Vicky Christina Barcelona and Osbourne Cox

Of late, the truly entertaining, well-written movie has become somewhat scarce for us. But in the last two weeks, the tide has turned in Singapore as both Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona and the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading are playing at the same time.

As a Woody Allen fanatic, I will say that VCB ranks up there due to its novelty. After Matchpoint, we are now accustomed to a Woody Allen film without a Woody Allen character. But somehow VCB goes beyond that in its exploration of the various ways a woman searches for and responds to love and the idiosyncracies of the romantic relationship. Not since Hannah & Her Sisters has Allen delved so thoroughly into the feminine heart and the mysteries therein, and to such comic effect. Once again, casting director Juliet Taylor triumphed with Spanish actors Javier Bardem as Juan Antonio and Penelope Cruz as Maria Elena, characters that could have deteriorated on the page as mere cliches, but were so thoroughly developed by these artists into complex, flesh and blood beings who actually risk eclipsing the heroines completely. My only quibble, and it is a small one, is the use of the isolated narrator. Voice over is a tool Allen has used for decades, but it is frequently the voice-over of one of the characters of the movie. To my mind, this particular voice over tended to be disruptive and it would have been possible to let the film play out without some of the editorialising exposition, as well-written as it was - (..."and Christina...certain only of what she did not want". As a cheat, I would have made the narrative voice-over either Vicky as one of the more grounded characters or perhaps even the hostess ably portrayed by Patricia Clarkson.

Burn after Reading is not the triumph that Fargo was, in terms of writing, though of course, it has its own delightful ingenuity. But seeing the likes of Pitt and Clooney and McDormand and Malkovich play those pathetic characters was tremendously entertaining - even if the overall darkness of the plot in the end was a bit disturbing and didn't have the affectation of a moral centre that Fargo did. Yet the richness of the characters,their various mishaps and the mayhem that resulted all worked together so beautifully to express a most frightening message of random human stupidity and meaningless cruel chaos in a tragic world in which it is humorously and insistently clear, there is quite simply no justice.