With characters named Esperanza, Dawn and Patience that signal Deeper Meaning, Henry Poole Is Here traffics in the kind of inspirational kitsch that only a true believer could swallow. Those convinced that faith can literally move mountains may welcome a film whose characters discuss spiritual issues, although there are no grand tectonic shifts in the landscape. In the film, directed by Mark Pellington (Arlington Road) from a screenplay by Albert Torres, the miracles wrought by feeling a mystical connection with a mysterious reddish stain on the side of a stucco house are less earthshaking and have to do with physical and mental health.
That house is purchased by Henry Poole (Luke Wilson), a brooding American Everyman diagnosed with an unidentified terminal illness whose only visible symptoms are episodes of blotchy skin. Henry has returned to the Los Angeles neighborhood in which he grew up determined to die in slovenly solitude. While glumly waiting for the end, he comforts himself with vodka and Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
To his annoyance, his pesky neighbors refuse to leave him alone. The most persistent is the garrulous Mexican-American widow who lives next door, Esperanza (Adriana Barraza). She is the first to notice the stain, which contains a spot from which a bloodlike substance slowly drips. Certain that she has seen the face of God, she summons her pastor, Father Salazar (George Lopez), to inspect it, and as word gets around, visitors begin arriving to worship at the supposedly holy site.
Millie (Morgan Lily), an 8-year-old neighbor who hasn’t said a word since the breakup of her parents’ marriage, is also mysteriously drawn to the stain and miraculously begins talking again. Her beautiful, cookie-baking mother, Dawn (Radha Mitchell), just happens to be a perfect mate for Henry should he be roused from his morbid funk.
As Henry engages in furious verbal skirmishes with the true believers, Wilson offers a credible portrait of an angry, despairing man fending off a cult. But the film’s spiritual deck is stacked. In the mawkish tradition of movies like Simon Birch, Wide Awake, August Rush and Hearts in Atlantis, Henry Poole Is Here is insufferable hokum that takes itself very, very seriously.
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby