17 Again
Teen heart melter Zac Efron leads the cast in a pastiche of Click and all those body switch/time travel movies of the mid-to-late-1980s (Big, Back to the Future and the eerily similar title 18 Again!, for example). In this one, Zac’s loser adult manifestation (Matthew Perry) is sent back in time by a weird janitor to ... the late 1980s. There, in the irritatingly dissimilar body of spunky Zac, our hero gets his chance to straighten out his life, but not before some uncomfortable propositions. Younger male moviegoers are advised to skip this and see Splinter instead (see below). Older males might wish to see ...
Two Lovers
Joaquin Phoenix has taken a strange turn lately with a bizarre new appearance and manner and an attempt at a career in rap. Hopefully it’s a trick, because movies like Two Lovers, Walk the Line and 8MM show that Phoenix the actor should never be underestimated. This film by James Gray was made before Phoenix grew the beard; in it he is a troubled New Yorker enticed by two women (Vinessa Shaw and Gwyneth Paltrow). The emphasis here is on dialogue, character and complexity.
The Lark Farm
A movie about the Armenian genocide directed by Italy’s famed Taviani brothers sounds unmissable — unless you’re a Turkish nationalist, of course. The story follows the misfortune of a well-to-do family brought undone by massacres and expulsion. But Variety expressed disappointment at how the epic approach clouded characterization. Still, the subject matter alone may intrigue audiences dimly aware of this little understood historical outrage.
Night Train
Danny Glover continues to dabble in low budget genre fare with this nocturnal horror flick. Weird passengers and Glover’s conductor start behaving very greedily and/or bloodily when a strange box activates their worst instincts — starting with the theft of diamonds from a dead fellow passenger. Sadly, Night Train is apparently still looking for a release in the US. This and the next three titles are being released in Taipei by distributor CatchPlay as a horror festival of sorts.
Splinter
Any low budget horror opus that gets killer reviews from Variety, the Village Voice and Fangoria magazine is probably worth seeing. The central plot device borrows a bit from From Dusk Till Dawn: a couple are forced to end a night’s camping, and on the way to a motel they are held at gunpoint by another couple. But all nefarious plans are abandoned when a much more dangerous foe emerges — a creature that exists and infects through splinter-like spines — and the luckless foursome are besieged in a gas station. Gory, fun, scary and smart; not many horror films can claim all these.
Dante 01
In the future, humans will be sent to a prison in space, where they can be quietly experimented on and killed by state medicos. If this grim French mixture of science fiction and Kafka sounds like a cross between the third and fourth Alien installments — but with human cruelty replacing the Alien — then there may be good reason. It was directed by Marc Caro, a member of the team that made Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, and whose partner directed Alien: Resurrection.
The Guard Post
It was an idea whose time had come: a gory horror movie set in a gloomy military station on the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. The Thing meets Event Horizon as a military investigator on a tight schedule probes a massacre at Guard Post 506. But the forces of evil that triggered the killings couldn’t care less about his superiors’ deadlines, and start playing havoc with his own team of soldiers after awful weather traps them inside. Also known as GP506.
Fist of the North Star: The Legend of Kenshiro
This is the final episode in the recent animated revival of the popular futuristic Japanese manga — and is actually a prequel to the manga’s storyline, filling in the missing year that resulted in so much of the warrior Kenshiro’s deadly motivation and torment, including the murder of his girlfriend. This film was released last year on the 25th anniversary of the manga’s creation.
Tamagotchi: Lost Child in Space!?
That Japanese toy pet fad from some years ago may have died out for kids (and kids at heart) in most markets, but now the franchise’s first movie is here to get your little’uns addicted all over again. A chaotic story puts our child heroes into Tamagotchi land before they end up in space and are threatened by a black hole.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50