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'Bleach: Memories of Nobody'

The Game Plan

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays a quarterback upended by an eight-year-old girl claiming to be his offspring. This set-up sounds terribly familiar, but even the sternest critics couldn't help admitting that The Rock brings a lot of charisma to his films, including this one. If you're a sucker for movies where beefy tough guys get domesticated by cute kids (think Arnie in Kindergarten Cop and Vin Diesel in The Pacifier), then you'll probably get clucky and weepy over this one, too.

Everyone's Hero

This animated baseball feature for children was co-directed by Christopher Reeve and co-voiced by his wife, Dana Reeve, before both passed away. However, the selling point in Taiwan - for all those Wang Chien-ming fans, at any rate - is the New York Yankees connection. "Everyone's Hero" is Yankee Irving, a youngster who sets off to recover a bat stolen from Babe Ruth and ends up helping his namesake team win the World Series. The movie features a big name cast (Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker and spurned Yankees coach Joe Torre), but most critics thought it struck out.

'Rise: Blood Hunter'

Rise: Blood Hunter

Lucy Liu stars as a reporter-turned-vampire in a sexed-up horror effort with toothless box office in the US. Reminiscent of the Blade series, she then exacts revenge on her own kind, but not before copious coupling. It's notable for Liu's no-holds-barred performance, cameos from the likes of Marilyn Manson, and for being a B movie with an A crew - Oscar winner John Toll (Braveheart, The Last Samurai) was cinematographer.

'The Game Plan'

Singapore Dreaming

This film's distributor is not doing itself any favors by releasing this breezy drama with comic touches in a week packed with new titles. That's a shame, because this multilingual tale of an unhappy middle class family and their travails in an all-too-materialistic "5Cs" society could strike a chord with many here. It was produced by plastic surgeon, 10-pin bowler, snooker player, painter and actor Woffles Wu.

Bleach: Memories of Nobody

First the bestselling manga, then the anime TV series, now the film. Bleach is the tale of a Japanese schoolboy who can see apparitions and a female death spirit who befriends him. In Memories of Nobody, our heroes are beset by sinister creatures that lack the capacity for memory. This film could further unnerve Taiwanese educators rattled by Japan's Death Note films, which were also aimed at adolescents. The second Bleach feature opens in Japan next month.

Crazy Assassins

This is a 2003 action-comedy-period piece from South Korea's budding answer to lowbrow movie icon Lloyd Kaufman, Yun Je-gyun, who made the gross-out farce Sex is Zero, also released here. The inept "assassins" of the title are charged with finding an AWOL concubine, only to get themselves tied up with some female ghosts. The Kung Fu Cinema Web site says the film "makes Dumb and Dumberer look smart." Screening at the Baixue grind house in Ximending.

L'Amour Retrospective

Taipei's Spot theater is offering a romantic two-week program of films by acclaimed husband-and-wife directors Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda. The titles are Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Le Bonheur, and two films by Varda about Demy: Jacquot de Nantes and L'Univers de Jacques Demy.

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