Hi, it's Ben. I like films (among many other things), and here are some places you can find me talking about them. I'm a podcaster, film critic/writer, and general swiss army man. Currently based in Singapore but you might find me lost in other countries. Open for writing collaborations/commissions, sidequest projects, and, honestly, almost anything you could think of.
Deep Cut is a director-focused film podcast featuring deep-dive discussions about international, art-house, and independent cinema. I co-host with my friends Wilson and Eli.
Before Paul Verhoeven was Hollywood’s pervert-auteur of choice, he was making massive hits in Dutch cinema like this episode’s focus, Katie Tippel . Ben’s main question for this episode: what is Paul Verhoeven’s worldview? To answer, the Deep Cut trio explores the economic and…
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The Kinetoscope is a newsletter following my personal journey discovering and thinking about cinema.
The first time I saw Singapore Minstrel was in 2016, when it premiered at the Asian American International Film Festival. I was interning at the festival in New York City, unpaid but especially optimistic as I continued to undertake my Film Studies like it would be my life. In many ways it has been and continues to…
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I built and currently run filmbulletin.sg which aggregates film listings. Easily find showtimes and film screenings outside your regular cinema all in one place.
★★★★
If you're not picking up all the friggin herbs lying around how are you going to heal yourself god damn is this your first time holding a controller?
★★★★★
A friend and I were discussing how you'd react to just knowing a film's runtime recently, and we both concluded anything above 2.5h is either a shit movie or has a really good reason to be that long.…
★★★★
Pretty incisive with digs at everyone, and pretty much doesn't let anyone off the hook. When it goes a little twee, you can be sure it's about to let things swing the other way. Liked it most when…
★★★
Definitely would've been more "authentic" to not have all the Singaporean characters not speak just in English but do sorta see the difficulty of exporting our hodgepodge.. don't really know what the…
★★
Not really sure what people are seeing in this. The thing that's supposed to be good, the action, is fairly rudimentary, and after the first act, becomes very repetitive, never finding any new…
★★★
While the characters surely feel and sound like their Looney selves, it feels like in trying to be the type of family friendly we expect today, they feel less absolutely insane as they used to be.…
★★★★
Pretty iconic in many ways, Michelle Chong sends me with every line read, and unfortunately a marker of a bygone Singapore and a bygone sense of filmmaking. Did we let this die?
Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of the Mermaid Island
★★★★
Damn Chiikawa really said "let god sort them out" Kindness, complicity, or condemnation? Who even knows
★★★★
Really cool ethnographic record of this place in time in which home, work, and family is smashed together, boundaries blurred, and when you start crossing narratives, realising that there's no normal
★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers. Actually very very cute movie that also happens to have scenes of cattle slaughter, self-harm, and hardcore anal; Enyedi is so iconic for that
★★★
Fairly slight in its aims, but interesting nonetheless with regard to how we remember, how we self identify, and what we choose to forget. Had me reflecting on actually how damn hard it is to act in…
★★
I very desperately wanna give Chen a chance because I think he has an ear for Singaporeanness and he captures Singapore well and has some sense of the kinds of themes people want to dance around but…
★★
Needed to make that narrative and tonal shift pronto and not drag its heels so much. Kinda all over the place as to what kind of film it wants to be in terms of mood. Y'all crazy if you think this is…
★★★★★
The first time I saw Singapore Minstrel was in 2016, when it premiered at the Asian American International Film Festival. I was interning at the festival in New York City, unpaid but especially…
★★★
finding love is hard enough. try doing it on the one night everyone forgets you're spiderman, i hate this night
★★★★
Yearning is loops and spirals, loops and spirals, endlessly involving, but when it does invariably end, does love begin?
★★★★★
"In a time of apparent magic..." This is the title card that opens The Odyssey and as much as it is the best Nolan-esque movie ever made, and it is very well made, that word "apparent" says so much…
★★★★★
It's Nolan's best movie. It's the Nolanest: sad dads, survivor's guilt, competence porn, etc etc. It's also his most emotional movie and it only took him adapting one of our oldest stories to find…
★★★★
Very peculiar movie from Kurosawa, which means I liked it. I love a character like Nimura whose main trait seems to be that... he's dumb? It's so odd, with strange plot developments, but still feels…
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