Monkey’s Mask – Film Review

monkeysmaskA strange little movie based on a poem novel by an Australian author Dorothy Porter – a fact I had no idea about before watching it, but you can guess its literary roots from the kind of dialogue that probably sounds fine on the page but comes off as mighty pretentious and unnatural onscreen.

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The Nice Guys – Film Review

the_nice_guys_poster_2_headerThis movie was a nice surprise, a detective buddy comedy that feels fresh mostly because of the stellar work by its two stars (Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling), who are not typically associated with the comedy but turn out to have a major, previously untapped talent for it. Throw in a sleazy, noirish 1970s Los Angeles setting, slapstick, sarcasm, raunchy dialogue, darkly humorous and surreal touches, and the results are highly entertaining.

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X-Men: Apocalypse – Film Review

xmenapocalypseimax-1There’s a scene in this movie where a bunch of young students from Xavier’s school discuss Return of the Jedi and one of them remarks that the third movie is always the worst, a knowing wink to the audience that was probably meant to refer to X-Men: The Last Stand, the much-hated third entry of the original X-Men trilogy. A movie’s gotta be careful with a line like this in case it comes to bite it on its ass, and man does it come to bite, hard.

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Joy – Film Review

joyI watched this movie on my flight from Singapore to Hanoi. International flights are usually a chance for me to catch up with the movies I never bothered to see at the cinema and I often end up watching a whole load of rubbish. Joy isn’t quite rubbish, but it’s not particularly good either. Read more

A Bigger Splash – Film Review

I enjoyed I Am Love, the 2009 Luca Guadagnino film starring the inimitable Tilda Swinton, but my big beef with that movie, wonderfully shot as it was, was that it featured zero memorable characters or performances other than Swinton. Not an issue with this movie, a languid, sun-kissed study of increasingly fractured relationships within a quartet of characters hanging around a secluded Italian island.

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