Genre: Comedy/Crime/Mystery
Director: George Clooney
Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Oscar Issac, Julianne Moore, Josh Brolin
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins
Rating: NC16 (Violence And Some Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website:
Opening Day: 9 November 2017
Synopsis: Suburbicon is a peaceful, idyllic suburban community with affordable homes and manicured lawns …the perfect place to raise a family, and in the summer of 1959, the Lodge family is doing just that. But the tranquil surface masks a disturbing reality, as husband and father Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) must navigate the town’s dark underbelly of betrayal, deceit, and violence. This is a tale of very flawed people making very bad choices. This is Suburbicon.
Movie Review:
Rosy façades may belie a different, more convoluted picture – that seems to be at least one of several themes Suburbicon is going for, although we could just as easily say the same of the film. Despite the lustrous sheen of its A-list cast and production team, one doesn’t need to peer much deeper to conclude it’s a deeply flawed film whose delivery fumbles under the weight of its ambitions. Actor-turned-director George Clooney, who wrote the script with frequent collaborator Grant Heslov by reworking an old draft from the 90’s by the Coen brothers, has shot a piece of work that tries to juggle social commentary, dark comedy and noir crime thriller, but ends up doing none of those things very well.
There are two main plots that intersect but unfortunately never quite intertwine as coherently as they should. Set in the 1950s, the first one involves the Meyers, a family of three that has recently moved into the titular town – a picture-perfect slice of suburban bliss. There’s one problem though – dad (Leith M. Burke), mother (Karimah Westbrook), and their son, Andy (Tony Espinosa) are African-American and for all of its middle-to-upper-class resplendence, the staunchly-white town is a racist backwater in terms of social mores. As the film progresses, reactions to the community’s latest transplants intensify from alienation, intimidation, protests to blatant violence. When everyone else goes low, the Meyers go high, deciding to go about their lives conscientiously and with quiet dignity until things ultimately become unbearable.
The second, arguably beefier storyline concerns the Meyers’ next-door neighbours, the Lodges, where the action of a whole different kind unfolds (clearly the Coen-esque bulk of the original script). Channelling more than a passing whiff of black comedy crime-thriller classic Fargo, Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) is the imposing patriarch here dealing with loss in the family. His wife Rose (Julianne Moore) has been killed during a break-in by two men (Glenn Fleshler and Alex Hassell), leaving behind his son Nicky (Noah Jupe) and his sister-in-law Margaret (conveniently Rose’s twin, played also by Julianne Moore), who steps up to the plate to fill her sister’s void in the household. At least this is how it all appears to be, as the truth behind the crime unravels with cataclysmic consequences.
So, what gives? For starters, the first sub-plot about racism feels like a bunch of underdeveloped expository ideas cobbled together, floundering in adding anything substantial to the overarching proposition about the rot beyond our rose-tinted impressions of 50’s American suburbia. The most compelling thing here might just be the fact that for all the Confederate-flag-waving absurdity of the incidents depicted, they’re actually inspired by historical events surrounding the real-life Meyers, who were harassed for being the first African-American family to move to Levittown, Pennsylvania. Not that the onus should fall upon audiences to know this factoid, although Clooney attempts to weave in actual documentary newsreels of “concerned” white denizens advocating segregation on television. But at best, this succeeds in evoking only a general, superficial sense of the twisted, small-town zeitgeist of its times.
We’d hazard an educated guess that this social consciousness arc is meant to be an indictment of the white hypocrisy that turns a blind eye to the homegrown toxicity literally happening next door at the Lodges; that it’s pertinent today in light of reignited conversations in the US about race (from the Black Lives Matter movement to the resurgence of the right and the recent Charlottesville attacks); that, well, racism basically sucks and we should all be indignant about it. But when the Meyers are written to be so bereft of any personality, it’s tough for us to root for any of them seriously.
Mama Meyer in Suburbicon is no Rosa Parks and doesn’t have anything remotely rousing or defiant to say about her family’s persecution, while her husband is so underutilised we might as well forget he even appeared in the movie. There’s a budding friendship between their child Andy and the Lodges’ kid Nicky that shows potential for further development (hope yet in the young who’re unsullied by bigoted social conditioning?), but frustratingly the film fails to mould their rapport into something more concrete. In a nutshell, apart from being relegated to the background as a vehicle for the lynch-mob chaos that distracts Suburbicon’s residents from the Lodges’ main murder drama, Clooney’s awkward grafting on of the entire racism narrative feels like the biggest mistake of the film.
And the Lodges. Where do we start? Sure, we’re given what we were promised: there’s blackmail; there’s revenge, there’s betrayal, all of which are delivered with the stylish licks of Clooney’s competent direction, and cinematographer Robert Elswit and production designer James D. Bissell’s pastel-palleted, plastic-perfect sets. But story-wise there’s also little here that doesn’t reek of predictability. We’ve tried to keep all of this as spoiler-free as possible, but suffice to say the movie gives away too much about the conspiracy behind Rose’s murder even before the halfway mark, and gets quite tedious before gory action is dialled up towards the end (hint: the casualty count doesn’t stop at one). Too many films about imperfect-suburbanites-in-perfect-suburbia have been made, from Little Children to Pleasantville, and we’re not sure we need another cookie-cutter cautionary tale.
Clooney’s penchant for old Hollywood (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind; Good Night, and Good Luck) shows up in Suburbicon’s obvious Hitchhockian influences, but he struggles considerably in mastering a balance between seriousness and black comedy. Images of Damon’s character grumpily squeezing a squeaky pair of hand grips or pedalling furiously on an undersized bicycle feel too much like self-conscious posturing, while we certainly could have done without those wistful trumpet sound effects at the end of a harrowing scene. Thankfully, the cast on this side of the lawn (Damon, Moore, Jupe) are consistently watchable, with the show stealer being Oscar Isaac in the role of a wisecracking claims investigator who turns up at the Lodges’. But the only real inquiry necessary here is what this film could have been if Clooney hadn’t come across this tone-deaf while trying to accomplish so many things at once.
Movie Rating:
(A mismanaged endeavour to balance social commentary and darkly comic crime drama, Surbicon is one piece of real estate that’s stylish on the outside but not necessarily worth your investment)
Review by Tan Yong Chia Gabriel
Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Bruce Willis, Vincent D'Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Jack Kesy, Dean Norris, Mike Epps
Runtime: 1 hr 44 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Violence and Some Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website:
Opening Day: 1 March 2018
Synopsis: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures presents director Eli Roth’s reimagining of the classic 1974 revenge thriller Death Wish. Dr. Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is a surgeon who only sees the aftermath of Chicago violence as it’s rushed into his ER until his wife (Elisabeth Shue) and college-age daughter (Camila Morrone) are viciously attacked in their suburban home. With the police overloaded with crimes, Paul, burning for revenge, hunts for his family’s assailants to deliver justice. As the anonymous slayings of criminals grabs the media’s attention, the city wonders if this deadly avenger is a guardian angel…or a grim reaper. Watch how fury and fate collide in the intense, action-thriller - Death Wish.
Movie Review:
Nope, you aren’t going to hear the leading man of this movie go - Yippie ki yay, mother****er!
Action heroes do not stay young forever, and that rings extra true in this remake of the 1974 movie of the same name based on Brian Garfield's 1972 novel. At 62, Bruce Willis has seen better days by playing the macho character in Pulp Fiction (1994), The Fifth Element (1997) and Armageddon (1998). Unfortunately, his recent attempts in Marauders (2015) and Once Upon a Time in Venice (2017) haven’t been well received by critics.
Looks like things aren’t going to change much with his latest project directed by Eli Roth (Knock Knock).
Willis plays an emergency doctor who has to go through the pain of seeing his wife and daughter sent to ER – unconscious and drenched in blood, no thanks to a group of violent assailants. It seems like the local cops have no time to hunt down the bad guys, so it’s up to the anti hero to avenge his loved ones. As the revenge plan develops, things get out of hand and cross the moral boundary. Viewers are left to wonder whether it is alright to take things into your own hands when the law isn’t able to deliver justice.
On paper, this sounds like a gritty thriller where an everyday man becomes a guardian angel and guns down supposed villains in the society. Copycats are bound to surface, and chaos reign. With Roth helming the flick, you wish you’d get the same amount of guilty pleasure as Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005). What you get instead is a serviceable movie that will, unfortunately, be forgotten years down the road. With the many public shootings that have been saturating the media, this movie also comes off as somewhat distasteful with its trigger happy protagonist. One wonders whether the movie would have been better received if it was released when violence isn’t so rampant.
Willis looks visibility fatigued as the movie’s leading man. While it may be a deliberate attempt to portray the character’s weariness, it bogs down the movie and leaves viewers in the cold. Vincent D'Onofrio (CHiPs), who plays Willis’s younger brother do not have much to work with. Elsewhere, the usually reliable Elisabeth Shue (Battle of the Sexes) is reduced to a one dimensional character who has very limited screen time. There are also uninteresting supporting characters like a pair of boring detectives, a stereotyped group of villains and a teenage daughter who has her future destroyed because of the unfortunate incidents.
Running at 107 minutes, there are many deafening gun shootouts with a generous amount of blood spilt. While we understand that this is a remake of a revenge flick, these sequences may leave some viewers squirming in awkwardness. The reality of things seems too close for comfort. At the end of it all, there is no proper closure and you wonder whether it is alright for a vigilante to take the law into his own hands.
Movie Rating:
(This serviceable revenge thriller is more of a "Yippie Ki Boo")
Review by John Li
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig
Cast: Laura Vandervoot, Tobin Bell, Mandela Van Peebles, Matt Passmore
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Rating: M18 (Violence and Gore)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website:
Opening Day: 2 November 2017
Synopsis: After a series of murders bearing all the markings of the Jigsaw killer, law enforcement find themselves chasing the ghost of a man dead for over a decade and embroiled in a new game that's only just begun. Is John Kramer back from the dead to remind the world to be grateful for the gift of life? Or is this a trap set by a killer with designs of their own?
Movie Review:
Seven years after the last, and supposedly final instalment, of the ‘Saw’ series, the German-born Australian brothers Michael and Peter Spierig attempt to breathe new life into the horror franchise with an entry that is intended as a fresh start – although, to be fair, it is only right at the end that you realise just what this means.
To its religious followers however, ‘Jigsaw’ has an even more immediate question to answer. Is John Kramer, the diabolical mastermind behind the elaborate ‘torture’ games, really dead? Or has he somehow managed to cheat death? That is the fundamental mystery at the heart of this movie, which largely unfolds as two parallel narrative threads whose relation to each one is only revealed just before the climactic finale.
On one hand, you have a pair of detectives Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) and Hart (Cle Bennett), who are on the trail of what appears to be a series of Kramer-inspired killings. They are joined in their investigation by forensic pathologist Logan (Matt Passmore) and his assistant Eleanor (Hannah Emily Anderson), the latter of whom just happens to be a big fan of Kramer and therefore a possible suspect herself.
On the other, you have five hapless victims who wake up at the same time on a farm to find their heads encased in separate metal buckets and their necks attached to long chains on the opposite wall lined with circular saws. Just as with the previous ‘Saw’ movies, each one of these victims has been chosen because of their past socially deviant and/or ungrateful behaviour, and the point of Jigsaw’s machinations were not so much to kill them than to give each an opportunity to redeem himself or herself and cherish the very gift of life itself. As it turns out, there are multiple rounds within the maze which Jigsaw has constructed for them, and every round is designed to weed out one of them before the last man or woman standing.
Just as with its predecessors, ‘Jigsaw’ relies on some sleight-of-hand to keep you guessing just how Kramer lives on; in fact, loyal ‘Saw’ fans will probably recognise precisely what writers Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger have up their sleeves which franchise veteran Kevin Greutert (who served as editor of the first five films and personally directed the last two) has nicely stitched together. Without giving anything away, let’s just say that it doesn’t have anything to do with the supernatural (thankfully!) and that it doesn’t mess with the admittedly convoluted series of events laid out over the last six movies. It is however not terribly clever too, which is one of the reasons why ‘Jigsaw’ is ultimately a passable but unremarkable addition.
Another is the absence of any particularly fiendish traps, which as sadistic as it may sound, is the raison d'être of any ‘Saw’ movie. Among the highlights are the buzzsaw wall we described earlier as well as a silo that fills first with grain and then with various sharp implements, though neither approaches anywhere close to the level of inventiveness that we’ve seen especially in the first three movies (remember the ‘reverse bear trap’ in ‘Saw’, or the pit of used syringes in ‘Saw II’, or the rack in ‘Saw III’?). It should also be said that the Spierigs have opted for a much cleaner and less grimy look and feel than any of the previous films, but that same aesthetic choice means it is somewhat less skin-crawlingly disturbing.
Be that as it may, ‘Jigsaw’ is unlikely to appeal to anyone who’s not already a fan. That’s not the fault of the film itself, which deliberately sidesteps the complex mythology of the first seven movies; rather, these films play to very specific pleasures that we cannot imagine anyone who is so inclined has not yet discovered the series. For those who have, as well as those who have stayed committed to it despite the diminishing returns particularly in the last two sequels, this latest entry doesn’t quite boast a twisted enough mystery plotting or enough memorable set-piece death-traps to truly stand out. Yet even though this blade is dulled, ‘Jigsaw’ is not without its fair share of visceral thrills, so those looking for its unique brand of Halloween horror should still find this a satisfying return to a franchise once thought to be all but dead.
Movie Rating:
(As this modestly successful but unremarkable entry proves, there is life yet in the 'Saw' franchise after a seven-year layoff, even though the traps aren't as clever and the plotting not quite as surprising)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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IT BREAKS BOX-OFFICE RECORDS WHILE JUMP-STARTING US BOX OFFICEPosted on 11 Sep 2017 |
Genre: Drama
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brian Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson
Runtime: 2 hrs 1 min
Rating: NC16 (Violence & Disturbing Scenes)
Released By: UIP
Official Website:
Opening Day: 14 September 2017
Synopsis: A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence. From filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream), mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer in this riveting psychological thriller about love, devotion and sacrifice.
Movie Review:
I’ll be honest – I fucking hated ‘Mother!’, and by that I mean I absolutely loathed it. If you thought ‘Black Swan’ was pretentious, well you haven’t yet seen writer-director Darren Aronofsky’s latest self-aggrandizing piece of ‘artistic filmmaking’.
The titular character is never named, and as played by Jennifer Lawrence, is the adoring wife of an also unnamed middle-aged poet – referred to as ‘Him’ (Javier Bardem) – stuck in writer’s block. They live in a gorgeous octagonal Victorian mansion, which she is painstakingly renovating. We find out later that the house was burned down in a fire which consumed her husband’s first wife, and that he had pulled from the ashes a burnished crystal which he now displays proudly in his study.
Then out of the blue, a stranger (Ed Harris) turns up at their doorstep. He says he’s an orthopaedic surgeon who’s looking for a place to stay, and that he had mistaken their house for a bed-and-breakfast. To her horror, ‘Him’ invites the ‘man’ to stay; and by the next day, his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) arrives, followed by their two quarrelling sons (Domhnall and Brian Gleeson). Before the day is over, one son will bludgeon and accidentally kill the other, resulting in a pool of blood on the wooden floorboards that she will scrub clean save for a patch shaped in a vagina.
It doesn’t take a genius to see the parallel with the Cain and Abel story in the Bible, or the 10 plagues that make a brief appearance one by one. Those familiar with Aronofosky will know that he has been fascinated with Christianity – from his first feature ‘Pi’ to ‘Noah’ to ‘The Fountain’, Aronofsky has consistently drawn allegories and imagery from Biblical stories. ‘Mother!’ is no different, but there is no coherence, no logic and no purpose in his references here.
The anything-goes, anyhow-told narrative has unwelcome strangers turning up at her house to mourn the death of the ‘man’s’ son, an unleashing of pent-up passion between her and ‘Him’, her unexpected pregnancy afterwards that lets her morph into the Virgin Mary, her husband’s sudden inspiration and overnight success, the arrival of cult followers that want to use her newborn son as blood sacrifice, and last but not least plenty of sectarian wars and conflict that culminate in a full cycle of destruction and reincarnation. Only those enamoured with ‘bullshit’ will think that revealing any of these unexpected twists and turns amounts to ‘spoilers’; but really, it’s a lot of shock-and-awe wrapped around a bastardisation of notable Biblical tales for absolutely nothing.
Indeed, even more absurd than the movie itself is how some have tried so strenuously to justify its nonsense. One reading has it as an allegory for the abuse of Mother Earth, a warning for climate change; another explains how it describes the process by which art is created and how the artist eventually becomes a slave to that art; another talks about how some men have treated their women in marriage, reducing them to supporting roles and robbing them of agency and respect. Neither of these interpretations disguises the fact that the movie is a haphazard mess of ideas that never amounts to anything substantial or compelling.
Why then should we put up with its misogyny? Why then should we put up with the overwrought delirium that just gets more and more sickening? Or more fundamentally, why should we even care about what’s happening onscreen? Not even Lawrence, or Bardem, or Harris, or Pfeiffer can add depth to their characters, which are so thinly written that we wonder why the actors even bothered. And therein lies the stark truth about the madness we are supposed to discern as an expression of profound ideas – there is simply nothing behind it, no meaning, no wit and certainly no redemption.
‘Mother!’ is the sad product of an artist’s self-indulgence taken to its own grotesque extremes. It is no art, it is no genius, and it is definitely no masterpiece, despite critics caught up in the same pretension will try to convince you. If you’re curious about why we hated it so much, then go see it by all means; otherwise, stay away from this motherfucking disaster.
Movie Rating:
![](\"http://www.moviexclusive.com/image/mx%20star.gif\")
(Utter bullshit masquerading as art, allegory or whatever excuse some deluded critics are calling it, 'Mother!' is a loathsome exercise in self-indulgence)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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TRAILER WATCH - THE COMMUTERPosted on 13 Sep 2017 |
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TRAILER WATCH - BLEEDING STEELPosted on 14 Sep 2017 |
Genre: Supernatural/Thriller
Director: Xavier Gens
Cast: Sophie Cookson, Corneliu Ulici, Brittany Ashworth, Matthew Zajac
Runtime: 1 hr 39 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes And Horror)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films
Official Website:
Opening Day: 12 October 2017
Synopsis: Based on true-life events, a priest is put behind bars for the homicide of a nun on whom he was performing an exorcism on. A journalist strives to establish if he did murder a deranged human being or if the accusations are false and he has lost the battle with a demonic presence, that she may possibly have come into contact with
Movie Review:
As tempted as you might be to check out this latest addition into the demonic possession sub-genre because of its talent pedigree (it’s produced by Peter Safran, one of the producers of ‘The Conjuring’ and written by the duo behind the same movie), ‘The Crucifixion’ is a lot more generic than you’re probably expecting it to be.
In a nutshell, this is the story of a sceptic who investigates an exorcism gone wrong and comes face-to-face with the demonic entity herself. That sceptic here is young New York Sentinel reporter Nicole Rawkins (Sophie Cookson), whose excuse for her ‘unbelief’ is the loss of her mother to cancer a few years ago. Although journalistic integrity would have it that she encounter the facts with an open mind, Nicole believes that it is the fault of the priest and four other nuns who had performed an exorcism on a fellow mentally ill nun named Adelina over the course of a few days that she had eventually died.
There is both fact and fiction to their tale, which is supposedly based on a 2005 incident in Romania. The names have been changed, but the details of the case remain essentially the same. Whether the victim was in fact possessed or simply suffering from schizophrenia is as much a matter of the facts as it is one of faith – after all, if one doesn’t believe in God and/or the Devil, then that person is not going to believe that there is such a legitimate thing as exorcisms in the first place. That said, there is no such ambiguity here, as it seems patently clear throughout that the deceased was indeed taken by a demon who goes by the name of Agares.
Without the benefit of the doubt, ‘The Crucifixion’ therefore becomes a straightforward horror bereft of intrigue. The script by Chad and Carey W. Hayes has Nicole spend her days in town talking to the local Bishop Gornik (Matthew Zajac) who had stopped the exorcism (thus apparently dooming it), another local priest Father Anton (Corneliu Ulici), and the medical professionals who had cared for Adelina when she was alive as well as those who had performed the autopsy to determine her cause of death – but at least two out of three of the perspectives listed here are pointless if the conclusion is already that Adelina was possessed.
In between, Nicole has her own run-in with the demon herself, which come in the proverbial forms of hallucinations, voices and bugs. Unfortunately, up till the final climactic end where Father Anton has to perform an impromptu exorcism on Nicole herself, there is nothing really scary or significant that happens. It is telling in itself that director Xavier Gens resorts time and again to jump-scares in order to try to get you spooked, instead of establishing build-up and suspense like how ‘The Conjuring’ movies did.
But the fault isn’t just Gens’ alone, who to his credit, has a competent grasp of pacing and tone; instead, the movie is thus lacklustre because of a weak script that doesn’t have an interesting story to tell or characters that we should care about. Try though she does, Cookson can’t quite make us bother about Nicole, especially not when what we learn about her during the course of the film is how she develops an unexpected romantic interest in Father Anton than how the unexpected death of her mother had affected her so profoundly in the first place. There is little characterisation of the other supporting acts to speak of, but in failing to create a compelling lead in Nicole, the movie ultimately loses credibility.
Truth be told, ‘The Crucifixion’ is a rather weak excuse of a ‘demonic possession’ movie. It isn’t just how we’ve seen all that’s here before, but also how dull it manages to be even as it is familiar. Really, it doesn’t matter if you’re a believer or not – objectively, this is a dreary effort at an exorcism thriller whether seen from the eyes of faith or plain logical reason. Unless you really have nothing else to do this Halloween, don’t even bother crucifying your time here.
Movie Rating:
(As derivative and dull as 'exorcism' thrillers can get, 'The Crucifixion' offers little horror but regular - and increasingly frustrating - jump-scares)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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TRAILER WATCH - ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLDPosted on 16 Sep 2017 |
Genre: Drama
Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Cast: Ryosuke Yamada, Toshiyuki Nishida, Nijiro Murakami, Kanichiro, Rico Narumi, Mugi Kadowaki, Kento Hayashi, Masato Hagiwara, Machiko Ono
Runtime: 2 hrs 9 mins
Rating: PG
Released By: Golden Village Pictures & Clover Films
Official Website:
Opening Day: 5 October 2017
Synopsis: Three delinquents run into an old house to hide from the wrongdoing they committed in the middle of the night. The house was once a general good store long ago where people could leave letters in the mailbox to seek advice for anything that were troubling them. Although the store was supposed to have been shut down, the entrance of these delinquents mysteriously triggers the mailbox to connect the past and the present - the letters from the past begins slipping through the mail slot. Are these letters from the past, crossing time to reach them? Although the three are bewildered by what is transpiring, they write responses to the letters, standing in for Yuji Namiya, the owner of the store at the time when the letters were written. The secret of the general store gradually comes to light, as well as a connection to a certain orphanage. The three individuals, who have never seriously considered anyone else’s problems their whole lives, find themselves connected to these strangers. Will this general store, which has helped so many troubled people decide their path, cause a miracle one last time?
Movie Review:
The Miracles of Namiya General Store is centred on a general that offers an advice column service, set in 1980s Japan. Think of the general store as what we commonly known as a mama shop, the one which you used to swing by after school for your favourite snacks, but with an added service – pretty much like an aunt agony column. The stories transpire across time spaces, and speak about 5 individuals’ lives all linked with this Namiya General Store and an orphanage.
The movie is adapted from a novel of the same name, written by popular novelist Keigo Higashino. The title was popularized as one of Keigo’s most touching works so far. It not only received a book prize in Japan, it was also positively received in China, selling more than 1.6 million copies to date. It has been adapted to stage plays in Japan before director Ryuichi Hiroki decided to adapt it to the silver screen. The human drama and the miracles of the connectivity is possibly the biggest draw of the movie.
Yuji Namiya (played by Toshiyuki Nishida) dedicated his life in running his business and helping solve the issues his customers were facing. No matter how big or small those problems are, he personalizes the replies and provide his advice to them, gaining trust and recognition for what he’s done in that small town. However, his body was ailing by the day and needed to leave the place. But he received also visions about the miracles that were to happen at the store. That became part of the explanation of why the three boys who chanced upon the abandoned old store was receiving letters that were sent from the past.
The original novel is made up of 5 story arcs, which the movie attempted to compact within the approximately 2-hour runtime. While there are criticisms of how the content has been reduced to being shallow and too surface, the movie did do justice in bringing out the key elements of those story arcs. The second story arc of Seri (played by Mugi Kadowaki) was particularly memorable. It was also crucial in setting up the movie and helping viewers understand the back and forth between the 2012 and 1980s. Mugi also made an impression with her moving performance of the song, ‘Reborn’, which was specially written for the movie by veteran musician, Yamashita Tatsuro. The song was also the cherry on the cake which gave an additional dimension and overarching message that strings the movie together.
The top billed actor the movie, Ryosuke Yamada, acts as Atsuya, the leader of the three delinquents who was somewhat instrumental in the story. However disappointingly, the role in this movie is probably not the most challenging nor was it his best performance to date. His roles in both Grasshopper (2015) and Assassination Classroom sequels (2015 & 2016) are better testaments of his acting potential. And excitingly, the soon to be released real life adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist, which stars Yamada as the lead character, is also a highly anticipated one.
Overall, The Miracles of Namiya General Storedoes well in intertwining the stories of unlikely individuals whose destinies are connected because of the ‘miracles’ that happen at the general store. The pace of the movie could have worked better, but the raw emotions captured and human drama played well in delivering a heart-warming story.
Movie Rating:
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(The search for the meaning of life has started from time immemorial. This miracle-filled journey brings about both tears and laughter)
Review by Tho Shu Ling
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