The Time Traveler’s Wife
Judiciously released on Chinese Valentine’s Day, this film stars Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, a loving couple cursed (or blessed?) by the latter’s uncontrollable trips through time and space. As with the temporal hoppers in The Terminator, Bana slips in and out of the space-time continuum absolutely starkers, which proves to be more humorous here than dangerous. Will true love prevail in the end (or the beginning)? Critics saw through the holes immediately, but uncritical, lovelorn audiences might have a heartwarming time, especially because the leads are winning.
Let’s Fall in Love (尋情歷險記)
Also making use of Chinese Valentine’s Day is this up-close-and-personal Taiwanese documentary enjoying a proper release with a new promotional campaign. Twenty-odd married couples come under the spotlight with their relationship problems and weaknesses, together with the intriguing matchmaker-counselor whom all of them share. From award-winning director Wuna Wu (吳汰紝), who had to solicit hundreds of small investors to get this film into theaters.
The Forbidden Legend: Sex & Chopsticks 2 (金瓶梅2：愛的奴隸)
Sweaty and kinky sex for its own sake is a rare bird on the Taiwanese big screen these days. We haven’t had a soft porn extravaganza since, well, the original Sex & Chopsticks late last year. Japanese hardcore actresses Hikaru Wakana (with head still shaved), Kaera Uehara, Serina Hayakawa and Yui Morikawa secure another Hong Kong work visa to tell, for the umpteenth time, the misadventures of barely robed courtesans. But tableware fetishists will likely feel misled all over again; the Chinese title (“The Golden Lotus 2: Slaves of Love”) is more faithful to what’s on show.
Largo Winch
At last, a live-action movie based on a comic book that isn’t Japanese. Largo Winch stands to inherit a fortune from a tycoon who rescued him from an orphanage. But money like that doesn’t come easily if Daddy’s ruthless business partners have designs of their own, including offing the man and preparing the same for his son. A mixture of office intrigue and globetrotting action, this French effort is something different for people who think they’ve seen everything.
Rookies: Graduation
And so, back to a movie based on a Japanese manga. A bunch of good-for-nothing punks regain self-respect and team spirit after their charismatic high school teacher shapes them into a formidable baseball team. This is a theatrical follow-up to a TV series based on the popular manga series Rookies. But unless you’re a baseball tragic or swoon at the sight of “bad boys” with trendy shocks of hair and perfect skin, this attempt at inspiration won’t mean a pitcher’s mound of beans. The Bad News Bears it ain’t.
Four Minutes
A German film from 2006, Four Minutes is also an inspirational movie, but with sobriety, depth and darkness. A dangerous new prisoner (played by the much-admired Hannah Herzsprung) at a women’s correctional facility turns out to be a very talented piano player, catching the eye of the prisoners’ aging music teacher and sparking heat in different directions. The film climaxes with the minutes of the title in a killer performance. Filled with surprising brutality, poignance and energy, this is a hands-down must-see for musicians, especially piano students who feel chained to their instruments.
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens
Made for PBS in the US as part of the series American Masters, this documentary on the iconic photographer is about three years old but could still be of interest. Packed full of celebrities, politicians and other recognizable faces, the story concentrates on Leibovitz’s craft and success rather than the controversies in her action-packed life. It’s not clear why the film would be released here now; Leibovitz is, after all, only in the news because of financial woes. Directed by the subject’s sister, who clearly likes her. Starts tomorrow.
KJ (音樂人生)
The poster for this Hong Kong documentary says it all: a boy sitting alone in an auditorium. The boy is “KJ,” a brilliant pianist with a bright future in store, though the film covers much wider, and occasionally darker, ground, which makes it an ideal companion to Four Minutes. With respected director Ann Hui (�?�) as consultant, this study of individual genius in a society that tends to stifle it has the stamp of quality. Six years in the making, KJ is screening exclusively at the Wonderful Cinemas complex in Taichung.
Planet Raptor
Made for TV, Planet Raptor is a galactic sequel to the unscreened-in-Taiwan Raptor Island and features a bunch of heavily armed humans doing battle with various dinosaur-like creatures. Truth be told, it all looks like a video game, but it is less than six degrees of separation from Sam Raimi and the Evil Dead series. Stars Steven Bauer and Ted Raimi. Screening at the Baixue theater in Ximending.
Good
Viggo Mortensen is a literature professor whose fictional treatment of euthanasia brings him to the attention of Nazis who need a professional apologist for breeding policies. The good professor subsequently, and reluctantly, climbs the ladder of regard and opportunity among monsters. Unlike Eastern Promises, Mortensen suffered poor reviews for his performance of a weak man succumbing to the banality of evil, as did the film generally. Based on the play.
The problem with Marx’s famous remark that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce, is that the first time is usually farce as well. This week Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made a pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “to confer, converse and otherwise hob-nob” with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. The visit was an instant international media hit, with major media reporting almost entirely shorn of context. “Taiwan’s main opposition leader landed in China Tuesday for a rare visit aimed at cross-strait ‘peace’”, crowed Agence-France Presse (AFP) from Shanghai. Rare!
What is the importance within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of the meeting between Xi Jinping (習近平), the leader Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), the leader of the KMT? Local media is an excellent guide to determine how important — or unimportant — a news event is to the public. Taiwan has a vast online media ecosystem, and if a news item is gaining traction among readers, editors shift resources in near real time to boost coverage to meet the demand and drive up traffic. Cheng’s China trip is among the top headlines, but by no means
Sunflower movement superstar Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) once quipped that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could nominate a watermelon to run for Tainan mayor and win. Conversely, the DPP could run a living saint for mayor in Taipei and still lose. In 2022, the DPP ran with the closest thing to a living saint they could find: former Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中). During the pandemic, his polling was astronomically high, with the approval of his performance reaching as high as 91 percent in one TVBS poll. He was such a phenomenon that people printed out pop-up cartoon
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
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