SPACESHIP EARTH (PG13)
117 minutes/streaming on KinoLounge
From 1991 to 1993, eight persons sealed themselves inside a massive dome in Arizona. The structure, dubbed Biosphere 2, was a replica of Earth's environment that included a coral reef, a rainforest and grassland.
The goal was to see what it would take to create a self-sustaining ecosystem in space and more intimately analyse the interactions that make life on Earth possible.
Using the trove of footage the so-called "biospherians" left behind and supplemented with present-day interviews, documentary maker Matt Wolf reveals the scientific idealism that drove the experiment and the crushing disappointment that followed when popular opinion turned against it.
The film is presented on KinoLounge by Shaw Organisation and the Singapore Film Society.
WHEN: Now showing ADMISSION: $12.99 for a 48-hour viewing window INFO: kinolounge.shaw.sg
BEASTS CLAWING AT STRAWS (NC16)
108 minutes/The Projector/4 Stars
Don't let the strange title of the South Korean crime thriller put you off. This work, adapted from the 2011 Japanese novel of the same name and starring Jeon Do-yeon , is as slick and accomplished as they come.
This belongs to the canon of noirish works in which everyone is rotten and the only difference is by how much. In a series of chapters that deal with different timelines and characters, eight persons become involved with a bag of money. As their relationships with one another become clearer, events get bloodier.
Korean thrillers can be just as violent as Western ones, but they also go where Hollywood fears to tread, such as in scenes showing men beating and torturing women. These can be discomfiting to watch, but writer-director Kim Yong-hoon, making his feature debut, intends to make a point about the world in which his characters live. The realistic cruelty, extravagant violence and graphic novel-style black humour come together seamlessly.
WHERE: The Projector, Level 5 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road MRT: Nicoll Highway WHEN: Now showing ADMISSION: $13.50 INFO: theprojector.sg
THE KINGMAKER (PG13)
101 minutes/The Projector/4.5 Stars
This documentary opens with Mrs Imelda Marcos, former first lady of the Philippines, handing out cash to the beggars of Manila, clucking with concern.
That act of minor munificence - when contrasted with the billions she and her late husband Ferdinand Marcos plundered from the treasury and thereby helping create beggars - is infuriating. But it signals that this work from American artist and documentary maker Lauren Greenfield will not be short of irony.
Through Greenfield's lens, the 91-year-old dowager is shown to be still active in politics, both directly and through her son Bongbong (Ferdinand Marcos Jr). The film covers her past as a beauty queen from the provinces, her husband's rise to power and her time as first lady in the 1960s to the 1980s, when she sought to make Malacanang Palace, the presidential residence, a centre of culture and glamour, to the time when People Power protesters stormed the palace, revealing to news cameras her infamous shoe collection.
WHERE: The Projector, Level 5 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road MRT: Nicoll Highway WHEN: Now showing ADMISSION: $13.50 INFO: theprojector.sg
