Four Christmases
A comedy opening at Yuletide with Reese Witherspoon and a cast of wonderful supporting actors (Mary Steenburgen, Jon Voight, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Dwight Yoakam)? Sounds unbeatable, but this emerges as something of an anti-holiday film and has left legions of critics mirthless. Witherspoon and hubby Vince Vaughan are forced to visit the homes of each of their divorced parents for the holidays, something they have always tried to avoid. The problem is, the couple themselves might be just as insufferable for the viewer as their parents.
Smart People
The sourness of Four Christmases is initially all over Smart People, which has cranky, widowed literature professor Dennis Quaid coping with a less-than-perfect family of smart but cheerless people — of which he is the less-than-perfect patriarch. An accident brings Quaid to the hospital and triggers a relationship with doctor Sarah Jessica Parker. Meanwhile, back home, there’s redemption in store when Quaid’s adopted brother (Thomas Haden Church from Sideways) moves in and turns the tables on everyone. Also stars Ellen Page (Juno) as Quaid’s daughter.
The Spirit
This is an adaptation of Will Eisner’s decades-old comic strip that follows Sin City’s stylistic lead, and is written and directed by Frank Miller, who helmed that groundbreaking film. The hero here is a policeman (Gabriel Macht) who is killed and revitalized as a crime fighting, mask-touting, womanizing vigilante. Samuel L. Jackson, as “The Octopus,” is the main villain and Scarlett Johansson is his companion in crime. Variety was singularly unimpressed, calling it “relentlessly cartoonish and campy” and “a work of pure digital artifice,” among other unkind words.
Suspect X
A theatrical extension of the award-winning Japanese TV mystery series Galileo, Suspect X pits a young and slightly eccentric physicist-cum-sleuth (“Detective Galileo”) and his policewoman collaborator against an old friend of Galileo who craftily sets up an alibi for the titular suspect (or is it suspects?) who committed a murder. Smatterings of whimsy, comedy and science make this a digestible mystery for non-converts to the TV show.
The Gift to Stalin
Not many films from Kazakhstan come our way (Borat doesn’t count). In this one, a young Jewish refugee escapes death when he is taken home by a local Muslim man. But this is the Soviet bloc under Josef Stalin, with purges and appalling mistreatment of minorities, so there’s something nasty in store for the old man and his charge. Location photography and heartwarming elements will charm viewers, but there’s a history lesson at the climax that will leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
Hell’s Rain
The “rain” in this made-for-TV flick is a comet storm that threatens a Colorado town whose mayor is a woman with burdens of every description: work, family and a traumatic past. The setup borrows from Twister, and retains that movie’s technique of milking drama from people battling their obsessions in the face of a natural disaster. Also known as Anna’s Storm, this is being released briefly as a DVD promotion. Starts tomorrow.
Man, Woman and the Wall
Crossover porn star Sora Aoi stars as the girl next door in this more mainstream Japanese erotic drama, though in this case the “door” is an incredibly thin wall between apartments that leads our antihero to eavesdrop on and finally stalk the poor lady, before discovering that she suffers even rougher treatment from her boyfriend. Screening at the Baixue theater in Ximending, which ordinarily screens Aoi product that we don’t bother covering. Like Hell’s Rain and Bangkok Dangerous below, this is a promo for a DVD release.
Bangkok Dangerous
Two months ago, the Nicolas Cage film Bangkok Dangerous was released here. This movie of the same name is the stylish 1999 original, also directed by the Pang brothers Oxide (彭順) and Danny (彭發) when they were still finding their directorial legs. The film, which chronicles the trials of a mute hit man, made an international impression at the time. The Baixue theater is hosting its theatrical cameo.
Elegy
We previewed this title last week, but without notice the distributor delayed its release. So from tomorrow it’s your chance to see literature professor Ben Kingsley seduce older student Penelope Cruz — without realizing that seduction can be a double-edged sword.
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