Wayward Charlie, Seven Sisters and a Mail Guy on a Bewitched Island of Weddings

So, loads of movies lately, kiddies. This time I'll do them from short to long.

Wedding Crashers
Uneven. Very, very uneven. Doesn't work. At all.

七劍 (Seven Swords)
Incomprehensible mess. Donnie Yen is cool though.

阿嫂 (Mob Sister)
Ditto. Plus an extremely irritating, simpering newcomer as the title character. I laughed when she died, and at her funeral too.

Bewitched
A restrained Will Ferrell? Who'd have thought it possible? But it works, Nicole Kidman works, and this romantic comedy mostly works. I don't know why most critics seemed to hate it, I certainly found it amusing enough to while my time away with.

Mail Order Wife
Biting satire, sometimes a little too clever for its own good, but it works most of the time. Everyone's an asshole, and everyone's just looking out for themselves. Not exactly a mood lifter, but a decent enough movie that's exactly what it intends to be. That in itself is an achievement of sorts.

Bad Guy
Interesting, even though characters were ultimately unrelatable. Rather misogynistic too. Guy kisses random girl, she slaps him, he orchestrates her fall into prostitution and they fall in love. Head-scratching, innit? But to Kim Ki-duk's credit, he manages to make it somewhat believable, and even end on a poignant note. Oh yeah, and it's set in a red-light district, so there's tons of sex too. I'm sure the Dirty Old Men in the theatre with me had a good time.

天邊一朵雲 (The Wayward Cloud)
Slow and meandering. But it's Tsai Ming-liang, so I expected it to be. He has a habit of taking material which other people would make a short film from and extend it into over two hours. Sometimes it works. This one though, is rather pointless. Of course there's a Theme somewhere in there, but it's just a variation on stuff he's dealt with more successfully before. Oh well, at least there's plenty of sex. And probably one of the rare times you see actual semen on the big screen (unless you have the habit of visiting porn theatres - speaking of which, I wish there was a porn theatre in Singapore. Wouldn't it be cool to watch larger than life porn and munch on popcorn at the same time?). And obviously the censors had a field day with this one. Boo.

The Island
It starts off rather promisingly (except for all the blatant product placements), then Michael Bay reminds us that he is, in actual fact, directing this movie. This means lots of explosions, car chases, ridiculous action sequences, and yet more explosions. And what is with the British Airways commercial-like ending? Highest point: Ewan McGregor using my phone to video-conference. I must have gotten the shittier version, because mine sure as hell doesn't have that feature. And Steve Buscemi is always cool.

Speaking about phones, I saw a Vertu store for the first time the other day. Suffice to say, they are absolutely ridiculous, as are their prices. And if you own a Vertu phone, I think I can safely say that I hate you very much. Please feel free to drop dead.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
I really really wanted to like this. And I absolutely loved the first half hour or so, when it concentrated on Charlie's pre-factory life. It felt exactly the way a fable should feel. Freddie Highmore is, dare I say, perfect as Charlie, providing a strong emotional centre for the movie. Unfortunately once they get to the factory, he takes a backseat to Willy Wonka. While Johnny Depp channels Michael Jackson uncannily, it doesn't make for a very relatable character, and the rest of the kids, while pitch-perfect, do not provide any emotional journey at all.

The movie eventually does work its way back to Charlie, but by then it's too late to be anything other than a weak attempt. And while it was fun seeing Christopher Lee in a cameo, Willy Wonka's backstory feels unnecessary, because no one really gives a shit. Too bad, Tim, you could've had a real winner here. The sets were gorgeous, but what the hell was up with the Oompa Loompas? I really did not enjoy the musical numbers at all. Somehow, indefinably, they just didn't feel right.

I'm gonna stop now, because Crash and Mysterious Skin deserve a post all by themselves. After all, they were without a doubt the best of the lot. And yes, they're the two movies mentioned here.