Animal Kingdom
Top-notch Aussie drama about Josh Codey (James Frecheville), a young lad caught in the grip of his family, a group of Melbourne criminals under the leadership of matriarch Smurf Codey (magnificently played by Jacki Weaver), a petite blonde grandmother who calls hits on rivals while popping a casserole in the oven. The Codeys are engaged in a war with the cops of the armed robbery division, who are almost as corrupt and violent as the criminals they pursue. Gritty and hard hitting, Animal Kingdom portrays suburban Melbourne as a jungle, and its characters grimly fight to stay alive, fending off enemies from without and betrayal from within. Animal Kingdom will not make you feel good, but it will keep you enthralled.
Las Buenas Hierbas
Family saga from Mexican director Maria Novaro focusing on a mother suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and her grown daughter’s attempts to cope. The director, who first came to prominence in 1989 with the highly praised Lola, eschews melodrama for a richly textured tapestry of modern Mexican life. Novaro has been described as an impressionistic director for her weaving together of sometimes disconnected bits of story to build up a complex and unresolved picture of real life. This makes a perfect fit with the understated musical interludes of guitar and percussion, which enrich the mood without obtruding on the meandering flow of the narrative.
Black Heaven (L’autre monde)
French film by Gilles Marchand that uses an alternate reality video game as its main trope. The setup is promising: A young couple, Gaspard and Marion, find a cellphone at the beach. It rings, they answer, and with that they are drawn into the discovery of the sexy Audrey (Louise Bourgoin), who has apparently tried to commit suicide. This action is somehow related to the online game Black Hole (a darker version of Second Life), and Gaspard opens an account to see if he can discover Audrey’s story. Amazing computer graphics and dark eroticism are not quite enough to save the film from its confused and confusing narrative.
The Ghost Must Be Crazy
Horror comedy out of Malaysia made up of two separate shorts by different directors: The Day Off, a story of the supernatural fears of a bunch of military reservists undergoing training in the jungle by director Boris Boo (巫培雙) and Ghost Bride, a film about the consequences of making Faustian pacts, by TV-host and first-time director Mark Lee (李國煌). The general mood of slapstick and some occasional real scares is similar to the Singapore movie Where Got Ghosts? (嚇到笑), which was released here late last year.
Heartbeats (Les amours imaginaires)
Quebecois director Xavier Dolan, aged just 21, picked up the special youth prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival for his debut feature I Killed My Mother. In this, his second film, Dolan shows he has talent to spare in what can be seen as an homage to cinematic idols Wong Kar-wai (王家衛), Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Bernardo Bertolucci and Pedro Almodovar. Heartbeats is an utterly over-the-top film about a love triangle between three amazingly good-looking people exploring their sexuality and the limits of love. Everything is utterly gorgeous, the emotions utterly superficial, and an undercurrent of sorrow and tragedy runs beneath the surface.
Something Borrowed
Soft fluffy rom-com starring Ginnifer Goodwin as Rachel and Kate Hudson as Darcy, two best friends who become involved with the same guy, Dex — played by Colin Egglesfield. He is about to marry Darcy, while Rachel has a long-time crush that is only getting worse as the impending nuptials approach. There is a lot of running about, often in the rain, and some rather ham-handed slapstick as Rachel dithers over whether she can hurt her best friend by coveting the man she loves. What the audience will be wondering is how the gorgeous Rachel could have any feelings at all for the self-satisfied and smarmy Dex.
We Are What We Are (Somos lo que hay)
Life can be hard for cannibals in Mexico City, with the daily grind of picking up a member of the general public for dinner. A debut feature by Jorge Michel Grau, this is an urban fable that revels in urban decay, and its family of people eaters are only the most ghastly of many living on the fringes of subsistence. Technically, this is a more than adequate horror flick, but too much is left unexplained to make it entirely satisfying.
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
Moritz Mieg, 22, lay face down in the rubble, the ground shaking violently beneath him. Boulders crashed down around him, some stones hitting his back. “I just hoped that it would be one big hit and over, because I did not want to be hit nearly to death and then have to slowly die,” the student from Germany tells Taipei Times. MORNING WALK Early on April 3, Mieg set out on a scenic hike through Taroko Gorge in Hualien County (花蓮). It was a fine day for it. Little did he know that the complex intersection of tectonic plates Taiwan sits
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