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.
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
The 2018 nine-in-one local elections were a wild ride that no one saw coming. Entering that year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized and in disarray — and fearing an existential crisis. By the end of the year, the party was riding high and swept most of the country in a landslide, including toppling the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their Kaohsiung stronghold. Could something like that happen again on the DPP side in this year’s nine-in-one elections? The short answer is not exactly; the conditions were very specific. However, it does illustrate how swiftly every assumption early in an
Inside an ordinary-looking townhouse on a narrow road in central Kaohsiung, Tsai A-li (蔡阿李) raised her three children alone for 15 years. As far as the children knew, their father was away working in the US. They were kept in the dark for as long as possible by their mother, for the truth was perhaps too sad and unjust for their young minds to bear. The family home of White Terror victim Ko Chi-hua (柯旗化) is now open to the public. Admission is free and it is just a short walk from the Kaohsiung train station. Walk two blocks south along Jhongshan
Francis William White, an Englishman who late in the 1860s served as Commissioner of the Imperial Customs Service in Tainan, published the tale of a jaunt he took one winter in 1868: A visit to the interior of south Formosa (1870). White’s journey took him into the mountains, where he mused on the difficult terrain and the ease with which his little group could be ambushed in the crags and dense vegetation. At one point he stays at the house of a local near a stream on the border of indigenous territory: “Their matchlocks, which were kept in excellent order,
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