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28 December 2011 #407

Season’s Greetings, dear readers! We hope you had a very merry Christmas and are looking forward to an excellent New Year.

Our pick for the holiday week is Margin Call. The thriller is set over 24 hours in an investment bank whose analysts have just figured out the investment bond market is about to crash. An A-list cast headed by Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons paint a convincing, dispassionate, and empathetic picture of the eve of the 2007 financial collapse and the bankers who were at the centre of it all.

Steven Spielberg delivers his most sentimental war movie yet with War Horse, a touching tale of a very young man, his pet horse, and the last hurrah of cavalry in World War I. The film melds both harrowing depictions of the war and its toll on both humans and animals, as well as an unabashed sentimentality that comes automatically with casting cute animals as main characters in films.

Tsui Hark continues his return to form in Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, a wuxia revenge film that reworks his favourite topic of court intrigues of the Ming Dynasty. It's also a refashioning of the King Hu classic Dragon Inn. Tsui Hark's first 3D film shows off the director's technical skills and solidifies his role as the George Lucas of the East.

James Lee may be better known as Malaysia's arthouse director but Petaling Street Warriors is his first commercial film. It's a rambunctious tribute to the Wong Jing school of filmmaking — a crass, politically incorrect, but ultimately funny period flick set in historic Kuala Lumpur.

Till next week,

Vernon Chan

PICK OF THE WEEK
 

Margin Call

What on earth can Hollywood make in light of the 2007 financial crisis? The documentary-trained JC Chander has a good idea. I dare say it's the only one left that it hasn’t tried – to dispassionately analyse what went wrong while jettisoning all that moral outrage, righteous indignation, and eschewing portrayals of finance types as cackling baby-eating monsters plotting from financial turmoil in the markets and then profiting from the fallout. The A-list cast take turns to deliver unforgettable lines and chew up the scenery, making this one of the best Wall Street movies ever made.

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OPENING THIS WEEK
RECENT MOVIES
War Horse
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
Petaling Street Warriors
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
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RECENT MOVIES
New Year’s Eve
The Muppets
The Adventures of Tintin
50/50
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
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FILM EVENTS
Short Circuit 5
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Trailers | Official website
6 January 2012, Guinness Theatre, The Substation, Singapore
 

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