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The Lost City Of Z, Singapore Chinese Film Festival, and more

PHOTOS: CATHAY-KERIS FILMS, SINGAPORE CHINESE FILM FESTIVAL, TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

THE LOST CITY OF Z (PG13)

140 minutes/4 stars

A lushly depicted and haunting film based on David Grann's 2009 best-selling biography of Colonel Percival Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam, right, with Robert Pattinson and Edward Ashley), a soldier who at the turn of the last century made gruelling expeditions to the Amazon, during which he would be away for years at a time, his children raised by his iron-willed wife, Nina (Sienna Miller).

Writer-director James Gray is not just interested in Fawcett as a man obsessed with finding a lost city, but also how he lived in a time when explorers were heroes and how, underneath the pomp, the British Empire was a well-run business.

John Lui


SINGAPORE CHINESE FILM FESTIVAL

There are award winners galore in this year's line-up of 16 narrative features, 13 documentaries, six restored classics and 10 short films.

They include Trivisa, about three real-life mobsters, which nabbed five Hong Kong Film Awards including Best Film and Best Actor for Gordon Lam and stars Jordan Chan (left); Chinese drama The Summer Is Gone, which won the Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film; and Taiwanese drama Hang In There, Kids!, which was named the 2016 Taipei Film Festival Best Narrative Feature.

WHERE: The Arts House, 1 Old Parliament Lane; Golden Village Suntec City, 03-373 Suntec City Mall, 3 Temasek Boulevard; and National Museum of Singapore, 93 Stamford Road MRT: Various WHEN: April 28 to May 7 ADMISSION: $13 a ticket from www.gv.com.sg and www.sistic.com. Tickets at $10 for Singapore Film Society and Singapore University of Social Sciences members at the box office INFO: www.scff.sg

Boon Chan


ALIEN DAY

April 26 is Alien Day, a global marketing campaign in celebration of the iconic Alien movie franchise and to drum up support for the sixth and latest instalment Alien: Covenant, which will be released next month.

The date is a nod to the planet LV-426 featured in the films.

In Singapore on that day, a back-to-back screening of the director's cut of Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) will be held at Golden Village Suntec City. There will also be exclusive content from Alien: Covenant, which stars Katherine Waterston (above).

WHERE: Golden Village Suntec City, 03-373 Suntec City Mall, 3 Temasek Boulevard MRT: Esplanade WHEN: April 26, from 6.30pm ADMISSION: Tickets are free and can be won from Twentieth Century Fox Singapore's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/twentiethcenturyfoxsingapore), Golden Village, StarHub, Mint Museum of Toys, Absolute Comics, Geek Culture and Popcorn.Asia

Andy Chen


POP AYE (M18)

101 minutes/4.5 stars

Singapore writer-director Kirsten Tan's feature debut is a playful and poignant look at one man's attempt to find redemption through a bold, insane act of animal rescue.

Thana (Thaneth Warakulnukroh) is a middle-aged architect losing everything, including the affection of wife Bo (Penpak Sirikul) and the respect of his peers.

A chance encounter with a "beggar elephant" - an animal used to coax money from tourists on Bangkok streets - fills Thana with the desire to rescue the pachyderm he thinks is "Pop Aye", a childhood pet, and return him to a sanctuary in the north of the country.

John Lui

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on April 21, 2017, with the headline The Lost City Of Z, Singapore Chinese Film Festival, and more. Subscribe