The Slap
A man hit another man in front of others in a big occasion. He became emotional. He apologised. His action appeared out of character. The man he assaulted was shocked. A day later he said sorry to the other man. In one stroke, everything seemed …
Mulan
There is a warm appeal about ‘Mulan’. A Chinese female warrior. The trailers are flavourful aperitif with glimpses of Donnie Yen, Gong Li, gorgeous sets, sweeping actions. And Chinese speaking clear, concise, simple English for all to understand. Something that may not necessarily be an …
A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood
I finally watched ‘A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood’. I don’t know anything about this film, except having an impression that it might be a cross between Pee-wee Herman and Sesame Street, perhaps with the quirkiness of a Tim Burton movie. The look of the …
The Invisible Man
Do you know of this movie, ‘Wait Until Dark’? A 1967 film with Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman who is attacked in her own home. She waits until it’s dark, then breaks all the lamps so that the attacker, like her, will not be …
Late Night
In show business, a most talented artiste will still need the perfect platform to shine. With a combination of factors, including a big dose of luck, this can happen. And we have seen this happen. How an artiste sparkle, and how a movie for example, …
1917
I remember there was a night when I was training as a cadet soldier. I thought I could not go on. It was an endless exercise of search and destroy in the mountains of Kaoshiung in Taiwan. Out of the blue, a fellow cadet started …
Ip Man 4
For those of you who see this film as an almost vulgar cash cow of commercial filmmaking, the eastern equivalent of the Rocky franchise, you may want to know Ip Man 4 is back-to-basic filmmaking at its best. You know how the audience need to …
Marriage Story
There is nothing new in saying every marriage has a story. Watching ‘Marriage Story’, however, is quite a new experience. Directed, produced and written by Noah Baumbach, it is a story of a union that seems to be happy, until it suddenly isn’t. Its unraveling …
Sister
I woke up this morning to Yeewei‘s text – the story is out. Reading the Sunday Times article, Death Row’s Angel Of Hope, I remembered the meeting with Dr Sudha Nair and a social worker on the year-end parties for the PAVE children. Before leaving, …
First Man
We think of the first man on the moon as a fairly distant history, and we may also think of this Chazelle Gosling collaboration as possibly a dry scientific docu-like drama. I have never seen a movie that captures space flight with a degree of …