Reviewed by David Levinson

CHATTING in a café in Paris during Linklater's Before Sunset, the focus between Jessie and Celine slowly cocoons from one throwaway philosophical gesture to another. At one point, after discussing the rising urban terror climate, Celine mentions how a trip abroad helped empty her of spiritual clutter. The conversation then inevitably topples into Buddhism and the elimination of desire, and the two manage to nicely articulate something that's plaguing about its ethos: what do you do when you reach the very apex? There's a thin line between living in a sealed bubble of bliss and Prozac-induced inertia...

Reviewed by Tim Wong

I SUPPOSE if A Very Long Engagement wasn't an Audrey Tautou film, I might of hated it. Even then, I would have played the bloke card, being too man enough to admit harbouring stray thoughts outside the sticky realms of that bathroom companion, FHM – an alpha male bible well known for its sermons on the ideal female form. A leggy blond she's not, and yet with her button-sized nose, gaping doe eyes, awkward poise, and café latte complexion, it occurred to me, without a hint of blasphemy, that this was the girl.

Reviewed by Aaron Yap

"MOVIES don't create psychos, movies make psychos more creative!": Kevin Williamson's nugget of slasher self-reflexivity from Scream seemed like a smart psychological and socially astute barb at the time. But now there's Saw, the stakes in cinematic art-imitates-life-and-vice-versa irony have risen to a new level: it's not that movies make psychos more creative, it's that they make budding screenwriters more inventive, demented and ultimately, illogical.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

PRIMED OUT in strokes of retro neon, urban high-rise and strategically-placed red objects, the Hong Kong in Throw Down might as well belong to a post-war 60's Ozu film. In fact, rather than preoccupy itself with endemic Trans-Asian tensions – a washing cycle of many of grudge where either the Chinese disliked the Japanese, the Japanese loathed the Koreans, or all three just didn't get along – the film instead embraces the legacy of its neighbour in two forms: through the art of Akira Kurosawa, and the discipline of Judo.

Reviewed by David Levinson

TO BE HONEST, I actually felt guilty watching this movie. And not the needling kind, either. You know – the one that sidles up to you like a sick dog, a pathetic whimper after having eaten lots of candy or laughed at a midget or listened to an R. Kelly song. What I'm talking about here is guilt that penetrates, God-is-watching guilt (as far as appropriate metaphors go ...), the kind that somehow makes you feel like a less of a human being for having even been there.