Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (PG13)
134 minutes, now showing, 4 stars
Edgin (Chris Pine) is a musician and protector of the innocent who becomes disillusioned after wizards murder his wife. He turns to crime with the help of friends – barbarian Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), paladin Simon (Justice Smith) and con artist Forge (Hugh Grant). But an attempt at stealing a book containing a resurrection spell results in the capture of Edgin and Holga. The pair discover they have been betrayed by someone in their circle.
Director Jonathan Goldstein cut his teeth writing comedy (Horrible Bosses, 2011). He knows how to do funny, especially when it comes to playing Pine’s brave but emotionally insecure character against his partners, such as taciturn woman of action Holga, who finds him a little needy.
Pine is excellent as Edgin, the unofficial head of the quest, and every well-cast member pulls his or her weight. This is the breezy ensemble fantasy-action-comedy that the recent Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania wishes it had been.
Salome
The biblical story Salome (1922, 74 minutes) will be screened with live improvised musical accompaniment from Dirk Stromberg, a composer and lecturer at Lasalle College of the Arts; Cheryl Ong, percussionist from band The Observatory; and Madam Data, an experimental sound specialist.
The film is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play about the dancing temptress of the title (played by Alla Nazimova, who also co-directed with Charles Bryant) and is regarded as a silent-era cult classic.
It is exempted from classification as it was completed before 1966, according to the Infocomm Media Development Authority.
Where: The Projector, 05-00 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road
MRT: Nicoll Highway/Lavender
When: Friday, 8.30pm
Tickets: From $18 (standard)
Info: theprojector.sg/films-and-events/salome
Marry My Dead Body (R21)
130 minutes, now showing
The Chinese tradition of ghost marriages and the buddy-cop movie come together in a package that was selected as the closing film of the 2022 Golden Horse Film Festival.
A reviewer for the Taipei Times newspaper hailed Marry My Dead Body as a mass-appeal comedy that addresses its themes in such a way that “same-sex marriage and environmental awareness reach a larger audience in a non-preachy, light-hearted manner”.
Through a series of mishaps, tough-guy cop Wu Ming-han (Greg Hsu) is made to marry a dead man, Mao Mao (Austin Lin). The bigoted detective is at first disgusted by the pairing, but after a series of spooky interventions, he finds that having a ghost husband that can help solve cases has its advantages.
Gingle Wang is Lin Tzu-ching, Wu’s colleague undermined by men who feel threatened by an ambitious woman.
The film is co-written and directed by Cheng Wei-hao, whose first feature The Tag-Along (2015) ranks as one of the highest-grossing Taiwanese horror films.
