Genre: Drama/War
Director: Todd Robinson
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Sebastian Stan, Diane Ladd, Ed Harris, Bradley Whitford, Peter Fonda, William Hurt, Christopher Plummer, Jeremy Irvine, Linus Roache, Michael Imperioli
Runtime: 1 hr 56 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 13 February 2020

Synopsis: THE LAST FULL MEASURE is the touching story of Pitsenbarger’s father who together with all survivors of the Vietnam battle petitioned the government to give this fallen war hero the medal he so well deserved. Investigator Scott Huffman is assigned to the case to investigate the reason for this grave injustice. During his research, Scott begins to discover the private and political reasons why certain corrupt politicians denied Pitsenbarger’s medal. Scott personally visits a number of the survivors of that terrible battle, all of whom unite for a march on Washington to give back to William Pitsenbarger the honor that has been so ingloriously taken from him. Driven by their conviction, Huffman and Pitsenbarger’s friends and family reclaim his well-deserved award in an emotional outpouring that honored this truly great man. To this day, he remains only of 1 of 2 enlisted airmen to ever receive such an honor.

Movie Review:

There is no shortage of good intention in writer-director Todd Robinson’s fact-based tale of Vietnam War hero William Pitsenbarger, a 21-year-old U.S. Air Force Pararescue medic who was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross and saw that recognition upgraded to a Medal of Honour some thirty years later. Yet you’d wish this tribute to Pitsenbarger’s bravery were a lot more poignant than Robinson’s treatment, which retells his subject’s heroic deeds during Operation Abilene amidst a present-day procedural of Pentagon staffer Scott Huffman’s (Sebastian Stan) investigation of what went down that fateful day.

While initially inclined to do the bare minimum, Huffman becomes intrigued as he speaks to the survivors – including Pits’ best friend and fellow pararescueman Sgt. Thomas Tulley (William Hurt), the reclusive Ray Mott (Ed Harris), the guilt-ridden Billy Takoda (Samuel L. Jackson), and the PTSD-afflicted vet Jimmy Burr (Peter Fonda) – and eventually becomes convicted of seeing that Pitsenbarger is duly recognised for his selfless acts. Each of these interviews is accompanied with a point-of-view flashback to the jungle battleground, and with these memories, an opportunity to reconcile with a past some of them have buried in the deepest recesses of their minds for good reason.

Like we said, Robinson’s sincerity is without doubt, not just in how he cares to detail each of these supporting characters but also in assembling an A-list cast of Oscar winners and nominees to play them. Besides the aforementioned, other notables which Robinson has brought on board his labour of love include John Savage and Peter Fonda, both of whose cinematic associations with Vietnam make their participation especially significant. They are complemented in the present-day by Hurt, Christopher Plummer and Diane Ladd, the latter two playing Pitsenbarger’s parents who have spent decades trying to win their son the public honour he so deserves.

Alas, for all that he does right, Robinson ultimately undermines his own storytelling by robbing it of any subtlety and complexity. Than trust his viewers to come around to empathising with his characters, Robinson overdoses on sentimentality almost every step of the way. It doesn’t help that his theatre of events remains confined narrowly to certain moments on the ground that ill-begotten day, without ever telling us the larger backdrop against which the joint US-Australian operation unfolded. The only conflict here is bureaucratic, as Huffman uncovers why his government had wanted to sweep Pitsenbarger’s accomplishment under the carpet all those years ago.

Indeed, Robinson’s technique fails his own ambition. Best known for writing Ridley Scott’s 1996 thriller ‘White Squall’, Robinson hasn’t had much output since then, and the inexperience shows. Going back and forth between present-day and past ends up being less enlightening than enervating, robbing either of the full emotional impact each should command. Robinson’s re-enaction of the battle sequences is handicapped not just by his own skill but also by the budget he has been given, which makes the footage look like something out of a TV movie.

Yet not all is lost in ‘The Last Full Measure’, thanks to the sheer acting talent involved; in particular, Hurt, Plummer and Harris deliver some of the finest work we’ve seen them in years, portraying real-life people whose grief, guilt and pain have come to define them. There is no denying too the valour that Pitsenbarger had displayed in the heat of war, and the earnestness with which Robinson tells the story at least ensures that it is not entirely lost. Had Robinson’s method been more deft, this Vietnam War tale could have been a lot more powerful; but as it stands, it is competent without exactly being compelling.

Movie Rating:

(Earnest but heavy-handed, this fact-based retelling of a Vietnam War hero is redeemed from its storytelling shortcomings by a stellar A-list cast of Oscar winners and nominees)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Thriller
Director: Midi Z
Cast: Wu Ke-xi, Sung Yu-hua, Hsia Yu-chiao, Shih Ming-shuai  
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Violence and Some Homosexual Content)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 20 February 2020

Synopsis: After eight years toiling in bit-parts, aspiring actress Nina Wu finally gets her big break with a leading role in a spy thriller set in the 1960s. The part is challenging, not least because it calls for full nudity and explicit sex scenes, and the film’s director is often hard on her. But both the industry and the press are confident that the results are sensationally good. On the brink of triumph, though, Nina’s psychological resolve begins to crack. She rushes back to her family home to deal with two crises: her father’s business has gone bankrupt and her mother has suffered a heart attack. She dreams of rekindling a close relationship with her childhood friend Kiki but is haunted by paranoid fantasies that a mysterious woman is stalking and attacking her. As Nina clings to memories of happier times, it seems that there is one crucial memory that she is repressing… 

Movie Review:

If you’re familiar with Midi Z, you’ll know that ‘Nina Wu’ is an uncharacteristic movie from the Myanmar-born and Taiwanese-based filmmaker. Better known for his features and documentaries about the rural poor of Chinese ancestry in his birth country, Z has taken on the challenging task of translating his frequent leading lady Wu Ke-xi’s screenplay for the big screen. We say challenging, because it is neither a comfortable or comforting story at all.

Drawing quite certainly from her own personal experience, Wu stars in the titular role as a bit-actress who lands a big role in an espionage drama set in the 1960s. The catch is that it requires that she appear in an explicit threesome with full-frontal nudity, a proposition which she is inherently uncomfortable with; notwithstanding, following some persuasion from her manager, she accepts the role, though the process soon takes its toll on her psyche.

Part of that psychological fracture arises from an exacting director, who verbally and even physically abuses her on the set; and yet part of that also comes from her background, for which the second act devotes a good amount of time to. It turns out that Nina had left behind a former flame (Vivian Sung) to pursue an acting career in Taipei, a choice which not only left her feeling lonely and depressed after struggling for eight years but also removed from her ailing mother and financially reckless father.

As much as Wu intends for her movie to be a reflection of the sacrifices that many young girls like her make in order to get into the filmmaking industry, it is also clearly meant as criticism for the industry itself. Oh yes, it is no coincidence that Wu has penned this in the throes of the #metoo movement, and an extended sequence which closes the film is clearly designed to elicit the sort of indignance which you would have felt reading what Harvey Weinstein did behind many hotel rooms with young aspiring female actresses.

Besides referencing the events of the day, Wu has also taken obvious inspiration from Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Black Swan’ in depicting her onscreen character’s meltdown. In addition to seeing things that ain’t there (like an iguana on a lampshade), Nina gets paranoid thinking that another fellow aspirant (Hsia Yu-Chiao) which she had barely edged out for her part in the movie is after her. Nina’s delusions also result in outbursts for which she has no recollection of afterwards, and if it all sounds overdramatic, the final scene explains why she had been left in such a fragile state of mind.

Much of the film rests on Wu, and to her credit, the actress gives her all to present her character’s angst, fear, helplessness, humiliation and pain. Like we said, Wu obviously had drawn on her own sentiments to pen the role, and it feels just as personal as she had no doubt intended. On Z’s part, he gives the movie a highly stylised polish not unlike that which Aronofsky had, but the striking visuals are undeniably successful in drawing you into an intriguing psychodrama.

Mind you though, ‘Nina Wu’ will not be a easy watch, not only because of its themes but also because it is not afraid to portray its derogatory parts within in full naked fashion. It is to Wu’s credit that the gamble pays off in a gripping watch which will have you thinking about the less-than glamorous side of the filmmaking industry, that is apparently not only confined to Hollywood. And seen in that light, Nina is not too different from the usual characters in Z’s movie – despite their status, they too are struggling to escape dire conditions both political and financial.

Movie Rating:

(An uncomfortable look at the less-than glamorous side of the filmmaking industry that is worth the discomfort)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi
Director: Richard Stanley
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Madeleine Arthur, Brendan Meyer, Julian Hilliard, Elliot Knight, Josh C. Waller, Q’orianka Kilcher, Tommy Chong  
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins
Rating: NC16 (Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 20 February 2020

Synopsis: After a meteorite lands in the front yard of their farm, Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage) and his family find themselves battling a mutant extraterrestrial organism as it infects their minds and bodies, transforming their quiet rural life into a living nightmare. 

Movie Review:

If you’ve heard of H.P. Lovecraft, you’ll most certainly have heard of his 1927 short story of the same name. Probably one of his most popular works, the story told of a fictional town called Arkham where a meteorite had crashed on an unfortunate farm, poisoning its vegetation, livestock, and eventually its human inhabitants. As ripe as that sounds for a science-fiction horror, there is good reason why few have attempted to adapt it for the big-screen – not only is his writing abstract (he describes the color as “hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased, underlying primary tone without a place among the known tints of earth”), the oddness of his stories was always going to be less intriguing than baffling.

That writer-director Richard Stanley has managed to turn Lovecraft’s source material into a fascinating mix of wacky and weird is therefore even more admirable, assisted in no small measure by a thrillingly gonzo performance by Nicolas Cage. In case you’re wondering, Stanley was the director of the infamous 1996 H.G. Wells adaptation ‘The Island of Dr Moreau’ before he was unceremoniously fired, and has spent the years since largely focused on short films and documentaries. The time in between though has not dulled his sensibilities; in fact, you can sense how Stanley relishes the opportunity to unleash all that pent-up nuttiness.

Staying true to his source material, Stanley tells the story from a first-person perspective through a surveyor sent to a remote corner of New England. The hydrologist Ward (Elliot Knight) encounters the teenager Lavinia (Madeline Arthur) performing Wiccan rituals in the woods, and meets the rest of her family – including her dad Nathan (Cage), her mom Theresa (Joely Richardson), her older brother Benny (Brendan Meyer), and her younger brother Jack (Julian Hillard). Nathan has moved the whole family out to the family estate where he grew up to get away from the city, but whereas Theresa resents the spotty Wi-Fi service, Benny gets by through getting high, and Jack has retreated into himself.

The sudden appearance of a glowing magenta meteorite changes the Gardners’ entire living environment. Strange flowers bloom in the yard. The tomatoes and peaches in the garden grow faster than usual, but end up tasting bitter and rotten. There is a funny taste to the water from the well, which itself begins emitting hues of purple light both by day and by night. These seemingly inexplicable events slowly but surely take their toll on the family. Jack begins talking to someone from the well; Lavinia starts to cut herself; Benny becomes even more spaced out; and last but not least, Nathan lets go of the frustration bubbling within him that he had tried to keep at bay with the move away from the city.

Yet the terror isn’t just psychological; oh no, there is plenty of old-school creature horror too, including the family dog turning into a mutant monster, the barnyard alpacas morphing into a bloody mangled mess, and Theresa fusing with Jack into a single mutated organism. Stanley must no doubt have been inspired by such classics as John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’, and the use of practical effects (than digital imagery) makes the displays of grotesqueness a delightful B-movie throwback. Even as Stanley is guilty of overloading his film with different forms of creepiness not necessarily coherent with one another, those willing to go along with the bonkers will enjoy how gloriously unhinged the proceedings unfold.

There is also sheer joy watching Cage go more and more uncaged. Watching Cage lose his shit is great fun, especially in how expertly he mixes horror and humour to something approaching genius. Those who have followed the former action movie star’s career evolution will recognise how he has honed his nutzoid turns in ‘Mandy’ and ‘Mom and Dad’ into a patent, and there are plenty of choice moments to savour here, including those in which he waxes lyrical about raising alpacas (“If you don’t mind, it’s time to milk the alpacas”) and then lets his anger take over the trigger when he finds that they have turned alien.

It’s not easy to turn a Lovecraft story into something for the big screen, but Stanley largely succeeds in crafting a delightfully weird science-fiction horror hybrid with the ‘Color Out of Space’. There is no point bringing logic into the cinema for this one, at least not if you’re prepared to go along with its sheer eccentricity. But if you’re willing to embrace the weirdness, you’ll find yourselves amidst one of the most authentically Lovecraftian horrors ever, with a brilliant Cage very much in his element. It is a wild experience all right, and even if it isn’t out of this world, will surely transport you into its own phantasmagorical universe with an allure you’ll find difficult to resist. 

Movie Rating:

(Weird, wacky and wild, this adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's classic short story is a phantasmagorical ride of eccentric pleasures, including one called Nicolas Cage)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Comedy
Director: Nat Faxon, Jim Rash
Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Will Ferrell, Zach Woods, Zoë Chao, Miranda Otto, Julian Grey, Kristofer Hivju
Runtime: 1 hr 27 mins
Rating: NC16 (Sexual References & Some Coarse Language)
Released By: Walt Disney
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 13 February 2020

Synopsis: Barely escaping an avalanche during a family ski vacation in the Alps, a married couple is thrown into disarray as they are forced to reevaluate their lives and how they feel about each other. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell star in this biting comedy. Inspired by the motion picture FORCE MAJEURE by Ruben Ostlund. 

Movie Review:

One of Hollywood’s favourite pastimes is to dig out some prestigious acclaimed or popular foreign features and remake them for the general audience worldwide. For example, The Upside, The Departed, Solaris, The Birdcage just to name a few. Downhill is the latest to join the ever-growing list.  

Inspired by Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure (2014), Downhill tells the story of the Stauntons, a supposedly privileged American family who is on vacation in the Alps. When a controlled avalanche happened in the midst of the Stauntons’ lunch, Pete (Will Ferrell) heads right off to safety with his phone leaving his wife, Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and their two sons in the lurch. When everything is over and safe, Pete reappears and pretends nothing has ever happened. With Pete’s selfishness and cowardice witnessed by his entire family, Billie is not just upset by Pete’s actions but his subsequent unwillingness to own up and admit his mistakes. 

Although this American remake retains much of the original elements, it doesn’t really improve on the comedy and most importantly, the messages. What is the movie trying to prove? Does it hit you in terms of emotion and sentimentality?  Sadly, the answer is no. While the original takes a more subtle, artsy approach, Downhill attempts to streamline the narrative but choses to make it so ambiguous that the end product feels detached, cold and unsatisfying. 

Despite running at a brief 87 minutes, the movie barely contains enough interesting ideas to carry it to the finishing line. The movie is often peppered with nice shots of Alps, perhaps as a distraction to the hollow script or nothing more than fillers. Directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash who also co-wrote the script obviously fumbles with the material, not knowing how to take this dramedy to another level. In retrospect, Faxon and Rash who actually did a great job with The Descendants and The Way, Way Back seems more at ease with original material than remakes.      

Older viewers who will know Julia Louis-Dreyfus from the hit sitcom, Seinfeld impresses with her performance as the frustrated Billie. Louis-Dreyfus is fantastic with her wide range of emotions on display. A near sexual encounter with a charming, macho skiing coach serves as the movie’s sole highlight. Australian Miranda Otto (The Lord of the Rings) appears on-and-off as the resort’s sultry, sex-loving receptionist Charlotte, a character that probably deserves her own spin-off than this boring drama. Leading man Will Ferrell is unfortunately miscast as Pete. Though he tries hard to suppress his usual wild, over-the-top persona, he is simply unbelievable as the perhaps tortured Pete.  

The repetitive hammering of the passing of Pete’s dad never result in anything. Maybe Pete is suffering from a prolonged grief disorder if it makes things far more interesting. And there seems to be some underlying marriage or trust issues between Pete and Billie before the trip that were never really addressed. Downhill is a wasted opportunity all in all. It’s not funny nor even engaging for the most part. Even supporting actors liked Zach Wood and Zoe Chao adds no mileage to the entire affair. 

Movie Rating:

(It’s a clear reminder that Downhill is not going to be listed as a remake worth watching)

Review by Linus Tee

Genre: Horror
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Cast: Michael Peña, Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Portia Doubleday, Jimmy O. Yang, Ryan Hansen, Michael Rooker  
Runtime: 1 hr 49 mins
Rating: NC16 (Some Drug Use and Sexual References)
Released By: Sony Pictures Releasing
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 13 February 2020

Synopsis: In Blumhouse’s new spin on Fantasy Island, the enigmatic Mr. Roarke makes the secret dreams of his lucky guests come true at a luxurious but remote tropical resort. But when the fantasies turn into nightmares, the guests have to solve the island’s mystery in order to escape with their lives.
 
Movie Review:

Unless you’ve had the fantasy of watching a supernatural horror, glossy romance, war movie, ‘torture porn’ and bromantic comedy rolled into one, you’d be advised to stay far away from ‘Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island’. What is billed as a horror reimagining of the vintage Aaron Spelling TV series is ultimately a mishmash of genres which is as awkward as you can imagine, so much so that you’ll be left wondering just what director and co-writer Jeff Wadlow had envisioned his reboot to be in the first place.

The premise would sound familiar to anyone who remembers the series: a mysterious island, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, overseen by an enigmatic figure known as Mr Roarke (Michael Pena) that offers its visitors the chance to see their fantasies come true, albeit with a price. Among the ‘lucky’ ones who find themselves on the island at the same time are the single real-estate agent Gwen (Maggie Q), the self-inferior young adult Melanie (Lucy Hale), the wannabe soldier Patrick (Austin Stowell), and the half-brothers Brax (Jimmy O. Yang) and JD (Ryan Hansen).

Like the TV programme, each of these guests have their own subplots based upon their respective fantasies. Gwen regrets turning down her ex-boyfriend Rocklin’s (Robbie Jones) marriage proposal five years ago, and is brought back to the restaurant where he had popped the question. Melanie wants revenge on a middle-school bully Sonja (Portia Doubleday) who had humiliated her, and finds the latter strapped to a chair inside a glass chamber. Patrick hopes to be a soldier like his dad, and is thrown into a special operation deep in the Venezuelan forest. And last but not least, Brax and JD just want to have the time of their lives partying with hunks and babes, and are brought to an Argentinian crime boss’ house to live out that hedonistic dream.

For much of the first hour, these subplots unfold almost independent of one another, unbounded by the realities of time and space. But if that already leaves you perplexed, you’ll be completely flummoxed by what happens in the next hour, as these subplots start bleeding into one another, such that each of these characters start living in one another’s fantasies-turned-nightmares. Patrick’s mission leads him to where Brax and JD are holed up after the said crime boss and his henchmen return home, while Melanie and Sonja run into Morgan (Michael Rooker), who had previously assisted Patrick, in the jungle while trying to escape from Devil Face (Kim Coates).

In particular, the storytelling in the last third goes absolutely ‘bonkers’, as Wadlow engineers multiple plot twists which try to tie these characters together in various equally illogical ways. So preposterous are these narrative turns that we might as well tell you now that these characters are in fact linked together by some tragedy which Gwen stumbles upon while trying to change her guilt-ridden past through another fantasy, if only so that you’ll be feeling less WTF when it indeed does unfold onscreen. By the time all these characters converge to try to find the source of the island’s black magic (we mean this literally, going by the colour of some mysterious liquid that oozes out of the eyes of those who died), you’ll be left thinking what poison Wadlow and his co-writers drank in order to come out with such utter nonsense.

There is also no joy in the performances, save for Maggie Q. Pena is so intentionally stoic that you wonder if it’s because he doesn’t know what to make of his role; Hale and Doubleday come off more ingratiating than anything; and Yang provides some brief moments of levity, but is otherwise as forgettable as Stowell and Hansen. Q stands out because she approaches her character – despite the sheer idiocy of the whole enterprise – with an earnestness that is hard to dismiss, especially as Gwen has to choose between her own happiness or relieving others’ misery.

Yet Q alone cannot save a movie that is destined to be one of the worst of the year. Indeed, there is no pleasure in this redo of ‘Fantasy Island’, unless like we’ve said, you’d wanted to see how disastrous it would be mixing five different genres into a single movie. There is most certainly no island paradise here, just a hot mess brought about by awful writing and terrible filmmaking we wish you’d never need to endure. Not even a late reference to one of the TV series’ beloved characters Tattoo can save it from being sheer hokum, so tear up your ticket if you must, just so you don’t get trapped for close to two hours in this drivel.

Movie Rating:

(A combination of genre mishmashing, multiple illogical twists/ fake-outs and plain incoherent filmmaking makes this return to 'Fantasy Island' one you'd wish you'd never had to make)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Action/Comedy
Director: Peter Segal
Cast: Dave Bautista, Kristen Schaal, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Chloe Coleman, Ken Jeong, Greg Bryk, Devere Rogers, Noah Dalton Danby
Runtime: 1 hr 39 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: Golden Village Pictures
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 12 March 2020

Synopsis: My Spy follows JJ a hardened CIA operative (Dave Bautista) who has been demoted and finds himself at the mercy of a precocious 9-year-old girl, named Sophie (Chloe Coleman) where he has been sent undercover begrudgingly to surveil her family. When Sophie discovers hidden cameras in her apartment she uses her tech savviness to locate where the surveillance operation is set. In exchange for not blowing JJ’s cover Sophie convinces him to spend time with her and teach her to be a spy. Despite his reluctance JJ finds he is no match for Sophie’s disarming charm and wit.

Movie Review:

Everyone loves a pair up between a beefy, hunky actor and a child right? Because every movie that has a beefy, hunky actor and a child is a winner at the box-office. In a make-believe world that is.    

Wrestler turned actor Dave Bautista, best known as Drax the Destroyer in the Guardians of the Galaxy series, plays JJ, a special forces soldier turned CIA operative. When a mission in Ukraine goes awry, JJ is sent by his boss (played by Ken Jeong) on a surveillance mission with fellow tech specialist, Bobbi (comedian Kristen Schaal) to spy on a nine-year-old girl, Sophie (Chloe Coleman) and her mom, Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley) who recently relocated to Chicago from Paris.

It turned out that Sophie’s late dad is a weapons dealer along with his estranged brother, Marquez (Greg Bryk). And the now wanted Marquez is busy searching for a thumbdrive which contains plans for a nuclear warhead which might be hidden with Sophie and her mom. Rest assured there are no surprises from the script by Jon and Erich Heober (Battleship, Whiteout).

As expected, JJ has no experience dealing with kids especially one as precocious as Sophie. So instead of spying on the mother and daughter, their cover is blown by Sophie when she accidentally discovers the surveillance webcam hidden in their flat. Along the way, JJ becomes a father figure to Sophie, teaching her tactics on how to become a spy to Sophie trying to matchmake her mom and JJ.

Primarily, My Spy is not so much of an action or spy movie. It’s more of a family friendly, heartwarming drama that focuses a lot on the relationship between JJ and Sophie. Occasionally, there’s some romance thrown in and the appearances of Sophie’s gay neighbours, Carlos and Todd as comic relief. Dave Bautista of course is immensely likeable as JJ, the agent who has a sad past and only has a fish as a friend. Bautista has shown the world he can tackle equally well in lighter material and darker ones and JJ is a role that takes it slightly further.

Bautista’s onscreen partner, Chloe Coleman, is a gifted performer and cute enough to be in a Disney movie (in fact she is seen in Disney+’s Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made). Kristen Schaal who has bit parts in numerous movies over the years offers a few amusing lines as the field agent wannabe tech support agent.

My Spy in short is not going to redefine the so-called family-friendly action comedies genre. Honestly, the action only kicks in the last act and the prologue. And even then, it’s not particularly exciting. The plotting and formula are heavily recycled from many other movies - think Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Kindergarten Cop and Vin Diesel’s The Pacifier. However, it’s not really a terrible movie. It’s merely a forgettable one.

Movie Rating:

(We are sure you have seen My Spy before. Maybe not with Dave Bautista in it)

Review by Linus Tee

SYNOPSIS: An old man suffering from depression is found dead, and his housekeeper, Mi-ran, is charged with the murder. Mi-ran's defense attorney, Soon-ho, is surprised to learn the only witness to the crime is Ji-woo, a teenage girl with Asperger’s. Will Ji-woo be able to take the stand and provide a valid statement?

MOVIE REVIEW:

A housemaid is being accused of murdering her elderly employer and the only witness is an autistic teenager, Ji-woo (Kim Hyang-gi from Along with the Gods) who lives opposite them. In comes Soon-ho (Jung Woo-sung), a lawyer from a big law firm who acts for the housemaid and he is determined to uncover the truth from Ji-woo.  

While majority of the plot is focused on the lawyer defending the housemaid, Innocent Witness spent a great amount of screentime on its two major important characters- Ji-woo and Soon-ho without sacrificing the narrative and gist of the main theme.

Soon-ho apparently was once a reputable lawyer who fights for human civil rights but in order to repay his family debts, he has to work in a bigger firm in the hope of securing a partnership position. Along the way, he lost the trust of the woman he loves and earns the constant nagging from his father about his single status.

On the other spectrum, Ji-woo is a smart but autistic teenager who is constantly bullied in school for her mannerisms and behaviour. Her inability to socialise and communicate with people adds on to her troubles which in turn makes her testimony in court highly unreliable. The only way it seems is to earn the trust of Ji-woo and Soon-ho has to enter her world in order to win the lawsuit.

Remarkably, Innocent Witness handles the topic of autism with much care and details. Mostly it works due to the incredible performance from Kim Hyang-gi. Without resorting to flashy tactics and happenings, the flick is indirectly telling audience to treat this form of mental disability with patience and love instead of mere scorn. Mostly, the story is effective enough to keep things interesting although the twist in the end is not exactly mind-blowing.

Despite all the seriousness, the character of Soon-ho’s elderly father contributes to some of the movie’s lighter moments and director Lee Han skilfully handles the twists and turns in the third act with much clarity and tension. Overall, this is genuinely a feel-good crime drama that features top performances from Kim Hyang-gi and one of Korea’s leading men, Jung Woo-sung. It will surely make you laugh, tear and probably empathised the plight of those who suffered from autism.  

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Kim Kwang-bin
Cast: Ha Jung-woo, Kim Nam-gil, Heo Yool, Kim Si-ah, Shin Hyun-bin, Kim Soo-jin-IV 
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Rating: NC16 (Horror and Violence)
Released By: Clover Films
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 27 February 2020

Synopsis: When a tragic accident leaves Sang-won (HA Jung-woo) and his daughter Ina (HEO Yul) without their wife and mother, he moves to a new home to restore his relationship with his daughter. Despite all his efforts, nothing he does seems to work but she makes a new friend who makes her laugh. This moment of peace doesn’t last long, as strange noises trickle out of their closet and Ina begins displaying strange behaviours. A few days after Sang-won starts having eerie nightmares, Ina disappears without a trace. While searching for her, Sang-won comes across enigmatic Kyung-hoon (KIM Nam-gil), who seems to know where Ina has disappeared to: the closet. Kyung-hoon tells Sang-won that he’s been looking for whereabouts of missing children for the past 10 years and believes that the key to finding Sang-won’s daughter is inside the closet. Desperate to find his daughter, Sang-won reaches out to open the forbidden closet. 

Movie Review:

There is little that is truly original in writer-director Kim Kwang-bin’s feature filmmaking debut, but ‘The Closet’ remains gripping, terrifying and moving all the same.

A prologue which shows a female shaman slitting her own throat after being seized by an evil presence emerging out of a closet explains the title, and it is not hard to guess that the same presence is the one possessing the young Ina (Heo Yool).

Ina has just moved into a new house in the woods with her architect father Sang-won (Ha Jung-woo) following the tragic death of her mother in a traffic accident. Both are still reeling from the loss – while Sang-won blames himself for causing her death (he was behind the wheel), Ina misses her primary caregiver and thinks her workaholic father regards her as a burden.

Unsurprisingly, the father-daughter relationship between Sang-won and Ina is at the heart of the story. Whereas he chooses to send her away to art camp so that he can get back to his big construction project in the city, Sang-won devotes himself to finding Ina after she disappears one fateful night.

That search reels in the shady exorcist Kyung-hoon (Kim Nam-gil), who pretends to be a technician from Sang-won’s broadband provider before revealing himself to have tracked Sang-won down after hearing about Ina’s disappearance. Kyung-hoon believes that Ina has been taken by the same spirit responsible for the disappearance of many other children throughout the country, reaching out from the titular bedroom fixture to kidnap kids into an otherworldly realm.

Like ‘Insidious’, Sang-won will follow Kyung-hoon’s instructions to enter the underworld through Ina’s closet in order to rescue her, though he will have to do so quickly or lose her forever to purgatory. That James Wan horror isn’t the only genre predecessor which Kim’s movie owes a debt to; indeed, fans will recognise how Kim has borrowed elements from ‘The Exorcist’, ‘The Ring’ and ‘Ju-on’ for his own supernatural mystery here.

While derivative to some extent, Kim deserves credit for sustaining a foreboding tone throughout the film through a mix of build-up, jump scares and disquieting aural effects. At an economical 98 minutes, Kim hardly wastes any time with the proceedings, establishing in sure-footed fashion Ina’s estrangement from her father, Sang-won’s subsequent despair and their attempt to reconnect with each other.

And in line with genre tradition, each of these narrative inflexions is capped with an unnerving, even startling, sequence – including one of Ina’s possession, another of Sang-won and Kyung-hoon being confronted by the spirits from the other side of the closet, and another of Sang-won’s race to locate Ina before the door to leave the underworld closes. It is riveting all right, and you’ll find your heart racing as you debate whether to avert your eyes from what is about to pounce at you.

But what roots the story is undoubtedly Sang-won’s love for Ina, which while clouded at the beginning by other distractions in life, including work, finally rings through loud and clear in the finale. Even though the role is not much of a stretch for him, Ha brings genuine emotion to Sang-won, vividly portraying the anguish, desperation and perseverance only a parent would demonstrate to save his child. Kim injects some wacky relief as Kyung-hoon, but the film rests pretty much on Ha’s shoulders.

So even though it feels familiar and has a less-than imaginative title, ‘The Closet’ is a worthy supernatural horror mystery that packs some good scares amidst a consistent atmosphere of intrigue. That it is anchored by a compelling father-daughter relationship makes the story even more affecting, and it also manages to be social commentary of irresponsible parents. To say it deserves an audience is an understatement, but that’s just us telling you not to keep it in… the closet.

Movie Rating:

(Familiar yet effective, this horror mystery packs some good scares amidst a general atmosphere of foreboding, dread and intrigue)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Drama/War
Director: Jonathan Jakubowicz 
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Clémence Poésy, Matthias Schweighöfer, Ed Harris
Runtime: 2 hrs 1 min
Rating: PG13
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 6 August 2020

Synopsis: All Marcel Marceau (Jesse Eisenberg) wants is a life for the arts. Working at his father's butcher shop during the day, the talented mime tries to make his dream come true on the city's small stages and to win the affections of politically active Emma (Clémence Poésy). To please her, Marcel agrees to join a dangerous mission that will change the course of his life forever: they want to save 123 Jewish orphans from the grasp of the German Nazis and the ruthless Obersturmführer of the SS Klaus Barbie (Matthias Schweighöfer) and take them across the border to Switzerland. Together with Emma, Marcel joins the French resistance to stand firmly against the atrocities of the war. His art will prove the greatest weapon against the horrors of war...

Movie Review:

The title may not bear the name of its subject, but ‘Resistance’ is ultimately a biography of the iconic French mime Marcel Marceau during World War II.

Convincingly portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, Marcel was the son of a Jewish butcher who was living the life of a struggling artist in the late 1930s before he joined the French resistance movement, performing in Strasbourg’s cabaret clubs by imitating the antics of the great Charlie Chaplin.

Marcel’s introduction to the crueller realities of life come one day when he decides to tag along with his politically active cousin Georges (Géza Röhrig), encountering a group of Jewish orphans which the Save the Children foundation had diverted away from a concentration camp.

Not knowing how to manage them, Marcel entertains the kid nearest to him with an unrehearsed pantomime, expanding quickly to a full-blown routine watched by every kid in the empty castle they are holing up in. Soon, Marcel finds himself teaching the kids routines in the event of a German invasion, which as we all know becomes awfully real.

The German occupation of northern France sees the narrative shift gears, focusing less on Marcel and the orphans than Marcel and his fellow resisters; these include Emma (Clémence Poesy), whom Marcel has a gentle crush on, his brother Alain (Felix Moati), and Alain’s girlfriend Mila (Vica Kerekes). Their paths cross with the sadistic Klaus Barbie (Matthias Schweighöfer), also known as the ‘Butcher of Lyon’, and the second act finds them engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with Klaus with inevitably painful consequences.

This detour into Holocaust movie tropes frankly does writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s film no favours. Not only does it serve up such superfluous scenes such as Klaus lining up a bunch of clowns in an empty swimming pool to be executed, it also turns Klaus into a cliched or worse, cartoonish villain, whether is it taunting Emma to reveal the location of the other Resistance fighters as he flays Mila or playing the piano before proceeding to personally execute suspected members of the Resistance.

While it is laudable that the movie does not depict Marcel as a glorified saviour, it also loses its focus on its subject’s experiences as a reluctant war hero, someone who more or less stumbled into the movement and had to thereafter find his own conviction to stay amidst the sacrifices of those close to him. Without that character focus, the movie simply enters conventional war-film territory, devoid of the distinction of being Marcel’s lens into the events of World War II.

Thankfully, the plotting regains firmer footing in the last act, which sees Marcel lead a harrowing mission to sneak a small group of orphans through the Alps to Switzerland. There are a number of well-executed sequences here, including a train stop where Marcel and the kids come face to face with Klaus’ contingent, and a game of hide-and-seek in the wintry Alps where they once again have to evade Klaus and his band of German soldiers. It is in these scenes that we see Marcel’s talents put to safeguard the children, which should have been the emphasis of the film through and through.

That you do not lose interest in the film despite its disjointedness is credit to Eisenberg, who subdues his usual nervous energy for an honest and committed performance. As Marcel, Eisenberg has clearly invested effort in learning a few mime routines, and even though the film does not give him nearly enough time to demonstrate them, it is still an impressive showing. He is joined by a solid supporting cast, including an affecting Poesy and a devilishly debonair Schweighöfer.

So even though Jakubowicz doesn’t always make the best creative choices in his retelling (which besides all else we’ve described, includes a strange framing device by way of Ed Harris’ Gen. George Patton addressing the ranks of the US troops who have just liberated France), ‘Resistance’ retains the power of its source material as a compelling account of Marcel’s wartime exploits. It doesn’t need to extol the man, but one hopes it could have also been a more incisive character study without the distractions of unnecessary subplots, especially since it is a story that is rich enough as it is.

Movie Rating:

(Lacking the focus needed for a truly gripping character study, 'Resistance' nonetheless remains compelling enough thanks to the power of its source material and an emphatic performance by Jesse Eisenberg)

Review by Gabriel Chong

Genre: Drama
Director: Autumn de Wilde 
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Angus Imrie, Letty Thomas, Gemma Whelan, Bill Nighy, Miranda Hart, Mia Goth, Josh O’Connor, Callum Turner, Rupert Graves, Amber Anderson, Tanya Reynolds 
Runtime: 2 hrs 5 mins
Rating: PG (Brief Nudity)
Released By: UIP
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 5 March 2020

Synopsis: Jane Austen’s beloved comedy about finding your equal and earning your happy ending is reimagined in this delicious new film adaptation of EMMA. Handsome, clever and rich, Emma Woodhouse is a restless “queen bee” without rivals in her sleepy little English town. In this glittering satire of social class , Emma must navigate her way through the challenges of growing up , misguided matches and romantic missteps to realize the love that has been there all along.

Movie Review:

What were you doing when you are young, single and available? Well, Emma decided to get into matchmaking and making others fulfil their wishes. Or does she?

This version of Emma is the latest remake of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel of the same name and it, without fail, does it best to impress both fans of the author and viewers who are curious about the film.

For one, the synopsis and basis of the book does intrigue people and ignite curiosity among viewers whom have not read the book, as Emma draw its focus on one main protagonist, unlike other Jane Austen’s books, where there were two lead protagonists (one male and one female), emphasising greatly on women and making it rather appropriate in this age and time.

The plot flows rather well with a proper timeline that dissect the story into chapters, using each of the season as a chapter, so that creates a smooth and consistent transition between the scenes.  This aspect makes the film easier to digest and comprehend.

Emma also offer to viewers a rather intriguing look into old England, with immaculate wardrobe that reflects accurately of the fashion style of that time.  The setting also was appropriate and realistic and it was definitely a joy to look at it generally.

A delightful cast also made the film enduring and loveable in a way, with each and every character having enough air time to develop well into the story and each of the cast member creating a wonderful and realistic take on their characters.

While the film does stay true to the story, it somewhat fails to capture the viewer’s attention visually and engage them, focussing a lot more on the script and quotes from the novel itself, making it slightly ‘inaccessible’ to those who came in without reading the book prior to the film.  

It is not to say that Emma is entirely boring and not accessible. It just lacks a bit of ‘excitement’ that could be derived from a novel that focuses on feminism, youth and young love of the 19^th century.  Consider other works by the same author and other adaptations via various medium, the direction that the director was going for does not seem to inspire people to pick up a book to read it for themselves and instead falls flat into a pool of wordy and endless conversations that requires a lot of attention, which may not sit well with viewers who 

There was, however, some sort of humour injected in the film at various points in time and that lightens the mood of the film.  It also helped that slightly more than midway through, the film got more excitable and interesting, but sadly it was too late to salvage the ‘drought’ that the film was facing.

 Emma is pleasant and lovely and faithful to Jane Austen’s novel, but more could have been done to make it more ‘accessible’ and lively.  It felt like the film emphasised greatly on the dialogue, forgetting to create life to the words that were spoken and, thus, creating a nearly boring ride through what is a loveable story.

All in all, Emma could have done more to be a star.  It takes more than dialogue to create buzz, but maybe it was meant to be like that. Who knows? Maybe the direction of the film and the novel did not match well, after all. 

Movie Rating:

(Pleasant, delightful and sometimes humorous, but could have been slightly more engaging. Reading the book prior to the film might help a little)

Review by Ron Tan