SINGAPORE CHINESE FILM FESTIVAL 2015
Documentary film-maker Yang Li-chou casts a discerning eye on five decades of cinematic history in The Moment: Fifty Years Of Golden Horse. Directors featured include critically feted Hou Hsiao-hsien and Singapore's Anthony Chen.
It will be screened at GV VivoCity tonight at 9pm and on Sunday at 2pm. There will be a question-and-answer session with director Yang after both screenings.
The spotlight of the classics retrospective programme is on Lee Hsing, who has been called the Father of Taiwanese Cinema by film critic Peggy Chiao. The opening film of the retrospective is Our Neighbours (1963), about the denizens of a slum supporting one another.
It will be screened tomorrow at 1pm at the National Museum. Lee will be speaking at a panel titled Tribute To Lee Hsing: A Life In Cinema at 3.30pm on the same day at the same venue.
Admission is free with registration. E-mail uccs@unisim.edu.sg with your name, number of seats required and name of panel talk.
Where: Various MRT: Various When: Till Thu Admission: $13 a screening (public), $10 (Singapore Film Society & UniSIM members). Tickets available from Golden Village & Sistic (call 6348-5555 or go to www.sistic.com.sg) Info: www.sfs.org.sg/scff
MARVEL'S AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (PG13)
141 minutes
3.5/5
Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) ropes in Dr Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) to help create the ultimate solution to protect Earth - an artificial intelligence named Ultron (voiced by James Spader). But Ultron has a mind of its own and turns into a powerful foe with a very different agenda.
The Avengers are also under attack from the genetically enhanced Maximoff twins - aptly named Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who can control minds.
Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) are all rattled by her. Only Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) manages to dodge her clutches.
Saving the world can be a deadly serious and even grimly dour business. Thank goodness then for writer-director Joss Whedon. He spent years honing the art of saving the world while firing off well-aimed zingers on television series such as action-fantasy Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003).
He will not be helming the two-part Avengers: Infinity War, but Whedon has already made
SOUTHEAST ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL
The disturbing documentary, The Act Of Killing, was lauded as one of the best movies of 2013 by, among others, respected film magazine Sight & Sound and The Village Voice. It is about the killing of more than a million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese and intellectuals in Indonesia in 1965-66.
The Look Of Silence is film-maker Joshua Oppenheimer's follow-up and takes the perspective of the victims rather than that of the perpetrators. It will be screened on May 1 at 5pm.
The line-up of 20 films also includes two world premieres. Fundamentally Happy from Singapore - the film adaptation of the Life! Theatre Award-winning production that tackles child sexual abuse - will be screened tonight at 7.30pm.
Where: Moving Image Gallery, SAM at 8Q MRT: Bras Basah When: Till May 3 Admission: $10 from Sistic Info: www.singaporeartmuseum.sg/SEAFF
ODE TO MY FATHER (PG13)
126 minutes
4/5
Director Yoon Je Kyoon made the movie as a personal tribute to his father and the two protagonists are named after his parents. While the film sometimes borders on melodrama, it still manages to be a powerfully effective tearjerker.
Hwang Jung Min's (with Oh Dal Su) moving performance is key as he is utterly believable as Yoon Deok Soo, a decent and dogged Korean everyman thrust into the tide of history. Uprooted from home because of the Korean War (1950-1953), he had to shoulder the burden of being the man of the family after getting separated from his father and younger sister.
Containing shades of Forrest Gump (1994), his journey through life mirrors a nation's development even as a tragic past haunts and galvanises him. In the end, the film is an ode, not just to a father, but to an indomitable generation who survived war and then fought hard to rebuild their lives.
