaut, such that even though McConaughey shares the screen with Anne Hathaway’s scientist Amelia much more than Sandra Bullock does with George Clooney in the leaner and we think far superior ‘Gravity’, the former pair hardly connect with the audience. Yes, it is telling when we sense more chemistry between McConaughey and a geometric talking robot named TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin) than the robotic exchanges between Cooper and Amelia. And if Hathaway’s character isn’t given much dimension, you can imagine the other members of the space team - the astrophysicist Romilly (David Gyasi) and co-pilot Doyle (Wes Bentley) - whose fates we couldn’t care more about.

Much as Christopher tries to ground the movie in the humanity between Cooper and Murphy, ‘Interstellar’ is better appreciated as an exposition on big areas - and there are many bandied about here. Mankind’s place in space is encapsulated in McConaughey’s lament that “we used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars; now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt”. Much later on, Matt Damon pops up to make an emphatic point about survival as the primal instinct, and by that, we mean survivial of the individual, not the human race. That is nicely contrasted against the motivation behind Cooper’s mission itself, following after the suitably named Lazarus Project, which his mentor Professor Brand (Michael Caine, Christopher’s go-to guy to play the father figure of wisdom) reveals on his deathbed to be much more selfless - or selfish, depending on your perspective - than what he had initially told Cooper.

Similarly, ‘Interstellar’ is a film of many contradictions. It wants so desperately to be intellectual, so it grounds its science in the theories of renowned CalTech physicist Kip Thorne (who receives an executive producer credit here), but it violates these principles in favour of building a more thrilling (and complex) narrative. It wants to be moving, but it under-develops the relationships between its characters and then tries to wring emotion out of every intimate scene. And at the heart of it is an unblinking motivation to be important, to be significant, to be monumental, to matter like Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece did, and to be both science and fiction at the same time. Indeed, there is no doubt it reaches for the stars, but ‘Interstellar’ remains right where we are - gazing up at these constellations, and never quite getting any closer to them. 

Movie Rating:

(Ambitious but pretentious and plodding, Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic strains for greatness, poignancy and monumentality, but falls thuddingly short)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Animation
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Koyu Rankin, Scarlett Johansson, Greta Gerwig, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Liev Schreiber, Fisher Stevens, Kara Hayward, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Courtney B. Vance, Ken Watanabe
RunTime: 1 hr 41 mins
Rating: PG
Released By: 20th Century Fox
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 10 May 2018

Synopsis: ISLE OF DOGS tells the story of ATARI KOBAYASHI, 12-year-old ward to corrupt Mayor Kobayashi. When, by Executive Decree, all the canine pets of Megasaki City are exiled to a vast garbage-dump called Trash Island, Atari sets off alone in a miniature Junior-Turbo Prop and flies across the river in search of his bodyguard-dog, Spots. There, with the assistance of a pack of newly-found mongrel friends, he begins an epic journey that will decide the fate and future of the entire Prefecture.

Movie Review:

If you were in a room filled with film buffs, you wouldn’t make the mistake of dissing American filmmaker Wes Anderson’s movies. Any self respecting connoisseur would be able to rant off a list of traits which mark Anderson’s distinctive visual and narrative style: tracking shots, symmetry, palettes and patterns all play a part in the resulting quirky charm. The 49 year old auteur’s latest work, which won him the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival, has all those elements in place.

Returning to the stop motion animation genre after Fantastic Mr Fox (2009), Anderson writes, produces and directs a story about, well, an isle of dogs. Set in a dystopian near future in a fictional Japanese city, dogs are banished to an island under false health conditions like canine saturation, dog flu and snout fever. A boy, who is searching for his pet dog, finds himself being adopted by a motley crew of island dogs. And as you’d expect from an Anderson film, misadventures soon follow.

We did not expect Roald Dahl’s beloved novel Fantastic Mr Fox to be a peculiarly delightful film about family under Anderson’s direction, so our expectations are high with his second attempt with the genre. The stage is set with the disclaimer “All barks have been rendered into English”, and Frances McDormand’s character translating the Japanese dialogues peppered throughout the 101 minute film. You know what to expect – a classy and fun ride that will leave you feeling intelligent when the end credits start rolling.

The production values are first rate. The sets are intricately designed (these would be the most beautiful trash lands you will ever see on screen), the puppetry is fascinating (you will want to own all the characters and place them on your display shelf), and the music score composed by Alexandre Desplat is cheekily apt (watch out for the charismatic taiko drumming sequence).

The spectacularly star studded ensemble voice cast is any director’s dream come true. Bryan Cranston (Last Flag Flying), Edward Norton (Sausage Party), Bill Murray (The Jungle Book), Jeff Goldblum (Thor: Ragnarok), Harvey Keitel (The Ridiculous 6) and Liev Schreiber (My Little Pony: The Movie) display the ruff and gruff of the dogs they voice. Scarlett Johansson voices a sultry female purebred (we wouldn’t expect anything less for the Avengers star to portray), Tilda Swinton (Doctor Strange) voices a sagely dog, Anjelica Huston (50/50) voices a mute poodle (but of course, coming from Anderson’s film), while Greta Gerwig voices a righteous American exchange student (the vocal filmmaker of the critically acclaimed Lady Bird seems to be the perfect choice for this role). Elsewhere, Japanese artistes like Ken Watanabe (Transformers: The Last Knight), Koyu Rankin, Kunichi Nomura and Yoko Ono (how Wenderson managed to get John Lennon’s second wife to say yes is probably worthy of another movie on its own) are also involved.

Viewers who are familiar with Anderson’s previous films will realise that he likes to feature a recurring cast (Norton, Murray, Keitel, Gerwig and Huston among others), and will smile contentedly at the humour injected throughout the film. Those who are familiar with the director’s works will be gleefully pointing out similarities in films like The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and The Darjeeling Limited (2007). For this film set in Japan, film buffs can spend even more time indulging in academic discourse on culture and exploitation – rejoice!

Movie Rating:

(Everything you'd expect from a Wes Anderson film - and oh, the trash lands on this Isle of Dogs are gorgeous!)

Review by John Li

MARK CHAO WILL BE IN SINGAPORE ON 1st OCTOBER FOR "BLACK AND WHITE: THE DAWN OF JUSTICE"! Posted on 15 Sep 2014 Popular Taiwanese actor Mark Chao, together with renowned TV series director Tsai Yueh-hsun will be in Singapore on 1st October to promote their latest action movie BLACK AND WHITE: THE DAWN OF JUSTICE (痞子英雄：黎明再起) BLACK AND WHITE: THE DAWN OF JUSTICE is the latest installment of the successful “BLACK AND WHITE 痞 ... more

Genre: Thriller
Director: The Mo Brothers
Cast: Kazuki Kitamura, Oka Antara, Luna Maya, Rin Takanashi
RunTime: 2 hrs 18 mins
Rating: R21 (Strong Violence and Gore)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 16 October 2014

Synopsis: Mr. Nomura is an eerily handsome, sharply dressed, sociopathic serial killer who preys on the women of Tokyo. In Jakarta, a world-weary journalist named Bayu finds himself unexpectedly falling into vigilantism after brutally killing two sadistic robbers. When each posts videos of his violent sprees online, the pair find one another on the Internet and begin a toxic and competitive duel. While Bayu clings to the hope that he can resume a normal life, Nomura continues to spill blood without remorse. Killing, advises Nomura, is something everyone ought to consider.

Movie Review:

We rarely begin our reviews with a piece of consumer advice, but ‘Killers’ should come with its own warning label. This is not one for the squeamish, and as a gauge, let us caution you that we found it even more disturbing than any of the ‘Saw’ movies or for that matter either of the ‘Hostel’ films. To say that it is bloody is quite the understatement, and not even brutal quite encapsulates some of its more graphic sequences, so stomach ourselves if you’re going to sit through this Indonesian thriller with a Japanese twist.

For the uninitiated, ‘Killers’ has two protagonists from two different parts of Asia. On one end is Nomura (Kazuki Kitamura), a suave and somewhat debonair Japanese with his own loft-style apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo. There is no illusion to his depravity though - the very first sequence we see is that of Nomura beating a woman to death with a mallet shortly after having sex with her. What’s more, Nomura captures everything on video, carefully edits it and then uploads the footage onto a specialised website for similarly inclined individuals to admire.

On the other is Indonesian journalist Bayu (Oka Antara); and while Nomura is the personification of a natural born killer, Bayu begins on a much more sympathetic note. Disgraced after his expose on a powerful kingpin Mr Dharma (Ray Sahetapy) goes awry, Bayu is struggling to rebuild his life with his estranged wife and teenage daughter (Ersya Aurelia). His circumstance takes a horrific turn when he becomes the unwitting victim of a sex crime cum robbery, and in a moment of self-defence ends up killing both his assailants. Yet in his moment of panic, Bayu recalls the videos he had seen by Nomura and decides to make his own that he then uploads on the very same website.

As you may imagine, that pretty much serves as a calling card for Nomura, who promptly initiates contact with Bayu to teach him the tricks of the ‘killing’ trade. Though some may be tempted to think that Nomura and Bayu will end up rivals trying to outperform each other with each kill, the skilfully crafted screenplay by Timo Tjahjanto and Takuji Ushiyama generally avoids that narrative convention. Yes, while there is a hint of rivalry between the two, their relationship is much more compelling - for a good part of the film, Nomura isn’t so much as competing with Bayu as grooming him to become as twisted as himself, soothing his conscience with such advice like “the second kill is always the hardest”.

Their fates couldn’t however be more different. Nomura befriends a florist Hisae (Rin Takanashi), who is the sole caretaker of her autistic younger brother, and sees in their bond shades of his own tragic relationship with his older sister. It is as close a shot to redemption as Nomura has ever gotten in a long while, but salvation doesn’t come easy for the malevolent at heart. In the meantime, Bayu finds himself possessed by a misguided sense of vigilantism, and with each murder, becomes further and further unhinged.

Just as you’re wondering if the film is content to keep its two characters physically apart for the entire duration, along comes a deliberately ironic turn of events which leaves Bayu regaining his sanity at Nomura’s expense, and the concomitant conclusion which follows is a surprisingly clever and unexpected one that forces both characters to come to terms with the consequences of their actions over the course of the movie. We’d even go so far as to say that their respective denouement in the last half hour is the film’s own deliverance, which would otherwise be no better than glorified torture porn.

Indeed, we would not be surprised that many among its audience will find several of the earlier scenes repugnant, in particular those where Nomura methodically tracks, baits and ensnares his female targets, revelling in their pleas of helplessness before smashing (and we mean this literally) the life out of them. We don’t blame those who find the movie itself disgusting, because up until the twists towards the end, we pretty much felt sick to our guts. There is thankfully method to the madness, and while some may still not feel it justifiable, we at least saw precisely what Tjahjanto and his co-director Kimo Stamboel were getting at.

Dubbed the Mo brothers (who share no connection with each other except a ‘mo’ in both their names), their sophomore feature after the 2009 pregnancy-slasher ‘Macabre’ is more than just sadistic thrills; rather, it is a dark psychological thriller that paints psychosis as a response to tragedy - both Nomura and Bayu’s descent into the mouth of madness stems from their misfortune, the former after losing his beloved sister and the latter after being forced to separate from his beloved wife and daughter. There is brilliance to the nihilism, though it first demands that its audience have the patience and temerity to sit through its vicious displays of violence.

The fact that it does get under your skin is also testament to the acting on display. Both Antara and his counterpart Kitamura are excellent in their roles, the former in portraying his character’s inner anguish and the latter in capturing his character’s utter depravity. The two co-stars of ‘The Raid 2’ complement each other nicely, lending the film the gravitas it needs to prevent from tipping into exploitation.

Like we said at the start, this isn’t the film for the weak of heart, and even for those who aren’t, it does take a certain amount of mettle to get through even the first twenty of minutes of misogynistic savagery. It will be polarising all right, but ‘Killers’ is also one of the most unapologetic films we’ve seen in recent memory, one that isn’t afraid to employ its method to the fullest in order to achieve its intended effect on its audience. We can’t say we loved it, but as a motion picture that deserves to be experienced, this is in a league of its own. 

Movie Rating:

(Unabashedly brutal and at times misogynistic, this unflinchingly savage thriller rises above torture porn with smart scripting, good acting and skilful direction)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Biography/Crime/Drama
Director: Michael Cuesta
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Sheen, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Robert Patrick, Barry Pepper, Paz Vega, Rosemarie DeWitt, Oliver Platt, Tim Blake Nelson, Richard Schiff
Runtime: 1 hr 52 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Some Drug Use And Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: http://www.focusfeatures.com/kill_the_messenger

Opening Day: 13 November 2014

Synopsis: Two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner (“The Bourne Legacy”) leads an all-star cast in a dramatic thriller based on the remarkable true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb stumbles onto a story which leads to the shady origins of the men who started the crack epidemic on the nation’s streets…and further alleges that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S., and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. Despite warnings from drug kingpins and CIA operatives to stop his investigation, Webb keeps digging to uncover a conspiracy with explosive implications. His journey takes him from the prisons of California to the villages of Nicaragua to the highest corridors of power in Washington, D.C. – and draws the kind of attention that threatens not just his career, but his family and his life.

Movie Review:

The titular messenger refers to Gary Webb, an investigative reporter for the Sacramento bureau of the San Jose Mercury News who stumbled onto evidence suggesting that the Central Intelligence Agency had set up a new triangle trade using cocaine for guns for money. Webb’s investigations and his subsequent series of articles entitled ‘Dark Alliance’ exposed the CIA’s complicity in importing massive amounts of cocaine into the United States – thus fuelling the crack epidemic afflicting the nation in the 1980s, in particular within the poorest neighbourhoods in South Central L.A. – and using the profits to fund the anti-Communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. 

And yet the story here isn’t simply about how a plucky reporter preserved in his quest against the establishment for the truth in order to publish an expose that frankly was way out of his depth or the depth of his newspaper. That’s just one half of it; indeed, the second half and the more intriguing part is what happened after. Community leaders latched onto his article, expressing outrage at the government and taking their cause right in front of the lawn of the White House. Major talk shows started calling, inviting him to be their stars. Webb is crowned ‘Journalist of the Year’ by his Bay Area Society peers, one of the most prestigious awards for someone of his standing. But just after the initial wave of lauds, came the unexpected backlash. 

His paper’s more well-heeled competitiors, The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times (which assigned a whole team of reporters to his story), were incensed at having been scooped, and ganged up to discredit his stories by questioning his sources. Instead of trying to find better answers themselves, they “showed more passion for sniffing out the flaws in San Jose’s answer” – as the LA Times’s then-ombudsman, Geneva Overholser, wrote in November 1996. In the face of controversy, his editors (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Oliver Platt) backed away from the story, citing problems with his reporting and implying that he overstated things. 

To say that there is compelling material here for a gripping and thought-provoking movie is an understatement; just the very textual description of the facts are probably enough to get you riled up not just about the Government’s wrongdoings but also about the injustice that the national news media put one of its own through. There is no ostensible doubt that this biography is very much in the journalist’s corner, and those already biased against Webb for whatever reason will probably dismiss it for being exactly that. And yet, those who approach it with an open mind will probably find that it does not sanctify its subject; rather, it leaves more than enough room for its viewer to make up his or her own mind, balancing a public and private view to Webb’s life to illustrate the impact that his career game-changer had on both. 

Much of that credit belongs to the impressive pedigree responsible for putting the film together. Michael Cuesta is no stranger to such controversial material – he’s the producer and director on many episodes of TV’s ‘Homeland’ – and he handles it with élan. The first hour as Webb connects the dots pulses with palpable tension, beginning with a call from the flirtatious Coral Boca (an unforgettable Paz Vega) to meetings with imprisoned drug dealer "Freeway" Ricky Ross (Michael Kenneth Williams) and his attorney (Tim Blake Nelson) and finally the similarly imprisoned drug lord Norwin Meneses (Andy Garcia) in a Nicaraguan prison. That frenetic pace settles nicely into a more intimate character study in the second hour, but Webb's fate hanging in the balance keeps the suspense on a thin wire. 

Cuesta gets some able help from his screenwriter Peter Landesman, a former journalist who adapted from Webb’s book ‘Dark Alliance’ and Nick Schou’s titular novel. Landesman knows the practical details that would make such an investigation plausible, and although there remain some hokey moments (such as Ray Liotta arriving unannounced in the middle of the night to visit Webb in his motel room), this is as accurate a dramatization of the events as we’ve seen in a long while. Landesman’s scripting is supported by some strong performances from the ensemble cast, including Rosmarie DeWitt as Webb’s committed wife and mother of his three kids, Platt and Winstead as his opportunistic editors, and a delightfully smarmy cameo from Garcia. 

But it is its star and producer Jeremy Renner that holds your attention and your sympathy from start to finish. Easily his best role since ‘The Hurt Locker’, Renner portrays Webb with a combative intensity that captivates you instantly. He is never less than thoroughly immersed in his character, inhabiting the role with the same fierceness and determination as Webb has digging through the facts. Renner has a couple of good scenes with DeWitt, as Webb’s infidelity comes into the national spotlight. It is Renner who makes Webb real and relatable, a flesh-and-blood flawed hero whom you’ll feel much for. 

Unlike many pictures of its ilk, ‘Kill the Messenger’ doesn’t try to be awards-bait, nor for that matter to emulate the classic 1976 film ‘All the President’s Men’. It is sincere in its zeal to let its audience know of a modern-day journalistic pariah, christened less so by the government but by his very own peers. Were it not true, one would probably dismiss this as hoary; but the fact that Webb has since been vindicated makes his tale even more significant. It is as much a damning statement on Big Brother as it is a cautionary tale for idealistic journalists, and whether as that or pure political thriller, it is simply hard to ignore. 

Movie Rating:

(Tense, gripping and poignant, this fact-based biography of an investigative journalist turned pariah is carried by a strong lead performance by Jeremy Renner)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Director: Rob Marshall
Cast: Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Christine, Baranski and Johnny Depp. Lilla Crawford, Daniel Huttlestone, MacKenzie Mauzy, Billy Magnussen, Tammy Blanchard, Lucy Punch, Frances de la Tour, Simon Russell Beale, Richard Glover, Joanna Riding, Annette Crosbie
Runtime: 2 hrs 4 mins
Rating: PG
Released By: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures 
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/DisneyIntoTheWoods

Opening Day: 15 January 2015

Synopsis: “Into the Woods” is a modern twist on the beloved Brothers Grimm fairy tales, intertwining the plots of a few choice stories and exploring the consequences of the characters’ wishes and quests. This humorous and heartfelt musical follows the classic tales of Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), Jack and the Beanstalk (Daniel Huttlestone), and Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy)—all tied together by an original story involving a baker and his wife (James Corden & Emily Blunt), their wish to begin a family and their interaction with the witch (Meryl Streep) who has put a curse on them.

Movie Review:

Disclaimer: This reviewer has not watched the musical. Then again, probably 80% of Singaporeans have not either. (If you have watched it overseas or caught Glen Goei’s production of it in 2011, then okay, come I clap for you.)

If one were to carefully scrutinize fairy tales, one would come to the conclusion that characters in fairytales are fairly simple-minded and extremely gullible. Point in case, you have the following in Grimm’s Fairy Tales:

(a) Cinderella: Young woman goes to a graveyard to ask for help when her stepmother bars her from going to the ball

(b) Rapunzel: Man decides that stealing cabbages from a witch’s garden is a good idea

(c)  Little Red Riding Hood: Girl cannot distinguish between a wolf and her grandma and lastly,

(d) Jack and the Beanstalk: Boy thinks that selling his cow for 5 magic beans is a fair trade

But what if. What if the characters developed a sense of awareness? What if they knew their quirks and eccentricities? What if they were generous enough to talk, or rather, sing about their own idiosyncrasies? Then BOOM, you have Into the Woods.

A skillful retelling of the four aforementioned fairy tales, Into the Woods begins with a “Once Upon a Time” narration of characters we are are all familiar with: Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) wants to meet the Prince (Chris Pine) at the ball, Little Red Riding Hood (Lilia Crawford) has to visit her grandmother, Jack needs to sell his cow in the neighbouring village and the Baker (James Cordon) and his wife (Emily Blunt) needs to find the ingredients needed to lift the curse set by the Witch (Meryl Streep). Each on their quest to fulfill their personal wishes, the characters find their paths colliding in the woods, their interactions accumulating into the “Happily Ever After” that we are often told. But here is when Into the Woods deviates from fairy tales filled with pastel drawings of sweet, lovely things. While fairy tales conveniently conclude with diabetic endings, Into the Woods directs viewers to the consequences of each character’s actions. It seems (according to the film) that there is no such thing as a happy ending when you marry a promiscuous prince, kill giants for no good reason, have a child when you are not ready for fatherhood and go around being all too nice.

Since Into the Woods was adapted from a musical, there was really nothing much that this reviewer could say of its plot. Seeing that Hollywood would dump millions of cold hard cash to produce a film version of it, one would assume that the story was great to begin with (and it is). What would make the film brilliant then, would be the other elements not associated with the story. And boy, would that convince you that Into the Woods was worth the money (or your parent’s, no judging). A feast for the visual viewer, Into the Woods had great costume design, as seen from Streep’s blue puffy gown and Johnny Depp’s Tex Avery-inspired wolf suit. Granted, the production design might be 50% CGI-rendered but it was still authentic enough to immerse viewers into the world of the characters. Blunt was especially relatable in her role as the confused Baker’s wife and Pine was equally convincing as the douchebag prince who was “taught to be charming, not sincere”. Streep, as usual, gave a brilliant performance as the edgy but motherly Witch with psycho eyes. In fact, quoting a flamboyant character on Modern Family, “Meryl Streep would play Batman and be the right choice”. On the whole, the ensemble cast also belted out songs that were pleasing to the ear, with the favourite being “Agony” and “Hello, Little Girl”.

That being said, Into the Woods does have its flaws. While the transition between the first and second act of the story worked well in musicals, the same does not apply to films.  As viewers are not granted any kind of intermission, it is easy to assume that the film has reached its conclusion when the characters get their wishes granted. The change in tone may hence be unsettling to viewers, making the film slightly draggy after the first act. But it’s the new year, and it’s this reviewer’s resolution to be kinder. Hence, looking past that annoying flaw, Into the Woods is definitely one musical you should not miss.

Movie Rating:

(A PG but dark re-telling of fairy tales, Into the Woods is a wonderful and refreshing musical that can watch with your 8 year old newphew, 18 year old girlfriend or 80 year old Ah Gong)

Review by Leng Mong