A Nutshell Review: Angel
Based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor, this Francois Ozon directed movie was the closing film of the Berlin Film Festival last year, and while it played out like a biography of a fictional character, you can't help but to imagine how close it seemed to the flamboyance of the other Liz Taylor being infused into the titular character.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/angel.html
A Nutshell Review: Accuracy of Death
The first thing that comes screaming to your mind when you come to know of this movie, is MEET JOE BLACK, yes in caps, and a nagging feeling that it's a rip off / copycat coming some 10 years after that Hollywood movie. Although this is based on the Japanese novel by Kotaro Isaka, you can't help but to ponder upon the similarities between the two movies.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/accuracy-of-death-sweet-rain-suwto-rein.html
A Nutshell Review: Death Defying Acts
What had drawn me to watch Death Defying Acts, is that it's a story with Harry Houdini, arguably the greatest illusionist and escape artist of our time. A few days ago I was browsing through a book which revealed the secrets behind his brand of death defying acts, and really he's a man of science, engineering and most of all, a performer to bring to life the act of fooling an audience into believing his stunts. Sure there's an element of danger, but with proper risk assessment and safeguards, they strip away all the mystique that serves to confound.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/death-defying-acts.html
A Nutshell Review: Chocolate
In this part of the world, there's no dearth of male action heroes, you know, those with real martial arts background. Think Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, Wu Jing, and closer to home, Tony Jaa. How about a female counterpart? You're likely to struggle hard to name a credible one, Michelle Yeoh notwithstanding. So Thai director Prachya Pinkaew is probably shrewd enough to identify this golden opportunity, and so introduces us to Yanin Vismistananda in her debut feature Chocolate.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/chocolate.html
A Nutshell Review: Prince Caspian
The first movie I watched in a theatre in the States happened to be in Las Vegas, and was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Billed as the year end blockbuster, it never did really live up to its hype, and I did not really enjoy the movie. Perhaps being the most familiar of the Narnia stories that expectations of its treatment tend to be higher, and nonetheless coming off the sucessful Lord of the Rings franchise, it certainly had to scale a higher benchmark.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/chronicles-of-narnia-prince-caspian.html
A Nutshell Review: Ayat-Ayat Cinta
Playing to full houses since the day it premiered in Singapore, Ayat-Ayat Cinta piqued my interest not only because it's a movie from the region, but also because it tackles the theme of polygamy and wears religion on its sleeve. Based on a novel by Habiburrahman El Shirazy, and it being obvious that I haven't read the book, Ayat-Ayat Cinta had a lot going for it, with its attempts at tackling various issues, but it always seemed that while it goes for the jugular, it holds back, therefore not being able to deliver its punches to the full, and strangely enough, had a scene which looked like a nationalist cry for victory.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/ayat-ayat-cinta.html
A Nutshell Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
So it took 19 long years since the last installment, to finally decide to nail a decent story befitting of the trilogy that went before it. I would have thought it's because Spielberg, Lucas and Ford were racing against time to add some good money to their coffers before the latter got too old to don the fedora again, so they just greenlit this poor, poor imitation and parody of an "Indiana Jones" (deliberate quotes, mind you) movie, and slapped a Kingdom of Fictitious Skulls on it to make it sound like the worse title ever since Attack of the Clones or The Phantom Menace. If I had my way, this would be Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Mediocre Action Sequels with Weak Multi-Genre Plots.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/indiana-jones-and-kingdom-of-crystal.html
A Nutshell Review: Sex and the City
I've got to admit that I've never seen an episode of Sex and the City prior to this movie, so I'm probably a good gauge whether someone going in blind will still be able to enjoy the movie. In short, yes I did, primarily because it's so cliche of a romance movie and I'm in the mood for some formula after frying my brain for the last work week. But like in true Singapore fashion, the same reason why the television series never made it to our free-to-air channels, is precisely because we cannot stand sex. I've said it before and I'll say it again, stop complaining about dwindling birthrates when we can't even watch some harmless humping on the screen. In true capitalist fashion, the distributors decided on the M18 rating, with the censors exercising their scissors to trim it for that. An R21 rating will enable this to go uncut, but no. So while we can see a dog hump everything in sight, human copulation is a strict no-no.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/sex-and-city.html
A Nutshell Review: Kung Fu Panda
It seems like this is a movie made for all the fanboys out there, regardless of what their obsessions are about. You know, being one who idolizes certain somebodies or some things, and given a day that Fate decides to throw you a curveball and give you that one opportunity to come up close and personal to meet and greet your idol in the flesh, or be thrown into the exact situation that you've always been dreaming about. What would you do, and would you go weak in the knees or be overcome with disbelief that you're actually, finally, realizing your dream?
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/kung-fu-panda.html
A Nutshell Review: Black Book
I guess the most obvious comparison this movie will go up against, is Lee Ang's Lust, Caution. Both are set during WWII in lands under Axis power occupation, and both involve using the adage of Generals having to stumble over the lure of beauties. This strategy is quite basic in fact and execution, and both movies involve having an ingenue infiltrate their enemy's territory by getting up close and very personal with the respective officers in command, taking a little more than the spreading of limbs to pander to the lusts of men. Even though I had enjoyed Lust, Caution, I would have to say that Black Book notches a rung above it, simply because of it more superior production values, and a storyline a tad more complex and intriguing, that makes the Ang Lee movie look like a walk in the park.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/black-book-zwartboek.html
A Nutshell Review: Shine a Light
The Rolling Stones was here for a concert not too long ago, but since tickets were priced way out of my league, there was no way I could have seen them in action live unless I opted for the cheapest of the lot and sat well away from the stage. So I got to thank Martin Scorsese for having design and capture some definitive moments from a Rolling Stones performance, and share that stage magic the quartet provide when they're at their element, on a celluloid screen, captured for posterity.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/shine-light.html
A Nutshell Review: Sarkar Raj
Sarkar Raj is the sequel to the 2005 movie Sarkar by Ram Gopal Varma, which is said to be the Indian equivalent of The Godfather starring megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the titular role where a gangster gets elected to political power. You don't really need to watch Sarkar in order to enjoy Sarkar Raj, as characters get introduced fairly quickly, and their motivations spelt out clearly on the surface. Necessary links to the original were presented in flashbacks, while the story here takes off with new challenges that present themselves to the characters whom you can get chummy with in a jiffy.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/sarkar-raj.html
A Nutshell Review: Shaolin Girl
Ever since the success of Stephen Chow's Shaollin Soccer in 2001, he's been asked time and again whether a sequel was in the works. There still isn't, but he sort of franchised the idea out to the Japanese and served as executive producer, so the outcome of the deal, was Shaolin Girl.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/shaolin-girl-shrin-shjo.html
A Nutshell Review: The Incredible Hulk
I guess everyone has a little mean streak in us, and anger's something that we have to control lest we flare up and hurt people, physically or otherwise. In the 1960s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby fused atomic energy with that emotion, and gave us a very tragic, misunderstood hero in the form of a grey coloured Hulk. I still recall when I was young, reading a reprint on the origin of the angry monster, where a scientist in an act of selfless sacrifice, helped a young boy evacuate from a ground zero site, therefore exposing himself to deadly doses of radiation from an army bomb test. The rest as they say, is history, and a pop culture icon was born.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/incredible-hulk.html
A Nutshell Review: The Happening
Allow me to state up front so that you'll know one of my idiosyncrasies. I am an M Night Shyamalan fan, and to date I have not been disappointed with his works. The closest I have been to thinking one of his movies was an unenjoyable one, was Unbreakable, but that's because I'd read the whole plot before watching it, thus spoiling it big time, so I'm going to give that film another go hopefully soon. But for each and every other movie starting with his groundbreaking The Sixth Sense, I've come to appreciate what Shyamalan is, not a horror-meister, not a one trick pony, but a damn good storyteller, like it or not. So if you are to disagree with me now, then tread the rest of this piece of writing carefully.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/happening.html
A Nutshell Review: Missing
I hate to make such a statement, but until I see something better from him, I think Tsui Hark has lost his Midas Touch. He had given us wonderful movies, some of which are my personal favourites like the Once Upon A TIme in China series starring Jet Li, and the Blade, but in his attempt to register a more prolific comeback after his less than stellar stab at Hollywood, his recent filmography had blown hot and cold, with more misses save for his collaboration in Triangle. Missing unfortunately falls into the Stinker category.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/missing-sam-hoi-tsam-yan.html
A Nutshell Review: Never Back Down
Donnie Yen's recent Flash Point provided action movie fans a glimpse of Mixed-Martial Arts, or MMA, where the best of breed techniques in taking down an opponent get gelled together to provide unpredictability in offensive and defensive response, coupled with the transformation of almost every part of the body into a well-oiled mechanism to dish out some serious punishment. But with Hollywood, well, you can bet your last dollar that the philosophy behind this brand of martial arts get dumbed down to 3 words - "Mix it up".
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/never-back-down.html
A Nutshell Review: You Don't Mess With The Zohan
Comedies go up against each other at the local box office, with Adam Sandler squaring off against Steve Carell, and incidentally, both lead characters in their movies are of the spy / special forces kind, with Sandler's Zohan Dvir being the top Israeli counter-terrorist operative, and Carell's Maxwell Smart thinking he's the best, working for the CONTROL organization to bring down KAOS. Just which agent will outdo the other remains to be seen, but I thought Zohan had opportunity before throwing it away when it goes back to the usual saccharine sweet ending with a nicely inserted moral message of peace and harmony.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/you-dont-mess-with-zohan.html
The Michelangeo Antonioni Retrospective at The National Museum is now on. Click here for more details: http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/michelangelo-antonioni-retrospective_18.html
A Nutshell Review: Get Smart
Just to set the record straight, I've been a fan of the original series when it played on local television many years ago when I was a kid, so I've been weaned on Don Adams as the original Maxwell Smart aka Agent 86 in Get Smart, and if I had the cash, I would not bat an eyelid to shell out good money for one of my beloved television series that I follow religiously. For one yet to be exposed to the glitz and glamourous world of James Bond, I thought Maxwell Smart had all the coolest gadgets that a spy would possess, and have a competent agent/partner in Agent 99, then played by Barbara Feldon. And who can forget that catchy theme song and the hypnotic opening and closing sequence where he makes his way to and from the CONTROL headquarters?
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/get-smart.html
A Nutshell Review: Sparrow
Taking almost 3 years to make, and finally making its way to our shores, Sparrow is worth every moment of waiting, and again cements Johnnie To's reputation as a living maestro who conjures up magical cinematic moments from the tired Hong Kong crime genre. This time though it's totally sans violence and elaborate gunplay, and what came across was a short film idea that's brimming with class, injected with well placed humour, postcard picturesque framing and the unflappable Simon Yam who can do no wrong as the lead.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/sparrow-man-jeuk.html
A Nutshell Review: Wanted
A young man stuck in a mundane job suddenly got pulled out of it by a beautiful dominatrix, and into a world where it seemed like he's The One savior to rid the bad guys from the face of it. When the trailer first came out, there was word that hey, it's the Matrix all over again, this time with one of Hollywood's latest "it" boy James McAvoy (it rhymes too) in the starring role of an indestructible superhero with a penchant for the gun theatrics. Save to say though the storyline for Wanted is anything like the 1999 Wachowskis movie, for the sole fact that it's many miles away from the various philosophical musings that ploughed deep into the Matrix world.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/wanted.html
A Nutshell Review: 21
While Las Vegas is Sin City personified, having been there in person actually stripped away much of the glitz and glamour that comes courtesy of various movies and television series. Maybe because I'm not a high roller (or even a simple punter to begin with) that I don't get to enjoy the sexiness that comes with attention lavished at their well-known, well-paying customers. But in any case, the mathematics of it is that the house always win, and it is not a zero sum game, always in favour of the house. A bus driver in Vagas once told me that it's simple logic - look at the hotel above the casino. The larger it is, the higher the overheads, and guess where their revenue is coming from? You guessed it.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/06/21.html
A Nutshell Review: Penelope
Face it, I think we're attracted to beautiful things and are repulsed by almost anything that does not look appealing at first sight. For a girl, I suppose having a face of a pig is a living nightmare, and what more when you can do absolutely no cosmetic surgery to remove the snout? That's basically the premise of this quirky but charming fairy tale of a story in Penelope, where a descendent of a high society family gets cursed as payment for the sins of her ancestors, being the first born female of the lineage and made to suffer from prominent physical defects, with only the love of one of her kind to break the spell and set her free.
Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2008/07/penelope.html