My Blind Uncle (阿輝的女兒)
A debut feature by George Hsin (辛建宗), My Blind Uncle tells a common enough tale of a child cared for by an unlikely guardian. The two discover an unexpected love for each other, and through this, both grow to be better people. Hsiao Chi (小琪) is left by her mother with the child’s maternal uncle Ah Hui (阿輝) when she relocates to China. Ah Hui is a rather improbable choice, because he, as the title indicates, is blind. His role is played by Lin Fu-sheng (林復生), who is severely visually impaired, and the trailer has many scenes of Lin living life to the full, swimming, practicing judo, and rollerblading. The inspirational message is laid on thick and this gets in the way of making My Blind Uncle interesting. The project comes over as a well-intentioned infomercial about the ability of blind people to take an active role in society.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
The latest Woody Allen release in his long-drawn-out decline from one of the world’s edgiest comedians into a hardworking director of superior mainstream comedy that more often than not fails to wow either the mainstream or the art-house crowd. As ever, Allen’s name has given him access to a mouthwatering array of talent, including Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones and Naomi Watts. In Dark Stranger we have a host of superficially attractive characters struggling against existential angst or simple metaphysical confusion, to rather ponderous comic effect. Allen has worked with many of the cast members before, and while he has maintained a reputation within the industry, he is no longer the pioneer he once was. But it must be said that even the worst Allen efforts — with one or two notable exceptions — are better than much of the dross available at the cineplex.
Reign of Assassins (劍雨)
Co-directed by John Woo (吳宇森) and featuring Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) in a surprising role like the one she played in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), this martial arts epic looks like an effort to reignite the kung fu fever sparked by Ang Lee’s (李安) classic. Early reviews have lauded the film as a return to form by Woo, whose name has adorned a string of high-profile flops in recent years. The cast includes Taiwan’s own Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛, aka Big S) and Leon Dai (戴立忍), and South Korean actor Jung Woo-sung. Assassins might be described as a period costume version of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Although swords rather than guns are used in the fighting, there is a similar balletic quality to the fast-paced action, and production values are high throughout. The film also has the advantage of a strong script written by Taiwanese co-director Su Chao-pin (蘇照彬).
Harmony (Hamoni)
A story of three woman doing time for murder, Harmony shifts forward and back from the reasons for their imprisonment and their participation in a prison choir. One of the three women is played by Kim Yoon-jin, who will be known to Westerners through her appearance in the television series Lost. Harmony is an unashamedly feel-good movie, with Kim’s character, who is serving 10 years for killing her violent husband, having a child behind bars, and finding some degree of consolation by immersing herself in the choir, which aims to participate in a national competition. The film is light on grit and heavy on sentiment, and the musical numbers, by award-winning music director Lee Byung-woo, have already proven a huge hit with South Korean audiences.
Heartbreaker
American remakes of successful European films are not uncommon, but director Pascal Chaumeil has injected such a strong Hollywood sensibility into the French-language Heartbreaker that it could easily be mistaken for an American product. (There are nevertheless plans for an English-language remake.) The film stars two very beautiful people, with Romain Duris showcasing his raffish elegance and Vanessa Paradise struggling to achieve the haughty, slightly remote charm and sophistication often associated with European romantic films. The story of a man who makes a living from facilitating the breakup of undesirable romances has a good dose of slapstick and some amusing similarities with film and music of the 1980s, particularly Dirty Dancing (1987). Diverting, occasionally amusing, but never very persuasive or engrossing.
Life as We Know It
Hollywood is no stranger to utterly awful comedy scenarios, but Life as We Know It should have been rejected seconds after it was thought up. A lovely couple, a lovely little child. Couple get killed. Sad. In their will, they name two friends, a stylish debutant played by Katherine Heigl and a blue-collar jock played by Josh Duhamel, as joint guardians to the child. What? The two have already dated once and hated each other; but then, of course, they discover that with the mischievous little child in tow, they are really one big happy family. Nausea ensues. The lack of wit in Life as We Know It makes its tastelessness even more unforgivable. The fact that the lovely baby that brings the Heigl and Duhamel characters together is in fact played by triplets somehow adds to the overall ickiness of this comedy.
Moss
Not to be confused with the 2008 Hong Kong cop flick The Moss (青苔) directed by Derek Kwok (郭子健), Moss is an action thriller with a horror twist from South Korean director Kang Woo-suk, based on a hugely popular Internet comic or Web-toon. While this does not sound too promising, a solid cast holds things together, and the director succeeds in creating an atmospheric mood in which themes of judgment and revenge predominate. Actor Jeong Jae-yeong plays a young man who gets summoned back to his hometown when his father dies, only to find the inhabitants particularly unwelcoming. When he gets suspicious about the cause of death and insists on staying in town to investigate, bad things begin to happen.
My Rainy Days
If a Web-toon seems an insubstantial basis for a major feature film, then check out My Rainy Days, a film based on a popular Japanese cellphone novel. The film is about a spoilt brat who bullies and humiliates those around her while living off her sugar daddy, then has a life-changing experience when she falls hard for a dorky history professor with a brain tumor. My Rainy Days has all the ingredients of an exceptionally grating exercise in sentimental excess and emotional manipulation. Surprisingly, Internet reviews suggest that it manages to avoid most of the worst pitfalls of its premise, and glamor model Nozomi Sasaki is praised for an outstanding performance in a debut role as the film’s main character. She is supported by a solid cast, has curves to spare, and there is plenty of catchy J-pop to maintain a lively pace.
Dachimawa Lee
This South Korean spoof of the 007 franchise along the lines of Austin Powers or Get Smart is already two years old (released in 2008) and is just another in the slew of average Korean films brought in to feed the as yet unsated appetite for all things Korean. There are a million cinematic references to American spy films, and also some humor at the expense of South Korea’s own political establishment, all thrown together in a big mess of a film.
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
Manga-based film that combines high school themes, time travel, aliens and adventure. It is based on the fourth book of the nine-book Haruhi Suzumiya series of Japanese light novels written by Nagaru Tanigawa. The stories of this series revolve around a weird but beautiful girl named Haruhi Suzumiya who convinces several of her high school mates into joining a club that explores extraordinary phenomena. Its popularity with young readers led Little, Brown books to acquire the rights and an English-language version of the first book in the series, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, was published last year.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and