A Nutshell Review by daface

last SG · 2005-05-29T10:42:43+00:00

A Nutshell Review: I Hate Valentine’s DayI haven’t seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding from start to end, but from what I gathered from scenes, Nia Vardalos is qui...

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Arctic Tale

In 2005, March of the Penguins brought us to the Antarctica, and introduced the life cycle of the emperor penguins to the mass audience. And Happy Feet was quick on its erm feet to seize the initiative and make an animated feature on our non-flying friends. Now, we journey to the opposite pole to visit Polar Bears and Walruses, but somehow, the former proved to be a logical choice for promotional posters. Having the worlds #1 brand use them in their advertisements, and as I recall one cheeky ad involving a bear shaving excess fur, you would have thought that this would make another documentary worth sitting through.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/arctic-tale.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Rogue Assassin aka War

War undergoes one of those unnecessarily title changes for this part of the world, naming itself after Jet Li's assassin character Rogue. Billed as "The Ultimately Martial Arts Duel of the Year", the person who wrote that blurb for Rogue Assassin obviously hasn't seen many movies, or martial arts ones for that matter, or is plain lying through the teeth. You'd half expect that pitting two action stars against one another will instantly mean box office success by pulling in fans of both Jet Li and Jason Statham, but it's a downright insult as you don't see any punches pulled between the two for 99% of the time.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/rogue-assassin-aka-war.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Waitress

The late writer-director Adrienne Shelly's Waitress is a fine quirky film. But I have to admit one of the prime reasons for my catching this movie, is that it stars Keri Russell. Somehow I didn't find her all that attractive during her Felicity days, but my, how have things changed, and her very short role in M:I:III was somewhat a pity. Here, she plays the lead role as Jenna, a waitress at a pie diner, who's secretly wishing to save enough money to get away from a miserable life.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/waitress.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: SiCKO

Won't we like to visit a doctor, and be provided preventive advice during a regular checkup. Or how about instead of worrying just how much those consultation charges are going to be, we get a world class doctor who basically just cares and is genuinely concerned with our well-being, and getting us cured of our sickness?

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/sicko.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: The Invasion

It seems like Nicole Kidman's The Invasion is something like a tit-for-tat response to ex Mr Nicole Kidman's War of the Worlds. Aliens from outer space, check. Estranged spouse (the cinematic one that is), check. Cute toddler kid, check. Being the only one who figures what could be going on, check. Lots of running, check. Single parent power, check. Having people clamour on your escape vehicle, check. Cop out Hollywood styled ending mocking the aliens, check. Pointless remake? Probably not, and that's its leg up against the tripods.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/invasion.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Planet Terror

I am a fan of Tarantino, though I'm slightly disappointed with his portion in the Tarantino-Rodriguez Grindhouse partnership. It's classic Tarantino with the excellent dialogue, but Death Proof seemed to be lacking something, and seemed more like a Tarantino movie done Blaxploitation style. Now Rodriguez's offering with Planet Terror is the bomb, and it is miles better than Death Proof in containing the spirit of Grindhouse, and that it doesn't seem to have his fingerprints and stylistic references all over it, making it a truly wicked grindhouse experience.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/planet-terror.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Balls of Fury

Balls of Fury is a movie that takes the mickey out of martial arts movies, throwing in a few cheap laughs, and nothing more. Like bad movies with plenty of cheese that adopts martial arts like Mortal Kombat and DOA, Balls follows the usual formula of having a prodigy fall from grace, only to be thrust into a mission that involves prior intense training, and meeting with an adversary who in turn is skilled by the same martial arts teacher, so that the finale is a fight of values.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/balls-of-fury.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Shoot 'Em Up

Shoot 'Em Up is a guilty pleasure in watching a souped up modern day Western, where a stranger rides into town, minding his own business, but his innate qualities of helping the meek and the downtrodden almost always brings him adventure uncalled for. Trouble looks for him, and he has the opportunity to show everyone, and the audience, just why he's so damn dangerous.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/shoot-em-up.html

World Cinema Series Presents - Cairo Station by acclaimed Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chihane on 9th Oct Tuesday
For ticketing details, please check the National Museum website at http://www.nationalmuseum.sg

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

Folks would have remembered Kevin James as the affable guy who needed help from Will Smith to hook up with girls in the romantic comedy Hitch. Which I thought was a little strange, because, and I'm not gay, James comes across in likeable terms. In Chuck and Larry, he's the latter, again looking for help as his job as a firefighter puts him in considerable risks, and wants to ensure that his children's welfare is taken of in the unfortunate event that he goes.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/i-now-pronounce-you-chuck-and-larry.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Truth Be Told

Truth Be Told (TBT) is set in an HDB estate. Wait, before you roll your eyes at yet another local movie set in the HDB heartlands, or having its story dwell on the down and trodden, I've got to echo a sentiment made by a local short filmmaker that I agree with. HDB is very much part of our landscape, like it or not, so why shouldn't we have more stories coming out of the estates? Besides, if I put it in a different way, behind every closed door of an HDB flat apartment, is a story waiting to be told. It might seem that these stories are trivial ones that you get to read about in the press, but when in the hands of a creative writer, you get a succinct story that on its own, could stand and engage an audience for 90 minutes.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/truth-be-told.html
with Pics from the Blog Aloud event!

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Joshua

There are kids who are adorable, and kids who just gets on your nerve. Joshua gets filed under the latter, with a creepy look to boot. No offense to child actor Jacob Kogan who gets the titular role, but when he's brooding with that psychotic glint in the eye, you just want to throw him into a cage and toss the key out of the window.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/joshua.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: The Nanny Diaries

Given the dual income generating parents these days, most children are brought up by domestic help. They rarely see their parents on the weekdays given that they're out bringing the dough back to feed their lifestyle, so most of the chores of child raising are left to the maids or the nannies. In Singapore, this phenomenon continues to grow, and in New York, it becomes a fictional social study, where you have a best selling novel turned into a movie (what else?).

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/nanny-diaries.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: The Dead Girl

The story brought memories of an old television cult series called Twin Peaks. A dead, blonde girl's body is being discovered in the grasslands of an idyllic village, and this provides the catalyst for the movie as the plot unravels to tell of the stories that centers around that discovery. In summary, it had a total of 5 short stories all interweaved through a fragmented timeline, and a host of characters in those stories who have one way or another, played a part in the girl's life, during when she was alive, and after.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/dead-girl.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Death at a Funeral

Funerals are serious business, where the mood is usually grim and sombre, and friends and family come together to commemorate the passing of their loved one. The proceeding is usually prim and proper, with some protocols to adhere to, for fitting tributes given in a dignified manner.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/death-at-funeral.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Cheaters

And speaking of fragmented timelines, they don't get presented as strongly as that in Cheaters, a Korean R21 movie. It's a modern day tale of relationships, and it actually has a very bleak and pessimistic outlook, in that everyone's trying to get into everyone else's pants, and nothing, not even marriage, is sacred anymore, but only the gratification of lust and the flesh is.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/cheaters-nae-yeojaeui-namja-chingu.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Savage Grace

It's been a long time since I've written a short review and stayed true to the nutshell, and I'm compelled to do just that now. Savage Grace is based on the murder of Barbara Daly Baekeland in 1972, and this movie is a dramatization of that incident, but it goes way back to paint a picture of a sad woman of society who gets no love, and although this is brilliantly played by Julianne Moore, that is about the best aspect of the movie.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/savage-grace.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Day Watch

We were made to wait for more than 2 years since the debut of Timur Bekmambetov's Night Watch, Russia's groundbreaking science fiction fantasy movie which promised a trilogy with the following two movies, Day Watch and Dusk Watch to follow. The first movie opened to much fanfare here with overnight festivities and a graveyard hour premiere, but reality set in soon after that local audiences perhaps aren't game for something too foreign, despite it that it stuck to the familiar action-effects formula.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/10/day-watch-dnevnoy-dozor.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Lust, Caution

Early in the movie, Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei) gets asked to act in a patriotic play, in a time when China was threatened by the Japanese Invasion during the late 30s/early 40s. Little does she know that she's got to carry on acting the rest of her life, together with her group of idealistic young dramatists, as stage feelings stirred up real emotions that calls for the sacrificial of self for the greater good, for the country. What they lack in experience, they make up with their youthful passion and exuberance. And their rawness shows in the way they clumsily set up their traps for the coming of the prey, and fumbling even with their first blood.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/10/lust-caution-se-jie.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Resident Evil: Extinction

With Extinction, the Resident Evil franchise perhaps have made its mark as the most enduring computer game turned movie to date. Most of such movies usually make for cheesy lazy weekend entertainment, little in depth but filled with plenty of set action pieces, which for the most parts are nothing groundbreaking. But what this franchise has to credit for its longevity, is Milla Jovovich.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/10/resident-evil-extinction.html

daface SG

A Nutshell Review: Alpha Dog

There will come a time where actors and actresses will decide to take on a role that will break the mold of their idoldom, and shed those cute, goody two shoes image for something that could demonstrate and add some depth to their credibility. So taking on more edgy, angsty characters might just be their quick solution. Anne Hathaway lost her clothes and borrowed a foul mouth for her turn in Havoc, and Justin Timberlake here lost his coolness but almost always brought sexy back in his scenes, despite having tattoos riddling his toned body, and adopting as foul a mouth as Hathaway's Allison Lang.

Continues at http://anutshellreview.blogspot.com/2007/10/alpha-dog.html

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