Accident
Soi Cheang

The story: Brain (Louis Koo) heads a small team of hitmen who engineer their killings to look like random accidents. When an operation goes awry, he thinks that someone is out to get him and his suspicions are focused on insurance agent Fong (Richie Jen).

Perhaps the thought has crossed your mind: Is your insurance agent a diabolical master manipulator or merely someone who is just doing his job?
There is more at stake for Brain than premium payments, though. His latest staged accident is successfully carried out, then something unplanned happens. A bus careens out of control, just misses mowing him down but kills one of his accomplices.
He smells a rat when he finds a link between insurance agent Fong and the client who ordered the hit. At this point, Accident suddenly turns into a film about a one-man stakeout operation and Koo seems to be reprising the role he just played in the surveillance thriller, Overheard.
We are supposed to keep guessing whether Brain is paranoid or whether there really is someone out to get him. Despite being nominated for the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, director Soi Cheang’s thriller is not fully satisfying.
In order to keep the audience wondering, he has to pull off a tricky balancing act. Brain has to walk that fine line between appearing unreasonably delusional and being plausibly suspicious.
Cheang gives tantalising clues that point us in both directions.
Brain is shown as being meticulously cautious when he returns home after a job, which is understandable given what he does.
On the other hand, one of his accomplices later admonishes him for being overly wary, saying that it is all in his head. Meanwhile, Fong’s overheard conversations could be coded to sinister effect. So far so good.
A key problem is the casting of Koo, who is not subtle enough to balance on that tightrope. Yes, ultimately the character is either delusional or reasonable. But while the actor has to maintain a consistent tone, he also has to leave room for doubt.
Given the complexity, Koo chooses to give us a sombre-faced portrayal that simply sidesteps the pesky nuances. Jen has the easier role here though he falters in a major emotional confrontation scene.
As a result, the flashbacks at the end of the film never achieve the weight of revelation. Uncertainty is an elusive quality to capture on film and Accident misses its quarry.

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The Glass Room

by Simon Mawer

The Glass Room is an exercise in audacity. Instead of a conventional living room defined by walls, there is merely space and light enclosed by plates of glass.
It is the piece de resistance of a house that the German architect Rainer von Abt builds for Czech newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer.
The whole-hearted embrace of modernity and the idea that one can shape one’s future seems incredibly naive, though, as the political maelstrom in 1930s Europe begins to churn.
Viktor is Jewish and Liesel Aryan, and when the Nazis sweep into power, they are forced to leave their Czech home and go into exile.
Mawer, however, is not interested in simply recounting the story of the Landauers against the backdrop of World War II. Instead, he treats the Glass Room as a central character as it passes through the hands of the Nazis to the socialist Czechs after the war.
The “cool, calm rationality” of the space is a stark contrast to the “irrationality that human beings would impose upon it”.
The clean, crisp prose here mirrors the modernist ideals of the Landauer House.
But there is nothing sterile or cold about Mawer’s writing and he conveys the emotions roiling just beneath the surface that threaten to, and sometimes do, crack the placid facade.
By setting the final, moving scene in the titular space, he imbues it with an unexpectedly tender note of benediction and grace, perhaps the most audacious qualities ascribed to a room of glass in the novel.
If you like this, read: To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Woolf’s challenging exploration of childhood, adult relationships and the passage of time spans the period of World War I.

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Crows Zero II

Takashi Miike

Vanquishing your enemy is one thing, winning the hearts and minds of the masses is another.
Having fought his way to the top of the heap in the earlier film, Takiya Genji (Shun Oguri doing his best too-cool- for-school impression) now has to rally the students of Suzuran All-Boys High as they head into all-out war with rival Hosen Academy.
The idea that teenage life is war is not a new one. In Battle Royale (2000), students were literally forced to kill one another.
What that movie had going for it, and what Crows Zero II could certainly use more of, was a deliciously demented sense of black humour.
Without that, what you get is scene after relentless scene of teenage boys beating each other into bloody, pulpy mush.
Is it possible to escape from this cycle of violence and vengeance?
Director Takashi Miike, adapting Hiroshi Takahashi’s manga, suggests that it is. But that message is buried beneath all that boisterous brawling.

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I Love You, Beth Cooper

Chris Columbus

Graduation does strange things to people.
At his convocation, nerdy high school valedictorian Dennis Cooverman (Paul Rust, right) decides to declare his love for one Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere, far right), the blonde cheerleader who is not even aware of his existence.
A series of contrived events then occur for the two to bond over the course of one night. While Nick And Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008) explored how two people make a connection in a believable manner, this film has no such aspirations.
The one moment of truth in the shenanigans occurs when Beth realises that the best days of her life are over. This moment of downbeat clarity is so at odds with the rest of the movie that director Chris Columbus (2001’s Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone, 1990’s Home Alone) proceeds to drown it in mawkish sentimentality.
If not for the fact that Panettiere has hit TV series Heroes on her resume, this effort would have flunked out of school and slunk straight to video.

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9

Shane Acker

This is no by-the-numbers animation. The graphics are so beautifully detailed that you can practically feel the burlap’s texture that is used to make 9.
And who or what is 9? He is a small doll made by a scientist, given the gift of life and wakes up to find himself in a world devastated by the war between man and machines. But he is not alone and both friends and foes are out there in the ruined landscape of gloomy greys and rusty reds.
The film is both an adventure yarn and a cautionary tale. To director Shane Acker’s credit, he has created characters that pique one’s curiosity.
However, there are several areas where the movie falls short. The man versus machine plot seems to be lifted from the Terminator series and the actors voicing the creatures, including Elijah Wood (the Lord Of The Rings trilogy) as 9, can be strangely emotionless and distancing. The bigger problem is that the logic for creating 9 and his brethren in the first place does not make sense.
Still, if 9 is flawed, it is at least ambitious and Acker remains a talent to watch out for.

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Aliens in the Attic

John Schultz

Faced with a cute moppet and adorable aliens, resistance is futile. When an advance team of Zirkonians lands on their vacation home, it is up to Tom, his sister Hannah and their cousins to stop them.
Luckily, Sparks the four-armed techie turns out to be a sweet thing who decides that an invasion would be wrong. The agreeably paced film has some laughs and surprises, and is not just for tykes.
When Tom and company decide to call the police after first encountering the aliens, the last thing they think of using is the old-fashioned rotary telephone, a device that might as well be from another planet.
And who can resist watching Nana (Everybody Loves Raymond’s Doris Roberts) duke it out with college jock Ricky (Robert Hoffman grinning goofily away) as they are both being manipulated like human puppets through the use of remote controls?
Just surrender to the moment.

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The Garden of Last Days
Andre Dubus III

Paging director Alejandro Inarritu. If you are looking to make a new movie, this story could be right up your alley.
The Garden Of Last Days weaves together several narrative threads – a device Inarritu used in 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006) – to tackles issues such as terrorism, parenthood and gender relations from the perspectives of several protagonists.
April is a protective young mother who becomes a stripper to pay the bills, Bassam an enigmatic cash-rich foreigner on a holy mission and AJ a short- tempered fellow with a large chip on his shoulder against the world.
Their paths cross in sometimes unexpected ways at the Puma Club for Men when April is forced to take her three- year-old daughter to work.
The use of short chapters and the constant shifting of viewpoints make for a compelling page-turner and suggest a ready-made cinematic sensibility.
But despite Andre Dubus III’s efforts, his characters manage to feel only slightly more sturdy than cardboard. Perhaps this is because they seem vaguely familiar, as if one has encountered them in previous books or films.
Some of the novel’s energy also dissipates towards the end and the writing starts to come across a little repetitive.
Still, this is an ambitious effort and the author’s refusal to give us neat, tidy endings and easy, comforting answers is to be lauded.
If you like this, read: House Of Sand And Fog by Andre Dubus III. The battle for ownership of a house between a young woman and an immigrant Iranian family was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film.

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Dance Flick

Damien Dante Wayans

From the makers of Scary Movie (2000) and Scary Movie 2 (2001) comes Dance Flick. Be afraid, be very afraid.
The Wayans brothers offer spoofs of movies such as dance flick Step Up (2006), vampire hit Twilight (2008) and quirky indie drama Little Miss Sunshine (2006) in a series of gags strung along with no regard for character or continuity.
If you liked their previous parodies, chances are higher that you will enjoy this latest offering.
For the rest of us, the skits might raise an occasional smile or laugh but nothing more.
No need to make a big song and dance about it, this flick pretty much lives down to expectations.

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