Sandcastle

Sandcastle's the movie that featured Singapore, with all its Singaporean flavour, that Hollywood could never hope to portray. It's the feeling of stepping into the cinema and then being bombarded with more than langauge at once, yet feeling strangely "at home" about it, as well as the scenery and the places.

Also I read an interview about Boo Junfeng saying how the setting plays a huge role and I felt the places really gave the movie a lot of a character. It was something I really appreciated and it sort of reminded me of his previous works like Katong Fugue.

I enjoyed the first two-thirds of it tremendously. Driven by a strong narrative and I was hooked on En's journey of discovery. The actors did a really great job and I was particularly impressed with the scene where En got slapped by his mother.

The last one-third was rather slow-moving and I'm not sure I understood why it was ended the way it did. I've been trying to figure it out but it's been rather frustrating.

The soundtrack was interesting to say the least. I was a tad annoyed by the number of national day songs but grudgingly admit that each song gave identity to each era of nation building.

But truly, everyone, stand up for Singapore.