John Lui Film Correspondent recommends

Film Picks

The Irish selection Sing Street. PHOTO: SHAW ORGANISATION, NETFLIX

EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL

The 29th edition of the festival will showcase 27 films from across Europe in most genres.

The Irish selection Sing Street (2016, screens on May 11, 7pm) is a funny and heartbreaking coming-of-age story set in 1980s Dublin. Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is a teen songwriter, dodging bullies at school and pursuing an unattainable girl.

Writer-director John Carney made two other films in which pop and rock do the job of dialogue and action - the Oscar-winning Once (2007) and Begin Again (2013) - but this is the most autobiographical of the three and the most entertaining.

WHERE: National Gallery Singapore, 1 St Andrew's Road WHEN: May 10 to 19, various times ADMISSION: $12 INFO: www.euff.sg


HOTEL MUMBAI (M18)

123 minutes/ ****

In this tense and emotionally truthful adaptation of a documentary about the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, American businessman David (Armie Hammer) and his wife Zahra (Nazanin Boniadi), their infant and nanny Sally (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) are guests of the posh Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Waiter Arjun (Dev Patel, above) shows up for work and is assigned duties by head chef Oberoi (Anupam Kher).

This is the day in November 2008 that terrorists will attack 12 locations in the city, including the hotel, leading to a hostage crisis that will leave many dead.


THE WANDERING EARTH (PG13)

125 minutes/Now showing on Netflix/****

China's second highest-grossing film of all time - after Wolf Warrior 2 (2017) - is a big-budget science-fiction epic based on a novella from award-winning Chinese author Liu Cixin. It is a loud, explosion-filled and ridiculously over-the-top adaptation of a serious work.

In the future, when the decaying Sun is about to engulf Earth, humans build country-size rocket engines that turn the planet into an ark so it can move to another star system. Astronaut Liu (Wu Jing) is part of a team on a space station guiding the planet. When the Earth engines fail, he and his son (Qu Chuxiao) and adopted daughter (Zhao Jinmai, above) must act to save billions of lives.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on May 03, 2019, with the headline Film Picks. Subscribe