Change Your Image
jamescholes
Reviews
Wanton Mee (2015)
A love letter to Singapore's hawker culture
Wanton Mee is an incredibly moving love letter to Singapore's (hawker) culture from acclaimed director Eric Khoo.
Koh Chun Feng (Peter Boon Koh) is a middle aged food writer living with his father in the soon to be demolished government flats at Tanglin Halt. To preserve Singapore's hawker culture Koh embarks on a series of often emotional interviews with first, second and third generation hawkers who have taken over the family business. Along the way we are introduced to many of Singapore's iconic dishes - laksa, chicken rice, bak kut teh, fish head curry and the rest - while learning more about hawker culture and the early days of Singapore.
Koh also finds himself responsible for the next generation, and his softening towards his younger colleague (Tammie Chew) is one of the film's highlights. The ending, which I didn't see coming at all, completely floored me.
Tenet (2020)
Possibly Nolan's worst film?
This is the first Chris Nolan film since Insomnia that hasn't blown me away. And although Tenet resembles Inception (still Nolan's best film) it is inferior on almost every level.
One level where it does impress is spectacle. There are some jaw-dropping sequences and the opening 10 minutes are the most visceral of any movie in recent memory. Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is as oppressive as ever but did it have to be so loud?
But that's about it. There are no performances here to match Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception (although Ken Branagh is superbly nasty) and the human story just doesn't engage at all. And for me the whole 'reverse entropy' thing lapses into self-parody and just felt a bit silly.
Chun jiang shui nuan (2019)
A masterpiece
This is a tremendously assured and moving first feature from director Gu Xiaogang.
Set in eastern China it follows a year in the life of four brothers and their ailing mother. My wife, who is from Hangzhou, said the story was so true that it felt almost like a documentary.
This is a film about a changing China (the razing of old neighbourhoods) but also things that are unchanging (the Fuchun river, which keeps rolling towards the sea).
It also resembles a Chinese scroll painting, with fishing boats and figures lost within a landscape of mountains, trees and rivers. Some of the tracking shots, too, mimic the way that scroll paintings used to be viewed in ancient China (the 12 minute swimming scene is remarkable).
At the end of the film we learn that this is only the first chapter, giving us the tantalising possibility that Gu might return to these characters and stories in later years. We must hope that he does, because to my mind this is one of the finest Chinese-language films since Edward Yang's Yi Yi.