SYNOPSIS: In the vein of classic coming-of-age films like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, The Edge of Seventeen is a poignant and hilarious look at what it's like to be a teenager today. Growing up is hard, and life is no easier for Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld, Pitch Perfect 2), who is already at peak awkwardness when her best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson, Ravenswood) begins dating her all-star brother Darian (Blake Jenner, Glee). All at once, Nadine feels more alone than ever. With the help of her reluctant sounding-board (Woody Harrelson, True Detective), she soon discovers that what feels like the end of the world may just be the beginning of growing up.

MOVIE REVIEW:

In 2016, STX and Huayi Bros scored a hit with a little movie about moms going wild. On a meagre budget, Bad Moms made like seven times at the box-office. Probably hoping to repeat this miracle, both parties released a coming-of-age drama later in the year though it hardly makes any waves anywhere.

To be fair, The Edge of Seventeen is not a bad movie after all. It has an amazing cast especially lead actress Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit, Pitch Perfect 2) and most importantly a sharp script by first-time director Kelly Fremon Craig. What it lacks is a likeable central character and the story moves along more like a monologue. Amusing for the first 45 minutes or so but simply gets too draggy past that.

Steinfeld plays 17-year-old Nadine who proclaims she is much older than the average teenager in terms of thinking. She has only one friend, Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) since junior school while her older brother Darian (Blake Jenner) has everything Nadine lacks- lots of friends, a fantastic bod, popularity and the apple of his mother’s eye (Kyra Sedgewick). When Nadine finds out that her only friend in the world has become an item with Darian, all hell breaks loose as Nadine unable to control her emotions turned into a complete shithead and did the unthinkable act of hooking up with her questionable long-time crush.

The movie has all the basic ingredients of telling an angst teenage story from a girl’s point of view. There’s the school crush, overprotective parents, siblings rivalry and misunderstanding between best friends. Topics that never stray far away from a coming-of-age picture are captured gloriously right here. It’s this generation Mean Girls and Easy A with of course social media thrown in for good measures. It’s a movie for anyone who has been through the awkward stage of being 17.           

The young Hailee Steinfeld should be applaud for playing the lonely, awkward over-mature Nadine. Flawless and always believable, Steinfeld is perfect in nailing a self-centered character that seriously deserves no sympathy at all in real-life. This is a movie that succeeds purely because of her and I doubt it’s a role Lindsay Lohan in her heydays will be able to carry through. Not forgetting the ever-reliable Woody Harrelson playing Nadine’s form teacher who also humorously and unwillingly act as her confidante and counselor.

To round things up, if you could get past the fact that Nadine is actually a detestable character that whines at every opportunity and talks more than she listens then The Edge of Seventeen is one teen comedy for you.  

SPECIAL FEATURES:

There’s only 5 minutes of Gag Reel and 4 minutes of Deleted Scenes. 

AUDIO/VISUAL:

Colours and details are generally fine and the Dolby Digital 5.1 serves its purposes for this talky title. 

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee

TRAILER WATCH - 'SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY' TEASER Posted on 06 Feb 2018 After unceremoniously parting ways with 'The Lego Movie' directors Phil Lord and Christopher Lord, Disney's 'Star Wars' spinoff based on the Harrison Ford character Han Solo is finally back on track. The story charts the future iconic Millennium Falcon pilot, Han Solo, as he meets his future co-pilot Chewbacca and encounters Lando Calrissian in a dark and dangerous crimi ... more

When the world was first introduced to the first of the Fifty Shades film series in 2015, audiences were, ahem, sex-cited to see how kinky the movie would be. While it wasn’t Oscar material, it did become the fourth highest grossing R rated movie of all time.

The sequel came along earlier this year, and critics still can’t find the chemistry and passion to feel fired up. The kinkiness of the movie became unintentionally funny, and things fell, ahem, limp.

Send the soundtrack album to the rescue – this is one CD that you can put on loop if you are planning a romantic evening with your other half. The lead single "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" is a suggestive duet by Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik. The mood gets a little naughty with Nick Jonas and Nicki Minaj’s lusty “Bom Bidi Bom” (the purring and panting in the song will get couples in the mood of things).

Elsewhere, there are soulful songs from well known artistes like John Legend (“One Woman Man”), Sia (“Helium”) and Corrine Bailey Rae (she performs a cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist”). Each seems to be mourning the hurt and heartache that love brings along.

The second official single "Not Afraid Anymore" by Halsey is a thumping song which takes listeners to the darker realms of a romantic relationship. The 19 track album also includes performances by other artistes like Tove Lo (“Lies in the Dark”), Jose James (“They Can’t Take That Away from Me”), JP Cooper (“Birthday”) and Anderson East (“What Would It Take”). Each brings his or her own flavour to this eclectic of music.

There are also two score cues by composer Danny Elfman. Although brief, the suggestively named tracks “On His Knees” and “Making It Real” close the album nicely.

Who can’t wait for the last film of the series, “Fifty Shades Freed” to, ahem, come in 2018? 

ALBUM RATING:

Recommended Track: (11) The Scientist - Corinne Bailey Rae

Review by John Li

Genre: CG Animation
Director: Kelly Asbury
Cast: Demi Lovato, Rainn Wilson, Joe Manganiello, Jack McBrayer, Danny Pudi, Jake Johnson, Mandy Patinkin, Ellie Kemper, Gabriel Iglesias, Tituss Burgess, Gordon Ramsay, Michelle Rodriguez, Ariel Winter, Julia Roberts
Runtime: 1 hr 30 mins
Rating: PG
Released By: Sony Pictures Releasing
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 6 April 2017

Synopsis: In this fully animated, all-new take on the Smurfs, a mysterious map sets Smurfette and her best friends Brainy, Clumsy and Hefty on an exciting and thrilling race through the Forbidden Forest filled with magical creatures to find a mysterious lost village before the evil wizard Gargamel does. Embarking on a rollercoaster journey full of action and danger, the Smurfs are on a course that leads to the discovery of the biggest secret in Smurf history!

Movie Review:

Movie Rating:

(This, ahem, reboot of The Smurfs doesn’t offer more than it should, and works well for its young target viewers) 

Review by John Li

AWARD-WINNING LOCAL MOVIE POP AYE COMES TO CINEMAS 13 APRIL Posted on 22 Mar 2017 Ahead of its release on 13th April, the official movie trailer and poster for the highly acclaimed local movie POP AYE 《大笨象》has been released. Written and directed by first-time feature film director Kirsten Tan, POP AYE is a hot film festival favourite, bagging the Special Jury Award for Screenwriting in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance F ... more

Genre: Drama
Director: Elliott Lester
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maggie Grace, Kevin Zegers, Scoot McNairy, Hannah Ware, Mariana Klaveno
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins
Rating: NC16 (Some Violence and Scene of Intimacy)
Released By: Shaw 
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 27 April 2017

Synopsis: The story of two complete strangers, Roman Melnyk, (ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER) a construction foreman, and Jake Bonanos, an air traffic controller, (SCOOT MCNAIRY) who become inextricably bound together after an unfortunate tragedy.

Movie Review:

Aside from trading barbs with President Donald J. Trump on Twitter, Arnold Schwarzenegger has sadly faded from our collective consciousness. That is all too evident in the box-office reception of his more recent movies – namely Kim Jee-woon’s ‘The Last Stand’ in 2012 and David Ayer’s ‘Sabotage’ in 2014 – and not even a return to his most iconic role in ‘Terminator: Genisys’ two years ago could reverse that. It is no wonder that Schwarzenegger opted for a less action-heavy role in the zombie drama ‘Maggie’ by playing a grief-stricken father who goes all out to save his infected teenage daughter, and in the process earning some rare praise for his dramatic chops. And it is also no wonder that he has reprised essentially the same role here in ‘Aftermath’, another (supposedly at least) character-driven drama that sees him struggling to cope with the death of his beloved wife and pregnant daughter following a horrific mid-air plane crash.

As its opening credits tell you, the movie is inspired by the 2002 air disaster that took place outside of Überlingen, Germany, in which a passenger plane from Moscow collided with a cargo plane in midair, killing everyone on board. About two years after being cleared of responsibility, the Swiss air traffic controller who had been in contact with both planes was stabbed to death at his home by a Russian man who had lost his wife and children in the crash. Indeed, like its title suggests, the focus of this Javier Gullon-scripted story is not on the crash per se, so the closest you’ll get to seeing the accident is a computer screen in the control tower showing two triangles glowing red and heading straight for each other before disappearing from the monitor altogether. Rather, the emphasis here is the impact of that crash on one Roman Melnyk (Schwarzenegger), a Russian immigrant working as a construction foreman whose thrill at finally being reunited with his family is transformed abruptly into grief.

Staying true to the true story, Roman’s reaction to the freak accident is stretched across a two-year timeframe, which though admirable in its authenticity, requires a compelling character arc in order for us to comprehend the anguish he is going through during that time. And that is precisely where both Gullon and director Elliot Lester ultimately falters. Immediately following the crash, Roman’s grief is characterised by a stunning sense of emptiness, so much so that he decides to sign up as a volunteer at the crash site, eventually discovering a pair of seats suspended from a tree with his daughter still strapped in. After that dramatic turn however, the movie itself struggles to pin down Roman’s mourning – once the obligatory stages of cinematic grief, i.e. abandoning his job, spending his days morosely watching home movies and his nights sleeping next to his loved ones’ graves at the cemetery, are exhausted, it finally settles down to Roman’s determination to have someone assume responsibility and apologise for what had happened.  

To be sure, Roman’s perspective is only half of the story; indeed, Gullon’s narrative is structured as a two-hander that juxtaposes Roman’s grief next to air traffic controller Jake Bonaos’s (Scott McNairy) guilt. He retreats into bed, he withdraws from his family (who, following one particular meltdown where he serves his little boy raw eggs for breakfast, prompts his wife (Maggie Grace) to suggest that they spend some time apart), and after the investigation, accepts the severance package from his employer and settles down into a new identity in a different town working as a travel agent. As much as Roman earns our empathy, it is clear that the movie wants us to feel pity for Jake too, whose actions were but one in a chain of human errors that precipitated the tragedy. In fact, it is during his reunion with wife and teenage son that Jake finally comes face-to-face with a supposedly inconsolable Roman, that fateful climax you were waiting for from the very beginning which sees Roman claiming Jake’s life as compensation for the loss of his loved ones.

For that tragic intersection to make psychological sense, we would have needed to believe at least that Roman was exasperated in his search for closure and that he had an obsessive and retributive side which led to him searching out Jake. Somewhat ironically, it is Roman that proves to be the story’s weaker link, which fails to build up a persuasive depiction of a man driven from a desire for accountability to a thirst for revenge. Schwarzenegger does a decent job conveying his character’s stoic mourning, but one wonders if a character thespian would have portrayed the gamut of emotions within Roman – shock, loss, anger, frustration and finally, rage – more keenly. Despite his best abilities, it is undeniable that Schwarzenegger’s capacity for deeper, more complex, emotional beats is somewhat limited, and more so than in ‘Maggie’, these limitations are quite plainly evident here. It doesn’t help that Schwarzenegger continues to be haunted by the ghosts of his blockbusters past, and you’re half expecting that he simply let out his wrath than bottle it all up.

If it isn’t yet clear, ‘Aftermath’ is a depressing movie to watch from start to finish. Both Roman and Jake start off from much better points in their respective lives, are struck by calamity, never quite recover, and even when one of them looks like he might be bouncing back, is swiftly upended yet again by misfortune. But it also feels much more like a slog than it needs to be, especially because it cannot quite get a handle on just what Roman is going through during the two years before he finally confronts Jake. Telling two sides of the story over that two-year period also makes the movie as a whole less coherent because of the disjointed time frames. Much as we would have loved for this to be Schwarzenegger’s sophomore comeback, it is sadly not, and if anything, simply reinforces the actor’s own struggle to remain relevant once again.

Movie Rating:

(Lacking a crucially compelling character arc for one of its two protagonists bound together by tragic fate, 'Aftermath' comes off no better than an after-thought, especially for Schwarzenegger's post-action hero movie career)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Drama
Director: Susan Johnson
Cast: Bel Powley, Nathan Lane, Gabriel Byrne, Vanessa Bayer, Colin O’Donoghue, Jason Ritter, William Moseley
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language and Sexual References)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 6 April 2017

Synopsis: Carrie Pilby (Bel Powley) is a 19-year old genius, a year out of Harvard, four years ahead of her peers, living in New York City. Burdened with an overactive moral compass and self-consciously aware of her uncommon intellect, in a city full of people she considers oversexed, deceitful hypocrites, Carrie finds herself isolated, friendless, dateless and unemployed. To coax Carrie out of her shell, her psychiatrist, Dr. Petrov (Nathan Lane), makes a list of goals she is to achieve between Thanksgiving and the end of the year: 1. Go on a date. 2. Make a friend. 3. Spend New Year’s Eve with someone. 4. Get a pet. 5. Do something you loved as a child. 6. Read favourite book. At first Carrie resists, but when her goal-oriented prodigy brain kicks in, she embraces the task with a vengeance. Set against the backdrop of decked-out-for-the-holidays New York City, Carrie evolves into the compassionate person she never knew she wanted to be.

Movie Review:

The more you like the eponymous 19-year-old teenage prodigy who is the subject of this film, the more you’re likely to dislike the film that she is in.

Based upon the New York Times bestselling YA novel of the same name by Caren Lissner, ‘Carrie Pilby’ is a 19-year-old teenage prodigy with an IQ of 185 who has already graduated from Harvard after enrolling at the mere age of 14. Unfortunately, as such characters come, she has far from the perfect life. Her mother died when she was just 12, her Blighty-based father (Gabriel Bryne) has largely been absent since, and she sees a therapist (Nathan Lane) regularly for guidance. Essentially, her genius makes her feel freakish, her social awkwardness compounds her sense of isolation and she doesn’t quite know how to engage human company for which she longs for.

In adapting the book, screenwriter Kara Holden retains the basic structural premise, i.e. that her psychiatrist Dr Petrov (Lane) has given her a list of five tasks to complete which are intended to take her out of her shell. These include making a friend, spending New Year’s Eve with someone (it’s just Thanksgiving when Carrie is assigned these tasks), getting a pet, doing something she loved as a child and reading her favourite book. Yet rather than focus on these five well-intentioned things to accomplish, the attention here falls mostly – and sadly – on her romantic attractions towards a bunch of brainy lost souls in New York City.

There is the philandering MIT grad (Jason Ritter) Carrie picks out from a newspaper classifieds ad that the former has taken out to solicit female company before he seals his marriage vows - though Carrie reaches out to him with the intention of exposing him, they end up connecting unexpectedly with each other over literary interests and almost getting intimate with on the sofa of the apartment he shares with his fiancé. There is the music geek boy next door (William Moseley), whom Carrie initially chides for disturbing the peace of her neighbourhood when he is playing some quirky musical instrument along the back alley of their apartment building. After a couple of run-ins, she discovers that he happens to be a closet Berkeley grad and a New York Philharmonic musician. And last but not least, told over a series of lugubrious flashbacks is the Harvard professor (Colin O’Donoghue) she dated as a student, to whom she lost her virginity as well as her late mother’s copy of J.D. Salinger’s ‘Franny and Zooey’.

No doubt the scenes in between show her getting a pair of goldfish she names Katharine and Spencer (after her favourite actress Katherine Hepburn), taking up a temp job as a proofreader at a law firm on the graveyard shift, and befriending two eccentric colleagues who will become her friends, but neither of these other pursuits are fleshed out adequately or perhaps with the same amount of enthusiasm as Carrie’s love life. If it isn’t yet obvious, what is surely meant to be a coming-of-age tale of a distinctive individual is ultimately reduced to a string of vignettes surrounding her bumpy love life. Only for a while during the third act does her dad show up for the obligatory father-daughter reconciliation, and even that has to be done over a long overdue resolution with the aforementioned bastard Harvard professor from a couple of years ago.

To the credit of indie film star Bel Powley (reprising her precocious turn in her impressive debut ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’), she makes Carrie a lot more endearing and nuanced than her movie allows her to be. Fully embracing her character’s intelligence and idiosyncrasies, Powley makes a truly engaging screen presence. Lane and Bryne lend excellent support, but are again given too little time and space to develop more fully their characters’ respective relationships with Carrie. In contrast, her other male co-stars are often bland and dull, which further begs the question of why so much emphasis has been given to them in the first place.

As a movie though, accomplished producer Susan Johnson’s directorial debut feels choppy and episodic, lacking coherence and continuity as it lurches from subplot to subplot. Of course, the fact that it is a little rough around the edges gives it an indie vibe, but the dearth of wit in the banter as well as the sappy piano score gives off more of an ABC Family movie feel. Feminists will also take offense at how such a brilliant female who reads Foucault and Kierkegaard and rebuffs men's tendency for sugarcoated catcalling is diminished to finding direction in life through her father and a potential male suitor.

But that aside, there is no shaking off the fact that ‘Carrie Pilby’ comes off flimsy and inauthentic, turning what could have been a witty poignant coming-of-age tale into a trite and cutesy journey through the ups and downs of teenage romance.

Movie Rating:

(Reducing what could have been a witty, poignant coming-of-age tale of a unique female individual into a series of romantic vignettes, 'Carrie Pilby' does its own intriguing protagonist poetic injustice)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: David Leitch
Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Sofia Boutella, John Goodman, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan
Runtime: 1 hr 55 mins
Rating: R21 (Some Homosexual Content)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films 
Official Website: http://www.atomicblonde.com

Opening Day: 27 July 2017

Synopsis: Oscar® winner Charlize Theron explodes into summer in Atomic Blonde, a breakneck action-thriller that follows MI6’s most lethal assassin through a ticking time bomb of a city simmering with revolution and doublecrossing hives of traitors. The crown jewel of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, Agent Lorraine Broughton (Theron) is equal parts spycraft, sensuality and savagery, willing to deploy any of her skills to stay alive on her impossible mission. Sent alone into Berlin to deliver a priceless dossier out of the destabilized city, she partners with embedded station chief David Percival (James McAvoy) to navigate her way through the deadliest game of spies. This film is based on the Oni Press graphic novel “The Coldest City,” by Antony Johnston & illustrator Sam Hart.

Movie Review:

As if the roles of Furiosa and Cipher are not kick-ass enough, there’s a reason why Oscar winner Charlize Theron took years to develop and produced this big screen adaptation of the graphic novel by Anthony Johnston and Sam Hart. The character Lorraine Broughton is a tough, relentless bisexual MI6 secret agent, a perfect role that any gung-ho actress in Hollywood would dream to take on.

The year is 1989, just days before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Agent Lorraine Broughton (Theron) is assigned by her superiors played by British thespians, Toby Jones and James Faulker, to Berlin to retrieve “the list”. The reason being that an undercover agent has been killed by a KGB agent in East Berlin while on the case. The victim might also be a lover of Broughton, although details are pretty murky at this point. Once she touches down in Berlin, Broughton’s point of contact happens to be British agent David Percival (James McAvoy), the kind of jerk that might have an agenda of his own. 

Although the advertising materials attempt to sell it as a straight up action thriller, there are more twists and turns than an average rollercoaster ride. It’s definitely not an easy movie to sit through not because the multiple spy games, double crossings are too complex to understand, but because every happening on screen is narrated by Broughton to debrief her superiors, thus resulting in the frequent cutback to the interrogation room. At times, the technique kills the momentum of the story and mostly, it never really serves the narrative much - except that we know Broughton has a penchant to dunk herself in icy cold bath and wear nice lingerie. Lorraine Broughton is a mystery from the beginning to the end.   

What the filmmakers do right is establishing the fact that Broughton is a tough femme fatale who has no qualms to fight several men with nothing but a rope and (wait for the drumroll…..) a supposedly non-stop ten-minute brawl down a staircase and inside an apartment. The sequence is brilliantly staged and choreographed from the guys at 87 Eleven (although I must add The Raid still rules) - it is both realistic and brutal and goes to show that Lorraine Broughton is actually a human being after all. The fighting continues to a car chase which is cleverly shot and manipulated by cinematography Jonathan Sela (John Wick, Transformers: The Last Knight), second only to that memorable car scene in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.

While Theron is pretty much flawless as the lead character, it is James McAvoy who steals the show as he continues to impress with his nasty bad boys roles after Spilt and Filth. As the ambiguous David Percival, audiences are left every minute guessing the man’s true motivation. Is he still serving his country’s needs or serving his own? Is he truly going to protect an East German operative (Eddie Marsen) who has committed “the list” to his memory? Or is he selling him out to the KGB? To say the character of David Percival is a much more interesting watch than Broughton is truly an understatement. The Mummy’s Sofia Boutella on the other hand has the thankless role of playing a rookie French agent who falls in love with Broughton and the very reason why this title is slapped with a R21 rating. At the very least, the lesbian intimate moments weren’t cut.  

Atomic Blonde also offers top-notch production values (neon lights is a must in Berlin it seems) and a crazy mix of 80’s pop tunes ranging from George Michael to Duran Duran. To sum it up, the sophomore effort of John Wick’s co-director David Leitch is quite a mixed bag. On one hand, there are people who would prefer a more direct female version of John Wick - which of course the movie does deliver but sparsely. The filmmakers behind Atomic Blonde probably prefer to deliver a smarter action flick. As it turned out, it’s never that compelling or witty for the two hours runtime though you have to applaud the excellent performances of Theron and McAvoy. 

Movie Rating:

(Forget about Aeon Flux, now you can add Atomic Blonde to Charlize Theron’s glowing resume)

Review by Linus Tee

Genre: Action/Crime
Director: Mak Siu-Fai, Pun Yiu-Ming
Cast: Huang Xuan, Duan Yi Hong, Lang Yue Ting, Zu Feng, Xing Jia Dong, David Wang
Runtime: 2 hrs 1 min
Rating: NC16 (Drug Use And Violence)
Released By: Shaw 
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 6 April 2017

Synopsis: Police officer Lin Kai is assigned to be an undercover in a drug cartel by his supervisor Li Jianguo. As he gradually penetrates into the “Twin Eagles” drug cartel, he discovers that the big boss, Eagle, is connected to a crime case investigated by Li ten years ago. Li was then an undercover. In order to gain Eagle’s trust, Lin is forced to become a drug addict. Fighting against the drug addiction was hard enough, he must not lose his focus on locating Eagle’s drug production base. In the process, Lin finds out that Eagle had seized Li’s work partner, Ning Zhi, for ten years just waiting for the day he could take the revenge. Li has to save Ning even it might cost his life. It is not only about fighting the drug dealers now, it is an extraordinary mission!

Movie Review:

In 2002, Asian movie goers went gaga over Infernal Affairs, a Hong Kong crime thriller directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. The screenplay penned by Mak and Felix Chong tells the story of a police officer who infiltrates a triad (ladies swooned over the exhausted looking but suave Tony Leung), and a police officer secretly working for the same gang (ladies swooned over the villainous but slick Andy Lau).

In the original ending, Leung’s character dies and Lau’s character gets away. In the version shown in Mainland China, Leung’s character dies and Lau’s character is arrested for his mole activities. The alternate ending was shot for the Mainland Chinese market, where censors advocate the punishment of bad guys in movies.

Some 15 years later, Mak returns to the familiar themes of Infernal Affairs and directs this Mainland Chinese production with Anthony Pun, with a story written by Chong. As one character rightly points out in the movie, everything these days is about the renminbi (the official name of the currency introduced by the Communist People's Republic of China at the time of its foundation in 1949), and why wouldn’t Mak and Chong dabble in the lucrative market?

The protagonist is an undercover cop (Huang Xuan, who does a good job at playing the tortured hero) trying to get to the heart of the heroin syndicate business. He has worked his way up the ladder, earning the trust of the mob boss. He must next bust a Golden Triangle heroin cartel led by Eagle, a ruthless Pablo Escobar like character played by the excellent Duan Yihong. In the mix is the undercover cop’s supervisor who has an untold past from his days as a field agent.

The three men have very good on screen chemistry, and each flexes his own acting chops. You wonder whether there is anyone in Mainland China who can’t act (in this writer’s opinion, whether you make it in the fame game depends on whether you have the luck to stand out in the world’s most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion). There is so much acting going on in the 121 minute movie, you wonder whether there is anything in the mental cat and mouse game that wouldn’t intrigue you.

It is nice to watch a movie without familiar faces – you will be totally absorbed in the cast’s commendable ability to scream, shout, emote and tear. Huang is believable as a tormented soul, Duan is gleefully wicked and a joy to watch, while Zu is the kind of superior you would go all the way for.

The filmmakers know their actors well, and effectively create a complicated but captivating web of intense relationships with the characters, There is no way viewers would scorn the characters with disbelief with such strong acting.

Alas, what we get for a finale is an out of this world shootout that goes from the rooftops to the streets. The stunts are ridiculously exhilarating, and the car chases are silly yet fun to watch. It is a deafening, preposterous conclusion to an otherwise well set up plot. And you know the bad guys won’t get away in this one.      

Movie Rating:

(The movie’s leading men impress with their acting prowess, before fighting it out in a loud and preposterous action packed finale)       

Review by John Li

Genre: Drama/Crime
Director: Nathan Morlando
Cast: Bill Paxton, Sophie Nélisse, Josh Wiggins, Colm Feore
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw 
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 13 April 2017

Synopsis: Mean Dreams is a crime thriller about a fifteen-year-old boy who steals a bag of drug money and runs away with the girl he loves while her corrupt cop father hunts them down.

Movie Review:

Mean, abusive and often menacing, the late Bill Paxton puts in a solid performance in one of his final onscreen performances before his untimely death in February this year. This made in Canada crime drama stars Paxton as a corrupted cop and even though he is not the leading man right here, he easily stole the limelight from his younger co-stars.

Teenager Casey Caraway (Sophie Nelisse from The Book Thief) has just moved into the rural country with his police dad, Wayne (Paxton). Her neighbor happens to be a teenage farm boy, Jonas (Josh Wiggins) who works on his father’s cattle ranch. Before long, their friendship turns into puppy love to the dismay of Wayne.   

On one fateful night, Jonas accidentally finds himself trapped inside the back of Wayne’s truck. Noticing there’s a huge bag of money there, Jonas decides to take it and run off with Casey hoping to escape their mundane and abusive lives.

Despite containing a coming-of-age theme, Mean Dreams eschews the romance of The Fault In Our Stars and the innocence of Moonrise Kingdom. The indie title attempts to stand on its own however the writing by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby doesn’t live up to all the promised setup. Part teen romance and part crime drama. These two elements simply don’t go hand in hand in this indie directed by Nathan Morlando.

Most of the running time is spent on the two young lovers who are on the run from Wayne and his equally corrupted partner played by Colm Feore (House of Cards). The interactions between the young stars are subtle and beautiful composed, nothing sexual. There are two brief thrilling chase scenes inserted in-between not to mention an unsatisfying conclusion to all the brouhaha. But all sorts of questions linger on as we wonder about the fate of the young lovers and why Wayne Caraway is such an A-hole in the first place.  

The entire affair works all because of Nelisse and Wiggins’ remarkable chemistry. Remember they are in almost every scene and shot for this 105 minutes movie. Paxton on the other hand basically disappears midway till the finale which is of course a pity consider his character’s motive and action is far more interesting than watching two young runaways dashing from one place to another without much of a plan.

Mean Dreams was first shown at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes last year and several Canadian film festivals before arriving in theaters for general screening. It’s purely arthouse delight and not forgetting the gorgeous cinematography by Steve Cosens. It’s not a complicated movie to follow however those looking for more commercialized teen romance stuff should look elsewhere. 

Movie Rating:

(Years down the road you will not remember Mean Dreams but you will remember the presence of the late Bill Paxton)

Review by Linus Tee