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TRAILER WATCH - WRECK IT RALPH 2Posted on 05 Jun 2018 |
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TRAILER WATCH - BUMBLEBEEPosted on 05 Jun 2018 |
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TRAILER WATCH - HALLOWEENPosted on 09 Jun 2018 |
Genre: Comedy
Director: James Haslam
Cast: Alice Eve, Tim Roth, Maggie Q, Uma Thurman, Sofia Vergara, Stephen Fry
RunTime: 1 hr 35 mins
Rating: M18
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website:
Opening Day: 28 June 2018
Synopsis: THE BRITS ARE COMING follows an eccentric British con-artist couple, Harriet (Uma Thurman) and Peter Fox (Tim Roth), who flee to Los Angeles to escape paying a large debt to a notorious gangster named Irina (Maggie Q) after a failed poker game. In an attempt to raise the money, the couple approach a former associate (Stephen Fry), who secretly sells their whereabouts. With Irina hot on their trail, the pair scheme to win back the money by executing a jewel heist involving Peter’s ex-wife (Alice Eve) and her new husband…
Movie Review:
We love Uma Thurman and Tim Roth, but that’s hardly enough for us to enjoy this terribly scripted and appallingly directed heist comedy. Paired as husband and wife, Roth’s Peter and Thurman’s Harriet are two scam artists who flee to Los Angeles to steal a priceless jewel from Peter’s ex-wife Jackie (Alice Eve), in order to repay their gambling debt to ruthless mobster Irina (Maggie Q). It’s not difficult to see that co-writer and director James Haslam had intended for this to be a Elmore Leonard-styled breezy crime caper, but the result has neither the thrills or the laughs that he intended; instead, what we see are a couple of perfectly respectable actors and actresses forced to make the best of painfully unfunny situations and horribly cliched lines, and we dare say that this will probably go down as one of the worst films we’ve seen this year.
To be fair, it doesn’t start that way – in fact, the opening which sees Harriet doing a drug run for Irina with an elderly woman dressed in a nun’s habit in front of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral promises a sharp, subversive satire. Ditto Stephen Fry’s sadistic cum paedophilic priest Sidney, who is introduced spraying water at two homeless people who had spent the night on the bench in front of his church, and is later seen with his Asian toy boy inside the very place of worship. Alas what spark the first act might have had is surely and definitively doused by the time we are introduced to a whole menagerie of over-the-top folks, including an uptight Jackie, her egotistic self-absorbed actor fiancé Gabriel (Crispin Glover), his rapacious leading lady Vivien (Sofia Vergara) and his long-suffering personal assistant Gina (Parker Posey).
A dinner party at Gabriel’s sprawling mansion in the middle act where these characters are gathered should be the ideal opportunity for all manner of laugh-out-loud shenanigans; unfortunately that potential is not only squandered, but utterly devastated by the sheer absence of any creative display. What is supposed to qualify as humour is a lot of cussing, plenty of inebriated behaviour, unbridled sexual advances and repeated literal pratfalls; worse still, the lines are unfunny, the gags just plain juvenile, and the acting so cringe-worthy you’d feel bad for the talented cast clearly trying to compensate for the quality of the material they have been given to work with. Perhaps the only joke which works is that of Harriet posing as dog whisperer to Jackie’s pet chihuahua, but that alone simply makes how tedious the rest of the movie is so glaringly obvious.
Things do perk up if slightly during the final act, which sees Irina finally catch up to Harriet and Peter as well as blackmail Sidney into locating the couple. But even then, the film struggles to bring itself to a smart yet cheer-worthy finish that any respectable heist movie would, and ultimately fizzles than sizzles with a lame shootout so poorly staged it could very well have ended up on the cutting floor of Maggie Q’s ABC/ Netflix TV series ‘Designated Survivor’. You have to hand it to Thurman and Roth for their commitment, trying to bring as much sass and jazz to a pair of fundamentally unlikeable people despite given so little to work on. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Thurman front and centre in a crowd-pleasing film like this, but the stunningly gorgeous actress chews up every bit of scenery without ever skipping a beat.
We’d had very much liked for this to be Thurman’s comeback vehicle, or that matter Roth’s, both of whom were star indie character actors in the 1990s for good reason. But ‘The Con Is On’ is neither, simply because it is so badly conceived and executed that it deserves to be known only in ignominy. It isn’t smart, it isn’t funny and it isn’t entertaining by any measure, and there’s nothing that any cast could have done to save it. The blame falls squarely on Haslam and his co-writer Alex Michaelides, who seem content for their film to run on the fumes of audience goodwill towards their incredibly and impossibly talented ensemble. The real con here is how they had assembled such a list of celebrities – and unless you want to be scammed of one-and-a-half hours of your life, you’ll do well to avoid this at all costs.
Movie Rating:
(For so valiantly giving their best to a film so dull, dumb and dreary, Uma Thurman and Eric Roth deserve one star each)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Adventure/Action
Director: Travis Knight
Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Pamela Adlon, Stephen Schneide, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Jason Drucker, Kenneth Choi, Ricardo Hoyos, Abby Quinn, Rachel Crow, Grace Dzienny
Runtime: 1 hr 54 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)
Released By: UIP
Official Website:
Opening Day: 20 December 2018
Synopsis: On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns this is no ordinary, yellow VW bug.
Movie Review:
The ‘Transformers’ franchise had all but run aground with the fifth and most incoherent entry last year, so ‘Bumblebee’ is really an inevitable step for its studio if it didn’t want yet to lay that cinematic universe to rest. Though Michael Bay remains involved, he is only here as producer, having handed the reins of this spinoff to ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ director Travis Knight. Despite this being his first live-action feature and sophomore filmmaking effort, Knight proves an inspired choice to helm this intimate, character-driven movie, as he deftly balances the requisite blockbuster action spectacle with a keen eye on the emotional arcs of its central characters. It hardly is as action-packed as Bay’s quintet, but there is wit, warmth and a lot of heart in this love story between a teenage girl and her alien robot.
Oh yes, you read that right – ‘Bumblebee’ offers a significant change-up from the previous films, centering on a female protagonist instead of the usual male suspects. That individual is adorable tomboy Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld), a music fan and auto enthusiast who is about to turn 18 but is still very much hung up over the loss of her dad. Charlie is not yet ready to accept that her mom Sally (Pamela Adlon) has a new boyfriend Ron (Stephen Schneider), and resents them as well as her younger brother Otis (Jason Drucker) for having moved on. By chance, Charlie comes across a dilapidated yellow 1967 Volkswagen Beetle in the junkyard where she hangs out to find spare parts to remodel the classic 1959 Corvette which her dad treasured. Needless to say, Charlie will discover in no time that the VW Bug is in fact a young soldier by the name B-127, which had been tasked by his leader Optimus Prime (once again voiced by Peter Cullen) to establish a base for his fellow Autobots on Earth.
As penned by Christina Hodson, the relationship between Charlie and Bumblebee becomes a semi-Spielbergian tale of intergalactic friendship. One by choice and the other by circumstance, both find themselves having no other companion, and the bond that ensues between them is somewhat akin to that of a master and pet. There is low-key charm and laughs to be had in their scenes, including one by the beach where she teaches him how to conceal himself, another in her garage where he shows his distaste for certain 80s music that she introduces him to, and another at the front porch of a snooty female schoolmate’s house whom he helps her take sweet revenge on using toilet paper and eggs. You can probably guess that the movie is setting itself up for some point later on when both of them will be forcibly separated, but given how genuinely earnest it is done, you’ll likely still fall for it.
That focus on character- and relationship-building does mean the middle act is more deliberately paced, which will test the patience of younger viewers as well as those looking for the sort of non-stop adrenaline thrills of the earlier films. Yet we suspect many will not mind a much more poignant story, which at its essence is about two characters finding their purpose and voice next to each other. In the case of Bumblebee, that is pretty much literal, but is a surprisingly neat explanation to why he ends up communicating via the song lyrics on radio channels; but in the case of Charlie, it is about rediscovering her reason for living following the emotional hole that her father’s death had left, and in that regard, there is a nice call-back to her earlier days as a champion high diver right at the end of the film.
Lest there be any doubt, it does end on a high – meaning, thrilling – note, with Bumblebee confronting two vicious Decepticons at a shipyard where a transmission tower will determine the fate of humanity. Befitting this origin story, the finale is all on Bumblebee (and not say Optimus Prime), and in place of scale, there is a lot more emphasis here on slick one-to-one robot-a-robot judo-like action. The details here matter, and even amidst the heat and noise of battle, you’ll still be able to take in fully the way these robots transform, folding and twisting from one shape to another. It is a welcome change from the frenzy of Bay-hem, where we could often hardly make out who is fighting with whom, let alone how all that metal is clanging together.
Much care too has been paid to the period details – tab cola, rotary phones, rabbit-ear television sets, VHS tapes, the primitive Pong video game, and of course the pop culture references. Whether it is ‘The Breakfast Club’ (watch for how Bumblebee responds after watching the iconic scene of Judd Nelson walking across the football field and punching the air) or the soundtrack of classic 80s bangers like Rick Astley, the Smiths and LL Cool J, Knight clearly has a fond affection for the era. That same nostalgia in fact extends to the material itself, from the choice of Bumblebee as a humble VW bug (before his Camaro days) to the inclusion of such fan favourites like Soundwave and attack dog Ravage. Oh yes, the film’s sensibility is firmly rooted in the 80s, which melds an old-school action-adventure with the young romance of classic John Hughes through the inclusion of Jorge Lendeborg Jr.’s boy-next-door.
Importantly, you shouldn’t go into ‘Bumblebee’ expecting the bombast of the earlier films – and we suspect for many, the change in pace, tone and setting will indeed be both refreshing and appreciated. Like we said, there is a lot more emphasis here on character- and relationship-building, which pays off in several heart-tugging moments in the third act. It may not have the same frenetic exhilaration of the Bay movies, but there is thrill in being able to see the transformation of the robots themselves, whether in or out of battle. For once in the franchise, there is truly humour and heart in the story, the former too from the addition of John Cena as a hard-nosed, brick-jawed military man who comes to learn the difference between an Autobot and a Decepticon. With ‘Bumblebee’, we dare say the ‘Transformers’ franchise roars back to life with a terrific reboot, and we hope that sets the course for the (inevitable) next few films to follow.
Movie Rating:
(Eschewing the earlier films' tendency for wanton indiscriminate mayhem, this character-driven, more intimate spinoff packs wit, warmth and a lot of heart into a story of finding your purpose and voice)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Director: Andrew Lau
Cast: Louis Koo, Zhou Dongyu, Chen Xuedong, Bao Beier, Guo Biting, Wang Taili, Wu Yue, Alex Fong
RunTime: 1 hr 51 mins
Rating: PG
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website:
Opening Day: 3 January 2019
Synopsis: During the Wanli era of the Ming Dynasty, a rare creature escapes from the western gardens of the Imperial Palace. When the palace puts a hefty bounty on the escaped creature, martial arts masters from all walks of life jump in on the hunt...
Movie Review:
Remember that old saying about cooks and broth? Kung Fu Monster is an excellent demonstration of this proverb. Rife with a cast that vies for screen time, the script trips over itself with its littering of superfluous side comments. Assembling a motley of knavish characters, the effect becomes even worse, as they throw liners that repeat themselves ad nauseum. The barrage never stops, and halfway through the film, you’ve lost the plot.
The fantasy wuxia film by Andrew Kau adheres to the rinse-and-repeat formula commonly seen in commercial chinese cinema these days. Unctuous amounts of special effects, an ensemble of dysfunctional characters, a popular personality or two, a cutesy mascot primed for intellectual property and a thin script rigged to showcase them all - in no particular order.
This one takes place in the Ming Dynasty, but it could have been in any of the others because it doesn’t have any bearing on the story. Sun Yehe (Alex Fong Chung Sun) is an ambitious eunuch who wishes to overthrow the emperor by collecting a zoo of monsters and taming them to his bidding.
When his latest pet comes in, it’s a small furry creature not unlike a gremlin. It coos and makes baby sounds, and Yehe tasks Feng Sihai (Louis Koo), his trusted wingman, to torture it to obedience with a silver whip. Sihai chooses to release the creature instead, and the betrayed Yehe puts out a reward of 30,000 taels to anyone who brings back the beast.
Under the manipulation of Leng Bingbing (Bea Hayden), a group of scampish warriors come together to rob the silver from the corrupt officials, but it turns out her plan was to rescue Sihai, her paramour. This eventually leads to a showdown when Yehe chases down the couple and brings his forces to capture them both, along with the monster.
There’s no prizes for guessing that the little imp can transform into a mega monster that saves the day, but by that point it becomes a little hard to care. Lau lost our respect halfway with his heavy-handed manipulation, by dialing up the cute to nauseating levels.
His actors suffer the same fate. Koo is an overly serious (and botoxed) Sihai. Hayden doesn’t have half the magnetism that she is trying to pull off. Even Cheney Chen and Zhou Dongyu loses credibility, as they wave their weapons but never to any effect.
But worst of all has to be Bao Beier. When he drops in on the party, they cast suspicion on his agenda and purpose. I happen to concur. His raffish ways may have meant to give the group an unorthodox way out, but he disturbs every scene with his presence, not unlike a pesky fly. Because all the assembled are of a similar nature, it flattens out the jokes. The warriors constantly shuttle between staying and fleeing, with similar approaches of cheesy empty showmanship and lascivious comments. Think Stephen Chow, without the tickle.
Okay, that white-brow gag and traitor turn was a little fun to watch, but otherwise, Kung Fu Monster is a rolling mess of insecure decisions, suffering from overcompensation in the funny department. You’re better off starting 2019 in another way.
Movie Rating:
(The film is lavish enough, with beautiful production sets and stunning setting, but the script is hacked with lame lines and characters with so little charisma, it lacks the move to win any interest)
Review by Morgan Awyong
Genre: Drama
Director: Sebastian Lelio
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz, Alessandro Nivola
RunTime: 1 hr 54 mins
Rating: R21 (Homosexual Content)
Released By: Sony Pictures Releasing International
Official Website:
Opening Day: 28 June 2018
Synopsis: The film follows a woman as she returns to the community that shunned her decades earlier for an attraction to a female childhood friend. Once back, their passions reignite as they explore the boundaries of faith and sexuality.
Movie Review:
Appropriately, ‘Disobedience’ opens with a sermon by a rabbi in a London orthodox synagogue about free will. We humans are torn between the forces of spiritual good and darkness, he says, and yet what distinguishes us from beasts and angels is the ability to choose whether or not to obey divine commandments. In other words, we are above all given the right to freedom, the right to choose, and therefore the right to disobedience. Then, much to the horror of his congregation, he collapses in front of them and dies.
It is no coincidence that Chilean director Sebastian Lelio begins with that speech, for what follows is really an exploration of how we exercise that free will, both in terms of our personal faith and our desires. For the rabbi’s long-estranged daughter Ronit (Rachel Weisz), that has meant leaving the community she was born into, and choosing to pursue her own career as a photographer in New York. In turn, the community has disavowed her, and when she returns for her father’s funeral, her appearance is greeted with muted shock.
On the other hand, for her childhood friend Esti (Rachel McAdams), that has meant repressing her teenage attraction towards Ronit and choosing to marry the rabbi’s favourite pupil Dovid (Alessandro Nivola). If she was going to be with a man, she might as well be with one of the most respected within the community, she reasoned. Yet as a scene depicting the weekly scheduled sex she and Dovid partake in, there is hardly any passion in their marriage, as and it is no surprise that Ronit’s return sets off a torrent of repressed emotions within Esti that forces her to re-examine her own choice over the years to deny her feelings for Ronit.
The love between Ronit and Esti is the beating heart of Naomi Alderman’s 2006 debut novel, and here Lelio and his co-writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz retain it as the emotional core of their film, even as they dispense with the dual-voice narrative of the source material. That said, the movie doesn’t rush into unleashing their urges for each other; instead, Lelio spends the first act building up Ronit’s return to the community that holds her in mild contempt, whether is it at a dinner with relatives or in a reading of her father’s will where she learns that he had bequeathed the family house to the community. Amidst this carefully observed detail is Esti’s initial reaction to Ronit’s presence, and Lelio brings his camera in close for us to observe her wariness slowly give way to longing.
When Ronit and Esti finally confront their long-suppressed feelings for each other at the halfway mark, the energy between them will set your heart racing. The first kiss that they share exude tortured passion and melancholy, acknowledging how much they have denied each other because of the consequences they were fully aware that they would have to confront. Their subsequent one is a lot more spontaneous, but unfortunately witnessed by two members of the community, who report Esti’s indiscretion not only to the headmistress of the school where she is teaching but also to Dovid himself. And yet, as much as Esti struggles to handle the fallout, it says a lot that she still decides to engage with Ronit in what has been and would likely be the film’s most-talked about and memorable scene.
That key scene, which finds Ronit and Esti indulge fully, completely and utterly in their yearning for each other, is beautiful and sensuous at the same time. It contains no nudity mind you, but there is no need for that for you to feel how emotionally invested these characters are given the two Rachels’ remarkable performances. There is perfect symbiosis in their masterful acting – in Weisz, you feel both the self that ran away to New York and the self that remains tethered to her past; and in McAdams, you feel both the self that wants to be free to pursue its own passions and the self that has been carefully curated to stay compliant with the strict norms of the community. Both actresses are perfectly attuned to their characters’ emotional anguish, which intensifies the sheer attraction between them expressed by their physical intimacy.
As the third side of the emotional triangle, Nivola’s supporting act is just as significant. Though he starts off as an enigmatic figure, he brings clarity to Dovid’s own inner turmoil as he deals with his wife’s change of heart. In particular, the film’s conclusion hinges on his own choice – whether to be oppressively controlling over Esti or to grant her the freedom that she asks from him – and while it is not a happy ending per se, it is a surprisingly nuanced finish which bookends the earlier speech on free will. At its essence, ‘Disobedience’ is a three-hander among Weisz, McAdams and Nivola, and watching them inhabit their fraught and complicated relationship is what makes this drama so compelling and fascinating.
Like his previous films, ‘Gloria’ and the Academy-Award winning ‘A Fantastic Woman’, this English-language debut is also about courage and claiming one’s life. To his credit, Lelio does so without ever seeming to condemn the orthodoxy of faith or imparting any will and judgment upon his characters. It is however an extremely carefully observed study of behaviours both verbal and non-verbal, where every glance and pause reveals what the characters are feeling. More than a statement of defiance, ‘Disobedience’ depicts poignantly what it truly means to be free – free from conformity, free from suffocation and free to love.
Movie Rating:
(As beautiful as it is devastating, this exploration of emotions suppressed and passions unleashed boasts remarkable, masterful performances from both its Rachels)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Crime/Thriller
Director: Herman Yau
Cast: Francis Ng, Julian Cheung, Charmaine Sheh, Chrissie Chau, Louis Cheung, Kent Cheng, Wilfred Lau, Michelle Wai, Sam Lee
RunTime: 1 hr 40 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)
Released By: 2K Studios Pte Ltd and Cathay Cineplexes
Official Website:
Opening Day: 21 June 2018
Synopsis: A lethal infectious disease breaks out in Malaysia forcing authorities to administer a new experimental drug manufactured by international pharmaceutical company – Amanah. When the son of Amanah’s chairman is murdered, Malaysian police officer Lee Weng Kan (Julian Cheung) teams up with his Hong Kong counterpart David Wong (Francis Ng) to investigate the case. As more murders follow, Lee and Wong are contacted by a secret organisation – The Leakers. They claim to know the dark truth about the murders and Amanah…
Movie Review:
Continuing their director-screenwriter partnership that started some seven films ago, Herman Yau and Erica Lee concoct a cops-versus-robbers thriller with a vigilante twist. As the title suggests, somewhere between the good guys and the bad guys lies an organisation who claims to be on a mission of social justice. They want the public to know the truth behind the corrupt practices of a pharmaceutical company named Amanah and its founder Teo Jit Sun (Kent Cheng), who are at the centre of a viral epidemic sweeping through Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Thailand. And to prove their point, they have kidnapped Jit Sun’s younger son Jun Yan (Wilfred Lau), demanding that his father not only make public the formula behind the antidote to the virus, but also release RM$1million worth of the antidote to the health authorities around the world.
It’s an ambitious and intriguing concept all right – ambitious because few Hong Kong filmmakers have tried to portray a real-life pandemic in their territory, let alone Southeast Asia; and intriguing because there is within potential for a compelling moral drama about the circumstances under which we need to choose whether to break the law in order to uphold it. On both counts though, ‘The Leakers’ comes out somewhat short. Despite a promising setup that portends a conspiracy stretching across Malaysia, Hong Kong and Australia, Lee’s script opts for a predictable and easy finish which makes you wonder why it was even necessary to go through so much trouble just to get the truth out. That also means the dilemma at the heart of the organisation’s criminal practices is barely sufficiently fleshed out, though we’d be frank to admit that its target audience may not be bothered.
Indeed, Yau’s film has been billed as a true-blue Hong Kong action thriller, and on that account, it does satisfy. As he demonstrated with last year’s big-budget blockbuster ‘Shock Wave’, Yau is a perfectly competent director of taut and tense thrillers, and this one is no different. The pacing is tight and gripping from start to finish, and even when the script starts showing more and more of its loopholes in the second hour, Yau keeps the wheels turning on the picture so quickly that you won’t have time on your mind to dwell on them. The action too, while not particularly memorable, is cleanly and nicely staged, especially an extended car chase that takes place along the streets and highways around Penang. It’s been a while since we’ve had the pleasure of enjoying such Hong Kong-styled police action, and that nostalgia certainly makes what ‘The Leakers’ has to offer a lot more attractive.
Ditto for the ensemble that Yau has assembled for this film. As thinly drawn as the characters in Lee’s script are, it is the sheer charisma of these actors that make their roles so watchable. Chief among them is Francis Ng, who brings his usual brand of rumpled coolness to the role of the about-to-be-divorced Hong Kong detective David Wong. On the other hand, Julian Cheung is his typical dapper and serious self as the Malaysian police officer Lee Weng Kan, and Ng and Cheung complement each other beautifully as ‘buddy cops’. Charmaine Sheh’s lauded news reporter Carly Yuan plays second fiddle to both men, but she, Cheng, Chrissie Chau, Louis Cheung and Sam Lee add some authentically Hong Kong star power to the film.
Lest we forget, the Hong Kong film industry was built not just on standouts like ‘Infernal Affairs’ but also on hundreds of effortlessly entertaining films like this one. We won’t deny that there could be a much better film within had Lee and her co-writer Li Sheng bothered to develop a less straightforward story and given more flesh to the characters, but with Yau’s steady direction, ‘The Leakers’ is a completely agreeable way to spend one-and-a-half hours of your time. It’s a production full of genuine ‘Hong Kong’ feel for better and for worse, from its relentless pacing, to its action, and of course to its actors. As long as you have your expectations right, ‘The Leakers’ will keep you hooked like a good disposable Hong Kong movie should.
Movie Rating:
(As genuinely entertaining and flawed as the typical Hong Kong action thriller, Herman Yau's cops-versus-robbers tale with a vigilante twist is perfectly disposable entertainment)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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TRAILER WATCH - HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLDPosted on 08 Jun 2018 |
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TRAILER WATCH - THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEBPosted on 08 Jun 2018 |
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