Words: James Soo

It must be terrifying being asked to play a myth. But there are moments in this film when you forget you’re watching Michelle Williams and believe it’s Marilyn Monroe up there in front of you. While she may not be an exact lookalike, Williams captures that almost indefinable quality that Monroe was rumored to have, this thoroughly unpracticed, totally innate understanding of how to seduce the screen. The foundation of the film is this very quality.

‘My Week with Marilyn’ is based on the memoirs of Colin Clark (played winningly by Eddie Redmayne), a young boy enchanted by the movie world who gets his big break being 3rd Assistant Director (aka the gopher) on the set of ‘The Prince & The Showgirl’ starring Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe. Kenneth Branagh hams it up as Olivier with an enunciation that verges on the ridiculous, but it’s Clark and Monroe’s budding romance that is the heart of the film. As you watch it, there is undoubtedly the feeling that Clark’s memoirs may have had more than a touch of exaggeration in them – the idea of the most famous woman in the world falling (a little) in love with an unknown director’s assistant has the flavour of the rose-tinted nostalgia of an aging man. But whether the romance was built up for the film, or whether Clark himself magnified it, or whether indeed it is absolutely true, the joy of the film is the exhilaration of feeling you’re watching a lost Marilyn film. It’s impossible to think about Marilyn Monroe as just an actress – any attempt to discuss her verges inevitably into some form of idolatry. ‘My Week with Marilyn’ is no different, but for once you begin to understand the hype.

Words: Lee Harlem Robinson

Much ado about Michel Hazanavicius’ French silent film ‘The Artist’ these days. It keeps scooping up film festival awards all over the world, and rightfully so. ‘The Artist’ is a wonderful, almost frivolous, idiosyncrasy in today’s cinema, with its boundless love for sequels and superheroes. In crisp black-and-white cinematography, it takes us back to late twenties Hollywood, when movies with sound (talkies) started taking over from silent films.

Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, a silent actor who is cast aside by the studio that made him a superstar. He refuses to believe that the glory days of his type of cinema are over and stubbornly soldiers on, until his demise is inevitable. As George Valentin’s star fades, Peppy Miller’s, played by the gorgeous Bérénice Bejo, rises to unseen heights with the advent of the talkies. George Valentin has no choice but to look on how his former protégé, whom he personally picked to dance alongside him in one of his last films, takes Hollywood by storm — not an easy feat when years of success have left him with a certain sense of entitlement.

The two main actors, Dujardin and Bejo, are perfect for their part. It’s astonishing to witness how Jean Dujardin captures the spirit of the era, while balancing, all without words, the near-arrogance but irresistible like-ability of his character. Bérénice Bejo’s dazzling smile and effortless grace are more than enough to make anyone believe she was the first real star of movies with sound. Together they display such chemistry on screen, and, alongside John Goodman and James Cromwell, who respectively star as the studio boss and Valentin’s driver, they make watching ‘The Artist’ an extremely enjoyable experience. Add to that director Michel Hazanavicius’s eagle eye for detail, his clever use of cinematic tricks and — we saved the best for last — the most adorable Jack Russel to grace the silver screen ever, and it’s safe to presume that ‘The Artist’ will rank high on most critic’s Best of 2012 lists.

Words: James Soo

or all its flaws, the Descendants is a nuanced portrayal of a family that is coming apart. George Clooney plays Matt King, the staid attorney and trustee of a large piece of land in Hawaii that is due to be sold for a great deal of money to developers. At the start of the film, his wife suffers a horrific accident while waterskiing and you next see her in hospital, in a coma, with a grieving Clooney by her side. Their two daughters are next introduced: the younger daughter is at an age where reality and fantasy merge easily, the older is in her late teens, and is already jaded and bitter. King thinks his job is to manage his two daughters and the sale of the land. But it all changes when he discovers that the origin of his elder daughter’s anger is that his comatose wife was in fact having an affair and was planning to leave him.

Director Alexander Payne does a good job of inculcating a Wes Andersen quirkiness, with King’s bizarre family and the cruel drama of grieving for someone who doesn’t love you. But the film suffers from a bit too much cool. King and his daughters don’t ever strike you as people whose wife and mother is dying – while King has to maintain an aura of decorum, the resulting lack of emotion is too stylized to allow the audience to sympathise.

That is not to say the film doesn’t have some fine performances: Clooney does well as the much put-upon King, and Shailene Woodley in particular shines as the fractious elder daughter. The screenplay is wry and witty and the entire film feels modishly low-key. But it is perhaps this desire to be modish that stops the film from really tackling its subject matter and making the leap from an exercise in style to something more emotionally affecting.

Words: James Soo

It’s probably quite hard to watch this film with fresh eyes, and even harder not to compare it to the book or the original Swedish film adaptation. If you’ve seen the Swedish adaptation, don’t bother with this one, unless you’re a huge Daniel Craig fan – it’s almost a direct copy. If you’ve only read the book, or have never come across the biggest publishing sensation of the past couple of years, then you might be in for a reasonably enjoyable evening.

What director David Fincher and writer Steven Zaillian have come up with is Hollywood’s acknowledgement that the original Swedish adaptors got it spot on. What was a rather rambling, and rather confusing, book has become a taut locked room mystery that answers one basic question: what happened to Harriet Vanger 40 years ago? The rest of the detail has been thankfully expurgated to reveal the thriller within. There is a pleasant amount of polish that’s been added – the cast is internationally recognisable (dare I say, attractive?) and effort has been made to hype up Daniel Craig, even to the extent of adding stupid James Bond style titles.

But, unlike the Swedish adaptation, you get the impression that it’s all been rather hurried. The characters feel sketchy and their relationships even more so. There’s no clear reason for Salander’s involvement at all. Blomkvist in the books is a Casanova, but Craig plays him so conservatively that his sexual libertinage feels out of character. And even though Larssen’s main theme is that the abuse of women is societally institutionalized, the audience here is left with the impression that the crimes committed were the work of individual madmen – the complete opposite of what Larssen was trying to say. The original title in Swedish is “Men who Hate Women” – something the almost meaningless “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” totally fails to get across.

Words: James Soo
There’s a lot to like in Almodóvar’s latest film, ‘The Skin I Live In’. The sets, the design, the dialogue are all gorgeous in their hyper-realism. But there is definitely a sense of anticlimax as well. The characters are deliriously exotic as usual, but I found myself not falling in love with any of them. It’s a shame, because one of Almodóvar’s fortes is his ability to turn the grotesque into the everyday, and show us the humanity inside even the most outlandish person. Agrada, the transexual whore whom we first see being beaten to a pulp in ‘All About My Mother’ is the perfect example. But the characters in ‘The Skin I Live In’ are cold and inhuman, although in fairness this is partly because of the plot.

No-one wants to give away the plot of this bejewelled puzzle-box of a film. The bare essentials involve a mad scientist (Antonio Banderas) and the creature he is ‘creating’ (the striking Elena Anaya). His housekeeper (Marisa Paredes) shuttles between the two, like a matronly Hispanic Igor, spending her time variously whipping up gourmet comfort food or bringing in buckets of blood ‘taken from the animals while still alive, as requested’. Without letting on too much, it’s the story of Pygmalion, Frankenstein, and Twelfth Night rolled into one. But to get to the pay-off, the audience is led up various false dead ends through twisted flashbacks and jumps between seemingly unrelated stories.

Despite the convoluted plot, it’s the most spare Almodóvar has been since ‘Live Flesh’. Most of the film is set in one house, and much of it in one room. The three main characters inhabiting the house jealously guard their secrets till the end. The trouble is the ‘hero’ of this ménage à trois keeps flipping between the characters until the audience doesn’t know who to root for. I think that was the director’s intention – to come to an indeterminate conclusion – but the fuzziness of the ending left me a little unsatisfied.

Words: Arthur Tam

Male masturbation or “hitting the gun” (shotgun?pistol?) seems to be a common occurrence in this movie; portraying men as horny little monsters(which we are).
With that said, “You are the Apple of My Eye” is quite an adorable movie filled with humor, youthful shenanigans, and a few life lessons to boot.
This film is based on the author Jiu badao’s (九把刀) own adolescent romance and reflects an honest perspective on love.

The story begins in a Taiwanese high school during the late 80’s early 90’s. The young Ko-Teng, played by Chen-tung Ko (柯震東), is interested in nothing more than masturbating, working out, and causing mischief with his high school chums. On the other end of the classroom is the studious and mature Shen Chia-Yi, played by Michelle Chen (陳妍希). The two are polar opposite and could care less about the other; however, fate takes its course and Chia-Yi is forced to monitor Ko-teng after he was caught masturbating in class. From then on, their relationship of mutual detest transformed into a story of love in its purist form. Chia-Yi starts to care for Ko-Teng and helps him with his studies, while Ko-Teng shows Chia-yi how to let loose and have fun.

The film captures the untrammeled lives of the youngsters with a sense of nostalgia and longing. The movie is split up into two parts. The beginning portion is the initial stages of love, while the second portion juxtaposes the conflicts that begin when adulthood comes into fruition. As Chia-Yi put it, “ Sometimes we do things in life that we do not expect returns for”, which seems something that we learn later on in life with our relationships. Give this film a watch, because its not your typical sappy Taiwanese young idol love story.

Words: James Soo

There is absolutely nothing original, noteworthy or particularly funny about this film. But it’s surprisingly enjoyable. The basic insane plot is this: according to Marie Claire magazine, Ally Darling (Anna Faris) realises that she has slept with almost twice the national average and if she reaches the magic figure of 21 men, her chances of marriage diminish exponentially because it will prove that she doesn’t have the commitment to stay in a long-term relationship. This is quite clearly bullshit and comes from that odd Anglo-Saxon idealised puritanism in movies that simply doesn’t hold up in the real world. Anyway, as a result she decides that she has to marry one of her exes just so that she doesn’t pass that arbitrary 21 lovers – ensuing in a sometimes really very funny series of set-pieces as she, with the help of her hunky (and nearly always naked) next-door neighbour, the extreme womanising Colin Shea (Chris Evans), sets out to find her ex-lovers.

We all know that every romantic comedy is fundamentally the same film. What’s Your Number takes this to the next level by consciously lifting plotlines and even dialogue from other movies. It’s almost a ‘best of’ compilation of sight-gags and situational comedy from the last five decades of rom-coms: drunken bridesmaids giving awkward toasts, the heroine falling for the wrong guy when the right guy is staring her in the face, madcap chases across town on a variety of silly vehicles. And yet, the luminous Anna Faris somehow makes it work. Her perfect comic timing and her hapless optimism just infuse the audience with the kind of care and sympathy for her character that allows you to suspend your overwhelming disbelief and simply enjoy her mad adventure. A fun, silly but surprisingly endearing bit of fluff.

Words: Boyd van Hoeij

Woody Allen’s latest film, Midnight in Paris, is just as enjoyable as the title makes it sound. After several films set in London (including Match Point, Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream) and one in Barcelona (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), the New York writer-director has imagined a fairytale-like story about a Hollywood screenwriter (Owen Wilson) who, when on holiday in Paris with his better half (Rachel Mc Adams, even blonder than Wilson) and in-laws, discovers a portal to the 1920s, the era when all his literary and artistic heroes, including Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Salvador Dali, lived and worked in Paris.

Allen being Allen, this is more than just a time-travel story. A lovely young Frenchwoman he meets in the 1920s (Marion Cotillard, looking splendid in period garb) dreams of fin-de-siècle Paris, thus underlining the film’s central idea that every generation seems to think that the past was somehow better than the present.

Though perhaps made as a personal lesson for Allen as a filmmaker as well (since many of his recent films seems to suffer from a kind of excessive nostalgia), Midnight in Paris perfectly stands on its own as an enjoyable entertainment, with solid acting, some witty oneliners, gorgeous locations and dresses and fun cameos (the First Lady of France, Carla Bruni, shows up as a tour guide!). A perfectly light cinema soufflé.

Words: Arthur Tam

Certified, bona fide, genuine American superhero, Captain America protects the world from the Red Skull’s domination while satisfying the desire for superhero action. There’s romance, humor, ass kicking, and even a musical number. After releasing Thor and X-Men First Class, Marvel comes through again with Captain America. Chris Evans, whom we remember as Human Torch from the Fantastic Four series, returns in tiptop shape for the role of Captain America. His embodiment of physical male perfection is sure to make a few hearts race. Captain America is delightfully entertaining.

The whole idea of an overzealous and eager superhero running around in an American flag costume might seem a cheesy, but director Joe Johnston molded the concept into a fun film. The story is pretty straightforward and simple, without too many frills, yet remaining adventurous. We’ve got Steve Rogers, a wee little man with a brave compassionate heart, yearning to join the army, despite physical inadequacies. Luckily, science came through, and, like magic, turns the scrawny and frail Rogers, into an American freedom-fighting machine, Captain America. Captain America grapples the world’s destiny against the hands of a wonderfully played, maniacal villain, the Red Skull and his evil organization, HYDRA.

The cinematography whimsically captured the essence of the 1940’s wartime era and the top quality acting made the fantasy quite realistic. The dialogue was at times humorous and well deserving of a few chuckles, and at other times, heartfelt. Pay attention to catch a bit of the historical humor. The stories development and progression was fluid and contained depth that an audience would appreciate.

After the movie, I was left asking myself: why isn’t there a quick way for all of us to achieve Captain America’s physique? It would beat slaving away at the gym.

Words: Boyd van Hoei
There was only one American film in competition at the Cannes Film Festival this year, but the jury headed by Robert De Niro gave it their top prize, the Palme d’Or. Significantly, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life doesn’t particularly feel like an American film and the director would probably shudder at the notion of it being considered as such.

Though a large part of the narrative is set in a very recognisable United States – Texas, to be more precise – and it stars the closest to what the world has an all-American movie star, Brad Pitt, the main aim of Malick is to reach for something transcendental. Transcendental not just in the sense of beyond the borders of the United States, but truly universal in the literal sense of the word. This film dares to juxtapose a 1950s childhood with the beginning of time.

Even more so than in his handful of previous features (four in a four-decade career, including Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line) Malick’s background in philosophy, which he studied at Harvard and Oxford and which he taught before becoming a filmmaker, comes to the fore here, and as would be appropriate for the visual medium that is film, a lot of the philosophical subtext comes simply from the images themselves.

The film starts of in a 1950s Waco, Texas neighbourhood (the city where Malick was born), where a stern but loving father (Pitt) and a beautiful and kind mother (Jessica Chastain, superb) raise three young boys. The mother, heard in voice-over, explains that there are two ways through life: “The way of nature and the way of grace,” and it is clear from the get-go that she represents the latter, while her husband, Mr. O’Brien, represents the way of nature.

The focus of the story is on the second son, Jack. Played by a succession of actors when he grows up (in order: Finnegan Williams when he’s two, Michael Koeth when he’s five, Hunter McCracken for the remainder of his childhood, and Sean Penn as an adult in several flash-forwards), Jack questions the innate goodness of people and God and the reason why people behave as they do. He experiences two major traumas in his life: The drowning of a fellow child and the death of his own brother at 19. After Mr O’Brien has failed to revive the drowned child, Jack is heard (again in voice over), wondering why God would allow such a thing and thinking, “if God’s not good, then why should I be?”

These are of course big philosophical questions and The Tree of Life faces these questions head-on. About twenty minutes into the film, the O’Briens and suburban Waco are put on hold for a symphony of images and music (courtesy of some of the great classical composers as well as Oscar-winner Alexandre Desplat) that take the story all the way back to the beginning of time, to the beginning of life and to a surprising moment, on the bank of a stream, involving two dinosaurs, one of them a predator, the other probably lunch.

If the scenes involving the O’Briens seem to form some sort of loose-limbed narrative about growing up, the images of volcanoes, splitting cells and dinosaurs work not on a non-narrative level, but a through the way they contrast with the story of the twentieth-century protagonists.

By juxtaposing these stories, Malick achieves two things. Firstly, he equates the origins of the earth and of life itself with each new birth. Everything was born once and had to learn how to get by, through the ways of nature or grace. And secondly, it makes the very particular story of the 1950s O’Brien parents and their offspring a much more universal story. It is clear that the family’s particular story of growing up – the children growing into adults, and the adults growing into parents – is but one of many stories but that this doesn’t mean that pretty much everyone struggles with or faces the same big questions.

If all this sounds very difficult and esoteric, then this movie definitely isn’t for you. It has to be said, that, partly, The Tree of Life suffers from the same problem as other extremely ambitious films such as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: If it doesn’t entirely convince you as a viewer on every level, then the film doesn’t feel ambitious but overblown, not masterful but pretentious. The risk is definitely there, but if you’re a cinema fan, this shouldn’t be a risk that’s unfamiliar to you, or one you’re not willing