After last week's embarrassment of riches, this week sees the movie train slowing down just a little. There are only four new films, as compared to the seven that opened last week .

The best of the lot are 3:10 to Yuma and The Savages.

3:10 To Yuma is a superb cowboy drama that may be the best Western since Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. It features terrific performances by Russell Crowe and Christian Bale as two men on opposing sides of the law.

Also good is The Savages, a very sad yet bitterly funny family drama about a self-centred and snobbish pair of brother (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and sister (Laura Linney) who are forced to care for their equally cold father (Philip Bosco). A treat for smart audiences.

Also opening is the award-winning documentary Sharkwater which tells you which sharks are less of a threat to humans and humans are to sharks. The documentary show you why sharks are really far less dangerous than films like Jaws make them out to be, and how the killing of sharks for the popular sharks' fin dish is seriously jeopardizing our ecosystem.

Not worth catching is Linger, a supernatural romance about a dead boy (Vic Zhou) and his former love (Li Bingbing). A disappointment, considering that it comes from Hong Kong foremost auteur Johnny To (Election).

Till next week, enjoy!

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You can call it the return of Russell Crowe. After a string of highly-publicized public brawls and high-profile flops (Cinderella Man, Master & Commander, A Good Year), Russell seems determined to redeem his reputation at the box-office.

Fresh on the heels of his excellent gangsterama American Gangster, Russell scores yet again with 3:10 To Yuma, a superb shoot-'em-up Western that showcases his prodigious acting skills and spellbinding screen charisma.

Russell plays a dangerous outlaw who regularly holds up trains and stagecoaches. The authorities have been after him for years, but have been unable to track him down. Then, by a stroke of sheer luck, an impoverished army veteran (Christian Bale) manages to find and capture Russell. Christian and a few other men must now escort Russell on a 3-day journey to a prison in Yuma.

Russell, of course, has no intention of going to prison. And his men — who sorely miss their leader — will stop at nothing to get him back...

Directed by Jame Mangold (Walk The Line), this is perhaps the best Western since Clint Eastwood's 1992 Oscar winner Unforgiven. It combines a good script, powerhouse acting, a strong sense of location as well as a palpable respect for the Western genre to give you two hours of thrilling cowboy entertainment.

We highly recommend it to the butch boys and girls, and anyone else who likes to play cowboys-and-rodeos in bed.

This is the artiest and most intellectual film of the week — meant for those who have no trouble recognizing surnames like Brecht, Plath and Pinter. Anyone with no interest in literature and has an IQ of less than 120 shouldn't even attempt to watch this.

Written and directed by Tamara Jenkins — a theatre writer-director-actress turned filmmaker — this gloomy yet funny yet moving film depicts the love-hate relationships between the Savage family members.

Laura Linney plays Wendy Savage, a struggling playwright who's having an affair with a married man and who also happens to be a shoplifter. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays her brother Jon Savage, an academic trying to write a book on Brecht. Philip Bosco is their father Lenny Savage, who is suffering from dementia and gradually losing his mind.

When Lenny has to be discharged from an old folks' home for various reasons, Wendy and Jon have to figure out how they are going to take care of him. None of three characters are particularly pleasant to begin with, but when you put all three under the same roof, it guarantees a perfect storm of emotional disaster.

The acting is painfully funny, and the writing-directing is exceptional. The Savages was nominated for numerous awards from various critics' associations, but lost out on most of them because it is ultimately too erudite and refined a pleasure to be appreciated by most.

Very smart and witty people will enjoy this film. Everyone else will likely end up scratching their heads over the film's ironic jokes and references.

A lot of movies like Jaws will have you believe that sharks are very dangerous predators. But this underwater documentary is set to change that impression, especially after you've seen the writer-director Rob Stewart happily swim alongside sharks — the way some people jog with their dogs.

According to Sharkwater, more people have been killed by crocodiles, tigers and elephants than sharks — in fact, only five people die of shark attacks every year compared to 100 who die of elephant or tiger attacks.

Even more sobering than this is the fact that by the time the 89-minute documentary is over, about 15,000 sharks would have been killed — mostly for the manufacture of shark fin soup.

The shark fin soup is an important ceremonial delicacy and a symbol of prestige among the Chinese. But Rob alleges that it is responsible for many shark killings. Rob even claims that in some parts of the Costa Rica, the industry is run by Chinese mobsters who bribe the authorities to turn a blind eye on the practice of shark killing.

Some of the claims are indeed sensational, and this documentary does not bother to show both sides of argument. After all, the Chinese taste for shark fin is no less contentious than bull-fighting in Spain or the once-popular use of animal fur coats in the fashion industry, just to name a few offenders.

Still, what's eye-opening in this documentary is the realisation that sharks are really less dangerous to humans than humans are to sharks. A must-see for nature lovers.

We at Fridae have always loved Johnny To's films. Ever since John Woo left Hong Kong to carve a successful career in Hollywood, Johnny To has picked up the slack and become the best action director in Hong Kong. His best gangsteramas like Election and The Mission are masterpieces of action cinema. Even misfires like Exiled were enjoyable B-grade action flicks.

So to watch Johnny latest film Linger, a slow and monotonous supernatural romance, is to experience serious disappointment.

Former F4 member Vic Chou plays a boy who cheats on his girlfriend with the attractive, tomboyish-looking Li Bingbing. The romantic triangle frustrates him so that he crashes her car into a motorcycle and dies. Three years later (why the wait?), Vic returns as a ghost to taunt Bingbing into telling him if she ever loved him. Bleaaah...

As the lead, Vic Chou is simply too whiny and ineffective to make the cliched romantic lines work. (The same lines in the mouth of Takeshi Kaneshiho would have been a different matter altogether.) Linger moves at such a glacially slow pace that it became struggle just to keep awake throughout much of its routine scenarios.

Yes, Vic does appear shirtless, but it's really not that big a deal.

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