Railroad Tigers
Ding Sheng
The story: Ma Yuan (Jackie Chan) is the head of a group of railroad workers who regularly steals supplies from the Japanese military in east China in 1941. Tipped off by a Chinese soldier (Darren Wang), they get a shot at accomplishing something big – blow up a bridge to disrupt a key enemy supply route. Ma’s crew also includes noodle-seller/ sharpshooter Fan Chuan (Wang Kai) and tailor Dahai (former Exo member Huang Zitao).

Action star Jackie Chan and his son Jaycee provide some of the more amusing moments in this middling film.
Although Jaycee is missing from promotional material and even from online write-ups, he plays a member of Ma’s crew. Some have speculated that this is Chan’s way of giving his son a leg-up after the latter’s show-business freeze because of his marijuana-related jail stint.
Whatever the reason, father and son are pretty entertaining to watch.
In one scene, after being captured, they happily trade insults over each other’s looks instead of being worried – Jaycee even scores a big hit with a jibe at his father’s bulbous nose.
And during an attempt to steal explosives from a Japanese warehouse, they end up on two ends of a rope thrown over a metal beam – like two ends of a human pulley system – yo-yoing up and down as soldiers prowl the premises.
The key hook of the film – which reunites Chan with Ding Sheng, his director for crime thriller Police Story 2013 and period action flick Little Big Soldier (2010) – is how a motley crew with few resources go about destroying a bridge.
It has promise, but Ding takes too long to kick things into gear, burdened as it is with too much unnecessary cargo, from the superfluous framing device to the sprawling cast of characters.
Xu Fan is wasted in the role of a hawker who is sweet on Ma and Zhang Yishang barely registers as Ma’s daughter. At least Wang Kai (Nirvana In Fire, 2015) leaves an impression as the cool sharpshooter Fan.
The finale, which is predictable, needs better computer-generated imagery for the flick to end with a roar.
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Run! Frantic Flowers!
Waa Wei
The first thing that grabs your attention is the unusual- looking title.
Interestingly enough, the Chinese phrase Mo Lu Kuang Hua is also the translation used for the American movie title Thelma & Louise (1991). That road movie about two women breaking free of their mundane lives turns out to be a signpost of sorts for Taiwanese singer-songwriter Waa Wei’s fifth album.
The title track is an electro-rock number on which Wei proclaims with a snarl: “The ordinary is my enemy.” Then, she coos in her higher register on the chorus: “I’m a more dangerous kind of flower/The elegance at the end of the road/The confidence of the lowly/Frantic flowers in the gale/Bloom wherever they land.”
And yes, her creativity is in full bloom here.
Her sly sense of humour emerges on the electro track Snow Girl as she laments: “The heat of passion that others want will kill me.” And she wistfully imagines on the gentle Little Fish: “If I were a mountain, you couldn’t come and go as you please.”
Wei dips into a variety of genres here from the gently jazzy Crooked to the breezy pop of I Will Be Fine to the guitar ballad You You.
On the last, she sings in Mandarin and Minnan and also scats to convey her tender state of being in love and pain.
On the album’s dreamy, perky synth-pop closer Monroe, she draws inspiration from the icon and bombshell Marilyn Monroe.
When it comes to music, Wei is no shrinking violet either.
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Assassin's Creed
Justin Kurzel
The story: Sentenced to death by lethal injection, criminal Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) wakes up instead and finds himself in a facility run by scientist Sofia Rikkin (Marion Cotillard) and her father Alan (Jeremy Irons) of Abstergo Industries, the modern-day incarnation of the Templar Order. They are after the Apple of Eden, a powerful object last handled in 15th-century Spain by assassin Aguilar de Nerha (Fassbender) – whose memories can be accessed by Callum. Based on the video game franchise of the same name, in which the Assassins fight for peace with free will and the Templars want peace through control.

There is something interesting going on here.
The names for this project read like a dream combination for an indie arthouse flick.
Indeed, director Justin Kurzel had just worked with actors Fassbender and Cotillard on a well-received adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (2015).
And then we have Oscar winner Irons, Emmy winner Brendan Gleeson and film festival favourite Charlotte Rampling.
But wait, this is a video game adaptation.
Despite an attempt to give this lightweight movie a heavyweight makeover, Assassin’s Creed ends up being a failed experiment.
It is both unnecessarily complicated and ridiculously simplified at the same time.
For all the powerful technology that Abstergo Industries has at its disposal, it is unable to fast forward to the exact moment when Aguilar last had possession of the Apple. Instead, the key moments of his life – which are now Callum’s memories – are helpfully converted into a technicolour film we can all watch.
It is also necessary for Callum to be strapped into a machine so that he can act out each gesture in his past life as he recalls it. Can the film be more literal?
Then there are the protracted speeches about the nature of free will and the relationship between genetics and the propensity for murder, which are not only tedious, but also mostly sound like hogwash.
What a waste of the killer line-up assembled.
(ST)

Albums of 2016
BEST
Talk About Eve by Eve Ai
The Sum Of Us from the album, Talk About Eve (photo 16), is one of my favourite songs of the year. The ballad penned by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Eve Ai is quietly compelling and the lyrics poignantly sustain a metaphor about love and mathematics. There is a soulfulness to her singing that lifts even more conventional material such as Harmless Loneliness, turning it into another highlight here. This is an album that should get people talking about Ai.

The River by Wang Feng
Before he became better known as a singing contest judge and as actress Zhang Ziyi’s husband, Wang Feng was already making waves with his songs and his ninth album is a reminder of his musical prowess.
It is a record made by a man at the crossroads of middle age and taking stock of life. He is defiant on the stirring ballad, Fleeting Time, What Can You Do To Me, and unbowed on the title track. There is more than navel-gazing here and he turns a critical eye on society in Full, juxtaposing to pointed effect things which are overflowing with an aching hollowness elsewhere.

Progress Reports by Eli Hsieh
This is the year’s most compelling debut and Taiwan’s Eli Hsieh was a deserving Golden Melody Award winner for Best New Artist.
The disc is intimate and ambitious. Conceptually, it was inspired by American writer Daniel Keyes’ sci-fi short story, Flowers For Algernon, comprising progress reports by the protagonist as his low IQ is boosted via experimental surgery. At the same time, the singer-songwriter’s pellucid voice evokes an honest portrait of a young man’s emotional world. Life can be filled with uncertainty, but there are moments of grace on songs such as Roam.

WORST
Journey by Nicky Wu
Maybe there is a reason for the 19-year break between this album and his last, 1997’s Hero. The Taiwanese might have been the best-looking of the boy band trio, Little Tigers, but he was not their strongest singer. The opening synthesizer strains of Lonely By Nature sound dated and the title track, which harks back to one of his best-known solo hits, Wish You A Smooth Journey, also fails to get things moving.
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Concerts of 2016
BEST
Stella Zhang Qing Fang Live In Singapore 2016, Singapore Indoor Stadium, Jan 30
It has been 20 years since Taiwan’s Stella Chang (photo 13) performed here and time has not dimmed her crystalline-clear vocals. Remarkably, her voice grew in strength and vibrance over the course of the show.
It also helps that she was never a cutesy teen idol and her love ballads have weathered the years well. The staging was elegant and classy and it all came together with a flourish for the finale.
Dressed in a vermillion gown and framed by a giant gazebo with a huge wall of flowers as a backdrop, she cut a striking figure as red confetti drifted down lazily.

Terry Lin Onetake Concert 2016 World Tour In Singapore, Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre, Aug 26
Taiwan’s Terry Lin might not have idol looks and he can be a little awkward on stage.
But none of that matters when he sings. There is a purity to his pipes that makes emotions ring bright and true, and he glides effortlessly over the high notes, even in falsetto.
Apart from performing his solo hits and songs from his Ukulele duo days, he took on several covers, managing to make even a hackneyed ballad such as Making Love Out Of Nothing At All feel fresh. And to think he had a cough that night.

Yuzu Asia Tour 2016 Summer Natsuiro, *Scape The Ground Theatre, July 9
To mark their 20th anniversary, Japanese folk-pop duo Yuzu embarked on their first Asian tour. They brought with them a taste of natsu matsuri (summer festivals) with their sunny and breezy tracks, which were accompanied by guitars and the plaintive wail of the harmonica.
There was even a fun mass dance segment with two costumed Japanese Citron (yuzu) Monkeys leading the choreography with chirpy instructions to “tap tap your bum”.

WORST
“The Invincible” Jay Chou Concert Tour 2016, National Stadium, Sept 3
As expected, the production was top-notch for Mandopop king Jay Chou’s gig. But vocally, the singer was not at his best. He was too ready to point his microphone towards the audience members for them to sing along and he seemed to be relying heavily on his back-up singers.
The sound quality was contentious as well, with some fans demanding a refund after the show due to the poor acoustics.
Not being able to make out what Chou is singing because of his characteristic mumble is one thing. Not being able to do so because of murky sound is another altogether.
(ST)

Films of 2016
BEST
Mr Six
China’s Feng Xiaogang is equally at home behind the camera or in front of it. He is tremendous in this compelling character study of the titular Mr Six (photo 2), a Beijing old-timer of honour and principles who is out of step with the times, and he deservedly walked away with the Golden Horse Award for Best Actor.
The film packs in plenty of observations about contemporary Chinese society and values and ends with a visually spectacular showdown on a frozen lake.

Ten Years
The controversial Hong Kong Film Award winner for Best Film paints a disturbing picture of the territory in 2025. The anthology comprises Extras by Kwok Zune, Season Of The End by Wong Fei Pang, Dialect by Jevons Au, Self-Immolator by Kiwi Chow and Local Egg by Ng Ka Leung. The works run the gamut from heavily metaphorical to darkly humorous to overtly political.
The movieis uneven and raw at times, but is also filled with unbridled passion and a sense of urgency and it taps into a very real sense of unease about Hong Kong’s future.

Your Name
The anime flick, which has been smashing records at home in Japan, tells a beguiling story in an unexpected way and deftly ties together strands of humour, romance and mystery.
The movie starts out as a light-hearted high-school comedy and deepens into an existential mystery and a rumination on the nature of time as the appearance of a comet and the Japanese tradition of braiding cords are woven in.
The animation is gorgeous, detailed and vividly coloured.

WORST
A Chinese Odyssey Part Three
Comedian Stephen Chow’s priceless deadpan performance in his dual roles of Joker and Monkey King is a big reason the two-part A Chinese Odyssey (1995) is so beloved by its fans.
So a part three sans Chow – and much of the original Hong Kong cast – is absolute travesty in this sequel to the Journey To The West movies.
Even the jokes here are recycled. Did director Jeffrey Lau run out of money and ideas?
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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Gareth Edwards
The story: The Rebel Alliance recruits a reluctant Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) in its war against the evil Galactic Empire. Her missing-for-years father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) has secretly sent a message about the Empire’s powerful new weapon, the Death Star, through former Imperial pilot Bodhi (Riz Ahmed). She embarks on a mission with intelligence officer Cassian (Diego Luna), blind warrior Chirrut (Donnie Yen), freelance assassin Baze (Jiang Wen) and android K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) to track down her father and finds out that the planet-zapping Death Star has a weakness.
Rogue One is the call sign of the space vehicle that they travel in.

For those who have wondered how the Empire could build such a powerful weapon of destruction and yet conveniently leave a fatal flaw in it that would allow Luke Skywalker to destroy it in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977), this movie is for you.
Rogue One serves to bridge Episode III – Revenge Of The Sith (2005), which ends with the construction of the Death Star, and A New Hope, which starts with rebel leader Princess Leia having acquired the blueprint for it. But I suppose Episode 3.5 would have made for an awkward title.
Like the last Star Wars title, The Force Awakens (2015), this new instalment features a diverse cast in terms of gender and ethnicity.
Felicity Jones makes the jump from award-winning dramas (The Theory Of Everything, 2014) to big-budget movies (Inferno, 2016) and her strong-willed and quick- thinking heroine is compelling. Mexican actor Diego Luna and British-Pakistani actor-rapper Riz Ahmed are competent in their roles.
And, cue sigh of relief, Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen is no mere token presence. Chirrut is some kind of Jedi gongfu warrior and Yen gets to show off some moves and also has a poignant and pivotal scene towards the end.
In comparison, acclaimed Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen has less to do, although he does make an impact of sorts with his screen presence.
There is also comic relief from K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) – a droll droid in the tradition of C-3PO – once part of the short-lived space adventure series, Firefly (2002).
While the movie is a little confusing to follow at the beginning, jumping as it does from location to location, director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, 2014) soon gets a handle on its scale as he juggles more intimate moments between the characters with the bigger battle and space scenes.
So, Rogue One is entertaining enough, but there is not much surprise as to how things turn out, given that the audience already knows that Princess Leia has the plans in A New Hope.
If only the story could have gone a little rogue.
(ST)

Imperfections
Ellen Loo

Fabulous
Sammi Cheng

There seems to be a lot weighing on Hong Kong singer-songwriter Ellen Loo’s mind.
On her latest solo Mandarin album, images of destruction and perversion of the natural world flit across tracks such as the guitar- and-tambourine-accompanied Mai Kong Qi De Ren (literally The Man Selling Air) and the flamenco- tinged Wu He (No Seeds).
She paints a bleak picture of the former: “Who dares to put a price tag on the water and land, air, forests/No responsibility, no life, nobody leaves here alive”.
On the song Ka Dai (Cassette), she wonders if she is out of step with everyone else: “The world outside wants me to go faster.../But I’m stuck in rewind in the machine”.
While she explores unusual territory lyrically, the music feels a little less engaging at first compared with that of her previous albums The Ripples (2011) and You’re Nobody To Me (2012).
The electro-pop of Through The Hurdles, which Loo composed with Hong Kong pop star Sammi Cheng for her Cantonese record Fabulous is more immediate. The uplifting dance number features lyrics by Lin Xi: “Through the hurdles, do you need permission from the world to be happy/Through the hurdles, only if you can let things go can you carry them”.
There is a good mix of fast and slow songs here, including radio- friendly numbers such as ballad I’m Not A Singer and mid-tempo track 8km.
She breaks into full-on dance diva mode with Incredible and the title track, on which she proclaims: “We make it fabulous”. Yes indeed, she does.
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10,000 Miles
Simon Hung
The story: High school student Kevin (Huang Yuan) is so determined to run that he leaves home to join his elder brother Sean’s (Darren Wang) track team. He gets rejected, but Ellie (Megan Lai), a senior member of the team, starts to train him. Their burgeoning relationship is tested when Kevin defies her to take part in a competition despite being injured.

There is a thin line between being passionate about something and being pig-headed and reckless about it. It is a line that Kevin crosses with abandon.
Injured as a result of over-training, he insists on taking part in a competition despite being warned that doing so could cripple him. On top of his petulant behaviour, he is also often shouty and unreasonable.
If not for the fact that Huang plays him with such earnestness, he would be completely insufferable.
It does not help that director and co-writer Simon Hung piles on florid emotions and cliches, turning 10,000 Miles into a sports film on melodrama steroids.
The story veers off-track when Kevin turns to driving a taxi to make a living while Sean bizarrely ends up as a criminal. Thrown into the mix are a tragic past for Ellie, Kevin’s disapproving father and an orphanage that needs to be saved from impending closure.
And then there is the Jay Chou cameo.
The Mandopop king drops in for a scene as his younger, demo-toting self taking a cab ride to a record company, inspiring Kevin in the process to keep running. This is even more jarring than superstar Andy Lau’s appearance as himself at the end of the youth romance comedy Our Times (2015), as it jolts one out of the movie.
Kevin eventually takes on a brutal run along the Silk Road to fulfil a promise. The movie then ends abruptly, as though it has suddenly run out of steam.
(ST)

Progress Reports
Eli Hsieh
Thanks to a Golden Melody Award win for Best New Artist in June, Taiwanese Eli Hsieh’s debut album Progress Reports – released on Dec 31 last year – has been getting more attention, including from this reviewer. And deservedly so.
The work is intimate and ambitious. Conceptually, it was inspired by American writer Daniel Keyes’ sci-fi short story Flowers For Algernon, comprising progress reports by the protagonist Charlie, as his low IQ is boosted through surgery. But the experiment is ultimately a failure.
The singer-songwriter’s pellucid voice evokes an unvarnished portrait of a young man’s emotional world. In a life that can be filled with uncertainty and diminished expectations, there are moments of grace and light.
The opening track Roam finds him contemplating: “What have I lost, what have I found/I don’t want that much right now.” Worry Song finds him fretting about the state we are in: “The whole world, the dark world/But I’m still living in these times/So I can only sing.”
There are no grandiose dreams, only modest ambitions to hold on to. On the guitar ballad Light, he wants to shine bright – but not like the sun: “I only wish to be a lamp for you/Press the switch when you need me.”
Just when you have him pegged as a sensitive troubadour, Hsieh surprises you with the rock-tinged You Found Me that harks back to early Maroon 5, a splash of electronica on Still Alive and then, for good measure, a dose of rap on You Found Me.
He might be a mercurial millennial, but there is no doubting the power of his songs. He performs in Singapore on Feb 11 as part of the Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts. For those who watched him sing as a 13-year-old on the singing contest One Million Star in 2007, this would be a chance to see how far he has progressed.
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Suddenly 17
Zhang Mo
The story: Liang (Ni Ni) has been with her boyfriend Mao (Wallace Huo) for 10 years, but the marriage proposal she has been expecting from him does not arrive. A box of chocolates she buys, for her to eat away her sorrows, turns out to have magical powers. Each piece of chocolate consumed returns her to her 17-year-old self, albeit in her 28-year-old body. The younger Liang then falls for a biker kid, Yan (Wang Ta-lu).

Body swopping is a common plot device in films that still works when it is done well. The massive success of this year’s hit Japanese anime Your Name is a case in point.
Director and co-writer Zhang Mo tries to give a twist to the tried-and- tested genre by swopping the same person at different ages into one body. Unfortunately, it does not work.
For one thing, the older and younger Liang seem like two different people rather than the same person at different ages. Big Liang is mousy and eager to please her man, while Little Liang brashly takes the initiative and is committed to her drawings and paintings.
Suddenly 17 ends up being an unfunny split personality movie – it is dour when one sees Big Liang and needlessly manic when Little Liang takes over because, well, youth rocks.
That both personalities are, in fact, Liang means that the antagonism between them feels forced – she is ultimately making things difficult for herself.
The idea here is that one’s youthful self is more idealistic and authentic and worth holding on to. Unfortunately, the execution of it is incredibly literal – Big Liang tries to hold on to Little Liang in one scene.
Meanwhile, the underwritten male characters seem like poor motivators for Liang’s actions.
Did Zhang pick the light-hearted romance comedy genre to steer clear of comparisons with her acclaimed film-making father Zhang Yimou’s dramas?
The comparisons will be made regardless and, based on this work, they will not be favourable.
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Museum
Keishi Otomo
The story: A woman is killed by ravenous dogs. An unemployed man who mooches off his mother is killed in yet another grisly manner. As detective Sawamura (Shun Oguri) digs deeper into the murders, a link surfaces to an earlier case of a girl encased in resin. Then, his estranged wife and their son go missing. Who is behind it all and what does he have planned for Sawamura? Based on the 2013-2014 manga by Ryosuke Tomoe.

It does not seem all that long ago (2005, actually) that Japanese actor Oguri broke out in the idol drama Boys Over Flowers as pretty-as- a-flower Hanazawa Rui.
Here, he plays a grizzled detective, Sawamura, a man stretched to breaking point by a sadistic serial killer who hides behind a frog mask.
While it is laudable that the 33- year-old actor wants to stretch himself professionally, Museum is not quite the ideal vehicle for doing so – it comes across as being more interested in the horrific spectacle of death than the psychology behind the crimes.
The gruesome murders are each described by the perpetrator as punishments, including “dog food penalty” and “feel pain of mom penalty”. They recall the horrific murders and the deliberate way in which the victims were displayed in Seven (1995).
The titular museum is a twisted take on the concept by the killer, who envisions a series of bloodcurdling tableaux for his museum of horrors. Alas, the motivation behind his plan is cursory.
In other respects, director Keishi Otomo, who did a better job with adapting the period action manga Rurouni Kenshin, is too heavy- handed – from the repeated flashbacks to the over-the-top emotions spilling forth.
This is an exhibit of a movie that is too baldly manipulative.
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Journey To The West
Khalil Fong

It All Started From An Intro
William Wei

Hong Kong-based singer Khalil Fong raps on Wu Kong: “My master is a master of self/He taught me how to master myself.”
Whether he is referring to himself or the Monkey King in the Chinese classic novel Journey To The West, the assertion is well earned.
Journey To The West is Fong’s first release under his own label Fu Music and he is pulling out all the stops.
His opus features an array of collaborators, from Beijing Mongolian folk-rockers Hanggai Band to South Korea’s R&B and hip-hop artists Crush and Zion.T, to London-based singer-songwriter Fifi Rong.
Their contributions spread over 20 tracks (21 if you include the bonus track demo of Wu Kong) on two discs, mostly in Mandarin with some in English, Korean and Mongolian.
Wu Kong, the opening number on the Black disc, starts off as a synth-rock number boasting about his prowess, name-checks actor Stephen Chow and singer Jay Chou in a Mandarin rap and ends with an English rap.
Remarkably, he makes it all sound so effortless and natural even as he is melding different elements and genres. The same is true of the album as a whole.
One of the best tracks is Listen, a song about the pleasures of music. It is seductive and irresistible.
Another thoughtful singer-songwriter with a new album is Taiwan’s William Wei, who will be performing at Shanghai Dolly on Saturday (tickets are sold out).
It All Started From An Intro wanders further away from the guitar-driven balladry he was known for, an artistic departure that had begun with his 2014 third record Journey Into The Night (2014).
Wei, who performs as Weibird, seems to acknowledge this when he sings on the opening track Intro: “This is the end, this is also the beginning.” The song’s structure eschews the standard pop template and goes from a ballad to electronica-tinged dance pop.
Another tune, One Shoe, with dramatic orchestral strings and piano and a backing choir, feels like it escaped from some stage musical.
But the album lacks focus with the inclusion of more radio-friendly tracks such as television drama theme songs Think Of You First and Play Games.
Nevertheless, there is still much to enjoy here, including the bonus tracks of well received recent works such as Deja Vu, which was easily the most poignant moment when it was performed in the Edward Lam play, What Is Sex? (2014).
(ST)

Bad Santa 2
Mark Waters
The story: Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) is at a dead end in his life. When his former elf suit-wearing partner in crime Marcus (Tony Cox) turns up with a proposition for a job, he reluctantly goes along. How will Willie cope with the appearance of his hated mother Sunny (Kathy Bates) and the unquestioning loyalty of the one person who truly cares about him – the simple-minded Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly)?

All that Christmas cheer starting to get you down? Never fear – here is Bad Santa to the rescue.
In the 2003 film, Willie was a department store Saint Nick with a difference.
The persona was merely a cover for the professional thief to get into malls at night.
There were reportedly 300 profanities uttered over the course of that uproarious, no-holds-barred movie.
Forget milk and cookies – he would rather have a drink and adult activities.
In case it is not clear, do not bring your little ones to this new movie.
Fans will be relieved that Willie remains incorrigible in the sequel – there has been no attempt to make him over.
Mark Waters (Mean Girls, 2004), taking over directorial duty from Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, 1994), maintains the tone of a black comedy generously topped with much swearing and boozing.
Key members of the cast – an excellent Thornton, a hilarious Cox and a deadpan Kelly – return, but not Lauren Graham (TV’s Gilmore Girls), who had played Willie’s love interest. So he gets to ogle charity organisation exec Diane, played by Christina Hendricks.
Bates (Misery, 1990), playing Willie’s tattooed biker-chick mother, is a brilliant addition to the cast. Her entry shows why he has issues – after all, her term of endearment for him is “s**t stick”.
Just when one thinks the shock factor of a foul-mouthed Saint Nick (and his equally potty-mouthed mother) could wear off, there are still quite a few highlights here, including two Santas having a punch-up.
Despite everything, Willie is not a complete jerk and there is a tender moment or two to be found.
Still, if it is redemption and the warm fuzzies of a happy ending that you want, go watch It’s A Wonderful Life (1946).
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I Am Not Madame Bovary
Feng Xiaogang
The story: Li Xuelian (Fan Bingbing) goes to court over a fake divorce that turned real. The ruling goes against her and so she keeps escalating the case up the chain, aggravating officials every step of the way. She gets another grievance when her ex-husband calls her Pan Jinlian, the infamous adulterer of lore. Only her old classmate Zhao Datou (Guo Tao), who has always had a crush on Xuelian, is willing to help her. Based on the 2012 Chinese novel of the same name (literally, I Am Not Pan Jinlian) by Liu Zhenyun.

The shadow of another movie looms large over this one: Zhang Yimou’s The Story Of Qiu Ju (1992), where Gong Li played a peasant woman from rural China who travels from village to town to city to seek justice.
So, too, does Fan’s Xuelian doggedly pursue justice, without qualms haranguing any and every official she meets to get her case heard.
The international red carpet regular also goes the de-glamorising routine, speaking with a rural/provin- cial accent and going from va-va-voom to looking as plain and dowdy as a worn rug.
Unfortunately, the strong sense of deja vu does her no favours. In a diva-to-diva face-off, Gong comes across as the stronger actress.
Still, Fan is competent enough that she has nabbed a Golden Horse nomination for Best Actress, which is among the five prizes the film is up for later this month at the event. I Am Not Madame Bovary is also competing for Best Feature Film and Best Director for film-maker Feng Xiaogang.
The black comedy about incompetent government contains flashes of sly humour. Sycophants and fools abound, their names exposing them for what they are: court employee Jia Congming’s moniker is a homonym for “fake cleverness” in Mandarin, for example.
Feng plays with the framing of the film, going from a circular frame to a rectangular one and then to the more familiar widescreen format. Some of the scenes composed for the circular frame are as pretty as a picture, recalling traditional Chinese painting. Or it could be a reflection of the loop that Xuelian is stuck in, fighting on year after year to no avail.
At the same time, it also reminds one of a peephole, one that peers into the murky heart of Chinese bureaucracy.
(ST)

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Lee Ang
The story: Specialist Billy Lynn (Joe Alwyn) rushes to the aid of sergeant Shroom (Vin Diesel) under a flurry of Iraqi fire and is hailed as a hero. Shipped back to America, he goes on a celebratory media tour with his Bravo squad mates, including the no-nonsense sergeant Dime (Garrett Hedlund). The tour ends with them taking part in an over-the-top half-time show at an American football game. Based on American novelist Ben Fountain’s 2012 novel of the same name.

Much of the buzz surrounding feted director Lee Ang’s new film is for its groundbreaking format of a high frame rate of 120 frames per second, 4K resolution and in 3D.
Unfortunately – or fortunately – audiences here will get to see only the regular version, which is in 2D and at 24 frames per second.
So its success boils down to the film itself, shorn of its high-tech coat.
There is much going on thematically, including an exploration of courage, the idea of patriotism and the tendency for the media to over-simplify things.
Billy remarks that he is being honoured for the worst day of his life, but no one seems to care. Indeed, he seems to be sucked into a situation in which almost everything is out of his hands. Up to the moment it happens, no one in Bravo squad knows what it is that they are supposed to be doing for the half-time show.
At the same time, this is also a meta-movie about the movie industry. Quick-talking Albert (Chris Tucker) is the guy trying to make a film deal for the Bravos and his comments often undermine what is happening in Billy Lynn the movie.
He says that “there’s always a girl” – and sure enough, there is a cheerleader, Faison (Makenzie Leigh), who catches Billy’s eye. And after a confrontation between Billy and the slick businessman Norm Oglesby (Steve Martin), Albert remarks that “that’s what we call a real movie moment”.
In other respects, Lee does not make it an easy watch by doing away almost completely with a music score until the very end. There are also too many close-ups, making the film feel static.
It is a pity because the issues examined here are pertinent, bolstered by a solid cast – newcomer Alwyn, soldiering on in the maelstrom of the celebrity machine; Kristen Stewart as his concerned sister; and Vin Diesel as a zenmaster-like sergeant.
Hedlund is a standout, making the cliched tough-on-the-outside- caring-underneath Dime totally believable.
While Billy Lynn does not quite come together compellingly, you cannot fault Lee for having an ambitious vision and trying his darnedest to realise it.
(ST)

Death Note Light Up The New World
Shinsuke Sato
The story: If you write the name of a person while picturing his face into Death Note – a supernatural notebook – the person will drop dead. At the end of Death Note 2: The Last Name (2006), both Kira, who used a Death Note to execute his brand of justice, and L, the brilliant detective hunting him, had died. Ten years later, a rash of new Death Note murders takes place. Tracking down the notebooks are task force member Tsukuru Mishima (Masahiro Higashide) and Ryuzaki (Sosuke Ikematsu), an investigator who has inherited L’s DNA. Meanwhile, Kira appears in a computer virus video, raising doubts about his death. Based on the Death Note manga series by Tsugumi Ohba.

The crux of the Death Note movies has always been the battle of wits between Kira, originally an ordinary college student named Light Yagami, and L.
They were protagonist and antagonist, light and dark, villain and hero – although it was not always clear who was which.
After all, wasn’t Kira using his power for good by rooting out the unsavoury elements of society?
With Kira and L out of the way, this new instalment, to keep the story going, goes for the bigger and more complicated.
But it is less inclined to dwell on the philosophical conundrums presented by the existence of Death Notes.
There are now six such notebooks and it takes a while to account for who possess them.
Then there is the computer virus and the question of who is behind it, while suspicion is also cast on L’s successor Ryuzaki.
With so much story to get through, it is no wonder the film feels so busy.
Worse, without a clearly defined rivalry along the lines of Light versus L, Light Up The New World seems more scattered.
Still, one does get caught up in the story as it develops.
The twist at the end is quite a whopper and it leaves the door wide open for the next movie chapter.
For those who miss the Kira vs L dynamics, the American live-action remake of Death Note is out next year.
But given Hollywood’s track record with manga adaptations – um, Dragonball Evolution (2009) or Oldboy (2013) anyone? – an English-language Death Note could well be a tough sell.
(ST)

Your Name
Makoto Shinkai
The story: Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a high-school boy living in Tokyo, has a crush on a senior colleague at an Italian restaurant where he works part-time. Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi), a restless high-school girl living in rural Itomori, performs rituals for the family shrine. Their lives start to intersect in a mysterious way that confounds them and the people around them. Based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Makoto Shinkai.

It is easy to see why Your Name has been such a big hit in Japan – it has a compelling story told in an unusual way and the visuals are lovely.
As of Oct 23, it has been No. 1 on the Japanese box-office charts for nine weeks.
It is the first anime movie to earn more than 10 billion yen (S$132.6 million) that is not from the vaunted Studio Ghibli, whose acclaimed hits include Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Spirited Away (2001) and The Wind Rises (2013).
A product of CoMix Wave Films, an animation outfit whose credits include the well-received mecha romance Voices Of A Distant Star (2002), Your Name is one of those movies that work best the less you know about them.
There is a sense of dislocation when the film opens, with Taki and Mitsuha dogged by the feeling that they are searching for something or someone. Yet, the answer is just out of reach, like a dream that is forgotten the moment one awakes.
It is only 30 minutes in that the characters realise what is happening – at the same time that audiences find out. The question of why it is happening remains a mystery for a while longer.
Along the way, the movie deepens from a light-hearted high- school comedy into a kind of existential mystery that seems to be linked to the impending appearance of a comet.
There is humour, romance, excitement, poignancy and a gentle rumination on time through the Japanese tradition of braiding cords.
The animation is lovely, beautifully drawn and vividly coloured.
One needs only to look at the gorgeous autumn scene in which Mitsuha, along with her grandmother and younger sister, make their way through the woods – the trees ablaze in red, orange and yellow – to know that the competition is heating up for Studio Ghibli.
(ST)

What Love Has Taught Us
Eric Chou
Taiwan’s Eric Chou, who impressed on his 2014 debut album My Way To Love with his smooth vocals and songwriting skills, has since shown that there is more to him than just crowd-pleasing love ballads such as the hit Let’s Not Be Friends Anymore.
Now 21, he is an in-demand songwriter for others, including Eve Ai, whose sultry R&B number Talk is an indication of Chou’s versatility.
The new album’s opener is a slinky electronica number -1 Minute, where he sings: “Let another me completely change me.”
Let It Go shimmies into dance territory as he cajoles: “Follow me, fling your troubles away/So we let it go, go, go, go, go, go.”
It takes a certain amount of confidence to name a track Let It Go, given the popularity of the song of the same name from the huge animated hit Frozen (2013), yet Chou pulls it off – you will probably be too busy moving your feet to dwell on the association.
Unlike Singaporean singer-songwriter Tanya Chua on Aphasia (2015), however, he has not gone full-tilt into electronic territory.
The ballads are still here and his lovely vibrato and warm tone make How Are You and Wish To Return To That Day come across as deeply felt. He lingers over a past relationship in How Are You and pleads: “Can you continue to cry at me, laugh at me, be good to me/Continue to let me think of you, be crazy for you, grow old with you.”
Even the English-language number No One Like You manages to charm with its breeziness, despite cliched lines such as: “Baby, baby, in my eyes/Oh, you are paradise.” Given that he spent his formative years between 12 and 18 studying in the United States, one expects better lyrics from him.
Still, this is a consistently listenable album with some surprises along the way.
It is a worthy follow-up to My Way To Love, one that suggests Chou will not be easily pegged – and that he has lots more up his sleeve.
(ST)

American Pastoral
Ewan McGregor
The story: Swede Levov (Ewan McGregor) and his wife Dawn (Jennifer Connelly) seem to have the perfect life. But when their daughter Merry (Dakota Fanning) turns to violence for her political beliefs at the age of 16 and then disappears, their world collapses. Based on the 1997 Philip Roth novel of the same name.

American novelist Philip Roth is having a bit of a moment on the big screen.
Recent adaptations of his works have included erotic comedy The Humbling (2014), starring Al Pacino as an ageing actor whose life gets messy; and drama Indignation (2016), which addresses the role of religion in school and the boundaries of personal liberties.
Things continue to fall apart in American Pastoral. At its heart, it poses a question that, unfortunately, continues to resonate today: How is an extremist made?
Merry comes from a loving, well-to-do family and yet she is drawn to the philosophy of violent revolution in a tumultuous period of American history as anger and frustration erupt over the Vietnam War.
Her parents wrestle with guilt even as they are left bewildered and devastated over her actions.
Chameleonic actor McGregor as the grieving father who refuses to give up on his daughter is the emotional centre of the film. As Dawn, Connelly (Requiem For A Dream, 2000) has the tougher arc to pull off, as she goes from grieving mother to brittle socialite.
McGregor, in his directorial debut, does well to juggle both the family drama as well as the bigger events playing out in the background without resorting to preachiness or a need to tie everything up neatly.
But by sticking to the framing device in the book – Roth’s alter ego Nathan Zuckerman attending his high-school reunion and learning about what happened to Swede from his brother Jerry Levov – there is a sense of distance from the events that unfold.
The film recalls a story in The Guardian about mothers in North America and Europe whose children had volunteered to fight for the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria – including one who said poignantly that she did not even know what the word “radicalisation” was before finding out that her son was dead.
You can raise children in a loving environment and yet have absolutely no idea how they will turn out.
In other words, American Pastoral is also a horror film for parents.
(ST)

I Hear The Sound Of Dawn
Liang Wern Fook
In his first record since 1992’s Go East, xinyao leading light Liang Wern Fook performs in his inimitable style, that modest, homespun charm still intact as he speaks and sings Xin Yao Li Shi Wai Zhuan (Unofficial History Of Xinyao), a reworking of fan favourite Eve Before The History Exam (1987), in which he namechecks the creators, singers and songs of the home-grown Mandarin music movement.
There is also an update of the 1990 classic, Singapore Pie, which takes into account developments such as MRT train breakdowns and the sky-rocketing of certificate of entitlement prices.
These are songs that chart the ups and downs and growing pains of Singapore. No one does it like Liang, who taps into people’s collective memories – be it goggle-box viewing in Watching Television or listening to the radio on New Flame Meeting Old Love.
Ren Sheng Wu Suo Wei (Life – Fear Not) not only marks the first time that Liang sings a TV series theme song and the breezy track for the long-running series of the same name (2015-2016), but it also fits in a reference to Sang Nila Utama.
This new release was not conceived as an album with a cohesive vision; it is a collection of mostly recent material from the past few years, as well as a few tracks that date back to 1999.
Inevitably, it is thematically disparate, with songs as different as Hear Tomorrow Singing (an ode to teachers) is from Carefree Suzhou (an ode to the Chinese city).
Nevertheless, Sound Of Dawn is a collection of works written by Liang that demonstrates his range as a songwriter, who, apart from crafting social observations, can also compose evocative ballads such as Wish To Tell You. It was penned for the xinyao- themed TV series, Crescendo (2015), and ably performed by local singer A-do.
Unusually, there is one song here which was not composed by him. He wrote the lyrics for Jacky Cheung’s 1999 hit, She Came To Listen To My Concert, while Huang Mingzhou penned the music.
It is a poignant track about the relationship between a singer and his audience and how songs accompany one throughout one’s life. It was a special treat when Liang performed it at his long-overdue first solo concert in April last year.
And now, people have it for posterity.
(ST)

Inferno
Ron Howard
The story: Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), professor of symbology at Harvard University, wakes up in a hospital in Florence with a head injury and no memory of how he got there and what happened in the last few days. When an assassin shows up, his doctor, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), helps him get away. Together, they need to solve a series of clues to reach a deadly pathogen that could wipe out half of Earth’s population. Based on Dan Brown’s 2013 novel of the same name.

One of the pleasures a Dan Brown film adaptation offers is allowing viewers to watch the characters traipse about beloved landmarks and institutions and/or cavalierly handle all manner of cultural treasures – the Louvre’s Mona Lisa in 2006’s The Da Vinci Code (a replica was used) and the Vatican in 2009’s Angels & Demons (although filming did not actually take place there).
In Inferno, viewers get to see Hanks and Jones worming their way through crawlspaces and secret passages in Florence’s monumental town hall, Palazzo Vecchio, and the death mask of Italian poet Dante getting swiped as easily as candy in an unmanned shop.
Dante is the author of the 14th- century epic, Divine Comedy, of which part one is titled Inferno. The movie taps on his idea of hell to present unsettling images of extreme pain and suffering and also, a drawing of it contains the first riddle that Langdon has to solve.
Thanks to veteran director Ron Howard’s sure hand, one gets engrossed in Langdon and Brooks’ race against time in an elaborate game.
Details start to niggle only when one starts to think about them.
Langdon’s head trauma seems at first to be a good idea for the story – it means that the hero is compromised. But as with the recent thriller, The Girl On The Train (2016), the director makes use of a far too convenient plot device: what the protagonist forgets, or remembers – and when.
Also, does one really need a professor of symbology to make sense of the clues? As Brooks deftly demonstrates in one scene, a Google search could be just as helpful.
Then again, that would not make for a popcorn flick that people would want to watch.
(ST)

Head Over Heels
Angela Chang
If Taiwan’s Angela Chang had a signature song, it would be Invisible Wings. The ballad from her third album Pandora (2006) has a message of hope and encouragement that resonates strongly with fans.
The opening track here, I’m Not Afraid, is in the same vein. It starts with Chang musing on the universality of pain (“Everyone is struggling/Everyone has somewhere they wish to go”) before she soars with the imagery of flight (“I’m flying through the dark night/Searching for that starlight that is mine/Though I know that honesty will get you hurt/I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid”).
The sentiment is familiar, but the track still works, thanks to its memorable melodic riff and her full- blooded delivery. Perhaps such songs strike a chord with Chang personally, who had to overcome a very public and unpleasant splitting of ways from her mother in the late noughties.
Another strong number here is the power ballad, Before Goodbye. She croons: “I’ve made it through those few years of utmost pain/All those familiar people, every face makes me reminisce.”
In contrast, the peppy joy-of-falling-in-love title track feels a little out of place here. But her fans should be happy to see this buoyant side of her.
(ST)

Southside With You
Richard Tanne
The story: Legal associate Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers) has been trying to get lawyer Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter) to go out with him. Eventually she agrees, although she insists it is not a date. They spend a day together, going from a museum to a meeting at a church to a screening of Spike Lee’s drama, Do The Right Thing (1989).

Could this film – a portrait of the outgoing United States First Couple as they were in 1989 over the course of a summer day in Chicago, Illinois – be anything other than respectful and safely sweet?
After all, the subjects are none other than one of the most powerful men in the world and his wife.
And the fact that they ended up together is a matter of fact, not an issue that is open to speculation.
So the somewhat surprising answer to the question is yes.
First-time writer-director Richard Tanne made the smart decision to follow Obama and Robinson over the course of one day and not be overly ambitious.
The day-long set-up has been employed to great effect in films such as Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995).
Here, viewers get the sense of the couple as two intelligent, idealistic people simply getting to know each other, and they are admirably fleshed out by the actors.
In his first leading role, Sawyers, who bears more than a passing resemblance to a young Obama, impresses with his ability to imbue the character with confidence and conviction.
Sumpter (Ride Along, 2014), who also produced the film, is very much his equal as the more wary and world-weary Robinson.
Instead of robbing the film of dramatic tension, knowing what we know now makes it fun when she describes her suitor as “that jive- talking stereotype from Good Times”, referring to a comedy about an Afro-American family that ran from 1974 to 1979.
Issues of race and mobility are addressed – Robinson sometimes feels like she is “going from Planet Black to Planet White” when she goes to work and the choice of film that they watch is deliberate – but Tanne avoids being heavy-handed about them.
There is also a scene of Obama winning over a group of doubters in a modest local church with his words, foreshadowing his rousing speeches in real life on the presidential campaign trail in 2008.
As Robinson remarks, that is a “pretty good setting to bring a girl”.
In the process, he wins over his date and the movie wins over the audience.
(ST)

Journey
Nicky Wu
The title of this album harks back to one of Nicky Wu’s best-known solo hits, Wish You A Smooth Journey, taken from his 1992 debut solo album, Wind Chaser.
Of course, the Taiwanese was already a star before that as the best-looking member of the boy band trio, Little Tigers, and not their strongest singer.
Maybe this is a reason for the 19-year break between the new album and his last, 1997’s Hero.
Another is that he has been focusing on acting, including in the hit period television drama, Scarlet Heart (2011).
On Journey, the opening synthesizer strains of Lonely By Nature already sound dated and, unfortunately, Wu seems resolutely stuck in the past. Even the title track fails to muster much excitement.
Perhaps the song of greatest interest is Hand In Hand, a duet with Cecilia Liu, his co-star from Scarlet Heart and now his wife. The track itself is nothing too exciting, though it does end on a sweet note with the chiming of wedding bells.
(ST)

Each time you think the Hallyu wave is about to peak, a new South Korean television series comes along and crests to another high.
In 2013, romance drama The Heirs, starring Lee Min Ho and Park Shin Hye, took South Korea and beyond by storm. Then sci-fi romance My Love From The Star, with Gianna Jun and Kim Soo Hyun, surged to new heights of popularity in 2014. Earlier this year, military romance Descendants Of The Sun blazed a different path and turned Song Joong Ki into a megawatt star.
What these three shows have in common are beautiful actors and actresses, but that is only half of the reason K-dramas are flourishing.
The fact that they all star different actors points to the depth of talent in the industry. There is a seemingly inexhaustible supply of actors and actresses who not only look gorgeous but can act as well.
This becomes even clearer when you go beyond the blockbusters – a star is seemingly born every few months on the small screen.
Nostalgia drama Reply 1997 (2012) was a cable show that came in under the radar, but grew to make a big splash as word of mouth spread. Singer Seo In Guk had a star turn as the high school hotshot with a sensitive side and Jung Eun Ji from girl group Apink had an auspicious acting debut as a feisty superfan of male idol popsters Sechs Kies.
The drama Incomplete Life (2014) heralded the arrival of Yim Si Wan as a new acting talent as he played the part of workplace greenhorn Jang Geu Rae to perfection. He picked up several accolades, including a Baeksang Arts Award for Best New Actor.
Interestingly, individuals who get lost within the confines of a boyband or girl group shine in the spotlight when they make the leap to television. Apart from Apink’s Jung and ZE:A’s Yim, there is also Lee Hyeri from Girl’s Day, who made a great impression in Reply 1988 (2015) as the bubbly high-schooler Sung Deok Sun. The ratings for the show’s final episode are the highest in Korean cable TV history.
The depth of talent in the acting pool extends to the creative pool.
A second reason for the thriving K-drama scene is the industry’s ability to come up with new concepts and to put a fresh spin on familiar ones.
The recently concluded W, written by Song Jae Jung and starring actor-model Lee Jong Suk and actress Han Hyo Joo, played mind games with its characters and viewers as the story unfolded across two parallel worlds – our world and the world of a hit webtoon, a comics title that is published online.
With a fresh and exciting premise, it kept viewers guessing throughout what was going to happen next.
You could say that it was an update of the concept Norwegian pop band A-ha used for their seminal music video for Take On Me in 1984, in which a woman enters the world of a comic strip she is reading.
Similarly, the crime thriller Signal (2016) borrowed a key idea from the American sci-fi thriller flick Frequency (2000) – two characters communicate with each other across time, using walkie-talkies in the former and a radio in the latter. To this it added an elaborate labyrinth of unsolved cases and personal connections. The result was gripping.
The ongoing period romance Love In The Moonlight is more than just a replay of the old chestnut of gender-bending – see Hong Kong rom-com He’s A Woman, She’s A Man (1994) or even the previous hit Korean series Coffee Prince (2007).
It’s a gender-pretzel as Kim Yoo Jung plays not just a girl in man’s clothing, but one who has to pretend to be a eunuch.
Moonlight is based on the Korean Web novel of the same name (in Korean) and it is proving to be popular enough that there are reports asking whether it could reach or even eclipse the ratings for Descendants Of The Sun.
Another reason shows from South Korea are thriving seems to boil down to a general tenet: no sequels.
Signal’s scriptwriter Kim Eun Hee has hinted at the possibility of a follow-up given the tantalisingly open-ended finale. But it would be an exception that proves the rule as none of the other titles mentioned above have yet had sequels.
Season 2 for Descendants Of The Sun is reportedly in the works, but it has also been said that stars Song Joong Ki and Song Hye Kyo will not be returning and neither will director Lee Eung Bok and writer Kim Eun Sook. For fans of the show, that would be like getting a beautifully packaged gift, only to find that it does not contain what they want inside.
While the titling of Reply 1997, Reply 1994 (2013) and Reply 1988 suggests a continuity, they are best thought of as sibling series – recognisably part of the same family, but each with its own traits and quirks.
They share the same attention to period detail as well as a similar set-up – who will the female lead end up with among a large group of potential suitors. Yet each show is about different characters and stands alone on its own.
Keeping things contained to a single season forces a show to be compelling and complete in that timeframe.
And if a show fails to pique viewers’ interest, not to worry, the next one could well be the one to sweep you off your feet.
(ST)

A Chinese Odyssey Part Three
Jeffrey Lau
The story: Time-travelling with the help of Pandora’s Box, fairy Zixia (Tiffany Tang) realises that she will sacrifice herself for her loved one, Joker (Han Geng), the reincarnation of the Monkey King. She tries in vain to get him to fall in love with the demon, Bak Jing-jing (Karen Mok). Her plan B: marry the Bull King (Zhang Chao). On the day of the ceremony, the ersatz Monkey King (also played by Han) is sent to Earth to subdue the demons so that he can accompany Longevity Monk (Wu Jing) on his journey to the West, thus righting a mistake made by the Jade Emperor (Huang Zheng) in the heavenly annals.

A Chinese Odyssey sequel without Stephen Chow? This is a travesty.
The two-part A Chinese Odyssey (1995) was one of the key works cementing Chow’s reputation as a comic superstar and he will forever be associated with the dual roles of Joker and Monkey King.
The luckless stand-in here is singer-actor Han Geng, whose good-looking mug is no substitute for Chow’s priceless deadpan face.
Given the massive popularity of the earlier films in China, this new instalment was greenlit despite the absence of most of the original cast.
Apart from Mok, who reprises her role as a demon in what is essentially a cameo, the line-up of Hong Kong actors, including Athena Chu, Law Kar Ying and Ada Choi, has been replaced by names better known in China. For die-hard fans, this would be akin to returning to one’s childhood home, only to find it peopled with strangers – who are pretending to be one’s family.
At least Jeffrey Lau, who directed the classic two-parter, has returned to helm the sequel and also penned the script, which contains Chow’s signature mo lei tau style of nonsensical humour – Bull King’s sister (Zhang Yao) drools copiously at the sight of Joker and characters break into a Cantonese ballad to express their emotional conundrum.
Even then, these are recycled jokes. Nothing beats Law’s Longevity Monk earnestly massacring the oldie, Only You, as Chow’s Joker is pushed to the limits of his patience in Part Two.
Worse, while the earlier instalments were hailed for their special effects and high production values, this entry’s computer graphics look cheap and make things feel weightless and cut off from reality.
Of course, one can always make another film based on the literary classic, but even when Chow co-wrote, produced and directed his version without starring in it – Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons (2013) – he did not tag it with A Chinese Odyssey.
Despite Lau’s involvement here, in the end, it is hard to shake off the feeling that this was made solely for a quick buck.
(ST)

Marauders
Steven C. Miller
The story: A group of men in kevlar masks carry out bank robberies in which they appear to be targeting specific people to kill. The FBI’s (Federal Bureau of Investigation’s) Jonathan Montgomery (Christopher Meloni) is on the case along with hotshot Wells (Adrian Grenier). The signs point to a dead soldier – and a cover-up by banker Jeffrey Hubert (Bruce Willis).

After 12 seasons of playing a cop on the long-running television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Meloni plays another one in Marauders.
The sense of familiarity deepens with the spectacle of masked men pulling off bank robberies, seen in countless other heist movies.
But, at least, there is something of interest here. The perpetrators use a wireless mini speaker to broadcast their instructions, so there is the surreal scene of a soothing Siri-like voice intoning: “Remain on the floor or we will kill you.”
This could well be the most arresting detail of the entire movie.
As in the Hong Kong movie S Storm, which also opens this week, there are clashes over territory between different agencies. In this case, though, there is a lot more macho posturing as Montgomery snarls at officer Mims (Johnathan Schaech) for intruding on FBI jurisdiction.
Mostly, the story is as grim as the setting, a city grey with foreboding and unrelenting rain. There are cops who might or might not be crooked, a soldier who might or might not be dead and a financier who might or might not be guilty of hiding something.
It is hard to care when the entire thing feels like a tired rehash of stock elements. And, no, adding Bruce Willis’ smirk and a perfunctory twist at the end does not help matters.
(ST)

S Storm
David Lam
The story: There is something fishy about the betting on football matches taking place at the jockey club. To uncover the truth, investigator Luk (Louis Koo) from the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) and detective Lau (Julian Cheung) have to put aside their differences and work together. Thrown into the mix are a skilled assassin (Vic Chou) and Lau’s sister (Dada Chan), who is also the damsel in distress. The sequel to 2014’s Z Storm.

I had forgotten about Z Storm, as the generic crime thriller had not left much of an impression. And sadly, the sequel to that forgettable flick does not fare much better.
The public service element of educating the public remains, except that this time around, it is less about the noble work of the ICAC and more about the dangers of gambling and the fact that anyone can fall into its clutches, including the cop Lau.
Scriptwriter Wong Ho Wa and director David Lam try to add a new dimension by introducing another police department and highlighting the differences between the elite ICAC with high-tech resources at their disposal and the lowly crime unit headed by Lau. There is some fun in watching how fiercely they each guard their territory.
There is also a brewing bromance between Koo and Cheung as their characters bond over how no one understands how tough things are for them.
Too bad there is no time for this or anything else to be explored. In addition to Chou (unconvincing as a killer) and Chan, there is also Ada Choi as another ICAC officer, Bowie Lam as a former ICAC agent-turned-jockey- club-security manager, not to mention the required villains of the piece.
To tie together all the characters, the story is drenched in lazy coincidences and oh-so-convenient plot turns.
Not the kind of storm that makes for exciting viewing.
(ST)

Kit Chan Spellbound Homecoming Concert 2016
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Last Saturday
What did the addition of Homecoming to the concert title mean for local singer Kit Chan’s show?
For starters, instead of the more intimate The Star Theatre, where she kicked off her regional Spellbound tour last June, the venue this time was the Indoor Stadium.
Production was ramped up with more lighting and stage effects, but they never swamped the star of the show and her luminous voice. She sounded great throughout the 21/2-hour show – the audience could hear every nuance of tone and emotion in her singing. Even her cover of David Huang’s You Make Me Drunk, a song that is in danger of being overexposed, felt fresh.
It had been 15 years since she last performed at this venue, yet she owned it as if she had never been away.
In between songs, she chatted easily with her fans like they were her old friends. At one point, she thanked celebrity hairstylist David Gan for his bird’s nest soup, quipping that he gave it away like complimentary coffee.
Since the previous Singapore gig, Chan has released her first album of original material, The Edge Of Paradise, in 12 years. Apart from the track Spellbound, she added three songs from it to the show, including the jazzy Don’t Ask Me Why I Love You, originally written for the late Leslie Cheung.
Quite a few things remained unchanged, though.
Her choice of covers to illustrate her ease in English and Cantonese remained largely similar. They included the Prince-penned Nothing Compares 2 U, Lana Del Rey’s Young And Beautiful and Cheung’s Left And Right Hands.
Nevertheless it was still a joy listening to Chan as she made the songs her own.
What could have done with some updating were portions of the scripted banter. The introductions to emo ballad Dazzle and Marilyn Monroe’s My Heart Belongs To Daddy would have been all too familiar to those who went for the previous show.
None of it mattered anyway, because Chan went into full chanteuse mode and turned the Hollywood bombshell’s number into a slinky and cheeky showstopper, earning a round of thunderous applause.
After the entire stadium surprised her with an early happy birthday song, she told the audience of 7,000: “Thank you for having been with me for such a long time. The scenery along the way has been beautiful.”
Ditto the accompanying soundtrack of her songs over the years.
(ST)

Talk About Eve
Eve Ai
Whenever The Sum Of Us plays on the radio, I feel like I should stop what I am doing to give it my full attention.
The ballad is written by Eve Ai and features a spare guitar arrangement. It does not scream for attention, yet is utterly compelling in its quietness. The lyrics beautifully sustain a metaphor about love and mathematics that is both unusual and poignant.
“No one has ever been able to perfectly expound on this and come to a conclusion/But to me, it’s still beautiful/Don’t dream of discovering the evidence/Of who loves who, published as a proof.”
You can cherish a relationship even when things do not add up.
The third album from the season five winner of Taiwanese television singing competition Super Idol in 2011 is Ai’s most beguiling yet. It lives up to the sobriquet of “Queen of Blues”, conferred by music producer Wang Chi-ping.
There is a soulfulness to her singing that lifts even more conventional material such as Harmless Loneliness, turning it into another highlight on the album.
She is also a versatile artist who can flit easily between balladry and other genres.
Talk, composed by talented newcomer singersongwriter Eric Chou, is a sultry R&B number tailormade for her lightly husky pipes. She promises: “When the crowd stops swaying/When the music starts getting softer/I say, I say, I say/Will be with you till the end?”
She rocks out on Escape Plan, chills on reggae-tinged Take Me To A Sunny Island and swings effortlessly on Dependence.
When she sings the refrain of “Then you come along” in English on the Mandarin track of the same name, packing a range of emotions into that repeated phrase, you can understand why she was once hailed as Taiwan’s Adele.
The comparison to the British star is meant to be flattering but, really, there is no question that Ai is her own woman.
(ST)

“The Invincible” Jay Chou Concert Tour 2016
National Stadium/Last Saturday
Since his last concert in Singapore in December 2014, Mandopop king Jay Chou has gotten married and is now the father of a little girl.
These are major life changes and they have clearly shaped his new album, Jay Chou’s Bedtime Stories (2016). But he made no mention of his wife and daughter and the only hint of domestic bliss was when he asked the sold-out crowd of 40,000: “Have I put on weight?”
Then he added teasingly: “If you listen to my songs, you’ll never get fat, I mean, old.”
Otherwise, the man himself was hard to pin down from his pat banter and it sometimes felt as if he was a little elusive during the gig, even if the production was top-notch.
Visually, this was a spectacular concert.
A suspended man in a spacesuit appeared to float through space as images of the cosmos were projected onto the screens on stage. Next, the concertgoers were plunging deep into a space vehicle and, finally, Chou himself appeared in a lit outfit which made him look like a walking pink skeleton. And this was just for the opening song, Hero.
The gothic segment for Bedtime Stories featured background visuals, which looked like they could have been outtakes from a Tim Burton animated film. The stage was transformed into the stained-glass interior of a cathedral for In The Name Of The Father and into an expansive underwater world for Mermaid.
But, sometimes, you wished that the excellent staging could have been in service of stronger material. The tracks from his recent albums tended to feel familiar where his songs were once fresh and exciting.
The excitement was palpable whenever he launched into his earlier hits, including Can’t Express Myself from 2001’s Fantasy and Peninsula Iron Box from 2002’s The Eight Dimensions. Unfortunately, Year Three, Class Two from 2003’s Ye Hui Mei – named after Chou’s mother – was merely filler for an interlude and not performed in full.
At least, the problem of murky sound that plagued his previous concert at the same venue did not resurface. From where the media were seated – centre and near the front – the sound was a little echoey at times, but not enough to be ruinous.
Chou was not at his best vocally. Had he been too busy taping the China reality television show Sing! China? He was too ready to point his microphone towards the audience members for them to chorus along and he seemed to be relying quite a bit on his back-up singers.
The concert was 21/2 hours long and one segment which could have been trimmed was the interaction with fans. It was great for those who were picked to sing with their idol, but it was largely a draggy affair for everyone else.
After all, it was Chou for whom the crowd came for and the extra time could have yielded a few more classic hits or maybe even a tiny peek into his life as husband and father.
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History Of Tomorrow
Mayday
The passing of time and growing older are themes that top Taiwanese band Mayday have explored before, on works such as Poetry Of The Day After (2008), and continue exploring on their ninth album, where they ask: “How did they get here? What comes next?”
“If we had never met, where would I be?/If we had never known each other, this song wouldn’t exist,” singer Ashin ruminates on opening track What If... With other songs touching on similar themes (Best Day Of My Life, Beginning Of The End), they cast their gaze to the past and look to the future.
In the five years since their last album, The Second Round (2011), two more members have gotten married, leaving Ashin as the sole bachelor. Perhaps those developments have prompted some of the introspection here.
What remains constant is the band’s ability to come up with compelling hooks that are by turns sunny, sweet and stirring.
One of the most moving numbers here is the poignant Here, After, Us as Ashin’s voice taps directly and deeply into the emotions: “Only hope that the future you will be happy/That’s what the future me wants most of all.”
While some of the tracks feel a little calculated – Party Animal fills the quota for a fast-paced arena anthem – the staunch friendship among the members remains genuine. There is a touching ode to their bond in Brotherhood: “Brothers, how have you been, it’s hard to imagine what things would be like without you.”
Fans of the band would feel the same way.
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Pete's Dragon
David Lowery
The story: After his parents die in a car crash, Pete (Oakes Fegley as the 11-year-old and Levi Alexander as the five-year-old at the time of the accident) comes face to face with a dragon that he names Elliott. Six years later, the forest they live in is being cleared and lumberjack Gavin (Karl Urban) leads an expedition to track down Elliott. Meanwhile, park ranger Grace Meacham’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) maternal instinct is aroused when she comes across Pete. A remake of the 1977 musical live-action/ animated film of the same name.

The animated dragon in the 1977 film was goofy-looking with a mop of red hair and an impressive belly. For this live-action flick, Elliott has been completely reimagined.
While audiences today might be more familiar with the scaly, reptilian creatures of the fantasy
television blockbuster Game Of Thrones or the movie series adaptation of The Hobbit (2012- 2014), moviegoers get quite a different kind of dragon in this feel-good family film.
Elliott is green and furry and behaves like an overgrown puppy, be it bolting through the forest with abandon or chasing after his tail. Little details, such as the coat of fur being ruffled by the wind and a prominent chipped fang, help to bring him to life.
Thankfully, the film-makers resisted giving a speaking voice to the dragon, who communicates through expressive grunts and growls.
What makes the film tick is Oakes as Pete and the connection that he has with Elliott.
While he seems to have a remarkable command of English despite being essentially raised by an animal, the little boy touchingly mimics the dragon by howling when he is upset.
Bryce Dallas Howard, who recently faced down nastier creatures in Jurassic World (2015), provides maternal warmth, while screen legend Robert Redford plays her father, who once encountered
Elliott, with a twinkle in his eye.
With the trigger-happy Gavin, writer-director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, 2013) seems to be taking aim at how man’s first instinct, when confronted with the unknown, is to pick up a gun and shoot at it.
Still, it is safe for parents to take their little ones to watch Pete’s Dragon. The bigger lessons in this sweet and gentle film are about the family you make, the ties that bind and the fact that you can be a good friend, regardless of your size.
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Power Station Next Station World Tour In Singapore
Resorts World Ballroom, Resorts World Convention Centre/Last Saturday

Right from the get-go, Taiwanese duo Power Station revved up the energy level.
They came on with guitars blazing, tearing into an energetic opening medley. Yu Chiu-hsin and Yen Chih-lin are known for their brand of tuneful, rugged rock as well as their heart-on-sleeve ballads, which reveal a softer side.
Both their voices are instruments of vigour and power, and neither held back as they belted out the high notes with gusto.
You wondered if they could sustain this level of energy and singing for the entire concert. And they did, for an impressive three hours.
They took the full-house crowd of 6,000 on a thorough tour of their catalogue, beginning with their 1997 hit, Cruel Love Letters, through 1998’s Tomorrow’s Tomorrow’s Tomorrow, 2001’s Walking On Chung Hsiao East Road Nine Times, all the way to songs from their latest album, Light (2013).
There were noticeable tweaks to some of the material.
A guitar solo intro was tacked onto Cruel Love Letters and it was a bluesier, grittier version; while Tomorrow was pared down. The result was more intense renditions of the original recordings.
They also covered a few tracks, including an electrifying version of Faye Wong’s hit ballad Sky. Their take came with a propulsive rhythm and a sense of delight at the boundless expanse of the heavens.
What was unnecessary though was a perfunctory stroll through the hits of the four heavenly kings: Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok. It came close to feeling like a karaoke session and merely took time away from Power Station’s own material.
Interestingly enough, they had sung the theme songs for several Singapore television series and these were performed in a far more relevant segment.
The best known is probably the inspirational I Can Take Hardships for the period drama, Stepping Out (1999).
Their connection to Singapore goes even deeper and they invited home-grown songwriter Eric Ng on stage as a guest guitarist. It was Ng who co-composed the title theme track for their current tour, Next Stop.
While Yu did most of the talking during the gig, the most heartwarming moment belonged to Yen, when his two young daughters came on stage and sang along on I’ve Loved You.
He cajoled them by saying that next time, they could all sing Let It Go, the megahit from the animated film Frozen (2013).
Given the rousing vocal prowess of Power Station and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of hits, that was the one thing the audience was reluctant to do.
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Terry Lin ONEtake Concert 2016 World Tour In Singapore
Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre/Last Friday

In many ways, Taiwan’s Terry Lin is an unlikely pop star.
Bespectacled and gangly, he is not quite idol material. Nor does he have the effusiveness of a natural entertainer.
Indeed, some of the staging for the concert was a little awkward as he introduced the erhu accompanist as his lover in a past life and the violin player as his current flame.
He also pretended to be an alien from space at one point.
But none of that mattered the moment he started to sing. When Lin sings, he performs an act of alchemy.
As he took on Jay Chou’s Fireworks Cool Easily, he transformed a melancholic pop tune into a thing of beauty shimmering with loneliness and longing.
There is a purity to his voice that makes every emotion ring bright and true, and his is a set of pipes that glides effortlessly over the high notes, even in falsetto.
It all came together wonderfully on ballads such as Losing You, What Does It Matter If I Win The World and The Departed, which he dedicated to his late mother.
Mandopop fans of a certain age would remember Lin and Lee Chi as the pop duo Ukulele from the early 1990s.
As a solo artist, he went on to chalk up a few hits, including Mona Lisa’s Tear and Bachelor’s Love Song. He performed these two tracks right off the bat, cloaked in a bright red coat and sporting shades and a perky pompadour.
There was a point to putting two of his best-known solo numbers up front.
He said to the audience of 6,000: “I usually put one at the beginning and one at the end, so that’s the whole show. Actually, I wanted to let you know I have a lot more good songs beyond these two.”
Many of the numbers during the two-hour-long gig were those he had sung on the popular China television reality show, I Am A Singer, in 2013. He emerged second, behind Chinese duo Yu Quan that first season and it gave his singing career a second wind.
At the concert, he performed Chyi Chin’s exquisite Night Night Night Night and a Mandarin version of Eason Chan’s dramatic Grandiose.
He even breathed new life into that hackneyed love ballad, Air Supply’s Making Love Out Of Nothing At All. This was despite the fact that the 50-year-old was nursing a slight cough and not quite in tip-top condition.
Lin also showed his range by singing in Cantonese and Minnan. And while a jazzy segment was meant to change up the pace, I would have preferred to hear more of his work from his Ukulele days.
Losing You was lovely, but what about Admit I’m Wrong and Journey Of The Young?
As if acknowledging the omissions, he encouraged fans who were left unsatiated to attend his upcoming concert at Taipei Arena in November.
A tempting proposition indeed.
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Rainbow Bot
Stefanie Sun
When was the last time you looked at the world through a child’s eyes?
Inspired by motherhood, Mandopop queen Stefanie Sun has put out an EP that captures the sense of innocence and wonder of childhood.
The title number, Rainbow Bot, is the lone new song here. Over a laidback mid-tempo beat and with a carefree whistled accompaniment, she sings: “Does that cloud look like ice cream/Grasp it between your fingers and it’s a sandwich cookie.”
Other tracks seem to tap into her maternal instinct.
The home-grown star offers a very different version of Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine. In contrast to Axl Rose’s fervent wailing on the rock ballad, she evokes sweetness and even whimsy, through an arrangement which incorporates the ukulele, trumpet and xylophone. When she proclaims “I’d hate to look into those eyes/And see an ounce of pain”, you wonder if she is picturing her son, who is almost four.
Kepler, from her 2014 album of the same name, has been reworked into a sparer version. She launches into the song with no accompaniment save for the natural sounds of night and it feels utterly intimate, as though you were listening in on her singing a lullaby to her child.
The other two songs are Nursery Rhyme 1987, written by xinyao leading light Liang Wern Fook and set to a different tune here, and the achingly poignant This World. It was by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Tsai Lan-chin, who died in 1987 at the age of 22 from illness.
Sweet Child O’ Mine was originally released on the seminal album, Appetite For Destruction in 1987, when Sun was nine.
Rainbow Bot is as much an invoking of her own childhood as a celebration of all children.
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Ben-Hur
Timur Bekmambetov
The story: In the latest adaptation of the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ, Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston) is a wealthy Jewish prince with a Roman adopted brother Messala (Toby Kebbell). Their competing loyalties eventually tear them apart as Messala rises through the ranks to become an officer in the Roman army, which is persecuting the Jews. When Judah is blamed for an assassination attempt on Pontius Pilate, he is sentenced to be a galley slave and his family is taken away on Messala’s orders. Years later, the brothers square off against each other in a chariot race.

A single scene defines the 1959 period action epic Ben-Hur starring Charlton Heston – a heart-stopping chariot race in which the stakes are life and death itself as losers face the threat of getting crushed under the thundering hooves of the horses.
The chariot race remains pivotal to this latest adaptation and director Timur Bekmambetov (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 2012) does away with the flashy sharpened spikes of the souped-up vehicle seen in the 1959 hit.
He favours a grittier approach and still musters plenty of excitement. To get to this point, brother is pitted against brother and familial bonds against the mighty Roman empire.
While the family drama feels a little stilted, Bekmambetov does a good job contrasting the sumptuousness of life in Jerusalem – the feasting, the frescoed walls and the colourful outfits – with the dank and drab hell that is the confines of a galley slave.
Striking an odd note is Morgan Freeman as an African sheik who saves Judah and later trains him to be a charioteer. Playing a wise old man is par for the course for the veteran actor, but the showstopping braided hair seems to belong in another movie, if not another era altogether.
The ending is somewhat rushed and something of a stretch as it involves several miracles.
But then again, this is one of the rare occasions when a deus ex machina is justified since Jesus Christ (a beatific Rodrigo Santoro) shows up as a supporting character.
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Indignation
James Schamus
The story: Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), the son of an over-protective Jewish butcher, leaves home in Newark, New Jersey, to attend college in Ohio. There, he meets the beautiful but troubled Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon) and their first date turns his world upside down. He later clashes with the school’s pedantic dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts) over religion and the boundaries of personal liberties. Based on the 2008 novel of the same name by acclaimed American writer Philip Roth.

The story is set in the early 1950s against the background of American soldiers being shipped off to the Korean War. While some elements feel dated, Marcus’ frustration as he rails against older authority figures is easy to identify with.
Indignation hinges on the pivotal scenes between him and Caudwell. Letts, who is also an award-winning playwright and screenwriter of August: Osage County (2007), is the man you love to hate as the intransigent, blunt force of authority.
Lerman, who came to fame playing the teenage Percy Jackson in the adventure fantasy film adaptations The Lightning Thief (2010) and Sea Of Monsters (2013), has grown into an actor of some sensitivity in films such as the comingof-age drama The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012) – and it is this quality that helps to keep this talky movie afloat.
As Marcus, he goes convincingly from bristling at the injustice of his interrogation by the dean for his decision to switch dorm rooms, to lashing out in a moment of exasperation. The price he pays turns out to be a heavy one, with war and death looming menacingly in the background.
The film also addresses Marcus’ sexual awakening, but the sexual mores of the time seem so quaint now.
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Day By Day
Hebe Tien
On the album cover, singer Hebe Tien is pictured ironing clothes. In the pages of the lyric booklet, she paints her nails and does a yoga stretch.
The prettily coloured and carefully styled images of the most successful solo member of the popular Taiwanese girl group S.H.E were taken by award-winning Slovakian photographer Maria Svarbova. In other words, the singer’s fourth album might be about the quotidian, but there is nothing perfunctory about it.
Ren Jian Yan Huo (Every Day Is A Miracle) is a good example of this.
The phrase “bu shi ren jian yan huo” is used to describe someone who is not quite of this world. So I was expecting something ethereal- sounding, but Tien ventures into upbeat electronica territory instead.
Defying expectations is a good thing and so is sounding different from everything else on the radio, which bodes well for Tien.
The tempo slows down on Useless as her voice casts a languid spell and then gently hits the high notes as she croons a series of zen koans: “Uselessness is useful or completely useless, what’s the difference?”
Working with a wide range of musicians here – from China’s Lan Xiaoxie (lyrics for Useless and others) to Singaporean newcomer Boon Hui Lu (music for Every Day Is A Miracle and Your Body Speaks) – she produces an eclectic, electronic collection that will liven up your day.
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One Night Only
Matt Wu
The story: Gao Ye (Aaron Kwok) is an incorrigible gambler who is deep in debt. Momo (Yang Zishan) is a prostitute who knocks on his door by mistake. Thus begins a night of adventure as they place bets in an underground fight club, get forced into a life-threatening car race and trade stories in an abandoned mansion.

The idea of a story taking place in the course of a single night is an intriguing one.
The compressed timeframe heightens the sense of excitement as characters have to meet, fight, make up or break up – and all before the sun rises.
Before Sunrise (1995) is an engaging talky take on the concept, while Au Revoir Taipei (2010) goes for a more energetic vibe with a caper that is also a love letter to the city’s rich nightlife.
One Night Only is like neither of those films; in fact, it does not seem to know what to do with the concept. Here, the one-night timeframe feels contrived at times as the story has to hinge on the most idiotic of events.
Despite meeting Gao Ye for the first time and despite the fact that he lives in a hovel, Momo happily hands over a stack of cash for him to gamble with. And later, her bunch of sisters-in-trade do the same as well even though he does not seem that persuasive.
Neither are the characters persuasively drawn.
Gao has an estranged daughter but his actions are not exactly consistent with that of a man who wants to have a second chance with his child. Kwok tries but it is hard to feel much sympathy for his character.
Fresh-faced Yang, who broke out in Zhao Wei’s coming-of-age drama So Young (2013), is saddled with inconsistencies in her role as well. Aside from her questionable motivation, there are things about Momo that do not make sense.
It is suggested that she was trafficked into prostitution, yet she seems to be remarkably free when it comes to her time and movements.
It is also incongruous to have all these characters interacting in Mandarin when they are clearly in Thailand, a setting which feels incidental and accidental.
The big reveal at the end is supposed to make everything click. In truth, it raises more questions than it answers.
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HK Forbidden Super Hero: The Abnormal Crisis
Yuichi Fukuda
The story: At the end of HK Forbidden Super Hero (2013), Kyosuke Shikijo (Ryohei Suzuki) – in his alter-ego as Hentai Kamen (literally, Pervert Mask) – has defeated villain Tamao Ogane (Tsuyoshi Muro). His girlfriend Aiko Himeno (Fumika Shimizu) wants him to give up his perverted side and takes back the pair of panties she had gifted him. But when a mysterious force starts to suck up women’s underpants, Kyosuke has to train under the Perverted Hermit (Ken Yasuda) to take down foes old and new. Adapted from the cult manga Kyukyoku!! Hentai Kamen (Ultimate!! Pervert Mask, 1992-1993).

Think that Deadpool, with his snarky barbs as he rains violence down on his enemies, is subversive? How about a superhero who wears a mankini, fishnet stockings and a pair of panties over his head, and whose finishing move is to smush the heads of baddies into his crotch?
The tagline for the movie is No Panties, No Justice. Your reaction to it should determine whether you should watch it or skip it.
Returning director Yuichi Fukuda has fun sending up the superhero genre here, including sending the protagonist on a training stint and journey of self-discovery in the mountains – except that the Perverted Hermit is not quite the wise and respectable Yoda.
He is first shown crouched on the floor, waiting for someone to turn on a whipping machine.
The villains, from a dismembered head scuttling around on mechanical legs like a demented spider to a human-crab cuum hybrid monster, are over the top.
The film sags somewhat as it meanders in the middle, but the game cast keeps its energy level up.
Ryohei Suzuki (My Love Story!, 2015) returns in the title role. He is equally convincing as mild- mannered Kyosuke, aka the in-your-face Hentai Kamen. And Tsuyoshi Muro’s pigtailed Tamao has to be the most annoying villain ever.
For all the sexual innuendos and fetishising of panties, the film manages to retain a sweetness at its core.
After all, as Kyosuke proclaims: “I’m a pervert for justice.”
This is what wholesome smutty fun looks like.
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For A Few Bullets
Peter Pan Anzi
The story: Zhuang (Kenny Lin Gengxin) prides himself as China’s top hustler. He finds himself working with the icy agent Ruoyun (Zhang Jingchu), veteran con man Shi Fo (Tengger) and his wife (Liu Xiaoqing) to retrieve a precious jade seal – one that the Japanese military wants to use to legitimise its rule in Nanjing in the 1940s.

Kenny Lin’s big break came in the period drama Scarlet Heart (2011) in which he stole hearts as the dashing 14th prince.
Seizing his chance to lighten up here, he turns in a charming performance as a rakish con man with a winning smile and a quick wit, which is the best thing about this uneven movie.
His character Zhuang is remarkably cavalier in the way he handles the MacGuffin here, a priceless four dragon rectangular zun (ancient Chinese wine vessel). His carelessness with it reveals the greater treasure within, a royal jade seal which has to be kept out of Japanese hands, a task that falls to an unlikely team assembled by director Peter Pan Anzi (The Palace, 2013).
There are some twists and turns involving traitors and double- crossers, not to mention hurdles that are set up to keep them from their prize. But none of it feels particularly clever or terribly exciting. The ploy to nab the seal on a ship – clearly set up to be a highlight – falls short of being inspired.
It is sad to see Liu Xiaoqing, China’s movie queen in the 1980s, reduced to clowning about in a slight role in a sloppy movie whose villains are hammy, subtitles are rife with errors and computergenerated imagery is distractingly amateurish.
This movie headed by China’s ambitious Wanda Pictures needs stronger ammunition to mount a successful assault on the stranglehold of Hollywood’s best.
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Skiptrace
Renny Harlin
The story: After the death of his partner, Hong Kong police officer Bennie Chan (Jackie Chan) is bent on proving that businessman Victor Wong (Winston Chao) is the crime boss known as The Matador. By chance, scam artist Connor Watts (Johnny Knoxville) ends up with evidence that could implicate Victor. He also falls for Bennie’s goddaughter Samantha (Fan Bingbing), who works at a Macau casino. But first, Bennie has to rescue Connor from the clutches of a Russian gang.

As with any Jackie Chan live-action cartoon, fans can expect the usual mix of smooth moves and humorous gags from the action star in his latest work.
But Skiptrace, which is a travelogue in the guise of an actionadventure comedy, feels more lacklustre than the average vehicle for the star.
Thanks to his passport getting destroyed, Bennie, along with Connor, has to take the scenic route in the journey from Russia to Hong Kong – because, clearly, that is the fastest way to go, with Samantha in the hands of the bad guys and the clock ticking away.
They tangle with traditional wrestlers in Mongolia and there is a campfire rendition of Adele’s Rolling In The Deep complete with the region’s famed throat-singing. In China, they come across a festival and find time to set alight a Kongming, or sky, lantern and then have to sing in order to cross a throng of women in ethnic costumes.
All the while, Bennie is spouting factoids a la a travel show host, until Connor snaps: “Are you on Wikipedia all the time?”
Renny Harlin, who has five Golden Raspberry nominations for Worst Director, could have done with a greater degree of such self-awareness in his approach to the movie.
Instead, he muddies the water with touches such as a choice of hillbilly western songs for the soundtrack. The music mayhem is compounded by a caper involving Hong Kong cops and criminals speaking a version of English as jarring as the buddy pairing of Chan and Knoxville.
The odd couple are a notch above the dud duo of Wallace Chung and Lee Min Ho in Bounty Hunters, but not as entertaining as Chan and motormouth Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour movies.
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What A Folk!!!!!!
Crowd Lu
From the effusion of exclamation marks in the title of his latest album, you can already feel the excitement of Taiwanese singer- songwriter Crowd Lu in returning to the music scene after his military service stint.
What A Folk!!!!!! proves that Lu has plenty to sing about even after leaving the fertile campus ground that had inspired so much of his early work, especially the excellent 2008 debut 100 Ways Of Living.
He is still crooning about chasing after one’s dreams albeit tempered by a reality check. In One-and-a- half Ping (one ping is 3.3 sq m), which refers to the size of the tiny room he had once lived in in Taipei, he sings: “Can I rent some more strength/Lick my wounds/As I continue to make way.”
The optimism of old is not entirely missing, as he scats joyously on the opening number, Happy Chakra, and breezes his way through Summer Song.
On this record, his path seems to have opened up musically and in terms of subject matter.
With its refrain of “look, look”, the Minnan track Little Phone (1) is a gentle reminder to tear one’s gaze away from one’s phone and to notice the world around one instead. After all, as he points out: “A handphone is not your lover.”
Little Phone (2), an acoustic punk number, takes it up a notch, opening with the exhortation: “Stop looking at your phone!”
Wedding Ring, which was co-written with singer-songwriter Cheer Chen, suggests greater emotional maturity on Lu’s part. Rather than a happily-ever-after ballad, it is instead about the fraught meeting between a man and his now-married ex.
Lu’s concerns go beyond the personal to embrace the wider world.
Sleeping Here Today touches on homelessness and it comes from a place of care and compassion. He paints a poignant picture and also offers warm encouragement: “If you are happy that you are living, live life with intent/It’s the best homework in life.”
His positivity can almost seem like rose-tinted optimism, but there is no denying that there is an innocence about him that is genuine and touching. He muses with gratitude on Kind Glasses: “Kind glasses can help you/Discover the beauty of this world.”
We could all do with glasses like these.
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The Edge Of Paradise
Kit Chan
Home-grown singer Kit Chan used to be known for her emotive ballads, in which she would swing for the high notes. Hits such as Heartache and Dazzle made her a star.
She no longer feels a need to engage in vocal dramatics for the sake of doing so. Instead, her voice seems more tender and sensitive in The Edge Of Paradise, her first album of original songs since 2004’s East Towards Saturn.
Perhaps the title track comes closest to the feel of her earlier works, but even then, the effect is more ethereal than forceful when her voice climbs the scale.
There is a laidback ease to her singing on the quietly insistent There’s Been You In My Life and the gentle yet compelling Sudden Rain.
Chan has fun on the playfully jazzy number Don’t Ask Me Why I Love You, composed by singer-songwriter Jimmy Ye. And she pulls off a neat trick by making this seem like a new song with a different arrangement and Cantonese lyrics by the feted Lin Xi on A Missed Opportunity Is Not A Crime.
This is what a Kit Chan album sounds like now.
As she croons on the slow-burn track Spellbound: “My heart has long melted, my love is so passionate.” There is no need for her to showboat, the emotions come through loud and clear.
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