It's pretty to safe that there hasn't been a film emerging from Singapore in recent years that has enthused me - some have been better than others (Singapore Dreaming over 881, for instance) but certainly not in the realm of documentary film-making, an endeavour that, locally, has so far been limited to either vaguely or blatantly propagandistic films intended for education rather than entertainment. Despite (or perhaps because of) rave reviews for Mad About English in the local press, then, I approached this home-grown documentary with some trepidation... but fortunately, came away with sentiments almost akin to pride.

MAE is a funny, sweetly effective documentary about China's push for its citizens to improve their command of the English language in the run-up to the Olympics. For years, China's hilariously misspelt signboards and menus have provided amusement to tourists and Internet dorks alikeâ?¦ but, with an enormous influx of tourists expected for the largest sporting event ever held in China, scores of people - from wannabe volunteers to store owners, little kids and old folks - start taking lessons in bids to ensure they can communicate (and, one might say cynically, sell their wares to Western consumers as China inches ever forward as a capitalist society in deed if not name). And with surprising emotion, you get to know (among others) an earnest cab driver, an old lady doctor keen to ensure she can treat foreign patients, a little girl struggling to keep up and not disappoint in an intense English boot camp (seriously, only in China would you have kids and adults alike enrolled in a camp that has you running while chanting grammar rules or passing tests before you're allowed food) and an old man of retirement age who just wants to improve his English so that he can volunteer his services for the glory of his country.

There is next to no editorialising in this film - there really isn't much need for it, for one thing, beyond some introductory placards about the various individuals who have consented to interviews or to be followed through their English classes by cameras. But what really comes across in MAE, peppered as it is with genuinely funny moments as the various 'stars' of the film find themselves tripped up by the inexplicable vagaries of the English language, is the pride and determination of all of these people: each one of them eager to ensure that they do not fall behind, that they do not disgrace their country or themselves, that there is a uniquely strong bedrock element of pride to the entire process of preparing for the Olympics that perhaps has not been seen in many host countries outside of China.

The only problem with this film, I'd imagine, is that one's enjoyment of it, especially its humour, would be limited if one did not also have a passing grasp of Mandarin - the subtitles are adequate, but as in most cases of translated foreign films, don't do justice to the absurdity of the mistakes being made or some of the touchingly stoic sentiments being expressed by the interviewees as they plough on with their tasks of learning a language that is, for the most part, completely alien to them.

In any case, while it may be ironic that this film showcasing the best of China's people and can-do spirit comes from Singapore, it nevertheless does a great job of showing that the very human qualities of humour, hard work and determination transcends linguistic boundaries. A smart, funny movie that would have served as a great introduction to tourists and participants in the Olympics, it's a shame that MAE never quite received the wider distribution that it deserves.

8/10

By all standards and definitions of good movies, Kung Fu Dunk, at least on paper, doesn't sound like it'll be good at all. First off, it's evidently little more than a star vehicle for Taiwanese mega-pop-star Jay Chou, whose own well-documented obsession with basketball and all things kung fu makes the premise of the film - a young kung fu expert turns basketball star and finds love along the way! - ridiculously self-indulgent and predictable. Having Chou's smugly happy mug plastered across all the trailers and posters doesn't help in convincing anybody that the film isn't all about paying him to do the stuff he'd normally do on a weekend anyway. Nice work if you can get it, huh? But, somehow, and as long as you head into the cinema with your brain safely stashed somewhere far away, there's a lot to like about KFD, which coasts by on bucketloads of charm and cheerily self-reflexive humour.

Chou plays Fang Shijie, a slightly cheeky but extremely well-trained martial arts expert who's kicked out of his school after offending a local crime boss by beating up all his men and destroying his casino. He meets down-and-out Chen Li (comic legend Eric Tsang), who spots Shijie's uncanny ability to drop a can into a garbage can from a hundred paces and is eager to cash in. So he sells Shijie to a university basketball team - touting him as the Basketball-Playing Orphan looking for his parents - and expects him to be the shining star of the bunch. But as Shijie gets to know his teammates, including boozy captain Ting Wei (Chen Bo Lin) and centre Xiao Lan (Baron Chen), he learns a few things about teamwork (obviously) and love (even more obviously) and family (awwww - though also obvious).

So, with a ludicrous plot and perky pop stars populating the cast, including Charlene Choi of Twins (no, not the one in the sex photos scandal) as the team manager, surely it sounds like KFD would shape up to be something only diehard fans of Chou will enjoy. Well, while a healthy adoration for all things related to Chou would only enhance your movie-watching experience, the movie itself remains relentlessly upbeat and irreverent - unlike unintentionally bad shows that genuinely thought their cheesy moments were high drama, KFD knows it's cheesy and campy, and embraces it. Which works wonderfully, of course: because it means you as a viewer can sit back and revel in all the silliness: Shijie's kung fu masters coming to help him fight a duel, inter-team rivalry unlike anything you've seen, slam dunks buoyed by the power of qi gong - yup, all the wacky is present and accounted for.

There are also so many cute, good-natured little moments scattered throughout the film that you'd had to be heartless and humourless not to find yourself swept along by the film in the end. Shijie's clumsy wooing of the only female character in the show - from the adorable photobooth flip-book he makes for her to the point that she calls him, begging him to get rid of a stalker outside the window... who is, obviously, Shijie just lurking in the rain - is made all the funnier by Shijie's voiceover explaining, except not at all, the three loves of his life. The snarky irony infused throughout the script - it knows when it's being over-the-top ludicrous - and plays to that as a strength.

Speaking as a Chou fan myself, the movie is one of the better showcases for his acting talent. He's got that, I think, and if he finds the right roles before he polishes his skills up enough to take on more challenging parts, he has a long career ahead of him in the acting biz. And there's something to be said to playing a character so clearly based on you - you know just how to play it right. Chou fits Shijie to a T (unlike his foray into melodramatic family drama Curse of the Golden Flower, where he was fine if a little bit miscast), so it's a joy watching him having a ball as he strikes ridiculously contrived kung fu poses or just delights in dribbling a basketball down a court and slamming an insanely impossible dunk. He has considerable comic charms too, playing dorky and oblivious with such charm that it's probably not an exaggeration to say that this is one of his best performances yet. I especially love the moment when he reveals that he is his martial arts teacher's punching bag - as Shijie swaggers away, the self-satisfied smirk on his face is pure Jay, and pure hilarious.

There's a lot that can be said if you want to be negative about the film - and certainly it cheerfully opens itself to that criticism. The tale spun is silly, the characters not entirely well-developed, plotlines dropped (Xiao Lan remains a mysterious figure since we get a random scene suggesting some backstory for him, which is never really explored) - it's all a bit happy-go-lucky in the plotting department. Problem with being so nitpicky is that a logical, coherent storyline isn't what you're looking for in a film like this. You're just meant to enjoy yourself and have a good laugh at how crazily off-the-wall the jokes are, or the slam dunks (literally) were.

Of the two movies that opened during the Chinese New Year season earlier this year - to cash in on the crowds of people swarming to movie theatres stuffed with food and good cheer - I'm genuinely flummoxed that KFD didn't out-perform the risibly bad CJ7 at the box office. At least this is a comedy that, on top of great performances from Chou and the enjoyable chemistry he shares with Tsang, knows its limits and plays to them. Silly, sweet and contrived in equal measure, KFD nevertheless has its heart and funny bone very firmly in the right place - not to mention a discerning eye to know just when to ham it up to the max.

7/10

Okay, so I always preface my reviews of movie musicals with the caveat that, being a huge musical dork, all my reviews need to be taken with a pinch of salt i.e., the fangirly factor should be dialled down by about 20 and you might have a better idea of the film's actual quality. I exaggerate, of course - but, for the most part, it does tend to be true that a movie being a musical does not in any way count against it, at least in my book. And I was quite intrigued by the prospect of watching 881: not just because it's a movie musical featuring Hokkien songs and the uniquely Singaporean experience of ge tai (literally 'song stage'), but because it's become a bit of a cultural phenomenon in Singapore. Box office records have been smashed, so many of my friends - including ones I'd never imagine would have seen or enjoyed a movie such as this - have recommended it wholeheartedly, the soundtrack's a soldout hit and the theme song storming up the radio charts here. Basically? 881 has been made out to be, well, the greatest thing since... not sliced bread, but the last time we had a truly great local movie hit the silver screen. (That would be Jack Neo's I Not Stupid, not to be confused with its mediocre-ish sequel I Not Stupid Too.)

Yeo Yann Yann and Mindee Ong play, respectively, Big Papaya and Small Papaya (you never find out their real names, those apparently being unworthy of mention as they would detract from the overarching theme of sisterhood) - a sister act who perform only at the numerous ge tai staged across Singapore every night to entertain the dead during the weeks of the annual Hungry Ghost festival. With the help of Ling Jie (Liu Ling Ling) and her mute son Guan Yin (Qi Yiwu), they dash from stage to stage in jaw-droppingly glittery costumes, fulfilling their dreams of stardust and belting out Hokkien songs for a rowdy, drunk crowd. But life can't all be about getting what you want: Small Papaya is deathly ill (no spoiler, the movie opens with it) and just wants to last out her final season... which is ruined by the untimely arrival of the bitchy Durian sisters (May and Choy) who, as foreigners lip-synching to Hokkien pop songs, are a travesty to true ge tai tradition but are nevertheless keen to battle the Papaya Sisters to the death.

So the story sounds simple enough, right? A bit outlandish, unless you understand Singapore culture and the Hungry Ghost Festival, but quirky and charming enough to form the basis for an entire movie - which bounces by with bells and whistles on, by the way. When writer/director Royston Tan set out to make a bouncy, cheery musical, he clearly allowed nothing to stand in his way: he jams the first half of 881 with ditzy, sparkly numbers, upbeat songs (although a lot of them are still, aptly, about death) and what passes in a pinch for sly humour. By this I mean Guan Yin's unnatural attachment to his pet chicken, which allows for a few too many dick jokes (sounds similar in Hokkien).

The problem with 881 is simply that Tan's ambitions far outstrip his ability to blend everything he comes up with into a coherent, workable whole. The film is a mish-mash of ideas, strung together with some lovely music and acting, but at too many times is played either too broadly or just plain too loudly. As if the stuff of human drama wasn't enough - Big Papaya's brief kiss with Guan Yin in a car wash makes her think she's ruined their act, Ling Jie sings achingly about having fought battles her whole life - he decides to mix in some inexplicable humour (particularly an unfunny yet too-often-repeated play on the word 'techno' - it makes no sense, trust me) and a supernaturally strange element (Ling Jie has a twin sister who is apparently the magical Goddess of Ge Tai - and no, unfortunately, this is not metaphorical but literal). It's hard to take the film seriously or really follow along with its plot when random visits to the Goddess' shrine are interspersed with heartbreaking moments when reality comes crashing down upon our protagonists. I have a sneaking suspicion Tan could have been far more judicious in the editing suite - there was a great, tight, smart movie labouring to escape from within the flabby running time of this cut, layered as it is with slightly bizarre ideas and moments that don't quite work in conjunction with one another.

Doesn't help either that Tan's rawness as a writer and director are clear from his heavyhandedness and unwillingness to cut scenes to make a tighter movie - he's clearly enamoured of the ideas and characters he's dreamed up, and they are funny (Ling Jie is a great, boisterous, spunky creation), but there can be too much of a good thing. Some moments just don't ring true - how does Guan Yin selling his chicken help raise funds for the Papaya Sisters? - and others are blatantly manipulative to the point of being rather annoying. You'll know what I mean: the scene when the camera swoops around and around and around and around the sisters, as they sing a dirge together (I'm not kidding) and Tan shoehorns in special effects in an attempt to wring even more tears out of you? Painful to watch.

That being said, 881 isn't terrible - the soundtrack is wonderful, and the theme song instantly familiar. The cast is uniformly impressive for non-jobbing actors (none of them is huge on the local scene at this point, except maybe for Qi) - Yeo doesn't get as much to do as she did in Singapore Dreaming, but she's quietly impressive here, especially in moments when she fights with her mother, who doesn't want her to be a ge tai singer. (This could have been a great secondary plotline that I felt wasn't fleshed out well enough - we needed more backstory for her mother, not the little we were given!) Liu is also fantastic, in a role that treads a fine line between bawdy comedy and pathos. It's even better when she sings, and it'd be great to see her parlay this film role into a longer-lived career in television dramas here (where the real money is).

In a way, I guess, it's unfair to criticise 881 for its ambition - much as I have reason to quibble with it, it's this very ambition that sets Tan's movie aside from the rest of the pack (not that there's much of a pack to contend with, the local movie scene resembles a desert with tumbleweed occasionally bouncing past). The movie is big, colourful, loud and clearly expensive, overflowing with ideas, songs, personality and sequins. For the most part, it's an enjoyable watch, and it's certainly something different - which is a good enough reason to recommend it, I suppose. A breath of fresh air, even if slightly over-oxygenated, is better than suffocating to death with no air at all, right?

5.5/10

Makoto Konno (voiced by Riisa Naka) is an ordinary Japanese school girl having the worst day of her life: she's late to class, flunks a pop quiz and, no thanks to a set of faulty bike brakes, dies in a train accident. Well, almost dies, anyway - fortuitously enough and at the exact right moment, Makoto also discovers that she is The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Suddenly, she finds herself able to time-leap: she saves her own life, first and foremost, but quickly uses her newly-found abilities to skip merrily into the past to make her everyday life a little easier to live. Soon she's acing quizzes and eating pudding before her sister can get her hands on it. But problems start to bubble to the surface when Makoto tries to expand the use of her powers to help or hinder the love lives of her two close friends and baseball buddies Chiaki (Takuya Ishida) and Kousuke Tsuda (Mitsutaka Itakura). She time-leaps to avoid having to deal with Chiaki confessing his feelings for her, even as she tries to push Kousuke into a relationship with a girl who has a crush on him. It isn't long before she discovers the emotional pitfalls and costs that come with time-leaping...

Whether you'll like TGWLTT depends very much on your tolerance for slightly weird, charmingly romantic, occasionally obtuse Japanese anime - as a movie, TGWLTT is wonderfully entertaining. Makoto is an adorable creation, bumbling and clumsy and earnest, but genuine and sweet for all that. It's easy to identify with and be amused by her as she blanks out when good friend Chiaki tries to get her to date him, or as she randomly tumbles through scenes at a breakneck pace (something that happens every time she time-leaps). The sweet friendship that develops between her and the mysterious new boy Chiaki, who quickly becomes a fast friend she fears losing should they get into a relationship, is lovingly depicted as well... all of which is helped along by the healthy, smart sense of humour that runs right through the film. You'd be hard-pressed not to crack up at Makoto's repeated attempts at snatching a pudding cup from her sister's clutches, or her multiple rewinds in the face of the relentless Chiaki's insistence on expressing his feelings for her.

TGWLTT also has that uniquely Japanese ability to tread a fine line between humour and pathos - it's just as difficult not to laugh at Makoto's exploits as it is to steel your heart against it aching at least a little as she realises the extent to which her choices in the past can change both her present and future, and she races against... well, time... in a desperate attempt to fix it all. In the end, the harum-scarum schoolgirl we first met at the beginning of the film is forced to grow up, as she decides between her own happiness and those of the people she loves. Couple this with some wonderful, old-school 2D animation (jazzed up with occasional splashes of 3D), and TGWLTT is as much a treat to watch as it is to experience - a standout scene in this regard comes when Makoto trails Chiaki through a tableau of humans frozen solid as they go about their daily lives.

Too bad the plot doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. For the first half of the film (or so), everything skips along at a cheerful pace, with a blithe disregard for logic, and is all the better for it. Ah, if only it could have stayed that way. Unfortunately, the movie goes a bit pear-shaped when it suddenly feels the need to explain Makoto's mysterious power, complicating the plot to the extent that, towards the end, nothing quite explains anyone's motivations anymore. As more and more details about the exact means through which Makoto is able to time-leap come to light, just as much mystery is thrown up, to the extent that the frustrating lack of backstory, especially for Chiaki, makes the movie's final moments remarkably obtuse. Touching, yes, in some strange way, but obtuse and annoying nevertheless.

If it could have had a better plot that either made more sense or decided to give up on having a logical foundation (and it doesn't even have that, after it tries to explain the time-leaps), TGWLTT would probably be embraced as one of the best animes in recent memory. But because it remains confounded by a storyline full of holes (why does Chiaki romance Makoto at all if he's so keen on going home, at the end?), the movie simply becomes yet another entry in the specifically Japanese genre of deeply amusing but inherently strange and puzzling animes - albeit an above average one.

6.5/10.

On the face of it, Protege is yet another movie to be added to the slightly tired genre of melodramatic thrillers based on the seedy complexities and shifting alliances of the drug trafficking trade. Daniel Wu plays Nick, the protege of the film's title, a young man deep in the thick of the Asian drug cartels, gainfully apprenticed to unlikely head honcho Kwan (Andy Lau). But all is very much not how it appears: Nick is in actual fact an undercover cop, sent several years ago to smoke Kwan and his sprawling international enterprise out of the woodwork and into the open. As if risking his life everyday weren't quite enough, what with Nick being forced to grapple with accidental busts and desperate attempts to retain Kwan's trust, he finds himself confronted with the horrifically ugly consequences of the trade in which he is embroiled when he crosses path with pretty neighbour and hopeless junkie Fan (Zhang Jingchu), who can't seem to kick either the habit or her menacingly worthless husband (Louis Koo).

Strictly speaking, this movie really can't be called original or groundbreaking in any way - mostly because it's treading on ground that has been so frequently 'broken' before. The movie snatches elements from several others: thematically, it shares the anti-drug moralising that formed the basis of Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, except with fewer confusing storylines. The good-cop turned bad-guy schtick is straight out of Infernal Affairs (or, if you prefer, The Departed) as Nick stews in his everyday conundrum of being forced to play a role he can't reconcile with the horrors he sees around him or the things he is compelled to do to remain in Kwan's confidence.

But where writer-director Derek Yee really excels is in weaving all this into a fascinating, engaging whole. Protege is everything you'd expect a movie like this to be: haunting (as Fan's adorable young daughter steals through her mother's drug-addled life like an abandoned ghost), tense (Kwan's testing of Nick's loyalty at gunpoint) and action-packed. In fact, you might get a little more action than you bargained for, through an especially memorable scene in which a fiercely determined police officer loses a great deal more than he bargained for when he attempts to gain some glory for himself by busting Kwan's cartel ahead of schedule. (No spoilers - but trust me when I say that scene is a pretty darn uncomfortable one to watch... whether you think it tips over the edge and becomes almost ludicrously melodramatic, there's no denying that this is a scene that will stick with you long after the rest of the movie has faded in your memory.) The story is told in an unadorned, tightly-plotted way, and artfully sketches out the perils inherent in Nick's double life. He struggles with his concern for Kwan, an ailing man theoretically repulsive and yet personally disarming. Nick also can't help but find his unintended career repugnant as he tries to sort Fan's life out, especially when he meets her pushy, sinister husband (a role which is, surprisingly, played for laughs as Koo capers around the screen slavering like some kind of heroin-addicted wolfman).

What helps Yee really sell the movie, whatever shortcomings it might have in terms of freshness, is his tremendous cast. Wu carries the entire film on his shoulders, and is more than competent at conveying Nick's growing emotional distress with barely noticeable shifts in his facial expressions. However, strong presence at the centre of the film though he may be, Wu is practically blown off the screen by his cast mates. Relative newcomer to the film industry Zhang is magnetic as Fan - beguilingly beautiful, Zhang lends her character both the aching vulnerability of an addict trying to come clean and the desperate hunger of a junkie who can't quit. As she howls after Wu, pledging that she will remain clean this time, her performance tears at your heart... and your gut too, in the penultimate moment she has on screen, which, unfortunately, she shares with the rats that have been plaguing her dingy apartment. As already suggested earlier, it's almost impossible to take your eyes off Koo as well, whether his perpetually high, unwaveringly selfish character is trying to force his estranged wife back into junkiedom or pimp her out to another man for more drug money. Koo admirably subverts his usually clean-cut good looks to play a far seedier, thoroughly unsympathetic character, and comes out looking much the better for it.

The greatest accolade, however, goes to Lau. For quite some time now, Lau has managed to shed his pretty-boy singer-turned-actor image to emerge as a credible thespian in his own right. He proves with his performance here that much interesting work can be expected from him as he moves into roles more suitable to his age (despite still being craggily handsome). Lau sports a silvery hairdo and kidney-induced pains to create the character of Kwan, who turns out to be a more fascinating subject of study than Nick. Unlike his counterpart in The Departed, played by the inimitable Jack Nicholson, Kwan's sinister streak is buried far below his genial attitude towards Nick and his own children. Kwan does the business of the everyday so well, sneakily indulging in sweets (explaining his diabetes), treating Nick like his own son, nagging after his rebellious elder daughter. All this Lau pulls off with his customary charm. Where he genuinely contributes something different is in those moments when Kwan displays disturbing flashes of his true self - whether it be during his heated diatribe about how it's not the traffickers but the junkies who are to blame for their sorry plights, or when he explodes in anger on two separate occasions, trying to smoke out the mole in their midst. Crucially, Lau manages to make Kwan as sympathetic as a drug warlord with a cruelly skewed understanding of his place and influence in the world can be.

Predictable and preachy though it might be, Protege is nevertheless smart, engaging and a curiously fresh spin on an age-old story. Better than you might think, and well worth the watch. 7.5/10