The Man From Nowhere
This kinetic, violent action thriller by director Lee Jeong-beom has already proven a big hit in his native South Korea and on the festival circuit. The story of a withdrawn former special ops agent who gets drawn back into a life of violence to save a young girl is hardly new, but actor Won Bin brings enormous energy to the lead role, and the bad guys (and police) get dispatched in a brutal fashion. The Man From Nowhere, with its subplots taking in illegal organ harvesting and child trafficking, aims to shock. The gritty feel of the cinematography and a willingness to take the violence that extra mile (a torture scene using a hair dryer is much praised by Internet fans) ensures that the film can barrel through a few narrative absurdities to provide two hours of gripping entertainment.
The Borrowers (Kari-gurashi no Arrietty)
Japanese animation from Studio Ghibli directed by veteran animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi with a script by the celebrated animator and studio cofounder Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle). The story is taken from Mary Norton’s 1952 novel The Borrowers. This is the second time that the studio has borrowed from a well-known Western work, the last occasion being in 2008 for Gedo Senki, based on Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels. While Gedo Senki featured a full cast of outlandish magical creatures and grand quests, The Borrowers tells the story of an ordinary family, ordinary except for the fact they are 10cm tall and live within a regular Tokyo home, taking what they need from the human environment (hence the title). The production has been praised for its delicate touch and its generally strong characterization. Environmental issues are dealt with, but there is also a strong mood of youthful adventure, making this an ideal movie outing for the whole family.
Battle Royale 3D (Batoru Rowaiaru)
A 10th anniversary reissue of a film that first came to Taiwan in 2000 but failed to get by the censors due to its extremely graphic violence. Directed by the late celebrated filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku, and starring the inimitable Takeshi Kitano, Battle Royale’s story is simple: School violence has got out of hand and the state intervenes. It arbitrarily takes off whole classes of highschoolers to an island and tells them that only one will survive. They are given some food, a weapon of sorts, and the contest is opened by the teacher who recommended their participation. They soon discover that they must either fight or die. The high body count and the vicious, bloody action does not totally drown out the director’s deeper interests in the violence that is inherent in all of us. Battle Royale is much more than a gore fest and still manages to shock even a decade after its first release.
Blood Ties (頭七還魂夜)
The first feature film by young Singaporean director Chai Yee-wei (蔡于位), starring actress Cheng Pei-pei (鄭佩佩), a huge star in the 1960s whose career made a resurgence with her role as Jade Fox in Ang Lee’s (李安) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Cheng’s presence in Blood Ties might actually be the most interesting thing about this conventional story of a dead police officer taking possession of the body of a 13-year-old girl to exact vengeance on the gang that killed him and his wife.
Eloise
A Spanish film that performed well on the gay cinema festival circuit. While boasting solid performances and two beautiful leads, Eloise is a niche product. Directed by Jesus Garay, Eloise is the story of a nice girl, Asia, who is targeted for seduction by Eloise. The film opens with Asia in a coma, and the main body of the film is made up of her struggle with her sexuality and our discovery of how she came to be in that predicament. There are the usual dollops of art house sex and a generally positive portrayal of a lesbian relationship.
The Hairy Tooth Fairy 2 (El Raton Perez 2)
Low-budget CGI children’s film about a mouse who works nights as a tooth fairy, picking up teeth placed under children’s pillows, selling them on and giving the money to the children. The first installment was successful enough in the Spanish-speaking market to spawn a sequel. This time the hero, the mouse Perez, meets up with a girl mouse, learns to dance and then the two must avoid capture by a fiendish circus manager who wants to exploit them as a money-spinner. Mixture of animation and live action, but for audiences brought up on Disney, Dreamworks and Pixar, it’s low-rent. If you want to watch rats being cute, catch one of the endless reruns of Ratatouille on the Disney Channel.
I Am Love
There is enough haute couture, chandeliers and champagne in I Am Love to put this contemporary story into the category of costume drama. Director Luca Guadagnino has done a splendid job in giving us a glimpse of the Italian financial aristocracy through the story of an affair between Emma (Tilda Swinton), the young, inexperienced wife of an industrialist, and Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), a young chef. Emma’s flight from a stultifying society into the arms of passion offers little that is new, and Guadagnino’s considerable talent is largely to be placed at the service of pretending that a story taken directly from the pages of pulp romance is something better than it really is.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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