Having worked as second- and third-unit director on the Matrix trilogy and Dark City, Bruce Hunt is no stranger to inspired and
stylish productions. But whereas those films managed to inject new life into tired territory, The Cave, his first effort as director, fails to generate anything resembling innovation.
A group of ace cave-divers are flown in to investigate an intricate maze system discovered beneath the ruins of an ancient Romanian abbey. Without much explanation the gung-ho team -- and two scientists -- are lowered uncomfortably deep into the earth. It doesn't take long to learn that they are not alone, and are soon being preyed upon by what look like cheap creature rejects from the Alien films, except these demonlike mutations can fly and use sonar to see in the dark.
What is left of the plot amounts to guessing who will be killed off next out of the token Asian and African-American guys, the girl in the skimpy outfit, the sexy female scientist with an English accent and the testosterone-pumped combative brothers. Not that it matters much -- the characters are so colorless and underdeveloped that their deaths certainly won't be mourned.
As utterly formulaic as the film may be, the elements for an edge-of-the-seat crowd-pleaser are, in theory, all present: a closed-off environment ideal for creating no-one-can-hear-you-scream suspense; stimulating underwater and wall-climbing action; exotic settings, shot on location in Bucharest and the Yucatan; and bloodthirsty villains.
It's a shame, a travesty even, that the filmmakers seem to have forgotten that in order to keep viewers from contemplating the absurdity of what they are watching the action must move at a pace that doesn't allow for it. But not only is the film dreadfully dull -- every time something potentially exciting does occur -- the scenes are so muddled and chaotic that it is impossible to make out what is happening.
As the vaunted leader of the expedition, Cole Hauser attempts his best Vin Diesel impersonation but fails to deliver even at this rudimentary level.
The rest of the actors turn in performances right out of the casting room, as if they were reading the lines from the appallingly bad script for the very first time, embarrassed to
discover that it's all been done before. And will indeed be done again. Let's just hope it won't be in a Cave sequel, a possibility the film's ending distressingly leaves open.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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