Saw some excellent films in Singapore. Was especially impressed by all three Filipino films which featured at SIFF.

Top 5 movies I saw at SIFF2002
1. No Man's Land - Farce about the Serbian-Bosnian conflict. Very funny until you realise it's all too real. Directed by Danis Tanovic, won Best Foreign Language Film at the 2001 Oscars. I saw Amelie earlier, loved it, and wondered why it didn't win the Oscar gong. Now I know.
2. Batang West Side - You may call this cognitive dissonance since I sat through the entire FIVE hours of this epic, a comprehensive (it better fucking be at five fucking hours) dissection about the Filipino diaspora in the US. Directed by Lav Diaz, won best film at SIFF2002. I left my Batang West Side poster at the train station boohoo!
3. The Man Who Wasn't There - Coen Brothers does Camus' The Outsider. Who wudda thunk Billy Bob Thornton as Meursault?
4. What Time Is It There? - The least subtle of the three Tsai Ming-Liang movies I've seen. Which is akin to saying the Arctic is the warmer pole.
5. Bayaning Third World (Third World Hero) - The most comprehensive deconstruction of an icon on film that I've ever seen. Mike de Leon does things to The Philippines' national hero Jose Rizal that I'd like to see being done to our leaders. The Tunku would be Rizal's equivalent, but would DrM be more interesting?
Notable mentions:
Pulse - Enjoyable Japanese schlock horror, without any ghosts. Pulse does to the computer what The Ring does to the television.
Tuhog (Larger Than Life) - schizophrenic Filipino opus about rape, porn and sexploitation.
Lifetime Guarantee - hilarious documentary about lesbian folk singer-turned-Tupperware saleswoman.
Big Mac Small World - improbably moving and slyly comic look at the lives of McDonald's employees across the world.
Hollywood HK - another uneven but engaging Fruit Chan film about slum life in HK.

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