Hanging On

The story is about an old man trying to hold on to old voice mail recordings of his daughter as the telephone company phased it out just after she died in an accident.

Liked how the film showed the human side of technology! Thought this was quite similar to Emoji except that one was about voice mail and the other was about messaging apps.

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Crumb

This is a documentary about Robert Crumb who is an American cartoonist.

Liked the interesting interviews and how Robert brought the viewers through several of his cartoons! It made me question if there should be bounds to freedom of expression as one man's view could be offensive to another.


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Like Someone In Love

The story is about different types of love: a student's respect for his teacher, a girl worrying for her grandmother's safety, a grandfather's longing for his loved ones and a boyfriend's concern for his girlfriend.

I was browsing through the Criterion catalogue and this title caught my eye as it was directed by an Iranian director but filmed in Japan. Liked the interesting conversations and the pretty actress! The film taught me not to judge a person too quickly by first impressions. I thought the boyfriend was a good for nothing initially but changed my mind after seeing him working diligently in his uniform. Similarly, I thought the professor's neighbor was just being nosy until I learnt more of her situation later in the film.

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PSLE-GO

The story is about the stress that children and parents face when taking the PSLE exams.

Liked the happy go lucky father who saved the day in the end!

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B Mine, Would you?

The story is about how a fat guy dated the new girl in class.

Liked the nice beauty and the beast plot! A bit skeptical that running is faster than driving though.

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Second Chance

The story is about a woman reminiscing about her past as she chit chats with the nurse at a nursing home.

Liked how the director showed two different perspectives of the same scenario! Think people usually choose to remember the good parts of their past.

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Grandfather

The story is about how a spoilt little girl changed her attitude towards her grandfather after staying with each other for a few days.

Liked the close ups on both characters and how the little girl managed to discreetly passed a gift to her grandfather towards the end!

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The Longest-Distance Relationship

This is a documentary about four girls' attempt to understand each other's religion better.

Liked the informal approach to a serious topic! The interviews were interesting and I especially liked how they included their own responses seamlessly to the interviewer's answers towards the end!

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Sunflowers

The story is about how a makeup artist found a job beautifying the dead.

Liked the nice plot and the carmaderie spirit of working together like one big family!

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32°C Fall in Love

The story is about how the cashier at a mini-mart and a security guard who liked her encountered a robber in the middle of the night.

Liked the interesting plot and the twist towards the end! I wonder where the robber managed to get the gas mask?

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Otosan

The story is about a father whose daughter is getting married soon and he is reminded of the happy times that they spent together in the past.

Liked how the film is able to convey the father's mixed feelings without the use of much dialogue!

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Yukuharu

The story is about a little girl's sadness towards the impermanence of things or mono no aware in Japanese.

Liked the conversation between the protagonist and the little boy who is his classmate as they walked home from school! They reminded me of Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in "Before Sunset". The dream sequences were interesting too! The ending was a little bit too sad though.

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Lollypop Love

The story is about the friendship of two pairs of couples in the hospital.

Nice music and pretty actresses but not much of a plot. Think I preferred the director's earlier film.

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Cine Twilight

The story is about two actors finding difficulty acting in an intimate scene.

Found this film when I read the newspaper. Thought the monologues by the two actors were quite interesting! The gigantic videos on the wall reminded me a bit of "Persona" by Bergman.

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To Mum (Love, Me)

The story is about how a mother learnt that her daughter was a lesbian and slowly accepting this fact.

This film helped me to understand the anguish felt by the LGBT community when they were treated as abnormal people.

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Emoji

The story is about how a mother tried to communicate with her workaholic daughter through messaging apps on the phone.

Liked the interesting plot and the reminder to spend more time with our loved ones!

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Farewell September

The story is about how the lives of two unwed mothers are inter-twined together.

Liked the nice plot but thought there was a little bit too much narration.

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FYP

The story is about how a woman who thought she was dying in three months time followed her passion to learn the piano. FYP stands for "follow your passion".

Liked the good chemistry between the protagonist and her piano teacher!

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Sweet Day

The story is about how a band struggled to stay together after many years.

Liked the little details that showed the bond among the band members and how they managed to keep their passion alive!

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God Knows

The story is about how a man fell in love with a deaf girl who plays in a band.

Was really surprised by the twist in the middle of the film! The director tried to explain what really happened towards the end but didn't think it was too convincing.

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Florence Foster Jenkins

The story is about how a rich amateur singer called Florence Foster Jenkins loved operas and sang to a large audience despite negative reviews.

Liked the positive can-do attitude of the protagonist played by Meryl Streep! Thought the singing lessons would start from basic, so was surprised that she knew quite a bit of the song already!

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La Ronde

The film consists of several inter-connected short stories about affairs by different couples.

Liked how everyone was linked together in one big circle! Thought the maid and the girl who loved to eat looked quite pretty!

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Our Time, Our Story

This is a documentary about Taiwan New Wave cinema that is packaged together with the "A Brighter Summer Day" criterion DVD.

Liked the interviews and the old film clips that showed how people lived more than twenty years ago! Learnt quite a bit about Taiwan film history from this documentary!

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

The story is about how Prince Achmed fought against a wizard to save a beautiful princess with the help of a witch.

Liked the interesting shadowy effects in the animation and the exciting fight scene towards the end!

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Cybercrimes with Ben Hammersley

This is a British documentary on different types of cybercrimes around the world.

Liked how the presenter slowly introduced the audience to the subject on location and the interviews with the relevant people!

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Somm

This is a documentary on how a group of young men prepared for the master sommelier exam, one of the most difficult test in the world.

Read about the exam in the newspaper some time back so was interested to learn more about it. Liked the glimpse into the history of wine making around the world!

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Blind Date

The story is about two neighbors falling in love with each other despite not having seen each other. Their wall is not sound proof and they could talk to each other.

Liked this charming little film! Can't really tell how great the piano performance was though except through the audience's reaction.

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After Porn Ends

This is a documentary on a group of people formerly from the porn industry.

Liked to hear how different people coped with the stigma of being in the industry and it affected their relationship with friends and family! Quite amazed to hear that one of them even ran for the governor of california elections!

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Tesla: Master of Lightning

This is a documentary about Tesla the scientist who enabled electricity to be distributed to the masses in the early 20th century and who was a pioneer in radio communications.

I have seen the lightning demonstrations at Science Center but didn't realize that they originated from Tesla. I was impressed by Tesla's contributions but I thought some of his ideas could be far too ahead of his time to be implementable.

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Why Planes Vanish

This is a documentary about the science behind the mystery of the disappearance of flight MH370.

Liked how the scientific principles of airplane tracking are explained in simple terms for the layman to understand! Didn't realize that there were so many gaps with present technology!

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Airplane!

The story is about how a series of incidents almost led to an air disaster.

Liked the visual gags and the play on words comedy! Might be a little bit politically incorrect at times but the auto pilot looks quite cute!

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Fantastic Mr Fox

This is an animation film adapted from Roald Dahl's short story of the same title. It describes how a fox family managed to outwit a group of business owners.

Liked the nice stop motion animation and how the wild animals worked together as a team!

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Particle Fever

This is a documentary on the large hadron collider (LHR) at CERN and how it helped to discover the Higgs Boson in 2012.

Liked the interesting computer animation of how the LHR worked! Thought the acne spot on one of the postdoc's face was a bit distracting though.

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Secrets of Her Majesty's Secret Service

This is a documentary about the British Secret Service MI6.

Liked the account of the cracking of Enigma during Second World War and the interviews with the former agents!

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Back in Time

This is a documentary on the "Back to the Future" series.

Learnt about many interesting "Back to the Future" related events such as theme parks and car shows!

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Atari: Game Over

This is a documentary about the rise and fall of the video game company Atari.

Liked how the director presented the view points from different groups of people: fans, programmers and historians! Quite amazed by how the protagonist could develop a game in just five weeks!

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Goodbye CP

This is a documentary about cerebral palsy in Japan during the early seventies.

Liked how the director dived deep into the personal lives of a few individuals to show us how it was like to be inflicted with cerebral palsy! Felt sad for one of them who had to cancel his poem reading session as the authorities called it a freak show.

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