A Nutshell Review: Invisible Target
There's nothing invisible about the target in Benny Chan's latest movie Invisible Target. And in actuality, it seems that the constant target for everyone in the movie here, be they the bad guys or the good cops, are the plenty of glass lying around, getting smashed into smithereens by hurled projectiles, or more frequently, human bodies. See that nice looking glass window? It'll be smashed soon. Or that double panel glass facade? Yup, as soon as you notice it, the next scene will show it in a million bits on the floor with a writhing body. It could be aptly titled Glass Target.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/invisible-target-nan-er-ben-se.html
A Nutshell Review: Vacancy
For starters, if I own a BWM, I'll make sure I have a baseball bat handy and near enough for that occasional road rage, and am sure as hell gonna bring it along with me if my car stalls and I need to journey into the night. And to remember never to bicker incessantly with my wife because she's always right, and everyone else deserves to have their heads bash in because otherwise, they'll snuff us.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/vacancy.html
A Nutshell Review: Alone
If you think Banjong and Parkpoom are one hit wonders with their debut movie, then Alone will prove you wrong. Despite having counted on the usual lighting and shadow techniques, quick cut surprises and scares, and the pristine, well-crafted sound effects, it demonstrated that as long as you deliver the product with great technical skill and respect for the medium, it'll still be as enjoyable as watching it all for the very first time. Having a storyline which engages helps as well, and here the duo still seemed to have a thing or two for old photographs, this time showing the subject material of siamese twins, although not as grotesque as those shown in the Alone trailers.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/alone.html
A Nutshell Review: Black Sheep
I haven't the opportunity to follow many New Zealand movies, besides the recent memory of Sione's Wedding and In My Father's Den, both of which were of different genres, and mighty enjoyable. Written and directed by Jonathan King (who is also writing the Raintree produced movie The Tattooist), Black Sheep takes the well-established genre of zombie movies, and with its fusion of local flavour, presents its own worthy take in giving us the attack of the killer sheep.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/black-sheep.html
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A Nutshell Review: The Condemned
At first glance, the storyline looks like a distant cousin to the Japanese movie Battle Royale. Instead of having sent unruly students to an island and see them finish off one another, The Condemned follows the same lines of having 10 death row prisoners from around the world being brought to an island, and given a simple rule to kill everyone else in order to earn their survival, and freedom. They are similarly rigged with an explosive device which if tampered, or if they choose not to participate, they too will be blown to bits.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/condemned.html
A Nutshell Review: La Vie En Rose
Of late, musical biographies make popular films especially when they dish out anecdotes on the various ups and downs in the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and especially so when the music they play and the songs they sing happen to be evergreen classics, or at least those which you've probably heard before at one point in time. In recent years, Walk the Line and Ray have also garnered popular film awards, and not to mention raised the profiles of the stars like Joaquin Phoenix and Jamie Foxx respectively who played the musical legends.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/la-mme-la-vie-en-rose.html
A Nutshell Review: Knocked Up
Writer-director Judd Apatow is probably best known for last year's sleeper hit comedy The 40 Year Old Virgin, where Steve Carrell played the titular character whose friends tried to get him laid. In Knocked Up, most of the familiar faces in Virgin returns for Apatow's latest offering, this time with Seth Rogen cast as one of the protagonists who has his hands full when he learns that he's going to be a father. But here's the catch - the pregnancy is totally unplanned, and was a result of a drunken one-night stand.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/knocked-up.html
A Nutshell Review: Disturbia
Disturbia played it smart in its release locally, by having pushed back its release date until almost every cinema goer had seen Michael Bay's Transformers, and become acquainted with the latest Hollywood "It" kid, Shia LaBeou, otherwise also better known as "the Transformers boy".
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/disturbia.html
A Nutshell Review: Gone Shopping
Singaporeans are known for our passion for food, be it either great tasting humble hawker fare, or exquisite fine dining at various swanky restaurants. Food has been featured in a number of our local movies, with yellow flat noodles being the Mee Pok in Mee Pok Man, Chicken Rice in Chicken Rice War, and the ubiquitous coffeeshop locales in almost all of director Jack Neo's movies. The other passion we have is for shopping, no doubt with our most famous road being Orchard Road, for its malls and food of course, and the various generic shopping malls (with almost the same shops, that each mall seemed xeroxed from the preceding success story) that have sprung up in various neighbourhood heartland town centers all over the island.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/gone-shopping.html
A Nutshell Review: The Simpsons Movie
I'm a big, big fan of the Simpsons, and word that the movie version of the hit TV series would be made had been out for the longest time possible. Toying between trying to cast actors in a life-action movie (rumoured at one point to have Bruce Willis playing Homer because of the err, balding pate), and sticking to its 2D version of yellow skin and four fingers on each hand, I'm glad that the movie was done in the latter version, simply because casting will be a nightmare to flesh out the inhabitants of Springfield, and 2D allows for many insane jokes and situations to be played out without reliance on CGI and the likes.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/simpsons-movie.html
A Nutshell Review: Cashback
How can anyone miss the poster for Cashback? Featuring a beautiful blonde in a supermarket who's almost naked from the waist up, her modesty protected by the words of the title, I guess you're forgiven if you mistake this for some low brow sex movie. But Cashback is anything but low brow, and sex is just a small part of the equation. Based on a short film of the same name written and directed by Sean Ellis, this is easily one of my favourite movies this year. It's intelligent, sexy, and nothing as raunchy as the poster would suggest, but full of little elements of surprises that connected, some of which are wickedly naughty.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/cashback.html
A Nutshell Review: Flash Point
In his black leather jacket and oozing plenty of charisma, Donnie Yen's Inspector Ma Jun quite resembled his other character in SPL, which was also directed by Wilson Yip, because at one point Flash Point was supposed to be an SPL sequel. But in any case, the character is slightly tweaked. Early in the movie, Ma Jun tells it straight to the camera that as a cop, his job is to apprehend criminals, and it's as simple as that. And the trailers would have you believe here's a man who's lightning quick with his punches, throws and kicks.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/07/flash-point-dao-huo-xian.html
A Nutshell Review: Secret
While Jay Chou no doubt holds court in today's Mando-pop scene, he gets no love from the movie-goers who snigger at his expressionless performance in Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower. It indeed is quite brave of him (though it's arguable to strike while the iron is hot) to diversify and have a hand in directing so early in his cinematic career, and coming up with quite an interesting, engaging story, though like any creative work, his story did make him seem quite intelligent, in spite of his usual laid-back demeanour.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/secret.html
A Nutshell Review: Perfect Stranger
Perfect Stranger is far from perfect, and this is yet another classic example of the marketers taking the source material, and letting their own imagination run wild to get bums on seats. Bruce Willis in a seedy role, and Halle Berry oozing sex appeal with assets spilling out of her dress? That's what the trailers would have led us to believe, that the movie's a classical sexy thriller, but the movie is many miles away, southwards in direction.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/perfect-stranger.html
A Nutshell Review: 881
The Seventh Month, according to Chinese beliefs, is the month where the gates of Hell open, and the ghouls and goblins of the underworld get a one-month visit-Earth pass. They roam around, hungry and looking for entertainment, so to appease the spirits, humankind will offer food and fruits, and burn paper money to line their pockets so that they do not disturb us. Also, we have to provide entertainment, so that happy souls do not come haunt us, like those in Kelvin Tong's The Maid, which is also set during this lunar Seventh Month.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/881.html
A Nutshell Review: Rush Hour 3
Should movies make money, then the Hollywood rule of thumb is to make another, and another, until the franchise runs out of steam. The original Rush Hour was a Jackie Chan vehicle of sorts to break into Hollywood, and it made a lot of money with the mis-pairing opposite Chris Tucker in a buddy cop movie formula filled with action and comedy. Rush Hour 2 was made 3 years later and made even more money, but it took 6 years for the second sequel to be made, and 9 years for the entire trilogy to be done (pray tell, will there be another sequel?)
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/rush-hour-3.html
A Nutshell Review: The Bourne Ultimatum
Move aside Transformers. Retire John McClane. Matt Damon is back as the best of the best prototype secret agent-assassin Jason Bourne, and his Ultimatum wins the best action movie of the summer, hands down and without a single thread of doubt! Loosely based on the Robert Ludlum novels of the same name, the movie version starring Damon in the titular role, have already established itself as serious, slick, and got almost everything right in the spy movie genre. It owned James Bond, and in my opinion, possibly one of the best franchises out there.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/bourne-ultimatum.html
A Nutshell Review: Hostel: Part II
Between the first Hostel released last year and its sequel, there have been countless number of torture porn movies released, like Turistas, Captivity, Wolf Creek, and the likes, so much so that audiences these days (or fans of the genre) bay for more blood to be spilled, the gorier the merrier. In that respect, Hostel Part 2 failed to live up to its predecessor's success in sticking to the blood, gore, violence, drug and nudity clauses that have become staple, and instead, opted for a perceived balance with its earlier film, which made it turn out to be a yawn.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/hostel-part-ii.html
A Nutshell Review: Ratatouille
The Pixar juggernaut continues! I've always been enthralled by the movies that Pixar puts out ever since Toy Story, and through the years, Pixar has built a brand of trust amongst movie goers, with quality storytelling using animation as a tool to tell them, not because it's cool to do things through the medium, but that it adds a certain powerful, believable dimension, with stories rooted to universal themes, yet jazzed up by the structure in which it's told. The Incredibles ranked amongst my favourite so far, but writer-director Brad Bird has topped that with Ratatouille, a story about a rat, and probably the most mature of the Pixar stories to date.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/ratatouille.html
A Nutshell Review: Brave Story
Say "Anime" these days, and the brewing spat between the local anime community and the company Odex will spring to mind, with the latter suing illegal downloaders of their licensed anime and allegedly gloating over the internet, leaving a bad aftertaste amongst the online folks. But I'm not into serialized anime (ok, I hear those chants of you-don't-know-what-you're-missing), but frankly, I prefer animated movies, as they're to the point, and nothing beats watching them on the big screen.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/brave-story.html
A Nutshell Review: Dead Silence
In 2004, James Wan and Leigh Whannell burst into contemporary horror-thriller genre with their highly successful movie Saw, and had created quite an enigmatic character in Jigsaw, the serial killer with highly questionable morality issues. Success had meant spawning a slew of sequels, though they hadn't really had much direct control over the quality of the subsequent movies, which I thought to date had made quite a neat trilogy.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/dead-silence.html
A Nutshell Review: License to Wed
Marriage is serious stuff. I've come to realize that it takes a lot of commitment and trust in order to walk down the aisle and dedicate your entire lifetime from that point onwards to the welfare of another human being, and that's not counting the fact that some kids would be in tow in the future as well. Forever is a very long time, and just how sure are you to say "I Do" to the significant other, that the relationship should at least stay the same, or in the best case, improve and grow from strength to strength. If someone has problems keeping promises, then an eternal vow, wow.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/license-to-wed.html
A Nutshell Review: The Willow Tree
Sometimes God works in mysterious ways, and us mortal man have absolutely no idea what to make of it, opting for the most parts to blame the big guy when things don't go our way, only to find out that the fault lies in ourselves. No, I'm not suddenly pious and wanting to spread the word, but Majid Majidi's The Willow Tree evoked such a feeling and reminder to myself, that it's always so easy to blame "somebody else", even though that someone could be the guy up there.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/willow-tree-beed-e-majnoon.html
A Nutshell Review: Poltergay
I'll have to admit that Poltergay is a lot of fun, for straight folks and gay folks alike. It's probably something that Kelvin Tong's Men in White could have been - smart, witty and with that level of cheekiness, without almost always falling flat on its jokes. If it could have been at least what Poltergay was, then it won't have to suffer the misery of a relatively poor box office, or DVDs that I think most people would stand around the shops to watch for free, rather than to purchase a copy for personal consumption.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/poltergay.html
A Nutshell Review: Skinwalkers
The poster may look menacing, but Skinwalkers is actually a tame pussycat. In the hands of ordinary filmmakers, this is what you get - mediocre, "have we seen this before" moments, and plenty of unintentional comedy, for a werewolf genre that tried to reinvent itself, and exhausted its game plan. To give itself a mystical feel, it developed its own uninteresting mythos about some prophecy (not again!) that will come true after the appearance of the red moon.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/08/skinwalkers.html