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Darah Rating: C Guess I didn't get the memo on why it's entertaining to watch a bunch of people get killed one by one. Tokyo Sonata Rating: A- The first two acts are note-perfect. The third act veers into a hair-pin turn, splinters into at least three separate films, and miraculously manages to right itself toward the end (though the coda verges on cheese; what's with the Japanese and classical music?!). Forward Motion: Intros Rating: From this entry onward I will not give grades for works that I feel are beyond me (e.g. non-narrative films). These short dance films are interesting for sharpening my awareness of the screen's materiality, and of the stylization of movement that is seemingly brought about by cinema's framing (Bresson's iconic pickpocket sequence must count as an example of screen dance?). Beyond that though, I'm hard-pressed to come up with answers on what I could get out of these clips. (500) Days of Summer Rating: B+ Overly eager to brandish its hipster credentials. Too pleased by its own cleverness. Or, is it just saddled with the postmodernist anxiety that we would find a plainly bleeding heart uncool? Julie & Julia Rating: C+ I've always found Meryl Streep overrated; the impression I get from her performances these days is that she pretty much directs herself. As for the film, so much of it is twee, tedious and devoid of dramatic interest. The Blue Mansion Rating: C+ A conjoined twin, its parents would've done better to let only one live: the comic whodunit or the family drama. I say kill the former, which fails to entertain in the way even ill-received comic whodunits like 'Manhatten Murder Mystery' and 'Scoop' succeed in doing (this film is as removed from reality as those Woody Allens, sharing their rarefied air without quite breathing the same wit). Freed from this pesky twin, the family drama might have dug deeper, developed more fully; here we have a Singapore tragedy waiting to be told, here we want to see how a man (some would say THE man) is corrupted by the Singapore Dream into losing his soul, here is the Singapore 'Godfather', if we ever dare to paint on such a vast, majestic scale. But what we end up with is soap opera level feuding, and a denouement that does nothing to illuminate character, merely illustrating a wrongdoing in the past, which the film seems to believe is a shocker (it isn't). The redemption at the end rings hollow. And then you realize, so does the whole film. The Hurt Locker Rating: B+ If you must shoot with the camera removed from the tripod, where it rightfully belongs, this is how you do it. Post a comment in response: |
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