Genre: Drama
Director: John Hillcoat
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, Jason Clarke, Dane DeHann, Noah Taylor, Lew Temple
RunTime: 1 hr 54 mins
Rating: M18 (Violence, Nudity & Coarse Language)
Released By:  Golden Village Pictures
Official Website: http://www.lawless-film.com/

Opening Day: 15 November 2012

Synopsis:  "Lawless" is the true story of the infamous Bondurant Brothers: bootlegging siblings who made a run for the American Dream in Prohibition-era Virginia. In this epic gangster tale, inspired by true-life tales of author Matt Bondurant's family in his novel "The Wettest County in the World", the loyalty of three brothers is put to the test against the backdrop of the nation's most notorious crime wave.

Movie Review:

Like the gangster movies of its ilk, ‘Lawless’ – which purports to tell the true story of the Bondurant brothers during the Prohibition era – celebrates the audaciousness of the men who lived and loved outside the law. Back in the 1930s when alcohol was outlawed, Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack Bondurant (Shia LaBeouf) were three brothers who ran a profitable business in Franklin County selling moonshine out of common glass jars – so established was their enterprise that even the local cops were their customers.

Nick Cave’s adaptation of the book ‘The Wettest County in the World’ – the author of whom counts the three infamous protagonists as his ancestors – begins with the arrival of Special Agent Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) from Chicago whose mission is to crack down on the rampant moonshine operations in Franklin. That of course puts him on a collision course with the Bondurants, but as we quickly find out, the dandy lawman with slicked hair and gray gloves is not a man with justified methods.

In a brash display of authority against the defiant Forrest, Rakes beats Jack senseless, sparking off a series of tit-for-tat series of strikes between Rakes and the Bondurants that tests your limits for uncompromising violence. Indeed, we should warn you that the bloodletting here will likely make even the strong of heart squirm, especially one where two of Rakes’ men take a knife to slitting Forrest’s throat. The brute violence is supposed to be lyrical of the harsh circumstances these men are living in – unfortunately with an underdeveloped script that relegates its characters to stock types, it just comes off exploitative.

Disappointingly therefore, no attempt is made to demonstrate the moral ambiguity of the characters. Forrest is the tough reticent one whom we are supposed to respect for the code of independence and honour by which he lives by, with some good-ol sentimentality thrown in when he falls in love with the red-haired waitress Maggie (Jessica Chastain) at their local bar. Howard is the war vet we are supposed to sympathise with; and Jack is the weak-willed wuss who mans up when he sees the world around him has no place for gentleness – except in his pursuit of the pixie-ish church girl Bertha (Mia Wasikowska).

Similarly, there is no nuance in Rakes – he is a sadist, period, and we are not meant to feel anything for him except disgust. Such simplicity isn’t bad in itself, but John Hillcoat directs the movie as if there is much more to the characters than there is. Each scene therefore unfolds with intended gravity just so we can appreciate and empathise with the characters a little more, but there is little purpose in doing so when the characters are drawn without much complexity. In the absence of that, the deliberate pacing is simply laborious, and the conspicuous lack of any cinematic urgency leaves one cold.

That’s a pity because the acting here is topnotch. Tom Hardy brings his signature roguish charisma to Forrest, and even though he grunts and growls more than speaks in the movie, there is something magnetic about his very presence that keeps you hooked. Ditto for Pearce, who chews up the scenery despite being cast as a caricatured baddie, as well as Gary Oldman, severely underused as the legendary Chicago gangster Floyd Banner whom the Bondurants get entangled with. The weakest link in the ensemble is LaBeouf, who plays Jack like a variant of the twitchy fast-talking character in ‘Transformers’ and by virtue of repetition comes dangerously close to proving the limits of his acting range.

Yet even the solid performances on display can’t disguise the fact that there is little depth to the drama going on, whether the back-and-forth plotting between the Bondurants and Rakes or the characters within. It is also a let-down considering how Hillcoat’s last collaboration with Cave was the superb ‘The Proposition’, which felt like a bold reinvention of the Western genre. ‘Lawless’ is too simplistic and therefore pedestrian, not helped by a frustratingly languid pace, and this is ultimately a lifeless Western that will leave you listless. 

Movie Rating:

(A less than compelling Western that tries to substitute some unflinchingly bloody violence for a repetitive plot and simplistic characters)

Review by Gabriel Chong
  

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Shirley Henderson, Ciaran Hinds, Allison Janney, Charlotte Rampling, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy, Michael Lerner
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes and Some Mature Content)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films
Official Website: http://www.wercwerkworks.com/projects/lifeduringwartime

Opening Day: 9 August 2012

Synopsis: In writer and director Todd Solondz's part sequel/part variation on his acclaimed film HAPPINESS, three sisters and the people they love struggle to find their places in an unpredictable and volatile world where the past haunts the present and imperils the future. The question of forgiveness and its limits threads throughout a series of intersecting love stories, offering clarity and, perhaps, alternatives to the comforts of forgetting.

Movie Review:

There are many reasons to make films. Some are visually driven pieces meant to entertain everyone. Some are fantastical pieces meant to realise beautiful visions of a future world. And yet others are tales that simply wish to inspire us. On the isolated occasion, you get something that still stands to share the simple stories of what it means to live as a good person, specifically to forgive people for their flaws and forget their wrongdoings. Such a virtue is genuinely rare to celebrate alone, much less in tandem with a film.

Life During Wartime charts the whimsical and often farcical adventures of self-discovery between sisters Trish, Joy and Helen. Trish starts to find new love in an Israeli after ex-husband Bill is sent to prison for child molestation. She has been feeding her 3 children with lies of their father’s death but problems arise when Bill returns to visit his children after his release. Joy has become estranged from fiancé and former cocaine addict Allen and is having visions of Andy, a co-worker who committed suicide after dating her. Helen has cut ties from family and become a successful screenwriter.

To be sure, the film deals with a very skeletal plot despite what the less than digestible cast of characters might suggest. Instead Director Todd Solondz builds an assortment of self-contained scenarios and ties them into something remotely resembling a narrative. It’s not an approach that will appeal to everyone but he drives it with a confidence in the fact that the virtue he’s trying to sell carries its own meaningful narrative. It’s a notion that’s enjoyed by placing characters in the most brutally dreadful situations and maneuvering them away with cruelly honest and astutely self-aware dialogue.

Broaching a subject like forgiving and forgetting eventually takes a toll on the film, unfortunately. It’s a concept that’s interesting to paint in broad strokes yet so thin that a little bit of fade is unavoidable. Interspersing the less interwoven portions of the film with long, painfully quiet moments in which characters perform the most mundane activities isn’t completely unreasonable, but better restrain would have been preferred over an agonizing pace that detracts from the experience.

Like many films of its ilk, this experience owes its merits to a fine balance between simply sharing the good side of humanity and relentlessly forcing the lessons onto the audience. So it’s at least a little disturbing that Todd colours the later parts of the film in a far more sanctimonious hue, desperately pleading with the audience to accept that forgiving and forgetting is the only way to live as a good person. It won’t discourage you from wanting to believe what the film wants you to, but it could have been more prudent by leaving behind an ambiguous moral statement and trusting the audience with the freedom to decide whether that is indeed the best way to live.

For this reason, the earlier portions of the film are the best. It’s easy to see the film set out for a humble, noble purpose and discuss its subject in a manner that’s effortlessly enjoyable in bursts. But it eventually loses its way among its dense ambitions. With the issues that Life During Wartime tackles, however, it could get a lot worse. So let’s just forgive and forget its shortcomings and celebrate it for what it represents.

Movie Rating:  

(Not the best piece about what it means to forgive and forget but it’s at least enjoyable in bursts)

Review by Loh Yong Jian

Genre: Thriller
Director: Kim Hyoung-jun
Cast: Park Hee-soon, Park Si-yeon, Joo Sang-wook
RunTime: 1 hr 58 mins
Rating: R21 (Sexual Scenes)
Released By:  Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 6 September 2012

Synopsis:  Detective Kang Sun-woo who specializes in Adultery cases is running a private detective agency while he’s on suspension. He’s hired for a case with 3 days before his reinstatement He calmly enters the motel to catch the scene but what he finds at the scene is two dead bodies. The only witness is Soo-jin, the wife of the dead man. Now Sun-woo is in danger of ending up as a prime suspect. Sun-woo tries his best to find the real killer but the situation only gets worse. To top it all, Sun-woo falls into a dangerous relationship with Soo-jin who possesses provocative beauty and the situation gets more complicated. All Sun-woo wanted was to make few bucks out of other people’s problems. But now he’s a murder suspect. Will he be able to prove himself innocent?

Movie Review:

You’ll probably be of one of two reactions after seeing the poster for ‘The Scent’ – one, you’re thinking that you must watch it for Park Si-yeon, the ravishing beauty doing a Demi Moore-like ‘Striptease’ pose; two, you’ll dismiss it as yet another skin flick, the kind meant to draw the crowds at the infamous Yangtze cinema. If you fall into the latter camp, then we’re here to stop you from dismissing this thriller a little too quickly – yes, it does have a generous bit of skin in it, but trust us when we say that its pleasures aren’t quite so superficial.

Only writer/ director Kim Hyoung-jun’s sophomore film, it is a surprisingly satisfying blend of the thrilling, the erotic, and rather unexpectedly the darkly funny. Framed around a murder mystery, the story at its core has a police detective named Kang Sun-woo (Park Hee Soon) racing against time to clear his name after waking up one night next to a dead woman in a hotel room. Not only does he have to stay one step ahead of his colleagues – especially the hard-nosed Seo (Kim Jeong Tak) – he also has to figure out whether the irresistibly alluring Kim Su-Jin (Si-yeon) is his ally or his enemy.

Unlike the typical South Korean crime thriller however, Hyoung-jun literally turns up the heat by injecting a fair amount of eroticism. Sun-woo turns out to be no ordinary detective, but one just resuming duty after a two-year suspension following his affair with a police chief’s wife. His predicament also came to be only because he has been moonlighting as a private detective tracking (ironically) adulterous spouses, this time trailing Su-Jin’s apparently philandering husband whom he also finds dead in the next room. And boy does it sizzle when Sun-woo and Su-jin get together – the reason why this film gets the highest R21 rating – the former barely able to keep his head together when she flirts with him.

You might think that with so much crime and passion swirling around, this is going to be a grim sober viewing experience. We thought likewise too, but Hyoung-jun directs the proceedings with some well-placed humour. Instead of playing it dead serious therefore, Sun-woo’s nervous anxiety is bound to make you crack up as you watch how his previously cocksure attitude dissolves into timid insecurity. The supporting characters also lighten the atmosphere – including Sun-woo’s bumbling sidekick Gi-pung (Lee Gwang Su) and his trusting policeman partner Han Gil-ro (Joo Sang-wook).

It’s a tricky juggling act keeping the drama, comedy and the erotic in balance within the same movie, but Hyoung-jun pulls it off with aplomb. The central murder mystery keeps you guessing until the very end, the sexual tension between Sun-woo and Su-jin crackles with passion and intensity, and the bits of comedy let you catch your breath along the way. Credit goes to Hyoung-jun for not sacrificing style over substance, and the tightly woven plot that gives just the right amount of detail and attention to characters large and small is a testament to that.

In no small measure, Hyoung-jun owes the success of his movie to his ably chosen cast, all of whom we are happy to report have been selected based on their aptitude. Hee-soon may not be a recognisable name here, but his brazenly charismatic performance here is one of the reasons why the movie remains compelling throughout. As the pressure turns on his character, Hee-soon’s increasingly edgy portrayal is riveting to watch. You’ll find it hard too to take your eyes off Si-yeon, who pulls off one of the most memorable femme fatale roles in recent cinematic memory. She is captivating to say the least, and her seductive turn after largely TV drama roles is certain to raise the pulses of guys in the audience. The chemistry between Hee-soon and Si-yeon is sizzling, and if you had belonged to the former camp who are watching the movie largely for these scenes of passion, rest assured that you won’t be disappointed.

But really, this review is meant for those who are likely to avoid this Korean thriller with the impression that it is nothing more than a softcore porn flick masquerading as a legitimate movie. Ironically, the attention-grabbing poster might just turn discerning viewers away from a well-crafted movie that is tense, taut and for the lack of a better word hot-blooded. And if you need one more reason to catch it in the cinemas, then remember this – it’s rated R21 in its full glory, so you won’t be able to see it in the comfort (and perhaps privacy) of your home anytime soon

Movie Rating:

(More than just a skin flick no matter what the poster implies, this is one heady concoction of mystery, comedy and the erotic in one tense, taut and utterly riveting package)

Review by Gabriel Chong
  

Genre: Comedy
Director: Jay Roach
Cast: Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Baker, Katherine LaNasa, Dylan McDermott, Jason Sudeikis, Brian Cox, Josh Lawson, John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd, P.J Byrne, Gary Grubbs
RunTime: 1 hr 25 mins
Rating: M18 (Coarse Language & Sexual Scenes)
Released By:  Warner Bros
Official Website: http://thecampaignmovie.warnerbros.com/

Opening Day: 30 August 2012

Synopsis: When long-term Congressman Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) commits a major public gaffe before an upcoming election, a pair of unscrupulous power brokers plots to put up a rival candidate and gain influence over their North Carolina district. Their man: naïve Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), director of the local Tourism Center. At first, Marty appears to be the unlikeliest possible choice but, with the help of his new benefactors’ support and a cutthroat campaign manager, he soon becomes a contender who gives the charismatic Cam plenty to worry about. As Election Day closes in, the two are locked in a dead heat, with insults quickly escalating to injury until all they care about is burying each other. It’s a mud-slinging, back-stabbing, home-wrecking comedy from “Meet the Parents” director Jay Roach that takes today’s political circus to its logical next level. Because, even if you believe campaign ethics have hit rock bottom…there’s still room to dig a whole lot deeper.

Movie Review:

If you aren’t a fan of comedies like Anchorman: The Legend of Rob Burgundy (2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) and Blades of Glory (2007), we are suggesting that you sit this one out. After all, not everyone subscribes to funnyman Will Ferrell’s brand of humour. Having first established himself as a comedian on NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live in the mid 1990s, Ferrell has since made a name for himself as one of the “Frat Pack” members, alongside fellow comedy actors like Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and brothers Owen and Luke Wilson.

Here, he teams up with up and coming comedian Zach Galifianakis (go check out “Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis”, a series of videos on the “Funny or Die” website where celebrities are asked bizarrely inappropriate questions), where they play two Southerners vying for a seat in Congress to represent their small district. 

We are glad the local movie distributor has decided to bring this comedy to our shores, considering how Ferrell’s last big screen outing Casa de Mi Padre was not screened here. As one would expect, there is a large dosage of crude humour in this movie. Add political humour to the mix and what you get is 85 minutes of crazy fun. The digestibly accessible runtime also means that the punchy tempo does not make you feel dreary by the time the film’s end credits come on.

There are portions of this comedy which shows us realities of modern day politics. Whether it’s the unscrupulous measure both parties go to just to make each other look bad (watch out for the viral campaigns the two men conceptualised to spite each other) or the somewhat pointless appearances at public events just to get that newspaper space, you’d be reminded of how dirty the political game can get. 

Physical comedy is one highlight you can’t miss as well. Laughs are guaranteed at Ferrell’s unfortunate encounters with a baby and, well, without giving too much away, a star from the Oscar winning The Artist (2011). 

What we also love about this recommended comedy is the supporting cast. We have John Lithgow (TV’s 3rd Rock From The Sun, Rise of the Planet of the Apes) Dan Ankroyd (Ghostbusters, Yogi Bear) and Brian Cox (Match Point, The Bourne Supremacy) hamming it up, indulging themselves in silly fun alongside Ferrell and Galifianakis. As campaign managers, Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses, Hall Pass) and Dylan McDermott (TV’s The Practice, The Messengers) give their best shots at comedy. 

The show inevitably belongs to Ferrell and Galifianakis. The chemistry between the two men is spot on, and the deadpan and straight faced expressions provide over the top laughs. This may not be a smart political satire (you shouldn’t expect that when jokes involving fireflies in butts and snake bites resulting in ridiculously swollen arms are involved), but the raunchiness is exactly what you’d look forward to seeing from the two men, who have previously made you holler in laughter with shows like Step Bothers and The Hangover.

If the abovementioned titles only made you cringe in disgust and contempt, we are strongly recommending you staying far, far away from this latest laugh a minute movie. 

Movie Rating:

(You’d either adore or hate this raunchy comedy – we love it to bits)

Review by John Li
  

Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: David Koepp
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jamie Chung, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Aasif Mandvi, Aaron Tveit, Lauren Ashley Carter, Ashley Austin Morris, Nick Damici, Jennifer Butler
RunTime: 1 hr 31 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
Released By:  Sony Pictures Releasing International
Official Website: http://premiumrush.com/

Opening Day: 27 September 2012

Synopsis: Dodging speeding cars, crazed cabbies, open doors, and eight million cranky pedestrians is all in a day's work for Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the best of New York's agile and aggressive bicycle messengers. It takes a special breed to ride the fixie - super lightweight, single-gear bikes with no brakes and riders who are equal part skilled cyclists and suicidal nutcases who risk becoming a smear on the pavement every time they head into traffic. But a guy who's used to putting his life on the line is about to get more than even he is used to when a routine delivery turns into a life or death chase through the streets of Manhattan. When Wilee picks up his last envelope of the day on a premium rush run, he discovers this package is different. This time, someone is actually trying to kill him.

Movie Review:

In life, one shouldn’t stop. It’s an odd philosophy that bike messenger Wilee has and it sounds pretty harmless until you consider that he actually applies it to his get-from-point-A-to-point-B-quickly job, refusing to have any brakes on the bicycle that he uses to weave in and out of busy traffic daily. In many ways, Wilee’s unchanging obligation to his principle represents the movie he’s in. Certainly that has to be the attitude of a cycling-centric chase movie like Premium Rush. By embracing the heart of its premise, even at the risk of being anathema to mainstream Hollywood, Premium Rush manages to instantly become a curious package that’s easy to admire even though it might not be as good as the best chase movies.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, coming right off a sterling performance as a rookie cop in The Dark Knight Rises, fills the shoes of Wilee, the bike messenger who has no intention to stop until he arrives at his destination. This narrow-minded ambition and his single-gear, no-brakes policy automatically qualify him as New York City’s peerless bicycle messenger. The problem? He becomes the target of suspicious characters who want to deliver life-or-death materials. A routine delivery one day turns into a race for his life as he quickly discovers that a crooked cop is actually willing to kill him to get to the contents of the envelope he’s holding.

From the beginning of the movie, with Wilee flying across the screen in faux slow motion, arms and legs splayed, and numbers that show up to rewind the time to hours before this unfortunate event, it’s obvious that Premium Rush is created around a great sense of urgency, matched in equal measure by lighter touches of comedy. It’s at once completely thrilling and completely hilarious to see the movie pull the screen out into a Google Maps-esque overlay every time Wilee needs to trace the shortest route to his destination or slow Wilee’s breakneck speed to a crawl as he quickly analyses the best way to get past oncoming obstacles, always playing out the worst-case scenarios with cartoonish effects.   

At the core of these mechanics is time. Getting to every destination in the shortest amount of time possible and quickly dodging every obstacle become the least of Wilee’s worries when there’s also a corrupted cop breathing down his neck and a bicycle-riding NYPD patrol officer who comically happens to respond to every call involving Wilee’s cycling-so-fast-it’s-dangerous infraction. Michael Shannon offers a particularly hammy performance as the shady cop, shouting self-aware lines like ‘I am chasing a bicycle in a car!’ and always dangerously close to arresting Wilee before letting him slip under his guard with the cachet of a Looney Tunes villain. More importantly, these plot devices allow for a really fast-paced movie.

The only limit to that pace, then, is the time leaping trick that Premium Rush exploits over many instances, preventing you from watching the movie in a proper sequence until it’s nearing the end. As you may have learnt from many movies before Premium Rush, when a movie starts to futz around with chronology, it enters a choke point of its own design. With the right plot, travelling back in time to tell the events that predate the current plight can introduce more suspense. In Premium Rush, however, the plot is so wafer-thin that it actually makes more sense to tell the story in a proper sequence. The decision to reveal the origins of the suspicious content fairly early doesn’t necessarily cripple the movie, but it does remove a great deal of mystery surrounding the show.

At the end of the day, Premium Rush remains a great movie. It’s a refreshing and spirited effort that ventures onto areas that a lesser filmmaker would prefer not to explore. That said, Premium Rush is a movie about cycling through and through, so it’ll be easier to appreciate if you already have a basic liking for cycling. Beyond that, it’s fast-paced and funny although it suffers from an anorexic story and questionable plotting. If anything, those are minor gripes, so don’t let those stop from you from enjoying this unique flick.

Movie Rating:  

(Not the best chase movie, but it’s fast-paced and funny, with a focus on cycling that makes it a curious package to explore)

Review by Loh Yong Jian

James Bond escorts Queen Elizabeth to the Olympics Posted on 30 Jul 2012 In case you missed the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony with Bond Bond escorting Queen Elizabeth to the Olympics in style. Here's the youtube embed: The 2012 Opening Ceremonies was directed by Slumdog Millionaire's Danny Boyle. ... more

Truth be told, the latest offering from Pixar just doesn’t feel like your traditional (if that’s an appropriate word to use) Pixar film. The protagonist isn’t your cutesy princess and there is just this adult tone which perpetuates the entire movie. Same goes for the music from the soundtrack actually – it does not have the signature feel from past composers like Randy Newman (Toy Story series), Thomas Newman (Wall.E) and Michael Giacchino (Up, Ratatouille).

The filmmakers have gotten Patrick Doyle to compose music for this adventure fantasy film about a skilled archer who defies an age old custom. This princess is about to go on an adventure of her lifetime a befallen curse needs to be broken. Set in the Scottish Highlands, Doyle has put together some 55 minutes of music on this album.

Setting the tone if “Fate and Destiny”, where listeners are brought on an overture of symphonic sounds which bring to mind majestic mountains and lush green fields. “The Games” starts off softly before bringing on a grand finish which spell A-D-V-E-N-T-U-R-E. The protagonist’s persona is brought on in “I am Merida”, a courageous and spirited track.

Given Doyle’s past works, which include Sense and Sensibility (1995), Hamlet (1996) and GosfordPark(2001), the filmmakers know that they have the movie’s score in good hands. The firm handedness can be heard in tracks like “Remember to Smile”, “Through the Castle”, “Legends are Lessons” and “In Her Heart”.

There’s also the jolly “Song of Mor’du” performed by Billy Connolly and cast. Other songs on the album include Scottish Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis’ “Touch the Sky” and “Into the Open Air”, and Birdy and Mumford & Sons’ “Learn Me Right”. While the music may not be in the spotlight at awards, it is a solid effort not to be missed. 

 ALBUM RATING:

Recommended Track: (5) The Games

Review by John Li

Genre: Superhero/Action
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Michael Shannon, Antje Traue, Ayelet Zurer, Russell Crowe
RunTime: 2 hrs 23 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)
Released By:  Warner Bros Pictures
Official Website: http://manofsteel.warnerbros.com/index.html
 
Opening Day: 13 June 2013 

Synopsis: From Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures comes “Man of Steel,” starring Henry Cavill (“Immortals,” TV’s “The Tudors”) in the role of Clark Kent/Superman, under the direction of Zack Snyder (“300,” “Watchmen”). The film also stars three-time Oscar® nominee Amy Adams (“The Fighter”) as Daily Planet journalist Lois Lane, and Oscar® nominee Laurence Fishburne (“What’s Love Got to Do with It”) as her editor-in-chief, Perry White. Starring as Clark Kent’s adoptive parents, Martha and Jonathan Kent, are Oscar® nominee Diane Lane (“Unfaithful”) and Academy Award® winner Kevin Costner (“Dances with Wolves”). Squaring off against the superhero are two other surviving Kryptonians, the villainous General Zod, played by Oscar® nominee Michael Shannon (“Revolutionary Road”), and Faora, Zod’s evil partner, played by Antje Traue. Also from Superman’s native Krypton are Lara Lor-Van, Superman’s mother, played by Ayelet Zurer (“Angels and Demons”), and Superman’s father, Jor-El, portrayed by Academy Award® winner Russell Crowe (“Gladiator”).

Movie Review:

Did Superman need a reboot after his last big screen appearance in Bryan Singer’s ‘Superman Returns’? Not really in our opinion, even though the box-office reception to it was generally ‘meh’. Singer did not so much as reinterpret the character as create a movie that was in the spirit of Richard Donner’s iconic 1978 classic, misgauging modern-day audiences’ appetite for the clean-cut square-jawed superheroes of old. And so the task of making Superman relevant once again for the zeitgeist has fallen to Christopher Nolan, he who successfully rebooted another DC Comics character with a grim and gritty treatment under the banner of ‘The Dark Knight’.

Though ‘300’ and ‘Watchmen’ director Zack Synder is at the helm here, Nolan’s fingerprints are all over the material, serving not only as producer but also sharing story credit with his ‘Dark Knight’ scribe David S. Goyer. This is a Clark Kent conflicted with his Superman calling as much as Bruce Wayne was with his Batman persona, and the key struggle for Superman here is that tension between both his Kryptonian and Earthly identities - or to put it simply, though he was raised on Earth, Clark has always wrestled with the fact that he is not of this planet.

Such an existential dilemma has been explored in similar fashion in Marvel’s ‘X-Men’ movies (produced and/or directed by Singer ironically), but Goyer makes it personal, heartfelt and ultimately moving in a way that no other film has done. Employing a flashback structure not unlike that in ‘Batman Begins’, Goyer paints an intimate portrait of a unique individual whose innate nature and ability to do good is tempered by a genuine need for self-preservation. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a stirring sequence where a young Clark pushes an entire school-bus of his classmates to safety after their vehicle plunges into a raging ravine, only to be regarded with trepidation from the ones he saved and their loved ones as well.

“You're not just anyone,” Johnathan Kent (Kevin Costner) tells his adopted son. “You just have to decide what kind of man you want to grow up to be. Good or bad, that character will change the world.” So convinced was his father that the world was not ready for Clark that he would make the ultimate sacrifice just to preserve the latter’s identity, that singular demonstration of love counting as one of the most powerful emotional wallops in the film. And amidst the bombast you would expect of a summer blockbuster, there are many such heart-tugging moments to be found here, which lend a depth to the character that no other Superman film has been able to.

In building the emotional core of the movie, Synder makes some unlikely yet inspired casting choices. Costner and Diane Lane play Clark’s adoptive parents Johnathan and Martha, and both actors bring seemingly effortless warmth to their performances. There’s also Russell Crowe, who plays Clark’s biological father Jor-El, the Academy Award-winning actor injecting nobility and gravitas as Clark’s other fatherly figure motivating him to realise the destiny for which he is capable of. It is indeed rare to find such acting heavyweights willing to take up supporting roles, but no matter how Synder managed to convince them to do so, the dramatic tones they add to the film makes it all the very much better off for it.

One suspects that these actors might have signed up because of the creative liberties that Goyer has taken with the material in a studious attempt to ground mythology in reality. There’s no Kryptonite for one, and the Fortress of Solitude gets only a passing mention - but beyond these obvious revisions, Goyer makes bolder moves to find reason for just how Superman ended up with an ‘S’ on his suit, or for that matter, such a spandex suit in the first place. Just as significantly, he lets Clark and ‘Daily Planet’ reporter Lois Lane meet and fall in love even before the former joins the very newspaper, taking that familiar dynamic between Clark and Lois in a wholly different but entirely refreshing direction. There is both ingenuity and meticulousness in his revisionist plotting of familiar elements, even to the point of building credibility and reason into what could have easily been designed as a cardboard villain in General Zod.

Clearly inspired by Goyer’s reinterpretation as well as Nolan’s guiding hand, Synder delivers what in our opinion is his best work to date. There is little doubt of Synder’s ability to deliver visual spectacle, but his later works ‘Watchmen’ and ‘Sucker Punch’ have been criticised for being no more than empty spectacle. With Goyer’s character-driven script, Synder establishes a level of heart and profundity that has escaped even his best films thus far. Even though everything unfolds and has implications on a huge scale, there is always a personal quality to the storytelling - whether is it in terms of Clark’s own coming-to-terms with his identity or his budding romance with Lois - that ensures that the audience is always emotionally invested in the character.

That’s not to say that Synder has let up on what he does best; on the contrary, the visuals are simply astounding, especially so in the relentlessly thrilling action sequences. Aside from the messy prologue that sets up the destruction of Krypton, all the rest of the sequences pulse with an urgent rhythm that draws you in with bated breath and keeps you on the edge of your seat. That is particularly true for the second half of the movie that begins with an awesome decimation of Smallville and culminates in an exhilarating finale right in the heart of downtown Metropolis - despite going from one big set piece to another with nary any breathing space, it never for one second gets monotonous, with every subsequent piece upping the stakes from the last.

This is action filmed on a scale never before seen, the mano-a-mano between Superman and General Zod alone enough to rival everything you’ve seen so far in them Marvel superhero movies. Synder’s frequent use of handheld cameras also aids in reeling his audience closer to the scene of the action - and of course to our very superhero himself - without ever getting too frantic to make us lose sight of the bigger picture. And because unlike The Dark Knight, this caped crusader isn’t at all Earth-bound, the action pushes the boundaries of the laws of physics and makes the whole experience even more breathtaking than any of Nolan’s Batman movies have been able to accomplish.

Yet all that flying and smashing and ass-whooping would not be as stunning without an emotionally satisfying centre, embodied perfectly by British actor Henry Cavill as well as his complement Amy Adams. Cavill plays Superman as quiet, reserved and thoughtful without ever being angsty, while Adams has plenty of sass and spunk to spare as his romantic other half. Like we said earlier, their Clark and Lois isn’t what we would be well-acquainted with, but hey, if you’re going to do a reboot, you might as well be audacious in spinning the oft-familiar elements of the tale.

And that is what director Zack Synder, screenwriter David S. Goyer and producer Christopher Nolan have accomplished so beautifully in their rendition of the caped crusader. This ‘Man of Steel’ doesn’t just take flight - it soars. 

Movie Rating:

(A near-perfect summer blockbuster with heart-stopping action and unexpected poignancy, this revisionist telling of Superman’s origins lives up to its titular character’s measure of mettle)

Review by Gabriel Chong
  

SYNOPSIS: It was summer 1999 when four small-town Michigan boys began a quest to lose their virginity. More than 10 years later they all return to East Great Falls for a High School Reunion. In this one long over-due weekend, they will discover what has changed, who hasn't and that time and distance can't break the bonds of friendship.

MOVIE REVIEW:

A little raunchy movie made on a paltry $11 million with virtually no special effects or cast members to speak of shook the movie industry back in 1999 with its accumulative box-office of over US$200 million. That movie is known as “American Pie”.

Since then, it has spawned two sequels, four direct-to-video titles, some of the cast members have become household names (or at least one has) and most importantly, started a trend of endless slew of raunchy sex comedies. At the behest of main leads, Jason Biggs and Sean William Scott who also produced this effort, the guys are back for a reunion. Set 10 years after their high school graduation, the guys namely, Jim (Jason Biggs), Oz (Chris Klein), Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Stifler (Sean William Scott) gather yet again at their hometown, East Great Falls. Expect lots of naughty fun from the boys who first started it all. The wolfpack probably got to stand aside in the meantime.

Honestly, I see no point in watching “American Pie: Reunion” if you have not been an avid follower of the series. Much of the plotting involves or at least referenced to the past instalments liked how husband-and-wife, Jim and Michelle’s (Alyson Hannigan) sexual encounters continue to go wrong, Oz rekindling his love for his high school sweetheart, Heather (Mena Suvari), Stifler still being the mischievous prankster, Jim getting more advice from his dad and so on and so forth. These are the stuff that makes this installment interesting instead of mere throwing sexual gags at audience. Even though all these involved grown up men but their juvenile behavior still bring a smile to our face because all of these familiar characters.

You got to admit the gags here are old or even tamer than the current crop of comedies. Gags liked Stifler defecating into a cooler just doesn’t cut it anymore. Oddly, Biggs manage to topple his classic pie act with a full-frontal male nudity in an awkward scene set in the kitchen. Directors and screenwriters Hurwitz and Schlossberg (Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay) despite being new recruits to the franchise relies much on nostalgia and some heartfelt moments to keep things ongoing for 112 minutes.

“American Pie: Reunion” is comfort food for the masses, to be accurate, decent homecook food that you are familiar with. It’s not overwhelming but definitely a substantial outing to bring the raunchy franchise to a full stop. 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

There are seven Deleted Scenes, some of them actually pretty funnyand aGag Reel which features mainly Sean William Scott’s fumbling his lines.

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The visual transfer offers a natural tone and clean images while the Dolby Digital 5.1 serves its purpose with decent surround activity and clear dialogues.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee

SYNOPSIS: The imaginative world of Dr Seuss comes to life like never before in this visually spectacular adventure from the creators of Despicable Me! Twelve year old Ted will do anything to find a real live Truffula Tree in order to impress the girl of his dreams. As he embarks on his journey, Ted discovers the incredible story of the Lorax, a grumpy but charming creature who speaks for the trees.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Seriously, you might as well settle on reading the original 1972 children’s book by Dr Seuss if you can’t stand catchy sing-along song routines, cuddling cute characters and the voices of Zac Efron and Taylor Swift. See, I made my point in the beginning of this DVD review for haters and detractors of this CG animation, “The Lorax”.   

From the studio that brought you “Despicable Me” and “Hop” comes this delightful adaptation about a boy, Ted (Efron) who set out to seek out a real tree for the girl of his dreams, Audrey (Swift) but found out the tale of a tree guardian called the Lorax (Danny DeVito) from a mysterious man, Once-Ler (Ed Helms). It turns out that the current Thneed-ville was once a flourishing land of greenery where animals roam freely. However, a greedy businessman’s deforestation methods gradually turned it into a wasteland and with Thneed-ville now controlled by a greedy mayor cum owner of a bottled oxygen company Aloysius O’Hare, will this idealistic young man save the day or risk the wrath of O’Hare?
 
“The Lorax” aim to please the younger kids without sacrificing the need to spread some meaningful eco messages even though Disney/Pixar has done it earlier with “Wall-E”. While it’s a high benchmark, “The Lorax” compensates by creating beautifully, crafted in details graphical images by the digital artists in true Dr Seuss’ style be it the truffula trees, the wondrous colourful backdrops or the various human/animal characters. It definitely brought back fond memories for the parents and adults who grew up on Seuss’ books as well. While you can’t expect every animation on the market to possess the wit of Pixar’s earlier productions, Illumination Entertainment’s “The Lorax” is seriously a threat to the big animation companies in the market.

Danny DeVito is perfect as the grumpy, mischievous, magical creature, The Lorax. What’s really annoying is we don’t really see a lot of him in the movie. “The Hangover” star Ed Helms voiced the Once-Ler in his usual earnest way and he contributed a couple of genuinely affecting songs too. Yup the man can sing, just check out “How Bad Can I Be?”. Not that they did a bad job but Zac Efron and Taylor Swift are here to make sure tickets sell though they didn’t get much chance to showcase their solo singing voices. Grand Old Dame Betty White is also here providing the voice of Ted’s granny while Rob Riggle (21 Jump Street) gives the villain a voice.  

“The Lorax” is filled to the brim with cartoony fun and no doubt a piece of solid entertainment for the young and grown-ups. It’s never an easy task to adapt a picture book to a 90 minutes movie and for that we got to give a round of applause to directors Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda for a job well-done.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Cast and crew talk about adapting the Dr Seuss’ classic to the big screen in Seuss To Screen.

Join storyboard artist Mark O’Hare as he teaches you how to draw the Lorax, Humming Fish in Seuss It Up. 

Once-Ler's Wagon
 is a fun interactive game for younger kids

A fully rendered Deleted Scene is also included.

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The colourful world of Lorax comes to live brimming with delightful details and graphics in this DVD transfer. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is energetic with plenty of sound effects and feature boisterous song routines for your home enjoyment.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee