MAY 16 — People often complain about how good films rarely get to Malaysian cinemas. As with any other country out there, it’s the Hollywood products that usually get the premium treatment here.
It’s very understandable, as bringing in movies to show in local cinemas is a business anyway. Having said that, as I’ve been to a fair few of our neighbouring countries, and of course checking out the cinemas there, I don’t think many people realise that the situation’s really not that bad here.
With at least three major cineplex chains around the country in the form of GSC, TGV and MBO, with one cinema normally home to at least nine or 10 screens, there really is a lot of screen space to fill with films, and we’re increasingly getting much better at providing variety as well.
While we still have a long way to go to match Singapore’s enviable track record of bringing in arthouse and indie films, when it comes to Hollywood blockbusters we’ve beaten them hands down endless times as we get more of them here, and sometimes even a few days earlier than their opening day in the US.
But the increasing activity among smaller distribution outfits like Rain Film, RAM Entertainment and GSC and TGV’s own distribution arms have meant that more and more films are getting screen time here.
This particular week has been one of the best in recent memory as so many interesting films are playing simultaneously on screens across Malaysia.
It’s such a good week that I can pick and recommend 5 movies, and that doesn’t even include Pitch Perfect 2 (notable for being actress Elizabeth Banks’ directing debut) and Paul Feig’s latest comic extravaganza Spy. So do check this list out, and head on to your nearest cinema for a great time at the movies!
It Follows
This one’s getting such a low key release here that there wasn’t even a press screening for it, but David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to his beautifully low key debut The Myth Of The American Sleepover is destined to become one of the best horror films of the year.
A sensation at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it played at the Critics Week section, It Follows has one of the most ingeniously simple concepts that I’ve come across in recent memory.
It’s about a "thing", simply called "it", that slowly walks towards whomever it’s passed to, and "it" is passed through sexual intercourse. It only walks though, so you can outrun it or drive fast and far to take some time to think, but it will catch up with you eventually. Seeing people slowly walk towards you has never been this scary. Catch it while you can, because this is this year’s Oculus or The Babadook.
Mad Max: Fury Road
Forget the Fast And Furious movies, director George Miller has returned to school everyone on how to conceive, shoot and execute vehicular carnage. Its minimalistic story and simple character motivations might put off some people, but that simplicity is needed for it to not get in the way of the film’s main point, which is to orchestrate some of the most astonishing practical stunts you’ll ever see involving cars, lorries, motorbikes, jeeps, trucks, and whatever vehicles you can think of. It really is mad, filled with fury, has lots of road, and ultimately cranked up to the max! As jaw dropping a blockbuster as you’ll ever see this year.
She’s Funny That Way
After 13 years without a new film, New American Cinema legend Peter Bogdanovich is back with this delightful and hilarious homage to the cheeky Hollywood screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. Produced by Bogdanovich fans Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach and armed with a star-studded cast that includes Owen Wilson, Imogen Poots, Rhys Ifans, Will Forte and more, it’s a story about a call girl and the increasingly complicated web of romance that revolves around her. This is the kind of film that fans of Preston Sturges, Ernst Lubitsch and Mitchell Leisen will eagerly lap up as it will remind you of the days when Hollywood was able to churn out cheeky and funny movies about sex, but without needing to show it.
The Age Of Adaline
The main reason I wanted to see this movie was because it was directed by Lee Toland Krieger, who last did the beautifully funny and emotionally true Celeste And Jesse Forever. He still doesn’t disappoint here in this tale of a 29-year-old woman named Adaline who stayed 29 years old after a car accident, in which a combination of her heart stopping, her being submerged underwater and a strike of lightning resulted in her cells simply stop growing old. What transpires afterwards is nothing big, grand or historical like The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, but a more personal story of love, missed opportunities and letting go. See this if you feel up for a little bit of earnest romance.
Unfriended
This one’s entering its third week in cinemas here and is still going strong. A horror film where all of the events take place on a laptop screen, as in we’re literally watching that laptop screen for the whole movie, a lot has been said about the ingenuity of this concept, although Open Windows, directed by Mexican genre whiz Nacho Vigalondo and starring Elijah Wood and former porn star Sasha Grey, had done this first last year. What makes Unfriended such a bewitching watch is how well it executed this concept, which is basically a social media and chat windows update on the found footage horror genre. It’s the perfect horror movie for the social media generation.
