There’s a new IMAX theater in town: the Vieshow Sun multiplex in Wuchang Street, Ximending. With luck, IMAX moviegoers will get to enjoy varied programming instead of month-long block bookings, but for now, it seems, we will have tandem schedules with the Miramar IMAX. And the first film to be screened? It’s:
Monsters vs Aliens
This animated 3D film will be a smash hit with the kids. A luckless bride grows very large after contact with an extraterrestrial object and gets locked up with various monsters in a secret government facility. But when some aggressive aliens ignore immigration procedures and start causing havoc, the monsters are let out to save the world. Well, America, anyway. It’s a real spectacle, this film, but the plot is for the birds. Screening in English or Mandarin at IMAX and regular theaters.
Knowing
Back in 2D movieland, Nicolas Cage continues his series of hernia-inducing roles in this apocalyptic tale from Aussie director Alex Proyas (I, Robot, Dark City). An elementary school time capsule from the 1950s is dug up to reveal a strange sheet of paper with nothing but numbers, which a bereaved professor (Cage) learns is a code of catastrophe for the past, the present and the future. This film has divided critics more sharply than any other in recent memory, but Cage’s fans should be satisfied.
New in Town
Renee Zellweger is the star of the show here. She’s a ruthless executive who travels to Minnesota to axe local jobs, but gets more than she bargained for professionally and romantically. As a romantic comedy, this change of pace might impress Zellweger devotees, but anyone who has seen Local Hero will hear the machine of Hollywood color-by-number filmmaking start up at the opening credits. Instead of Scottish wile, Zellweger must deal with locals as pure as snow — and who reminded critics of the cast of Fargo.
Fireflies in the Garden
A big cast (Julia Roberts, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Carrie-Ann Moss) star in a small movie about family troubles in sub-suburban America. Roberts is the mother and Dafoe seems to have used his evil genius character in Spider-Man as a template for his cruel husband and father. As so often happens in these types of dysfunctional family dramas — even if they’re autobiographical — an accident is the trigger for much fighting, fraying of nerves and gnashing of teeth.
Claustrophobia (親密)
In probing relationships within constrained social circumstances, this drama from first-time writer-director Ivy Ho (岸西) turns to the office setting, with all of the barriers and quiet communication that this implies. An apparently unconsummated attraction between Karena Lam (林嘉欣) and her married boss Ekin Cheng (鄭伊健) is gently probed, but like Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, the story is told backwards, challenging the viewer to look for hidden clues. Warm reviews greeted this Hong Kong production.
Anpanman: The Secret of Fairy Rin-Rin
Here comes the 20th feature starring the much-loved, bun-and-bean-paste children’s hero Anpanman (“Bread Superman”) from Japan. In this entry, the secret ingredient that gives Anpanman his courage is discovered and damaged, leading to an odyssey in search of the flower from which it derives, but the evil Baikinman (“Germ Man”) has other ideas. As always, the program starts with an Anpanman short.
Lump of Sugar
The next South Korean release at Ximending’s Baixue theater is an unusual family film from 2006. Up-and-coming actress Lim Su-jeong (A Tale of Two Sisters, Happiness) plays a horse lover with a tragic past. Horse racing and effective scenes of human-horse bonding punctuate this drama.
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist