Film Picks: Singapore Chinese Film Festival, Evil Dead Rise, Rebound
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PHOTOS: WARNER BROS DISCOVERY, GOLDEN VILLAGE, SINGAPORE CHINESE FILM FESTIVAL
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Singapore Chinese Film Festival
The 11th edition of the event will showcase 34 features and 21 short films, all screened in cinemas. There will also be talks and panel discussions under the event’s Festival Forum section.
In the Documentary Vision section of the festival is the provocative work of journalism Silence In The Dust (PG13, 95 minutes, screens on May 1 at 7pm at Oldham Theatre) from Chongqing-born film-maker Li Wei.
It tells the story of Dazhang, a middle-aged man crippled by a respiratory disease picked up from his former workplace, a Guangdong quartz processing plant with few safety measures.
Li’s lens follows Dazhang’s three children and his parents as they cope with his illness and work towards a brighter future.
The work was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category at the 2022 Golden Horse Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize at the 2022 Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival.
Where: GV VivoCity, GV Bugis+, Oldham Theatre scff.sg
MRT: HarbourFront; Bugis/Rochor; City Hall/Dhoby Ghaut/Bras Basah
When: April 28 to May 7
Tickets: From $14, with discounts for members of the Singapore Film Society and others
Info:
Evil Dead Rise (R21)
97 minutes, now showing, 4 stars
PHOTO: WARNER BROS DISCOVERY
An earthquake uncovers a book buried beneath a Los Angeles apartment building. Yes, that book – the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis grimoire – which will doom a young family by summoning demon spirits for a fifth Evil Dead film.
The Deadites take quick possession of mum (Alyssa Sutherland), turning her into a rabid rotting zombie. She will savage every mortal.
The claustrophobic midtown setting may be far removed from the series’ earlier woodland cabin, but Irish writer-director Lee Cronin’s (The Hole In The Ground, 2019) confident retelling with its strong family dynamics and stonking performances remains pure Evil Dead in spirit. This is a splatter-schlock B-movie that does what it is expected to do with brutal efficiency.
Rebound (PG13)
122 minutes, now showing, 4 stars
Ahn Jae-hong (in glasses) in Rebound.
PHOTO: GOLDEN VILLAGE
Based on the true story of Busan’s Jungang High School and filmed on location, Rebound is a South Korean underdog sports biopic so cliched, you ask yourself why you would watch it.
Kim Eun-hee is a reason – the creative mind behind the Netflix hit zombie series Kingdom (2019 to present) is the screenwriter for her director-husband Jang Hang-jun.
In 2012, a struggling team with just six players overcame impossible odds to reach the finals of South Korea’s National High School Basketball Championship.
Cherubic coach Kang (Ahn Jae-hong) is a sad sack you genuinely want to root for.
On the day of his appointment as Jungang High’s new basketball coach, one who has no coaching experience, the players walk out and even the backboard in the decrepit gym collapses in protest.
Never was there a more inauspicious start. But Kang perseveres in scraping together a ragtag team of rejects. And they will succeed with humour and drama for an enjoyable zero-to-hero romp despite exhaustion, injuries, in-fighting, fouls and mightier rivals. This inspirational hoopfest plays skilfully by the genre rulebook to score a crowd-pleaser.
