Reviews

The last time a local film actually garnered critical acclaim, Cleopatra Wong was still karate chopping up policemen in shorts. Hailing from 21th century Singapore, I was all eager to watch 15. Too eager, on hindsight, as I passed up Broken Flowers and Julie Delpy for it.

Opening sequence with 3 leads playing bow-and arrows in a metaphorical wasteland (Nope! There's no desert in monsoon-ravaged Singapore), a sense of foreboding crept up inside me. A film which purports to capture street life grittiness but opens with some high arty farty concept, is suffering from a clash of ideologies, something akin to getting Jesus and God of Mercy tattooed on your back.

So the movie meanders down this slippery path of pseudo high concept art. We find Ah-bengs, or 'street thugs' in colloquial Hokkien, not in the streets spilling blood, but hanging around in their not-so-spartan HDB flats musing about the vagaries of life and occasionally breaking into colourful song-and-dance. Sounds a lot like my life, thank you.

Granted, there were a few great takes of self-mutilation and drug-smuggling, which was stomach churning even to the hardboiled. But the terrible pacing blunted the scenes and ruined the senses. It was with much gratitude that I survived the extreme tedium, thanks to my fingers on the FAST FORWARD button. Mind you, it was not just a casual fast forward, but a SUPER TURBO FAST FORWARD of 8x.

15 would indeed be a smashing hit as a 15 min long feature. Royston Tan shouldn't have dragged 15 out from the relative comforts of short films to the hazards of full-lengths. A full-length film needs to be sustained by a story, a heartbeat. Witness how blood courses through the veins of Amores Perros, or Cidade de Deus. A concept alone, even if wrapped up in garish lighting and high contrast colours, is simply not enough.

IMDb Rating: 4.7 (-1 for lack of Ah Lians in a movie about Ah Bengs. Oh! Ludicrious!)

Wales is often thought of as mountainous. Unfortunately most of the magnificent peaks straddle the border between England and Wales, and they cannot be considered wholly Welsh in their own rights. Somewhere deep in Welsh-land, a village nestles in tranquility amidst rolling hills and green pastures. There was this particularly large mound in the terrain, and the villagers are proud to call it the "mountain of Ffynnon Garw". "Its the first mountain in Wales!", remarks a villager.

Hugh Grant, cast as a English cartographer, is tasked to measure the exact height of Ffynnan Garw, and he bears unfortunate news to the villagers, that Fynnan Garw, at 980 feet, is 20 feet shy to qualify as a mountain, and hence won't appear in Her Majesty's Map.

Now the Welsh are a proud race. One only needs to take a leaf from Ryan Giggs, the Welsh soccer wizard who actually turned down playing for England in favour of Wales, and missed out competing in the World Cup altogether. ( On second thoughts, he didn't miss much. England the soccer team stutters much like Hugh Grant the Englishman.) The mere suggestion of Ffynnon Garw as a hill would have the villagers absolutely livid. The only thing worse than that is to have an Englishman tell them that.

Springing into action, the villagers decide to add twenty feet to the hill. It isn't such an easy task, considering the village has most of its able-bodied young men fighting the Great War in France. It is up to the women and children to rally for this valiant effort. Hugh Grant and his superior, a destestable Englishman with a huge potbelly and an even bigger head, are anxious to move on. Other hills are waiting for them to be measured. That's when Tara Fitzgerald, as an endearing village girl Betty, enters the story to try to charm the cartographers into staying for a few more days. And just in case, the Welsh make sure Grant's car was rendered useless, and they were left stranded in the village of Ffynnon Garw, with nothing more to do but to re-assess its status as a hill.

Grant plays his usual stuttering and apologetic self. While I felt his stuttering was way overdone, he comes across as very likable and a seriously nice gentleman. Beneath his self-effacing behaviour is a man who knows when to assert himself. There was this one and only time when faced with a medical emergency, he actually orders his boss to "bugger off". ("Bugger off" is one endearing phrase he utters throughout his movie career, if you haven't noticed.) Tara Fitzgerald appears as the romantic interest of Grant. The little game of seduction she plays makes your heart yearn once more for the high-school romances that once were sweet and whimsical. Colm Meaney is memorable as Morgan the Goat, the one magnetic personality who galvanises the village into action with his fiery ways and charms viewers with his cheeky ways.

This is not a Grant vehicle. His vehicle would be About a Boy. If anything, this is simply a vehicle for the Welsh fighting spirit which resides in the heart of every Welshman.

Who should stay away : Those who abhor spending Sundays at the picnic, those who can't stand Hugh Grant, and Welsh people, in the same vein as how Parisians stay away from Amelie.

A touch of La Vita e bella eh? In both cases, we see this lush make-believe world created entirely out of a father's vivid imagination for his son to immerse in.

For la vita, its the holocaust which lends a deeper dimension to the film. For Big Fish, it was ...wat? The harsh world out there? How harsh is this world out there? We see Will (Billy Crudrup) surviving pretty well as a foreign journalist with a beautiful French wife. The thing which gnares at his inner psyche is solely the fact that he doesn't know who his dad was.

Unfortunately his dad was a droner (someone who won't stop talking nonsense). He couldn't accept it. His dad did not create these stories to buffer his son from the world. He tells his stories whenever he has the chance to. To everybody he meets. Strangers and friends alike. Including wedding guests at Will's wedding, and thanks to his dad, Will's big night was ruined. It was the final straw in their relationship.

To people who thinks his father is cute, that's because you have been exposed to his stories for two hours. Try a lifetime.

The only beautiful part is when Will finally accepts his father for what he is...a droner.

People who should stay away are those who simply can't stand manipulative films which purports to be thought-provoking and inspirational.

No reviews here, except for a MAJOR SPOILER which i feel the need to air. ..and it concerns how our beloved Korean Cassonova has his life ended. Being a skilled martial arts exponent, as we are led to believe from the earlier fighting sequences, how is he blissfully unaware of the ruffled footsteps of the assassin approaching from behind? I wasn't told he was hard of hearing. This begs the question : why does he even turn his back on somebody who has shown every intent to kill him? Did he really believe his assassin's knife was made of rubber? Hell, i'd watch my back if anyone carrying a dildo threatens to stap me with it! There can be only one conclusion : He already decides to die, much like Paulo Coelho's beloved Veronika, and he chooses death by a-huge-gaping-hole-at-the-back-of-the-body.

a social commentary into the lives of the immigrants in London, capturing their helplessness in the situation they are caught up in. Okwe is a Nigerian doctor-turned-illegal immigrant, and has to work 2 jobs simply to make ends meet. He is a strong character full of compassion for his fellow mates. He dismisses his plight as just another "African story" as he refuses to wallow in self-pity. Instead what drives him and the other central character, a Turkish chambermaid Senay, on, is hope. Hope for the future. Hope for a better life.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

The story unfolds slowly, drawing us and directing our pity to Okwe. The dark undertones of the movie is obvious from the start. The movie settings shows only the the seedy ghettos and an impassioned hotel lobby. There is no villian in this show. The worst crimes people commit are just taking advantage of the situation. Senor Juan insists he is in the "happiness" business, and you can't really argue with that, except sometimes the organ transplant operations botch up. One thing to note : all the people who take advantage of the immigrants are also immigrants themselves. Senor Juan is from Spain, and the guy who runs the sweatshop seems to be Turk himself. This is not a statement exonerating british folks. It may simply be they are too apathetic to really interact, let alone, take advantage, of this underclass.

One bright ray in this dark movie is the Chinese character, who seems to be the only guy who appreciates Okwe as a friend, and offers his no-strings-attached friendship in return, with his own job at risk. But the movie fails to explain why this Chinese seems to be living a good life, as in the show, he drives a benz. The prostitute also appears out of nowhere to play an important role in the final part of the plan. Is she paid to do this? If so, why is there so much trust between her and Okwe?

It is difficult to see how Okwe, supposedly worldly-wise and hardened he is, is so shocked that organ transplant business is taking place. Another complaint is how the Social Security officers keep going after Senay. The amount of time they spend pursuing her and making sure she starve to death without a job, is ridiculous.

All in all, top class acting all round. Audrey Tautou has further enhanced her reputation as a versatile actress, totally at home with quirky roles, and I can quite rightly give her the female Johnny Depp tag. The story unfortunately lacks real passion. The feeling I get from this is just like watching any BBC documentary about the poor and the destitute. The major complaint of this show is soundtrack, using dissonant chords to create a dreamy yet cold atmosphere, like Punch Drunk Love. But the dissonance and loud drum basses get irritating after a while, again like Punch Drunk. Feels like a shorter, less emotional version of Cidade de Deus, the brilliant Brazilian social docu-drama.

Rating : 7.5