John Lui
John Lui's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
The Straits Times (Singapore)
| Publications: | The Straits Times (Singapore) |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/5 | 85% | American Animals (2018) |
The bleak comedy of the film's first half gives way to a more sombre mood in the second. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jun 14, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 67% | Ocean's 8 (2018) |
Cast women, by all means. Just make sure that they get a script worthy of their time and talent. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jun 14, 2018
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| 4/5 | 92% | Revenge (2018) |
Fargeat avoids modern cliches, such as altered timelines or found footage, to deliver a suspenseful nail-biter of a thriller, one that updates an old format with an interesting take on gender politic‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jun 7, 2018
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| 3/5 | 60% | Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) |
The real hybrid here, however, is the movie itself. While more coherent than its 2015 predecessor, it stills feels lumpily composed of bits from other science-fiction and disaster films.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jun 7, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 70% | Adrift (2018) |
As survival stories go, the story of Tami (Woodley) and Richard (Claflin) has great bones - they are young, pretty and in love, and the settings are marinas and beaches of islands in the Pacific.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2018
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| 4.5/5 | 95% | Custody (Jusqu'à la garde) (2018) |
Writer-director Xavier Legrand knows how to do family court.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jun 1, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 34% | Fahrenheit 451 (2018) |
Bahrani's fondness for drama with a social justice angle is revealed in the backstory...and does not go much farther than general finger-wagging at screen-addiction and the herd mentality found on network echo chambers.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 30, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 33% | Mary Shelley (2018) |
Well-mannered, largely accurate to the facts and pretty to look at, it fails to convey what it must have been like to be an artist so out of step with her time.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 30, 2018
|
| 3/5 | 71% | Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) |
By the end of this safe, bland origin story, one will walk away feeling entertained, but without having learnt anything surprising-or even interesting-about one of the franchise's most important characters.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 25, 2018
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| 1/5 | 17% | Show Dogs (2018) |
This film might be aimed at the under-six crowd, but that is no excuse for scenes that will bore older viewers into a coma.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 25, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 46% | How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2018) |
The pairing of Gaiman's provocative whimsy and Mitchell's edge should have resulted in something a lot better than this tepid teen romance.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 25, 2018
|
| 4/5 | 82% | Deadpool 2 (2018) |
[Julian] Dennison as the volatile Russell is the heart of the picture, providing an emotional anchor in a production that might otherwise be too snarky for its own good.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 17, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 21% | Terminal (2018) |
About three-quarters style exercise and one-quarter story, this occasionally intriguing but mostly frustrating film is one example of a work that would have benefited greatly from better control of tone and more careful casting.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 17, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 89% | Isle of Dogs (2018) |
What it does not have in great quantity is a story or characters worth remembering. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 15, 2018
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| 3/5 | 79% | I Kill Giants (2018) |
Despite Wolfe's excellent portrayal of a girl who is mature and defiant one moment, then terrified the next, audiences will find it exhausting to stay with a child with so bleak an outlook that even her wildest dreams are terrifying.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 15, 2018
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| 2/5 | No Score Yet | The Trough (Di ya cao) (2018) |
As writer-director, [Nick] Cheung suffers from a classic case of creator narcissism, blocked from thinking about the story as he makes the protagonist - himself - the focus of the film.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 8, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 52% | Bad Samaritan (2018) |
[David] Tennant plays Erendreich with bemused and chilling intensity and, like all good villains, he makes the audience sit up and pay attention to what he is going to do or say next.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 8, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | No Score Yet | Dukun (2018) |
Exploring one's inner Neil Gaiman is fine, but an exploitation flick about a serial-killing shaman is not quite the place to do it.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 8, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 79% | The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018) |
This film adaptation of a popular novel begins as a feather-light piece of escapism, but gains unexpected pathos mid-way.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 8, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 83% | Avengers: Infinity War (2018) |
Everything that has been said about this film, perhaps this year's most anticipated movie, is true. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 8, 2018
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| 4/5 | 79% | Unsane (2018) |
[Steven Soderbergh] has a knack for making tired genres feel fresh and he brings that magic here. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted May 8, 2018
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| 3/5 | 33% | I Feel Pretty (2018) |
If only this project examined that eagerness to laugh at female unattractiveness in the viewer, instead of giving them a pat on the back for getting on Renee's side.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2018
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| 4/5 | 84% | Journeyman (2017) |
In [Jodi] Whittaker's hands, [Emma] is a reminder of everything the damaged boxer has lost and needs to find again.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Apr 18, 2018
|
| 17% | The Titan (2018) |
But [Lennart] Ruff refuses to go there, into the gross-out, squishy, pulpy, B-movie zone that would give this venture a semblance of a purpose.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Apr 11, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 80% | Ramen Shop (Ramen teh) (2018) |
The movie feels afraid to go all in, to embrace the sensuality of its subject matter. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2018
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| 4/5 | 82% | Pyewacket (2018) |
It is a set-up as old as time, but this chilling, frequently terrifying work of horror manages to find fresh nightmare fuel in dark woods and incantations muttered in the moonlight.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2018
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| 3/5 | 43% | Pacific Rim Uprising (2018) |
In fact, the kaiju themselves, in their bizarre characteristics and highly imaginative use of bio-weapons, are more interesting as characters than the jaeger pilots.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Mar 22, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 25% | 7 Days in Entebbe (2018) |
The movie does a decent job laying out the choices - moral, political and military - facing the Israeli cabinet‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Mar 22, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 38% | Gringo (2018) |
Action comedies can be packed with action and comedy, but without a strong point of view, they feel trivial, a lot of busyness with little to show for it. That problem plagues this project. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Mar 15, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 48% | Tomb Raider (2018) |
[Alicia] Vikander's more realistic take is fine, but it is bland and saddled with a saccharine rendering of the father-daughter relationship.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Mar 8, 2018
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| 4/5 | 99% | Lady Bird (2017) |
Actress turned writer-director Greta Gerwig has turned out a funny, engaging picture driven by the twin poles of Christine and Marion (Metcalf).‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2018
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| 3/5 | 48% | Marrowbone (2018) |
The climax packs a nice wallop in giving the answer, but by then all that zig-zagging might have exhausted the audience past the point of caring.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2018
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| 1.5/5 | 31% | Wonder Wheel (2017) |
The best that can be said about this dull, overlong project is that it is at least pretty to look at. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 41% | Den of Thieves (2018) |
This movie might have been a fun, stylish homage to everyone's favourite hardboiled L.A. action-thrillers, but for [Christian] Gudegast's clumsy, overcompensating fetishisation of masculinity.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 13% | Fifty Shades Freed (2018) |
None of the films has found a way to reconcile the two purposes - sensuality and exposition - in a harmonious, graceful way that does not require excessive amounts of plodding dialogue.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 67% | Wonderstruck (2017) |
Relationships between people from two eras should be important in a story, but to make it a device feels like a cheat and not a very good one either.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2018
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| 2/5 | 14% | Winchester (2018) |
Inexplicably they have the A-list talent of Oscar winner Mirren on their side. She is aided by Clarke, an actor at home in a genre film such as this or in serious dramas. Neither of them seems to be slacking or phoning it in, to their credit.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2018
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| 4/5 | 92% | The Shape of Water (2017) |
Sally Hawkins brings a combination of frailty and strength to her part in this movie that makes her performance the pillar on which everything else stands.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Feb 2, 2018
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| 4/5 | 90% | I, Tonya (2018) |
At its heart, this film asks its audience to accept a contradiction, which it sells with a knowing wink and rather successfully.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Feb 2, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 84% | Loving Vincent (2017) |
Van Gogh's paintings already shimmer and swirl on canvas. Here, because of the animation, the painter's images of postmen, farmers and country doctors come to life in glorious squiggle-vision.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 31, 2018
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| 3/5 | 77% | Last Flag Flying (2017) |
The result is a "compare and contrast" experiment, one that feels unevenly paced and soft in focus because ideas that might have worked on the pages of its source book have not translated well into film.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 100% | Earth: One Amazing Day (2017) |
That need to draw a movie-style narrative from animal behaviour gets annoying. The beautiful footage is good enough.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2018
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| 2.5/5 | 78% | All the Money in the World (2017) |
Mark Wahlberg's fixer character, Fletcher Chase, is superfluous and feels jammed into the story to provide a musclebound foil to Williams' femininity.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2018
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| 5/5 | 91% | Phantom Thread (2018) |
The pace is stately and the visuals are lush, pushed along nicely by the neo-classical music score of frequent Anderson collaborator Jonny Greenwood.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | No Score Yet | Satan's Slaves (Pengabdi Setan) (2017) |
The scares are carefully timed and spaced between plenty of character-building moments, showing the closeness of the family. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 3/5 | 54% | 12 Strong (2018) |
Characters are reduced to thumbnails, and there is little of the soul searching found in other war movies, in which men question the need for war, or ask why men kill.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 3.5/5 | 66% | Breathe (2017) |
Actress [Claire] Foy brings the same luminous intensity to her portrayal of Diana as she does Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix series The Crown. ‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 18, 2018
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| 4.5/5 | 92% | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) |
The film, however, belongs to McDormand as the wrathful mother, capable of conveying more menace with her steely gaze and set jawline than a dozen thugs waving weapons.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 18, 2018
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| 4/5 | 84% | The Square (2017) |
Yet, this movie is anything but misanthropic. And while it pokes at the pretensions of modern art, it does not dismiss it altogether.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 18, 2018
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| 4/5 | 87% | The Post (2018) |
Graham, who inherited the job after her husband's suicide, grows in stature - from reluctant boss shouted down by male subordinates to a more confident leader - and is fascinating to watch, thanks in large part to Streep's sensitive portrayal.‐ The Straits Times (Singapore)
Read More | Posted Jan 18, 2018
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