The Bank Job
Jason Statham gets around as a leading man. In this heist flick he’s back on home territory in 1970s London, leading a raid on a bank at the behest of the British secret service, which wants a file from the vault that incriminates an allegedly randy royal. Not all of those involved know, however, as the theft of cash and other items attracts the attention of another criminal who has a very good reason to hunt down the gang. Based on a real incident, and directed by Kiwi/Aussie veteran Roger Donaldson (Dante’s Peak). |
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Gabriel’s Voice
Barely released outside Spain, Gabriel’s Voice is about a psychologically stunted, virtually mute young man with considerable musical ability whose mother died and whose father was imprisoned when he was very young. His preoccupation as an adult is playing with wooden toys, but this changes after he meets a feisty (and attractive, of course) female violinist who uses music to reach him. Then Gabriel’s father complicates the picture after getting out of prison. Fine, emotional fare for young musicians who may be wondering what all the practice is for. | |
Detective Conan: Full Score of Fear
This is entry No. 12 in the Case Closed series of animated features from Japan sourced from the popular manga about a young super sleuth transformed into a child by criminals. The shrinkage luckily doesn’t take away Conan Edogawa’s ability to crack cases that no one else can. As with Gabriel’s Voice, music is key in this episode, but for more sinister reasons: Conan must investigate a series of mysterious deaths at a music academy, a case made even stranger by the presence of flutes at the crime scene. | |
Sands’ Chronicle
More manga-sourced Japanese melodrama as Ann, an energetic schoolgirl, moves to the country and attracts the attention of the local boys, only for her divorced mother to kill herself, eventually forcing the unhappy girl back to Tokyo with her father. The threads of romance and guilt culminate in what the Japan Times calls a radical break from the standard structure of such dramas: It frequently jumps to the suffering of the adult Ann who can’t deal with her trauma. Japanese title: Suna Dokei. | |
Five Across the Eyes
Taiwanese cinema patrons are frequently fed straight-to-DVD junk from the US, but occasionally experimental and low budget films of merit slip through as well. Five Across the Eyes is a no-budget horror flick that played a few specialist festivals before going to rental stateside. Even so, it picked up a few encouraging reviews, and may impress fans of the shakycam school of filmmaking. Five young women on the way home one night from a football game in Tennessee get lost in countryside known as “The Eyes” before being set upon by one thoroughly nasty individual. It’s the kind of film that a young, passionate Sam Raimi might have made before getting bogged down in the overblown Spider-Man trilogy. Starts tomorrow. |
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In the aftermath of the 2020 general elections the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had crushed them in a second landslide in a row, with their presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) winning more votes than any in Taiwan’s history. The KMT did pick up three legislative seats, but the DPP retained an outright majority. To take responsibility for that catastrophic loss, as is customary, party chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) resigned. This would mark the end of an era of how the party operated and the beginning of a new effort at reform, first under