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Paranoid Park (DVD) Rating: A It's lazy to proclaim an artist to be working 'at the height of his powers', but the fact that Van Sant made this back to back with 'Milk' can be proof of nothing but. Shot in different speeds and formats, and rife with stylistic flourishes that scream 'Experimental!' (these would usually have driven me up the wall), the film is free-floating yet centered, mysterious yet lucid, a drowsy diaphanous blow to the head and heart. Here Rating: A- The crack in the wall at the film's beginning is a harbinger of the audacious and increasingly deft frame-breaking to come, a head-trip with a sepulchral atmosphere reminiscent of 'Last Year at Marienbad' and a 'storyline' I'm tempted to describe as Charlie Kaufman minus the pranksterism – if only that approximates the generous cerebral pleasures this film affords. Even calling it the best Singapore feature I've seen diminishes its achievements somewhat, for no local film I know is more exhaustively thought through, more accommodating of multiple readings, and more divisive of critical opinion. The Love of Siam (DVD) Rating: B Sometimes, a happy ending is not a cop-out or a political imperative, but plain narrative necessity, especially after you've put the audience through an emotional wringer, and led them into believing a beatific resolution is waiting in the wings. It is a testament to how well this melodrama is made (it's got little of the exaggeration you expect from Thai pop cinema), that the anti-climax of its last five minutes is felt this acutely. Revolutionary Road (DVD) Rating: B- Mendes is so taken by suburbia bashing and rigging the kind of no-holds-barred husband-and-wife showdowns that brought home the Oscars for 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?', that he has failed to see the true terror at the heart of his source material: We may think we are superior to our trite little lives, we may insulate ourselves with irony and cling to the belief that we are destined for something more meaningful, but it is all delusion, because 'real' life isn't elsewhere, and what's worse, we may be every bit as banal and mediocre as the unthinking plebians we disdain. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Rating: B- I've always thought the charm of the books lies mainly in the cozy self-containment of Rowling's whimsical little world (Harry Potter spent half of the final book in a tent), bursting at the seams with mischievously conceived minutiae and droll schoolboy humor. This may explain why the epic qualities of these Hollywood studio 'adaptations' feel so forced, so slapped-on to me. Sometimes, illusion is just illusion, not magic. DIVE!!! (DVD) Rating: C+ Just because the narrative arc for a film like this is cast in stone (dream-obstacle-triumph), doesn't mean you can't have fun with it, as 'Strictly Ballroom', the first 'Iron Ladies', and 'Water Boys' have so amply demonstrated. Huhwihaji Anha (No Regret) (DVD) Rating: C- What the film wants to be is melodrama, but the director has other ideas (it's more refined to make an inscrutable art film, you see), doing away with vulgar things such as character motivation and psychology. The result: Hollow pretty pictures with neither emotional nor narrative logic. Yi He Yuan (Summer Palace) (DVD) Rating: B+ An object lesson on how to channel French New Wave via WKW without seeming derivative or compromised. It went on for at least twenty minutes too long and by the end you're as numb as the dysfunctional leads – not entirely a bad thing. Ssang Hwa Jeom (A Frozen Flower) Rating: C Either way, it's fucked: Make the queen the villain and the film will be misogynistic. Make the king the bad guy and here you have it, the most bilious portrayal of homosexuality on celluloid in recent memory. I was so busy struggling against what the film was saying – that homosexuality is enslaving, histrionic, caused by inexperience with women, and ultimately castrating – that I didn't even notice how absurd the whole thing was getting. Public Enemies Rating: B Michael Mann's auteurist preoccupation with men at work continues with the usual crop of startling compositions and envelope-pushing HD work, among many other things to admire, but as a crime film, it could neither match the pop thrills of 'The Untouchables' nor quite attain the tragic jolt of 'Bonnie & Clyde'. Post a comment in response: |
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